Thursday, February 17, 2005

Ankor what?

I'll start at the very beginning...

I get on my bus to Pakse (southern Laos) and there was something wrong with my ticket, so for 5 hours I sat in a little, red, plastic, Kindergarter-like chair in the isle. Fun fun fun. It was an overnight bus. I met some people on the bus and went with them the next morning to Tat Lo on the Boleven Plateau. I spent the day on the back of a motorbike cruising around the villages, many of which are surrounded by coffee orchards, the money making crop of the region. I stayed in a nice bungalow by a waterfall. The next morning we (my new friend, Ressa, and I) took a city bus back to Pakse and then a 3 hour jumbo (a large, covered pick-up with benches) and a 10 minute boat to Don Khon, one of the islands in Si Phon Don ("4000 Islands"). We stayed in Don Khon for the weekend, in a sparse, but lovely 2-bedroom bungalow that overlooked the Mekong. It came fully equipped with porch and hammocks, so I was set for shabbat. Oh, and I saw some extinct (or nearly so) dolphins! And I started playing chess. And we went fishing. It was so classic Laos--I went and asked a guy at a resturaunt for some bait and he was like, "one sec." And he ran off. A minute later I saw him emerge from across the way with a shovel and 10 minutes later we had our toilet bucket filled with worms. We gave him a dollar. The island of Don Khon (that's actually repetitive cuz "don" means "island") is exactly how you would dream an island in Southern Laos should be--since I'm sure everyone must dream of s. Laos. People wake up with the sun and go to sleep with the sun--there is very little electricity and the elec. that there is shuts off very very early. There are gigantic palm trees that sway in the sunny hot air, arching gently over the gorgeous Mekong river. There are rice paddies along certain parts of the land, and village homes with cheerful kids (I never saw a kid fight or cry or whine). Everyone seems so happy. And there are not very many tourists. But the boats are the best part. Men, women, and children of all ages ride long, thin boats on the river. They stand and row with one leg bent at the knee and perched on an incline in the boat. There is something so serene and the people look so content, that the whole scene seems staged.

Then Ressa and I went to Cambodia. (Ressa, btw, is a guy my age, from Montana. He grew up on a massive ranch. He spent the last 2 years teaching ENlgish in CHina and is traveling before he joins the Peace Corp in Azerbyjon [I have no idea how to spell that country that I had never heard of.])We woke up early that morning, packed our bags, ate breakfast, paid for our rooms, strapped our bags on our backs and hopped on the back of some motorbikes. We rode on rocky paths through rice fields and forests, down to the beach. got on a slowboat to the Laos exit border. Then another boat to the Cambodia border. Passports stamped at both borders--very unorganizedly, with bargaining and bribing and paying made up fees. Then a speedboat (a bit scary, a bit exhilarating) to Stung Treng. And now we're in a cab, for 8 hours, to Phnom Penh. And there are no real paved-roads for most of the way. Just dirt roads and not very interesting scenerry. Just a lot of dirt and sand and dry-looking trees.

I had just finished reading a book about the Khmer Rouge, so I actually had some interest in the history of this country. (I just bought a biography on Pol Pot and today I went to a war museum here in Siem Reap....see how reading a good book can change you?) Cambodia, like many of the places where I have been, is a strange blend of the old and the new. Phnom Penh has a fancy waterpark, yet many parts have dirt roads in serious need of pavement and repair. There are some large houses and there are also more people--mostly children--begging in Cambodia than in Laos or Thailand. Because of the land mines and the civil war which was so recent, many people are missing limbs. This place is not brimming over with happy looknig people.

We went to the killing fields and to s-21, both places of mass, mass, homicidal insanity. My tour guide at the museum today kept reiterating the fact that Cambodia (as a political entity) is just plain dumb. I think "stupid" is the exact word he used. He lowered his voice as he stood there and sighed, telling us that the king of Cambodia today is the same king who reigned during the Khmer Rouge, and that in essence, nothing has changed. This is a man (our tour guide) who fought in the late '70s as a child soldier. He lost both his parents and most of the rest of his family in the war. He has been shot numerous times and has shrapnel lodged in his arm. He is blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other. And he has a prosthetic leg, due to a landmine accident. He says that people say he is like a cat, with 9 lives.

At least half a million people were killed in the Killing Fields. And the skulls of many of those people sit in a glass tower at the entrance of the field. It was a profound experience that made me reflect more about the history of the Jews than....well, than I probably ever had before.

Then a long bus to Siem Reap where Ressa and I met up with Molly (who had a fantastic time diving in Ko Tao, Thailand). The thing to do in Siem Reap is Ankor Wat, the largest temple in the world and one of the 7 manmade wonders of the world. Pretty cool.

Something happened to me over this past week, amidst the buses and boats and motorbikes and tuktuks (local "cabs"...carriages attached to motorbikes...totally totally unsafe), amidst having to depend on my powerbars a bit more for lack of edible food, amidst being in scorching sun and having to scrape inch deep dirt off my face every night....I suddenly realized that I had finally relaxed and that I was enjoying traveling. This "experience", as Molly would call it, truly is thrilling. And today we go to Bangkok and tomorrow night we go to Africa. I laugh as I write that, thinking, "Who are you and how did you get to be so lucky that you get to travel all over the world like this???" I'm actually jealous of myself.

Love, Sarah

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