I woke up around 1.30am wondering why the fan on my air conditioner had turned on full pelt; I then realised it was thunderous rain. I live on the top floor of this building and, instead of a ceiling, I'm exposed to the roof and this means I hear every drop of rain. I dashed outside to remove the cushions from my deck furniture and then settled back to sleep. The man, who said the rains would end on the 23rd, was obviously wrong.
I had to go over to Cina Travel this morning to read a document from IATA - that's the international organisation to which many travel agents belong. It gives them the right to issue tickets rather than to have to deal with other agencies. Cina and Vuth said they had trouble with the wording of the document. I didn't have the same problem but my problem was not understanding what they were on about. It was very legalistic and not at all easy to understand. IATA headquarters is based in Montreal and I presume the writers of these letters are native English speakers and often trained in legal matters. They don't seem to realise that many travel agents, in other parts of the world, are not native English speakers. So why can't IATA write in simple, easy to understand English?
At 10.30am I was told by Vuth to come down as we had to go to meet Sim Vathanak; he's a friend I've not seem for about 10 years. In the old days we stood on the street, flagged down a tuk tuk and discussed the price. Now we go to an app on our phones and a vehicle appears. We normally have a rickshaw as they hold just two or three people. There's no arguing about price and the app even tells us personal details about the driver and where he is presently located, plus how long it'll take for him to reach us. It's all very high tech.
We had a drink and chat but when Vuth paid the bill Vathanak objected. He said he hadn't seen me for a long time and we hadn't finished our conversation. We therefore decided to stay for pizza. Back home I was told to relax until 3pm and to then be ready to visit Kolap, who is getting married. We were supposed to attend a ceremony today but that's been cancelled until tomorrow and so I'll miss it. I'm not fussed about missing the ceremonies as I now find them excruciating, because of having to sit for ages between each little ceremony. At 2.30pm Vuth phoned to tell me to relax. He has an outside job to do so we aren't going anywhere. It's absolute flexibility all over again. So now I'm waiting until 5pm for our trip to the airport. Let's see if anything changes.
