Christmas in Cambodia

Someone else once spent his Christmas in Cambodia. It was John Kerry, and his holiday memories are the reason he lost the 2004 presidential election and stuck us with a bonus four years of George W. Bush:

"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."

This is the claim that Kerry's comrades disputed. They say his ship never entered Cambodia. Never mind that few soldiers admitted to taking part in a secret and illegal war with Cambodia. It became accepted fact that Kerry, like most Democrats, was yellow.

I spent my first Christmas in Cambodia exactly forty years after Kerry did (or didn’t, depending who you believe). Thankfully, there are no bullets flying past my head. The country is at peace, though only because its populace is willing to accept a semi-totalitarian and totally corrupt government.

Unlike its shady, 30-years-of-war-causing dealings that Kerry described, America today has an overt presence in Cambodia. And that presence comes in the form of… Stuff. At Lucky, the overpriced grocery store in the center of Phnom Penh, discarded Christmas items cover discount shelves. On one, someone had peeled back the foil on a tray of chocolate Santas, broken off the heads, and folded the foil back over. On another, there were melted giant Hershey kisses with their points caved in, victims of the long journey from who-knows-where. This is probably the farthest place Hershey ships to. It's the periphery of Western encroachment, a place where few people speak English but every waiter wears a Santa hat.

I spent the day, like a true expat, with a group of fellow foreigners--temporary orphans--filling in as one another's family for the day. We ate turkey and wondered where in this country one finds a bird with this much meat on its bones. It's probably imported.

Covering the tribunals

I have a story on Law.com’s new international page today.

I enjoyed getting the chance to write a longer piece about the tribunals and the insanity I witnessed at the post-trial press conference last week. Jacques Verges, egomaniac, thespian, and subject of last year’s documentary “Terror’s Advocate” delivered his trademark histrionics and managed to rouse victims close to violence. Among the outlandish quotes that didn’t make it into the story:


·“I do not wear the slippers of a servant.” (Jacques Verges, implying that the court has somehow belittled him.)

·“I have been trying all my life to work for my country and now things have worked out differently and I am being charged with crimes against humanity. I never understood why there are so many documents that implicate me. I asked the guards and they say it is because I have written so many books.” (Khieu Samphan, tribunal defendant and the Khmer Rouge’s former head-of-state.)

·“If there was no Pol Pot regime, I could be a lawyer or an economist like you all.” (Ly Monysak, a Khmer Rouge victim who resides in a mental institution.)

·“If things do not improve, I will call al Qaeda and ask them to come here and commit a terrorist attack.” (Monysak)

·“If I could tear him away and eat him and it wasn’t against the law, I would do so now. (Sok Chea, a Khmer Rouge victim, referring to Kheiu Samphan’s Cambodian lawyer, Sa Sovan.)

The anger exhibited at these hearings, stemming from more than 30 years of delayed justice and prodded by Verges, was both heart-wrenching and terrifying. The experience and the story hopefully helps prepare me to cover the tribunals for GlobalPost when it launches in January.

Cheering for Obama with Cambodians

I wrote a similar piece to the story below for Southeastern Globe, a magazine here in Cambodia. It chronicles my bizarre election results experience. They requested a ‘humor’ piece and I was terrified. Asking people questions, writing down what they say, and condensing it into a story is easy. Writing funny is hard, and often falls flat. Below is my stab at it:

A basketful of McCain-Palin ’08 pins sat outside the entrance of the United States presidential election results banquet at the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh on November 5. The receptionist, after directing me to sign in, pointed to the leftover shwag. “Sorry, that’s all we have left,” she apologized. Damn, I thought. Greedy, liberal hands other than my own greedy, liberal hands had already picked out all the Barack Obama buttons.

Then I remembered how campaign paraphernalia from failed presidential bids become quirky relics that impress hipster circles back home in New York City. I still needed to go inside and watch the outcome of the election, but I had a hunch McCain pins were about to become fashionable, so I slipped one in my pocket.

Inside the reception hall, red, white and blue helium balloons, American flags and a solitary Cambodian flag lined a three-story atrium. Cambodian officials in collared shirts and dress shoes mingled with white reporters and NGO workers in short sleeves and jeans. The disparate crowd made awkward attempts at conversation.

Most of the foreigners, myself included, discussed their hopes for a President Obama. The democratic candidate won a mock election at the event, garnering 72 votes to John McCain’s 25. The Cambodians seemed less enthused. A recent Gallup poll of 73 countries ranked Cambodia the third most apathetic country toward the U.S. election, after India and Pakistan. Eighty-six percent of Cambodians reported no preference toward either candidate.

The dullness reverberating through the room that Wednesday morning reflected this attitude. It resembled a trade convention for a boring industry. For the amount of attention paid to the two giant screens projecting CNN, they could’ve depicted a PowerPoint presentation on insurance statistics. More attendees focused on the food than the screens, scooping scrambled eggs from steaming silver trays and nibbling tuna finger sandwiches.

In 20 years, members of my generation will reflect on where they stood when Barack Obama won the presidency. I can tell my children: “I was leaning against a buffet table, eating a bran muffin, letting the crumbs fall onto a saucer below my chin, and talking to an official about the decline in traffic violations.”

It wasn’t until I walked back over to the screens that I saw the flashing “Obama elected president of the United States” banner. The audience had made no audible reaction. The muffled murmur of chatting voices and the strums of a six-piece string orchestra silenced the broadcasters’ voices. The orchestra continued playing as McCain gave his concession speech. A few minutes later, the screens showed Obama stepping onstage in Chicago. The orchestra played on until an Embassy employee stopped them.

“We invited the people who would be directly affected by the outcome of this election,” U.S. Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Piper Campbell told me.

One of the officials I met, Legal Aid of Cambodia’s executive director Peung Yok Hiep, disagreed that it made much of a difference to her. Little of her organization’s funding comes from America, she said. She asked me how many candidates were in the running and whether Barack Obama’s wife was Spanish.

I longed to be surrounded by partisan Americans. I wanted jubilation, cheering, a high-five. Cambodians are more cautious. They doubt leaders can change their day-to-day lives. More than anything, they appreciate a free buffet. The air of pragmatism wafting through the room that morning killed my Obama buzz.

As I walked out, I chatted with Sarith Moun, a freshman at Pannasastra University of Cambodia. His professor selected 10 students from a political science class to attend. Sarith enjoyed watching the results, he explained, and liked Obama. Even better, he added—he got to miss class.

Touring Angkor

Travels, story deadlines, and editing work in Bangkok consumed the past month. Suddenly it’s early December and I’m approaching my three-month mark in Cambodia. I live here now, but still feel like there is so much to learn--like an entire language outside greetings, directions, and the numbers one through 20.

At home in Buffalo a month before my departure, my mom, brother and I sat flipping through TV channels. We stopped on the Travel channel, where a group of Canadian men in tank tops were in the midst of traveling the "exotic" lands of Cambodia. They actually used the term several times. I learned the 10,000 reasons to never use the word—-or consider new people or places—-exotic by second semester freshman year. It's step one in avoiding the ignorant expat moniker. One guy proceeded to introduce the concept of curly hair to the natives by pointing to his head, and shouting incessantly, "curly hair!"

He walked through Angkor Wat with a Lonely Planet guide in hand, a land mine pictured on the cover. Inside Ta Prohm, the famous temple where giant tree roots sprout from the ruins, he ran into that very man, bent at the waist, still shuffling along with his cane. The Canadian is star struck. He asked for the (illiterate) man's autograph. The old man looked at him, bewildered.

Sure, these guys are caricatures of the bad traveler. But someone decided to give them a TV show and, until I can find a way to scrub off my pasty white skin and all the assumptions that come with it, I'm just like them.

In the first weeks of October, my friend Julia flew out to visit, and we traveled northwest to Angkor Wat. While most trekked destinations fail to live up to the hype, this one exceeded my expectations. Enormous teak and bayon trees line the temple park. They seem almost as old as the buildings themselves. Outside the enormous, crumbling structures, limbless men and women and small children beg for change. It struck me that an ancient city built on the backs of slaves leaves out the poor today. A private company somehow owns the national treasure, and the $20 per day park entrance fee goes toward the profits of a firm called Sokimex.

The trip involved ignoring a lot of unpleasantries. It also involved climbing over loose stones and learning about the buildings' carvings. Apsaras—celestial nymphs—adorn many of the buildings, especially Banteay Srei, or “citadel of the women,” because, as our guide explained, the temple is modest in size but the craftsmanship exceeds all the others. They assume women built it. Plus, it’s covered in Apsaras and made of pink sandstone. We visited it in the pouring rain (the angry, multi-directional kind mentioned above) and even that failed to diminish the temple’s beauty.

On the way back to Phnom Penh, we took a boat from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, down the Tonle Sap, the only river in the world that flows two ways, depending on the season. Whole fishing villages float on tires and empty barrels, hundreds of feet from either shore on this wide river that starts out as a lake. As commonly happens here, the government is trying to push these people out of their homes.

Survival of the fittest

The rain here is angry. Whenever a black cloud moves in and the sky lets, I remember Forrest Gump’s description of the rain in Vietnam.

We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin' rain... and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.

Indeed, it almost seems to come up from the ground. Sheets of water fall so heavily and continuously that it’s impossible to see where they begin and end.

The other night, Stephen and I left our apartment on his bicycle. As he pedaled, we felt a few drops. After five minutes, the sky opened up, and we, along with a few dozen Cambodians, crowded underneath the awning at a nearby gas station, waiting for the onslaught to slow. Finally it did and we enjoyed a fun night. The next morning, I awoke with a raw, red patch on the crease of my arm. It felt like a burn. By day two, the patch, which resembled a butterfly, had turned blistery and raised, prompting everyone I encountered to say, “What happened to you?!”

I have no idea what happened, but hypothesize that, because of its shape and appearance, some kind of chemical dripped onto my arm during the night of the rainy bike ride. The oddest part is that the whole experience didn’t faze me much. It looks as though it will scar. I have the tramp stamp on my arm, a souvenir from Cambodia.

Pain thresholds heighten here. And dominance, out of necessity, is unapologetic. People kick whining dogs, mothers drag children through the markets, frogs, rabbits, rats, and who knows what else come served in everyday cuisine. Initially, the brutality upset me. As a kid, I frantically scooped drowning moths from my swimming pool. Now, I grip an electrified bug zapper, shaped like a racket, in one hand, and an enormous can of Raid in the other. It’s that or let them feast upon my thin, white flesh. When I spray a trail of ants heading toward my refrigerator or stomp on a roach hidden behind my TV, I feel a thrill, no remorse.

As I write this, sitting on my front porch at 10 o’clock at night, a bat flew into my apartment and flapped frantically around until it found its way back out the way it entered. I shrieked and ran to the corner. I guess I’m not that tough after all.

Kampong Cham

Last weekend, Stephen and I traveled to Kampong Cham so I could write an update for Travelfish, a Southeast Asia travel guide. We spent three days in the city, and its quiet streets and calm boardwalk along the Mekong River offered a respite from dusty, fluorescent Phnom Penh.

The editor tasked me with visiting all the hotels, restaurants, and sights of the city, an enjoyable experience but also stressful on the time constraints. We rented a moto and drove through narrow, tree-lined Cham (Muslim Cambodians of Malay descent) villages with marshland and distant pagodas to the left and the river to the right.

First we visited Han Chay, a series of pagodas and a monastery set atop a steep hill. At one part, the hill drops off and dozens of cows, their sallow, white backs hunched over, chomp on brush. At another, anatomically correct statues of wild animals and mythical beasts dot a small garden area and path. We spoke to a monk briefly; he held the cigarette he was smoking behind his back the entire time. Stephen climbed a tall, flagless flagpole stuck into a platform that jutted out from the hillside.

Afterward, we drove to a monkey-covered pagoda set atop another steep hill. Next to it, we found an old Vietnam War-era air strip, only recognizable because of the width and flatness of the stone path. A decaying pillbox rested on the sloping hill next to it. Inside the crumbling stone walls, we found feces, some garbage, and views of the hills. As we drove down the pebble-lain runway, our tire popped for the second time that day, and we wheeled the moped two the nearest village. There, a woman with a round, pregnant belly, poured liquid rubber on the hole and ignited the mixture to fuse it. Fumes swirled up toward her unmasked face.

As we waited for her to finish the job, a crowd formed. Whenever our two, big white bodies lumber into a rural village, we cause quite the commotion. I feel a bit like E.T. after he’s discovered by humans. The kids told me their names, and we pointed to features on our faces and exchanged our words for them. A little boy pulled out a magic marker and drew the face of a white woman on a cement column near the side of the road. Stephen helped a little girl, maybe 7, take a huge, rusty saw to a giant slab of ice. We returned to town, argued with our lender about how much we should pay for his defective moto, and fell asleep.

The next day, we finished my Travelfish research by completing the arduous task of visiting the remaining sights of the town. It’s still a bit surreal that someone has agreed to pay me for this, even if it’s not much. We traveled downriver to another well-known Wat. Behind a massive temple was a small, crumbling wooden pagoda, painted blue. The Khmer Rouge attempted to destroy it in the late 1970s, but most of the paint has been scraped off to reveal depictions of traditional Khmer life and tales of Buddhist morality. Behind the temples, we found more animal statues, and, among them, live cows and horses. We met a few of the monks, as well as two men sipping a sweet, refreshing liquid tapped from the tree they sat beside. They offered me their cup and I tasted a sip.

Then we rode the boat further downriver and visited a weaving village. Underneath most of the stilted homes, young girls through old women sat at long looms, weaving together strands died bright purples, greens, and reds. They look like organists with their delicate feet maneuvering foot pedals attached to ropes that manipulate the loom’s movement. Stray dogs surrounded us, notifying their kind farther ahead that strange-looking two-leggers had descended onto their turf. A herd surrounded us, barking and snarling, their matted fur flecked with mud and bugs, their overused teats hanging down.

I felt relieved to leave the village filled with nice people and nasty canines. In general, the dogs here seem better taken care of than in other poor countries. Fewer strays, more pets. The ones we encountered that day scared the crap out of me. We left later that day on a bus back to Phnom Penh.

Public domain

A Cambodian couple in Prey Veng province decided to divorce last week. To divide their assets, they sliced their stilted hut cleanly in half. The ex husband took his piece and moved it to his mother’s lawn. This seems (and looks) absurd. Practically, it makes some sense. Most Cambodians’ possessions begin and end with their homes and its contents. Space is communal. Even the space immediately surrounding your body.

I sat at a café today, eating lunch and using the free WiFi, and the waitress stood behind me, both hands planted on the back of my chair, the entire time. Reasons for this are twofold. One, personal space is non-existent here and waiters stand beside the table waiting for you to read the menu, observing you paying the bill. Hovering is standard practice. Secondly, most restaurants and bars employ far more workers than there is work to be done. This leaves hired help standing around idly, waiting for tasks.

Surely, this has to do with the low price of labor and the minuscule wages paid to these eager-but-abundant employees. And those working in the food/entertainment sector are far better off than factory workers. Earning $5 a day working at a restaurant in Phnom Penh sure beats the average annual per capita salary of about $571.

Just another naïve idealist

A few days later, I returned to the orphanage. It was the last day of Prachum Ben, a 15-day holiday in which families bring food to their local pagoda so monks can pray on behalf of their ancestors stuck in the spirit world. The children with families had stayed home that day, as did the other volunteers, apparently.

Only the orphans remained. I walked up to the building, Ma and Ly, two six-year-old boys about the size of two-year-olds, holding each of my hands. Svay Lin, the “teacher,” nervously approached me. “Sameth is drunk,” she said. I misheard her, I thought. The kind, responsible man who runs the orphanage surely was not drunk at 2 p.m. on a religious holiday. I walked over to Sameth.

“I’m sorry,” he slurred. “I’m drunk.” Awesome.

I didn’t want to say “it’s ok.” It came out of my mouth anyway. My allowances in the name of cultural sensitivity stop at the caretaker of 12 orphans getting blackout drunk on a Tuesday afternoon. Maybe it’s because, as a child, I watched in terror as Carol Burnett stumbled around in her nightgown wielding a bottle of booze as the mean Mrs. Hennigan in one of my favorite movies, “Annie”. Sameth destroyed my briefly held image of his altruism. Afterward, I wondered…Embezzler? Pedophile? Both?

The kids laughed and pointed at Sameth. Being drunk is funny, they explained. No, it will make you sick and it will make you stupid, I explained, using simple English words I knew they understand. They nodded. A 14-year-old boy said proudly, “I don’t drink.” That is the extent of drug and alcohol instruction they will probably ever receive (not that it does much good in the U.S.). And my brief lecture will surely make no impact.

I proceeded to lead them to a smaller area upstairs to teach my first English class. The kids are eager to learn and listen well. Svay Lin, a bright girl, adept at English, studied in the corner. We drew animals and identified them, acted them out, and used them in sentences. We labeled objects. We made sentences. We sang songs that used English words. Then we played a few games. When it came time for me to leave, I climbed down the ladder to the bottom level. Sameth lay passed out across the children’s desks, mouth agape. And I left them there, with this, their chaperone, feeling guilt-stricken and helpless. I will return next week.

'Saving' children in Asia

The other day, I watched a boy, maybe three years old, standing barefoot in the middle of a major intersection in Phnom Penh. He kicked around a small, blue plastic bag as his sister, holding an infant, begged tuk tuk passengers for change.

Childhood is a luxury afforded only to some. Me, for example. Last week, I spent my first day at “Save Children in Asia Organization,” a tall order for a one-room orphanage about 20 minutes outside the Phnom Penh city center. A German man at an Internet café had told me about the place and encouraged me to volunteer. I envisioned a respite where children’s youths are preserved from the horrors of living without a mother in a Third World country.

The day began when I hired a motodup to take me out of town. The driver, who looked like the Cambodian Morgan Freeman, spoke no English whatsoever, and responded to my instructions with a bellowing, nervous laugh. Since my Khmer vocabulary includes the words for yes, no, left, right, and thank you, jointly navigating our way to the tiny orphanage on a hidden path off a no-name dirt road required stopping to ask for directions at nearly every intersection.

When we finally pulled up, a herd of children ran over and began grabbing at my hands and introducing themselves. Ma, Ly, Svay Lin, and about a dozen others. They must be incredibly used to scrungy-looking barangs people dropping by, looking for a good story to tell friends back home, I thought. Or else, they’re starved for adult interaction. I decided it was probably some combination of the two.

Two other white people sat on benches inside the one-room schoolhouse. Walker, a short, 20-something American guy with a lisp (who, back in Phnom Penh later that night, I saw fly past me on the back of a pickup truck, horsing around with a bunch of drunken friends). And Chris, a 50ish Englishman with brown teeth and weathered skin. The only other adult there was Sambeth, the orphanage’s founder, a wiry Cambodian with a wide smile and perfect teeth. He explained the organization’s history to me. He collected homeless children from various provinces during the past three years and officially opened the facility’s doors in April. He offered me a large plate of rice with a bowl of broth filled with leafy greens and animal bones.

Soon, neighborhood children arrived to participate in the afternoon class, about 30 kids who would return home to their mother and father afterward, leaving the remaining dozen behind. After the adults and children finished eating, class began. Walker, a TESOL-certified instructor, taught with the school’s main teacher—a 16-year-old Cambodian girl. Chris wrote on the dry erase board. I observed.

Walker struggled to teach pronunciation. “One, two, three, four, five, thix, theven, eight,” he said. The children repeated. When it came time to practice months of the year, Chris misspelled February. Twice.

The class exhibited why Cambodia’s president, Hun Sen, criticized NGO work in his marathon four-and-a-half hour speech last week. It seems that with foreigners trying their best to make a difference here, earnestness comes first, competence second. As a journalist who hopes to write about a country she entered two weeks ago, I am conscience of the problem every day.

A barang arrives

I left New York for Phnom Penh, via Buffalo and San Francisco, in mid-September. My reincarnation from New York law reporter to international journalist began. After arriving at the airport, I sat on my suitcase, eating almonds, reading, and breathing in the dusty afternoon air, and waited for my ride. I chatted with the guy at Duty Free and the taxi drivers, who taught me my first bits of Khmer. I shared my almonds with one of them. The other raced over with their hands out.

Like New York, Phnom Penh more tasty-sounding restaurants than I can possibly try. Like New York, the people are smart and confident. And like New York, it's full of contradictions. The streets of Phnom Penh show it best. About three-fourths of the automobiles on the roads are motos or bicycles. The others--Lexus SUVs with giant "Lexus" decals affixed to the sides (in case their was any confusion about its pricetag). Children run alongside tuk tuks begging for change and mothers pick through garbage on the street curbs with their infants loosely tied to their backs in front of pristine, imposing government buildings and car dealerships. Like most developing countries, the chasm between rich and poor is vast. The "emerging middle class" people discuss is bit of a myth.

It seems Western journalists, tourists, and NGO workers fill that void. Go to any mid-range restaurant or hotel, and find a prominence of white people. The familiarity is comforting and gives me more chances to make new friends, though I must admit that everyone travels to get away from their kind, not to encounter loads more of them.

The next after arriving, we traveled to the Cardamom Mountains to stay at The Rainbow Lodge along the Kep River. A woman named Janet runs the place. Last year, she says, she quit her job as a barrister in Birmingham, England to start an eco lodge in the jungles of Cambodia. We were the only guests. Her attention to detail was meticulous and a bit overbearing. We ate meals with her and learned every detail of her life story. We think she opened the lodge just for the company.

We kayaked up the river to a small waterfall, climbed around, swam, and paddled back. We gorged on Janet and her helper Saran's dishes of fresh, local foods. The next day we foolishly decided to take a trek to the more impressive TaiTai falls with Janet's helper, Mr. Lei, a former park ranger. We should've known what we were in for when her mangy rottweiller, Sunny, turned back from the hike.

It started with a 15-minute vertical climb. We grabbed at roots, some unattached, and I dug my toes into any nook I could find to keep from sliding to my death (or at least to a painful broken limb). That was the easiest part. Once at the top, they struck. Janet had warned us--"You will get leeches." Having already agreed to the trek and hanging out with my "don't be a wimp" boyfriend, I refrained from saying "WHAT?! Nevermind then." Plus, I had long pants and sneakers on and figured I would be relatively safe and I figured she meant we'd spot one or two of them. Wrong.

First, they hit Stephen, who, in his constant quest to be a minimalist, only brought shorts and sandals. Leeches on his feet, ankles, between his toes. Little black worms raised their fat bodies skyward from the wet ground, reaching out for human flesh as soon as they felt the warmth of our bodies approaching. When Stephen stopped to flick them off, more inched over. We had to keep moving. Then they found me. I lifted a pant leg, just to check, and spotted four or five, on each ankle, climbing down my pants and up my socks to their feast. I screamed. I felt violated. Disgusted. Terrified. Stephen flicked and yanked at them. The little buggers are tough to get off.

For two hours, I moved as quickly as I could through the uncleared path, climbing under brush less than a foot above the ground, trying to keep my bare hands from touching the hungry earth. We ran through stagnant puddles of water and soggy patches of rotting foliage. We saw no wildlife (though there are elephants, tigers, and gibbons in the forest), only leeches, beetles, dense brush, and mud. In my haste, I hit my head three times and was poked in the eye with a stick. Rain poured the entire time, making the habitat under my clothing all the more hospitable to the life forms making their homes there.

Finally, after two grueling hours, Mr. Lei, machete in hand, cleared a path to the waterfall. It was beautiful. I didn't care. I was grateful for the smooth patch of rock where I could strip off my clothes and rid myself of the worms. Two more on the backs of my legs. One more on my inner thigh, that jerk, about to really ruin my day. Stephen pulled out a long sliver stuck in my forehead. Refusing to return to the jungle, we decided to swim downstream, despite the frothy water and strong current leading away from the waterfall. Drowning was preferable to going back in.

Beside whacking my legs on a couple rocks, it worked out fine. A boy from the lodge met us in a boat at the foot of the falls with a packed lunch. Our reward. We ate sandwiches, popcorn, fruit, and drank soda water and Angkor beer. I felt like I'd been through a war, or at least a grueling episode of Survivor that people watch so they can think "Thank God that's not me" from their living room couches.

The next day we returned to Phnom Penh. We began our apartment search, which is a nice break from New York prices ($280 for a large porch, two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, all furnishings), but haven't yet found the perfect place in the right location. Last night, I had dinner with a girl, Erica, who left her job at a giant law firm for an internship at a local paper here. Her move makes me feel less gutsy. We met up with my boyfriend Stephen and his friend Adam, played a few rounds of pool and went to a bar called Heart of Darkness. Armed guards at the door frisked entrants for weapons. It turned out to be tamer than expected, just a few small Cambodian men dancing closely in one of the few places where they can release their repressed feelings.