Fabienne in Asia

since luang prabang was the place to decide things in life, i ignored the promise i made to myself to always travel by the cheapest means possible (over land), and i walked into a travel agency and bought a plane ticket to phnom penh. perhaps it was the influence of paul and katrina’s decision to fly to chiang mai (yes! i met up with paul and katrina again! it was great, and i think my accent provided endless amusement for paul who loved to mock my desire to go ‘toobing on toosday’.). whatever it was, i had a week to kill before meeting up with my family, and cambodia had captured my heart, so i flew back.
i wonder if i would’ve fallen in love with cambodia regardless of rejean, or if he was the catalyst, or if he is an integral part of why i love the country so much. i didn’t really write about phnom penh the first time i was there. i think it was just too overwhelming, in the most positive sense. it had been the place i most needed to go ever since my mom stepped off the plane with my little brother when i was six, and suddenly i was there, right in the midst of it all, confronted with the mekong, the smiles, the land mine victims, and the history i’d read so much about. i saw rejean everywhere, i spent most of my days walking through and across and up and down the city, just searching and examining and trying to understand (i’m not quite sure what). it was a whirlwind, and i left suddenly because i knew that if i stayed i might never make it to laos. maybe i knew from the start that i’d be back.
i stayed in a guesthouse second time around, right on the top floor/roof, level with the highest of phnom penh’s buildings which don’t exceed 5 storeys. i did the unthinkable and went back to tuol sleng, the genocide museum. i didn’t last much more than about 15 minutes in the buildings, because it was just a bit too much to take, but it was something that i needed to do, whithout a tour guide this time. i just sat there for a while, outside on a bench in the centre of it all, realizing it’s something that probably can’t be understood, no matter how much you read or how many times you return.
canada house – rejean’s orphanage – had been a place i wanted to visit, but it shut down many years ago. i saw a sign in a guest house asking travellers to visit a non-governmental orphanage just outside of town, and to bring donations, if they had a spare afternoon. the kids were mostly from the provinces, and from my understanding, many of them either had parents who were too poor to support them, or were the children of hiv victims. one of the older boys (same age as rejean is now) took my camera for the afternoon and photographed the orphanage. the photos on the yahoo website are all his. he’s the one in the superman shirt.
so, before it begins to slip from my mind, here’s the phnom penh i want to remember and may forget (since we don’t all have the memories of elephants):
1. kramas – a country unified by these endemic checkered scarves – used as towels, head wraps to shield from the heat, waist straps to hold up the baskets of vendors selling books to baguettes to mangos, face masks to protect from the dusty cambodian roads, slings for babies. 2. the charming and incessant ‘hello madame, moto?’ proposition of every moto driver, one finger poised in the air and a quick, broad grin, like it’s all a joke and they already know that you’ll decline.
3. amok fish: fish in coconut milk, served over rice, deliciously, constantly unique.
4. early morning dragon boat practise on the mekong.
5. the owner of boh’r books who i befriended and visited almost daily. he and his family have probably been running the book store for the past decade. a conversation with him can cover ten distinct topics in ten minutes, and somehow flow seamlessly. it seems he has read just about every book in his shop. book stores are the most dangerous places at the worst of times. i never left empty-handed.

sihanoukville
my last days as a solo traveller were spent on the beaches of sihanoukville, a port town on the gulf of thailand. since 2005/age 20 seemed to be the year of reflection (alone in the big open spaces of canadian clear cuts, travelling alone, the space for thought that accompanies big decisions and life changes like taking a year off school and stopping rowing…) it seemed fitting to spend the last few days as a 20 year old alone on the beach with a notebook and ‘the alchemist’, gearing up for 21.
21 is going to be a good year. i think i’d decided this before dad and rejean and i stumbled across a fortune teller at the temple the other day. i’d never been to a fortune teller, dad didn’t want his fortune told, rejean was either disinterested or too superstitiuous, so i went for it. why not indulge this youthful soul-searching, eh? he said that if i go home now i’m going to stay for a while, look around, and leave again. he said that it’s going to be my gypsy year. and since this entry delved was deeper than i originally intended, i’ll just top it off with a quote from the alchemist. “each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.” guess we’ll just see how this whole life thing unfolds. for now, it’s down to the south thailand beaches for a couple of weeks of sand castles, beach soccer, snorkelling, and diving. merry christmas, happy new year! those of you at home: roll in the snow or have a brutal snowball fight or build a giant snowman and take a photo of it for me…please?

sorry, i know it’s been a while. it was a combination of becoming discouraged with blogging, sending heaps of personal emails and not wanting to then repeat what i’d written in them on the blog, and being surrounded by mountains, sunsets, books, and people that were far more enticing than a computer. now i’m in bangkok with my family, in a hotel grand enough to negate all of the backpacking i’ve done during these past months, and the pool and tennis courts aren’t going anywhere. we’ve poked around the city a bit and taken in our share of river ferry rides, night markets, and lavish thai temples. i’m just a tiny bit templed out though. gross understatement. i’ve reached a point where my mind looks something like this when i enter a temple: buddhabuddhabuddha lama buddhabuddha breath! buddhabuddha, all awash in gold leaf and digital flash. night markets widen that hole in my pocket, and i’ve ridden my fair share of boats that pitch and heave across bodies of water far too mighty for their sizes. so it’s time for an update.

luang prabang: the perfect city
the perfect mix of traditional laos and french colonial architecture, right at the junction of two rivers, under green and gnarled dr. seuss mountains. like alisa said, it’s the place to go to decide things in life. the place to sit right down in the dirt on the banks of a river and contemplate, anyway, while a group of laos boys across the water try to outdo one another’s back flips off the stern of their fishing boat, for your benefit. or the place to happen upon a collection of alice munro’s short stories and decide that it may not be so nuts to want to be a writer, after all. or to accept just how crazy a notion it is and decide to plunge.

vang vieng
this place is drug tourism. every restaurant along the main strip advertizes for happy shakes, happy scrambled eggs, happy pizza, and if you walk inside, sit down, and really examine the walls, it’s not too hard to find a small, hand-written sign for mr. ‘o’ tea. someone introduced the idea to vang vieng locals that tourists love ‘friends’, so now just about every one of these ‘happy’ locations is equipped with a few televisions, comfy cushions, and every episode of ‘friends’ since the beginning of time, on repeat, all day.
people who visit vang vieng seem to come away with a pretty strong opinion about the place. there’s the ‘vang vieng is awesome! you can just drink and tube all day, and the opium’s so cheap!’ crowd, and there’s the ‘all of those drug tourists give foreigners a bad name. i don’t understand how foreigners can justify and condone this sort of impact on laos society.’ crowd. i guess i fall a little in the middle.
i’ll try just about anything once. the perfect mix of thrill and relaxation is a day of tubing down a cool mountain river, stopping off for the occasional beer or leap from a flying fox, then hopping back on the tube to navigate the best route around the rapids, bums up.
i met up with the most wonderful group of girls – mostly med students from brisbane (of course, because who else do i travel with but australians?) – and we decided to spend a day white water kayaking and spelunking. spelunking! i had to use that word at least once on this trip. we spelunked on inner tubes into the deep dark depths of a water cave, left our tubes on a gravel bar, adjusted our headlamps, then crawled under stalactites and overhangs until we reach a hidden pool, great for swimming and as cool as a dip in stuart lake in july. also a prime location for sea monsters and anacondas.
i wonder if i’ll ever conquer my fear of water monsters. i mean, i’m 21, it’s a bit ridiculous. i’ll always swim, anywhere and everywhere, and for great distances, across massive bodies of water, but there’s always the lurking idea as i’m out alone in the middle of a lake that the swim i’m on will be my last because i’ll be swallowed by a monster that has risen from the plankton bottom after centuries of laying dormant. i’m getting my padi certification in a week. maybe surviving a few dives with sharks and sting rays will suppress the fear of monsters. i’ll let you know.
back to vang vieng. i don’t think i could last more than 3 days without the cynical side prevailing. a couple of girls i was with rescued a man from the water who was so drunk that he had lost his tube and had practically passed out in the rapids. kids ask you if you want to buy opium and probably press ‘start’ on the blender for 50 happy shakes a day. they must think that we’re all lazy, ‘friends’-loving, bob marley fanatics. i can’t help but wonder what pre-tourism vang vieng must’ve been like, when it was just a quiet little laos town in the mountains.

when my dad decides that he has read enough on silk road mummies for a while, i might just strategically set a book about the plain of jars in that beijing living room for the 'unsolved mysteries' buff. ... [Continue reading this entry]