Going, Going, Ready to be Still

The Cambodian on the bus offered me one of his crickets. It tasted briny, like bullion with a hint of lime. A leg got caught between my teeth and it rode there until we got to Phnom Penh. My feet itched from a sunburn I got at Mui Ne. My first day there, I slavered on insect repellent, thinking it was sun screen, walking the fine Vietnamese beach while jet ski boys buzzed past, offering rides. The AC in my room at Tien Dat Resort was out, so they upgraded me to a seaside bungalow. I felt almost embarrassed by the luxury of it, especially the following day when I joined a gaggle of international backpackers in a convoy of U.S. Army Jeeps for an all day sand dune tour. The dunes stretched far, and in the late afternoon a group of vacationing Asians invited me to sit at the rear of their laminate toboggan, and we slid down and I carried one of their children back up the dune on my back.

Another five hour bus ride back to Saigon, another night at the Asian Ruby 3 Hotel, then a six hour bus to Phnom Penh. Getting back onto the bus on the Cambodian side after showing customs my e-visa, the trip changed immediately: the highway became rutted, potholed, eventually unpaved. The Santana CD we’d been listening to was replaced by an American action pic dubbed in Cambodian: one voiceover, a high pitched staccato actress, for all of the characters, male and female. We passed dusty stilt houses wilting in the heat, the land low and flooded. If I’d woken up from a nap and looked out the window, I might have thought I was in The Florida Everglades. This being the start of the monsoon season, the unpaved road turned muddy. On the ride from the bus to my hotel, the tuk-tuk driver apologized for the rain splattering into my carriage, and then laughed at the fifth or sixth time his engine died. I laughed with him, and told him I wasn’t in any hurry.

The ATMs in Cambodia spit out US dollars. Everything is priced in dollars and riel. Now that most of the land mines have been cleared, tourism is booming. Clinging tightly to their number one industry, the Cambodian people are desperate to learn English. The Cambodian government, however, is one of the most corrupt in the world, which means the citizens work their asses off and see almost nothing for it. I’d read horror stories of the Cambodian sex and drug trade, and though I’ve been offered a vast array of drugs while here, the sex trade in Phnom Penh seems to pale compared to what I saw in Bangkok in the mid-nineties. Sure, there were hustlers out front of most of the bars I walked past, urging me to step inside, but nowhere did I see the signs for special shows or price lists for services. I did, however, see trucks parked outside of factories in the afternoons, being loaded with women of all ages as they got off work. Beggars abound, maimed adults and dusty kids, but they usually drift away with a firm, “No thank you.” The streets at night are dimly lit; while walking back to my hotel from dinner, I edged back out of one particularly dark street and sought out one with a bit more traffic. But the people here, like those in Bali, are ready with genuine smiles and kindness. They have suffered, as a quick study of Cambodian history or a trip to the genocide museum or the Killing Fields will testify. At the Killing Fields, the worn footpath exposed human bone, shined smooth by numerous tourist shoes.

In Siem Reap, Cambodia’s second largest city, I paid Thean, a young tuk-tuk driver (vannthean1984@yahoo.com), $20 for an all-day tour of ancient temples, ending the day at Angkor Wat. The long day darkened with storm clouds, and as we raced back to the hotel, the sky let loose. Thean pulled over, threw on a raincoat, and then started to roll down the plastic walls of his tuk-tuk. I told him it wasn’t necessary, and, once back at the hotel, changed into my bathing suit and stood outside in the rain. The street now a river, old men on the other side cheered me on. The hotel staff just laughed. The electricity went out, and I did yoga in my room by candlelight before heading out to dinner: a mixed grill of ostrich, frog legs, python, kangaroo and crocodile. Afterwards, I got a $12 “four hand” massage: no monkey business, just languorous pressure in a dimly lit room, surrounded by gauzy white curtains.

The hard drive of my laptop died in Siem Reap. I’m now spending my third and final night in Sihanoukville, on the southern coast, before heading back on the five hour bus ride to Phnom Penh tomorrow. It’s been raining every afternoon, hard and steady. The hotel's swimming pool's a dark lily pad green. It’s after midnight, the damp air finally cooling, and I’ve loaded my photos onto the hotel lobby desktop and used their Word program to write this update. The hotel is a new and rather bland affair, just across the street from the beach shacks that sell $2 prawn and squid skewers, with marijuana milkshakes and cookies on their menus. Tomorrow night, I catch a nine hour flight to Seoul, wander through a nine hour layover there, then fly another nine hours to San Francisco. This has been a year I'll never forget. One of love and loss, hard lessons, adventure and discovery. I’m ready now to be still. I’m ready to come home.