Andrew Turco - A year in Cambodia

-Reunions were great and most definitely worth the trip.

-I’ve been away for long enough that I actually thought for a millisecond that it was October when I returned to campus and saw all of the orange and black, especially since I have no concept of seasons here anyway.

-It’s amazing how much easier it was to get right back into things than I thought it would be.

-It’s also amazing how, in contrast to previous reunions, when lots of unknown people descended on campus, a year out (and coming from Cambodia), I felt like I knew everyone I saw this year.

-Staying out until 6 AM is much easier when you’re still somewhat adjusted to a different time zone.

-Seventeen-hour flights are great for catching up on sleep from those 6 AM nights.

-It’s a lot of fun to not even be doing it on purpose but to garner impressed reactions by mentioning your previous weekend trip to Ho Chi Minh City.

-Lots more of my friends have blackberrys than did last year.

-The reverse culture shock was not as big as I thought it would be, and I didn’t find myself instinctively using Khmer or anything; however, the one thing that I did continue to do unconsciously was to hand money to people using both hands.

-There are countries where it’s possible not to sweat for five straight days.

-Your lips get really chapped when you come from humid Cambodia to dry New York and New Jersey.

-People in Tribeca look a lot more put-together and well-dressed than people in Phnom Penh.

-It’s a weird feeling to be checking in to JFK for a flight to an exotic destination and to be disappointed that your vacation is over.

-Yet, having been away for longer times during trips to other places in Asia, being back in my apartment again on Monday night felt surprisingly normal and like my regular life.

I think I’ve read more books for pleasure this year than I have over the four years of college combined. Fortunately, there’s enough good literature on the region that I’ve also been able to spend a lot of that reading time learning about Cambodia and the region at large. In addition, a few classics that have been on my list for a while have made the cut. Plus, there’s the occasional break for when I need to escape from the context of Southeast Asia and don’t feel like reading an old book.

On the recommendation of Elena and some of the rest of the Lao crew, I just started Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which chronicles the life of an immigrant Hmong family’s epileptic daughter and, in the process, talks a lot about the edges of where cultures meet and some of the misunderstandings that result.

The best part about reading these relevant-to-the-region books is that I can usually either relate to the stories in some way or gain a greater understanding about where I am this year.

So far, no other book has as well expressed the occasional anger that can result unintentionally between people from two different cultures looking at the same issue with such little common ground as Spirit has. In talking about the conflict between Lia’s parents, who are accustomed to Hmong medicine and believe that the American doctors are actually hurting their daughter, and the doctors, who are brought to absolute frustration over the fact that Lia’s parents are failing to follow their medical directions and are therefore jeopardizing the health and even life of their child. The interactions between these sets of people so illustrates the anger, not even just frustration, that can result when core beliefs are put in opposition, even though the book looks at it objectively enough to be able to realize that both sides are right and wrong in their own ways.

Additionally, though not at as intense in scale or as important in context, I can relate to the weird feeling discussed in the book of simply not being able to translate an idea between one culture and another. The language translation doesn’t exist, but the idea’s almost indescribable as well. As taken from the book, how does one differentiate what a psychologist is from other doctors when Hmong believe that all sicknesses, including even a common cold, involve spirits and something gone amiss with one’s spirit and head.

And finally, in reading about a female researcher working within a traditional Hmong community, it’s hard to avoid thinking about when one is acting more admirably by conforming to local social norms, such as by showing higher respect to males than females purely because of their gender, and when one should be unbending about beliefs that one holds to be truly virtuous, such as treating all people equally.

About ten minutes before we were supposed to meet for dinner, Rabia texted to ask if I’d be up for joining a group of people going to Spark later last night. Would I? Uh…yeah, of course - is Buddha Buddhist? Spark is on par with the Rock as being the most happening Khmer dance hall in the city. Both are huge buildings with big name-recognition located on the Southern side of the city. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve only been to the Rock once and had never been to Spark before, but it wasn’t because I hadn’t been wanting to go.

We got in a tuk-tuk from the restaurant, and in contrast to the usual clueless reaction, the driver answered with a quick reply of recognition. “Oh, yes, spah’k. You should go to the Orange Club too.” Anyway, we showed up at the surrounding parking lot and looked up at the radiating red neon lights on the roof. This seemed to be the place where all of the teenage riders of the new Honda and Suzuki motorbikes, with their flashy clothes and speedy driving, go on a Saturday night. We headed into “blue” Spark, not to be confused with the smaller and apparently slightly sketchier Spark Red, which sits behind it.

Both the Rock and Spark are huge dance halls, and we could hear the dance music as soon as we walked in. That was after, of course, passing the signs spelling out that guns, military uniforms, grenades, cameras, military caps, babies, drugs, and flip-flops were not allowed.

It was the night out I had been craving since before I partly satiated that desire at reunions. We went straight to the dance floor and practiced the jelly-like shoulder movements of the young Cambodians dancing around us. Pop Khmer dancing or the dances that young people in Cambodia do or whatever you want to call it is pretty good, I think. It somehow captures the hip shaking of Western hip-hop dancing and meshes it with the deliberate hand and arm movements of classical Khmer music. I happen to think the end result is both unique and successful.

The best thing, I discovered, though, is that there are breaks in the DJ’s playlist in order to make way for bands or performances every once in a while. At first, when the music changed to a slow song and everyone vacated the dance floor to the tables and bars surrounding it, I thought that perhaps slow songs were just too scandalous for the clientele. But then I realized that we had just missed the memo and that they were breaking for a performance. From my perspective, these provided the best excuse to stop dancing for ten minutes to let my sweat decrease to a normal rate. And as a side note, for a supposedly conservative culture, the performances were far from PG.

Following the success of last night, I jumped on Brendan’s suggestion to go to Phnom Penh Water Park today. What could be better on a hot, hot day? Plus, we couldn’t imagine too many tourists coming to Phnom Penh to go to the water park along the road to the airport, which increased its appeal.

The oversized and neat white and blue cement entryway visible from the road certainly oversells the slides inside. We paid our admission, again headed past the no-guns signs, and stepped into a little piece of Americana. The snack bar even sold a Cambodian versions of a hot dog, which I had to get just because it felt appropriate. Expecting to see towering slides curly-cuing down into blue pools, however, I was moderately surprised to see only a few slides of medium height surrounded by what we came to call the Stagnant River Pool.

Nonetheless, we pulled off our flip-flops, kept our shirts on (since everyone else seemed to be), dumped our stuff in the lockers, and hit the slides. They weren’t high, but it was still plenty of fun. In contrast to the regulated parks in the US, the rules seemed to be that, if you didn’t run, you must not really want to slide down. If you didn’t launch more than five people down the slide at once, then you just weren’t being creative. And if you didn’t go immediately after the person in front of you, then you just had no sense of adventure for when you’d run into the other person midway down the slide. Also, feet up at the bottom. As if on purpose, the bottom of the shallow pools at the end had extremely roughly finished concrete floors.

Even though I swim nearly every other day, there was something more entertaining about going down the slides. We held our mouths closed super tight when we hit the pools. The water wasn’t exactly crystal clear. And when the sirens started sounding, we did like everyone else did and ran for the wave pool, which was just starting up again. We went into the empty pool first, and within seconds, it was filled with paratroop jumpers landing in their inner tubes with thuds all around us. We looked around a few minutes after we got in and realized that the pool was virtually full, and everyone was packed in tube to tube.

Yet beyond the nearby tubes and at the edge of the pool, we confirmed our worst fear, which deep down, we already knew to be true. A mother was leading her young son to the edge of the pool to…pee. There may be waves, but this was no ocean. We got out, tried to block the knowledge out of our heads, hoped really hard that we wouldn’t get sick, went on a few more slides, and then headed back into town.

As of June 15, the renter we’ve been subletting from will be returning to Cambodia, so, as poorly timed as it is - coming so close to when we’ll be leaving the country - it meant that Brendan and I were thrown back into the apartment search. Either that or I’d have the less desirable option of returning to a guesthouse for the remaining few weeks, which, at this point in my year, sounds less than appealing. I’ve gotten used to keeping juice in the fridge and not having to overhear directions to the city’s sites every time I return home. So although the time left is short, we’ve just transitioned to our second “penthouse” of the year, located on the top floor of a house in a three building “complex” East of Independence Monument and off of Sihanouk Boulevard.

In all honesty, knowing we would be switching apartments made me excited to be leaving the old place. Although charming, the leaking faucet, lack of screens, extreme heat, awful lighting, consistently wet bathroom floor, and pungent cooking smells from below have taken their toll on me. But, in other ways, it was a sign that the first of my many Cambodian chapters is coming to a close.

The new apartment doesn’t have nearly the same character as the old one, and it even has a guard, a sure indication that we’re no longer so seamlessly in the middle of a Khmer neighborhood. When I met Mon, one of the guards, he even stuck out his hand in expectation of a shake, which caught me off guard and is probably the first time I haven’t simply sophea-ed in that context since arriving. But I’m more than excited for my own bathroom, windows on four sides of the apartment, screens that will enable us to keep them open at night, a lack of dust coming through wall openings, air-conditioners that work (though, after a year without them, I don’t actually feel they’re that critical anymore), and bright fluorescent lights that may cast a somewhat unflattering light on everyone but which also wonderfully light all the rooms of the apartment. In fact, on my first morning, I reveled in being able to walk in and out of the bathroom without wiping the puddle water off my feet each time.

Additionally, the apartment is set slightly off the street and on a much quieter, leafier one than we were previously living on. Read: we actually have quiet time. With the bulbs fully illuminating the room, a breeze rolling through the open windows, and the sense that there were no longer neighbors who could hear my every step through the less than substantial floors and walls, I found myself completely content staying inside last night. It’s been amazing to discover how much time can change one’s preferences. If I had seen this apartment when I arrived, I probably would have passed it up, thinking that it was too isolated and too generic, but I’ve gotten to the point when that quality has less sway in my decision now that I’ve built a life in the city. In fact, it’s recharged me in a way that again makes me think that I could actually stay a little longer.

On my way out of the old apartment for the last time, I noticed something I hadn’t noticed for many months. Along the alley in front of me, a woman was cooking outside each of the downstairs doorways in fry pans set over small charcoal fires. The alley’s not wide, and whenever I walk by them, I always have to turn sideways while they duck into the doorway to make room as well. It’s unavoidable because of the narrow dimensions of the passageway. I do this nearly everyday, but I simply stopped noticing.

When I first arrived, however, it made more than a casual impression. I remember coming home those first few nights when the glows from the fires were going and the small fish were sizzling in the pans and thinking how great a sight it was and that I needed to take a picture of it. It wasn’t until I left for the last time that I remembered and then realized that I’d never gotten around to taking the picture. And I didn’t really have a desire to anymore, other than to document what my daily landscape was like. It just seemed too regular to me to think of as being picture worthy.

It’s funny how time and familiarity change one’s perspectives on things. In the May issue of Conde Nast Traveller, they mention a small hotel in Siem Reap and highlight how “the helpful staff can arrange a tuk-tuk there [to Old Market] or to Angkor Wat,” to which I wondered why that was worth mentioning. Of course, to me, taking a tuk-tuk is second nature, and it’s easy to forget that the ride might be intimidating, adventurous, or exciting to anyone not used to seeing them everyday. In a way, it was kind of disappointing to realize that the exotic of Cambodia is somewhat gone for me - but also rewarding to know that those previously interesting aspects of life here are things that I simply accept as part of my everyday world.

Even in my quiet, comfortable apartment, I was still awoken at 4 AM this morning after my first night of sleep there to the sound of amplified Buddhist chanting coming from the wedding across the street, which quickly reminded me that certain things here still grab my attention. And some things that would have never previously thrilled me now do, as well. Unlike in our old apartment, each of the bathrooms has a towel rack neatly mounted on the wall, making the everyday shower infinitely more enjoyable.

Today’s Cambodia Daily:

In an article titled “New Traffic Law Fails to Reduce Road Fatalities”:

“Traffic deaths have not decreased in the nearly one year since the law took effect, and traffic police admit that they haven’t been able to fully implement such provisions as making motorists wear safety helmets and stopping drivers from drinking […] Tin Prasoer [Phnom Penh municipal traffic police chief] added that officers will not be taking any steps to increase enforcement of the traffic law prior to next month’s election. ‘It’s close to the election. We don’t want any reactions…If we stop motorbikes, there will be reactions from road users,’ he said.”

Read: the government makes all efforts to carry out road improvements, like paving, that they’ve otherwise put off since the last elections and relaxes fines against people in the run-up to the election in an effort to get people to go to the polls with a good impression of the ruling party, irrelevant of the safety consequences of those decisions.

In other great quotes from the same article, the traffic official also explained that the traffic police try to get riders to wear helmets but that “they say they are too tired to wear helmets.” What?

And finally, in response to why the police have been unsuccessful in curbing the high prevalence of drunk driving, Siem Reap traffic police chief Thong Sokun said, “If we implement it [the drunk driving laws], our people will have difficulty […] It is their custom.” It is a logical point. It would be harder to get from the karaoke joint home if you couldn’t drive after getting trashed, and can you imagine if one person had to remain sober for the whole night? It really would make fun “difficult” to come by.

Another day in the life

Sandwiched between errands and an approaching trip to Indonesia next week, I headed to Kratie yesterday in an effort to take in all that I can of Cambodia before my year here comes to a close in a seemingly rapidly approaching manner. Anastasia had it so right when she replied to an email I sent her and Leslie a couple days ago. This is one of the best parts of the year. The grades are in, and it’s time to revel in simply being in and exploring a place I’ve gotten to know so well and can now easily make my way around. I now have the knowledge (plus the comfort of not having a whole unknown year ahead of me) that I didn’t have when I first arrived and feel so much freer to do the things I’ve been wanting to do.

In many ways, it feels like the end of school. The closing of an experience makes you appreciate all of the things you’ve become accustomed to. Just as you’re at the top of the food chain by the end of senior year, I’m also the most familiar with, knowledgeable about, and comfortable with Cambodia that I’ve been since moving here.

It’s also reflection time. And as I’ve thought back on the year, as with the conclusion of any long commitment, I can always think of minor things I still wish I had done differently. Plus, there are the inevitable mental comparisons with other similar experiences, as similar as any previous experience I’ve had could be. I didn’t wholly eat Cambodian food all of the time as I did when in Mexico and probably got out of the habit of even trying to find cheaper, more local places more completely than I would have wished. Unlike in China, I didn’t spend as much time with my students outside of class, even if I got to know them extremely well in the classroom context. In fact, I always felt like all of the extra effort I made to talk personally with them or do things extracurricularly went so well that I should have made more of an effort. But it always required a lot of extra work, and, in all honesty, I feel like I’ve gotten to know them better than the majority of their other teachers probably have.

In continuing to reflect on what I’m feeling like I’m most leaving behind and what’s made this year distinctive from those other experiences (in addition to the length of time) is probably the knowledge I’ve gained of the place. Never before have I spent a year so dedicated to simply learning as much as possible about a country, a city, a culture, and a history as I have this year. While I journeyed on less traveled paths in China, much more isolated from the rest of the world and from other foreigners, I often whisked away with the group for a weekend in a place I appreciated immensely but knew little about. In contrast, here, I can probably tell you about the history, current political climate, and traditions of nearly every area of the country. I can point to all of my travels on a map and even trace the routes that I took to get there. I devour the Cambodia Daily and Phnom Penh Post and even try to catch up on back issues when I’ve been away. In getting ready to pack, I’ve noticed the height of my book collection on Cambodia and “Indochina.” Writing for Asia Life has lead my interview with people I wouldn’t have otherwise given myself the excuse to talk with - from monks to long-term bar owners. Daily chats with Steve in the office have given me insight into recent history that happened before I arrived. Discussions with Boramy have revealed the general trends of thinking in the country, as well as her commentary on those trends. Simply speaking the minimum amount of Khmer that I do has produced smiles that have, in turn, allowed me enter old buildings and explore in ways that I haven’t ever before been able to do.

As my year here is winding down, I’m most appreciative of and also most reluctant to leave this environment in which I really feel that I have become so knowledgeable about.

And so, with the knowledge that I wanted to see the Irrawaddy fresh water dolphins that ply Cambodia’s Northern stretches of the Mekong (and Laos’s Southern reaches), I decided to take a trip to Cambodia’s “Wild East.”

Unfortunately, I hadn’t really checked the bus schedule before I left, and the route to Kratie isn’t one of the more traveled trips in the country, as the ones to Siem Reap or Sihanoukville are. In fact, by showing up at 9 am, I had already missed the once a day bus. After momentary shock about how I was now going to fit in this “must-see” destination before my flight to Indonesia on Sunday, I realized that there was a bus to Snoul around mid-day and decided that I’d find my way to Kratie when I arrived or could spend the night and would simply travel the remaining hour early the next day, thereby maximizing my time in Kratie when faced with the other option of simply departing Phnom Penh on Friday.

As the bus headed North, I found myself unable to concentrate on my book. In general, I can usually find interest in simply looking around, as long as the scenery is changing in some way. Cambodia’s only further cemented this patience and ability to appreciate the scenery, as time doesn’t have the same urgency that it does in the US and as hyperactive stimulation isn’t always as readily available. With two weeks to go, though, I felt too antsy to put my focus on a book. I couldn’t afford to miss any of the scenery outside the bus windows since I know I soon won’t be able to take it for granted.

We passed through the city of Kampong Cham, in Kampong Cham Province. (All provincial capitals have the same names as their provinces, which can be seen as either making their names easy to remember or making everything very confusing when you’re not sure whether someone’s talking about the city or the province). I was impressed by the number of colonial-era Chinese shophouses and hope that I’ll be able to follow through on a plan with Fi to spend a day or two visiting right before leaving the country.

After Kompong Cham, Highway 7 curves East away from the Mekong and towards the border with Vietnam before turning back again between Snoul and Kratie. As we headed into Eastern Cambodia, the landscape changed. The ground began to roll gently and rows of rubber trees appeared to flicker, as in an old movie, as my eye was caught transitioning between each long, neatly arranged row. Throughout, there were still thatched huts and elevated wooden houses, all constructed in traditional Cambodian style. I wanted to take it all in, knowing these sights are such rarities that I’ve come to take for granted. As I stared out the window, I couldn’t help but think of the history that took place in this region. Being in the Eastern part of the country and along the Ho Chi Minh trail, this area was the first to fall to the Khmer Rouge and the Viet Minh but is considered to have been ruled with slightly more restraint than the Chinese-backed faction that controlled the Western areas of Cambodia. It was here that the disillusioned factions of the Khmer Rouge also later enlisted the Vietnamese to invade Cambodia and initially liberate it from the KR’s grip, sending to KR to the jungles along the Thai border until they were mostly extinguished as a fighting force in the late 1990’s.

Somewhere in Kompong Cham Province, the bus pulled off into the dirt parking lot of a rest stop area took. All of a sudden, I was approached by a girl that I recognized. Then I realized that it was one of my students, Dany, who, it turns out, was on her way to her hometown in Kompong Cham to help farm during her summer vacation from school. For the first few seconds, it was hard for me to place her. She looked much older without her school uniform on, and although this sounds funny, she looked like a younger version of many of the older Khmer women I see.

It was nice and a little strange to talk in such a removed context. I was flattered by her telling me out of the blue that many of my students were still hoping I would come back next year and that they could be in my class, even though I had told them that I would be returning to New York for at least the next year. Two girls selling pineapple approached and, after a brief sales pitch, asked if Dany was my girlfriend. It was the first time I had ever seen young sellers like this so healthy, fluent in English, and happy. When I told them that she was not my girlfriend, they jokingly said that I was therefore free to be their boyfriend. Normally, a lot of the children selling stuff at bus stops either just depress me or can be incredibly annoying as they hang off of you demanding that you give them money just because you’re a foreigner, but I actually found these two amusing and so pleasant to be around. I bought a pineapple from them even though I didn’t necessarily want it. It was tasty, though. The driver honked the horn, and we headed back to the bus. No matter how forcefully I insisted that Dany step onto the bus ahead of me, she wouldn’t allow it. After all, even in this context, I was still her teacher.

Finally, at around sunset, we arrived in Snoul, a small town with not too much a mere 15 km from a border crossing with Vietnam open to Cambodians and Vietnamese but not to foreigners. The name alone, pronounced “snool,” would make staying there tolerable until early the next morning, but there really wasn’t much. It was the first place I’ve seen that looked like a true border town and the places depicted in black and white photos from the 1980’s and 1990’s.

The center of town was a small bus station and taxi stand consisting of radiating red dirt and a concrete overhang and seating area. The sun was setting, and the redness of the sunlight only seemed to emphasize the earth that was caked to everything. Music blared from a surrounding building at a volume that made it seem like everyone around was simply mouthing conversation but not actually speaking. The concrete structures around me were crumbling and stained a deep red for nearly the entire height of their first floors. A mini merry-go-round was set up in the dirt, with small lights twinkling in the twilight, and street carts had set up around the concrete pad. It seemed as if the whole town was just wandering around or sitting on the few benches under the concrete roof of the bus station’s overhang, all moving to the beat of the trance-like Khmer music blaring out of the unidentified speaker. Teenagers climbed up on run-down tractors, and a couple of 4x4 Toyota pick-ups loaded and unloaded materials from their beds.

I was torn between getting a few pictures and making it out before darkness meant that I’d pretty much have to spend the night. Unlike in Phnom Penh, where you’re harassed mercilessly and annoyingly by tuk-tuk and moto drivers as soon as the bus is moving slowly enough that they can start banging on the windows of the bus, everything felt calm and friendly.

I’m glad I’ve begun to travel to the remaining areas of the countries that I still haven’t seen because leaving Phnom Penh for destinations further a field in Cambodia has made me realize that I do actually like Cambodia as much as I like Laos. I just needed to get out of the sometimes unpleasant Phnom Penh more. In my mind, Laos almost benefits by not having a city as large as Phnom Penh, meaning that even Vientiane feels relaxed and comfortable.

The Lonely Planet advised staying in Snoul only as a last resort, indicating that the walls separating the rooms of the town’s only guesthouse don’t even reach to the ceiling. Out of curiosity, I asked a motorbike driver how much it would cost to get to Kratie. He replied with $15, but didn’t pressure me when I declined his offer. Another man sitting on a bench a few feet away and who spoke excellent English told me that it was possible to get a share-taxi at seven the next morning if I didn’t want to pay the $15 and could bare staying the night. The friendliness and honesty of both of these people is one of the things I’ve come to see as unfortunately lacking in many interactions in Phnom Penh and which I’ve come to see still exists in the rest of the country during my other recent journeys. When I didn’t have exact change for a motorbike ride a few nights ago, the motorbike driver claimed that he didn’t have any change either and would simply have to take the entire dollar that I had. However, when I told him that I didn’t think that would be happening and to wait for two seconds while I went inside to get some riel instead, he all of a sudden found a wad of riel in his pocket that must have simply slipped his mind ten seconds before.

But back in Snoul, I was deciding whether to commit myself to the town or try to make a break for Kratie. Still wanting to take some more pictures anyway, I decided to think it over. As I snapped my first picture, another man, hearing that I wanted to go to Kratie, came over and asked if I needed a ride because he knew a truck heading that way. I followed him to the Toyota pick-up with a truck axle in the bed and asked the price. The three making the trip onward to Ratanakiri offered to drop me along the way for $5, which I was certainly willing to pay. I didn’t know how much it should be, though, so figured I’d just take a dollar off and offer four for the ride. They nodded vigorously in a way that made me think I probably could have gotten it for only a couple thousand riel, but I didn’t feel ripped off. A motorbike ride of the same length in Phnom Penh would cost around $5, and we were going to be driving partly while it was dark out in a country where it’s hard to both get people to take you anywhere around dinner-time and where there’s an aversion to traveling at night.

I got in and for some reason decided that I wanted to sit inside the cab rather than on the benches in back. I sat on the right side, behind the driver, since Cambodia gets its cars from anywhere it can and doesn’t have any kind of obvious regulations as to whether they must be left or right-hand drive models.

For the first time, I understood how travelers around my age going throughout Southeast Asia survive. Even over New Year’s, when I was traveling with a good friend in a country I grew to love and on a pre-planned route for two weeks, I eventually desired to return to a home base, to regroup, and to be able to sit still for a few days. Traveling can be exhausting, and sometimes there’s something to be appreciated in the familiar. But the thrill of figuring out how to get from Phnom Penh to Kratie and catching the truck by coincidence, which led me the final way in my journey as the sun touched down, was admittedly pretty exhilarating. It was also much more doable without having a time constraint of having to make it back to work by a certain day, which obviously cramps how much spontaneity I felt I could afford during other parts of the year.

At first, the ride was quiet as the two men in front went through four cigarettes, and then they turned on the radio to a call-in show. Since they never changed the channel, I couldn’t tell if the speakers were just bad or if the station was purposely synthesizing everyone’s voice in order to make it echo in an attempt to make it sound soothing. The volume was up so loud that it didn’t at all sound soothing, even though I have the feeling that it was the Cambodian equivalent to Delilah. I was hoping they might switch to Khmer music instead, but they didn’t.

The sky grew dark, and we swerved to avoid cattle and unlit bicycles still using the road. For a while, I was dazing and forgot that I was traveling in Cambodia with three men I didn’t know.

Sure enough, though, within an hour (I was very conscious of looking for landmarks and monitoring the time), the small thatched houses lining parts of the road began to support single fluorescent tubes, and an hour and ten minutes into the ride, streetlights appeared. Throughout my year here, I’ve felt fortunate that I have a fairly good sense of direction and can pretty easily make the transition between map and reality. When they dropped me in town, they thanked me and wished me good luck as I headed to find one of the guesthouses I had been recommended. I’ve learned by now that, with the exception of Phnom Penh, most provincial capitals are laid out in the same way: originating from the river, usually at the focal point of an art-deco market built by the French in the 1920’s or 1930’s. Next come the small streets of colonial-era shop houses and then the newer additions. I spotted the old architecture and walked towards it, then veered right when I saw the darkness a block down, correctly assuming it to be the bank of the Mekong.

I checked into the hotel, into a room with a window overlooking the river and walked around the tiny radius of the town, basking in the laid-back atmosphere and the knowledge that I could never get too far away from where I wanted to end up.

This morning, I woke, as I’ve occasionally come to do for weeks at a time since living here, at around six o’clock. Everyone else is already going by then, and the lights better for photos too. For breakfast, I went to the Red Sun Falling, a small restaurant across from the river that has a mini bookshop consisting of a few shelves of books for sale. First, I found a copy of Mistapim in Cambodia, a book published in 1960 that I’ve been looking for for some time in an effort to find descriptions of what the country was really like before the thirty years of wars forever changed the country. Next, I was really craving a Western-style breakfast and was even wanting the classic backpacker breakfast of pancakes. I looked over the menu and didn’t see any but at the last minute spotted an even more precious find: waffles. They were delicious. They even came with syrup, unlike the honey that usually accompanies pancake dishes in Southeast Asia, and I even wondered whether the owner had imported the waffle mix, they tasted so good. They were thin and dense and were in heart shapes, just like the ones Mrs. Kelly used to make for us on the mornings of sleepovers at Brad’s house.

It’s t minus one month until the election, and the CPP had a huge truck parade coming through town today. With a month to go until the election, Cambodia’s politicians don’t turn to debates but turn more to rallies and convoys of cars and trucks blasting music and plastered with party stickers. I watched as the police and military officers cleared all of the motorbikes and cars out from the route, and I took pictures as the procession noisily made their way through this dusty town past the market and the shop houses. In some ways, it reminded me of the packed blue trucks of New Years in Luang Prabang, only the participants weren’t dumping water and drinking but waving Cambodian and CPP flags. I’ve become so wrapped up in politics here that I’ve come to despise the CPP nearly as much as Bush, but not a single person harassed me about taking pictures and I’m always surprised when, on a personal level, CPP supporters are as friendly as anyone else, instantly shattering the depiction of them that I’ve built in my head.

Although it felt like noon, it was only about 9:30 by the time I headed back to the guesthouse. I sat on the balcony and attempted to meet Edward A. Gargan’s travels in The River’s Tale here in Kratie before I left. Although the book started slow, he’s in Laos now, just exploring Luang Prabang, and I’ve begun to really enjoy it. I can relate to the places he’s talking about, and I can’t tell if the book just gets more interesting as he travels further, or if I really just like reading about Laos much more than the Western reaches of China. I’m hoping I’ll be able to make it to the part when he must pass Kratie along his trip down the Mekong before I leave tomorrow, but chances are I’ll be reading that part in Indonesia.

This afternoon, it’s off to see the dolphins by boat.

To preface, the dolphins were worth the trip. It wasn’t like one of those whale-watching trips where you pretty much just see a lot of water. The dolphins were there, and there was a great feeling of being on the Mekong at this point where it’s flat and wide and reflects the enormous clouds in its mirrored surface. We huddled around in our wooden boats, with their flapping and faded Cambodian flags, and watched the dark gray endangered animals breach the water.

On our way back from the dolphins, I had requested that we stop at a hilltop pagoda that we pass between the launch spot for the boats and the town of Kratie. The other people on our boat and I got off our motorbikes and walked to the top of the steps to try to get an aerial view the Mekong through the shield of trees. Shortly after we “summitted,” a seemingly eclectic group of four Cambodians reached the top as well. There was a student, her friend of the same age that she was coming to visit, the mother of a friend of this friend, and the former teacher of the initial student, who also happened to be a friend of the friend’s friend’s mother. It was a little confusing, but they were very friendly, and the fifteen minutes of chat gave us an excuse to remain at the top while the light became nice. At some point, the reason for all of us being in Kratie came up, and I ended up mentioning that I taught at RUPP. The teacher took interest, as he graduated from RUPP before going into teaching, and asked a little more about what I did there. Eventually, he mentioned that he had taken the TOEFL exam at RUPP a couple of months ago in an effort to get a scholarship to study in the US but was disappointed with his result. When I told him that I had actually been one of the proctors for the exam, he confessed that he thought he recognized me and was trying to figure out if I might have, in fact, been the person he was thinking of. Between running into Dany on the bus and this guy at the pagoda, I was starting to reap the rewards of having been here for so long, finding some kind of connection with seemingly random people throughout my travels in the country.

I ended up having dinner with the other people on the boat (trump-carding them in the process), and I shared what travel advice I could give them when they asked. I realized how much I’ll miss traveling in a place where I feel knowledgeable. It’s funny - you’d think that being here so long would make me feel comfortable traveling anywhere in the world (and actually, it really has), but it’s also made me realize how ignorant I am and feel when I travel to places where I speak none of the language and, in the grand scheme of things, know little about. Very strangely, trips for weeks at a time are beginning to seem almost pointless to me. In contrast, here, I feel respectful and also, in turn, welcomed.

Someone I was originally trying to arrange a boat with this morning, Thaung, was working at the restaurant we went to for dinner. I spoke a little Khmer with him this morning, and more than that, we chatted about Cambodia and I could actually contribute more than the standard, “oh, yes, the Cambodian people are so nice.” He formally introduced himself, and for the second time in the year, I had someone shake my hand. When he simultaneously touched his elbow with his other hand, I instantly recognized this mixing of Eastern and Western traditions and shook with my left hand on my right elbow as well, reciprocating the sign of respect that he had shown me. At dinner, while everyone else was just a costumer, he called me Andrew the whole night (and, whether by coincidence or not, ended up bring me my drink and food before everyone else every time).

Traveling alone certainly comes with its challenges, primarily that it can sometimes be lonely and that you sometimes just want someone else to contribute an idea about what to do, where to go, or what to eat. But it also has a lot of benefits, including the spontaneity and ability to do exactly what you yourself want to do. If I’m feeling tried, I stop. If I see something interesting along a trip that I want to photograph, I simply tell the taxi to pull over for a minute. When I was in Snoul and was offered a ride the rest of the way to Kratie, I didn’t have to consult with anyone to decide whether to go. In addition to all of these advantages, though, I find that people are much more willing to approach and talk to you when you’re by yourself. It’s understandably less intimidating. The two-day connection that I built with Thaung and the hellos that I received from him when I passed him in the street might not have come if I had been occupied with a group of friends.

Before bed, I thought about why I was so sad to leave Cambodia all of a sudden. I’m even becoming sad about leaving my pool and gym at the Hotel Le Royal. Even my most recent visit there began to take on sentimental value. It seemed moderately stupid until I realized exactly what it was. Sure, I’ll admit that I will simply miss being able to swim outside everyday under palm trees and behind the elegant architecture of the hotel. But I realized that it’s not just the ability to swim in the sun that I’ll miss. It’s the fact that I know how to take a moto to Le Royal, that I know I’ll say hello and chat briefly with the guys who work at the pool and who know me, and that I’ll pick up the Cambodia Daily on the way in and read it with interest in the lounge chair. I think I’m afraid that, once I return home, I’ll lose interest in finishing the remaining Cambodia-related books that are still unread, that I’ll forget the names of towns that I’ve visited and where I can right now even tell you best places to eat or where to buy rain ponchos, and that I’ll lose touch, for example, with the AusAID friends that I’ve traveled with and have shared many stories with once we no longer have easy common ground to talk about.

There was also the originally weird feeling of not knowing whether I’d ever return to this place where I’ve spent so much time. I’d certainly love to come back to visit, but after all, there are so many other places in the world that I’ve never been before. It’s not like I’d come back as tourist to see the “sights.” I’ve already seen way more than most tourists come to see. It was somewhat unsettling to have that realization that I’ve lived a year of my life here and don’t know if I’ll ever even see it again. But recently, I’ve gotten a feeling that I’ll be back at some point, even if in an unplanned way or simply as a stop over on a trip with friends to somewhere else.