The Foreign Experts’ Administrative Coordinator

It was a unique, unexpected and timely job offer, received between hangovers and saddle sores in Cuzco, Peru.  Let us fly you to sunny (at least ten days per year!) Chongqing, China, O American Software Engineer.  There, you will instruct the next generation using your vaunted coding prowess which you have surely acquired from many years of revered capitalist field work.  Lodging, utilities and a massive paycheck (at least by local standards) will be provided.  Vacation days out the yin-yang!  (which, of course, means something completely different over there, yet still works within the context of this sentence).

With little expectation of a response, I read a paraphrased variation of the above while slumped over at a public internet terminal in my Peruvian hostel, and blasted out an only mildly embellished resume electronically back to China, only to discover within the hour that paperwork was already being drafted for my work visa.  Cut to four months later, and the soft, wispy smog clears around Huang Yang, my steadfast employer, as he greets me just outside the gates of Chongqing International Airport.  There’s an innocence to his exuberant smile that would look hopeful and precious on the face of a child or puppy, but grants the grown man a look of exaggerated simplicity one could potentially mistake for feeble-mindedness.

Such is not the case, though.  When necessary, Huang Yang is indeed a shrewd and serious man, and I would later witness his dissatisfaction with other teachers and be glad not to be caught up in the path of his wrath. But generally I am solely the beneficiary of those simple, blank stares and overly enthusiastic smiles.  I am the lone American “foreign expert” in his employ and the supposed feather in the cap of Chongqing University’s roster of international teachers.  It is not that Huang Yong is good-natured, though that he may be; that hazy smile of his is a brilliant defense mechanism to be delivered in tandem with any sort of unfortunate news, which a neophyte instructor such as myself is sure to be receiving on a regular basis.

For instance, allow me to recount a conversation from my first day in Chongqing, in the close quarters of Huang Yong’s office where he has just lit a cigarette.  Judging from the brownish-yellow build-up on his teeth, it is not the first and I nervously note that the windows are sealed, trapping the both of us in close quarters as the smoke builds up to a soft smog to match the weather outdoors.

In many ways, modern China is like America in the 1950′s.  They’re going through unprecedented growth in almost all sectors represented by a growing middle class, they’re fiercely patriotic and they love cigarettes.  Upon a visit later in the year to Chongqing’s new hospital, I was amazed to find people smoking in the hallways, surrounded by what would otherwise be one of the nicer hospitals I’d ever visited.

Huang Yong brings something up on the computer and calls me over to examine it.  ”Here is your schedule,” he tells me, excitedly.  Questions arise almost immediately.  Five classes, but only one involving direct lessons in computer programming?

“Software Systems Design.  Systems Architecture.  Advanced Object-Oriented Principles.  Requirements Engineering.  Ah, here — Introduction to C++.  You have me listed for these five classes, but only one of them is the C++ class you told me that I would be teaching in the job description…”

“Yes, those are your classes,” he affirms, not acknowledging the heavy hint of a question I’d layered into my statement.  His smile is bright and expectant, clearly beaming from what he either believes to be extremely good news or terrifyingly bad news.  I smile back at him, doing my best to not let on that I perceive it as the latter.

“It’s just… I came here because the job description said you wanted someone that worked in C++ to teach C++.  Software Systems Design?  I don’t really even know what that means..?”

Though he doesn’t respond vocally, his eyes widen a bit, as though to say “I acknowledge that you have just spoken, but you have not provided me with enough material for a retort, so please continue speaking.”  The smile is larger than before, and oddly hypnotizing, which is typically a job left to the eyes.

“Maybe… Do you have a syllabus?  Or something that describes the class, so that I know what should be covered?”

At that, his eyes grow to maximum wideness in excitement as he exclaims:

“Ah, that is the good news.  YOU get to write syllabus.”

“Oh.  Good news.  Yes.  Also, most of these classes have ‘(M)’ written next to their title, see?  What does this mean?”

“Those are Masters level courses.  You will teach the Africans.”

A whole stack of interesting surprises piled on all at once.  It seems that only some of my classes will be taught to Chinese students; the others will be to foreign students from Ethiopia, Togo, Benin, Mauritania, Madagascar and elsewhere in Africa that have come to Chongqing to seek their Masters degrees.  A common source of irritation over the next year would stem from telling people I taught African students only to get the response “Uhhh, you know Africa’s a continent and not a country, right?”  Yes, smartass, I know this.  I just do not feel like listing off 14 countries every time I try to describe who I teach.  Regardless, nothing about the job description mentioned need of a certificate of higher learning, but suddenly I’m filled with a nervous sense of guilt as I unload my shame to Huang Yong.

“I am afraid that I do not have a Masters Degree.  I sent copies of my diploma to you — I thought you knew…”

“Oh, is fine,” he smiles.  ”You do not need Masters.  You are a foreign expert.”

My title has apparently granted me a reprieve from all other factors, despite my not having precisely earned the title in any way yet.

“I don’t need a Masters to teach Masters level courses?”

He simply smiles back at me with an almost imperceptible shrug.  This is not something of importance.

“But… ‘Software Systems Design.’  Could I at least see the book I am to use for this class?”

At this, his face seems to grow simply to contain the beaming smile that emanates from it.  Under its power, my head starts to grow light and fuzzy.

“Also good news!” he exclaims.  ”YOU–”

“–I get to pick the books.  Riiiight.  Great.  Are there even English books here at the school?”

For the first time since our conversation, his smile seems to dampen a little.  Perhaps it’s dropped down to an eight, on the standard scale of one to ten.

“Not very many English books here.  But you can pick book online and I will get them for you.  You give me the names of the books.  Is no problem.”  The closing expression is one that I would hear many times over the course of the year

“So I get to write the syllabus and pick the books.  Even though I have never taken or heard of these classes, you want me to fully design them?”

The smile is back in full force.  Is this not fantastic news?

“Yes!  You will do very well.”

I’m doubtful, but put on a confident face.  I’m doing this for America.  After several hours of intense research of different tomes that seems as though they might apply to the classes that I am teaching for which I still have nothing more than names.  He writes back immediately to give me a thumbs-up — I will be alerted immediately as soon as the books arrive.  Flash forward to a week before my class is scheduled to begin:

“Hello Huang!  I really need those books to prepare my syllabus and lesson plans.  I am getting pretty nervous.”

“No need to be nervous.  You will be fine!”

His smile is dizzyingly strong.  Maybe all will be well…

“You have the books, though, right?”

“No.  No, I have no books.  Soon!”

The day before class:

“Huang Yong, I am sorry to come by again, but I’m kind of freaking out.  You have the books, right?”

“Ah.  They still are not here.  No.  No…”

His smile is still cheerful, but as I am now an expert of sorts, I can sense that something is off.

“It is for my students also.  I cannot assign them to read without books.”

“Yes,” he nods, more as an acknowledgement that I have spoken more than as an acknowledgement about anything I have said.

“So, what should I do?”

He seems confused by the fact that I am having difficulty with this, but bears with me out of apparent politeness.

“Tomorrow is introduction.  No need for books.  Say hello.  Talk about class!” he smiles.

The combined efforts of google, wikipedia and youporn have given me less than a page’s worth of riveting information to impart upon these foreign scholars, and tomorrow I will be lecturing them for two hours.  Yet I get through it, somehow.  It’s uncertain whether my students appreciate being spoon-fed two hours of bullshit in lieu of actual erudition, but they seem to accept it silently; most of them have to accept it silently, as they speak almost no English.  But more on that later.  A week passes like this, and then another.

“Huang Yong.  I am sorry to complain to you, but this is terrible.  I have no books.  Students have no books.  Please tell me you have them now!”

“Ah, no.  The books–” he says, pausing as if to give his next point a bit more moxie, “–They are not here!  I checked, and we cannot get the books.”

I stare back with a slight grin, using all the energy and willpower within me to maintain composure while my eyes shoot beams of rage and madness at that unflappable yellow-toothed grin of his.  At once I sense that, like me, he is caught up in a large and generally inefficient machine that typically means well but disappoints more often than not.

“But..” I stammer, breaking down before him.  ”I need.. the students need books.  We all need them.  Books.  I mean, how can I teach Software Design Analysis–”

“You mean ‘Software Systems Design?’”

“Yes.  That.  Right.  How can I teach without books?”

His smile takes on a Buddha-like calmness as he delivers what is, in his mind at least, a perfect solution, and one that I will surely be pleased to hear: “Just use Internet.”

Not acknowledging this statement in any way, he adds an addendum just to make sure I truly understand the majesty of this explanation: “All information is on Internet.”

And with that, he forms an impossibly optimistic grin that is positively beaming at me.  How can there be doubt in my heart in the presence of such a smile?  All information really is on the Internet.  Classes resume the next day, not with books, experience or traditional knowledge, but with all the material google can provide me.  Sometimes, a question is asked to which I do not know the answer, but this is not a problem.  Sometimes, the answer to the hardest questions in life can be answered with a smile.

University-Appointed Tourguides to this Strange New World

Wei, the first of several female graduation assistants assigned to my service is already waiting outside the door of Huang Yong’s office for our meeting to conclude.  I’m not certain if Wei is her first or last name or if it matters or if my intonation is correct or if it is what anyone else in the world calls her.

“Wei?” I ask.  ”Is that right?  I call you Wei?”

“Is Ok,” she responds quietly, looking down.  I’ve determined that the term “OK” might be the most universally used English phrase in the world.  In this case, I take it to mean “No, but it’s probably as close as you’re going to get, so let’s just go with it, laowai.”  Laowai is the Chinese equivalent of “gringo,” though outside of the worst tourist spots, it isn’t typically spoken with a derogatory tone.  Over the course of the year, I will hear this word many times.

As to why my well educated, short-term servants are always female, I quickly dismiss any ideas that I am being set up with potential lovers as all of them appear too intimidated by me (bordering at times on mortal fear) to succumb to any of my flirtations.  But Chinese is a strange and unfathomable language, and these shy, frail local women all speak it fluently, so my life is quite literally in their hands.

For the first month or two, they help me shop, buy a phone, set up my cable and internet, figure out mass transit, give me tips on etiquette and local customs and generally ease my way into the weird and wonderful world that is China.  Wei is mine for the afternoon, and I’m told we are to go on a brief tour of the city as well as stock up my home with basic needs I would otherwise be too overwhelmed to purchase on my own. Wei is overly polite and has a difficult time making eye contact with me, despite my generally pleasant demeanor and some almost needy attempts on my part at making banter.

The outside air is sweltering, with a palpable, damp mass to it that feels uncomfortably grippable at times.  The sky is a uniform, grey-ish blue with no hints of “normal” bulbous clouds or even general atmospheric health, and I feel for all the children of Chongqing that never got to look up and create shapes from the billows above.  As one of China’s hottest cities, Chongqing’s ancient accolade of being a member of China’s “Three Furnaces” (the other two hotspots being Wuhan and Nanjing) is well deserved.

Easing them from the intensity of this heat, Chongqing men roll their shirts up from the bottoms, exposing much of their clammy waists and stomachs.  How much gut is exposed seems to be directly proportional to their stomach size; fat men amble down the streets with bulging, sweaty bellies protruding for all to see like hard earned trophies.  At a cafe once, one of these stomachs came into contact with the side of my bare arm, and I fought hard to keep the contents of my own stomach in place as our stale sweat briefly mingled.

Hordes of women clog the sidewalks with cheap umbrellas blocking out the sun, and the umbrellas blend together as one, forming a single canopy that hovers approximately six feet above the ground — just above the heads of 99% of the population here in Chongqing and directly at eye level with me.  The umbrellas are ubiquitous in Chongqing year-round.  They are used on sunny days to protect the fair-skinned girls, for whom a light complexion is so important that skin-bleaching products, regardless of health hazards, are still all the rage here.  And on rainy days (read: “every other day”), they are used for their more traditional purpose.  On either day, I am barraged with a never-ending assault of umbrella tines at or near my eye level.  Sunglasses are necessary protection here, though more from the threat of umbrella assault than from the muted, hazy sun.

“There’s lots of pollution in Chongqing,” I state, with just a hint of a question, staring up at the unwelcoming, gloomy sky above.

“Is fog.  Chongqing always foggy.”

This is not entirely inaccurate.  In World War II, Chongqing (then known as “Chungking”) became the capital of China after most of the country’s eastern territory was gobbled up by the Japanese.  Hidden within a valley, Chongqing was seen as the perfect spot for a base of operations, since its location kept it regularly cloaked in a bed of clouds.  But the overcast haze that hangs over the city now doesn’t match the color or character of any natural clouds I’ve known to have existed before.

Wei’s phone rings a familiar song and after she engages in a short, terse conversation in Chinese with the person on the other end, I joke with her about the ironic choice of ringtones.

“You know this song on your phone?  It is called ‘Winter Wonderland’.  This song is about winter and cold and snow.  Isn’t this funny?”

“I do not know.”

“No, I mean.  The song says it is so cold out, but here now in Chongqing, it is hot, right?  Very hot.  That’s funny!”

“Yes.  This is… very funny I think.”

Wei is not the last person I will meet here who acknowledges what I believe to be humor without even a hint of smile. On the phone was a friend that wants to meet us for tea near the city’s cultural center, Jiefangbei (pronounced, by me at least, “JAY-fong-BAY”), where the Yangtze River, so similar in name to my own, meets the Yellow River.  From the start, I’m disheartened by the fact that the Yangtze goes by a different name in China: Chang Jiang, meaning, appropriately enough, “Long River.”  It is the longest river in China, after all.  Apparently, “Yangtze” was the name of a local structure or port outside of Shanghai that some white foreigner was mistaken for pointing at whilst attempting to discern what the locals called the river.  The misnomer stuck.

Nearly a fleet of permanently docked riverboats perch along the banks where the two rivers meet, offering dining and entertainment at varying levels of quality.  The lower decks are loud with the combined sounds from a kitchen that seems too busy for the otherwise empty vessel and an engine room that seems unnecessary for a permanently docked riverboat.  The smell of seafood and brine is palpable, but the muggy air at least smells fresher on the top deck where we’re seated, and we’re given a pristine view of the convergence of water bodies below us.

The Yellow River, which is actually more of a dark green color, slowly churns its way into the fast-moving, milky brown waters of the Yangtze until it is dissolved and the two become one. Even with the river breeze, the air is thick and oppressive here, but with the dearth of other customers on the boat, each of us is granted our own industrial strength fan to stave off the heat.  The electrical fans are old and loud, and they make the already choppy conversation between us even more strained, but the broiling alternative is far worse.

Tea is brought to us with a wide assortment of strange grasses and flowers hovering in a clump at the bottom of the glass like fallen leaves caught in a pool filter.  Mine has been picked specifically by Wei and looks to be the most exotic (is that a dandelion?), though tastes no different to my simple pallet than generic packet teas I’ve sampled in the past.  While we drink, they share their favorite music with me via cell phone speakers; the upbeat, nasal Sino-Pop is painful at times for me to listen to, but probably no more so than lots of modern Western teeny-bopper music offerings would be.

Around us, the clustered buildings of this little known mega-city rise up and out and beyond from the riverbanks like a petri dish experiment gone wild.  Depending on where one draws its boundaries, Chongqing contains between ten and 32 million bustling people, and the metropolitan expanse explodes outward in every direction, dwarfing nearly every city I’ve ever visited thus far.  Immune to western views on tackiness, the skyline shimmers each night with flashing lights and colors on the buildings that create a spectacle similar to a city-sized 80′s video arcade decked out in Christmas lights.  The daytime view, while still somewhat daunting, is a bit more serene, though I point out to the girls how prolifically each building seems to be covered in compact Chinese characters.

“Can you actually read that?  Those letters there–”

I point at four characters erected at the top of a particularly boxy skyscraper far in the distance that, to me, look like blurry white smudges.

“Of course.  It is Chinese.  And we are Chinese.  We learn these letters when we are very small.  It is no problem.”

“No, but I mean… They’re so far away, but each character has so many lines and boxes and squiggles.  It’s…  Let me explain a different way.  In English, letters like ‘D’ and ‘O,’ or ‘N’ and ‘H’ are similar.  So from far away, sometimes it is hard to tell these letters apart, even though they are simple.  I would think Chinese characters can also be mixed up from far away.”

“No, this does not happen.  I think that Chinese is a very good language and this is another reason why.”  She stares at me and it’s clear that this is as precise as her explanation will be.

“Oh.  Ok, then.”

Over the course of a long afternoon, the pair take me through a “tourist” market (I am the only non-Chinese visitor), a grocery store (where I pick up basic home supplies, like my very own wok) and a traditional style luncheonette.  The kitchen at the restaurant is only separated from the diminutive dining area by a small ceramic barrier, and the massive stove top only adds to the already stifling heat inside.  The walls, floors, tables and staff could all equally be described as dingy, but the flames licking nearly a foot up the sides of the large wok at least leads me to believe that no contaminant in any of the ingredients could possibly survive the cooking process.

Chinese food is typically flash-cooked over intense heat, with most meat dishes being fully prepared in under two minutes.  The quick method of wok frying is much to my liking and I’m pleased to see that the gas stove in my apartment kicks out similarly large flames unlike any I’ve ever cooked with before, which is useful, if a bit dangerous.  The downside to this is that the “low” setting on the stove is actually the western equivalent of “medium high,” making simmering all but impossible without manually holding the saucepan several inches above the fire.  Like most Chinese kitchens, mine also lacks an oven, as baking (without steam, at least) has only just caught on in China recently.

When asked by the girls whether I like spicy food or not, I answer in favor of it but the girls still warn me that my dish may be too fierce to manage.  The lamb that was ordered for me comes out in a small, rectangular metal dish with a small fire below it to maintain the heat.  The tingling of the fresh Sichuan peppers is a new sensation for my mouth, but it is not unpleasant, and I’ve had far spicier offerings in the past.  Like most Chinese food, the meat and vegetables have already been cut into bite-sized pieces; Chinese silverware is a simple set of chopsticks, and finely chopped food eliminates any need for knives to be kept along the standard place settings.

Another question I’ve always had about using chopsticks: How does one eat the tiny, elusive grains of rice, so omnipresent here in China, with those thin wooden sticks?  The answer, though seemingly unrefined, is fairly obvious: the bowl of rice is held aloft near one’s mouth, as the sticks work in unison, shoveling large clusters of rice inwards to compliment the meal.  Spoons seem to be available when needed, but it seems they are rarely used. Hard food in soup is eaten with chopsticks; the rest is quaffed from the bowl like a fine, savory tea.

Biting into a piece of lamb, I quickly discover the morsel is primarily made of bone and gristle.  It’s an unpleasant surprise, and I try to disguise my shock and extricate the gritty artifact from my mouth without either of the girls noticing, spitting it suavely into my small paper napkin.  If they notice, neither girl says a word, but I quickly find that the next bite, while meatier, still contains a fair bit of un-digestible mass.  Giving up on propriety entirely, I spit the sticky brown clump into my hand and mash it casually against the edge of my plate.

“Sorry,” I say sheepishly, “there was bone.  You don’t eat that here, do you?”

“No, it is ok.  Most meat have the bone in it.  You do not eat this.”

“Yes, but I do not know where to put this–” I say, pointing at the lump of almost-food perched along the side of my plate.

“Oh, you can put this on the floor.”  As if to demonstrate, she removes a small piece of sinewy mass from her mouth that I hadn’t even realized was there, and drops it softly onto the floor at her feet.  ”They will clean.  Also you can put on the table.  It’s ok.  No problem,” she smiles.

“Wait a minute,” I say, removing a chunk that my teeth had just recently stripped bare.  ”You’re saying it’s ok for me to do this?”  I place the chewed-up mess between my fingers and hold it aloft dramatically, before insouciantly dropping the moist chunk onto the dirty floor below.

“Yes, this is fine.”

“Wait,” I say, quickly chewing on another piece of the meat which is, by the way, succulent and filled with flavor.  Once I ascertain that there’s little benefit to keeping the used morsel in my mouth any longer, I spit it into my hand in preparation.  ”What about this?”  As though the used meat fills me with shame and disgust, I fling it low against the wall near me, where it silently bounces off and settles onto the ground.”

“That is fine also,” I am told. “You should not throw at other person though,” warns the second girl. “Yes, that is not a good thing to do.”

“Oh.  Damn.”  I stare down with a look of exaggerated dissatisfaction upon hearing this news.  I’ve gotten no laughter from these girls all day, so clearly this faux disappointment will be similarly confusing to them, but I can’t help myself.  It’s probably a terrible decision, as these girls already seemed intimidated enough by me before discovering that I apparently have a sick fetish for flinging used meat at people.

“Sorry,” says the first one, quite genuinely, meeting my eyes briefly with a confused sympathy.

There was a distinct language barrier when dealing with people throughout South America.  But at least there was always a sense that what we collectively found to be funny stemmed from the same presumably European root.

Here in China, people don’t simply laugh at things differently; they think differently.  Sarcasm (which oddly enough is quite popular with the Russians, who fully border the Chinese from east to west) seems to be a strange, alien concept here.  Around me, people laugh and smile and joke, but the language of their humor is as different as the language they speak with.  There is some foundation to western thought that leads to basic similarities in most Western art, philosophies, and basic conceptions of the world around us.  Whatever that intangible bit of Western-ness is, it is not present here in China.  And that’s going to take some getting used to.

“Did you like the food?” asks Wei.

“I did!  It was amazing.  Spicy and so much flavor.  I did not like the bone, but I do like throwing the bone on the floor, so that is good.  Thank you very much.”

“You are in the right city for food in China.  In all of China it is said that Chongqing has the best food and the most beautiful women.”

“Interesting,” I say.  ”Where are you from, Wei?”

“I am from Chongqing.”

“Oh,” I respond quietly.

Since this seems to be the best place to get information out to my parents, who have requested pictures of my apartment in Brooklyn, I decided to post them here (despite the fact that an “apartment in Brooklyn” is pretty much the opposite of “travel”).  Most people should probably just skip this entry, unless you’re feeling voyeuristic.

 

 

So, this is apparently where one lives after traipsing about the globe for three years…

While some of us rely on savings, windfalls, luck and/or a steady stream of odd jobs to maintain the traveler lifestyle, Elizabeth Gilbert managed to have her entire trip fronted by publisher Penguin books, in the hopes that it would lead to good material for a book.  Their gamble succeeded, as the book, entitled “Eat, Pray, Love,”spent 187 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list, and if I sound jealous in any way, it is only because — like most other feckless travel bloggers out there, pinching every penny to jot out notes on our self-indulgent misadventures from around the world to a readership that scarcely extends beyond parents — I am.  Truly, madly and deeply jealous.

Gilbert’s premise was simple enough: Get over the heartbreak of a failed marriage by eating in Italy, praying in India and loving (or at least contemplating on how to love) in Indonesia.  None of her epiphanies are philosophically eye-opening and the book suffers (or perhaps profits from) an excessive amount of navel gazing.  But she has a compelling voice, pleasant enough attempts at wit and above all manages to write a book that follows enough of the conventions of best-selling “chick lit” to make a ubiquitous tome among female backpackers, while managing to tell a story that, at least theoretically, actually occurred.

For the purposes of this blog, there’s not much point to discussing Gilbert’s eating or  praying, so I’ll jump straight to her Indonesian love-fest, where the hapless Gilbert found herself in a mild form of indentured servitude with the yoda-like Ketut Liyer.  Living with the wizened figure, she documented all of his simple, salt-of-the-(Eastern)-earth style wisdom that had provided Gilbert with the existential material needed for her to have an epic breakthrough and find true and everlasting love.  Theoretically, at least; I wasn’t compelled enough to go out and grab the sequel to see just how well all that love worked out for her.

The Ketut of the book is a soft-spoken, patriarchal no-nonsense figure who simultaneously seems to view the world as though in on some sort of private joke.  None of his fortune-cookie-like words of wisdom truly seemed epiphany-inspiring enough to me that I would pointedly track the man down, but upon hearing that the now-famous guru lives just minutes from our hotel in Ubud, Laurie and I are both too compelled to pass on a quick visit to his humble estate.  With each passing year, I’ve gradually accepted that I will never meet Yoda, but perhaps getting some profound words from a man who is now both the most famous and the most shriveled tourist attraction in Bali will be a close second.

A handful of black and white drawings hang along the single wall of the otherwise open air waiting room, where we lounge in silence as Ketut tends to the steady queue of visiting pilgrims that all tend to be of the same basic demographic: white, female, mid-30s to early 50s, presumably single, presumably not always so.  His current seeker sits cross-legged next to him on a small platform, peering into his eyes so deeply it seems she’s attempting to use them to extract a part of his soul, and she rides every slow word that wisps inaudibly at her from his dark, cracked lips. Intermittently shifting his gaze between her eyes and her right palm which he grips with one of his small, dry hands, Ketut mumbles to her with an urgency that she clearly grants an exaggerated poignancy.

Turning my eyes back to the artwork on the wall, I’m reminded of the psychedelic scrawlings of shifty parking lot artists at Grateful Dead concerts, peddling their wares for gas money.  The mixture of Balinese spirituality with repetitive patterns that surely “look sick when you’re tripping” permeates most of his efforts, and there’s a clear display of at least basic talent on his part, but none of the pieces are compelling enough to request a price.  Glimpsing back at the ancient figure, I ponder on the artistic truism that an artist’s works always skyrocket in value upon their demise, but even as I morbidly size up Ketut’s mortality, I’m not compelled enough to shell out any extra cash on a sketch of a three-headed Balinese demon goddess floating within a circle of curvy totems that could either be surreal earrings, surrealistic breasts or both.

We’re waved forward as the woman currently on the dais with Ketut slowly pushes herself upwards into a hunched over stance, still shaking his hand vigorously in gracious praise of his divine acumen.  It’s a good sign.  My casual public cynicism may make it clear to anyone glancing over at me that I expect little from this meeting, but deep down inside, why wouldn’t I be hoping for the same enlightening, life-changing pearl of wisdom that all of his pre-menopausal visitors with biological clocks ticking so ominously that they might be connected to large blocks of C4 hope for?  How different am I from these grimacing, doubt-filled near-matrons, floating about the world with little direction or purpose?  Clearly this mystical little brown spiritual ninja will slice through all the subterfuge and see that I’m at least as worthy of life-altering advice as Elizabeth fucking Gilbert.  Right?  Is it so much to ask for that he provide me with just a handful of solid one-liners that both change my life and sound really witty if you add “in bed” to the end of any of them?

Ketut signals for Laurie to advance toward his platform first, as I am guided over to a small stone step next to one of the many birdcages pervading his sacred compound.  The large white bird contained within, like most of the Balinese people I’ve come in contact with, seems neither perturbed nor excited by my presence, despite my apathetic attempts at befriending it.  It’s uncertain to me whether the guru is even aware that I am the next in line; I’ve heard that many men apparently come along on this excursion solely as supportive partners, surely hoping the entire time that Ketut doesn’t complicate their relationship with a dismissive thumbs-down when the topic of romance comes up.

As Laurie sits, the diminutive man greets her with a nearly toothless grin and takes her hand warmly. “Welcome!  Oh, your lips look so sweet!  Please, welcome, sit.  He–” Ketut says, pointing at the male guide that brought us here, “–explain that the reading is [equivalent of $25], yes?”  To give this value perspective, most meals are around five dollars; an hour-long massage at a nice spa is upwards of ten; a night at our bed and breakfast is just under twenty.  She nods and he continues.

“I am sorry but my nephew is in the hospital right now and it is so expensive and so I must charge this.  You know — E-liz-a-beth Gil-bert?” he asks rhetorically, putting extra emphasis on each syllable of her name.  ”She stayed here with me and wrote a book Eat-Pray-Love.  You know this book?  Yes?  And this man there,” he says, pointing at me, “is your… boyfriend?”  Laurie quickly explains that I am not.  ”Oh,” he says, looking mildly befuddled by this unexpected news.  It must always be perplexing for fortune tellers when they discover that they have no idea what is going on.  He passes her a brown, hardcover book.

“E-liz-a-beth Gil-bert give me the book Eat-Pray-Love and many people in the world love this book.  But I do not know what it says because I can not read this!  Will you read please?”

“You want me to read it to you?” she asks.

“Yes.  Please.”  He stares at her, nodding toward the ratty tome, which appears to be close to a hundred years old, despite a publication date from 2006.  She picks a passage seemingly at random, though it’s possible that the section had been marked in advance for intrepid visitors that they might get a refresher as to why they came to visit Ketut in the first place.  She reads softly to him for a few moments — no more than two paragraphs — while he stares out into space loftily with the occasional solemn nod, as though receiving a sacred benediction.

“Ah.  Yes,” he says with a smile, closing the book as he eases the book from her hands.  ”I do not know what she is talking about, but I remember E-liz-a-beth Gil-bert and she stayed with me for many days and I am happy for her that the book Eat-Pray-Love is so popular and I hope she is very happy.  Now–” he says, suddenly returning to the business at hand, “–you would like for me to do a palm reading, yes?  Good.  And I must ask you first, this man with you is your boyfriend?” he says, gesturing again toward me.  Laurie laughs confusedly and expresses that I am still not her boyfriend. “Hmm,” he ponders, confused by this reiteration.

“I look first at your beauty line and you are so pretty and I see that you will be beautiful for all of your life.  And your life line is also very long so you will live to be very very old!” he smiles warmly, as though caught off guard by this splendid news.  ”Very good, yes.  And here, I see, is your line for romance.”  He says the last word excitedly, as though several months of regular practice has keyed him into what the money point is among his typical guests.  ”You came here with this man, I am correct?” he points over to me.

“Yes,” she says, “but he–”

“And,” he cuts her off excitedly, “he is your boyfriend, I think!”

“No, really, he’s just a friend!”

“Hmm,” he ponders, “but you have a boyfriend, yes?”

“Yes.  Back at home.  Not him.”

“Not me!” I quietly assure him from my spot next to the disinterested white bird.

“I see your romance line is very long.  The man you are with now is the right man for you.”

“My boyfriend back at home?”

“What?  Yes, you and your boyfriend.  You will be married and both of you will live for a long time.”  He smiles knowingly.  Cynically, I feel the strong urge to point out that he doesn’t technically have her boyfriend’s palm available, and thus cannot make such a proclamation.  But then the cynic in me remembers that we are here getting our palms read from a near-toothless Indonesian man which already renders all further skepticism redundant.

“Also,” he says, tacking one last piece of inspired wisdom to a reading already rife with visionary prescience, “your flower — is a geranium!”

“Oh,” she responds.  ”Thank you.”

“Very good for you.  You must come back and visit me some time.”  Elizabeth Gilbert ran into the fortune teller some time before beginning work on her book, and was inspired to return after he generously requested that she come back to him some day.  Hearing this closing line, it’s possible she might’ve read a little too much into his closing shtick.

I replace Laurie on the dais, while she steps aside to keep the insouciant white bird company.  Ketut is exactly as warm and friendly with me as he is with her, though thankfully the line about my having sweet lips is omitted.  He queries me about my relationship with Laurie, and his eyes widen as he shares the good news about my successful business dealings, my long life (presumably with the girl sitting behind me) and a great love who will be with me until the end of my days (“that girl that is with you, I think,” pointing again at Laurie, and said with a smile and wide eyes that seem to get more and more glazed with every proclamation).  Proving that he finds me every bit as charming as both Elizabeth Gilbert and my presumed girlfriend, I, too am invited to come and visit the next time I am in Ubud.  As it is unlikely that I will be returning in his lifetime, I swear in all earnest that I will.

My future now laid bare with surprising clarity and depth, I rise to take my leave but Ketut reaches out for my hand portentously and, after a brief, thoughtful pause, suddenly shares something with me that is for once entirely different from what he had passed on to Laurie:

“Your flower — is the orchid!”

Even leaning over the bar, under the influence of an incalculable quantity of cheap beers (“two for one with a ticket,” I’m warned almost immediately, “–don’t forget to use your ticket or they’ll charge you.”), the muscular stranger sitting to my right can hardly be described as slouching.  Two sips into my second (free, courtesy of aforementioned ticket) Pabst Blue Ribbon and my thin arms already pour over the bar like a timepiece in a Dali painting, while my neighbor radiates with a solidity that gives him the appearance of having been carved simultaneously with the bar from the same piece of wood.  He’s my age, maybe older, and prominently bulky without seeming fat, casually muscular without the chiseled tone of someone that works at being so.  He likely bulked up early in high school (Judgmentally, I assume football, or wrestling.  Too blue collar for lacrosse.  I’d wager big dollars against chess club), and via an assortment of labor-intensive jobs, he likely never had the opportunity for all that muscle to deteriorate into the fat that comes so easily to one’s body past the age of thirty.

For someone that surely would’ve avoided any attempt at talking to me in high school, he certainly seems overeager to do so now.

“What are your names?” he asks us, friendly enough, offering that his own is Greg.  Louise and I answer him, though she quickly leans in conspiratorially and speaks to me quietly enough to establish a level of privacy to our conversation that doesn’t extend to my new friend, but not so quietly that he might suspect we’re talking about him.

“I can’t believe this bar!” she tells me with excited trepidation.  ”I can’t even believe it exists in the middle of the city like this.”

“I love it.  It’s an actual dive!”  I’m genuinely excited to be at a dimly grungy and antiquated bar simply for the perfectly innocent level of trashiness that it exudes.  Not even a New York City resident yet, and already I’m acting like a hipster.

“Well, I only came here because there are two-for-one drinks,” she responds.

“Yeah, just don’t forget to use your ticket,” Greg offers.

“Thanks!” I smile, without actually understanding his point, before shutting out the stocky neighbor on my right once again in favor of the far more attractive neighbor on my left.  It’s not that I actively want to block the mildly soused Greg from our discussion;  I just need some quality time with Louise.  She is going to be my new roommate after all once I resettle from nearly three years of travel into The Greatest City On Earth™.  ”It doesn’t seem that bad here.  It’s got a kind of gritty 70′s charisma.  It’s dark, and smoky and… wooden…  I would totally hang out at a place like this.”

“No,” she whispers firmly.  ”I got here early and left to wait for you outside.  When I showed up, there was a guy running out with blood pouring out of his face!”  Decidedly odd for 5 pm on a Tuesday, I agree.

“Yeah, I probably wouldn’t hang out at a place like this…”  I signal the bartender.  ”PBR, please.  And a ticket..?”

“Ticket’s two for one.  But you gotta get both beers at once,” she explains.

“So you give me a ticket and then I give it back?”

“Yeah.  For the second beer–”

“–which I get at the same time?”

“Right.”  I manage to hold onto a small, yellow ticket stub for a few seconds, and two pints of America’s most beloved beer for a little bit longer than that.  We have an appointment with the cast of The Big Lebowski in just thirty minutes (the Blu-Ray of the movie is being released, and they’re celebrating with a Q&A session at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan), and it’s the kind of event that one should be both timely and mildly intoxicated for.

“You guys live around here?”

“Nah.  Well, not yet at least…”

“We’re going to be roommates!” says Louise excitedly.

“If all goes well, we’ll be moving into our spot in Brooklyn in the beginning of September.  I just got back to the States a few weeks ago after some extended traveling.”

“Me too,” says Greg.  ”Where were you?”

“Oh my god, he was everywhere!  He went to Antarctica and high-fived a penguin!”

“He didn’t actually high-five me back…”

“…and taught in China, and went to Africa!  It was like, the biggest trip ever.”

“It was ok.”  I pause, embarrassed in person by the same narrative that I ploddingly maintain a blog about online.  ”You just got back from a trip too?” I ask him.

“Yeah, I just finished a third tour in Afghanistan…”

“Oh.”

Greg has two kids, and they seem to be his primary reason for returning home from time to time.  Since joining the army right out of high school, he was shipped off to Iraq, fought in Somalia during the “Black Hawk Down” days, and has bounced back and forth between Iraq and Afghanistan for most of the past decade.  While Louise banters with the bartender, I listen as the previously mundane Greg regales me with stories of interesting and treacherous places that never managed to make it onto my travel roster, nor will they likely ever, much to the joy of my parents.

“So are you back for good?”

“No, I’m headed back to Afghanistan in two weeks for one last tour.  Found out I’ve got prostate cancer so it’s really the only option.”

“What?!”  I don’t exactly do a spit take, though my shock upon registering his previous statement is fairly visible.

“Between dying slowly over here or going out over there, it’s not even a choice.  But the main thing is, if I die over there, my kids’ll be well taken care of.  That’s why I’m doing it.”

“But prostate cancer’s got a good recovery rate.  Though I guess I’ve heard you can’t ever fuck again without viagra…”

“Yeah, you know about that, huh?  I’d never heard about it until I got diagnosed.  What a shitty side effect.  I dunno.  I don’t want to go through that.  The whole procedure… it’s just not for me.  Even if I make it, what would I do after that, you know?”  He shrugs.  ”I’ve thought about it a lot, and I know what I’m doing is the best thing for my family.  And there’s really no way I’d rather go out.”

“Hey, your choice, man.”  After a sip of beer, I profoundly add: “Sucks.”

“Yeah, it’s nuts but you know, I don’t even think anything about it anymore.  Maybe it’ll hit me harder when I’m back over there, but I’m kind of ready to go already.”  He pauses to finish his beer.  ”Cute girl.  She your girlfriend?”

“Nah, Louise is just an old friend.  She needs a roommate and I need a city to live in, so we work well together.”

“What do you do?”

“To tell you the truth, I have no idea.  I used to be a software developer, and I’ve done some writing in the past.  But right now I don’t have a fucking clue and I’m just kind of burning through more savings than I’d like trying to figure it all out.”  

I don’t add the obvious “but it could always be worse” addendum that still hangs in the air from Greg’s own story.  Louise tugs on my sleeve expectantly and I nod, quickly downing the last of my pint.  ”Well, we gotta get going, but it was nice talking to you.  Good—  Shit!  I was about to say ‘Good luck over there in Afghanistan,’ but that just seems wrong to me now.”

“You’re going to Afghanistan?” Louise asks, rejoining the conversation.  ”Wow!  Be safe!”

“Hah.  I don’t think she heard my story,” Greg says.

“Probably not,” I tell him, shaking his hand.  There are so many strange, interesting and dangerous paths a life can take.  Whether or not Brooklyn ends up being the right choice is still very much in the air, but one thing’s for certain: It’s sure as hell got nicer weather than Kabul.

Over a week in Indonesia, and only one goddamned page of notes, mostly from a short excursion I’ll not be writing about here (see next post).  Expect this one to be short on the verbal meat, and a bit long on pictures, as Bali‘s reputation for one of the most gorgeous and relaxing of the popular hot spots on the planet is well earned.  And sad to say, I only scratched the surface of the mecca (no pun intended) of Indonesian Hinduism amidst the near endless sea of Muslim islands (Indonesia hosts the largest Muslim population by far of any country in the world).  Despite terrorist bombings in 2002 and 2005, the island still maintains a solid reputation as a veritable paradise on earth, and despite there being 17,000 islands in Indonesia, 80% of all foreign visitors only make a point of visiting Bali.

I timed the trip carefully to coincide with a ten day yoga retreat taking place in the impossibly serene town of Ubud, located basically in both Bali’s spiritual and physical center.  The ways of the Downward Facing Dog or the Sun Salutation are mostly unknown to me, as a decade spent slouched by a computer monitor are about as far from the physical finesses invoked by yoga as one might attain in life.  Even the bulk of those gathered for the retreat don’t fall within my typical strata of social connections.  The women are Californians both in name and in spirit, all in their 40′s and 50′s; the lone male, of about the same age, possesses a particularly grating sense of humor and an unstoppable urge to talk in poorly executed ethnic impersonations for no discernible reason anyone present seems able to comprehend.

“Can you please pass the salt?” I ask him at one point over a group meal.

“Now we ain’t got no salt he-ah, man,” he responds with ebonic swagger.  “All we done got is a lotta peppa!”

Who the fuck are you, Fred Sanford?  “Oh, I thought both were in front of you there.”

“Nah, man, just messin’ witchu.  Some salt for mah man,” he says, passing over the salt.  Laurie’s eyes meet mine with a quick, burning glare clearly meant for the grating half of an Amos and Andy act in the process of painfully bombing across the table from us.

“I think I’m about ready to slap him if he does another shitty Chinese or black accent every time he opens his mouth,” she swore to me earlier.  “Last night at dinner, he was talking in a bad Indian accent to the waiter.  Here.  In Indonesia.”  She’s amusingly fuming, but accurate, as well as my reason for being involved with the retreat in the first place.  An old friend from New York, it’d come to both of our attention that we’d be in the area around the same time it felt a travesty not to meet up.  Doubly fortuitous for me, their whole crew was arriving around within an hour of my flight, providing me with a free ride from the airport (past a McDonalds proclaiming “beef prosperity,” by the way) and a pseudo-guide in the form of Patrick.

An American expat who’s lived in Bali now for years, Patrick’s living expenses are too low for him to ever consider living elsewhere by now, and at least on the surface he seems to be living a dream life of sorts with his Japanese girlfriend here on the island.  Costs of living are beyond affordable here, with occasional work like the organization of these sporadic yoga retreats taking care of most of his basic expenses.  The cottages where those attending the retreat will be staying are fully booked, but Patrick has a friend with an open room across the street that’s almost as nice for just ten dollars a night.  Laurie’s cottage, located on immaculately maintained gardens replete with a wide assortment of statues of Balinese gods peering about serenely, is still only twenty dollars a night and includes breakfast and swimming pool access.

For an assortment of valid and fearsome arguments she was quick to provide, Laurie has no interest in riding on the back of the motor scooter that, for reasons unknown, the friendly Patrick has also provided for me free of charge.  From occasional comments made by the generally thrifty Laurie, I know the yoga retreat doesn’t come cheap, so it’s bizarre that the one freeloader — myself — seems to be getting the most perks from their guide; I do not complain.  I scour the rice-covered hillsides on the back of the small bike — a toy compared to the Minsk I’d just been living on in Vietnam — while Laurie meets for yoga, and then in her off-time, we stumble about through the quiet streets and shops, basking in the spirituality that just oozes through every brick, stone and grain of rice in town.

Fierce and benevolent gods peer out at us from every corner; they watch down on us from the rafters and rooftops, and guard entryways and temples.  They stand prominently in the center of temple complexes, and they silently peer out almost invisibly amidst seas of dense trees and bushes where only the most searching eyes would take note.  Each evening, the massive figure of Ganesh, multi-armed elephant god of intellect and wisdom (I like him so much, I pick a large, iron Ganesh up at one of the many craft shops, despite the future difficulty that traveling with such a massive idol might cause me), greets us upon our return to the small boutique hotel.  In the mornings, he sends us off covered in garlands of fresh flowers with a newly made canang sari placed at his feet.

Literally “essence basket,” the canang sari are placed at the feet of the gods and goddesses every morning by soft-spoken women mostly wearing the same matching peach-colored sarongs.  Made of coconut leaves and filled with a variety of flowers, leaves and berries, the offerings are similarly left at the doorstep of every home, stand, temple and business in town.  During the afternoons, the same serene girls sit behind their respective counters at the shops where they work, quietly braiding the small leaf-entwined baskets for the next day’s offerings and filling them in between sales of strange Balinese masks, vividly colored pottery and a profusion of wooden penis statues (and similarly shaped bottle openers) that for some reason can be found in every store in town.

The center of town hosts a complex of temples more intricately adorned and spectacular than anywhere else in the city (or perhaps the entire island).  Outside of one, a large statue of a baby glances down at us gleefully, its waist respectfully wrapped with a large, clean sarong.  We stop for lunch under the thatched roof of a building located on an island in the center of a large rectangular pond.  Only thin walkways over the water to the north and south provide access to the scenic restaurant, where we lounge out on pillows while a large Balinese temple reflects across the water nearly to the edge of where we sit.  The food, like the view, is amazing, though the finest dining experience in Ubud requires a bit more effort from its patrons.

 

 

 

The Trek to Sari Organic

My interest in the Sari Organic Cafe is middling at best; the skies are overcast and hint of rain, and the most common caveat with every recommendation for the restaurant is that it requires a bit of a journey to find the elusive vegetarian restaurant.  Not being a vegetarian myself, the compulsion to roam the countryside in search of the popular cafe is not particularly high for me.  But Laurie’s interest in the place is too piqued to be denied, and despite a hand-drawn map to the cafe with less clarity than most ancient cave art, we take off down the main street, turning onto a narrow muddy road with overgrown grass to either side that eventually gives over to seemingly endless rice paddies.

Clouds darken and what had been a soft mist in the air thickens to an uncomfortable downpour, leading us to seek shelter in one of the lone buildings along the empty dirt track.  A not particularly riveting art gallery, the building also doubles as a restaurant by night and offers cooking lessons as well; I’m vaguely curious, though the prices are significantly higher than any of the other attraction we’ve sampled in town.  As the rain subsides, we make our way back out and follow the widening track until it intersects with one of the main streets through Ubud, closer to the center.  Only the chance glimpse at paper advertisement for Sari Organic on the side of a telephone pole points us in the right direction.

Again detouring from the main road, we go against instinct and follow the sign’s directions around a small, empty garage as the sidewalk gives way to a thin dirt track just wide enough for a single motorbike.  The track stretches along for a few kilometers, with nothing but terraced rice fields and the occasional farm house to either side of the increasingly narrow path.  The last marking that signified in any way that this was the right way to Sari Organic was also the first, with no signs of life or activity since then.

And suddenly a cluster of open-air buildings, most of them little more than thatch-roofed shacks, rise out from behind a cluster of trees and vegetation.  In place of rice paddies are several rectangular gardens offering a wide variety of different herbs and vegetables.  Most items — salads in particular — are thrown together from items hand-picked by the chefs just moments before from these gardens.  Creative guests are even given the option of picking through the plants by themselves to make part or all of their own meals.

A Canadian, about my age, plays at at guitar for a time at the table behind us.  That he’s brought the instrument this far out into the Indonesian countryside implies either that he’s been here before or that he was a lot more trusting than I was about the restaurant’s reputation.  While I dine on cream of pumpkin soup and a green pancake replete with chunks of mango and pineapple, a wizened dark-skinned guru with a long, white beard and a look of profound enlightenment in his eyes speaks to a group of Americans in their fifties and sixties who all look as though they might’ve hung out with Ben and Jerry (or Jerry Garcia) in their youth.  Nearly horizontal on a long, soft cushion, I stare out over the moist rice paddies stretching into the distance as a prismatic sky of blues, pinks, oranges and purples is reflected into countless patchwork puddles on the damp ground below.  It might be the most perfect location for a restaurant ever, if only one doesn’t mind a bit of a hike.

The relaxing environment and almost hypnotically bucolic countryside lulls us into a peaceful complacence that causes us to neglect the difficulties in returning to Ubud after the sun has set.  Stumbling through the darkness with only the light from my camera for guidance, we’re trailed for a while by a shadow about the size of a medium-sized dog.  We walk in a state of mild paranoia until reaching a building with a sloppily painted-on depiction of the lion-faced demon god Barong glaring outward at us.  Perhaps it was enough to scare the animal off, as there’s no further sign of its presence for the rest of the walk.

Over drinks later that night, an American couple speak to us of their work on the island: They’ve come to assist with the massive outbreak of rabies amongst feral dogs in Bali.  Apparently, the disease — especially here in the center of the island — is quite rampant…

The Monkey Temple

In town the next morning, we venture downhill to the base of the large hill our cottages are built into to scope out the Monkey Temple.  It’s an appropriate name.  Here, the woods are at their most dense, choking out the sky under a massive green canopy.  Already a handful of monkeys chase after tourists bearing bags of bread crumbs, industriously sold by locals across the street where for some reason the monkeys don’t dare to tread.

Against Laurie’s wishes, I pick up a back of the crumbs to take into the park; she’s understandably timid around the obnoxious little bastards, and this timidity only grows each time an occasional alpha male asserts itself a bit too strongly while seeking out snacks from clueless tourists like myself.  The animals are far more friendly than their cousins in Vietnam, but still aggressive enough to make one maintain a safe distance.  For every monkey willing to dance about playfully on the ground for a few crumbs, there’s another with no compunctions about climbing up a human’s leg and angrily grabbing the entire bag with a soft hiss.

In the center of a long series of winding trails sits the temple itself, a monument to the animals that appear to claim dominance over this section of Ubud.  No less intricately carved out than any other temple in the city, busts and statues of Ganesh, Setesuyara and Kala are all replaced by various monkeys in a variety of positions, innocently mocked at all times by the living specimens that’ve made this place their home.  A cluster of infant monkeys come tripping over to me greedily upon spotting the remainder of my bag of snacks and I dump it quickly on the ground for them before any large males can swing by.  One assertively does, of course, but not before a few of the pups at least manage to sneak off with a few morsels.

Kuta Beach

With two days left in my Balinese adventure (the lucky Laurie getting to stay on for a few more days for further exploration), we debate between treks to dormant volcanoes and sloppy beach adventures, eventually opting for the latter.  Calm, relaxing beaches can be found in all the cardinal directions, with some exciting island hopping in the southeast and a few popular beaches famous for their black sands in the north.  But after a few days of Ubud’s pleasantly lull-inducing air, the liveliness of Kuta Beach in the south seems the ideal choice.

Notoriously taken over by young and wild Australians almost year round, it would appear we showed up on an off night.  By day we swim and tan on nearly empty beaches, so happily unmolested by locals (when’s the last time locals at a beach haven’t at least approached to beg or sell something?) and then wander about the fairly modern city streets through the afternoon.  There are people here, but not in any abundance.  The most people show up for a sunset worthy of even more than those that arrived, but even still it’s no Koh Phangan in terms of population or wild behavior.

At night we wander through mostly empty bars and clubs, walking back and forth in anticipation of the large crowds that never quite arrive.  Outside, some local men stand around in a huddle looking bored.

“Want any drugs, my friend?”

“Nah, not really.  Do you know how much a cab back to Ubud would be?”

In liu of excitement and adventure, and perhaps realizing we’re too old to spend a day at the beach and then sit out in the clubs until midnight waiting on the hint of a party to start, we opt for the casual familiarity of another night in Ubud.  It’s no raging all-nighter, but there’s a decent Reggae band here in Ubud and the beers are cheap.  Sometimes, pleasant adequacy after a long day at the beach is more than enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The legendary island destination of Bali is, if not the place to be in Indonesia (I know people who’ve traveled around Java and swear that it’s the most interesting place on earth), the place I most want to be right now.  Gorgeous beaches.  Tropical (and thankfully dormant) volcanoes.  Lush, verdant inlands that just pulse with eastern spirituality.

In the midst of a massive collection of crowded islands — 17,508, to be precise — containing the largest Muslim population on earth, the relatively small (compared to sister islands Java and Lombok) Bali practices a unique form of Hinduism appropriately called “Balinese.”  It features a perfect blend of wild, frolicsome coastlines, and ultra-serene meditative environments within the island’s heart, making the whole package an ideal tourist destination.  Hell, it accounted for one third of Elizabeth Gilbert‘s Eat, Pray, Love (and 100% of the “Love”).  Only the terrorist bombings of 2002 and 2005 mar its reputation, though the US removed its dire travel warnings as of 2008.

Into Jakarta

Unfortunately, the discount flights I chose required overnight layovers both heading to and away from Bali in Indonesia’s populace capital city of Jakarta.  Two non-consecutive nights in a city isn’t nearly enough time to pass judgement upon a place, but Jakarta is probably the least pleasant city I have ever passed through.  My first visit in Jakarta, upon entering the country, was made infinitely better by a brief visit with my friends Jim and Liz; I’d met them the year prior in Patagonia, and they’d since taken up residency as teachers at a high-end American school here.  One of the finest things about long-term traveling is ever growing list of amazing people around the world to catch up with in their homeland (or in this case, adopted homeland).

Muslim women in dark burqas line the dimly streets, crying as we drive by, their arms locked in place reaching out like crooked tree branches, wordlessly begging for money.  It’s explained to me later that they are unmarried, and likely too old or undesirable to  find a husband now, though they’re simultaneously incapable of self-sufficience.  The streets aren’t lit nearly enough as we drive by suspicious characters standing in place in the shadows, peering into my cab.  A McDonald’s, seemingly out of place in this part of Jakarta, casts a golden glow on the area and proclaims “beef prosperity” on its exterior sign.  And suddenly, we pull through two large gates — double security — and it feels as though the car has mythically crossed the border into an entirely different reality.

Here, houses unmarred by graffiti have green, well-manicured lawns with flowers and the occasional piece of lawn furniture.  Windows lack thick metal bars over them, so common on buildings outside the gates.  Are those tennis courts?  The school where Jim and Liz teach is prestigious, and safety is clearly a primary concern for their foreign teachers.  I’m among the first to find out big news that had arrived almost concurrently with me: Liz is officially pregnant.  We toast to their good luck and share travel and life stories from the time spent since last we saw each other.

My stay is short, unfortunately.  They’ve got a nice house, complete with a local husband and wife team that live in a room adjacent to their garage and serve as their cook and housekeeper — another boon of working at their school.  It’s almost enticing enough to encourage me to get a Masters in education.  They leave before I wake but, consummate hosts that they are, arrangements were made with both their chef and their driver for my convenience.  After a large breakfast of pancakes and fresh fruit, I’m taken directly to the airport.  I may not get the best vibe from this city, but it certainly has its  pockets of comfort.

Out of Jakarta

Cut to one week later and I’m back in Jakarta, relaxed and somehow even tanner than before, with less than twelve hours to go before my flight returns me to the life of a mild-mannered software professor in Chongqing.  Dirty and exhausted, and now with a bulky, extra duffel bag purchased just to carry all of the knickknacks I’d picked up along this trip, it’s imperative that I find a place to stay.  But where?  The overpriced (even for Indonesia) airport hotel is filled to capacity.  Hopping in a cab, we have no luck at two other spots before finding a third that’s willing to take me in.

An employee takes me up the stairs — the elevator is broken, and I feel quite certain that it has always been so — to a small room on the fourth floor.  He opens the door for me and immediately flips the light switch, which proves to be a futile gesture as the room stays cloaked in darkness.  Shrugging it off, he crosses the room and turns on a more effective table lamp on the other side of the bed, illuminating a mammoth-sized cockroach that sits, antennae gyrating wildly, on my pillow of all places.  It must be a comfortable pillow.

“Ahhhhh!” I exclaim.  He can’t understand English anyway, so it’s not like a more descript explanation would’ve served any purpose.

“Ahh?” he asks.  I know you see the cockroach, fucker.  Don’t play dumb.

“Roach there!” I say, pointing.  ”Monster fucking roach!”

“Oh!” he says, suddenly aware of what is causing my discomfort.  He swoops in and swats the mouse-sized insect toward the doorway, where it rebounds off of the door, dazed, and flops gracelessly onto a spot on the floor just barely within the confines of my room.  Stepping forward swiftly, he kicks it with his right foot, which again sends it bouncing up against the open door before following up with his left foot as though tracking a soccer ball, knocking it safely into the hallway.  He looks up at me with a large, satisfied grin upon his face.  All done.

“Good enough, I guess…” I say, shrugging off the pyrrhic victory.  After he leaves, I grab the pillow and consider removing its casing before I notice the sickly yellow mass that resides within it.  With no other options, I flip the pillow over and collapse down onto the coarse, fetid pallet in exhaustion.

I wake and it’s still dark out, with only the softest, ash-gray hint of dawn brightening the lone window, filling the room with soft shadows and hard silhouettes.  Now significantly into my thirties, I have apparently reached a point, physiologically, where it is impossible for my bladder to make it through an entire night.  This personal detail is only important as a lead-in to explain why I am awake in time to discover a small cat, glowing eyes forever burnt into my memory as fodder for a legion of future nightmares, perched upon my bundle of belongings in the corner, mere feet — it’s a very small room — from where I sleep.

Wait.  Not a cat.

“Ahhhhh!” I repeat again, groggier this time but possibly conveying a greater sense of revulsion.

My exclamation sends the rat running into the bathroom, but I remain in bed, frozen and nauseated, for several moments before building up enough drive to switch the bedside lamp on.  Shivering with revulsion, I slowly creep off the bed, checking first carefully under the bed to make sure no other distinctly unwelcome guests (snakes?  spiders?  OJ Simpson?) are currently residing in my room.

I lean into the bathroom, keeping my feet firmly entrenched outside of it as I turn the light on and stretch my head inside.  It’s a small bathroom, and I can immediately see both that the rat is gone, and what was most likely his escape route.  Shuddering, I reach back into the main room for my duffel bag of souvenirs and drag it into the bathroom, pressing it flat against the wall to block a single small hole where the floor and wall meet.  I close the door to the bathroom and lay back down before grimacing as my bladder reminds me why I woke up in the first place.

Cautiously opening the bathroom door, I return to the scene of the crime, though my bag is thus far succeeding in separating me from Jakarta’s lively animal kingdom.  Back in bed, I close my eyes and pretend to sleep, but I fool no one.  Least of all, myself.

Seven AM, and I’m waiting outside on the front step for the shuttle to take me out of here, never to return.  I will not say with assurance that Jakarta does not have its charms; simply that I was unable to discover them during my short stay.  I’m too tired to be startled as a rat — my roommate? — nonchalantly darts out from under the steps right between my legs, making his way into a cluster of large bushes growing next to the hotel.

No, I don’t think I like Jakarta very much.

Singapore.  Tiny island nation off the southwest tip of southeast Asia.  Home of the… Mer-lion?

More on that later.

A Singaporean (Singaporese?  Singaperson?) friend from Chongqing, upon hearing I’d be gracing his small but world renown homeland, offered me all the lodging, touring, dining and clubbing I could possibly want, courtesy of a legion of his friends and family.  It’s the ultimate backpacker boon — having access to friendly locals — and it’s absolutely wasted on me.  The cheapest flights I could organize in advance from Cambodia to Indonesia happened to have a seven hour layover in Singapore.  It’s enough time to go on a quick tourist run of the city-state, but doesn’t allow for much more than that.

It’s a shame, because I’ve liked everyone I’ve ever met from Singapore.  For one of the smallest countries in the world — at only 270 square miles, it’s barely larger than Guam — the people of Singapore certainly get out a lot.  I’ve met several people from Singapore in my travels, though I’ve never met a single Malaysian, despite the neighboring country being more than 500 times its size.  There are a few factors that likely influence this:

1. Singapore’s primary language — there are three other official ones — is an interestingly accented English.  It’s heavily enunciated, yet with a soft ‘R’.  ”Sing-a-PUHH” rather than “Sing-a-PORE.”
2. It’s an extremely wealthy country, with the highest percentage of millionaires in US dollars — 15% of all households — in the world.
3. Singapore is used to being very international.  It has one of the busiest ports in the world, and  is the fourth leading financial center in the world, due to very business-friendly policies from the government.

Singapore is also famous (or infamous) for having a strict, authoritarian government.  When I was in grade school, it made the news for taking a cane to an American student’s bare ass due to catching the hooligan vandalizing property.  The penalty for being caught with drugs, even for foreigners, is  death.  Chewing gum and having oral sex in one’s own home are both still technically illegal, though laws are in the process of being changed to make the country seem more modern.  But spitting, littering, smoking in public, urinating in public and jaywalking all carry heavy fines and potentially warrant use of the cane.

I make a mental note of staying on my best behavior during my short, exploratory layover.

A thoroughly modern subway drops me off in the theoretical heart of town.  ”Go to Raffles!” the various subway employees tell me when I question them for advice on how to best spend my time here.  Thomas Stamford Raffles, founding father of Singapore.  Dead now, obviously, but his legacy remains in the form of a hotel, bar, hospital, university, sports complex, marina, several statues and any number of other honors bestowed upon him by one of the few Asian cities I’ve been to that seems proud of having a British imperialist founder.

It’s a decidedly Western city, tucked away as it is in the heart of southeast Asia.  Its layout, architecture, appearance and general personality remind me more of home than anywhere else I’ve been since arriving in China six months ago.  A purposefully wrinkled, beige sport jacket catches my attention in a window, and while it’s significantly more expensive than clothing in China, it’s the first article of clothing I’ve felt the need to purchase in some time.  Outside, an older man driving a bicycle taxi offers to give me a thirty minute tour for ten dollars.

As his tour includes the first, and ends with the latter two on my tourist checklist –

1. Visit the Mer-lion
2. A Singapore sling at Raffles Longbar
3. A drink at the New Asia bar

– I hop into the comfortable wicker and cushion seat.

Yes, it’s a decidedly alcohol-saturated list, especially for a quick afternoon visit, but (2) is this country’s  addition to bar menus across the world and (3) offers the best skyline view of the city, but only for bar patrons.  I have no choice but to imbibe!  As for (1), I’m not quite sure what the hell is going on with this country.

Yes, the Mer-lion: Half mermaid (well, half fish, technically) and half-lion.  For a country with zero tolerance toward drug usage, it’s surprising to find this Yellow Submarine reject as its official mascot.  In Malay, Singapore means “Lion City” despite no lions ever gracing its borders, and being an island, clearly a more marine-based lion would be needed to represent the country.  Enter the Mer-lion.

Forty years ago, Americans came to southeast Asia and got to play with big guns, and in that regard, little has changed.  There are subtle differences of course;  modern enthusiasts aren’t also getting fired at, themselves.  On the other hand, we pay a bit more of a premium in cash for the ammunition than the soldiers used to.  So it all balances out…

Several miles from Ho Chi Minh City are the tourist-friendly Chi Chu tunnels used by the Viet Cong to sneak about the city underground.  It’s a popular and particularly claustrophobic tour that peculiarly enough finishes at a gun range where visitors can fire AK-47s and other period weaponry of the Vietnam war, living out their childhood GI Joe fantasies without the burden of sacrificing four or more years of one’s life to military service.

I opted out of the experience, but not for any disdain of heavy weaponry; I just wanted a little more bang for my buck.  While there are smatterings of large gun ranges all around the world, Phnom Penh is infamous for being the one spot on the backpacker trail where random, non-military non-citizens can drop in and, for an extremely inflated fee, play with the big toys.  Rocket launchers.  Grenades.  Grenade launchers.  Etc, etc.  Bang, bang.

What sort of mad firing range would allow tourists to drop in and fire rockets at a variety of unseemly targets (more on that later)?  Why, none other than the Cambodian national army, of course!

Getting There is Half the Fun

The tuk-tuk picks us up at ten in the morning, sharp.  I’m the only one with the funds or interest in wreaking havoc on peaceful Cambodian hills and meadows, but the German at my hostel who’s been staying in Phnom Penh for the past two weeks has heard many rumors of this base and was itching to come along for the ride.  We cram onto the long, single seat of the tuk-tuk, next to a little boy and girl who seem to be joining us on this ridiculous mission for reasons neither of us can understand.

Thankfully, they’re short term companions.  The driver takes us a few blocks from the hostel and we all switch into 4×4 Ford Bronco, which seems vastly more appropriate for the day’s events. After ten minutes of sitting in the car with the doors open, a young woman approaches and wordlessly guides the children out of the car.  Our last obstacle overcome, the driver starts out on our epic journey of explosive mayhem.

It’s a ninety minute ride spent almost entirely in silence other than the Cambodian music playing on his radio (I know this is a very narrow-minded, foreign thing to say, but I swear that every song sounded identical, save a single Cambodian hip-hop tune), punctuated by this bizarre exchange which took place about twenty minutes from our destination:

“Do you want cow?” the driver suddenly asks me, in slightly broken English.

“A cow?  Like moo moo cow cow?”

“For explode with rocket.  Need to get now.”

“You’re asking me if I want to buy a cow, and then blow it up with the rocket launcher?”

The German nods his head.  ”I’m surprised you haven’t heard about the cows, mate.  Every story about people going to shoot rockets usually involves them getting offered a cow to shoot at.”

“I don’t want to blow up a cow with a rocket!  It’s just such a… dick move.  So pointless.” I pause for a moment, considering the situation.  ”If I blow up cow, can I eat the cow meat?”

“The… meat?  It is not for eat.  Is for explode.”

“It’s just… I would have a hard time blowing up a cow just to blow it up.  Eating some meat, even just a little, would validate it somewhat — it’d be like it died for something at least, you know?  Rocket-fried steaks!  That’d be something!”

“You cannot eat!”

“Relax, man, I’m mostly joking.  I’m not going to try to eat the obliterated cow.  How much more would the cow cost?”

“For you, four hundred American dollars.”

“Yikes!  Does anyone ever actually pay to blow up the cow?”

“Many times.  Russians like very much.  Last week, Russians get two cow and old car.  Eight rockets.  I have video.”  Ahh, the Russian nouveau riche.

“Too much for me, I’m afraid.  No thanks.”

“No cow?”

“No cow.”

“So, you want chickens?”

I opt against purchasing chickens for all the same reasons I avoided the cow, in addition to the fact that hitting a chicken with a rocket launcher is almost certainly beyond my abilities.  Two men stand listlessly at the gate to the army base as we pull up to the lowered bar.  While one of them speaks to the driver, the other slowly steps over and stares sheepishly at us in the back, with a small, confused grin.  I smile back.

After a couple of minutes, a confident young Cambodian man steps over to us and hops into the front seat, guiding us over to a small building about the size of a two-car garage.  He has the sleek smile of a salesman and wears a plain white t-shirt with no military gear save a camouflaged hat bearing the Cambodian insignia on its front.

“So,” he says, turning to me, “you want to fire the rocket launcher, hah?”  His accent is strong, though his English is quite good.  ”But noooo cows?”  He stretches out the “no” in feigned surprise and bemusement, before laughing at himself.

“That’s right.”

“So what else?  Light machine gun?  Heavy machine gun?  You want to fire grenade launcher?”  His eyes light up as he speaks.  He’s so happy to serve, and suddenly I get a sinking feeling in my stomach that, with enough cash, this is probably one of those places where demented and bored old men with way too much money can go to hunt disenfranchised poor people that hopped on a bus thinking they were getting a free trip to some scenic Thai island.  The smiling, nameless man in the army hat – I’ll call him “Smiles” — lists off prices, and they’re every bit as bad as I’d been warned.

Eventually, I talk him down from the exorbitant price of four hundred dollars to the still exorbitant price of three hundred dollars.  But I would like to fire a rocket launcher, and barring any large scale global wars, this will likely be the only time in my life I have this opportunity.  Besides, three hundreds dollars pays for two nights at a seedy hotel room in Jersey City.  Who the hell wants to stay in Jersey City anyway?

My lump sum of cold, hard American cash wins me the right to one rocket, one launched grenade and fifty rounds fired from a heavy machine gun.  Smiles runs into the building with another man dressed fully in fatigues — I’ll call him “Fatigues,” though he’s grinning every bit as much as the first man.  Hell, everyone is all smiles here – and they both come out shortly with their hands full of an assortment of black steel, explosive munitions and long, sexy chains of bullets.  Space is cleared in the back of the bronco and all the gear is set down, softly of course.

There are no roads out here; only dry, dirt paths cutting through the open, arid brushland.  We drive gently over the bumpy terrain, always cognizant of the various explosive devices located mere inches behind me.  Stopping next to a small tree, there’s discussion in the front followed by Fatigues motioning for me to exit the car with him.  He and Smiles slowly remove all of the weaponry, placing it in the shade next to another tree, farther from the car; our driver never leaves his seat.

At this point, I was very glad to have brought the German.  Someone had to take the pictures, right?

Exhaust smoke permeates the air to near choking levels while I barter with an uncooperative older woman selling bread from a basket she wears at her waist.  Overweight and wearing a headscarf and altogether too much clothing, she looks like a rotund pile of tattered hand-me-downs with a face, and clearly no one has ever taught her how to negotiate.  The bus honks its horn at me impatiently as I stand there with two loaves of bread in my left hand, insisting that they are not worth the equivalent of five American dollars.  Then again, I’m starving, tired and still very woozy from the inappropriately named “happy” pizza that I made the mistake of ingesting just before sleeping last night.

“NO!” the woman shouts at me, as I tug on the 20,000 Riel — the Cambodian currency — note she’d just taken from my hand after I’d asked how expensive the bread was.

“Ohhh, now you speak English.”

 

In my other hand are the two small loaves of bread I’d hoped would get me through this five hour morning ride to Phnom Penh.  Five dollars for two small, bland chunks of peasant bread that shouldn’t cost more than fifty cents?  I’d rather starve!  Yanking the bill firmly from her grubby hands, I dump the loaves unceremoniously back in her bread basket and storm back toward the expectant bus.

“No!” she shouts again, following me.

“Yes!” I spin around and yell back at her.  ”You are a price gouger!  You gouge prices!”

“No,” she says more quietly this time, stopped in her tracks and staring at me unpleasantly.

“This is getting nowhere!” I hop on the bus expecting the driver to be bothered by a delay that did not even yield any bread, but he stares at me just long enough to make sure I am on board so that he can close the door.  ”20,000 Riel for two loaves of bread!” I explain to no one in particular with a huff, in the hopes that my outrage is contagious.  It is not.

I have my choice of seats on the bus and collapse into an empty pair, laying down with the intention of sleeping my way to Phnom Penh.  Cursing all six feet and three inches of my person, I hopelessly curl up on the thin seats and try to ignore the bumpy Cambodian countryside, my own self-doubt and the uncomfortable lack of two small loaves of bread in my stomach that pride had robbed me of.

I wake upon entry into the city, groggy but in better spirits despite realizing that I’d missed what was likely a gorgeous and memorable countryside in exchange for this mostly gray city with a few oases of eccentric French architecture, where everything appears to have a cloudy film over it.  Maybe that’s just my tired eyes still reawakening.  A tuk-tuk picks me up directly from the bus stop and I fumble through my papers to find information of use to him.

 

“Hostel Nomads,” my note says.  For the first time since Hanoi, an honest-to-God hostel.  Lodging is so cheap in southeast Asia, they always tell me excitedly, you don’t NEED to sleep in hostels. But I want to.  Finding short-term compatriots with varying degrees of compatibility comes naturally in the common room of a hostel; trolling for the same company in the lobby of a cheap hotel just comes off as seedy and/or desperate.  Within minutes of checking in at Nomads, I’ve got a crew of two others interested in a tour of some of Phnom Penh’s more cheerful historical locations: The S-21 Prison Museum and The Killing Fields.  Thankfully I’m in a better mood since waking up, or today would just be one big celebration of despondence.

We agree to meet in an hour, and I use the time to check out the city’s namesake, Wat Phnom.  As with Angkor, “Wat” again is “temple” while “Phnom” means “hill.”  Legend has it that in the 1300′s, an old woman named Penh found five Buddha statues floating in the nearby Mekong River.  She ordered everyone she knew to pile dirt into a large hill, and then build a temple to house the Buddhas atop it.  It’s an impressive shrine — the tallest in the city — and I saunter around it for a while before picking up some spicy, fried noodles in a paper cup at the base of the hill.

“Where are you from?” the noodle vendor asks me.

“America!” I say, shaking her hand.

“Ah,” she says, excitedly.  ”America!  Yay!”  Her hand is limp in mine, but she smiles with genuine warmth as she tells everyone around us where I am from.  From all sides they surround me with smiles and tea, speaking to me in a mix of Cambodian and the one word “America,” recited each time more emphatically than the last.

 

 

 

And You Thought it Was Bad Being a Four-eyed Nerd at Your School…

Khmer Rouge.  ”Khmer” as in the dominant racial group in Cambodia and  ”Rouge,” red, for the group’s general communist ideology.  Taking a particularly hardline stance, Pol Pot and his followers declared that the farmers were the true proletariat and nearly destroyed his country by trying to turn every citizen into one.  Urban Cambodians, particularly college educated ones, were torn from their homes and families and sent to work in the fields with the rest of the populace.  Money and books were destroyed everywhere, and almost every Cambodian whose profession was not “farmer” was either made into one or murdered.  Effectively, the entire country became one large labor camp.

While I never cared much for being mocked in grade school for wearing glasses, I submit that my situation was better than what my Cambodian peers faced for the same infraction: Glasses-wearers were seen as “brainy,” which was enough under the Khmer’s regime to be executed.  If only contact lenses came into widespread use a decade or two earlier…

 

Much like Mao Zedong — a fan of and inspiration to the Khmer Rouge — Pol Pot led a series of massive, countrywide experiments that had never been proven successful before, to disastrous effects.  The “New People,” what they labeled those that once lived in cities, had no clue how to effectively farm and were suddenly told that they must produce three tons of rice per hectare; in pre-Khmer Rouge times, even skilled farmers could only produce one.  And Pol Pot had basically led Cambodia into its worst famine ever, as hundreds of thousands of new and inept farmers died of starvation.  At least they could’ve lived off of fresh fruits and berries on the land, you might protest.  No, the communists considered that “free enterprise,” one of the worst capitalists traits.  Punishment for such a crime: no pudding!  Just kidding.  Death, of course!

While the Khmer Rouge led Cambodia, more than a fifth of its population (over 2 million) died of starvation, torture, disease (Pol also banned all western medicine in favor of the healthier traditional remedies — apparently ginseng root and powdered tiger penis don’t do much to cure Malaria) and outright murder, and in the process, they almost completely reverted the country back to stone age.  All this in under four years.

In 1975, the regime took over a large high school — standard education no longer being a government priority — and turned it into a brutal and generally fatal prison center.  Tuol Sleng  (literally “Strychnine Hill”), as the morbid museum is now known marks the second depressing museum in a row I’ve been to, following Vietnam’s War Remnants Museum, but seems to be a necessary visit for anyone trying to understand the depth of the Khmer Rouge’s cruelty.

 

Upon entering the prison, inmates were stripped of all clothing and belonging and put into rooms often barely larger than phone booths.  Prisoners were fed four spoonfuls of rice porridge twice a day, and hosed off every four days.  Talking to other prisoners or drinking any water, even found water, without permission resulted in beatings.  While kept at S-21, inmates were tortured until they admitted to any and all accusations, generally giving up the names of countless innocent friends, co-workers, peers and family members, who were then rounded up and exterminated at the local Choeung Ek killing fields.

Though brutally tortured with electricity, starvation, hanging, knives, clubs, pliers, whips, waterboarding and any other assortment of unpleasant means, the intention was generally to keep inmates alive as long as possible to get the most thorough confessions from them.  Nearly 100% of inmates confessed, proving once again that torture is the ideal method to make anyone say anything you want them to say (truth not necessary!).  One of the few captured foreigners, a young Englishman unfortunate enough to be caught eventually admitted to being recruited by the CIA during a vacation to the States he took at age twelve.  He was killed shortly after his confession.  Of the estimated 17,000 people kept in S-21 from 1975-1978, only seven were known to have survived.  Basically, Tuol Sleng was not a very enjoyable place to live.

 

 

Like a bitter chaser of misery following a burning, double shot of despondency, we waste no time upon leaving Tuol Sleng hopping on a cab and taking a route from the prison that, 30 years prior, would’ve likely meant certain death.  Choeung Ek.  The killing fields.  Once an orchard 17 kilometers from Phnom Penh, the open land was turned into a site of regular massacres by the Khmer Rouge with mass graves there containing the remains of thousands of Cambodians.  Politicians.  Teachers.  Engineers.  Writers.  Enemies of the State.  Today, a Buddhist shrine stands to honor the dead containing a pillar of skulls within, that no one may ever forget the atrocities committed here.

 

Nomads at Night

Are we timid vacationers, hiding behind the fences of the world’s various all-inclusive resorts, too afraid to step out and sample the local flavor, be it insect, root or even man’s best friend?  Of course not!  We drink the classical poisons of third world villages so remote they don’t even know of the first two worlds, and subject ourselves to rashes, diseases, ailments and maladies, all in the name of adventure, of curiosity, of boredom.  We make love to foreign women with mocha colored skin and English skills limited to what can be learned from watching The Simpsons and take ridiculously ill-conceived chances simply because we’re lucky enough to find ourselves in places where such ill conceptions are even conceivable.  And yes, we drink an opaque beverage translating to “palm whisky” that tastes like paint thinner and is sold by the cupful from a large orange cooler attached to the back of an unscrupulous looking Cambodian’s bicycle, simply because we can.

The palm (as in palm tree)-based concoction tastes like the morning breath of the recently deceased, pungent and without the promise of anything good to come.  The German who seems to live at this hostel has developed a fondness for it, but his admiration of the sour poison is not contagious.  He’s playing with the exuberant post-puppy that he calls “Dinner” tied to our table on the sidewalk outside of  the hostel.

“Why do you call it that?”

“Because some other backpackers apparently rescued it from a restaurant where it was going to be cooked up, but then they couldn’t take him home with them and had to ditch him at the hostel.”   The table stops jerking as the dog, who was just before attempting to eat his own tail, looks over at us with his mouth agape, clearly aware he was just the topic of conversation.  His slightly chewed tail begins to wag frantically as he bounds over toward me and places his front paws on my lap and stares at me with a degree of adoration that only puppies and prepubescent fans of boy bands are capable of mustering up.

In China, I had briefly considered trying dog because that is what locals do.  Try Anything!  Do Everything!  Live a little, right?  At the back of a restaurant in Chongqing known for serving canines, they made the mistake of having a large cage with three dogs, presumably used for culinary purposes, on the floor near the restroom that I desperately had needed to use.  They barked and called after me, just like pet store dogs would, and as we made eye contact, I envisioned them dripping in kung pao sauce and wearing a crown of water chestnuts and bean sprouts and knew at once that I would never be able to dine on man’s best friend.

 

As I pet Dinner, the demure Davi sits next to me, decidedly not flirting.  The tall Cambodian girl looks like she could be anywhere from 14 to 22 years old; it turns out she’s 26.  Her face carries a mixture of serenity that could’ve been lifted from a statue of a Hindu goddess and the nervous suspiciousness of a wily street cat.  She tells us poutingly that she does not have a boyfriend.

“I’ll be your boyfriend,” I say.

“No!” she exclaims, though she doesn’t leave my side for much of the night.

As we play with our Dinner, more hostel guests arrive out front and we sip on palm wine and “Baroso” whisky, which seems to feature the bust of a Jersey Shore reject on its label.  I have big plans for tomorrow morning at 10 AM (see next post!) but tonight, we are exploring the nightlife.  We dodge swarms of gnat-like insects at an outside bar along the Mekong, then get lost in a maze of seemingly identical streets looking for nightclubs.  Davi guides us silently through the streets, advising that we skip some bars (including one with a “no handgrenades” sign outside) in favor of one further away that caters to foreigners.  They still search us brutally on the way in.

Tired and exhausted, I take my leave of the group not long after arriving at the last club.  Moments later, I notice Davi silently walking closely alongside me.

“Go away,” she says with a voice of total seriousness, as she moves in closer and follows me along through the dark, eerily quiet streets of late night Phnom Penh.

“You’re a very confusing person, Davi.”

“No I am not,” she assures me matter-of-factly.  It wouldn’t be the first time I did not understand a woman.

 

“Elephant!  Enter Angkor Thom like a king!  Ride the elephant!”

The short man in a red and gold period costume sits insouciantly near the head of the lumbering beasts as it trails me along a stone bridge.  Behind him is a large covered saddle, with what looks to be an overly wide red sofa perched loosely atop it.  Fit for kings, indeed, though how one gains access to the towering pillion is unclear.  The driver lounges on the front so casually, one would expect him to either slide off or lose control of the behemoth at any point, yet the elephant saunters along listlessly.  I smile up at the man.

“Elephant?” he asks me.  I shake my head and resume my slow walk across the Angkor Thom causeway, under the watchful eye of the massive stone Gopura — a Hindu tower usually marking the entrance to a temple.  This one is  adorned with giant faces staring out in the cardinal directions, presumably for watchful protection.  Assisting them, or possibly just using the heads for a toilet, are a handful of monkeys that seem to have formed a playful bond with the thousands of weekly visitors to the site.

“Is only way to enter Angkor Thom!” he yells out after me.  My feet continue to prove him wrong.  From either side, an army of stone Devas (Hindu gods) and Asuras (demons) stare me down as I cross over toward the southern gate.  Motorcycles pass by with all the foot traffic, but Sapo explained that it is traditional to walk across; Sapo also looked pretty damned comfortable where he was, lounging on his bike as still as the stone figures alongside the bridge.  The figures sit there in perpetuity, both sides pulling a naga or “great snake,” which represents the Hindu creation myth of “Churning the Ocean of Milk.”  Angkor Thom has entrances at all four of the cardinal directions, and a fifth, the Victory Gate, which we pass through later on our way to explore more of the grounds.

Passing under the Gopura, past one of the first giant Angkor trees with roots dripping down over the rock like a psychedelic waterfall frozen in time, I catch my first glimpse of the Bayon Temple.  The temple was built by the great Jayavarman VII, an Ancient Khmer king of the 12th century and the leader who presided over much of Angkor Thom’s creation.  His pyramid-like palace sits on the grounds very close to Bayon, though it’s his temple, with its giant spires and multitude of serene stone faces that capture the most attention from tourists.

Artisans and dealers in kitschy trinkets can be found outside almost every archeological site — and there are at least forty spectacular sites alone on the overall Angkor map — though large dining areas are a bit more spread out.  Following my tour of Bayon and the king’s palace, Sapo and I stop for lunch (on my dime, of course) before plotting our next few stops.  Sapo’s a great driver, but fairly lacking on any interesting historical information; he seems happier to talk about his mistress, frankly.  There are plenty of other tour guides walking about, though, and I stop  from time to time to listen to the more interesting points.

While eating lunch, a girl of about twelve comes over to tries to sell me a t-shirt, failes, and then attempts to sell some magnets and other trinkets that I also have no interest in.  I push them away politely.  ”I rub your back,” she says excitedly, digging in her surprisingly strong hands to the area between my shoulders and neck.  ”Well, that’s.. not so bad actually…”  I let her continue for almost a minute until I look up and spot two female tourists in their 20′s staring peculiarly at a grown man getting massaged by a twelve year old.  I quickly toss her a dollar and wish her good luck elsewhere.  Talented kid, though.

Following lunch, Sapo and I ride out northwards to a series of sites I’d picked out while we ate.  There are at least twenty spots worth seeing, and only enough time for five or six of those, so time is of the essence.  The temple of Preah Khan.  The large fountain at Neak Pean.  And the perfectly picturesque Ta Som and Ta Prohm, both so beautifully absorbed into the jungle.  Depending on time, we might catch a few others, before timing our day to end atop Ta Keo for one of the best views of the surrounding landscape.  It’s an ambitious schedule, but definitely worthwhile.

Following sunset, there’s little else to do here, and Sapo’s clearly done with me.  Siem Reap’s a lively town with a burgeoning club scene due to the steady influx of young tourists here.  But I’m apparently getting too old to spend thirteen hours exploring ruins and then go out and rage until dawn.  I have a nice meal with some Canadians and, since I know I’ll be sleeping for a long time anyway, risk ordering my meal “happy.”  This simple adjective, added on to nearly any course on the menu in many restaurants in Siem Reap, means the dish is prepared using ample servings of marijuana.  I tried a “pot brownie” once before.  I found the experience both miserable and paralyzing, as I was abandoned by nearly all of my faculties; As I try it this time before passing out on a surprisingly comfortable bed, the experience is not as unpleasant…