Dear Family and Friends,

Phew – I’ve just completed rehashing my Angkor Wat visit for you all and I feel practically as if I’ve re-climbed through the many doorways and re-craned my neck at odd angles. In fact, I’m hungry. At the very least I should order dinner. While I loved traveling to Cambodia, part of me is enjoying the familiar territory of Bangkok and the Wendy House. Although it can be lonely as I badly miss my friend that has now returned to India. I miss the boys too. On Saturday night I was compiling a list of pros and cons of places to job hunt/live at my favorite W House table by the window (my last resort when Bushy-bearded man and wife are watching television at full volume). I had just recalled the memory of a Saturday morn when I was sitting in the same window seat and one of my classmates appeared on the other side of the window and made me laugh… when I heard an actual tentative “Laura…?” I looked up to find the very same classmate plus two child versions of himself standing in our Wendy House lobby. Oh, the joy! I gave him a big hug – which embarrassed him, I think. Minutes later, I met his wife who was understandably a bit dubious of me… it didn’t help that I apparently really liked her husband and that I was dressed like a harlot in my shortest shorts and a close-fitting top while she was dressed in proper Muslim fashion. But even they are gone now and now only one CELTA friend remains.

LOL – I’m writing as if I’ve caught you all up – and I still have lots to tell you about Cambodia!

And oh, sheesh. Bushy-bearded man and wife have just turned on television now, tonight… I don’t even need to look to know that it is them, due to the volume. During my last week of CELTA, I came millimeters within blowing up at him when the television intruded on my intense concentration (please note that people passing through and talking in the lobby never bothers me in the least). Tonight I’m decidedly mellower but my irritation with him continues… and it doesn’t help that every time he strikes up a conversation with me, he asks when I’m going to leave. *&^@*&#^*&^@#!! Next time, I’m going to use a Jane Austen rejoinder: “I don’t know, Aunt Norris. When are YOU leaving???” Do you reckon that duct tape could be used as be a murder weapon? Ok, I’ll stop with the criminal fantasies and return to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

After only a few hours in Siem Reap, it became apparent to me that tourist industry is both an economic boost and a dreadful burden for the Khmer people. The boost is obvious… but the burden? Siem Reap is growing really fast… every day, hotels open, schools open, restaurants open, shops open. For Siem Reap residents this is good in that these new businesses provide badly needed employment. However, because of the tourist boom, Siem Reap land is selling at a rapid rate for high prices – which leaves regular Cambodians without the ability to rent let alone buy a home in the city that they work in. The economic boom seems to benefit the “have”s and further displaces the “have not”s. This is not an unfamiliar phenomenon: it is also occurring at home in Seattle, in many places in the States, and has been a problem in land-restricted countries such as Britain or Japan for years. But pushing the Cambodians aside in their own city renders Siem Reap a bit akin Disneyland – complete with selling day passes and going on rides.

Hang in there, I’m getting to my point.

Now, if you will recall my announcement regarding my immediate post-CELTA removal to Cambodia, I mentioned that I planned to go to Cambodia with a friend and that “I love picturing Cambodia through his eyes and look forward to making my own observations and eliciting stories from others.” Of course, you now know this friend as Siem Reap guy (a nicer nickname than he came up with for me) – and you could accurately conclude that his deep love for the Cambodian people was one of the reasons that I was eager to journey with him. He was also the one to tell me that “everyone has a story” – meaning a remarkable story, usually a sad story.

Anyway, after Angkor, we had one day remaining in Cambodia so I asked Siem Reap guy if he would show us the Siem Reap that he sees… his regard is such that I desired a touch of understanding. Silly me – as if I’m going to get that from a day of activities. Also, I’m a bit tired of tourism in that since departing from the States, I’ve been to loads of marvelous historic, religious, and artistic sites… but in no way have they helped me form an understanding of Southeast Asian people. Again, silly me - but there you have it. I did my best to explain this to my Siem Reap friend who readily assented to take us around… thinking that we would enjoy going to a few schools, visit the Landmine museum, and thought that visiting the Childrens’ hospital was in order. “Do you plan to donate blood?” he asked me. I didn’t realize that there is a very strong need for blood donations and said so before pushing aside my own daemons to do some assenting of my own.

So, on our last day in Siem Reap and my traveling companion friend and I naturally had some shopping to do. I had identified a few must-buys and I needed to replace the Ancient Angkor copy that I had given to Theara at the end of our time because he needed this book much more than I did – and I knew that he could never justify spending the money on himself. I have learned to do a bit of bargaining although I’m really too soft-hearted - unless dealing with taxi drivers – and had set out in my mind exactly how much I planned to spend. I did ok. But what I had not planned to buy and yet I cannot regret it is a silver mother-of-pearl pendant that I’ve worn every day since… at the time of purchase, I was so thrilled that I didn’t even dicker with the $13 price. Anyway, we made our purchases, snatched a few pictures of Siem Reap and returned to the Shadow with stuffed bags.

While we were waiting for our Siem Reap guy and his friends to join us, my traveling friend told me a story that had me in stitches of laughter: my friend has the bad habit of leaving her balcony door open at night. This bad because she ends up with geckoes or mosquitoes or other nasty bugs in her room. One time at Wendy House, she trapped a big bug in her garbage can and then left a picture for the cleaning lady to warn her about it. I think the bug was still there when my friend returned that evening… Anyway, this time my friend ended up with a huge bug in her Siem Reap room. So she rolled the thing up in her bathmat and took it onto the outside balcony to release the bug back to nature. The problem: it wouldn’t loosen its grip on the bathmat so she got frustrated and oh so accidentally dropped the bathmat over the side of her balcony. It landed on a wire between the first floor striped awning and the ground. She really hoped that the cleaner would assume the person in room 7 – that would be ME – had done this goofy thing and the wind had blown the bathmat the wrong way. Talk about wishful thinking. This made me laugh… By the way, I did not get a glimpse of the offending mat draped on its wire because the staff managed to retrieve the thing and place it back on her floor - without washing the mat. My friend was resigned to her punishment.

Not long after I had recovered from my fit of laughter, our friend and two of his other out of town friends joined us at the Shadow and we all walked to our first school: the Green Gecko. An amazing Australian, Tania, fell in love and about a year ago, she and her husband Rem opened up a school for street kids, using mostly personal funds. At first Tania was only able to offer the kids a safe place to eat but she has developed the program to the point that students are now able to wash bodies and teeth, play and learn. These may sound like trivial accomplishments but do recall Murt and the girls that sold my friend and I our books… and while I have so far not proffered further description of “the gauntlet’s” found at each Angkor temple, universally the children that we encountered no longer have childhoods, they have retail sales jobs. They hock products or their baby siblings in slings or even themselves (“lady, I’m a poor starving Khmer child. I deserve a dollar.”) One of the most beautiful sounds that I heard while visiting Angkor was at the Preah Khan temple when the sound of childish laughter bouncing through the stone halls as some kids lapsed from selling into a game of tag. Anyway, a few months ago, the Green Gecko faced its biggest challenge: popularity. The crowd shot up to 72 children in a space that is full at half that number and suddenly there was chaos in place of learning. The Gecko had to reorganize into target groups for Monday – Thursdays while Friday remains a free-for-all day. When we arrived just after 10 on Thursday, we were greeted by crowds of kids practicing their manners, practicing their English and were quickly co-opted into playing jump rope. At one point, I took my camera out so that the kids could use it to take pictures and I have a nice set of pictures of my Siem Reap friend to show for that. We enjoyed the infectious enthusiasm of the kids, were silently horrified by a sparkly-eyed 15-year old boy the size of a 7 year old and enchanted by a tiny girl in a dirty pink dress that only wanted to be pushed on the tire swing by her bigger brother. We also slipped in some talk time with Tania, a truly warm woman proud of what she has done, concerned about the present (what she really needs now is native-speaker teacher – but she cannot find one due to funding + stigma associated with street children), as well as the future because her landlord plans to tear the building down to make way for apartments. Anyway, we played and moderated and chatted with the children and departed when more organized classes began just after 11.

We walked back into town for a cold drink with our Siem Reap friend and discovered the sublime joy of fresh lime juice combined into a syrup with a bit of palm sugar. My friend then departed for his midday job and check this out: my Siem Reap friend is a DJ at Siem Reap’s LOVE FM. He is known as DJ Monkey and is live on the radio every weekday from noon ‘til 2 pm. Sadly, I never heard him, but this little tidbit was vastly amusing to me. This “fame” manifests itself for him in different ways: for example, Tania of Green Gecko fame, has a hard time remembering my friend’s actual name and just calls him DJ Monkey. Another time when we about town, my Siem Reap friend walked up to a tuk tuk driver to inquire regarding the location of a Cambodian province. The driver first asked him if he was DJ Monkey and then happily told us that the province was on the border. My friend is famous!

While my famous Siem Reap friend amicably chatted on LOVE FM, my traveling companion friend and I searched for a working ATM and had a long lunch at the Khmer Kitchen before meeting our Siem Reap guy at the Angkor Hospital for Children at just past 2 pm. My famous friend had a bunch of teddies that his parents had sent him to distribute at the hospital. A nurse came to escort us around and she ensured that before we did anything else, we gave blood – which 3 of the 5 of us did. You may ask: why do they need our blood? I’m not 100% clear on this. One web site said that a problem that Cambodian hospitals have is they lack of blood donors because most Cambodians are pretty suspicious of hospitals (no doubt with reason); one sign that we passed indicated that blood donations were necessary to help with a current yellow fever epidemic(?). Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that the need is there. Vital Cambodian health stats:
• Infant Mortality Rate: 96 per 1,000 Births
• Under 5 Mortality Rate: 138 per 1,000 Births
• 70% of Population does not have access to safe water
• 83% of Population does not have adequate sanitation
• 35% of Children are NOT immunized for Polio, Measles, or Diphtheria
• 45% of Children under 5 are Moderately to Severely Underweight
• There are 30 doctors and 18 dentists to serve every 100,000 Cambodians
• 12,000 children are living with HIV/AIDS

Although I didn’t look at these stats ‘til later, I can readily believe them. No surface in the hospital went unoccupied as small kids and their mothers were everywhere: seated on benches, lining the hallways, sleeping beds little better than pallets. We were utterly conspicuous as we walked through the halls. Some kids found us scary and ducked behind their mothers while others that were quite curious and openly stared. Apparently, I was remarkable because my skin is so white – my usual eye-catching hair was of little interest or maybe was too high to be noticeable. Anyway, it wasn’t long before we were at the sterile lab, filling out paperwork, and were called one by one to give blood.

For the record, concerned medical professionals, before walking into the hospital, I verified the legitimacy of the non-profit that runs the hospital. The Angkor Hospital for Children is actually run by a New York City non-profit called Friends Without Borders (www.fwab.org). Founded in 1995 by a Japanese photographer that was moved by his encounters with children disfigured by landmines and in desperate need of medical care, the photographer founded an organization that could build a pediatric hospital near the temples. And so was born the Angkor Hospital for Children which now, 11 years on, works very hard to (a) quality health care to children while (b) educating and training Cambodian medical professionals. The hospital is very careful how much blood they take and about their sterilization out of practicality: they need the blood, they need the foreign donors, and getting a single foreign donor sick would put their mission at risk.

While giving blood, I had an initial bumpy encounter with the lawn chair that had been set up for me to lie in… getting into the thing necessitated me mounting it once, utterly messing it up, getting out of the thing and then gingerly crawling back into it, carefully balancing my weight. I paid no mind to the embarrassment that this should’ve caused because I was already absorbed in conversation with an American Bio-med student whom I easily co-opted to distract me while blood was collected. The lawn chair racket became apparent to me when she told confided that the Cambodian medical staff had an excellent sense of humor (she feared sometimes at her expense) – which lead me to postulate that even if I donated a replacement lawn chair for future foreign donors, the Cambodian staff would use the old chair just for giggles. Anyway, soon it was over and I was given a Coke (the first non-diet Coke that I’ve had in well… dunno), a t-shirt, and a horrible packet of cookies/biscuits that I gave to the first interested child in the hallway. Then the 5 of us were given a tour of the premises. We gave out the stuffed animals at one ward… and were fascinated by the factors that frustrate the health care system – and the solutions that this hospital works towards. Visiting the hospital ended up being an incredibly sad experience – all those sick kids – and yet a wonderful experience due to all the caring and the promise that this little NGO is offering.

You may rightly inquire: why is Cambodia so poor? Why isn’t the government doing better? Where are the big NGOs (i.e. American Red Cross, WHO). Good questions, these. The answers that I’ve so far run across mesh well with Nick Ray’s description from The Lonely Planet Guide to Cambodia when he writes that:

“Cambodia is at a crossroads in its road to recovery from the brutal years of Khmer Rouge rule. Compare Cambodia today with the dark abyss into which it plunged under Khmer Rouge rule and the picture looks promising, but look at its more successful neighbors and it’s easy to be pessimistic. Cambodia must choose its path: pluralism, progress and prosperity or intimidation, impunity and injustice. The jury is still very much out on which way things will go…

Corruption remains a way of life in Cambodia. It is the leadership that must set an example but right now that example is take, take, take and it goes from the highest government official to the lowest paid civil servant. Sometimes it is overt, but it is increasingly covert, with ministers signing off government land to private companies for a steal and contracts awarded to shadowy business figures with close connections to the leadership. At its worst, it has seen partial privatization of Cambodia’s temple sites and hefty tolls levied on foreigners and locals alike for the use of such infrastructure.

But it is not only locals that know how to play the game. Aid is big business in Cambodia and many smaller Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) have played an impressive role in getting the country back on its feet. Indeed, there are many that would argue that without the parallel state that is the NGO world, there would be many more Cambodians mired in poverty than there are today. However, there are others who contend that many individuals in the bigger, multinational organizations are just riding the gravy train to Geneva, stashing six-figure, tax-free annual salaries, driving the latest 4WDs and renting houses with seven bathrooms…”

One thing I will say is that traveling in Cambodia and becoming aware of a tragic history + entrenched poverty is that this awareness makes the discouraging, insurmountable problems that I’ve carried with me from home seem surmountable, seem solvable. This is not at all to diminish the problems at home nor to argue that one set of problems in one country is superior to another set in another country; rather this is a reminder to myself to not be so fast to give up hope. Problems have solutions, or at the very least have improvements. If I’ve acquired my wished-for touch of understanding while in Cambodia, I’ve learned to appreciate that the while the Cambodian people are very much determined to survive in the present, many sincerely believe that an improved future could be just around the corner. Their obstacles are many and their attempts strong. This is inspiring, actually.

One night Theara said to me: “you are really lucky to be an American.” And for the first time ever, I really knew that I was lucky to have been born in the United States. I may hate the current government, I may despair of the power of corporations, I may long for better care of the disadvantaged... but my parents were able to give me much and if I were to have children, I could give them so much because I have good health, an excellent education (despite my Asian ignorance!), I do not need to pay a bribe to acquire a good job, and when I am unhappy with civil circumstance, I can protest. The law provides me with philosophy and the right to disagree with my government. Countless times, I have been told that these are luxuries that I enjoy as an America – but here in Cambodia, I pulled out dollar bills to pay for dinner and for the first time, I was a-ok with being an American.

After our hospital tour, we took a tuk tuk driven by a stranger to the ACE: the Australian Centre for Education, an English teaching school that my Siem Reap friend regards quite highly. The school manager was not available; however, one of the more experienced teachers gave us a tour of the premises including the teacher offices, the extensive teacher resource room, the student resources room (books + tapes + computers) and we even peaked into a classroom. Although an institution such as ACE exists in order to make a profit, it was still heartening to note the efforts into providing their students with a good education. For me, now a certified English teacher, it was the first time I had been on the premises of a school (besides ECC). How odd is that? We enjoyed our tour and our talk with the teacher and just as it started to rain, we climbed into a waiting tuk tuk, waved at our friend Theara (who had been engaged to drive another friend’s mother around that day), and journeyed home for a break and a change of clothing.

At 7 pm, I climbed on the back of my friend’s motorbike while the other 4 climbed into a tuk tuk and we all drove to Siem Reap friend’s favorite restaurant for amok. We ordered 3 versions of amok: chicken, fish, and vegetable as well as friend tofu, banana blossom salad, and chicken curry. With our nice-sized crowd, we were able to have samples of each dish… and seconds if we ere particularly deserving. It was a delicious and fun meal! In fact, I was very pleased by the majority of the food that we had in Siem Reap; eating there made me more determined than ever to find good Thai food. Particular favorites:
(1) amok: a coconut milk-based, lightly spiced dish with vegetables, meat of your choice and baked - usually served in an organic dish such as a few banana leaves or coconut shells.
(2) baked pumpkin: I ate this the night that the two boys and I went to Khmer Kitchen and it was a very hot metal bowl, filled with something similar to a squash/pumpkin soufflé with meat.
(3) Bo Bo and banana pancakes: both breakfast dishes were nummy. The bo bo was a rice porridge with shrimp and pork and although it was steaming, it was savory and delicious. The banana pancakes were too salty for me to eat every day: but the bananas were friend and placed on top of the pancakes. We ate those small, sweet bananas in Siem Reap. In the market, I was delighted to note that banana bunches were sold hanging in bunches from the ceiling (seems like this would cut delicate fruit bruising).
(4) banana blossom salad: don’t ask me where the banana blossom was the but this salad is actually similar to the Thai papaya salad with the sweet, sour, salty, hot elements apparent – the salad had shredded items in it, seafood, and was savory and dripping with dressing.
Me being me, I developed a craving chocolate while I was there… but I never saw any. Granted, I didn’t look hard but it did seem that fruit desserts were it… and I didn’t order dessert as I was never hungry nor inspired enough.

Each Thursday night the Funky Monkey, a bar that behaves like a classic British bar but is painted electric blue, holds a quiz night. My Siem Reap friend is an active participant in these quizzes to the point that he subtly practices anagrams in his spare time. Actually, one night when we were in a Bangkok jazz club, he gave several of us an anagram that I cannot now recall. He told us that it was a famous American politician and I puzzled over it for about... 20 seconds while another friend got out his pen and studiously went to work. A third friend tuned in to the conversation, was posed the question and a second later popped out with the answer “Hillary Clinton.” Brilliant. My other friend worked away for a good 5 minutes without coming up with the answer… while I was subsequently quizzed on American presidents – for the record, I do fine on the basics but I am not up on my presidential trivia. Anyway, proceeds from the Funky Monkey quiz nights go to a worthy charity (happily, this week’s charity was the Green Gecko) and my Siem Reap friend eagerly shepherded his well-fed team to the bar so we’d be ready at 9. We ordered drinks, named our team the Idiots Savant and began the quiz - which was really hard. I always find that I love quizzes more than they love me. In this quiz, I was able to answer the American questions (except for which city MLKing was assassinated in), was able to contribute towards the educated guesses, and was utterly useless in the sports and anagrams arenas. I would’ve been really useful if they had an arts or literature section or movies section – but heck, we were in a British bar in Cambodia! Anyway, after the quiz questions were over, teams exchanged pages and corrected each other’s work. During the presentation of the answers, our team would look at each other say “oh, we got that right” or “darn.” As time went on, we realized that we were getting a fair number correct. When the scores were tallied, our team and another team were tied for first. After a long debate about who could take the pressure, we sent up the CELTA boy that had missed the bus; he answered a question about the number of species of insects correctly and we won the quiz. This was fun for all… and particularly rewarding for our Siem Reap friend who won glory plus a free dinner on Sunday night.

At that point, it was past 11 in the evening and aware that our taxi was arriving 7 am the next morning, we patted ourselves on the back, snapped a few pictures and our friends bade farewell. I do so hate good-byes – although I find less-prolonged ones easier.

Packed, showered and determined, my traveling friend and I climbed aboard a Toyota Camry the next morning and were bumped along the return road to Poi Pet. The driver was a pleasant-round faced man with the horrid habit of beeping at other cars, motorbikes, bikes, lorries, dogs, cows and kids as he drove by. He was either constantly applying the horn or talking on his cell phone, or at worst, both. I found the trip back scarier (I do think that there were more close shaves) while my friend actually had an easier time of it – and attributed this to acclimation. I respect her judgment but was and I continue to be dubious. But the country-side was ever-beautiful and I did lots of counting: of minutes as well as cement poles that are interspersed along a stretch of the road (I’m guessing that these will eventually provide electricity). After about an hour, we stopped off at toilet and with my guard down, I ended up paying a $1 for the toilet and another $1 to the little savvy sales girl who tied a bracelet around my wrist on the way in and sweetly requested payment on the way out. Another village that I particularly noted manufactures clay statues – especially statues of Buddha. There were red Buddha heads and a whole lot of Buddha bodies seated in the lotus position in a myriad of sizes every place that I looked.

Anyway, the border crossing was hot but fairly easy. My Visa in Thailand is now good ‘til September 2nd. We obtained a tuk tuk to the bus station expecting that we would be waiting to catch a 1 pm bus and instead just made it on to an 11:40 bus. We paid for our lack of wait time in that this bus was run by a different company than before, at the same price. We didn’t get biscuits and they played horrid Thai karaoke music for 4 of the 5 hour of the bus ride. My iPod kept me sane. We arrived in Bangkok in the middle of rush hour and had to search a bit for a metered cab (this is my job, I don’t buy it when cabbies say “400 B, lady… yes, cab metered…”). We arrived safe and exhausted at the Wendy House soi for 125 B – including tip. I ate a plate of noodles and feel asleep to a DVD… honestly, I couldn’t even say what I watched that night.

Today I looked in the mirror and then had a second glance because I found that I almost looked pretty. I am getting a bit tan – well, truly my number of freckles has increased and I adore every new freckle. I suspect that I’m beginning to shed some weight and that the pains that I’ve taken to consistently care for my skin are paying off. I promised myself that this year I’d make an effort to accept what I cannot physically change and improve on what I have… and I think these efforts are coming along. Isn’t that nice?

So now I’m back in Bangkok, compiling a CV (resume), debating on where to job hunt, actually job hunting on the web as well as catching up on correspondence, etc. However, there is no particular reason for me to stay in Bangkok so I’m likely to journey some place else soon… on Wednesday or Thursday, I think. I was seriously considering Chang Mai until I consulted my British ex-pat friend who told me that there has been serious flooding in Chang Mai… I’m further researching this but I fancy that I could head South. I’m ready for water + cleaner air + the ability to hike/walk and wouldn’t mind staying in a place that is different than Bangkok. I’ll keep you all posted but I can readily assure you that this time, my “baby” goes with me and regular Internet access is a requirement.

Don’t let my happy travels fool you into thinking that I do not miss you all. --Laura

PS: Today's photo was taken of DJ Monkey by a little, talented Green Gecko student.