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CAMBODIA JOURNAL By Anna Redsand Copied with permission from http://aredsand.livejournal.com/ A MEANINGFUL LIFE
Maybe it’s because Albuquerque isn’t a hub for any airline that 6 a.m. seems to be a popular departure time from the International Sunport, which I think is the most beautiful airport I have been through. Massive carved vigas, wall and floor tiles in warm desert colors, and sculptures and paintings bring southwestern cultures to life. Anyway, Cheyenne, who went along as my assistant, and I found ourselves at the Support at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday, the 18th of November, flying from there to San Francisco, to Seoul-Incheon, Korea, and to Phnom Penh, Cambodia–total air time 19 hours. The walls of the Phnom Penh airport are painted a deep coral pink, almost red, a fashionable wall color these days, but I can’t help thinking that, given Cambodia’s recent past, it was an unfortunate choice. At 11 p.m., the queue for visas was short, but at customs we got behind a white American family of six with four carts stacked high with boxes labeled “dishes” and “linens.” The young children looked shell-shocked, as the parents tried to explain in careful English to officials who seemed to understand very little, “We’re moving here. These are our personal belongings.” I pegged them right away as missionaries and smiled to myself at the synchronicity. The customs guy recognized the simplicity of our needs and waved us ahead. Before we got our taxi, the missionary family had made it through. They were hailed eagerly by another white man, clearly their new colleague. Cheyenne with her sweet self was relieved that they were being met because they looked like such lost lambs. But enough; I have promised that this is not a story about missionaries. Wayne had told me to arrange the cab fare before leaving the airport and not to pay more than agreed. Ten dollars took us through one area after another that seemed more or less run down and grime laden. Apartment buildings are French colonial style, often survivors of that era. There are western style shops and shops that are little more than corrugated iron sheds, a few still dimly lit by charcoal braziers. Everywhere there are small motorcycles and scooters, and we witnessed the crash of two of them inches from the hood of our cab. Our destination in Phnom Penh City was the Golden Gate Hotel. Actually, it was the hotel annex across the narrow street. Price–$20 a night for two. Before we could get started with the check-in process, I felt the presence of a large man at my elbow. I hadn’t seen Wayne for more than thirty years, but in photos on his website he looked much the same as he had when we knew each other in Gallup, NM–shoulder-length hair, a beard that now had some gray in it, black shirt and pants. A few seconds after our awkward half-hug, I saw that there’d been a transformation. No beard, brush cut hair, and a crisp white shirt. He said, “I changed my image for Obama.” At sixty-three, Wayne, a Viet Nam vet and medic, said this was the first time he’d ever voted, the first time he’d felt there was someone worth voting for. Our room with two twin beds and unmatched, serviceable furniture was blessedly clean. Meditation forces you to confront yourself face-to-face. So does travel. What you see, of course, is often not pretty. Throughout this trip, I kept running up against what I have to admit is an obsession with cleanliness, especially when it comes to food and other people’s dirt. It seems that once my own dirt has been layered atop the dirt of others for a few days, I’m quite happy with what seems now to be just my layer. My mother is a nurse, and when I was putting myself through school as an operating room technician, I suddenly realized that she had run our kitchen on the principles of sterile technique. So I thank her for this obsession, and I hope that one of the life changes wrought by the trip helps me let it go. One little thing we loved in our room, and I do mean loved, was the tiny bar of soap. Pepto-Bismol pink, it was about one and a half inches long and an inch wide, imprinted with the word, “TOURIST.” We laughed, Cheyenne took a picture, and we said it made perfect sense, because you never use the whole bar during your stay. Not even this teensy one. After I showered, Wayne and I met on the second floor balcony of the hotel and visited for more than an hour, beginning our thirty-year catch-up process and inadvertently but naturally beginning the interview. I asked Wayne how he knew this hotel, and he said he’d lived in the neighborhood when he first came to Phnom Penh and worked with street kids here. At 2 a.m., we agreed to meet in the lobby at 9 and go to breakfast. I can highly recommend the Garden Cafe around the corner from the hotel, if you’re ever in Phnom Penh and start hankering for some beautifully prepared western food. Begun by (who else?) a former missionary, an Aussie by his accent, the food is superb, and if you sit facing the wide entrance, you are looking at bougainvillea and many other flowering, flowing plants whose names I don’t know. Wayne has lived in Cambodia for twelve years and had never visited the prime tourist attraction, thousand-year-old Angkor Wat, thought to be the largest structure of worship in the world (a wat is a temple and its grounds). Every month Wayne donates his VA check to the Wat Opot Project, the orphanage he runs, but recently his aunt died and left money for the project, including a thousand dollars earmarked for his personal use. He asked if he could accompany us to Angkor Wat on his first vacation since 1980. His presence made the trip stress-free and very satisfying. After a walking tour that took us around government buildings and close to the royal palace, we boarded the Mekong Express Bus for the 6-hour trip to Siem Reap, home to Angkor Wat. Although the Mekong Express is used by many Cambodians, one of its features is a comely young Khmer woman who acts as tour guide and hostess. Before we’d left Phnom Penh, she was telling us, first in Khmer, then in English, the legend of the city’s founding by a woman of great charity. A ways into the trip, our hostess served us a little box lunch with a savory meat pie and a little round sponge cake. The banks of the Mekong are densely packed with corrugated iron sheds, homes mostly to Vietnamese. There is little space along the roads through the countryside that does not contain houses on high posts, many of which are also small businesses. People spend daytime hours beneath the house on the ground, where air circulates. At night, when the air is cooler, they sleep upstairs in the house. Beautifully constructed houses stand right next to grass huts that are literally falling apart but still lived in. I could not see that neighborhoods in the countryside were at all segregated by social class. The little businesses in the open air portion of the house or under a roof closer to the road might be selling flip-flops and hats; galvanized watering cans; sides of slim Brahma beef; highly polished chairs, tables and bedsteads; and the mysterious, ubiquitous liter Pepsi bottles filled with yellow liquid. Cheyenne asked what that yellow drink in the Pepsi bottles is; turns out it’s gasoline. Home service stations. We arrived in Siem Reap at dusk, dust and charcoal smoke in the air. The hotel had dispatched a Tuk-tuk driver to meet us. The Tuk-tuk has become my favorite mode of transportation. Amazingly, it is a 110 cc motorcycle pulling a little 2-wheel, 2-seat carriage with a surrey roof and open sides. Amazing because that tiny engine can pull 3 large Americans and all their luggage and one small Cambodian driver. It’s slow, but I liked that because it allowed us to really see the countryside, the way of life, and to make contact with people in their Tuk-tuks with smiles and waves and bows. Also, in the heat it’s very nice to have the breeze flowing past you. And for all those benefits, what’s a little dust mote in the eye now and then? Along the way to our hotel, Wayne pointed out that if you like Christmas, you will love Siem Reap, because here it’s always Christmas. Sure enough, strings of lights abound. The one I liked best was a multi-colored configuration forming a steaming teacup. Our driver was the smiling Mr. Thi, who quickly arranged to pick us up at 5 a.m. the next day so we could watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat and to take us on tour for the next 2 days. Freedom Hotel boasted much polished wood, an elevator, an attached restaurant, internet for a price, and a mysterious leak in our bathroom, so the floor was soon well covered in water. Although I tried telling the desk about the leak the next morning, I could tell that nothing would likely be done about it. I was right. Wayne says he doesn’t know if it’s the type of glue they use on PVC pipes or the heat and humidity, but plumbing leaks are frequent and ongoing. Adventure is palpable in the 5 o’clock dark, and by now it is Friday. We pass other Tuk-tuks filled with westerners, and we are pretty sure we are all headed for the same place–Angkor Wat. We traveled down wide avenues, a legacy of the French colonists, replete with buildings large and ornate enough to serve as embassies. And then we were on a rural, dirt road. We reached a row of lit kiosks where we had to step out of the Tuk-tuk, pay $40 each (by the way, it’s all American greenbacks here, except for small change) and be photographed for our 3-day passes. I look like a grinning toad in mine, which will nevertheless be taped into my journal as a souvenir. We were cautioned several times not to lose these passes, as we would have to show them at each temple we visited. Tuk-tuks, vans and buses pulled up in the darkness, and we followed the crowd with its flashlights, stepping onto an elevated walkway of stones worn smooth by thousands, millions, of passing feet. There is something about walking where so many have gone before that calls forth visions of past centuries, a deep sense of the ancient. The sun began to slowly pink the sky above the three elongated pyramidal structures forming the entrance to the wat. The crowd was quiet, spread out enough to give me a feeling of private experience. The air beat softly with expectancy, even reverence. As the sky lightened, I saw that on either side of the walkway were large marshy areas filled with long-stemmed magenta lotus blossoms. The three towers, which are silhouetted on the Cambodian flag and in artwork in all Cambodian restaurants, are deceptive, because, although they are flanked by long wings, they appear to be the whole temple; once we stepped into them, however, we realized they were simply a vestibule to a temple that goes on and on and on. When I saw a structure or set carvings to my right, I soon realized that if I looked to the left, I would see its mirror. Everything is symmetrical. The Hindu carvings are replete with voluptuous goddesses cavorting with potent gods, or simply standing to bless, and the temple was built probably as both a mausoleum and to honor Vishnu. At one point, in a cave like chamber to my right, I saw a statue of Buddha that is a present object of worship. Candles lit the meditating statue draped in orange and gold and burning incense wafted out into the hallway. Monks in saffron robes arrived and began their resonant morning chant. I moved further down the hall, perpendicular to them and came upon a grassy courtyard far below me. The chant was somehow both magnified and distant, channeled through the chamber upon chamber. I walked to the farthest point of the temple, overlooking lush forest. Coming back along a row of sheltered columns, I saw a group of westerners engaged with something I couldn’t identify. Then I realized we were being greeted by small brown monkeys who, unlike us, had the sense to wait until daylight to sally forth. They were fun and funny. Like meditation and travel, their activities mirror our human frailties and foibles. |