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.