Is Nothing Sacred?

I've joined my local YMCA.  It's a Pacific Northwest, new agey YMCA which doesn't care whether members are Christian or a same sex couple and they're even open on the Lord's designated day of rest (other local YMCA's are not open on Sunday).  There's no mention in person or on the walls of the "C" in YMCA.  I wear my MP3 player and I sweat to the oldies with the rest of the overweight guys and hausfraus, doing my part to nullify the “Y” in YMCA. 
  
My local YMCA doesn’t dwell on the “M” in YMCA either. Some genius Dad recently brought in his 4 kids, a boy and 3 little girls into the Men’s locker room.  I wanted to peel off my sweaty clothes but I felt modest in front of the little girls, none was probably older than 5 or 6 and all were clothed, including Dad.  I held off for awhile while the kids played at a large scale off to my left.  Dad saw that I was there and that I was about to pull off my sweaty shorts and reveal my full frontal birthday suit so he called his flock away.

 But one little girl had many questions about the scale and sensitive, new age Dad felt he had to give her all the time she needed, even in the Men’s locker room.  I had enough and stripped.  I was in the right place to be doing that too, if I can’t strip down to my birthday suit to shower and change in the Men’s locker room for fear of offending underage females and being labeled a perv then I might as well wear a burka or just stay home.

My local YMCA has three locker rooms, Men’s, Women's and and one labeled “Family”.  Signs posted at the entrance to each explains that boys younger than 5 are permitted entry into the Women’s locker room.  But as you can see from the outlines on the picture above the Men’s locker room is very inclusive.  Boys, girls and Men and the wheelchair bound are all welcome. 

I went to the showers but Dad had already waddled in there with his brood.  They were all wearing bathing suits, probably washing up before going into the pool.  This Men’s locker room at my YMCA has shower stalls fronted with plastic shower curtains but I came out of my stall wearing nothing but water when I realized that I had forgotten my razor.  One little girl stared at full frontal naked me in amazement.  One of us didn’t belong in there, can you guess which one? 

But it probably doesn’t matter.  I’m sure that the day is coming when men will be encouraged, and persuaded by well meaning laws if necessary to refrain from nakedness and being offensive with their mere presence to young girls in the Men’s locker room.

Phnom Penh – Where Old Camrys Go to Die

What do you call a country where everything is priced in US dollars, where a beer costs just $1 (.75 during happy hour) but signs in English warn you to not patronize the country’s infamous child sex industry? Here’s a hint, I found it in my hotel room but I’m seeing it all over town:

Cambodia is still recovering from wars involving the United States, its neighbor to the east Vietnam and a civil war which culminated in a genocide that wiped out a generation and targeted anyone with any knowledge (doctors, teachers, engineers) about anything beyond day to day farming and peasantry for death.  2 million Cambodians perished at the hands of their countrymen.

Here's a story that ties obvious corruption and a convicted Russian pedophile in one nasty little package: Pedophile Was Permitted To Leave Prison  Why?  To go visit one of his many investments,of course.

The present government of Cambodia is a corrupt mess but I’m sure that most Cambodians find that preferable to the genocidal government that it replaced.  So Cambodia is a land of dollar beer and no local industry to speak of other than tuk-tuk taxi driving and child prostitution.  So why are the streets choked with Lexus cars, motorbikes and tuk-tuks?  And why are a majority of the cars I see in Phnom Penh Toyotas and why are the lions share of those Lexus SUV’s and Toyota Land Cruisers and Camrys yet there are no Honda Accords (but plenty of Honda CRV’s)?  

But wait, it gets stranger.  The Camrys are all American spec with US 2.5 MPH bumpers and I’d bet every last one of them popped out of Toyota’s assembly plant in Georgetown, Kentucky.  They look very different from the Thai assembled Camrys I saw in Bangkok and that Toyota sells in most of the world outside of North America.  I rode in one from the Phnom Penh airport to my hotel and noticed that the speedo showed MPH, not KPH.  Then I started noticing that some of the Camrys on Phnom Penh’s streets carried stickers on their rumps from dealers in places like Miami, FL and Norman, OK.  A few had California license plates, one a Colorado tag.  I’ve combed through the Internet and other travelers have noticed the dominance of the Camry here but nobody has an explanation why. 

My best guess is that these Camrys were indeed built and bought either new or more likely used in America by Cambodians or Cambodian Americans and sent home to the rest of the family. That would also explain the Toyota Tacomas I’m seeing.  Outside of North America the Toyota pickup is known as the Hi-Lux and I’ve seen a few of those along with a few other North America only models such as the Toyota Matrix.

I have no explanation for all of the Toyota Land Cruisers I see in Phnom Penh in both Toyota and Lexus dress.  Most are late model and the Land Cruiser sells for around $65,000 new in the US, the Lexus variant costs around $76,000.  They have big thirsty V-8’s, all of this in a country with next to no economy and no Lexus dealers.