a holiday in cambodia
greetings, dear readers, from hanoi. in case you never knew, hanoi rock – so much so that a heavy metal band named themselves this very thing, “hanoi rocks”. hanoi is in northern vietnam. it rained here today, the first rain i’ve seen since the first of february when i was in trinidad and the lights went out.
ahem…let’s go back to leaving luang prabang, shall we? yes let’s. so i caught a laos air flight to bangkok from luang prabang (nice, small, mellow airport not unlike huatulco’s) rather than deal with the treacherously long and winding road back south through laos to thailand or the other way over to cambodia and more, probably worse, roads. before all that happened, however, i have a sweet story to tell about some farm kids in laos, an iPod and a band called belle & sebastian.
belle and sebastian hail from glasgow, scotland, and are a superb pop group who sing about weird, unexpected events and darkly ironic tales of love and loss. i was riding The_Worlds_Ricketiest onespeed bicycle through some rice fields outside vang vieng, laos, when i stopped to take a rest in the shade at the entrance of a cave/lagoon area. at this particular spot was where a guy collected a small fee for the privilege of visiting the cave and/or lagoon, another 6KM up the road in the hot sun.
so i’m sitting there downing a bunch of water and behind me are sitting a pack of about six small boys playing together in the dirt. they were filthy, these kids, and all their clothing was torn and ragged and of all mostly a smudged grey/navy/beige color, no one color standing out from the rest as they all sort of blended together with greasy, dirty stains. not one of these kids (aged between about 3 and about 8, although who can really tell) had a complete mouthful of teeth among them.
when they saw me they just stared at first. my riding companion, john, pretty much ignored them, preferring I think to gaze out over the fields and simply cool down quietly, but i couldn’t do that. i was curious about them because they seemed so innocent and gentle and simple and, frankly, happy. it’s unlikely any of them had ever known the inside of a schoolroom nor was capable of reading or writing. these kids were farm kids, terribly poor, and probably hit the fields to work alongside their family from the time they were able to walk.
anyway, they were pretty curious about us too and gathered close by to inspect the weird falangs (that’s lao for farang: see thailand post). since i had no way of communicating to them nor they to me, i thought what better way to blow their minds without words than to share the gift of music with them. as it just so happened, i’d brought along my iPod and had been listening to belle & sebastian. they stared in wonder as i unraveled the earphone wires, booted it up and got it going, though they knew not what this weird gadget i held was.
as soon as it was going, not too loud, i handed one earphone wire to one kid and another to the kid next to him. each kid was confused, but as soon as they heard the strange music their eyes opened up REALLLLLY wide, their smiles clear across their mugs EVEN WIDER and they started cracking up hysterically. they were in stitches over this weird gadget! i’m pretty sure they’d never seen or touched anything like it in their lives and were completely astonished that such clear, pretty, poppy sounds could come from such a thing (even if they couldn’t understand what on earth the songs were about-though of course i am taking a huge liberty in assuming that they agreed that this music was good).
what really struck me as so sweet and good about these poor kids with hardly a lick of clothing on their backs was that after the first two kids had a listen each, they both gently and politely passed each phone to the other kids one at a time in turn so each could have a chance to hear for a few seconds. no one kid held on to his phone for more than a couple seconds before giving someone else a chance to have the same experience. each kid who didn’t have a phone in his ear got up close to one who did have the earphone to try and hear what all the fuss was about. of course the ones without couldn’t hear anything at all and so sat very patiently awaiting his turn to go ga-ga himself.
that scene really warmed my wee li’l ol’ city slicker heart to pieces and i thought even if he can never in their lifetimes afford an iPod and accept his fate as his own reality, just by virtue of being good buddhists and survivors in the face of such hard lives, each one will carry on living by the only real values they have had passed down for generations and will probably ever need, without fancy musical gadgets: the three F’s each lao lives by in their struggle for survival in that difficult place: food, family and faith; everything else will sort itself out in the end.
when belle & sebastian ended, i put on some beatles for them too, but by this time they’d all had a chance to listen, a couple of them getting both phones for the full on hi-fi stereo effect, then politely and gently returned the phones to me and i headed back out across the fields on the rickety old brakeless bike towards town.
another thing about this scene worth mentioning was that in all those vast fields with the high high high limestone karsts in the distance, not a single other soul was around save, john and the boys’ father or uncle. the ticket taker guy (with the exception of a few skinny white cows grazing way out there somewhere).
anyways (as mister lipski likes to say), vang vieng was good for some eye opening, philosophical reflection and exploration. luang prabang, north of there, provided culture, drama and architecture and a cool river breeze after the sweltering heat down south. the most sensible next move was to get myself to vietnam.
after some research i decided the easiest thing would be to swing by bangkok (and the post office) then book a bus to siem reap. this i did via one of the notorious “official” tourism authority agents in bangkok. there’s nothing official about these folks, i later learned from a charming and clever fellow traveler of norwegian extraction called jack (see any coincidences there, family?). he told me i could’ve taken a local train to the border for 45 baht. he’d done it. but i did not do that.
originally, i wanted to get a train to the cambodian border then bus to siem reap, having heard the trains are not so good on the cambodia side. so when i wandered in to the TAT office to inquire, i was told “there is no train. take bus, much better – faster, air con, take only 3-4 hour. very good bus. no problem”. of course i was hoodwinked by these clowns so they could get their commission with their bus buddies. still, i didn’t really care that much HOW i got to cambodia, i just wanted to get there and not on some crazy chicken bus or tuk tuk, and i didn’t want to spend a small fortune in baht or badly compromised butt and guts and lungs in reaching my destination either.
my bus ticket from bkk to siem reap cost me 2000 baht and was to include the 30 day cambodian visa. i thought that was pretty good considering the long distance and visa and immigration hassles involved and that this agency would just “handle” it all for me. not so.
the bus from bkk was plush but loud as hell in its interior design motif. hot pink goes together with red and royal blue and goldenrod? sure, why not! and cotton candy pink chintzy curtains, nicely ironed as if for a 12 year old girly-girl’s bedroom? you betcha. it all fits perfectly…for a colorblind monkey! it was a very surreal scene, but at least the seats were good and the A/C did work. i thought i could easily endure the 3-4 hours on board. this was not to be, dear readers, the cushy cruise i’d settle in for. it was closer to 4 than 3 hours, naturally, but it was nice and the views were colorful out the window. that bus could easily have carried 30 passengers and was about 1/3 full.
the border scene, some 6 hours later, was another cluster of hauling all ourselves and stuff off the comfy thai bus with ample leg room and through the crappy, dusty, dirty border town of poipet, through the visa check counter #1, back out on the street and down a few more yards to the visa check/immigration counter #2, then on to the rattletrap local transport they somehow condescend to describe as a “bus” (the inner-city shuttle, presumably, and the one that took us some 5 minutes away to the other bus that would take us on the remainder of the journey), then on to the bigger bus with legroom sufficient for a person averaging 4′ 11″, then on to siem reap. that 6 hours was The_Worst_Road_Ever_On_Earth and yet i heard from a regular rider that it has improved markedly in the last 5 years. i will only say this because i dare not bitch and moan and turn you all off my scribblings, dear readers, as a whiny little bizzatch, that i (a) wish i’d packed a sports bra and (b) had had no liquids of any sort so that none would need to pass through me. we stopped to pee once after about 4 1/2 hours into the ride on this bumpy, hideous road. i knew things were going to be slooooooooooooooooooooooooow going when after a mere 1/2 hour on the road the bus got a flat tire and we were forced to pull over to a tire shop located in the Middle Of Nowhere with no other services save a small drinks/candy/lotion & sundries stand with minimal shade. there were roughly 20 passengers who deboarded the packed bus and huddled under that shade in the 100+ degree midday heat for an hour.
upon arrival at siem reap, we went in a confused mass into the “buddy” hotel where the bus dropped us, each of us looking at the rooms to see if we wanted to stay there (most of us did at least one night), all the while being heavily pressured to decide and get settled in the room of our choice by the proprietors, and yours truly did chose and settle in to my $5 a night room with attached bathroom and blood red walls and an operating ceiling fan.
because my kidneys had been so jarred, the rest of my guts shortly after followed suit and began to atrophy and i began to feel pretty out of sorts. i rallied on, though, and bought the 3-day angkor wat pass the next day and went out to see some temples. they are as spectacular as everyone says and all those national geographic pictures are pretty close to capturing the enormity and beauty of them, but still do not quite do the place justice – you just have to see for yourself. and i myself only cruised through 4 of the dozens of these glorious structures! the place is immense. the bestest bonus: MONKEYS. lots of monkeys. friendly monkeys, too.
that day i could only muster a couple hours of temple trotting before i needed to return to rest in the cool of my room. about then i hit bottom with the illness and lost about 3 days, doing very little but walking around in the hotel’s immediate vicinity when it was cool enough, interneting a little, eating nearly nothing but crackers and drinking gallons of water and gatorade and sleeping. by day 2 i’d upgraded to a room with more space, hot water and A/C, which probably saved me entirely. i was in that hotel for 5 nights.
after that little parasitic setback eased up, i figured i’d better go see more temples and so i did that with a one day pass. this time i went at sunset and was duly impressed with the big kahuna, angkor wat (the one you see on all the magazine covers). next day i figured i’d had enough of sicknessville and had segued into temple fatigue and so headed out to phnom penh for some real city life and other photo ops. when i got there, i booked a much higher standard of room in a nice hotel for $55 a night with all manner of mod cons. the place used to be called star royal hotel but is now called khmer royal hotel and is directly across from the tonle sap river, and my view for that price up on the fourth floor was of the river and island beyond. the island has almost no development on it, though, and it’s flat and fairly uninteresting to look at. below and across the street was the busy waterfront promenade with its clean sidewalks and grassy areas where folks lazily stroll in the evenings when it cools down, practice tai chi type exercises in the pre-dawn hour when it’s also cool enough, or pick fights with policemen paroling the area and scooting vendors off of the pristine walkways. by this latter scenario i mean that on my first night in the room i caught site of a 60ish year old woman, likely a street vendor, who was chasing a couple young policemen down the promenade swinging her broom at them and yelling at the top of her lungs. each time the one of cops tried to subdue her, either by speaking calmly to her or putting up a night stick in defense and standing his ground, she continued to take whacks at one of them pressing them backwards in her fury. the scene went on for some 30 minutes or longer and every few minutes she hung back, turned around in exasperation and i thought she was finished. she was not. she no sooner returned to where these cops were and started her abuse again, pushing them back down the walk. by this time a huge crowd of spectators had gathered, as well as several more cops, and eventually the violent broom-smashing ceased and the voices quieted, and pretty soon the lady and her posse walked away one direction and all the policemen the other direction. surprisingly, she didn’t get hauled off to the pokey! my guess is that she was being told to leave with her goods to another part of town and she didn’t want to go, put up a stink, and the cops got cocky and threw some of her stuff over the wall toward the river. i think it was a steep slope there and she was PISSSSED at having lost her valuable wares, and was not afraid to call these guys out on their arrogant behavior. i believe she did triumph and am sure the crowd mostly took her side, although the promenade from then on and for the rest of my stay was clear of those vendors. at least each time i looked out my window i never saw any others.
one great thing about spending a couple nights in relative luxury, besides having the option of taking a soak in a real and super clean, modern bathtub – something i hadn’t done in 2 months – is that this place was a 1 1/2 minute walk from the famous foreign correspondent’s club. i spent some time there, although it’s not cheap, but the views from their balcony restaurant on the corner are not to be missed. there was a great black & white photography exhibit in the entrance of old war time soldiers in the fields, young kids with big guns and VW bugs and other 60s/70s iconic things from that time – several of them i’d seen before in national geographic or similar publications from the war.
from my table on the fcc’s balcony on my first day in town, i saw an elephant walking down the street right in the middle of regular (eg, HIDEOUSLY busy and chaotic) traffic being guided by his mahout. here are these crazy, chaotic drivers of scooters and tuk tuks, completely lawless and insane, driving as usual and then there is an elephant cruising at 1/8th the speed of them down one of the lanes! besides that queer scene, the breezes up there from the river and tasty western (reality) food are exceptional.
another great spot for the happy hour libation in style: the elephant bar at le royale hotel (one of the raffles chain of hotels). this was recommended to me and so i took the liberty of following up on that recommendation. i did not regret it for i not only had the tastiest gin and tonic i’d had in ages, but i’d also arrived on the same day that dozens of old restored, mostly british, sports and touring cars were parked out front in the circular drive. i thought, “wow. how cool that this place has a collection of cool old cars on display for everyone who comes to visit or stay in this hotel.” that was naive, of course. turns out, there is a big car rally throughout southeast asia, eventually ending up in europe i hear, and each of the drivers had to pay $46,000 just to participate. that doesn’t even count gas, maintenance on these old beauties from certain damage from those awful roads and the unforgiving climate. this was but one little treat for me upon my arrival as i do love the old english cars and got pix of some of them: 3 little red convertibles all in a row (triumph, sprite, mg), a few immaculate jags from the mid-60s and 70s, a couple old 20s touring cars and several rolls royces and bentleys, among others.
the best part of the elephant bar, however, had to be that i had the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with a real swell couple who’d lived in cambodia (and who now live in south africa – i will look them up when i get there without a doubt) and whom i met again for the next happy hour night at the FCC. fun, interesting, nice folks who helped make my time in phnom penh pleasantly memorable. we sipped our cocktails, shot the breeze, and marveled at the fumigation scene that took place just outside the bar window. we had been sitting there and suddenly the clear blue sky and green gardens went all greyish and clowdy. it was a strange sight as you could not see more than 1/2 a foot beyond the window. then just as quickly as the cloud came over the garden, the smoke dissipated. it was explained to me that they were fumigating because it was bug-time (around 6pm) and if anyone wants to go outside for a walk, they want to be sure it’s clear of the majority of those nasty critters for their guests.
then the not so light and civilized experiences occurred. i paid a visit to the tuol sleng genocide museum and the killing fields. i most certainly will not ever forget those experiences either. the tuol sleng museum is a nearly perfectly preserved memorial in a high school building in downtown phnom penh where the demented khmer rouge leader pol pot ordered his goons to detain “impure” cambodians they’d arrested for doing virtually nothing wrong between 1975 and 1979. these folks were poor farmers, diplomats, middle class business men, women and children. of the 40,000 or so brought to tuol sleng under pol pot’s orders, 7 survived. many of them were tortured and killed there, after having forced to admit to treason regardless of the truth (often they were forced to lie to appease their captors and to end the torture sessions). many more were taken out to some fields at chuoen ek, about 6KM outside of town, where they were beaten, tortured and killed, then their bodies tossed into mass graves and covered with some type of sulfurous powder to hide the stench so the nearest residents wouldn’t suspect these dubious practices. there is another memorial at chuoen ek which is an obelisk containing shelves and shelves of human sculls on display behind glass.
when i visited the genocide museum at tuol sleng in town, i spent about two hours going through each building and afterward had to sit very still and quiet for some time before i could leave the compound. it was impossible to conceal my emotions for those innocent souls. the next morning when i went out to the killing fields i only spent 45 minutes there. at neither site did i have a hired guide nor did i need one. both sites were very well marked with signs in english explaining the atrocities that occurred in there. it was a very powerful and moving experience at both places and it’s especially unbelievable that this one man, in a similar way to hitler, obtained absolute power over a nation of people and was able to get away with such malevolent destruction so without remorse and so recently in time.
the papers the other day said that “brother number 2”, pol pot’s second guy in command, is trying to get out of jail under some inane “i’ve been here long enough, don’t you think?” plea. i hope he rots in there til the end of his days and suffers a slow and agonizing death without ever seeing the light of day again.
beyond all of that opinionated reverie, overall i enjoyed phnom penh and would visit again. now, however, i’ve made my way to hanoi, vietnam and plan to head up into the hills near the chinese border in sapa where i hope to do some hiking (being sick and riding on buses and tuk tuks and planes is not conducive to getting good exercise, you understand). sadly, i had a canceled flight (too much of a frustrating disaster of disorganization and lost time to report adequately), have missed many more hours that i’d intended to spend in vietnam up and down the coast, and so will have to return to bangkok sooner than i’d prefer. but, now that i’m well again i plan to make the most of my short time here in vietnam before i go south in search of some tasty waves.
next post will likely be after my time up north where it is cool and possibly rainy, where there are high high high tall tall tall mountains to climb and verdant green rice fields cut into the hillsides in tiers and often shrouded in mist (that expression again! why is it always “shrouded in mist”??? why can i not come up with something else like “etherially misty” or just “damp”? i must be tired). should be eerie and spooky there and better than the continuing to walk around in the hot hot sun all day long and simmer in the humidity. it’s tiger and panda terrain, though i don’t think there are actually any pandas there, sad to say. probably no tigers either that i will ever lay eyes on. mostly, i’m just happy to get to a place that is QUIET and free of these motos, tuk tuks, honking horns and honking old ladies and all the noisy noise making thingies.
stick with me…it’s just going to continue to get better and weirder.
Tags: Cambodia, Vietnam
karen_shelver
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