The last time I visited the States I forgot that I had a half eaten tuna sandwhch that I'd bought in the departure lounge in Bangkok. I was detained for an hour and threatened with fines and jail time! An sweet elderly woman from Hong Kong was sitting next to me because she had forgotten that she had the equivilant of three dollars in loose change in the bottom of her purse which she hadn't declared. She couldn't speak any english and customs didn't even try to find a translator, they kept shouting at her at high speed with his hand on the baton on his belt as if he was going to pull it out and strike her. She was in tears. I tried to translate the best I could in my broken Cantonese in between trying to figure out what they had against tuna sandwiches. It was almost surrealistic. Customs in Mainland China, who are not the most enduring bunch of people on their best day were still orders of magnitude more polite and civil than what I saw that day.

Last night I was in a bar in Phnom Penh and an American yelled at me because I didn't agree instantly that America was the greatest country on earth. I have nothing against America, I grew up there, and there are a lot of very decent kind people there. But I don't live there, and after a long string of incidents like the one with customs I can't honestly say that America is the greatest country on earth. There are places which are better and places that are much much worse. I've lived in both.

My guess is that the guy yelling at me had something against tuna sandwiches as well....