Step 1. Find a girlfriend whose aunt has a condo she is not using in West Palm Beach. (Note: A boyfriend would work here as well, depending on sexual preference, availability of condo, etc.)

Step 2. Plan on what dates you would like to go. Leave ample time for planning. For example, in February, plan on going the first weekend in April.

Step 3. A week before your set date, begin preparations. Realize that you have left yourself no time for the planning stage. Convince your girlfriend that this is part of the plan and that Florida is more fun in May. Then actually begin preparations.

Step 4. Buy the flight first. Allot approximately two days for the process. Begin by opening four internet browsers, one for each discount travel website. Start searching for the cheapest weekend to go. Do not develop a system or create any sort of organizational charts. Simply plunk in information at random while rotating through the sites with increasing frustration. Jot down numbers on Post-It notes which will mean nothing to you when you reference them later.

Step 5. Gather all the information into your memory. Write a vague, imprecise email to your girlfriend asking for her opinion. Act more confident than you are. This is not considered deception because you are paying. When she writes back, “Whatever you think is best,” resist the urge to reply, “Blow me.”

Step 6. Wonder how people got anything done before the internet.

Step 7. Realize that you have now spent three hours trying to save $40. Feel ridiculous, but not so much that it compels you to quit searching. Try utilizing different departing or arriving airports even though doing so will add immeasurable inconvenience. Curse.

Step 8. Take a break from searching for flights by going to Priceline to name your own price for a rental car. Try to score a convertible for $30 a day even though the computer, a machine with no logical capabilities, tells you this will not work. After two more unsuccessful tries at $33 and $36, settle on a compact – one step above an economy, because you are classy. So classy that you have a rental car 1,000 miles away and no way to get to it.

Step 9. Renew your search for plane tickets. Go to JetBlue as a last resort. Be utterly entranced by the simplicity of the website, the narrow-mindedness of the pricing and the little televisions in the back of the seats. Book your flights even though it is probably more expensive.

Step 10. Quell the urge to feel nostalgic for times before the internet when people placed orders for goods and services with other people; when they wrote down dates and confirmation numbers on paper with ink. Email your girlfriend and tell her all the plans are set. Pack up your bag, shut off your computer and leave work with a glowing sense of accomplishment. Drink as needed.

- by Dan Murphy of [redacted] fame

If you find yourself in Cambodia and wanting for English conversation with the locals, just head to the nearest temple and find yourself a novice monk. If of course they don’t find you first, which most likely they will.

When backpacking in Cambodia several years ago, I found the novice monks – often in their late teens or early twenties – the most outgoing and curious people. And most of them speak English amazingly well.

Wherever I traveled in Cambodia, there were monks. And I began to think of them as the unofficial symbols of the country – more relevant, more alive than the image of Angkor Wat emblazoned on the national flag. All I would have to do was wander into a temple complex to admire the Khmer architecture, and sure enough a novice monk in his bright orange or dark maroon robe would appear and address me in English.

Walking back from the Russian Market in Phnom Penh one evening, I caught a glimpse of an elaborately tiled temple, Wat Tuol Tom Pong, hidden behind a tall gate. As I maneuvered my camera between the bars to snap a photo, a monk approached me from the street. Buddhist etiquette varies from country to country, and in Cambodia, although monks aren’t allowed to touch women – even to shake hands – they are permitted to speak with females. In surprisingly fluent English, the monk introduced himself as Bunsinat and offered to show me around the temple grounds.

After the tour, he led me to a classroom in an austere building near the pagoda, where he introduced me to his English teacher, who invited me to stay as a guest instructor. For the next hour, I fielded students’ questions, most of which involved life in America and what I
thought of Cambodia. Most students seemed to be studying English so they could get jobs in tourism, which is second only to the garment industry in Cambodia.

Bunsinat, one of two monks in the class, was no exception. “Many monks, like me, they come from the countryside to the temple in the city to learn English. For the monk the English class is free,” he said. Other students pay about $5 per month.

“For many years I will study the life of the Buddha, but later I want to find a job in a hotel or a bank,” he continued, “I want to make a lot of money.”

One student asked me, “Do people plow the fields for work in your country too?” He meant with water buffalo, not machinery. Although I was the teacher – the so-called wise Westerner – I am quite sure that I am the one who learned the most that day.

- by Terry Ward