Motorbike Sir?

By the looks of things, my friends and family (especially you mom) are all clamoring for some pictures of this mysterious Pooja. Well, here she is. She is from Edmonton though her family is originally from India.

Also, here are some shots of the countryside from my ride last Saturday:

Peov about to jump over this canal
Peov celebrating a successful landing

Visa rolling over a culvert
Leang’s bike after he tried to drive across a railroad bridge

I moved up in the world. By “world”, I mean Phnom Penh. By “up”, I mean that I now live in an apartment on the 4th floor of a building in the heart of the city. No longer will I have to walk down the mosquito-infested lakeside ghetto, past the jaba sellers and moto drivers in order to get home. Pooja (my girlfriend of 4 months) and I decided to get a place together. So far it is working out great.

The apartment has some modern amenities that I am slowly getting used to again. These are air-con, a washing machine, and hot water. The air-con I don’t really care about, as I find that in this climate if you sleep in air conditioning, you end up spending the entire day sweating (well, a lot more than usual). The washing machine is great – no longer do I have to worry about the laundry lady stealing my clothes or being overcharged. Hot water is also not necessary in this climate, but it is nice to indulge once in a while with some sclading cleansing action. It reminds me of what it used to feel like when I tried to warm up after waking up for school on a sub-zero moring in Minnesota. Also some days here are downright cool, and the thought of getting into a cold shower just doesn’t get me as excited as it used to.

Our new place also has cable TV. After not watching regular TV for almost a year, it is moderatly interesting to be able to channel surf again. I have realized that TV is not worth too much of my time. Crap followed by shit. I did get to watch an monday night football game today. I haven’t done that in a while.

The apartment has a balcony overlooking the street and then another on the roof. If I only had some sticks here, the one on the roof would be perfect for some floor hockey games. The balconies are perfect for letting in daily breezes, chilling in the hammock, or spying on my Cambodian neighbors (hey, they are probably doing the same).

I love the old 50’s tile that covers the floor and also the general paint sceme. Absent are the usual tradmarks of modern Cambodian interior design such as shiny brightly colored tile all over the floors and walls, or ornate, out of place balcony railings.

All in all I am extremely pleased with my new pad. I still need to go down to the used stereo street and pick me up a ghetto blaster. Then we can have a proper housewarming party.

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So what about some other stuff that has been going on, you ask?

A few weeks ago I rode up to Siem Reap to do some riding with my buddy Dave. After working and riding in Phnom Penh for 7 or so years, he started a new job in Siem Reap. Unfourtunately there aren’t many riders up there, and he was tired of riding around alone, so I drove up and joined him. Before I left, my engine was having some serious problems. I took it into my mechanic for a new timing chain, new gaskets, and new piston rings. I don’t think the bill was more than $60 (including parts!).

The ride up was plesant. The rainy season has turned the countryside from a brown wasteland into a lush ocean of green rice patties. Many areas have seen a lot of rain, creating lakes where before was only dust. As you approach Siem Reap, you cross an an Angkor-era bridge still in use. Beside the bridge was an amusing sign. There are also some towns along road #6 with excellent examples of old French colonial buildings.

Our first day we drove out towards Beng Mealea (one of my favorite temples, read about it in one of my earlier entries, Temple Mainia) and up Phnom Bok, a local mountain. At the top is a small temple in poor condition. An old anti-aircraft gun sits watch, along with a few Cambodians that guard the site. I was ready for action against those imperialist American bombers. The mountain did offer some great views of the surrounding countryside. Later that day I got a flat tire which took some locals 3 tries and 2 hours to try and fix.

The next day we road down near the Tonle Sap (great lake), which has now swelled to its apex. This is the “road” along the edge of the Tonle Sap. The picture is taken from a cement culvert where we had to enlist some local fishermen to help us lift the bikes over the obstruction. Here is the port where the speedboats from Phnom Penh dock.

I’ll leave you with an image of one of my favorite local thirst quenchers. Cambodians squeeze sugarcane with an orange through a press to make a tasty, ice cold drink. Delicious!

The past few weeks I have been trying to put my bike to use, and the rainy season isn’t stopping me. I have hooked up with some Khmer riders including my neighbor Peang (who is a guide) and my mechanic Peove. They have a crew that tries to go out every Sunday for what they call a “rally.” I try to tag along as much as I can. It is convenient riding with your mechanic who can fix any possible problem, as well as a professional guide, who has ridden all over the country.

Last Sunday morning eight of us set out westward into Kampon Speu province. Due to the decent weather (cloudy but no rain), we decided to ride out into the Aoral Wildlife Sanctuary, on the eastern edge of the Cardamom Mountains. Getting there was along a rural road common to much of the country – unpaved and unmaintained. Recent rains left large standing puddles that got us nice and muddy.

Riding in the countryside – especially with a large group – provides serious entertainment for the local communities. People come to the edge of the road to watch the show; kids are usually screaming at the top of their lungs and motioning for someone to do something entertaining like a wheelie. Those standing too close to puddles usually get an unexpected shower. If any of you remember those arcade racing games, the ones where you drove a dune buggy through some foreign country – that is the scene I am talking about. Here is a picture of Peove trying out a different sort of bike.

After about three hours of riding, we reached the sanctuary and entered a thinned out forest. This “sanctuary” has obviously been logged in the recent past. There were no large trees and little of the jungle-like underbrush you would expect in this part of the world.
We were obviously riding along a prior logging road. The road was good fun with numerous stream crossings. Everything was going great until we came across a swollen river. It was too deep to ford, so we attempted to carry one of the bikes across. This was working well until the current swept out the feet of one of the guys, sending him under for a second along with the bike. Luckily these dirt bikes are surprisingly resilient, they had it running only a few minutes later.

We followed another road that might we hoped would lead us to a better crossing, but all we found was an illegal logging camp. One of the riders, Sothea, posed with some gorgeous flowers that were in the area.

So we turned around and went back to the entrance to Aoral the way we came. The ride back was fun, though it was starting to get a bit dark before we reached the main highway. I was fortunate to catch a great sunset, complete with a family on their oxcart.

The ride back to town was along road number 4, scary in daylight because of the large amount of speeding buses, trucks, and Land Cruisers (returning from the beach) mixed in with the usual slow moving traffic of motorbikes, bicycles, and oxcarts. It was a white-knuckle ride due to my fatigue and the amount of traffic, but we made it back without incident.

All in all, it was a great day. I learned a new phrase in Khmer: Sabai, which means happy and klang, which means strong, evidently come together to mean: I am having a great time sabai klang klang.

We have a new roomate in the house. Her name is Ch’goo-ut, which in Khmer means crazy/foolish. We found her hungry and lonely wandering around on our street and decided to adopt her.

The second night it was in our house, it got caught in a sticky mouse trap. Three hours of dealing with a tramatized cat later, I suceeded in cleaning off most of the glue.

Will, who has taken the place of James in the house, did not want the cat in his room, so he set up a guardian as protection.

Some more pictures of the cat:
Enjoying my helmet.
Wondering what is going on.

With little fanfare my one year anniversary of being in Asia has come and gone. My arrival on July 1st, 2004 seems so long ago. I remember stepping off the plane onto the tarmac quite clearly. A wave of hot, steamy air enveloped me as I hustled over to a waiting bus, all bleary-eyed from the twenty odd hours I had been sitting on planes. We were squeezed in like sardines but at least the A/C was cranked. Once I cleared customs I hopped into an unofficial taxi and taken to a dingy sex tourist motel. I paid way too much for the taxi and way too much for the room, though it seemed reasonable at the time. All I wanted was some sleep. That first morning in Bangkok, watching the sunrise through the smog from my 8th story room overlooking the skyline of the city, will always be a vivid memory. That morning it really kicked in. I am in Bangkok. I have no plan. What should I do now? I often recount in my head the events of the past year. Many experiences I have had seem unreal now.

In the five months that I traveled around Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia I have seen so many interesting things and met so many interesting people. I won’t recount them here – read what I have written in previous entries for some of the more interesting stories. Or wait until I get home and I can bore you in person.

I have received a few emails from friends who are concerned that when I come home, they will not recognize me. True I think that a year spent in Asia has changed me. I think that sitting on a bus for 26 hours has shown me a thing or two about patience. Many things that once shocked me now seem quite normal. Deep fried tarantulas and crickets? Nothing but a roadside snack. Seeing a kid with no arms and no legs being pushed around in a cart by his little brother begging for money? Just another day in Phnom Penh. But I really believe that I am still the same old me. I like to think that I have matured a bit, maybe grown a bit wiser, and definitely become more handsome.

I am really enjoying being away from US culture and politics. Don’t get me wrong, I love my country, but being away from it for this long has shown me the various aspects of our nation and culture that are flawed. US culture is too materialistic (not that Cambodian culture isn’t, it is just that they don’t have the material part of the equation) and insular. For many reasons living in a place like Cambodia, life seems more “real”. It is hard to explain in a form such as this. Those of you who have traveled to developing parts of the world probably know what I mean. The rest of you will have to ask me in person.

The friends and family who I left behind are never far from my thoughts. I hope to see all of you in the near future. I promise that I will be home next May at the latest. Whether my homecoming will be just a visit or a more permanent move is still very undecided. If May is too long to wait, you are all more than welcome to swing by for a visit. Think about this: when is the next time you will have a friend to show you around Cambodia?

Here are some pictures from our party a few weekends ago, courtesy of Omry. We had an even bigger turnout than last time – estimates of turnout vary between 300-500 people. Good times were had by all. The DJs did an excellent job; Primitive Soul were on from 12 – 330 followed by Dave from the Boom Boom Room who layed down some excellend Drum & Bass. Before I knew it, it was 730 am. Neil and I were still behind the bar trying to kick a half-full keg.

In was reported in the Cambodia Daily today that the rainy season officially started April 27th, which means that we will probably have to wait until the next dry season (next December) before we can have another one.

Enjoy:
here I am, stringing up speaker wire before the party
the house before guests arrived
Vinh and I working the bar
Omry with his game face on
the crowd
check out the video screen we set up
Primitive Soul working the vinyl
James and Omry share a moment
Neil and Vinh

My bike hadn’t started for half an hour. We were sitting at the bottom of an enormous rut on the side of a mountain, drenched in sweat that a swarm of bees found attractive. At least 20 of them were on me, though I wasn’t too worried, as I was to tired to make any sudden movements that might cause them to sting.

“We need to get the bike to a place where we can push it and then pop the clutch,” I suggested. Having already driven up some hairy sections of the hill, turning the bike around and heading back down did not seem like the best option.

“There is a relatively smooth section up here,” Andrew said while gesturing 25 meters up the hill.

“Alright, lets give it a shot,” I said as we began the energy draining process of pushing my motorbike up the ‘road’, with scores of bees still sitting on our shirts and sweat dripping from my chin. We had gone a few meters when Andrew said that my back tire was a bit low of air.

Shit.

It was at that moment that I began to wonder what the hell I was doing in the middle of the jungle, hundreds of kilometers from civilization. Everything had been fine for the first four days of our trip. Gorgeous jungle covered mountains and fresh cool air were a welcome change from the dusty confines of Phnom Penh. But at that moment, things were looking a little bleak. We had no air pump and only basic motorbike repair knowledge. I thought we might be here for a while.

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This Saturday we are throwing a party at our house. Anyone in town is encouraged to come by. Our last party was a big success and we even turned a slight profit. I designed this poster, though my friend Vinh came up with the basic concept. It should be a fun time, I will let you all know how is goes.

Last night at about 2 am I was lying in bed at my guesthouse up in Kampong Chhnang watching the Discovery Channel when I realized that an odd noise was coming from the window. At first I thought it was one of the guesthouse workers doing something, but when I looked, I saw that the ground was wet. I grabbed my flip flops and ran outside in my underwear and couldn’t believe my senses. RAIN! And not just a little sprinkle, no, a serious downpour was underway. The last time I saw rain was Thanksgiving Day (November 25 for all you non-Americans) during the Phnom Penh Water Festival. I stood there for a few minutes until I was sufficiently wet and cooled off. For the previous 5 hours I had been laying in a pool of my own sweat on the bed as my ceiling fan tried in vain to relieve the stagnant air around me.

I have mentioned before that Cambodia is in the middle of its dry season (January to June), but a significant portion of SEA is also suffering from the worst drought in 10 years. Certain areas of the country have been hit particularly hard as the rains ended a month earlier than normal. The Prime Minister has gone so far as to ask Thailand to extend its cloud-seeding flights up to 10 km into Cambodia.

I fell asleep to the steady rain drops landing next to my window. The next morning I woke up to go teach. The ground was still wet and a faint mist hung in the air. It was cool enough that I didn’t immediately start sweating and that post-rain, musty sent was a welcome relief compared to the dry dust I have been breathing for the past 4 months.

On my way back to Phnom Penh, the bone-dry, brown rice fields punctuated with Palm trees faded into the same surreal mist. I hit a few patches of rain on the way home, but it was not significant enough to cause much discomfort. As I rolled down my street I saw that Phnom Penh had seen a good bit of rain. The backpacker ghetto in which I live has a single, narrow dirt road that has to accommodate many tuk tuks and motorbikes that constantly harass any foreigner who comes within 5 meters of them. I smiled while I drove through some sizable puddles as many travelers were trying to dodge the mud and moto drivers in their flip flops and white skirts.

“Governor, how are you?”
“Ohhhhhh! busy, busy, busy, busy”

Often times the Governor repeats words over and over when he is trying to emphasise a point. A few weeks ago, the CPP (Cambodian Peoples Party) had their annual party conference and a bit of reshuffling took place. (Governors are not directly elected by their province but are instead appointed by their party. The CPP received about 60-70% of the votes in the last national election, so for the governorships, they are allotted something like 14 out of the 23 provinces.) So the Governor has been moved to his native province of Takeo, about 75 km south of Phnom Penh. I asked him how he felt about the move.
“Ohhhhh, very happy, happy, happy, happy, happy…”
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