girl meets monkey

This is the travelogue from my 2005 trip through Thailand and Cambodia. The madness began on September 6th and continued through October 5th (the final post below).

Little Bits

This may be my last post from Thailand. What a wild trip it's been, just packed with colors and insanity. There are many little things here that I'm not sure I've mentioned.

You can buy fresh-squeezed orange juice right off the street, did I mention that? They bottle it for you and it's the perfect mix of sweet and tang.

There are dogs everywhere, just like in Central America, although most of the ones I've seen are happy and well-fed, unlike in Central America. Although a good many are mangy and sticky with Bangkok grime. They're never kept on leashes, and patrol the street or the beachfront, whichever they claim as their territory. I've seen a number of dogfights when these invisible lines are breeched. It's interesting to watch. The dogs are half wild pack animals and half beloved pets. I wonder what would happen if I threw Sky in the mix. He's probably be chewed up in minutes.

Every restaurant, shop, and most homes have their own altar, shaped like a tiny temple. They're usually garish, gilded and painted bright colors, draped in fresh flower wreaths. The figurines inside vary. I've seen tiny men and women, rotund Buddhas, slim and handsome Buddhas, and pictures of the king and queen. On the platform before the shrines food is set out daily: bananas, noodle soup, bottles of Fanta soda with straws for ease in sipping. Usually whatever is set out swarms with ants. Once I even saw a cat surreptitiously slurping from an offering bowl.

In Koh Samui there was a place where quite a few such altars were clustered beside the main road. Whenever a car or motorbike sped by, they gave their horn a honk. There and only there, some kind of sign of respect. Honk if you love Buddha.

Everything here is Same Same, But Different. That's what all the merchants say. They even have shirts that say that.

There are tailors selling Armani knockoffs custom-made spotted through the tourist areas, all dealing out of nice, air-conditioned shops. At last Bryson broke down and allowed himself to be fitted for a suit. It's grey with faint pinstripes, Italian wool and cashmere, and he looks damn sexy in it if I do say so myself. The guys who made it were Indian and Burmese. Thus, it's a Thai Italian Indian Burmese suit. Can you beat that?

Speaking of Indians, the Indian food here is superb, and I've developed a real taste for it. More than just curry. I love the paneer, which is homemade cheese, baked in a whole wheat tandoori roti.

The cats here all have gimpy tails. It's as if a few tail-less manxes bred into the mix somehow. They range from stubby jokes to thick knobby nightmares, though the cats themselves are cuties. They also like to munch on enormous Thai bugs like spiders and cockroaches.

When I worked as a server at Red Robin, we were required to drop a table's check before the first person had finished their last bite. It's was all about turnover, hustle and bustle. Here they never, never, never drop your check unless you ask for it. They allow you to sit and enjoy yourself as long as you want, no rush. But in all the Thai shops, there's always someone following you around, eagerly quoting a price for anything you even show a smidgen of interest in. I absolutely despise it, actually. I hate being pressured, and if someone is following me too closely or pushing too adamantly, I'll leave the shop entirely. It's not that I don't understand; they're trying to make a living. But let me breathe, okay?

There's a pigeon family living outside our bathroom window. The children are obnoxious, hooting querulously far too early in the morning, but I wish them well. When I was little the gardener knocked a swallow's nest off our wall. We found the crushed babies on the ground, a tragedy. You can never trust people where compassion is concerned.

There's one smoothie cart on Soi Rambuttri claiming, on a big yellow sign, that they offer smoothies with "Safe Ice for Delicate Foreign Digestions." I love it. I love Thailand.

Sleepy Now. Bangkok Smells.

Yesterday we spent most of our daylight hours at the largest shopping monstrosity in Thailand, MBK. It's about ten stories, and when you peer down a shop-crammed corridor surging with human beings you can't make out the end. It's kind of gross. Good buys, though.

Today we went to Chinatown, which is a lot like every other Chinatown in every major city: a hodgepodge of stink, voices, and raindrops; piles of chestnuts, roasted duck and pig faces, dried shrimp in sacks, tea, baubles; an aching overload on the senses. For some reason buying streetside junk was more expensive than elsewhere in Bangkok, and when the rain came we were the first to leave. I'd heard this week was the Chinese-Thai Vegetarian festival, and although most restaurants did promote their vegetarian selections prominently, I didn't see any bold monks impaling their cheeks with spikes or walking on coals, as I'd heard was the story. No fun.

Back to Khao San. We're always here, avoiding buying anything usually, but now we get to spent money. Lots of fun. I'll be going now.

Son of a bitch deleted my post.

Underwater

While I was in the internet cafe constructing my last couple of posts, it began to monsoon. It rained so hard that the soi flooded ten inches deep right outside. Although the cafe was a step up, every time a taxi passed by it sent a wave of foul water rolling under the door.

The girl manning the cafe freaked out, understandably so, and began to use a dustpan to scoop water into a large bucket and then dump it down the bathroom drain. Bryson and I helped her lift a few ground-level computers on top of a desk. We stayed inside until I started having electrocution fears. Then we ventured outside.

The rain had subsided some, but we had to splash through water well over our ankles to get back to our hotel, a ten minute slosh away. Periodically a great clap of lightning would shatter through the sky, in a fabulous jagged arc, triggering shouts and hollers from all the late-night backpackers. Brilliant night. I'm glad I've had both my hepatitis shots; that was some nasty water.

For You!!

I Promised: Some History.

This isn't a research paper. My sources are only three: The opening chapter on Cambodia in Lonely Planet's Southeast Asia on a Shoestring; a book I bought from a slick-talkin' boy called Children of the Killing Fields; and our tuk-tuk driver, who works for the guesthouse where we stayed, and who rode beside us on the bus into Siem Reap.

After an extended period of poverty and civil war in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge subjugated their opponents and took ultimate power. They asserted that the new Cambodia would be an agrarian communist society, led by the people, and at first the country was in a state of celebration. Unfortunately, the party didn't last long. What soon became apparent was that the Khmer Rouge was a bloodthirsty regime with zero regard for human life, who believed the only way for their ideal society to succeed was to murder every former soldier or military officer and their entire families, every intellectual, everyone with any level of education, every writer, artist, poet, everyone who spoke out or didn't quite follow orders. They murdered people with smooth hands, merchants, even people who wore spectacles-- people they considered "parasites".

Because the Khmer Rouge wanted no loyalties to anyone but themselves, they severed families, "adopting" children and placing them in labor camps by the thousands. Children and adults alike were forced to work in the snake-infested rice patties in the broiling heat, with as little as two cups of watery rice a day to sustain them. Many of those who weren't shot, smothered or bludgeoned to death died of starvation. Some estimates claim that a third of Cambodia's entire population died in those wretched years, from 1975-1979.

In 1979, Cambodia was liberated by Vietnam, which had formerly been its mortal enemy. Yet after being so tragically and thoroughly devastated, the country has been able to recover.

To make matters much, much worse, Cambodia is absolutely littered with mines left over from the Vietnam war, a disproportionate amount placed by American soldiers. Nearly every day, someone steps off a path and is gravely wounded or killed by a lingering mine. There are people everywhere with limbs missing, scarred or blinded, unable to find work because of the explosion's stigma, reduced to shaking plastic cups on the street with the nubs of their elbows and hoping for strangers' change.

"Pol Pot killed my father," the man beside us called Beebee said, the man who would be our tuk-tuk driver, as we clattered down the road. "I was only two. Whenever I take people to his grave, I piss on it."

Later he told us about the bus driver, a man of about fifty. We learned he made the excruciating journey either to or from the border every single day. He rarely saw his wife, and often made as little as one hundred and fifty US dollars a month.

"He used to be soldier for Khmer Rouge," Beebee said. "Tank driver. So now he is happy. He is happy because he is free."

There's so much we take for granted, it's incomprehensible. What a heavy weight that knowledge is.

After we left the lake, Beebee took us to a Land Mine museum. It wasn't much; just a series of huts around a muddy courtyard far off the beaten path. Yet the piles and piles of rusty old mines were affecting, and the scrap of field spotted with mines half-buried was powerful. There were several volunteers working there, and I spoke at length with an English girl. She told me many of the children about were orphans (though most were in school) whose parents had been killed by mines, and who the man leading the mine relief organization had adopted. Others had heard about the free English lessons being offered by the volunteers, and were eager to learn. If I had known about that place, I would have spent some time there. Compare the kids I get paid to tutor in San Diego to these kids, and there's no comparison.

It's Like We Never Leave

We're back in Bangkok, for the final shopping stretch before our long flight home. To journey back we sprung for a cab instead of the clanky old busses, because we're spoiled, but it was semi-hellish anyway. The driver crowded four of us in the back and three up front. Bryson--I love him-- but he's a large man, and he took up nearly half of the bench seat, shoving me crooked and awkward into two Cambodian passengers beside me. And naturally, the road hadn't smoothed out any over the last two days, although we were riding in a Camry that had shocks, so it wasn't nearly as jarring. And we arrived in half the time.

We heard from a couple Cambodians that it's corrupt politics that have prevented the road from being paved, more veritably than lack of funds. Bangkok Airways has a monopoly on the small airport, and thus a ticket for the short by-air trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap is $150, or $300 there and back. To fly to Chiang Mai from Bangkok, which is a similar distance, cost about $50. Thus, even though it's a Thai airline, the Cambodian government is making riches of affluent tourists, or those who aren't so wealthy but dread the torturous overland trail. If they paved it, a good portion of tourists would go by road.

It's sickening, because you just know that flight money isn't even touching the people at all. But if the overland journey was more popular, it would be the people making the money, with cabs and busses and tuk-tuks, and it would be one of the best things possible for the people of Siem reap.

Lake Living



Today we woke up at the semi-decent hour of eight to visit the mouth of the nearby lake, which happens to be one of the largest sources of freshwater fish in the world. Or so Sean's guidebook said.

We paid for a boat to take us around, and our tuk-tuk driver gave us flimsy fishing poles to bring with us. Any fish we catch, we cook at guesthouse, he said.

The water is shallow for quite a while, dotted with water foliage like clouds. The people there make their living straight from the lake. All the fishermen and their families live right on the water, in raised huts only accessible by boat. The huts vary from sad shaky structures that looked like they'd soon topple in, to sturdier years-weathered structures with multiple stories. Everywhere there were children, jumping off their porches naked into the water, or fishing with bamboo poles. Longtail boats with shuddery motors as well as old canoes floated by in every direction.



For a short while, the boat drivers turned off the engine and let us drift in a deeper part of the lake, which is so large the other edges can't be seen. Peace, halcyon stillness. Then a handful of children rushed up to us in the strangest contraptions, really half-buckets with a single paddle. They sat in these cross-legged. The boat driver explained that they were Vietnamese children. They wanted money, and since they had worked so hard paddling over to us we gave them some change.





Our destination after that was a sort of floating restaurant/souvenir shop/fish farm. There the guys fished with some little Cambodian boys, for fish that were really far too small to reel in. We also enjoyed peering in a crocodile pen, and watching a man scoop tiny shrimp into a pen teeming with two foot-long catfish. That lake was one of the most relaxing places I've ever been. It seems good for the people to live on a constant source of protein, in a place where the children can play and fish and swim, and even attend classes on one of the floating schools back towards the village.

It was hard to leave the lake. Afterwards our driver took us to a land mine museum. I want to get into that, but then I'd have to get into the history of the Khmer Rouge. That's for tomorrow's blog.

It was worth it. And you know it must be pretty amazing here, if I can make that kind of statement.

So Much More

Cambodia overwhelms the senses, five-plus. I have never seen a more shattering discrepancy between those who have and those who have nothing. Sure, I've been all over Central America, and outside Tegucigalpa there were villages like human hives caked on the hillsides. I live in paradisiacal San Diego, a twenty minute drive and five minute walk to the slums of Tijuana, where dirty children sell chewing gum instead of attending school.

I knew Cambodia was one of the poorest countries in the world. I never could have fathomed the obscene number of five-star hotels. They are glowing behemoths that cater to the most prodigal in the world, those who jet-set from nations away to sleep away hundreds per night, while men and women slashed by puckered scars, missing one, two or more limbs, beg in the street with tears in their eyes less than one block away. These jetsetters must come in to take pictures of Angkor Wat and feel well-traveled, unless, of course, they come to buy women and children. And their money doesn't even touch these people at their feet; instead, it fattens the pockets of foreigners or men who made themselves rich by pillaging the heads from ancient Buddha statues.

We're white and obvious, and we're not fooling anyone about our means, but at least we're staying in guesthouses, eating at local restaurants and food carts, buying items only at the local shops. We are doing the best we can to give, and yet even when I buy a souvenir I wonder if I should just be giving the money away, or at least buying from a person who needs my money even more.




Angkor Wat


Despite our pastiche of aches and pains, yesterday our new Canadian friend Sean, Bryson, and I woke up at five am and climbed on a tuk-tuk to see Angkor Wat at sunrise. Apparently several hundred other people had the same idea, because the expansive stone steps facing the best postcard shot was overrun with tourists, mainly of the Asian persuasion, although a number were westerners like us.

Yet as soon as the bright dawn-colors faded to blue, the crowd dissipated. And when we shouldered through and began walking towards the temples, and very few people followed. They must have come only for that early money shot, and not to tramp around in the endless ruins.



But that's the best part. Bryson and I visited Tikal in Guatemala, the ancient Mayan ruins. Angkor is even larger, and much more complex. Every wall, every pillar, every fallen stone is impossibly intricate, a masterpiece of lost languages, warriors, stories and faces. There are stairs so steep the top step holds the sun, and deep dark passages squealing with bats. Broken artifacts with insurmountable histories lay strewn like pieces of rubbish. And behind every temple is another, and another, silent, musty with centuries.





Although yes, there were other people. Herds of Asian tourists looped with cameras seemed to filter by at the most inopportune times, like in the exact moment I'd lined up the perfect picture. When the rain began, their colorful umbrellas coming into passageways stung my eyes. But there were many moments in which we were alone, or the boys had climbed up something to high for me and I was alone at the bottom, with only the echo of my footsteps.



The rain was every monsoon we'd been lucky to miss before, and there the run to shelter was a long, wet one. I have never been rained on so powerfully. The water ran into my eyes, and I spit it out as I ran. Shelter was a string of cafes underneath an aluminum and bamboo roof, filled with Cambodian restaurateurs and their children. A few minutes after we sat down, the rain increased with a particularly potent blast of fury, and everyone screamed and ran as a tree crashed into the roof of the cafe directly across from us, all the way through to the ground.

Every child had something to sell, and some spoke English slicker than an American car salesman. "You look like Movie Star! You from USA? I from Washington D.C! (they knew the capital of every single country, it seemed) You only buy one from me, I make special discount just for you, for the beautiful lady," and so on and on and on. Of course we relented here and there, and at long last the rain let up and we hurried to our tuk-tuk.

The driver is quite a guy. I'll tell his story later.

Cambodia

There's too much to say.

We'd heard again and again the roads were bad, but we remained optimistic. In Honduras we'd ridden ramshackle school buses down cowpaths, and so we thought we were up for anything. We never knew we were embarking on a gut-scrambling migration along a mountainous disaster, eight hours in a brokendown bus-van over a road like a field of boulders caked with mud.

I have never experienced anything like that overland journey, that sweatsopped rattling chaos. One traitorous knob of my spine jabbed into a hard spot, no matter how I shifted. It was too hot to close the window, but two hours in we were coated in fine red dust that became a paste when it mulled with our sweat. The hair around my face sprung loose from my ponytail and framed my face in a ticklish halo. The effort of keeping my body tense to lessen the impact seized my muscles with a constant, maddening ache. During the whole first third, I had to pee.

And there was nothing, nothing, nothing to do. Once I attempted to read, but the letters shook like agitated ants, and my brain scrambled crosswise. Every time we checked, there were hours and hours to go, and yet the minutes only strolled. There are only so many corners a mind can wander into before a treacherous buzz of madness begins. Nothing to do, nothing to do but look.

The entire stretch of country we crossed was soaking wet. Everything was water, in lilied pools spiky with pink flowers, or in still dim ponds, or in furred checkers, the golden-green rice paddies. Every hut was built beside or over a pond. Some were hiked up on stilts, with rickety staircases leading to higher ground. Beneath overhanging trees, children swam naked in the shady water, or stirred the bottom muck with crooked sticks.

Each hut we rambled by was a flash of lamplight among the trees, a fragment of indigent life. Women flocked by children held peaked hats to their heads against the wind. Seal-slick toddlers bathed in jugs. Older boys play-fought while small ones watched. Farmers hung exhaustedly in hammocks like sacks of grain, and among dangling bunches of bananas and cans of American soda, merchants patiently peddled their meager wares.

In the evening there were fireflies. There are no fireflies in Southern California, and we watched until they faded. Later there were bigger spots of light, flashlights, sway-dancing over the fields. The man beside us said they were looking for frogs, just another thing to sell.

By the time it was too dark to see, there were still two hours left. Two hours banging in the blackness. Purgatory must be like this, I thought to myself. Restless discomfort, a relentless twilight. A road with no end. A grey place in between somewhere and elsewhere, dotted with moonlit ponds, choked in dust.

There was one stop towards the end, a restaurant with open walls and overpriced beverages. As soon as I stepped inside two Cambodian girls ran towards us. The older one showed us a monkey they kept on a length of chain, and the younger caught a pugnacious praying mantis and brandished it with pride. Before we left, she tied a yellow string around my wrist.

"For free," she said, and the praying mantis flew away.

There's too much to say, but it's dinnertime. We went to Angkor Wat today, and it was a near-God experience (near-Gods?). So more tomorrow.

Me Versus The Monster

Ahhh, yesterday was hell on wheels. When I woke in the morning the oscillating pressure, the tingle behind my eyes, the painful sensitivity to light, all had already begun. My evil nemesis, MIGRAINE.

The first four hours in the minibus from Phuket to Surat Thani were hellish enough. Minibuses are cramped and sweaty nightmares, lacking in air conditioning and body space. I was half-psychotic by the time we arrived. Then came a two hour wait at a sort of way-station in the middle of nowhere, and then came the VIP bus.

VIP busses aren't that bad, usually, as long as we're not on them for too long of a time, and we're sitting up high and away from the bathrooms. They're double-decker and they play movies (last night was Apollo 13). However, they're no good to sleep in, even when the person next to me is my boyfriend. There' was just no comfortable position any way I contorted myself, and anytime I felt myself drifting off, Bryson would shift and suddenly my head would slide down his knee, or he'd attempt to lay his double-my-weight body across my lap, or some body part would begin to ache-- a kneecap, a shoulder. And these three friggin' Israeli guys were rattle-a-tatting Hebrew in their outdoor voices as late as three in the morning. And even though we were far from the bathrooms, a fine miasma of sewage began to permeate the air.

But worst of all was my headache. Banging, pounding, glass and tears. All I had was Tylenol, and four didn't even begin to assuage my agony. Using Tylenol for a migraine is like attempting to douse a forest fire with a squirt gun. The creature only laughs.

Hours and hours of misery. Praying, even. Bangkok, city of stench, became a mental Mecca. All I wanted was a hotel room, where I could sleep supine. Sleep is the only thing that makes the headache pass, and sometimes I even wake to find it hasn't passed entirely. And the terrible nausea that comes with it. It doesn't relinquish its hold on my gut until I've thrown up everything inside.

At five-thirty in the morning we arrived on Khao San road. With tears in my eyes, I followed Bryson to the first hotel that had a vacancy. As soon as we received our key I dashed upstairs and into the bathroom headfirst, then on my knees. Throwing up is the worst when you've got a headache. We slept for about six hours, and when I woke up it was still there. However, it was dormant enough for me to go down and have a meal and a popsicle before going back to bed. Bryson went for a massage.

Now all that's left is a strange tenderness, a shadow of the beast, a reminder that I have to get my ass to a doctor and figure this thing out.

This evening, we walked up and down Khao San road. There's so much to buy it's incredible, and not like Central America, either. The clothing here is American quality and an American quality of cuteness. It's all we can do to restrain ourselves, because tomorrow we're going to Cambodia for a few days, but when we get back we're going to buy as much as we can carry. Khao San at night is like a second-rate Vegas strip, a revolucion without the three-story nightclubs and painted donkeys. Like TJ, some people despise is here, but I embrace the craziness. It's an explosion of humanity. Although not the best headache remedy.

I'm not sure how readily internet will be available in Cambodia, although Siem Reap, where Angkor Wat is, is the most touristy place in the country. I might possibly disappear for a while. But this place is supposed to be one of the most fantastic in creation, and so I'm bubbling over to see it.