Globalization for your head, from Cuba to Cambodia

Can you think of a better movie for the barbershop TVs than Edward Scissorhands? I couldn’t, but then again, in the heat of Santiago de Cuba, and with the gummybear feeling in my bones after two days of food poisoning, I wasn’t up to much in the way of active thought. I was just happy to sit in the classic chrome barbershop chair and let the dude chop off the hair that had been holding in heat like a hammam for my noggin.

Lydia was more reluctant. “You can’t get your hair cut in Cuba!” she had initially prohibited. She’d enjoyed the story of my previous Cuban barbershop visit, but didn’t love the cut itself. “He gave you The Haircut!”

When she met me, I was fresh off a The Haircut in Malaysia, and it was sufficient, as were later iterations from Peru and Venezuela, but her standards had been raised in a teeming and clattering market in Phnom Penh.

This lady was on to something, mid-afternoon in Phnom Penh

It was Day One in Cambodia, we had been up since the jetlaggy hour of 4:00 AM, and sweat was rapidly soaking through my store of T-shirts. We were hiding from the sun and seeking the Cambodian in one of the labyrinthine markets that crop up like callicks throughout the developing world. They are sometimes a good place to buy items, usually a good place to buy food, and always a good place to be among the locals living their normal lives. I’ve slurped soup and sampled sandals in these markets, but I couldn’t remember ever getting a haircut in one.

Not a lot of English here

One of the ways you can tell whether a market is for tourists or locals is if anyone speaks English. In this bustling corner of snapping scissors and dripping dye, no one spoke a word. Good for authenticity, bad for communication. In short, it was exactly the sort of place where I always get The Haircut, inevitable when your request is articulated in fingers held close together while pointing to the sides, then a little farther apart when pointing to the top.

I don’t mind The Haircut. I do mind Feeling Like My Head Is A Long-Burned Candle. So I took a seat, pointed, measured, and sat still for the scissors. He cut. He tilted. He bobbed and weaved. Floated like a butterfly and snipped like a….barber. Flat razor for the neck hair, always appreciated, then he was done. In the Mekong-hazed mirror I saw...a slightly different haircut!

Somehow we'd gotten to be friends, with all our smiling
and faltering attempts at communication

It had a little spiky zone towards the front! Variety! Nice! Lydia, with her more assessing eye, informed me that the whole thing was more shaped and well done. That’s extra bonus; the only criterion for me was shorter.

So in the Cuban chair, watching Johnny Depp produce topiary, and feeling hair tickle my ears on its way to the floor, I was already satisfied. When I presented the finished product to Lydia she squinted for a moment. “He cut everything the same amount shorter...so he basically returned you to the same cut you got in Cambodia, minus the front flip flair thingy. I like it.”

It was a Cambo-Cuban haircut, multicultural coiffure, globalization for the cabeza, but I was just happy to let the heat stream up less impeded.

Just put it down. Or not?

My camera was making me growl. Even though I knew better. Everyone knows that taking a photo from a moving vehicle is bound to fail. So just sit back and enjoy. But Cambodia wasn’t cooperating.

Missed him

A monk in brilliant orange robes stood in front of a humble house, waiting for the bus, and I wanted the image. Women in colorful skirts stirred steaming pots of soup while egrets posed, poised, in the background, and I wanted to record it. Children laughed as they rode bicycles far too large for their sapling legs, then turned around to do it again, and I knew the photo would make me smile for years...if I could just get it.

But the monk was a blur, the woman was too small, and the children fell half out of the frame. So I was growling. Lydia was patient, and helpful. “Or, you could put the camera away and just enjoy it,” she offered.

Wait, what's going on over there? Move, you stupid tree!

I knew she was right. I remembered all the commuters I’d marvelled at, faces in phones, ignoring gorgeous sunsets out the window. And backpackers by the kiloton, iFaces in iMacs while the irlWorld went on outside.

I could remember these images just fine in my mind. I counted them on my fingers as we went, to make sure I wouldn’t lose one. Eight fingers. There was the monk, the woman, the kids, the….um….

My mental memory card has a leakage problem. Or rather, it’s working perfectly, since remembering everything would be a useless skill, once you went insane after a week. That’s why god invented kodak.

How could I let these moments slip away? Perhaps my soul’s memory is better, and even if the images are forgotten, their calming beauty remains. I could live with that. I would live with that. In gratitude and satisfaction.

Okay, so I didn't entirely miss the morning soup, but still
not the image I was trying for.

We rode along one of Angkor Wat’s massive reservoirs, which stood for the world’s oceans in the physical portrayal of Hindu cosmology that Angkor Wat represents, and allowed Angkor Wat to become the largest pre-industrial city on Earth, roughly eight times as large as its closest rival, Tikal in Guatemala.

And what do they do now, besides serve as marvelous photographic elements for zigajillions of tourist photos? The afternoon had reached a fine, calm old age of softer sunlight and gentler warmth, when skin felt embraced instead of assaulted, and the reservoirs were hosting groups, cliques, and packs of Cambodians, who lounged on the walls, nibbled snacks in the shade, and laughed above ancient waterways.

It was the sort of communal public space that I envy in countless places around the world, where the population is not willingly confined in their separate bubbles, captives to their flickering blue screens and “social” media. It felt like a privilege to see, and a gift to my spirit.

And I wanted to take its picture! But no, I had put the camera away, I could just enjoy it. Breathe it in. Witness and appreciate. Screw that, I want a reminder to hang on my wall. I ripped the camera out of its bag, flicked it on, lifted it to my face-

Just this one, hurried and blurried, over my shoulder as
we drove away

And the road curved and we headed into town. Growl.

Reverential expression of the divine, or just obsessed with boobs?

“Ugh. Great. Tits again. Cuz that’s all women are. I am so sick of that.”

“No way! Look at the care, the precision, the ornamentation and dignity of the carvings. And the serene smiles, delicate hand mudras, and lengthened earlobes of enlightenment. These are demonstrations of reverence for feminine deities, or femininity itself as divine.”

“But why do they all have to be bare breasted? The dudes get to cover their junk.”

“Maybe they didn’t see boobs as nudity, maybe that’s just how women dressed. Lots of cultures are like that, hence National Geographic’s popularity among boys.”

“So why are they so big? This isn’t Sweden. Men are depicted pretty normally, so why are all the ta-tas supersized?”

Lydia and I had different responses to the ubiquitous boobage of Angkor Wat. In the mass of carved curves, one of us saw a monotonous obsession with female bodies, and the other saw the meticulous expression of their sanctity.

What do you think?

Do the multitudinous bare breasts of Angkor Wat reveal an obsession with one aspect of female anatomy, with an emphasis on exaggerated, even unnatural dimensions?

Or do they reflect a culture that revered femininity as a goddess, an apsara or devata?

Is it artistic license and style, or another oppressive patriarchal hypersexuality?

Or is it both, a fascination that was both sexual and respectful, boobcentric reverence?

Or are we missing the point entirely?

Feelgood Fridays, how much can one man do to heal Cambodia?

After my post about Tuol Sleng, a friend asked “Did you find yourself looking at Cambodians of a certain age differently after visiting those sites? I found myself wondering what side people were on. And wondered how on earth you manage to put a population back together again after something like that.”

A Cambodian elder we met near Chi Phat,
I would have loved to hear his story

The answer is yes. Or rather, yesses. I did find myself wondering about people’s past in the Khmer Rouge years, and was stunned by both the challenge, and apparent success that the country has had, in healing from such astonishing trauma. But one does not just ask “So, were you one of the victims, or one of the murderers?” Besides, as with nearly all of human existence, that dichotomy is false. Things are much more complicated than that.

Take Aki Ra. On paper, you could read that he was part of the Khmer Rouge, and planted an unknown number of landmines, the same mines that are still killing and maiming Cambodians today. Bad guy?

But Aki Ra was a child soldier, a 10 year old forced by the Khmer Rouge to do these things. Some might say that deeds are deeds, and karma is karma, but I challenge anyone to blame a 10 year old, whose family was just murdered, to stand up against armed thugs with the blood of millions on their hands.

But perhaps the more interesting part of the question, the “How do you put a country back together?”, focuses on what people did after the war. What did Aki Ra do?

I can't imagine looking for landmines in a jungle like
this one, which we found near Chi Phat

Landmines. Only now, removing them instead of planting them. I would think mine removal would be more difficult than installation, so how much can one man do?

How about 50,000 mines?

There’s a problem with modern reality, in that any number over a couple hundred is basically unimaginable, in a real sense. 50,000 land mines. I try to picture them, spread out on a football field, and the stadium of people whose lives and limbs he has saved, but I’m not sure my imagination can really suffice for understanding what this man has done, to help his country, to help his people, to heal this planet.

He is clearly a hero, and fortunately, CNN agrees.

And just in case his bravery and dedication are not enough? Aki Ra has founded an orphanage to care for children who have lost their parents to these mines. He is one man, making an incredible difference.

(This is the first of my Feelgood Fridays posts. Looking for positive things to talk about is a pleasure, but if you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them. Share the joy, no?

And thank you to Lydia for bringing Aki Ra to my attention.)

What if Angkor Wat sucks?

Be honest, though you’ve heard it all before. The Mona Lisa...looks like it’s supposed to, and is surprisingly small. The Coliseum? Sure, you feel like watching Gladiator, but mostly you’re just waiting for your next gelato. The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur? Yup, really tall, pretty. Now what’s for dinner? The Panama Canal...is impressive as hell on paper, but outside the window it’s the world’s most boring river.

Now that I’ve offended a few million people, I should clarify that all of these places are still worth seeing. Lordy knows I’ve sought out my share of postcard sites, and smile at my inner version every time I see their iconic images. But in the end? They can be a little underwhelming.

There are exceptions to this. Machu Picchu is stunning, even with the crowds. I hear the Grand Canyon is the same, though I shamefacedly admit I’ve never been. Which category would Angkor Wat fall into?

When we pulled up along the reservoir outside the iconic triple-tower-temple, there was a bit of a “Yup, there it is” first impression. But Angkor Wat is much more than a first impression.

It is cool hallways filled with the soft tranquility left by centuries of people relaxing in relief from the sun. A visceral tradition you’re now part of. Then you’re humbled by the massive stone structures, an achievement in any century. Where did they get the stone? How many people worked on this? For how many generations? My mind felt fragile with admiration already, when I noticed the carvings. Unimaginable, incredible that humans did this. The sheer volume of artistry made me want to shake the nearest Cambodian hand.

Entire armies marched down walls, identical and detailed in an age before mechanized reproduction. Elephants reared and kings balanced, chariots raced while horses pranced and archers took aim. But apparently the ancient Khmer and I have something in common. Because as well and good as war is, sure, whatever, there are more beautiful things in life.

Namely? Boobs. Lots and lots of boobs.

Women danced on walls, watched from doorways, and made mudras in alcoves throughout the temples, hallways, and galleries of the ancient complex. Subtle smiles of feminine wiles that predated and predicted Mona Lisa’s secret by centuries, inspiring craftsmanship and care that has stood the test of time. And they all had knockers to die for.

(See the additional 6 image gallery on the vagabondurges.com post)

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.

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.

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.