SE Asia Trip - Cambodia

So the next morning I wake up at 6am to catch the 7am bus ride to Siem Riep. This was quite likely one of the longest bus rides of my life. I was told it would be a larger, VIP bus, which means a nice, standard coach in our terminology. So we hop on a combi, and I'm thinking its transport to the coach. No. It was our ride to the border, where we grabbed lunch, filled out our forms. I particularly met a British girl named Kate who all the Cambodians thought I would hook up with, but I wasnt interested, and tried to explain this to them. When they finally understood what I meant, they quickly offered the services of many girls that they were sure would please me. I had to even more vehemently discourage these offers. Kate couldn't find her photos for the visa, nor could she find enough money for it, so I lent her around 20 dollars, she was very embarrassed. After going through customs, we hop on about the worst bus on the worse road and drive until 11pm. Absurd. For a major highway with tons of trucks and lorries travelling back and forth, it was amazing. I was so happy to be off, I didn't know how to properly express it. So I went to sleep.

Angkor Wat was amazing. The first day I went to the top of a temple and watched the sunset with a thousand other tourists. Spectacular? Yes. That night I drank a lot with Kate and lost an arm wrestling match to a man about 5 foot tall. But he was strong. I mean, really strong. So I don't feel bad. They did call me strong man all throughout asia, because their tolerance for alcohol is about zero. They have about 2 beers, and they're gone. So if you have 6 in a night, they're pretty much blown away. I figure it just takes practice, that's all.

Then I watched the sunrise (after going to bed around 2am) over Angkor Wat itself. This was probably one of the highlights of the whole trip. Very few tourists were there at the time. In some ways, I wish I had saved it for last, rather than first, because I didn't really appreciate it for what it was. The glowing silhouettes of the towers above the jungle forest hiding the rising sun. Just the feeling that you're in someplace that was and is a very holy temple. This feeling was completely shattered when the tourists (like me, I know) came through and the tour guides started their schpeels in 18 different languages while little kids ran around and lovers found remote corners to snuggle in. They were always the ones who made me feel the most lonely. I have always wanted to travel with someone like that, but I can't hold a relationship down long enough to get to that stage, so really its my own fault. But it still hurts like an ice knife scrapping across your forearm.

The experience is hard to describe. There were many columns and bas reliefs that were in spectacular condition. One in particular was spectacularly long and preserved nearly perfectly. I didn't at the time, but now I realize why the area is one of the worlds highlights. The orientation of the temple allowed so much of the early morning sun to come through it felt like walking through a movie when the forest light sprinkles down through the autumn leaves. The light was excellent for photos, I remember and I took quite a few. I just wanted that moment to last forever. But it didn't.

So I hopped on the back of the moto (moped) and we moved to the next temple, which I don't remember the name of. Hopefully I'll come back and populate the names, but that may not happen. There were so many temples, some of them run together. In Angkor Thom, there were a series of square pools with trees growing in them, it became easy to fall into the fantasy of the area at its height. Another one was, well, I don't remember the name, but it had trees going through the temple. The roots grew over the roof like curtains falling over a chair. Another one was the huge administrative center, and hadn't been reconstructed yet. This was great to walk around. The security guard offered to sell me his uniform for twenty dollars.

I also went to see some of the earliest temples, and what happened to me there, I will never forget. I was returning from buying some water, and a child of about twelve came up and made some noise. I knew he was asking for money, but I didn't even look at him at first, which is my normal response to that situation, just act like I didn't hear. But he was persistent and so I turned to him and felt my heart drop into my stomach. I can't truly explain his condition. He had no hair, no nose, no lips, no eyelids, third-degree burns (I'm guessing) all over his body. His hands had no fingers. I think he was in a tractor accident or was an Agent Orange child, I don't know. I just can't describe the experience. It stills makes me nearly cry. Its like the opposite of happy thoughts. If I found an anti-tinkerbell and she asked for a sad thought, I would immediately have one.

On a happier note, there was another temple, about an hour and a half on the back of a moto. After all that driving, I was completely covered in red dust (N.B: an excellent book) but it was worth it. This was an enormous area that was untouched by the archeologists, basically. A guide took me around as we climbed over the walls, ducked into covered hallways. There was a film crew there, which I didn't learn until the end of the tour. They were from the Discovery Channel and were filming all the snakes. This freaked me out, not because I'm afraid of snakes, but because I was climbing over all the rocks, which could have hidden any number of them. Also unique about this area was that it had not been cleared of mines. Angkor Wat is completely cleared, this one, not so much. A little scary? Oh yeah.

Enough about temples. From Siem Riep I bussed it to Phnom Penh, which was somewhat of a shithole, I'll not deny. I went to the Killing Fields, which was not much, but because you knew what it was, it hurt. All the mass graves really retained a disturbing air. Bones were sticking up out of the ground. They had a tower of skulls. Very sobering. From there I went to the genocide museum, housed in the old interrogation center 521. It was an elementary school before that, ironically. They had built brick cells inside, rows and rows of them. I went into one an immediately felt claustrophobic, although Ive never had that feeling before. I just had to get out, and of course, I became lost. Not a happy time. Robbin Island? Nothing. Thats a hotel. They had barbed wire webbing to keep people from jumping out.

Diary Entry 6-19: The history is so new here. It lives in people's memories like an excommunicated priest who walks the corridors of his church. Not dead, but in the process of being relegated to memory, rather than life. It makes your mind race, just trying to come to grips with these young people who lived through it. They will say its the past, they don't remember much, but that's just denial. Trying to reconcile something so morbid breaks the heart if you don't separate it from your life.

Sometimes I feel that all these experiences will tear me apart, from having seen so much poverty, deprivation, persecution contradicted with the wealth of the first world. We worry about the Health Care and retirement plans, they worry about getting enough money to support the whole family that month. Such a distance, it really just is incomprehensible until you see it enough, but even then its sympathy, not empathy. You just can't get it into your head, let alone your heart. This country moves me as I've never been moved before. x

The drug scene there was unreal. Everyday I was offered everything. Id be at breakfast reading the Bangkok Post and a twelve-year-old kid would come up and say, Grass? No. X? No. Coke? No. Opium? No. Heroin? No. Fuck? For god sake, man, you're just a kid. It's never been that blatant for me before. Try walking down the street and seeing girls lined up calling you out saying Fuck you good, five dollar. Crazy place.

So from there I flew in the oldest plane imaginable, it had porthole windows. The air-conditioning blew out like a cloud. But we landed on the dirt strip in Ban Lung, Rattanakiri. This was a tiny town in the middle of rural, rural Cambodia.

There was a volcano lake that was just gorgeous, crystal clear water, great for swimming. I walked to a waterfall and every single person I passed called out, sometimes from quite a distance, Hello! or Goodbye! They were some of the happiest people, it seemed like. There were rows and rows of rubber trees. When I was at the waterfall, all alone, a kid came down and we tried to talk, because he wanted to practice his english. That didn't work out so well. But it was what is was, it happens all the time.

I wanted to go into the Virachey National Park, which is located close to the town, but I needed someone else to split the cost, so I had to wait a few days, which I spent with Mr. Leng and his crew. He was an amazing guitarist, especially for not owning a guitar. We all had a great time drinking and talking, playing cards and whatnot. So a Swiss girl, Elaine, finally came in and wanted to do the hike. So we went in for 3 days. This was some of the most difficult hiking I've ever done. The mud was incredibly deep, and the path was just barely a path. We had a guide, who spoke some english, and a community guide, who picked leaves from trees and rolled his tobacco in them. Only the community guide was able to do the hiking without a struggle, and he was in flip-flops. There were six-inch bamboo stalks, freshly cut, that made you trip every step nearly. No switchbacks, just straight up in deep mud. I about died, I swear. But it was great. We tried to tell stories at night, since there was nothing else to do, and that didn't really work. We got a very confusing tale of the beginning of time, which didn't make any sense. But it was amazing at night. So many stars, like when I was on Kilimonjaro.

It was a quiet week for me, and I returned to Phnom Penh and flew to Ho Chi Minh City, a.k.a. Saigon.