Cambodia, 29 Nov 2006 --

The first time Andris and I came to Sihanoukville I saw a notice by the Catholic Children’s Bureau (CCBO - BICE in French) looking for native English speakers to work with their staff. Knowing only what was in the notice, which is that the organization helps children involved in child labor and sexual trafficking, I contacted the coordinator Pav Vannak and offered my services. Making arrangements was difficult and through one confused e-mail and another confused phone call we agreed that I would arrive back in Sihanoukville on the 26th. I arrived as planned, and in addition to teaching English Mr. Vannak wants me to better understand the problems facing Cambodia by following his staff into the field.

As briefly as possible, let me describe my first day, for which I was wholly unprepared:

At 7:30 AM I was picked up at my guesthouse by three CCBO staffers, two of whom spoke some English, on two motorbikes. I hopped on the back of one of the bikes and we rode for an hour on bumpy dirt roads into the countryside and to a small village where several village chiefs were meeting.

A plastic chair was placed in front of the classroom where the meeting was being held and I was asked to sit down. (Just a note on atmosphere: the classroom is in a small thatch building in a very poor, dusty village. Children wearing only over sized dirty t-shirts and scruffy dogs and chickens continually walked through the meeting) Next, all of the chiefs introduced themselves to me in Khmer and som pas (bow slightly with hands in a prayer). I had no idea what to do but clearly I should have som pas(ed) back, but I didn’t quite realize this at the time. Next, like a bad dream, I was asked to say something to the group. I had no idea what to say and what I did say I’m sure was inappropriate and disappointing (I said something about Cambodia being wonderful and how nice the people are and I want to learn about their problems). Once this awkwardness was over the chiefs explained their problems to the staffers, one of whom roughly translated them for me.

After the meeting the staffers took me to lunch, which was lovely except for the red bean dessert I had trouble finishing. During the afternoon we went to investigate the problems brought up by the village chiefs, and the staffers tried to refer them to the appropriate NGO. These problems included a fisherman with an untreated infection who is unable to support his family, a mother of 15 (with only 5 still living) whose left side of her body has mysteriously become paralyzed, a 15 year old girl who has been having seizures three times a day for three years and has never had medical treatment, several children who have to walk 2 hours to school everyday for whom the CCBO is trying to purchase bicycles, and a four year old girl who had been raped by a neighbor. The CCBO was trying to arrange a lawyer for the girl’s father so he could prosecute the rapist. Also, there are very few NGOs that help people with medical problems, so the untreated people will most likely remain untreated.

At 6 o’clock we returned to the classroom where the meeting had been held and it was decided that I would teach two English classes to the “poor” kids in that area on that day. Just like that I became an English teacher. I was handed a marker for the white board, briefly introduced by the English teacher (who is paid $30 a month, and speaks almost no English), and began my “lecture” to 45 Cambodian children. It actually went quite well, thanks in part to my ability to draw cats, pigs, dogs and stick figures. The kids were wonderful and extremely well behaved, but many just liked staring at me. After the class the kids offered me good wishes and asked if I could stay. I was told afterwards that I was the first Westerner to ever visit their classroom. Then I did that again for another class before we drove back.

I was finally returned to Sihanoukville around 8:30 PM, where I met up with some American friends for dinner and a beer. I went to bed at 10:00, and then woke up at 6:45 the next day to do it again. Needless to say, I’m wiped out and a bit depressed. Also, if anyone has tips for teaching English, please please please send them to me! In the mean time, I’ll do my best.

Cambodia, 18 Nov 2006 --

So we’ve written two downer posts about Cambodia, which is unfair to such a beautiful country, so I thought I’d make a list of stuff that I like about Cambodia:

• They have baguettes here! Thanks to the French, good, freshly baked baguettes and even Laughing Cow cheese can be found everywhere. They are delicious.
• They use US Dollars, which is good and bad. It is bad because it makes us go “It’s only $1…” all of the time, when in Thailand we might have gone “35 baht! That’s outrageous!” But it is cool because at the ATM you can get out US dollars and there is no exchange rate that devalues everything and the surcharge is only $2, which means it is just like taking money out at home. (There aren’t American coins, however. For that they use riel, of which there are 4,000 in one dollar)
• The Internet is really, really cheap. Right now I’m paying 1,500 riel an hour, which is less than $.50.
• The language isn’t tonal (as Andris mentioned). My Khmer vocabulary is already much larger than my Thai, and Cambodians understand me when I attempt my phrases. (I can now say in Khmer “Hello”, “How are you?”, “I am fine”, “Thank you”, Numbers 1-9, 100, 1000, “How much is it?”, “Yes”, “No”, “Where is the bathroom?”, “Please”, and “Excuse me”, and some food words)
• It is really beautiful. The rice patties and the hills and the fields are all gorgeous.
• Motorbikes are the primary mode of transportation, and they are fun and cheap. In small towns we can rent our own, or in big towns (like Phnom Penh) we can hire someone to drive us around for an absurdly small amount of money. Tuk-tuks are also cheaper than they have been anywhere else, and the guys who drive them don’t hound us as much as they do in some other places.
• We have cable in our room. It’s lame to admit, but when we have only had TVs in 1 out of 10 rooms, and they have previously only had a maximum of 4 channels, none of which spoke English, having a TV is briefly wonderful. However, that was 4 days ago and now I’m over it.
• They played a karaoke video on the bus our way from Kampot to Phnom Penh which contained the English language line “I love you, loving you, as the mouse does love the rice!” Now I can sing that to Andris when I feel like being annoying.

Cambodia, 13 Nov 2006 --

After our exciting trip to Borneo, we headed back to Bangkok to do some serious errand running and then spent an amazing four days in Koh Chang, my new favorite island paradise. In hindsight, it was a good thing that we had so much time to relax and regain some energy just in time for our next destination - Cambodia. Lonely Planet once used the analogy that if Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia was your first stop in SE Asia, it is the kiddie pool of travel. Extending that analogy, Thailand is a little deeper (and probably pleasant with a sandy bottom and colorful fish), and Cambodia is where your toes don’t quite touch the bottom anymore.

From Koh Chang we took a ferry to a town in Thailand called Trat, where most guesthouses sell two day packages to get all the way to Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Our guidebook said that it was possible to do the trip in one day, so at 5:45 AM we woke up in Trat and began a long, confusing day.

First, we tried to get a taxi to the bus station to catch the 6:30 bus to the border in Hat Lek. The taxi driver didn’t understand “bus station” but he knew “Hat Lek”so he agreed to take us there. Soon we were on the road in the back of a share taxi (pick up truck with benches in the back) with 8 other people, one of whom was a small boy with no pants. My guess he was Cambodian, because it seems small boys in Cambodia are not required to wear pants.

Once we got to Hat Lek, a bunch of young men offered to taxi us to the mini-bus to Sihanoukville. We vaguely agreed to go with them after we crossed the border.  Of course, the minibus leaves at 9:00 and it is 8:30, so we are in a bit of a rush and the boys with the taxi even filled out some of the forms for us. Our guide book said you could pay for the visa in American  dollars, but the guards demanded 1,200 Thai baht each, which we didn’t have. One of the taxi guys offered to “loan” us the money, which seemed extremely shady. Finally, after we looked despondent long enough, the guard went “Okay, $30 each,” which was actually quite a deal since one guide book said we should expect to have to pay “extra fines,” and that is less than they wanted us to pay in baht. With visas in hand, we got into the “taxi,” which is an unmarked Camry, which we were told by our tourist guide we should also expect to overpay for. On the way, we went over a bridge with a toll and one of the taxi boys said we needed to pay 4,800 Cambodian reil for. We didn’t have any, we said. It’s OK, I’ll loan it to you and we can stop by the money exchanger in town, he said. Right. Smells scammy. In no time we at the money exchanger, which is really a small stand that also sells juice. Andris tries to exchange just a few leftover baht, but the lady doesn’t seem interested. We’re running late, so we get back in the car. Once we get to the mini-bus we pay the cab driver, and try to repay the guy who paid the toll with more baht than the toll actually cost. The mini-bus people charged us 700 baht per ticket to Sihanoukville instead of the 550 it is supposed to be, despite our protests, but there wasn’t much we could do at this point. Our bags disappeared and were supposedly on top of the minibus under a tarp (which they were). Meanwhile, the guy who loaned us the money was dogging Andris for more money for “helping” us at the border, but  Andris stayed firm in that he already over-repaid him double.

We were ushered into a mini-bus full of grumpy looking tourists before I realized our tickets say “Phnom Phen.” We bolt out of the mini-bus to change tickets, but the guy at the ticket window just crossed it out and wrotes”Sihanoukville.” The other tourists confirmed that many of them were, in fact, going to Sihanoukville. A few moments later we were on an incredibly bumpy, dirt road. The trip was about 6 hours, and included four ferry trips across rivers. Also, by ferry I mean four rowboats with blanks across them that the minibus drives on to (we got out of the minibus for this, of course).

During the trip we compared notes with the other travelers, who confirmed that our experience was about as good as can be expected. We underpayed at the border, overpaid for the tickets, and no one knew what the deal with the money exchanging scam was. One French Canadian, who had been to Cambodia several times, said that one problem with Cambodia is that “they always want just a little bit more money, which makes it hard to trust people.”  So far, that has seemed to be true. Add on to that the run-down nature of everything, and Cambodia, so far, has been exhausting. I think we’ve been here four days, and in that time we’ve rented three broken motorbikes (they ran, just no odometer, speedometer, or gas gauge), had one dramatic argument with a cabdriver over inflated, mis-quoted fares, taken a tourist truck that broke down twice in Bokor National Park (where land-mines and tigers are “rare”so don’t go off trail), got invited to dinner that we were then asked to pay for, and ran out of gas once with the motor bike because the guy renting it swore that we would have enough for our destination. Luckily, children sell soda bottles full of gas on their front lawns, so this wasn’t much of a problem.  Whew, I’m exhausted just writing about it.

Oh, and Cambodia is beautiful and has a tragic history that is difficult and interesting. But more about that on another day.

Borneo, 1 Nov 2006 --

Please allow me a minute to describe the many ways in which leeches suck (ha ha ha… sorry).

During our trip to Malaysia, Andris and I encountered three different types of leeches: the little sock-penetrating leeches of Taman Negara, the big friendly leeches of Borneo, and the tiger leech, also of Borneo, which has a painful bite and enjoys doing it’s hitch-hiker dance from leaves above the ground.

For those never lucky enough to have had many interactions with these type of leeches, let me describe their appearance and behavior. The leeches we met were either solid black, brown, or dark red, with the exception of the tiger leeches which were black with white/green stripes. The smallest one we encountered was about half an inch long, and the longest was about 4-5 inches. They are very thin when you first meet them, though they can be quite fat when they finally abandon you. The leeches have a mean sucker mouth at one end, and what I will call the “wiggly” end at the other.

What a leech does when I am not around I do not know, but once they hear us coming ( I believe they can sense the vibrations in the ground) they affix their sucker end to a leaf that is either on the ground or, in the case of tiger leeches, anywhere.  They stick their wiggly end up in the air and either stick straight up, or madly, blindly, flail around looking for prey, which is what I call the “hitch-hiker dance.” (I think it looks like they are screaming “pick me up! pick me up! I want to come with you!”) The movement of the hitch-hiker dance is alien and disturbing, and after several hours of hiking through leech-infested jungle your eyes become keen to detect it. When you put your foot down in any proximity to a leech, it will “sense” the presence of a big sack of blood and quickly start heading towards you, moving like an inchworm. When it reaches you, it will grab on to your shoe or clothing with the wiggly end, and then inch along you until it finds flesh. If you happen to notice it, you can usually flick it off. The bigger leeches are very strong and flicking doesn’t work, so you can grab the wiggly end and yank. It will then affix itself to your finger, and then you can quickly scrape it off with a branch or something.

If a leech is lucky enough to find flesh, it will put a little bit of anaesthetic and some some anti-coagulant on your skin and then bite a hole in you. When it is full, it will let go and leave you with a freely bleeding wound. When I got a leech in my sock, someone lent me some liquid band aid which completely failed to stop the bleeding. When a leech got in Andris’ pants (through the hole where the zipper is for his zip-off pant legs) he didn’t  notice until the guide pointed out that there was a big blood stain on the back of his pants.

However, it is not as bad as it sounds. Leeches do not carry diseases, and eventually the wounds heal. I think that when you hike in the jungle you go through various stages of leech acceptance. At first they are disgusting and incredibly scary. Eventually you realize they are just animals doing their thing, albeit an evil thing. Then, if you are me, you start tempting them onto sticks and rocks and throwing them into the woods rather than running away screaming. If you are our guide (who must be at a very advanced stage of leech acceptance) you allow them to attach, but then kill them via bug spray, salt, or fire.

In conclusion, I don’t like leeches, but I prefer them to sea cucumbers.