Cambodia Fun Blog

Alright, enough of the “need to know” set-up information and on-line silence! Here’s my personal experience on my Cambodian bicycle tour!

For whatever reason, this trip was a pill and a half to organize. I won’t go into the crazy details because you’ll log out of this blog faster than a Japanese ninja mosquito will leave my eyelid looking like something out of a “Rocky” movie.

In the end, all the advanced mess left me with an accidental flight into Phnom Penh a day earlier than that advised by PEPY. Luckily, one of the other trip participants, Dan, an energy trader in Manhattan, flew in just an hour before me, so I had a partner in crime with whom to kill time while we waited for the other 3 trip participants to arrive later the next day. Lucky (whom you hopefully remember from the first full-length Cambodia blog) came to pick us up at the airport in his tuk-tuk. This is when I found out I was about to get the equivalent of a cycling-ass-kicking, as Dan informed me, while Lucky was off weaving through the parking lot to bring his tuk-tuk around to the curb, that during their “waiting for Mandy” bonding time, he had found out JUST how good of a cyclist Lucky really is.

For those of you who don’t know by now, my week in Cambodia was to participate in an educational bicycle tour with an NGO called “PEPY.” I don’t think I’d ever rode more than 30km in a day on a bicycle before this trip and suddenly I was faced with up to 90km/day in a country I was incredibly unfamiliar with, with a national cycling champion (Lucky, the tuk-tuk driver) as my tour leader. Yeah…that’s the ticket.

So anyway, the night of our arrival, Lucky drove me and Dan the 30 minutes from the Phnom Penh airport to our guesthouse in the city, which was comically named, “Tattoo,” then he took us out for dinner at one of his favorite eateries. I asked him later why he chose that restaurant and he said it was so he could eat beef. He likes his beef. That night was when I was introduced to the best condiment ever, fresh Cambodian black pepper mixed with self-squeezed lime juice. We dipped everything from the beef to morning glory stalks in it and everything it flavored was sublime. Of course Lucky jabbered away with the staff and other patrons, most of whom were already his friends, some of whom became his friends from that point on. He’s insanely gregarious.

Outside the "Tattoo" guesthouse (left).

The next morning, Lucky met Dan and I back at Tattoo, which is PEPY’s Phnom Penh guesthouse of choice, to drive us around for a day of site-seeing. We had absolutely no plan (nor ideas) about what to see, but nonetheless ended up at the Russian Market (why it’s called the “Russian” market, I have no idea), for breakfast, where we ate some sort of incredibly delicious omelet-looking thing with bean sprouts and peanut sauce (peanut sauce can be added to anything in Cambodia, and in my opinion everything tastes better after it’s added!). Lucky wanted to show us the river too, particularly the section where 4 rivers, including the Mekong, meet. He said normally, of course, the rivers all flow towards the sea. However, during the rainy season, two of the rivers change direction and the water ends up flowing backwards towards the lake that feeds one of the rivers. Wild.

We also went to the Royal National Museum and the Royal Palace. Yeah, I forgot to mention that one of my favorite things about flying into Cambodia was having to fill out the customs and visa forms emblazoned with the title “KINGDOM OF CAMBODIA.” Too few places are labeled “Kingdom” these days (hee hee).

On Lucky's tuk-tuk.

Phnom Penh city shots from the back of a tuk-tuk.

Police station!

Inside the Russian Market.

Breakfast!

River confluence, including the Mekong.

Independence Monument, a gift from France (Cambodia's colonizers).

Various government buildings.

She was just too cute not to try to steal a photo of!

Monkeys hanging out in the overhead trees.

Phnom Wat (temple).

Elaborate wall paintings inside Phnom Wat.

Temple Buddhas.

Wherever the money will stay, I suppose!

Looking down into the park below Phnom Wat.

Royal National Museum. No photos were allowed inside, so this is all you're going to get! Most of the contents were reliefs from the various Angkor-era (1100's) temples around the country.

Okay...the ONLY "inside" photos that were allowed at the museum, from the courtyard.

The Royal Palace grounds. I was never quite sure what all the buildings were, but this particular one housed the literally golden throne room (from ceiling to floor). No photos allowed.

I was completely enthralled by these palm trees!

Along the outer walls of the golden throne room building.

Cheese!...literally. ;-)

I really liked the snake statues that lined the entrances of the temples in Cambodia. In Japan you usually find lions or dogs instead.

Monkeys hanging out on the palace walls. Seems fitting somehow, doesn't it? Should be a requirement at all palaces. ;-D

The Silver Pagoda. I'm not quite sure why it was called that, or why it was considered special, but the grounds around it were incredible.

An outer wall enclosed the entire Silver Pagoda grounds, and this painting stretched all along the entire wall enclosure. It was awe-inspiring.

Outside the Silver Pagoda were a few small museums. This one housed royal paraphranalia. Above, items used in the crowning ceremony. Below, fashion of the queen and king.

I'm not sure who exactly was supposed to wear these, but I got a kick out of the fact that each day of the week had it's own color sarong.

Again, not sure who these are meant for, but you have to like the colors...especially the hats!

Buddha's footprint!

Elephant saddles!!!

There were various musicians stationed in locations around the museum areas.

Map of Cambodia in French...and what I'm assuming is the national anthem of Cambodia? I LOVE Khmer writing (like Thai, derivative of Sandscrit).

Okay, I'm going to be honest...this musician was about to take a break as I approached...he had to go back and pose special for this photo! He got a good tip out of it though. ;-)

There were two traditional-style houses on display, and inside, traditional kitchen items. I love old stuff!

Actually, what led us up into this particular house was the music wafting from it!

Old treasures underneath the display house.

Photos from the life and coronation of Cambodia's current king.

This was my favorite photo!

These little roadside stands could be seen on street corners and roadsides throughout the city and countryside. From 2-litre glass Pepsi bottles filled with petrol, moped drivers could get a quick fill-up!

Daniela, our PEPY staff tour leader, met Dan and I for dinner that evening, even though the rest of our group still hadn’t shown up. Two others were arriving around 10pm that night and the final member of our group wasn’t going to arrive until the next day, after we were to take off for our next destination.

Just in case you’re wondering, yes, it’s quite hot and humid in Cambodia. If I could have catalogued the layers of sweat in my clothes by the end of the trip….

Tuesday morning, 95% of our group was present. Besides myself, Dan, Lucky and Daniela, John and Kat had joined us overnight as well. As it turned out, John and Daniela went to the University of Notre Dame together back in the day. John is now a professor and Associate Dean for the Department of Exercise Science at Western Texas A&M University (or something like that). He’s the one that was on the men’s swim team at Notre Dame. Impressive. As I mentioned in my previous blog, he was there scouting for his university because they had partnered with PEPY to send 30 students to Cambodia on an educational tour in 2011. John’s wife, Kat, is an 8^th grade teacher either in or near Amarillo, Texas, where they live. As she put it, she wrangles 160 14-year-olds everyday. God bless her. Especially seeing as she is originally from D.C. Slightly different culture between D.C. and Amarillo, TX. John is originally from Indiana. Dan is originally from New Jersey but spent a stint in Chicago. Daniela is originally from New York State. And I’m from Iowa. Let’s start our game show! Yee haw.

So anyway, after a hot noodle breakfast, and getting to know the ‘newbies’ a bit, we loaded up into a van and drove from Phnom Penh out to our next 2-day locale, an eco lodge well outside a town called Kep. The location of this lodge was incredible. And here’s a funny thing, especially with the vistas we were afforded at the lodge…Cambodia constantly reminded me of what I always imagined parts of Africa looking like, even though I’ve never been to any of the parts of Africa that would look like that. Go figure. Hopefully you remember the story of how the eco lodge came to be from the previous blog, so I’ll just show you photos here.

"The Vine Retreat" eco lodge.

Isolated, silent, the view from "The Vine Retreat" was fantastically serene.

Overlooking the eco lodge's pepper plantation.

Seeing as how the trip from Phnom Penh to the eco lodge was a 3-hour drive, I should talk about traffic and road rules in Cambodia at this point. There’s lots of traffic in Cambodia, whether it has 4-wheels, 2-wheels or hoofs, and there are nearly no road rules. It’s actually a beautiful thing to behold, the perfect example of controlled chaos.

Technically, people drive on the right side of the road in Cambodia, and in larger cities and towns, the larger intersections have traffic lights. But other than that, it really is driving “at will.” If you’re coming to a 4-way intersection with no traffic light, then there’s probably no sort of stop or yield sign either, so you just continue on your merry way. There might be someone coming from the other way, but growing up in Cambodia I reckon merging/right of way just becomes second-hand, even though it might not be obvious to “out-of-towners” like me. I could tell it worked for them, but I couldn’t figure out how they figured it all out. Most of the time perpendicular passing happened within inches of another vehicle, and I saw and experienced many people pass someone, then turn down a side street RIGHT in front of the person they just passed. I never did see an accident though!

The other thing I loved about Cambodian traffic was that if, for example, you were turning left from one road onto another, if you couldn’t get across traffic to the right side of the road right away, that didn’t mean you had to stop…you just drove down the far side of the left side of the road onto which you had turned, until you had an opportunity to move over to the right side of the road. And horns were used more to warn someone you were about to pass that you were indeed about to pass and they had better not even think about purposely or accidentally moving further towards the middle of the road at that particular moment in time. The whole horn system was actually quite considerate, in association with the fact that people rarely slowed down while they were passing, even on busy 2-lane dirt roads in the countryside.

School's out!

So, needless to say, the 3-hour drive from Phnom Penh to the Kep eco lodge was interesting. We were in a larger vehicle that day (a van), but soon enough we were to be one of the smallest moving things on those roads (on bicycles)!

Arrival at the eco lodge, called “The Vine Retreat,” was shockingly serene after the craziness of the Phnom Penh big city and the road trip. The building was gorgeous (in a natural sense), as were the surroundings. And it was the first time I’d been at a pepper plantation (pepper the spice, not the vegetable), which is a side venture of the eco lodge. If you’re into buying “gourmet” pepper seeds, they are most likely from Cambodia (or so I was told)!

We met the staff, moved into our rooms, and loitered around the balcony/dining area, waiting anxiously for lunch.

Water/compost (respectively) holding containers.

I had a little fun stumbling upon a small cache of pepper plantation tools.

Inside a pepper plantation!

Lunchtime!

Right after the table was cleared (the food was always incredible, regardless of what meal we were eating!), our last member, Jason, also some sort of financial/energy guru from Chicago, showed up. We allowed him to snarf down some food before heading back downstairs to dole out the bikes and gear, do adjustments, then head out on our “getting acquainted with our bicycles” ride. We headed out onto the dirt backroads towards a local NGO, a Community Development Vocational Training Center, which I mentioned in my last blog.

One project was loom-based textiles. That same day, a man from another part of Cambodia had come to the center to teach the workers how to weave using silk, which of course could fetch a higher price on finished products than cotton.

"Funky Junk" building!

Workers threading together strips of cut-up plastic bags to be woven into various products from pencil cases to seat cushions! Along the bench in the background, you can see some of their creations, vase-like containers. Also, at the feet of the center manager (near Daniela), you can see two examples of their seat cushions.

The weather was great everyday, whether we were on our bikes or not. Okay, that’s a lie. Each time we wanted to hang out on a beach/by the river, it started to cloud over. But the sun was out enforce for every biking day! And the sky always seemed full of cottony clouds. But man was it hot and humid! (It had to be said again.)

I think it was only about 16km round-trip between the eco lodge and the training center. We took a leisurely ride back to the eco lodge after hanging out at the training center for a little while. There were two spots on the road where we had to ride over wooden slats laid out over a small gully. In front of one, Kat and I had to maneuver around a cow and calf that kept dancing around in the road, not sure which way they should go. Ahead of us at the second location, apparently a cow was standing directly in front of the crossing, and Dan and Jason had fun trying to dodge it while not getting their tires stuck in the spaces between the slats. Lucky was smart enough to realize that the cow’s rope-lead was caught between the slats, so he stopped to free it, leaving the path clear for those of us coming up behind.

After washing up and having dinner, we finally had the tour orientation we were supposed to have back in Phnom Penh but decided to wait to have once everyone was together. Although, by the time we had it, I think everyone had already kind of settled into their roles in Cambodia and on the tour (i.e. my place was “bringing up the rear” and “trying to avoid malaria or making too much noise in the bathroom”). We did a bit of reading, bit of chatting, watched a thunderstorm roll across the sea in the distance, and one by one, dropped away to bed.

I LOVE geckos, and this was the first time I'd ever seen the larger species of gecko...so I ended up stalking it pretty much every night when I caught sight of it, even as it did some stalking of it's own (below)!

My room! I figured as long as the visitor (below) stayed on the outside of the mosquito netting and did it's best to catch mosquitoes all night, we'd get along just fine. ;-)

On day 2 from the eco lodge base, immediately after breakfast we hopped on our bikes and headed for the seaside town of Kep. This day was more of a sight-seeing day. After a few kms, we stopped at a pagoda (temple), famous for the caves beneath it, primarily a feature within the caves called “The White Elephant.” There was a bit of hiking between the caves in what felt like jungle.

I thought these trees, with their red blossoms and black seed pods as long as your arm, were fascinating.

The White Elephant. Can you see it?! I had a bit of difficulty!

At the last cave, while we were standing around watching bats zoom around, we found out why Jason had arrived a day late. He had participated in an Ironman (his first) in Utah, and done his best to hop on the next flight out so he could join us in Cambodia….not to relax, mind you, but ride a bicycle across part of the country for a week. Holy cow. At this point I was wondering how exactly I ended up with this particular group on a tour like this.

Lucky hanging out, waiting for some sugar cane juice...fantastically delicious stuff!

Some chicks enjoying left-over melon.

Mmmm....sugar cane juice....

I’d met one or two people who had done a PEPY bike tour before, and all of them said, “Oh, don’t worry about being in really good biking shape! I’m no biker myself, but didn’t have problems.” Yeah, so on the tour I’M on, we’ve got Cambodia’s top cyclist leading the tour, an Ironman triathlete hot on his tail, a former divison-whatever swimmer, his wife who is an avid mountain-biker, an energy trader from Manhattan who over the course of the week revealed little things like training for a marathon, etc, the PEPY Executive Director who was a swimmer, ski instructor, does triathlons herself, and has been doing long distance bike rides and races for who knows how long,….and me, who just always seems to find herself in these situations because she doesn’t know any better! Hike in and out of the Grand Canyon in a day? Hike 90 miles across northern Scotland? Bicycle across south-central Cambodia? Stealing one of Lucky’s catch phrases, “Why Not?!?!” Geez. Well, it all definitely makes for good stories down the road!

Welcome to Cambodia!

From the pagoda and caves, we rode down to the sea shore, where we had a fresh seafood lunch at a restaurant…well, not on the water so much as half IN the water. Daniela has a severe liking for durian fruit, which she bounded off to buy, as well as the spidery-looking ramattan (I might have gotten the name wrong or horribly disfigured the spelling, but whatever, right?!) fruits, both of which we enjoyed digging into before the main courses for crab and shrimp were brought to the table.

Seaside "restaurant row" in Kep.

Interior of our lunchtime restaurant, a PEPY favorite!

After lunch, we rode over to the “port” to “ferry” across to Rabbit Island for a low-key afternoon of swimming and general hanging-out on the small strip of beach.

At this particular point in our journey, for whatever reason, Jason (a.k.a. Dragon) and Daniela broke out into a rousing chorus of "Ice Ice Baby." Definitely a Kodak moment!

I was surprised how many foreigners there were already on the island, most of them younger (actually, there weren’t really that many people in general on the island, but it just seemed to be a random place to run into anyone, let alone small groups of people obviously not from Cambodia). There were rental cabanas on the island right next to the beach, so I don’t have any difficulty imagining it’s a popular place for South-east Asian gap-yearers or study-abroaders to hang out during their holidays.

The next day our stay at the eco lodge came to an end and we hopped on our bikes to head for our next destination, the town of Kampot. We spent the morning being one with our bikes, enjoying the beauty of the seemingly random backroads down which we road; long stretches of empty space, rice fields, spotty lone houses and small villages visible in the distance.

I'd like to point out that these last two photos were taken while speeding along ON the bike. It took me at least 5km from the point when I took out my camera to get to a point where I could actually take a picture; sudden hills requiring breaking, potholes, curves, unexpected rocks made photo-taking while trying to keep up with Lucky a tad difficult! Most of the time I was hoping only that my camera wouldn't fly out of my hand, let alone a chance to actually take a photo!

One water break we took was right in front of a random house along the backroads. We made a very interesting momentary attraction to those who dwelled in the house!

Team "Speedy." Dan, Lucky and Jason. Who knew energy traders made such good cyclists?! You'd think they were German or something (threw that in there for you, Michael ;-D ).

During the second half of the ride we joined up with a larger, still mostly unpaved red dirt and gravel road, but wide enough for 2-3 lanes of traffic.

I say 2-3 lanes because almost the entire length we traveled was under construction for widening. We rode mostly off to the right-side, which was kind of a wide shoulder of sorts that the dump trucks seemed to prefer using as well (and there were many of them!). Because it was not yet the rainy season, the dust flew freely from the wheels of any motorized vehicle riding past us in either direction. The most enjoyable was the dust mixed with lots of nice exhaust from the dump trucks scooting past us just an arm-length away. I think I might have won ‘the dirtiest rider’ contest at our first sugar cane juice break of the morning.

This was one of the funniest moments of the day, by far. We were getting back on our bikes after the sugar cane juice break (yes, we took a LOT of them over the course of the tour), and this little lady comes up to Dan and starts making all these funny noises and comments about their height differential. She had one heck of a sense of humor, she did! She even commented that she needed herself a white husband and asked Dan if she could jump on the back of his bike and run away with him. :-D Of course Dan's wife, Kat, was standing off to the side, getting even more of a kick out of the encounter than the rest of us!

Me 'n' my bike, going for the "filthy as possible" look!

Now THIS would make a good TARGET ad!

Our filthy band of 7 cycled into Kampot around lunchtime, found our guest house (to be our base for the next 2 days), showered and ate, both of the latter done most ardently.

Another big gecko! And the best part was that there were at LEAST 50 small geckos hanging out all over the outside of this particular wall at the same time we spotted this larger one. I know you'll think I'm crazy, but they are SO cute!

Someone mentioned ice cream as we lazed around at our lunch table, which got us all back onto our bikes in a way that I don’t think anything else could have. Unfortunately, neither of the places we wanted to go were open, so we ended up at the EPiC Arts Café (see previous blog) a day earlier than planned, which is where we ran into Hannah again (had half a novel dedicated to her in my previous blog), and learned more about the café and what’s going on with evolution of Khmer sign language in Cambodia.

Downtown Kampot. Everywhere you go in Cambodia, you can find evidence of past French influence.

We had a few hours off in the afternoon, which most of us used to sleep and cool down. My innards were toying around with digestive pyrotechnics enough for me to beg out of evening dinner plans to continue slamming water, sleeping and in the awake-periods, ironically, watching a National Geographic show about the ancient, incredible Angkor civilization of 1100’s Cambodia.

The next morning I was feeling better and my morning coconut (I swear they are one of God’s miracle food products) helped solidify that standing. We jumped on our bikes again late morning and rode over to the EPiC Arts office and education site for a tour and lesson in deaf and disability issues in Cambodia.

That's Hannah, gesturing in the background on the left.

EPiC Arts' performance practice space. The NGO's founder and her husband bought this land years ago, and have been slowly building it up into the facilities we see today. It truly has been a labor of love, not only through the founder's insight, but through her husband's professional abilities as an architect and landscaper.

Wheelchairs donated from England.

Banners from EPiC's "Spotlight" 8-day festival last year, brought to fruition through a generous $300,000 donation for EPiC to create a singular, large-scale event featuring performances by Cambodia's deaf and disabled community.

Props created by EPiC's students for their community and school performances.

Craft/play/classroom.

Self-portraits done by EPiC students.

After the tour we headed back over to the EPiC Arts Café for lunch, then back to the guesthouse for a bit of a siesta before our late-afternoon/sunset river cruise.

Riverside Kampot.

Monks and tuk-tuks.

Lucky looking at home on the guesthouse's tuk-tuk, flashing his trademark smile that could put even Oscar the Grouch in a pleasant mood. :-D

The river cruise commences!

A bit of a stop-off at a riverside bar/hostel run by an Aussie.

Yeah, this is the life! All I need is a coconut, open water, time and space. :-)

Unfortunately another of our group had gone down with tummy trouble prior to our river cruise the evening before, but bounced back well enough to jump on the bikes again the next morning as we left Kampot and headed towards our family stay village outside a town called Chhuk. The original plan for this particular morning had been to get back on that nasty dust and dump-truck filled road on which we rode into Kampot. But even Daniela and Lucky weren’t keen on that idea, so they made the executive decision to hire a truck to drive us to the point on our route where we would have left the nasty road. We loaded up the bikes on the back of a small truck, then stood around for a few minutes wondering how we were going to get the people on that same truck!

It was quite an interesting hour-long ride in the open on the back of the truck, limbs, spokes and gear all mashed together. Lucky stood up the entire trip to keep the bicycles from shifting too much. Those with butts that were already feeling sore from the extended bicycle-riding over the past few days particularly enjoyed the truck experience (not). If anything was gained by this particular part of the trip (besides avoiding inhaling the rest of what was left of Cambodia’s red dirt after the previous day), it was getting people to start their day with a smile. The sight of a bunch of geared up white people crammed with their bicycles into the back of a tiny truck elicited more than a few “what-the-heck?!?!...” smiles and laughs. I have no trouble imagining how ridiculous we looked!

Eventually we were able to untangle ourselves from our bikes and get back on them the way God intended, and we cycled the rest of the way to our family stay destination.

The village in which we participated in the family stay had established the program for visitors awhile ago as part of a self-established community improvement program. Different families take turns hosting travelers who make advanced arrangements with the village for an overnight stay (or longer as well, I imagine).

We were welcomed into the village at the community center by a few of the village elders. We were filthy again and must have looked pretty bedraggled! After refreshing ourselves with the coconuts offered, we took a tour of the small museum in the community center which detailed the programs established by the village for community improvement. Afterwards, our group spread out amongst 4 families to bathe and relax. While there was a bit of generator-powered electricity in the village, there was no running water. Each house had the enormous ceramic pots used to store water- rain water during the rain season. During other times of the year, water was hauled from the communal pond built by the village by human-drawn wagon/wheelbarrow (the kids seemed to enjoy this task), and transferred into the large ceramic pots.

My (and Daniela and Lucky’s) family-stay house had a small, enclosed bathroom building, which not all homes had. I actually really liked this building and wonder why people of European decent never did this with their outhouses. The inside was tiled, and there was small space just inside the entrance where one could ‘bucket bathe,’ then a squat toilet on an area slightly raised off one end of the bathing area, and next to that, to fill out the rest of the space, was a large water retention area, I guess you could say (kept full in the same manner as the large ceramic containers.) There was no flush mechanism on the toilet, so there was a bowl-sized plastic (or metal) scooper with a handle that you used to draw water from the retention area to pour into the squat toilet, and the water pushed your business down the drain. After a couple of scoops of water, everything was as good as new. It was one of those startling solutions that kind of leaves your mind perplexed by its efficient simplicity.

Cambodians don’t bathe nude, at least not in rural areas, and I imagine a lot of that has to do with the reality of having to bathe in the open in mixed company, in view of anyone who might be out and about (although I got the impression that this wasn’t just a rural quirk). Women wear a sarong, and men wear a knee-length cloth tied around their waist. They scoop water over themselves for washing and rinsing from the retention area, one of the large ceramic pots, or a smaller bucket. It was all quite pleasant, except for my difficulty in trying not to accidentally get non-wet things wet.

In case I left it open to question, yes, I “bucket bathed” in a sarong as well.

After my bucket bath and becoming an acceptable human being again instead of a walking pile of dust and mud, I kind of hoodwinked one woman from my family and her small niece and nephew into walking the paths around their home and farm with me so I could take pictures (I’m awkwardly concerned about possible picture-taking offenses). We understood next to nothing we said to each other, but got a lot of laughs out of it nonetheless, especially with my pronunciation of their word for “cow.” Anything I can do to spread the international love. I’ve gotten quite good at cross-cultural comedy since coming to Japan….

Not that long after we started our farm rounds, the 19-year old daughter of someone in the family (extended family lived together and I lost track at one point of who belonged to which part of the family) came home from school and used the opportunity to practice her English with me by telling me about her farm, family, the cycle of rice planting their livelihood kind of depends on (her uncle also collects chickens raised by people in the village and sells them at market for profit), and not to get too close to the water buffalo tethered in the neighboring field that was staring us down while taking very decidedly direct steps towards us.

One of the village elders collected us in the early evening, and walked us over to an area overlooking a small section of river with a view out across rice fields and hinterland hills, to watch the sunset.

There were turkeys gobbling all over the place, which, for some reason, I got a big kick out of, especially when one came up onto the road where we were sitting and a lady that had been walking past picked it up while exclaiming, “Oh, THERE’s my turkey!” then disappeared down the road with it.

After sunset, we headed back to the community center for a fantastic dinner of omelets, seafood and soup, cooked by the community members in a small kitchen adjoining their center. I had been under the impression that we would be having only dinner that evening, so it was a pleasant surprise when a few guys sat down behind us with traditional instruments and began playing. That was just the beginning of what turned into a full-blown village party, including lots of traditional dancing undertaken around one of the plastic tables on which we had eaten dinner. All I remember right before we had to beg out of it all due to an early departure time the next morning was taking it upon myself to perform something akin to Irish tap dancing in response to one of the village lady’s dances that I couldn’t keep up with. I do remember hearing quite a bit of laughing in response to my shenanigans. Once again with the cross-cultural comedy, and I’m not even Irish.

There were two house-type buildings on the family lot were I did my home stay. I never entered the building that looked more like a house, so I can’t say what it looked like inside nor what it was actually used for. Daniela and I were set up in the other building, a wooden building on stilts. It was one big room with no furniture except a dresser and a dark, wooden vanity. In the corner opposite the door was a small, raised platform enclosed by thick, red curtains, where the 19-year old and at least one other female member of the family slept (maybe more). They had laid out a large futon mattress on the floor in the corner next to the door, enshrouded by a pink mosquito net that reminded me of princess canopy beds. On top of the mattress was a red blanket with matching small, red, embroidered pillows as well as long, cylindrical red, embroidered pillows. It all looked very regal. But it was a very hot, humid, still night, and padded up in that wonderful make-shift bed the family had laid out for us, I was more uncomfortable than I can remember being at night for a long time. After worrying for at least 20 minutes that I was going to soak through the entire set-up with sweat (the pillow was already done for), since I had seen another lady from the family doing the same thing just outside the raised platform bed area, I rolled off the mattress, out of the mosquito-netting and onto the wooden floor in an effort to find relief…and air currents. I was instantly cooler. It became quickly obvious that any padding on the floor blocks the opportunity for air to circulate through the cracks in the floor boards (in some spots I could see down to the ground below the house). Since I usually sleep on the floor in Japan as well, I was quite comfortable on the floor, even though I knew I had to risk mosquitoes in order to be cool. Wonder of wonders, I was bitten not a single time that night. From the moment I rolled over onto the floor, I spent a very restful night in my rural Cambodian home-stay. Lucky and at least a few of the male members of the family slept on hammocks strung up under both buildings. I knew the baby chicks were down there too, and the 19-year old had told me their cow was moved from the pasture to a small pen under the far end of my building at night as well, but I forgot to take a look after all the dancing excitement to confirm it.

In spite of the fact that we needed to be underway by 5:30am the following morning, the family was still up ahead of us. As soon as the sky turned a particular shade of daybreak, I heard almost everyone in the family get up at the same time and start their routines. It’s a wonderful thing, the art of rising with the dawn.

Unfortunately our group started buckling a bit on this, our last day of riding. Another of our members had been stricken overnight with tummy troubles and was not really in a condition to ride 90km back into Phnom Penh. When we reached a point on our route where we could reasonably expect to flag down a truck traveling to the city, John (the stricken), his wife, and Daniela packed up onto the back of a small flatbed truck, bicycles and all, and started their 4-wheeled journey back into Phnom Penh.

That left me without my “back of the pack” members, facing the last and longest leg of journey with the national cycling team member, the tri-athlete, and the energy trader/surprise sportsman. I figured as long as I could still see them somewhere in front of me and see when and where they turned, I’d be okay (hee hee).

The first part of the ride was again quite beautiful, through back roads and villages hidden in the middle of wooded areas. And almost everywhere we went, children continued to call out their hellos. On this section of the trip, more and more of them started running to the road to slap our hands as we rode past, particularly in an area on the side of a lake that Lucky called the road of “one thousand hellos.”

At the end of the road of a thousand hellos is where I had to admit defeat. I was starting to overheat and not only was the day becoming hotter, but it was turning into the hottest we’d encountered yet on our biking trip. When we exited the backroads onto a larger road and stopped for sugar cane juice, in consultation with the others, we decided to send me ahead on 4-wheels too. In consolation, I suppose, I can say I made it 45km that day.…..

Lucky was able to flag down a small van headed to Phnom Penh that already looked incredibly full, but made room for me and my bike anyway (the bike was tied, minus the front wheel, in the back on top of a Santa-toy-sack-sized bundle of something with the door protruding unhinged above it all)! Dan and Jason seemed more worried about sending me on alone than I did…Jason even gave me his internationally serviced iPhone as a ‘just in case.’ Actually, I never thought twice about heading back to the city by myself. Partially because my brain wasn’t working all that well at that point, and partially because I’d seen how things operate in Cambodia and felt that as long as I knew what sort of agreement was made prior to loading me into the van, I knew everything after that would fall into place somehow. And it did! That was probably one of the most interesting parts of my trip in Cambodia in the end, the full-on solo immersion experience (or so I’m choosing to remember it as such)! I heard from someone once that that’s how the Peace Corps used to immerse their volunteers, at least in Latin America anyway…put them on a bus and they have to figure out on their own how to get to their village placement from there! I have no idea how long I was on the van…hadn’t known what time it was when I got in and as previously mentioned, my brain wasn’t really functioning on all cylinders anyway. We had a few stops along the way to pick up/drop off other passengers, and 2 quick stops for people to jump out and grab food or other roadside goods….3 passengers bartered for straw hats through the window of the van during a 2 minute stop, then put them on immediately while still in the van, which I thought was odd….not a lot of need for a wide-brimmed straw hat in a van, but to each his own!

The van reached Phnom Penh and stopped outside what looked like a depot for those kinds of vans….there could have easily been a hundred of the same style of vehicle lined up in a semi-organized way outside a large warehouse-looking building. All the remaining passengers unloaded, and somehow the van driver made a tuk-tuk miraculously appear out of thin air. He loaded my bicycle and pannier into the tuk-tuk while I chased his wife around the van trying to pay her the $3 Lucky had negotiated as my ride fee (yes, only $3 and I was in the van for about 2-hours, I think). I then loaded into the tuk-tuk, gave the driver the piece of paper on which Lucky had written the instructions to the Tattoo Guesthouse, and off we went.

The tuk-tuk part of the “return to Phnom Penh” trip was smooth as well, until we were literally directly across the road from the side street where “Tattoo” was located, but from our angle on the main street where the driver stopped in the hopes of eliciting some sort of spark of recognition in me as to which side street he should turn down, I couldn’t see it, nor did I recognize the street in the daylight…all the side streets looked the same from where we were sitting, and there were a lot of them! Since I wasn’t being very helpful with the finale, the driver got out for a second to ask another tuk-tuk driver who was sitting at the corner just in front of us. This second tuk-tuk driver was gesturing further down the wide, 4-lane road we were sitting on….then to the right….then to the left…then making “in the very long distance” gestures again. I wonder where we would have ended up if we’d had to try to follow his instructions. LUCKILY, when my driver came back and started to pull away from the curb, “Tattoo’s” sign came into view and I started gesticulating wildly at the driver to head “over there.” It was a nice moment, to see the familiar faces of the “Tattoo” staff again.

I think I was back in Phnom Penh by early afternoon. When we met up for dinner that night, we were all happy to see Dan, Jason and Lucky sitting around the patio area having a beer, having returned around 4:30pm. In total, they road about 105km that day. I think that deserves another Yee Haw! That night we had dinner at the sister restaurant of “Friends,” (see previous blog) which is where we met Tara and heard about her extraordinary project (see previous blog again!). To round off my last night in Phnom Penh, we headed over to Rob’s wine bar (again, from the previous blog, Rob came to Cambodia to visit his girlfriend, Hannah of EPiC Arts fame, bought a wine bar, become co-manager of an eco-lodge, you know, as people are prone to do) to bring the evening to a close.

And then dawned my last day in Cambodia. The morning was spent on the more sobering tours of the S21 (Security Center 21) former Khmer Rouge prison/torture center (that had at one time prior been an intermediate/high school), as well as the killing fields where S21 prisoners were taken to be massacred once they had been tortured into confessing whatever it was the officials wanted them to confess to. I still have trouble wrapping my brain around this one, but almost all the prisoners who passed through S21 (roughly 20,000 over the course of 3-4 years) were NOT Khmer Rouge opposition, they were Khmer Rouge supporters and sympathizers!!! Extraordinary proof as to just how paranoid the Khmer Rouge were of even their own. It doesn’t take much to understand why it’s taken up until recently for Cambodia to redevelop any sort of educated population. If the Khmer Rouge actively exterminated their own, you can imagine how much more aggressively they did the same with the non-sympathizer “educated” population of that era.

Anyone who has been to the concentration camps in Europe can imagine what the tours of S21 and the killing fields were like. If you know you have a weak constitution for this kind of stuff, I recommend skipping through the next series of photos, because I’m not going to spare anyone the education of what we experienced on this particular morning just because the images are ‘unseemly.’ This stuff happened, not more than 35 years ago at that, and this stuff still happens; is happening right now in other areas of the world. It is my firm belief that just because we might never have personally experienced something so grossly inhumane doesn’t mean that we can excuse ourselves from knowing the horror of it all. It can happen anywhere at any time and no one is immune, even those who now seem the farthest from such an atrocity. All it takes is an en masse severe displeasure at something, lack of education as to the complicated reasons behind the displeasure-causing circumstances (like a bad global economy for example….), a political movement taking advantage of a tidal wave of bad circumstances, and a mass of people so disillusioned that they will believe the façade presented them by the most dangerous of movements as an ideological truth, but fail to see the signs of true intentions. It’s what happened in Germany. It’s what happened in Cambodia.

The Khmer Rouge kept files and photos of all their prisoners...and the S21 center in Phnom Penh is just one of MANY such torture/prison centers the Khmer Rouge had all around Cambodia…of course each was associated with further killing fields as well, close to 400 in all. The prisoner photos are now on display in the memorial museums the S21 grounds and killing fields have now become. These include photos of the last 14 victims found locked up, chained to bed frames, dead, when the Khmer Rouge were chased out of power by the Vietnamese army. The most stirring images, however, were paintings done by one of the 7 survivors of S21. They documented the torture methods used by the Khmer Rouge at the centers, as well as the murder methods they used at the killing fields…for both adults and babies. But I couldn’t bring myself to photograph those paintings, out of an unsettling feeling of memorializing the methods and the regime above the victims.

Our guide was a Khmer Rouge survivor. He was 14 or 15 years old at the time the Khmer Rouge came to power. Marched out of Phnom Penh with his family, along with the rest of the entirety of the city (supposedly headed for a life of communist utopia), separated from his parents and siblings, he was imprisoned in the jungle and remanded to 16-18-hour days of forced labor for 3 months, being fed only one small bowl of rice each day. 3 months might not sound like a long time, but when every day you are literally being worked to death and starved to death, imprisoned in the middle of nowhere as a kid with no idea whether you might be the only surviving member of your family and no idea of, let alone no hope of, if or when you might be released, or if you will even survive long enough to hope for anything back from your former life…3 months must feel like an eternity. Our guide said that every day he thought he would die. There were many other boys his age at the labor prison. They weren’t allowed to talk to each other, so he never knew them very well, but it was very obvious when they started to disappear. He knew he could very easily be the next one. One of the guards told him early on that if he valued his life, he would work as hard as he could, keep quiet and keep his head down. Even without much hope that it would amount to anything better than his current situation, he did just that. 3 months after imprisonment, one of the commanders (not more than 25 years old himself), came to him in the field and told him to come to his office at 2pm that afternoon. From this point on, there were so many times cross-wires could have changed his fate.

Even though he was sure his life would end at 2pm that afternoon, he couldn’t do anything but follow orders. At 2pm he told his field guard that he had to go to the commander’s office. If the field guard hadn’t believed him or hadn’t been told about the request beforehand, any one of the officers could have killed him on spec. But his field guard dismissed him to the commander’s office, where the commander gave him release papers. It turned out that the prison commander had been a student of our guide’s uncle. This loose connection had brought him his freedom. The commander gave him a piece of paper he was to show any Khmer Rouge soldier he happened to meet on the road, proving he had been given official release. And he was told if he did encounter anyone, not to talk more than necessary, to keep his answers simple and consistent. Then he was told to leave, just walk away, get out, and he didn’t hesitate, not even to collect whatever belongings he still had in his cell, out of fear that his good fortune could turn against him at any moment at someone’s whim. So he started walking to the village where he was told his mother was being kept.

Along the road to the village, he met a checkpoint. A young soldier no older than himself trained his bayoneted rifle on him, and told him to stop; to not come any closer or he would be shot. He stopped, and told the guard he had been released from the work prison and was on his way to his mother’s village. The guard didn’t believe him, called him a liar and accused him of escaping from the work prison. All our guide repeated at that time was the word “no,” and took the paper out of his pocket to show the guard. But the guard wouldn’t relent, wouldn’t even look at the paper, continuing to accuse him of being an escapee, and told him to walk down into the jungle. For the second time that day, our guide though his life was about to end. At that exact time, however, a slightly older soldier (again, maybe only 25 years old or so) rode up on his bicycle and demanded to be told what was going on. Our guide repeated his story to the older soldier, as well as the word “no.” He offered his release paper for the older soldier to review. The older soldier took it and read it over, then went over to the younger guard and hit him hard across the face, ranting at him, “What do you think you’re doing?! He has been released! He is allowed to go!” Coincidentally, the older guard was friends with the prison commander who had written the release paper, which made the offense by the younger guard that much more aggregate. Unsurprisingly, the younger guard couldn’t read. Instead of showing that hand, he preferred to dispense of the issue simply by killing the former prisoner who stood in front of him. You have to wonder how many times people have been killed injudiciously in similar situations over centuries worth of conflict because of things as asinine as illiteracy.

Being handed his life back for a second time in a single day after having it hanging by a thread, our guide continued on to his mother’s village, where, of course, his mother went nearly delirious with joy at the sight of him, in spite of his malnourishment, filth and disease. But the older soldier who had saved him from being shot on the road had told him that if he valued his life, upon his arrival in the village he should do nothing but go straight to the ‘employment office’ and registered for work with the regime officials there. He shouldn’t go to his mother’s home; he shouldn’t stop for a meal or to clean up. His mother seemed as if she would never release him again, and as overjoyed as he was to see her, as absolutely exhausted as he was, he pushed her aside and told her to wait for him as he took his release paper to the employment office to register for the workforce of the village. And he was still only 14/15 years old.

He lived and worked in the village with his mother through the end of the Khmer Rouge regime. During that time he escaped another near miss of another fashion. For reasons I still don’t understand, the Khmer Rouge implemented a system of forced marriage between marriageable “citizens” and marriageable members of families who had been loyal to the Khmer Rouge from the beginning. They would gather all such eligible members in a hall in a village, give each of them a number, then line up the girls on one side and the boys on the other. A regime official would call out the number of one of the girls, and then one of the boys. The summoned two would walk to the middle of the room to face each other. If everyone approved…not that they really had the option to oppose, I imagine…the new couple was taken to an official at the end of the hall for union formalization. Our guide said there were many such couples that he never saw again. It wasn’t far-fetched to assume that the “citizen” of the couple had been taken off and killed somewhere not long after the marriage and in some cases during what was supposed to be the honeymoon trip.

Our guide happened to be one of the eligible bachelors and his arranged marriage time came. He herded into the hall with the other “soon-to-be-marrieds.” He was still suffering from malnourishment then, looked scrawny and weak, and had lice, so he had recently shaved his head. When his turn came, he walked to the middle of the hall to meet the girl from the ‘loyal’ family who was to be his new wife. He stopped in front of her. She looked at him, walked a full circle around him, then walked to an official at the end of the hall and had a hushed conversation with him. Our guide said he has no idea what she said to the official, but when she came back, she whispered in his ear that she was sorry, she was sure he was a nice boy, and she didn’t want to embarrass him, but that she couldn’t marry him. He was completely overjoyed because he did not want to get married, let alone be forced into a marriage (still a teenager), but faked a sad rejection as he agreed not to be paired with this girl. Would you believe that he still visits her and her family with the man she did eventually marry to this day out of reverence for the fact that he believes she saved his life in many ways that day?!

He did end up getting married eventually and has a family now. Both he and his wife work for the government, which I guess isn’t that great of a job (doesn’t pay well), but has long-term security. There are options to work for private companies, but as our guide explained, you never know whether or not those private jobs are going to exist from one day to the next. He does English language tour-guiding as a second, side job. He’s just like every other father out there in the world. He says his son is a bit rebellious, but dotes on his daughter who has a good head on her shoulders and very actively studies English, hoping to get into a good university outside of Cambodia someday.

The photos speak volumes about the Khmer Rouge era, but this man’s story is nothing short of awe-inspiring in my mind, and put such a real face on the events of the 3 years the Khmer Rouge were in power, that you could see visual images of his plight being played out in front of you like a movie as he told his story.

Our morning reliving Cambodia’s shocking recent history came to an end. We bade farewell to our guide and headed to lunch at a restaurant that employs as well as financially supports projects for at-risk women and children.

After lunch, we headed over to the home of a Cambodian traditional musical instrument maker.

Daniela happens to be friends with his daughter. We spent the better part of the afternoon in the family’s living room, listening to the impromptu concert the master craftsman and his family put on for us, eating South-east Asian fruit, and trying our own hand at playing his instruments…which most of us butchered something awful, but we had a good time trying, and gave our hosts a laugh at our inadequate attempts.

Unfortunately we had to bring the afternoon to a close in order to get me back to the airport for my return flight to Japan. After a quick, cooling shower and grabbing of the suitcase back at “Tattoo,” Lucky drove me in his tuk-tuk the 40 minutes in Cambodia’s crazy-beautiful traffic, back to the Phnom Penh International Airport.

After an extremely inadequate showing of appreciation for Lucky sharing his country and his talent with us, I rushed into the airport to catch my flight. Along the way I scarfed down a chicken salad sandwich at the only café I came across in the incredibly classy airport (I’m kind of bummed that I might never experience travel as it was prior to capitalism and free-trade…all the airports nowadays, regardless of where they are located, seem to have undergone extensive, expensive reconstruction to give travelers the best possible first-impression… “airport homogenization” if you will. I could have just as easily been in Minneapolis, Minnesota as Phnom Penh, Cambodia.), then had a 10-minute conversation with a few of the university-aged staff in the souvenir shop who were all keen to practice their English, which was all incredibly charming, before grudgingly getting back on the plane…but gratefully as I literally had no money left! The last noteworthy aspect of my trip was my layover in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, where I randomly watched a playoff game for the England intra-country soccer tournament (can’t remember what it’s really called) on ESPN.

Thus endeth my Cambodia experience, although the memories and nagging questions will long remain.