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.

Same Same, But Different

Many things here are lost in translation. For example, they have this new energy drink here, with banner ads plastered hugely on billboards and flapping from mini-mart overhangs. It's called "Shark", and its catch phrase is, "It Goes Up." I've been trying to figure it out and I still down get it entirely. Is it a pun that refers to a shark surfacing, and maybe the effervescence, the carbonation? Or maybe a drinker's heart rate? Any way you look at it, it's not very clever.

Goodbye, Sweet Beach

After gobbling a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or two, Bryson and I hailed a tuk-tuk to take us to the beach a few miles south of Patong, Karon. When we didn't know anything more about Phuket than the few paragraphs from Rough Guides, that's where we were going to stay, assuming it was less touristy than the larger and busier Patong. Yet we chose Patong anyway, capriciously, when we read that Karon often has a treacherous undertow in the rainy season. I'm so glad we did.

There's nothing wrong with Karon. That's a lie, there's a couple major things wrong with Karon, and a medley of other things which Patong overshines. It's more expensive, with less local color, and the undertow did indeed seem treacherous. Despite the sunshine, the ocean was churning as if God had turned on a dozen undersea blenders at conflicting speeds. Red warning flags everywhere. I only waded in up to my knees, to splash the sticky sand off my skin. The whole time Bryson was splashing around belly-deep, I was gritting my teeth anxiously, praying he wouldn't be swept off into the Andaman Sea and the Indian Ocean beyond. Food for the fishies, like they say.



We tried our best to cook ourselves, knowing it was our last day at the beach, and possibly our last sunbathing day all year. I'm not expecting glorious sun when we get back to San Diego. The rain came only after a couple crispy hours, so I'm not complaining. We gathered our things and fled for one of the benched, roofed, gazebo-like structures right off the beach I believe are placed for that very purpose, to protect people from the short but furious rainstorms. Like being stuck in a stalled elevator, it was interesting to see who was accompanying us. One group of Thai guys in particular made us laugh; they kept making smart-assed, facetious remarks about Bryson's shoe size, which is a monstrous thirteen. I made them laugh in turn when I put his shoes on.

Then we took a tuk-tuk back to Patong and showered (glorious, glorious hot water, I love you). When the rain let up we wandered back to the beach and played dominoes over bowls of Thai soup. After that, a little more wandering, and then smoothies, Thai pancakes, and massages. No embarrassing mishaps this time around. The girls called Bryson very handsome, and it's not the first time. We're a hit in Thailand, it seems.

It's funny how we nearly left Phuket in the beginning without even an explore-through, and now I'd certainly say this has been one of the best legs of our trip. However, we must be moving onward, although the journey smacks of Our minibus/bus ride to Surat Thani and then Bangkok starts at one p.m. We arrive at five a.m. You do the math.


Bryson is a good helper.


This one was less pornographic.

He's Haunting Me



This was on the ceiling of a tuk-tuk I rode in today. I thought it looked like Sky.

What A Day

Our hotel room in Patong, Phuket, is far too comfortable. For seven dollars each a night, we've got air conditioning, hot water, clean sheets, and a television with HBO. It was difficult to get up in the morning, especially when we looked outside and saw our precious sunshine had vanished, and trees all chaotic in the wind. So we wandered downstairs to 7-eleven, bought some of this and some of that for about three dollars, and went back upstairs to watch School of Rock.

After, we felt guilty and cabin-feverish, and so we took an hours-long walk through the city and along the beach. We realized out hotel is in a much quieter and more local part of Patong. We found shopping malls with wares ranging from tacky souvenirs to forty dollar Nautica shirts, arcades filled with shops, and rows and rows of go-go bars. I always wonder what would happen if Bryson and I sat down together to have a drink. Plenty of shit-talking in Thai, possibly, depending on the type of girl.

Thai people, in general, have been some of the friendliest I've ever encountered, unless they're trying to sell something, in which case they're just aggressive and irritating. Central American people were friendly too. It often seems like the less people have, the nicer they are. Even if, theoretically, they have more of a reason to be bitter and crabby. Although I don't speak Thai, so I never know for sure if there's any aspersions being muttered.

They call this place the land of smiles. It's true I've been smiling much more frequently, at almost every stranger I see (or at least the women and children). What I usually receive, especially with girls my age or younger and children, is a great big grin in return. I've smiled down from bus windows at schoolgirls, and they've reacted in such obvious delight that I've felt warm all over. What a way to spread goodwill from country to country, smiling.

In the basement of one of the malls we encountered our first supermarket, although it was maybe a fifth the size of a Ralph's or Von's back home. Bryson had a craving for peanut butter and jelly, randomly. So we spent a couple bucks on sandwich makings and took them to some steps beside the beach. It was still windy, sand flying everywhere, sand in our peanut butter, but relaxing in a strange sort of blustery way.



We watched people go by, and a good deal of them were white-guy/young Thai girl couples. Each pair was fascinating, and we couldn't help but check them out.

When I look at the guy, I'm observing exactly what type of guy he is, to pay for a hooker. How old, how young, how ugly, how normal. Is he wearing a wedding ring, an emblem of someone betrayed? Is he acting furtive, as if he's ashamed? When I look at the girl, I'm asessing how pretty she is-- how lucky is he to have nabbed her? What is the difference in their ages? And most of all, does she look happy?

Usually, it's hard to tell.

Internet Cafes

I love backpacking in the twenty-first century. I get to go home for a little bit every day.