Pchum Ben is a national Buddhist holiday to honor dead ancestors. Most people go to the pagodas and offer food to the monks in exchange for the monks making blessings for their ancestors.

You're right, Monkey-B and I have a special relationship, we are both very active, like to joke a lot, and also like swimming together. I love to hang out with Srey-Yuu, but now that she is a teenager she doesn't want to do anything with me anymore, just wants to sleep and look at a screen.

I am still a coffee drinker, but now I've been trying to switch to green tea because it is cheaper and healthier. I like my coffee sweet, so that is why it's not good for me. I enjoy green tea without sugar, but I can't drink black coffee without sugar, too bitter for me.

I think it's hard for us to vacation together because somebody needs to stay and watch the property because there is no fence and not much lighting. There is not a problem with theft in the village, but we also don't want to make it too easy, we know there are many people that owe each other money because of gambling problems.

I wish I could take a short holiday by myself and visit old friends, but my wife still hasn't learned how to ride the moto, or tuk-tuk, so she can't take the kids to school for me. I am stuck without a vacation for the foreseeable future, but at least we live in a vacation destination 😉.

🙏🙏🙏

This staycation has been good to me even though I have been very busy working. But not driving 2 hours back and forth to school and working inside the tuk-tuk for 4 hours is like a vacation to me.

I hope Mey-Yii is enjoying her vacation, she hasn't had many chances to travel in life. I would like to take a vacation soon too, but somebody needs to stay and watch the property because we don't have a fence, and my wife still has not learned how to drive the moto or tuk-tuk, so she can't take the kids to school if I go.

I guess this means no vacation ever for this Dad, but luckily I live in a place where tourists pay money to see. In a way my home is a vacation destination.

Haha, my kids still don't understand when I try to explain to them. We'd get home from school around 3pm after an almost 8-hour school day, then have to cook, clean, do homework, and prepare the house for the arrival of the parents at 6:30pm. If we were lucky, the parents wouldn't be too tired and we could hang out out for an hour or before going to bed and starting all over again.

I told my daughters that I spent more physical time with them in the first year of being together than my parents did my whole childhood 😂. I don't think they can imagine it, they're home before 12 then we're together for 8 hours until bed time.

The gossip in this village is so thick you could slice it with a knife. My wife has thrown herself deep into village gossip already now because of Mey-Yii's grandma. I always remind her the village is small and everyone has known each other long before we moved in. I feel it's best to be quiet and ignorant the first year so that we can better understand the personalities that control things here.

In short, it seems most people dislike the grandma, but she does have several loyal gambling buddies, and on top of that she loans people money sometimes, and this causes a bit of loyalty too. In fact, most people here won't hang out with her unless loans them a few hundred bucks first, you can't make this stuff up.

Somebody needs to film a reality TV show here, plenty of drama, the director wouldn't even have to set up circumstances to create drama 🤣.

She always turns on the personality when a photo is coming, easy content for Hive when I have no ideas for a post 🤔😉.

Thank you, I do my best, but if you asked my kids, they'd probably say I let them down often, haha. We do need to make some lifestyle changes so that I can get more sleep, definitely a priority for when the family returns.

I joke with **@sreypov** about this because she's never had a stepparent type experience. I've had partners with kids before, so I'm familiar with the struggle of giving it your best and just being hated by the little ones. It took me a solid year of massive daily efforts to win Monkey-B's heart, not as easy as the free love that comes from just being a biological parent. 

I'm ready for the long haul with Mey-Yii, and I can't imagine there will be any great changes with for at least 6 months to a year, but I can see my wife has lost her patience. I would really like to make it a goal to get Mey-Yii speaking some English so she can participate in conversation a bit more, for some reason my daughters have chosen English as their life language even though I only speak English with them 50% of the time.

I've lost all hope for the Grandma who can't take Mey-Yii to school on her moto because of her physical problems, but she can ride back from the casino at 2am no problem. I am absolutely sure she thinks we are overly kind because we are simple minded, but one day she will overstep the line and I will have to engage roast mode on her 😁. She doesn't know that I am the youngest ginger child of many stepbrothers and stepsisters, so I was naturally roasted, causing me to always have a verbal zinger loaded in the chamber at all times.

https://media.giphy.com/media/YnwGYRZyEmiyOJevTx/giphy.gif

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Well I am honored, haha. And totally unrelated to this comment, but I have a close friend now living in Phuket, and he is helping train the Thai paralympic sailing team. He gets to go on the sea every day for a short while because of this, and once upon a time he took a stab at Hive via **@chrisinphuket**, but had a bad experience after posting about marijuana, and a now-muted ASEAN Hiver gave him a hard time.

Unfortunately the experience was one of his first ones, and it left a bad taste in his mouth. Shame because I'd like more aquatic content like yours, and he enjoys writing.