The Triumphant Return (to Thailand)

Cambodia was fantastic overall. The trip had it's ups and downs but looking back I'm really glad I went through with it. Returning to Thailand was kind of a shock to me after 10 days out of the country though, because it felt a lot like 'coming home'. A familiar bed, the ability to talk to people on the street (especially when asking directions), and familiar food make a world of difference in terms of comfort level. I guess while traveling I'd been keeping my guard up so to speak because so many things were unfamiliar and I was trying to be careful, and letting some of that extra stress slip away felt like a weight had been lifted. I returned to Chiang Mai this morning in very high spirits.

From past experience I know that my last week here is going to pass by more quickly than I'd like it to so making the most of things is going to take some planning. I've already scheduled one more thesis research interview for Friday morning and I've emailed 3 other organizations about potentially sitting down with me as well. I'll have frisbee Wednesday and Saturday and a farewell BBQ at Sam's house on Friday night.

I'm also trying to work in time to pack each day so I don't end up packing the night I leave (which seems to happen EVERY SINGLE TIME I GO ANYWHERE, though I wouldn't be able to tell you why exactly...though if I were to guess I'd say my uncontrollable penchant for procrastination may have something to do with it).

I suppose I should say a little bit more about Cambodia while it's all still fresh in my mind.

Phnom Penh, the capital city and my first destination was an interesting experience. I arrived in the dark the first night (after that hair-raising moto taxi ride) and began looking for a guesthouse. This is one of the downsides of sponteneity in terms of trip planning. It was raining by the time I found a place with a free room for 5 dollars a night. Fortunately I asked to see the room before paying anything because there was a huge leak in the ceiling and the bed mattress and the floor of the room were both soaking wet. The man offered to turn the mattress over (as we stood there watching the water drip-drip-dripping from the ceiling onto the bed) to which I queried whether or not turning the mattress would stop the roof from leaking on me all night. In the end I ventured back into the rain to find a drier room. After asking a few people on the street if they knew of anywhere with free rooms, I was taken to a dimly lit wooden guesthouse that extended out over the lake in the middle of the city. It wasn't the cleanest place but I figured I could spend one night anywhere as long as it was dry and could move the next day. After dropping my bags, I went out to find somewhere to satisfy my appetite. During dinner I bought a Lonely Planet Cambodia Guidebook from a boy selling them out of a box he'd hung around his neck with string. I managed to bargain him down to 5 dollars for it and was feeling quite proud of myself for having done so until I saw the same book in a shop for 2.50 a few days later. The money situation in Cambodia is interesting because you can interchangeably use Cambodian riel, or US dollars. The first time someone handed me a wad of change that was a mixture of US and cambodian currency I was shocked, but you soon learn to convert from one to the other (4000 riel=1USD). I also found myself converting prices to baht in my head. Before getting ready for bed I killed two cockroaches in the bathroom using the roach spray I'd fortunately packed with me.

The second morning dawned hot and still. Having gone to bed early I was refreshed and ready to go by 8, and I set out to follow a walking tour of the city outlined in my guidebook. What followed was an incredibly hot and dusty walk through downtown Phnom Penh. I enjoyed it immensely. The hustle and bustle of covered outdoor markets crushed up against the outside walls of shopping centres, the dirt and grime of garbage-filled alleys and side streets side by side with post colonial french style architechture. And bread! Because Cambodia used to be a french colony you can get loads of baguettes, croissants, danishes and all sorts of assorted pastries. It was truly a city of contrast. I spent about 8 hours walking around that day and saw most of the city on foot, checking into another guesthouse for the evening as I went.

That evening I had dinner at a restaurant run by an NGO which runs programs for street children in Phnom Penh (there are lots of them) which is why I could look past their somewhat steeper prices.

I have to say that eating on your own is one of the downsides of travelling by yourself. I don't really like it. If I'm at home in my room, fine, no problem, but I don't like going OUT by myself. All the tables at restaurants have two chairs which makes it especially depressing. I had plans to meet some other backpackers I'd met the previous evening somewhere in town later but basically wandered the streets by the river until the time came to go and meet them. Once I actually met up with them the night turned around and ended up being a really fun time. People you meet travelling are fantastic 97% of the time. You could question whether that is true of people generally, or whether it's because the people who choose to go travel tend to think the same way and thus get along well, but I'm not here to argue the details. Either way, the trick is to put yourself out there and be able to start up a conversation which is something that I'm working on. This trip definitely helped me practise.

The next day as I already mentioned involved a visit to the S-21 Detention Centre used by the Khmer Rouge as an interrogation centre during their time in power, and to the Killing Fields, very powerful stuff. I read up on the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia a little bit before going but I certainly wasn't prepared to see the evidence in living color. Intense doesn't begin to capture it. I wasn't alive when the events took place and would really like to sit down with someone who was after I get home or something just to get their take on the situation and what they remember of the global response (or lack thereof) at the time.

My next morning saw me on a bus on the way south to the beach at Sihanoukville, the small town on the very southern tip of Cambodia on the Gulf of Thailand. It was time for some sun and some sand. I notice in my last post I said I was going to meet with my friend Janeen on the beach, but in a hilarious turn of events she headed to Phnom Penh the same day I went to Sihanoukville. Our busses may have passed each other on the road. Regardless, an excellent time was had there, I realized the second night that the guesthouse I was staying at was patronized mainly by american sex tourists, but they stayed out of my way and I stayed out of theirs and the room was cheap, clean and had cable TV so I didn't see a problem with staying. Met quite a few people on the beach which was nice, all the backpackers in town seemed to congregate their after the sun went down for barbecues and beach parties.

The second morning at the beach I woke up at sunrise to go for a run on the beach. I was the only one out at that hour, and the only sounds to be heard were my bare feet on the wet sand and the sound of the waves. I hadn't jogged in a long time. Frisbee keeps you in shape, but you get to rest occasionally, and the beach was longer than I'd expected but I was determined to run all the way to the end. I finally made it sweaty and exhausted to the point where the beach ended at a rocky slope with a wide stream running along the bottom of it into the sea. As I stood there catching my breath and trying to get rid of the stitch in my side I caught sight of an incredibly short old woman who was picking her way down the rocky slope toward me. She was moving with what I thought was surprising speed down such a precarious slope, especially for someone of her age. When she made it the bottom, she was on the opposite side of the stream and without hesitation she waded in among the rocks protruding from the surface of the stream and sat down in the middle of it in front of a rock so that the water covered her stomach. She then proceeded to use a sharp piece of metal to pry the mussels off of the rock dropping them into a plastic water bottle. I watched in silence for some time. It was silently magical. For me at least...for her it was probably more like "What's this guy staring at me for...this is why I hate tourists." I wondered how mornings before she'd descended the same slope (quite a few judging from how easily she was able to navigate her way down), and what she did with them when she went home. Did she sell them, or eat them herself? Anyway, after I felt I'd stared this lady down long enough, I headed back up the beach and then home for a much needed shower/rest.

That same day I decided to get out of the backpacker area of town and see some more of the area which was FANTASTIC. I got some great pictures, and ate the first real 'Cambodian food' from a stall by the side of the road. It was meat and vegetables and rice and three cups of sugar cane juice all for 1.25 american. Tasty tasty tasty. I've always felt kind of conflicted about taking pictures in some of the places I go. If I see something really interesting like a house on stilts with someone sitting underneath weaving a fishing net (yes I saw it, no I didn't take a picture) around underneath it, part of me is all "Awesome, grab your camera!" while another part is saying "Whoa, he's just doing his thing, living his life. Why would you have to walk up to him and start snapping pictures like this was some sort of National Geographic special? Leave the man in peace." In my mind it would equate to you doing something completely mundane like washing your car in your driveway and then having someone walk up onto your lawn and start snapping pictures of you, then walking away. This conflict has meant I haven't taken pictures of a few of the really neat things I've seen not just in Cambodia but in Thailand as well, but I think that respecting your subjects is more important than getting that perfect shot a lot of the time.

My third day on the beach saw me lazing around like it was my job. I read a lot and ate a lot and generally was a waste of space, breathing all the good air that should've gone to the deserving, productive people of the world...scientists and the like.

After a day of laziness, I was ready to hit the road again and hopped a bus up to Siem Reap, a dusty town in the North of the country, home of the UNESCO Heritage Site that is Angkor Wat. Dusty was somewhat of an understatement. To be honest, everywhere I went in Cambodia was pretty dusty, but if there was a contest, though the competition would be stiff, I think Siem Riap would emerge as the dust king of the country. The odd thing is that all the roads are paved so there's no real excuse for having clouds of dust hanging in the air all the time, that just seems to be the way it is. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on the circumstance) all of Cambodia is way further south than Chiang Mai, which means the rainy season comes earlier and it was definitely in full swing, with daily or bi-daily showers by the time I took my vacation (whereas in Chiang Mai, it only rains once a week or so). This was good because it helped control the dust, but bad because it turned the streets into a muddy quagmire.

Another thing about cambodia is that you get harassed CONSTANTLY by people. Now, I've never been to India (which I'm told is the harassment capital of the universe) so I had nothing to measure this by other than Thailand really, but it did get pretty intense at times. On the beach when all you wanted to do was sit on the beach in the sun and enjoy your book, people (always women) were constantly coming up to you with platters of fruit or lobster balanced on their heads asking you if you wanted to buy some. The children were also in on the game. They walked up and down the beach, some with fruit, some with string and other assorted arts and crafts materials asking people if they wanted to buy a bracelet. The interesting thing about these kids was that their english was impeccable. I didn't end up buying anything from anyone on the beach, beacuse I feel like as soon as I buy something, I give up my right to complain about getting harassed all day. The reason people sell things on the beach is because it's profitable and allows them to earn a living. If nobody bought anything, begging would cease to be profitable and they'd be forced to find something else to do. Herein lies the dilemma for me, because the next question is always, well what else could they be doing and I don't have an answer. Work long hours in horrible conditions for low pay in a garment factory making shoes or clothes for Wal Mart or The Gap perhaps? I'm not making the call on whether or not that's a viable alternative.
On the one hand you could argue that you were supporting these people and helping to put bread on their tables which is likely valid, but I would counterargue that at least as far as the children are concerned, the amount of profit they recieve personally is likely far less than what you're paying for whatever you buy from them. These kids aren't going to the market to buy their string, etc. It's far more likely that they get it from someone else, who in turn takes their share of the profit from whatever these kids earn by selling the bracelets (this isn't all speculation, I asked where a boy of about 7 got his string from and he said "The Man buys the string and give to me so I can sell bracelets and pay him back for the string"). Those of you familiar with the concept of cycles of poverty, or poverty traps will notice a familiar ring to what the boy was saying. In economic terms, he needs the string to make bracelets, he pays for the string by selling the bracelets, but he's not likely to make enough to collect enough profit to do purchase the capital to embark on another (more profitable) business venture.

In the temples at Siem Riap it was the same deal, kids selling things from flutes to guidebooks to cold drinks and water. The thing about these kids was that they often spoke 5 or 6 languages. When my motorcycle driver told me this I was astounded and tried to stump the next kid that came up to me. He flowed effortlessly from english to french to spanish to thai and likely could have kept going (german, japanese, korean and vietnamese and of course Cambodian) but I don't know any more languages. None of them receive any language training, it's all picked up 'on the job', and while it's likely that their linguistic talent doesn't exctend far past what's required to ask people to buy things, I still think it's impressive considering how young some of these kids were.

The temples themselves were AMAZING for the most part, but to go through each day blow by blow would take too long so I will just only about the best one.

I ended up getting swindled HARD on the last day (100 US out the door...) but I don't really want to dwell on it as it was a depressing experience, probably the worst I've had since I got here. Long story short, I found a motorcycle driver taht spoke Thai and a little bit of English, and using a mixture of the two we were able to communicate pretty well. We agreed on a price, 12 dollars a day for each of the days he took me around the temple complex and on the last day (my second) I expressed interest in going to a temple I saw in my guidebook that he hadn't been planning on going to. He said that temple was extra far away, and would take a long time to get to and he'd have to charge me extra, 100 dollars or something. I was like whoa, okay, if it's far and 100 dollars, that's a no go, forget it we'll just go to the short ones. Or so I thought, I didn't really press the issue afterwards but obviously I should've made sure he understood, because this whole conversation was in Thai. I don't know if it was purposeful deception or genuine misunderstanding but in the end it didn't really matter because I didn't know where we were supposed to be going and he ended up taking me to this really far temple and then demanded the money for it when we got home, saying that I'd agreed on the price beforehand. He ended up taking me to an ATM where I took out and forked over the cash, because it's hard to argue with someone when you remember the conversation, and the mention of 100 dollars, and he's already taken you to the temples you had asked for. I don't know, I was really really bummed out about it that evening but I've since tried to put it in perspective. Yes, I'd lost a hundred bucks, but it wasn't like it had fallen out of my pocket and was lying in a ditch slowly decomposing. I'd put it into someone else's pocket. Maybe this was karma's way of telling me I should've been more generous with those kids on the beach or something, I don't know. Over the course of our two day conversation, the driver told me about his life, the 8 years spent as a chef in Thailand, his wife at home, his dreams of children and his worries about being able to support them on the meagre wages of a motorcycle taxi driver. He also spoke of his plans to save enough money driving people around to open his own restaurant in Siem Riap, making enough money to be able to afford the children him and his wife dream of having one day. Hopefully my cash (seriously though, in Cambodian terms 100 US is a huge sum of money) will put him that much closer to being able to buy a building and open his restaurant. I also pointed out to myself that this was probably the worst experience I've had in the year that I've been living here and all things considered I think that means I've come out WAY ahead of the pack. So hopefully one day when this man opens his restaurant he'll think of me and my hundred dollars. Or maybe he went straight to the bar and drank it all, his wife at home never seeing a penny. I know that's sometimes the cruel reality but even though I'll never be able to be sure, I know which story I'm sticking to in my head.

The last temple, Beng Malea was probably one of the most insane experiences I've ever had. Better than watching the sun rise at 5:30 in the morning over the three huge towers of Angkor Wat, better than the 214 staring faces of the temple of Bayon, better even than Ta Phrom, that temple where a scene from Tomb Raider was filmed. We arrived at Beng Malea about 5PM, just before sunset and since this temple was so far away, as I was going in, the last few straggling visitors were leaving for the day. I was the only person there. The temple itself was MASSIVE. About 200m by 200m, and unlike all of the other temples I'd seen previously, this one had been left virtually untouched and unreconstructed since it was built. Aside from a few wooden supports holding up crumbling archways and things, it was completely left to it's own devices. There isn't really a path through the temple, and in many of the corridors and passageways you're clamboring over huge and precariously balanced pieces of the temple itself that have been left where they've fallen as the temple slowly collapses. The other thing is that it's been taken over by the jungle. Ta Phrom is another temple that's advertised to have been "taken over by the jungle" but it's obvious that there's been considerable effort taken to make sure to manage said 'take-over', there are a few trees left inside in strategic places to make the temple look wild, but Beng Malea definitely shows more accurately what a jungle takeover is supposed to look like. If my internet wasn't being a jerk at the moment I'd post some of the pictures but it is, so you'll have to use your imagination. Ask me when I get back and I'd be happy to have a sit-down. The pictures from this temple specifically weren't the greatest because the light was fading and for some reason digital cameras go nuts the second the light dims slightly and the flash just didn't cut it in this massive place. Anyway, I spent about an hour exploring the crumbling ruins of the massive temple structure, and marvelling at how huge and regal the temple must have been in it's hayday.

The artsier fartsier side of me also kind of liked the way the temple, like the beach during my morning run in Sihanoukville could be thought of as an art piece, forever unique in that it was constantly changing. Every wave carries sand up the beach, as it comes in, and drags some away as it goes out, changing the space gradually over time. Every stone that tumbles from the wall of the temple, and every tendril and vine that snakes it's way up the side of an archway simultaneously alters it and becomes a part of the piece itself. Silently beautiful.

My trip around the temples (especially Beng Malea) was also very humbling. These things have been here for A THOUSAND YEARS. Yes, they were "lost in the jungle" (I use the quotes because it's speculated that 'lost in the jungle' meant that the people who knew they were there weren't European and thus didn't count, at least as far as the history books are concerned) for hundreds of years, but here they are, still doing their thing. I'm 21 years old, but a thousand years from now (unless my plans for world domination take off in a big way, in which case I'd still probably end up being remembered as little more than a blip on the radar millenia from now) then I'm going to be forgotten in ways I can't even begin to contemplate. Kind of makes you think twice about rolling out of bed in the morning doesn't it, but on the other hand it's kind of hard to squeeze juice out of every day if you spend too much time being depressed about your insignificance from the comfort of a warm bed.

There really wasn't much to do in Siem Reap other than the temples, although I did end up meeting, among others, two Scottish guys: Frasier and Scott (or, Scott the Scott, as I called him in my head) who were also travelling together. We were supposed to meet for dinner on the last night I was there but I got back from Beng Malea far later than I'd expected and I wasn't able to find them. So, on the offchance one of you two are reading this give me a shout because I'd love to stay in contact.

The morning of my last day saw me once again boarding the now familiar 'bus out of town' on my way to the Thai border. Long story short, it took 22 straight hours of travelling to get to Chiang Mai, but it's good to be back. I remember posting a "one week and counting down" post before leaving for Thailand but that seems like it was only a few months ago, yet here we are in the same situation but the destination is Canada. Funny how life works, no?