Cambodian cleansing, and, Feelgood Fridays

Tuol Sleng left a stain and a weight on my spirit, but just as Cambodia was home to this darkness, it also held the cure. The natural beauty of the land cleansed my heart with sunlit swims in Chi Phat waterfalls and a languorous afternoon in a seaside hammock, but the burden of spirit, of disappointment and doubt regarding the nature of the human soul, needed a different remedy.

It’s so easy to only see the negative. If I drive an hour across town, I’ll most easily remember the guy who cuts me off, the space cadet who can’t drive in a straight line, and the squad of sluggards too lazy to flick on a turn signal. I’ll remember those few negatives, without noticing the five hundred drivers who did everything right.

(Thank god I don’t own a car.)

This ease of negativity is most subtle and seductive when we’re sedated by the familiar, accustomed to all our privileges and gifts, alert for anything less than optimal. (Thank god I own a passport.) When traveling, we can more easily reverse this orientation and focus on the positive, celebrate the joyous, and dismiss the uncomfortable as inevitable, but incidental.

I don't have my normal computer, is it me, or is this
image of the statue in Kep all wonky?

Despite the afternoon’s shackled memories, when we spent the evening drifting through the light-hearted embrace of New Year’s revelry in Phnom Penh, it took a piece of that burden off my shoulders. Here were humans, having fun together, harming no one. And the following days in Chi Phat, whenever we sat down to a meal with our hosts or chatted with our guide, that human goodness was clear and warm, restorative.

Our last stop, modern Siem Reap and ancient Angkor Wat, combined both the cleansing of beauty and the rejuvenation of kindness. We stood under arching banyan trees that dripped down temple facades which have witnessed centuries, then got back in Mr. Chet’s tuktuk. With an easy smile, kind eyes, and something familiar about him, we liked Mr. Chet from the get-go.

“I’ve got it!” Lydia finally announced. “He’s Cambodian Manny!” Manny is a friend in Oakland, but Mr. Chet was already linked to here by an inspirational friend who founded Altruvistas, the incredible agency that helped me go Cuba and Venezuela. She connected me with Mr. Chet, and I was able to serve the same role, recommending him to a friend who does amazing work with children in Vietnam.

The negative tendency of perception might say “Both those friends are doing far more to help the world than I am” and feel quite boohoo about it. Or, I can foster the positive side that marvels “How amazing is it to exist in a world where so many people are doing so much good?”

On one side we have the darkness of war, torture, death and suffering, at Tuol Sleng and in the news. On the other is the healing light of human kindness, compassion, concern and empathy that we see in the faces of good people all around the world. The latter doesn’t get as much press as the former, but maybe we can deliberately focus on the positive stories, and the people doing wonderful things in the world.

To that end, I will try to blog about positive things every Friday. Feelgood Fridays? I’ll keep my eyes open, and if you hear of stories you’d like to share, I’m open to either guest blogs or recommendations. Just a small balance to the headlines of horror, but maybe it will help orient towards goodness.

And hell, maybe I’ll even start noticing good drivers.

The darkness we all share, at Tuol Sleng, Cambodia

I don’t want to talk about this. I want to tell you about the color of the water at Kep, the hammock that swayed by the waves which slid on a day that lingered on mango fingertips, or the stone nobility of ancient ruins in banyan shade.

But between Cambodia’s ancient history and its modern reality lies something else, this other thing, a part of their history too gruesome to be contained by a nation, so must be remembered and owned by all of us.

(Fair warning. This post may be disturbing. If you don’t want to hear about cruelty today, stop now.)

Flimsy barbed wire cage to keep the ruined humans
within from seeking escape through suicide

We were somber when we left the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek, mourning the deaths of so many that estimates can’t even agree which million to begin with. Was it a quarter of Cambodia’s 8 million people who died, or nearly half? But the Khmer Rouge’s most notorious prison, Tuol Sleng, S-21, has something worse than sadness.

It used to be a school. That’s the first part that gets me. Children ran and played in these halls, laughing and learning. But the Khmer Rouge opposed education, feared intelligence, so schools were closed, and this place became the site of a blasphemy against humanity.

(Last warning.)

At first it just looked like a school. Then merely a prison. Bare rusty iron bed frames stood in the still air, and an awareness of abuse rose in my mind. Then I looked at the picture on the wall, and slowly accepted that the melted wreckage on the bed had been a human. I looked down at the floor and understood what the stains meant, the blood and ruined flesh in this room where people were left to decay between tortures, until they were finally allowed to die, perhaps murdered by hand at Choeung Ek, or thrown alive on a pile of burning tires.

The images of pain, the relics of inhumanity, pile up in my memory of that place. Room after room of them, two buildings of three storeys each, more torture in the courtyard where children once played. Photos of unknown victims now line the walls, so much data of suffering and such an absence of reason. Who did they think they were fighting?

I understand the concepts. The Khmer Rouge told people in the countryside that all their woes were the fault of the city people, then gave them the guns to do something about it. And once it starts, it burns out of control, because what guard will protest the cruelty, when that might put him in shackles next? That happened regularly, in the Khmer Rouge’s internal purges.

But at the end of the day, I just cannot make sense of the inhumanity of what happened. The sheer senseless cruelty is stupefying. It makes me wish I believed in demons, since demonic possession would explain it, might take it out of our hands. But it was not demons who did those things, it was men.

So tempting to say “Well, we would never do that.” How many times can we say that? How many nations have to descend into madness before we realize it’s in us? And how many times will we stand around afterwards and wonder why no one did anything? I’m sure my grandfather meant it when he swore “never again” after World War II, yet we did nothing while the Cambodian people died. And we turned away while machetes cleaved flesh in Rwanda. And we pretended to believe Reagan while “freedom fighters” burned down houses with the families still inside in Nicaragua, just as they had in Guatemala. And maybe we tweet while Boko Haram turns children into suicide bombers. And maybe we click a petition while the bombs rain down on the long-tortured population of Gaza.

On a normal day, I believe in humanity. I believe that our species is making gradual progress towards reason, gradually developing the abstract thinking to care about others, even if we don’t know them personally. Gradually defeating the sort of reptile mind that thinks “Well, that’s just Them.” But that sort of sunlight is hard to see in a place like Tuol Sleng prison. And in that darkness, the headlines are still legible, as “hard liners” and sociopaths allowed to “lead” tear apart human bodies and minds.

The sun was shining on the last day of 2014 in Phnom Penh. I still loved the city, but its sounds seemed muted. I still loved the country, but it felt sticky with drying blood. I still loved the planet, but it felt brittle with the violence we’re still allowing. The next day, we would travel to Chi Phat, where human goodness would again be on display, again tangible, again something I could believe in. But at the end of 2014, standing in the sun in a place where such inhumanity happened, I could not feel warm.

Chi Phat, Cambodia. It ain't New York or Miami.

Of course we would see Angkor Wat and the Killing Fields. Of course. But that list reminded me of “I’ve seen America. I went to New York and Miami.” Ssssure, those are part of the country, but hardly a representative sample. So where could we see something more….everyday Cambodian? Quotidian Khmer.

That’s when well-traveled friends come in handy. My Malaysian friend, born and raised in England, wrote “I spent a few days trekking at Chi Phat, through a community-based tourism project where we stayed with a family in the village. It’s a bit of an effort to get to, but worth it - trekking through farmland and jungle, staying in the forest and getting a waterfall all to yourself.” That sounded mighty fine.

And then the community’s website added “Trek, cycle, kayak or boat in the Cardamon Mountains to discover the real, peaceful Cambodia, far from the crowds. Guides, once poachers, lead you on jungle treks to waterfalls, grasslands and mountains that they know well, but few others have seen. ” We bought our bus tickets immediately.

In a world where traditional tourism seems so corrosive to its destinations, community tourism is a beacon of something better. We clicked the “Let the community decide where we homestay” option, loving the implication that our money would go to a deserving, Cambodian recipient, not Best Western Incorporated.

Carrying as few preconceptions as possible, we arrived in Chi Phat after a two hour boat ride where everyone waved back (I love Cambodians!) and followed our host to her home. It was a traditional Khmer house, a single large space roughly 4x6 meters, partitioned into three rooms by interior walls, and an exterior storage closet, all raised two meters on stilts. The elevation provides protection from floods, a shady space for livestock or living, and natural ventilation that keeps the house cool in this hot country. (We ate dinner with the family down there, rice, vegetables, and fried eggs from the ducks at our feet.) Ventilation is further assisted by a handsbreadth gap all the way around between the walls and the roof, and the thick spaces between floorboards.

The young couple and their two year old son shared the other bedroom, while grandmother slept in the main room with the Buddha shrine and TV. I’m not sure if we stole grandmother’s bed, or if the grains of dry rice liberally scattered across the mattress meant it was normally storage.

After the urban hubbub of Phnom Penh, we were looking forward to our peaceful nights in the country. The first night’s soundtrack was the periodic wailing of a two year old, though he quieted quickly each time the father spoke to him. That, combined with the surprising cold and hard bed meant we didn’t sleep much, and judging by the utter absence of conversation and haggard eyes around the pre-trek tourist breakfast table the next morning, we weren’t the only ones.

We spent the day trekking to a waterfall, learning scattered Khmer phrases (my favorite was bamboo, which sounded like “Russai tnga” with a nice nasal “a” after the velar nasal “ng”). Our guide was an older gentleman, whose kind eyes and easy laugh were communication enough. I couldn’t ask if he had been a poacher, but he certainly isn’t one now. His wife waved to us from the porch in the middle of a banana plantation.

That night the door to the storage closet came open, and a succession of jungle beasts came exploring. This incensed the dogs, who could hear, smell, maybe see, but not reach the intruders. I’m not sure what breed these demonic canines were, but their unexpected small-dog yapping had an undercurrent of tortured metal that scraped the ear drums and shredded sanity. The father was normally responsible for quieting them, but he had gone out of town that night, so I found myself asking the question “Would it be culturally insensitive if I killed your dogs?”

Despite the sleepless nights, and the 8 hour walk that harvested the nails from both of Lydia’s big toes, we absolutely loved our time in Chi Phat. One of the things we’d looked forward to were mealtimes with the family. We had a slew of questions for them. “How do you feel about tourism in your community? How has it changed things?” And maybe “May we ask you about the Khmer Rouge?”

But the family didn’t speak much English, so conversation was limited to pointing at the food, smiling, and rubbing our stomachs appreciatively. (“Delicious” is something like “Chnaing nah”, which was our ace conversation piece, quickly exhausted.) At first we were a little disappointed by this lack of communication, but then I thought about it a different way.

Of course they didn’t speak English! (And I, unfortunately, do not speak Khmer.) That’s because these were not professional hosts with degrees in Tourism, where they’d learned how to accommodate foreigners. Nor did they live in a fully globalized world of Friends reruns. These were normal, “real” people, going about their normal, “real” Cambodian lives.

And that’s exactly what we had been looking for.

Does altruism exist?

Is there such a thing as altruism? It’s an old question, with a contact high from so many dorm room debates and jittery after too much time in coffee shops, but I’m wondering if you can help me with it.

All of the earnest high schoolers writing “Volunteer work in Costa Rica” on their college applications, remembering the joy of going to that beautiful country, having so much fun with their friends, and helping those people build that library. Are they inspiring examples of how the precious few lucky enough to be born into sufficient affluence and power can help share the gifts of their birth? Are they ambassadors towards a better tomorrow? Are they exploitative colonists using the Third World for their own gain?

The kids were doing just fine at smiling before we ever
showed up... But hopefully we helped with a few more?

I remember an Australian I met a couple weeks before K and I went to Africa to lend a hand. With that beloved Australian gift for plain talk, he said with no malice or scorn “You’re not going there to help those kids. You’re going there because it makes you feel good to do it.” He leaned back to wait for my response.

I wasn’t sure what to say. “For starters, I don’t know how much help we’ll really be, but I hope we can do a little something useful. And yes, I do expect it will feel good. But I don’t think that invalidates anything. I think it’s okay for someone to feel good about helping others.”

Me, in dire need of a haircut, trying to be helpful by
rewiring the toaster oven.

He nodded and bought me a coffee the next morning, but the issue of exactly who was benefitting the most never did sit easily in me, and it feels extravagant and uncomfortable to use the word “altruism” when talking about myself.

Tomorrow I have an interview about a position teaching English to refugees. I’m not going to lie, a big part of why I want the job is to feel like I’m doing something useful, and to get out of my stale routine. I will benefit from the classes. Will they? I’m not sure; it remains to be seen if I can be an effective teacher in those circumstances. What if they don’t learn much? Does it matter if I feel good about helping? Are we all just using each other? (I look forward to your comments.)

Why Cambodia? Why anywhere?

Yeah, why would anyone come here?

“Cambodia? Why would you want to go there?” asked a surprising number of people. The question baffled me at first, after all, one need not know very much about the country to understand its appeal. I assumed that was the answer, that the people asking the question had somehow never heard of Angkor Wat, or the Khmer Rouge, each a blazing demand to be witnessed, albeit on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.

But even without its chapter heading draws, Cambodia would still be undeniably worth visiting. Because it’s a place. They’re all worth visiting. (Okay fine, except Fresno.) So that’s the question they’re really asking. “Travel? Why would you do that?”

Reading list on a Phnom Penh street

This is a perennial question to the vagabond castes, and one I’ve mentioned before. But that’s fine because there are endless reasons, endless answers. Travel means different things to people at different times, and often simultaneously, to ever have a standardized rationale.

Last month was hard. Old burdens of childhood pain showed up for the holidays as they always do, their customary anxiety now equipped with the depression of too much time alone in my silent apartment, often in a queasy sauce of purposelessness, as the dream occupation of last year continues to offer me nothing but rejection, and the newer dream occupation 2.0 wavers in the face of extremist violence. I’m left with a desire to punch everything in the face, balanced by a fatigue that just wants to sleep, but is scared to try.

So a trip to Anywhere sounded pretty fucking fantastic to me.

Change of pace

Travel can be an escape. A refugee flight. I’m well aware of that. That’s what it was for me, for a long time, though I resisted admitting it. I have to laugh at the odds that I’m repeating that denial in the next sentence….but I really don’t think so…

Because I don’t think this was that. I wasn’t running away in Cambodia. But I did happily take a break. A change of scenery, temperature, and temperament. I gratefully lay back in the easy purpose of choosing where to go and making it happen.

But I came back. Fleeing one’s life takes longer than 11 days, and this ticket was round-trip from the get-go.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I don’t have a tidy conclusion. Those are in short supply these days, when my inner landscape is rather roiled, and the world at large seems dominated by deterioration, where the intelligent voices are defining the problems, but the responses seem dominated by the asinine braying of lunatics and extremists.

Ready to go anywhere, I started listing countries, and when both y’all illustrious readers and Lydia jumped on Cambodia, I bought the ticket without pause. Was I driven by intuition, wisdom, or cowardice? I had to go to find out.

Travel questions

Ah, the particular questions of traveling. “What should I wear tomorrow?” is rarely worth asking, even less right now so since I’ll spend the whole day in a chair. This won’t be that bad, considering tomorrow will only be a few hours long.

Flight 17 will depart San Francisco half an hour after midnight, then 13 hours and 50 minutes later it will land in Taipei...a day later. Figure the date line is somewhere in the middle there, and it’s about a 7 hour day.

Of greater import is the question “Will I go insane from 13h 50m on a Hello Kitty themed airplane?” We shall see.

Three hours of Hello Kitty PTSD in the Taipei airport, then three and a half hours to Phnom Penh, where the GMO day will already be half over. I can’t imagine I’ll have much in my head except an anime-adorable scream, so I booked the first night’s hotel ahead of time. Thus the next travel question:

A room here for tonight is listed at $30

Given: super luxury hotels in Phnom Penh are about $40 a night. (The skankiest rooms in the SF Bay Area are more than twice that.)

But: these businesses are uniformly international, ie not-particularly-Cambodian. They don’t feel like Cambodia, and the money doesn’t stay in the country.

My room in Hasankeyf

So: Where do we stay? A fancy-pants place with a rooftop pool, devoid of filth, bugs, mold, personality, and character? Or wait and find a dingy little backstreet flophouse with cockroaches, suspicious stains, in-country owners, and plenty of authentic “character”?

Do we sleep in comfy colonial elitism, or honest nastiness? We want to feel like we’re actually in Cambodia, but we also want to sleep without fear of cockroaches nibbling our fingernails.

Or I suppose there could be a third option.

Where should we stay? Vote in the poll on the vagabondurges.com version of the site.