Stories of Pol Pot’s Killing Fields had been understated. Hearing the awful details from the survivors turned the movie into a sickening reality. A Cambodian with connections to the West, or who was suspected of higher education made them an enemy of the people and subject to arrest and interrogation. From eyeglasses to vaccination scars, evidence that you were bourgeois pre-revolution was grounds for accusations of treason. In a mindless rampage of death and destruction, the Khmer Rouge rampaged in fury from 1975 to 1979. Eventually, under the fanatical tyranny of Pol Pot, sweet-natured Cambodians turned on each other.
Today, wavering on the trembling legs of a fresh democracy, all hope for Cambodia’s immediate future is found in tourism. Home to Asia’s most remarkable display of early civilization, Siem Reap is a gateway to this single Cambodian cash cow — Angkor Wat. With insufficient infrastructure to support mass tourism, disoriented Cambodians trudge empty-handed into the 21st century. An enterprising elite seizes any advantages, and while shoeless village schoolchildren are introduced to computers, new hotels and restaurants appear weekly. As in Laos, ATMs are still years away, but telecommunications are on the rise. Cell phones are not permitted for foreigners, but Chinese businessmen and prostitutes imported from Viet Nam are burning up the airwaves. It’s the hot rainy season, yet visitors still converge to marvel at the temples and gasp at inflated menu prices. Modern hotels with satellite TV are cheap, but most other goods and services cost twice what they do in Thailand. Angkor Wat is too vast for a one-day tour, but week-long passes cost 60 bucks.
The capital city of Phnom Penh is my next anticipated crossroads. Do I head into Viet Nam in search of a questionable route to China or return to the certainty of Thailand? The Vietnamese government doesn’t want anyone to have bigger bikes than their police, so motorcycles over 175 ccs are prohibited. Even if I’m able to schmooze my way past skeptical border guards, further north into China, private foreign vehicles are outlawed, period. A ride to Shanghai looks dodgy, and it could mean a 2,000-mile detour just to be told no. I have a lot to ask of the Travel Gods this week.
Angkor Wat
May 25, 2005
Siem Reap, Cambodia
After milking the last drop of his luck, Art Kernaghan had finally abandoned his broke-down rat bike near Bangkok. A cracked crank-pin on his old Belarus-built Minsk proved too difficult to replace in Thailand. Down but not out, he continued to Siem Reap on a rented Honda to complete the Cambodian leg of his journey. We’ve remained in contact by email and will likely ride together until he returns to Saigon and I roll south toward Indonesia. For now, we’re off to investigate a dozen square miles of fabled stone temples and palaces at Angkor Wat — Asia’s Disneyland of archaeological ruins.
Constructed during the ninth to 13th centuries to honor Khmer god-kings, even today, Angkor Wat is the pride of Cambodians. Once covering all of Southeast Asia, Khmer civilization was ultimately destroyed by pillaging Thai warriors. After a series of invasions and conquests from within, Angkor Wat was reclaimed by the jungle until 1860, when French naturalists stumbled upon it. Today, all that remains of the might of a fallen empire are the hand-chiseled granite walls of these decaying shrines and monuments.
Travelers often develop an idea of how famous places will appear from studying guidebooks and tourist posters. Yet when we get there, we always mumble in amazement: “I never dreamed it was like this.” The history of Khmer life is written in stone. Yet, as much as the elaborate carvings are beautiful, what’s so overwhelming is the sheer size and number of moss-covered buildings emerging from the forest.
An overpowering tropical heat makes lingering in one place uncomfortable, and given there’s so much to see, motorcycling proves to be the ultimate way to absorb it. Leisurely cruising beneath cooling canopies of tropical foliage becomes an enchanting tour of stone temples and crumbling palaces. The encroaching tentacles of the jungle envelop the solid rock framework, providing a blissful awareness of both the natural environment and the highly developed magnificence of early Khmer architecture. With much of the ruins still half buried among roots of giant hardwood trees, Angkor Wat captivates much more than it would if it were a polished modern restoration.
S-21 Prison
May 30, 2005
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
On a world tour through developing nations, travelers encounter enough gut-wrenching catastrophes to haunt their dreams for years. Will we ever get used to it? Or will we eventually yield to the psychological strain caused by our inability to affect what leaves us sleepless? This being a traveler’s diary, should it exclude the immeasurable suffering caused by abusive governments, disease and natural disaster that I have witnessed?
It’s impossible to separate Cambodia from its appalling past. To meekly sidestep the reality of the recent genocide is to punish the victims once more. In television news, we hear words like genocide so often the meaning gets lost — even Mr. Webster uses sterile terminology: “The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.” He should have called it what it is, a wholesale butchering of innocent men, women and children that generally involves torture for fun. The Maoist Khmer Rouge had a special gift for inflicting such misery.
S-21 Prison was originally a Phnom Penh schoolhouse, until 1975, when bloodthirsty Khmer Rouge rebels converted it into a detention facility for interrogation — a torture center. Those who survived the horrors of questioning here were later transferred to extermination camps. Like the Nazis and other tyrannical regimes, the Khmer Rouge kept detailed records and photographs of their victims. To preserve the memory of this twisted nightmare, S-21 Prison has been converted into a museum of shocking revulsion, where the voices of the sacrificed can still be heard.
In group meditation, there is a belief in the existence and effect of collective consciousness. Focusing mental energies in monasteries and holy sites is said to intensify the power of prayer. But who is out there listening? Is there a spirit world of higher beings, gods and ghosts? Is a person without a soul a hollow vessel? Where do we go when our bodies expire?
To pass into the afterlife, Cambodians believe their dead must be cremated before burial, otherwise they languish in limbo as ghosts for all of eternity. This is a dreadful notion for relatives of those dumped in mass graves during the Khmer Rouge reign of frenzied genocide. Cambodia is a country few can pick out on a map — their holocaust is a mere footnote in history, but the lost souls of the two million murdered still demand justice.
Even your first few steps inside the S-21 Prison Museum evoke a distinctive anguish that smothers your spirit. Before you’re inside the first torture chamber, tears will flow down your face, while some find it difficult to breathe. No one speaks during the tour — you merely wander through rooms in a daze of nausea. The ghosts of S-21 Prison not only cry out, but you can see their faces. Recovered mug shots of prisoners are on display so visitors can slowly walk by each one and look the victims in the eye. The innocent young, the helpless old and the seemingly average Cambodians — you study them as they study you. Suddenly your mind spins in a sickening cauldron of ghastly images — while they were being photographed were they aware of the grisly future ahead?
On their way to dank holding cells, were they marched past the gruesome gallows to witness the bodies dangling upside down? Could they hear the screams of those begging to die? What did they feel at those moments? What about when they were finally steel-bar-shackled together, lying side by side on concrete floors awaiting their turn? How long was eternity for them?
Pol Pot’s regime was an efficient operation: to save bullets, executioners often bludgeoned victims to death. Enormous pits were dug by dazed prisoners who had to know this would be their next stop. “Mass grave” is another term that lacks meaning until you see one. What makes this experience more tragic is meeting the surviving Cambodians first. From the tormented families of the dead to the unlucky legless who stepped on a la
nd mine buried in one of their fields, the gentle Buddhist Cambodians silently bear their sorrow. But the human spirit triumphs, and, after all this, they are still always first to smile.
Former schoolhouse turned prison is now a museum reminding visitors that the bloody history of the Khmer Rouge regime won’t soon be forgotten
On the Border
June 3, 2005
Chong Yeam, Cambodia
After departing Phnom Penh, I took a smooth ride to Kampot, a small country town delivering sweet riverside sunsets as well as wicked backstreets pointing like unforgiving fingers into overflowing swampland. Mosquito-infested shantytowns on stilts were reminders of how far the people here still have to come. When I pause to study the town, excited children rush to pull on my sleeves and clamor aboard the Beast. Shrieks of bright-eyed laughter draw crowds of villagers curious about the invading alien. Everyone wants to be in the picture.
Further east, the beachside city of Sihanoukville emerged as an unlikely conglomeration of sleepy Cambodians and aging expatriate businessmen trying to survive after an anticipated tourist boom never happened. Waiting out the low season, gulping down beers in empty hotels, foreign entrepreneurs have lowered their expectations. There is little for me to do here but sit sweating and wait out the sporadic squalls, answering emails under wobbling fans in Internet cafés.
With four ferryboat crossings between here and the border, torrential downpours have turned a wavy hundred-mile red road through the jungle from hard-pack adobe to knee-deep, sucking mud. Without a challenge it wouldn’t be worth the effort, yet it’s always a relief to find shelter at the end of the day to dry out waterlogged gear and scrub off clods of clinging clay.
Staring through the window of a riverside hotel mulling over my time in Cambodia, a familiar reluctance to leave is overwhelmed by images of what’s waiting across the water. Delicious food and Thai massage: All that remained between me and Thailand were immigration formalities and document stampings. But above the rampant poverty, the soothing simplicity and basic humanity of Cambodia sticks in my mind like sweet scents of blooming orchids.
Two weeks had hardly been enough to tour an entire country, but with seasonal rains washing away exit roads in Thailand, it was now or never.
Prospering like an Asian tiger, Thais have long forgotten their roots in Khmer civilization. Even Thai boxing combat techniques are chiseled in the decomposing granite walls of Angkor palace temples. As if in the restlessness of an infinite slumber, sweet little Cambodia endures terrible hardship and cold corruption while its neighbors march and haggle their way into prosperity. With an uneasy night ahead, tomorrow will be more than just another border crossing; it’s a sad goodbye embrace for the humble hearts of a nation on its knees.
Coming Home?
June 11, 2005
Pattaya Beach, Thailand
Next to painting the house, changing a motorcycle tire is the least pleasurable way to spend an afternoon. Yet the Travel Gods had smiled on me once more as a blowout occurred while white-lining through stalled border-city traffic. Within seconds, a wobbling Blue Beast slowed to a graceful halt directly in front of a well-stocked motorcycle shop. Twenty minutes and four dollars later, we’re back on the road with a new tube, a lubed drive chain and some new friends. Even the last hundred miles in the rain to Bangkok was uplifting.
Motorcycle maintenance is a constant. For anything not welded solid, if there is a reason for it to wear under the bike’s vibration, it will. Holding out until Singapore to avoid the high-priced imported parts in Thailand wasn’t going to work, and recalling a recent raping at the hands of Bangkok motorcycle dealers, mercy was unlikely. Up until now, the local’s unwritten rule of two-tier pricing for taxi rides and trinkets has had minimal effect on my travel expenditures. But doubled prices for foreigners on already expensive BMW replacement parts means budget bites in the hundreds of dollars.
It took four days to coordinate what would have been an afternoon of supply shopping in California — meanwhile, the indifferent streets of the capital have grown cold. As in most countries, pretty faces and hustlers migrate to cities while the pure at heart remain in villages. Bangkok may be the center of Thailand, but its heart and soul is in the country. Returning to Siam has been the closest thing to coming home since I’ve left the U.S., and it’s hard now to find a reason to leave. The mild climate, cheap hotels, scrumptious cuisine and great roads — is it any wonder foreigners immigrate daily by the planeload?
In the mid-80s, Pattaya Beach had a population of 20,000, mostly Thai and some foreigners. In 20 years, it’s become an overdeveloped multicultural colony of two million retired white men and hopeful Thai businesspeople catering to their whims. In between Pizza Huts, 7-Elevens and McDonald’s restaurants, legions of saggy-bellied European men cruise rows of beer bars and flashy strip joints perusing thousands of catcalling young working girls. Nerdy, slump-shouldered Westerners peering through coke-bottle glasses stroll through crowds savoring their reversal of fortune. Amidst beckoning bargirls cooing “Hallo sexy man I lub you too much,” these scrawny Poindexters saunter about as rock stars fending off fans.
Just as Cairo boulevards are sprinkled with elderly Italian women clinging to teenage Egyptian boyfriends, the traffic-jammed roads of Pattaya Beach are filled with waddling drunks unlikely to get this lucky with women elsewhere. Throbbing rock music blares past midnight as expatriates on pensions gather to drink themselves to cirrhosis. The perils of their superficial paradise can sometimes lead to suicide, as disillusioned foreigners discover the loves of their lives have more than one husband. Well coached by over-the-hill sex workers, within a few weeks, eager new service girls hone their hardening edges.
Outside cities, even when river-bathing, shy female Thais wouldn’t dare venture out dressed in less than oversized T-shirts and baggy pants. In Pattaya Beach, at the insistence of their pimping boy-friends, once bashful country girls jiggle downtown bra-less on platform shoes in miniskirts the size of cut-off socks. Here, money rules, and temporary fortunes offer false security. Not counting freelancers, there are a million registered hookers in a country that outlaws prostitution and bars.
The first question I am asked anywhere in Thailand is “Where is your Thai girlfriend?” More comfortable in backstreet cafés without menus in English, it requires lengthy interrogation before the jaded natives believe a foreigner could be interested in them. But soon the jabbering old women accept the wandering Farang and begin preparing my favorite meals the moment they hear my motorcycle engine.
Asians are superstitious as well as religious. Even downtown skyscrapers provide exterior space for elevated platforms, with their dollhouse-sized temples supposed to house accompanying spirits. But whatever their socioeconomic status, Thais enjoy life. They smile at everyone and laugh at anything. As I explain my journey to the curious — chubby young restaurant girls enquire, “Mai gruah bpee?” (You are not afraid of ghosts?)
“Mai shuah.” (I don’t believe in them.)
They giggle in feigned fear, “Pom gruah drah-kool-lah!” (I am afraid of Dracula!)
Hearing stories of how life near the aqua waters of Pattaya Beach had changed, I had purposely put off my decision to visit until the last minute. There is no such thing as really going home. When I encounter an old friend, Jake, a British expat down on his luck, he reminisces about a decade of failures and heartache while dreaming optimistically of the breaks that are sure to come. Others I had known have drank themselves to death or jumped off balconies, mourning unsuccessful romances. Asia is a ruthless lover.
Seventeen years ago Khun Daeng from the MA Language Center had given me my first lessons on how to speak Thai. Wandering into the hardly changed office, I was curious if anyone would remember me. The eyes tell a lot — before I even remove my helmet, we recognize each other and rush to violate the traditionally reserved Asian behavior with giant bear hugs. Sometimes you forget how de
eply someone has affected your life until you see them again.
Cruising my old neighborhood was a hesitant tour of buried emotions. Once brightly painted townhouses are now poorly maintained rows of shabby rentals. I barely recognized my old two-story home. Peeks through smudged windows revealed fine teakwood floors replaced with cheap ceramic tiles and barely latched doors on rusted metal hinges. Steel hooks still protruded from concrete beams where my boxing gear used to hang. In a moment of downhearted nostalgia, I picture a long-lost lover appearing in the doorway with dainty brown hands on her hips impatiently asking, “Bpie nai mah Gan?” (Where have you been Glen?)
Often troubled over the years by what her ultimate fate might have been, I silently mumble, “Bie hah koon tee lak.” (I’ve gone looking for you my love.)
Jep Jai
June 27, 2005
Thailand
Whenever I’m asked for travel advice, my reply is invariably the same: “Next to ‘always carry toilet paper’ is learn a foreign language.” Although this journey’s been fascinating, a deeper knowledge of Russian and Arabic would have enhanced the experience. A few rehearsed phrases can be helpful when ordering food or seeking accommodation, but to understand the minds of the people, learning how they express ideas not only shows respect, it can provide a subtle glimpse into their ways of thinking. English speakers are surprised to discover that people in other countries share their familiar sentiment about foreigners — “As long as they’re here, they should damn well speak our language.”
Except for a difficult-to-master system of tones, Thai is a simple language, structured in a way that’s almost the opposite of English. Because a specific tone carries the same value of a consonant in En-glish, it must be pronounced properly. There are five to be mastered: high, low, mid-tone, rising and falling. One word will have five different meanings according to the tone. A tongue-twister we learned in school was “Mai mai mai mai, mai?” — “New wood doesn’t burn, does it?”
One More Day Everywhere Page 25