on the road again

Wednesday, March 7th, as my mini-bus pulls up in front of my guesthouse, i couldn't help but laughing -it is a mini-van packed with local passengers and their luggages, and all the products -coconuts, tomatos, noodles and snacks etc. in bags are strapped on top of the vehicle, where also another three passengers sit. An eldery woman gets up from her seat inside and offers me a tight-squeeze spot on the back seat. "No," i say, climbing up to the top of vehicle and that becomes my special seat for the next 6 hours, just a couple of sacks of coconuts with a bunch of Khmer riders. The view is incredible, and the dust from the road doesn't get high up 4 meters above the ground.

Within this 6 hour ride, we come across four times rivers where bridges are under construction and not accessible. Each place we pull up to the side of bridge, wait for a 'Ferry' which is nothing more than just some wooden floor rigged onto a couple of fishing boats. It's not so bad since i can get off from the roof of mini-van, stretch my back, go to bathroom and taste my last Angkor beer. As these crossing points comes one after another, i notice more Thai signs and Thai products, it tells we're nearing the border town.

All along the road, i see so many road-works to build bridges or cut through the mountains. This southern coastal road is full of hills and mountains, it must be difficult to do any road work here, unlike the route 6 to the west of Siem Reap, which is straight road on a flat land but in worst imaginable condition with so many holes and rocks and dunes, and few road-works are seen done.
This actually has a reason, as i later found out, the road between Poipet and Siem Reap is straight, on a flat land and populated with backpackers. When Thai government and Bangkok Airway (only airline who flies Bangkok to Siem Reap) helped building Siem Reap airport, there was some sort of agreement between them, that Thais pay money to Cambodian government so they will delay the road work on route 6, or practically not do it. On the other hand it is Thai military and their equipment who's cutting through the mountain to build the coastal road in highlands and construct large and sophisticated bridges.

3 in the afternoon I reach the border. Cambodia to the left, Thailand to the right. with gulf of Thailand behind. Leaving Cambodia after these intense and purposeful two months breaks my heart, as entering far more advanced Thailand again gives me strange sensation of culture shock.

Kampot, Kep and Koh Tonsey

Saturday, March 3rd, 5+3 hours of bus rides with literaly one minute between of Phnom Penh experience (which is enough for now. I need to go somewhere quiet) brings me all the way from Siem Reap to Kampot, a town on almost South-Eastern tip of Cambodia, some 60 km from Vietnam. The town has handful of accomodations and restaurants, virtually no bar(except a cozy garden of Blissful guesthouse can indulge you with nice bottles of chilean wine), and many roundabouts each of which radiates roads in six or eight directions; this would make it easy to get lost in your direction but don't worry, the town is still so small, if you're lost you still can't go that far. I just want to be away from all the experiences in Siem Reap, be in peace for a couple of days.
On a balcony of Mealy Chenda guesthouse I meet Helene, a traveling writer/French teacher, whose quiet quality pulls me into bringing up my social noch. After three large bottles of ever-consumed Angkor beer however, I am once again into taking about me, me and me, while the lone French beauty remains quiet and makes me dying to find out about her...

So I am quite pleased when she says she can come to Kep, then to Koh Tonsey with me the following day. Koh Tonsey is a small island on a remote shoe near Cambodian/Vietnamese border. The name means Rabbit Island for its shape. Sunday morning after I find a temple in town where i can meditate, i rent myself a moto and two of us are off to Kep, a posh harbour town with many abandoned buildings from French colonial era. From Kep we take a small boat to Koh Tonsey, which has no pier, the boat just rides up right onto the shore and we are on the sand. This is my first beach experience since last year in February, on Koh Samui, Thailand. I can't believe I didn't go to beaches all summer long. After swimming and hiking and drinking more Angkor, the full moon has risen and everythings is peaceful. There are only 12 families on the whole island, not many tourists, maybe dozen of bungalows, three or four boats resting on the shore.

The following morning Helene and I don't do much on the island, some reading and writing a letter while waiting for the return boat on the beach. By 2pm we are back in Kep, which is known as the cheapest place to enjoy fresh crab.

Kampot (and Kep and Koh Tonsey) is great. I really love the contrast from booming tourist town of Siem Reap. It really makes you not have any plans, just stroll small streets and sit by the river and read, etc. And you keep running into the same people during your few hours of walk. I find this school of traditional Khmer music for orphans and disabled children.

Tuesday, March 6th, although I would love to stay in Kampot more, spend more time with Helene, meet more quiet and slow people, and continue on the philosophical talks which me and young monks at the temple started, I really must move on. There's a promise to reconnect with Patrick (he had left Siem Reap on Feb. 16th, out to Thailand) and to start my annual fasting/cleansing meditation retreat. I book a mini-bus to Thai border for the next day. Helene contrally books her way up to Phnom Penh, then to Siem Reap. I sit and watch (and take a picture) of sunset over the river, my head heavy and heart exhausted. Later on I again run into Helene on the street and we got to spend the last evening together over Crab and Pepper dinner, two products this area of Cambodia is so proud of.
Travel well beautiful one. I'll see you in June in two years.

Battambang

Feb 16th, feeling the midway exhaustion on all my projects and social life in siem reap, i ask Sophat if he wants to go visit his family in Battambang, A city south of Tonle Sap lake. we drive our little 100cc motos and leave Puok around 6pm. this is a very bad idea!! most of the road to Battambang is in very poor condition. full of dirt, rocks and holes and we can't even see them in the nighttime. we arrive at Sophat's wife's village Kor Kosh at 3 in the morning with our bodies aching and sore from driving and covered in dirt.
6 am, wake up to the sound of village, roosters and children, there's a breakfast served in a front yard for villagers. Pamera and Arachana, Sopat's 2 daughters see me awake and immediately want to play. Everybody's smiling, kind and curious about me. such a nice way to wake up, a little more sleep would have been better, though.
then we drive into town and i get myself a room, in center of the town across from the market, up on 5th floor with a balcony so i can see the entire activity of this Cambodian town. (Siem Reap is not as big as Battambang, but overpopulated with tourists that you don't feel like it's in Cambodia) i take a nap for a couple of times, then bring my guitar to the park by the river and watch sunset.

Train station in Battambang. Pretty much a slum for the homeless family. A pack of children play with a cardboard box. when i walk up to them with camera, they call out "hello" "what's your name?" then i say "my name is Toshiro, what's your name?" they reply, "my name's tochiro, what's your name?" local people use train tracks to drive bamboo platform rigged on trainwheels.

This is a Chinese new year weekend. Sunday the 18th, i wake up 5 in the morning to the massive sound of fire cracker shaking my 5th floor window, and from then there's no going back to sleep. On my way to breakfast i run into a parade for the new year. This is a year of wild bore, Morgan!

Our quick day and a half off is up, Sophat and I start driving back the same road again. Sophat takes Chey's mother who happens to be in Battambang and needs ride back. 60km up to Sisophone, it is a smooth road and we stop for photos etc. Many signs like this one "give your weapons up" can be seen all over the country.
Then after Sisophone it's another 100 km on the notorious Highway 6 (see February 11th posting 'Highway 6 rebuilt') no bridges are accessable, full of dirt, pebbles and holes. once again all three of us are covered in dust with sore body when we get back to Puok.

Tourists

"Honey, how was the trip to Cambodia?"
"It was fantastic, the day I arrived I found the perfect table clothes for our kitchen, and I got it down from 2 dollars to a dollar fifty, (proudly) it took me twenty minutes of negotiation!"
"What did you do? Where did you go?"
"Oh, you know, Angkor Wat and all those temples."
"What did you see there?"
"Well, most of time I was staring at the back of my digital camera... here I got some great pictures, do you wanna see?"
"Did you meet any interesting Cambodian people?"
"Not really, they all seem smily and very nice... very poor though."

Taking pictures of the sunset instead of watching it...
Dear Fellow Travelers,
As one of many threatening, obtrusive, photo-snapping tourists, i would like to ask you, don't go to places and immediately take out all your cameras collectively in your group of three, ten, twenty, and shoot the picture of local lives and go. Imagine some other people from other country, ethnicity, culture came visit your daily life and did the same thing, how would that make you feel?
Get to know people, or the scenery before taking pictures, make friends with them with eye contacts and smiles, gesture and hey, they (Cambodian kids in tourist spots) are pretty good at English too. And then, ASK FIRST if you can take a picture or not, and if you have a digital camera, show it to them, they'll love it. they don't have any oppotunity to have their own picture taken and see it. as for me with film camera, I got myself obligated to come back to visit them again when the film is processed and prints are done. giving actrual prints to them, i found, is far better gift than showing the LCD back of little camera.
and mostly, don't we all know that no picture, even the most beautiful ones is never perfect recreation of the reality? and the time you are holding the camera up and watching the back of it, is time away from your precious experience of beautiful reality.

Caffein, Beer, Cell and Moto

Advertisement is everywhere.
Television is everywhere.
This one is particularly disgusting. I can't read Khmer but let me guess what it says;
"Come and buy this drink full of caffein and sugar to poison your body, and we'll give you this transportation device that polute the air, or this tele-communication device to damage your brain! Offer ends quickly!"
in our modernized capitalism societies, we often ask people we newly met "what do you do?" but it most of the time means "what do you do to earn your money?"(=what's your job? what's your profession?) but we really must think it's more important what we do to SPEND our money. Don't let the corporations decide how and on what you spend your money.

road to Siem Reap

The most breathtaking landscape ever seen in my life takes us 3 hours deep down into the field/jungle of Cambodian land. Sometimes i just need to give my photographer's hand a rest, sit in the back of pick-up truck and enjoy the dust sprawling all over my face.



Village of Anlong Veng. Pol Pot is cremated here.



As many struggling societies do, (in Brazil, in Africa) people burn the forest to gain the land for vegitation. Not very healthy for the land. After the few cycles of cropping the soil will be exhausted and they will need to abandon the area.



coconut trees and bamboo huts elevated off the ground (in rainy season from April to November the entire land is cover with mud) much of their life style here has been similar for centries.



Cows and buffalos just randomly walking along the road, make way for us to the sound of honking. They seem domesticated, but do they know where their homes are?



Village school! I feel Siem Reap is nearby.

crossing border

At the border, we find the only sign written in English ever since we left Si Saket. It just tells how much of the tourism in this region is catered towards what purpose, important sign but sickening.


First time I ever cross any border by foot. Now I am officially in The Royal Kingdom of Cambodia.




People in the border village. a few strips of bamboo dwellings, no school, no medicine, not much hope in these people here.

Siem Reap is 150km South from here. So we charter a 4WD from the chief of immigration office, whose parents were killed by Khmer Rouge.