Notes from Cambodia

We made it to Siem Reap after seven amazing days of travel. First we were in Bangkok and did the usual touristy things while we acclimated to both the heat and the culture shock of a 2nd World culture. Many of the photos we took are loaded up to google but I can't get google to work right now or I pass along the link.

We met Tobias and Arwen and Bryan in Phnom Penh and moved from a 2nd World culture to a 3rd World Post Apocalyptic one. PP is rising from the ashes of the Year Zero Khmer Rouge' experiment and it's a crazy place with a Wild West sort of atmosphere. Our taxi driver moved to PP in 1979 right after Pol Pot emptied the city and he said there just 200 people left in town. It had been one of the most beautiful French Colonial cities in SE Asia. Then it was deserted and ransacked. Today it is a madhouse of reconstruction and new building is going on everywhere.
1.4 million inhabitants now.

Tobias had arranged for us to stay our first night at a beautiful western-style guest house - with a pool and all sorts of amenities. It was a lovely gesture and it allowed us to unwind. That night we took a tuk-tuk to a restaurant run by an NGO and had a great meal. The next morning we swam in the pool and then took a bus to Kep.

The bus ride was a trip - literally and figuratively - that I'll never forget. The bus was ok - with something like AC struggling to keep us cool - as we headed south through the countryside to the coast. The contrasts were everywhere as we moved from 3rd World city economy into the rural agrarian economy of rice fields, cows, water buffalos, roadside stands, houses on stilts and - in the distance - lush coastal mountains. There were newly refurbished Wats every few miles and the pervasive Political Party buildings (bright and shiney and newly constructed) beside shacks of wattle and palm fronds.

The two lane highway was swarmed with moto-bikes, bikes, and trucks and cars - as well as ox carts and swamp tractors. The mode of driving is to go as fast as you can, with you hand on the horn, weaving and dodging down the middle of the highway. The trip to Kep took us six hours with one stop about half-way. As soon as we stepped off the bus we were swarmed by children selling things in baskets - candy, water, satay, chips. If you said "ati akun" (no thank you) they just stood beside you holding their baskets, waiting against chance. Polite but ready. (To give you an idea of the contrast in the value of money - the exchange rate is $1 US for about 4000 Real. I made the mistake of tipping a cabbie $1 for helping us move bags and he held it up to sky and then kissed it, smiling happily).

Makes one feel like a real colonial.

We arrived at Kep in the evening and climbed the hill to our guest house - a place that Tobias christened "the Ewok village" and Arwen said it came right out of an episode of the Myst computer game. The bungalows are up in the trees on stilts surrounding an open air veranda overlooking the Gulf of Thailand. Kep is right on the Cambodian/Vietnam border and was the Rivera of Cambodia before the civil war. There were hundreds or thousands of modern villas built here, overlooking a rocky shingled beach and they once trucked in sand from the north to make it more like the beaches of Thailand. The invasion of the Vietnamese turned it into a house-to-house war and now all the villas are bombed out shells - some with squatters living in them, but most simple abandonded. It's spooky to see these burnt out shells being overrun by the jungle. Thirty years of jungle growth is a testiment to the impermanence of human industry, and what's really telling is that the native Khmer aren't really interested in resurrecting them for their own use but have built new since the 1990s in the style that they prefer. We climbed up through some of the ruins, being mindful to stay on the beaten pathways because there are still unexploded munitions hidden in the undergrowth.

Tobias had contracted some sort of bug and was feeling very bad and we convinced him to get some antibiotics before it turned into pnemonia, but the nearest pharmacy was in Kam Pot, so he hired a moto-driver to take him the 15 miles to the town. Meanwhile the rest of us wandered the road along the waterfront.

Bryan bought rambuthan fruit from a woman on a bike and we rented hamocks and ate and watched a squall blow in from Vietnam. Got caught later walking back. Arwen was also coming down with the bug so we were starting to get worried about her.

One interesting incident was the attack by giant red ants on Tobias' computer. He had left it out in his bungalow and some small ants came to eat the crumbs in his keyboard. These ants then attracted the giant ants who were hunting the smaller ones. By the time he had returned to his room a full-fledged battle had ensued with millions of ants swarming inside the machine. Needless to say he decided not to turn it on again and we still don't know if the machine still functions.

That night we found a beach restaurant that served us wonderful Khmer fish dishes that prompted Bryan to say it was the best food he'd eaten in Cambodia. We ate and ate and drank beer and ate some more and in the end we were charged $35 for the lot, including tip.

We had planned to take a boat to Rabbit Island the next day but we decided it was best to get Arwen and Tobias to a doctor so we rented a minibus to drive back to PP. Again a mad dash through the countryside to stay at Tobias' favorite guest house called "OK Guest House".

The OK Guest House is a backpacker's place that is hard to describe. The central entryway is jammed with parked tuk-tuks, tables, and signs for tourism trips. The tv is always on with either a movie or CNN or BBC. Our rooms were clean although you got to them via a narrow stairway that ran along the outside of the building, around and around.

By the time we arrived it was too late to see much so Tobias and Arwen and Bryan took us to the FCC which is a restaurant frequented by western journalists. We ate up on the third balcony overlooking the Mekong River. The contrasts between what we as Westerners were privy to spend and what was going on down below is the streets - mothers using their sleeping children for begging on the street corners beneath flashing neon broadway signs that advertise Lexus and western clothes - it's hard to describe and contextually confusing until you grow used to it all.

Bryan took us the following morning to see the royal palace - a short walk from the OK. The Silver Pagoda was supposed to have a silver floor but they had covered it with carpets. The gallery of frescos were heavily destroyed by the Khmer Rouge' but parts were still visable. The many pagodas and the complete French wrought iron house sent by Napolean the 3rd had a seedy sort of ruty patina. But it was worth it to see what the Khmer Rouge' had preserved as a cultural heritage while they brutalized the common folk in work camps. We didn't have time to visit the Killing Fields museum that trip but Judith and I will be returning through PP on the way back and will see it on our own.

The interesting personal observation for me was how Tobias negotiated in the Khmer language - conversing with tuk-tuk drivers and talking with strangers. He seems to be a well-known personage and his cordial interactions put us all at ease.

We rented a taxi and were driven up to Siem Reap yesterday - another crazy driving experience and this time we almost got squeezed between a moto bike a car a truck and an ox cart as we zoomed along. It's a frightening experience to ride in these cabs for westerners I think but the drivers seem to take it all in stride. What normally is a six and a half hour bus ride was whittled down to four and a half.

Arwen and Bryan's house is a rental that was built last year and is a Western style exterior with marble floors and wainscotting in a gated yard. It's very nice with very high ceilings and decoratively carved furniture. They graciously let us have the room with ac - and we're grateful becuase it is swealtering. Their puppy is named Gogi and is a cute Khmer sort of mutt - black and a heart-stealer. Very smart.

Today we went to the farm of friends of Tobias' - John Morgan and Meako - out of town and had a Sunday dinner with their circle of expatriot friends. It was great to relax outside under the veranda and just talk and listen and feel a part of what's happening here. They all seem genuinely fond of Tobias and Arwen and each has a different set of stories about how they began their work in NGOs. .
Tempting stories. Very tempting.

On the way back from the farm - over the washed out red clay road - I sat in the back of the truck with Bryan as we drove through little hamlets of Khmer houses. Everywhere kids waved and smiled and seemed pleased to see the strange Barang so far from the tourist roads.

We drove through a section of the Bayon Temple - part of the Ankgor Wat complex - and stopped and climbed around in the dusk. Too difficult to describe the scale of just this one temple. We'll go back later to do a whole day of exploring. It was overwhelming.

As we drove home squadrons of fruit bats flew across the sky - hundreds of bats with wingspans about 2 feet - silent in the twilight, while cicadas droned deep eiry buzzes that sounded curiously like clarion horns in the forest.

For dinner we ate at a favorite Indian restaurant in the colonial section of town then walked to the hotel where Bryan works. Inside the five star hotel were modern sculptures and drawings and an amazing display of western opulance. We ate ice cream and gelato on large reclining beds in the lobby. Brian showed us around a little and then we headed back outside into the "other" Siem Reap with tuk-tuks and motos and children on the street hawking and begging.

Then home to bed. So many contrasts, Judith said it felt like cultural whiplash all the time.

All the friends who work at the various NGOs said it was like feeling the ground constantly moving beneath your feet. What was wattle yesterday is now a five star hotel. What was marsh is now a shopping mall. Somewhere, caught in the middle of this all, are the Khmer people - who have suffered so much in silence and without visible anger. The injured, the lost, the old, the young.... I just see in my mind's eye those kids waving to us from their shacks. And then the little three year chanting to us in the dirt parking lot, holding her plastic bag filled with string bracelets "Only won doe lar please. Only won doe lar please. Five for three dollar please. Only won doe lar please...."

She was no taller than Tristan and it made me cry.