Beyond the Borders: Musings on the expatriate life

Across the world, for whatever reason, millions of people are living outside of their homeland, just as millions are living the same hometown in which they grew up, maybe the same as their parents, and their children.

People immigrate for all sorts of reasons: the promise of a better life, forced circumstances, a job, a family, the need for adventure, whatever it may be. Over Christmas, when I was in America, I found myself thinking about this phenomenon, which is so daily -- but really, it's interesting to me, why some people leave their own country for other shores. 

I was thinking about it for a number of reasons. The first is probably that it's been a year and a half now that I've lived in Cambodia. The second is that I knew that trip to the States would be the last in awhile -- the ticket is just too expensive and I can think of some other places to use extra money. Although I don't necessarily see a long-term future in Cambodia, it had become quite clear that I no longer have any interest in living in America. 

Of course, my beloved family is there, and I would spend time in Colorado for their sake -- but not to live. Living is different. 

So why did I leave? It's not the easiest question to answer because right now, I can say that, simply enough and for whatever reason, it's just not my country. It's not "home". It's familiar, but not home. But that's not why I left when I did -- I left and came to Cambodia because someone asked me to come here and teach. 

And so I did, and that's that. It's just that living abroad has agreed with me, and now I can put words to it. 

It's not always easy. I'm quite convinced that "cultural DNA" is a thing. I spent my childhood -- a very, very impressionable time -- in America. All of my cultural references, societal rules, history, background, etc, was programmed into me from birth to adolescence. In Cambodia, there are very few common "genes". It's the West, not the East, third world, not first, and those are just the big labels. 

As you can see from the progression of posts on this blog, sometimes I don't understand, sometimes I really have no clue why I'm here, sometimes I feel like an unwelcome and unneeded observer, sometimes I'm ready to pull all my savings from the bank, buy a one-way ticket to wherever I can afford, and flee. Some days it's just too far and my family is gone and I'm alone on the other side of the world.

And on the other side, sometimes everything is so rewarding, sometimes I'm accepted and welcomed more than I can believe, sometimes I just can't imagine leaving.

It's a choice I make, every day, and when things go wrong, I always make myself wait at least a couple days. Talk to a friend or two. Just keep living, day by day, and I never regret it.

Sometime last year, I was talking to another friend, who said that people like us who travel a lot and live elsewhere start to belong nowhere. It's true, in a sense. I no longer belong in America, but nor do I belong here. Even in France, the place where I've felt more at home more than anywhere else in the world, I don't belong fully.

But I look at it differently. Now, these days, I belong everywhere.

For me, that's enough. 

Running Away from the Elections, and the Backpackers: A trip to the coast

As some of you may or may not know, there were just elections in Cambodia. It's the first time since the Khmer Rouge that the opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, has had significant support, and the campaigning season has been crazy, with huge rallies for both sides anywhere you look. While it is common knowledge that the ruling party had the election rigged, suddenly it became much more of an issue. In the weeks leading up to the vote, the embattled leader of the CNRP, Sam Rainsy, who had been in self-exile (that or face a long prison term in Cambodia for phantom charges), was granted a royal pardon by Hun Sen himself, and returned to the country.

The vote is over now and both sides have claimed victory, with reports of serious voter and poll fraud and both sides pointing fingers, and calls for investigations and recounts and all sorts of crazy things.

That's a story for another post, however, and what I mean to say is, this past weekend when the vote happened was the perfect excuse to get out of the city. My flatmate has been itching for a vacation for awhile anyway, and I thought that sounded like a brilliant idea, so on Friday we hopped in a taxi and headed south.

The road to Sihanoukville is very well taken care of -- and it needs to be. The main cargo shipping port is there and if the trucks carrying the shipping containers can't get there, the whole economy stalls. So instead of the very suspect and pot-hole filled road to Siem Reap, the road to Sihanoukville is smooth and paved.

The town itself is sprawled on the hilly coast, somewhat badly organized and winding. The second stoplight arrived recently, and the roads are mostly paved these days. It's developing quickly, but slightly too fast for itself and kind of haphazardly. Still, my first impression was that it was charming, with the hills and the one main street.

After getting everything organized for the rest of the weekend, we headed down to Serendipity Beach, down a short slope and then sprawling to both sides in boardwalks and restaurants. To the left, the sand beaches and restaurants, paroled by a few dozen women and children selling manicures, bracelets, and a waxing service that somehow ingeniously uses dental floss and baby powder to remove hair. To the right, the bungalows, a boardwalk of small beach-side bars and a number of huts built into the sleeply sloping hillside, which is where we stayed the first night.

Where we stayed the first night

Very happy to be away from the madness!

It was lovely -- except, of course, the booming bass music from across the beach, where the backpackers apparently partied until past 5am, right about the time the rain started and more or less drowned out the end of the party. By that time it was about time to get up anyway, and we were on a shuttle bus by seven, heading to the shipping port where a ferry would take us out to the island. It was a quiet enough ride until all the seats filled up and we stopped one more time to pick up a large group of still-drunk British backpackers, whose first words upon getting on the bus were, "Sorry guys, we're drunk as shit."

They were covered in paint (paint!) from the previous night's party and filling the bus with loud, inane chatter, including announcing very loudly that the people sitting down didn't appear to be enjoying their banter (really, ya think?). Needless to say, when we all saw that they were occupying the top level of the boat, we immediately went to the bottom level.

The boat ride to Koh Rong, our final destination, is supposedly two hours but actually closer to two and a half or three -- so long. When we arrived, a chipper expat hopped on the boat to inform us that there would be a briefing about the island's "activities" at the nearby guesthouse, but sensing a backpacker trap, my flatmate and I jumped off the boat as soon as possible and went peeling away from the backpacker area of the island, filled with dorm rooms and "As long as you're still drinking, we're still open" signs.

I have yet to really understand the bungalow phenomenon, let alone the concept of an "upscale" bungalow, but the place we went was supposedly upscale -- I guess that means you pay for privacy, your own hut, and no backpackers. The bungalow was tucked up into the gently sloping hills, a short walk from the large hut that doubled as common chill out area and restaurant, and the beach.

After some food and getting checked in, we headed straight for the beach for some sunbathing, though I forgot to check that my sunblock wasn't actually water-resistant, and after two and a half hours, I woke up from a nap to discover that I was seriously burned -- actually, as the day went on, it got worse and worse, developing into a very painful red. Whoops.

Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits. 

The third day, second on the island, passed in peace. Mostly, I sat on a rock in the shade and read, or stared at the water. Later on, when it was dark and nobody was on the beach, I took the recommendation of a friend and went for a late-night, unclothed swim, which wasn't nearly as terrifying as I might have thought, deep water and darkness not being my favorite things in the world. I discovered that the sea there has the special phosphorescent algae that lights up the water when you move your body.

Then it was Monday and time to go back to an uneasily quiet city, but in between Koh Rong and Phnom Penh was a long and rainy boat ride and a longer drive. I was not looking forward at all to the boat ride, as it was a rainy and windy morning. However, I took my towel up to the less-populated upper deck and found the ride to actually be very strangely enjoyable. I realized that the rocking felt much like riding an elephant in Siem Reap, which was quite comforting, and the wind in my face was refreshing, watching the rain move in and out, obscuring the shore and the islands from view. It did get kind of cold when the rain started, but a good samaritan lent me an extra towel to hide under.

The weekend was not really a stop so much as a pause, but it was very welcome. Sleep comes early as there isn't much to do after dark, unless you want to head down to the backpacker area and drink yourself to oblivion (clearly that was high on my priority list). Time moves impossibly slowly when you have nothing to do, and by the end I was glad to return and get back into the swing of things -- though I admit that trying to think again on Tuesday morning after four days of staring at the water and not thinking was a bit of a struggle.

And next time, I'm going to be a bit more careful on that stupid sunblock...

Re-entry: calm and chaos

Mosquitos. Horns. Loud and busy and why the heck is it raining. Shop fronts and no sidewalks. Loud. Where did that moto come from and driving slowly with a helmet this time. Power cuts and internet spottiness.

I am so tired. Sleeping on the airplane -- my lucky string of discovering the rows with only one other person continues -- did no good. A 3-hour nap I barely dragged myself up from, in bed at eight and awake after nine and still couldn't get up. Another 1.5 hour nap today, and if things don't change, another in the works.

Twelve hours on the airplane and back to the humidity and in a tuk tuk. Side saddle on a motorbike and a plastic bag of trinkets distributed to the dancers. Everything as it was, as though untouched, as though it all froze for a month and only by touching it it came back to life, animated like a wind-up toy.

Everything as it was but it's not, precisely as I remembered but the reality is shocking. I am the only one who has changed, one month away and rediscovering worlds I once knew that became home, became beloved once more, and then left them to their own devices to re-enter this one and I admit as we dipped and descended towards Malaysia, the awful propaganda video playing in front of me, I thought, what the hell am I doing here.

When we descended into Phnom Penh, I was asleep. There was no one in the row with me, no window at the end for whatever reason, just fuselage, and so I closed my eyes instead and only knew we'd arrived by the bump of the wheels hitting the ground. Then I opened my eyes and blinked once into the madness, clambering into a tuk tuk and staring around me.

I knew it. Knew it all, expected what I saw, not the wide-eyed astonishment of the first time, but this time reentering a place that had become familiar, comfortable, easy, and now was strange and chaotic (it was the chaos I missed those first few days in the manicured, carefully crafted first-world streets.)

I know what I'm doing here. I love the opportunities, I'm excited about what I can do here, I have ideas and projects. I have friends. I love the opportunities and so I learned to like the life. I have purpose and a path.

My head knows this, and somewhere I think my heart does too.

But for right now, changing lives three times in one month has left me confused and dazed, stumbling back into a life I used to know so well with blank and unseeing eyes. I'm sure within a few weeks, it will be all I remember and this cloud of culture shock will have lifted. It always does, eventually. But the old saying is true: once you begin traveling, you cannot go home again.

Or maybe, you can, except "home" is different, home is where you are at the moment, and reentering old moments is jarring and uncertain. But the thing about that too, is like the great poet T.S. Eliot wrote:

We shall not cease from exploration, 
and the end of all our exploring 
will be to arrive where we started, 
and know it for the first time. 

I have returned to where I started, and indeed knew it for the first time, and each time I return I will know it again, and again, rediscovering more of each world I never thought to look for. For that, I am blessed, and acknowledge it freely.

But right now, all I want to do is bury my head in the pillows against the chaos and sleep until I wake and find the eyes I had before, and that this place that I used to know is once again comfortable.

Lost in Paris (Again)

It has been a year. One full year, one year of life and a few hundred lifetimes. I dove into, discovered, adapted to, and built a life inside another world that had nothing to do with the life I had previously, and what was my plan before has melted down and built back up into something entirely surprising. Where I am is not where I thought I'd be. What was immense passion has become sheer obsession, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

And now--yes I know I haven't updated in forever and there was a whole life in Colorado that you missed because I didn't want to stop to put it in language, didn't want to waste time on words when living was enough--I've returned to a life I had.

Two years is not a long time. And it is.

The last time I was in Paris, I was still a student, still fresh off the experience, still reliving it every day. Now, I've entered into the Big Bad World of Adulthood, and have spent eight months in an entirely different universe, and Paris became a word.

Not a place, but a word, a word that means a time, a moment in my life when everything changed, when I changed and everything I thought was my essence was burned away, and what remained was so much more than before.

But just a week ago, I pushed on the word and found it a door, and behind the door was a world, a city, a place that exists and lives and breathes. Not a dream, but flesh, rock, and bone, and not just a place but a place I know in my bones. It took a couple days, but it's not Paris the city of light, the grand European city that everyone talks about and loves, but a place I know. 

The streets, the metro, the buildings, it's familiar. It's not out there but right here, not a city in the world but a city in my heart. A different language, but one that came rushing back after a day (albeit still imperfectly) to the point where I've started dreaming in French again, and the first language that comes out of my mouth.

I have to say -- it's confusing as hell. It's equally as disconcerting as returning to the United States was after my year abroad. There is a girl in Paris who I knew, the girl I became, but I don't really know her anymore. My life is different now, I'm different now. How do we live together?

It's perturbing, to say the least, to reenter a dream you had. I don't know how to explain it, even to find the words to say why it's so perturbing. Is it good to be back? I don't know. Bad? Can't say that, either. It's not what it was and yet it's exactly how I left it...and that's as much as I can say.

Of Paris, I have no idea what to think. But as for the people here, it has been a very great joy to rediscover them and I have enormously enjoyed it. It makes leaving, once again, very difficult.

Paris is beautiful, but it makes my heart hurt.

Merry Christmas from the Pixie Dust Chronicle!

I'm a day late, I know. Although I did have my computer with me the past four days spent in Kampot in a beautiful guesthouse right on the river, I used it to skype my family and check Facebook. I quite ambitiously brought a book, my notebook and journal, and some markers with me, thinking reflection would come in the form of words, but as it turns out there was no reflection and more of just staring at the world going by.

I'll publish a 2012 year in review in a bit here, but I will say that it has been one year of complete insanity, and I haven't stopped moving since Christmas last year. This vacation -- somewhat ill-timed as there still remains a shit ton to do and projects in full swing and projects just getting started -- was so, so necessary. I needed the four days of not thinking, which was startlingly successful consider my usual issues with remaining thought-free.

It was a great vacation. We rented motos and puttered into town about once a day, exploring the villages and the salt flats in the area or just poking about Kampot, which is a very sleepy, small town, where the most activity happens on the trampolines randomly set up in the middle of town and everything is 'close to the durian," a large and random sculpture of a durian in the middle of a roundabout.

The rest of the time was spent at the hotel, eating or sitting by the pool, or talking, or swimming in the river. We swam across the river one day, which was lovely. And eating. There was Christmas to be had, and a huge barbecue that included an entire pig, a tree to be trimmed, Christmas cookies being baked by a couple other guests (who were actually some friends of mine -- small world here!!), skype calls to make, greetings to be had.

The motos, by the way, were fully automatic, which means you sort of perch on top of them. Both hands have brakes and the right hand has the accelerator, which I found confusing. They are also much heavier than you think, and especially compared to a bike they are much less agile, however much they look like toys in the hands of the teenage drivers. Figuring out the balance was a challenge, especially on the very bumpy dirt roads from town to the hotel.

So naturally I had to bail a couple times as I was learning how the thing worked, one time when I was trying to turn for the first time (oops), once when I was trying to pass a bike on the tiny backroads in the little surrounding villages and discovered I was heading directly for a very unflexible looking piece of palm tree, and stopped too quickly, and once when I apparently revved at precisely the wrong moment on a piece of mud and dropped the moto on my foot -- and sliced it open from sole to heel on the inside of my ankle.

So there was a trip to the hospital in there and a lot of blood, but six stitches and some bandages later I was patched up nicely and busy thinking how I might get in the pool while leaving one foot out of the water. It is still quite sore and quite annoying, and I still get the willies looking at it (fortunately I don't have to, it's covered most of the time). I suppose I could take it as a sign to never get on a moto again, but I don't think I will. I've never done it before, I don't know how to deal with mud and dirt, and I'll probably learn.

Also, better to get the crashes out of the way first, right?

Foot cut open or not, it was a lovely, lovely Christmas and vacation. Kampot is much, much windier than Phnom Penh and therefore much cooler (I wished I had brought a cover up for the evenings!). Amazing how different weather can be just a two hour drive away. There were even hills there, adding some texture to the incredibly flat landscape around here. The dirt was this lovely burnt orange, there was real grass and actual birds, and getting back into Phnom Penh today was a shock of people and traffic.

The only thing wrong was not having my family around and I missed them terribly, especially with my sister having some serious health issues and the family kind of tense, worried, and waiting. Still, through the miracle of skype we were able to spend my Christmas morning and their Christmas eve together. It wasn't perfect, but it was still beautiful.

It was my first Christmas in the blazing sunshine, certainly.

I've sent most of my Christmas greetings already from email and Facebook, but just wanted to post it here. Here I am, in Cambodia, celebrating Christmas in 90 degree weather.

Craziness.

Exhibit Barang, the River, 6 methods of moving, and Pchum Ben

I'm not quite sure how to begin this write up -- I could do a multi-part, day-by-day thing, but I'm not sure I want to be that ambitious or if it would be that interesting.

Let's start with the bare bones. Here's how the thing shook out, by modes of transportation:
-Tuktuk to Central Market
-Shared taxi - we bought the backseat, 3 people where 5 usually are, and as a consequence there were 5 in the front seat, including one in the driver's lap - to Kampong Chnnang
-Moto to the riverside market
-Ferry to Kampong Leang
-Walking around
-Ferry back to Kampong Chnnang
-Boat ride around the floating villages
-Moto to hotel
-Next morning, bus to Ponley
-Moto to Kampong Steang
-Motorized canoe ride around the area
-Moto back to Ponley
-Bus home to Phnom Penh.

As you might be able to tell, we spent a lot of time moving. You can't tell from this how much of that time moving we spent in packed public transportation, squeezed in between the motos and market goods and people, with loud motors and odd looks.

Let me put it this way: tourists don't go where we went. I was traveling with a good friend and her uncle, the Uncle fortunately being able to speak good Khmer and have a knack for discovering how to get places. We didn't make a single reservation in advance the entire time, and to get home were literally standing on the side of the road flagging down buses.

Tourists go to floating villages, sure, these strange bobbing clusters of humanity on the river, swollen heavily from the rains, where shops are on barges and everyone owns a boat. But they only go to certain floating villages, in certain places, and not, apparently, the ones we were at. I think we were the only Barangs I saw the entire two days, except for a group of people at the hotel restaurant.

The looks we got were curious, amused, excited, deeply concerned/confused, and uncertain, the primary one being amused confusion. Open stares were more the norm than sidelong looks, and in some cases the staring turned to gaping. You could hear the thoughts, what the hell are these Barangs doing here, of all places? 

In both Kampong Leang and Kampong Chnnang, within some time of arriving, a friendly police officer arrived to say hello, see if we needed anything -- if we were lost, more like. It was really funny, I thought, that they sent the police to deal with us, I guess no one else really wanted to. On the boat ride at Kampong Steang, we stopped by an island Pagoda, filled with people celebrating Pchum Ben, and there it was a monk sent to deal with us -- and attempt to get money from us, but he did it in a very nice way and wasn't upset when we politely refused. We figured he got sent to deal with the Barangs because he had the best English.

Wherever we went, we were a spectacle. The street kids hanging out at the temples came in crowds to follow us and try to get in the pictures we took. The people in the pagoda greeted us very warmly, almost proud to have their very own Barangs. We were like celebrities, but like aliens too. Celebrities because alien, I guess. People -- and not just kids, people of all ages -- waved to us as we passed, shouted hello. We waved back because, why not?

The constant motion and the constant staring was exhausting, but this was contrasted with the peace of the river and the water. The rainy season has made water of the whole land, the trees in up to their branches and green plants floating where mud flats are during the dry season. Something about the water is so calming, even with everything.

During the sunset cruise, we motored by people just living -- fishing, sitting in hammocks, eating, praying, kids playing in the water. A few kids with boats were drag racing in front of the appreciate audience on the riverside at Kampoong Chnnang. We also saw two boats playing pirates with each other, throwing plants and anything else they could get their hands on at each other, and then later on a 'club boat' -- no lights, no music, but a bunch of kids dancing away to the beats in their heads.

Watching the little girls expertly row the boats, the kids playing in the water, the water culture, I thought, they don't know what it's like to live on dry ground. The water is everything to them.

It was a fascinating couple of days, and I can't deny I was glad to be back home. I thought I was a foreigner in Phnom Penh -- and I am, and always will be -- but it was nothing compared to the strange, fascinating, and interesting alien I was there. The scrutiny gets to you after awhile, and I'm still getting over the constant motion. But -- I am glad I went.

Here are some photos from the trip:

This is the kind of look we got. 

The ferry from Kampong Leang to Kampong Chnnang

Sunset on the river, and some awesome little girl rowing.

The boat ride to the hidden pagoda, along a hidden channel.

With some onlookers. 

The monk went to deal with us, my travel partners, and the crowd. 

Linda

The past week was a mess, hence why my blog posts abruptly vanished and I just relied on the automatic posting feature to finish up telling the temple stories. I had a workshop to finish and kids not ready to perform on Thursday for a Friday show, I crashed my bike, and wasn't home any evening.

Instead, I was out on Pub Street, usually at the same bar or somewhere close, with a 50 cent draft beer and the free popcorn. I didn't go there to drink, as drinking alone is sad, and I could have easily just gone back to my hotel after dinner.

In being there alone, of course, I always started talking to the people around me and made some excellent friends, but that is not why I was there.

I was there to see Linda, the flower girl I talked about in the dinner post. When she said goodbye to our group, she said to me, "I see you every day." I took her seriously, and besides, I wanted to see her. I didn't see her over dinner, and so went to the bar in the hopes of catching her -- and did, every night.

Some days she would just sit and play games on my cellphone. One day she was selling some plastic snakes, and sat in my lap to recount an incredibly detailed story with each snake as a character, further astounding everyone in the vicinity with her grasp of English. Some days she would try to sell to whoever I was sitting with. On one occasion, when the monsoons hit, she came inside with me and sat, playing with my cell until the rains stopped.

I gave her my card with my email and phone, and made sure she had it before I left. On my last day, she begged me not to go. She said she was only here until next week, and then back to her country (province), some eight hours away. When she comes back, she said, maybe I sell, maybe not.

I promised her we would see each other again, and she made me hook our pinkies and swear, which I said. And when at last we hugged goodbye, she couldn't let go, and cried as I held her.

The sound you hear is my heart breaking into pieces. I dried her tears, promised again to find her, and then before either of us could fall apart anymore she left, and I ran.

I don't know what I did. She never tried to sell me anything, and I never asked to buy. We just understood each other perfectly, and since I left, I can't stop thinking about her, and spent most of yesterday completely broken-hearted. I'm going to find her again -- somehow. I'm already planning to make a dance about her, and call it Linda, and whenever I do find her -- show her, or have her dance it (she's a fantastic dancer.)

In any case, if you see her -- tell her I'm looking for her.

A night of three: part 4

By the time I arrived, there were five of us, though shortly after to be four, as one of the three German guys headed out. Sometime during the evening, the Dutch girls joined us, bringing the number to six. 

It was a restaurant down one of the alleys from Pub Street, which is exactly what it sounds like, and loud and crowded to boot. But down the alleys, it’s calmer and very nice, the restaurants packed one next to the other.

The dinner itself was not particularly special – in fact, most of them were just drinking, it was just my friend Paulo and I eating, beef lok lak. For the rest, draft beer, only 50 cents per. 

No, what was fascinating were the visitors. 

The first was perhaps the most broken woman I have ever seen. I don't know how old she was, but not very. She was wearing a dress, if you can all it that, sagging down to show her bra. She wore no shoes, and stumbled, clearly drunk. 

She came to the table. At this point, it was raining, and the four of us had moved under the eaves, leaving one side of the table empty, where she was standing. She was carrying a small plastic cup and placed it on the table, not looking at us. Randomly, she moved things around. Paulo gave her what little remained of his drink, which she took, then mimed a smoke. In one of her hands, she was clutching a lighter. 

The German guys both smoked, and one passed a cigarette over. She had a bit of trouble lighting it. Paulo, pretending not to watch by covering his eyes with the coasters, made her laugh, a brief thing, but beautiful. She took a long, grateful drag. She at last met my eyes, and I offered her a smile, the only thing I could think of. She returned it, offering a small thumbs up, and then stumbled away. 

We noticed later she had taken a headband from the disabled vendor across the way, so Paulo went over to pay for it. By that time, she was long gone. 

The second was a young girl, a vendor, 10 years old as we later learned. Her name was Linda, and we had met her the night previously, at another bar. She spoke excellent English and hung around our table for a long time, even after she knew we weren't buying, to talk. Both Paulo and I have Maori fish hooks, and she did as well, a topic to be much discussed. 

She was around a lot during Monday evening. She was clearly exhausted, but refused to say so. She was eating fruit and tried to explain that on Mondays, she only wants fruit. The guys tried to get her to eat more, but she refused. Still, she kept coming back. The previous night, she had just been talking to the guys, and again this time. And yet, one time when she came back, she came over to me, threw her arms around my shoulders, and kissed my cheek, and remained there for several seconds. 

With several more kisses and another squeeze, she was off, leaving me stunned and touched, totally melted and totally heartbroken. She said at one point she was staying with a friend and I wondered where her parents were, if at all. She kept coming back, at one point quite firmly removing Paulo's hand from my knee, where it had been resting, and sitting in my lap herself. Later on, the waitress -- a relative, or a friend -- brought her a plate of watermelon, which we shared, though mostly tried to get her to eat, and Paulo paid for it. 

At the end, she was drawing something, and I asked her if I could draw something for her, drawing the little rose I always doodle. The others added their little drawings. Everyone in the group but me was leaving the next day, and she gave them all hugs, at last putting her fist in the middle. I joined first, and everyone else put their fists in. "Friends forever!" she declared, wishing the rest of them luck and saying to me, "I see you every day!"

As she left, the third and final visitor appeared, watching this exchange with wide eyes. He was a street child, wide, hungry eyes. He looked no more than eight, but when we asked, said he was twelve. He didn't speak any English. He was clutching an empty water bottle and a can to his chest, probably to exchange for a few riel. 

We had a half empty water bottle on the table, and gave it to him, which he took. The waitress came with a new plate of popcorn, and was going to put it in his shirt, but we found an extra bag and filled it for him. He took it gratefully. When she came with a new plate for us, we gave that to him as well. I think Paulo slipped him a dollar or two as well, and he went off, one arm clutching the bottles, and one stuffing popcorn into his mouth. I wondered when the last time he had eaten was. 

Three visitors. It was like a myth, like each needed something specifically from us. I don't know if we gave them that, but hopefully. 

But it didn't really hit until today, when I was telling my sister about the temples, and the blessings, and said that my favorite was from the three ancient women. Three, and then I looked down and realized I was wearing three blessing bracelets. 

Three blessings, three women, three visitors. 

I don't think it was a coincidence. 

The bike, the heat, and the blessings: part 3

I got a late start on Sunday.

It was overcast when I set out, my bike clanking away as it does and me wondering if it would last the day. It’s not a very long ride to the archeological park, to Angkor Wat a bit further, and from there another few minutes to Angkor Thom.

I could have started at Angkor Wat, but had discovered sometime during the week they had elephant rides in Angkor Thom, and I thought only in the morning. They normally go from the south gate of the city to the east gate of Bayon temple, but when I got there they had moved up to the east gate already, and so just cycled the rest of the way.

They were now doing loops around the temple, and I parked my bike. The people running the rides were very friendly. They can’t do rides for just one person, but quite fortunately there was a friendly Malaysian guy who was also by himself, and so it worked out perfectly. We waited for the elephants to come back and chatted amiably.

I bought a pineapple to give to the elephant, and they cut it up into three pieces for me. Most people seemed to be afraid of the elephants, kind of dropping the fruit and running, but I know they’re very gentle and tried to wait while the trunk – so delicate for such a big creature – wrapped around the fruit.

The ride itself was bumpy, the little platform to hold us rocking back and forth as the elephant shifted its weight, and not entirely comfortable. But it was really cool. Afterwards, I set off to the temple, which turned into a much longer adventure as I realized there were many more – Angkor Thom was, in fact, a whole city – and it was going to take a lot more exploring than just checking out Bayon.

The adventure took me the entire morning, each again totally different from the previous day and from each other, today an experiment in climbing very steep stairs. The clouds had gone away, and the day was sweltering hot. The shade – wherever I found it – was welcome, and by the time I started trying to find my way back to Bayon, I realized I’d wandered very far.

There was one thing of special note in this adventure, a stop by one of the huge shrines surrounding the temple with the enormous statues of Buddha. I found one empty, three ancient women sitting around with shaved heads and a great lack of teeth. They smiled at me and waved me over, and I came gladly. I took the incense and one showed me how to do the three bows, which I already knew, but let her show. Then, she pointed me to her two colleagues, and one tied another bracelet around my wrist. As she did so, all three came over, touching my hand with theirs, and intoned the blessing together.

At the end, the one put my hand to my head. They pointed me on to the next temple, and I went, feeling quite touched.

When I finally found my way back to my bike – taking a wrong turn and unnecessarily wandering around the entire dang Bayon temple – I found the elephants gone, the table gone, and a small plastic bag with some mysterious foodstuffs in my bike basket. Wondering if they had been thrown there or left for me purposefully, I headed off to the next stop, Ta Prohm, stopping to buy a one dollar pate sandwich along the way.

Curiosity killed the cat, and however much I had no clue what was in the bag, I had to try it, finding it to be something fried, with some veggies in the middle. I didn’t trust it, but had a few bites, and went off to explore.

By the time I was on the road to Angkor Wat, I wasn’t feeling very well, though whether or not that was the heat, a lack of water, the sun, or the mysterious foodstuff, I’m still not sure. It was a full 7km to return to Angkor Wat and by the time I got there I was seriously dragging. The sun was really overwhelming.

I parked the bike and bought a cold water. I didn’t stay long. The temple looks like it does in the picture, and is impressive for its sheer size – and I guess the bas-reliefs, which I said I wasn’t much interested in. It was crowded, and under construction, and I stayed long enough to feel the stones and then went off in search of a rest and water.

Following this, and feeling a bit better, though still hotter than I’ve ever been in my life, I got back on the bike and dragged myself home, my body protesting the entire way, and wasted no time in cranking the AC and going to bed.

Traveling alone was nice for the freedom I had, though the day was a bit of a struggle, most for the heat. I suppose I could have spent more time everywhere, but I just didn’t feel the need. It was enough, as I said, to see them, and to feel the stones.

By the evening when the rains came, they were heartily welcome, and I again had dinner with my new friends, this time joined by a couple of Dutch girls, as they were sitting next to us and we just started chatting.

It set the stage for Monday dinner, which is currently one of the fascinating experiences I have ever had, and I guess that’s saying a lot. To be continued…

The temples, a lot of incense, and not seeing the bas-reliefs

The first day, I took a tuktuk. I had been planning to go on a moto, but was convinced otherwise, and was very grateful for it. The main attractions -- Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and Ta Prohm -- I decided to leave for the following day as they are in cycling distance, and took advantage  of having the tuktuk to go around the "big circuit," with the more distant temples, including one, Banteay Srey, which is about 37 km away.

I met my driver at eight, and we hashed out the itinerary and then headed out. We saw around eight temples that day, quite enough for one day I think. Although some of them are classed as 'minor ruins' by the maps, they are still all equally impressive.

I don't know how to really talk about them. It's hard to get your mind around how old they are, or that they were once the foundations of an Empire and not the ruins they are today, that people walked through them. They are all, for the most part, enormous, huge monuments to power -- some are religious, some are residences, some are capitals.

The stones are colorful. I guess I hadn't expected that, but in this tropical climate the lichen and moss covers the stones and they are splattered with color. There are different kinds of stone, from the porous, sponge-like, to the black and white streaked sandstone (my guess is sandstone, at least), to the regular blocks of grey rock. Each temple is a different color -- for example, Preah Khan, the first I saw and one of the biggest, more of a grey streaked with pink and green lichen, versus Banteay Srey, a rich red sandstone.

If you like, the guidebooks or the guides will tell you what exactly are the carvings, what each room is for. They will show the bas-reliefs and the sculptures and tell you the stories behind them. I guess that's interesting enough, however --

It's not why I was there. Sure, I could have spent more time at each temple, could have hired a guide, could have checked the sculptures against the book. But I didn't, and didn't want to. I came to feel the stones, the energy. I wanted to know what the temples felt like, if they still carried the history with their stones. Just to spend some time in them.

They are starting to crumble now. The plants are taking over -- the trees too, roots dripping over walls and worming through the cracks. Some hallways are blocked with the huge stones, tumbling down like waterfalls. Almost all of the statues are missing their heads, thanks to some enterprising vandals. Can't take the statue, so take the head, I guess.

But the history is still there, like it could ever escape. In each temple, often in more than one place, there is a center area, darker than the rest, with a monument. To the King, or to the Buddha. The statues are draped in bright fabrics, little shrines set up in front with some offerings. Some have donation boxes, and some have watchful guardians, but some don't, just a lighter, some incense sticks and a bowl to stick them, and the statue. I liked these latter the best, but lit incense at all kinds, kneeling to pay my respects to the past. Not to the Buddha, but the ancestors, the history.

Often, by these shrines, there's a mat and some ancient person, men and women, crouching. With them is a bowl full of donations and little string bracelets. Maybe they were monks, or maybe not. Maybe they just know a few Sanskrit blessings, or maybe it's not Sanskrit at all.

It didn't matter to me. The first blessing I received was at the temple Banteay Sampré, just before lunch on Saturday. The man wasn't a monk, because he were he wouldn't have been allowed to touch me, but he took my hand as I sat next to him. He tied the bracelet around my wrist, murmuring a new blessing with each knot. He then gave me a flashlight and told me to go into the darkest, center room, I think a tomb for the King or at the very least a very sacred place.

I did -- it was creepy, and looked around at the fallen stones, broken in pieces on the floor. The ceiling of the pagoda went very high, and I offered a last sompiah before returning to the old monk. He asked me to sit again and tied another bracelet around my wrist, this time sprinkling it with water. He put my hand to his head and murmured, some in English and some in his own language, and then at last released it.

Who knows if it was a real Sanskrit blessing, and honestly, I didn't, and don't, care. The blessing, and the sentiment, were honest, and he wished luck and long life for the both of us. I thought, hey, you know what, I'll take it.

The other thing about the first day was the long trip up to Banteay Srey, a full forty five minutes drive each way. I sat back in the tuktuk, very happy for the roof as it was raining, and watched the countryside go by. Here, as I said before, the children play in the rivers along the road, brown water and god knows what inside, but they shriek and hang onto logs and play. The countryside is beautiful, and so green.

By the time we got to the last temple for the day, Pre Rup, which was really cool, and so big, I was getting really very tired, the early morning wake up really starting to get to me, and all the exploring.

My tuktuk driver, a very friendly guy named Rob who spoke English pretty well, explained the basics of each temple as we arrived -- when it was built, what the name meant, and a few other factoids. Some, he would meet me on the other side, or back at the parking. It was really such a privilege to have the tuktuk, after each temple to settle into the back, slip off my shoes, and watch the jungle go by.

I spent much of Saturday evening hanging out with some new friends, some people who had been on the same temple circuit as me -- a couple of German guys and a Brazilian guy -- and we met for dinner and drinks. After the long day, it was really nice to kick back and chat.

Sunday was something else, as I decided to take the bicycle and go alone. That is for part three, and part four is now reserved for dinner last night, which turned out to be one of the crazier experiences I've had here, and that is saying something.

Temple hopping: Part 1

Strap in. This is gonna take awhile. After two days and --- (pause to count and while I try to relocate my map, without which this latter task will be impossible) --- eleven temples, there's a lot to recount. I'm not going to go temple by temple -- check out the pictures on Facebook for each -- but talk about the adventure, the experience, and all the fun Things Of Note.

While at a certain point you have seen so many temples that your eyes are crossing, it is not true that once you've seen one temple you've seen them all. And while sometimes it is tempting -- read, on the last temples when you are dying from the heat and exhaustion -- to be like, yeah so it's a bunch of old rocks, you never quite get there, because they are all so impressive in their own ways.

They are, however, a bunch of old rocks. A bunch of really really old rocks. I was talked into buying a guide book -- hey, it'll make a good present when I go home -- and the most recent dates are eight hundred years ago, some into the 9th century.

A note on the book: I bought it to shut up the vendors offering it and give a really good excuse why I didn't want to pay some random friendly guy to tell me about the temple history, however interesting it was. The guy I bought it from was very nice, but scalped me for 12 bucks -- though in all fairness in the bookshop it's 28 -- and my tuktuk driver later informed me Cambodians get for 6, and I'm pretty sure I heard other vendors later offering it for that. So whoops, my bad. I wasn't pleased to discover this, but like I said, it'll make a good souvenir.

And the vendors, by the way, are everywhere. They of course congregate at the entrances and exits and gather by each temple. They are loud, persistent, and "if you buy you buy from me." They range from very young -- I saw a girl not much more than three, heartbreakingly, waving a postcard in the direction of a guy -- to middle age. Many very young, and many teenager/young adult.

One of them, particularly persistent and friendly -- she was admiring my white skin, and discussing how the rich Cambodians make their skin white, but all she could do was wear long sleeves and a hat -- finally convinced me to buy a scarf. It was only because she sold one to my tuktuk driver for 2000 riel and then asked 1 dollar for me, but apparently they're friends. Either way, at least she was honest enough to laugh about it, and I picked out a beautiful blue cotton scarf.

They are all friendly, of course, but annoying, though I learned if you talk to them in Khmer they leave pretty quick, if you say 'I'm sorry' and whatever word is appropriate for their age -- it all mean "sister" or "brother", but varies according to age. For the little kids, who hang around for ages by the hapless tourists with frustrated looks on their faces, I noticed if I just say, "Sum tow own," (sorry, younger sister/brother), they headed off quick enough.

I am also really getting tired of being called "Lady." I greatly prefer "sister", and actually really like it whenever anyone calls me that.

While I'm on the subject of the vendors, it should be noted that it's a particularly sad story -- my tuktuk driver explained that of all the money that people pay just to get into the park (20 for one day, 40 for three days, maybe 60 for the full week), exactly none of it goes to the Cambodian people who really need it, and instead just fatten the pockets of the foreign companies that run the park. For the vendors, they must pay three dollars a day just to be there.

If you'll excuse a bit of a diversion from the temples -- it is incredibly sad to see so many young children selling and not going to school. But unlike in the cities, out there it is the countryside, and I got a chance to see a lot of it. It is remote, and there are no schools anywhere close. They certainly can't afford to have a driver, even tuktuk or moto, and the kids will probably make more money selling. It's a vicious cycle.

And about the remoteness -- no, seriously. The roads are paved, ish, for the tourists, but they are still filled with potholes and issues, and in between the temples, there is just jungle, and people living. It was not unusual to see children playing in the rivers and streams, swimming around, shrieking and laughing as children do. The water has been god knows where, but they don't mind.

The temples are enormous, but the jungle hides them, such that you can't see them until you're literally standing in front of them -- except for Angkor Wat, which was built to be seen as far as I can tell. The plants and the green is everywhere, insidious and beautiful. The trees are if not as old as the temples, in the range of two or three hundred years, and are ridiculously tall and have the craziest roots. They drape themselves like lounging gods, in the most improbable ways. I never knew trees were able to grow like that.

The ruins, however, are everywhere. I'm sure just going to see the main temples you see the merest fraction of what's out there. Home to the Khmer Empire during the Angkorian and pre-Angkorian eras, and filled with Kings, whose names all end in -man for whatever reason, who liked moving the courts and the capitals around, each move -- with each new King -- bringing more building. You can see them sometimes, tucked into the jungle -- these days, maybe someone's house, or where the children play.

So here is the picture you start with: tourists, from everywhere, the jungle, and a whole bunch of really impressive old rocks, the brain-children of some really powerful dudes a really really long time ago, and masses of Cambodians with every kind of useless trinket imaginable, swarming the tuktuks as they arrive like carriages to the ball.

Got it?

Okay, now we can start exploring...

A moto ride to the middle of nowhere

It's been a challenging week, for a lot of reasons. I was never intending this to be a vacation but it's been more of a struggle than anticipated, part of that for reasons I can do absolutely nothing about. Either way, I'm pretty happy to see the weekend, and have decided to take it completely as a vacation.

My workshop finished at five. At six, the organizer of the club here came by the guesthouse on his moto to take me to see this stage where he wants to do the showing next week -- something I hadn't really thought about, but it is better than the huge, hot room on the second floor of the hotel we've been using.

Dusk was gathering as we headed out, the crescent moon high in the sky. I, as I have said already on this blog, adore riding on the back of motos, and I sat back to enjoy as we left the main town. Heading to where cars stop for cows crossing the road and sometimes the concrete cuts out into small lakes from all the rain. Where the shanties line the street and the jungle creeps up to the side of the road, insatiable green.

We went even past the local restaurants, the markets filled with Khmer people getting food for dinner, soups in two plastic bags and sitting in those colorful plastic chairs, big open houses and restaurants. We turned down a side road, and then onto a dirt road, fine red dirt.

The place was just there, in the middle of nowhere. A few friendly children opened the gate for us. It was a small collection of huts, with tin sides and roofs. In one, a small stage, painted green, with a few large amplifiers and maybe five small lights arranged at the front of the stage. A couple other buildings, and on the right, built on stilts, what must have been a dormitory, where the children were gathered. Steep steps -- more of a ladder -- led to the ground, now flooded, and they splashed through ankle deep water to investigate us.

Across the way, a tiny playground -- a seesaw, and a slide, in teetering, rusty blue metal. A pile of logs, and then the gate. A few of the mean, rangy dogs that are everywhere were running around.

"What is this NGO?" I asked, turning around, and finding a sign. "Cambodia Orphan Family Center Organization." Suddenly, it made sense that the kids were gathered there so late, and the dormitories. Oh, I thought, suddenly speechless. They teach traditional arts here, my friend explained. Every Saturday and Sunday during the high season -- not now -- they have shows.

The kids happily bid us goodbye, and the night was good and truly falling, the sky the shade of blue I can't ever get enough of. The frogs were singing their hearts out, and I sat on the back of the moto, in just absolute peace.

I had dinner at a place called Butterflies Garden, though the butterflies are only around in the daytime. Either way, I had a traditional Khmer dish -- yellow beans and pork wrapped in sticky rice and steamed in a banana leaf, a shrimp salad -- which was excellent, and I'm not usually a shrimp fan -- and some fresh veggies. I had a fresh coconut to drink.

I treated myself to ice cream at Swensen's afterwards, and decided to splurge and get whipped cream with, not really realizing I was going to be giving a full mountain of the stuff. But it was lovely, anyway, and now I'm so full I can barely move. But --- it was so worth it.

Check out the pics and a bonus vid from the back of the moto...

The lobby of my guesthouse. So pretty! 

The NGO. 

Sunset. 

Coconut with dinner! 

Er...have a little ice cream with your whipped cream??

Stumbling in on sacred ceremonies: with photos

It just so happened that today, of all the days I might have chosen to check out the School of Fine Arts here in Siem Reap, they had invited a couple old masters to work with the kids and to honor their presence, decided to do a whole ceremony, honoring the spirits of the dance. 

The set up is quite extravagant: at the head a table with the mask for the giant role and a bunch of apsara headresses, then a line of candles on either side, in descending height - but not ordinary candles, towers of greens and wax, with cones at the top, an egg, and then the smaller candle - and then the offerings, mostly bananas and other fruit. One plate -- all gold and ornately carved -- held a cooked chicken. In between the line and by the table, a bowl of water and a coconut. Finally, a giant pot of incense sticks, and a plate with many candles stuck on it. 

They were in the process of setting this all up when I arrived. Sitting and waiting were the students, in their uniforms. There were perhaps fifty in total, though my estimating skills are a bit iffy. The boys - maybe the music students? - in yellow. All the girls in the traditional tightly buttoned top and wrapped pants -- the very young in light blue shirts and green pants, the mid age in red pants and white tops, and the older in the colors of their choosing. 

Bustling around the offerings, lighting candles, were the older girls, the teachers watching with a close eye. At last, with everything lit and the room filling with incense smoke, the orchestra took their places, a mix of young students and older masters. 

The first song, everyone in the room began to bow, the traditional hands to head and then to floor three times, then bent over. After that, they just remained sitting, hands in the 'sompiah' or namaste position. After a few songs, six girls got up, each taking one offering, and then performing the basic apsara gestures (which, happily, I've learned to recognize) -- and in fact, as I've been told, this is what apsara was created for, rituals and ceremonies only, not shows. 

They put the offerings back after that, and -- my goodness, I thought, this is a LONG ceremony -- five other girls got up and performed a full apsara dance, five or ten minutes long. I don't know what it was about, though I assume it is to pay homage to the ancestors. 

With that, the incense almost burnt out and the candles dripping wax everywhere, the fruits of the offerings were broken open, a banana or two unpeeled, the eggs opened, and the orchestra played a final song, everyone repeating the bowing sequence from earlier (including me, I was doing my best to follow). 

The ceremony at last closed, everyone began to split up the offerings, happily eating them. I guess the ancestors had had their fill, and food does not go to waste here. One of the old masters offered me a bunch of longan, one of my favorite fruits here. I took it with both hands -- I'm learning the gestures of respect -- and ate them, thinking to have fruit touched by the spirits of the dance is pretty darn cool. 

I had some time to kill after that and made friends with a kitten, who kept trying to attack my hands, but adorably sat on my lap for awhile -- cats always seem to understand I love them. The rest of the day was just a nice lunch with a couple of friendly elder British guys who are apparently launching a theater company in town, teaching, and dinner at a off-the-beaten-path falafel place, which may or may not have been a bad idea on a still tender stomach. But I wanted to, so that's just me thumbing my nose at whatever bacteria I picked up...

Here are some pictures of the past days' adventures...

Falafel for lunch the other day. I've been in a mood for it I guess.

The School of Arts. 

The offerings. 

The headresses. 

My new friend. :)

Two weeks stay, the rainy season, and hiding in the hotel room

As with any first night in a new place, I woke often in the night, despite enjoying the wonders of sleeping in an air-conditioned room, mostly because I got to use covers for the first time in forever. The sound of the rain pounding on the tin roofs just outside woke me up, but didn't bother me too much, though to discover it still going this morning was a bit annoying...

My alarm went off at eight and wrestled me out of a dream about causing havoc at my old high school (which I did even while I was there, come to think of it...). I went to the café just across the street, Common Grounds, for breakfast, and was stymied by the fact that they were still baking all my favorite breakfast treats, but managed just fine on toast, eggs, and an espresso. I'm trying not to spend enormous amounts of money, so mostly trying to stick to my 10 dollar a day per diem from Cambodian Living Arts.

In any case, I met one of the supervisors from the club I'm teaching at nine, who came in a car, thankfully, and showed me how to get to the rehearsal space. It's a bit out of the way, but it's funny to note that as soon as you leave the tourist traps, the bilingual signs more or less disappear, leaving just Khmer. It's pretty sad, actually...anyway, the space is a huge room on the second floor of a hotel, with a big tin roof, tiled floors, and windows open to the outside. They open onto Siem Reap and the countryside, and it's actually quite beautiful, though the noise of the rain on the roof is a bit loud.

Speaking of the rain, apparently the rainy season is in full swing now, and September and October promise to give 25 days of rain per month, according to the club supervisor, and if the past few days are any indication, it rains all day too. Which means that I'm going to have to just suck it up and spend the next couple months being wet, or buy a couple of those ponchos.

I was going to spend this morning exploring a bit, and probably still could as it's more or less stopped raining, but I was so tired when I got back at nine thirty that I decided to just sleep, and have decided to take today easy. Maybe I'll explore when I go out for dinner, but I realized that I'm here two weeks, and it's a small city. I have all the time in the world to explore, and if I need to take a few days to adjust -- everything is still so new and confusing -- that is totally okay, and if I just chill in my hotel room, that's okay too. Or at a cafe, or whatever it may be.

It's a luxury I think a lot of travelers don't allow themselves, and goes along with my previous post about seeing the sights. I still remember my mom telling me to sleep a lot when I got to Phnom Penh because that's how your brain adjusts itself, and while Siem Reap and Phnom Penh are in the same country, Siem Reap is a whole new city and I would not say I'm comfortable in Cambodia yet.

I'm comfortable in Phnom Penh in that I know how to get around, I can more or less always figure out where I am, and I have places I go to and like, and people I know. It's not really home yet, and still remains very strange. Here, I don't know how to get around, I don't know how to get places, I know no one and I have no idea what are the good places. That's okay; I'll find some good places during the two weeks and I'll probably make sure to go back there a lot.

In the meantime, I'm going to take today very easy, still a little sick and culture-shocked all over again. I'm anxious, as I always am, for the first day of teaching a new group. I'm going to get lunch at the café adjacent to my hotel, because it's probably cheaper and I can sit and eat my noodle soup in peace, and mess around with my syllabus for the first class.

Like a minivan out of hell -- with photos

Laying on the horn to scatter -- or not -- the motos and carts and cows from the middle of the road, we blasted down the road, swerving past any vehicle going slower than us, that is, all of them. The huge tourist buses, vans like ours, normal passenger cars, motos. More often than not, laying on the brakes as a pothole reared its ugly head, or the driver realized that he wasn't going to be able to pass the slow-moving truck before the oncoming traffic hit.

I was very tired, and a little sick, probably from the grand adventure biking in several monsoons last night (worthy of another blog post -- I've been slacking because I've been really busy and my google accounts have been strangely messed up, I think my network somehow decided to block googleusercontent.com or something. In any case, I have a lot to catch up on.) The long and the short of that story is that I spent the majority of the evening in cold, wet clothes, and was already a bit sniffly, so, well...

Anyway. Of the fourteen passengers in the van, including the driver, there were two females, both expat, and the rest male, I think mostly Khmer but with a couple of non Khmer. I slept a bit, amazingly, later on in the journey, which took about five and a half hours, though it seemed much longer. The first two hours were interminable, though it got better later on. But for the most part, I looked out the window and thought, as I currently have a lot to think about.

Besides, there was a lot to look at.

At the beginning, it's all the same shops, little hole in the wall places, people sitting in plastic chairs and waiting for the world to arrive. Every few minutes, reliably, a car parked and its occupants peeing off the side of the road -- for all guys complain it's the girls who go all the time, well, it's a lot easier for you!!! But besides that, the houses, all built on stilts of course with laundry hanging, little shanty shack houses. Children running around, people living.

I wanted to take pictures of it all, the shops and how they vanished as we headed down the road, the crazily laden carts, but I couldn't have captured it all, not even close. What one instant the camera captured changed as swiftly as the van was going, always something else, something I'd never seen before. Lakes filled with lotus, houses just barely holding back the jungle, people waist-deep in water with huge nets.

The further we got, the shops vanished into endless landscapes full of water, a few high palm trees; or maybe the jungle creeping up to the side of the road, a narrow strip of pavement parting the green sea. Small villages were scattered along the route, a gathering of houses and the same shops, selling water and noodle soup and shampoo and every other knick knack anyone might need.

The cows are white, or light brown, and big boned, but skinny. I thought they were statues at first until I saw one of them moving, as they are that statuesque and odd, their skin hanging limply from their jutting hip bones and wide ribs. Some are less skinny, but none of the fat black and white variety in your ideal vision with the white picket fence.

We stopped a couple times, once at a market on the side of the road with hole-in-the-floor bathrooms and an army of little girls selling bananas and mangoes, ice cream, what-have-you. They ran towards us as we exited the vehicle, shouting to be noticed, and clambered at the van's open door. I was thinking about buying something, but changed my mind, despite the pleas of the young girl at my side. "What do you want, sister?" she asked. "I have it."

I looked at her eyes, sincere and fierce, and shook my head. "No," I said, "I'm sorry."

The second stop, at the biggest city between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap -- Kampong Thom, I think -- was at a restaurant, and the passengers ordered noodle soups and ate while I wandered, bought an ice cream and chatted up the other woman in the van, an Irish woman living just outside of Siem Reap. Her sandwich, a baguette with pate, some kind of sauce, and pickled veggies, looked so good I had to get one for myself.

By the time we arrived in Siem Reap, a mess of hotels and restaurants and lights, even more crazy than Phnom Penh, I was dragging. I had been warned that the van would try to make the foreigners get out way out of town, and they did, but they said it was the last stop for everybody and I didn't have the energy to fight. A very friendly Khmer was waiting to set me up with a tuk tuk.

He chatted amiably, wanting to know how long I was staying, if I was going to see Angkor Wat, and if I was volunteering. No, I said, teaching dance. "Oh! You are a dancer!" he said, very impressed, and it warmed my heart a little. Always nice to get someone who thinks what you do is cool.

He instructed the tuk tuk driver, who headed off and naturally got lost, but thankfully I was able to call my contact in Phnom Penh and have him talk to the driver. As it turns out we were just around the corner, and I was shown into this beautiful little inn, where I am now staying. It is a single room, and very close to the Old Market Area, which is where all the restaurants are.

I found the bike waiting for me, a tiny little thing and a total piece of ----, but hey, it will function and I took it off to the nearest possible restaurant for a pizza. Since then, I've been unpacking, enjoying having a hot shower for the first time in two months, and generally zoning out. It will be an early bed, for sure...

Check out the pics below. I may have to resurrect my photobucket for this trip...

In the tuktuk heading to the bus station in Phnom Penh

Going over the bridge, leaving the main Phnom Penh

A heavily laded tuktuk we passed on the way. 

Long stretches of nothing but sky and water...

My room in Siem Reap! 

Visiting, living, and the shame of not seeing the sights

I am about to make an illogical statement:

I have serious travel inertia.

This might sound odd coming from a girl who has, multiple times, upped and moved to a new country or state, knowing one or no people at the destination city, and recently jetted off to the other side of the world on a one-way ticket.

But let me explain.

Having now been in Phnom Penh for over two months, I'm starting to get the questions about where I've been and what I've seen, inside the city and country, and outside. Today -- National Museum? No. Tuol Sleng, the genocide museum? No. The Killing Fields? Not that either. What about around Cambodia? No. Thailand? Laos? Vietnam? No, no, and no.

They all happen to be on my list of things I'd like to see, sure. It does seem a bit silly to be in this region of the world and not go voyaging, and especially the things in Phnom Penh, and I do feel a bit guilty about it. Sometimes I see the tourists flocking around Wat Phnom -- which I have to go by every day on my way to work -- and I reliably think, I should probably check that out too.

But in reality, unless there's a good opportunity or I have serious reason to want to do so, I don't. My excuses are the usual -- no money, don't want to go alone, don't know where is good, don't know how to organize it. All of them are perfectly well solvable and avoidable.

And yet the fact remains that, unless the opportunity comes knocking, the chances of me actually organizing a trip to Vietnam by myself, for example, are pretty darn slim.

I don't really know what to do about it. Like I said, I feel kind of guilty that I'm in the region and just doing my thing in Phnom Penh, but maybe that's just it -- I'm not really here to visit. I came here to work, and to make stuff happen. I'm doing that. I came here to live. I'm doing that too.

I suppose it all works out in the end. I've noticed it enough, though, to realize it's just something in me. If I have good reason to go, I do, in somewhat spectacular fashion. If I don't, I don't.

For better or for worse, I guess...

Studying abroad to living abroad

When I came back from Paris after eleven months abroad, I realized something: my family, the people I'm closest to in the whole world, had lived a full year that I knew nothing of. They were the same as always, but changed, and I found myself trying to relate to them in a way that hadn't worked for a year, like trying to fix a  fridge the way you used to fix an ice box.

It was upsetting, and disturbing, but understandable. While I didn't cut them out completely, I did intentionally disappear, burying myself in the city and my own soul, trying to figure out what it looked like. I was lost, and needed that time to reform.

It's the only time I've spent significant time abroad; while New York is a full three and a half hours by plane away from Colorado, the family is only two hours and a phone call away. Plus, when I left, I knew I was coming back. I had a year left of school, after all.

This time, as has been previously noted and the cause of all sorts of shenanigans and complications, I just don't know when I'm coming back, and in fact I'm not planning to go back to America to live. Just to visit, a month or two every year. This time I'm separated by thirteen hours and a skype call, or a very expensive phone call.

This isn't a year abroad to find myself, but actually moving abroad, and it's changing my focus. I've been asking my family to send me updates, things about the daily life, little challenges and uncertainties that I would  miss otherwise. What they're thinking about, what they're concerned about, triumphs and challenges.

I may live far away, but I don't want to be far away. Space is a distance, but thanks to technology even the other side of the world is just fourteen inches and on the other side of the computer screen away.

Not so very far away at all.

A Chalet and Rain: Something's Wrong There

One would think, or at least hope, that if one spent time in a chalet in the mountains next to a ski resort, it would snow.

There was certainly plenty OF snow -- being everywhere -- but I am not kidding when I say it rained almost constantly Monday and Tuesday, the days during which I was there. Being out in the snow while it is raining is not the most pleasant experience in the world. Nevertheless, Monday afternoon, I decided it was necessary.

The reason it was necessary was this: I was at the chalet with a new French friend, who extremely kindly invited me to join her family there for a few days. The thing is, she has a younger brother and a younger sister, plus in the group was a little cousin, and the three of them would NOT stop arguing. More than that, the little cousin somehow managed to get chicken pox and would not stop crying. In a very small chalet, with no real room to escape, I can assure you that the noise, along with the sniping, was getting on my nerves -- I was always polite about it, I'll have you know, and so I suggested to my friend, Margaux, that we disappear.

So we went for a walk, that took us up and around, down into the snow to make angels, here and there, to a lake but not on it, as the ice was a little mushy from the rain, a random tiny church that is only open on tuesdays in July and August -- go figure -- and then finally back to the chalet. We were completely soaked by that time, but at least it was nice to get out for awhile. We needed it for that night, I can tell you that.

The next day was better, because mostly we weren't in the chalet. The morning we made snowmen and I endeavored to make the perfect snowman and then decorated it with only natural things, like sticks and pine branches etc. Of course it started raining less than an hour afterwards, so there you go. It's probably all gone now. In the afternoon we went sledding, which was great fun, if not extremely wet, because it was raining quite hard by then and didn't stop all afternoon.

The little cousin was getting better and the kids had all decided I was the cat's pajamas, so I somehow ended up entertaining all of them before dinner. I think the easiest way to get them to stop fighting -- though they tried often to restart -- is to just tell them it's not that serious. They kept sniping over the paper airplanes I'd made, and I just said, it's just an airplane, forget it. I never took anyone's side, so naturally they all assumed I was on their side. Works like a charm.

One thing always good, though, was the food. I ate for about four straight days -- breakfast of bread and crepes, full lunches, three course dinners, a hell of a lot of chocolate, cheese, some roasted chestnuts, you name it we had it. It was wonderful.

Wednesday we headed to Strasbourg, which was great fun. In the morning we actually made a stop to the pasta production factory where Margaux's dad works and took a tour -- got to see the whole process from start to finish, which was actually really, really cool. Then on to Strasbourg, which is a beautiful little city. Old, especially Petit France. I get the sense that it sleeps all year long and comes alive for the holidays, especially at night.

As it gets dark, the lights turn on -- and there are lights everywhere. Windows, streets, the little huts selling trinkets, ornaments, food, whatever it is. There is vin chaud and hot chocolate everywhere, gingerbread and bretzels, people -- essentially, Christmas. The town lives for this time of year, and I get the feeling that they're proud of it.

The cathedral, by the way, is utterly spectacular. Huge, gothic, built with the reddish stone of the countryside, it's extremely impressing. Inside tapestries are hung everywhere, there is a huge astrological clock, and of course a nativity scene. It was fairly dark, but still beautiful.

All in all, it was a great change of pace for me, and I'm very happy I went, even with all the sniping and crying ( which, to be fair, got better after Monday). I'm back in Paris now for the holidays and spent about four hours today at the coiffeur getting my hair done -- it was expensive, but I'm happy to report that after years of wanting it, I am now platinum blonde. Yahoo.

Bisous à tous.