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Cambodia

In March of 2003 the world was not at its most stable state. U.S. and British troops were moving into Iraq and SARS was rapidly spreading around Asia. I, however, had a few weeks without classes, so what did I decide to do? Tour SE Asia, of course! Although I was a little worried at the time, now I look back and realize that it was an amazing experience that left a large impact on me.

I traveled with an American friend of mine who is an intern in Tokyo. On the plane from Tokyo to Bangkok we discussed our loosely set plans and some of our concerns about traveling while a war was starting and a new disease that originated in Asia was spreading around the world. My friend, Jamin, half jokingly had brought face masks for us to wear on the plane (although we didn't) and said that he'd played a worst-case scenario game with himself that went like this: The worst thing that could happen was not that we might get sick, and it wasn't even that we might die. It was, he had decided, that we might get kidnapped and be tortured for years and years. That was the worst thing that could happen. This didn't ease my mind about the trip, but at least we'd found that we could incorporate a little humor... sort of.

It had been snowing in my tiny Northern Japanese village the morning I left. When I arrived in Tokyo on the Shinkansen (bullet train, tons of fun!) I noted that it felt a little warmer - but that was no transitional point for Bangkok. Our flight arrived at midnight, but even at that hour the humidity and heat were nearly overwhelming, they reminded me of August afternoons in Alabama right after a rainstorm. It was muggy. Even though our next flight was no more than six hours away we decided to go a hotel room near the airport and try to get some sleep. Because of this, my first impression of Bangkok was from a taxi at 1:30 in the morning; dark, dirty, humid, and involving some strange road system I didn't understand beyond the fact that apparently cars were required to travel very quickly. Jamin reminded me that Bangkok is the city that once had a 22 hour traffic jam. Lovely.

Our hotel was kind of embarrassing. It was very tourist-focused and seemed to have a mall/amusement park mix attached to it. But it was the cheapest we could find in the area, so we decided to deal with it and that we would find more "authentic" lodgings the next day in Cambodia. Still, besides the fact that we used bottled water to brush our teeth, we could have been in just about any country with air conditioning and high-rise hotels (we were on the 17th floor).

After sleeping for three hours we returned to the airport where we needed to track down the tickets that one of Jamin's friends had reserved for us two days earlier. This was a little confusing. It was an 8:00am flight from Bangkok to Siem Reap, Cambodia on Thai Airways - or so we thought until we were informed that Thai Airways doesn't fly to Siem Reap - but Bangkok airways does, and that's in the other terminal. Could we get a bus to the next terminal, we asked. No, you walk. So, off we went through the airport before sunrise, unsure of which airline our reservations were with. Bangkok airways was very friendly, however, and even offered us an earlier flight so we wouldn't have to wait so long - not that the flight was crowded. Just for the record, we were hungry (our last meal had been airplane food on the way from Tokyo), so we stopped in a duty free shop and purchased breakfast: peanut M&M's.

From my experience the airports in most of Asia either bus you from the terminal to the planes, or allow you to walk. When we (and the other twelve people who'd been on our flight) arrived in hot, flat, dusty Cambodia at 9am we got to walk from the plane to the small building that is the airport. Here we each gave US$20 and a passport photo for our visas and where swept through customs without a problem, closely watched by the armed guards that meandered around the one-room airport.

As we stepped out of the airport we were greeted by a crowd of people, mostly men, shouting English phrases and holding up signs for taxi services, guesthouses, hotels, restaurants, and just about anything else tourists might be interested in. A friend who had recently visited Siem Reap had suggested a certain guesthouse to us, so we had already decided to stay there, but we needed to get there. We rented a car and driver for $5 (Cambodia uses a combination of reel, its national currency, and US dollars) to take us to our guesthouse. On the way there I suddenly felt very overwhelmed. It wasn't just the tropical heat, but the sights - the unpaved roads, the shoeless children, the skinny cows and chickens on the side of the street, and the motorbikes. Entire families of two parents and four children would ride on a single motorbike together, the children holding on to the babies, the toddlers hanging on to their parents with a dependency that must have been completely instinctual. I couldn't relax, couldn't stop looking out the window, and couldn't really believe that I was actually there.

Once we arrived at our guesthouse we got a room - bars instead of glass over the window, a ceiling fan that sounded like a helicopter (but mercifully cooled the room down), and mosquito netting over the beds - all for $7/night. We also had our own bathroom with a toilet raised on a pedestal (no toilet paper), a shower hose hanging on the wall (meaning the entire tiny room was the shower), and a sink with a drain pipe that stopped a few inches above the floor, allowing the water to drain onto the floor and giving a false sense of cleanliness and modernization. But it was a place to stay, so we set down our bags and decided to walk around a little bit. We walked down the main trash-lined dusty street full of motorbikes, cars, and people. Some motorbikes had two-seater attachments on the back of them, which are apparently popular among the tourists. We couldn't walk down the side of the street for more than ten meters before one of these would pull over and offer us a ride, using odd English phrases like "hey man, you going somewhere?" "How's it going? Need ride?" "what's up? Go to Angkor Wat?" and stuff like that. The cars were interesting, too, because they were driving on the right side of the road, but many of them were apparently not designed to do so, as their steering wheels were on the right side of the car. I guess this is just one of the many circumstances in third world countries where you take what you can get. Most of the buildings lining the main street were vehicle repair shops, and stands that were selling some type of liquids in reused glass bottles. We did notice a few political party centers, which stood out sharply because they were so well kept, their lawns were green and their gates guarded by at least one gun-wielding man. We crossed the main street (which reminded me of the computer game 'Frogger') and entered an outside market there. I was in a daze, so I don't remember much except the meat. Meat sitting out in the sun, some of it recognizable, some of it not, but all over it covered with flies. We began to walk a little faster, and didn't discuss where the meat served at restaurants would be from. More skinny chickens paraded around, mixing around our feet with one or two giant roaches. We weren't really interested in buying the photocopied books, cosmetics, shoes, clothing, or especially the meat, so we didn't stay in the market long and headed back to our guest house where we took a nap.

When we woke up we met Jamin's friends - a woman living in Beijing and another living in Hanoi - and ate lunch at one of the near by restaurants while our guest house host arranged transportation for us to, from, and around Angkor Wat. All the restaurants we went to were open-air restaurants, usually no more than a pavilion with chairs and tables and a sectioned off area for the kitchen. During several different meals while we were at restaurants like this, cats would walk under our table and rub against our feet - something that is not the most pleasant of surprises, especially if you don't like cats. The food was excellent though - especially the fruit.

After lunch we decided to go to Angkor Wat and see a few of the different Wats before sunset. The most common mode of transportation is, of course, motorbike. Because Siem Reap is such a tourist-filled area, there are many motorbike drivers who will drive you around wherever, whenever, for a set price: $7/day. This felt a little awkward to me, simply because it felt like I had a servant at my beck-and-call. At the same time, however, I was not ready to try to drive a motorbike myself and I needed to get around, so I climbed onto the back of one of the bikes waiting for us, and my driver, Mhangu, sped off through the traffic towards Angkor Wat. As I held onto the bike I wondered if anyone ever wore helmets there (I couldn't see any), and if it was a bad idea to ride motorbikes with just flip-flops. I decided that I was glad my parents couldn't see me right then - some things are better shared after the event (kind of like when I went sky-diving...). Over the next five days in Cambodia I got accustomed to motorbikes, and really began to enjoy them. They're not safe, and really feel like hell on the many bumpy and unpaved streets, but there is a certain freedom that comes with riding out in the open at 50 kilometers an hour; you can really see the area, hear the sounds, smell the odors, and beyond that, motorbikes and their drivers can be convenient. As it turned out, Mhangu didn't speak much English at all, but some of the drivers that I encountered later were nearly fluent and provided me with some insight into Cambodia's history and culture.

As we approached the main gate to the Angkor Wat park to buy our $40 three day tourist passes (cheaper than Disney World, but extremely expensive by Cambodian standards) we heard an explosion near by. When we asked where it had come from, the guard pointed to the surrounding fields and explained that every day at that time a crew goes around to detonate landmines. Cambodia, after its years of serving as cold war and Vietnam battle ground in addition to its own civil war and genocide, is still heavily covered with landmines that continue to threaten its residents. I later read in a guidebook that it is not advised to stray from a path under any circumstances (including make-shift toilet emergencies) because of landmines.

I cannot sum up the temples of Angkor Wat in any type of writing. Unfortunately I am undereducated in the history that is behind them and I picked up what I could from guidebooks and various information plaques. The Wats are impressive, massive, and really quite mind-boggling. We saw a great deal of them, moving from one to another on motorbikes and noting the differences and likenesses between temples, their structure and the materials used to build then. They had relief sculptures, statutes of Buddhas, Hindu mythological figures, stone elephants, and ten meter smiling Buddha faces carved into the walls. Even right after they were constructed, the temples were rarely visited except for special ceremonies, so the stairs were nearly impossible to climb, often they would be about a foot up with only three inches across to step on - no exaggeration. While climbing up seemed like a good work out, things looked a little different from above and climbing down became an act of balance and coordination, not to mention trying to suppress any fear of height issues. We saw many Khmer children running up and down these as though the Wats were their playground... and, upon further thought, I realized that this was probably the case. Perhaps one of the most impressive things about touring Angkor Wat is that one is welcome to climb nearly anywhere and walk anywhere (with caution of landmines). My travel buddies and I discussed how different it would be if it were an American national park, or even in Europe instead. Instead of carefully planned paths lined with guide rails and watched by guards, we were given the free range all over the complexes with not safety cautions or limitations. Since the restorations that are taking place in Angkor Wat are largely under the surveillance and budget of international organizations, I am not sure how much longer tourists will have this freedom, but I was glad to have enjoyed it while I was there.

At every stop before entering a Wat complex and again while leaving, Khmers would crowd around us offering to sell us water, coke, photocopied guidebooks, give us tours, sell souvenirs; at one point I was even offered a young baby. Often children would follow us for as far as they could, trying to get our attention and buy their souvenirs. But they weren't begging, and when my friends and I bought a few sets of postcards from a girl for more than she'd originally asked, she gave us bracelets as well. These children certainly understand money and language, most of them knew enough English to bargain and advertise, and many of them also spoke a fair amount of French and Japanese as well. It was an indescribably odd feeling to see a six-year-old child say while bargaining, "If I sell at that price, I get no profit." ...and at that point I thought back how, at that age, I was still thrilled by playing dress-up and using finger paint.

Near the end of the first day we decided to go up to a Wat that rests on the highest point in the area. The climb up this hill was not exactly a piece of cake, but everyone was going at their own pace, and so we began to climb. On the way up I passed beggars and musicians, many of them missing limbs because of landmines, and yet, here they were in the middle of this steep hill everyone was struggling to climb. At the top we had a lovely view for sunset and the surrounding Cambodian terrain, which was stretching out before us, and in the company of tourists from nearly every nationality as well as the brightly robed monks (many of whom, apparently and oddly enough, are nicotine-dependant). As it began to get dark, we took the less-steep elephant path down the hill, stepping aside every now and then as tourist-baring elephants meandered by us. It was dark by the time we met our motorbike drivers and sped back to our guesthouse, worn out and covered in the sweat and dust from the day.

We had dinner in another restaurant near our guesthouse where I ate chicken curry from a carved out coconut and had fried bananas for desert. A shadow puppet show started while we were eating our meal and although it was all in Khmer (and the whiney singing was sometimes annoying), it was an interesting cultural aspect to see, though I got more interested in the geckos that climbed up and down the railings and ceiling of the restaurant. When our meal was finished we took not-warm, not-cold showers and slept under the loud whirring of the ceiling fan.

We woke up at 5:00am, before down. When we stumbled sleepily out of the guesthouse our motorbike drivers were waiting for us - I remember hoping that they were more awake than we were because I was so tired I wouldn't have trusted myself to drive. It had rained that night, and we splashed through puddles in the wet streets on our way back to Angkor Wat. The plan for the morning was to watch sunrise from the actual Wat known as Angkor, then spend the rest of the day looking around different Wats in the area. Angkor was crowded, everyone trying to find a perfect spot to watch sunrise. Unfortunately, sunrise itself was obscured by clouds, so we spent most of our time exploring rather than sunrise gazing. Exploring means climbing - up and up the steep steps until it seemed as though half of Cambodia was spread out before us. We rested at the top of the complex as the sun finally did expose itself, and it wasn't long before it was strong and beating down on us. The climb back down was actually pretty scary... This picture was taken from the top, and the tiny purple blob is Jamin at the bottom!

After sunrise we decided to have breakfast at one of the tent-restaurants set up nearby. Outside, but covered by a tarp, we sat on plastic outdoors table and chairs, and ordered the BEST banana pancake I've ever eaten. While we were eating a young girl, probably about 11 years old, approached us and tried to sell us postcards. We told her that we weren't interested and she sat down at the table next to us and watched us. (I'd noticed a lot of people doing that, and I wasn't sure why, but my best guess was to practice English.) Finally she caught my eye and asked where I was from. Now, there was a war starting, and in general Americans didn't have the warmest welcome in many countries, including Cambodia, so I gave her my adopted answer. "Japan," I said. She looked at me sideways and said "I don't believe you," then began to have a conversation with me in Japanese. When I responded in Japanese, we were both surprised and both laughing. After a while she told me that she would wait to sell us her postcards until after we were done eating. As I returned to the conversation my friends were having, she sat down and wrote me a note in English, which she then gave to me "as a souvenir." When we had finished our breakfast, we all bought postcards from her.

What else can I say about that day? It was amazing. We went from one Wat to another - some made with different materials, some with elephant statures, some that were Buddhist, and others that were Hindu - one of them was mixed due to a change in king and his preference (Kind of reminded me of Mary Queen of Scots, only here they just re-carved the figures and changed them from a Buddhist meditation position to a Hindu one). Some Wats had been completely renovated and rebuilt, while others were shabby ruins, piles of stones with the occasional archway still standing. It was all thrilling and overwhelming at the same time. We returned to out guesthouse for lunch and rest time. I was lucky enough to talk to one of the sons of the guesthouse master, who taught me thank you and hello in Khmer, while he practiced his nearly perfect English. He told me that he is a motorbike driver, and gave me a little insight on life in Cambodia while discussing education, tourism, and his family.

It wasn't long before we were back on our motorbikes and heading back to Angkor Wat for the last time. We visited more Wats (notice a theme here?), one I remember well because a 14-year-old boy began to give us a tour. Normally when someone had begun to approach us and tell us about a certain area we had told them that we weren't interested in a tour (especially after hearing about a friend whose tour-guide had apparently memorized a guidebook and was reciting phrases like "From here you are sure to enjoy the pleasant scenery of the Cambodian forest."); but this kid was telling us some fairly interesting facts and answering our questions, so we stayed with him until it was getting dark (which means that the geckos were crawling everywhere and making me jump) and he asked for US$5, which we gave to him - but then he asked for more money, this time in Thai baht, which we refused, and things got a little messy there, but nothing too bad.

We also went to a well-known Wat where trees have been growing over the ruins, stretching their long roots down the sides of the stone walls and enclosures like waterfalls. This was really impressive, it seemed like each tree was more massive than the last - most of them were older than the United States. I think this is the Wat complex where the movie 'Tomb Raider' was filmed, and we joked around with one another that we were Angelina Jolie - but as it turned out, none of us had actually seen that movie. Oh well.

At the end of the day we took our motorbikes back for the last time, bid our drivers farewell, and went out for dinner. This last meal in Siem Reap was something I will probably never forget - it's an experience that still disturbs me. We sat down and ordered our meal at an outside restaurant on the corner of a fairly busy intersection. I ordered fried fish and got just that - one fried fish, no flavor or anything. The fact that its head was still attached didn't bother me (since I see that all the time in Japan), but the fact that there was almost no meat on it was a little disappointing. The tv in the corner was playing some type of Mtv program, which contrasted harshly against everything else around us. When we were about half way through our meal a raspy, croaking voice began to shout out to us "hello, hello, hello" and from the corner of my eye I could see a hand held out by the plants behind me. Now, I wish I could say that I knew how to handle this. I wish I could tell you that I brought myself to acknowledge the source of this voice (which I had assumed to be coming from an old, sick man), and somehow have made that person's life better, either by inviting him or her into the restaurant, or providing money, or something - but I couldn't bring myself to do that, and we sat through the rest of our meal, ignoring the pleas as we tried to carry on our conversation. The hand was reaching, and I was getting very creeped out, and as soon as we were done eating we got up to leave. While we were paying about three small children ran up to the table we'd just left and had taken the remainders of our meal. The waitresses yelled at them, but it there was nothing to be done - those children had been the source of the hellos, and apparently had been hungry.

I learned something that night, and for me it was a very difficult lesson. I was at first angered by those kids for begging, for throwing out their eerie "hellos" across our dinner table - but then I was shaken up. I've never lived in a large enough city to deal with beggars on a regular basis, and I still have no method of dealing with them - be it giving them money, taking them out for a meal, or ignoring them. But that night I realized that those children were doing only what they could do, using their one English word to try to communicate and look for sympathy. It shook me up considerably, and the fact that it bothered me so much embarrassed me. Now I only hope that I can remember the lesson I learned - that those children weren't begging in order to bother me, but instead they were doing the only thing they could with the hope of survival.

The next morning we arose again at 5:00am, this time on the instruction of our guesthouse owner. We had decided to take the boat from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, which would only be six hours in the not-dry-not-wet season. Now, that's the express boat, the local boats would take about 36 hours, we were told. Either way, boats are the safest means of transportation in Cambodia, or at least they're much safer than buses (and friends had recently expereinced an airplane without seatbelts...). The owner of our guesthouse had set us up with tickets and means of transportation to the boat, and he told us that the bus would pick us up at 5:30am and would not wait, so we had to be ready.

Now, do me a favor quickly. Think of a bus. What comes to mind? A school bus? A public transportation bus? Maybe even a posh travel-guide-on-the-microphone tourbus? Well, seeing as we were in Cambodia, I don't think any of us were expecting something along those lines, and yet we were still surprised when our "bus" pulled up. It was an old, clanking pick-up truck with two benches in the truck bed and a tarp stretched out over the top. We threw our bags in and climbed up, and held on as the truck bumped along the dark early-morning streets. We went from one guesthouse to another (with names like "happy house," "Mama's Guesthouse," and "love happy gusethouse") and picked up other boat-bound people like ourselves, piling the bags up and holding on as the truck became more crowded. Far past the point when the truck seemed full (we were very cozy, yet no one seemed interested in talking - it was, after all, not even 6am), we began to head out of town on a dirt road towards the Tonle Sap Lake where we were to meet our boat.

Having seen many American inner cities and suburban developments, I have always been accustomed to seeing wealthier homes and areas on the outskirts of a city. Although I hadn't thought about it before this, I realized that it's the complete opposite in third-world nations. As we left town, the poverty gap became more and more apparent not only in the housing (from large structures on stilts with wooden and rush-woven walls to small rooms on stilts with cut-up cardboard boxes serving as walls), but there was less livestock near the houses, replaced by more staring, naked children. The sun wasn't up yet, and there wasn't much movement on the street, but our driver seemed to feel obligated to act as local alarm clock by honking the carcass-of-a-truck's horn around every corner and while passing every animal or person on the side of the road. It didn't really bother all of us piled in the back of the truck, however, we weren't exactly about to take a nap for fear of falling out.

As the morning grew later the traffic grew heavier, other trucks, cars, and vans all filled with tourists bound for the boat. This increased the beeping, and from the back of our respective "buses" we stared at each other, as though to say "It's too early; howcome you got a van? Wish these roads were paved?" At a few points we had to pull over to let another "bus" pass us, and the road was so uneven that the truck would tilt sideways and we were afraid that it would tip over completely.

Eventually we arrived at what seemed to be the stopping point - all the various "buses" were letting their passengers out, and as soon as we were out of the truck crowds of women and girls were gathering around us, trying to sell us small loafs of French-style bread and little triangles of madcow brand processed cheese. We each bought some for breakfast, then realized that there was a slight problem. This was where we were supposed to be meeting our boat - but there was no boat in sight. In fact, there wasn't even water in sight. Unsure of what to do, we simply began to follow the other tourists, through the crowds of people to an unknown destination. At one point the line of tourists came to a halt, and when I looked ahead I saw some water - a shallow stream of muddy, smelly water over which a narrow ramp made of a plank had been built, roughly five feet over the water. We'd all stopped because the plank (which was about 6 inches wide) had fallen into the water, and some of the townspeople were hauling it back in place. This was a pretty frightening contraption, but once it was up and people we climbing over it, I realized that I would have to simply lock my jaw down and walk over it, praying I wouldn't lose my balance. I did. It was fine. Relieved on the other side, I realized that there had been some local people standing on it to keep the plank in place, which I really appreciated. But at the same time, I wonder what compelled them to do that. Does someone pay them, or do they just do it to be kind? It's little gestures like that that make me want to speak the language of any place I visit.

We kept walking, kept following, stepping across garbage piles, walking around nearly-dead dogs, and looking for a boat. What we finally saw was a line of boats, little boats, which the other tourists were boarding. Now, this was another point of confusion. We had, on out glossy tickets, a lovely picture of a large white boat. Not a cruise ship, mind you, but something that was large enough to have a cabin and fit all the tourists we'd been following. These boats, however, looked more like Disneyworld ride boats, with eight wicker chairs per boat. So we showed one of the boat drivers our shiney tickets with the pretty picture, and he said "okay, okay" and told us to put our luggage at the bow and sit down. We did as we were told. We were still confused, but soon pulled out and, rocking back and forth, slowly made our way down the shallow, smelly river. It was so shallow, in fact, that the rudder kept catching on plants at the bottom. I learned later that the large lake we were heading towards is only 30 feet deep in the rainy season. We weren't sure what was going on, but we were stuck and if we'd somehow gotten confused and were in for a 36-hour ride, well, there wasn't anything we could do about it. Scared of boats and water ever since I could remember, I was grabbing onto the sides every time the boat tipped and trying to cheerfully reassure one of our travel companions when she said "Um, you guys, I don't think this is the express boat..."

Although it didn't look like the picture, and certainly didn't feel like an express boat, we got to see a lot from our little eight-seater. We passed a lot of fishermen and women, some with their entire family on board, heading one way or another on the river. Sometimes boats would spray us when they passed, which at first seemed annoying and unsanitary, but since we couldn't do a damn thing about it, we quickly learned to laugh it off. We began to pass houses that were floating in the water, bobbing up and down, with boats that were parked at their porches. As these became more and more common, we passed two such buildings that apparently created a school. I could hear children inside reciting lessons and saw a few kids in what I've found to be the typical Southeast Asian school uniform: white shirt and navy blue skirt/pants. These kids grow up in houses on the water, take boats to floating schools - it seemed really impressive. It got more impressive as we headed into an entire floating village. The sun was coming up, and everything seemed very peaceful, and luckily for us, our rudder got caught on plants again and we turned the engine off while they tried to remove it. I saw toddlers sleeping on the bows of small boats - this made me nervous, but I guess they grew up sleeping there. There were pigs kept in small cages strapped to the sides of houses with no room to move, and there were tv antennas, which seemed a little funny to me. Everything was silently floating together, bobbing up and down - it was a moment I don't think I'll ever forget. (Later I would read that in the early 1990's 33 Vietnamese fishermen, their wives, and children were killed and 29 more wounded in this floating village during a racial conflict. Cambodia's pain and beauty never seem far from one another. [source: Cambodia: Report from a Stricken Land by Henry Kamm])

As soon as the plants were detached from our boat, a surprising object came into sight: the same boat on out tickets! We learned later that because we were heading towards a dry season, the river wasn't high enough for the boat to dock near land, thus the Disney-jungle-ride-without-safety-track-boats were only to transport us from the land to the floating village where our larger express boat was waiting.

When we pulled up to the larger boat many of the our bags were taken by young, energetic boys, and delivered to the storage area on the boat. Once those kids found out whose bag they'd moved, they would then demand a dollar for their services. To me is seems like this kind of action would be illegal in the U.S. or Japan; but none of the boat officials blinked an eye - as my very well be the case with any such situation in Cambodia. Anyway, my friends and I decided not to go into the dark, stuffy, cabin on the boat, but to sit out on the roof instead. So, as out boat set off across the Tonle Sap Lake and down the river towards Phnom Penh, I applied my treasured spf85 sunblock and watched the country slip by us. No many people talked to each other on the boat - there were no Cambodian passengers, mostly Australians, Germans, and a few Japanese from what I could make out. In a way I've found that the way tourists in Asia often treat each other is absurd - we all try to ignore each other because we're trying to have an 'authentic' experience, and seeing other foreigners somehow spoils that. I think this is silly - there is so much information tourists can share with one another - but maybe that's because I live in a rural village in Asia and almost never seen foreigners. Right - back to the boat ride...

So, you're sitting out in the sun for a five or six hour boat ride across a lake and down a river is SE Asia - it's flat, there are no roads in sight, sometimes you see huts on stilts, sometimes you see water buffalo, and usually when you pass a fishing boat, you wave to the people on it, and they wave back. What else do you do? You sleep. That's about what everyone did. We woke up to drink water, reapply sunblock, and rolled back over on the warm, metal roof of the boat. At one exciting moment we turned around to retrieve someone's backpack that had fallen through guard rails. (Guard rails? Oh! Is that was those three inch high things were for? They seemed more like trip wires), then watched the poor woman try to dry out her passport and money, but that was about it for excitement.

After 5 1/2 hours we pulled up to the dock in Phnom Penh (which was about six feet higher than the boat with the water at it's low level). Getting luggage and getting off the boat was complete chaos - no thanks to the seven inch wide walkway around the boat, or the crowd of hecklers once again offering us every service possible. We finally all had our own luggage, however, and found a taxi to take us to meet a friend who lives in Phnom Penh.

All that I saw of Phnom Penh was from the back of a motorbike, bumping along on the sometimes paved, sometimes not paved roads. The majority of the city is large, hot, and dusty, which once again made a strong contrast against the elaborately decorated palace and temples. It's a dangerous city, and the travel books don't try to hide that. On the boat ride to the city, I had flipped through one guidebook that advised me to give a mugger everything on me, since he/she would undoubtedly be armed. Phnom Penh seemed full of people, on the sidewalks, on the streets, sitting in the sun, begging on the corners, and selling nearly everything imaginable. Somehow, through all of this, I fell in love with the city. It's painful history is anything but hidden, resulting in a rather violent culture, but for some reason I felt myself drawn to it. That may be partly do to the fact that my travel companions all knew one another, knew our host in Phnom Penh, and thus there were a lot of conversations about people and events I knew nothing about, pushing me to look at city around me, rather than focus in on friends and conversation too much. The conversation that I did engage in, however, was amazing - these folks having been doing some really noble and often trying things all over Asia, and I was glad to have the opportunity to chat with them. At the same time, however, the city kept pulling at my attention.

Soon after our arrival we went to the Cambodian Palace where we saw large Buddha icons and an entire building that is tiled with silver tiles. Again, the brightly orange clad monks were everywhere, which added to the feel, but was also a little difficult in crowded spaces since they're not allowed to touch women. Everything was overwhelmingly elaborate and decorated; although cameras weren't allowed inside without paying a fee first. Actually, it wasn't until I got home that I realized that I never took a single photo in Phnom Penh. Why not? I think this was largely due to the fact that everything significant was so incredibly sad, I could not bring myself to whip out my camera and document it. It will forever be burned in my brain.

We stayed with a friend of a friend whose apartment was lovely - high ceilings, large, cool tiled floors, and a feeling of openness everywhere. I know that this was on the top end of the line for living standards in Cambodia, but it was really fun to kick back there for a few days. One evening a group of about eight of us rented a good-sized boat and driver and went out on the river for a few hours, where we watched the lightening from the roof of the boat. Another night we went out to dinner at a restaurant that seemed like a large patio - raised above a swamp - where we were given our own secluded dining area and felt like a labyrinth to find (can you say bugs? We were eating in 90 degree weather over a swamp!!).

Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. For a while now I've been trying to figure out how to write about this, but I'm still unsure how to present it. I think that I am unable to properly display the feeling that remains over me when I think about visiting this genocide museum and the Killing Fields. I am not the expert to consult on Cambodia's history, but I would like to present several facts that I never knew before going to Cambodia in order to explain this experience.

During the Viet Nam War Cambodia was also in a political struggle concerning communism, rebellion, and civil war. A communist faction known as the Khmer Rouge took over in the 1970's and between 1975-78 an estimated two million people (of an original population of seven million) died - either overworked, starved, or executed. The Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh (the capital), and forced an entire nation of people to work on farms, often separating them from families, and enforcing very strict rules. Doctors, politicians, teachers, and other people with significant education were some of the first to be executed, thus snuffing out those most likely to organize any type of rebellion. The idea was to isolate the nation in order to gain complete control over it - no one had any means of connection across the country's boarders except for a small number of Khmer Rouge leaders. The Khmer Rouge's soldiers were mostly children, between the age of 10 and 15, and probably very brainwashed in order to carry out their duties. The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is in the same complex of buildings that were used as a prison and torture facility during Khmer Rouges' rein, and before that it had been a high school. The Killing Fields are about 15 km out of Phnom Penh where many mass graves were uncovered in the 1980's and many are still uncovered. There is a monument made out of glass, inside of which layer after layer of sculls are piled up.

We saw a video first - while many videos about genocide and civil war can be incredibly harsh, I believe the producers of this film tried to take a different approach. Instead of going over gruesome facts, it focused on a separated couple and the letters that were illegally exchanged between them and their family members. It was by no means fun to watch, but it was easier to watch than a documentary I once saw on the Nuremberg trials. After that we began to walk through the museum - I found later that we'd actually gone through it backwards, but I don't think it made that much difference. We saw photos and quotes of people who once worked for the Khmer Rouge (now mostly in their 40's) - none of which expressed regret, all of which stated that someone else had done the dirty work, never them. Then we saw facts, then we saw cased of sculls, piles of bones, and even a map of Cambodia that is made entirely of sculls. Then there was a type of art gallery; one of the prisoners who had actually survived was an artist, and he'd painted some of the most haunting depictions of the torture methods he'd witnessed or heard of during his time at Tuol Sleng. After that there were photos; thousands of photos from the carefully documented prisoner records that had been kept. Adults, women, children - it was very eerie. Then there were empty, crumbling, dirty prison rooms, then the rooms in which torture and interrogations where held.

It's a solemn place and a difficult and draining experience. One of the things that was on my mind the most was how recent it all was - how recently the rest of the world has turned its eyes away from such a living nightmare, and the possibility that this continues to go on now, in some isolated nation that the rest of the world is either unaware of, or apathetic towards. It's not a rich museum, it's dirty and falling apart, which on one hand adds to the sense of despair that must have been felt while it was a prison, but on the other hand it displayed Cambodia's continuing struggle to get back on its feet after the Khmer Rouge fell; A point illustrated even more by the many landmine victims begging outside the museum gates who have no feet to get back on.

We ate lunch and talked about other things that weren't so emotionally trying, then got on our motorbikes again. This time we drove for 45 minutes, over unpaved roads, and out of town where the dust flew up around us, and one again we could see the decrease in living standards as we headed out of town. By the time we arrived at the killing fields, we were covered in dust, which, when mixed into our 97 degree sweat, was forming a lovely crust across my skin. There were more beggars, this time mostly children, asking for money in every language I could imagine. We walked around, read the few heartbreaking plaques, but most of it was left up to our imagination, like the museum film. The harsh historic facts were left to subtleties, although I'm not sure I could comprehend most of it. I don't feel the need to write about everything I read, saw, or thought of that day. Although it had a large impact on me, I think it's the kind of thing that you need to experience yourself. I urge you to read up on recent Cambodian history, or on the problems the country is currently struggling with - but there is no need for me to post such painful things here. With that, I would like to change the subject.

We spent three days in Phnom Penh, but not all of it was depressing. In a way, we were just kicking back in South East Asia with friends, watching movies, making dinners, and brushing our teeth with bottled water. I went to a market that truly seemed like a maze in which you could probably find just about anything in ten different sizes, shapes, colors, styles. In fact, I even found a pair of pajama pants with the University of Alabama's logo printed across them. One evening while riding home from dinner one of my friends pointed out to me the burned out Thai embassy, which had been the site of rioting only a month before due to a rather absurd rumor concerning a Thai actress that enraged the Cambodians so much that tension elevated to the point of burning down the embassy.

We left Cambodia early in the morning, taking a taxi to the airport. The taxi was full of mosquitoes, which we soon made a game out of smashing, but decided it would be better not to keep score since the number of bugs was disgustingly high. Almost all the music that was played over the radio in the car was American, and in a very surreal and odd moment I found myself car-dancing with two friends in the streets of Phnom Penh to Brittany Spears.

As our plane lifted off on its way back to Bangkok, I was overcome with a sense that it wouldn't be my last time in Cambodia - that I will return not as a tourist, but as an aid worker of some sort. I'm still not sure where that feeling came from, or where it's going, but in the few months since I last went there, I have found that anything about Cambodia draws my attention, and as I look into graduate programs, I've become more interested in third world development, especially in South East Asia. So, who knows? Maybe I'll return one day.