Leaving SE Asia

Once again I find myself at the airport in Taipei. We have a ten hour layover here, and then another ten hour layover once we arrive in L.A. Originally, we were both set to return to the states on the 25th, but neither of us like Bangkok, and as a result, we moved our tickets up a few days.

It seems like the perfect time to reflect on the last three months, but for me at least, that will have to wait until I return to the states and go through my pictures. I'm excited to be going back to Portland, and now my mind is on preparing for school at Hopkins in the fall. Over the last three months, I've taken a break from my writing, and the hiatus has been good for me. On an active level, I haven't thought about my writing much, other than the ideas I have been generating on my travels. On a more subconscious level, I've been processing where I want my writing to go from here, and I've realized that the direction I'm going in is different than the one I was on before I started this trip.

A big part of that has been the sublimation of the ego and self that I've been feeling over the past three months. Perhaps the five beads I still wear on my wrist from Burma have turned me into a Buddhist after all. More likely, traveling has made me aware once again of the enormity of the world and the smallness of my own experience within the world.

Angkor Wat; Recovering

It's been a while since I've posted. I haven't had the energy. Leaving Phnom Penh for Kratie last week, I was slammed by a nasty bug and I'm only now just about fully recovered from it. I slept the first 24 hours and most of the next 24 hours as well, with a Tylenol-laced reprieve to see Kratie's critically endangered Irawaddy freshwater dolphins.

That was an incredible experience. Pairs of the dolphins circled us on the Mekong, and there were cranes wheeling overhead. For the three hours I was out, I actually felt wonderful.

That didn't last long. Returning to Phnom Penh all the symptoms continued, plus a few more. I had headaches, eyeaches, chills, shits, dizziness, all-out exhaustion.

Three days ago we came up to Siem Reap and my first day here I just had to take it easy. I was in no shape to see Angkor Wat. I stepped off the bus and I had cramps in my calves from dehydration.

In the future, I'll take my chances with malaria before taking Doxycycline again. Because it's an antibiotic, it's knocked out any natural immunity my stomach has, and as a result, this sickness hit me harder than anything since before I was in college.

The last two days, however, I've been feeling much better. We've explored Ankor Wat as well as the other major temples of Angkor. It's quite overwhelming.

Anyway, I'm glad to be alive, and once again, well.

TS-21 and The Killing Fields

TS-21 is the most infamous detention center in Cambodia, used by the Khmer Rouge during the years 1975-1979. Of the more than 10,000 people who were tortured there, including women and children, only seven survived. The rest were taken to the Killing Fields about 15 km out of Phnom Penh, where there is a monument stacked with the skulls of the executed. The cracks in the skulls clearly show that bullets were considered too precious to waste.

Tuol Sleng Prison was a high school before the Khmer Rouge revolution. It's one of those monstrous buildings that were built in the '50s and '60s and looks like Soviet Bloc architecture. In places, there are still bloodstains on the floor. One part of the exhibit shows the faces of thousands of TS-21 victims-- all were photographed and documented before they were tortured and killed. If one person was considered to be a traitor to the Khmer Rouge, it was customary for that person's entire family to be killed.

There is one room that has brief bios and portraits of the Khmer Rouge leaders, including Pol Pot and Ieng Sary. The remaining portraits have been so defaced by Khmer grafitti that the faces are no longer recognizable. There is no longer even a picture of Pol Pot on the wall. Most likely it was defaced to the point of being unusable. I found the grafitti to be a small but moving testament to how the Khmer people feel about these former dictators.

Perhaps the most meaningful part of the exhibit for me was a section of pictures and bios by a Cambodian photographer. He had photographed portraits of former Khmer Rouge soldiers and security guards in their present lives. Many did not want to work for the Khmer Rouge, but knew they would be killed otherwise. Indeed, even those who ended up working for the K.R. often fell out of favor and were tortured and killed.

There is talk of putting the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders on trial. This talk has been going on for quite a while, and honestly, it's getting too late in the day for that. Pol Pot and Ieng Sary are dead. Ta Mok will be dead soon. They all lived to be old and unprosecuted in their own country, where they are responsible for the deaths of 2-3 million of their people.

Now more than half the population is under 20. There are very few who survived the Khmer Rouge, and when I see older people, I cannot help but wonder what their memories are, and which side of the fence they'd been on. Had they survived by keeping quiet, or luck, or outright support of the Khmer Rouge?

From the Coast to Phnom Penh

We just arrived in Phnom Penh a few hours ago, and the city's hectic pace is a big change from our time on the coast. Five star hotels alternate with run-down cinderblock buildings. What should be four lanes of traffic seems more like twelve.

The last few days we were on Rabbit Island, which is a few kilometers off the coast, near the former resort town of Kep. Rabbit Island is practically uninhabited, and is only 10 kilometers in diameter. There are a few rustic bamboo bungalows and that's it. It was a good place to decompress for a few days, and to recharge our batteries for the last two weeks of our trip.

I've been feeling a strong interest in Cambodian culture, much like the way both Zander and I feel about Burmese culture. It's just staggering to think of what Cambodia has gone through over the last 30 years (since the Khmer Rouge's "Year Zero"), and so far, the country's future doesn't seem particularly bright either. One of the saddest things I've noticed so far is the high rate of prostitution. In Sihanoukville, another beach town where we spent a few days, the going price for a girl is only $2. Not surprisingly, there's also an incredibly high rate of HIV. There's a certain level of physical contact in the culture that I haven't seen anywhere else on this trip. In its positive manifestation, it's a very affectionate energy, and the kids will come up and playfully jest as they try to sell bracelets. One boy even drew two dragons for my diary. On the negative side, there's an undercurrent of violence to the contact-- pushing, mock fighting, and the like. Physical abuse is all too common and I've already seen too many instances of it.

In a country where until recently more than 50% of the population was under the age of 15, the future really does lie in the hands of the kids.

Crossing Into Cambodia

We've been in Cambodia for just over 24 hours and we've gone from one extreme to the other. Last night we crossed the border at Koh Kong, on the Gulf of Thailand. It was so flooded around Trat, on the Thailand side, that there were traffic jams of cars and scooters waiting to go through water that was axle-deep.

From the moment we reached the Cambodian border the hustle was on. The rain was coming down and men ran out of the shadows with umbrellas and questions. We'd arrived just before 8 pm, when the border closes, and when we crossed, I found myself holding two umbrellas and wondering what was going on. We somehow ended up in separate taxis with two different agendas. My driver was a madman. He was driving too fast and he hit a flooded patch of road and went into a yaw. The car did a 45 degree turn and almost went off a steep embankment, then went the other way and took us into a muddy strip on the other side of the road. Somehow he did manage to make it into town.

All the taxi drivers get commissions from guesthouses, so that will explain why the Angkor beer was on the house for my driver. He made it known that he could take care of any of my needs-- money-changing, hookers, drugs. I told him I was ready to go to bed.

In the morning Zander and I met up again at the pier for the "boat" to Sihanoukville. I say "boat" because it appeared to be a cross between a submarine and a UFO, except it was decrepit and made in Malaysia. I couldn't believe how many people they managed to stuff onto this thing, and then how many of them were throwing up once we hit the open sea. The water was rough and a grandma sitting two seats away couldn't hold things down. The little kids were peeing on the floor and the waves were hitting the windows of our boat, tilting us at a 40 degree angle back and forth.

Now we're in Sihanoukville, a resort town on the southern coast. We're about 4 hours away from Phnom Penh when we choose to go up there. First we'll head to Kep, another town further up the coast. The weather is gorgeous again, and it's very invigorating to be exploring a new culture. Still, I can't help but get the sense that this town is a little too free and easy, an illusion for us westerners.

Ko Chang

My bungalow is on the edge of the ocean. It couldn't be any closer to the water without falling in the sea. Mists flow through the walls of the cabin, my mosquito net and me. It sounds like the end of the world. More than once I've woken up in the middle of the night with the sense that the ocean was about to swallow me.

Our first night here I walked ankle-deep in rain down the rutted track that led to the ocean, stumbling in the dark as the palm trees thrashed in the wind. The rain and ocean remind me of Oregon, though its palms and strangler figs I see, not Sitka spruce.

There is a swing outside my window hanging from the branches of a sprawling tree. It rides just above the high tide. When the tide is out there are shells swept up on the beach. There are shells of fantastic shapes and colors, many which must have once been home for hermit crabs and other creatures. There are also pieces of coral that have washed ashore and are bleached white as bone.

There are other islands around Ko Chang, all of them lushly forested. These islands make up Ko Chang National Park, and its heartening to see that efforts are being made to protect the area even as it is developing all too quickly. All along the road there are muddy desolate lots waiting for more resorts and shopping centers. Meanwhile, we are at Lonely Beach, where the lodgings are still rustic, there isn't too much shopping, and the happy shakes are both tasty and quite potent.