Happy Halloweenie!

Not only did I not carve any semblance of a pumpkin-like gourd (I really would have settled for a bitter melon, YECH!!!!), but the only night that I actually care about what's on television here, my options are Blue Crush, Joan of Arc (with Mila Jovovich, who I know many of you men are fond of, but I can't handle her blithering whininess in this movie), and Condoleeza Rice speaking at the UN. Guess who is the scariest with her "I will suck out your soul while looking creepily at you from the tops of my eyeballs". The last few days have been nice though. The weather at China Beach (and all of Vietnam, for that matter) has been crap and rainy, but "Hoa the Dude" more than made up for it in personality and hospitality. We stayed an extra day because "Hoa's Place" feels so much like home. Pull up a chair, get yourself a beer from the fridge, and plan to stay for the family style dinner which his wife prepares with mastery. I got recipies for her spring rolls and her stuffed tomatoes which are both to die for. No measurements for anything though (of course), so this is going to take a bit of trial and error - or will provide excess and unnecessary motivation to return to Hoa's in the future for the real thing. So after hanging out and listening to Hoa's profound statements late at night over candles and a few beers, I have "chilled out", have "no worries", and feel confident that "we'll settle it all out later". Hoa really is a dude.

Please stop smacking my behind

Yes, I know that I have a reasonably well endowed hind end. And now a significant portion of Hoi An has repeatedly pointed this out to me. I had clothes tailored in Hoi An - a lot of them. Three pair of casual pants and a nice skirt, a brown courderoy jacket, and two button up dress shirts. The coup de grace, though, is this outfit that I had made from the red silk that I bought in the silk village in Cambodia. I found a nice little shop run by a woman who spoke really good English, was patient, and listened to me. This is a rarity in SE Asia where everyone is just SO DESPERATE to sell something to you that they often tell you what you need and want rather than listen to your explanation. So I told her that I wanted a nice fitted sleeveless camisole type shirt and simple, elegant straight-legged pants, and I explained to her how important it was that this came out perfectly since I only had 3 1/2 meters of this very special and irreplaceable silk. And she did a magnificent job, even down to the detail in the embroidered bamboo detail on the top and pants cuff. Yeeheee!!! So this is what I will be wearing to Josh and Kate's wedding, and all the rest of you better pair up and get hitched because I want lots of other opportunities to wear this - soon enough you'll be saying, "God Kim, please just buy a new nice outfit and stop wearing this one and making us listen to the story over and over again about how you bought the silk in Cambodia and how it was tailored in Vietnam!" But for now, I'm going to go on being quite pleased ;)

Which leads me back to my bum. The women measuring me in the two shops that I had things made in were very entertained by my rear measurements. The woman in my favorite shop (the other shop was crap)was in her early twenties, and teensy tiny itty bitty. She didn't even come up to my shoulder. And she developed an obsession with my rear. So everytime I walked past her, she swatted me. She kept saying she wanted to take some out of mine and put it into hers. She's very cute, though, and we had a laughing, joking good time. The other great thing is that they keep your measurements on file. So if there is anything else that I want to have made when I get home, I can email her, and she'll send it on to me. Yay!

So now we're on China beach, which is lovely, at the base of the Marble Mountains, which are also lovely, and we plan to just chill out for a couple of days. I think the three of us are pretty tired of go go go. Which also reminds me that I still have to update the first 3 days of our motobike tour - later, you'll just have to be patient and wait for that one. Ta ta!!

Hello from Hoi An!

Hi All! We made it into Hoi An this afternoon, safe and sound. It looks like a nice little town. Lots of shops, so I'm going to do lots of shoppING! I think that we're going to have a few things tailored while we're here, too. You can pick a style, colors, fabric, and in 2 hours have a new skirt! I'm also going to start this evening with an update of the last week on the motobike, but it may take a couple of days to catch up.

So I'll start with the last 24 hours. Our drivers are dear, sweet, wonderful, nice men. Linda (the Dutch gal)'s birthday is tomorrow, so last night they brought us 2 bottles of red wine, three bunches of flowers, and a card for her. We went to another fabulous dinner where we finished one bottle of wine (the second is being saved), then headed back to our hotel. Our accomodations for this trip have actually been really good (for the backpacker traveler budget), and they were SOOOOO excited about booking the place last night because it has a BATHTUB!! (which is a rarity in SE Asia). Unfortunately the 5 liter hot water tanks aren't quite big enough to fill a bath, and having the bath was not quite enough to make up for the large family of cockroaches that had moved into our room to escape monsoon season. So we returned from dinner, turned on our light, and two roaches (one of which was IN MY BED) skittered under furniture. So we decided to sleep with the lights on to discourage them from coming out of hiding. This is after killing two - one of which was a poor, deformed, "Timmy" roach. Didn't make killing it any harder, though. I should clarify that Vicky (the British gal)is our roach killer - Linda and I sat with our feet up on the beds and squealed like the girls we are. So I finally fell asleep with my sleep sheet over my head to keep the roaches our of my eyes, ears, and nose. We woke up at 1 am because Linda had to pee, the electricity in the entire city was out, there were roaches in the room, and she wanted someone to provide light. So we argued for a bit over who had to brave putting a foot on the floor to find our lamps (thank god for headlamps!) Managed our "business", and fell back to sleep - this time with headlamps on. What a LONG night!!!

Woke up to more rain - rain all day. Heavy rain. When you hear that rainy season in SE Asia consists of the 2 hour afternoon storm blowing through, bear in mind that this does NOT apply to Vietnam. Here, the rainy season is 3 months of nearly continual rain. Fortunately Seattle has prepared me for this. So I found it quite enjoyable - from inside my helmet and happy rain gear. I was a bit nervous about landslides, and there was one point that we had to get off the bikes and walk on a hillside along the new "toll road" that some of the local villagers were building around the landslide. No joke - our drivers had to pay these dudes to let my feet get cut up by bamboo grass (I somewhat stupidly decided to ride in flipflops today). Meanwhile, our drivers were sunk in 10 inches of red mud trying to maneuver through the slop. But we made it all in once peice, and the drive through the cloud-shrouded, jungle-coated mountains is really amazing.

On a last monsoon note - does anyone remember that old Mac Classic game, Oregon Trail? Bad 10 pixel green graphics? When you get to a river and have to decide to ford it, pay for the ferry, or go looking for a bridge? The river here is so overflowed that it's covering the road into HoiAn, and there are actually people with little canoes ferrying motobikes from one side to the other. It was only about 10 inches deep, and fortunately, our motobike engines didn't flood. This time, no oxen, and no family members drowned in the crossing.

Vietnam motobike tour - Day 5

You know that it's going to be an interesting day when it starts with a three rice wine breakfast. We were toodling along and stopped for a break in this little village where we immediately became the main attraction. A group of men taking their midmorning "work break" invited us up to a longhouse for some ricewine, and once again, it's rude to say no, right? I'm glad we did that, because there's no way I would have done the next activity otherwise. You know when you see those pictures of rickety old narrow bridges spanning high over a torrential flood swelled river with boards ready to snap under your weight at any moment? Yeah, we crossed one of those. For the "experience of how local villagers commute to the main road". More like, "for kicks and giggles of seeing the three I-can-do-anything stubborn Western women wet their pants." So we get across this horrible thing, then back across to the motobikes, and to show off, these two local guys go across this thing ON A MOTOBIKE!!! I mean, it was like being on fear factor with no safety harness when it's just you're own weight and dexterity, but on a motobike?!?! Insanity.

The road that we traveled yesterday was a former section of the Ho Chi Minh trail that winds through the jungle mountains, and it's idylically BEAUTIFUL. It's my first jungle experience, and it was made even better by the whispy clouds rolling through. Then at one point, we stopped to walk a section of the original HCM Trail that is still being used by some of the jungle villagers. Our sweet, funny Linda stepped squarely in the middle of a 3 inch cow pile thinking it was a rock :) Then, my driver warned us that we shouldn't follow the trail any further or we'd be covered in leeches!!!! Fortunately, he's the only one who managed to get one - right between his toes. Disgusting little buggars!

Vietnam motobike tour - Day 4

We spent all day today in Kuntom, which is a nice little town. There is a lot to do here. And fortunately, it was a short driving day - especially after yesterday. We rolled into town at about 11 am, checked into the hotel, had lunch, and headed for a museum with a bunch of local hilltribe art, tools, baskets, and stuff. It's in an old church, which is kind of nice - even though the French Catholics have moved in and turned much of the countryside Catholic, they have at least preserved some of the history and culture. And not in an "isn't this quaint how they used to live" sort of way either, because a lot of these ethnic minorities still live as they always have.

Next, we went to the market to collect things to take to an orphanage. The children are so precious!!! We arrived, and they all gathered to sing for us, which was a bit of a strange and staged performance, but I know they were just showing appreciation for the visit. Then they all broke out playing with the balls and kites that we'd brought for them. I had a line of 3 year-olds standing on a low wall so that I could pick them up and make them fly. It's fantastic how a language barrier never matters with children. Somewhere along the way, we as adults seem to forget how to communicate nonverbally. Anyway, they took us on a tour of their place, which is sparse. They seem fairly well cared for, though, if a little dirty, shabbily clothed, and slightly sick and snotty. But they're such happy kids when they've got visitors. They range in age from 10 months (a boy who was a triplet - his parents kept the two girls) to several teens. About 200 in all in dormitory style housing separated by age and gender. Someone has come and painted their walls with cartoon animals, which they were all very excited to show us. At one point, I had one on each hand, and two more that wanted in on their own fingers to grab on to. One 3-year old in particular kept trying to climb my legs and just grinned at me the whole time that I was there. It was really hard to drive away without them, and I think all three of us gals had tears in our eyes.

Vietnam is okay with me

I'm a little drunk on ricewine, so maybe that's part of it ;) Having a hard time typing at the moment. Linda, Vicky, and I (a dutch and a brit) traveled from Saigon to Mui Ne on Monday and hated Mui Ne. It's a sleepy little resort town with disgustingly polluted beaches. At that point, none of us were all that enthusiastic with Vietnam, and I was really resisting the urge to flee back to Cambodia to spend the next month working in an orphanage. But we kept saying "maybe Dalat will be better", and fortunately it is. It's up in the central highlands, and the weather is like seattle, so it feels sort of like I'm home - cold and rainy. As soon as we landed in town, we met three men who are part of the EasyRider's group. They a group of moto drivers (many are Vietnam vets) who have an organization to take tourists out into the countryside to see the real Vietnam. So the three of us agreed to a three day trip to Nha Trang, and if by day two we really like it, we may extend to 6 days to Hoi An. I figure I'll do a big motobike tour in ever country in SE Asia, but I think that Cambodia will always have my heart.

We had dinner at a local restaurant up the street from our hotel where they serve soup that you cook at your table. It's really good - Heang and I had some our last night in Phnom Penh, so I knew what to do with all of the stuff. The the men at two tables near us started offering us rice wine (like sake), and we figured it's rude to refuse, right? So we started drinking with them, but my two lovely companions decided they'd had enough, and I stupidly kept drinking. So this email is written in a bit of a drunked stupor, and fortunately you all have no idea how many times I'm had to hit the backspace key ;)

Safely in Vietnam

But I miss Cambodia. It's just different here, and hard to adjust when you fall in love with a country and have to leave it. It's funny here, though. Things are so regimented. As soon as we crossed the border things changed. I paid $4.50 for a bus from Phnom Penh to HCMC (10 hours). It wouldn't have taken that long except that you get delivered to the border and told to spend 40 minutes in a cafe before the crossing. It makes it all sounds like this is planned, right? So after lunch, some guy comes along and ushers us toward the departure and arrival line. We enter Vietnam, and it is the absolute most complicated border crossing I've ever experienced. We start at one window where they check the visa, stamp the passport, and give us our departure card. Then to a table where they look at the passport, fill out some other form, then send you to a third person who looks at the form and demands 1000 riel (25 cents). For what, who knows because the form is ENTIRELY in Vietnamese. Then on to the fourth person who puts our baggage through X-ray, and a 5th person who checks everything again and sends you out the door. So we walk out of this building (a group of about 14 of us), and wander a bit to a short row of cafes that look like the tour bus type. No one has a list with our names on them, and we're the mysterious "yellow ticket" group. One guy says he'll take care of us and call a bus from HCMC to come get us (from 2 hours away, mind you). He seems like he's just some dude being helpful, but then we figure out that he actually works for the company that's responsible for getting us to HCMC in the first place (partnership between the Narin Guesthouse in Phnom Penh and Happy Tours - his company - in HCMC). So he says it's going to be at least an hour, and just as we get settled in and accept the fact that this is going to be a painfully long travel day, he returns to take us to a back parking lot where a bus has *MAGICALLY* appeared - driver sleeping shirtless on spread out newspapers in the luggage compartment. En route, he goes on and on about how Happy Tours is the best, cheapest, and most reliable tour company in Vietnam. HA! Funny too, while we were waiting in the cafe, I moved my chair forward a bit to get closer to the fan, and the lady running she shop rushed over to move me back against the wall. The chairs seemed sort of haphazardly placed around this little room, but apparently they were EXACTLY where she wanted them :) And today in the Reunification Palace, a group of men were arranging chairs for some big military meeting that they're having tomorrow. They tied a bit of string from on chair all the way down the row to the end chair, then lined up all of the back exactly perfectly straight along the string. Welcome to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam!!

Genocide

I visited Tuol Sleng (S-21) and Cheuol Ek (the Killing Fields) today. That was really tough. Tuol Sleng was a high school before the Khmer Rouge turned it into a torture and interrogation prison in 1976. Of more than 14,000 people that passed through those gates, only 7 survived. Many were killed and buried on the grounds, but most were transferred to the "extermination camp" at Cheuol Ek, about 15 km outside of Phnom Penh. Tuol Sleng is still relatively intact as it was when it was a prison - many of the school rooms were walled off into 0.8 X 2 meter rooms, several hundred of them. The Khmer Rouge photographed each person as they came in, took their biography, then tortured false confessions from them of how they had betrayed the organization and the revolution. The real sick thing is that the american government supported this (whether intentionally or not is debatable) by bombing the crap out of the eastern (bordering vietnam) side of the country and bringing about the end of the civil war between the khmer rouge and the government run by Lon Nol. That started a mass evacuation of the cities into the countryside and the formation of a communistic agrarian state where there was no individuality, no personal ownership of property, and all effort was focused on the "independence of the state of Democratic Kampuchea". The Khmer Rouge was anti Vietnam, Thailand, and China, therefore the US supported it, but ironically they were also anti western and executed all foreigners and all educated cambodians. Uneducated people are easier to control - as we're still seeing today. Ironically, it was the vietnamese invasion of cambodia in 1979 that brought about the end of the genocide, though the Khmer Rouge was still the UN recognized governing party of Cambodia until 1993 when they had their first free election. Alright, there's my political rant.

The most moving thing about the museum is the scores of photographs of all of those who were slaughtered. Then to go to the killing fields and see the giant stupa containing over 8,000 exhumed skulls and realize that those are all of the people whose faces you've just seen vacantly staring from photographs. In 86 mass graves, they've recovered the corpses of 8,985 victims, many naked and blindfolded, and many beaten to death to "save precious bullets". You know how you aren't supposed to step on a grave because it's disrespectful? Well it's hard to avoid it there. There are dirt paths skirting the holes in the ground where bodies were recovered from these mass graves, but even in the walkway are bones, fragments of clothing, and a few strewn teeth. It's a really disturbing place to visit. And to think that nearly 3 million people of a population of just over 7 million were wiped off the earth, it's even more amazing to see this country pick up the peices and try to rise from poverty - especially since the current government is so corrupt that it's taking 7 of every 10 dollars coming from the world donations, and all relief organizations or businesses that want to set up in Cambodia have to register with the government and pay huge fees.

The other thing that strikes me is, why did so many people let it happen? When we were in Anlong Veang (night 3 of the mototrip - last stand of the Khmer Rouge) the owner of our guesthouse was a former Khmer soldier. Heang had a really long chat with him about his time as a soldier, and he said that not all of the people involved in the KR were as heinous as the mass murderers. Many truly believed in the communistic ideal of sacrificing individuality for the good of all, and didn't use their power for personal gain and murder. But I wonder if that's really true, or if he also has done such horrible things in his past that the guilt has put him in denial. He seemed like such a kind man, that I'd love to believe the former, but you don't know. And no one has ever been brought to trial for this - 3 million dead and no one punished. Even Pol Pot died in his home in 1998 from malaria. Sickening.

A much better day of SNORKELING!

I snorkeled for the first time today :) Kathryn and I each paid $10 for a boat tour of three islands. This included transport to and from the beach, breakfast, the boat tour, snorkeling, and a delightful lunch of fresh fish cooked right on the beach. And I SNORKELED! It was really cool. Our guide was such a nice young guy who spoke really good english. He was lots of good fun - playing around and teasing everyone. He took my hand and swam me around the reef showing me all sorts of cool things in the water because I was the only newbie to the event. He even brought up this GIANORMOUS sea urchin that he de-spined and cracked open on the beach. So I've had the freshest uni available - don't like it all that much ;)

I know that I still have a fair bit of blogging to catch up on - I managed to get at least the first half of the motobike trip logged in, but there's even still so much to tell you all. I've been online for over an hour already, and my fingers are getting a bit sore. So once I get back to Phnom Pehn tomorrow, I'll do my best to finish with the catch up - and get pictures posted. I burned everything that I currently have to CD, and this computer doesn't have a drive to be able to pull them off to share with you. Soon, though!

A very bad day

I got into Sihanoukville yesterday (Sunday) for a couple of days of relaxing on the beach after such a long week on the motobike. Met up with a nice british gal, Kathryn, and we're sharing a room here in town. We went down to the beach today to get some sun and read our books, and didn't listen to the expat who told us to go to the ritzy private beach of a hotel where you don't get hassled as much. So we went to one of the main beaches and OH MY GOODNESS, the kids and women there are horrible. They've got good maniputlative marketing skills, but it's all very upsetting. They try and try to sell you string bracelets with you're name woven in them, and cut fruit, and hair removal, and massages, and manicure, and you name it! You say no no no, they say maybe later, then they give you a "free" bracelet so that you'll remember them. But then they keep coming by to remind you that they gave you that bracelet, and you have to buy something from them. So we agreed to have our leghair "threaded" off, Kathryn had a quick halfhearted massage, and I got the worst manicure on the planet. So when we started to negotiate what we thought were reasonable prices for things, they flipped out on us that it wasn't enough. Here we are surrounded by a dozen people, half of them pissed off that they didn't get to sell us something, and the other half pissed that they aren't getting 20 dollars for a sucky massage! One little boy actually threw the dollar in the sand that Kathryn had given him for a little string bracelet. So after all the time in the countryside seeing these dear sweet children who really have nothing but still play and laugh like children, I just couldn't handle the corruption and manipulation anymore. So we paid them what we thought was fair and booked it out of there. I was just left feeling so objectified and used. It's tough being here and always feeling like a walking dollar sign and an opportunity for everyone to make some money. I guess it is just the bad side of that survival spirit that I love so much, but it's hard to handle sometimes.

My arse is chaffed

Hi all! This is going to be a quick post just to say that I arrived safely in Phnom Penh, though I think the skin on my bottom has left me somewhere along the way. And I'm more disgustingly dirty than I think I've ever been in my life. I'm seriously contemplating burning all of my clothes and shopping for more. It was an amazing week, and I'll set up shop somewhere tomorrow to input a more detailed report. Suffice it to say for now that this is an incredible country that you should all come visit at the first opportunity. The people are beautiful and have such an amazing spirit, especially considering everything that they've been through and all that they still have to overcome.

Cambodia motobike tour - Day 7

Today was a straight shot down to Phnom Penh with a stop to visit Heang's family. We bought a Buddha statue carved from pink sandstone to give to his grandmother. His family is really kind. I wish that I'd had the energy to stay longer, but by that point I was so tired and ready to be in Phnom Penh. His mother had made a huge and tasty lunch for us. He's got so much family everywhere. That's what has helped people here to survive all that they have - even the extended family bonds out to 3rd and 4th cousins in strong. All along the way he'd say, "let's stop here and visit my mother's brother's wife's brother and his family".

This is an incredible country, and I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to make this trip. It was sort of random that I met Heang in the first place - he tried to deliver me to the guesthouse the night that we rolled in (he gets a dollar commission for bringing in tourists), and when I told the guesthouse that I wanted a guide, he's the one that they called. So many people come to Cambodia on package tours, and you can tell who they are. They fly into the airport, get picked up by a camry, and delivered to their 4 or 5 star hotel. Then they get into a tour bus to see the sites, often for just a day, whisked off to a fancy restaraunt, then off to their next destination. It's so sterile, and they never actually have to see the people, and see the country for what it really it. Heang says they're "wrapped in plastic". Even of the tourists who come here, most only ever go to Phnom Pehn and Siem Reap, which are wealthy cities by comparison to the majority of the country. And it's just not the same to see dusty faces staring back from the 2-dimensional glossy pages of a National Geographic sitting in a pile on your glass-topped coffee table. This is reality for the majority of the world's population, where they live in huts with palm leaf walls and grass roofs, no water or electricity, no bathroom or kitchen, no furniture, a family of 7-10 sleeping on the bamboo floor without even mosquito nets. Where they live amongst signs that remind them "Danger Mines", the main purpose of schools is to educate the children to be aware of the dangers of mines, and one of the few English words that just about every child knows is "bomb". So many young faces with so much potential, and they're surrounded by so much political corruption. If only given an honest opportunity they would flourish, and it's so hard to always hear "I want to move to American someday" and know that for most of them, it's just a dream. It makes you realize what great fortune we all have to be born somewhere that we have more of a chance. Because at our core, none of us are any different. Some of us just got extremely lucky. And we should never forget that. I've never been much of a "things" person, but I've decided that from now on for every birthday and Christmas, I'd much rather see those who care about me donate to charity in leu of giving me gifts. There's really nothing that I need all that much, and it would make me so much happier knowing that something kind and generous was done in my honor. I hope that you all with think about doing the same.

Camodia motobike tour - Day 6

Today we made our way to Kampong Thom - and it rained almost ALL DAY. Not just a drizzly seattle rain, either. Buckets of full on monsoon rain. Whatever posessed me to make this trip in the rainy season, you know, when it RAINS!!! I've never been so wet in my life, but at least it's a warm rain. And it feels better than the blistering hot sun. We stopped for awhile in a little village to have a drink and wait it out, and there was the cutest little girl (probably about 5 or 6) who was playing with me. She's hide around a corner, peek out, and giggle and run away when she saw me look at her. I pulled my camera and got a really cute picture of her. After she saw that she could look at the screen, she wanted more and more pictures, so I shot a few good ones of her. The rain subsided a bit when we got to the Ker Kek temple complex. There was a swarm of giggly girls and one boy herding them with a stick. They giggled even more when I got the stick from him and started poking at him with it to let him see how it felt ;) Heang picked his favorite curly haired little girl and kept scaring her and making her laugh. We gave out the last 18 or so books and pens. They're all so polite and grateful. I'm just about templed out, though, so while Heang poked around the ruins, I learned a few Khmer words. I remember that the word for rain is "plean". We made it to Kampong Thom for the night - nice little town. On the way in, we passed food stalls selling huge platers of roasted tarantulas. I was so tweaked out that I made Heang take my camera to get pictures. Even looking at the photos give me the willies.

Cambodian motobike tour - Day 5

I wandered around the village of Preah Vihear this morning by myself while Heang was getting himself up and around. It's funny - he's really not a morning person at all, and until he's had his first cup of coffee, he has great difficulty with English. Makes it fun to taunt him ;) I kind of enjoy the curious stares from the villagers, especially the children. I played a good game of kick the can with an adorable little 3 year old boy - with about a dozen pairs of eyes on me.

The road from Preah Vihear to Tbeng Meanchey is the WORST road on the planet - hands down. It started with us having to go back down the mountain the way we came, and in the process I got glued in mud up to my ankles. Heang had to come pull me out. I was walking across a rough spot so that he could pass easier on the bike. I sloshed through a stream to clean myself up - big waste of time since I was 50 times worse in about an hour. We had maybe 10 kilometers of mud to drive through - potholes the size of a volkswagon bug full of water from the storm the night before. The only people who seemed to be having an okay time of it was the family in the ox cart - I longed for an ox cart about then.

Some of the drive also took us through a wild life preserve that was full of amazing tropical birds - these little green guys with bright red heads, and dozens of different sorts of brightly colored butterflies. After many attempts, I have decided that butterfly photography must be one of the most difficult tasks in the world - thought I guess it would help to have better than 6X zoom. They tend to take off when you get too close.

Cambodia motobike tour - Day 4

Today we moved on from Anlong Veang (last stand of the Khmer Rouge until Pol Pot died there in 1998) to Preah Vihear (amazing temple complex on top of a mountain. It's an amazing place, and a complete pain in the ass to get to. We got to the village at the base of the mountain, and everyone says "you need me to take you to the top! Very steep! You need my motobike!" when we are already on a motobike (albeit without quite as much power, which we quickly discovered) So with my pack, Heang, and me on this poor bike up a huge grade, it was pretty difficult. I had to hope off a few times as he started out in third, slipped down to second, then first, then the bike refused to move with us. So huff puff up a ways until it flattened and we could start up again. The road winds for about 4 hm. We managed to get to the first little village on the mountain and left the bike there. It took some pretty strong convincing to get Heang to let me carry my own pack at this point. He took a little too much concern for my health, safety, and wellbeing and started to treat me like too much of a "girl" for my own independent Laura Croft tastes ;) But I showed him by scampering ahead of his out of breath, pack-a-day self - with my own pack. We made it to the top of the temple just in time for sunset. What an amazing view! You can see Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos all at the same time from up there since it is the border for Cambodia and Thailand, and near the Laotian border. The really striking thing is that you can tell where the Thai-Cambodia border is a night because the cambodia side is all lit up with cities and villages with electricity, and the Cambodian side is completely dark. You know that there are people living there because you see them all day long, but there's no power outside of the provencial towns, so the entire country just looks pitch black.

We stayed in a simple little guesthouse the village of Preah Vihear and ended up staying up late drinking "Special Muscle Wine" (cheap cambodian headache whiskey) with the owner (also the chief of police) and two of his friends. Heang was busy cooking our dinner since the owner of the only restraunt in town was too sick to cook, so the three men and I sat staring at each other and exchanging smiles and Khmer/English words for gecko. Grand conversation ;) Once Heang re-entered the conversation, it was a bit easier since he could translate, and this very kind guesthouse owner started asking all about my home and family, and how big america is relative to cambodia. I wish I'd traveled with a little world map because it would have been so useful on multiple occaisions already. I ended up drawing (very poorly) on the back of my journal. And OH MY GOD the crickets here are ENORMOUS - a good 2 inches long at least. And they're so loud that they are literally deafening. It was quite beautiful to stand up at the temple and listen to the symphody of crickets and frogs with lightening rolling in from the distance.

Cambodia motobike tour - Day 3

I had my first REAL 3rd world experience today. We got up and off this morning, delivered some books, pens, and candy to children along the way, and came across a guy who had been totally tossed from his motorbike and was unconcious in the road. It was really scary because at home, you'd just call 911 and get an ambulance to the hospital, but here the nearest hospital may be half an hour down a bad road, and no one in the village has a car! Luckily an Aussie woman who works in an orphanage near Siem Reap was passing by as well (westerner number 2 of 2 on the trip), and she had a good first aid kit with her. We got him cleaned up a bit and bandaged, but his left pinky was gashed nearly to the bone and needed stitches badly. I wanted to pull my sewing kit and try to stitch him up, but Heang was already freaking out about me touching him in the first place with all of the blood. But what can you do really, but be as careful as you can and do anything possible to help. I had no cuts on my hands, and we used lots of alcohol and peroxide. It took him a good 15 minutes to come to, and another 20-30 to be interactive and responsive. I shined my headlamp (thanks lab!) in his eyes to see if they reponded well to light, and thank god they did because what would I have done if they didn't! We stressed to the villagers the importance of making sure he is able to wake up and be responsive ever 2-4 hours or so, left him with some ibuprofen and powdered penicillin, and hoped for the best that he'd be okay. He was able to sit up and drink some water, though, so i think he'll be alright. And the look on his face when he first opened his eyes and saw me was pretty priceless ;)

Cambodia motobike tour - Day 2

OMFG it hurts so badly to sit! The roads suck, and I'd rather eat moldy eyeballs than spend 5 more days doing this. Okay, maybe not the moldy eyeballs part. What makes this all worthwhile is the stopping points. We bought 4 school uniforms, more books, and some candy to deliver to kids along the way. It's so wonderful seeing their faces light up with joy. At first they're really scared of me, because i don't think they see many westerners out here (note: we met two others in the entire week). But after 10 minutes or so, they're laughing and playing with me. We stopped first at a buddhist pagoda to pray, and a lot of people were inside chatting (a group of old men and a couple of families.) heang showed me some of the ritual so that I felt like I was genuinely participating. I felt really funny in such a sacred place, being stared at so because I'm a foreigner, but not in any sort of bad way. I had my forture read - all good. Heang's was first bad, then good. Sounds about right. Along the way, we stopped at Banteay Chhmar temple to see the ruins. Well, first to eat something because I was losing steam. We had the best sweet sticky rice and red beans packed in bamboo and a bunch of bananas. A group of boys waited and played while we ate (mimicking WWF which is on ALL OF THE TVs here!) Then they followed us around all over the place - they were so CUTE! The ruins are amazing, better than Ta Prohm in Angkor, and we were the only visitors. Heang took my camera and got a lot of pictures. Good thing, too because the heat was getting to me pretty badly.

Cambodia motobike tour - Day 1

Finally in Sisophon. Heang overslept and didn't meet me until 8 am - we were supposed to leave by 6. All good, though. We stopped at a market on the way and bought notebooks and pens for the village school kids and a krama (cotton scarf) to keep the sun and dust off my neck. Over breakfast this morning, we started talking about our earliest childhood memories. I told him mine was when my sister was born (I was about 3 1/2). His first memory is of being in the hospital in Phnom Pehn in late 1979, after the end of the Pol Pot regime. He told me that his mother worked in the rice fields, and they were only allowed to eat rice soup - basically a little of rice in the cooking water. His mother would smuggle small bits of rice home for him, and she would have been killed if she was caught. He said he was skinny and malnourished with the pot belly that you see on photographs of starving children. After that, we headed off to the "Killing Lake" which I don't remember the name of. It's this huge irrigation project developed by the Khmer Rouge to increase rice production in the region (rice that was sold to china and thailand for profit). The entire enormous lake was dug out by hand, and somewhere between 2-3,000 people died there. While we were there, a man drove up in a Lexus SUV with his enture family. He'd been one of the workers digging the lake in the 70s and wanted to show his family.

From the lake we went to a silk faming village - so cool! I spent about $50 on two scarves and about 4 meters of beautiful ruby-colored silk. I'm going to have mom make pants for me (plus a bunch of other things, I'm sure). It's incredible fabric, and it's really strange to buy beautiful 100% silk from people living in wood shacks amongst cows, chickens, pigs, etc. The houses are basic stilt houses with palm leaf walls and grass roofs, and the fam animals live beneath the houses, then there's this amazing silk. We got to visit where they raise the silk worms and see the cocoons. The woman who I bought the scarves from was pulling silk - they boil the cocoons, then spin the silk thread from the surface of the water. So there was this basket of beautiful yellow raw silk. Then I stood for awhile and watch two girls weaving some amazing pieces. It doesn't get more authentic than this - and you know that the money is going to the people who need it and deserve it rather than to 5 middle men for profit.

For about half of the day, I really needed to pee, but couldn't quite bring myself to squat along the road in front of everyone. So once dark came, we pulled off, and I crept off the road a bit in the dark searching for a bit of privacy and promptly fell into a hole full of water up to my waist!! Turns out it was someone's washing hole, so while I was covered toe to hip in muddy water, at least it was soapy muddy water!