Change of plans

Work offered me the last week off from my internship if I wanted to travel. Seeing as I have more than enough employment left in the summer when I return -- if anything, I was working too much -- I accepted.

Right now it looks like I'm heading to Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore across 8 days with nothing but my backpack. Hooray! More details to come.

I just left Freebird, a bar/grill that looked and felt distinctly American. It was weird to walk out on the street when I was done... I honestly felt like I was at home. Sadly, and happily too, I will be home in less than 3 weeks now: Wednesday the 16th.

Tomorrow I am catching the 8AM bus to Sihanoukville. All the rest of my friends are already there, so I'm stuck home alone. I bought a bus pass for Saturday before I realized work would've easily let me take a half day so I could go today. Oh well. So tonight I am all alone. I enjoyed my chicken sandwich @ Freebird and now just booked a flight to Bangkok! And I bought the Prestige today @ the DVD store so I could watch it tonight, so this is what I will do.

Plus, since I'm travelling alone tomorrow, this means I can get up early and indulge in something that probably only I would enjoy... USA DONUTS!!! Yes! Authentic, American-style donuts (cake with sprinkles) await me when I wake up tomorrow. Awesome. I'll almost more excited about this than I am about going to Sville.

- m

Plane crash stuff

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6243842.stm

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/6/27/worldupdates/2007-06-27T072714Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_-281930-2&sec=Worldupdates

Turns out it had crashed a lot earlier in the day, which means we were definetly there when it happened. Don't know where we were in relation to the mountain it was found on.

Yikes.

- m

Weekend, Insanity (part 2)

Wanted to get this up but no time to do pictures. Sorry.

Sunday

Woke up the next morning bright and early, and I’m hoping to go to the beach. The rest of my group thought going to the beach at a beach town would be a bad idea (?) so we went on a five mile hike in the hills instead. It ended up being really invigorating and we got great views of the ocean from up high. I however, like my fear of water, also fear snakes and there were a few too many on the trail for my liking. But I got a good work out.

I was going to be working in nearby Kampot for the rest of the day/Monday so work picked me up in Kep around lunch time. We had another great seafood feast – more prawns, more squid, and this time, fish soup! – and then headed into the communes once again. Here, we encountered a.) the worst road I have ever, ever driven on; b.) a commune still ruled by Khmer Rouge. Neither was pleasant at all. It took an hour to go less than 3 km and I’m pretty positive the van’s undercarriage and shocks are just blown to hell. And Mr. KR didn’t want us telling his people about human rights and wanted us to fire a few of the citizen advisors we had hired in the area. Our director got diplomatic and we eventually appeased him but it was tense and disheartening and we were all a bit upset about it.

So after that meeting we headed back to Kampot where we had yet another fresh seafood feast and then retreated to our guest house for the night. I got my own room, which was awesome, and I watched about half of V for Vendetta and some CNN before I fell asleep.

Monday

More communes, more bumpy roads. No huge animosity from any village leaders this time, which was a good thing.

On the way home we got stopped for a bit because the bridge in front of us had gone out. So, we just waited as they fixed it. We didn’t have to wait long, which was sorta disconcerting. As we crossed, I was convinced we were going into the river. They had just thrown a few sheets of metal across the hole and hoped it stuck. Thankfully we made it across. This was not the first blown-out or untrustworthy bridge we had encountered all weekend – at one point, we almost began to cross a bridge before realizing it had collapsed (yikes). But we made it every time, thankfully.

About 35 minutes after leaving the last commune in Chhuk district, a parade of ambulances and military vehicles full of soldiers were heading the opposite way down the road towards Kampot, which puzzled us all. I honestly thought a coup was going on and we were in the midst of it. Turns out a passenger plane had crashed in Chhuk, right where we were, about 15-20 minutes after we left, killing the 22 passengers and crew on board. What’s weird is that they couldn’t find the plane for days, and just found it this morning (Wednesday morning) after a government search, a reward from the prime minister for any information about the plane’s whereabouts, and a donation from the U.S. government of the use of two spy satellites to track it down. A little bit odd for my tastes. Won’t be getting on any domestic Cambodian flights soon, that’s for sure.

We got home and I was exhausted and hungry and on sensory overload from everything I had experienced all weekend. So I stopped in at the new hit restaurant in town, Pizza World (yes!), ate a medium deep dish pepperoni pizza w/unlimited orange Fanta (one of my more expensive meals in PP at $6 total), grabbed a tuk-tuk home and watched House / read the Corrections all night.

- m

Weekend, Insanity (part 1)

Another multi-part update. Sorry. I've gotten lazy with this. As have you with the comments!!

So, my weekend update is long overdue. Here’s what I did.

Friday I went out with work to hold some meetings in the communes (a commune is the smallest administrative area recognized in Cambodia; they’re small villages and are in no way communist). We were commissioning Citizen Advisors, who, with our training, would teach the locals – who have no education and concept of law, human rights or democracy – about, well, law, human rights and democracy.

The communes are a trip. Often, the roads aren’t really roads -- they’re just piles of dirt that have been flattened by lots of use. Or, they're somewhat roads, just with unending amounts of potholes. So, we’d bump and jostle across the “road” for an hour or two, reach the meeting (which I’d suffer through since it was all in Khmer... sigh), and then repeat it. At one point in the afternoon we had to wait on the side of the road as a tractor “built” the road for us; the road was literally a huge series of dirt piles, and the tractor flattened them into a sort of plateau that we very slowly drove over. Probably took hours to go a matter of 10 km. And I almost barfed a couple times. We ate this totally sketchy lunch in Kampong Speu province that I was convinced was going to make me hurl instantly; it didn’t, but I was hungry all afternoon.

It’s insane to see this level of poverty and under-development. The houses were often literally shacks amongst rice fields. The schools were old and rotting. People stared at our truck and white skin like we were aliens that just landed in the mother ship. It was humbling, to say the least. At one place I was given an authentic scarf made in the design worn by all citizens in the area. The people were very gracious.

When we got back to PP I headed to Steve’s Steak House as it has the biggest burgers I knew of in town and I was starving. I order the big burger, and doused it in ketchup... or so I thought. I had actually grabbed the chili sauce bottle, which looked just like – and was sitting right next to – the ketchup bottle. Hottest burger I’ve ever eaten, but I was starving so I just got through it. I got home so late that all my housemates had already left to go out so I just chilled at home and fell asleep really early.

Saturday

Woke up way too early again to catch the bus to Kep. Kep is a beach town on the south coast of Cambodia that just got ravaged during the war in the 1970’s and really hasn’t been rebuilt much. Really, it was pretty much a ghost town and we were one of the few hundred people there. But it is beautiful, and it is the ocean, so it was alright in my book.

The bus ride was another four hours of dust and constant jostling, despite the fact that it was only a 120 km trip. Lovely. I do around 130-140 km/hr in Ontario. They didn’t want to run A/C so they just kept all the doors to the bus open the whole time. The smells were nice. The bus itself was falling apart as we drove. I sat in the back listening to Wilco and dreaming about moving to Chicago and had a sort of zen-like peace for an hour or two.

So we get to Kep and decide to take a boat across to Rabbit Island, which lays off the shore of Kep in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand. It’s about a few km across the open sea to get there. In true Cambodian fashion, our moto driver “had a friend with a boat” who magically appeared after a twenty second phone call and the mention of $20 in payment. Soon, we’re on some complete stranger’s rickety old, tiny rowboat – which had thankfully been juiced up with an absolutely pitiful offboard motor – a few miles off the coast of Cambodia and I’m just freaking out. I hate water. I’m watching him pump water out of the bottom of the boat. Fish are flying in the air and hit Erin in the face. Really, it was fun, but I hate deep water, as I said. We could see into Vietnam from the boat, and in the gulf there were all these small islands all around... it really was beautiful.

We get to Rabit Island, it’s a secluded beach, really beautiful. Too bad it is raining. We swim in the ocean any way, and it was totally warm, which was awesome. We quickly forgot about the rain. I’m glad to say I’ve now swam in three of the four oceans (and I hope I never swim in the Arctic, honestly).

The trip back across the Gulf was even scarier than the way there because now there was a storm passing in the distance and we were hitting some waves pretty hard. Thought we might have bit it a few times but we didn’t. Everyone made fun of my fear.

Back on stable ground, we had an amazing seafood dinner – grilled crab, deep fried battered squid, and prawns in pepper sauce – and then we all sorta gave up on the night early. There’s zero night life in Kep so I ended up in our little bungalow in the hills (which, I should add, only had electricity from 6PM to 6AM... just like the rest of Kep, which runs on generator). I finished White Noise and Bobby and I went to the guest house patio for a beer a bit later, but that was about it.

Angkor What (part 3)

Sunday

No sunrise today. Woke up and had a normal breakfast at the hotel: pancake with chocolate. Read an old issue of Elle as I waited for it to come. It was surprisingly really good.

We made it out to the Wats (in Khmer, Wat = temple) around 9:30. We didn’t see too much remarkable, but it was a really fun day. We made friends with some local kids, I have some really cute pictures. The kids here are, admittedly, pretty adorable. The sad thing is that as soon as your tuk-tuk stops, they swarm it, trying to sell you postcards, bracelets, drinks. If you give to one, or buy from one, the rest expect you to give / buy from them. I made this mistake at one point and two boys almost started fighting each other. They walk up to you with the standard routine, almost every one:

“What country from?” “U.S.” “Capitol Washington D.C. You buy postcard, ten for one dolla?”

Or, the worst, hands clenched in a praying position, eyes dropped, lips pouty, and in a quiet tone:

“Sir, sir ... sir ... money ... sir ... please ... sir ... money ... sir, sir ....”

I always tried to talk to them about school or something, to try to be friendly, but of course, they just wanted my money, which is understandable. I don’t understand this level of desperation. Very sad. Many of the kids are forced into this profession by a parent or a "beggar pimp"; they know Westerners are disturbed by the site of desparate kids and send them out for money, collecting usually all of it from the kids when they get home, often to support addictions, etc. It's a problem in Cambodia, as is the child sex trade in general.

And it's not just kids. It's adults running food stands, book shops, t-shirt shops, all around the main entrances and exits of the temples. Literally, as soon as I walked out on the street, and they saw my white skin, I was swamped. Like, at times up to 20-30 people screaming at the four of us. My favorite exchange, which I got a lot:

“Sir, you want some cold drink?” “No, no thank you.” “Yes thank you why no thank you? Why no buy?”

I think they all learned English from the same person. I had the same exchange like 20 times this weekend.

So we saw a ton of minor temples today, and the temples took a backseat to us just generally enjoying the forests, the jungles, the countryside, and hanging out. Things are intense in PP and it was great to get out of the city and see something else. We headed back to Angkor Wat one last time, where Jordan pissed off a monkey – they have monkeys just chilling here – and it chased him 50 feet across a bridge, causing all the Cambodians to laugh at the stupid, silly American boy.

Exhausted, we left the temples around 4 or 5, did dinner in town, slept.

Monday

We took the bus home. 5.5 hours. No Titanic. I read half of White Noise by Don DeLillo and almost passed out from a lack of protein. Back in PP at 3:30 and I was sad. A great weekend was over.

I was sad to see it end. I can’t wait to show you all the pictures.

Photos of me in Cambodia

So I still haven't taken the initiative to figure out how to get my photos onto the internet, but for now, here are two unexciting photos I stole from my co-worker's Facebook album. This should serve as photographic documentation that I, in fact, am in Cambodia.

Here's me at work, at my desk, sitting in front of the computer I am now typing on, looking like a goofball. My hat says "clean hands" in Khmer and it's advertising a big anti-corruption campaign a lot of NGO's are partaking in right now. I am making the standard "Asian tourist" pose, which caused my co-workers to laugh, in turn causing me to laugh.

Here's me (in the upper left hand corner) out to dinner at One Fish Two Fish a few weekends ago with the American college students crew. We all just sorta found each other around town and all did dinner together.

Oh the excitement! Two whole crappy pictures.

I'll get the third part of my Angkor Wat saga up soon. I finished all my assignments for work last week and have now asked multiple times for more work and have not been given any. My director is so busy with other programs that she has yet to read or comment on either of the memos I have completed, or obviously come up with a new assignment for me. So, I'm sitting here in an office in Cambodia from 8-5 doing nothing when I could very easily be travelling. I'm using my time to work on my Cambodia paper for class so I can get the grade on my transcript before interviewing and to research firms for interviewing. After that, I might just not come in anymore until they give me work to do. I'm frustrated. I didn't fly 8,000 miles to surf the internet.

Thankfully tomorrow, Sunday and Monday I will be in the provinces observing human rights development and training sessions. That will be good.

Yesterday we ate pizza at the Pizza Company downtown, which was the most American -- and expensive -- meal I have had yet. I spent $6 and got a personal pan pepperoni pizza (pretty good, but no distinguishing taste), breadsticks, a couple buffalo wings, and a large coke. Mmmmmmmmm. And then I fell into a food coma the rest of the afternoon.

- m

Angkor What (part 2)

Saturday

We woke up at 4 am to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. We specifically saved the big temple for this setting. We got to the site just as the sun was starting to light up the sky – 4:30/4:40ish local time. Welcome to the Equator.

It was eerie. We were some of the first at the temple that day. It’s never empty; in fact, there are so many tourists there that you can hardly walk. But now, the temple was almost exclusively ours. We found one other couple there, and thankfully they had a flashlight so they guided us through. We climbed through the tombs and inner rooms of the temple in near total darkness.

Then we sat on the edge of the reflecting pool and watched the sun come up over the towers of the temple. To be honest, I wasn’t too impressed with the sunrise – it was really just sorta blah. Nothing great. But it was cool to be there, in that setting.

With the sun pretty much up around 6AM, we decided to fully explore Angkor Wat. We made it to the second highest level of the temple (~25 feet off the ground) and had one more to go. I looked up. The “steps” into the tower were probably about 30-40 feet in height, at least at a 60 degree angle, and they were big enough for me to get my toes on, at best. Essentially, it was like climbing a rock climbing wall with small grips for your hands and feet... except without a harness or rope. If I fell, I was going to be seriously, seriously messed up.


I watched some little girls climb up and figured I’d be fine. I made it about half way up before panic set in. I scrambled to the top. Once there, a huge feeling of dread came up on me as I realized I had to go back down. For a few moments I enjoyed the view, but then it was time to go back.

As I lowered myself over the top, the wall truly felt vertical. I looked down and couldn’t really see a slope. It just seemed like a drop off. I was, admittedly, really scared. I went down four steps, reached my foot for the fifth and.... it wasn’t there! There was a hole where I had stepped. I kept myself from panicking, because if I would’ve slipped then I would’ve fallen off. I made it to the side and lowered myself down. It scared the living crap out of me but I felt accomplished.

Until I found out a few minutes later that there was a "proper" staircase (for Cambodian standards) with a handrail on the other side. I just hadn’t seen it. All that risk-taking for nothing, and still, it was not even 7:30 am.


Next up was breakfast and then Ta Prohm, the Tomb Raider temple. Here, the trees – and their roots – have quickened the ruination process. Whole segments of the temple city have been knocked down by outwardly expanding roots and trunks. Certain parts of the temple have been engulfed by nature. It was quite a sight. Really, it's worthless to try to describe. The words don't do the pictures any justice.

Honestly, the whole place felt like Disney world. I suppose that's the best way I could describe it. It was hard to look at this stuff and believe it was real. That at one point it was a city. That it was nearly 1,000 years old. It just looked like a movie set (which, ironically, I suppose it was at one point.)

We eventually headed back to sleep at some point in town. We were just all destroyed. Made it back to the park by 4, headed to Angkor Thom / the other part of Bayon, which is just a temple made up of all these eerie faces.

The faces are the king, some guy Jamalagaaaayas or something that I don’t remember. This temple absolutely blew my mind. I honestly felt like an explorer, or a contest on Legends of the Hidden Temple. I swear Bayon was the influence behind Ole Mec.

We headed to Angkor Wat to watch the sunset but this idea sucked, we left early and exhausted, back to Bar Street. I had an amazing bacon cheeseburger and two Anchor drafts for $4.50 total and called it a night early. I passed out around 9:30.

To be concluded...

- m

Angkor What (part 1)

Note: This is the first part in what will be a series of entries documenting my weekend in Siam Reap and visiting temples around Angkor Wat. There's so much to remember and document that it would be too big to do it all at once.

This was the weekend of the Angkor Wat/Siam Reap spectacular. For those of you not versed in Cambodian history and/or culture, you should know that Angkor Wat is a massive Buddhist temple – in fact, it’s the largest religious building in the world. It – and the temples surrounding it – date from the height of the Khmer empire, between 1150-1200 AD. They were used for religious and royal purposes. Some are as large as small cities. They’re ruins now, some with nature growing right in the midst of them. The setting is so unique and exotic that this is where they filmed Tomb Raider (as such, Angelina Jolie is quite the celebrity around town). It was a little odd that here, in the middle of the jungle, I could purchase Tomb Raider on DVD for a reasonable price.

No hyperbole: Angkor Wat is Cambodia. It’s on the flag. It’s on the cans of the national beer, not surprisingly named “Angkor.” What the Statute of Liberty, White House, Mt. Rushmore, etc. are combined to the U.S. cannot even touch the significance of this temple to the Cambodian people. Wars have been fought over it. No movies from Thailand are shown on Cambodian television because once a Thai actor said that Angkor Wat was really owned by Thailand. The name of the city nearby – Siam Reap – literally means “fall of the Siamese,” the Siamese being the ancient name of the Thai people.

I was told by someone here that if you visit Cambodia, but don't see Angkor Wat, you haven't truly visited Cambodia. After going, I understand why.

Friday

We headed up Friday in a bus where they played Mr. Bean in English. Titanic in Khmer, and Karaoke (in Khmer of course). The trip took about six hours, we were in by 1:30. We wandered around Siam Reap for a while – and it’s a truly nice town. Much more green and lush than PP. Parts of it actually reminded me of Hilton Head. It is, after all, a major SE Asian tourist destination.

We went to the Angkor complex around 5:30 to catch the sunset from the top of Bayon (sp?), a hilltop temple. I say “Angkor complex” because it’s really a huge mass of temples, ruins, and cities – probably thousands of square kilometers big. Massive. You’d need weeks to see it all. The sheer productivity of the Khmer empire in such a small period of time is incredible.

We climbed the hilltop, where we were afforded quite a view – the landscape of Cambodia stretched on for miles beneath us. I could see so far, and the countryside was beautiful: lush, green, dotted with lakes. In pure Indian Jones-ian fashion, I climbed all over the ruins of the temple, half playing, half in awe of the view and my surroundings. A massive storm drove us off the temple; we made it to our tuk-tuk just in time: the downpour was on. We drove home in the rain, just getting bombarded. Soaked to the bone. We laughed like crazy people because it was the first time in Cambodia we’d ever felt cold. Our drivers aimed for the puddles to soak us, cracking up the whole time. It was fun. Then we went into town, had some beers on Bar Street with some boys from Brainerd, MN, of all places.

More to come.

- m

Progress

This morning I went to the courthouse for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (the extremely awkward name for the venue of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal) for a somewhat historic and important press conference.
Finally, after over a year, the internal rules have been agreed upon (there had been quite a lot of disagreement). The trials have, I suppose, officially "begun."

Preliminary indictments and conferences will begin in a few weeks. The rest of the pre-trial stuff will take about six months. The actual courtroom litigation is set to begin in January, 2008.

What does this mean?

It's unclear. The rules have yet to be distributed to the public. There have been some complaints from the defense support staff, but nothing particular. Thus, I can't comment on the content or quality of the rules until they're circulated.

What is clear is that time is running out. The ECCC is under a strict three-year mandate, and the clock began running in February 2006. That means, from the time the first defendant enters the courtroom in January, there will be a little over a year to hear and try the cases of the remaining KR leaders (~5-10 defendants).

A little over a year to hear, try, and do any appeals work for 5-10 of the top perpetrators of one of the worst acts of genocide in recorded history. Almost thirty years after the fact.

It's hard to be satisfied.

Rupert Skillbeck, one of the leader defense team members, told me over lunch last week that the likelihood of an extension is slim to none. The only hope is that all the defendants could be rushed in early to the chambers, allowing for the glimmer of hope that if all trials aren't completed by February 2009, the UN will allow extra time to finish up (but this isn't guaranteed at all). But there will be no likelihood of new complaints being heard or new trials being initated after February 2009.

It's a bit of a mess.

Here's the Yahoo story.

In other news, I'm going to a mock trial for the KRT tomorrow, and then Friday morning it is off to Siam Reap! Likely no posting until I get back Monday afternoon / evening. It's sure to be a ridiculously awesome weekend, hopefully as sweet as Justin Verlander no-hitter:


- m

Weekend in Cambodia

It's 9AM. I'm at work dead tired cause I slept like crap last night. I had my fan up to near full blast and was still sweating. I don't know if it was the heat that kept me up. I feel asleep around 4:00AM and woke up at 6:30AM for work. It's super hot here as well, plus my computer is broken, so I'm sitting here on another computer without my work trying to figure out how to keep busy.

Friday night we went to the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club) after work for happy hour. The FCC was supposedly the place where journalists used to hang out but now it's a very touristy place that caters to fashionable (and cheesy) westerners and ex-pats. This is just my personal opinion. Also, the beer and food is twice as much as it is elsewhere in the city -- a cheeseburger costs $8. But the people in my group like it a lot for some reason so I go to be social. Then we hit up this excellent and cheap Indonesian restaurant called Bali's on the riverfront. It was great. I try to be adventurous with food but there's not much description on the menus and somehow I always end up with meat and rice on my plate, maybe a few vegetables, no matter what I order. Anyway it was good.

Saturday we did lunch at a western-style bar and grill on 240. I had fish and chips. Tasted like fish and chips, Asian style. Like, Almond Boneless Fish and Chips. Then Bobby and I saw the Royal Palace. The architecture is cool here -- unlike the Chinese, who use a lot of reds and dragons and such to decorate, there is a distinct SE Asian flair here. Elephants replace dragons. Yellows and blues replace reds. Yet there are still tons of huge gold buddhas everywhere (I mean, everywhere), some with psychedelic lights behind their heads that go a long way in explaining why many buddhists are hippies.


Saturday night we met up with a lot of students in town at One Fish Two Fish on 278; there were about 10 of us there, most of us from Michigan, Harvard or Georgetown. My stir fry was tiny and left me hungry, sad.

Yesterday I woke up and grabbed some donuts from Del Gusto on Sihanouk. The donuts here generally suck -- no glaze at all. Then I worked off the donut with an hour long bike ride through the city. I got the bike from KiD; some people get cell phones from their jobs, I got a bike. So I biked all the way to the other end of Phnom Penh and back. I got destroyed by the heat (it was in the 40's yesterday... like 100+ farenheit) and I also got an amazing farmer's/sunglasses tan. The farmer's tan might be the best I've ever had. Ended up around Wat Phnom (see picture) later in the day; WP is a 600-year old temple (literally means "hill temple") and is the supposed namesake for Phnom Penh. Here, I saw some monkeys, an elephant, more buddhas, then went to Sorya for some gelato, which I ate in about 20 seconds to cool my body down.


Home to chill / listen to a Kensington message. At night we went to Pat, Tiffany and Jordan's apartment for pizza from Happy Herb's. As the name implies, it's pizza with weed as the topping. A few of us (including myself) opted for the un-happy pizza, and it generally sucked. I should've had the weed pizza, perhaps I wouldn't have noticed how bad it tasted.

Came home later, and didn't sleep. This entry has come full circle. Great.

- m