The Generosity and Friendliness of the Cambodian People

is what I originally intended this post to be about.

I was going to talk about how kind, warm, and welcoming the Kampuchean people are, how even in Phnom Penh so many people are quick to return a smile to anyone who has smiled at them. I wanted to talk about how the children outside of PP come out of their shacks to catch a glimpse at Westerners and throw a "Alo" your way.

Most of all, I wanted to write about my students, the ones that threw me a big party on the last day of class, replete with food and presents--and more presents--and one-hundred-and-one photo ops and hearty Thank You's. Some of these students can just manage to pay the $50 dollars for the three months tuition, yet they all managed to buy me presents including a leather belt, t-shirts, a wall hanging, and many others. One class took me out to lunch before taking me to an arcade where they basically fed tokens into the machines while I played games. Such is the respect that a teacher garners in this, what should be "The Land of Smiles."

But now, the joy of all of that has been overshadowed by the friends who have recently left us to continue their journeys, either to new regions or to their homelands. They began leaving us last Friday. First, our Slovakian friend, Mirka, took off to Thailand. Our wonderful Kiwi friend Danica followed suit the next morning. The other Kiwi close to our heart (and Julie's doppelgänger), Minda, left on Monday afternoon to head home. And yesterday, Charlie, our reggae-obsessed Englishman/ Frenchman friend--and one of my new best friends in the world--boarded a plane to Paris (where he is now so freaking cold that he is actually shaking).

It wasn't until today, when a new set of volunteers arrived to teach at CWF, that I realized what a gaping hole these missing friends had left in my heart. It literally aches right now, and I would actually cry right now if only the emptiness would stop floating around in my chest and stand still. But it's an ephemeral feeling, and it leaves me with a sense of wonder at how close you can become to someone or some group of people in a very, very short time.

So, in the end, this post is meant to be a love letter--though I am not sure it's eloquent enough--to the Kampuchean people in a general sense and, more specifically, to my new, dear, dear friends. Though they are many, many miles from this, our shared home, they stay in our hearts now and forever. And that, my friends, is a fact. Stamped and Approved.

Otres Beach

is Sihanoukville's shy daughter of a beach.

There's not much going on there except for a strip of backpacker bungalows and restaurants. There isn't a nightlife to speak of--unless, of course, you consider drinking wine and beer in a tree house perched at the water's edge while watching thunder storms on the horizon "nightlife." We did when we were there over the holiday weekend.

The holiday in question is the Water Festival, which celebrates two things: the end of the rainy season and the time when the Sap River (Tonle Sap) reverses flow. In years past, this three-day festival is a time when Phnom Penh is inundated with people, Cambodians who come in from the rural provinces to watch boat races along the Tonle Sap and celebrate with friends, family members, and countrymen. Three years ago, however, a bridge collapsed during the festivities, killing over 300 people. Since then, the government has cancelled for one reason or another the formal celebration of the Water Festival here in PP, which drives people (us, for instance) to other places.

We chose Otres Beach because of it's proximity to PP and because it is known and the not-too-known relaxed beach in Sihanoukville, which is more widely popular for it's people-staggering-around-drunk-at-nine a.m. beaches. We were able to avoid these, and Otres proved to be everything we expected.

There really is nothing in Otres except for the spate of establishments that line about a 1/2 mile of beach, so by day, we divided our time between sitting under the palm trees and swimming in the clear blue water. When we were hungry, we ordered slightly over-priced dishes; when we were thirsty, usually around 10:30 a.m., we ordered up some tasty beverage of one sort or another. Sometimes we strolled the beach, but we rarely made it more than 400 or 500 meters from home, and even then it was only to make our way to a different bar/restaurant, a different papa san chair, a different spit of sand. On one occasion, I was actually left the beach--in a kayak to do some snorkeling at a nearby island. (Fortunately, this expedition didn't force me to break my four-day stretch without wearing shoes.)

The evenings blended into the day and were only different in a few regards. One of the biggest changes was that once we snuggled Sila into our bungalow, our enjoyment of beverages increased in both quantity and quality. Most nights we ended up in the aforementioned tree house (conveniently located just outside our room) with five of our good friends. From our vantage, we contemplated the universe, solved the world's political and environmental problems, and told fart jokes.

Biking in PP

is a crazy affair.

Check out the attached video to get a narrated glimpse of things in action. I shot the video by duct-taping my handheld to my handlebars. Boo-yah!

p.s. Follow my Bike Route on a map if you want.

Normalcy in PP

sets in. As Julie mentioned in her blog, everything seems somehow "normal."

Clinging onto the back of a moto seems normal. Walking in the street and not on the sidewalks, which are pervasively occupied by parked motos and cars, seems normal. Even biking the streets, where incoming traffic consciously does not look before entering the flow, seems normal. There are so many other things that are simply becoming a part of daily, regular existence.

The school semester is in full stride, and we are having a great time with our students. After my second morning class--around 8:00 a.m.--I have another cup of coffee before heading to the gym. I alternate between weights, the tread, the elliptical, the pool, and blowing it all off and just sitting in the sauna. I often get a fresh coconut cracked open and sip that on my way to lunch. I have a few regular joints, my favorite being a stall tucked in the middle of the Russian Market. When I make it there, I have what I've dubbed "pure deliciousness," fried noodles on a lettuce/ vegetable base topped with peanuts, sliced spring rolls, and a rope-a-dope sauce of mystical creation.

After my nooner class, I head back home--usually--and relax in the apartment. As Jules mentioned, I am finishing a draft of a book on travel, which I hope to send out to some agents soon. I'll let you all know when it goes global. I also keep myself informed by scanning Yahoo News! I like it's medley of feel-good, celebrity, and serious stories. There's only so much debt ceiling stuff you can read about before you want to vomit.

The weekends are filled with kid-friendly activities. There's a great French joint that serves a nice breakfast and has a large sand pit. There's the huge park down by the riverside. There's the pool at the gym and many other things to keep us all going.

As I said, we are settled into routine. Though we miss the States and our dear friends, PP is treating us right and its quirks have not yet driven us insane. Sure, sometimes I get frustrated when a huge car almost takes me out going the wrong way down the street, but let me tell you this: I am the only one who gets frustrated. To everyone else, it's all normal, so I put on a brave face, try not to hurl expletives, and pretend it's normal to me, too, which, in a way it is, I guess--for now.

The Temples of Angkor

Wat were some of the most amazing I've ever seen. In scope, they far surpass what's left of the fabled Incan ruins at Machu Picchu or the monolithic stone Moai of Easter Island; while they cannot compete with the sheer grandeur of Java's great Borobudur, the Temples of Angkor--if taken as a whole--rival that great complex in magnitude.

Many people--myself included until recently--associate images from a series of sites loosely catenated  by some beautiful tree-lined avenues with Angkor Wat, which, though it is certainly the most ambitious of the group, is just one in the series. The rest vary in size and scope from small mausoleums almost lost amid the jungle (and seldom visited) to the great terraces that house the 200-plus heads of 12th-century (self-styled) God-king Jayavaraman VII. Beyond Bayon to the East lies Ta Prohm, or what is now known as "the Tomb Raider temple," crumbling and flaking off under the weight of great hundreds-year-old trees.

Julie, Sila Kai, and I spent three days touring the ruins: the first we spent as a family, biking the 5 kilometers from our hotel to the beginning of the site, and biking and stopping at various places throughout the early afternoon. The second day, while Julie took Sila Kai for the morning, I headed off at 5:00 a.m. to join the "penitent" (tourists, really) to catch an elusive sunrise. As it's the rainy season, and it was dumping buckets for much of our four days, you can judge for yourself how my "sunrise" photos turned out. Intrepidly, my Kiwi friend Amanda and I continued on our adventure shortly after sunrise, biking our way through the complex--often off-roading to see some of the out-of-the-way places. The following day was Julie's to explore, but I did make it back with SK in the late afternoon for a few hours. We stayed closer to home at Angkor Wat proper and checked out the extensive bas reliefs that adorn the outer walls of the main temple.

Though different than what I expected, the experience and the temples themselves were everything you might imagine, everything I hoped and dreamed they'd be. For now, it's back to waking at 5:00 a.m. not to follow the masses in pre-dawn pilgrimages, but to bike across the dusty and chaotic streets of Phnom Penh, or PP as the locals say, to teach a 6:00 a.m. English class.

You can't ask for much else from this ol' world. So, if anyone asks, you tell 'em, He's doin' just fine.

The Last Few Weeks Chilling in Phnom Penh

have been awesome!

We have finally settled into our neighborhood. People recognize us as we walk Sila to his school, which is around the corner, and when we head out to the market one street over. It's so nice to settle into a place and make it your home, to learn which streets are best, how much things should cost, where to find things, and how to get around. The last time Julie and I settled somewhere other than Florida we were in Knoxville, TN. Well, this is a bit different.

We have also settled into teaching, having finished our first week last Friday. Teaching English, and especially the conversation-centered English we are teaching, is completely different from the teaching we do back home in part because you can spend the better part of 10 minutes, as I did last week, trying to explain Halloween to people who don't have the vocabulary. Things like jack-o-lantern, trick-or-treat, and dressing up in costume for really no good reason at all are hard to understand out of context. There's also the fact that my students really regard this class--and learning English--as a major step towards a more positive, rewarding life. Cool!

Things otherwise are uneventful, which is great. I bike to school every morning and afternoon through the insane traffic (perhaps more on that in my next post); Julie has begun teaching a free yoga class; we both spend our evenings watching some TV--thank heavens for the internet--and reading.

We miss everyone very much and think of you often. We also think of cheeseburgers and other amenities of American life, but really, it's being around our friends that stings the most sometimes. We will certainly be happy to land on American soil and into the arms of friends when the time comes.

Toul Sleng or Security Prison 21 (S-21)

was a high school--an irony perhaps not lost on leaders of the Pol Pot regime, many of whom were once teachers--before the Khmer Rouge army seized Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. Under the Khmer Rouge, Toul Sleng was a prison of the walking dead--those who needed to confess their sins against the Angkar (or Organization) before being put to death in the Killing Fields just outside of town.  

The tales of brutality are well documented because the Angkar wanted to have "evidence" to justify their practices, so prisoners were photographed upon entry, and their testimonials, sometimes running hundreds of hand-written pages long, were kept on file. One prisoner, one of the few who made it out alive when the Vietnamese retook Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979, was kept alive so he could document life in the prisons through his paintings.

On my recent trip to what is now formally known as the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, the details struck me the most. The holes chipped into the baseboards where the outer walls meet the floor. One author pointed out that they were punched out so that the blood and excrement could be more easily washed from the room. These little holes are omnipresent: in the cells, in the larger rooms, in the stairwells.

The chalkboards in some of the rooms remain a testament to the prison's former life as do the vast courtyards where children must have shrieked and scampered during recess. In the buildings, chains are still firmly stuck into the concrete flooring of the brick cells, the slapdash masonry of which attest to the quickness of their construction. A man can just stand akimbo, raise his hands into the air, and lie out flat in these cells. The wooden cells are a bit tighter, and it is only through pure chance that some have access to a barred window, or portion of one. Higher ranking officials who had fallen from grace were afforded larger rooms with metal beds, but the torture devices and apparatuses--and the shared fate of most of the inmates--are cold reminders that a larger cell must have been little comfort when the beatings, waterboarding, and finger-nail pulling finally ended late into the night.

As I stood in these cells, as I stared at the thousands of faces gazing back through time, as I peered out at the courtyards through the cross-section of razor wire that was meant to preclude suicide attempts, the greatest tragedy was that the story of Toul Sleng can never fully pass into the annals of history as long as it reminds us of the present. And that's perhaps the craziest thing to think of as you walk the halls and touch the chains: there are people today, right now as I write and as you read, who are suffering similar fates to the thousands-strong tortured souls of S-21.



  

The Settling in Process Continues

in ways we had not imagined.

Now that we have a space to call our own, we are tasked with finding chairs, bed linens, pots, pans, spoons, and all of the other miscellany that make a place a home.

To complicate matters, we are all succumbing to various illnesses of one sort or another. In between bouts and episodes of Elmo (all hail the omnipotent electric parental unit), we are exploring our hood. There are a host of shops, hair salons (I just got a crop for a buck-fifty), bakeries, super markets, cell-phone purveyors, moto-bike shops, and stalls.

We also have a wonderful open-air market one (or is it two?) street over. This is a hodgepodge of make-shift sunshades, under which (mostly) women crouch or perch while they await a passing glance at their goods. These range from an assortment of wonderful fruits, the names of which I can only guess (we call one spiney fruit), seafood, meats (passing stall after stall of these warming, fly-covered carcasses always evinces in me a certain je ne sais quoi), and vegetables. Hidden behind the women are little homes, the front rooms of which double as shops and restaurants.

 

The restaurants are themselves a cluster of small (1 ½-foot) stools clustered around a table that has a few condiments (usually of the holy-s#*! hot variety) on it and a spangling of used napkins under it. These places often sell only one type of dish for a particular mealtime, something we found out yesterday as our hostess pointed to a number of options and when we tried to order one of them (obviously not the correct one), she called over someone who could speak English. That nice lady informed us that they had meat soup today. Okay, I guess we’ll take a couple then, we said—only to find out later that our definitions of edible meat are quite different than theirs.

Our apartment itself is above this fracas as we are on the 3^rd or 4^th floor (depending on if you’re speaking to an American or a European), and we get a lovely breeze through the place once all of the windows are opened. The place is tiled throughout, clean, new, and we have such Western novelties as a two-burner range and a rather large mini-fridge, into which I recently deposited a few Kingdom beers.

We are in high spirits (or soon will be) as we sit here above the din and think of all of our friends back home. Tonight, as you head into your evening routines, enjoy a few things for us: identifiable food stuff, cotton sheets (top sheets, too, actually), a non-foam mattress, and the ineffable comfort that can only come from having the neon glow from the 2 or 3 (probably 4 or 5) CVS/ Walgreens signs in your neighborhood. Oh, how little I appreciated their warmth when they were so close upon me!  

The Settling in Process

is just about complete.

I've just come back from enrolling Sila Kai in school at the Liberty International School. The whole family is excited about this. For as much as SK needs to be among other little people doing little-people party things, mom and dad need a bit of a break. We also wanted to get him placed a few days before our volunteer work begins so that we can be around and available if anything comes up.

I've also just leased an apartment just around the corner from the school. In fact, we can see the school from our (very) small balcony. We are set to move our stuff from our current guesthouse to the apartment tomorrow. After that, it's off to the market to buy sheets, pots, pans, and the other miscellaneous necessities of everyday life.

On a practical note, this means that the Griffin Guesthouse is about to officially open to visitors. We have an extra bedroom with it's own bathroom, so feel free to start making plans to visit beautiful Phnom Penh. This should save you about 10 bucks a day if you're living on the cheap and up to 25 bucks a night for comparable accommodations in the city. Think of the savings! Your stay will also include at least one English-speaking guide with marginal familiarity with the city and almost no knowledge of Khmer culture, history, or language. Book now!

Beyond that, we've contracted with a foreign-language school, Conversations with Foreigners to volunteer teaching English about 3 hours a day for the next 12 weeks.

At this point, it really feels as though we're beginning to settle into life in Phnom Penh--at least for the time being.

Cheers!

Our First Week in Phnom Penh

is over--I think? It's been a bit hectic adjusting to a 12-hour time difference (that's exactly opposite where we were for those who are paying attention), seeing some of the local sites, and getting settled as it were.

We began the week in a (sort of) swanky place. It had air conditioning in the room, and the lobby wasn't someone's living room. We spent a couple of nights there because we thought it would be nice to acculturate a bit on the slow. And it was.

A few days ago we moved to this place, which is, to say the least, interesting. The shower has no curtain and kind of dribbles cold water over you. The air conditioning is gone. The walls are a bit smudged and the blankets (for who knows what in this hotbox) are suspect.

We have just secured some volunteer work teaching English to local adults at a place called Conversations with Foreigners. The "job" lasts for the next three months, so we've been looking at schools for Sila and apartments for the past two days.

In between all of that, we've cruised town in our fair share of tuk-tuks (more on those in the days to come), eaten our share of noodles and rice and other oddities of unknown origins and composition, and been to a couple of the temples outside of town. But to be honest, we've spent more time at the big playground near the riverside than we have doing the "tourist" stuff. It's nice to know that we'll be here for a few months--if not more--because it slows things down. There is no pressure to go hit all the hot spots before jetting off. It feels as though we are just settling in and getting to know our this, our new temporary home.


 

Cambodia?!# Who said anything about Cambodia?

Yes, yes, after a little bit of gratuitous verbal ejaculate, I will answer the question on many of your minds. How in hell's name did we end up in Cambodia? I know, some of you are saying, "You said you were heading to China," while others are even now saying, "China? Who said anything about China?" So, for those not in the know, let me give you the skinny and then I promise that my next post will have something more exciting about our first few days in Southeast Asia.

We were headed to China to teach for an academic year (August to July) at a university with which our home institution (FGCU) has ties. We had hosted a visiting scholar from that Chinese university this past academic year, and I had served as somewhat of a point person for her, introducing her to people and having her sit in on my classes. Well, in the course of our conversations, the idea of Julie and me teaching English in China came up and was enthusiastically pursued by all parties.

On our end, Julie and I wrapped up most of our household belongings and shoved them into storage before handing our keys over to some nice young college girls (no comments on that please). We also made arrangements with FGCU to take an unpaid leave of absence (so, Yes, we have jobs when we return). We bought extraordinarily expensive tickets to China (to be partially reimbursed later), and began taking physical examinations and submitting our bodies to all sorts of other prodding and poking in order to prove our relative healthiness. We then began sending paperwork to all sorts of various organizations in order to prove that we were who we said we were and had the credentials we claimed to have and all sorts of things like that. Though it may sound easy up until now given that this whole process has thus far only taken up a few sentences, it was neither easy nor straightforward.

Once packed and de-homed, we set off for LA--via a two-week, truck-pulled popup camper, camping adventure that is a whole other story--in hopes of arriving in plenty of time to take our remaining documents to the Chinese Consulate in that city and have our visa applications processed only to find out that we were supposed to have gone to Houston because we lived in Florida or to have sent the applications to a third party organization that handled such matters. We found all of this out approximately one week prior to our departure at the same time that we found out expedited handling of the visas would cost over $1500 bucks.

If that would have been the end of it, we very well might have shelled out the cash, but there were still other glitches that may or may not have smoothed once we arrived in China--glitches that may yet have precluded us from staying and teaching there. So, in the words of an old buddy of mine, C-Spot, we "Poof," popped the shoot (which should be accompanied by the motion of your hands pulling imaginary parachute cords).

With no jobs or home to return to and certainly not enough money to hang in the States for a year, we did what any sane person might (or at least what should little surprise those of you who know us), we changed our flights from China to Cambodia for a modest sum, and decided to wing it from there. We had been meaning to spend a spot of time in Southeast Asia.

Now, the only question that remains for those of you who do actually know our penchant for bailing early is, When will we "Poof" and come back to the States?

Let the betting begin!

A Traveler Is

There is something about the idea of a traveler that has always appealed to me. To me, the traveler is akin to the explorer's of yesteryear, and while there are certainly true explorers left, those who dive into the dark and unknown places of this earth, their possible terrain must certainly be dwindling. What makes the traveler their heir is that he seeks lands unknown to him and in this way explores; the traveler leaves friends, family, and the familiar behind in search of something ineffable; the traveler gives up routine and the comfort of his own couch; the traveler seeks out the unfamiliar and the close sweat of foreign bodies in favor of his own sterilized world. Beyond this, the traveler must also share some of the qualities of those great charters and mappers of history.

The traveler is patient. He has to wait, to be able to work on the timeframes of others and accept the fact that different cultures have different perceptions of timeliness. When I lived in the Caribbean, I learned that soon could mean 5 minutes, 5 hours, or 5 days depending on what it what the speaker was referring to. If it was a car part that had to come from off-island and the mechanic said everything would be alright "soon," he meant about 5 days; if it was some paperwork that needed governmental authentication and the woman at the desk said things would come back "soon," she mean 5 business hours. If it was . . . well, you get the idea. This drove the American in me bat-sh#!, but it taught me patience because the worst thing you can possible do when you have no control or recourse it to pretend that you do.

The traveler is watchful. He is amazed that so many fantastically different cultures inhabit the same globe, that so many different peoples walk this wonderful earth speaking a myriad of languages. The traveler watches in awe and tries to appreciate that he may never again experience these same things again, so he watches carefully so as to remember them "someday day ages and ages hence." I felt this way yesterday as I stood outside a temple and watched a band play while dancers writhed on a wooden stage (see background photo) and the supplicants brought flowers, coconuts, and little birds to the alter.

The traveler is respectful. He does his best to learn the language and customs of his host country. In some cases, this may only be "hello" or "thank you" at first, but he realizes that these small tokens are a way of showing his host people that he does not expect them to know his tongue. Here in Cambodia, this is a daunting challenge because many of the pronunciation keys are even beyond my scope. Try to wrap your head around "cheh niyeay pia'saa Anglais baan the?" That's "Do you speak English?" Somehow it doesn't seem as facile as "Habla ingles?"

The traveler is equanimitous. He must always have a certain level of calm and surety that does not rely on events or circumstances. When working properly, mine comes from the incredible gratefulness I feel at even having the opportunities to explore that I do. These opportunities are not readily available to the woman in Arequipa, Peru, who works 10 hours a day, 6 days a week and earns little more than $150.00 a month. Try saving up to head to Miami for a weekend! The traveler must be equanimitous to face such daunting challenges as when my mother was calmly told at a major fast-food franchise in the Caribbean that there was no iced-tea because "da mon who
make de ice tea ain't come in yet today." Oh, well. I guess there's no iced tea then, is there?

The traveler is adventurous. This above all, I think, for without an adventurous spirit, who would want to venture beyond the Americanized resorts and hotels? And, if you're going to stay at some four-star hotel the whole time you're in Bangladesh, why even bother? The traveler braves dysentery and other ailments in an almost futile, certainly fleeting and far-between, effort to experience something real, something authentic, something that shifts his perceptive lens and challenges his gods.

This is what being a traveler means to me. These are the qualities I try to cultivate and practice (though to varying degrees of success). Do you have a story that brings these to mind? Is there something else that drives you to travel?

A Traveler Owes

The 17+ hours of flight time en route from LAX to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, yesterday afforded me ample time to reflect, and I could not help but think of the many friends, acquaintances, and sometimes strangers who have made my travels possible over the years, so I thought it only appropriate that my first post be an acknowledgement to all of them because it is to them that this traveler owes many a debt.

I want to thank them--you--for all of kindnesses great and small: the stored bags, the airport runs, the refrigerator and pantry space consumed by random foods and beverages (some better than others), the borrowed cars, the last-minute necessities poached from some closet or cabinet, the random articles left for whatever reason, the cars bought and campers sold on my behalf, and the small and large disruptions that I can only repay with stories and the occasional postcard. If you are one of those friends, you should know that your generosity and hospitality mean more than I say. You make my travels possible. Thank you. This blog is for you.

If you are a traveler and know what it is to have such friends, I would love to hear some anecdote about a kindness that helped you on one of your journeys.