My ride didn’t show up at the airport so I entered Phnom Penh proper in a taxi driven a man whose insistence that he knew the location of my office seemed to run contrary to all evidence. We circled blocks of heavy looking french mansions surrounded by high stucco walls and pink flowering trees, getting out occasionally to consult with moto-taxi drivers. The cab driver wanted to discuss life in California; his family had moved to Fresno, leaving him behind.

The city is lovely—full of wide boulevards that call to mind a sort of dusty post-apocalyptic Barcelona.  We did finally reach the office and my ebullient new boss showed me to my new home, a squat whitewashed fortress of a house abutting the stately homes of several police-generals whose walls are decorated in an intricately woven fabric of vines and barbed wire.

My room is plain but functional: white tile floor, white walls and a pinkish bathroom. I have a small balcony from which I could leap easily onto the neighbor’s roof and steal his golden spirit house.

I more or less blacked out on my new bed for a few hours. When I woke up around 8, I rushed out to a concert at the Foreign Correspondents Club where my new co-workers had invited me to join them. The decks of the club were filled with tanned ex-pats and hipster tourist sipping watered down mojitos and feigning interest in the work of a pair of DJs. When the featured band, Ratatat, took the stage it became clear that their music was going to suck.

The band consisted of two interchangeable dudes with spanish moss beards, long hair and seventh grade understandings of the guitar. They played repetitive chords and banged their heads while a clip show of the movie Predator played against the wall behind them. I slipped up to the roof to look out on the molasses spill that is the Tonle Sap and nearly fell asleep with my nosed lodged in an Angkor beer.

We left mid-concert and the night became a blur. I tried to seem well-adjusted-if-not-likeable while barely managing to keep my eyes open. I know there was more beer, marijuana smoke and game involving a recently dismembered pig’s head being passed around. Some details, such as why this was happening, now allude me.

I took a tuk-tuk (a small living room pulled by motorcycle) home around one. The streets were illuminated by the Angkor beer signs and moto lights as I passed under the independence memorial, an intricate red stone tower poking out of Sihanouk Boulevard like a lit match.

Bed. AC. Ahhhhhhh.