I leave Cambodia feeling sad. I don’t feel sad to leave, but rather I am infused with a profound sadness from what I saw over the past ten days. I have much the same feeling as I did after living in Guatemala: the scars of recent history’s horrors are still bleeding through this country. And how could they not be?
Here are eight elements that will likely strike a [...Read More!]
There is a toxic lake at the heart of Phnom Penh. If you swim in it, your flesh may sizzle, or perhaps the effects will cancerously explode in a few years. Regardless, though naked children slide through the brownest rivers of the Cambodian side roads, there is not a soul amid the silvery waves of Boeung Kak Lake.
Naturally, this is where I spent my first night in Phnom Penh.
Ponder: If you’re traveling alone, how do you get yourself in your photos? Here’s a buffet of options.
1. Hold that arm out, grin at the wobbling lens, then click! This usually eats about forty shots before more of your face than your top hair tuft appears in the resulting photo. Furthermore, your big honkin’ head will inevitably totally obscure the cool tourist attraction behind you. Hypothetically, if [...Read More!]
The public bathrooms in Angkor Wat temple complex are some of the most luxurious in Asia. That is to say, they are not holes in the ground, but rather Western-style toilets that you sit on! Sometimes the seats are clean! They have toilet paper and soap! You still can’t throw the toilet paper in the bowl because the pipes can’t handle it (it goes in the trash [...Read More!]
Bayon… At first it looks like a mountain-sized pile of stones. Then you realize– holy heaven!– there are over two hundred faces watching you from every surface of the temple!! Look carefully at some of the photos or click to enlarge them. Can you see them looking back at you?
The four massive gates guarding the entrance to Angkor Thom complex also contain four faces looking outward in different [...Read More!]
His tiny form flitted past the hole in the stone wall so fast I thought he might be a forest spirit. But then there he was again: sparkling eyes, tiny body in a grubby orange shirt, barefoot… He disappeared again, and I was ten minutes further into the thick jungle path to the next temple when he materialized right beside me.“Hello lady!” he said with a smile. “This used [...Read More!]
Kiss! Kisskisskiss! Kiiiiissss!!
I spent a good two hours of the bus ride from Bangkok to Poipet gazing three seats ahead at the Cambodian mother kissing her sweet baby. Ahh, the flutter of my heart and the patter of that good old biological clock!
The mother would kiss all up and down the baby’s soft, pudgy arm, then go, “Mumumum!” as she nibbled up the tiny caramel-colored fingers. [...Read More!]
At four thirty am, my cellphone alarm exploded me awake in my ridiculous supply attic room (pictured left– no joke).Was a torrential lightning storm going to foil my plans like yesterday morning? There are no windows in my supply attic room, so I padlocked the door and barefooted down to the second floor to peer out the grated balcony. Clear! Dark! This meant ten minutes to throw [...Read More!]
In Phuket, Thailand, I spent some creepy time chatting with womanizing older German men. They all had twenty-something year old Thai girlfriends already, but they had big other plans.
“Every day vee play Poker together,” said Hans with a leer, “And vee put money in a pot. Vhen we have a full pot, you know vhat we do?” I didn’t know. “Vacation! Cambodia!” he gave a wink. [...Read More!]
Part of the reason I stayed so long in Bangkok (besides the wonderful people) was I was terrified to cross the infamous Thailand-Cambodia border at Poipet.I was right to be scared.
“This is NOT the border,” said Thomas. “We asked the tuk-tuk to take us to the Cambodian border and this is NOT the border.”
The man in the suit grew exasperated. “This IS the border, sir. Here– here is [...Read More!]