Into the Heart of Darkness: Rampant Road Rage in Phnom Penh

Close your eyes and imagine a city with no traffic laws, where might is right on the road and the bigger vehicle always has the right of way. No wait, you won't be able to read. Maybe just squint your eyes a little and imagine. Or better yet, just come to Phnom Penh and sit on my balcony for a few hours. While not the most exciting point in Phnom Penh, it affords one a pretty good overview of the traffic here.

I'm situated on St. 51, a street best known for the popular Heart of Darkness club, or just Haat to the locals. In the past it was known as a gangster hangout where the offspring of the military brass and other upper crust Khmers came to let off steam and shoot off a few rounds once in a while. When I first came to Phnom Penh the place had been shut for a month after a fatal shooting, but these days it doesn't feel that dangerous, thanks in large part to the thorough weapons search on entry.

It's an average road, not too big and not too small. It's got a lot of traffic in the daytime, but transforms into an eerie ghost street at night, like so much of Phnom Penh. Past 11, no one walks down the road, and the only souls to be found are the ever present security guards, faces buried beneath caps casting ghoulish stares.

It's a huge difference from Bangkok, the Asian city which I'll forever use as a reference point. In Bangkok the only dangers I felt at night were the packs of mangy street dogs which take over the alleys and bully humans after being abused and kicked around during the day.

Here in Cambodia though, there are no street dogs to be found. I was told that's because a healthy dog can fetch upwards of $20 at the market, a handsome sum. For those Khmers who turn their noses up at the idea of eating dog, this is one of the many evils Vietnamese brought to Cambodia during their 10 year occupation of the country.

The Vietnamese are used as the butt of many jokes. While Khmer's have a general disdain for the Thais, they harbor a special kind of distrust for the Vietnamese. When explaining to my students that they had to write a letter inviting a foreign friend to come and experience Cambodia, I offered a few suggestions for the nationality of the friend: French (nod), American (nod), or Vietnamese (laughter). The thought that you'd call a Vietnamese person a friend!

Due to the lack of domestic expertise, infrastructure, investment and whatever else, many manufactured goods in Cambodia come from neighboring Thailand or Vietnam. A few days ago I stopped to chat with my downstairs neighbors as I was coming home with a fresh supply of bottled water. "What's that for?", they enquired. I explained that because of my lack of exposure, I require a certain level of hygiene in my drinking water, while their bodies were accustomed to a higher level of impurities. "My stomach made in Thailand, your stomach made in Vietnam", one quipped. Laughs all around.

The corruption and lawlessness here, however, I'm afraid is home-grown. When I went to Vietnam it looked the picture of a communist-turned-capitalist success story: orderly, modern, and prosperous. The first thing I noticed as my bus sped towards Saigon on a perfectly sealed road was the impressive signage: crosswalks, speed limits, and other warnings. I suppose those things are pretty far down on the Cambodian government's list of improvements for the road from Phnom Penh to the Vietnam border; better to remedy the Mekong river ferry crossing which can back up and make for 5 hour waits at peak times. Therefore, a bridge first, paving the road second, and then perhaps we can think about signs. But wait, there are signs in Phnom Penh, but does anyone notice? I did, until a Lexus SUV almost flattened me while attempting to utilize a "pedestrian crossing". Then the signs became background noise, just another piece of sensory input to mix with the hollers, motorbikes, ice cream truck tunes, bells, crashes, and laughs that litter the air.A Lexus is just an overpriced Toyota, douchebag.

Is it Christmas yet?

A holiday in Cambodia isn't quite as bad as Jello would have us believe. Things have improved enough that, 2500 US soldiers from a big-arse ship just enjoyed one a few weeks ago during their R&R beach stay in Sihanoukville, and they certainly were indulging in more than a bowl of rice a day.

I decided on a whim to jet down to the beach on Christmas eve in a shared taxi. The Toyota Camry managed to seat 8: 4 in the front and 4 in the back. Now how, I can hear you asking, do you seat 4 people in the front seat when one of them is presumably driving? Very carefully. With 2 people in the driver's seat, it looked like 1 of them was steering and the other on the pedals. There's never a dull moment in Cambodian transport, I tell you.

I wanted to do a personal recreation of the baby Jesus' birth scene by arriving late at night with no hotel reservation, all of the rooms being booked up, but finding a kind soul to provide me with humble but sufficient lodging. The plan worked perfectly! All of the rooms were in fact booked, and I spend the night having my feet feasted on by mosquitos. I've been performing regular puja's involving incense and fruit offerings to keep out the bad spirits, known to some western scientists as "malaria".

So here I am on the beach, soaking in rays, not a snowflake in sight, but there are a few shabby plastic Christmas trees and some battery lit Santa hats. It seems Santa couldn't sort out the thatched roof of my bungalow because my socks are full of the same lint and sand that they were on the 24th.

Today I return to Phnom Penh, then on to Thailand and the big Bangeroos. Enjoy your final days of 2007 and don't be afraid to COMMENT.

It was supposed to be so easy...

I thought I'd like to get out of the malaria infested woods of Ratanakiri for Christmas and booked a minivan trip back to Phnom Penh. Ratanakiri is in the northeastern corner of Cambodia, and the journey should take 11 hours under normal conditions.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the driver starting off down the road before full capacity of the van had been pushed to the limit; my pleasure turned to pain when he began slowing down and desperately honking his horn for any possible fare holding passenger along the road. Before long, the van had been properly filled to Cambodian standards, and without any cargo in my footspace (it had been giant vats of honey on the trip in).

After a couple of hours we hit the paved road near Stung Treng - from there it's a straight shot on good roads all the way back to Phnom Penh! After an hour there was a noise and the driver lost control, but managed to bring the vehicle to a stop before plunging us into a ditch. After some consultation with the other passengers, I figured out what had happened: The suspension over the front left wheel had broken. The driver managed to do a pretty impressive impromptu repair job on it, and we all got back in and cruised at a leisurly 15 mph for another hour or two to the next city (Kratie. Never did see the dolphins...), where it was properly repaired.

To my surprise, we were soon back on a dirt road! I was sure the road was good and sealed all the way back to Phnom Penh! Ah, but this is a shortcut, I was informed. Have to make up for lost time, after all.

Total time of the trip: 14 hours. Could have been worse.

Beneath the Surface

Living in Phnom Penh, I've been at a loss as to what to post here. I've even written a few articles about life in the capitol, about the traffic, the corruption, the lawlessness - but somehow I felt that posting them would detract from the travel focus of the blog.

Lucky for the readers here, my stay in Phnom Penh is coming to an end along with the year, and there are some new and exciting trips on the horizon.

Now, I'm staying in the provincial capitol of Kampong Cham, a hundred or so miles up the Mekong river from Phnom Penh. The town itself is nothing special, but the rural villages surrounding it are traditional Cambodia at it's finest.

As I rode along the dusty path on my Chinese bicycle, all the children waved and practiced and words of English they knew (mainly "hello"). Most adults in the village were busy with some task: collecting palm oil from the trees, laying bamboo water pipes from the Mekong into the village, chopping wood, planting rice, making huts and houses - but a few seemed to be dangerously unoccupied, drinking whiskey and waving merrily (but a bit aggressively) at 9:00 A.M... I didn't stop to chat.

After a while the houses dwindled but the dirt road pressed on. I started having thoughts of highwaymen - surely they exist around here... But decided to go a bit further. After all, there might be a magnificent sight just around the next bend. Finally, I came across a young boy driving an ox cart. We chatted amiably in my extremely broken Khmer for a bit, then I asked how to get back to the town, and he pointed me in the right direction. When I asked what was down the other way (the way I had been going) he ran his finger along his neck, the universal throat slitting sign. I swallowed hard, thanked him, and went back the way I had come.

Cambodia looks fairly safe to the visitor, but I we have to remember that the country is growing out of the ashes of a 30 year civil war and the people have experienced horrors that no one reading this blog is likely to know. Take care of your safety in Cambodia! Now I know why anyone with money buys the biggest, most heavily armored vehicle they can afford.

Tomorrow it's off to Kratie, home to the famed Irrawaddy river dolphin. I read an article on a website a while back that the species had gone extinct years ago and the whole thing was a sham perpetrated by men with dolphin fins, swimming at a safe distance from the boats. A scheme, the article reported, to keep the tourist business in Kratie alive. I have since heard from numerous eye-witnesses that the article has to be rubbish because they went there, and there were definitely dolphins. Stay tuned for the final word.

The Year of Kampot

The first things you'll notice coming into Kampot, a lovely little town in the south of Cambodia, are the bizarre memorial statues gracing the roadways and roundabouts. In addition to "2000", there's "rice farmers", "white horse", and most curiously "rhinoceros".

On Friday morning a few friends and I hopped on our motorbikes and headed there for the long weekend. My little 100cc bike handled the trip admirabley, but my friend's much older bike kept overheating, so he bought an IV drip at a pharmacy and rigged it to feed a water drip onto the motor. He made it in the end, an hour or so after me.

On the following day we went to the nearby Kep beach and feasted on fresh shrimp and crabs. Afterwards we swam and relaxed in the sun. In the evening we went to a restaurant specializing in wild meats and feasted once again, this time on hog and deer. The unfortunate vegetarian in the group was surely annoyed, but didn't complain.

On the way back it rained, but we didn't care.

Home Sweet Home

A glimpse into my first week in Phnom Penh...

Phnom Penh: the first week

I arrived only 2 days before starting my new job, so my time has mostly been spent getting adjusted to the job rather than really exploring the city. Or take many photos, so patience on that front, dear friends.

The city feels more modern than my first trip to Phnom Penh a couple of years ago. Being outside in the streets at night, I don't feel the sense of danger (or at least noticeably less) that I did back in 2005. Admittedly, I'm staying in a fairly western part of town with heaps of western restaurants and bars catering to tourists and and ex-pats (I'll be looking for a more Khmer area to reside in soon).

Been trying to learn Khmer from the get-go, but damn are these SE Asian languages tricky to wrap your head around. In the initial stages it doesn't feel like my knowlege of Thai is helping much, but I think it will as I begin to understand Khmer better.. Thai is tonal and Khmer is not, but they do share a fair bit of vocabulary, and have similar grammar.

More soon.

Music Review: Radio Phnom Penh

Sublime Frequencies, a Seattle-based record label specializing in radio and field recording collages from around the globe, has kindly saved you the trouble and pain of digging through the mines of mediocre Khmer Pop and ripped-off Tata Young melodies and delivered some of the catchiest, melt-in-you-ear sweet Khmer sounds ever to grace the streets of Phnom Penh (or your living room).

Being back home in the sane lands of the eternal toothless-winter (it's August, so why am I sleeping with a down comforter?) has left me with plenty of time to get re-acquainted with my old friend music, and RPP is topping the playlist. When the quiet predictability of Olympia underwhelms my stimulant-starved, metropolis-acclimated mind, I only need strap on my sennheiser teleportation device to be whisked away to that mystic land steeped in war, history, and re-birth.

Teaching in a Khmer language school

I've taken a job 2 hours per day teaching in a language school in Phnom Penh. The name of the school is ELT. Here's a quote from their introductory information for teachers:

ELT popularly stands for English Language Training. It, however, can be interpreted as Enriching Life for Tomorrow as its Motto. We also attempt to translate ELT as Excellent Learning Torch...

Ouch. Yes, it's that bad. OK so the school is crap, but Khmer students are outgoing and eager to speak (compared with my experiences teaching in Thailand and Japan). The level of English in Phnom Penh is, on average, higher than in Bangkok or Tokyo.

My schedule leaves something to be desired: one hour from 6:30 AM to 7:30 AM and another hour in the evening, 5:30 to 6:30. I did this to force myself to wake up early. Teaching 2 or 3 hours per day is about right, really. One has time to adequeately prepare for classes and not feel like a zombie at the end of the day. Mostly I've taken the job for a laugh and to see what it's like in a Cambodian language school, and also to cover most of my expenses during my stay here. It is cheap, I tell ya. One strange thing in Cambodia: The U.S. dollar is the de-facto currency here. They do have riel, the local currency, but it is used interchangably with the dollar at a rate of 4000 riel to one dollar. This means riel are used for small amounts(there's no US coins) and dollars for larger ones.

What's it like in Cambodia? HOT!!! Now is the peak of summer and the new year is this weekend. I'm planning to get out of town for the holiday and see a bit of the Cambodian countryside.

Stay tuned in the next week or two for some videos from India, new photos from Cambodia, and of course my continuing impressions of Phnom Penh.

Cambodia

I'm posting from Siem Reap, Cambodia, which is best known as home of the temples of Angkor. The Angkor empire dominated South-East asia about a thousand years ago, then fell into obscurity. For centuries these giant stone temples were lost to the jungles and known only to the local villagers. Now that the prospect of war has lifted from Cambodian life, the site is seeing unprecedented numbers of visitors, increasing rapidly each year.

I spent the last 3 days touring the temples. It's my second time here, but this time I explored many more of the temples. They cover a wide area at the north eastern corner of the Tonle Sap lake, the massive lake dominating the Cambodian heartland. This unique lake receives an influx of water from the Mekong each year, when the water journeying towards the sea overwhelms the Mekong Delta in Southern Vietnam and backs up into the lake, multiplying it's size four fold. As the water recedes from the lake throughout the year, rice is planted continuously on the newly exposed, highly fertile land.

The Khmer Empire, which had it's capitol at Angkor, dominated south-east Asia at it's height, encompassing large swaths on land in modern day Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Much of today's cultural and religious life is rooted in heritage of this vast empire.

Look at my Flickr photos to get an idea what it's like at Angkor.

From India I spent 10 days in intensive Vipassana meditation at a center outside of Bangkok. There, I put my strength of will to the test. Wake up bell was at 4:00 AM. The days were filled with meditation (about 11 hours each day). We were also forbidden from speaking with our fellow meditators. A difficult but worthwhile experience. This organization has meditation centers worldwide, but Vipassana meditation centers with varying methodologies and degrees of strictness are to be found throughout S.E. Asia.

We are now in the peak of the Cambodian summer. This means a kind of heat that I thought only existed in the lower hells. I can feel the sun cooking my exposed skin like rotisserie chicken. From the 13th to 15th of this month the Khmer's celebrate the Cambodian New Year. I'll most likely be in Phnom Penh for this. This is known as Songkran (or Thai New Year) in Thailand and is also celebrated in Laos and Myanmar. I've been in Laos and Thailand for it in past years.... always an excellent time! I'm looking forward to seeing the Cambodian take on it.

More from the Capitol (Phnom Penh)...