Jungle Trekking

I knew it was a bad idea. When I first arrived in Cambodia last September, I spent a weekend at an ecolodge in the Cardamom Mountains and one afternoon decided to hike the surrounding forest. Rainy season was in full force and before we headed out the lodge manager mentioned in passing: “You will get leeches.” Stephen was wearing sandals. For $15 apiece, we spent the next two hours trudging through parasite-infested jungle, flicking off five to 10 of the bloodsucking parasites from our feet and ankles (and arms and backs and thighs and...) every few minutes. The rain poured and dense brush scraped our faces. When the hike finally ended at a nearby waterfall, we stripped off our clothes on the slippery rocks and a vowed to stay away from the Cambodian jungle for good.

So when I agreed to a three-day trek through Virachey National Park to write about the trip for my guidebook update in Travelfish, I wondered if I had signed up for a marathon session of the brief misery I had experienced months before. The leeches wouldn’t be as bad, I figured, since it’s only the beginning of rainy season. And I figured the payoff—seeing probably the most remote, unspoiled place I might ever visit in my lifetime and the views and wildlife that came with it—would be worth it. I was wrong.

We set out last Thursday morning with our guide, a former poacher-turned-park-ranger. We headed north, on motorbike, the 50-kilometer distance on winding, red clay roads, to the Sesan river where we’d boat into the jungle. The ride there was beautiful, passing steep hills, stilted villages, and endless cashew and rubber plantations. When we arrived at the river, I stood on the banks, looking out at nature. It was then that nature first attacked. Suddenly, I felt stinging pricks all over my body. I looked down and giant, red ants were crawling all over me. I’d chosen my lookout atop an ant hill. My guide and I rushed away, pulling frantically at our clothes and swatting the insects. It was an omen.

The two-hour boat ride, in a narrow, rickety, wooden boat that raised no more than a foot out of the water, was lovely. We arrived at our first destination in mid-afternoon. It was village of the minority Brou ethnicity that consisted of no more than six homes. One was a separate shed for homestay guests. We set up our beds—army-issue hammocks, and settled in for the day. The only thing to do was to watch the farm animals interact. I entertained myself picking out the alphas and watching them harass the smaller pigs and chickens. Males of all species are the same. Stephen attempted to interview some of the villagers for a story about illegal logging and poaching. We ate a hardy meal made from meat and vegetables packed in our guide’s backpack, I slipped myself a Dramamine to counteract the discomfort of sleeping with my feet pointing up and the nerves of the following day’s challenge.

The next morning, we headed into the park. After another, shorter boat ride, we left our boats behind and pulled on our leech socks—canvas boots that tie below the knee. Stephen’s had a big hole right at the ankle that our guide had failed to notice. He didn’t offer to swap, even after I suggested it. Apparently, $107 per person for the trip does not come with a guarantee of intact leech socks. My socks were twice the size of everyone else’s, fit for a burly male, although my ankles and calves are about the thickness of a seven-year-old boy’s.

“We came out of the jungle for a reason,” I thought, over and over again, as we walked, sloshing through ravines, climbing over dead trees, constantly pushing thick, wet tree branches aside. When I said it aloud to Stephen that night, he replied, “I’ve been waiting for you to say that.” After 10 months of living and working together every day, he knows my thoughts as well as I do.

The socks helped keep the leeches from getting to our flesh, but didn’t stop them from trying. Every few minutes, we’d stop and flick, stop and flick. Usually, they’d burrow between our socks and our shoes while we walked, waiting to climb upward when we stopped moving. We stopped for lunch beside a waterfall, removed leeches (one had wiggled inside Stephen’s shirt and stuck itself to the middle of his chest. The wound bled like a bullet to the heart). Then we swam in this far-away pool, in the middle of the jungle. It would be one of the only payoffs of the trip.

In the afternoon, we hiked uphill, over endless wet leaves and stagnant pools of water covered in black, slimy worms reaching upward toward our body heat. When I became tired, Stephen held my hand, half dragging me forward. Hours and 20 kilometers of walking later, we arrived at our camp beside another stream, where we bathed, de-leeched, ate, de-leeched, and slept again in a V. The tarps over our hammocks kept the night’s rain from coming inside, and I felt protected inside my bed, lifted above the hungry earth with a mosquito net shielding the malarial night jungle air. I thought of a baby, warm in its womb, and how it screams when forced to confront, for the first time, the bright, cold world. I heard rustling beneath me. Was it a sun bear? A tiger? I thought. No, our guide told us the next morning. Giant bamboo rats were foraging for food.

After another breakfast of instant noodles and vegetables, we headed out. More of the same—dense jungle, streams, wet leaves, and leeches. Like the day before, we spent part of the hike walking along the Ho Chi Minh trail, where, 30 years ago, Northern Vietnamese fighters transferred supplies and hid out from U.S. forces. The parallel lines where military truck tires once drove are still visible, though overgrown. Our guides pointed out rusted artillery and bombshells. I tried to appreciate it, but really, thought about the open sores on my feet from two days of walking in soaked sneakers stuffed with wet canvas.

We arrived at our final resting place, where we’d swim, eat, and board a boat back to civilization. I thought I’d feel a flood of relief, but it didn’t come. I just enjoyed taking off my shoes and washing in the cold, fast stream. We motored back. Our boat ran out of gas a few hundred yards from our destination, and we drifted slowly ashore. As we climbed off, I rushed past the red anthill, a savvier hiker by now, with only two toenails and a few ounces of blood missing.

Happy Khmer New Year

Happy New Year. In Cambodia, the year begins not on January 1, but in mid-April. Khmers ring in the occasion by throwing water and baby powder at each other. If you don’t want to “play,” I’m told, muster your extra-serious face when you ride past a group of kids throwing handfuls of powder and squirting water at each other. I tried this, and still returned home drenched and pasty.

My Khmer teacher, San, invited Stephen and me to join him and his family at their pagoda for the start of the holiday, which lasted three days between April 14 and April 16. Stephen and I awoke at 5:30 a.m. and discovered an abandoned city. Whereas Phnom Penh usually awakes with the sun every morning and is boisterous, dusty, and crowded every morning by 6 a.m., this morning it remained dormant. For holidays, Cambodians pour out of the capitol and return to their homelands in the countryside, clogging highways out of town but leaving the city itself blissfully tranquil for an entire week.

We convened at San’s house, where we met his sister Raksmeay, his brother Sang, and a few neighbors who accompanied us on the trip. We loaded up a tuk tuk with water, beer, and tins filled with tasty Khmer food, climbed in, and began the slow chug out of town. When we arrived at the pagoda, we encountered something that looked like a cross between Easter Sunday and a county fair. Hundreds of people crowded into the main temple, which is a massive, bare cement building still under construction. Others wandered around the grounds outside, buying snacks from food vendors and plastic toys from peddlers.

Inside the pagoda, people ran around completing what seemed like an endless list of ritual tasks distributing all the money and food they brought with them. First, they poured bags of uncooked rice onto a pile of rice—an offering to the monks. Then, they walked around spooning cooked rice into individual bowls of rice—another offering. Then there was the series of slots through which you insert riel (Cambodian money) or if you’re generous, USD. Raksmeay taught me how to conduct the rituals, and I by participated by placing a bouquet of lotus blossoms into an urn before a giant Buddha statue. Then a monk gave me a bracelet made of hot pink braided string as a blessing. I donated a few thousand riel in return (about 50 cents).

One of the monks-in-training there, praying over small children from a mat near the Big Buddha, was San’s father. After working 30 years as a taxi driver, he became sick and was forced to retire. He prayed and promised Buddha he would become a monk if he was healed. He recovered, and now he lives in a tiny wooden shack behind the pagoda. In a year or so, he’ll be able to move into the main monk’s quarters once he’s officially ordained. The family seemed distant from their dad and Raksmeay explained that soon, he will call his children “brother” and “sister” instead of “son” and “daughter” and, though they will remain family, he will no longer officially be considered their dad. He will be something higher, she said.

After visiting the pagoda, we headed out to the bustling, carnival-like grounds outside and enjoyed ice-cold bottles of Coca Cola. It was time for San and his siblings to pray to their dead grandfather, the pagoda’s head monk 50 years ago. San tells an odd story about how pineapple killed his grandfather. He ate it, began vomiting blood and immediately died. As a result, their entire family shuns the fruit. Khmer culture is filled with this kind of half-believable folklore. San’s grandfather’s remains rest in a monument just outside the pagoda, and the family gathered together to pray for him, offering his spirit some snacks and a handwritten note.

At lunchtime, we gathered under a shelter, sitting cross-legged on the tile floor, and feasted on dishes brought by San's family, as well as uneaten leftovers of dishes given to the monks, and crispy but scrawny chickens fried in pots along the dirt entrance to the temple. Later, we visited a hilltop temple, looking out over the country’s flat, dry rice fields. Then we stopped at another carnival-like pagoda, this one a mini replica of Angkor Wat. We played carnival games where popping balloons with darts wins you wholly practical prizes—-clothes hangers, washing basins.

We joined a group of kids dancing (incredibly self-consciously) to blaring pop music under a tent. A circle formed around my standout tall, pale body like some kind of ostracized genetic defect in an animal litter. Children and teenagers stared at this odd foreign specimen. I danced like the awkward white girl I am.

At the end of the day, we sputtered home on our tuk tuk, with a carnival prize--a bottle of dish soap.

Work, etc.

My posting frequency has been abysmal. My excuse is that I spend my days working...slowly. Since I'm perpetually overheated, it takes me three times longer to accomplish anything here than it did in go-go-go New York City. The only thing slower than my pace is the Cambodian internet connection.

This week, I spent my days trekking 45 minutes to and from the Khmer Rouge courthouse. I had a story in GlobalPost about the start of the trials and also co-authored a piece with Stephen about corruption in The Economist. This might cause our visas to be mysteriously revoked, but it was worth the risk. Enjoy.

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.