Cambodia -- where you’ll hear about the Killing Fields, an orphanage, a demon possession, and the fixing of my sunglasses.

The Air Asia flight from Bangkok to Phenom Phen, Cambodia took only an hour, and as the plane approached the capital city, out of the window I saw a quieter, greener world. To the north of the country had been the jungle-covered mountains that separated Thailand and Cambodia; and after that had been green fields and spots of jungle and forest and villages. As the plane now dipped low on its approach to Phenom Phen, there was a great expanse of dark brown water, like a flood plain. Rivers and streams forked out of it, and in a couple places were peninsulas of land with houses on them. But on either side was water. Coming low for the landing, we flew over low buildings (no concrete high-rises here!) and homes—all of which had roofs of red or blue or brown. I could tell this would be a more colorful, down-to-earth place than Bangkok, a concrete jungle of unimaginative buildings.

The airport was a dinky thing, thankfully, although visa procurement was both efficient and inefficient at the same time. The Cambodians have the process down: passengers line up, turn in their passports, and the passports are passed down a row of several workers behind a desk, each glancing and stamping and writing. A man at the end of the row then calls out the name of the passport holder, who emerges from a knot of anxious passengers to claim his document. Sometimes the name gets mangled by the poor fellow whose job it is to call out what must be to him nearly unpronounceable names. Well, finally the man called out for “Scote Sootan” and I was legally allowed into the ancient land of the Khmer.

I carried only a light pack with me so escaped out into the world of touts and taxis and tuk-tuks. I paid the seven dollar fee at a counter for my ride into town. The tuk-tuk driver exited the airport and proceeded on down a main avenue on either side of which were the kinds of shops I’d come to see as commonplace in Asia. But unlike Bangkok, these buildings were usually three to five stories, at the highest, and mostly open to the street. The population looked poorer, too. In fact, just about everything looked different, which in my mind was a grand thing. Gray was now replaced by buildings in more earthy tones. Even the dirt along some of the side streets, I noted, was red.

As dusk fell on Phenom Phen, the tuk-tuk driver made it to the ADRA office, where I’d been expected (ADRA stands for Adventist Development and Relief Agency). I met the director of ADRA Cambodia, an American man named Mark Schwisow, and his wife Ann. In their office on the ground floor of a three-story building in a quiet residential neighborhood, I took out my laptop and went online while Mark and I chatted a bit about the work they are doing: water projects, sanitation projects, teaching projects, etc. ADRA has a solid reputation in any country where they are serving; in fact, the US government has hired them for projects due to their reliability and honesty.

At any rate, I was supposed to catch a midnight bus, another dreadful overnight bus, which would take me north to a town called Seim Reap. “Is it safe?” I asked Mark. Judging by Cambodia’s turbulent past and the fact that there existed much more poverty here, I thought it prudent to ask. I expected to hear “Oh, safe as can be.” But Mark said, “Uh, I think it’s probably pretty safe.” This didn’t inspire me. However, Mark was kind enough to speak to the guard and arrange for the guard’s brother-in-law, who had a scooter, to fetch me down to the bus station. After Mark left to go catch up on some work in his adjoining office, I logged on to the Lonely Planet website forum on Cambodia and typed in various phrases like “Cambodia night bus danger” but couldn’t find any discussion on the forum except for one traveler who thought night buses were dangerous because the roads were potholed, cows sometimes laid down on the roads, and for that matter, sometimes people slept on the roads. I don’t know if the traveler knew what he was talking about, but I prayed about it and decided to take the chance. I remembered a phrase from a movie, where a man played by Scatman Crothers says to his friend, “Life is risk, Mr. Conroy.” I guess it’s like “no pain, no gain” or another sign I recently had seen: “Show me a man who hasn’t made a mistake, and I’ll show you a man who hasn’t done anything worthwhile.” Plus there was the old Star Trek adage: To Boldly Go Where No one has Gone Before!

A couple hours before my bus would depart for its night-time voyage through rural and dark Cambodia, the guard knocked on the door of the guesthouse room where I was resting. I gathered my pack and went out to the main gate of the high metal fence that surrounded the ADRA office (and every other home on the street). The guard pointed to a youth, on a motor scooter. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen, but he offered a friendly smile. “What’s your name?” I asked, climbing on the seat behind him.

“Men,” he said, and when I asked him if he spoke much English, he chuckled and said, “No, maybe ten words.” So I was off to a potentially risky bus station with a kid who didn’t speak English and likely drove like most Asian males—that is, a bit maniacally. In fact, while enjoying his bouts of acceleration, Men slowed down at key intersections where scooters and bicyclists (and cars) from four directions tended to merge. I was reminded of those scenes of space battles in Star Wars, where dozens of ships come within inches of each other without colliding. Scooters in Asia weren’t quite as cool as that, but came close.

We rode along a wide boulevard that followed the river, which of course I couldn’t see at night, but there was a palace, and large roundabouts all alit, colonial-style hotels, and everywhere people: human beings walking along the road or shopping at any one of the ubiquitous stalls and stands selling foodstuffs (including, I’m sure, roasted bugs) and fruit cocktails. We pulled up in front of a large open-air night market, and Men pointed to a sign that had a picture of a VIP bus on it. “Bus station,” he said. There was no structure, no building, just a sign, beneath which were several parked tuk-tuks and their drivers. I would have thought it all a bit shady except for the fact that the street here, due to the activity in the market and the street lights, was well lit. There were a few white faces in the market, and a pair of policeman loitered. A rather rotund man asked me, “You go bus?” I said that I was, and he asked, “You have ticket?” I said ‘yes’ and he looked crestfallen.

“Okay, bus coming 11:30.” I asked Men for the time and he glanced at his watch, and then showed me. The time was 10pm; there was plenty of time to kill. Men must have known that because he said, “Come, go ride, later, here.” (Five of his ten words). So I hopped on and off we went for a very pleasant and exhilarating ride through the riverfront area of Phenom Penh. Afterwards, he returned me to the ‘bus station’.

Waiting for the bus, I started chatting with an older white man who sat on the plastic chair beside me. The bus waiting area consisted pretty much of a half dozen chairs sitting beside a booth and table on the corner of the street. The market was closing down; the tuk-tuk drivers were laying down in their front seats to sleep, and a couple of teen-aged boys behind the desk were watching soccer on an old TV. The man I spoke with was named David, who looked to be into his sixties. I remember only that he seemed a bit jaded and cranky. He had been living “for some time” in Siem Reap and loved it. He hated Phenom Penh, declaring that the place was a deathtrap and that motorcyclists here would just “run you over without even looking back.” He added that you could forget about any help. “You can lay in the street and die, and forget any medical treatment. My god, it’s medieval. I took this young Cambodian girl that I’d gotten to know, just like a daughter of course, to a hospital…” He took a sip of water, so I asked if she’d been sick.
“No, she’d gashed her leg somehow; the calf looked god-awful, ripped open and festering. So I took her to the government hospital and right there in the emergency room, which looked like something from a horror movie, some kind of doctor, without even washing his hands, started poking and prying while she screamed. I had to leave.” I asked what had become of the girl, and David said, “Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her around. Maybe she died.” Well, that statement certainly punctuated the end of that discussion. David introduced me to a friend of his, a man who’d sat quietly on a nearby chair. “Sim’s a dentist,” he said. I introduced myself to Sim and asked, “Do you think the bus will be crowded? It would be great to have two seats to myself.” I’d been hoping for that, anyway. It’s the way to survive a night bus. I longed for the Chinese sleeper bus, now.
“Oh, forget that,” David exclaimed. “We’ll be lucky to get any seats, isn’t that right, Sim?” Sim nodded in confirmation. “Very full, I think,” he said. The bus, he said, was coming from a nearby town; Sim had already confirmed with someone that there might not be seats. “Or maybe they’ll place a few short plastic chairs in the middle of the aisle; they did that once on a bus ride I took. It’s horrible, absolutely horrible.”

My hopes for a night of relative comfort were dashed.
But when the bus arrived, a rather large bus where passengers climb to the second level, a few passengers (mostly exhausted looking backpackers) disembarked. But by the time David, Sim and I had boarded, the very dimly-lit bus was packed again. I noted that someone was sitting in my seat, a European at that, so I showed him my ticket and mentioned that I’d like my seat. He looked like he’d comply, but along came a little Thai dude (bus employee) who glanced around, double checked the ticket, noted an empty seat behind my assigned seat, and ushered me to sit there. An aisle seat, darn it. And in the window seat was a long-haired Thai youth who looked none too happy. He’d been stretched out rather comfortably, and now came a white foreign devil to make him scrunch up. David had walked up and down the aisle twice already, and he’d muttered a couple of words that a good Christian wouldn’t want to hear. Finally, however, he got a seat towards the front.

As the bus driver navigated the unlit potholed road, the only illumination coming from the headlights, I got to talking to two chaps across the aisle from me. Two backpacking buddies, Martin hailed from Switzerland and his friend from Poland. The Polish dude fell asleep by some miracle right away but Martin and I chatted amiably for at least an hour. I think we knew sleep would be elusive, so why not talk? The topics were the city of Dubai, the organization of the Swiss (my comment) and the narrow view of many Swiss (Martin’s comment). Meanwhile, the Thai youth beside me stretched out one leg into my leg territory, which irritated me. I stretched mine out, kind of laying it against his leg, hoping the physical contact would dissuade him, but it didn’t. I attempted to apply just a bit of pressure, but already this guy was snoring. I gave up and kept chatting with Martin. Eventually, the invading legs withdrew to their own territory when the Thai guy changed positions, going into the fetal position, head dropping against the window. The bus driver, apparently looking for adventure, developed the habit of honking at any vehicle in front of him (not that there were many on this largely empty road). He’d hit the horn and pull over to the other ‘lane’ (not that there were lanes, really, on this great path of hard soil). As soon as he’d cleared the ‘slow’ vehicle, he’d weave back in front of it. This pattern continued throughout the journey, along with a tendency to locate potholes. I’d experienced frightening turbulence on flights, and this was worse—and continuous, hour after hour.

We arrived at dawn into Seim Reap. Actually, we arrived on the outskirts of Seim Reap, on a potholed road of rust-colored soil in the middle of jungle—or what Asians call ‘jungle’. More like rain forest but with tall coconut trees, broad-leaf plants, vines, etc. Very exotic but at six in the morning I was more interested in getting to the hotel that Mark had been kind enough to reserve for me by phone. First a few of the backpackers, including Martin and the Polish guy, watched as an evidently new bus driver tried to maneuver an empty tourist bus into a small driveway, where our bus was parked. A half dozen locals were motioning, shouting, and waving while guiding him in, but the front corner of the bus swiped our bus, smashing the mirror.

I took a private tuk-tuk to the Safir Hotel. The place was three-star at best but clean with a friendly staff. I slept for an hour or so until woken up by some idiot talking through a loudspeaker somewhere. Going to the window, I peered down to where there was a shed, a small grassy area, the usual junk lying around (it’s everywhere in Asia), and an old water-tower from which hung a speaker. Who would be quite chanting—and it sounded like chanting—at this early hour? Downstairs at the main desk, I queried the young twenty-something manager, and he said, “Monks, maybe the monks.” Well, honestly, I thought to myself. Why did they have to do their prayers via a loudspeaker next to a hotel? The sound was much worse than the Imam’s voice coming out of the mosque speakers in Dubai.

I walked across a little bridge that spanned a narrow, dirty river, and immediately loved the scene of tall elegant trees on either side of the river. I walked along the river for a few minutes, then cutting right and into the tourist district. The buildings were somewhat dusty and worn, but still attractive, mostly two-storey affairs. A few tourists walked along the street; others were parked at various cafes, sipping coffee and smoking. The usual thing. A middle-aged Cambodian guy, looking similar to an oily used-car salesman, asked me if I wanted to buy a massage. I said “no” because I absolutely despise massage (I know, one of the few human beings on Earth to say so), and the guy then asks, “You want boom boom?” What I wanted to say was, “No, you sick perv, I want to smash your face,” but simply said, “No, I’m American.” And walked off, no doubt leaving him perplexed. As I strolled into a mini-mart, I thought that perhaps there were as many American perverts as European perverts, but Europeans get those grand six-week vacations so can take the time to travel to Asia (where European men are always being arrested for one sick crime or another).

Anyway, I’m happy to report that at the minimart, I found Diet A&W Root Beer, a terrific bit of luck. As I drank it out on the sidewalk, glancing at a touristy road filled with dust in the air due to road construction, I thought, “This isn’t for me.” It was time to phone an Australian couple named Tim and Wendy Maddocks—who look after nearly 200 orphans just out of town on their multi-acre complex.

After speaking with Wendy on the phone and being invited to share a meal with them, I caught a tut-tuk in front of Safir Hotel and watched the busy road give way to country road, deeply red and with puddles and potholes here and there. We passed rural homes just outside of town, several skinny wandering cattle (sometimes urged on by a little withered old woman carrying a big stick). The ride was bumpy to say the least; my insides were jarred, but we arrived just at dusk, and Tim hopped in the tuk-tuk and told the driver to take us around the property for a look-see. “There’re some of the classrooms,” Tim said, pointing at a one-story building across a wide lawn. The tuk-tuk bounced as we followed a rough dirt path through the trees; here and there, dim lights glinted through buildings, homes. In an adjoining field, farmers were heading home after their labors, and a few cows stood doing nothing in this perfect quiet time at dusk. It did make it difficult to see the complex, however, so we headed back to the house.

Here’s the Maddocks’ story in a nutshell: An Australian couple in their 40’s, with their teen-aged kids, run an orphanage here. Living in a Thai-style wooden house with glass-less windows, with an adequate number of geckoes and mosquitoes, and sleeping on a floor mat, they live a lifestyle not many from the West would go along with. They’ve dedicated their lives to building an orphanage for the Cambodian homeless children—and their charges are numerous; but the entire complex of homes and school is impressive and touching. Tim and Wendy have lived here for several years in the forest/jungle with its collection of bugs, frogs, and the like—but also with the spirit of God and a few volunteers who make the place a home in the wilderness.

Their home, surrounded by trees, is a two-storey wooden house in the Cambodia style. The ground level, walls of dark wood, consists of an entryway, tiny kitchen, and a room in which a couple of teens were on computers. The kitchen was a one-person-at-a-time affair with little more in it than a small electric stove and fridge. The real basics. Wendy came out and introduced herself and sent her husband and I upstairs so that she could finish preparing the dinner. A steep flight of steps led up to a large room that was simply wood. Large glassless windows let in fresh air and anything that wished to fly in, though to be fair the place seemed to be bug free. That’s probably due to the geckoes in the place. They know how to keep a home bug-free. A short deck had on it a pup tent, which is where the son slept. At one end of the room was a web of mosquito netting covering mattresses on the floor. “That’s our ‘bedroom’, chuckled Tim. I couldn’t believe that a couple of westerners had chosen to live in this fashion for the last decade. How many people did I know in Nebraska that would play at camping in the Cambodian forest for ten years or more? Not many. Certainly not me.

Wendy came up and laid a tablecloth of sorts on the floor. “That’s our dining room table,” she said. Her daughter and son carried up some pots and pans, Tim brought some plates, and soon we had a mini feast: tiny bananas along with other tropical fruits (don’t ask me, I’m pretty much a ‘green apple’ man), sticky rice, tofu, some salad. Tim’s kids must have skipped dinner because it was just Tim, Wendy, myself and Andrew, a 20-something volunteer out from Montana. During the meal, I learned quite a bit about the operation.

At the orphanage were 170 orphans, from babies to near-adults planning for college. These kids are all divided up into ten different families, each headed by two ‘parents’ who look after not only the adoptees, but their own kids as well. “Can you imagine,” said Tim, “having a two or three bedroom apartment but more than a dozen kids?” Altogether, in what is known as ‘orphanage village’, there are about 220 people. When I asked how they can accommodate so many, Tim replied, “Everything is on faith. These are people God has sent to us; He will fund them. If they need a home, we take them.” He also stated that they operate on an empty bank balance. “We’re not funded by the church or any nonprofit organization. Somehow, when we need the money, God sends it. It’s always provided.” This takes faith, certainly, I think. Their budget is ten-thousand dollars a month, which goes for food, generators, trucks, repairs, and to build more buildings. Currently, the Maddocks have plans to build a TV studio in order to produce programming that will build the faith of the existing membership and beyond. “We want evangelistic programs that will touch the hearts of the Buddhist community—and for the talented young people here that are into the production process.”

They do have a satellite dish, but unfortunately, a lightning hit took it out of action for a while. When the service returned, all the channels were there—except for the Christian channels. “They were gone,” Tim said. A chill ran down my spine. After dinner, I interviewed Andrew, and then Tim took me over to a volunteers house, where I met a young woman who will share with me via email her story, and where on the front porch a frog jumped at my back, blast the thing. My cry of fear was obviously amusing to Tim and the girl. “I’m a city boy,” I explained sheepishly.
Tim got out his motorcycle in order to run me back to town. That in itself was an adventure, shooting through the night, weaving around potholes in the dirt road heading back to Siem Reap. As we pulled up to a street near my hotel, I told him, “That ought to be a ride at Disneyland,” at which he laughed.

The next day was Angkor Wat, one of the man-made wonders of the world. You can go to Google Images or the blog, but I won’t even attempt a good description here; it’s one of the places that has to be seen, experienced, absorbed. But basically: a collection of ruined temples covering many kilometers in the Cambodian jungle. They are ancient; no one knows for sure who built them or for what purpose. The whole complex was discovered by French archeologists in the late 19th Century after they heard reports of a lost city in the jungle, something only rural forest people had been rumored to know about. The place today has become a tourist mecca, of course, with the usual army of hawkers, touts and sellers—especially children sellers. After you buy the ticket at a ‘gate’, your private tuk-tuk driver hauls you down the road a kilometer to the biggest and most famous temple: Angkor Wat. Fortunately, at none of the temples are sellers allowed to hawk their bottles of water, T-shirts, etc. They are required to maintain a distance, usually hanging out in parking lots near the tuk-tuk drivers, who laze about or nap while the Westerners are inside climbing around temples.

I’d hired a tuk-tuk driver and guide at the Safir Hotel, and basically I spent a fascinating five hours wandering through various spooky-looking temples of dark rock. At my favorite, gargantuan tree roots above ground have wrapped themselves (through the centuries) around huge temple walls, around fallen stones, through doorways. It’s absolutely other-worldly. At one pyramid-shaped temple, the top of which I could reach only by climbing what seemed a thousand stone steps (but was more like fifty or sixty), I met two young women: Daniela and Annalenina. We were admiring the view of the surrounding jungle and catching our breaths, and as travelers do, started chatting. Annalenina was from Moscow but living in Dubai, which of course led me to ask a lot of questions about Dubai’s current news. Daniela turned out to be from Hamburg, a city in which I’d recently visited, so we chatted about Hannover. After a while, the three of us made our way down the steep staircase, quite slowly and deliberately because one slip and…no more traveling. Once down and on the narrow road towards the next temple, I suggested we meet up in the evening for supper. Daniela said, “Sure, that’s a good idea. But where shall we meet?” We determined that our hotels were an equal distance from the touristy street, so Daniela said, “There’s a minimart and petrol station right on the corner. Let’s meet there at 7:30.” That agreed upon, we found our respective tuk-tuk drivers.

During the entire journey, I’d thus far only purchased two knick knacks: a fridge magnet of the Great Wall and a fridge magnet of Sofia, Bulgaria. The reason for this is because I have more knick knacks than I know what to do with, so why buy more? But outside of Angkor Wat, in amongst several bamboo and wooden concession stands, a boy not more than ten years old introduced himself and asked if I’d buy post cards. Naturally, since I’d already been in the complex for a couple hours, I’d been asked maybe thirty or forty times to purchase something, be it water, postcards, tablecloths (yeah, like that’s what a single guy wants to buy), etc. But this kid was cute and started out by asking me where I was from. “America,” I said. He smiled and said, “America, the president of the United States is Barrack Obama, the vice-president is Joe Biden, there are 50 states and Washington DC is the capital, and…” He kept spouting off the memorized facts while I looked at the postcards. I needed postcards as much as a hole in the head, but I felt a little tug in the usually cold heart—and asked, “How much?”

“Only two dollars!” he proclaimed as if this was the deal of the century. “I let you have for one-dollar and two-thousand Rials.” I calculated quickly; two-thousand rials was about fifty cents. Remember, in Cambodia, everything is for sale in dollars, but once you get under a buck, the rials come into play. “I’ll give one dollar,” I stated, the selfish Yankee taking advantage of a poor third-world kid. “Okay,” he said, but not in a particularly grievous tone, which leads me to believe he got a fair price. By now, a little friend of his had come over with his postcards and implored me to buy more. “But I have ten already,” I said. His quick reply: “But if you buy mine, you’ll have twenty.” Nice try, kid.

As I walked along past a group of really poor-looking musicians sitting on the ground (a sign announced that they were victims of landmines), a small girl of perhaps ten or eleven wandered over holding a bright green T-shirt. “Hi Mister, where you from?”
“America,” I replied, wearying of the badgering. “Are you going to tell me the name of the president, too?”
She cocked her head and smiled brightly. “No, that’s Barrack Obama, but I just want you to buy a T-shirt. Very nice, good souvenir.” I relented a little. “No, thanks. I’m trying not to buy any more stuff. I just bought some post cards.” She implored me a couple more times and to put her off, I said, “Maybe later.” That was a mistake, of course. As I was nearing the gate (where the hawkers can’t enter) of the temple, she said, “Okay, I’ll watch for you when you come back. I’ll remember!” She gave me a broad genuine grin and turned around to pester someone else.
This temple was just plain bizarre. There were the usual walls, broken roofs, huge fallen gray blocks that had lain for centuries. Little crude paths cut through alleys, up steps, and through the inside of several half-destroyed structures. Had I been a travel writer in the 19th Century, I would have been forced to write a three-page detailed description that would have allowed the reader to visualize. Thankfully, now we have digital cameras and Picasa Web Albums. The coolest and most impressive sight for me was the many places where humongous tree roots had wrapped themselves around and through the temple ruins. This was definitely something out of an Indian Jones type film. Roots ran for yards and yards, attached to walls, going through walls, into empty frightening rooms. I wandered for over an hour.
When I returned the way I’d come, sure enough, the girl was loitering nearby with a couple T-shirts hanging from her arm. “I told you I’d be here,” she said with a chuckle. “So which one do you want, the blue or the green?” I shouldn’t have asked the price, but I did. Each T-shirt was three bucks or so. “They’re really cheap and you need a souvenir from here anyway, right?”
“But I don’t like the colors,” I said weakly.

“No problem, you come to my shop,” she said, pointing over to one of a half dozen stalls. Reluctantly, I walked with her. I could see that her English wasn’t canned, that she did understand the language. “So why are you selling T-shirts?” I asked, wondering that kids here were allowed to work. She tossed her head ever so slightly and replied, ‘Well, for food of course.” We laughed together. I don’t remember all that we talked about, but she impressed me with her wit so I bought a T-shirt. Sigh.

My last pleasant experience was having dinner that evening with Daniela and Annalenina. We met at the petrol station on time and walked to a café where they’d eaten before. When seated, Daniela asked the waiter, “Is it still happy hour?” It was, so at the end of a hot and tiring day filled with temple visiting (and for me, apparently, souvenir buying), we washed down the dust with some Thai beer. The food took an hour to arrive, but we didn’t mind. We enjoyed talking travel for a good three hours. Annalenina would be returning to Phenom Phen the next day for a couple days while Daniela wouldn’t make it back for another couple days or so. “Why don’t we meet there?” Annalenina asked me. “We can go eat something.” She wrote down the name of her guesthouse.

The next day, I took a bus back to Phenom Phen, this time commandeering two seats together in the rear of the bus. Once back in the capital city, I got checked into one of the ADRA guest apartments and spoke with Mark and his wife Ann. I got caught up with some school stuff, watched a gecko crawl on the wall, and got caught up with e-mail, two of which were from Daniela and Annalenina, and then I hit the hay.

I had set up an interview with Sathai, the PR guy for ADRA. But first, in the morning, I had time to catch a scooter-taxi into town. I walked along the river, passing the ornate palace of the king and several equally astounding golden temples. I found a halfway decent supermarket and got some cereal and cola light. Back at ADRA, I spoke to Sathai for a good two hours about his own Christian experiences. One of which was a little spooky. I’ll say, first, that Sathai is a strong Christian. Mark and Ann had assured me of this. He even did a little pasturing. So when he told me that his sister had been possessed by a demon, I thought, “oh oh.”

One more interruption: In the West, we’re used to “mental illness”, which exists in Asia as well, of course, but so does something far stranger and probably supernatural. Buddhists believe in ‘spirits’ of all kinds, and all through Asia I’d seen what look like giant birdhouses on stilts, only the ‘bird houses’ are facsimiles of tiny temples. Worshippers place offerings of fruit, glasses of water, flowers, crackers, whatever, on a tray in front of the miniature golden temple. These are to appease various and sundry spirits, whom the Southeast Asians take very seriously. So, this strong belief in the spirit world can be looked at from two fronts: either Asians are so aware of and afraid of ‘spirits’ that any mental breakdown is seen as a possession, or there is truth to the views of Christians with whom I’ve spoken that, yes, there exists actual demon possession here. Why? More ignorant minds, the victims of true evil? Certainly, I’d heard enough stories to know that there was more going on here than just ‘mental illness.’ Science doesn’t have the answers to everything.

Sathai’s story went something like this:
My younger sister was attacked by a demon. When I went to visit her and my parents, she was just lying in the bed and her eyes were a little red. I prayed, “God, stay in my sight so I can have a victory over the evil.” The demon had come at midnight, my parents told me, very frightened. My sister’s behavior changed, she yelled from the bed. She threw an electric mosquito paddle at our father, and then my sister said, “I’m Kuko, you’re father-in-law.” Mom cried out, “You are not my father-in-law!” When I arrived, my sister never looked straight at me…I think because I’m Christian, the only Christian in the family. She would put hand to her face.
I asked it, “Where do you come from?” and it replied, ‘I’m from Svay Rieng.’ I asked why it always came at night. The demon said, “I love her, why can’t I come?”
“If you love her why not come in the daytime?”
I told the demon, “I love and live with Jesus. I never see him act like you do. Is this the way you show love?” I then added, “If you don’t go now, I’ll tie you up and pray more.”
“Okay, I’ll go now,” it said.
The demon left. “My sister woke up and asked why I was there and seemed surprised to see me. She didn’t remember anything.

I got a lot more from Sathai, including his own testimony as well as some facts/figures about ADRA and the important work they do with the poor. I arranged to go with him to a countryside church in a couple days, and left him to his work. I caught another cycle-taxi downtown because I’d left a message at Annalenina’s guesthouse that I’d be there around 6:30pm. The guy who’d answered the phone promised to deliver the message. So at dusk, I make it down one rather decrepit neighborhood and finally find the Nice Guesthouse. A young guy of maybe twenty or so was sitting in a plastic chair at the front of the guesthouse, which was wide open, revealing a row of computers, a desk, some sofas. As soon as I mentioned that I’d left a message for a friend, he asked, “Who?” I said, “Annalenina. Is she here?”
“No, she got out,” the lad said, but clearly annoyed.
“Did I speak with you earlier?” I asked.
“Maybe, I don’t know, no, maybe brother,” he hedged. “Anyway, she go out.”
“How do you know?” I asked. How would he know? Did he keep track of each guest or was he just being lazy?
“I know, Anna, I know her, she go out. I not lying!” His face twisted in a look of anger and I hoped I wasn’t irritating a case of mental imbalance—or worse yet, demon possession. Goodness, you never know. I told him that we’d agreed to eat dinner and that I’d wait. He didn’t like the sound of that, saying, “She maybe come back 7:30, I think maybe. We go dinner 8:00.”
“You and Anna, going to dinner?” I asked. This was surprising. The guy was frankly an ugly shrimp. At any rate, I couldn’t really have cared less, so figured I’d just walk around a bit, find a KFC, and head back to my Internet activities. I had had a long day anyway so this suited me fine.

As I walked down to the corner, exiting the dark alley for a more vibrant street, I realized I didn’t quite know where I was. Fortunately, a young couple came along who had a map and were Irish (both good things, I suppose). We wandered hither and thither for awhile, but when they stopped into a cheap, tawdry-looking pub (and empty to boot!), I caught a scooter-taxi back to ADRA, first directing him down a street on which I knew there to be a KFC.

I had a scare when I returned to my apartment. On the table, I’d placed a can of Pringles and some cookies. I moved over to the table and was reaching for the Pringles when something behind an empty plastic wrapping darted out and scooted across the wall. A little gecko! Harmless, of course, but I detest being startled. And what was a gecko doing with chips and crumbs? That’s not in their food chain. I got my answer to the mystery when I looked down at the table. Well, an army of ants—all in a row, mind you—were busily engaged in carrying away the crumbs of this morning’s cookie treat. The gecko, now making a B-line for my bedroom, drat him, had seen the ants and wanted them, not my goodies. Now, I had to contend with the ants. The little wagon train of ants, each ant dutifully carrying a crumb, still in their orderly procession, marched under the rim of the table and off to some dark place on the wall. Rather unkindly, and not in a mood of brotherly love, I walked to the bathroom, tore off some toilet tissue, and returned briskly to the table where I wiped out the wagon train with a couple of swift moves. I’d wetted the TP first so as to be sure to catch as many of the beasts as possible. I threw the weapon of mass destruction, on which a number of ants were clinging in terror, into the trash can. I was furious that they’d gotten into my can of Pringles with the lid on. Crafty—but no longer among the living. There’s a lesson there for all of us (but I don’t know what it is).

Nov 20th—
Today was just a really pleasant day with no stress or appointments. Of course, how does one have stress while traveling? But when you’re a backpacking online teacher, there’s usually something every day if only student email to answer. And of course I had the medical stuff going on in Thailand. But this morning I left the ADRA apartment on a warm sunny morning, riding on the back seat of one of the ubiquitous scooter taxis. I then walked along Norodom Boulevard, one of the main thoroughfares crossing this small city, and had my first piece of luck of the day: I spotted a China Airlines office. Inside, a helpful young woman behind a desk provided a much-needed service, locking in for me a reserved window seat. It may sound like a tiny thing, but now I wouldn’t be burdened in Bangkok with locating China Airlines. I then strolled further on down this street of rather ordinary three and four-story nondescript buildings, thankful though for the shade of short trees lining parts of the road.

My second bit of luck was stopping in at Phenom Phen Optical. A couple weeks earlier, I’d stupidly wiped my expensive prescription sunglasses with a sweaty T-shirt on which there had no doubt been some sunblock. This resulted in my wiping away some protective film on the left lens and creating a permanent ‘smudge’ spot. You may remember the crisis of my first pair of expensive sunglasses: the ones that were left behind on a bunk of a Swedish train. I was getting ready to toss the sunglasses and buy some cheap non-prescription ones. When I asked the girl behind the counter about cleaning my lens (in the event there was a miracle spray), she examined them and said, “Sorry, sir, not possible. Must to replace lens.” One of her colleagues, a young man dressed in a shirt and tie, took my sunglasses back to an impressive-looking machine and then returned to say something to the girl. I was readying to walk out, expecting to hear an outlandish price, or perhaps a reasonable forty dollars, so I was stunned when she said, “Six dollars. Can you come back at 4pm?”

I walked past Independence Monument, which stood like a towering obelisk over the square below. Trying to keep out of the noonday sun, dodge tuk-tuks and scooters, and prevent dehydration, I stopped in at a nifty little bookshop—not one of the several second-hand shops that were stuffy and uncomfortable—but an honest-to-goodness clean book store that specialized, it appeared, in art, culture, history, travel. Best of all, I found an International Herald Tribune and a coffee shop in the back. I spent the next hour sipping Indian chai tea, spiced with the flavor of ginger, and reading. While paying afterwards, I discovered that I had in my wallet only two American dollars and only several thousand Cambodian Rials (about a buck). Time to visit a bank, I thought.

This is the cool thing about Cambodia: it’s the only country in Asia that prices in dollars and where dollars are the medium of exchange. Tuk-tuk drivers, shop owners, even the owners of tiny food stalls maintained plenty of US greenbacks in their pockets. Apparently, the dollar was king. But what is really cool is that ATM’s dispense US dollars! No one else does, that’s for sure. So here I was in Cambodia, getting accustomed once again to buying with US currency. I made this monumental discovery while at a Star Mart (like a Convenient Food Mart in the USA). I celebrated by wandering down to a mall of sorts and, at an American pizza franchise named The Pizza Company, feasted on double-cheese pizza and salad.

After fetching my glasses, now complete with two clean new lenses (they apparently replaced both lenses—for a total of six dollars), I caught a scooter taxi back to the apartment. I figured I’d need some munchies for the evening as I was going to stay in and write, so I wandered down the insanely-trafficked street, crossed the dangerous road beside a woman with her toddler (figured I was less likely to get hit), and bought some Ritz crackers at one of the hundreds of side-by-side shops that are nothing more than pieces of wood and corrugated metal. The road was potholed dirt; poor folks wandered, shopped, carried kids, kids wandered, dusty and in need of a good bath), and groups of young guys either sat on their scooters or just stood aimlessly. Had I been in Los Angeles, I would have fretted about safety; but here, I didn’t worry. Of course this secondary street was a far cry from any shopping district in LA. A little boy of about seven rode a bike too big for him, and as he passed, saw my smile and offered a big wide grin in return. I probably made his day, the happy white foreigner.

On Saturday, the pastor of one of the churches that lays outside of town, picked me up and we traveled to a village in his rather nice-looking black SUV. The church congregation certainly didn’t own any SUV’s. They were poor as the proverbial church mice. The church itself was bare bones: a concrete wall, whitewashed with a ceiling of wooden boards. The floor was bare concrete. But the people, about fifty or so members, seemed joyful if not quite poor judging by their clothing. Definitely rural Cambodians. Sathai showed up as the service was beginning and we took seats in the front row—on plastic chairs. After the service, out back of the church, some ladies were cooking up a storm beneath a simply awning of fronds. The largest Wok I’ve ever seen was filled with enough soup to feed a small army; kids and chickens and dogs played about the yard, and beyond the church were rice fields. The whole thing made me happy.

In the late afternoon, as the sun hung lazily over the river, I met Daniela, as we’d planned. Actually, we’d planned to meet at a restaurant at 738 Rue De something-or-other (I forgot), but when I got there at the appointed time, no one knew where it was. In fact, such an address didn’t seem to exist. I wandered along the river, only by chance spotting Daniela, who waved at me. “I’m so sorry, that address doesn’t exist now.” She laughed. “I was looking at my Lonely Planet Guidebook, which says it’s a great restaurant, but this morning, I saw that it was gone, torn down!” Anyway, we sat and watched the sun sink a little lower in the sky. The families were out in full force and a couple of women were hawking their wares to the families and to tourists. Friendly policemen directed traffic with a smile; it seemed like the happiest land in the world, and yet in the late seventies, this had been hell on Earth during the time of Pol Pot’s rule—and the genocide that wiped out some 1.7 million people! This very city had been emptied; revolutionary soldiers fresh from the countryside, had ordered everyone at gunpoint to exit the city. For four years, the now-vibrant Phenom Phen had been a ghost town.

My last Cambodian day was somewhat somber. I visited the Killing Fields. Waking early, I caught a scooter-taxi downtown and met Daniela at the address she’d given me: a combination ticket shop and hole-in-the-wall corner café. The beggars were a bit off-putting but I gave some of my bread to a man in rags holding his toddler daughter. She proceeded to eat the bread while they squatted on the concrete. Then we got our bus tickets, and a minivan took us and a few foreigners out to the Killing Fields. Since it must be experienced (and the movie viewed), I won’t go into details here. It’s kilometers outside of town, and a scant 30 years ago, soldiers as young as their early teens were hauling out prisoners by the thousands to be executed and buried en masse. Usually the means of execution was a hatchet to the back of the head. All the torture had gone on previously at the prison, so this was the final stop. Tacked to a large imposing tree, a sign announced that here was where soldiers swung babies and toddlers against the tree, smashing their heads against the trunk. A tall memorial has been created near the entrance, and hundreds of skulls are stacked at various levels. Tourists may go up to the ground level and see dozens of skulls, 3 of which are set clearly aside to reveal some of the execution and/or torture methods: the back of one of the skulls is caved in, another has several teeth missing (torture). It’s all quite depressing and one feels a great sorrow for the innocent people, whose only crimes were being normal, everyday Joes.

Daniela and I caught the minivan back and asked the driver to stop at the prison. A number of tourists, mostly Cambodian actually, walked around a central courtyard. The place had been a primary school before Pol Pot’s troops took it over to use as a prison in 1975. Incidentally, if you are wondering if this horrible leader was really named Pol Pot, the answer is ‘no’. He named himself that, and it stands for Political Potential. The brute was a strong communist. Anyway, the prison contained now-empty rooms, the walls scraped of paint, a plain metal bed frame in several of the rooms, where prisoners had once lain in suffering agony. There is a wing that contains sketches of various torture methods used—and hundreds of photographs of the victims, taken as they were processed here. Very disturbing.

After an hour or so, we were standing outside the building with the photos, and I said, “I think we can go.” Daniela said, “Yes, really, that’s enough.” We wandered a boulevard near the palace and came across a true Thai restaurant—one without tourists in it. I ordered rice and veggies (I like to play it safe) and watched CNN news from a wide-screen TV on the wall. There were about a dozen waitresses (and one waiter, the poor man) and as many customers. But they all were very friendly and happy. The food turned out to be quite good; I should have known it would. You know a place is good if you see a herd of SUVs parked outside. The rest of the afternoon was at the Soriya Mall snapping pics from the fifth floor windows of The Pizza Company and then along the river again. This evening, a large family of perhaps eight or nine adults and several children was taking pictures of each other in a marble pagoda; a western man who sounded American asked if I’d take their picture, which I did, and then they wanted both Daniela and I to be in the photo. We chatted, the man telling me he’d recently married a Cambodian woman. That explained that. The final hours in Phenom Phen were spent viewing the river from the FCC Restaurant patio—enjoying a gorgeous sunset.