The best laid plans of mice and men

Well, that didn't go as expected. 

What was supposed to be five blissful days of peace and quiet over Khmer New Year, visiting the family of a friend in the Cambodian countryside turned into one day of bliss followed by now over a week of being sick. And as much as I have inherited the DeTroy (my Dad's family) love of finding someone or something to place the blame on, it's hard to say what exactly the culprit was. Everybody seems to have their own theory, ranging from "a dish that you've never had before and ate too much of" to "the legions of flies freely moving from cowshed to cooking area" to "you shouldn't drink sugar palm juice when it's been raining outside". Whatever it was, it's resulted in a (deservedly) nasty sounding "intestinal infection", which is currently being treated by antibiotics and a strict diet of re-hydration drinks, rice porridge, crackers, and strong black tea. And that's about all the deeper I'm going to delve into that topic, since I do remember from my pre-Cambodia days that not everybody discusses sicknesses with as much detail as you somehow find yourself doing here.

Our being sick unfortunately means that all the pictures we were going to take of the beautiful landscape, of learning how to cook Cambodian dishes over a fire, of our participation in traditional Khmer New Year celebrations didn't get taken. I have about ten variations of the scene above, another dozen of the chickens roaming around the house, and a few nice ones of us actually learning to make a Cambodian dessert recipe. That's it, though. Basically, it if wasn't within range of the hammocks where we spent most of our time napping and drinking tea, we weren't really going to be seeing or taken part in it. 

a variation in the view

Interesting things did come to us though, in the form of animals that would bore any farm kid to tears, but were interesting enough to us city folk. And if fluffy little chicks weren't so cute and amusing to watch, why else would so much of Youtube be filled with videos of baby animals? 

Oh, and there was also this guy:

Probably the ugliest and saddest chicken - creature - I've ever seen. We were told that his loss of feathers wasn't due to some horrible chicken illness, but was a phase in his development and that he would start growing new feathers soon enough. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the chicken equivalent of the acne-plagued, braces-wearing, awkward adolescent. Being a teenager is rough, no matter what species you belong to.  

This is Fido, on whom I wholly place all of the blame for the approximately 4 million flea bites I still have covering my feet and legs. Thanks little dude. He was pretty cute, though and would spend every mealtime at my feet giving me the best puppy eyes he could muster, hoping for table scraps, which he didn't get any of, since we spent every mealtime being closely watched by our host family and a varying number of neighbors. 

In the next post I'll write more about our visit, especially about what made it so delightful before we got sick and so, so difficult on every day after: food.  But, in the meantime, I'll be getting back to my crackers and Gatorade.