Category: Journal

Journal April 10, 2010

Okay, so I didn’t make it into Vietnam as I thought I might: with ease.  Unfortunately, after leaving from Phnom Penh, I was denied at the border because I had the incorrect information that I purchased online to get in.  The paperwork that I had only allowed me to fly into an airport and at airports throughout the country, they have a network of visas on some mainframe they can all access.

This database clearly does not exist at border crossings.  Nor do the border guards care to lift any extra fingers over to the phone and dial the number to any of these airports in which my proof of valid entry exists.  But that’s okay, because I got to experience the capital of Cambodia a little more.  And it was quite interesting.

Firstly, the people are great… swindlers.  They love to try and take you for every penny you have.  I don’t blame them, though.  I suppose if my people had been oppressed for about a thousand years, I’d be doing everything I could to get a little bit ahead, too.   The people are nice enough and there is definitely a limit to their greedy nature.  It’s just kind of strange having three people following you, tugging on your clothes and all of them trying to sell you the same things.  You don’t really know whether they are selling you something or coordinating a quick dip into your back pockets.

At any rate, beyond all the personal interaction that takes its toll on the weary traveler, there are plenty of cool things to do here.  And by cool, I mean dangerous, cruel, illegal, immoral and outlandishly deplorable.

Phnom Penh will forever ring a note with me that reaches into the very depths of the most deviant parts of my soul.  And it’s one hell of a deep cavern, let me tell ya.  Here in Phnom Penh, if you so choose on any given

day, you can wake up and take a ride outside the city where you can blow up farm animals with old machine guns left over from the Vietnam war; you can then head over to the killing fields where you can still see the bones of victims of the communist torture machine poking up out of the ground; then you can go and gamble on the latest Muay Thai match — Cambodian fighters, of course; then head out to lunch where you can eat pizza cooked with marijuana seasoning and a side order of deep fried tarantula; walk around the markets and buy everything from brand new illegal movies and computer software to used shoes and sex toys; then head to your tandem hotel/massage parlor and have an afternoon nap while tiny Asian women rub your toes (and whatever else you pay for); in the late afternoon you can dash out and see a genocide museum where thousands of innocent men, women and children were shackled to beds and

tortured and brutally slain; then head home and sit out on your balcony and listen to the propaganda trucks buzz down the roads with loudspeakers blaring communist noise about the rise of terror that is soon to return; by the evening you could stroll down into town and have your choice of all manner of drugs from peddlers who walk right up to you with briefcases full of a colorful assortment of pills, baggies and needles.  And after (or if) you’ve come down off your undoubtedly intense high, you can have a beer at the local club and pay a little extra for some late night boom-boom.  It’s all in a day’s fun for the learned traveler.

And if you really just don’t have a taste for any of that you can simply pick a streetside cafe and sit with a coffee and watch the truly amazing world of Cambodia walk right by you – or more likely, come up to you and ask you for money.

It’s really striking what you can see walking down the street at any given moment.  You will see all kinds of interesting things – and not all of them human.  But definitely all of them interesting, foreign and mostly enjoyable to remember when you leave.

The markets are really a world all in themselves.  There is meat hanging in the open air waiting for hungry buyers.   When a place is so dependent on the black market, cost goes down, but so does quality.  Take your pick.

The gun range was interesting.  You can choose any number of fully automatic armaments, grenades, even a grenade launcher, and fire them at any number of animals that happen to be running around the field abutting the firing station.  I wasn’t allowed to take photos – though I managed to still sneak a few in that I will upload later – but I did get to see some interesting things.  For about $40 you can fire a fully automatic Chinese- or Russian-made AK-47, a number of Russian- and German-made automatic rifles or a .308 U.S., ground-mounted machine gun.  I saw an Australian tourist make a rooster-swiss cheese and dirt sandwich with one of the 9mm versions.  For $50 you can chuck a live grenade at one of the farm animals.  I didn’t get the pleasure of seeing anyone send off one of these.  And for $350 you can launch a shoulder-fired rocket from a grenade launcher.  For this, the target was a cow that they bring out and tie to a fence post.  Someone

goes out and paints a big, black “X” on it and then instructs the gunman on how to place the sights so that the blast will send the animal’s insides out to the maximum coverage on the hillside behind it.  I didn’t get to see this.  I wanted to.  But I missed that by about an hour.  However, I did get to see the remains of the last poor karmically deviant incarnate to have been born into the bull that now drips from the karst formations jutting up from the Cambodian soil about 150 yards from the viewing area.  It’s truly something to behold.  They told me they would sell me the gun, but of course, there was no guaranteeing I would be able to leave the country with it.  It’s like the hooker-rule: It’s not the prostitute you need to worry about – it’s her driver.  That might not make much sense now.  But come out for a visit.  You will know what I mean.

In all that I saw, I was glad that I had been denied at the border.  And though I didn’t partake in any sexual or murderous activity, I did enjoy a “happy pizza.”  All you have to do is go to the Happy Herb Pizza shop and ask for it “extra happy.”  Of course, when I got the receipt, it came with a hog-leg joint the size of my middle finger, rolled tight as a drum and stinking like a hippy’s undercarriage.  So since I had a fourth floor hotel room, I sat out on the balcony and buzzed into the evening.  Hadn’t done it in a while, so I figured, “why not?”

It’s sort of funny, the way people think of pot, here.  The way they see it, it’s pretty childish.  They kind of see it as a thing that kids do (e.g. huffing glue) – especially since the grown-ups have moved on to quite harsher things.  They have pure heroine, uncut cocaine, tons of undocumented UXO (unexploded ordinance), enough armaments to field-suite every man, woman and child in all the neighboring countries and enough of a volatile overpopulation of impoverished women to deploy an infected band of prostitutes to the far reaches of every nation on earth.  So what’s a little weed gonna do?  I guess they figure they have bigger fish to fry.

Journal 14: April 9, 2010

I heard a man say at a funeral once that we come into this world with nothing and we leave it the same way.  But I can’t say as I agree with that.   Whatever god that inspired that phrase, I believe that coming and going with nothing isn’t really good business if the idea is to get better with time.

For the last few years, after the many things I have seen, all the stories and memories and feelings of friends around the globe I believe that I will be leaving this world with much more than I had when I  came into it.

And, speaking of god and nothing:  God and nothing have a lot in common, I think.  And that is been exemplified in every new place I see.  People really want to believe that there is something greater than ourselves out there.  It’s essentially become a system of ethos.  It takes lots of forms and it’s believed in different lights no matter where you go.  Sometimes it’s resembled in golden relics; sometimes in the flora and fauna that surround a people in a given demographic; sometimes it’s embodied in the form of celestial manifestation connected in a web of shimmering specks woven across the night sky.

I tend to believe that because it may well be so much greater than us that we can’t begin to imagine its true greatness with our feeble, little minds, how, therefore, can we deify an object which we can comprehend in order to represent it?

In any case, this marvelous place has plenty of proof of worship to the higher order of things.  Of course, I am speaking of the temples of Angkor.  The sheer size of this place is almost unimaginable.  The entire city was once the bustling capitol of the Angkor Empire.  And it’s hard to imagine it but there are no definitive answers as to why it was abandoned.

Recent history has given us many clues as to why most of it has been demolished.  From World War Two to the Vietnam War when it was used as a stronghold, bombed by opposition and even defaced by the communist regime, it’s surprising that there is really any of it left.  Nevertheless, though, I did get to see the one place that I have been hoping to see ever since the July, 2009 edition of National Geographic came out, detailing the recent theories as to the ultimate demise of this wonderful city whose presence here dates back a thousand years.

To get the greater understanding of just how massive, organized and functional this place once was, you have to look at it from the bird’s-eye-view.  Actually, you would be better off seeing it from the satellites hovering over us in space.  The Mekong River, which I have already crossed once so far in my journey through this beautiful chunk of the planet, is the most powerful and life-giving resource to this area (aside from the sun, of course).  And to see its uses here is only too simplistic.  You must first understand that it starts high in the Tibetan ice fields.  So not only is it uninhibited by the climatic rollercoaster of monsoons, dry seasons and everything in between; it’s also a force that pushes water down to a gradually flattening plane.  And this is the greatest contributing factor that led to the success of the largest, organized, urban complex in the pre-industrialized world.

Angkor, itself, is a city that can be seen in its entirety if you rent a motorcycle and stay for a week of doing nothing but exploring.  So in my few days there it was simply impossible to take it all in.  However, there were some highlights that I couldn’t have gone without.

For my first day, I knew that I couldn’t wait to see the city’s center piece, Angkor Wat (or Angkor Temple).  I got up around 4:30 a.m. just to get the sunrise which, I was told, graces the Cambodian plains just behind it.  And, as with most of the temples throughout the Buddhist world, its symmetry is denoted by entrances in the four, cardinal directions.  Therefore, when the sun rises at one entrance, it will set at another.  There is almost always a body of water to the south and, if possible, mountains to the north.  This is what is accepted by most cultures in the Asean as good “Fung Shui.”  It ensures that the proper energy flow enters, fluidly disperses itself throughout the structure and then exits – all in an organized and coordinated way.

Firstly, even just traveling to get there is an adventure.  I hired a tuk-tuk

driver to take me through the three days of studying the monuments.  And all the while I was happy I did.  There are no dirty windows to ruin shots of the local flavor.  Monks on scooters, villagers selling goods, the nature as it exists and the culture as it moves through the days here is all something pretty amazing — and therefore worth every penny of the $10/day fee for the open-air, motorized coach known throughout Indochina as the “tuk-tuk.”

In Angkor’s construction, there was a large moat surrounding the entire temple.  It was massive.  To cross it, it must have been at least 100 meters.  But its circumference around the four entrances was the really impressive part.  Not only did the moat extend for about 500 meters on each side, it was lined all the way around with a series of continuous steps on either side of the water.  This made the entire thing look more like the grandest set of stadium stands ever created by the sweat of man.  The effort of bringing these huge, stone slabs alone must have been a marvel of organization and coordination.  Looking across the moat in 180 degrees of the visual peripheral plane while seated on one of these slabs, one can imagine endless tiers of orange robes draped over shaved, tanned heads encircling this beautiful monument at the epicenter of the Angkor Empire.

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Not impressed yet?  Well, I haven’t described the wall that surrounds all of this, which is another 500 meters out from the moat.  This wall, which is overgrown by strangler figs and other flora, was, brick by brick, carved, crafted and carried from an area around the banks of the Mekong floodplain

about 400 kilometers away.  The carvings depict huge figures from elephants to gods to people and when it was complete it told a story of the successes of the kingdom as it had once reigned supreme in that area – extending to reaches farther than that of the Roman Empire.

And if after all of this you’re still not impressed, there is another wall that surrounds the entire city.  It’s just as fascinating and about ten times as impressive.  It has entryways with inscriptions and little sculptures – each one unique – that number about 1500 or so on each overarching entryway.  Each one intricately crafted and looking as though its care and meticulous attention was the devoted focus of a single man’s entire lifetime.

But back to the success and ingenuity of this place:  In reading up on the history and archeological discoveries of the area, it has been found that there were many structures – since destroyed by floods, droughts, even the builders, themselves – that are impressive by today’s standards.  These included underground tunnels, viaducts, aqueducts, and several different types of mass-water pumps which kept water in the city throughout the long, rainless months.

There were pools, moats, ponds.  There were even four massive, rectangular barays (one in each cardinal direction pointing toward Angkor Wat) which diverted water from many sources including the Siem Reap River.  A thousand years ago, to build something as large as one of these barays, as many as 200,000 Khmer workers may have been needed to pile up nearly 16 million cubic yards of soil in embankments 300 feet wide and three stories tall. It was truly a massive undertaking.  And it was so well thought-out that it was planned down to the days when the last bit of saturated soil from the retreating monsoons was set to take place.  They even knew which areas had the siltier, sandier and loamier soil that would need to be moistened first in order to keep continuous rice production.

This was the defining factor in the Khmer people’s success in rice production throughout the dry months and, consequently, their ability to extend their rule into larger and larger portions of their surrounding nations.  As Angkor was a moneyless society, all their influence came from the money-dependent countries around them.   Even today Angkor remains the largest single religious monument in the history of the world.

But that’s enough about the history.  On to the present.

The temples, the carvings, the tile-work, the massive stone structures ensconced in pagodas and tens- and hundreds-of-meters-high temples; it was almost too much to take in.  But I did my best anyway.

The gallery below should show you a glimpse of some of the wonderful things there are to see here.  Aside from the guards posted at the front of most of the temples, there is really no one that walks around telling you that you can’t climb on things.  There are a few signs here and there, but for the most part, no one really watches over you.  So I climbed.  I scurried.  I risked a broken back.  But I got lots of great shots.

Please enjoy these as I have enjoyed being here and taking them.  And thanks again for reading.  It has brought me great pride and personal pleasure to have heard back from all of you about my trips.  Keep them coming and let me know what you think, what you might want to see more of and what are your favorite parts.

I will not likely be able to write again until I reach my next top-10 must-see location: Vietnam.

Until then, all my best!

[Gallery will be posted when photos finish uploading]

A grateful thanks and citing of information goes to the National Geographic Society for the July 2009 edition of their wonderful flagship publication, National Geographic Magazine.

Journal April 5, 2010

Today was probably one of the most moving days of any of my trips thus far.  I was taken by a river boat through the most poverty-stricken areas I have ever seen.  The “slow-boat,” as they call it, was more like a river taxi, once we were well into the “neighborhoods” of floating villages.

To start my day, I awoke at the ugly hour of 6:00 a.m. in order to make my way to the boat headed toward Siem Reap.  The night before, I told my driver to come and pick me up at about 6:30 so that I would have enough time to check in and buy some food to eat on what I was told would be a 6 – 7 hour trip through the Sangker River headed toward the Tonle Sap (lake abutting Siem Reap).  Well, when I finally dragged downstairs at about that time, a large number of the most desperate looking men surrounded me on all sides.  My driver was nowhere to be seen.  They were all pleading with me to pay them one dollar to drive me six blocks and drop me off at the dock.  I couldn’t tell whether or not they were driven by drugs, hunger or eight starving children.  But I was eventually so frustrated by them berating me that after about five minutes of not seeing my driver, I told one the saddest looking of the lot that I would let him drive me to the boat.

Needless to say, when I got there, I was asked for more money.  I stood my ground.  I am tiring quickly of all of this constant edginess and being followed just because I am white.  I do indeed understand the problems of poverty – or, as this passage will denote, I will soon understand it more – but I get very winded when my space is constantly invaded by people, their hands all over me, tugging on my clothing and asking me to buy this or that or shouting their sob story at me.  I feel bad, I do, but it just gets old quick.

The dock was a strange place to hang out.  I had my ticket in hand from the day before because my driver wanted to make sure I had a seat.  That’s one of the best things about hiring a driver; as long as you pay them at the end of the day, they provide some excellent services to you.  They look out for your interests as well as hold on to your bags while you are away seeing the sights, they act as translators and as mediums to keep out the riffraff – seeing as they are also protecting their source of income from a frustrating encounter they might otherwise run away from – and they know all the best spots in town,

the cheapest hotels, the most coveted photo-spots and the best advice for travel to surrounds.

The sour part comes when you get the “the bad one.” There has long been a breed of drivers who scheme and plot in all ways possible to get from their fare the most they can.  This is the notoriously shifty tuk-tuk driver – the ugly step-cousin; the proverbial rooster-in-the-hen-house to the honest, hard-working bike taxi community.  And they do work hard, there’s no doubt about that.  But there is a bastardized assemblage of conniving men who go into the town, hook up with several restaurants, places of dodgy business and form with the shiftless management of these establishments and once their fare is in-tow, they will not bring them anywhere else.  It’s like a continual conveyor belt of traveler that they attract which they hope will remain dumb to their game as long as they are in that town so that they spend money only in these specific places – everyone gets a cut.

I am not even really upset about this way of doing things.  It’s underhanded, granted, but it’s not illegal, and it is a way to make better money in a completely underprivileged society.  I get it.  You have to do what needs to be done to put food on the table.  But I just don’t like it.

That said, I made my way to the seats to await the boat and went to grab some breakfast.  There was a police officer standing nearby, so I decided to give my back a rest and leave my backpack in the chair next to him.  He’s a policeman, what could go wrong, right?

Upon my return, I find that two younger gentlemen have been picking at the locks on my bag – just keeping people honest – and the policeman is sort of leaning over them to see if they can get it open and catch a glimpse of what’s inside!  I couldn’t believe it.  I walked up behind them casually and the officer, who was the first one to notice my presence, kind of patted the shoulder of one of the teens prodding at my bag and the two turned in shock to see me hovering over them.  They smiled sheepishly and got up to pick another seat as I sat and began to ensure that they had indeed not breeched the bag.  All was intact.

They may have been complete nunces, but they were fashionable – as far as fashion goes here.  In the last decade or so, kids have been wearing their pants low on their waste, sometimes well below.  This works for the most part as long as you include a belt.  And though, this kids had the feet of an 80-year-old man and no shoes to cover them, it seemed that he had gone and spent all of his money on the pants alone, rather than to save up for the shoes and belt to go along with them.

I started to eat the bread-hotdog-herb crust combo, unique to this area, and heard a ruckus taking place just behind me.  I looked quickly and couldn’t really tell what it was I was looking at.  I don’t think that my brain computed what my eyes were imputing for at least five or so seconds.  Then it came to me; I was staring down the tailpipe of that very young man who was poking at my bag.  His pants had fallen down and he was fumbling to retrieve them – unsuccessfully, I might add.  It was all there – everything.  All that Cambodia has to offer, just dangling there before me.   Once I realized what was happening, I just grabbed my bag and moved to the other bench.  These two kids were sharing about 35 – 40 brain cells between them.  They were two boneheads of the highest order.  And in about five minutes I would find out another interesting thing about them; they were the drivers.

But inside those five minutes I would be hassled yet another time.  Apparently my delinquent tuk-tuk driver showed up at the hotel to find me gone and was so furious that he came to find me and tell me all about it while I waited for the boat.  This was going to be an interesting – though enlightening – ride.

You see on the commercials about organizations in place around the world helping out impoverished areas to get schools, medicine, clothing, food and shelter.  Well, this is the type of place that they make these commercials.  When I was in Peru, I thought I had seen poverty in Central America.  But

Peru took the cake.  Now that I have seen this place, I really have to say that this is definitely the worst that I have ever seen.  I thought that I would not be so saddened after having seen those other places – those places where children are digging barefoot through trash heaps to find food and things to sell on the streets, where the governments had long forgotten about them, where aid won’t reach because these places aren’t even on the map.  But I was wrong.  I was very touched by what I saw and it proved to me that no matter how much of it I see, I can never get used to it, grow comfortable with it or feel okay about it.  And it certainly makes me feel fortunate to have been born anywhere else other than places like these – much less in a country where, even if I disagree with most of its policies, they do much more for their less fortunate.

The importance of education was the first thing to strike me as what’s needed here.  I thought, ‘If they only knew that there were little organisms and parasites growing in that water that you’re bathing your child in; that you and your children are brushing your teeth with; that you’re cooking with; that you’re drinking, perhaps you would not be doing this.’  But as I watched boat after boat and village after village pass, I realized that this is not some connected place.  The people that we were dropping off were bringing back lots of supplies and food that they had likely saved money for a long time to buy.’  So it’s not like they can just import clean drinking, cooking and bathing water.  So what then?

Then my thoughts roamed a while longer and I thought, ‘why wouldn’t these people realize their location as one that is not the most beneficial or

opportune?’  And of course I remembered back to my conversation about how these people had been chase from their homes, raped, tortured, murdered – slaughtered, really.  Of course they would flee to the most difficult place to find.  And so

they came here.  And here they stay, living the life that is the safest – even with a staggering infant mortality rate due to parasitic infestation.  It wouldn’t even surprise me to find out that there are probably some people here who haven’t yet realized that the occupation is over.  That is why this is the worst of the poverty that I have seen to date.

Knowing all that I have seen, that is an amazingly appalling thing.

Because this is the end of the wet season and the beginning of the long, hot summer, the water was very low.  So low, in fact, that the two sac-sporting, toothless, thieving, teen nitwits driving the boat got us lodged against the bottom of the river several times.  This was to be the last transport through this area, they told me.  After this the river would be too shallow.  I was not disappointed to find out that these hopeless, pubescent skippers would be manning their last ship of the season.

One would run and jump into the filthy water to push the boat back into the deeper area while the other one would gun the throttle and wedge us in just a little deeper into the muck.  They were not very coordinated.  No real

communication took place between them as one would throttle and the other would slip and slide around in the mud.  They hustled, though, I will give them that.  They really worked at it.  Well, until about four hours into the trip when I looked up to the front to see them both sleeping, having gotten a child to steer the boat.

Once we got throughthe lowest of the waters, the villages became more and more “advanced.” There was everything from floating markets, to floating restaurants, to floating churches – even a floating basketball court!  I really couldn’t believe just how much effort was put into keeping this place… afloat (sorry, I had to).

Once we crossed the lake, it was back into the dusty, arid climes headed into town.  I thought that I might have seen the last of the polluted lifestyle, but really, it just got worse.  Instead of having a flowing body of water in which to dump all of your trash, feces and unwanted items, the areas I would pass through only had standing water.  So there were ultimately stagnant pools of stench rather than a steady flow of it.  Between the two, take my word for it, I’d “go with the flow” (again, sorry – how could I pass up these puns?)

Tonight I went to book a hotel and hire a driver for tomorrow’s festivities which will include seeing something that I have wanted to see for a long time, Angkor Wat and surrounding ruins.  I found out that things are much more expensive here.  It is really unbelievable.  As it happens, there have been a series of wealthy investors come in and hire up all of the drivers, pay them to only drive the tourists to their hotels and restaurants and have thereby effectively muscled out all of the low-budget hostels and backpacker eateries.  I can’t tell whether or not I like it because I want to see more money come into this place, but at the same time, I know that this money is likely only lining the pockets of a few already wealthy individuals while keeping the low-rent business in the red.  Plus, it’s always nice to know that you can still travel cheaply and help out the smaller businesses.  But since I couldn’t seem to find anything like that, I am now sitting in an air-conditioned, cushy mattress-ed, wall-to-wall tiled, four-star resort complete with sauna, a swimming pool, breakfast bar, room fridges and even a jetted bathtub.  I haven’t seen a bathtub in six months!  It’s too late tonight to indulge, but soon enough…. Oh yes… soon enough.

Please enjoy this photo gallery as I have enjoyed making it.

Journal April 4, 2010

Waking up in Battambang at the solemn hour of 8am may be a regular thing for most people.  But after a day-and-a-half of trains, buses, hiking and sweating all while breathing in the most putrid collection of gaseous excretions that I have ever had the extreme displeasure of inhaling, I could have used the morning to sleep in.  But there is no rest for the weary, especially when good photography awaits – besides, the stench was already forming a purple hewn fog along the rotting baseboards of my tiny hotel room and the heat entering the failing seals of room was giving it a stir and sending it right at me.  Time for the breeze off the causeway and then to climb some temples where just a few, short decades ago thousands of people were bludgeoned to death by tyrannical, genocidal communists, the Khmer Rouge.

The Khmer Rouge (literally Red Khmers) were the Communist guerillas in Cambodia in the early 1970s. They were created, trained, funded and equipped by North Viet Nam. After the United States Congress, in violation of its treaty obligations, cut off all military aid to South Viet Nam and Cambodia, both countries fell to Communist rule in April of 1975. South Viet Nam was conquered by North Viet Nam and Cambodia was taken over by the Khmer Rouge. Over the next three years the Khmer Rouge killed nearly half the population in Cambodia.  The leader of the Khmer Rouge, the agrarian, totalitarian and admittedly psychotic ass-hat, Pol Pot, personally saw to the deaths of at least 2000 local farmers in this area alone.  The bodies were strewn about the temple that I was to see this morning and there was definitely an eerie and ominous feel to the place.

The ride to the cave monastery was great.  A little dusty, but there was plenty of local flavor floating around on makeshift carts and trailers, weighing down already overburdened motorbikes with as many people they can carry, hauling good supplies – babies, pork backs, groceries, toilets, monks; you name it.

Climbing the cliffs to the “Killing Cave,” there is a rather peaceful and calming sense to the place.  The bluffs overlook what appear to be thousands of hectares of farmland in every direction.  Once atop the mountain, though, all that can be seen is the old and new construction of temples and places of meditation.  You would never really guess, by the way it looks now, that the terrible atrocities were acted out on innocent people here – and only a short time ago.

The first temple you see is about five meters wide by about 10 long.  This is where the Khmer kept more than 1000 men, women and children at a time while they awaited a swift clubbing and a 20-meter tumble to their deaths at the bottom of the Killing Cave.

Following the trail down to the cave, you can look up and see where they were dropped, their bones, skulls and all, gathered up and placed in a

Buddhist shrine built in dedication of these poor souls’ suffering.  Prayer flags lead the way down to the dungeon-turned-cave-temple.  At the bottom, there is also a reclining Buddha.  There are classes taught there for young children and there are many ceremonies every month in remembrance of those who’ve passed.

The rest of the grounds are full of wonderful eight-door temples, newly constructed visages cresting the walls of each of these buildings.  They stand right beside the older, more disheveled buildings, though, which makes me think that the older buildings will be coming down soon, rather than maintained any further.

One of the most amazing things that I have had the privilege of experiencing in my time in and around Southeast Asia over the past months is to have met and spoken with several monks.  The first monk I met was in Malaysia in January.  That conversation was wonderful.  It was a tribute to the standard of peace, openness and intelligence to which they hold themselves.  His name was Lampau Chamnin and he was the chief monk at the Jumnean-Wat-T-humsua (Tiger Cave temple) in Krabi before visiting his brother, Naichan Sararaks, who maintained the temple in Malaysia I was visiting when I met him.  I have met others since then and all of my interactions with them have been pleasant and uplifting.  But the young monk I met at this temple was

especially memorable because of his enthusiasm and sparkling smile that erupted when I spoke to him and introduced myself in combination with a proper “wai” greeting.  He spoke excellent English and couldn’t stop asking questions about America and Alaska and he would pause to give me time to speak — as they are taught to make a conscious effort to do — and I responded with questions and answers of my own.  There was nothing terribly amazing about the situation; only that I was offered a glimpse into the mysterious life of dedicated, ascension-seeking monks.  His name, as best as I can figure the spelling, was Ranae, and he was 15-years-old.  He knew much about America.  It seemed to be a research passion of his.   He had been at that monastery for one year of his three year commitment.  Most, if not all, Southeast Asian Buddhist-born men are expected to dedicate two years of their life as a monk — one in their young years and one as an older man.  I have been writing quite a lot of notes on my experience with the Buddhist element here.  I will be writing a reflection piece on this in a later blog.

Once I left there, it was off to climb the 386 stairs to the fire temples.  The ride there was full of wonderful those slice-of-life shots that I love so much.  There were children playing, people going about their business, carrying, toting and hauling things here and there.  There was a real sense of “real” here that I had hoped to find – especially after the rancid aroma from the French colonial town of Battambang.

I paid my two dollars, signed my name in the guestbook and snapped a photo

of the very courteous official who took my money before heading up the stairs.

Now, some might think that 386 stairs is an auspicious task in the dry Cambodian heat.  But as long as you keep looking down and take it slow it’s a lot easier.  But since I did neither of these, I was in for some sweaty pain.  At one point I finally decided to keep looking down at the steps in front of me rather than all of the steps above me I was worn but not dead.  And it was okay; right about the time I felt like I was about to fall over dead, I realized I was halfway there.

Once up to the top, I snapped a few photos, enjoyed the view and kept trying to tell the lady who had followed me up with a fan that I couldn’t pay her any money.  But she was persistent.

The ruins atop the temple were great.  Some of the oldest collections of construction that I have seen were there.  It was nice to get up and see the area as well.  There was a temple that was dedicated just to the burning of bodies during the Vietnam war.  And there was still a holding area where the

German guns were kept.  I didn’t know that the Germans supplied arms to the

communists, but here it was: proof positive.

One of the saddest things that I have seen so far (besides the evidence of absolutely atrocious acts against innocent people by totalitarian regimes) was that a lot of the carvings from these great temples have long since been broken off, looted and sold to the European art market.  Normally, it’s not even done very well, so there are just score marks where most of the faces of these carvings used to be.  So if you ever find yourself in a street market in Asia, please do not buy relics that are said to be real.  There are castings of these beautiful pieces that do not support destroying the country’s heritage.

From there the driver, Chan, took me to a motorized bamboo train that I could have sworn was approaching 100 miles per hour with nothing between me and a grizzly death but a loosely strung patch of sun-beaten reeds.  It was quite a thrill – to get off.  Once I felt the cool, calming feeling of solid ground under my feet, I was happy to pay the driver a little too much money to never do that again.  And then it was back to the hotel.

I have just finished editing the day’s photos and writing this journal entry and now I am headed out to the market to go get some photos of pigs hanging by their tails and ladies carrying little baskets around on their heads.

Good night.

Journal April 3, 2010

As noted in yesterday’s journal, plans inherently seem to adapt themselves to some greater lineage of events which normally end up having the most unexpected results while traveling.

This morning, I awoke on the sleeper train to Bangkok around 6 o’clock to a crimson hewn sun casting the day’s first light.  The sunset was particularly lovely last night.  But still nothing compared to the break of the new day.  And another highlight was this older monk who sat adjascent to me and watched his little radio television all night.  It was really funny.  Every so often he would adjust the antenna and the static that had been building up minutes before would clear and he would chuckle when it came through.  I couldn’t figure out whether he was laughing at the content of what he was seeing or the fact that he only recently realized that he didn’t have to have been sitting watching static.  In either case, his pleasant demeanor was a nice thing to watch.

Once in Bangkok, I found that I did not pack my visas that were emailed to me from the Cambodian and Vietnamese embassies.  So I had to print off another copy.  This proved troublesome and ultimately delayed my travel by about three hours.  But, once printed, I was back to moving across the countryside and seeing parts of Thailand that I don’t get to see back in Suratthani.  Some were good; some were horrible.  But for the most part, there was an all around “new” feel to everything.

Even on the morning train as it approached Bangkok’s inner core, there were signs of such extreme poverty that I was quite baffled.  I saw what looked like three families (from grandparents all the way down to newborns) sharing the underside of a pre- or failed-construction bridge.  That was sad.  But what was amazing was that this scene took place about a block from a mansion where several men washed the high-priced sports cars of the resident owner.  Then, on the way out of town, there seemed to be lots of bogs that people had come along and built houses on stilts, connected by a shanty wood bridge.  And even in these little cutaway communities, there were still street venders opening up their plastic bags and setting up their stoves to prepare to sell whatever they were making to whoever lived in these propped-up shanty shacks.  I kept trying to get pictures of these scenes, but the train was moving a little too fast for my still-drowsy trigger finger.

Back on the bus, though, I did manage to snap off a few good shots.  And once at Poi Pet, my whole idea of “border run” changed forever.  This place was a complete cesspool.  An armpit, really – complete with floating filth from street corner to street corner.

And that really wasn’t the worst of it.  I am not sure if it was because of the fact that I had just left the land of smiles, Thailand, where everyone greets you with immediate respect and enthusiasm, or if these people were really just rude, deliberate and aggressive.  But I was rushed from before I even hit the border station.

People would come up to you and say, “Hi, man, where are you from?” and offer a hand to shake as if they were your immediate and undying friend.  But you knew it was all a shiny coating on some deeper, more sinister ordeal.  You knew that they wanted you to buy something, give them money because of their sob-story or worse, to get you into their car and take you somewhere… else.

In any case, this didn’t stop once in Cambodia.  It only got worse.  And I should have known that this was not a country to be trifled with once I walked into the immigration station and saw no means for checking any of my bags.  There were no metal detectors, no guards on duty digging through luggage for contraband, no scanners – there wasn’t even a table on which to look through your things.  There was no concern whatsoever as to what you were bringing into their country.  I could have had smelly body parts and would have still gotten through based on the grade and level of the stench flowing through that place like a bad omen.

I would later find out that the reason they don’t check luggage is that there is quite literally nothing that you could possibly bring into Cambodia that (A) is not already there, (B) they ultimately don’t want or (C) would loose you any popularity or credibility with the locals.  As far as they are concerned, whatever it is that you have, it’s merely a conversation starter.  Because, when the cards are down, these people have been savagely oppressed for hundreds of years and have most certainly seen it all.  They have nuclear sites, American landmines strewn all over the countryside, missiles, rockets, grenade launchers, prostitutes, all manner of drugs, heaps of nameless bodies as yet undiscovered from all parts of the world, pharmaceuticals, genetic labs, bathtub drug manufacturing stations — and that is just the unregulated, black market stuff.  It’s all found here, grown here, made here, brought, bought and sold here.  So pretty much anything goes.

I found this out in a conversation that ended with an offer from my driver to blow up a cow with a grenade launcher for $300 in a small village just south of the location that very conversation took place.  I had no idea my driver

knew that much English until he started talking shop.  And Cambodian “shop” is an interesting thing to talk indeed.

To dot the trail to this night’s accommodations: I left from Bangkok headedfor Poi Pet – the butt-stench border town – and passed through Butchang, Bang Khla, Kabin, Buri, Khok Sau, Khok Sung and Sisiphorn to get to Battambang.  The names are strange, I know, and they can almost all be mistaken for the parts of the body that are most likely to emit a very similar smell to that which hovered like a cloud over each one of these polluted, little towns.