Postcard from Cambodia

Just a quick one, as the Internet connection here is poor:

I know I spend an awful lot of time thinking about food and weight and exercise, and sometimes I'm ashamed of it. After all, I am the person who managed to binge while covering the tsunami in Indonesia -- a place where there certainly wasn't much food. (For the record, I didn't take anyone else's -- just binged on some of the provisions I'd brought, and on my Singapore army rations, which were designed for men's calorie consumption needs, not mine.)

I've been to poor countries before, always overweight and/or bingeing, so maybe I was too busy stuffing down any shame. But here in Cambodia, I can't stop thinking about it. How frankly lucky I am to have a problem like needing to lose weight, and probably, how lucky I am that -- though it's been pretty crap lately -- my life is good enough that I have the luxury to worry about bingeing and putting on weight (plus the ability to procure the food to do so) and the resources to attempt to treat the problem.

I went to the gym in Phnom Penh -- I actually enjoy going to local gyms (as opposed to hotel gyms) to see what's on offer. (In Madrid I once took a fantastic samba aerobics class, not to mention learned a lot of very interesting vocabulary.) It cost two American dollars to go there in a tuk-tuk, and my tuk-tuk driver was perfectly happy to sit outside the gym and wait (at no extra charge) in the 40 degree hit-with-a-hot-wet-towel-humid heat for me to come out and pay two dollars to go back to my hotel.

On the elliptical trainer in the lovely air conditioning, I felt like more of a pampered swell than I've ever felt at any spa. I thought about how absolutely crazy most of the people in this country -- 18 percent of whom live below the poverty line, and some scary number of whom live just at it -- would find it that I have to pay money to go somewhere special to expend energy because I eat too much. Or put more gently, because I like to eat and I can and do.

Today outside Siem Reap we drove past loads of small children (nearly half the population here is under 18), many of whom don't go to school because their parents can only afford to send one (and six children is the average here). Some -- no more than age 5 or 6 -- were carrying their younger brothers and sisters. Every time one disappeared from my sight, another child would appear. I watched and watched and watched, and then finally, I dug in my bag for a cereal bar. It was nearly 4 pm -- snacktime for me -- and I was hungry. And I felt ashamed.