The Thai border opens in a few days, and already the local Cambodian stores are flooded with Thai products full of ganja gimmickry.
Well, It's A Cool Sticker At Least 🤷♂️
This artificially flavored sugary drink was purchased specifically to be Hive content. I was simply amused by the sticker, didn't have my camera on me, so I had to buy it to share it with you all. The ingredients lists Cannabis leaf water as 50% of the volume in the bottle, but in parentheses next to that it states from Dried Cannabis Leaf 0.01%. It's clear there are no medicinal, health, or psychoactive benefits, but it shows that perceptions towards marijuana in this part of the world are slowly shifting from negative to positive, and a small start is still a start.
Market Protests In Pramaoy ✊
The government in our former home, Pramaoy, has been expanding and renovating the local market, and nothing like this ever goes smoothly in Cambodia because greed will always cause the poor people not to benefit from a new arrangement as much as the government or rich folks will. I was eavesdropping from across the street while waiting for my wife to select a few pairs of pants to purchase, and heard that the government is no longer allowing the former vendors to re-establish their shops and pay a reasonable monthly rental fee, but now has listed the land for sale at $20,000 USD per meter, a price not even remotely affordable for an average vegetable seller.
The former vendors decided to occupy the land, make Facebook Live videos, shout at the developer and chase him away. Only a few minutes the rich man returned with several police officers broke up any potential larger gathering, reminded the locals not to get involved in any civil unrest, and left the area. The police seemed to be content to let the protesters roast in the sun, and Khmer people tend not to rally around in support like I have seen in places like Ecuador, Suriname, and Albania. One kind man gifted the ladies with a large umbrella and a few bottles of water, but that was the only support I witnessed from the spectators.
Sleepy Passengers 🛺
Another day on the opposite side of our new mountain home, I picked Monkey-B and our neighbor's boy up from school. Stephen, our guest, and my wife rode along for the adventure, and on the way back we picked up some cement sacks that slowed down the mountain climb by about 20 minutes and put nearly everyone to sleep. 2nd gear full throttle is the only way to get back home like this, and the vibrations tend to shake all passengers into unconsciousness.
Oops, How Did That Get In There? 💪
After I got home from school, I went outside and posed for a picture with my attack butterflies. I have been working out lately and trying to build muscle, and so far it seems to be going well. It is definitely not an AI-generated image born out of the prompt "red-haired man with a big beard wearing a turban, flexing big bicep muscles, award winning, photorealistic, in the background there are many butterflies and a dystopian landscape". I just thought this post was lacking a little pizazz and wanted to spice things up, sorry if my chest is threatening or menacing in any way.
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