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.

Ubon Thailand

Ubon, Thailand—where you’ll learn about missionaries, an old brothel named Disneyland, the search for my old house, and a horny leopard

I arrived in this provincial town at 7:30am on the night train from Bangkok. That may sound exotic, but in actuality, the engineer must have been either inexperienced or an overly cautious fellow; throughout the night, whenever approaching a stop, the train jerked its way to a stop, as if the poor fellow couldn’t make up his mind whether to stop or not. Or the guy had previously worked for Amtrak. At any rate, I didn’t get much sleep up in the top bunk and was happy to get off the train. I wandered into the small station and out the other side just in time to see a tall woman in her late twenties approaching from amongst some tuk-tuks and taxis. This would be Carla, the director of the SDA English Language School here in Ubon. The folks in Bangkok had put us in contact, and Carla had graciously invited me to come visit the school and my old home.

After our intros, we were getting ready to head into town in the back of a tuk-tuk when Carla spied a middle-aged Thai man walking towards us. “Tomas,” she cried in joy and with a laugh. “What are you doing here?” She spoke some words in Thai to him and turned to me. “C’mon, he’ll give us a lift into town. I met him when I first arrived three months ago.” The guy had a very nice Jeep Cherokee, and we piled in along with three backpacking women in their forties. Apparently he ran a makeshift taxi service. After dropping us at the “apartment” complex where Carla had reserved a room for me (and where she lives), I checked into a nice room with private bathroom and good wifi in the room and air-con, thankfully. I was sweating like a pig and it was only 8am.

I wound up walking with Carla a couple blocks to where the church and the school are located. It’s a nice little whitewashed church, though only twenty or so people were in attendance, mostly Thai’s but some Filipinos as well, and Angel, an American woman who is a teacher at the school. At the front of the church, a Filipino woman led out in the singing, and then translated the sermon into English with the pastor beside her. After church, I just wandered around this part of town remembering the old days and taking everything in. The town is not big—perhaps a hundred thousand, but just a collection of streets with one lane in each direction, and as in much of Asia, shops fronted the street, wide open and inviting customers to walk in. There wasn’t much in the way of English signs; and no tourists in sight. Ubon is a Thai town that offers nothing to foreigners other than friendliness and a chance to rest. Cars didn’t pack the roads as elsewhere; I could cross a street without worrying about a maniacal taxi driver aiming for my legs. Tall palms stood behind three and four story buildings that looked, truth to be told, a bit run down and tired—but that pretty much describes Asia, and is part of the charm of the place. Finally, here was a place without Starbucks or McDonalds—(or much Cola Zero, as I found out to my chagrin).

My swallowing difficulties persisted though I discovered that I could more easily swallow solid foods. Anything juicy had been giving me trouble, as if the swallowing reflex didn’t recognize “juice” as needing to go down, but in Ubon, I ate my first apple without half gagging on the juice that preceded the ‘meat’ of the fruit. I decided one morning to go find a coffee shop and read a newspaper. I’d been praying for an International Herald Tribune, VERY difficult to find in China and impossible in Laos, so imagine my joy when passing a small seemingly second-rate magazine shop and spotting ONE copy of the Tribune. I happily paid my 60 baht for the paper. So when I woke up that morning, I took my paper and headed down to the street, where I caught the “number 3 tuk-tuk”. Carla had shown me on the map the route it takes. “It’ll go up the one main street we have until it reaches Tescos,” which was a British supermarket. “And it’s bright pink,” she added with a laugh.

On the hot street under a hot sun, I waited only a few minutes for the number 3 Tuk-tuk, which was indeed bright pink. One climbs aboard from the back and sits on a bench on either side and beneath a canopy. Whenever you want to disembark, you push a buzzer and the driver pulls over, at which point you go around to the front and pay him 10 baht. Quite simple and wonderful. I wasn’t sure where there would be a coffee shop, but I figured there had to be one near the Swenson’s Ice cream parlor I’d seen the evening before while wandering about. “Western” goods and services were often in close proximity. The Tuk-tuk carried me and a half dozen other passengers along the somewhat busy main street, and only after a few minutes, I spotted the Swensons. I pushed the buzzer, the driver pulled over, and I paid him his 10 baht and stood under the hot sun glancing around as he took off. Scanning, my eyes rested on the one place a diabetic should avoid: a Mister Donut shop. There was nothing else around except for the ubiquitous Thai shops: a tire shop, a ‘refreshment’ shop (selling only sugared drinks, chips, various Thai snacks), a clothing shop, etc. I walked into the wonderfully air-conditioned Mister Donut and for the next hour or so, munched on two donuts, drank Latte, and read the paper. It was heaven.

In the evening, Carla and Angel invited me to go with them to the night market. Hopping on a Tuk-tuk, we rode a short distance to the market where there are dozens of stalls, booths, stands—all selling fresh grilled, baked, boiled or otherwise heated up foodstuffs. Fried bananas? Rice topped with either green veggies or some unidentifiable glop of something? Fresh-squeezed mango or pineapple juice? Carla opted for some grilled chicken whose aroma wafted through the air and past the plastic tables where we sat. I played it safe and chewed up my rice with chicken bits about thirty times before carefully swallowing. Afterwards, we each had a roti, which is a powerfully sweet taste treat that every diabetic and overweight person should fanatically avoid! So I had only one. At a roti stand, I watched the ‘chef’ spread a thin layer of dough over a hot circular griddle, on top of oil and grease and butter, naturally, just to make it totally bad for the health but assuring a delight for the taste buds. As it begins to cook, he lops on some butter, then squirts from a tube a steady stream of sweetened condensed milk, and sprinkles on sugar. Then he rolls it up, wraps it in paper, and you take it in anticipation of the rapture to come.

We munched on our rotis and took another tuk-tuk back to the apartments. Here, I completed the last step of my evening out: injecting a hefty 8 units of insulin into my tummy, which I’d noted hadn’t been decreasing in size although a few ribs were poking through skin. I unhappily concluded that I’d be the fattest emaciated man walking around town.

I had two joys primarily during my first days in Ubon: riding a bike around town, staying mainly on the many untrafficked roads, and visiting some of Carla’s classes. I twice did a stint as ‘guest teacher’ for her 4:30 class, which consisted of 4 children: pon, po, puey, and tang tai. And before you start snickering about odd names for kids, consider two of Sarah Palin’s offspring: Track and Trig. Pon was a pleasant but ‘naughty’ boy around 10; he and Po, about the same age, frequently chatted in Thai, heads together while Carla and I offered our lessons. Tang Tai was a cute little girl of about 10 or 11, and her English was probably best of the lot, though of course we’re talking about beginning level, the use of simple past. During one of the visits, she stammered out, “I…flew..on…plane….to…Bangkok.” Puey, a quiet, obviously introverted little girl of about 8 or 9, when asked a question, would look stunned and shy for moments before whispering a carefully worded answer. The first afternoon I met with them, Carla sitting to the side happily watching and interjecting comments, I told them where I was from, about my family, and about my trip. The two girls listened carefully but Pon and Po had to be dissuaded a couple of times from their ‘laughing chats’. I let each of them write down a couple of questions on paper (always the writing teacher), and then asked them to say their questions aloud. Actually, the questions were fairly thoughtful, Tang Tai asking, “What..does…you..father…work?”

The third morning, I met Carla downstairs at 9:15 because she was going to lead me over to a fancy little Kodak shop where she would meet the owner for some English tutoring, and where I could transfer my flashdrive pictures to a DVD. The owner was a woman in her early fifties, I imagine, and she was typically Thai: soft-spoken and gentle, and acted as if genuinely honored to have you in her shop. Carla had told me on the way over that the woman’s family was quite wealthy. “They own the shop, not to mention a five-star hotel and a restaurant.” No wonder the woman could enjoy a private tutor. At any rate, it was quickly decided that I would attend the first part of the lesson. Her daughter, in her early twenties, also studied with Carla. We all got comfortably seated around a big desk in a fairly empty (but air-conditioned) second floor room, and I repeated my lecture of where I was from, about Dubai, and about my trip, all of which they soaked in with smiles and little exclamations. The woman had traveled to Dubai and the daughter to Germany, so they were quite taken with me, as I later found out. We got invited, Carla told me, to a dinner on Friday evening. While we were chatting away, one of the worker girls brought in four big glasses of iced juice for our sipping pleasure. Very nice morning. When I tried to pay downstairs for the DVD with my pics on it, the girl behind the counter replied, “Free.”

I biked down side streets to a coffee shop named Peppers. I’ve no idea why it’s named Peppers since their menu is rather normal, nothing exotic. The owner/manager is a pleasant Aussie named Andrew, who was there that day with his Thai wife and 2 little daughters, one of whom was celebrating her birthday. We chatted about the usual stuff: home countries, heat, Dubai, life in Thailand, but he did convince me to come back the next morning for blueberry pancakes. For now I satisfied myself with Latte and the Herald Tribune. After a bike ride through the delightful roads of Ubon, past shacks, sparkling rich villas, lakes and temples, nothing can be better.
In the late afternoon, back at the school, I had a talk with Carla about the school. Unfortunately for the mission school, enrollment was way down, in fact practically nothing. This was because there was too little need for English in Ubon and too many English language schools. The fact that the SDA English Language School was a rather old two-story structure (though with a nice shady front lawn), was not air-conditioned (we sweated like hogs while sitting in either the office or the classrooms), and there was a general air of ‘old and poor’ about the place. This is no fault of Carla or Angel, who work under difficult conditions. I blame the mission ‘leaders’ in Bangkok, who do not have the foresight to see what is sorely needed in order to meet with success. It’s not enough to simply say “We are doing the Lord’s work.” To my way of thinking, the Lord would prefer if church leaders opened their purses a little more and tried using their brains. Ah, organized religion.

I started feeling lightheaded (when I get overly hot about politics or have had too much insulin). I joined Carla with Pon, Po, Puei and Tang Tui once again, though. Standing somewhat feebly in front of the four energetic students, I told them a story about snorkeling with a friend in Dubai and seeing a shark, and about my friend screaming when she saw the shark. The kids thought it moderately funny and learned the word “scary” and practiced their past tense verbs for awhile, but then I needed to get some carbs down my gullet in order to avoid fainting in the streets of Ubon, so off I went for dinner.

I chose an Italian place on the corner of the street closest to the apartments. I suppose it was the only Italian place in town, but it looked authentic and Carla had raved about the place. As the only customer I the rather cozy and well-decorated restaurant, two waitresses hovered over me as I looked at the menu. Realizing that I needed to raid an ATM, I asked a waitress if they accepted credit cards. The question was met with a blank stare, so I said, “How pay? Pay by credit card?” The girl turned with a shy look of horror to another girl and said, “Pay…pay?” Her companion was equally clueless so I withdrew my Mastercard from my wallet and showed it to her. She shook her head, “No, no, so sorry.”

“Where’s an ATM?” I asked. “A bank?” This word they knew, and the girl led me out the front door and pointed down the road. “Go to end road…to streetlights, then left” but she pointed right. We got it figured out and she said, “You take my bicycle please.” I thanked her, touched. Can you imagine a waitress in the US offering her bike to a total stranger who had only left an International Herald Tribune and a bag of red apples as collateral in the restaurant?

The girl pointed down at her bike, and I groaned inwardly. The thing was this tiny, girly-pink bike. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, however, so I climbed aboard what seemed little more than a toy, and pedaled off down the busier-than-normal street on my pink girlie bike. I got a few stares along the way, the white foreigner on a girl’s bike! I had to laugh though. How many Nebraskans were riding on a pink bicycle past tuk-tuks and pedestrians and chickens on a busy Thai road? Not many, if you ask me. Anyway, after probably making a lot of Thai folks chuckle as they walked along the road or watched from those open-front shops, I withdrew a cool ten-thousand from the ATM (don’t get excited, that’s only a couple hundred bucks). I returned to the restaurant and feasted on a big salad and spaghetti. Back at my hotel room, I had a warm shower to rinse off the day’s accumulated sweat and got caught up for the most part with my journal. I was getting used to this room, even though the ants in the bathroom kept appearing from nowhere.

I walked over to the school around 9am to meet Carla and Angel. “We’re going to a Veteran’s Day memorial in the park,” Carla said. “Wanna come along?” I said ‘sure’ but wanted to rent a bike for a couple days; Carla walked with me over to a little shop where a man did printing and engraving—but also rented out bikes. His wife, Yoko, half German and half Japanese, was a cheerful woman in her early forties who pumped up the front tire of a bike and waved happily as we three pedaled off down the street.

The next morning, the three of us attended a Veteran’s Day memorial service held in the city park; the military was represented by several hundred cadets, all of whom were simply kids trying to stay in the shade. Beside several bouquets of flowers and at a podium stood an Englishman speaking about how the city was honoring Mother Ubon, a truly elderly woman who during WWII had risked her life to give fruit to the allied POWS brought to Ubon by the occupying Japanese. The couple hundred in attendance applauded her as she collected her flowers. She told everyone (in Thai) that she wasn’t a hero, that it had been the soldiers. There were two or three picture-taking periods where the media snapped group shots, though it was never clear to me who was to be in the shots. There was a funny little Thai guy, obviously military, who was running around ushering anyone and everyone to come forward to be part of the group shot; why on earth he wanted me in my shorts and tank top, and sweat pouring from my face, to be in a photo with well-dressed (but definitely suffering) townspeople and dignitaries was beyond me. I guess I only went because my Uncle Clause had been a POW of the Japanese, and of course my own father had been stationed in England during the big war. Today was in honor of them and their service.

Then Angel, Carla and I pedaled our bikes (it’s so much fun!) to Peppers, the place owned by the Aussie, and feasted on blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup. They were delicious. Carla had ordered eggs but cooked well, so when they came out with yolk oozing from them, she wasn’t a happy camper. “They never can get it right,” she said. Well, after that, back at the SDA English Language School, I spoke with the secretary, a cute little Thai woman in her forties who speaks decent English. I’d been trying to arrange a meeting with an elderly pastor—in my search for stories of inspiration. I think she got tired of us asking, because she got hold of him and said, “He says, okay, but come now.” So just as I was dreaming about a nice nap, I instead drove with Jaroonee and her friend to the home of this elderly, retired pastor. The guy is eighty-three years old, but still pretty spry. But he said (speaking Thai to Jaroonee, who in turned translated into English) that he wasn’t sure of dates and would like to have his friend present “because she would remember more.” So we hopped back in the car and drove a few blocks to pick up an elderly woman. On the way back, one of my prayers was answered: I found the house where I’d lived nearly 30 years earlier and “Disneyland”, a place I’d visited in those days. More on that later.

In short, in the un-air-conditioned hall of the school, a once grand old two-story building, I listened to the history of the church and school in Ubon. The pastor or his friend, a genteel woman in her seventies, would alternately speak about those times and the hard life, and while Jaroonee translated, sometimes with chuckles, I’d type it out on my laptop. One of the stories the woman related, and as she sat in the plastic orange chair in this hallway, she told of how the pastor in his younger years had befriended a man named Mon, and after getting to know her, telephoned Mon, living in another town and said, “I have a girl here for you to marry.” Pastor Mun, at the time in his mere twenties, did come to Ubon, did meet her, and did fall in love. Eventually, they married and had a full life serving God in various places in Thailand and Laos. But that’s the subject of another book.

For now, after the interview ended, Carla and I biked through town to go to the night market. We stopped at Joe’s shop, where a friendly little Thai guy named Joe sells a vast assortment of semi-expensive and quality items: knick knacks to silk ties to art. He introduced us to a Chinese girl named Jessie, who is here guest teaching for six months at a small university. As we sat at a table in Joe’s shop drinking water and juice, she told us about herself, and of course we reciprocated. The cool thing about traveling is the human connection. The night market was right across the street, so we left our bikes parked in front of Joe’s and crossed over to the buzzing colorful market with its special enticing scents and deep-fried foods. I saw the same Roti maker rolling dough in which he’d sprinkle sweet condensed milk and sprinkle sugar, the same musician beggar playing his little ukulele as he slowly strolled along only half seeing out of one eye. Townsfolks and a handful of whiteys sat at cheap plastic tables munching on fried rice with assorted ‘goodies’ and drinking fresh-squeezed juices. Bugs flew here and there, this being Asia, but I thought it sad that this kind of social setting, a market, was missing from Midwestern society.

The next day, my fifth day in Ubon, I was going to bicycle up a few blocks to see the house where I’d lived in 1982—and a place called Disneyland, just down the street from that house. Carla and Angel asked if they could bike along; they, too, were anxious to see the places I’d talked about. The sun was strong and great puffy white clouds hung in the sky; we pedaled through light traffic past all the two and three story buildings (some old, wooden structures from way back) and others more modern. Passing a temple where I was sure the house had been near (and where Jaroonee had showed me just a couple days earlier), I was frustrated not to see the house. “Let’s try Disneyland,” Carla suggested. “Maybe then we can backtrack and find the house.” That sounded logical so I agreed. And within a few minutes, we coasted into Disneyland. Which requires an explanation here.

I had come to Ubon in 1982 for several weeks to teach English to Lao refugees in a Red Cross camp; the organization for whom I worked was Volunteers International. There were four of us volunteers: Clint, a rather serious youth who was technically ‘in charge’; myself, and then Jamie, a pretty young woman from California, and Duncan, an English lad of nineteen with blond hair and an amiable personality. We three gentlemen lived in one house that had been built by the church leaders two or three decades earlier; the house was a whitewashed affair that resembled an old American home from the period—front porch and all. Jamie lived alone next door. The guys’ house had an expansive green lawn on which the neighborhood boys frequently played soccer, and the house also had a collection of bats, ants, geckoes and roaches. The entire neighborhood had a rural feel about it though we could pedal into town within minutes. But this street was limited to our two houses and some wooden shacks. The road in front of our house was of dirt.

Down the street from us was “Disneyland.” In the 1970’s, while hordes of Yankee soldiers were based here during the Vietnam War, Disneyland was a brothel, an amusement park of sorts with undoubtedly wild rides. The place was nothing more than some wooden two-story shacks that looked like they might collapse would there be any tectonic jolt whatsoever. Then, years after the uniformed Americans departed, Disneyland remained a partial brothel but also a place where poor folks lived. I’d met a Thai teacher and his wife there, and every few days biked down the road to visit them. There was a little weedy front yard filled with junk and dust, a low fence, and a couple round metal tables over which hung a makeshift covering. A couple of chickens might have been clucking around as well as some stray mutts. There had been one young lady there, a twenty-two year old girl named Jau, that seemed to take a liking to me. For the longest time I didn’t know her profession—until one night when, at a rather seedy club, she showed up. For work, that is.
It’s like this: Jamie, Duncan, Clint and I had been teaching in the camp that afternoon. After ‘work’, we wanted to bike into town and catch a bite to eat. On one dust-covered street, inside a two-story building, there was a ground-floor eatery of sorts. But the manager insisted we go ‘upstairs’, and so we did (well, why not?). Jamie said, “Oh oh,” as soon as she saw how dimly lit the room was—and the men sitting about tables. But she was from California so made the decision to go in. Well, I’ve written a whole story about that night which I won’t repeat here; suffice it to say that the four of us, in our semi-missionary capacity, were struck dumb when a young beautiful Thai girl started doing a strip-tease. We were more shocked afterwards when some naughty boy switched on a projector. It wasn’t a home movie that you would show to an after-church potluck crowd.

Flash forward to 2009, and me wanting to locate my old house and Disneyland. It had seemed impossible once I got the lay of the land: the city had grown significantly even though it still was a very small city (or big town); I remembered nothing about the street layout of the town, and after asking a few locals where Disneyland was (and getting some funny looks—as if to say, “well, in California, isn’t it dumb kid?”), It became apparent that I wouldn’t find it. Not even Jaroonee had heard of it. But the day Jaroonee and I had gone to pick up the elderly retired pastor for an interview; she’d driven me by the house that the church had owned. A “Wednesday Market” was going on at the time on a patch of land so I didn’t get a great glimpse, but she assured me that this was the house in which I’d lived because Adventists had owned it then.

Which brings me back to my bike ride there in the morning with Carla and Angel. We pulled into Disneyland (the big sign that had read DISNEYLAND was no longer hanging between two trees) and celebrated our find with a couple of hurrahs. I happily pointed out the very same table that I’d sat at with the Thai couple and Jau twenty-eight years earlier. The memory was sharp in my mind because I’d bitten into a Thai pepper thinking it was a carrot. The resulting tears and agony had evoked a few chuckles from my Thai friends, but at least Jau, bless her, had had some compassion.

As I was relaying this to Carla and Angel, a woman (needless to say, a short, Thai woman) came into the ‘yard’ and asked, “Can I help you?” in English, a surprise. I guessed her to be in her fifties. Carla told her in Thai that we’d been looking for the place because some old friends of mine had lived here. Breaking into a smile at that information, as well as the fact that Carla spoke Thai, the woman answered some questions for me, but basically there was no Jau living here now and no teachers. Well, it had been ages ago. And Disneyland looked poorer than ever. From up on a balcony, a very old woman looked down at us. A couple other souls in poor garb shuffled across the dust-covered lawn and disappeared into one of the three shacks, two of which were closely set together. “Why don’t I get a picture of you and the lady?” Carla suggested. She was such a cheerful soul, and a real people person! She likes to laugh, and is one of those wonderful human beings that makes you feel a little happier, and her laugh gets you into a good mood so that you want to laugh too. All of us were smiling and shooting pictures when the very old woman joined us, and a new round of picture-taking began. The old woman’s face was heavily wrinkled and had seen a lot of hard times. But she possessed strong features and her lively eyes danced as she said to Carla, “You are beautiful.” To which Carla laughed hysterically and said, “You’re so sweet!”

The woman impulsively hugged Carla, which was such a sweet thing to see, and not content with that hug, she went on over to Angel and hugged her, a big full hug. More pictures, this time the whole gang, and of course with each of our cameras. “You’re good lookin’ honey,” said the old woman, first to me (with a hug, of course), then to Angel. Carla said, “Yep, she was definitely here during the American presence.” Doubtless that’s where she’d learned some of her phrases. At some point, she’d mentioned “G.I Joes”, another giveaway. Carla handed each of them a brochure for the English school though I doubted either could afford the classes. Carla would hand a brochure to Barrack Obama should he make an appearance in Ubon. But, heaven knows the school needs students.


We hopped on our bikes, waved and said our good-byes to the ladies, and rode on up the street. After crossing another road, I heard Carla say, “Is that the house?” I looked ahead and said, “That’s it!” But the place had changed dramatically; a once green lawn was now weeds and dust. A mini-market of tables, stalls and awnings had sprouted just to the east of the house, which apparently was deserted. There were some guys in chairs and a hammock under one of the coverings, doubtless shading themselves from the sun, and I asked Carla if she’d ask them if we could go up to the front porch at least. We parked our bikes and Carla went over to talk to them while I stepped up to the porch. I began to wonder if this was the house; something wasn’t quite right, but then, it’s likely my memory wasn’t quite right. Carla came over with a Thai guy in his early to mid thirties, and at the same time, a pickup truck had pulled up behind our bikes, out of which emerged a youth with shoulder-length hair. Angel at once thought he was adorable—reminding her of her adopted brother).

As it turns out, the youth had bought the house and was in the process of renovating it. In typical Thai fashion, both of the men insisted we all three go in. After removing our shoes (not that we could have gotten the floors dirtier than they already were), we walked in. I knew that this couldn’t be the house—and also remembered that Jaroonee had said one of the houses had been sold and demolished.
The bottom line was that the house in which I’d lived—with ants, bats, geckoes and roaches—no longer existed. As I looked across the lawn, I could see where the house had stood. This house we were in was the house in which Jamie had lived. Still, it was a cool and wonderful feeling to know that so many years ago, I’d been in this house and that I’d discovered my old stomping grounds. We had quite a nice visit with the guys, and Carla said, “Why don’t we get some pictures of them?” Needless to say, we are all now the owners of a fine collection of pictures—including the men because after our talk with them, we rode our bikes back into town and made printouts of the digital pics. We rode back to the house and presented them as a gift to the man who had been laying in his hammock just an hour earlier. He was pleased as punch and invited all of us for…well, some kind of fruit punch. We sat at one table next to a much smaller dwelling (one couldn’t call it a house), sipping drinks and being introduced to three young ladies who were masseurs. “Come, see,” the man said beckoning me inside the little place. The gals didn’t get an invite. I walked in to a little side room about the size of a bedroom. On the floor were three single mattresses. At the foot end of each mattress were little pink towels.
In the afternoon, we met up with Satpo and Sita at the coffee shop they own, a nice little place that makes great smoothies and has treats. Satpo also owns the adjoining hotel and insisted on taking us through two of the guestrooms, a king-bedded room and a double-bedded room. Here, Satpo learned from us to say “King-bedded room”, repeating the words slowly, and then thanking us.

Then I pedaled around, saw a temple, just enjoying riding. The one thing that made me a bit nervous was the dogs. In the temple compounds, there always seemed to be two or three dogs that would bark threateningly, trotting closer to the bike, but not too close, being uncertain about the white boy. And not only near the temples, but also ordinary neighborhoods. Underfed-looking dogs, probably not fed by owners who believe in a dog’s inherent ability to ‘catch food’, either slept at shop entrances or lurked about the streets. For the most part, I have to say, they rarely barked at me and only a couple gave chase. Usually, my shouting at them (usually in fear) dissuaded them from furthering their pursuit.

In the afternoon, I attended the kid’s class again. Tempo is a new boy, a little Thai Harry Potter. It didn’t take him too long to figure out how to be naughty, whispering and giggling to Pon while Carla was speaking to them. The kids were all rambunctious, though, and when Carla asked them if they were ready to tell Scott a story (she had told them the day before to memorize for me), they squirmed, shook their heads or looked dumbly straight ahead; so I had a quick idea: “Kids,” I said, getting up, “Let’s write sentences on the board.” Which is something they enjoyed as long as three could get up at once. They had to choose one animal that they knew and use it with one of the verbs I’d written on the top of the board. Overall, it went well. The kids expended some energy writing on the whiteboard (Carla whispered some ideas to Pon at the far end of the board) and they had good practice writing full sentences.

I rode my rental bike at sundown to the river, a gorgeous sight as a red sky off to the west made the water turn amber. This forty-something guy, who I’d seen standing over one of the many ‘cooking stands’ along the river, where one could purchase various fried or grilled foods. He must have seen a falong walk by, because all of a sudden he came up with a ‘hello’ and said some words that might have been “I see you are riding your bike down by the river” as easily as he could have been saying, “It’s my dream to kill a foreigner.” He was neither friendly nor unfriendly, and all of a sudden, the air reeked of Johnny Walker, which I doubted was emanating off the river. “Where you from?” he asked in carefully constructed English (must have been a challenge after the Johnny Walker). After mentioning “Nebraska,” he offered up this dumb look of non-comprehension. I promised to return for some of his good cookin’ the next day and biked off, keeping my eyes on a couple of mean-looking dogs as I pedaled.

The last event of the day was a fine dinner at the Rossito’s Italian Restaurant. Days earlier, when Satpo and her daughter Sita had learned that I’d be leaving in a few days, Satpo had insisted that she host a dinner for me. Carla told me one afternoon, “The ladies are quite taken with you; they loved talking about Dubai with you and think you are so neat.” She laughed. “They really like you.” I thought it was cool but wondered why I hadn’t had this effect on women when I was twenty-one. Anyway, we all met up at the restaurant, filling up two tables shoved together. Satpo had brought along her husband, who spoke almost no English and aside from Sita, her other daughter, who was married to a lawyer whose name was Pi Nut (pronounced ‘peanut’). He didn’t speak English either, so the only conversation at the table was between Carla, Sita and me at one end, and Angel at the far end chatting with Satpo. The others got some words in (with either Satpo, Sita or Carla translating) before the meals arrived, at which point there was more chewing than communicating. At the end of the meal, we had a round of “thank you”s, pictures, and handshakes. It’s never easy to have these cross-cultural dinners, but they’re usually enjoyable and make everyone feel good. It’s nice whenever people of different backgrounds (and worlds!) get along and laugh together. Stupid world leaders, most of whom in my opinion will one day be doing the backstroke in the lake of fire promised in the book of Revelations. Don’t bother with the life vests, boys.

On Friday, Carla, Angel and I caught a bus (air conditioned by the open windows) to Tiger Kingdom, an hour outside of Ubon in the middle of nowhere. It’s a zoo of sorts with only a few animals, but the thirty tigers are wonderful to see. Unlike the tigers at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, these beasts are energetic and have small yards in which to exercise. Tiger Kingdom also has a few lions, several leopards, cute monkeys (though cruelly chained or kept in cages), alligators, and bright colorful tropical birds. Highlights this day included a tiger that rose on his hind feet and pushed against the metal grillwork of his cage in order to impress me, a leopard couple, the ‘husband’ of which was clearly very infatuated (drooling, actually, in anticipation of mating; the female was less than enthusiastic, simply cowering), and a monkey that jumped at us, hitting the cage we stood beside. Well, check out the pictures.

We hitched a ride back to Ubon with a pleasant young couple in a Toyota Pickup with AC running and American pop music playing. They dropped us at Big C Department store, where we devoured some KFC before we caught our pink Tuk-tuk ‘home’. In the afternoon, Carla and I biked around, visiting some of her favorite temples. At one, we met a Thai English teacher, and I suggested that someone in Ubon start up an English club—since so many people wanted to practice their English.
In the evening, we biked along the river as the sun was going down, and then headed to a Vietnamese restaurant where Angel awaited us. The place was fairly upscale and a woman in her forties sung mournful Vietnamese love songs as a man played the piano. Not in the mood for love songs, we instead got to chuckling over movies, TV shows, and other equally important topics. This generally led to our guffawing rather loudly, I think. But the time was relaxing and fun. Sometimes, you just have to have a good time and laugh. As I biked home later, I heard “Hi Scott” from someone; turning my head, I saw the kid who worked at a fruit stand; I’d spoken with him two days ago—and he’d remembered my name. I was impressed and bought another apple.

Thailand: hospitals and snorkeling

On the overnight train ride to Bangkok, I was in “2nd class air-conditioned sleeper”, as were all the sane backpackers and a number of Thais. The design and cleanliness left something to be desired; where the Chinese trains were fairly nice (if you stayed out of the bathrooms), this train’s interior décor was what I’d call “cluttered metallic”. Even though there seemed to be some cool air entering the cars, it was circulated by means of a series of ceiling fans pointing downwards and rotating. In front of each pair of facing seats (which became a single berth at night) was a metal combination rack and ladder (to reach an upper bunk). Together with dim lighting and a grimy floor, the effect was somewhere between ‘3rd world train and “Borg cube”.

My immediate neighbors included a Thai monk wrapped in orange robes, a gaggle of yackety Thai girls in their late teens, and two American backpackers, one of whom looked like a grumpy Bruce Willis; another, whose name was Daniel and who hailed from the Bay area, hobbled along on an injured foot. The result of being slapped in the foot by an errant piece of bamboo while dirt biking through rural Laos. That’s what you get when you go for adventure. Stick close to coffee shops and you’ll be fine, I always say. Well, but then I did go to Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Bangkok is, like most big Asian cities, crowded and polluted. Mostly flat, it lacks the exotic appeal of green, mountainous Hong Kong with its gleaming skyscrapers. Bangkok, nevertheless, is cool to visit. There are only a few staggered skyscrapers; it mostly has a cluttered feeling (like the trains) with streets filled with unimaginative buildings. The traffic, for the most part, during the day, remains at a standstill for several minutes at a time. Taking a bus for a kilometer takes about as long as walking. Still, Bangkok has charms: temples of gold and red with chiseled golden dragons sitting atop temple gates, a palace where the ancient kings of Siam ruled from, and famed Khao San Road—a pedestrian only tourist street littered with shops, booths, signs, touts and scantily clad tourists. Actually, I didn’t like it at all. It’s no different from other “tourist streets” in Asia—just shops of the same old junk you find everywhere else (usually for cheaper): clothing, jewelry, books, CD’s, knick knacks, and then the guesthouses all offering cheap rates and western food and Internet, and the cafes and coffee shops. It’s all quite dreary in its sameness. I guess tourists like it because there are some palm trees here and there.

I offered to share a taxi with Daniel at the train station when we arrived in Bangkok very early the next morning. He was limping along by now, having shed a quantity of blood onto the train floor after hopping down from the top bunk. He’d said one choice word repeatedly, which caused me to pull back my privacy curtain and peak out in the first place. The taxi took us to what is known as Mission Hospital but its real name is the Bangkok Adventist Hospital. 27 years ago when I was here, it was one of the best and I believe it still is. Bangkok has world class hospitals, something most people are ignorant of. Washington DC, London, and any old city in Germany would pop into mind, but not Bangkok, but the fact is that people from as far away as Australia (and certainly the Middle East and India) come here.

I’d booked the guesthouse through a kind email contact named Myrna. The hospital maintains a couple guest apartments for (mostly) Adventists coming for long-term treatment or as guests coming through Bangkok for another reason. After dropping Daniel in the care of the ER people, I checked in at some little office near a series of waiting areas. Since it was barely 7am, seats were empty. My apartment, as it turns out, was much more than I expected: two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen complete with fridge and microwave (and several bottles of water) and a living room. Goodness knows I’d have been happy with one room; this was luxurious. I wound up staying six nights. 

One of the reasons I’d come on the trip was to collect inspirational spiritual stories for a book I was contemplating. I’d had bad luck in China and Laos contacting any pastors but had already received some contacts in both Thailand and Cambodia. It was Saturday, so I wandered along a pathway on the hospital compound that cut through tall trees, banana trees, ferns, vines, a veritable rain forest—all here on the property. I’m exaggerating but the grounds of the hospital are quite green. I came across the church and spoke to a woman named Rickie; she’s in her fifties, I imagine, having lived here a long time. Her father, as it turns out, started an organization called Volunteers International way back in the 70’s. I’d been hired by him and his partner to teach English to Lao refuges in 1981—though just for a couple months, and ‘hired’ isn’t the right word since I wasn’t a professional and wasn’t paid. The whole thing was volunteer, as the name implies. Anyway, she told me about a woman running an orphanage on the Thai-Burmese border and told me the names of some guys to contact. After that, I attended the church service (in Thai and English) and afterwards enjoyed a potluck dinner with two American guys in their early twenties who are teaching here at one of the Adventist schools. I enjoyed their company but not the lunch since I could barely get down any of the rice with spicy green beans—due to my affliction, of course.

In the afternoon, I caught a bus (another rickety, smoke-belching affair) whose air-conditioning consisted of open windows. There were two centers that I wound up visiting: Big C was a modest multi-story department store but I succeeded in swallowing some KFC mashed potatoes with a little difficulty. I even tried ice cream and that wasn’t entirely easy going down. I did some work at Starbucks and got home by early evening, just lazing around the apartment reading and checking emails.
Sunday morning, I woke up a bit nervous. I was to see the doctor and get a true idea of what was causing my swallowing problems. Down in the clinic, when the nurse weighed me, I was chagrined to learn that I’d lost a couple kilos recently. What if I wouldn’t be able to swallow normally again? It’s scary. I tried to read the Bangkok Post while waiting for the doctor, but articles about train strikes didn’t capture my imagination. Finally, I was called in to see Dr. Nick (as he’s called), an American GP who is one of only a couple English-speaking docs to pass the Thai medical boards. It’s a miracle, really, since he’d only been in Thailand a short time. But more on that in my book. For now, I gave him the report from the Australian doctor and some more background. Yes, type 1 diabetic with pretty good control, etc. etc. He asked questions and set me up with an ENT—in fact to see him within the hour. Dr. Nick struck me as one of those dedicated, truly Christian missionary doctors whose only goal is to help other people. He also told me that his wife would be a wealth of information on Bangkok.

The ENT examined my throat, asked questions, etc. I was shown the way to the X-Ray department where technicians did a sinus X-ray and a throat X-ray, made a bit unpleasant by my having to drink barium (not too bad tasting actually). “Take a mouthful, and hold it in your mouth,” instructed a kindly middle-aged little Thai nurse. She ran off and the technician got his ultra-modern gleaming computer machine going and the nurse called out “swallow!” I only managed to push tiny swallows down one at a time, my poor old ticker beating hard. “Please, take another mouthful,” she said, watching me. “More. Good, now hold it, and when I saw ‘swallow’, swallow all of it in one go.”

I managed to do it, surprisingly, the third time. Off I went to wait for the report.
“The good news,” said the ENT doc, “is that there are no growths, no cancer, no stricture or blockage in the esophagus. The mechanism works fine.” Which I had to take issue with, of course. It wasn’t fine at all. But the moving images of my swallowing action were on his computer desktop as he pointed it all out. Nothing was preventing me from swallowing. “We can try a neurologist tomorrow,” he said.
Well, in the next couple of days, I saw the neuro doc, who said it couldn’t be ‘Mysthenia Gravitis’, or some such horrible disease as my sister back home had feared it would be. “You have none of the symptoms. I think it might have been a mild infarction in a region of the hippocampus”. (or something like that). That translated, as far as I knew, into STROKE, which sent my little heart into palpitations. “It should get better,” he informed me. “I’d take one aspirin every day…you are diabetic, it would be smart.”

Well, I did feel a bit better after watching the images of my throat swallowing without hindrance, and in fact got down a couple Dunkin’ Donuts pretty easily, and even a McDonald’s double cheeseburger. Liquid or any kind of fruit was problematic, but I wouldn’t starve, I found out. The thing that pleased me about the whole thing was the proof that American insurance companies and pharmaceuticals are ripping off the American public like bandits. How did I arrive at this conclusion? I had the following medical treatment:
• One consultation/exam with an American GP
• One consultation/exam with an ENT specialist
• One sinus X-ray
• One major throat X-ray
• 2 follow-up consultations
• 1 exam with neurologist
• 3 prescriptions

TOTAL cost: $100 US dollars.

Note: The MRI that I did a few days later cost a whopping $250! Compare that with $3,000 back home. And you don’t think we desperately need health care reform?
Phuket is a town on the west coast of southern Thailand. American viewers got a glimpse of Phuket and other Thai towns along the coast back in 2004 when the tsunami swept over them. You-Tube videos of that catastrophe are still popular viewing. The town itself is nothing special in my view; a few streets of ordinary shops. There’s a couple of beaches popular with the young partying crowd, but after landing at Phuket Airport (a rinky dink affair, thankfully), I climbed onto a bus that would take me downtown, where I’d try to find the Adventist Hospital and, hopefully, guest quarters. I wasn’t even completely sure how I’d spend my five days in southern Thailand, kind of playing it by ear. On the bus, I met a Russian couple named, appropriately, Boris and Tanya. With them, I wandered around downtown Phuket at dusk looking for the Thai Authority Tourist office but by the time we stumbled on it, the place was closed. Boris and Tanya wanted to go by minibus to the party part of the town, but after our good-byes, I walked down the next street I came to. This was yet another of the many Asian roads with dozens of dimly-lit shops with their open fronts to the street. Outside one car-parts shack sat a man in his forties, perhaps, with long hair. He reminded me of a Thai hippie, if there had ever been such a thing. The man and I enjoyed a short conversation before he led me out into the street and flagged down a taxi-scooter for me—and told the driver where I wanted to go. Thanking him, I took off clinging to a couple of metal grips on the side of the scooter as the maniac got me at warp speed through traffic to Mission Hospital.

It turned out that the hospital here didn’t have guestrooms, but I met Tom, a Thai man who works as assistant to the hospital president. He led me over to a nearby two-star hotel that the hospital sometimes uses for visitors, and I must say, the place was quite okay. Quite two-star, as well. But there was air-conditioning and a clean bed, so that’s all I cared about. The little lizard hiding beneath my shower controls during my shower was a bit un-nerving, I will add. Every time I’d adjust the hot water knob, he moved a half inch further up into the control box shadows, his cute little tail the only thing showing.

I had to call in to the Thai Immigration office the next morning. My visa would run out in a week or so, and I needed to stay at least a week beyond that. In the main office of a small white stucco building, crowded with a dozen desks, a uniformed white man came over to me as I entered. “How can I help you?” he asked with a Scottish accent. I explained about the extension I wanted, and he said, “Sure, just gotta have the passport, passport copy, application and nineteen-hundred Thai Baht.” I nearly fainted at hearing I needed the equivalent of fifty bucks just for an extension. “I also need an extension to the fifteenth of November,” I added. I knew it was more than the one-week extension that they gave everyone. “Let me speak to my supervisor,” said the officer, and he strolled into some office and spoke to a Thai guy sitting importantly at a big desk cluttered with paperwork. When he walked back, he smiled and said, “The captain says it’s okay to give you until the 15th.” He looked happier than I did, no doubt. Well, that was some good news anyway. Being hot and sweaty and wishing to only get to a nice beach, I nodded at the man. “Where’s the ATM?”

He gave me directions (basically for the 7-11, of course) and said, “Look, ya come back and I’ll help you get it all done in a jiffy.” I could see he really was trying to be helpful. There were a dozen other tourist in various stages of getting something official done, and three white Westerners in the uniform of Thai Immigration. How did that come to be? I asked the guy if he were from Scotland and he laughed. “No, from the Netherlands.” Well, he did have a Scottish accent. Maybe he’d studied in Glasgow. Anyway, after lugging my pack all the way down to the 7-11 and getting my cash, I returned, and sure enough, the Dutch guy filled out the application for me and got permission from his superior to tell the clerk to give me an extension to November 15th.

Across the street were some fellows sitting comfortably on their scooters; one middle-aged guy sat on a fold-out chair smoking in the shade of a tree. “Where you wanna go?” he asked me. I’d decided the night before to go to Phi Phi Island (pronounced “Pee Pee Island), so I said, “To the pier. How much go pier?” One might as well leave off prepositions when speaking with these guys. The man frowned as if in deep thought about the problems of the world, scratched his ear, hemmed and hawed a bit. “100 Baht,” he said. This was a ridiculous price; I thought 60 would be more like it and offered 60.

“Okay!” he said, all too quickly, and I realized that once again I’d not bargained hard enough. He would have taken me for forty, most likely. You’d think I’d learn. Anyway, the pier was a collection of tourist ferries and booths where you could buy tickets. At one counter, a girl asked, “Where you want go?” and I replied, “I wanna go phi phi.” I wished that the island had a different name. The funny thing is, there’s an island not far away called Pu Island. I bought a ticket and waited in a long ‘room’ about two-hundred feet long with only a small café at one end. Along with other waiting passengers, I read and sipped soft drinks. One exciting moment came when a bird flew through but didn’t quite make the exit; he smashed instead into the wall. Down the poor little fellow went and was surely dead on the floor. I wandered close and looked down. Yep, dead as a doornail. I continued reading, but noticed a pair of girls at the next table glancing down at the bird; now the creature was stirring! “He’s got one hell of a headache, I’ll bet,” I said. One of the girls smiled. “I’m sure.”

By and by, the bird (a pretty thing, dark with a yellow stripe) staggered a few inches, then flew up to perch on the door frame. That must have cost him some energy because he just sat there for the longest time. But by the time we headed out to board the ferry, the bird had flown away. All’s well that ends well.

Guess who I saw on the boat? Boris and Tanya; we greeted each other, and Boris pointed out where Tanya sat at the front of the ferry. There were approximately sixty or seventy seats all facing forward, and at the back of the room a short counter on top of which were some cans of pop and some beer, snickers, the necessities of life. All the seats were filling, with another forty or fifty passengers sitting or standing on the deck above. Once the captain piloted the ferry away from the pier, it picked up speed and we were on an open calm blue sea. I chatted with Boris and Tanya for awhile but headed up then to get some air on deck. The wind was warm but refreshing, that scent of the sea reminding me of Dubai. Backpackers made up the majority of travelers, though some were older, in their forties, fifties. The ship pulled into port, and because I carried only one smaller backpack (that I’d borrowed from Doctor Nick and his wife), I was one of the first off the boat as the others had to pull their packs from a little hill of luggage at the back of the boat.

I lost Boris and Tanya again. Walking first along a pier, I took it all in: an expanse of blue sea, a shoreline with nice beach. On one side of the pier were ferries, sailboats, and the like; on the other side, small motorized fishing boats, longboats as they are called locally. Each has a tiny canvas stretched over metal poles to offer shade. Not more than a few hundred yards away were the first towering limestone cliffs of the island as it curved around the port. Behind the town were high, grand hills. The pier walkway joins ‘main street’, more of a shop-lined alley along which are cafes, travel agencies, scuba-dive shops, knick knack shops, and, well, you get it. The same as all island tourist hot spots. Thanks to a brochure that Boris had showed me, I thought the best overall deal would be at The Andamon Resort. At a makeshift ‘office’ near the pier, I arranged to stay a couple of nights there, and a bony teen-aged boy of 13 or 14 walked with me down “main street” for close to fifteen minutes before we arrived at the resort.

I liked it immediately. The Andaman Resort looked like what I’d always imagined a beach resort would look like. Not the five-star Marriott type, of course, but an elegant three-star place with bungalows, a layered swimming pool facing the sea, and an outdoor café where a free breakfast buffet would be served. I checked in and was led by a youth to my bungalow. The room was large, had a ceiling fan, a clean bathroom and a fridge, wardrobe, all I needed. I dumped my pack and headed out to explore Phi Phi town. Wandering down “main street” with its twists and turns past shops and cafes all facing the sea. To my left was the water and fishing boats. Under a gnarled old tree sat three Thai fishermen. “You want go islands?” one said. He was wearing a sarong and off-white sweat-stained tank-top (hey, he’s a fisherman, for goodness sake), and his eyes were kind, the smile genuine. I asked him how much and where we would go. “Go four hours, four places for swimming, snorkeling, islands, okay, 800 baht.”

I told him that I’d let him know in a few hours, but it sounded good. Fifteen bucks or so to go snorkeling on islands wasn’t too hefty a price. I wandered on down to where another main road bisected “main street”—and ran into Boris and Tanya, and again we greeted each other happily. Turns out they too were staying at the Andaman Resort and were on their way to check in. I let them know about snorkeling with the private fisherman, and Boris said, “Yes, that sounds good,” and Tanya nodded in agreement. There were big tour boats that went out for the day for the same price, according to a dozen signs, but a private longboat was preferable. “Maybe we can talk him down in price,” suggested Boris. Later , I stopped by where the fishermen were sitting and made the deal with the man I’d spoken to. “Okay,” he said, pleased. “My name Zacharias. You come tomorrow morning, yes? Eight thirty.” At dusk, I plunged into the pool and watched the sun setting beyond the sheer cliffs on the other side of the water. Down at the beach, a couple of longboats were pulling up to shore.

The next morning, after a buffet breakfast where I managed to get down toast, scrambled eggs and even a few corn flakes, Boris, Tanya and I walked to where Zacharias was waiting. “We met another Russian couple last night,” Boris told me. “They should be here any minute.” Zacharias helped us each aboard the longboat, onto which we had to step from the embankment. The other couple, in their early twenties, came aboard and introduced themselves to me as Michael and Natasha. Settling onto the benches just under the protective tarp covering, they watched Zacharias start up the engine at the back of the boat. Boris and Tanya perched on the front of the boat.

The day was one of the best yet. Zacharias’s longboat glided and puttered over the waves past palm-filled forest and white sandy beaches. Limestone cliffs were set further back, and out to sea were other islands, three of which we visited. Snorkeling was great. At the first stop, twenty meters or so out from the beach, we swam with schools of clown fish. When Zacharias threw pieces of bread into the water, the fish darted in by the dozens. He’d toss the bread out to where one of us would be snorkeling or treading water, and of course we’d find ourselves swarmed, even nibbled at. Afterwards, Zacharias took us to an almost-deserted beach on Phi Phi Island itself. “Only way come beach,” he said falteringly, “is by boat.” We climbed awkwardly out of the longboat and waded in hip-deep water towards the shore. On the beach, a dozen tiny crabs darted hither and thither. Set a few yards into the forest was a makeshift shack where a longhaired Thai man of thirty, sleeping in a hammock, rose to get me a diet coke, which I was thrilled to find. Yes, this was paradise. Later in the afternoon, Zacharias took the boat to yet another island, the one where the movie The Beach was filmed—the one with Leonardo DeCaprio. There were too many little tourist boats near the beach, of course, but the high limestone cliffs sheltered the sea from the winds so that the crystal-clear aqua-marine water was quiet and shallow.

On the second day, Boris, Tanya and I decided to do a little hike. We’d gotten sunburned the day before, and I lent my bottle of white vinegar to Boris to apply to his burns. I’d looked all over the village for either vinegar (not in many tourist shops as you can imagine) or medicine to heal sunburn; finally, in one of the very few village food shops that catered to locals, I’d found the vinegar. At any rate, starting our hike that morning, we followed a pathway that ascended gradually at first. Signs with “Tsunami Evacuation” in big red letters and an arrow pointing up the trail were, to me, funny. When a tsunami hits, there is almost no warning—just the sea reversing itself and flowing backwards and revealing seabed. But by that time, it’s too late to really do anything except run like a maniac and scream a warning. Certainly, there’s not sufficient time to, first of all, fine the evacuation path, and then start climbing it. We hiked for ten minutes before at an altitude where I wouldn’t worry about floodwaters. The trail passed through palms, banana trees, ferns, towering trees with skinny trunks, wildflowers, shacks, a couple cafes. We climbed stone steps a couple of times, really panting as the demands on our lungs became more urgent. But at the top, from a few slabs of flat rock and a garden filled with brightly-colored flowers (and a tiny two-table café), the view was awe-inspiring: I could see the narrowest point of the island, a forty or fifty-meter wide stretch of island, on either side of which was beach. Back in 2004, the tsunami had just rolled over this fifty-meter stretch of hotels and town. Just beyond the twin beaches were limestone hills even higher than the one on which we now stood.

We continued on, Boris determined to get to the other side of the island. “I’m sure there’s a pathway,” he insisted. “How do the locals go? They don’t hire longboats to take them!” Sure enough, one of the trails veered off and headed downwards. The way was extremely rough, and after twenty minutes of heat, tropical bugs, huge tree roots snaking across the path, and rocks, we were tired. But we plodded on down because none of us wanted to go back the same way. Finally, we emerged onto level ground and into a clearing—and then beach. There were some primitive-looking wooden structures that turned out to be rented to the backpacker wanting a more ‘natural’ experience. I wandered around the beach, swam a bit, watched hundreds of tiny centipede like creatures crawl over slabs of rock. After an hour or so, Boris wanted to walk along the shore—except the ‘shore’ he desired to follow was covered with those rocks and probably thousands of those centipedes. I was more of a mind to get back, so we said our farewells for the time being and they continued on.

Now, I had a new problem. I had only a couple dollars worth of coins in my pocket. I’d kept my wallet back at the bungalow, figuring I’d be getting wet at some point. And the only ways off this beach included walking back that rough trail, following the centipede trail (which would take hours anyway), or by longboat. The longboats would cost plenty, so how was I to get off this island? I began to sympathize more with the castaways of Gilligan’s Island. I began chatting with a local, probably a fisherman and part-time water taxi driver. He said that some tourists wanted to go to Long Beach, which I knew was the beach near Phi Phi Town. From there, I was sure, I could walk through the jungle to my resort. After a while, a girl of perhaps nineteen or twenty came along with an older couple, and I asked them where they were going. Well, conversations begin this way on the road, so I soon determined that they were ethnically Russian but now German citizens. The girl, very pretty, was on a holiday with her parents, having convinced them after her first three Thailand trips to visit the islands. We all boarded the longboat by wading out and climbing aboard. The ride back was fun; I impressed the parents with my limited knowledge of German and Russian (they knew no English). I half worried about not having the fare but would tell the driver that I could find him later and pay him.

We came puttering close to Long Beach, nothing more than a five-star resort and a beach; the Germans were going to hang out here for awhile but I wanted to get back to the Andaman Resort. As I got into the sea, I handed my coins to the fisherman and said, “I only have this…” and was going to go into my big plan to locate him again, but he said, “Okay, no problem.” What a nice guy, I thought.

I didn’t hang around Long Beach, but asked a Thai girl working a concession stand how to walk to Phi Phi Town. She pointed down towards the end of the private beach. “There is a path, just follow.” What she didn’t tell me that the first part of the ‘path’ was an incline of practically straight up (slight exaggeration), consisting of dirt, rocks, a tangled mess of tree roots, and bugs. After navigating (and panting like a madman) the hill, the rest of the path was easy to navigate, through a woodsy area and over an area where the tide had gone out. I celebrated my return to town by visiting the Internet café, and then sipping a Cola Light and munching on chips while watching the sea from an area in the front of the resort where some tables had been set up. Darkness had fallen, and I soon went off for a swim in the pool.

The next morning, packing to leave the island, I noted that my camera was nowhere to be found—this with a bit of panic as I searched everywhere in my room. Well, I must have left it at the Internet café yesterday, I’d reasoned. And what were the chances that it would be there now? I didn’t like the odds but whispered a prayer. Maybe someone honorable had found my camera with all my pictures of Laos and turned it in. And maybe Rush Limbaugh would vote liberal in the next election. Myself and Mr. Backpack headed down the path to the office, where I hoped to hurriedly check out and get myself to the Internet café. My heart downcast, I offered a smile to the girl behind the desk as she checked me out and accepted my cash. At that moment, one of the workers, a teen boy in dark trousers and green T-shirt, came in with something in his hand. He spoke some words to the girl, but I already recognized my camera! “Yes, bless you, it’s mine!” I cried, and he looked surprised and handed it over. “Where did you find it?” I asked. He pointed outside and said, “On table.” Good heavens, I’d left it outside on the table the night before as I’d admired the sea, and throughout the night, it hadn’t rained (this was the tail end of rainy season) and no one had taken it during two hours of light this morning. I thanked God and vowed not to be quite so stupid in the future. But I’m afraid that is a regular promise that is regularly broken. Oh well.

One of the best places I have visited on this entire trip was Railay Bay. Getting there is quite an experience. First, I sailed on a small ferry that transported a crowd of backpackers to a town called Crabi. From the pier, a taxi driver delivered me to a place difficult to describe, the place from which one hired a longboat pilot to go to Railay Bay, which was only accessible by boat. It’s not exactly a pier, just a covered ‘bus stop’. A longboat pilot led a group of six of us out across an expanse of mud flats to where his boat lay in shallow water. The tide was out again. Rather awkwardly, one by one, we climbed aboard from a pile of slippery rocks. Once situated on benches, the pilot started up his engine and headed out to sea. The scenery was inspiring: more high cliffs, more karsts, more bays. After fifteen minutes, he puttered into one of these bays, the backdrop of which was a low mountain, more of a cliff, and several karsts. What got my attention right away was the lack of development. What looked to be little more than simple wooden structures, shacks as I’ve been calling them, fronted the sea. The tide being out meant that the boat halted a hundred or so feet from shore—and slowly and carefully, we six climbed with our packs and luggage into the thigh-deep warm water. Wading ashore was tricky; there was a wooden platform an inch or two beneath the water but the wood remained slippery. At any rate, soon I was standing on the shore and wondering how delightfully primitive the place appeared.

I wandered past cafes (very simple wooden platforms), a few touristy shops, and a couple guest houses before coming to what was supposed to be a simple two-star resort but turned out to be very impressive. A collection of nicely-spaced dark wooden bungalows, with plenty of tropical greenery and gardens between, were attractive and clean. A young woman led me to my room, taking me past a very inviting swimming pool with a grand view of the sea down the hill. After getting unpacked, I walked back down along the ‘beach’, which is actually on this side of the island only a few feet of dirty-looking sand on which bits of tropical plants were strewn. Not inviting at all. But it wasn’t supposed to be. The ‘beach’ was on the other side of a karst and some cliffs that rose up to a rather towering height. I followed a path at the base of this cliff to the other side—and was greeted with a view that made me realize how lucky I was to be traveling. Open sea in front of me—with three or four karsts jutting out of the blue water. To my left, a small lagoon at the base of these vertical walls, which were, along with the rest of Railay Bay, a magnet for the climbers of the world. Within twenty minutes of walking along the beach, wading over a calf-deep section of water to a mini-island, I’d met two couples from the States: one from Colorado and the other from Utah. All four were here to climb as many karsts and cliffs as possible in the weeks they were spending here. But for me, snorkeling would be the thing.

The next afternoon, an Irishman in his late thirties named Joe led a group of us out to a longboat. The pilot was a young Thai guy, naturally. Joe, the guide to whom we’d each paid fifteen bucks, was amiable and knowledgeable about these waters. He must have had spent a lot of time outdoors because his face was weather beaten with deep lines. Anyway, with me on the boat was a young English couple and a Dutch couple. The boat soon puttered out to sea just as the sky turned gray and gathering clouds promised rain. After a ten minute jaunt over the waves, Joe had the driver stop the craft at the base of a high karst. Jumping with our gear into the somewhat choppy water, Joe led us through an underwater ‘cavern’ (several meters wide). By the time we emerged on the other side, a good rain was falling. A little more water won’t hurt anything, I reasoned, and Joe was enjoying himself, taking pics with a waterproof camera and sharing his knowledge with us. As we swam back through a second cavern, I stuck my head out of the water just ten feet beneath a rocky surface only to feel the wind blast pellets of rain through. Back under the waves, all was calm.

Joe took us to a couple of other snorkeling points before we headed for a deserted island. The weather had cleared up by now and the skies were clear. The boat dropped us on the beach before puttering off. “The driver’s off to get our food,” explained Joe. “He’ll be back in a jiffy with some really great Thai food.” We all, in the meantime, had time to wander, explore. There wasn’t much to the island: lots of beach, a vegetation-choked hill, and a marvelous sundown to enjoy. The group broke up, with Joe hiking up through part of the thick vegetation. I found a delightful and peaceful place to sit at the base of the hill, in among some boulders, and simply gazed at a pink sky behind clouds moving in opposite directions. After, I don’t know, perhaps a half hour, a concerned Joe came from around the other side of the rocks. “Ah, wondered if you were okay.” We talked for awhile, awaiting the return of the boat.

After it reappeared and two metal containers of food were off-loaded, we sat and ate by the light of a couple of tiki torches. That alone was worth the price of admission, as they say, but there was more to come. After eating and re-boarding, we crossed the night sea to a practically invisible karst-hill. The massive rock was little more than a great black shadow set against the moon-lit sky. Jumping into the equally dark seawater, I was thrilled to see the thousands of pinpoints of light that are luminescent shrimp, tiny little things that swarm here beside the great karst. Through my mask, I could see as I moved my arms underwater that dozens (and dozens) of what looked like lightning bugs (the mini-shrimp) glowed brilliantly all through the wet darkness where my arm was. “It’s a bit disconcerting,” said the English girl. “They’re like all over me.” It certainly seemed so but I never felt the shrimp though one or two nipped at my legs. Joe said “Ouch” a couple times as he too got playfully bitten. Considering there were thousands and thousands of shrimp, a couple of nips didn’t seem to be much to worry about.

I hated to leave Railay Bay, but the next day, after a pleasant walk about the tiny village, a nice chat with the Internet café owner (a woman from San Francisco temporarily living in Thailand and a fellow book lover), and some lunch, I followed a few others to a longboat that returned us to Crabi. After that, I boarded a VIP tourist bus that made the long overnight haul back to Bangkok—where after a day or so I’d catch an overnight train to a town I’d once lived in, Ubon Ratchatani.