Cambodia to Vietnam

The morning I got packed and ready to depart Cambodia. The gal at the front desk told me they would pick me up around 7am or 7:30. I was outside the hotel when the bartender walked up. This bartender told me she makes 14 US dollars a month for her salary. Evidently she does not get many tips because I tipped her 1$ the night before after having a couple of beers and she was confused when I gave her the tip. She held the dollar up and looked at it strangely, and I said “for you.” Then she smiled and thanked me.

She arrived around 7:30 and I saw her the night before cleaning up the bar around 10pm. Not only was she paid horribly, but she also had a very long day. When she saw that I was leaving she smiled and said “see you again.” As I was waiting for the bus a couple of very young kids came up in Buddhist monk clothing. There were four of them and each one said a little prayer in front of the hotel. When each was done with their prayer the proprietor of the hotel bowed down in front of each one and gave them a little treat. It looked like she was giving each a package of rama noodles or something like that. It was like a Buddhist trick or treat and in return for giving them food, they blessed the establishment.

As I was sitting waiting to leave Cambodia, I started to reflect on some observations I felt in this very strange land. One observation that occurred to me was that Cambodia was in dire need of another hero. Jayavarman VII is one of the most revered rulers in Cambodian history because under his rule he kicked the Thais (then called the Siamese) out who had briefly conquered the Angkor empire. This happened somewhere around the 12th or 13th century. The town of Siem Reap was named after this even as Siem Reap means Siam defeated. Since then their heroes have been few and far between. The closest thing would be Hang Ngor who survived the Killing Fields and won an Oscar as the best supporting actor in the movie the Killing Fields. He may have survived Cambodia’s Killing Fields, but he did not survive ours. He was shot and killed a number of years ago in Los Angeles in a robbery attempt.

The extent to which the Cambodians admire their ancient Angkor history is amazing and signs of this reverence can be witnessed everywhere. I was in the hot as the towering inferno market having a drink at this little café and started talking to the owner who happened to be sitting next to me. When I told him I had been to Angkor he said that Angkor was like their George Washington. The lonely planet mentions this too saying that many Cambodians feel very proud about these temples because if Cambodian people could build something as beautiful as that then they have something to be proud of. Angkor is also the name of their national beer, they have a cigarette brand named Angkor, and icons of the temples can be found everywhere.

This dedication to the past is all fine and good, but the sad thing is that this was over a thousand years ago, and there has been nothing great to come out of Cambodian history since. Then the Khmer Rouge came along and basically knock them back in history may be one hundred years with their ruthless killing and torture. Their adherence to the Angkor temples would be like Africa being really damn proud that they were the home of the first human beings. African countries might adopt a flag with a likeness of the bones of Lucy in the middle of it. I wonder if any African country brews a beer called Lucy beer or may be has a cigarette called Lucy strikes.

I left Cambodia today with very mixed feelings about the country. I have never been in a place so poor and it was definitely eye opening. I think Julia the bickering Canadian girl was right when she argued that Thailand is not third world. If Thailand is third-world then Cambodia is fifth-world.

Of course we have much to blame for this situation. In the early 1970s our government felt that the Vietnamese army was using Cambodia to hide and also as a supply route, so we decided to bomb Cambodia into the pre-Angkor days. I have seen some of the victims of this bombing begging on the Phnom Penh streets and it is horrific. When I was in the sweat your balls off market I was trying to walk through an area that was crowded with people. On one side was someone shopping and on the other side was this burn victim. She had half a face and worse she was wearing a tank top which revealed sickening burns all over her body. I had to walk through this constriction to get by and almost had to rub up against this poor gruesome woman. You cannot get very far in Cambodia without seeing someone with an arm or leg missing as there are still millions of unexploded land mines that litter this countryside. Lonely Planet warns not to stray off the beaten path when exploring in places not usually traveled.

The irony in Vietnam was that we were fighting to contain the communist threat, and we spawned an even worse regime in Cambodia. The result of the years of carpet bombing the Cambodian peasantry was to radicalize them against anything we represented like freedom and democracy and the following de-stabilization due to years of indiscriminate bombing allowed the insane regime of the Khmer Rouge to take power. It was kind of a reverse Marshall Plan. Instead of aiding countries that were thought to be weak economically and ripe for a communist takeover like Europe after World War II we bombed Cambodia into a weak economic country ripe for a radical takeover.

I had a lot of time to make these reflections because the bus I was waiting for had still not come, and I had been waiting there for over an hour. Since my reflections were not doing the world much good, and I finally had that this bus is never going to come feeling, I finally decided to stop reflecting and ask the girl at the hotel if the bus was usually this late. The girl at the hotel asked if I booked through them. I said yes and showed her the actual ticket. She said she would call. She made a phone call and had an excited and worried look on her face, but as soon as she got off the phone she assured me they would come. Suddenly, instead of a bus, a moto-bike driver approached me and said he would drive me to the bus station. He told me that he was sorry, but they forgot me. I drove on the back of this moto-bike with my huge backpack on. We stopped on the side of the road, and he pointed and said that is your bus. It was another mini bus, so I figured this was the pick up bus. I got on as it was completely full and we drove and drove and I soon realized this was my bus. That was the funny thing about traveling in Asia. The traveler was always the last to know about these things. The guy sitting next to me said they drove for an hour and that they then turned around because they forgot someone. I told him it was me that they had forgotten.

We then stopped at this ferry as there is no bridge over the Mekong River on this particular highway (only in Cambodia.) A few people on the bus departed at this point as they were taking a boat the rest of the way, which thankfully created space. After they left the bus, we had to wait for the ferry to come back from the other side. Meanwhile there were beggars and peddlers everywhere outside tapping on our window trying to get our attention. I bought a loaf of bread and water, but I did not need gum, sunglasses, and all the other crap they were selling. They were persistent and annoying. One kid tapped at the window and showed the man in front of me every single drink he had in his cooler twice. He would take coke out and tap on the window and the man would shrug no. Then he would take a bottle of mineral water out and tap the window and the man would frown no. Then he would take a pack of gum out and this persisted until he tried to sell everything in his little cart to the man in front of me They all had these vacant stares and it reminded me of being trapped in a van with a bunch of zombies like Dawn of the Dead or something like that outside waiting to eat us. We finally got through the ferry and on to the other side.

We hit the border and the Eastern border crossing of Cambodia was much easier than the Western border. It still took awhile, but it was a lot smoother and incredibly, no beggars. Plus, a cool front has hit SE Asia. Today it is only like 90 degrees with a nice breeze instead of the sticky 95 it has been lately. I did have some minor difficulty getting through as I had to complete an entry visa form three times for some reason. I had to duplicate the form exactly twice because they kept one copy and the other copy was kept by the tourist because when leaving the country the customs people would take the duplicate then. I only entered one copy so the customs man said I needed to duplicate the form. In the meantime I had loaned my pen out to another tourist, and he gave me a pen to complete the form. The pen was blue ink and my first form was done in black ink. When I showed him my two duplicate forms one was done in blue and one in black. When he saw this he frowned and gave me two new forms to complete because they had to be in the same color ink. I am not sure how the customs guy as I was exiting was to know that my entrance form was done in different color ink, but it is no use in arguing with these people because they have ultimate but temporary power over you so they must be appeased. I completed both forms again and smiled to my new friend and gave them to him and thanked him. He then finally allowed me to pass. Since I had now completed this form four times, I was now an expert. I should have stayed at the border and helped people complete the form for a fee. I could have been an entry/exit form consultant.

We piled on a big bus that took us the rest of the way to Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon. One of my best friends from high school Jon, married a beautiful Vietnamese girl named Christine. It so happens that her brother will be here in Saigon at the same time I will be. Once inside the city I was going to check into the same hotel as he was in. When I got there they said they were booked. I asked if Khoa Truong was there and the lady at the desk frowned and said they had no one by that name. I was perplexed because I had an email from both him and his sister with the address of the hotel. I got out his email and showed it to the clerk and she said “oh yes, Khoa Truong is here.” Apparently, I must have massacred the pronunciation of his name. He was currently in Hanoi, but would be returning the next day. Now that she knew that I was friends with Khoa, my troubles with the hotel were gone. She said she would give me his room until another was available for me later. So I put my things in his vacated room and am here at an internet cafe drinking a beer. Apparently, when I get back they will have my own room for me.

One of the first things I did when I got here was to book a boat tour to the Mekong River Delta. Since the tour started at 7:30am the next morning, and I had a long day, I wanted to get to bed early. I was just going to have a beer or two and some dinner and head back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

I started walking up and down the backpacker area of Saigon for something to eat. It is interesting that every city I had been in has had a back packer tourist area part of town. Since many of the back packers are young people into hippy type activities, there is a kind of US counterculture aspect to the atmosphere at each of these places. It is kind of something like one might find on Haight-Ashbury Street in San Francisco. I felt like trying some Vietnamese food. Many of these places in the area I was in had more western cuisine, so I turned off on a side street and found a cafe where a few Vietnamese people were eating as well as a couple of tourists.

I had a Saigon beer and choose fried octopus with a sweet and sour sauce. The Vietnamese man next to me started asking me general questions where I was from, and I spoke to him until my food came. I was impressed with his English as it was perfect. Then I started talking to an English couple next to me. My food arrived and it was awesome. More of a spicy sweet and sour sauce than what we are used to and it was topped with many different kinds of vegetables.

The English lady next to me asked what I was eating and she ordered the same. We started to talk and they were really nice. She all of a sudden started talking about her son that was visiting Australia, and I smiled thinking she was going to start telling some story about how proud she was about her son. Instead she said he was in Australia for fourteen days then got sick and died, and she started crying. I was still smiling when I realized to my shock what she just said. I tried to console her, but there is no way to console someone for something like that happening. I told her that my brother had died when I was 16, and she then consoled me. I guess her son basically had a heart attack at age 28, and he was in almost perfect health according to her.

I was still kind of talking to this couple when another Vietnamese man next to me tapped on my knee and said he wanted to talk English with me to practice. I said ok, but I was a little worried because in Cambodia many people told me this and then asked for money, plus I was still talking to the couple next to me. He turned out to be a really nice guy though and he talked a little bit about remembering the American GIs being here.

The man who tapped my knee soon left without asking for any money to my relief, and I continued talking with his friend named Tho who was a Vietnamese businessman here in Saigon that worked for British Petroleum as a purchaser. This was the man that was talking to me before my food came. He learned English when he was seven from the GIs. All of a sudden another older Vietnamese gentleman approached and extended his hand and groped mine and held it and smiled at me. I thought this kind of odd, but I could sense that he was a nice person. He started talking in really broken English, and I had trouble understanding. Tho interpreted for me, and he told me that he was very happy to see foreigners talking with Vietnamese because this is an international city and he told me that he was happy I was here. I told him thanks and that I was happy to be here.

Through interpretation from Tho, I was able to discern that this older fellow used to be in the Navy, and apparently he trained in San Diego and Philadelphia prior to the Vietnam War. I had trouble understanding him as he talked in broken English and when he realized I was not understanding spoke Vietnamese so Tho could interpret. He then threw up his hands and declared “I love the American GI.” It was actually nice to hear this. We hear so many negative things about our army these days with the prison scandal and other things, so I was pleased that when he was in the presence of our troops that he must have been treated very nicely by our American soldiers. He had this beatific glow on his face as he remembered his time in America.

Tho was with a Pakistani tour guide that worked here in Saigon named Bobby, and all of us had a great political conversation and also a great conversation about different languages. I had finished my second beer and had forgotten all idea of going to bed early. The older guy bought everyone another round and we continued to discuss. Somehow we got on to the subject of world peace and Bobby the Pakistani excitedly yelled “what is peace?” Tho replied that peace is “within our mind, in the way we deal with others, and in our heart.” I could not agree with Tho more. We eventually began to wind down as I was tired from my journey from Cambodia earlier in the day. I was going to pay for my bill, but Tho would not let me and paid for both mine and Bobby’s and said it was his treat.

Bobby made some point that although he was foreign he was now local and had started to learn the language, so he was becoming less foreign here. He then said to me that I was really a foreigner. I agreed that this was true, but I said that I appreciated for one evening being treated as not a foreigner, but a human being by the first people I met in Vietnam. It was great to have such a positive first experience in this country. In Cambodia it was really weird, and I never felt like I had any positive communication with any local people. They were always trying too hard to please and wanted money, so it was difficult to interact with them. My first experience here was thankfully much different. I also learned quite a bit about Pakistan. We had a good conversation about Pakistani’s ruler President Mushareef. Apparently, President Mushareef cut his country’s debt in half by agreeing to lease out bases to the US. This has put him in hot water with some of the radical groups in his country, but economically, it has benefited the country tremendously, and Bobby really admired his diplomacy in this regard.

I got back to the hotel and just as I was getting in bed, Christine’s brother Khoa called, and he said he was still in Hanoi and would be back in Saigon the next day. As soon as he hung up the front desk then called and the most confusing conversation ensued. He said something about Khoa wanting to buy something for me and it was no problem, but I could not understand him and he could not understand me. We finally gave up. Then a minute later Khoa called back saying if I wanted anything to eat the front desk would take care of me. I thanked him and then went to bed.

The Killing Fields of Cambodia

The next morning Peram was waiting for me in full force. May be he took a vacation day the day before to rest up, so he could harass tourists that much better the next day. I decided I could no longer thwart his zealous desire to guide. As soon as I saw him before I could even say good morning he came up to me full of piss and vinegar and said, “if you want to go to the hotel now, I will take you.” I told him let’s go. He said that he was looking for me the day before, but he did not see me. Since he was not around I began to fear that he found someone else, so I had told another guy that he could take me. Now that Peram had showed up I knew I had to let him take me. The other guy new he was out of a customer and kind of moped around. I apologized to him, but told him I had to go with Peram. He asked if he could help bring me over there, but I told him that all of my bags could be placed on Peram’s moto-bike. He was not happy, but accepted his fate.

We packed up and Peram took me on his moto-bike to the new hotel. The lake area was nice, but I was craving some AC and hot water. Phnom Penh was just as hot as Thailand, and I had been walking around a lot lately, so I also had Peram drive me around today to some of the tourist areas. After settling in at the hotel, we headed for the Killing Fields monument. This was a 15km trip through some more pretty harrowing roads, but we made it there with no problem. I walked in and the cutest girl said to me “you take picture of me, and 1,2,3 smile.” They are so good at pulling at your heartstrings. I took her picture and gave her a dollar and then unfortunately another 5 or 6 kids mobbed me for money.

After that I walked around the grounds. They have this huge pagoda that is filled with skulls from the killing fields as well as remains from mass graves around the area. This was an area that the Khmer Rouge took their opposition, which included former government leaders and anyone in the intelligentsia and killed them. They used the most barbaric means possible too. I had a guide whose mother and father were doctors and were both killed when he was 10 years old. He survived because he was sent out into the countryside with relatives and worked in the fields. If the Khmer Rouge would have found out that he was the son of two doctors he would have been killed. My guide also claimed to have shown Kofi Annan and Francois Mitterand around the place.

Since bullets were at a premium the Khmer rouge killed their victims in the most barbaric ways possible. Inside the pagoda my guide picked up several of the skulls and looked at each one and identified the way they were killed. One had a clean hole through the top of the skull and he said bullet hole, another had a crack in the side of the skull and he said hammer, and a third was broken completely to pieces, and he said several jabs from the butt of a rifle. He also showed me a palm tree and told me to rub the side of the branch that leads to the plant, but do it gently. I did and it was pretty sharp. He told me they used these branches to cut people’s throats. I could imagine this would work, but it could not have been very clean because these branches were not razor sharp. There was also a tree he showed me that was used to kill children. They would swing the babies and hit their heads on a tree. It is insane that such a ruthless regime was able to do these things in this peaceful quiet country. It makes you kind of paranoid sometimes as the regime was almost like a Lord of the Flies type regime as they used young children and adolescents as their assassins. This meant that anyone walking around that is around my age or a little older could have been a ruthless cold blooded assassin twenty years ago.

The sad thing is that many of the perpetrators of this regime remain unpunished. The leader, Pol Pot reportedly died a peaceful death due to a heart attack at age 73. This is something that he deprived his more than 1.7 million victims of. Many of the leaders are still living free and rather peacefully including brother number two Nuon Chea and brother number three, Leng Sary. Nuon Chea is living near the Thai border and the Cambodian government agreed not to pursue prosecution against Chea. I believe that the Cambodian government is doing this in an attempt to forget the past, but it is important to pursue these criminals in order to heal and also in order to obtain justice for the victims and their families. I read a news report where a lot of the actual henchman for this regime are living rather close to the victims or the victims families of people they tortured and killed. A war crimes trial is supposedly going to take place soon. It is to be hoped that the UN can convince the reluctant Cambodian government to pursue these criminals and bring justice. Note: This trial has finally come about and is currently ongoing.

The evidence of this regime is everywhere. This country is the most backward place I have ever been to. When a country loses more that 15% of its population, it takes time for normalcy to return if it ever can. It is hard to explain unless you have visited this place, but there just seems to be an underlying sadness in the people that live here. It seems that there soul is hurting. With time and from help from the outside world, I hope that Cambodia can improve itself and the lives of its people.

After the depressing Killing Fields, Peram took me to a market. It was called the Russian market because it was near Russian Blvd. It should have been called the sweat your balls off market because it was just unbearable in there. It was actually underground, and there was not much ventilation in there and the whole structure was basically a giant oven and everyone inside was just baking. I felt really sorry for the workers in there, but I guess one can get used to anything. I bought a shirt and tried to buy some flip flops, but they were too expensive. I just want a really cheap pair to get me through the rest of my vacation, and I am sure I can get a cheaper pair in Vietnam, which is my next destination.

Peram took me back to the hotel, and I relaxed until later. I went back to the Heart of Darkness hopeful to hook up with Mark and Mike again as they said they would probably show up there again. Unfortunately, they never appeared and neither did Tan or Yan from the night before. It was basically the same scene as the night before. I grew bored of the place and returned to my hotel rather early.

A Day in Phnom Penh

I wake up the next morning and I do not feel like doing a thing today. All I want to do is relax. I think about going out and getting some breakfast and coffee, but I am worried that Peram will be out there ready to harass me. I brave this possibility and go out to the lounge area and order some coffee. Miraculously, Peram is nowhere to be found. He must have nabbed another tourist. When I got some coffee, Sean from Australia was at the guest house. He came to the Sidewalk Guest house in Siem Reap the last night I was there with the really stupid English girl. Fortunately, she was nowhere to be found. Two guest house employees inquired if I am going to this magical hotel or not, but I let them know that I want to stay there another night.

My plan for today was to go to the National Museum and the Royal Palace. The National Museum was an absolutely stunning piece of architecture. It was shaped like a temple and had a dark red hue to it. The majority of the museum consisted of artifacts recovered from the Temples of Angkor, so it was a nice supplement to things I had already seen in Siem Reap. One exhibit I found especially interesting consisted of eight heads of Angkor statues that had been recovered due to an effort done by an agency that tries to find artifacts that have been stolen or are missing from the Angkor Temples. This agency sends information to museums all over the world about missing Angkor treasures in the hope of recovering plundered Angkor art. The effort has paid off as is evident with the eight heads in the exhibit. The efforts are continuing as there are some pictures in the museum, of other artifacts that are missing that this agency is trying to find.

I was planning on spending three hours at this museum, but it was pretty small, and I got through it in an hour and a half. The Royal Palace was closed, so I took a few pictures of it from the river and then hung out at the river. Phnom Penh, besides being the greatest city in the world with two silent Hs, is also well known for the being the confluence of three rivers. The Mekong, the Tonle Sap, and the Bassac rivers all converge at Phnom Penh. The rivers are huge, especially the Mekong. You have to strain your eye to see things on the other side of the river. I went down to the river and there was a lot of activity going on there. Kids were fishing and a naked baby was bathing in the disgusting muddy water as trash floated on to shore. It was not an esthetically pleasing scene, so I moved on.

Just as I was going to leave a young kid approached me and started talking. He said he just wanted to practice his English. The sun was beginning to set and a bunch of tourists had lined up at the spot to take a picture of the beautiful Royal Palace at sunset. My new friend could not understand why tourists were fascinated with sunsets. I tried to tell him that it was natural beauty and it is something to appreciate. He just shook his head in disbelief. It made me sad because I think when one is in real poverty they do not have the time or the feeling to appreciate the beautiful things around them. In the same vein, in America we are usually too busy in our lives, working, and making money to have time to do the same thing. It made me think that a middle ground needed to be found. Work hard and make money, but yet do not work so hard that you do not have the time to take a few minutes and look at the scenery around you. There is so much beauty in the world and it is a shame that many people are too poor to be able to notice it or too busy to have the time to find it.

The young man that said he only wanted to talk with me to practice his
English then pointed to a photographer. He said for 2$ we could have our picture taken together. I told him for free I could have someone take our picture together with my digital camera, but he did not seem too interested in this, so I left. In retrospect, I should have given him the 2$ and taken the picture. Looking back on my trip as a whole, I wish I would have given more to people like this. I always had money to buy myself a beer, but I got annoyed when a beggar wanted to charge me two dollars to take a picture. I am sure he could have really used that money.

There is a section in the Lonely Planet that says there is a bat colony that lives in the roof of the National Museum and every night at dusk they pour out into the night in the thousands. This seemed like something that could not be missed, so I went back to the Museum and waited patiently for this spectacle to occur. The whole two hours I was there I probably saw five bats, and none of them seemed to come out of the roof. This was one of the few times the Lonely Planet let me down.

I returned to the guest house and there were a few people on top of the boat again. I climbed on top and Chris and Rose were there along with Sean from Australia and Clem from Ireland. Clem informed me that the boat operator got so stoned that he accidentally rammed the boat into a few houses during the tour. Chris from England was one of the clumsiest people I have ever seen. In two nights of hanging out with him I must have seen him spill or almost spill his beer five times. I stayed up on top for a couple of hours, but I felt like I needed to get out. The Lake area with its colony of guest houses was nice, but it was too insulated from the rest of the city. I decided I had to get out and walked down from the boat and left the guest house and grabbed a moto-bike driver for a ride into town.

I got a beer at the Heart of Darkness bar and chilled for awhile. It was really empty at this point, but the Lonely Planet guide mentioned that this place did not start picking up until midnight. This turned out to be the truth as people started to gradually filter in. When I ordered my next beer I was at the bar at the same time as an Englishman named Mark. We started to talk and he told me that I was too quiet to be an American. I took this as a compliment and told him I had not met many Americans. He said that he had met quit a lot on his trip. He was staying at a medium upscale hotel and it occurred to me that may be the reason I was not meeting many other Americans was that I was doing the backpacking thing where most Americans that travel to Asia, usually stay at hotels. Mark was there with his friend Mike, and we ended up hanging out for the rest of the night. Mark and Mike also mentioned that the place really picked up late.

True to their word and the word of the Lonely Planet that is what happened. I did not like the change in the music though. Early in the night when it was less crowded they were playing songs from the sixties like CCR and the Doors, but when the place started to hop the place turned into a disco and played all of the same songs I had been hearing at other discos I went to in Thailand. The good thing about this was that the hotness factor of the women also picked up with the change of music. Mike was soon talking to this adorable Cambodian girl that he eventually left with, and Mark and I started talking to some Japanese girls.

It turned out these girls were actually Vietnamese. They looked Japanese due to their really light complexion. I figured they might be fellow travelers, but they were local. They did not speak very good English, but they were fun to hang out with. They were a couple of jokers though. One of the girls, Tan, put her hand on my chest and when I looked down she smacked me in the face. Then she put her hand on top of her head and with her other hand motioned for me to touch her elbow. When I touched her elbow, she swung her whole hand down from her head and again smacked me in the face. Her and her girlfriend then laughed hysterically. It was clear that Mark and I were hanging out with the Cambodian three stooges.

Mark and I then followed the two jokers to another bar down the street called the Walkabout bar that was open 24 hours. You have to love a bar that is open 24/7. We then played a couple of games of pool. I was amazed how good these girls were at pool. The girl I was hanging out with was named Tan, and she was amazing. She was not much taller than the pool cue, but she hit the ball with authority and she was very accurate. I had never played with a girl that played so well, and in fact, there are only a few guys that I have played with before that was as good as she was. I was glad because she was my partner and I won a few games due to being the beneficiary of partnering with her. I played terrible, but she more than made up for it. There were a couple of her friends there and they played a pretty good game of pool as well. I guess there is not much for these girls to do in Cambodia except to play pool with foreigners.

First Day in Phnom Penh

My hiking boots showed up as mysteriously the next morning as they disappeared the night before. When I was checking in I saw some hiking boots that were similar to mine in the rack. Someone probably grabbed mine by mistake and brought them into their room for the night and the next morning realized they were not theirs and returned them. I went into the eating area of the guest house and reported to the workers there that I had found my shoes and smiled. They smiled back and asked if I wanted breakfast. I ordered a banana pancake and some coffee. Waiting for me in the eating area was my driver from the night before named Peram.

I was soon to find that the Cambodians have embraced tourism with a fervor I have not seen surpassed in the history of fervordom. I got a glimpse of this in Siem Reap, but in the capitol they are even more zealous to treat the traveler like a king. They are so ready to please that it is almost obnoxious and hilarious at the same time. When I got off the bus I accepted a ride from a moto-bike driver here. Ever since I accepted this ride, this guy has wanted to become my servant and has also served as my shadow. As soon as he dropped me off he carried my heavy bag to my room and said the next day he would take me wherever I wanted.

He was not joking either. The next morning I woke around 9am and came out for some coffee on our guest house platform that overlooks a lake. The platform is actually built on the lake and there is a big booze cruise boat that leaves every night at 5pm. It is really a pretty place. I get my coffee and here comes Peram, the moto bike driver from the day before. He asks me where I want to go, and I told him I was probably just going to walk around on my own today. He tells me he will take me to the Killing Fields, or the National Monument, or the shooting range wherever I want to go. I politely decline and tell him I will probably walk. He sits right next to me and waits while I drink my coffee. A couple of times during my coffee he reiterates his willingness to take me wherever I want. This is getting pretty annoying because it is nice to drink one’s coffee in peace and not be hounded.

Eventually he leaves, and I finish my coffee. I slip out and go put on my newly found hiking boots. All of a sudden I look up and there is Peram again hovering over me as I am lacing up my boots telling me he will take me anywhere. I again decline and leave. As I am leaving the guest house I am offered all different drugs and several moto-bikers ask if I need a ride. In fact at one point there are six moto-bike drivers in a row and as I pass the first driver says “moto-bike?” I say no thanks. Two seconds later I pass the second driver and he says “moto-bike?” Even though he heard me decline the first driver he asks again. All six drivers repeat the question. If this was not so goofy I would be really irritated, but it is almost like some sort of silly vaudeville comedy routine. I walked about a mile to the Tuol Seng S-21 prison museum, which commemorates the brutality of the Khmer Rouge regime and honors its victims, and I was offered at least 50 rides by passing moto-bike drivers on my mile walk. I am not joking. If you count the six right near the guest house it only took 44 more to get to fifty.

The museum was very moving. It was a high school that was turned into a prison cell by the Khmer Rouge and used to torture and kill many of their opposition and intellectuals or anyone they felt like. It was your usual testament for the brutality that we inflict on each other. The Khmer Rouge regime has to go down as one of the most brutal of all brutal regimes as the carnage they inflicted was probably the worst per capita of all the terror regimes. They are credited with over 1.5 million deaths of their countrymen in a country that only had a population of around 9 million. The museum even had pictures of the people that were interned here. Since only about .05% of the interned lived to tell about you know that you are looking at pictures of people that were imprisoned, killed, and likely tortured. Since the Khmer people are such cute people it is very painful to see these pictures of cute people that were brutally killed.

I later read that the regime was able to take power due to the instability caused by the bombing done by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. The U.S was trying to inflict damage on the supply route for the North Vietnam army, but many times they simply wiped out entire villages of Cambodians. The result was political instability and the fanatical Khmer Rouge was able to take advantage and overthrow the government. They wanted to return to a pure agrarian society were everything was shared. The result was complete madness, terror, and famine. They actually evacuated the cities and forced everyone into the countryside to help farm communal plots. All suspected intellectuals were immediately killed.

After that I walked to their independence monument. While at the independence monument I walked pass this man and women playfully fighting. I say playfully because from afar they were smiling as they were sparring. When I got right up to them the guy grabbed the long hair of the women and smacked her pretty hard on the face. She was crying. I was of course appalled, but I am pretty sure they were doing some kind of game because there was an older lady right next to them that was laughing. I walked away and turned around and the two had stopped and were both smiling again.
It was very strange.

From here I went to the main temple in town. It was $1 to enter the temple. After all the temples I have been to lately, I decided this was one I could miss. I opted for the drive by temple tour and snapped one picture from the gait and moved on. I got some lunch at a riverside restaurant. The view was nice, but unfortunately it was spoiled by an array of beggars, land mine victims missing limbs, and moto-bike drivers that stopped right in front of the restaurant and tried to get my attention while I was eating. I did my best to ignore them and focus on my chicken and pineapple dish. I have become addicted to dishes with pineapple as it is so delicious here. The combination of mouth watering pineapples sautéed with a sauce mixed with other vegetables over rice is amazing.

I got back to the guest house and my shadow Peram was waiting for me asking where I wanted to go tomorrow. It was really, really hot again today and I was thinking about upgrading a little to a hotel and get some air-conditioning. I told Peram this thinking he would be disappointed that I was leaving the guest house. He actually was delighted with this information. “I find good hotel for you,” he said in a very excited voice and he threw his finger in the air to add weight to his declaration. He asked me how much I wanted to spend, and I said about 10$ a night, and he said “no problem.”

No problem is the answer you will get to any request here in Cambodia. It may cost you some money, but whatever your request is it will be met by these friendly Cambodian characters. I would like to shoot a live cow with a bazooka, and it might cost a couple of hundred dollars for the no problem response, but that response is what you will get. This has kind of sad connotations some times too as people come here for their anything goes attitude and take advantage of it. That is why Cambodia is a popular place for drug runners and pedophiles. I would like two seven year old girls to my room please and you will find someone in Cambodia that will unfortunately say no problem.

There was a boat docked at the guesthouse and it takes a nightly cruise from 5pm to 7pm for sunset over the lake. I purchased my 2$ ticket, bought an Angkor beer, and I got aboard and started talking with Jerry and Nancy from the Niagara Falls area. They were Bills fans, so I told them about the Buffalo Bills bar in Chicago I go to. There was also Clem from Ireland, Chris and Rose from Manchester, England and Lea from London. One thing that was kind of funny was that Chris and Rose had hung out with two Americans in Laos for a week. It turned out to be Sean and Mike from Seattle that I had met in Chiang Mai.

The boat cruise was beautiful. I got some great shots of local Cambodians fishing in their little pirogies and also the sunset. Beers were flowing freely on the boat, and we were all having a good time. The boat returned to the dock at 7pm, but we asked if we could still hang out on the boat. They said “ok, no problem.” As I said I think this is the Cambodian motto. They told us we could sleep on the boat if we wanted to. So we continued drinking and talking on the boat until 11:30pm. The people at the guest house passed up food and beer to us from the bar as we continued to hang out. All we had to do is tell them what room we were in so they could charge us as they used the same type of system as the Sidewalk Guest house did in Siem Reap.

At one point Peram jumped up on the boat and said “tomorrow I take you to hotel.” At this point I was having a good time here and was thinking that may be I will stay one more night at the guest house. I told Peram that I might like to stay another night here. Again he started pitching the hotel, and again I said that I will make up my mind in the morning. He then said “you tell me at 8am.” I told him no probably around 11am. I am not sure why he wanted to know when I would make up my mind, but I can only venture to guess that he wanted to know when I would make up my mind so that if I decided to leave the guest house for the hotel he could then take to the hotel the minute I had made that decision. He wanted to make sure I was taken care of the minute my decision was made. He then asked again if I wanted smoke. I told him no thanks, and he said if you need I have. I thanked him and he left and I continued talking to the people on the boat.

There was this other guy that came up on the boat with Peram. When Peram left he stayed and he then started asking me about the hotel option again. I was getting a little exasperated at this point and told him what I had told Peram while he was two feet next to him that I might stay another night at the guest house. He said the hotel is very cool and has hot water. I told him that is great and what I am looking for, but I think I will stay one more night here then go. Chris from England was listening the whole time and decided he would help me with my predicament and jumped into the conversation and told the Cambodian that I did not want to talk about the hotel anymore that night, and he could ask me tomorrow. The guy said ok, tomorrow. There was a moment of silence and then the Cambodian again started pitching the hotel. Chris and I threw up our arms, but this time the guy was thankfully joking and he laughed hysterically at our reaction. It is funny because I just casually mentioned I might want to stay at a hotel and it seemed to be the hot topic of the guest house. I got down to go to the bathroom and got a beer from the bar and the guy from the guest house who got me the beer asked if I was going to the hotel. I told him I was going to stay an extra day. I think the cover of the Phnom Penh post was going to come out the next day with an article on the front page stating, “U.S. tourist contemplating a movement to a hotel,” because it seemed all the Cambodians were wanting to talk about it.

I am pretty sure the reason they want me to go to a hotel so bad is that they can make money off of it too. They take me to a 7$ or 8$ hotel and I pay 10$, so they make a little money. Also, though, I think they are obsessed with getting tourists whatever they want. They truly want to make life as easy as possible for you. I think they understand that if they treat tourists well that more will come, so they are desperate to make you feel comfortable. It has its good points and bad points and it is pretty funny to watch. The motto for the Cambodian tourist industry is See you again, and they live this motto. They want to treat you right, so that they will see you again.

After partying on the boat, everyone went their separate ways at 11:30pm. I got off the boat to the sitting area and ordered another pineapple dinner with fish and watched the funniest American movie ever made. This was Rocky III. The announcer asks Clubber Lang “Mr. T” what he predicts for the fight. Clubber Lang says in the most mean and serious voice possible that he predicts “PAIN.” Everyone in the guest house just cracks up laughing.

On the Road to Pnhom Penh

I woke the next morning packed, returned my bike, and got a bus to Phnom Penh. Then I had breakfast and paid my bill for my five night stay at the Sidewalk Guest house. My bill included the five nights (one was free because I slept in my tent), about eight 24oz Angkor beers, three lunches, three breakfasts, two dinners, and a bust ticket to Phnom Penh and this all totaled only forty dollars. What a bargain.

A small bus picked me up just like the one from the border. This was not a good sign, but at least I was the first one on and would not be crammed in the middle.It was very hot though and I was drenched as we drove around to other guest houses in order to pick up more travelers. Fortunately, this bus was just a pick up bus. It deposited us at the bus station, and we got on a nice big bus toward the capitol that was air-conditioned and played Thai pop music videos on this big TV up front. I was told that this trip would be easier than the one from the Thai border as the roads were better, but I was not going to believe it till I experienced it.

I got off the bus in Phnom Penh and was mobbed by Cambodians trying to get me to go to their guest house. There was like six moto-bike drivers grabbing my shirt to try and get me to look at their placard. I had been told by Ivan in Bangkok that I needed to stay by the lake. I took one that was where I wanted to go. He was a very friendly fellow named Peram. The drive was free if I stayed at his guest house. I got on the back of Peram’s moto-bike and he asked if I needed smoke. I told him no thanks. He said if I changed my mind I should talk to him. He also said he would be happy to take me wherever I wanted to go. If I wanted to see the Killing Fields, he would take me. I told him I would probably just get a bike, but he ignored this comment and reiterated I should come to him if I needed anything.

The guest house had 3$ rooms and the place was right along the Bong Kok lake. As I was checking in the sun was setting right over the lake and it was gorgeous. The place also had a nice bar area right over the lake and had a boat that took nightly tours, so I was pleased with my choice. I took off my hiking boots and placed them in the shoe rack at the entrance and got settled. When I wanted to leave to check the internet I could not find my hiking boots. I think either someone stole my boots or someone took them by mistake. If they are gone the first thing on the agenda tomorrow is to get some shoes. My flip flops broke in Thailand, and I have not replaced them yet, so I am sans shoes right now. The people at the guest house lent me some slippers that were way too small so I could walk around the corner to check the internet. I was a little upset about losing my boots, but the people at the guest house did not seem to feel it was a big deal, so I tried not to worry about it and hoped they would show up in the morning. For now I was shoeless in Phnom Penh.