12/13/04: Immodium deliver me from evil

Hello everyone:

I'm in Phnom Penh, Cambodia right now...a wonderful mash of 2 million people with 8 traffic lights (at most).

Since I've last reported from Siem Riep, we first took a boat trip to Battambang. And yes...learned once again that you can never ask too many questions before traveling. According to the guidebook, the trip should take about 3 hours. Foolishly, we did not consider the phase of the moon, tide, or the time of year...because we should have known that when there's less water, the boat has to go REALLLLLY slow to not bog down any of the fishing villages that line the entire length of the trip. And figuring that an 8am departure would escape the really harsh sun, we sat on the top of the boat. Anyway...8 hours later we arrived, dehydrated and suffering from sun delusions at our destination. The one saving grace was getting to wave to every child that called "hello" as we floated by...very cute. All 792 times I waved.

Battambang is great because it's off the beaten tourist path (ie. nothing to do) so it's very laid back and cheap. We stayed at the top place in town. It was $11/night!

We hired motor scooter drivers to take us around for the day. It was very, very dusty so the drivers stopped to let us buy dustmasks - we either looked like bandits or SARS patients, but it certainly helped. It was a mixture of uplifting and depressing. In one location, we stopped at a small temple to take pictures and soon Deanna was delighting the local kids by taking their picture and then showing them the picture. Little hams...all of them. In another, our guide spoke about how his father pretended to be crazy so the the Khmer Rouge would not take him to a prison camp. In many locations there are bones and skulls displayed to memorialize the tragedy. Really horrible stuff.

The driver was also interesting. The story as I first understood it: He had polio when he was young, and b/c of the Khmer Rouge had no medicine. Since he couldn't really do labor, he had to figure out another way - starting as a janitor in a nightclub, becoming an interpreter, buying real estate, and then buying a moto and becoming a driver after the interpreter business dried up.

The story as I later came to understand it:
1.He did work as a janitor/bathroom attendant at the nightclub
2.He soon figured out he was making better money from tips for translating for the ex-pat UN folks to talk to the girls in the clubs.
3.The women were prostitutes.
4.He was kind of a pimp...I can't be sure how exactly this worked.
5.He bought the house to rent out to the girls that worked at the nightclub.
6.When all the UN and related folks left after the 1991 election, business dried up (at least the interpreting part) and he had to find another job.

The other really fun thing in Battambang was we took a cooking class (add Khmer cooking to my areas of dangerous incompetence). As good as the class was (and the food) it was most interesting to hear about the store finances and his plan to translate restaurant cash flow into growing pigs and then the pig sales to pre-pay the restaurant lease to lock the rent (at $100/month). He was super-industrious (and only 23) and gives me great hope for the future of this country.

The really unfun thing was also related to eating. The night before we left town, we ate at a Lonely Planet recommended dining establishment and both of us just plain got SICK later that night. Stomach cramps, nausea, chills, sweats on top of the normal bad stuff. Somehow (maybe foolishly) we got on a five hour bus ride (not so bad except for the fact that I had to run for the hills at each stop - not so easy when you consider Cambodia is still the most land-mined country in the world. We arrived, found the closest hotel to the bus stop and just went unconcious for the next 18 hours. It was the nicest hotel we've stayed at and happened on exactly the right night. It's four days later and I think I'm almost all the way back...fingers crossed. Worst of all, it made me go back exclusively to western food...at least until the body forgets Battambang.

Phnom Penh is nice...there's not a whole lot to do (that's legal) here. We did go to the national museum and the palace, but after the splendors of Angkor and Bangkok, it paled in comparison. And there's no signage or information - so maybe there's something I was really missing that was amazing ("no mister Chiang, you actually have to look the other way to see the most unique thing in the world) - but I don't think so. Tuol Sleng was the opposite - very impactful...a very non-descript school yard and buildings that the KR turned into their prison/torture center. Very chilling as they kept a photo of every person ever "processed" here and they are on display.

Wednesday we leave for Vietnam. I leave Cambodia with appreciation for it's people and it's tragedy - but definitely not it's restaurant hygeine standards.

Best to everyone -