Vietnam By Train: Part IV

After trekking through the terraced mountains, we climbed back aboard the train, headed back to Hanoi, then south to Hué (pronounced Hway), a small city in the center of Vietnam, dense with history. It seems almost half the city is contained within the walls of the Citadel, the royal capital of Vietnam’s ousted monarchy.

Inside the stone gate, neighborhoods, moats, and pagodas all surround the Forbidden Purple City, the complex once accessible only to the Nguyen kings and his concubines and eunichs. I expected a maze of opulent palaces; I found a grassy field. Fighting during the American War 40 years ago virtually razed the Forbidden City, and like most things unrelated to the Communist party, little has been done to restore it.

The liveliest part of the grounds is the massive koi ponds near the main entrance, where young Vietnamese feed bread to giant fish who flap and scramble over each other, mouths agape, trying to catch the crumbs.

Beyond the palace, Hue is a city remembered for the horrors it endured during the Vietnam War. This legacy is still palpable. The Demilitarized Zone that separated the capitalist south and communist north for much of the mid-20th century is located a few dozen kilometers north. The city bore the brunt of battles along this border, and, today, disgruntled South Vietnamese veterans lead tours to the area, and openly discuss their anger with both the south and the Americans for their abandonment, and the north for their post-war “re-education camps” and prejudicial policies.

Other vets earn their living on the roadside, selling casings from exploded land mines and dog tags belonging, supposedly, to dead American soldiers. Its morbid tourism at its saddest, and made us wonder whether someday I’ll be touring the eastern region of Iran, that was once called Iraq, where locals scrape by selling Hum-V shrapnel. It's an odd mix of history, and one worth experiencing during a trip down Vietnam.

One of the best parts of the Hue visit was renting a motorbike and exploring the nearby surroundings. For $4, plus gas, I headed to Thuan An Bien Gua, a nearby island with chilly, empty beaches strewn with canoes and lined by giant, crashing waves. Equal parts stark and beautiful, fittingly, it looked like a movie set for a grim beach side battle.

Vietnam By Train: Part III

After returning to Hanoi from Halong Bay, we rode our first overnight train northwest to Sapa, the mountainous town famous for its proximity to Fansipan, Vietnam’s tallest mountain, and for the ubiquity of indigenous tribes.

Riding Vietnam’s national railroad is an experience in itself, and during my travels through the country, we slept on four trains. Cars range from whimsical, antique wooden boxes that look like something straight out of Darjeeling Limited to dingy, plastic cells with mattresses covered in hair.

True story—we found a bottle of warm urine resting on the windowsill in one of our rooms.

Once, our Vietnamese roommate snored louder than the locomotive engine. We also got screwed into paying the same for a six-bed car as others paid for a four-bed car. And unless you enjoy sleeping on a hard slab of plastic, stacked like Chinese businessmen in Kramer’s dresser, I suggest you always book a four-bed “soft bed” car.

Nonetheless, overnight trains are an efficient and fun way to experience the country. There’s nothing that says “I’m in Vietnam” quite like waking up at 6 a.m. to a touching story about Ho Chi Minh’s humble beginnings blaring from a speaker beside your head.

I arrived in Sapa, and walked out into the brisk mountain air. The town is frigid by Southeast Asia standards, and almost always foggy. Young Black Hmong women dressed in traditional woven dresses take tourists from the main town trekking through the villages that dot the mountainside.

Along the way, Hmong as well as ethnic Red Dzao villagers help you inch along the banks of terraced rice paddies. Small women with strong hands guided me along—a veritable giant compared to them—preventing me from falling face first into a muddy pool of water.

The villagers also try to sell you crafts—aggressively. Be prepared for a serious racket, although the people are equally helpful and welcoming as they are entrepreneurial. The prevalence of tourists has certainly changed the traditional way of life for the hill tribes, and one can make arguments that this is both good and bad.

Either way, most of the villages in the area remain outside the tourist path, and those inside it are trained businesspeople who are certainly doing well for themselves. Each of the villages closest to Sapa have many home stays, and by purchasing a $25 tour in town, you get a guide, a soft bed, three delicious meals, and an evening with a kind, welcoming family.

Vietnam By Train: Part 2

From Hanoi, we headed east to Halong Bay. More than 3,000 limestone islands jut out of the Gulf of Tonkin.
Like many UNESCO sites, the beauty of Halong Bay is constantly at odds with the ugliness of heavy tourism. Its adjacent city is the worst of rapid, unchecked development, with hideous high rises abutting massage parlors and slums. The bay itself is littered with “junk boats,” heavy wooden boats that ferry tourists through the maze of islands. The antique boats themselves look quite beautiful lumbering through the water, there is simply too many of them. Often, the iridescent glean of oil is visible on the water, and I floated past empty bottles and debris.

Tours through Halong usually cost between $32 and $56, and include three meals, transport from Hanoi, and an overnight junk boat stay. In our experience, there’s little difference between the cheaper and pricier rates. The only discernible distinction on our boat was that the first-class group was served a shrimp cocktail with their meal. Unless you’re willing to pay $30 for a shrimp cocktail, go cheap.

Tours also include stops at one of the bay’s many cliff-side caves and the use of kayaks. Paddling our small slab of buoyant plastic away from the crowds is probably the only time we could appreciate Halong’s beauty without throngs of fellow tourists. But the place is so freaking beautiful, it makes sense that so many people trek out to see it.

My travel companion is the kind of person who must always go the longest distance, paddle as far as we can, try and find the most beautiful, isolated spot, and really soak it all. He always challenges me to make the most of experiences, and although I sometimes complain in the process, I'm usually really grateful for it. This time, he paddled us both far from the crowd, where we enjoyed tasty bottles of Beer Hanoi and watched the sunset over the bay. It's a moment I'll remember for a long time.

Vietnam by train: part 1

Spoiled travelers around these parts often complain of desensitization. I still generally find myself in awe of the world and want to keep it that way. Still, I bet even the most seasoned whiners in Southeast Asia cannot deny the beauty of Hanoi. Although I'm sure they'll whine about all the hostels there these days.

For the first two weeks of January, Stephen and I traveled from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City by train. We flew from Phnom Penh to Hanoi, and, immediately, the Vietnamese capital exceeded all my expectations. We arrived in the midst of a pre-Tet (lunar New Year) celebration, and intricate, carefully manicured gardens and giant dragons made entirely of red chillis and flower blossoms lined the streets. Vendors lined the narrow streets, selling bowls of steaming pho and two-cent glasses of ice-cold local beer. In the midst of all these pleasures are constant reminders of the country's history and political state. Political propaganda—posters, flags, and images of Ho Chi Minh’s face are plastered virtually everywhere.

Other than all the giant, red signs, green is the most common color in Hanoi. In Asia, the “pave paradise, put up a parking lot” ethos is often an unironic way of life. Historic buildings are demolished and replaced with high rises; lakes filled and parks razed to make way for new developments. In Vietnam, a country that spent most of the last century at war, it’s amazing that its centuries-old architecture—and trees—somehow managed to survive.

Whenever we travel, Steve usually develops an objective/obsession with one sight he wants to see. In Hanoi, this was Ho Chi Minh’s Mosoleum. Arrive early. We learned this lesson the hard way, showing up too late one morning and having to return a few days later. Visitors can view the preserved corpse of communist Vietnam’s founder from 8 to 10 a.m. every day of the week except Monday. Locals take the ritual seriously, and dress in formal attire. After viewing the body, which resembles a Madam Tussaud’s wax replica, we headed to the adjacent Ho Chi Minh Museum, which is open all day, and contains loads of interesting war-era documents and artifacts, as well as odd modern art installations exalting the communist struggle. This is no place for someone who finds a particular political ideology offensive. Nor is Vietnam, for that matter.

After the mausoleum, Lenin Park is probably the second-biggest and most ornate homage to communism. It is anchored by a giant statue of the father of Soviet Russia, communist Vietnam’s benefactor and great friend. Inside, groups of women in track suits practiced aerobics in unison, kids played soccer, and lovers cuddled on benches looking out over Bay Mau Lake. In other parks around town, we spotted old men in fedoras and berets sitting on the sidewalks playing Tien Len, a traditional Vietnamese card game. We also saw a mid-day cockfight.

Beautiful Khmer women and the men who exploit them

Ubiquitous sights in Asia include motorbike drivers in surgical masks, face moles with hairs measuring several inches, and pot-bellied white men in stained t-shirts and man-sandals holding hands and walking beside beautiful Asian women (or girls) wearing short skirts and sad, vacant expressions.

As I write in a breezy, outdoor café called Green Mango, two white guys sit across from young Khmer girls at nearby tables. The sight usually makes me indignant. I know Westerners and Khmers can fall in love. But why is the Westerner is almost always an old dude snagging himself a much younger Cambodian girlfriend? Of course, professional, non-sexpat men here have Cambodian girlfriends and wives. I know some of them—they’re journalists and lawyers and businesspeople. I simply find it hard to believe that in addition to vast cultural differences and language barriers, you can find deep, meaningful connection with someone 30 years your junior.

Now, the idea that a great relationship comes out of a “deep, meaningful” connection is of course a Western construct. Why can’t a relationship be pragmatic, with each person contributing what he or she has to offer (money/security, sexiness/delicious amok)? I suppose it can. Perhaps it’s American women's addiction to romantic comedies that makes us so stuck on the idea of true love. And perhaps my belief in this myth is the reason I feel so quick to admonish the pairing of the gross-old-dude/beautiful-young-girl-without-many-options. I have the privilege to pursue romance.

So my whole premise is in part based on imbedded Paternalism. I want to pull those girls away from those men, tell the guys “Shame on you,” and teach the girls they have other choices than laying underneath that slob. Trouble is, they sometimes don’t. And moreso, even if they do have alternatives, many would prefer the life they’ve chosen. Ultimately, isn’t that their right? Nicolas Kristoff, the Times columnist, has set off a firestorm of criticism recently for his assertion that sweatshops help the world's poor. Perhaps even more incindiary was his attempt to play savior a few years ago, when he bought two teenage sex-workers in Cambodia from a brothel. One of the girls went straight back to her madam. This is the problem of meddling without offering a sustainable alternative. These women surely would've benefited more from membership in a union for sex workers and free health care than from Kristoff's misguided attempts to play God.

Before I left the United States, I sat on a flight from New York City to Buffalo, flipping through the channels on JetBlue TV. I landed on Dateline, whose addictive formula of luring sad characters to a house and then parading their depraved desires before millions of viewers has become a cultural phenomenon. Few stop to analyze what appeals to them about watching a show about men who want to have sex with children, but I think that bizarre double-standard deserves a proper assessment by a team of social psychologists.

This particular week, Chris Hansen & Co. had organized a Cambodia-specific “How to Catch a Predator.” It focused on a village outside Phnom Penh whose main export is virgins. I watched in horror at the country I was about to call home. Thousands of pedophiles visit the town, and others in Cambodia, annually, to have sex with children, often as young as infants. Tens of thousands more come to have sex with teenagers and young women and men. It seems as though every other day, we read in the paper about an arrest of a man accused of sleeping with 17 minors.

The question is, how do we balance a gut-instinct revulsion to exploitation with letting adults make their own choices? Relationships between two opportunistic adults becomes muddied in a place where child abuse and violence against women is often met with impunity. Recently, Cambodia started cracking down on prostitution. Their approach—busting brothels and arresting the prostitutes—does nothing to protect the women. It just adds to their daily risk of assault. Newspaper reports of police gang raping arrested prostitutes are common.

This is the reality of Cambodia, no need for Dateline sensationalism. It’s maddening and saddening, and makes me wonder if it’s at all possible to convert my indignance into something productive.

American and proud

I never felt more earnest than I did on Wednesday night. I went to a Democrats Abroad party at an English pub in town to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama, and, oddly, few Americans filled the room. Most of the hordes of NGO workers, Khmer Rouge tribunal interns, and, like myself, journalists, hailed from Australia or Canada, with a few Swedes and Germans in the mix. Per usual, they found Americans’ wide-eyed patriotism at best, naïve, and at worst, silly.

Yet they packed into that bar to watch the inauguration in impressive numbers. They jeered when a comically menacing looking Cheney rolled onto the podium and they cheered when the Obamas emerged. It sounded as though Manchester United was battling Liverpool on those big screens. Between the outburts, conversations continued. I strained to hear the new president’s speech over the disinterested chatting and occasional snickering after Obama made a particularly highfalutin statement.

As a liberal American living overseas, I’ve encounters strange, new emotions. I spent years living in a conservative town, arguing against an unquestioned belief in America’s supreme moral authority. Suddenly, I’m confronted with a strong and urgent desire to defend my country. Or at least to defend Americans. When someone taking a census of the crowd came around to see who comprised it, she asked if anyone at my table was American. “God no,” most of the Aussies replied in one way or another. It’s still socially acceptable to disdain my citizenship, even at an inauguration party for my president. I’m the white man, the patriarch, the oppressor, the girl from the bossy country that can’t mind its own business.

I’m also the citizen of a country that used to own black people and now elected one as president. And what makes me even prouder, I’m the citizen of a country who elected a proud intellectual, a man who sees nuance in the world and tries to make sense of it, who speaks to the educated, who values professors alongside “Joe the Plumber.”

Now, any derision I must endure overseas as an American has vastly diminished since Obama was elected. I shouldn’t complain. Cambodians and Vietnamese usually respond with “Obama!” now when I tell them I’m an American. When I studied abroad in Australia in 2004—in one of the few countries that sided with the U.S. on the Iraq invasion—my accent alone incited a shocking amount of contempt. I was treated as though I single-handedly campaigned for and secured the election of George W. Now, the rest of the world, cynical Europeans included, seem to feel as though this one man will positively impact their lives. I expect to be asked to personally answer on Obama's behalf whenever he falls short of these hopes.

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.