Khartoum wrote: ↑Sun Feb 03, 2019 2:38 am

nuzen wrote: ↑Sun Feb 03, 2019 12:06 am After five years of retirement life in Cambodia, and two years before that in the Philippines. I repatriated back to America. I'm starting more and more to miss Cambodia and Khmer people, and of course my friends there. One thing I don't miss is Khmer food.

The food quality is not something I miss either. It will remain a mystery to me why Cambodia, sandwiched between 2 countries that are renowned for fine food, turns up such vile fare.

ExPenhMan wrote: ↑Sat Feb 09, 2019 11:58 am

RickyBobby wrote: ↑Sun Feb 03, 2019 1:59 am When you leave the west and come to Cambodia, you are irrevocably changed. You never totally feel you belong but then when you go home, you feel the same. No one gets you anymore either. Total shift in values.

Yup, "no one gets you anymore." I would go one step further to say and "I don't give a f**k" whether they do or not. Harsh, but that's how my new life rolls.

RickyBobby says later:

I have talked about Cambodia a lot with my friends and family, I am surprised how uninterested most of them are. Then I just stopped talking about it. The west and consumerism and hamster wheel of life is another strange phenomenon.

I never worked in the KOW, and I feel that if I was plugged in, my experience would have been a lot more positive because I find it hard to stay healthy in mind and body. But, the entire experience of coming here and seeing the world from a whole other perspective has also been pure gold and I wouldn't change if for the world.

I learned after a couple of trips east that people don't want to hear about your new life lessons. I can tell they're just being polite by asking the usual questions. They're not listening, really.

The "hamster wheel of life" in the west becomes very visible on my returns, brief as they are. In fact, my stays started out as a month or more, and have fallen to a mere two weeks. It's not all bad but I know I don't want to be there for long.

Fortunately, I made some decisions before my eastern forays in the early 2000s to downgrade my role as a consumer. Sold off the fancy car and motorbikes, bought a 10-year old shit box, stopped buying this and that. Started shedding debt and finally achieved a positive cash flow. I was able to shed my life as a rent slave and bought a downtown condo. Second best thing I ever did.

Little did I know that I would be using the extra cash to escape to Southeast Asia as often as possible to continue my journey of knowledge about other cultures. It's been the best thing I ever did in my life.

PS I've lived in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. What an education!

RickyBobby wrote: ↑Sat Feb 09, 2019 7:01 pm

ExPenhMan wrote: ↑Sat Feb 09, 2019 11:58 am

RickyBobby wrote: ↑Sun Feb 03, 2019 1:59 am When you leave the west and come to Cambodia, you are irrevocably changed. You never totally feel you belong but then when you go home, you feel the same. No one gets you anymore either. Total shift in values.

Yup, "no one gets you anymore." I would go one step further to say and "I don't give a f**k" whether they do or not. Harsh, but that's how my new life rolls.

RickyBobby says later:

I have talked about Cambodia a lot with my friends and family, I am surprised how uninterested most of them are. Then I just stopped talking about it. The west and consumerism and hamster wheel of life is another strange phenomenon.

I never worked in the KOW, and I feel that if I was plugged in, my experience would have been a lot more positive because I find it hard to stay healthy in mind and body. But, the entire experience of coming here and seeing the world from a whole other perspective has also been pure gold and I wouldn't change if for the world.

I learned after a couple of trips east that people don't want to hear about your new life lessons. I can tell they're just being polite by asking the usual questions. They're not listening, really.

The "hamster wheel of life" in the west becomes very visible on my returns, brief as they are. In fact, my stays started out as a month or more, and have fallen to a mere two weeks. It's not all bad but I know I don't want to be there for long.

Fortunately, I made some decisions before my eastern forays in the early 2000s to downgrade my role as a consumer. Sold off the fancy car and motorbikes, bought a 10-year old shit box, stopped buying this and that. Started shedding debt and finally achieved a positive cash flow. I was able to shed my life as a rent slave and bought a downtown condo. Second best thing I ever did.

Little did I know that I would be using the extra cash to escape to Southeast Asia as often as possible to continue my journey of knowledge about other cultures. It's been the best thing I ever did in my life.

PS I've lived in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. What an education!

Thanks for the affirmation mate, we truly talk the same language. When I first came in 2014, I had already been on a path to non consumerism. It was a total shift in values and thinking that takes a long time to accomplish. Eventually, my loved ones learned i didn't want token gifts and useless trinkets. I sold off my r.e. holdings which was significant. (in many ways regrettable because I had a solid retirement plan) After living out of a bag in a single room for months at a time, I returned back to the west, and culled those items even further, having realized what little I actually used from what I had taken and what was necessary for my comfort.

I was totally pumped, enthused and excited to share my experiences and newfound insights. Over the next few years of many trips those insights deepened and became more profound, yet I was confounded with the lack of interest 'back home'

I caught myself as I realized I was droning on and just being tolerated for the sake of being polite. I was sorely disappointed that they didn't want to really know, didn't share the excitement or interest, and so I made more of an effort to stop talking about it.

The end result of that is that we no longer had any shared values. They were too busy on the hamster wheel of life to take pause and think of anything different, so they did the usual; work hard, make money and console themselves with the latest largest television purchase etc etc like everyone else. (work all day to make money to buy a bigger house that they can never spend time in because they are always at work)

I am sure some of them think that I am anti-consumer now because I cannot afford that life anymore. All the while, some of them have noted they live vicariously through me, and do note that I am 'living life' ; what a fucking conundrum.

I will not die a rich man, and its now by choice. I am single; free as a bird, can go on a whim, live cheaply and in spite of not having great wealth I am truly FREE. (well, as free as a person can be in the world, because in the context of politics and government, freedom is a ruse, but that's another topic)

My enlightenment and my journey has just begun, and I hope to be learning until the day I die. The world and everything in it is fascinating.

Ghostwriter wrote: ↑Sat Feb 09, 2019 8:17 pm Hi there,
Good topic for my first post.

I feel good being back to the west.

The latest country i've been living in (including working full-time as often as possible) was Cambodia (almost 3 years), and it was just the right thing to give motivation to put an end to the full-time asian part of my life. I will come back in asia for sure, not in Cambodia though.

pczz wrote: ↑Sat Feb 09, 2019 6:02 pm

Khartoum wrote: ↑Sun Feb 03, 2019 2:38 am

nuzen wrote: ↑Sun Feb 03, 2019 12:06 am After five years of retirement life in Cambodia, and two years before that in the Philippines. I repatriated back to America. I'm starting more and more to miss Cambodia and Khmer people, and of course my friends there. One thing I don't miss is Khmer food.

The food quality is not something I miss either. It will remain a mystery to me why Cambodia, sandwiched between 2 countries that are renowned for fine food, turns up such vile fare.

Everyone to their own taste. To me thai food is the biggest waste of decent ingredients ever invented. take good meat and veg add so much spice you cant taste anything for a week and say "ooh thai food is yummy". I just don't get it, obviously. The only thai food i eat the pork and egg in the food halls, provided it hasnt got intestines bobbing about in it and KFC
Vietnam food is pretty non descript really. Cannot say i enjoyed that too much but soup is not really my thing.
Cambodian food is no great shakes but I have had some good non spicy stuff in the villages especially a meat pie looks like a long sausage roll which is made for special occasiaons, lok lak, and local thick soup whcih is moe like european stew. The advantage for me is that most of it comes with spice to add to your tatse, rather than with a litre of chilli added during cooking so i have the choice.