Kampuchea Crossings

Bump to baby on the beaten expat track

travel

Images of Cambodia

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Culinary delights for the uncompromising palate.


Welcome to Cambodia (overland crossing at Poipet border).


All manner of vendors and sellers descend upon stopped vehicles.


View from the back of a tuk-tuk of some lakeside dwellings in Siem Reap.


Angkor Wat, in the Angkor Archaeological Zone


Bayon, in the Angkor Archaeological Zone


Ta Phrom, in the Angkor Archaeological Zone


Ta Phrom. These massive root systems have been removed from the other Angkor sites, but the French left them during their administration of this particular site.


With frequent and strong rains during the monsoon seasons, houses are typically raised off the ground.


Roadside gas station in the provinces


Gas station in Phnom Penh around the corner from my first apartment


The local barber shop


Psar Toul Tum Pung, or Russian Market. The Russian population in Phnom Penh frequented this market in the 1980s so it was named such.


Independence Monument, the most easily recognized landmark in Phnom Penh.


Elephant Sambo being taken for a walk on the riverside in Phnom Penh.


The Royal Palace

Cambodia: How to do the Poipet Border Crossing

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Border crossing from Arranyaprathet, Thailand, into Poipet, Cambodia, is more stressful than the other way around. The casinos are right on the border, with sellers and market stalls outside. $40 rooms are had here if the onwards journey is postponed and a night’s stay is necessary. Otherwise, the main street just straight out from the border is lined with guesthouses of various price ranges. My $3 room was clean with a solid lock on a rickety door. The bus station was off this main road to the left, if walking away from the border, for my early morning bus ride.

If you purchased a trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) or Bangkok-Phnom Penh, there is the possibility of a scam in Poipet. This can go along the lines of the bus breaking down, so if you want to get to Siem Reap or PP by nightfall, you have to pay extra to get on a bus that was leaving “right now” and happens to have extra seats. That’s an extra several dollars to $15.

If you took the train from Bangkok it will be around 2-3pm by the time you cross the border and need onwards transport. Touts of all sorts will approach you with options. Be mindful of the following ticket prices to adjust your bargaining (Phnom Penh-Siem Reap is roughly the same distance as Poipet-Phnom Penh, and also Poipet-Siem Reap as this latter trip’s road is in BAD shape):

A one-way ticket on a comfortable, clean, air-conditioned bus with a bathroom from Phnom Penh-Siem Reap costs around $12-$16. The cheapest ticket option where locals can ride roofside on a packed ‘taxi’ minibus for this same trip is around $3-6.

Just remember: If you haggle too hard, you’ll get shafted and may end up in another town altogether, late in the evening with no options (like we did, see below). Keep your cool, ask questions, pay fairly, and you’ll get safely to your destination.

My second trip through Poipet:
see my first border crossing into Poipet

First we stopped in Bangkok.

Although K has been to red light districts before, nothing quite prepared him—or me—for the Patpong mob scene in Bangkok. (Ah that mob scene was only the beginning…) That friendly smile…? It translates to “FRESHIE/SUCKER” hereabouts where people need just the slightest encouragement to keep harassing you for handouts or a sell. The gals came twelve-strong to our table in one of the fine evening establishments—with a ladyboy along just in case Keith’s taste ran the other direction—in a show of pressure that other foreigners walking in did not get. Tiny Asian gals crowded around K, who was trying to keep a shocked expression under control (unsuccessfully) at the whole situation and the vaginal acrobatics happening onstage. It was quite the amusing scene, until I saw one of them grab at his money and he let her take off with it.

–I did not! That was small change from the beers— which was about 20 dollars for two bottles, I might add. {{Edit to add upon K’s insistence that the girl only managed to get a 20baht note from him, which is about $0.50}}}.

So the next day I not-so-jokingly mentioned that if he EVER went out to Patpong for a bach party one day I will have to put a lock on him—

–A chastity belt-of-sorts? The boy asks, pleased at my apparent jealousy.

NO, a lock on your wallet, said I crossly.

Bangkok had all the comfort of any large bustling city. I was keen on the chocolate cakes here, which were moist and dense like a good cake should be (Cambodia did NOT get this memo). There is clean food (or minimal rotavirus–hey what’s the plural of virus? virii? viruses? anyone?), malls (there are no malls in Cambodia–not a huge loss, but the AC’d interior of a mall is nice once in a while, not to mention clothing designs that run around the vicinity of “normal”), and movie theaters (my movie critiqueing is getting dull by the day in Phnom Penh–we only have Khmer movies there). Oh and the pagodas and wats and the large Emerald Buddha that the Thais stole from Laos but tell tourists its theirs (the Laotians are quite bitter about this).

Bangkok was nice. But soon I sadly conceded that we must move on from the comforts of the big city. Onward ho, to a Kampuchean adventure.

K canNOT miss out on the experience of Poipet, so we did the do-it-yourself-border-crossing en route to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat in neighboring Cambodia. We hooked up with two female backpackers from the UK and New Zealand for the trip from Poipet to Siem Reap (and Angkor Wat)—for safety, I erred in assuming–and the combination of so much white skin put more than a bit of attention on us. The English hereabouts Cambodia is fine up until the actual exchange of cash, after which suddenly linguistic faculties fail and our deal with the locals to take us to Siem Reap went down the drain. There was no improvement in the road between Poipet and Siem Reap from when I came through a few months ago, so we bounced around the back of the flatbed of the pickup truck transportation we found, hanging on to our backpacks for dear life, which were sitting atop heaps of smelly days-old river catches. Those gaping patches of bridge?—our driver hummed right over them without hesitation. And what we thought was our transport to Siem Reap instead dumped us in Sisophon, three hours short of our destination, for a scam stop.

–As soon as our pickup truck rolled into Sisophon a feeding frenzy of the street sharks descended. Loud, broken English and Khmer were hurled about around us, and all we could make out was that they wanted us to get on another pickup and pay more. Now the thought of leaving the containers of fish I was forced sit on was appealing, but the deal we made was to ride this crowded (fish containers, old Khmer ladies, kids, and some dead unplucked chickens) pickup from Poipet to Siem Reap… not pay more money in Sisophon. The gals were quite aggressive back to our scammers, and they finally talked the guys down to a reasonable fee, but the journey doesn’t go smoother from here.

For some reason the men in the truck decided to abduct us. Having no familiarity with Sisophon, I looked at N, who through her work in the country knew the road we were taking was not the road to Siem Reap, but by then it was too late. They drove too fast for us to jump off, in circles to disorient us, and straight into a slum area, telling us we need to “come in and talk.”

Finally the vehicle slowed down and as the driver changed gears to reverse the truck into a gated house I jumped out of the back and grabbed everyone elses bags. N and the Brit followed suit. Luckily the Kiwi didn’t pass out from fright. Amid angry yelling back and forth from the men telling us we should come back and “be reasonable” we started trekking up the road away from the house, expecting at any moment to have a confrontation. They were demanding payment, for what I have no idea since they didn’t take us anywhere. We were all truly apprehensive about the whole event and I was mentally calculating which of the men needed to go down first should they decide we needed to be rounded up and marched back. I was afraid they might come after us with weapons; from my readings on the web that scenario certainly was not so farfetched in this country. Thankfully they let us be, perhaps they were too dumbfounded at our decisiveness, or they thought we would be too scared to walk out of this neighborhood and come crawling back for their help.

Luckily N had her phone, via which she beseeched upon her Khmer colleagues back in Phnom Penh to guide us back on track. We were in the middle of slum areas, with no idea where the bus station or the city proper was, and everyone on the sides of the road looked for all the world hostile and unfriendly. Four foreigners sporting large backpacks trekking about lost makes for quite a target, but we were not hassled. N called her translator and asked her to tell people around us to point us in the general direction of the bus station, and she sought random women posing relatively small threat to us to hand to phone to so that the translator can instruct the lady to point us to the direction we were seeking to go. She did this systematically several times for over an hour to make sure we were still traveling in the right direction, so that we finally managed to arrive, haggard, hungry, dirty, tired–but in one piece–at the bus station.

The moment we arrived we thought we made another mistake. It was filthy there, with garbage everywhere and stray animals poking their noses into everything, searching for food. Several broken-down stripped pieces of improvised transport littered the area. There were only men there, about a hundred of them, all gaunt, rags hanging off their starved frames, eyes gleaming like hyenas looking for meat. We stuck out like a beacon and they all immediately descended upon us in droves to offer their services, tripping over each other and trying to outscream everyone else in their desperation to make some money that day. Fist fights broke out around us as they beat on each other for our attention, and Nathalie, unknown to me until much later, was punched in the lip in the melee. I steered the other two girls over to where I saw a uniformed officer. When Nathalie saw our intent she hastened over and told us NEVER to seek police help if we were in trouble. We looked around and there is literally NO help available should these people decide to get some mob action started to take our shoes, clothes, bags, or money, and that is the most sinking feeling in the world. In not so few moments I found myself cursing the existence of this country and wondered for the millionth time what my wife was thinking when she plunked herself down on this hellhole.

The Khmer street sharks did not leave us be, crowding around and forcing their services on us–a moto taxi, a hotel room, food, etc etc– and we could not get a moment’s peace to even converse with each other to get a plan in gear. You just can’t think in that situation! Finally N broke away, snarled at the ones who followed her to get away, and got back on the phone. She asked her colleagues at the NGO in Phnom Penh to help us obtain a taxi out of Sisophon. Finally, after what seemed like days, via contacts of contacts from Phnom Penh to Battambang to Sisophon, her friends were able to help us get a legitimate taxi driver at the bus station and negotiate a fair fee for our onward transport. We were back on the road–the right road this time–to Siem Reap when the heavens opened up and poured down a storm.

Welcome to Cambodia! Why did we leave Bangkok???

And all this time with me yelling, “NO smiling! Hard look, hard look! You’re giving them reason to harass us!!!” Poipet is one of the most notorious border crossings, but nothing prepared us for that ordeal. I did not expect the chain of events we went through, and I just thank my lucky stars that I had some Khmer friends just a phone call away to help us.

Despite that nightmare, I am actually still quite taken with this country, which has a lot of potential and promise in its future. K understandably was not so keen on the whole scene, but after spending some time in Phnom Penh with me things slowly got better. It is still quite primitive for what he is used to. I think the way he handled the whole situation just made me fall more in love with him. Sappy I know, but how many people can find a gem of value in an experience like that, especially when it was unnecessarily forced upon him by someone who claims to love him?! What a trooper I married eh?

–Yeah, great experience of a vacation N, thanks– {{I didn’t hear sarcasm in that did I? he he}}}

Thailand: Scene in Bangkok

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People believe that spirits share the space that humans inhabit. When a house is built, a similar-looking smaller house is built and placed at a prominent location on the property, to house the spirits that were displaced by the humans moving in. This is done to pacify them or else bad luck will befall the new tenants. Many accidents plagued the building of the Erawan complex in this photo. These events stopped when this spirit house was built and dedicated.


Khao San Road, the backpacking mecca of Bangkok.


Jasmine vendor. The smell of jasmine is just heaven!


Fish vendor. The smell in the meat market is NOT heaven!


The absolute BESTEST iced tea in the world is at this particular street vendor in Bangkok! Drinks are put into small plastic bags that look like mini grocery bags, they stick some ice and a straw in there, and voila! (Edit in 2007: sadly this site has been developed with four megamalls on each corner so my cafe vendor is gone :(


Iced coffee to go!


Boat Lunge-ing 101. Boats take you up and down the canals and river for a scenic view of Bangkok–for a mere 10cents each way. They come in at a sideswipe angle at high speed. The boat never comes to a complete stop and people just lunge on or off. I have no idea how they don’t fall right in the water and get crushed.


This is at the Reclining Buddha. Keith was smitten by the wats, pagodas, and temples of Asia and we visited as many as he can get us to. These structures are actually resting places for prominent residents and monks.


Young monks were waiting with us for the boat to go down the klong (waterways).


Riverside dwellings along the Chao Praya

Vietnam: Visiting Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

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Of the three countries we visited, I think K fell in love with Vietnam. My consultancy back in Cambodia was on hiatus, due to financial mangling/wrangling among the health partners collaborating on the survey. It meant that K and I could not schedule ahead our entire visit with each other and instead were at beck and call of the survey’s schedule. Thus our time in Saigon was limited. However we found that it was the perfect middle ground between the ordered chaos of the big city of Bangkok and the primitive desperation of Phnom Penh. We spared ourselves the harrowing border crossing and went with a reliable tour company this time!

Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City in bureaucratic speak, is such a great city. The Cambodian side of the border is like the rest of the poverty-stricken country, with just a small shed to shelter border officials and a handful of travelers at the front of the queue. Dust kicks up into your nostrils from passing vehicles while Khmers assemble a truckload’s worth of cargo onto the back of a small moto (moped) via improv engineering using discarded slabs of wood. The Vietnamese architectural eyesore meanwhile, at Moc Bai, looms imposingly above the Khmer dust clouds. Travelers are invited inside the building boasting spic-n-span tiled flooring, a stocked bar, efficiency. Keith was smitten from day one.

The coffee here is one of the best I’ve ever had. The street food was clean, the streets were clean. People moved about purposely, with solid intent, and the city exuded a businesslike edge on the charm of Old World Vietnam. Everyone was pleasant. Eye contact in Vietnam, which in Cambodia instantly pounced an urgent sell on you, was easy and friendly. You did not fear a scam at every turn.

Our travel styles are always in stark contrast to each other. K revels in the details, his camera always at the ready, capturing a quick moment or beautiful piece of work that evades the average eye. He beelines for the pagodas and examines the centuries-old intricacies as well as the way the wind blows the incense fumes against the open doorway. He loves the food and sitting for hours at a cafe sipping his espresso, waiting for the storm to start so he can watch the squid seller and milk vendor adjust to the rain. He’ll poise his camera on one spot and wait for just the right moment when a masseusse bikes down the street ringing his bells, and he’ll stay there watching local life fritter by. I on the other hand like to take in the big picture and walk from one end of the city to the other. I seek out the tallest vantage point to the city and scope out the landmarks. Does the city have a vibrant energy? A rich historical environment? Do they have a lively arts community? I set out on foot in a rapid pace, chasing the ebb and flow of the local schedule from morning until dusk.

The charm of Saigon was in its people. They had so much energy, and they were fierce about it. When we asked for help our hotel receptionist not just gave us directions, she made us repeat the name of the street many times so that we can get it right and get ourselves there via a taxi whose driver probably will not understand our non-tonal Vietnamese. There’s a strong drive towards something, towards a goal, and it was palpable in the air. The bustle on the streets exuded a great energy that was absolutely contagious, that I like going back!



Moc Bai Vietnam/Cambodia border


Covert Viet Cong headquarters, where unsuspecting American soldiers had Pho every day. The nondescript shop’s owners are still running their noodle business as it was over thirty years ago.


Reunification Palace, today a museum where tour guides will give you the Communist government’s official version of war history. Back in 1975, this was the Presidential Palace of the leader of South Vietnam-the target of VC spy Nguyen Thang Trung’s bombing raid on Saigon in the final weeks of the war.


This year marks the 30th Anniversary of Vietnam’s independence.


Fruit market


Market scene, Keith’s-eye view.


It is intended as a curative cocktail, these snake wines have become a tourist draw. Cobras, scorpions, lizards, and all manner of exotic reptiles are bottled and sold at the market.


There are many food sellers around the city. Grills and burners, glass bowls and utensils are carried in the baskets hanging from either end of the pole, along with the rice and food.


Throughout SE Asia these conical field hats are very distinctly Vietnamese, to shield the wearer from the harsh sun.


Would you believe there are durian connoisseurs in this world? There are hundreds of durian species. They range from bitter and pungent with less meat and bigger seeds to the cultivated lines that are super sweet and keep for long periods. My durian-fan friends like the kinds found in Malaysia and Indonesia, less affected by genetic modification or pesticide use, and more bitter and “true”. Who knew…..


Bananas fresh off the orchards.


Motos are the most popular form of transport even in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.


Saigon Opera House


At night street stalls go up which sell all manner of Pho, the Vietnamese soup.


There are many centuries-old pagodas around Saigon. This particular one has a heavy Chinese influence, Ong Bon Pagoda.


The street food here in Vietnam looks clean (at least there is some measure of hygiene, compared to the complete absence of it in Cambodia!). Not sure what most of this seller’s items are, I’m getting a coconut-jelly dessert.


It’s a pagoda, but there were SO MANY I can’t remember which this was!


The Vietnamese government is phasing out the cyclos (bicycle-driven transportation) and they are not allowed on certain streets in and around Saigon. Unfortunately they’d do better to ban the smog-producing cars and trucks than these more-environmentally-friendly and culture-friendly modes of transport.


There is no way for pedestrians to cross the street except to just start walking. All manner of moving transport will either slow down or zip around you. Or they’ll plow into you.


View from the bus. The fare is cheaper on top of the already-top-heavy minivans and buses– hold on for dear life!


Chickens transported to the market on a moto. At least it’s a better travel alternative for the chickens. Usually their feet are tied and hung to a board off the back of a moto.


A trip to Vietnam is not complete until you get Banh Xeo from Dinh Cong Trang. The alley has two street vendors that became so popular that on any given time of day literally hundreds of patrons will be found sitting around eating these famous Vietnamese pancakes, wrapping them in lettuce leaves and dunking them in a sweet sauce. Heaven on a platter!

Khmer New Year (Choul Chhnang Thmei)

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It’s a week before the biggest annual event of the Khmer New Year. Every single baraing (foreigner) I knew already left the country and there are few people at the popular expat bars. My street is lined with huge speakers, stacked one on top of the other, and every night traditional Khmer shrieking pierces the air at full blast. Female vocals have a high nasally pitch to them so thanks to the concrete makeup of structures, the screeching amplifies and reverberates superbly, while the accompanying bass pounds to the core beyond salvation of earplugs. People are on the streets boppin’ to the racket.

OK so it’s one thing to have disagreeable tunes steadily assailing your nerves. Your frazzled system adjusts and the assault can mitigate to white noise. But local deejays have perfected a Chinese water drop torture, Khmer-style. No song plays in entirety. The music starts in the middle of a screeching trill, and halfway into the track it stops. Complete silence for two seconds or two minutes–no one knows— then the shrieking explodes again without warning. Your entire being convulses into shock each time. This continues all night— And people dance straight through these intermittent gaps in the music like it is totally normal.

At midnight amateur screaming blows through the neighborhood as the karaoke begins. And every morning they wake up before sunrise to play games. Of course these would involve a lot of hollering and clanging of objects designed to transmit the unfriendliest possible noise to wake up to.

Oh, and then there’s the water and talcum powder. I wondered why there were so few people outside in the daytime. Then I saw a pickup coming down the road on the other side of the street with large drums, hoses, and riders in the back. I paid the vehicle no mind. But when it bore down on a hapless cyclist and blasted him with a high-powered spray of water so that he fell to the ground, I made for a frightened dash out of sight. People– strangers— then descend upon you when you’re down to rub talcum powder into your face. This is all in good fun I think. I might join had I not had to work throughout all of this. Sigh. I have a few days’ vacation now, so perhaps I’ll get out there and pelt my neighbors with water balloons from my balcony. Perhaps I’ll dig out an Eminem cd while I’m at it hee hee, though with my luck they’d probably like it and I’ll be responsible for introducing a suboptimal piece of Americana culture. I am hoping for escape in Ho Chi Minh City. I hope Vietnam has a sleep-friendly version of these festivities– five hours a night isn’t too much to ask is it…?

Cambodia: To temple To Temple (Angkor Wat)

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Despite previous hysterics I’ve decided there’s an alluring charm about this unyielding landscape. It’s a tough adjustment, still is. One thing about traveling/living abroad that is nice in the short term is that you’re constantly engaged, stimulated, surrounded by people. But for the long haul it’s a revolving door of expats– they’re just passing through and do not stay in your life. Absence of the friendly face that knows, understands, or plain amuses you is draining. So I was much excited about the prospect of a friend of a friend coming into the country to see Angkor, though I knew little about this boy beyond his kind streak of saving your wits and handing them back to you when you’ve lost it in horrible places like POIPET. Happily– hopefully both ways– he turned out to be fairly cool!

Being “local,” albeit brand-new, apparently affords me a bit of aptitude on local lore in his erroneous estimation. What’s the time span on Angkor building activity? he asked. Uh . . .six centuries, said I with much authority. note to self: look this up. Where did they quarry the stones from? Locally, not far at all. note to self: look this up. How’s the crime situation in Phnom Penh? Not bad. note to self: look this up. Also noting the sidewise suspicious glances he started tossing my way.

It was a six hour drive from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, onboard the most well-run outfit I have seen thus far in Cambodia. There was assigned seating, we left almost on time, and they served bug-free pastries in a clean box with a bottle of “Elvis” brand water. I gratefully noted that buses are not equipped with those hideous Turkish toilets that seem all the rage here in SE Asia. We even got a take-off spiel that prompted Nirmal to crack on the airline frustrations of the bus company’s managers. To top it off there was the notable absence of missing patches of highway, making for a smooth unjarring journey. And unlike my errantly intrepid assumption of the availability of friendly hospitality in Poipet, in Siem Reap it was a given, making it easy to wing an itinerary. Ah the small luxuries I have descended to waxing lyrical on. By random choice we ended up with the nicest of drivers, who took us to the nicest of guest houses, and as soon as we booked our rooms he collected his commission for taking us there.

Travelin’ commandos: what one place on this planet just blew you away– by mystique, raw beauty, feat of humanity? Mohenjo-Daro, Petra, Machu Picchu, Kanchenjunga, the Bagan Plains?

It’s hard to imagine how old buildings and fallen stones overgrown with trees can move you to tears, even in state of disrepair. At Ta Phrom, the complex expression of art is magical, sacred, a powerful testament of man’s homage to his god. The jungles took possession of this monastic Buddhist complex in a morbidly curious way. Massive white root systems of fig and banyan trees, almost menacing, as if still growing before your very eyes in a horror scene, twist into and around the cracks and fissures of stone pillars. The sun’s rays diffusing through the canopy imparts an ethereal glow to the seeming-petrified state of ruin. Integrity of the monuments’ architectural design is intact, curiously enhanced by the force of nature in a parasitic vice. India takes over administration of this particular site from the French, and there is much resistance to reconstructive/restorative work that removes these trees.

One of these grace the Lonely Planet Cambodia cover with a very stooped old man sweeping the ground. As we turned the corner we hit a dead stop, cuz there he was, the very same man, wearing the very same clothes, still sweeping the grounds of his beloved wat as he was when the LP photographer came through to capture the 5th edition photo.

The Temples of Angkor comprise many hundreds of complexes, temples, and monuments in a 77square mile area of northwestern Cambodia. It is the legacy of an ancient Khmer empire, one of the greatest existing engineering and architectural achievements of the Ancient World. Angkor Wat is a vast spread of a city whose dimensions, art, and architectural features are metaphorically paralleled to Hindu philosophies and the spatial universe. It is also one of the largest known religious structures, with bas-reliefs carved into gallery surfaces to teach the religious epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana. Most proceeds from ticket sales to the Angkor archaeological zone go to a petroleum company called Sokimex. Odd arrangement, but questioning convoluted logic gets tiring and thus I regrettably can impart not a drop of clue what that’s about. So with passes clutched deftly in hand– our permission to wander the landmined acreages of Angkor– we took off for a dizzyingly full day of wat-sighting, with just a small break in the dead heat of day when brains hereabouts stop functioning, fixated completely on the one thought: I think I’ll just sit in a puddle. Otherwise we took in as many sites as our helpful tuk-tuk driver Longpok cared to show us: the Bayon, tribute to narcissism; the massive labyrinthian monastery of Preah Khan; delicate carvings on the stone pillars of Bantae Srei, tribute to the then-king’s mother; and impeccably restored Bantae Samre, to name a few.

Grave miscalculation by this neo-nomad brought us to Angkor Wat before sunset, when the entirety of the region’s travelers had also synchronized to arrive. We beelined for the central tower and shimmied up to the summit view of the vast royal city. It is a precarious 65meter (213feet) ascent at a steep 70 degree angle. How ancient peoples managed stairs about a foot and a half in height with barely a step to solidly plant much past the balls of your feet is counfounding to me. I hug-crawled up, grappling anxiously for hand- and footholds and ungraciously scraping my face and body in fear that a wisp of breeze would pluck me off. It is this way in the ruins of Latin America as well, and it is scary, without landings or railings to hold on to, so I am forced to sing songs like “A-B-C-D-E-F-G. . . .” to keep calm. For the descent NG offered helpfully to carry his binoculars, which I hogged during the trip, presumably so it won’t be damaged in the event I take the fast way bounce back down to the ground. “To help you,” he insisted, all innocence.

The visual impact of the sheer size of Angkor Wat was not delivered with the awe-inspiring punch as expected. Our approach was punctuated by the steady din that accompanies crowds; quietude was not to be had even atop the central towers where the view alone ought to inspire wordlessness. Cell phone conversations in all manner of languages pierced the air. Parents yanked whining kids along, and backpackers debated the evening’s haunts. We paused dutifully for armed and trigger happy commando tourists in fierce assault on the galleries of bas-reliefs, cameras slung about their chests like ammo belts. And the sun set behind mortal-brown clouds of dust stirred up by tuk-tuks and package tour buses roaming about the lot outside the western gate, across the immense span of moat. Weariness displaced the wow factor, with another visit required to truly afford it justice.

So I’m adjusting to the rythms of the country. Summits are scaled by attitude, yes?, and old comforts, conjuring up unbidden like a mirage for a stranded soul, daily resigns further along the periphery of awareness. From the avant-garde sophisticata of the Northeast US to the progress-cum-reinvention of the Asian Southeast, it is a contrast of worlds. I’m still inundated by new experiences: juggling dual currencies; ads and billboards communicating in three to five languages; an erratic mobile phone situation (Cambodia is a tad behind the curve negotiating bilateral agreements for connections). At this stage of (under-) development Cambodia’s pollution is still localized, not yet an ominous haze engulfing the skyline, but it still draws grievance of sinus activity that in this current climate of bird flu paranoia elicits a wave of alarm from people nearby. But not to worry, as our best medical minds (I hope) are on this puppy . . . a-choo. I also decided at some point that hunger is an unhappy state of being, so I’ve resumed eating in Cambodia, where rotavirus glee emanates palpably from each bite (eat me! me! ME!).

Then the nag of things missed which can’t be nursed with distraction: (KK might just have to top that list!) My jetta! Being driven around doesn’t compare to workin’ the gears and eating up the miles. Sports!, ohhhhh to burn holes in the ground!, pound the ball!, harness all frustrations and tear into a split burst of action! My sedentary reflexes are withering by the second and what I wouldn’t do to–hmmmh . . . well now if that doesn’t provoke a thought . . .

{{thinking. . . thinking}}} . . . –! ! !

Ok bye I go now