by Rob Binkley
“The outer wall corresponds to the mountains at the edge of the world, and the surrounding moat represents the oceans and beyond,” he explained.
Brian soaked it in as only he could. “Gnarly.”
We left the massive complex to explore the many ruins that were spread out in the jungle. Nature had reclaimed much of the stone facades. We drove through the jungle surrounded by hundreds of ancient trees that had slowly swallowed the stone structures over the centuries. The place was so inaccessible that there were literally no other travelers around us much of the time, which was awesome. It was a full immersion experience that was life changing.
That night we stayed at the Naga Guesthouse and spent the next day touring the Angkor ruins again. We even drove out to the countryside and watched the Cambodians work in the rice fields—it was a serene pastoral scene that made us feel that groovy high that I’d been getting a taste of ever since we entered Cambodia.
Later we went out to eat dinner in Angkor and discovered all the restaurants offer marijuana on the tables (like they offer bread in America), so we started smoking again—we had run out of our funny cigarettes in Vietnam.
At night, a bunch of the locals kept warning us that Cambodia was still a dangerous place—with The Killing Fields and all—which went down in the late 1970s when the Khmer Rouge killed two million people. It didn’t seem dangerous now, but the stories they told were horrifying.
“I’m feeling the stark reality of humanity’s dark side,” Brian said once we learned the atrocities the past regime committed on these beautiful people.
After smoking some of the complementary weed at a local restaurant, I got the hare-brained idea to buy a cobra and sneak it back into the US where I planned to sell it to pay for my trip. “A baby cobra would fetch a high price back in the states.”
“What, are you a freaking zookeeper now?” Brian said.
“No, but when I was a teenager I smuggled the world’s largest snake, a baby reticulated python, down my pants from the Philippines and sold it for a pretty penny back in California. My dad didn’t even get mad.”
“You realize you’re insane.”
“Yeah, I caught it in the jungle. This old villager led me to a whole nest of ‘em. I kept it in my bathroom sink until my flight out.”
“I hope you tipped your cleaning lady.”
“All you have to do is put it in a breathable sock and stuff it down your pants. “
“How did you keep it from biting off your dick?”
“He had tiny teeth. He was just a baby and didn’t make much of a bulge.”
“It’s not like you have anything down there anyway.”
“Let’s go wrangle us some ‘pant cobras’!”
“Okay,” Brian said, “but don’t say that in mixed company.”
I asked around and found out where I could procure a cobra, but I needed a baby, which was limiting my options. Turns out there were no baby cobra orphanages in Cambodia.
After spending way too much time on the hunt, Brian said, “Is this really the way you want to live your life—as a snake smuggler?” Brian had a point. It wouldn’t be until a month later that I actually came close to buying one (you can find anything in India, but that’s another story).
One hot Cambodian night, we decided not to smoke so much pot so we could stay awake long enough to finally check out the local clubs. When we asked one of the locals where the good clubs were, he told us about one but with a warning: “Don’t bring any bombs or guns, or you have to give them to the guard before you go in.”
“Awesome.” Brian was into the lawlessness of the land. “A terrorist club.”
“Oh, we’ve gotta see this!” I was pumped.
We hopped on our moped and cruised to the club, which always excited the village children; they loved to chase us down the street and wave at us until their arms got tired. It was great to feel love in a land that love had seemingly forgotten until recently.
“I’ll remember their smiles, man! Their smiles!” Brian was driving the moped, smiling and waving at the kids like a kid himself.
I yelled at the kids, “The tide’s turning, kids! Pol Pot’s dead and your future is bright! Be cool, stay in school!”
When we got to “Club Terror” it was closed down due to a recent bombing, but we didn’t mind. It was time for us to say goodbye to Cambodia.
We went back to the hotel and slept like babies, then departed Siem Reap on a five-hour boat ride back to Phnom Pehn. Like earlier, we could have hired an Army helicopter to jettison us for fifty dollars, but the pilot told us if there was a conflict “they would have to divert.”
Brian laughed at the proposition, “Divert? Are you saying we might have to shoot people from a helicopter?”
The pilot stared at Brian with a “maybe” look in his eye.
We opted to travel by sea and stay out of any guerilla warfare–type situation. On the five-hour boat ride out, a Cambodian gunboat stopped us armed with torpedoes. It was quite intimidating, but the only thing that attacked us on the ride back to Phnom Penh was the sun. It felt way more intense than at the equator. My hair was thankfully growing out, and I’d made myself a straw hat so my scalp didn’t melt.
The next four days were a blur of travel. Our schedule had us hopping around four countries in four days: Monday, Cambodia; Tuesday, Vietnam; Wednesday, Singapore; and Thursday we were on our way to India. We completed half of our travel gauntlet then stopped over in Saigon and spent the night at the Le Le hotel again in what appeared to be their “love room” this time. We laughed at the amorously decorated room with all the love oils and amenities on hand. I asked Brian, “Are they trying to tell us something?” He just smiled.
When I unpacked my bag, I found a surprise. “I’m an international drug smuggler!” I whipped out a joint I’d forgotten about. “This little baggie was with us the whole time from Vietnam to Cambodia and back again. And you didn’t think I could smuggle a cobra in my pants….”
“You’re like the Pablo Escobar of village idiots,” he said.
“One might ask why I’d smuggle pot into two countries that basically gave it away at every restaurant.”
Brian grabbed the baggie. “Don’t ask questions. Let’s get enlightened.” He lit up the joint and we both sat on the circular bed and got high in the love room. It was one more moment of Zen in a faraway land that had finally showed us two crazy Americans that our personal renaissance had to start from within, with one single act of kindness.
You want to get enlightened? Start with a smile.
7
India Is Burning
WE LEFT CAMBODIA RIDING HIGH on a wave of spiritual nirvana. All was momentarily right in the world as we trekked toward India, a mysterious country that would do its best to pull us down from our high perch and into the flaming pits of “eternal samsara” called reality.
It would be an understatement to say India is no place for the faint of heart. If you’re a tourist looking for a relaxing vacation paradise, look somewhere else. The India experience is more like a rugged leap of faith into a sometimes beautiful, oftentimes surreal landscape, full of a billion hopelessly impoverished people who are all living on top of each other waiting to be reincarnated into a better world. If you are up for the challenge, by all means check it out. Just come prepared to stare death in the face.
Brian wanted to visit India because it was “the birthplace of the world’s greatest religions.” After obsessing over Buddhism, he was getting into Hinduism because it’s the one religion that’s based on devotion to a personal God.
“So essentially, what Veda Vyasa is saying is, ‘We are our own gods.’” He looked at me and smiled. “This is my kind of religion, Rob.”
He’d been reading The Bhagavad Gita during the entire flight from Singapore. I felt like he was internalizing the philosophy, but had no idea what we were getting into by immersing ourselves in India’s culture. “This isn’t going to be a cake walk, you know,” I told him
. “Prepare yourself.” I know he heard me but he didn’t say a word.
After reading a few hours, he put on his sleep mask. As he drifted off he mumbled, “No moment of Zen can last …” which was a half-asleep non sequitur that bothered me for several reasons. I shot back, “I hope you’re not giving up on nirvana already.” But I knew he was right. Nothing good lasts forever. That’s the bittersweet duality of our universe. Ask a wise man, he’ll tell you that “life isn’t as sweet without the sour.” Ask a physicist, he’ll say, “from order comes chaos.” But damned if I wasn’t going to try and keep my state of nirvana going, no matter how much Brian tried to ruin it by bringing up my sordid past.
“Do you think we should head home after India?” Brian asked. “Be honest: what are we really accomplishing here?” He started mentioning the dreaded R-word during our layover in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Reality was something I’d been avoiding for months.
“What are we accomplishing?” I said with a fair amount of sarcasm. “We’re seeing the world outside the prism of our American eyes, following our bliss, looking for Utopia. Need I go on?”
“But, are we growing? Or running? I hate to bring up reality—”
“Then stop talking.”
“—But the reality is they’re gonna be looking for you back in—”
“They? Dude.”
“You could go to prison.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions, and I’m way too sober for this line of questioning.”
I led us into the airport bar and ordered two “doubles” to try and forget the truth of my own reality, but the bartender had no idea what I was talking about. Turns out doubles are an American thing so we ordered two Jack and Cokes and two shots of Jack and mixed it in ourselves.
After a few drinks, I finally admitted to Brian, “Yes, I’m probably wanted by the ‘tax police’ and definitely penniless if I ever decide to return home. But remember young grasshopper, there is no such thing as ‘debtors’ prison’ in the United States. Do you see me worried?”
“I dunno, you keep your cards close to your vest, man.”
“My denial has good intentions, buddy. I’m just trying to keep our state of nirvana going.”
“I know, it’s just—”
“Why drag us back into reality now? I’m not ready to give up on our dream. Are you??”
“What were we dreaming of finding here, again?” he asked.
“We were dreaming of finding ourselves.”
“That’s exactly my point. I haven’t found me yet.” Brian explained he’d been “taking inventory” after coming down from his spiritual high and wasn’t sure what he’d really learned from this travel experience. He also confessed California was on his mind and he didn’t know what his future held. “Our trip is almost over and if I’m concerned about what awaits us back home, then you sure as hell must be.”
“It’s always in the back of my mind, man.”
We spent the next two hours having a heart-to-heart where we boiled our situation down to its essence: Should we go home and face the music, or become permanent expats living on the proverbial lam? Start a new life in a new country.
Brian said he was running low on funds and was leaning toward cutting it short and going home. “I vote we keep going,” I said. “We still have sixteen weeks left on our ticket.”
“I don’t think I can last that long.”
“Is this because of what’s-her-name?”
“No! We broke up again. I just … feel lost.” Brian looked out the window at the planes landing on the runway.
I tried to cheer him up. “Who doesn’t? This is life, there is no perfect solution. If we go home, we’re screwed, if we don’t, we’re two men without a country. I mean, at this point, I’m a hundred percent sure that I’m not sure! Aren’t you?”
“I’m not sure of anything.”
“So let’s keep living the question, man. Don’t give up on us now. We’ll be fine!”
Our deep discussion almost caused us to miss our connection to India. When we realized the time, we took off running and were the last ones to board the plane. “See?” I said as we collapsed in our seats. “It’s meant to be.”
“Is it ‘meant to be’ that you’re gonna loan me the money to pay for the rest of this trip?” Brian smiled sheepishly.
“Umm … let’s pray on it.”
We flew on to Varanasi, India, the holiest of the seven sacred cities according to Hindu culture. After spending a few days there, we agreed it’s the craziest city in the world—maybe the universe.
We were still discussing our uncertain future as we exited the small Varanasi airport under brown clouds of an overcast day. We went looking for transportation and ran into a swarm of the most extreme touts in all of Asia. “These guys take it to a different level!” Brian yelled while being swarmed by beggars coming at us from all directions like ants on two wounded grasshoppers.
I will give it to them—these Indian touts were very creative in their attempts to relieve us of our money. They asked us for religious donations; they offered to take us on boat rides; they tried to sell us pot, jewels, or their children; and some wanted to give us massages, which was cool (a bit creepy). But creepier still was what happened when we didn’t bite.
After saying “no thanks” a hundred times, they turned on us. The pack of rejected beggars started hurling undecipherable curses in our general direction—the only phrase I could understand was “stupid Americans!”
I said to Brian, “Their smiles have turned to rage. Run!” Brian and I started gently pushing through the crowd; after a few minutes we escaped to higher ground, where we caught a ten-cent bus into Varanasi.
On the bus, we watched two Indian men having an argument; maybe they were just talking, but every time one would say something, the other man would refute him then step across the isle to spit over the head of the other man, out an open window. “Interesting custom,” Brian remarked as he watched the show.
Later, the bus mysteriously stopped for twenty minutes with no explanation. It started to rain. With the engine off, it gave us time to people-watch. I looked at Brian. “I don’t speak Hindi, but isn’t this bus full of a lot of people yelling and spitting?” We looked around and the entire bus seemed to be in one giant argument.
“Very astute observation,” he said.
We finally got off the bus outside of Varanasi, “the Holy City of India,” and went looking for a ride into town. We found a kind-looking rickshaw driver who was sitting under a tree to stay dry and hired him to peddle us into Old Town, where our hotel was supposed to be.
Of course, we picked a driver who was either directionally challenged or a master manipulator—or both. “I would say this kid is either half-blind or not the brightest kid in the traffic jam,” Brian remarked. The guy got us lost down a myriad of narrow, cobbled streets that were dark, dirty, and totally packed with people who all seemed to be looking at us like we were aliens from another planet.
He peddled us to the wrong Yogi Lodge, then down and around, inside and out all the congested streets that were as wide as a small walk-in closet back in the States. When it was clear our rickshaw driver was taking us for a “ride,” we leapt out to fend for ourselves and immediately landed ankle-deep in cow shit.
We both made the mistake of wearing flip-flops, so the wet dung wedged between our toes and caked our feet. Grossed out by all the waste on the ground, Brian the clean freak couldn’t take it anymore so he went looking for a water source to clean off his feet. He soon realized there were no clean water sources here. He tried to wash his flip-flops off in a filthy puddle. He looked up at me: “I’m trying to clean shit off with shit water in an acid rainstorm!”
“Just give it up, man! Let’s find our hotel before I pass out from hunger.”
We were out of our element, being pushed around by dozens of sacred cows road-hogging the tight city lanes. Cows rule here; it’s illegal under Hindu law to mess with them, so we let them by anytime t
hey got too close. A few of the beasts tried to gore me when I entered their personal zone; some even flipped shit on my shorts when I bumped into them while sidestepping the dung landmines that were everywhere.
“These cows are way cockier than the ones back home,” I said to Brian.
“Top of the food chain, man,” Brian said.
We kept slogging through the crazy traffic jam. I said, “Who knew we’d have to circumvent garbage, shit, and cows to find our bed for the night?” Brian just smiled. “It’s just like living at the Phi Delta house!”
Thankfully, we met two young boys who helped us find the right Yogi Lodge. They told us the rickshaw driver (called “wallahs”) “probably” got confused because there were “many, many Yogi Lodges in Varanasi”—but they knew where ours was. We would later find out there were three Yogi Lodges in Varanasi.
After some trekking we found ours, hidden down a dark alley that was literally three-feet wide. We had to take a hairpin turn up some stairs, past a humped cow, then over some wet cement where we tightroped across a six-inch plank before we arrived at our hidden lodge.
We thanked the boys; Brian gave them some chocolate. He’d started tipping everyone who helped us with chocolate since Vietnam.
We dragged into the hotel, Brian looked at me and said, “Does the Book mention this place is hidden behind a sacred cow taking a sacred shit on a not-so-sacred street?”
“That’s clever. Maybe we should write our own book?” I said.
“I don’t write, only doggie-paddle,” Brian said.
We checked into our Yogi Lodge for one dollar and forty cents a night each person (or 50 rupees). The second we paid for our room, the power went out in the hotel. Bzzzzz. Darkness. Our smiling bearded front desk guy quickly lit a candle. I asked him if we could get a discount since we now have no power and he said, “We don’t bargain with Americans.”
We found our room in the dark then went down to the candlelit dining room to eat. The food was really good, which was a surprise since the Book says you have to worry about eating anything that is prepared this close to the Ganges River. “We’ll see if we die of food poisoning tomorrow,” Brian said.