Fabienne in Asia

paul, katrina, and natalie have been my traveling companions for the past week. we met up in ban lung, bonded on our near-death boat ride up the mekong, and spent a week together relaxing on don deth island in southern laos, literally a stone’s throw – or a kayak ride – from cambodia.

if we each lost a life on the mekong fast boat, we gained ten on don deth island. sophie slesor, the 6 year old daughter of family friends that i stayed with in phnom penh, informed me a couple of weeks ago that i grew up in the olden days. well i’m not quite 21 but it’s all relative, i guess. anyway, i experienced on don deth what little miss sophie must imagine of my childhood. dirt paths wide enough for bicycles, perfect for morning jogs. no cars (okay, maybe the occassional motorbike, but it’s a rare site). bamboo huts. no electricity, aside from the generators that run from 6-9 pm to provide a bit of dinner lighting but mainly to power the blenders for pina ko lao laos. everyone goes to bed with the sun and wakes up with the roosters. piglets chase ducklings, chickens cross roads, water buffalo languish in roadside mud and paddie fields.

after a daily morning run down to the other end of the island, the week involved a lot of hammock time, a lot of pondering, some writing, and some great books. we decided to take on the mekong in a less shocking fashion. one day we rented bikes and cycled to a swimming hole, the next we moved from the hammocks on our hut porches to inner tubes on a tamer section of the mekong. we really outdid ourselves yesterday; a full day of kayaking down grade 1-2+ rapids.

the biggest dilemma of the week was how to get the hammock to its most comfortable hanging position. it was a welcome break after the emotional slog of cambodia. don’t get me wrong; if it’s possible to be in love with a country, then i’m in love with cambodia. i want to live in cambodia, i want to explore every corner of it, and i’m already thinking of going back having only been out of the country for a week. but its history really hit me. i cried a few times. i want to read everything about cambodia that i can get my hands on, but the problem with reading these books is that i’m afraid i’ll lash out at the first unassuming american i see. you can’t shoot the messenger, or the informed, concerned, intelligent american toursit, but shit. it seems as if that country prompted or caused nearly every conflict in this part of the world. they bombed the hell out of cambodia, laos, and vietnam. they supported corrupt officials in order to suppress their obsessive fear of rising communism. due to land mines and unexploded ordinance, many dropped or planted by the u.s., cambodia has the highest proportion of amputees of any country in the world. now george bush is saying that they will only sign on to the ottawa convention to ban land mines if an alternative method of national defense is established. maybe things have changed since i left north america, but this was the last i heard on the issue. please drop me a line if there’s been any sort of improvement. anyway, it makes me writhe. yes, the united states is a huge aid donor in cambodia (they have the means), but what sort of message is the country sending if they will not acknowledge the totally debilitating impact of land mines and agree to ban the production and use of them? especially after having played such a predominant role in propelling the cambodian genocide? that was rhetorical. it makes my blood boil.

p.s. on another note: i have to admit, i’ve been contemplating the post-asia adventure. not tomorrow, or next month, but maybe a year and a half down the road, maybe summer 2007. i picked up a rough guide to australia a little while ago and peaked through it. i’ve been meeting so many extremely cool aussies that i might just have to explore that part of the world in the not-so-distant future. check out the pics.

p.p.s. i’ve settled into traveling. i know this sounds ludicrous, but when it’s a long term thing, i think it’s something that you really need to settle into. i’m not stressed out about accomplishing great things or saving the world anymore. traveling is self-indulgent, and if you give yourself the time and the space to indulge a bit and be okay with it, then it’s fabulous.

never take a fast boat up the mekong. ever. i like to think of myself as a fairly daring person – sometimes stupidly so -and i usually come out the other side of extreme situations pumped up and thrilled, no regrets, ready to recommend the experience or tackle the adventure all over again. not this time. give me white water, dense jungle, a rock face, a mountain top, a clear cut swarming with blackflies; I’ll take it on with gusto. you have to have a death wish – a gruesome, guts-splaying, blood-spouting death wish – to ever take a fast boat up the mekong river.

she’s a mighty river, the mekong. she boils and swirls unexpectedly, drops ten feet on a whim, and is home to tree tops, dead heads, and random bushes that probably pick up and relocate as inconspicuously as ents. these fast boat drivers have nothing in mind but the profit they’ll make on their boat trips, and the faster they get you to point ‘b’, the faster they can jet back to point ‘a’ for another load of tourists. the boat sits about 5 inches above the water at top speed, maybe 2 on a lower setting. it swerves last-minute around whirlpools, and clips little green islets that pop up out of nowhere. no helmets, no life jackets. at least with white water, in a raft or a kayak, you have control over yourself and your boat, you’re moving at a relatively manageable speed, you’re wearing protective gear, and you can really only kick yourself if something goes terribly wrong. we all had our own ways of coping. i quickly decided that my backpack meant nothing next to my life, and that if i were to die, and least i would die having set off to see the world, loving life, missing great friends, anticipating new ones…adventuring and learning and happy. then i just started singing leonard cohen songs to myself, every single leonard cohen song i knew, from ‘bird on a wire’ which reminds me so much of my dad, to all of the memories surrounding ‘chelsea hotel’, to thoughts of sitting in the house in ottawa, jess and rejean close by, snow outside, doing high school homework to ‘famous blue raincoat’.

natalie got out her lonley planet once we arrived in laos and read the page about fast boats on the mekong. the book says not to take one unless you have absolutely no other option. 2 a week usually go down, often full of tourists because the locals know not to take the boats, and if people don’t die, they lose all of their backpacking possessions to the currents of the mekong.

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i understand why people say that cambodia is the most beautiful place on earth. it's even beautiful, and clean somehow, in its poverty. the khmer are possibly the most tender, kind, jovial, and resilient group of ... [Continue reading this entry]

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