Meli-Aventuras

The Adventure of a Lifetime

2010-05-20T09:49:00.001+07:00

So one day, during my final and last week in Cambodia I went exploring...

Tim is my partner in crime and we decided to take a moto trip across the country from Kampong Thom to Preah Vihear, some Angkorian temples on the border with Thailand that are "heavily" (but not really) militarized with Cambodian troops. Thanks to his GPS and our rented Honda moto, our sore butts bumped up and down along 500+ kilometers through dirt-roads, among blue-pyjama-clad Chinese construction workers, jungle forests, and steep mountains before we ended up at the temples, a.k.a the top of the world. The adventure would be incomplete without a run-in with a funny-looking old Khmer that burst out of the jungle in high-speed and splash-landed in a creek we couldn't cross (on our way to an Indiana Jones Preah Khan temple), a visit to Pol Pot's grave (i.e. evil dictator responsible for the genocide 1975-1979), dinner at a girly bar-restaurant where the waitresses blushed every time they came near Tim, a diet of 3 cans of coke (each) per day, and the realization that one should never look for romantic sunsets or you will miss them. Four times. It was nothing less than the adventure of a lifetime and the perfect ending to my time in Cambodia. I'll let the pictures tell the story:

GPS Navigation check: Yep... We're still in Cambodia...

Coming across some young Buddhist monks...

Making friends w/ Kids watching Chinese Construction workers build a road...

This kind-looking old man crash-landed his moto into a creek! (We decided not to cross the creek)

Sideways view of Northern Cambodia...

Transporting Cambodia...

Not an easy road...

Indy...

and partner in crime...

Making friends w/ Cambodian soldiers... SMILE!

Flat-tire...

POL POT'S Cremation site...

Even more photos can be found at: Adventure trip w/ Johnny Quest to Preah Vihear

Vietnam-Mami Adventures

2010-05-20T09:00:00.002+07:00

No one can ever understand what you have lived unless you bring them to experience life with you-- in the place, with the people (and the weather) that form your everyday. In an effort to figure out what the hell I was doing in Cambodia, and well, because she looves to travel (it runs in the family), my mom --henceforth, referred to as "Mami" -- boarded a plane with too many layovers, across the Pacific to charming little Phnom Penh back in mid-April.

THE ITINERARY

Mami arrived full of energy, surprising for one that's traveled over 20 hours to see a long-lost daughter. Having lost water in my flat the day before and in a fit of "my mother has to shower it's close to 40C outside and inside my flat," I booked us a "surprise welcome" room at a new little boutique hotel, found within the depths of chic organic restaurant on fashionable, touristy Street 240. The next day, well-bathed, rested and malaria-medicated, Mami and I enjoyed our inclusive breakfast complete with a passion-fruit juice by the Pavillion's pool. I knew then, I'd crossed worlds... Good-bye expatriate life, welcome life as a tourist.

PHNOM PENH

Of course one cannot plan everything. When Mami flew in, she flew right into the middle of Khmer New Year, which meant that virtually every person in Phnom Penh had fled to the countryside to celebrate the April New Year with their families. Emptied out of chaos, moto traffic, and well, decent open restaurants, Phnom Penh was the silent oasis often sought and rarely enjoyed by long-term expats. You could hear a pin-drop. So, what did we do? Hit all the big tourist sites: S-21 Genocide Museum, Choueng Ek Genocide Memorial, The Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda (which, contrary to most opinions I found quite beautiful and elaborate and not tacky at all), and Wat Phnom though Sambo the shoe-wearing elephant seemed to have gone off to the province on vacation as well. To top it off, Lucky, my tuk-tuk driver friend took us on a romantic ferry-crossing tour of the Tonle Sap, Mekong, and Bassac Rivers to watch sunset and eat local barbecued beef one evening.

SIEM REAP

After two sweltering days in my flat (Mami could only sit under the fan and sigh and wonder how the hell I had lived in a steaming-hot flat for a whole 8 months), we moved on and took the Mekong Express bus to Siem Reap in search of Angkorian Temples! Having booked a room at my favorite gay-friendly (and all-inclusive bed and breakfast w/ access to villa pools) establishment, we cooled off by the pool before heading to Angkor Wat for sunset. The next two days were spent with the ever-patient tuk tuk driver, Mr. Soerin, who on our final day asked us permission to go to a wedding, as I'm sure he was afraid we'd ask him to take us to the farthest possible Angkorian temple. What can I say? We love exploring. Mami was fascinated by each temple, while I mostly just became the photographer (this being my 4th time at the site) and nodded every time she commented on how superb the Naga or Apsara dancer statue would have looked, had their face not been clearly hacked off by thieves (or the National Museum). Other trip highlights included my mom being hit-on by nice Indian lawyer whom we shared a non-existent sunrise (front row w/ plastic chairs!) before it began to rain one morning, and climbing up to Kbal Spean, where there are lingas carved into rocks along a mountain stream.

HANOI(ing)

Having gotten all the Indiana Joanna crawling-over-temples out of our systems, we boarded an afternoon Vietnamese Airlines flight on Monday April 16th to Hanoi, in the north of Vietnam. After several mishaps, my mom more accurately christened this chaotic, in-your-face Asian city, HANNOYING.

Here's why:

Upon boarding our proper Airport Taxi (after having read Lonely Planet's "BEWARE OF AIRPORT TAXI SCAMS" decree) and traveling an hour or so into the city, our vehicle entered the Old Quarter, making its way down the narrow, crowded impossible streets of Hanoi in search for our *** Star hotel. Suddenly, the backdoor of the car opens up and a young man pops in, re-directing the taxi to "the sister hotel" and explaining most hastily that the room is booked and everything would be sorted at the sister hotel. You know when you get the feeling that something is wrong, but you react ever too slowly. Here... was... that... moment. We are then taken to the dilapidated backpacker-ish "sister hotel" which I mentally note is clearly lacking of an inclusive breakfast buffet table, and as we unpack our things and I calmly tell myself, "Okay, I've slept in worse. At least this will be cheaper and save my mom a few bucks." Then, my mom asks about the train and the set of Halong Bay tour tickets supposed to be delivered to our hotel. AHA! The Scammers panic and their faces drop into a long OH. We repack our things (yes, I had already started to wash a well-worn tee-shirt) and the guy calls a taxi that drops us back at our original hotel. "We are so sorry...my friend help you..." Yeah right. I refused to pay for the taxi after we were dropped off. Grrrr. It happens all the time to unsuspecting tourists. We suspected, but a tad bit too late. The Vietnamese took us for a ride, literally, but in end it all worked out, just not without leaving us with a bitter taste for Vietnamese scams. So, then we went for a walk to get ice cream and ran into the cathedral...

Hanoi itself is big and crowded and honestly, not one of my favorite cities. There's a pretty lake at the center around which lovers hold hands and walk, and by which we ate lots of ice cream and forgot about the scam(s). At night, a small pagoda in the middle of the lake lights up and it's rather pleasant to look out at. Several streets are lined with beautiful big French colonial buildings around the city and for one reason or another, as in Cambodia, these buildings find themselves painted in light yellow. We saw Ho Chi Minh's (Uncle Ho) mausoleum from the outside (it was closed) and explored the temple of literature where ancient scholars earned doctorate degrees. The"Hilton Hanoi"-- where American war prisoners spent months in captivity, including John Mc Cain was another must-stop, if only to historically satisfy our naturalized American citizenship. The highlight of the trip by far was the "water puppet show", in which puppets with names like "Happy Boy", carved from coconuts and wood float perform over a small pool of water. Yes, the entire time I thought there were people underwater moving the puppets and breathing through thick straws. Apparently, that's not how it works...

HALONG BAY

Both my mom and I really wanted to tour Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the new Seven Wonders of the world in the Gulf of Tonkin. We had pre-booked a tour on the rustic, but quaint miniature cruise ship, the "Jewel of the Bay" and upon arrival at the Bay, we boarded the ship with six other twenty-something year old English Teachers and two young Danish engineers. Mami was the ship's most uuh, mature visitor, yet she blended right in as we did some cave exploring (note: I found some penguins living in the caves), kayaking, swimming (the water was really cold and after she went in, of course I had to too), and sight-seeing around the islets. For the record, we are both terrible kayakers and thus on our return trip from a beach island to the ship, we had to share kayaks with the Danish, given their manly physique, not to mention ability to steer a kayak. When enticed by our Vietnamese Guides and deck-hands to sing Kareoke, Mami scrolled through and found some ABBA (this was after only one glass of wine). That's more singing in public than I have ever done. I'm so proud. Over all we relaxed and took in some stunning views of the sea-mountains. Swimming in emerald water and watching the sun set over the bay lent for beautiful top-vacation moment come true. All we needed were singing Little Mermaid turtles, and the scene would have been complete. Luckily, I found a trash-can penguin hiding in a cave instead...

SAPA

From Halong Bay we moved on north by night-train to Sapa, a town near the Chinese-Vietnamese border. Our goal was to do some hiking, visit ethnic villages, and really take in the more post-cardish rice-terraced mountainous Asia. What we really took in was a lot of cold rain. I was so, so, so cold. This was the equivalent to bloody Chicago rainy springs cold, with an added touch of misty mountains. Nevertheless, the views were gorgeous. Before long however, Mami and I had each hopped onto the back of a motorcycle and woven our way up into the mist, in search of Silver Waterfall. There (as seen below), I made a very drunken Vietnamese man, very happy. He even offered to buy me a corn husk. How do you say, "THANKS, but no thanks" in Vietnamese?

Having outfitted ourselves with really cheap (but real) gortex North Face jackets, we joined our Hmong tribe guide the next day-- a young 20 year old, pregnant girl-- and three other Hmong girls that would lead us to the valley where the Black Hmong, Flower Hmong and other "ethnic villages" lay. Our four-hour hike was plenty of time to grow close to these beautiful fresh-faced girls. We found out three of them were pregnant (all were under 24 years of age) and any one of them would share their views on the Vietnamese-exploitation of Sapa as a center for tourism. It was funny to watch them hike in their skirts and plastic sandals, carrying incredibly heavy wicker baskets on their backs, unencumbered by the muddy slopes and flooded terraces (as a matter of fact, with my proper trekking shoes, I was the one that slipped more than once), holding such strong convictions yet resigned to the idea that tourism was the only way for them to gain some sort of decent income. The one woman I became friends with was slightly older and had three older, high-school aged sons. We had originally met the day before, when she had attempted to sell me a thin silver bracelet, but at the crucial moment when she cleared her throat and was about to say to me "Please buy from me," she had cracked up and burst out laughing, which of course made me laugh and joke around with her, thus sealing the bonds for a genuine immediate friendship. (Yes, I did eventually buy a bracelet from her because I wanted to and received a more meaningful parting cloth friendship bracelet as a gift from her as well).

Throughout our walk, we ran into more gorgeous views, a dying pregnant horse, various ethnic women selling lots of crafts, our train travel companions (more on them later), and one young 22 year old Danish boy that had traded the European life for the village life, having wed and impregnated a young Hmong girl and decided to live life as farm help to his father-in-law. (Strange, but to each his own.) Over the next day or two we enjoyed warm pain au chocolate and coffee after our cold outings, made friends with a French Wisconsin-Madison Professor and artist, and visited the Flower Hmong on market day near the Chinese border.

That night we shared the night train ride back to Hanoi with the same newly wed couple we had shared our compartment with on our way to Sapa. The two were inseparable, and it was hilarious to watch him answer her every need as she'd kindly whine, "Chamoi!!!" (like the Mexican spicy sugary candy). Back in Hanoi, we waved goodbye and found ourselves a 5am taxi that could take us to the world's worst airport, where we waited hours (we couldn't change our flight, another Hanoi-ing instance) for our flight to take off for Da Nang. For five hours we lived off of dried papaya, a snickers bar, two mango juices, and my old copy of Orson Wells' 1984. The flight was 45 minutes.

HOI AN

After landing and eventually picking up our "Priority" red-tagged bags, we drove off along the coast through Da Nang to Hoi An. Da Nang served as a former US Military Base during the Vietnam (or "American") War, but today the coast lining the way to Hoi An serves as prime real estate for luxury condominiums, hotel resorts and golf courses of the Hilton Resorts variety. The Americans clearly wanted to comeback. They've also constructed luxury golf courses, which seem totally out of place, but given a few years time, will undoubtedly put Hoi An on more Apple Vacations getaway maps.

Hoi An is literally where one goes in search of tailored clothes, beach time, culture, and good food. For SE Asia expats (and their kids), it's the perfect town to cycle around at night and take in some fresh air as well as a few glasses of wine. In between our dress-fitting in small tailor shops and trying out local dishes (fried wontons w/ shrimp!!!), we visited old historical houses (Hoi An is also UNESCO protected) and even saw the house and met the grandson of an important government official to dear Uncle Ho'. One of our best meals by far was at a whole-in-the wall restaurant, "Mes Amies," where Mr. Kim served us two of his five-course menus of traditional veggie and seafood (he cooks whatever he wants that day and you eat it), while two Czech guys (sharing one meal) simply stared at us, probably wondering how in the world two little Latin girls could intake all that food. Small bites?

One day when we were not eating, Mami and I decided to go to the beach. On this particularly sunny day, I happened to step on a broken railing covering a square drain on my way to the beach. The railing was broken. Foot went through, knee to the ground, blooooood everywhere (though contained to the foot area). Brilliant. I'm about to step into the salty ocean and instead I've injured my foot, and the next thing I know I have three male hotel concierge guys kneeling around my left foot, using a cotton swab and scissors as they pour antiseptic and wipe away the blood. My heroes! The sea-salt did the rest, and for the rest of the afternoon I tied and retied my bikini between cursing the thing and diving into huge waves with my googles (thank you contacts). So for days on end (or well, 3 days) Mami and I shopped, ate, and beached, made friends with the lady beach-sellers and behaved like 10 year olds jumping waves.

PHNOM PENH

Back in the PP, Mami met all my friends and Yoshi, took a cooking class and made Fish Amok (yes I took it too evidence below**), and fell in love with the Elephant Bar the Raffles Hotel. She survived flooding in the Penh, thanks to Tim; enjoyed heavenly spa treatments and some real BBQ beef at Sovanna before flying back to the States (with all my pairs of Cambodian Beautiful Shoes in tow). In the end, I gave my mom an A++ for making the effort to fly out and visit me, for inviting me to Vietnam, aaaand for being a good sport and trying everything (including Snowies bar)!

**Evidence I cooked:

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS CAN BE FOUND HERE... Vietnam-Mami Adventures

Pressing "re-start"

2010-04-12T14:40:00.000+07:00

A few times in life we are allowed to press the "re-start" button: high school, college, graduation, new job, next job, moving to Cambodia (if applicable), and so on. Sometimes we're conscious and exercise our finger before we push, other times it's pushed for us. I haven't quite decided if I'm the one pushing the button or if some other force is pushing it for me this time around. All I know is that the signs are there...

1. Upcoming Trip(s) -- always provide a time for reading and reflection, generating new ideas, etc.
2. Dwindling bank account-- expedient need to replace funds and a sense of urgency to acquire full-benefits including vision care.
3. I've had my hair-colored (this time by a Japanese stylist who promised me he'd try his very best at highlighting my roots, but that he was "only human" and might miss a few strands). It took 3-hours.
4. 20+ hours of transatlantic flights-- also time for reflection, getting to know a new airport (Incheon, Souel), terrible in-flight movies, and undergoing emotional turbulence as waves of excitement and dread cause me to grip my arm-rests and pace the aisle.
5. Spring Cleaning (lots of washing and re-washing of backpacking backpacks, trekking shoes, and donating randomly acquired items to the cleaner (including a full-set of dish-ware I never used).
6. Incredible need to really work-out again (since knee/hamstring injury in Dec. I've yet to run more than 10 min. w/out experiencing pain)-- perfect opportunity to try out swimming-biking biathalons and windsurfing.
7. Acquisition of new shoes (blue leather-straps flat sandaled shoes-- $15).
8. Meditation willing the perfect next job to be thrown into my lap. (Actually I haven't had time for this one yet)-- visions of me at Starbucks (wearing all black and green apron) occasionally pop into my head.
9. The Economist (reading withdrawal)--> led to an hour spent standing at Monument Books, browsing the job ads, reading about the upcoming new state of South Sudan and spilled over onto this week's TIME issue.
10. That feeling...

Is life abroad real?

2010-04-09T11:50:00.002+07:00

A year in Cambodia can rip apart your heart and soul (and maybe knee) and stitch it back haphazardly, like a bad copy of a Russian-market dress. Oddly, upon closer inspection, the stitching is stronger. The experience makes you stronger. Even on a morning when you're completely drained and find yourself on the back of a moto, knowing that if something happens that's it-- you don't have the energy to jump off-- at least you're comforted by the one truth you know: you have lived. An experience in a foreign place makes every feeling, thought and emotion surface at odd times and then completely empties you out. Only then, when you're emptied out, feeling nothing, confused by what is the real and unreal, will you know. You'll be walking in the heated dream that is South East Asia and from somewhere within, a memory of a cold breeze will make you shiver and whisper that it doesn't matter.

We choose what we want to live and what we want to be real.

In an (almost) quarter-life

2010-03-28T17:45:00.004+07:00

25 Things I've learned, after an (almost) quarter life, with an experiential year in Cambodia:

1. Always listen, then speak.
2. Living with others is better than living alone.

3. Only you can find happiness, but it takes more than one to live happily.

4. I still hate cooking. If I ever enjoy it, it probably wasn't cooking.
5. Letting go is the healthiest thing to do.
6. It's not you, it's them.
7. It's not them, it's you.
8. Smiling is better than haggling.
9. Looking for Indiana Jones or James Bond really means you want to be Indiana Jones or James Bond. Be who you want to be.
10. Surround yourself with good people.
11. The question will always be, "Now What?"
12. Save the planet.
13. Real tests are physical, mental, and emotional.
14. Surprise people, but better yet... Surprise yourself.
15. Adventure means not knowing what comes next, and being okay with that. (That means, avoiding sleepless nights or worrying about resume submissions).
16. Avoid people that make you feel like shit.
17. Things don't last. Memories do, but they fade into hazy dreams. Exist Simply.
18. Live out childhood dreams. Then find new ones...
19. Life is movement by any means.
20. Find the ones who care.
21. The middle class has the real power for change, but T.V., fast-food, and enclosed spaces get in the way.
22. I'm not as scared of [insert whatever here] anymore.
23. The people you love, you'll want to see again. And again.
24. A future depends on silence, actions, and words. Learn to use the right one at the right time.
25. It's okay... Nothing is certain... Not everything you do should have a purpose. *

(*Okay, I cheated on the last one. You got 2 more bonus points.)

Cambodia through new eyes

2010-03-22T01:33:00.004+07:00

Hi. I’m alive. Here is what I’ve been up to the last month:

Interning at the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (i.e. being around lawyers)!
Planning and preparing for my mom’s trip to Cambodia and Vietnam in April (YAY)!!
My return to America (i.e. I know you didn't think it was possible)!!!

Before I elaborate did you know that the number one thought an expatriate has on a moto in Cambodia is: “Please don’t kill me.” (Source of sampling: Foreign colleagues & acquaintances)

Yep. ANYWAYS...

Okay so work: I LOVE my job. Seriously. Ever thought you could say that? I just did, and it’s pretty cool. For the last month I’ve been interning at the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, working on three projects:

1. Assistant Producing a promotional film for the website
2. Collaborating on a report about social media as a human rights advocacy tool (though I’m primarily writing the history of democracy, civil society, and the human rights movement in Cambodia part)
3. Deciphering the strange accents of my Irish, British, and New Zealander work colleagues (they pretty much think I’m a terrible listener).

I’ll spare you details about the work, but the fun bits have involved:

Traveling south to Takeo Province where we interviewed two Human Rights activists (Cambodian) formerly accused and acquitted on charges of disinformation SEE: Takeo Case Ruling

Watching a burnt-victim begging outside of S-21 fall silent as he is asked what his family & friends think of his situation (he has no access to decent medical care and job opportunities)...

Another stomach-sinking trip into the former torture prison in the middle of the city...

Having a "Phnom Penh Day" with my boss, Rupert & Louis (filmmaker) where I saw the city through someone else’s eyes as Rupert took us through hidden alleys, former hotels, and an old Church taken over by urban settlers after the Khmer Rouge…. [Please excuse sudden outburst for need of photographic creativity]

sideways tuk-tuk

view of the colonial post-office from building across

an old hotel room

phnom penh alley

cyclo nap-time

self-portrait (kidding)

living in a church

Filming and visiting an evicted AIDS colony at the outskirts of the city where they have no access to medical care and adequate housing…

new housing being built because aluminum housing (below in green) gets too hot

Filming at Boeng Kak Lake, where hundreds of families have been evicted as the government undergoes land concession to private companies and builds a new financial center at the heart of the lake. This has had a profound effect on my education of urban growth in developing cities, with governments with instinctive appetites for $$$. You can tell from these pictures how big the lake is and how much has been filled with sand already. In my opinion (and one probably shared by many), this is one of the biggest mistakes (both environmentally and socially) to happen upon Cambodia…

Traveling north to Kampong Thom and where I played with street children (very dirty, very cute, very, very wrong that no one said anything at all… I mean I could have been anybody if you know what I mean), and then traveling the next day to 2 hours into the middle of nowhere, where I observed a general deforestation of the land and a public forum held by the CCHR's Community Empowerment Programme, where local villagers voiced complaints against the government and officials taking away their land, farming equipment, and not allowing them to dig wells…

The Public Forum (Community Empowerment Programme)

villager speaking out

Then filming out-takes in the car and stopping by an Angkor Temple in the middle of nowhere (literally)

Louis ("filmmaker guy")

In short I have had probably close to the best month and a half of experimenting in the field of Human Rights Advocacy (with a cross into filming again). Not only have I worked with people that are passionate about community empowerment, land rights, acid attacks, anti-corruption laws, business and human rights, and other issues at the frontline of Cambodian political, social, and economic changes, I have also put my political science undergraduate degree to good use for once. The sad part is that I don’t get paid. Such is the life of the clichéd socially conscious liberal arts major. Tiny, tiny problem.

So having had a taste for human rights, documentary film, journalism, Asia, expat communities, rugby, bike-moto-running accidents, worms, dumplings, sweet iced-coffees, killer heat, rainy season, and dwindling bank accounts, I’ve found after one year in Cambodia, that it is time to return to my home base-- Chicago. Trust me, adventures will continue. My Return Date is set to May 5^th.

I’m definitely sad to go, but confident I’ll return to SE Asia one day. After all, Phnom Penh is now a part of me, a part of my definition of “Home” just as Mexico City, Vernon Hills, Chicago, Notre Dame, and Toledo have been. Cambodia is where I learned to just exist. To stop planning, worrying and dreaming… To just live reality (even though I too have criticized its "non-realistic" qualities).

The big question: What will I do next? I don’t know. (How exciting!)

Of course, I will keep in mind my perfect job description as I move forth. It should contain some sort of key phrase like:

Requires being on the frontline of… INSERT:
[disaster, crisis management, travel, cross-cultural excursions, spying, foreign language training, six figures, expeditions or All of the Above].

Where will I live? Hopefully, NOT a cardboard box.

When will I return to the life abroad? ASAP... For school or work or whatever comes next when the timing is right again... C'est la vie.

So... Now, if you’d like to see my CV, please inquire within...

Bangkok Top Ten

2010-03-03T17:30:00.000+07:00

Last Weekend Gemma, Moritz and I [i.e. three-fourths of Flat 42E] jet-set (well, Air Asia set) to Bangkok for a February weekend of fun! We forwent the opening and return of Pontoon (I know, what was I thinking?) for cheap street food, air-conditioned movie theatres, and shopping, and it was well worth it!

In list update, here is Bangkok's Top 10 Weekend Highlights:

1. We overpay the taxi from the airport to our cheap hostel by 100 baht. We were the clichéd dumb tourists calculating currency exchanges (33 baht to the dollar, which we for some reason couldn't figure out) when the guy peeled off. We proceed to make up our loss by eating cheap street food for the rest of the weekend.

2. After finding a slit between the air conditioning vent we blast to air to the musty room, where Moritz can hide his passport and Laos cash, the three of us dump our bags on the bed and head off in search of street pad thai and noodles! We discover, the giant white alien woman. Hours later we find ourselves cracking up, standing up for respect, honoring the King of Thailand as a cheesy promo plays in the air-conditioned movie theatre of Siam Paragon[NOTE: I tried to YouTube this video for your own personal enjoyment, and couldn't find it...]. A million trailers later, we don our 3-D glasses and consider ourselves to be the last people on Earth to catch Avatar on the big screen.

3. Saturday morning Moritz and Gemma make me get up early (they weren't aware this was a vacation) so we can spend the day sweating and walking around the city. We take the public bus (only 7 baht!) to the Khosan area to the West of the city. Khosan is the sketchy, cheap and dirty backpacker area featured in movies like The Beach (according to Tim). Truth is, it isn't so sketchy at 8am. We pass a bunch of perfectly respectable places serving "American Breakfasts" and opt for pad thai for breakfast from noodle cart lady instead. All fears of stomach problems have virtually gone out the window.

4. Moritz doesn't get a tattoo (well, al the stores were all closed anyways) and we find a tuk tuk that takes us for a ride....Or ON a ride I should say. We fall into another tourist trap... for 5 baht each, we are taken all over the city... the jewelry store, the indian tailor shop, the asian souveniers shop, where the tuk tuk driver collects what he claims are free gas cards, if we just "pretend" to shop for 5 minutes in each store. We should have walked. The pier to take the express boats down the canal was literally 10 minutes walking distance from where we were originally.

5. We take a boat down the canal to ChinaTown! For hours we get lost in the market... finding alleys, fruit stalls, eating and sampling tons of fried goodies (my favorite was the corn) and sweating buckets. Coffee breaks are a must and Gemma mistakenly orders black Thai coffee, or a cup of sugar maybe with some ground coffee beans.

6. By noon we are exhausted and find a small MBK mall with a bunch of Indian stuff. We listen to bollywood-like Indian music while sipping Lime freezes and recouperating from the heat. An hour later we are dawdling down little India (more market stalls) and on our way across a foot-bridge I discover the most brilliant random street-poster EVER:

7. We walk for what seems like hours out of Chinatown until we find a bus that will take us to Soi (street) 11, where I'm due at the much-recommended Cheap Charlie's random driftwood-like bar. Problem is, we find the wrong Soi 11. A lot of walking, and short tempers later, we get a tuk tuk to take us to the real Soi 11 (opposite end of the city) and we find that Cheap Charlie's does exist, much to our relief. Rounds of Gin and tonics pick us up again, thanks to Tim. We order Naan bread next door and it serves as our cheap tapas.

8. We then take the BTS (kinda like a much-better, much cleaner, much faster version of the Chicago EL) back to the mall area where we are staying at and stumble into a fast-food noodle place, where (as I'm virtually sick of noodles and fried food by this point) I order fresh spring rolls and top it off with an ice cream crepe for dessert. On the way back to the hostel we lose Moritz to shopping (for the record, he claimed he was NOT going to shop at all), and Gemma and I discover some sweet graphic tees for less than 5 dollars apiece.

9. Moritz departs for Laos bright and early the next morning, and Gemma and I gleefully make our way to the Chatuchak Weekend Market where much to our delight, young Thai designers display the latest fashion trends in clothes and jewelry. My wallet breathes a sigh of relief as it lightens up to a coffee frapp and earrings, bracelets, a shirt, and dress, and sweater... You get the point.
Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok

10. By 1pm we cram our newly purchased goods into our backpacks and march straight to a taxi that will take us back to the airport, but not before grabbing one last bowl of street food TO-GO that we shove down our throats in the taxi. With enough baht left over, I purchase a small oreo-blizzard at the Dairy Queen and look at all the pretty Duty Free things I will not be buying: alcohol, ciggarettes, ridiculoulsy expensive make-up, rolled up rice twisty cookie things, and dried fruit. For some reason, the Bangkok International Airport is overflowing with dried-fruit.

As Gemma and I walk onto the plane, joining the overtly red and balding, beer-bellied tourists on their way to Cambodia, we consider our trip a success, acknowledging that for less than a few hundred dollars, one can jet-set to Bangkok, "the city of life"... or in my opinion, the noisy, crowded first-world of Southeast Asia.

Road kill OR “The dramatic tale of surviving being T-boned by a moto”

2010-02-25T09:27:00.001+07:00

There I was, sitting in the office at the Cambodian Center for Human Rights when I get an emergency phone call from someone who needed my assistance, but it’s noon and I’m hungry. Stacey and Sana head off to Russian Market, where we’d planned a nice scrumptious lunch of no Khmer/Thai (i.e. what we eat everyday) and I had my heart set on salad. Then there was the phone call and I had to change my plans. I decided I’d grab a moto and head to Russian market; pick up something to eat/head back to my apartment for money, and head over to assist this person.

When I got to Russian market I sprang off the moto and looked for my co-workers. As I crossed the road— in the slow, snakelike pattern in which one can only cross the road in Cambodia, I saw her but only too late. Or maybe she saw me first.... The point is she collided right into me and I looked down and felt the push of the motorcycle right up against my right thigh. Let me tell you, GOOD thing I was wearing pants. As I flew sideways and crash-landed on my butt, my brain tried to catch-up with what had just happened…

[Thought process]

Did a moto just hit me?
Uuuhh OMG what if I broke my tailbone! I can’t get up... I’m going to die!!!!
Why is everybody staring at me and nobody is helping me up? Cambodian’s are brutal man, they leave road kill to fend for itself.

Looking up, I felt my palms burning on the black asphalt but simply stared straight at a foreigner I had seen right before I crossed. I think he sensed that all I wanted was for someone to help me up, and this forty-something family man left his kids to come rescue me from the middle of the road.

“Just put your arms around my neck honey.”

I think that’s when I started to tear. As I crossed over to the shaded corner, a little Cambodian couple offered me the tiniest little plastic chair to sit in, and I really started to stifle back those tears then.

“Do you have everything, your purse? The girl is gone, they just get scared,” The man explained. Was he apologizing for her? I’ve been here long enough to not expect anything back. Luckily when I was hit, I had miraculously managed to clutch my little wallet the entire time. Usually road kill lose their precious goods- backpacks, laptops, purses, limbs, the works.

Anyways.

The man disappeared and the little Cambodian couple noticing my state of shock pulled out a little red container of Tiger Balm and the woman began holding my hand and spreading it over my bare arms. Note: I had no scratches on my arms, just incredible butt pain. Tears started streaming out. Ugh.

Usually I never cry so clearly I’m in shock. I process this and try to decide what to do—food? I want to throw up. Help that person I was supposed to be helping? I need help. I began to tear again and then the American guy showed up on his motorcycle, after dropping off his kids. He offered to take me to his shop where I could sit. “Actually, do you mind taking me to my flat?” I wanted to go cry somewhere. Plus, I couldn’t stop shaking. “No problem, honey.” Awe, Americans are so nice.

When he dropped me off, I ran up the stairs and started bawling my eyes out. You know when you just need a good cry (or your mom)? This was the moment. I cried as I made tea, I cried as I made spaghetti. I even cried while slicing carrots and then into my bowl of noodles. I swear I broke the record on senseless crying. Between sobs, and incredible pain, which I tried to sedate with Celebrex, I got a phone call from Bijan:

“Wheeeere are you?” “Um, I’m fine (sniff), I’m home actually (sniff).” “Are you okay? You sound ill.”

“I got hit by a moto- but (sniff) I’M FINE. I’ll be in the office in an hour.” “Fucking hell, are you alright?” I love the British. Great respectable accents in moments of crisis. Naturally, I laughed and this made me feel 100% better. Minus the pain in my “arse”.

After washing myself, checking that no major damage was done— just nice purple bruising on my thigh to add to my collection of Cambodian-acquired beauty marks— I headed out the door to run my errand. Ah life. Sometimes you don’t see things coming and even if you do, it’s too late. BAM. Just get up again. Now if anyone knows where I can get the Girl Scout patch for getting hit by a moto and surviving, let me know…

Cambodia Wedding 2.0.

2010-02-25T09:25:00.000+07:00

I have a new job. Yes. A third one. Somehow I’m managing my time right, though my gut tells me this can’t go on for too long. But for now things are good again. Tuesday through Thursday I spend my time at the Cambodian Human Rights Center, where I intern. You see, I’m trying to figure out what I should study in my post-graduate, and it could Human Rights. So three days I try to figure out if investigating rights violations is my calling. Actually I just research, work on several projects that have more to do with technology, and thoroughly revel in the joy of having international colleagues (as opposed to CNN when I was working from home).Then, last weekend I was invited to a Cambodian wedding for a colleague I had just met at my new internship at the CCHR. Yay! A field trip sponsored trip to the province and food is included! Yuppie! Plus, I thought… It’ll be a GREAT bonding experience with my new co-workers, or at least for some language immersion. ENGLISH language immersion, that is. You see, the thing is, my new coworkers are well, yes Cambodian, but the other ones, they’re from New Zealand, Ireland, and the U.K. This makes for very interesting English translations. As the only American, I try to shed light on what it’s like to be a Yank, learn about rugby, closed-circuit televisions in London, studying in Europe, and how to greet the Queen of England. Seriously. Then we have less serious conversations. Like the other day at lunch:

Tom from New Zealand to the Waiter:

“No, can we get the GREEN Fanta instead of the Orange Fanta?”

Nod from the waiter. The can arrives, and Stacey (from the UK), Bijan (Iranian-English) and I stare at Dave (Team New Zealand) and Tom.

“What does it taste like?” Stacey asks. We all get a sip.

“Do you know what jolly-ranchers are? That’s what it tastes like,” I say.

Well, this just opened up a whole new discussion on candy, lollies, gummies, and I now know for a fact that jolly ranchers, which I described as hard-ass fruit gummies don’t exist in the UK or New Zealand. I only had North Americans Celine Dion and Kenny G to back me up, and they were really only backing up the restaurant’s music. The words “arse”, “bloody”, “rugby”, “root-boy” and a whole series of other terms make for truly engaging lunch and work conversations, which always leave me speaking my words a bit more carefully and feeling like I've joined the Harry Potter club.

Anyways, back to the Wedding. So 8am Saturday morning we all show up, groggy, sleepy, and not ready for a day of sweating in dresses and dress shirts and pants. Turns out the scheduled 1 hour drive (really 2 hours) takes us into some unknown area of Cambodia—well, unknown to me— so that we are thick into the jungle, rumbling along those dirt-roads that make walking around Cambodian villages so magically story-like. Six Barangs (foreigners) clamber out of the bus with our fellow Cambodian colleagues, and we are paraded into a colorful tent for the wedding ceremony. We even take part in the hair-cutting/perfume spraying bit for good-luck.

After groom/bride dress changes (Cambodians usually change around 6 times during a wedding)… a meal that made me want to become a vegetarian…. And naptime or gambling time (chose your own activity according to gender) at the neighbor’s…

A musician offers Tom a try at his fiddle-thing in exchange for a Marlboro Light. Note: Tom couldn’t even get a squeak from the strings.

We also listened to some sweet band. Kidding. I have to admit, the silver dress on one of the singers was kind of cute. The boys certainly enjoyed it.

After sweating off probably close to 20 pounds, our colleagues declared enough was enough, and we climbed back into our field-trip bus, wishing the bride and the groom lots of luck before heading back to the Phnom Penh.

Grab a Backpack

2010-01-30T13:03:00.006+07:00

The American filmmaker, Oliver Stone came to Cambodia.

As part of the Building Bridges for Peace lecture series, Mr. Stone's visit would engage his audience in a dialogue for "peace" (though not for the halt in purchases of pirated films). After receiving an honorary academic degree and adjusting his glasses. He spoke on nothing and everything. Saving the whales was never mentioned (as did Rick Steves when he spoke at Notre Dame), but neither was the role of media in the developing world. Numerous American institutions and political figures were criticized and parallels were drawn to the Vietnam War.

As I leaned forward in my chair and the slow hum of Cambodian chatter grew louder, it became clear: Mr. Stone had missed the whole point of the lecture series-- to engage Cambodian students. As an academic lecture-starved foreigner, I learned more about the need to bridge communication gaps than I did about American conspiracy theories.

Perhaps this lecture was better than the last one though. A couple of weeks ago, as part of the same lecture series, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate for Economics, Professor Eric Maskin had spoken on globalization and the growth of income and poverty gaps in the developing world. His lecture had managed to do one thing: make evident the gap within the audience. Academic lecture-starved foreigners, mostly working for prominent international organizations, left unsatisfied by a simplified lecture failing to address underlying factors such as gender, structural violence, history, public health, you name it. On the other hand, Cambodian students stood up at Q&A and asked for a definition of globalization.

Building bridges for peace? Perhaps a series on communicating clearly with Asia would be more appropriate. Mr. Stone did hit on one or two good points:

1. Grab a backpack and see the world.

2. Enjoy life and take one thing at a time at time. Don't multi-task.

Finding myself stuck in Cambodia, I guess I can check off at least point number one. I grab my worn, green and black backpack and head out the doors of PUC university. I've had the same backpack since high school, and with its country-patches I've haphazardly sewn on over the years, it is a testament that I've seen at least some of the world. Although, looking closely at my bag, I think there are still enough spaces left to patch over with world travels...

Kampot in 24 hours

2010-01-27T17:03:00.020+07:00

The van jerks to a stop. I wake up. Ooops. My head has rolled to the right, crash-landing on the laced-white sleeve of a nice Cambodian lady. I smile apologetically and try o sit back straight. At least I didn’t drool on her. A layer of dust has gathered on my black pants and backpack, and the smell of freshly baked bread fills the van, reminding me that lunch is still a few hours away, in the town of Kampot.

At 7am that morning Gemma and I had excitedly left our flat and made our way to the wrong market to catch a shared mini-van to Kampot. We had grand plans to get out of the city and go hiking up Bokor Hill and find the old French-colonial burnt-out buildings dotting the top of the hill. Problem was, we were in the wrong market back in Phnom Penh. We caught a motodop and hurried of to the right market, where we then waited an hour for a van to fill up with Cambodians making their way down South as well. Only USD$3, 4.5 hours, and a zillion stops later did we reach the riverside town. I’m all for local integration, but remind me never to take a shared mini-van again. You would think I had learned after Rattanakiri not to take these local transport vehicles. It’s an entire uncomfortable, dehydrating affair. The driver stops multiple times to use the natural toilet, bargain for fuel, buy bread, and pick up more passengers to stuff into every conceivable corner of space available. When you’re poor, you make the most of every space. Space, like television air-time, is incredibly valuable and once lost, is money gone forever.

When Gemma and I finally rolled into Kampot we headed straightaway to Epic Arts Café, the café/restaurant that employs and supports hearing impaired Cambodians and encourages the handicapped in art performance. One delicious quiche and pear-cinnamon shake later, I was ready to explore the riverside town and prepare for our next day 5-hour tour to Bokor National Park, but not before exploring some local caves and taking a walk along the river front. As consistent moto-dop passengers, we made it a point to use our legs for the weekend.

At 8am we gathered our day packs and loaded into a van with other foreigners (mostly Aussies) to hike up Bokor. Our guide Mr. Tree, was quite possibly one of the most hard-working, interesting Cambodians I have met so far. A camouflage hat shaded the cluster of deep wrinkles lining the corners of his eyes. “If you forget my name, just look up all around you. They are my friends!” I liked him immediately.

Born in another province, Tree moved to Kampot during the Khmer Rouge and became a former Cambodian-resistance soldier, fighting alongside the Vietnamese. Tree lived in the forests of Kampot for over two years, living off the land and mining fields. After the Vietnamese intervention, he helped the United Nations de-mine this area, moving on to be a park ranger while raising a family of six. Today he leads tour groups up to Bokor. I wonder if anyone else has had such an action-packed life, only to hear kids complain about the heat, steep slopes, and bug-bites.

As we ascended, the humidity soaked us through to the bone, but the dense forest provided adequate protection from the sun. Hiking up for two hours, we finally reached the spot where a pick-up truck then took us on an hour-long bumpy ride to the top of the hill. At Bokor Hill Station, Mr. Tree began:

“And now I will share with you, if you want, what I want to tell you now, the history of this place, of Kampot. You don’t have to listen if you don’t want but I will tell you anyways. We have two French [tourists] here, and I am sorry. I do not want you to be mad at me, because this story is history and now French tourists are very nice…” (The two French women look up and smile at the rest of us).

And so Tree shared with us the story of Bokor. How the people of Cambodia in this area were always under the rule of someone else; how a rich French colonial came across Bokor Hill in the early 1900s and decided this would be an ideal spot for French vacationers. The ideal (cool) weather and high altitude would provide a refuge from the Indochinese heat to rich French tourists. He built a Catholic Church, a post office, and a palace/hotel among other buildings. Cambodian laborers were used to build the beautiful buildings as well as the gravel road that would lead travelers up to this refuge. Many lost their lives building this colonial recluse.

Over the years, the Indochinese war, KR genocide (this was a KR stronghold), and US bombings would drive people out of the area. A Cambodian commander would live in the Catholic Church during the KR and the palace turned Casino that once held party goers and gamblers would turn into a place of torture—a prison. Overtime, lack of food, money, and the Vietnamese intervention would drive Cambodians back down the hill, transforming this once quaint little mountaintop retreat into a ghost town.

Today Bokor Hill no longer belongs to the French, but it does not belong to the Cambodian people either. According to Mr. Tree, the park is in the hands of Sokimex Goup, that own various companies across Cambodia, among them a prominent gas station chain. Sokimex owns a part of Angkor Wat. When you pay your $20 entrance fee to see Angkor Wat the money travels straight through to “company pockets”. A national treasure is in the hands of a few hands. Little money from tourism ever trickles down to the country’s inhabitants. It stays in the hands of a few or in the hands of expat-business owners. Today they are building another unsustainable tourist trap: A casino, hotel and golf resort atop this beautiful hill. Mr. Tree says he’s known this area all his life and is afraid of the environmental damage being caused by illegal logging. The winds will no longer remain trapped in the trees, but will reach down to other provinces, affecting local agriculture and weather patterns. There are fewer animals as well. He says he doesn’t know what this place will look like in 20 years.

Walking along the top of the hill, I explore the buildings along with the others. I come across moldy kitchens, cracked tile floors, the graffiti-covered inside of the Church. I imagine I’m wearing a long French gown as I make my way up the casino staircase and peer out over a cliff. In the distance you can hear the constant sawing of Japanese and American machinery, controlled by the Chinese with Cambodian-laborers illegally logging and clearing land.

I stand on the back of the pick-up truck on the way down the hill, my hands gripping the edge as we tumble down into the white mist. Do you know what it feels like to go through a cloud? It’s like going through the bright white flash of a camera, as goose bumps rise up on your arms from the cold and droplets cling to your eyelashes. I lean forward so Mr. Tree, who is seated on the roof of the front part of the truck can hear me. I ask Mr. Tree what he thinks this place will look like in 20 years. He shakes his head. I think he is afraid to say.

Don’t believe me about Angkor Wat? Go here:

http://www.talesofasia.com/cambodia-sokimex.htm

http://www.sokhahotels.com/termofuse.php

http://www.elephantguide.com/Cambodiatravel-news/bokor-mountain-golf-country-club-signs-up-arnold-p-2.html>

Rooftop Conversations

2010-01-27T16:50:00.005+07:00

“When you came here, did you come here for others, or for yourself,” Mauritz asked a slightly tipsy Gemma and me. The three of us sat drinking wine and milkshakes atop Equinox’s rooftop, overlooking the touristy golden street of 278.

“For myself,” we both respond. “Me too.”

We are twenty-somethings, being selfish, living in Cambodia; saving ourselves from boredom, inactivity; the stagnation of living of at home. We never thought we could save the world, much less the people we’ve come across in SE Asia. We all know we can make a bigger impact back home, in our own communities. I, for one, constantly ask myself why I’m not in Mexico or Latin America, or somewhere I can actually speak fluently.

Earlier that evening, Maurtiz had invited Gemma and me to dinner at Souky Soup, a local Cambodian restaurant to have dinner with his GTZ work colleagues, including two Mongolians. When I asked the Mongolians what they typically ate back home, they responded, “Camel, horse, chicken, beef…. A lot of meat.” Well, I’ve never heard camel and horse before. The meal was cheap and delicious and at the end, something happened which spurred our rooftop conversation later on. We invited them all out for post-dinner drinks. Whether it was too late (9pm) or perhaps the cost of a drink (roughly $2-3), they all declined and the three Westerners were left to keep the night going.

“I love to travel and work closer to the problems on the ground, but I want to go back to Germany. I’m fine here, but this is not my culture.” Though he had just told us he didn’t want to go back to Munich were his friends just played video-games all day or did boring technical engineering internships, Mauritz had just said what we all felt at traffic-stops, in the market, on nights like this. This was not our culture. He continued, “In a way, we are just the sons and daughters of rich parents, with choice. We come across Cambodian colleagues that are willing to work harder, study more, be self-sufficient, the difference is that we have choice and they don’t.”

We have the choice to get up and leave or stay. We can move between worlds. We are flexible and adaptable and it is those very characteristics that make it harder for us to fit somewhere.

Staring out at the popular bohemian backpacker guesthouse Top Banana, we moved on to discuss neocolonialism, politics, economics, long-distance relationships, the rebellion of our generation against set paths, and everything else one shouldn’t discuss on a Friday night at a bar. It’s amazing how three 23, 24, and 25 year-olds from different countries feel the same thing, still ask the same questions. Where do we belong? Not here, but maybe here now.

The Ritual of Leaving

2010-01-26T15:13:00.021+07:00

Phnom Penh is a revolving door. That is a fact. People come and go and that’s what makes this place so alive. I can have conversations about malaria, the environment, small business loans, biking to remote areas, travel to Malaysia, and the best place to eat Cambodian food in town. Most of us are young, restless, caught in between careers and wanderlust. Afraid of commitment and settling in one place where people only talk of last night’s show, new cars, money, hotel points, and the weekend shopping Sale at Macy’s. [NOTE: There is nothing wrong with talking about these things. I enjoy Glee twice as much as you do, believe me. I also love shopping at Macy's, nice hotels here and there and I still want a Mini-Cooper someday] When we leave home we miss out on birthdays, graduations, reunions, weddings, and so on. It is a sacrifice. We leave our homes to be closer to other things that matter to us—ideas, innovations in the field, travel, the exotic— only to be left behind by those of us that leave to move on to something new. Phnom Penh is a revolving door. It is a fact, and you have to learn to be okay with that.

That being said, a good friend just left. I met Katie, the way I’ve met other people. Through friends, of friends, of friends. That’s the only way you meet people here, or at bar. The night Katie left, I took out that cheap plastic Nokia phone and went through a ritual: the cleansing of the phone. Basically, I purged it of friend’s numbers that no longer exist. People leave, but they leave things behind. The things they leave are gifts and remind you of who they were, and maybe who they will become.

Betsy was the first to leave last May. I met her through Tim on our bike ride to Mondulkiri. Her infectious laughter woke me up from a cold year in Chicago, and I am indebted to her for leaving behind something intangible: The belief that those of us here could actually change the world through the little things we do every day. She also gave me a goal: to run the Angkor Wat Half-Marathon, which I completed last December. Betsy will take D.C. and the world by storm as an Anti-Human Trafficking and Women’s Rights Activist.

I actually met Fitria through Susan, one of my first housemates, but Fitria was also living on Sisowath next to the apartment I was watching for a friend. She was my only neighbor for a month and introduced me to the “UN Tribunal summer crowd.” When Fitria left to go back to Indonesia to finish her legal studies, she left me some cloth to make a skirt at the market and her Indonesian tea that felt so good when my stomach hurt. Fitria will become an exceptional international lawyer breaking free from conservative Indonesia to explore the world.

I met Helen through Tim, and Helen left me her room at the flat I currently live at. An incredibly energetic Brit with a knack for the wild party life in the Penh, Helen left me clean bed sheets, a towel, and a wicker shelf set. Helen will become a cross-cultural trainer in the UK, overseeing programs that emphasize the need for young people to get out and see the world.

When American David left, a sweltering summer of Pontoon parties and Chinese dumplings also left. As all the summer interns returned home, a new breeze flowed through Phnom Penh and it got quieter. Deepika can attest to that. I met David through Katie whom I met through Tim. David left me a motorcycle helmet and an iron. He’s also left me with the idea that I should keep writing, if not for others, at least for myself. David, I think you’ll definitely be one of those environmental activist lawyers responsible for taking down failures like the Copenhagen climate talks and actually doing work on the ground, wherever “the ground” may be.

Kathrin was my beautiful German roommate from Berlin. For two months my roommates and I watched her deal with sticky situations in Cambodia and fight against irresponsibility and those that take advantage of you. She left me a lot of Sunblock and the idea that you should always do what feels right even if it means being apart from family, friends, and boyfriends. They will understand. Kathrin will be an international lawyer in Germany and then go live in Latin America or become a model.

Taka was not a grass-eater. He was a Japanese “carnivore” as he put it. With a deep sense of curiosity for the living conditions of the poor and urban development, Taka left his plastic cigarette-butts bottle on our patio and a funny insight into what it is like to be a young male in Japan. Taka is going to re-develop an Asian city and quit smoking someday. Taka, I never thought you were a grass-eater.

Mary was the second German. She was just cool and did her own thing and questioned her own studies in agricultural development. She was the first German I met that loved (and took down) jars of peanut butter. Before I saw her off on her dirt-bike trip across the south of Cambodia, she left me with the idea that all over the world, women can be pretty good at the things men are supposed to be good at. Mary is going to leave Germany to go surf in Australia while she figures out her next steps.

I hated when Deepika left. My smart and super cool, Indian-American lawyer friend, she was both a mentor and my big sister. She taught me to work hard for what I want, and to move on to something else when I’m not happy. She taught me to cherish what we have and that it’s good to be patient when you’re young, and perhaps not so good when you are older because after all, we are always short on time. She left me plenty of relationship advice (for my non-existent relationships) and let me copy her beautiful shoes. Deepika is one of those people you’ll always be friends with no matter where you end up. I know you’ll continue to do amazing things for others as well as yourself whether it’s in Cuba, LA, India, or Europe.

Charel/Karel’s face always lit up when he talked about Africa. That was the best part, to see in someone who they are and who they will become based on the past experiences they’ve had when they were young. Not only did I learn more about mosquitoes than I ever thought I could, I learned what it is like to be carefree, compassionate and open with others. This tall, Belgian guy left me a Disney DVD collection and the hope that someday I will go to Africa. Charel, I think one day you’ll be where you really want to be, out in an African province researching the origin of tropical diseases or a bug's life.

Katie was my close friend for 8 months, though we were technically ND-BC rivals based on our University Alma Matters. When Kathrin left, Katie took her place at the flat and stayed on to have more adventures with me in Cambodia and Laos. She always found people and organizations doing cool things in microfinance and development. She set high goals for herself and taught me the importance of letting go of something or someone when it is not meant to be and that maybe I can become a rock climber one day. Katie will always place the interests of others before her own, especially when the others are struggling to make an income in developing worlds. I think you’ll definitely be on the front line of business and development, the future of closing poverty gaps. Katie left me her bigger pillow, Tylenol, and her straightening iron.

And now it’s almost February and the dynamics of my flat and work and life have changed. Gemma (French-American), Mauritz (German), Nora (Finnish and not pictured above), and I now cohabit in our Cambodian flat. We get along really well and at least three of us like to refer to ourselves as “The Family” when we go out. Gemma, Mauritz and I like to play the post-it game. Last night, we went around decorating the flat with yellow post-its with the French, German, Spanish, and Khmer spelling of words. We hope to be fluent by April when both of them leave.

The (Cambodian) Office

2010-01-26T13:57:00.007+07:00

I must say, there are times when I really do miss talking to someone by the water cooler. Not that the Univision kitchen’s water cooler, strategically located underneath a tiny flat-screen TV brought the thirsty life-changing conversations. It’s that cliche office environment that I miss. The girl-talk by the receptionist desk, everyone looking up from their desk after the head man walks by in some outrageous suit or tennis shoes, the quick getaways to the corner Starbucks, and yes, even those Tuesday morning meetings where I contemplated moving somewhere very, very far away. That is the American office culture I occasionally miss.

The Cambodian office culture I’ve witnessed is slightly different. Yes, there is a water cooler, but is located right by the men’s toilet, meaning that whenever someone has to go, you can hear. Never mind that doors are only ever half-closed. Then, there are my colleagues. Amazing young people, hailing mostly from the province of Kandal. When I taught basic ESL classes to my colleagues on Wednesday mornings, I used the opportunity to learn a bit more about who they were, because casual conversations seldom take place, probably because they are too shy to speak to me. I’m a foreigner, and I’m a girl. I get a lot of giggles and occasionally the receptionist will tell me that so and so has a crush on me. Never mind that they are married and have a baby. Anyways, in these classes I’ve learned that most of them are the first to go to university, are one of several siblings, continue to go to school and work, and have families of their own. Many of them barely make more than $200 a month, yet have in their possession two things: the desire to learn English and a snazzy mobile phone.

Apart from my colleagues (production crew and administrative personnel) , the rock stars and singers, and my boss, I have one favorite person that works in that building on Preah Monivong: the old guard. Probably around 70 years old, this bone-thin man always smiles. Not only that, he actually kids around with the stronger, younger guards. Whenever I leave the office on my high-tech vehicle--my bike-- he pulls at the back wheel so I can’t go. He makes about $80 a month and sleeps on a cot in the back room of the lobby. This building is his livelihood. His wife comes around sometimes and they sit together on the floor and eat from a little plastic bag of rice. It breaks my heart. Occasionally I bring him leftover Chinese dumplings, a bag of bread or some fruit from my house. He always thanks me kindly and gives me a little pat. Although language is our biggest barrier, we communicate by sign language, and well, charades. I act out being sweaty and hot (or just show up sweaty and hot), going to eat lunch, sticking out my hand and pointing up if it’s going to rain, etc. I brought him back some cute chocolate-reindeer from the States and I swear he did a Cambodian jig. Life is hard for some Cambodians, and it is written all over his wrinkled, smiling face.

Sometimes, we get visitors in the office! Sadly, they are never young and good-looking.

The other day this tall, leggy man, of the same nationality as the original baguette, stepped into the office to have a chat with my manager regarding procuring additional business for a local television station in the Penh. To my delight, this way too naturally tanned skinny twig with manicured nails had the most amazing French accent. As the two figured out how to present a proposal to UNICEF and UNDP, I had the delight of listening to how in FRRRANCE things are done, because in FRRRRANCE this and that. At one point he turned to me and said, “I knooooow you. We met at a bar.” I blinked twice. I think I would have remembered him. “I don’t think so,” I smiled sweetly. He shrugged and continued to explain the innovation of streaming documentary snippets in video-text.

No matter where you work in the world, it can happen to you. It happened to me on the day after I returned to Cambodia, and I have to admit it wasn’t as wholly unexpected. When you work for a private company in an unstable (those some claim, what is now a stabilizing) economic and political environment, things just happen.

It kind of all went down like this:

I fly back to Cambodia to be let go. My boss informs me she is starting a new company and would like to keep me on as her assistant producer, under which our film will be released. Wait a minute? Was I just fired and re-hired? Maybe. Technically, the new general manager at our company fired me. It was my first time being let go, and I can honestly say, I rather enjoyed the whole process. For some reason, as I sat in the conference room, trying to look apologetic, as if I were the one that was doing the firing, it struck me how comical the whole situation was. As a foreigner, and rather generously paid by Cambodian standards, I was an expensive asset to the company, an asset viewed more as a liability when it came down to the bottom line. This of course, I’ve known for many months, but still, one doesn’t like to be let go. Nevertheless, there I sat, with the GM to my side, explaining downsizing and restructuring, or rather, trying to explain these concepts with me actually providing the key word phrases for him.

“I understand, completely,” I said, beaming at him.

Anyhow, to my surprise, upon being let-go I had unknowingly entered the world of alliances. No, this is not some Harry Potter wizarding alliance or other medieval game of make-believe. “I support you always, if you support me,” He said. Who can say no to that offer? Of course, a master at diplomacy (a characteristic I’m beginning to detest), I do the polite thing and just nod my head. Alliances? WTF?

Enter stage three. It seems the GM is eager to match me with a fellow ally… A Thai media company, where he knows some people. While it strikes me as odd that this man I’ve only known for oh, less than a month, is eager to place me with a new company, I am grateful that he is taking my firing so well. I’m not loud, or obnoxious, or call them out on multiple violations to my contract, for I know, enforcement of a contract in a world lacking governance is as valid as getting married to your best friend when you’re five.

In the meantime, GM seems to be more worried about my well-being than I am. I have a job— I’m a less than part-time reporter. I have skills, the most important one being, I speak and write in English. Plus, in this world I hold the neocolonialist advantage of being a foreigner. I decide I must join this alliance game for a time, just to see what it’s all about. After all, how many 24 year olds get to form alliances outside of Facebook Mafia Wars?

Stage four goes something like this:

3 missed calls… I finally pick up: “Can you come to the office today at 3pm? I will take you to my friend.” Oh. Okay. Why not? Does one need to be wearing a suit to meet an ally? Too late for that. At least I put on earrings this morning. At 3pm on the dot (Note: It is rare to be on time in Cambodia) GM comes and finds me and we step into the SUV and I’m whisked off for some alliance-making. As the car tumbles out of downtown Phnom Penh, past Northbridge (school and country club on the outskirts of the city), I contemplate possible scenarios:

I’m really being kidnapped. I have in my possession a perfectly working ibook G4 (purchased on E-bay several years ago and slightly dirty so never go for white), a cheap NOKIA phone (worth considerably less than every other Cambodian’s phone), and my life (which I value the most). I will be raped, murdered, and left for dead in one of the MAERSK containers covered in mud in one of the shipping yards we just passed by.

I will meet this person, be offered a job on the spot because I speak English. I will be offered a driver, body-guard, a diamond-studded phone, and VIP access to all of Phnom Penh’s nightclubs. The driver is on account of the difficulty in finding this work place on my own should I have to start work on Monday.

It really is an interview. Damn. What have I done in my two and half years of work experience so far… I review my resume in my head and think of big “media” words.

We reach the location. It’s not a major media complex. Just some Chinese-style houses put together. Once inside though, the place is maze of staircases, high tech production rooms, conference halls, kitchens, computer rooms, and people (gasp!) working on Colgate toothpaste ads. What did I expect? Certainly, not a full-blown media company in the middle of nowhere.

The interview goes well, though the entire time I’m wondering if I should be pitching the job, or apologizing for the GM’s over eagerness to sell me off to them as he sits in the same room as me, while I’m being interviewed. I am asked to explain multiple points on my resume, which I do rather well yet that fact that I’m not wearing shoes really bothers me. (In most Cambodian homes, you take off your shoes when you walk in).

On the way back to the city, after bestowing my gratitude (honestly, I think I could qualify for the Neutral Olympics), the GM hits me with this:

“You take job, we help each other. You work for (past company) too. I cannot pay all. Then, when I have money, I take you back.”

Translation: If you take this job that I am essentially making my friend give to you, you will be indebted to me until the end of time and therefore will have to work for free for me in the meantime, until I convince the CEO to take you back… All smiles and laughter. I didn’t quite nod at that one.

In a way, I had just experienced what it is like to be an international organization: A foreign pawn in greedy local hands. Not that the GM is greedy, because he is not. He is simply interested in advancing the company he works for and he sees me as one source for advancement. I on the other hand, did not come to Cambodia to sell toothpaste and Chinese-made cars to a population with a disturbingly growing income gap. I am interested in the role of media in developing countries, and this is just another side of it: the mass commercial side. It is times like this that make me wonder what I am doing here. If life really is about fate, coincidences, and the choices we make, than why did I end up in country where I cannot speak the language fluently, cannot actually produce a commercial or documentary, and cannot be bribed to form alliances? One thing is certain: The answer remains unclear.

The Great Departure or Winter in Chicago

2010-01-16T10:15:00.009+07:00

After 23 hours of travel back to the States, I landed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5 AM in my beloved airport, O’Hare International. My dad picks me up and I eagerly shower and get ready for my first Starbucks coffee back home, but jet lag wins out and I pass out on my bed instead.

The rest of the trip goes at follows:

I proceed to hide under my bed-covers for the next three days, only submerging for food, water, hygiene, and movie purposes
My body, clearly undergoing culture shock, fails to respond to snow, wind, ice, and bleakness and requires me to dress in multiple layers, something a true Chicagoan would only do once upon a random wintry occasion.
Large intakes of Nestle dark chocolate raisins and Starbucks lattes help with the adjustment, as do fireplace movie nights with the family. I finally get the guts to brave it, and try out snowshoeing. It’s harder than it looks. My parents are pros though.
(Below: me, too cold to move)
I decide to be social. A Univision and Notre Dame reunion of friends my first weekend back in Chicago makes for a great re-introduction to life in the US of A with all my favorite people (well, in Chicago). Julie and I get each other the same thing for Christmas: squirrels (though hers suspiciously looks more like a groundhog), college note-passing jokes, and ethnic Bolivian and Cambodian scarves.
White Christmas 2010. My mom bakes a delicious turkey; apple-cinnamon mix thing, mashed potatoes, veggies and we trade the usual Austrian strudel for a French fruit pie. We proceed to open presents and miss all of our family back in Mexico City and the sun.
A string of movie-theater outings (they don’t have real ones in Cambodia), Barnes & Noble (again lacking in Cambodia), Starbucks (a rare find in Cambodia), and planning for what will be my second failure in life.
New Year’s 2010! What is time anyways?
Trip to D.C. to visit my newly engaged friend, Diana and my first glimpse of a BRIDES magazine outside of a bookstore. D.C. is colder than Chicago (is that possible?) and Mike teaches me how to play Wii Beatles Rock Band. I’m terrible at the guitar, but looove drums. I spare everyone by not singing, as does Diana.
I spend my second day in D.C. at the National Art Gallery and decide that the Art Institute of Chicago is much better. I’m partial to impressionism. At least 3 people ask me if I need help finding my way around D.C. I must look like a tourist.
My second failure in life. (The first was not pushing my parents for professional soccer training). I miss the Foreign Service placement cut-off by A QUARTER OF A POINT.
Such is life. I must go grow up now and deal with check-points in the West Bank or become a Lawyer in Munich or re-settle Somali refugees in Uganda.
I don’t commit suicide and meet Diana and Mike for a last D.C. dinner at a delicious Peruvian restaurant. It's a dark, lonely ride back from D.C. to Chicago.
I miss my plane ride back to Cambodia.. One leg booked for the day before the other. Oh details like 12:05AM departures. I take it as a sign I should go back and hibernate some more.
One month after I arrived in Chicago, I fly back to Cambodia.
A million hours later I taxi it back to St. 278 No. 42E, my humble abode. As I’m standing outside our green gate, waiting for Nora to come let me in, all my tuk-tuk and moto drivers welcome me back. They wave, smile, and point at the shirts they're wearing. Before I left to go home, I bestowed some presents onto all left by a former roommate. I feel back at home. That is, until a nice car full of well-dressed Cambodians parks next to me and they tumble out into my neighbor’s (or my landlord’s) flat. One of the women greets me, we chat a bit and it turns out she’s from Libertyville, a town next to the one I grew up back in my real home. She's just visiting, and dying of heat. Actually, the weather is the best it's ever been in Cambodia, probably around 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit. She sort of stares at me incredulously and asks me how many years I’ve lived here. “Going on 9 months now.” I hope next time I say that I’m pregnant. She blinks twice then says, “Be Safe!” Great. Welcome back to Cambodia.

My final dose of Cambodia before the Holidays

2009-12-12T16:34:00.012+07:00

It took me eight months living in Phnom Penh to visit S-21, the high school turned Khmer Rouge security prison turned today's genocide museum. Granted, I was really waiting for someone to come visit so I wouldn't have to go by myself, but as my flight home drew close I knew I would need something to talk about when I got back. Not that I wanted to talk about the Cambodian genocide, but more so I could understand better what Cambodia's went through from 1975-79 under Pol Pot's Kingdom of Death. AND maybe legitimize my standing as a Phnom Penhite.

Walking up the concerete stairs of Tuol Sleng and into the room where they show the documentary, "Bophana" every day at 10am and 3pm, I tried to picture what it would be like to have seen this place as an actual high school, filled with students dressed in white shirts and blue pants or skirts. It wasn't hard. My flat happens to be next to one of the many Newton Tlay grade schools so every morning I'm used to hearing the school bell ring, repetitions of "A, B, C...", laughter and occasionally little waves from students as I walk down and out of the apartment gate. But this place... The cracked yellow, red and white tiles, barbed wire, and cell blocks left as the Vietnamese found makes you picture blood stains instead. Maybe I'm being too morbid, then again, as the documentary showed, torture and death did happen here. It happened ironically under the "Democratic Kampuchea," under Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Nun Chea, and other leaders frustrated by US bombings, eager to see a revolutionary era of a classless, productive, agricultural-based society. They emptied Phnom Penh and drew millions into the rice paddies, killing intellectuals and destroying the moral and social fabric of Cambodian society. 2 million died, including (I think) 8 foreigners, and many did so at S-21, at the time under the wardenship of Duch, currently under trial by the International Criminal Court and the ECCC.

I watch the documentary about a young girl sent to work in a rice field while her husband worked with the KR in Phnom Penh. Separated by distance and increasingly by the controlling mind of "Angka", the two sent love letters only to be discovered by the Regime later and accused of being CIA spies. Crazy.

I then tour the rooms, expecting to come across all the scenes I've seen portrayed in tourist books and magazines. I find the room with the prisoner's photographs, the prison cell with the bed, and the tiny cell-blocks. I've never been to Auschwitz, but I imagine it is much the same... An eerie stillness in the air, probably imagined... Japanese tourists with super-zoom cameras hording around an "English-speaking" guide mixing history with prisoner stories... Encased human skulls & bones, gathering dust. I really didn't expect to see a burly Italian transvestite walk by in high heels.

Oddly enough, what struck me was the graffiti. It seemed to me, that in various languages, though primarily in English, visitors had managed to find spaces on walls and corridors to write their own thoughts (i.e."Never Again") and spray paint images. I guess I wouldn't really consider it vandalism. In a way, it added a little humanity to the place.

Upstairs I come across a photo exhibition of the Swedish delegation that came to legitimize the workings of the regime at the time. Each photo has a comment underneath it, relating what the photographer saw and thought at the time (occasionally questioning if some scenes like running hospitals and schools were staged) and then what really was probably going. Things are never what they seem, must be that harsh lesson learnt. In a public letter posted and enlarged next to the exhibition, the photographer apologizes profusely to the global community for not having realized the Khmer Rouge was actually evil.

I look out of one of the window's at the neighboring houses. Some are bright new and painted, Chinese-style gold and silver banisters glimmering in the mid-day sun. Others have that sad standard aluminum roofing. After all that destruction, this is what has risen... A traumatized society quickly building to catch up with modernity, trying to forget the past and move on (sometimes without regard to humanity again), with a wider economic gap between the rich and the poor, but hopefully with a sense that what their parents suffered can never happen. (Words often echoed and ignored by political, religious, and community leaders).

Angkor Wat 1/2 Marathon

2009-12-07T14:16:00.020+07:00

One week later and I find myself back in Central Market, negotiating for a private taxi. A beat-up Toyota Camry (what other car could it possibly be?) pulls up and Karel (Congo-Belgian, Willis (German-American), Mervi (Finish), and Katie (American), and I squish into the corduroy seats. 2 minutes later, the car stalls. $60 for a stalling car. You never know what you pay for in Asia. Oye Vey. You also never know how many stops you'll make, even though you paid for the car and technically, you can tell the driver when to stop. I think we made a total of 4 unscheduled stops on way to Siem Reap that Saturday.

1. Stop to pull out the kitty-cat "canin" shades and place over the windows.

2. Snack time: Spiders or sticky rice anyone?

3. Petrol Stop- $10 advance to driver.

4. Men's roadside natural toilet stop. The women were offered Karama's to cover themselves. We politely declined.

By 2pm we finally rolled into the Golden Banana and walked over to the Blue Pumpkin for some carb-loading and Mango/Banana Shakes. Then it was on to Angkor City Hotel, to finish registering for the 21K some of us would be running in the next day. Having successfully managed to get the boys registered, despite the "CLOSED" sign ("We just want to give you money and get a bib number...") and after running into half of Phnom Penh in the hotel lobby, we made our way back to the town centre for some evening Angkor Drafts and pre-run foot massages.

I love how in Cambodia one foot massage for $7 also includes a head, shoulder and hand massage. Not sure what the foot & shoulder massage includes. As we reclined back in our chairs, our masseuse girls giggled as they kneeded, slapped, and pounded are cold muscles in unison. All of a sudden a girl squeals and Karel exclaims, "I don't think they've ever seen this much hair on a person's arms and legs before!" We laugh, ignoring quiet foot-massage time. An hour later we head over for our second round of carb-loading. By 10pm we're ready to pass out and I do a walk-by the Blue Pumpkin for my morning 5am coffee wake up call (to go).

5AM Wake up call. I dreamed I slept in. So scary.

5:50AM Katie & I join the boys and head off in a tuk tuk towards the Angkor temples complex with the other 3,487 participants for the day's races. I'm very much awake and slightly, no wait... Very jittery.

Karel/Willis: "Uuh we can tell you've had coffee this morning... you're eyes are huge!" Hmm... didn't know that was a personal side-effect.

This is the 14th annual Angkor Wat 1/2 Marathon and by 6:30am my feet cross the Starting line. I press play on my trusty silver ipod shuffle carrying my adjusted new running mix.

5KM... 10KM...13 KM... 17KM... I feel good as the sun peeks up above the temples that just a week later I had been climbing and exploring. Bayon's faces, the elephant terrace, in front of Banteay Kdei and so on I run, on the forested path at times lined by Cambodian faces, staring and smiling. Sometimes the kids run up to the side and wait for you to slap their hand's with a sideways hi-five. A lot of the younger ones run along the edge, picking up and emptying plastic water bottles they can cash in at the local recycling centre.

The cool morning is perfect for the long run and the country and temples scenes make this one of the most perfect places to be in the running zone. By 17KMs I can feel it. My braced left knee begins to twinge with pain and I have to adjust the brace every so often to control my leg's movement. By 18KM I'm wincing in pain. Uuuuuggggh. No. no. no.... and a series of profanities run through my brain. I take it slower. Oh well. It's been hurting since Monday even though I've tried to keep off of it. Guess two months of training wasn't enough time. UUUHH DID THAT GRANDMA JUST PASS ME? No way. Grrrrrrr....

I finish in a little over 2 hours, having pushed back tears and cheering up a bit after I hear my name called out by a fellow Pehnite near the Finish.

I find Karel (at 6'3 with shoulder-blond hair, he's the easiest to find) and we get some ripe mini bananas and find Willis before heading over to the free physiotherapy massages provided by the Cambodian Olympic Committee & other donors (including the Japanese Aid Agency because I keep hearing "Arigato Gotziama" on the speaker). Downing bottles of water, we stand in line, recounting KM stories and I concentrate on moving my feet and not fainting.

One free massage, 4 bananas, 2 bottles of water, and 1 can of Anchor Beer later, the boys and I drag ourselves over to a tuk tuk to take us to the guesthouse, thoughts of cool showers and food running through our minds.

At lunch some young street vendors come over to our table. Since most people are touring the temples during the day, we are prime target for these tiny workers. One befriends Karel and challenges him to a game of tic-tac-toe for a pack of postcards.

By 2pm, we are once again alive, though very sore and are informed by the guesthouse that we are "Soooo Lucky" because the owner of the Golden Banana (a very very very flamboyant Cambodian man with a diamond-studded pink phone) will be driving us back in his bright-red Mitsubishi luxury truck car thing to Phnom Penh. We zoom back to the city, listening to five rounds of "Celebrate!" Cher, and your array of 80s Rock Pop and staring at bobbling penguins and piggies seated on the dashboard. Karel and I count bird species found in Cambodia (which is more exciting than him explaining mosquito body parts). 8 species only? I swear I saw a flying squirrel. Does that count?

For the record, my running mix is definitely way better than the owner's. Also for the record, I have IBS or what one would call, training too hard too fast. Oye Vey... Guess I'll be swimming indoors next month in Chicago.

When we give, we get back, but what we get back we won’t know until it is given…

2009-12-03T16:50:00.005+07:00

Thursday at lunchtime I found myself in the cool artsy clothing shop on St. 240. Keok’jay, meaning “fresh” or “bright green” like the rice paddies strewn across Cambodia, is owned and operated by Rachel Faller. I was doing a piece called “Shop Talk” for Asia LIFE and was surprised to be interviewing a 23-year-old American from Boston. As Rachel took me through the shop, showing me the upstairs sewing area and sharing the story of how her little shop on one of Phnom Penh’s most coveted rental-space streets came to be, I found myself in awe at this girl, barely a year younger than me. Having studied conceptual art (focus on textiles) in college, Rachel dreamed of becoming a community artist, but found herself in Cambodia after graduation, with a Fulbright to do market research and start a project in which women living with HIV/AIDS could benefit from her training in environmentally friendly clothesmaking. With little funding to actually pay the salaries of the women, Rachel found a way to make it all work—fundraising back in the States and coming across a series of events to which she remarked, “I believe when you give out, it comes back to you… You can call it Karma or God, or whatever.” The store opened in July, and here we are in December, with Keok’jay seeing profits grow slowly, but more importantly, with Rachel feeling like she’s actually doing something productive with her life. Her designs are cool and the material is recycled. She’s not selling local handicrafts, but is inspired by the collision of country and city life that Cambodian offers on the day to day. Again, she’s only 23.

As mentioned before, I’ve learned a lot from the people I’ve come across in Cambodia. What Rachel & my current documentary-film producer boss have unknowingly taught me is this: If you have a gift, use it to do good… And if you haven’t figured out what you’re good at yet, then follow your guts to do what you think is right.

When we give, we get back, but what we get back we won’t know until it is given…

Fact or Fiction? Escaping to Siem Reap for the Weekend

2009-12-03T16:12:00.005+07:00

Last weekend I traveled to Siem Reap with a friend. The last-minute trip was a great exercise in how to secure a shared (or private) taxi from a fixer-type at Central Market. “You want taxi with Cambodians or No Cambodians?” “Cambodians!” “Okay, you wait maybe two hour.” Uhhh… “No Cambodians!” “Okay five minutes.” And it was five Western minutes too. So Ben and I hopped into the backseat of a black Camry and rode up to Siem Reap. Four hours later we found ourselves dropped off at the Golden Banana Bed & Breakfast, sipping a welcome drink. You have to love Asian service sometimes. After a drawn-out lazy lunch at the Blue Pumpkin, and a tour around the city with a motodop that could not find a travel agency (he took us to a painted advertisement for Angkor Air after first attempting to take us to the airport), we finally made it to Angkor Wat for the (free) sunset. We walked upstream as hoards of myocardial infarction-prone fat white tourists made there way out of the temple and snuck in as far as we could before the night set in. After pizza, beer, and having secured the taxi services of one tuk-tuk, Mr. Mee for the next day, we turned in for the night.

4:30am, the alarm rings and we sleepily tumble out into the darkness of Siem Reap. Wearing his cool headlamp (I asked for one for Christmas),Ben’s drunk a bottle of Royal-D (lots of vitamins and sugar) so he’s less jet-lagged, and the cool air folds around us as we travel through SR towards the temples. Veering away from all the other early morning risers, Mr. Mee takes us on the forested path to Bantey Kdei— another good spot for viewing the sunrise. “Pretty-girl, you buy?” Nope. No more than five seconds after we are dropped off are we hounded by the young temple children selling bracelets, books, and offering cool drinks for our driver. Guess the sunrise spot was not as quiet as we’d thought it would be.

Once the sun rose over the man-made retention pool, we embarked on our fast-track expedition over many-a-temples. Surely Mr. Mee had never seen tourists work at this speed. As Ben pointed out, Mr. Mee was probably offended by our lack of cultural umm… observance of the temples built by people of his land. What can I say? We were just a couple of Speedy Gonzalezes eager to see as much as we could before it got hot. We also forgot our guidebook. Never mind. History works best when it relies on the imagination. With self-given PhDs in history and anthropology, we toured ourselves around the churning sea of milk murals (they made brie duh!), the dancing bridge (before the concubines were thrown to the crocodiles), the Kindergarten (short doorways) and the keepers of the temples (children with banana-leaf crowns signing for alms).

Like I said, it was my second time seeing the Angkor Temples, but I saw everything in a different light. Corners where I had once passed through were now deemed “danger areas” and vice versa. New scaffolding had creeped up stones, and disappeared against others; the history I’d read before (and forgotten) wittily replaced by imaginative stories and descriptions.

So here we ask a question facing contemporary storywriters: Are facts better than fiction? All I know is we may learn from history, but we also live from our imaginations. It’s a shame there aren’t Ancient Khmer Empire fiction novels out there, because with the tough issues facing this society, sometimes we just need to laugh.

That night I jet set across Cambodia back to Phnom Penh via air travel (I apologize for my moment of eco-unfriendliness). Forty-five minutes of airtime shared with a nice Chinese-man wearing a light pink shirt with the black graphic outline of Angkor Wat printed across. As I angled my camera at the plane window attempting to catch the sunset, he made a point to smile at me and state, “Sunset. Romantic. Happy to share with you.” Like I’d never heard that one before… “Xie-Xie,” I replied with a smile. We shook hands and the stewardess brought over “free” water and a slice of banana pound cake. Good times.

Step 1: Decide what you want to do Step 2: Do It

2009-11-23T16:17:00.008+07:00

During my time here, I’ve had several friends back home comment on how they wish they could take part in similar experiences like my own South East Asian adventures and have even asked if picking up and moving to a new country is as easy as it sounds, and if so, how they should go about doing it.

I’m not saying it was easy, but you know… It kind of was. I mean, the hardest part wasn’t choosing Cambodia (or having someone choose for me which is what I needed at the time)’ rather, it was actually putting an $800+ one-way plane ticket on my Chase Credit Card, because THAT meant I really was committing myself to something unknown, and we all know how much we like certainty.

A friend said to me a few months back, “You’ve built up a whole life here in a short time, and it has not gone unnoticed.” An odd choice of words I thought, wondering exactly who had noticed, but at the same time, not really caring. In retrospect, I guess I have built a whole new life around me. New gym memberships, new apartments, new bank accounts, new friends, new job(s), new language, and on and on and all for a period of time with a big question mark at the end.

I see now that only thing not new is me, myself, and I. I still occasionally diverge from work research onto Facebook, g-chat & The New York Times; I still draw horrible stick figures and stick-squirrels on letters and postcards I send home, and I still have to fight with my curls to stay in place. Other things about me have changed though—the experience of meeting and having friends, roommates, and acquaintances from six continents (I have yet to meet Antarctican penguins in Cambodia) means I am selfish, and take a little from them when we meet-- their perspectives on politics, economics, social issues, impunity, religion, education, relationships and just plain life. I don’t mean too, but maybe they do the same. And so it goes— the sharing and trading of ideas, of lifestyles, of knowing people that take risks and don’t take risks, of discovering how so many people can really truly be so utterly unselfish, true to themselves and open that they don’t mind shaking the hands of a prostitute after a drink at the bar with friends.

I think back home we suffer from ill judgment… Ill judgment of both others and more painfully, of ourselves. We judge those who don’t have the things we have or know the things that our college education has taught us, but we also judge ourselves for not taking a leap forward, for not doing the things we really want to do because it’s too expensive, or difficult.

I know when I go home for Christmas this winter, people will ask me what I have learned, as if some life-lesson must be drawn from every experience we witness while abroad. So here it goes...

What I’ve learned in my last 8 months in Cambodia is this (and I’m apologize for the cliché):

Life is way too short to not do the things we love, or at least try to discover what they might be. Life is way too short to get hung up on unsatisfying jobs, disappointing relationships, unexplored passions, and the ideas we put aside because they are too inconvenient to follow, risky or expensive. We use excuses all the time to justify not leaping forward. We can’t just sit and watch National Geographic (or whatever) forever. Or wait to strike millions to pay off college-debt.

Anyways, we don’t need a running start to make the jump… Just a plan, a little bit of cash saved up, and an idea or goal. The rest will come eventually (or so I keep telling myself). And if we don’t have a goal, a map of the world is a good start. As all of those bike hills, unemployed days, Asian stomach pains, and people that come and gone here have taught me, we’ll always hit ups and downs and even once in awhile really fall hard. We just have to get up, cleanse our wounds as best we can, maybe give the tuk-tuk driver around the corner a smile, and simply go on building & re-building.

There is something in the air in Laos

2009-11-16T10:12:00.046+07:00

Lao PDR Adventures Part 1

Day 1- Michael Jackson & Malls

The trip didn’t actually start in Laos— it started in Bangkok. Although sad to be missing out on the water festival boat races and celebrations taking place in Cambodia, my roommate Katie and I were excited to leave the country for roughly a little over week. Walking through BKK airport and riding a pink taxi down a four-lane highways into the city, I was hit by sights of tall buildings, modern billboards, and car traffic of the South East Asian “first world”. As we were only spending one night in BKK before our mid-afternoon flight to Laos, Katie and I wandered through one of the city’s luxurious malls (gasping & pointing at my first Asian sighting of ZARA- and not being able to afford anything) and ended up at the top floor of Central Mall, where since it was Oct. 28^th, we watched the opening of “This Is It.” Yep. I thoroughly enjoyed the comfy seats, high air conditioning, and watching Michael Jackson’s ripped backup dancers join the man with the glittery glove (or in this case, inexplicable orange pants) on my only night in Bangkok.

Day 2- Luang Prabang

After a healthful breakfast of Dunkin Donuts coffee & banana-nut muffin we were off again to BKK’s airport. One duty-free stop (for mascara) and 2 short hours later, Katie & I had landed on the tarmac of Luang Prabang’s tiny airport, paid a nice entry visa of $40 USD and traded in our dollars for some Kip, Laos’s currency, trading at roughly 8,300 Kip per $1 greenback. On our way into town with our new Australian backpacker friend Kieran, I took in the fresh air, the mountainous terrain, and the coffee shops that began to emerge as we headed into town. This was going to be one lovely relaxing trip, or so I thought…

Having checked in at the Moon River Inn, the rest of the afternoon was spent exploring the city or more accurately put, provincial town, and sipping some trademark cold Lao Beer by the Mekong River.

To provide you with some reference, here is a quick history provided by Wikipedia:

Laos (pronounced /ˈlɑː.oʊs/, /ˈlaʊ/, or /ˈleɪ.ɒs/), officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and People's Republic of China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west. Laos traces its history to the Kingdom of Lan Xang or Land of a Million Elephants, which existed from the 13th to the 18th century. After a period as a French protectorate, it gained independence in 1949. A long civil war ended officially when the Communist Pathet Lao movement came to power in 1975, but the protesting between factions continued for several years. 44% of the population live below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day.[4]

Laos was dragged into the Vietnam War and the eastern parts of the country were invaded and occupied by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), which used Laotian territory as a staging ground and supply route for its war against the South. In response, the United States initiated a bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese, supported regular and irregular anticommunist forces in Laos and supported a South Vietnamese invasion of Laos. The result of these actions were a series of coups d'état and, ultimately, the Laotian Civil War between the Royal Laotian government and the communist Pathet Lao. In 1968… Massive aerial bombardment was carried out by the United States. The Guardian reported that Laos was hit by an average of one B-52 bombload every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, between 1964 and 1973. US bombers dropped more ordnance on Laos in this period than was dropped during the whole of the Second World War. Of the 260 million bombs that rained down, particularly on Xieng Khouang province, 80 million failed to explode, leaving a deadly legacy.[5] It holds the dubious distinction of being the most bombed country in the world.

For David S. and Those confused with pronounciation:

The French, who made the country part of French Indochina in 1893, spelled it with a final silent "s," i.e., "Laos" (the Lao language itself has no final "s" sound, so Lao people pronounce it as in their native tongue though some, especially those living abroad, use the pronunciation ending in "s"). The usual adjectival form is "Lao," e.g., "the Lao economy," not the "Laotian" economy—although "Laotian" is used to describe the people of Laos to avoid confusion with the Lao ethnic group.

Thank you Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laos), moving on…

Our plan to relax and read lots of books didn’t last for long. By nightfall we had booked “adventure trips” with Tiger Trails, for mountain biking, rock climbing, and what the heck—kayaking, as well. Filling up on some chocolate crepes for dessert, we wandered back through the Night Market. Red & Blue tents had popped everywhere by 6pm, and merchants neatly placed their goods ready for foreigners to survey and hopefully, purchase. Everywhere I looked, colorful crafts and quality artistry beckoned tourist wallets: Asian paper umbrellas in all colors and sizes, ginourmous elephant slippers, hand sewn children’s books, snakes in jars, and Buddhist monk paintings on recycled paper. Being a girl, and one that occasionally likes to indulge in the sport of um, shopping, especially when it comes to supporting indigenous communities, I was delighted to find that my X-Mass gift list could easily be ticked off at the night market. I didn’t by the snake in a jar though, for fear I might shatter the glass and the thing would slider out still alive (never-mind customs inspections).

Day 3- Mountain Biking

I’m on vacation and I’m up at 7am. I like to shower before going off to do sweaty activities. It’s a curly-hair thing. An hour later Katie, Kieran & I have made our way over to the Tiger Trail office and are checking out our mountain bikes. The plan is to cross over the Mekong by ferry with the bikes and then hit the dirt roads, stopping at some villages along the way for lunch before making a loop back to the ferry by sunset. The road is bumpy, full of grooves and curves— nothing that biking in Mondulkiri, Cambodia hasn’t taught me, but the hills (or I guess, mountains) come up one after the other, making this a pretty grueling workout. The sun is out and we begin to sweat bullets as we pass villagers carrying wood and kids screaming “Xaibaidee!” (Hello!) along the way. We stop at a village where an old woman burning bamboo sticks is filling them with sweet sticky rice. She kindly gives us a little taste and our energy climbs back up. Back on the bike we happen upon water buffalo and a black scorpion. Over all, I’m struck by the cleanliness of our surroundings. Cambodia is well… Really dirty, despite the haphazard garbage collection system in Phnom Penh. Plastic bags, bottles, and scraps of paper are littered everywhere on the streets and even in the countryside. By contrast, Laos is surprisingly clean. Villagers seem to have a lot less, yet they have what they need and throw it away in twine wastebaskets, as I find out at our next village lunch stop.

Our guide, the most charismatic tiny, muscular Laotian man (of the Mon people), “Mon” pulls out sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, some beef & morning glory, and we settle down to eat underneath the shade of a villager’s house. To pass the high-noon sun, we are invited to rest at another woman’s house. Katie and Kieran nap for awhile, but I’m unable to fall asleep, so I wonder into the kitchen and find Mon sitting on a straw mat eating some freshly made hot papaya salad. He offers me a taste (it’s strong!) and we sit and chat for a while as a baby sleeps next to me and Laotian or Thai Karaoke sounds stream from a T.V. An hour or so later we are back on the bikes, gearing up for our long ride back.

Up and down, over steeper hills we go. The initial scariness of plunging down a steep, curving dirt path diminishes and I revel in the exhilaration. Unfortunately, I reveled a little too much… The vision of me flipping over handle bars comes to reality as my front wheel hits a rock—which I totally saw (stupid)—and I’m propelled forward. Luckily I somehow have the instinct to stick out my forearms first and my face is spared. Thigh, elbow, and back of the right leg weren’t so lucky. There is a neat trail of blood in the form of a bicycle chain trickling down my leg, and I can sense severe bruising formulating on my upper left thigh. I’m fine though. Mon freaks out, but then pulls out a first aid kit and gets to work immediately after Katie and Kieran detangle my body from the bike. He cleanses my battle wounds and puts on something that stings terribly, and then moves on to heal the bike. I’m thoroughly impressed, and to get over the shock, I get back on the bike. It’s the best thing to do really, because if I didn’t do it then, it would probably be a long time before I was back on the bike seat again.

That night, I received a much-needed foot & shoulder massage at one of the town’s many homegrown spas.

Day 4- Rock Climbing

Katie is an expert rock climber. As for me, I love hopping over rocks and pretending to climb things… Jungle gyms, trees, small rocks in caves… That sort of thing. One cliff off the Mekong River near Luang Prabang however, was my big chance to change that, to do the real thing (or at least try). My left arm had been hurting all night, probably from my bike fall, so I was a bit disappointed that on my big day, I would probably only give 80%... Okay, maybe 85% with the Lao coffee I’d gulped down that morning. “La”, our Spiderman guide that could climb that cliff in record speed after only one year of rock climbing, showed me how to tie knots and get my harness ready. I squeezed my size 7 feet into what felt like a crooked pointy-toe climbing shoes size 5, dusted my hands with chalk, and clipped a bright orange helmet on my head. Moments later I was an inch off the ground, willing my left arm to muster some strength to pull my body up. And… It worked! After some initial struggles I got the hang of it, and turned into a slow Itsy-Bitsy Spider, except in Laos it was the sun coming down, heating the surface of the black rocks, not the rain. After two climbing two routes, we braked for lunch and La, as Mon had done the day before, pulled out of his backpack a complete meal wrapped in those slick green banana leaves: fish, sticky rice, bean sprout things, and bananas! We slept & read some, underneath the shade of trees while we waited for the heat to subside. Attempts were made at the third route, but by 3pm the black rocks were hot to the touch, so we gave up, packed up, and slipped into a fisherman’s boat making our way back to Luang Prabang.

Day 5- Kayaking

I guess our bodies felt they hadn’t been beaten up enough because Katie & I decided to Kayak the next day. To our delight, Mon was our guide once again, and we joined a group of Australians and Canadians ready to paddle down the Nam Khan River. We would be kayaking for several hours with a stop at a village and some waterfalls. It was discovered that Katie had more of an attention span for steering than me, so she climbed into the back and I to the front of the kayak after slathering on some SPF. Traveling downstream, our Kayak was dwarfed by the gorgeous mountains and clear sky. As on the bike, we passed villagers fishing, bathing, washing their clothes, and hopefully not defecating, by the river. Our calculated village stop took us into the homes, school, and near a racing boat, as Mon explained how people lived in Laos and transferred their goods to the market to be sold. He also talked about the importance of Buddhism and Animism in the culture, explaining that since this was a poor village, only two monks lived here and were looked after with alms by the villagers. Yet again, I was struck by the cleanliness of the dirt floors and garden plots. The Canadians brought up the lack of hundreds of NGOs (at least compared to Cambodia) and the operations of the World Food Programme and the UN in Laos. Educational posters depicting nutrition advice and breast-feeding techniques were posted up as usual so clearly the arm of development had reached these parts as well.

Climbing back into our plastic yellow Kayaks, we ventured forth to our next destination, the waterfalls! When we reached the area- a small recreational park by the river to be enjoyed by locals & foreigners alike- we dipped our bodies (I dipped up to my torso) into the freezing cascades and luncheoned (the typical Laotian goodies wrapped in the famous banana leaves). I did some photo exploring, climbing along up a tree house and following some wooden planks, before bypassing the elephants chilling waiting for foreigners to ride them, before heading back to the Kayak.

The second part of the trip was a little too long. Our fingers cramped and the sun continued to beam down. We hit some rough patches and the Canadians went for a little swim when they flipped over (everyone was fine). As the hours ticked by, I reminded myself that soreness was worth it—it’s not everyday that I get to kayak through such a calm, picturesque place, observing the Laotian life along the river.

Back in Luang Prabang we treated ourselves to some Oreo milkshakes (clearly they know what foreigners like), and Katie grabbed a P&J baguette sandwich from the Skippy Lady, a smiley-round lady who when Katie first asked for peanut butter, shouted in high-pitch glee, “SKIPPY!” We visited her everyday after that. Katie almost rolled her up and put her in her new multi-colored patched Laos market bag.

Day 6- And on the 6^th Day, She Rested

Day six we slept in. We figured the real meaning of vacation had resting

somewhere in it’s definition so when we got up, we walked over to JOMA, a famous coffee house amongst travelers, akin with a Colorado mountains/ Starbucks feel and serving banana pancakes. I read and read, and played peek-a-boo with two Japanese kids while Katie diligently pulled out her GMAT study book. The rest of the day I walked around Luang Prabang,

exploring and photographing the tiny streets, shops, a much smaller and mostly French Monument bookstore, and generally just did nothing.

At sunset we joined crowds climbing up to the city’s tallest temple for a view of LP and a fiery orange ball descend beneath mountains and valleys. It’s quite true when they say, that you can spend days in Luang Prabang… There is something in the air in Laos.

Day 7- The Day Bus & the Sleeping Bus

It was time to say goodbye to Luang Prabang, but not before rising early to catch the locals (and a growing number of enterprising villagers selling alms to foreigners) give offerings to young Buddhist monks. Apparently monks only receive meals twice a day, for breakfast and lunch, so they welcome any sort of provisions at this time. On that cool morning I handed over bananas & rice to the red and orange-garbed spiritual leaders walking in a line towards their temple. We then packed ourselves into a colorful cage-like tuk tuk (much different from those in Phnom Penh) and then took a day-bus headed towards the country’s capital, Vientiane.

It was literally the most AWFUL ride of my life. (Actually, a few days later I would take this back).

While not generally a person that gets car sick, I had to concentrate so hard on trying to fall asleep to keep from vomiting along the mountain curves. The highlight of the trip was the two old ladies that hopped aboard mid-way. They smelled of firewood and spoke loudly to each other, completely ignoring those around them. They reminded me of two best friends, eagerly sharing the latest village gossip except these quirky ladies had bare feet the size of footballs, clearly used to walking through forests sans shoes, flowery shirts and scarves, and continued their chatter before falling asleep. When the bus failed to stop at their destination (essentially, the middle of nowhere) they shouted at the driver and every Laotian cracked up. It’s crazy local characters like these that add some local flavor (and smells) to traveling abroad.

Vientiane itself is just a city, like many cities, but without many tall buildings. It too was not spared from the Laotian calmness and cleanliness I had witnessed before, though seemingly the city itself providing not much to do. Upon arriving we enlisted the services of another tuk tuk and headed over to another bus station. Our goal was to grab a ticket aboard a night bus, or as the white lettering on the buses displayed, a “SLEEPING BUS” to a town in the South of Laos, Pakxe. With ticket in hand, we made our way to a noodle stand for dinner.

A sleeping bus is indeed, a “sleeping bus.” Picture seats taken out in sections and replaced by bunk-bed like spaces, complete with pillows & blankets. A midnight snack of rice and veggies as well as a plastic (throw up/garbage) bag and water bottle are provided. For roughly ten hours you don’t sit- you sleep- ignoring the fact that your body is being hurtled into the night at high speed as it makes it way to your destination. That is the Sleeping Bus. In the end, quite comfy & practical.

Day 8- Ralph (Melissa) and His (Her) Motorcycle

The Indian-run Royal Inn provided us with pretty disgusting ant-filled accommodations in Pakxe. We only meant to spend one night here, so we quickly drowned the ants, showered and found a place to eat some breakfast.

Side Note for Bread Lovers: It seems the French failed to teach Cambodian’s how to bake a baguette, while they succeed immensely in Laos. I’m pretty sure they forgot to tell Cambodian’s that a baguette should be soft & fluffy. And taste good.

Katie had her heart set on renting motorbikes and riding around the Bolaven Plateau, so after breakfast we found a shop that rented them and I traded my passport in for a black & blue Honda-model with gears (as opposed to an automatic?). Once I got the hang of it (i.e. start SLOWLY in first gear and ONLY use your foot break, not the handle break), we rode out of Pakse in search of waterfalls! While at first I was petrified of crashing into an incoming vehicle, I soon got over it and was doing wheelies. Just Kidding. No seriously, actually driving a moto as opposed to being a backseat passenger does not compare at all. Balance, steadiness and the thrill of reaching 60kmph (I had a helmet on) in lovely Laos made this one of the most exciting experiences of my life. Check that off my “things to do in life” list.

Of course the real test came when we diverged off the main road into the bumpy dirt grooved one, passing by coffee plantations, houses, and forests to reach each of the four waterfalls we found that day. Again, it’s all about steadiness and forgetting that you are in control of a heavy vehicle in order to bounce accordingly up & down each bump, following moto tracks set before you. Naturally, once we reached the falls each one had its own unique beauty and made the bumpiness worth it (Waterfalls we visited included Tad Lo, Tad Fane, and Taat Fang).

Before turning back around Katie discovered a fair-trade coffee plantation where a young woman made us some quick, pick-me up brew. Afterwards we rode down a hill and over a bridge and discovered literally, the most gorgeous view ever. This fairylike place, right when the sun was beginning to go down made the day bus, sleeping bus, and ant-filled guesthouse worth it. It also reminded me of Fern gully (movie w/ fairies I watched as a kid).

Day 9 – Island Living

Before heading back into Cambodia, we had one final destination in Laos to reach. 4,000 Islands, right south of Pakse. This group of teeny-tiny islands floats on the Mekong River. There are at least three “big” islands one can choose to visit. We chose Don Khone, just because. On our ferry to the island we met another American living in South Korea, but traveling throughout Laos before heading back to the States. For those of you wishing to leave the United States, I recommend you go teach English in South Korea; I’m told they pay way better than the Japanese. Anyways.

Don Khone provided us with a lot of nothing to do. I was reminded of Rabbit Island and Lazy Beach, minus a beach(though LB is waaay prettier seeing as it’s in the ocean). I read The Economist in our tiny bungalow hammock because I’m a dork, and when I got bored I took myself on an island tour. I encountered school children on their way to a school that is next to an old burnt-out French colonial building, pigs, an old lady pushing a cart of green things to a Buddhist Monastery, a Buddhist Monastery, some people working in the fields, tourists cycling around, and some young men playing pool offering me beer (as men do). At night we had dinner at one of the few homemade restaurants and seeing as I was running low on dough (I needed a Cambodian ATM ASAP) I chose to forgo dinner for dessert. Nutella-Banana Crepes. Excellent choice in the end.

Laos PDR/Cambodian Adventures Part II

Day 10- Border Crossings & Flipper Sightings

As we waited at the ferry landing, waiting for the bus that would take us across the border into Cambodia, and eventually Kratie, Katie and I were soon joined by a crowd of backpackers that had stayed on the other islands. While most of them were in their late-twenties from France and Australia, it still amazes me how so many choose to take off months or in some cases a year, to travel abroad after they’ve quit their jobs, have taken leaves of absences, or nowadays, have been laid off. For some reason, not as many Americans seem to be doing this, clearly an observation that they work too hard or simply chose to travel domestically or closer to home. It’s a pity, really because such experiences can be life-changing.

When the bus dropped us off at the border for my first “walk through a border-crossing”, we all lined up like little ants, marching right on through health, visa, and passport checkpoints. At each of these we paid a $1 bribe, or “standard administration fee”. Once I crossed the border I felt a strange sensation—I felt that I was home, which is weird, because that is the first time I considered Cambodia “home”. For one, I was able to say a little bit more than hello to the vendor selling bananas by the side of the road. (I asked to purchase bananas and for the toilet)

As the bus made its way down to Kratie, where we planned to spend one night in hope of spotting the famous Irrawaddy Dolphin, the scenery changed quite a bit as we traded taller mountains for the bright green tropical forests of Cambodia. Once in Kratie we dropped off our bags at yet another luxurious (cough, cough) Chinese-run guesthouse complete with painted portraits of half-naked Asian ladies, the Hung-You guesthouse. I trekked over to ACLEDA to pull out some cash for our final days of the journey, and then we hopped on a moto-dup and rode through villages to get to Kampi, where we could take a boat along the Mekong and hope to catch a glimpse of the dolphin.

The Irrawaddy dolphin (an oceanic dolphin that sort of established sub-populations in rivers Asian rivers like the Mekong) while I’m sure flipper was making it more difficult to spot him than necessary, probably hiding out underneath our boat, waiting for the moment we looked away to do an above-river stunt, though we did catch a glimpse of fins, noses, and tails, just not the whole body. What I did catch if full view however, was the absolutely stunning sunset, as evidenced below. It is my personal opinion that one of the finest things about Cambodia (as it was in Toledo, Spain) is the sky.

Riding back to Kratie in the dark, I spotted villagers lighting small fires in their homes and the enjoyed as the light of our moto shone on the back pedals of school children’s bikes. In complete darkness, a whole Cambodian world far from major cities, was settling down for the night.

Day 11- A Dip in a Lake

The night before, debating whether to continue on to Phnom Penh or not, Katie and I made the final decision to return up to the north east of the country, to the town of Ban Lung in the Rattanakiri province of Cambodia. This particular area is difficult to get to, mostly because the roads and bridges aren’t exactly Japanese-certified and the mountainous hills make the journey even more arduous, but being so close to the area and weighing whether or not we would ever be in this part of the country again, we made the plunge and bought a ticket aboard a mini-bus headed to Rattanakiri.

As literally twenty people piled into the van, we found ourselves squeezed into the backseat with two other Eastern Europeans, sacks of rice, and our travel bags. Five hours or so later, we managed to climb out of the van, very much disoriented, wrinkled, and nauseous. The Cambodian-Vietnamese-Chinese owner of the Tree Tops Lodge in Ban Lung was already waiting for us by the bus station with his cool old black jeep that seemed to have popped out of the 1980s (at least there were seats).

Arriving at his lodge, we knew we had made the right decision to extend our trip. Our tree-hut like bungalows in the Rat provided us yet again with beautiful views of the Rattanakiri forests below. Once we settled in and had a banana shake to settle our stomachs, we put on our bathing suits and headed over to the Yeak Loam, a volcanic crater lake for a quick dip in the clean, clear waters.

Day 12- Exploring Rattanakiri by Moto-dup (Katie)

With not enough time to venture off on a 3-4 day trek into the jungle, we decided instead the following morning to rent one motorbike and ride around looking for waterfalls. Katie became my moto-dup for the day, and quite a good one at that! We found one of the bigger falls, only after riding about 7km in the wrong direction. Generally exhausted and surprised by how hot the northeast of the country still is, we returned to the lodge to read and hang out with Yumi, the owner’s super smart three year old daughter—a little Cambodian Diva that often climbed into our laps and demanded as much attention from us as if she were our own child. I almost took her home with me.

Day 13- The Return Trip from Hell or The Most AWFUL Ride of My Life

By Monday, November 9^th, coincidently my mom’s 50^th birthday, we had plans to return in some 10-12 hours back to Phnom Penh by bus, or so we thought.

As typical of most bus excursions in Cambodia, 45 minutes into the drive we paused at a diner for a bathroom break, on the side of the road (or for women, a few feet into the fields). Two hours later we stopped yet again, for what we thought would be a thirty minutes or so, while we waited for the other vans, trucks, cars, and buses in front of us to pass through a flooded stretch of road. Thirty minutes turned into 2 hours. I finished The Economist (a feat in itself), Katie’s other book, and 2 more hours later befriended the other Westerner on our bus, an Italian thirty-something who demanded to know why “Thzee Cambodian government iz zo ztupid they can’t even buildz ah-tiny-bridgez if they know the road floodz in thiz zpot every time?!” Yep. My question exactly. Guess they haven’t sent the Japanese (or Chinese, or Korean) friendship building society the memo.

Two more hours later we decided that banana chips weren’t going to get us through the rest of the day, so we ordered some bay-saw (cooked rice) at the little stand that was clearly banking in the big bucks that day, strategically located on the other side of the flooding. I befriended an older French tourist and practiced my high school French with lots of nods and three-word responses. By 6pm we had a critical decision to make. It had literally been 8 HOURS since we had stopped and the sun was quickly setting. No doubt the bus would be parked here all night while two ripped Cambodian workers and some kids worked tirelessly around the clock trying to dig out stuck vehicles. Making our way across a tiny wooden bridge built for people and motos to cross, we climbed back into our bus and retrieved our bags. The Frenchies had mentioned a bus was picking up their bus on the other side and driving through the night back to Phnom Penh. This was our only chance. By now the night had fallen, and I stumbled through potholes alongside Katie (Mental Note: Purchase Headlamp). Finding the bus, we climbed aboard and for two minutes pretended that we had always been on that company’s bus. We were soon found out however, and we asked if we could “purchase” new tickets to stay aboard… $8USD later in the driver’s pocket, we had secured air conditioned seats, and a ride back to the Penh.

At 2am the bus came to a complete stop. Phnom Penh? Nope. As the blinking bus headlights showed me, our bus had broken down outside the offices of the World Food Programme, in the middle of nowhere. Having caught almost no sleep, with a meal of banana chips, Pringles, and tasteless rice in my stomach, and reeking of wet-mud, I was pretty much fed up with bus travels.

At 4:30 am our bus dropped us off by Olympic Stadium, and a half-asleep Katie and Melissa trudged along the dark Phnom Penh Streets towards the apartment.

5:00am: The longest shower of my life.

5:30am: Fell asleep

11:00am: Discovered ants all over my bag, hunting down spilled Pringles crumbs for bfast.

2pm: Showed up at work & it was baaack to reality… Whatever that means in Cambodia…

Too Much To See

2009-10-21T09:59:00.004+07:00

Last night some friends and I met up at Metahouse, a German documentary film restaurant/bar/art gallery/ covered rooftop theatre. Despite the German owner's sketchiness, the place itself boasts a monthly calendar of relatively good documentary films, including the one that my American friends & I were about to watch: "Man from Plains" (2007). The movie was hosted by Habitat for Humanity (Cambodia) in honor of the film's protagonist, former President Jimmy Carter, who will be coming to Cambodia post the Habitat Build Week in mid-November. [SIDE NOTE: Jackie Chan & Oliver Stone are also making there way to Phnom Penh, so CLEARLY, you should too.]

Midway through the film that documents his (controversial) book tour ("Palestine Peace Not Apartheid") in the States, and right about when I ran out of the delicious street kettle-corn popcorn, I reached down for my glass of tonic water, twirled around and chewed the straw a bit, thinking: How cool is this... It's October, I'm not freezing, I'm watching a (free) documentary on a SE Asian rooftop with a media producer, two burnt-out lawyers, and a micro finance officer AND my popcorn was only like 500 Riel (roughly 12.5 cents). Back home, a night out to the movies would probably equate to $10 bucks, not including food. Plus, I'd have to drive back to my house past strip-mall America, where replicated chain stores are probably selling things most-likely made from this part of the world.

Don't get me wrong- I loooove going to the movies back home. I mean, I grew up on going to the movies... Disney films, independents, you're occasional (okay, more than occasional) chick flick and college-esque movie, etc. But because I watch mostly Russian-market pirated (hey, eeeeveryone does) DVDs here, a trip to the sketchy German Metahouse provides a more "movie-like" setting. Plus you can also order beer. And after this fun-filled experience, I have the privilege of cycling home, past piles of garbage & awful smells waiting to be carted away (p.s I learnt that Jimmy Carter likes cycling too), with the warm night air clinging heavily to my only pair of dark blue jeans and a slight (okay, more than slight) trickle of sweat sliding down my back. I don't mind the heat at night though. It makes me look forward to a cool shower before I jump into bed sans covers (it's so weird, but I still haven't gotten used to sleeping without covers so I use my ND blue sports jacket as default coverage), fan pointed at my body & set to button 1. Then I'll read for a bit underneath the occasionally flickering overhead lights. When I'm almost asleep, I'll turn of the lights and think about what I'm missing back home... Cool October Saturday Notre Dame home football games, walks through forest preserves in the (Boring) Vernon (and very suburban, flat) Hills, evening runs along the Chicago Lake Shore, friends and family... But it's okay, because I'll be home in 58 days for about a month-- enough time to get used to America again (and see the twinkling white Christmas lights sprinkled down Michigan Avenue!), and enough time for me to want to come back to Cambodia.

Before I give my mom a heart attack, let me just explain one thing: Phnom Penh is not home... It's good enough for now, but when you're born with it--- with the itch to never settle in one place for too long--you can't really attach yourself to anyone place. There is simply too much to see.

55 kms to Udong and back

2009-10-12T15:09:00.005+07:00

So you thought I was done with long cycling trips right? Nope, nope, nope. Think again.

Saturday Tim, Katie, and the MBAs (i.e. two Hagar interns) met up at Cafe Yejj before embarking on a roughly 55 km bike trip to the Udong area. Tim's new GPS led the way along one of the National Roads, where we peddled and coughed up black exhaust as we weaved our way out of the city, to the "real" Cambodia, where I welcomed quiet mud-red dirt roads, bright green rice paddies and children swimming in streams shouting "hello!"

The first 1/2 hour of cycling or so brought us to a little house next to bamboo tracks and a Caterpillar tractor... an opportune time for Josh to fulfill his life-long dream of driving one.

While we waited, the old man living at the house called up his buddy to bring the train (lorry) to take us to a village near Udong and 40 minutes later we found ourselves and our bikes loaded up on the rickety boards, pummeling down the tracks. This was my second time on the bamboo train and it was just as fun as the first, not just because I'm breathing fresh air, but because it's the real "off-the-beaten-path" Cambodia: skinny cows, flooded rice fields, ancient railroad tracks, dirt roads, palm trees, and darkening skies.

When we came to a small village near Udong we unloaded, bought some ciek (bananas) at a stand and a woman told me I was number 1 barang on bike! I'm not entirely sure why, but nowadays that beats Obama getting the peace prize. She also had to point out how white my arms were in comparison to hers. I took off my bad-ass (not really) gloves and showed her where the Cambodia sun had drawn the line.

One bike ride up a hill (I may have walked my bike half-way up while Tim charged to the top in record time) and we were at the temple. We took a coke break, some pictures (including one of very disturbing statues involving shooting human beings with a bow & arrow, see below) and I used the monk's latrine.

Half-asleep on Sunday, I rolled out of bed to volunteer at a Democrats Abroad US Health Care Reform brunch followed by my first $15 dentist appointment in Cambodia. Yay for still having all my teeth!

waddling western men (aka sitting ducks for sex tourism investigation)

2009-10-06T17:02:00.003+07:00

I spotted a waddling OWM (old western man) walking alongside Monivong Blvd. this morning on my way to work. His shorts were riding up his butt and he had on socks. Was he on his way to Central Market or a massage-parlour? I totally jump to conclusions. I guess I thought the latter because I aimed my bicycle right at him and swerved at the last minute as I pulled up into our office. Good thing I don't have a moto.

where is my religion?

2009-10-04T13:13:00.002+07:00

I went to an Evangelical Church this morning. I guess you could say I went because my roommate was going, but it was really more out of curiosity. In the back of my mind I could hear the crooning coming out of Evangelical churches in Guatemala and I wanted to see if it was the same here. Three steps into the air -conditioned worship area and well… no crooning. It was by far the best singing I have yet encountered in Cambodia. Plasma screens with Jesus songs written in Khmer and a rock band center stage. I didn’t know church could be this fun. Don’t worry Mom… I didn’t convert over to Evangelism, all the singing, clapping, and head banging didn’t win me over. Maybe if there had been crowd-surfing….

Just Kidding. Putting aside how completely nuts the thing was, I do have to say this… On a purely cultural level, there need to be more things like this for Cambodians. I don’t know what they are preaching, but there was natural sense of community there that is missing from the general society. Maybe we need to get the monks some rock band guitars.

what September brought

2009-10-04T12:47:00.004+07:00

I can’t sleep again. It could be because I have a bad cold/cough or it could be something else. Through my half-open window I can hear another woman coughing into the night as well. That’s the thing about aluminum siding pushed up against other buildings. You can pretty much here everything from the tele to your neighbor’s various illnesses. How is it possible to catch a cold in 80-degree weather? Maybe she knows. The Cambodian doctor said it wasn’t bronchitis, just a bad cough. He then went about prescribing three different types of pills all the while conveying the historic importance of the “golden Cambodian land” and its attractive lack of catastrophic weather disasters that draw tourists in. I wonder if they teach 'How to Not Scare Western Tourists 101' in Cambodian Med-School. Seriously though… I felt like I was listening to a commercial for Cambodia the blessed land instead of a medical practitioner. Anyways, I really need to get one of those mouth-mask coverings you usually see stereotypical Japanese people wear when the Asian-Flu descends upon their city. People here wear those all the time when they are in transport. I should probably get over it and just strap one of those blue flimsy things on. I spent the first five years of my life getting sick from Mexico City smog and twenty years later I’m fighting to clear my lungs of Phnom Penh. Perhaps I should reconsider moving to cleaner, greener pastures.

Two weeks ago I visited such a pasture outside of the city. Actually, it was more of a soccer field, and a really muddy one at that. My flatmate Nora’s NGO whose name continuously escapes me, organized a Futbol 4 Peace soccer tournament for kids, with teams from various “eviction” settlements fighting for a giant plastic gold trophy. It reminded me of my youth soccer league days, the only difference being there were no girls playing and all the players took the field sans cleets.How beautiful-- just the bare foot to the ball—futbol at its most basic.

While I watched from underneath a small shelter, hiding well away from the sun, the kids ran around in that scorching heat, trading tee-shirts when the subs went in, rinsing their feet off with cool water, and cheering on fellow team mates with white plastic-bucket drums.

I really wish there were more events like these around here. It makes me feel a little bit more hopeful—a feeling completely absent last Wednesday.

That’s right- the monstrosity that is Bavet’s Titan King Casino completely robbed that cheery positive NGO feeling out of me when my boss and I took a promotional marketing video (pre-production) surveying trip to visit the gaudy Chinese-built palace along the eastern border with Vietnam. One trip to Casinoland is all it takes to understand the complete misdirection of investment in a developing country. I suppose I shan’t disclose too many details, but let me tell you that if in this world I ever build anything, it will not be a casino, and if for some ludicrous reason I do decide to build a casino, I will make every effort to make sure that the builders are not Chinese, that they have taken proper measurements of all doors and doorways, I refuse carpet installations in hot temperate climates, and I employ a proper accountant. I felt really bad for the young eager, chain-smoking five-coffees in three hours, new Malaysian manager that showed us around and confessed every detail about his first 22-days in hell (on the job) to us. Poor guy. Phenomenal challenge though for any person willing to subject themselves to Cambodian business politics and dealing with Chinese sub-contractors— equally phenomenal challenge for the creation of a 30-minute regional marketing video on this place.

Photo snapped as we drove away- proof that the golden monstrosity exists.

falling off the development bandwagon

2009-10-04T12:05:00.005+07:00

I confess. I’m almost at the point of hitting my six-month mark in-country and I’ve been hiding out from Cambodia the last two weeks. The heat, the dust, the garbage, it’s getting to me, not to mention the work politics, the country politics, the same conversations with Westerners...

The interviews with the young rape victims are the worst though. They make me feel like a useless observer offered a peek into the horrendous past of an innocent girl in exchange for nothing. I can’t comfort them in their own language; I can’t provide psychological treatment; I can’t even operate the damn camera. I just watch from a distance until the director translates what she’s said later. Seven men in one night… gang raped… sold… brothels here and there… uncle abused… pregnant from young western male…left behind. I hear some of this and more on a recent visit to the Somaly Mam Centre tucked away down a country-like road, underneath a bridge, past the banana stand, down the lane where a lady swats flies away from old meat, around the house with the naked kids playing by the dump in the yard. It could be anywhere in Cambodia really. The stories the girls tell could be told anywhere in the world really, except that I’m listening to them here and they tend to be shockingly brutal crimes. The rehabilitation center is actually quite nice though. Its open-air buildings and garden area make it a welcoming environment for girls that have been sexually abused and trafficked. I keep staring at the black concrete and marble signs out front detailing such and such funds donated by Queen Latifah and Barbara Walters. I say the names out loud. I wonder if signer and the reporter have ever been here.

Someone later complains that the center claims to be “saving girls” from these destitute situations, therefore immediately placing them in a category of the “unsaved”. There is no right answer. That’s the other thing that is getting to me. The NGOs, the donor-funded projects, the rules and regulations tied to aid meant to good that could actually do more harm. Everyone judges, everyone re-evaluates, everyone complains. I think I’ve learned that development can’t be imposed. Kind of a silly revelation really. Makes me think of old polisci theories on neo-colonialism. But whatever. Nothing is perfect. I don't really believe that corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, non-profits, or UN or inter-governmental organizations have the right answer. Am I a cynic or am I jaded? Maybe both, then again if those different entities didn't try to do something than we'd be right back at zero. I'm still of the belief that its the home government that must do all it can. Initiatives must come from local people. Not an earth-shattering conclusion at all. Then again, when the prime minister gives a talk on how much power he has and his disapproval of OK condom adverts on TV at a Ministry of Tourism conference, I realize why all the externally funded organizations stick around. In the end, I still think what Somaly Mam has done is amazing. We can all judge and point out the flaws of the organizations we deal with, but that doesn't get us anywhere.

http://www.somaly.org/

walking to where?

2009-09-21T13:05:00.009+07:00

Cracked, chipped, cut -- the lady mountain city's sidewalks sigh, raise and fall flat in uneven segmentation. Phnom Penh applies an uneven concealer of clothing scraps, cigarette butts and shattered colored glass on the bruised and broken, plastic-bottle littered pavement lining Preah Monivong. It's inhabitants rudely camp out atop its wrinkled corners, signaling to those that daan-leng (walk/stroll) along its surfaces, eagerly offering to sweep them away on Daelim motos or tuk-tuks.

A small almost-inaudible "click" announces the direction I take every time my brown Beautiful tiny round-heeled sandals (visit st. 143 Beautiful Shoes) touch this crooked pedestrian terrain. My arms occasionally swing upward, balancing my body as it squeezes past SUV and Toyota invaders accosting this unkempt path. At each potholed section I make an effort not to become Miss Trip-y, tip-toeing carefully over and around the jagged breaks.

The steps I take lead me to insignificant places-- restaurants, copy shops, cross-walks-- yet, each time the misaligned cement takes me on a journey back to similar, occasionally tree-shaded strolls in Mexico City's La Condesa, and for that I love the rutted paths in Phnom Penh, for the repeated short resurfacing of home.

What would you do if you were in Asia?

2009-09-14T11:45:00.002+07:00

What would you do if you were in Asia?

Living in Asia myself, I've taken the opportunity to explore and try out things I would have never had the opportunity to do back home either at my age, or at all. Feel free to let me know what you would do if you were in Asia (aside from travel and taking a cooking class), as I'm always looking for ideas...

In the meantime, for one, I've taken on freelance writing. I'm a writer/ reporter/journalist (whatever you want to call it) for Asia Life Guide, an English-language lifestyle magazine in Phnom Penh catered towards expats. I write reviews, vox pops, cover events, and features based on what my editor wants for each issue. The job has led me into expat worlds I would have never entered-- private international schools, homes, restaurant kitchens, and on occasion, a variety of events taking place throughout the city.

The magazine website isn't updated yet, but here is one such "event" I covered (see link). Pictures on this blog are of another event-- the Phare Ponleau Selpak Circus that performed at The Chinese House last weekend.

http://www.asialifeguide.com/News-Events/I-Am-What-I-Am.html?-events=

Oh "development"

2009-09-14T11:17:00.005+07:00

"Adventure Capitalist" Jim Rogers wrote in his book that you learn more about a country from a hooker than from a politician. I don't plan on befriending hookers, but the man has a point. What better way to know the ills of society than by speaking to someone living in it. I've met people that work for the United States government aid organization, USAID. They are on assignment pushing paper while living at places like The Himawari. It's a five star resort. That's right fellow American citizens, your tax paying dollars are going to a good cause-- swimming pools and rooms service. No doubt their work is contributing to the "development" of the country though. Somehow I don't think they come across too many "hookers" or Khmer people that actually show them what's going on in this country. Then again, back home we define America by what is going on Wall Street, Capitol Hill, Hollywood and our Facebook Feed. We don't walk to the corner of a city and chill out with the homeless guy (unless you are Sebastian).

Cambodia Caricatures

2009-09-14T10:21:00.006+07:00

I've decided that there are 5 types of Expats in Cambodia:

1. Those who spend time shuffling back and forth in tuk-tuks between spas, restaurants, nightclubs and the airport. Their interactions with locals is limited to their cook, driver, and house cleaner.

2. Those who work for non-profit organizations, schools, or businesses that allow them more interaction with Khmer colleagues, students, and friends. They take language lessons, travel out to the province once in a while, and enjoy a good Khmer meal now and then. We (Because I feel like I could possibly fall into this category more so than the rest) also like massages, coffee shops, and cheap DVDs.

3. Those who prefer the local and avoid the fellow expatriate as much as possible. They tend to enjoy entering the dark dens of unknown worlds, or at least have the guts to disappear into the slums, brothels, or provinces. Sometimes they are Mormon.

4. Rich Asians that send their kids to private schools were they study in English instead of Chinese or Korean.

5. Nigerians. I met my first in-country Nigerian the other day at the market. His name was Eddie. In between the rows of clothes stalls at Russian Market, he fulfilled all stereotypes involving asking my name, number, and address AND he was even wearing a Manchester United Football jersey. I half contemplated asking him his number and address and whether his occupation involved computer scams or drug deals.

I hate generalizing, but really that's it. Five types of expats, all living, breathing, and spending in a Prime Minister Hun Sen approved expat bubble.

indian stalkers in the penh & other weekend highlights

2009-08-31T17:03:00.006+07:00

And it's never going to stop raining so here are the Weekend Highlights:

FRIDAY

"Finnishing Post" Party at the swanky Topaz Bar/Restaurant where all the "business" people gather round for free drinks on the Phnom Penh Post (English-language newspaper in town)'s tab. When I first got there I knew virtually no one, until Sweetie (Khmer girl running the ad placement at the Post) screamed when she saw me --probably because I was wearing jeans & heels instead of a long fancy dress like her-- and gave me a big hug. Thanks to her, I met and hung out for part of the evening with some other Khmer guys who told me jokes like,

"Do you know what FORD stands for?"

Me: American Tradition in car-making?

"Found. Dead. On. Road."

Never mind that the "R" comes before the "D."

I must say the highlight of the evening was meeting Mr. Singh. In between free glasses of wine and bite-size delicacies, the story goes something like this:

[Out of nowhere a semi-attractive older Indian man in turban jumps at the opportunity of me standing alone for 5 seconds eating a tiny sandwich and sticks out his right hand]

"Hello there, my name is Singh."

I swallow, look up, wipe my hand on well... my jeans, and meet this man who runs the Chevy dealership in Phnom Penh. The greeting is followed by him moving me across the room where it is not so loud and he can tell me how [Felipe, please do your best Indian accent here]

"ForTy percent of theee people in this room are fake."

Obviously this strikes me as a curious observation and albeit a rather normal one, for it is a showy business thing and real people don't come to these unless like me, they want free food and drinks. He goes on pointing out people I don't know when all of a sudden a person I know very well and would rather not disclose via blog comes up, gives me a big and says good-bye, all the while Mr. Turban seems engrossed with texting on his blackberry and then manages to slip the phone in front of me as I'm saying my good-bye. I half-ignore him, but happen to capture what he's texted... "F.A.K.E." I find the whole thing hilarious and hope the person was not able to read his phone. I then excuse myself right after and leave. Since Saturday I have had three "missed calls" (ahem) and the following texts:

15:27:58: "Hi melissa how r u... best wishes signh... ur gennuine guy... hahahahaha" (I hope he was on crack curry when he wrote that)

10:28:09: "Hi good morning have nice and funfilled sunday ahead... best wishes signh (perhaps he was sober now... I respond with a simple "good morning, yes, thanks, you too.")

2 MISSED CALLS LATER

22:05:21: "Hi mel how is life u seems very busy" (mel? seems? at least no "best wishes")

Aaah such is life and my enormous luck with men.

SATURDAY

Went to two good-bye parties and one photo gallery exhibit on rubber plantations in Cambodia. Nothing particularly funny occurred at any of these except that they were fun yet sad events, saying good-bye to a colleague going back to France and a friend moving on to do NGO work in Afghanistan (makes me feel like I'm on holiday here).

Besides avoiding my new found Indian Sheik phone stalker, Deepika, my cool normal American-Indian (clarification: from India) burnt-out lawyer friend and I spent the day at an HIV/AIDS home orphanage near Wat Sam Kosal (the orphanage may or may not be part of the Little Sprouts Maryknoll program). We brought the kids some candy and play with them for a bit. I burnt my feet on pavement trying to play soccer. London Bridges was the hit song with the kids as well as taking numerous photos of them at their request. They are really cute kids and I'm glad Deepika showed me the orphanage. My goal now is to get a group of people to start going every weekend (following in the tradition of another friend who just left).

SUNDAY

Slept in. Read a lot. Biked around town. Aaaand finally played some volleyball! A Colombian friend of mine and her cute 7 year old daughter invited me over to play with some UNDP people, so it was my first official international non-formal game of sand volleyball!

That pretty much wraps up the weekend and it hasn't stopped raining so I presume I will now venture out on my bike and battle flooded streets. Lovely.

august weekend misadventures

2009-08-24T10:51:00.004+07:00

Thursday night I crossed paths with a random Australian who may or may not have told me in between drinks that he killed a Cambodian man in a motor accident on one of the National Roads and that it was tearing him apart because as a foreigner, the last thing you want to do is be involved in vehicle incident. At least he stopped to check if he was okay, though continued home after finding the body split in two.

Friday night I had another awkward dinner at a hotel where I once again enjoyed steamed dim sum, pretended to understand Khmer, stared at Malaysian ladies that didn't speak English, and listened to Indonesian men fresh of the plane pound on drums as they lost themselves in a trance, probably wishing they were back in their island village. This time I sat next to a Cambodian tycoon paying $5000 a head for U.K. pigs to fly over so he could raise them here and improve the quality of meat. In remembrance of a college senior year development class, I asked if he would be flying in cows as well. Yes. $10,000 a head probably. Do they fly executive or first class? I didn't dare ask. Sarcasm lost in translation is a pity sometimes.

Through wasabi-induced watering eyes, I nodded thanks as he confided in me how much he liked foreigners, wished they would stay in Cambodia, and if I ever, EVER was in trouble here, to give him a call. Card placed in front of me, names of various companies listed below.

Honestly, since when am I suddenly mixing with Cambodian business tycoons (in most probability ravaging the nation's resources)? It was a good diplomatic exercise though.

Saturday I pretended not to be in Phnom Penh as I watched CNN's special on Dolly Parton (remember Dollywood?) and biked over to St. 240, where I stared longingly at unique vintage designs hanging in tiny boutiques and then made my way over to the air conditioned heaven of monument books where I stared longingly at overpriced books and fought off a cough with some strong Japanese green tea.

The good thing is I'm not sick anymore, though the Shiatsu massage guy wondered what the hell I had been doing to my back as he pounded and worked through the knots and I winced in pain. I ride my bike (which by the way has suffered its second ailment post handle bars coming off- the back tire is flat).

Also I'm sad to report my french colleague quit last Friday and is moving back to France, which brought about the brutal reminder of how transient this world is. She's left me a nice french press for me to remember her by, which will no doubt come in handy every day at 2pm when I'm falling asleep a the laptop.

asian predators

2009-08-21T10:27:00.006+07:00

When a local restaurateur in Phnom Penh first invited me to a "water" conference at the Chinese-Khmer boutique hotel, The Almond Hotel, I got really excited. With my boss's approval, I would spend most of Thursday at this conference, hopefully making some good contacts for a future health documentary episode for the Cambodian public on water and finally taking part is some quality academic development discussions on the importance of clean water (or so I thought).

Five minutes into the conference, after the Taiwanese guys passed out PowerPoint packets of information on diabetes (one slide on Cambodia) and the Japanese passed out out promotional brochures for their Kungen "miracle water" machine, I probably should have left.

Except lunch was included. At least I learned that 255,000 people in Cambodia have Diabetes, according to the World Diabetes Center that published the 2005 study in the scientific journal, The Lancet. That was it though. That was my one piece of academic learning for the day. Why do these things happen to me?

If anything, the rest of the conference was a GREAT insight into how not to market a product, how to find a target audience before getting on a plane and trying to sell rich Cambodians a USD$4000 non-toxic water machine, and the importance of presentation skills. Aside from that, I made some nice Malaysian friends. Three housewives-- one whose husband works for Tiger Beer, one who from what I gathered did nothing but was disappointed that her children preferred to learn English instead of Chinese because English is easier, and one whose husband runs Agape-Shalom, one of those NGOs here that teach English but "don't require" Cambodians to become Christian, in the meantime forcing them to take part in at least a bible class or church, and one finance guy working for a Chinese mining company (i.e. the bad guys when it comes to environmental protection of Cambodia's forests). They were all nice people with good intentions. At least we were all at the same table that found it hilarious when the sound system didn't work and when the Japanese water guys made volunteers pee in cups so we could all see the acidity level in their bodies.

After drinking about 3 glasses of the "miracle water", I left before the second round of tea and dim sum were served.

Cambodia is developing fast. Somehow, I don't think throwing a little Japanese miracle water is going to help a defenseless majority of the population. Indeed, it is " a country for sale."

http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/713/en/country_for_sale

Playing in Cambodia

2009-08-16T17:02:00.007+07:00

So a couple of weeks ago I didn’t feel well and decided to take the day-off and pay a visit to SOS International Clinic. After having blood drawn for tests, fainting, and waking up to find two Cambodian doctors and one scared nurse looking at me, I was ushered off to the day-bed and told to rest while they cleared my test results. Great. I was dying in a foreign country far away from my Mami, but at least this bed was super comfortable and between hallucinations maybe I can think about the best way to present my case for staying on this bed and sleeping all day. As I drank water and slowly came back to life, the doctor said everything was fine. I just needed to drink more water, take vitamins, sleep, exercise under healthy conditions (i.e. not to much outside) and I quote the good doctor- “play.” That’s it? I’m not dying of some strange Cambodian disease, and all I have to do is be healthier and “play”? I had laughed when he told me to play. Was I five years old or did he mean something else?

Back in my flat I slept on our wicker couch and re-evaluated my life (again). Okay:

Step 1. Join a closer gym with air conditioning. Step 2. Take vitamins everyday and drink less coffee (I’m sorry to say the coffee thing only lasted about a week) Step 3. Play.

Step 1 I took care off the following weekend. After surveying several expat’s gym choices and visiting one amazing gym complex complete with a roof-top pool (though not Olympic sized swimming pool), and former Mr. Australia as a gym trainer, I opted for another choice. “The Place.” Here we go… The Place is highly controversial because, as Tim reminded me afterwards, it is a very socially unresponsible place to join because of its links to a Korean or Russian mafia or something of the sort. This is also “the place” where they have the fake Starbucks. Here’s the thing though, it has air-conditioned treadmills and is about a 5 minute bike ride from my flat. This comes in handy since I hate biking late at night after work. I figured if I wasn’t going to join, someone else was going to do it in my place and therefore the mafia was going to make money off of it anyways, and well, while I half broke my savings account again, invested in a healthier lifestyle. Mr. Australia and his white shorts weren’t convincing enough. Plus, at The Place they have free hair gel, cotton-swabs, shampoo and a clean locker room with sauna and a tall Cambodian girl that brings you water. In what world was I going to pass that up?

Step 2 I took care off with a Multi-vitamin Centrum everyday after my breakfast of yogurt and granola. I already feel 100% physically healthier and this scares me in the sense that I had no idea how weak I really felt before. Soo kids, I highly recommend you all take your flinstone vitamin or a spoonful of vitametavegamin every day.

Step 3 was harder. Playing. Well, what exactly did the doctor mean? He told me not to sit at home alone and think things over and over in my head because this would cause enormous amount of stress. Hmmm… Well, it’s not like I was doing that all the time, I mean I do have some friends and go out and talk to people. I’d have to work harder at playing then.

When you live an almost first class life as a privileged foreigner (affordable cafes, massages, gyms) in a third class world you sort of question why it is you came to a developing country anyways. For some friends, it is to live more simply. I tried that- living on $1.50 chinese & dumplings – and it didn’t quite work out for me. No- I came here to live simply, but in an entirely different sense. I came to do away with the complex interactions that we have in the States. To feel the heat on my arms, to smell the exhaust from the car in front of my bike, to smile again and again at the tuk-tuks that hastle me as I walk by. I came to feel life and witness it’s ironies and juxtapositions.

Everything in Cambodia is fragilely held together in a delicate balance. If one thing falls apart- everything can break as easily as rice paper. Some expats say that life here is harder for women. That the lack of men, the lack of air conditioned spaces, the sun, the hastling by Cambodian men all get to you until you’ve driven yourself insane. It could be true. Somedays are definitely hard so I have to “play more.” I decided the day I fainted I would change the way I was playing my life, my game in Cambodia. I would do things that make me happier. I joined a gym because I needed to run as hard as I was running before. I watch Nat Geo Adventure because it inspires me to explore more, to think on the edge. Some Saturdays I bike over to a small café the building I lived in temporarily because I can hang out with this young Cambodian waiter who corrects my Khmer and I can listen to him read in English and correct his pronounciation. He reads out of a book probably written in the 1980s on customer-service and probably rarely understand what he reads, but he is trying. He asked me to listen, so I did.

Yes, sometimes I have days when I turn things around in my head until the perfect migrane is formed as I worry about grad school or life after Cambodia, but I think about what a friend and a philosopher (Alan Watts) once said, if life were a symphony we wouldn’t rush to get to the end. Live life as a symphony. So when I go to work I don’t work anymore, I view it as play. I play.

A brush with a famous painter

2009-08-16T15:33:00.006+07:00

The crew sets up and the painter is pushed aside. Copies of his works-- paintings of prisoners at the high school turned torture prison, S21, that have made Mr. Vann Nath so famous, are now carelessly handled by the camera crew and placed behind a metallic chair with plastic red cushioning, as they set up the frame for the video interview. The director speaks to him in Khmer and I sit quietly and nod on occasion when I think I’ve understood something thanks to a small hand gesture here or there—I’m still waiting for the day that God will strike me with the awesome ability to comprehend what is being said in any language. An afternoon in the office suddenly turned into an unexpected invitation by the director to accompany him as he interviews Mr. Vann Nath, who now sits to my right, in black Adidas track pants and a blue button-down shirt opened up almost all the way, save a few buttons on the bottom to let air in. White hairs crown his head and his forehead collects beads of sweat in this hot dark room off, which is off to the side of his restaurant where I just had my second cup of coffee for the day. This is a room whose sole function seems to be an impromptu place to greet journalists, visitors and the like. It is not fancy. For a man who has witnessed killings during the Khmer Rouge and painted portraits for Pol-Pot to save his life, this room is just as dark and uncomfortable as the life he has probably had. Mr. Vann Nath’s wife sits quietly behind him as the crew and Kimsour move around the bare room and transform it into an art set. When they finally have the right camera angles they urge the painter to stand in front of the camera and Kimsour begins to ask questions, quietly prompting the man to share his opinions on violence against children in today’s Cambodian society. The director's tone is soft and relaxing. I've listened to him before and he has a gift for extracting what he needs from his subjects without any pain. They are comfortable with him and forget about the camera crudely pointed in their face. Faces soften and information is divulged.

Sweat is trickling down my back and there is a slight fan breeze hitting me now and then. It is a reprieve from the heat, but not from the scenes painted around me. I’m sitting between two paintings labeled numbers “6” and “7”. Number 6 is of a prisoner dressed in the typical dark-blue pyjama-like clothing, as he sits in a chair and a camera and bright light put him on the spot before a group of huddled prisoners watching from behind. An interrogation? A confession? More people will be rounded up and slaughtered. Number 7 depicts prisoners being brought into S-21; they are handcuffed and led together, their feet almost melting into the pavement. It is as if I can sense their soles and souls being dragged first into the pavement and then into the prison-school. The colors remind me of one of Van Gogh’s paintings-- the one of the Parisian café. Blues, yellows, reds, and oranges, but this is not a peaceful scene. As the filming continues I stand up and move to the right to read two pieces of faded-white paper taped onto the wall. Above the black type in French and English is a black and white photo of a young man. "Detained January 7, 1978-Torso length ?" —and other details about Vann Nath, including his place of birth, and spouse’s name and place of birth.

Out of nowhere I become aware of a clock ticking on the wall. It is near the painting of Cambodian scenery, perhaps of Battambaong where he was born, and the one of the prisoner about to be executed behind some trees. VANN NATH and a date is scrawled on the bottom left-hand corner of each of those paintings.

I’m in the presence of a character we read about in the news. A person whose name can often be found in the same published works (including his own) on the “Khmer Rouge” “Pol-Pot” and “S-21.” He is deeply historically, yet is standing before me in his comfy afternoon clothes and just served me tea, while saying “I don’t speak much English.” Well, I don’t speak much Khmer and it is a shame. A shame to be so close to hands that painted the truth behind the infamous prison, and not be able to ask him something as complex as “What do you think of the Khmer Rouge criminal tribunal that is going on in front of the world today,” or as simple as “How are you really doing today?”

For more information and to view Mr. Vann Nath's work, please visit: http://www.vannnath.com/

Filmmaking, leeches and bamboo trains

2009-08-03T13:52:00.008+07:00

Sorry, but I think I just wrote a book. I’d grab a cup of coffee/tea for this one…

I’m sitting in our living room flat, on our somewhat uncomfortable and very much worn wicker couch. The ceiling fan is on full blast and my body is positioned just so, so that I can feel a slight breeze flow in from the balcony. I’m trying to think of the best way to describe last week’s trip to Pursat Province, in the Northwest of the country. All my recent memories of those four days of documentary filmmaking seem jumbled in my mind forming a huge headache that’s probably also do to slight dehydration.

I check back my notes, bullet points listed under DAY 1, DAY 2, etc. Then I remember:

DAY 1- Living Beyond Reach

I wake up in a small hotel room in Pursat Town. My boss, M.K. is in the bed next to mine. I’m conscious of how good it feels to have a somewhat decent mattress underneath my back. We’d arrived late in the evening the day before and after some Khmer food, had settled down to get a good night’s rest. After a breakfast of chicken glass noodle soup and tea, Vanoc (Driver), Director Kimsour, Samnah (Director’s Assistant/Cameraman), M.K. or Ms. Mary (film producer) and I (in this case, observer, producer’s assistant, and default photographer) clambered into our beaten-up metallic company van and headed down a bright mud- red road off of Pursat Town to the tiny village of Boeing Smuck, adequately described as “being in the middle of nowhere.” We drove for at least an hour, into the heart of Cambodia, picturesquely passing by water-buffalo carts driven by children. Over bends, bumps, and muddy holes our trusty van went. By the time we finally reached the Chief of Commune’s house, half of us were already covered calf-deep in mud, having pushed and pulled the van out of real pot-holes that would make winter driving in Chicago’s I-94 easy-breezy.

We then made our way to the train station— not much more than an abandoned building. You could more accurately describe the train station as the rail tracks between the only two small, local restaurants in the village, next to the vendor selling frog legs and packages of raw noodles and an open field. The train? To my delight, the train, known as the “bamboo train” or what Cambodians refer to as the “Lorry” or “Norry”— flat wooden boards atop wheels with a massive engine strapped to one end and a “train conductor” keeping it in check-- arrived just in time to whisk us off to another small village about 20 minutes away to where the provincial coordinator and head of the women's division for the human rights group Adhoc, Madame Ngeht was giving an educational meeting on domestic violence. Riding the bamboo train is about one of the coolest things you could ever do in Cambodia, namely because you feel the rush (and bumps) of the track right beneath you and the wind and country scenes become the drapes of your coach car on the one-coach, one-track rustic train.

When we arrive at our stop, three motorcycles take a boom pole, a large camera, and us to the village where we will be filming some sketches of the province and violence education in action. While the adults sit in the cool underneath of a house, I look around for a means to entertain myself and find some seashells strewn across the sandy floor nearby. I pick one up, turn it over my fingers and begin to outline a sun. The little girls surrounding me look down and each pick up a seashell, copying my drawing. Cambodian’s are good at copying. We then move on to stars, trees, and numbers and promptly this little band of girls has added a little exterior décor to the village. I’m glad I could contribute a lesson in sand drawing at this human rights community forum.

Another bumpy ride later, we’re back at the Chief of Commune’s faded yellow-blue painted house we later learned he had built himself when he was a carpenter. The Chief, wearing round gold-rimmed glasses and black boxers, smiles widely as he greets us and proceeds to put on his pants. Privacy doesn’t really exist in this country. Once he is fully dressed, he leads us even further into the country to Boeng Smuck village to visit the families of two young girls, Nai Vinn (11) and Phal Sophoeun (14) that were raped and brutally murdered a few months back.

Let me pause and explain WHY I suddenly found myself standing in a yard full of children, chickens, and garbage littered across a backdrop of emerald green mountains and darkening skies. The documentary film my company is currently producing focuses on violence and rape against children in Cambodia, and the root of that violence stemming from Khmer culture, history, and psychological, social, and political repression. It is no exaggeration to say that everyday when I open the Cambodia Daily or the Phnom Penh Post, there is at least one report on a child rape, murder, or trafficking in this country. While our film is very general, it does draw from the voices of victims and their families, and that is exactly why I found myself in Pursat in late July—to observe the making of a documentary through interviews and film sketches (i.e. scenes of daily life) so I in turn can help take the film and submit it to international markets for viewing and distribution.

The mother of the victims is beautiful, despite her shaved head (probably due to lice) and sad smile. Her cheeks hold a slight red tinge while her eyes drift constantly from us to the various children (all together four) that run around the yard. Her hand occasionally touches her round pregnant belly hidden beneath a bright yellow shirt. Two very tiny, straw packed and wooden raised houses shared the yard in which the children played and run stark naked in. The other house belongs to her sister, also the mother of the second victim. What is it like to have your daughters— two cousins, raped and hung from a tree? I hope I will never know because in that yard I see sadness and the struggle for survival. I watch naked children playing in the rain with a single plastic tricycle, and families worrying how to feed them and pay for the midwife that will deliver their new sibling.

I stand outside in the rain while M.K. and the Kimsour interview the family as they eat from a pan of white, nutrition-less rice. One of the children has taken a liking to me and says things to me in Khmer I can’t understand. The entire time I can’t decide if the child is a girl or a boy as I smile back at those intense black eyes. When the rain hits harder, and the adults shelter themselves underneath the houses as if we are gathering in a gigantic sand box, the children squeal with joy and continue running around the yard, undisturbed by the rain drops. They all take care of each other. When the baby boy falls off the tricycle the 6-year-old girl runs over and picks him up, shifts him to her hip, and in the meantime the next boy sees this as an opportune time to hop on the toy himself. The filming takes a long time. I stare out at the distant mountains and think of there are so many people in this world living off the main road. There is no road to reach them, and there probably won’t be for a long time. To survive poverty in a place where an NGO, the UN, or where barely the government (i.e. Chief of Commune) can reach you, is that really “survival of the fittest”? There is something unsettling about that, if that’s the truth. If there is no road one must be built and it really doesn’t matter who does it.

DAY 2- Hiking in Flip Flops

I think I hear roosters crowing. Can someone please turn them off? Wait, where am I? Ouch… My back. Hurts. Roosters crowing again, and just as annoying as last time. Oh yeah, I’m in Pursat, sleeping in the Chief’s house, next to my boss (again). Was I dreaming about getting ready to go out at Finny’s? High heels, blush, and hair that actually does what I want it to do seem so far away. I pat my hands around me and reach for my phone. 4AM. Nice… Aaand I’ll just turn over on this wooden table, I mean bed, draped with red mosquito netting and try to go back to sleep. I’m vaguely aware of the need to use the toilet, but push the thought back. I refuse to go in the white chamber pot the Chief’s wife placed in the room last night. I’ll wait for the outhouse in the morning.

Amazingly two hours later I’m up and I’m ready for a new day of filming. After brushing my teeth with a water bottle I dip a plastic red ladle into a ginormous clay rain catcher and scrub a touch of face wash over my face and then wrap a blue-green krama (checkered scarf) around my head. I can sense today is going to be a sweaty, messy day. We’re going hiking up to where the two girls were raped and hung. I push the thought back into my mind and focus on the hiking part, namely because all I have are my worn-out J-Crew flip-flops as hiking boots. Well, those and two umbrellas I swing over my shoulders. Just in case it rains- I mean, when it DOES rain, the camera will be safe.

The crew heads down to the end of the village, over the train tracks, past the first rice field, and turns right into the fields. All the locals are staring, and rightfully so. We make quite a show, one super white woman with hair that is (gasp!) not straight (Vanoc actually asked me to buy a comb… I had to explain it would be pointless on frizzy, curly hair), carrying two umbrellas slung over her shoulder and a bright blue camera swinging from her wrist and one Asian-Western woman outfitted in super bright red clean Keds sneakers with a lime green backpack that holds a bottle of Mademoiselle Coco Chanel on her back. Great. I’m hiking in Cambodia with Coco Chanel. It makes me chuckle, but I have to admit, the scent felt nice on my inner wrists this morning even though it quickly blended in with the less appealing farm smells. M.K. and I follow the Deputy Chief of Commune, a skinny man with a weatherworn brown leather face who led the search party to find the girls and cut them down from the tree a day after the crime took place. Ahead of us is Director Kimsour, wearing one of those round sailing hats that reads “ADVENTURE” in small print and Samnah, who dutifully carries the camera on his shoulder. Vanoc, our driver turned assistant who also turned sick last night, trudges along as well. I hope the Airborne I gave him this morning works on Cambodians. There are also three elderly, skinny, ragged policemen carrying AKs with us. I asked what they were, and they were simply “AKs.” The fascination of being led by armed personnel takes hold of me. I momentarily pretend I’m being led deep into the Congo and there are armed rebel militias nearby. The fantasy quickly disappears as we reach the end of the first fluorescent green rice paddy. I almost slip off the small raised path as Mary falls forward in front of me and lands in a bigger pile of mud. I catch a glimpse of something black swimming quickly away. Water snakes! No wonder she got scared and fell. I give a little shriek and quickly jump up onto the next mound. I look ahead and it seems for miles there are just rice paddies just like this one, each flooded to a certain depth, each probably full of black water snakes. “Just walk quickly!” Kimsour shouts from up front. Uuuuh, you mean, walk quickly in swamp land where there are snakes happily swimming about? Dooon’t think so. Nope. EW. I’m a girl, and I freely admit it. I don’t do snakes.

But after crossing one or two fields with disappearing paths that require Samnah to carry both Ms. Mary and myself on his back, I feel sorry for the guy. He didn’t sign up for this, and somehow I feel slightly imperialistic asking this Cambodian man to put me on his back. It must be the umbrellas that contribute to the feeling, even thought they aren’t parasols and aren’t opened and I’m not in a white-linen dress. My boss is one thing, especially since her shoes would just get stuck in the mud. I sigh and slip off my flip-flops, like the rest of the men, and tell myself to just look ahead and forget the snakes if I feel one slip by. Luckily my determination to move fast outweighs the speed of these slippery creatures and I’m able to reach the next trek of stable pink-white sand without an encounter. Good thing too because I later learned they were in fact not snakes, they were leeches.

The sand trekking soon turns into a run-in with a water-buffalo cart again led by a small boy. I think we were the last thing he and the water buffalo were expecting to see today. We finally hit rocks and thicker brush. The mountain! Or hill… I guess it could be considered a rocky mountain for Cambodian standards. There is no path up, nor trail, just crumbling loose rocks and spiky branches protruding from everywhere. We curse and wonder how on earth three men could lead two young girls to this area to commit their heinous crime and string their bodies up on branch, but then I see it. The tree. It’s menacing in it’s own natural way, with one crooked branch sticking out over the rest of the hill. The perfect branch for a hanging, if there is such a thing. The view is breathtaking though. It’s a juxtaposition and it’s a shame. Such a beautiful country with such dark secrets. The filming commences and I have to somehow quietly sit on a loose rock holding two umbrellas, ignoring the ants crawling all over my wet feet, while Kimsour interviews the police. The Deputy recounts how he found the bodies as Kimsour finds all the right angles for shooting this scene. Amazing the artistic thought behind the man at the very scene of a double-murder. I imagine myself taking part in filming expeditions all over the world. I break out of my fantasy and look at the Deputy. What must have it been like to look up from the bottom of the hill and see the unnatural sight of two young girls’ bodies waiting for you to cut them down?

Sometime later the rains starts to sprinkle down and before we know it it’s raining, and it’s raining hard. Up the umbrellas go to protect the camera and Vanoc opens up a rice sack he’s been carrying, revealing a bunch of heavy-duty plastic raincoats. I reach for one, pull it over and am disappointed by the length of it. How on earth did short little Cambodians get a hold of raincoats built for Vikings? Honestly. I bunch up the bottom of the coat and pull the heavy plastic above my knees. I’m going to hike down a wet rocky mountain clutching an over-sized raincoat, an umbrella as a hiking stick and flip-flops. If I don’t sprain my ankle, it’ll be a miracle.

Well, it was a miracle I didn’t sprain it, but Ms. Mary on the other hand, sprained her wrist after slipping and putting her hand out to break her fall. She winces in pain and Kimsour comes over to look at it. He must think it’s broken because he quickly pulls hard on it and she screams out in pain, tears flooding from her eyes. I guess he was trying to set the non-broken bone. It’s kind of hilarious, but I don’t say anything, just follow the policemen with their A.K.s and hurry along. They don’t seem to mind the rain. In fact, they’re stopping every time we come across a paddy worker and seem to be asking them about their crop. The rain soon subsides and the sun comes out and it’s hot. Here weather changes as quickly as it does in Chicago, except it only alternates between sun and rain, hot and humid and more hot and humid. By the time we get back to the village, we are stinky, bruised, sunburnt and uber-dehydrated. All I want is a cold shower and a massage. And maybe a mango-shake, preferably at a five star resort. I look around, sorry darling, that ain’t happening today.

Kimsour and Samnah disappear that evening to go interview the local schoolteacher and M.K. and I take a nap. Later the Chief’s daughter brings over two purple flowered sarongs and teaches us how to bathe with our clothes on. We bathe with a pan next to rain catchers behind the large outdoor staircase, aware that a few feet away there is a group of young Khmer men with bodies chiseled down by the labor-intensive work they do playing volleyball. They barely pay attention as M.K. and I squeal at the coolness of the water being poured over us. Being clean again feels wonderful and we settle down to chat in the “outdoor lounge” – dirt floor with heavy-lacquered wooden tables and chairs, and wooden boards plastered with Cambodia People’s Party posters and portraits of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The rain descends upon us again and fails to cease as night takes over. We are rained in, or flooded in a village in the middle of nowhere. Everyone is a little fed up by the exhaustion, the work and the mosquitoes. Arguments over how to get out of here and into town consume the night. Too bad we already drank our bottle of Chilean red wine last night. I’m sure the Chief could have used it tonight as he listened to the Voice of America on his short-wave radio and probably wondered who on earth the Taliban were, but more importantly how much longer he’s going to have to keep feeding his five guests from the city.

DAY 3- Van on Bamboo Train

It was decided early this morning that we’d put our on money on the bamboo train. The locals claim that they can get two lorries tied together and put our van on top of them, while we ride in the front of the bamboo train all the way to Pursat, or as far as we are willing to pay. The non-roads are flooded waist-deep anyways so it seems that putting a van on a bamboo board is the only option. Ms. Mary has her doubts, Kimsour is sure it can work, and I’m just excited I get to ride the bamboo train again. Some rice and chicken bits later, the villagers have strapped the car securely onto the lorry and we celebrate our departure by buying some raw noodles for the kids and handing the Chief a nice envelope full of riels & dollars for his kind hospitality. I doubt the village has seen this much excitement in a long time.

The train ride is gorgeous again and Kimsour makes our conductor stop several times so we can film. At one point, while another lorry unloads and reloads around us, we catch sight of some Cham (Muslim) workers in the fields, heads covered with long scarves and wide-brimmed hats. We follow Kimsour who has quickly taken off to film the scene and meet the workers. They’re shy, but smiley and agree to let us film while they break for a lunch of eggs and rice. They eat with muddied-clay fingers and drink from a single white plastic bucket filled with water. I can’t help but notice how they must be my age. The rest of the ride is slow, but breezy and I enjoy every minute of it. For an hour and a half, I’m free to let my mind wonder over possibilities of more National Geographic-esque adventures, and a life of filmmaking. Then I think of the girls and filmmaking turns into human rights defending. Too many tracks to explore, so I sit back and enjoy the one I’m on.

When we reach Pursat Town, some locals nearby help unload the van onto the street. I bet they weren’t expecting to see a metallic van stenciled with “Rock Production” and little lightening bolts come up to the crossroads. While the men work to get the thing off, I hear a woman yell at me. “You! Come Here! Where are you from, I want to speak with you!” I’m startled by the harshness of the voice, but even more startled by the fact that it is in English. I just spent two days in the middle of nowhere using broken Khmer, eating rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner and the English words are hurtled at me with such force, I’m caught off guard and turn around to see this super-skinny wrinkled woman without teeth. I answer in a question, as I often do here for no explicable reason, “America?” She stares at me and begins, “ I came to America in 1972 to San Francisco, I was there a year…” I just stare. I must be hallucinating from the sun. This stick-like wrinkled lady wearing a visor is smacking her gums at me telling me how she came to speak perfect English. I can see she’s eager to speak. I bet she hasn’t had a conversation in English for a while because the words tumble out proudly as she sits between her grandchildren. I laugh and we talk for a bit before I have to pile back into the hot van for the ride into town.

DAY 4- Voices of Victims

How do we fight for human rights? I have no clue. I’m sitting in the sweltering heat in a large room were the Adhoc conference on “discussions” between the police, local government representatives and victims on their grievances is taking place, trying not to fall asleep. I’m all for human rights but it’s so hot it’s hard to stay awake. Iced-coffee will be able in the back of the room soon and I’ll be sure to make a dash for a glass. A few rows ahead there are a couple policemen leafing through the pamphlet in Khmer and a row behind me there are nervous girls, smiling shyly at the foreigner freak. Somehow I know the smile I give back doesn’t quite convey what I’m thinking…“I admire you for speaking out in front of police and officials after your rape case was ignored by the same men.” For close to six hours we sit, sweat and listen patiently. I mostly half-listen to interpreter next to me. His English isn’t very good but I get the gist of the conference. Land taken forcefully away without reparations, rape victims crying into the microphone, a commune chief with feet twisted backwards (perhaps a bomb chemically-influenced deformation?) who isn’t receiving enough support from the government…. Everyone is angry, everyone is tired, everyone wants the justice system to work so they can go home and go on with their lives. The court prosecutor and clerk and some other officials listen, take down notes, occasionally answer their cell phones while on panel (phone etiquette is completely non-existent in Cambodia), and speak words of encouragement to the people. In my book that’s a lot of empty promises and lip service paid to society’s most vulnerable members. People are told to re-file their cases and grievances, hell to even go to the prosecutor’s house if they have a problem- “My house, my office, is open to anyone!” He tells them. In the end we get what we came for. To get interviews with the officials attending on their thoughts about the rape case we are following in Boeing Smuck. Most have never even heard that it occurred. Most say they see it is a recurring problem that must be dealt with. But what will they do? How can a country forced to hold a “free and fair election” by the UNTAC in the 90s, a country wiped out of an entire generation, a country being built by donor dependency and opportunistic Western and Asian greediness hold criminals in jail despite bribes that are paid to free them and without consent of rape victims? But each conversation is a development. In Cambodia, every step counts even if it’s a baby one. An open discussion like this would have never occurred ten years back. Everyone knows that impunity is the biggest threat to justice anywhere. I just hope the other girls present here today can continue their lives without fear that the perpetrators will return to their house one day and seek revenge for speaking out. They deserve more than that.

The conference wraps up and we head out back to Phnom Penh, racing back before night falls, before we can forget what we have witnessed this week and perhaps more determined to make the documentary a success. On behalf of the world, we at least owe the family of the girls in Boeng Smuck that.