July 31st, 2022
We made it!!!! July 31st, 2022
Wow! What a day (or two days) or however you want to quantify amount of time it took me to get from Seattle to Phnom Penh. For the most part I would say it went about as seamlessly as one can hope. As most people know, the most stressful part of this whole thing was not knowing how Nichol’s journey would end up. I won’t keep you in suspense, he arrived in Phnom Penh the same time I did! Much to both of our pure joy. The second leg of our trip was a little frustrating for me, as the gate agents in Incheon airport were not as forthcoming with information about his whereabouts and comfort level as the Korean Air agents in Seattle. This was definitely on my radar as a possibility given it being a foreign country with a higher chance of a language barrier. With almost 2 hours still left to departure the gate agent was telling me that he was already on the plane. This of course was concerning to me because it was well over 90° in Seoul! He assured me that the compartment that Nichol was in was air-conditioned, I really had no choice but to trust the process. Part of me thinks he told me that because he may have thought it’s what I wanted to hear. It is actually the opposite of what I wanted to hear, I would’ve preferred to hear that he was inside the air conditioned building. No point in arguing though.
When I got to Phnom Penh, the health screening, visa process, and immigration went very smoothly. This is my fifth (maybe sixth) visit to Cambodia so I have a pretty good understanding of that process. I have an “ordinary visa“ also sometimes called a business visa, this will be extended by the school that I’m going to work for, into an employment visa that is good for a year, I believe. Or maybe just three months which is all I’ve committed to😂😂Not sure about any of that yet! He asked me how long I was going to stay and I said “possibly up to a year”, and he said “OK I’ll give you 30 days!”🤷🏻♀️
I was tracking Nichol and my bags on the AirTags The whole trip. I was unable to see anything after Nichol and the bags were loaded on the plane in Seattle. Given that the bags and Nichol were in their own metal cans, no iPhones were around them to transmit information to my iPhone (Plus presumably blocked by the metal). But what I was able to see as soon as it happened was that Nichol was in Phnom Penh with me and that he was unloaded from the plane immediately versus the bags that took another 30 or 45 minutes. That was a tremendous relief and worth every dime! Even though it was 11:30 PM in Phnom Penh it it was still well over 80° Those magic words “with you“ were all I needed to see!
Now here’s the sad part, spending 22 hours in his kennel really messed up his back legs. He was in a lot of discomfort and unable to walk when I took him out of his kennel. I was not expecting this as an outcome as his kennel is pretty oversized for his height and he definitely would’ve been able to stand up turn around and move if he was wanting to. Plus he had a lot of nice bedding in there. But it just shows how hard this was on him. At the time I was pretty upset I couldn’t take him in the cabin, but in hindsight, knowing how hard it was on his body to be in a large kennel, being in a much smaller kennel under the seat would have been even harder on him. The only difference being that I would’ve been able to take him out on the layover I suppose. I have canine anti-inflammatories with me so he’s had those a couple times today and by 3 PM he was feeling much better and even climbed two flights of stairs at the hotel we just checked into. But now I’m getting ahead of myself because I haven’t told you about my overnight yet!
Landon, Sam and Edward (their two-year-old son) picked me up at the airport last night and we drove out to their house on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. They moved into this house almost a year ago and it’s very comfortable and awesome and was truly a blessing to me for my first night here. But it is almost an hour drive to the school from there, so I am going to be staying at a hotel in the city until I find an apartment in the city that is within walking distance of the school. Landon’s place has a fully fenced yard so Nichol found a few spots to hang out (for brief moments) it’s way too hot here for him to be out for more than 10 minutes!! Major scorcher today 🥵 Landon and I went for a walk in the neighborhood this morning and I met some of his neighbors and friends, and then we took the car to a local coffee shop for coffee obviously. Two dollars for a iced caramel latte something or other. Amazingly good deal for a delicious coffee!
Landon and Sam drove me into the hotel this afternoon, it is called the YK Art house. It’s $21 a night and will certainly meet my needs while I look for an apartment. It’s pet friendly and I know from traveling around America for the last year that once you click “pet friendly“ on the search engine the number of options drops dramatically. But this place comes highly recommended by the pet owner community in Phnom Penh that I have become connected to as I researched what I needed to do to make sure that Nichol would be safe and happy here. I think of all the places that I considered employment and living in Southeast Asia, Phnom Penh is possibly the most pet friendly of all. They still have some work to do in that department but I think it will be OK. As it happens this is a tiny little place down a tiny little alley that is not really accessible by cars, so Landon had to park a few blocks away on a main street and Sam flagged me a Tuktuk (and explained where I needed to go). So for 10,000 reil which is $2.50 USD, we loaded all my stuff in the tuktuk and he brought us down deep into the side streets to our place here. Landon was going to stay here in a room tonight also but without a place to park his car he had to drive back out to his house tonight so I won’t see him again now until work tomorrow. I’ve been up since about 530 am so I won’t have any problem going to bed early tonight and being up early tomorrow. Not sure about how lucky I feel about room 13……on the ‘second floor’ that is actually the third floor 🤔
Nichol and I were going to go out in search of water but it’s 3:30pm and the late afternoon/suppertime monsoon is here. So we’re going nowhere until this clears up. WHOAH!
TTFN
