Cambodia

To the whole damned lot of you: Well, it's just past the half way point of this Cambodia trip that I'm sure you've been curious about. What? You didn't even know I was going to Cambodia? Well, I've been here 6 days and I have about 5 more to go. It's been a heck of a visit and I have to say that while I might be willing to return to a tourist center, I will not be looking to return to Th'mir Pouk any time soon. The kids are really cute, but cute kids do not a wonderful experience make. I don't care what you've heard to the contrary.

We left from Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa on Friday the 25th. It was a reasonably pleasant flight over. Only about 4 hours in the air, turbulence-free. We arrive just outside of Siem Reap at about 1100. The airport will be featured on Flickr, when I eventually get back to civilization. It's two hours different, so it was 1300 our time, and we were getting hungry. We'd eaten at about 0430, at Kadena, from a hotbox van; one of those driving junk food things that you see on union job sites. Unpleasant food for unpleasant people, we wolfed it down. We had to do a whole bunch of work at the airport, not the normal customs things, but loading and unloading our own luggage and equipment, getting it all onto trucks.

I almost passed out from something very like heatstroke. It was a close run thing. We started moving these large, flat metal pallets which were very, very hot and I started to get woozy. I stumbled over to a grassy knoll and upchucked. Unpleasant. They gave me some water and made me sit down for a while. I got a little better and it was time to head to the hotel. We drove around, looking at the wandering cows and the incredible number of Buddha statues everywhere.

The squalor, even in the relatively cosmopolitan Siem Reap, was intense. People sitting in filth, cooking in filth, hell, cooking filth in filth, it was depressing. We got to our hotel, which I can't recall the name of, but you'll see it on Flickr and I recommend it if you are planning trip to Cambodia. It is probably the most luxurious place I've ever been or even seen in real life. The photos can't possibly do justice to the feeling of exotic comfort. From the shrine in the lobby to the 50 channels on the TV in the room, there is nothing you can recognize as Western. I watched a kids show about Krishna and a band of demons. All with live action actors and not one thing that happened made sense. Possibly the best 20 minutes in front of a TV ever spent. The salt-water pool is a delight, warm as a baby's bath and so salty that it puts the ocean to shame. The actual hygiene issues involved with a salt-water pool are questionable, but it felt too good to care. The bathroom in the hotel room… I have been without a bathroom for several days now and so I hesitate to let flow the incredible details that seems so fresh in my mind. Let it simply be said that the torrent of complimentary details cannot hope to match the torrent of water that needles into your pliant skin in the shower. I didn't take a bath, figuring I'd hold out till I really want one, i.e. when I get back from my dirt bath. It was a good choice, I have no doubt that the bathroom will once again wow me, but holding off makes the expectation much greater. I don't know what I've missed. I have to imagine that it's great.After a few hours at the hotel, without eating anything, though I did drink my first Angkor Beer, we all met up to go with the Non-Government Operators (NGOs henceforth) for dinner.

Siem Reap at night is impossible to imagine. I told Margaret that it was like something out of Deerhunter, and that's true, but it's so much stranger than that. Being in Cambodia at night is like living a PJ O'Rourke essay. (This is HIGH praise, from me. Coming from other people it might be a negative position. I suppose you'll have to go read some PJ and then decide for yourself.) We went to dinner at a place called Dead Fish. I had heard about this place before I came. Each table is on a separate level, for privacy. It's a neat system, though it really wastes a lot of space. We fit 30 people around a long table on a high level and half of them never got the food they ordered. I felt their pain, I never got my seconds. The food was very good. Kind of like Thai food, which I like very much, but a little spicier, or differently spice. Like when Mom puts too much cinnamon in the chili. You still know it's chili, but the taste is just different. At any rate, the food was tasty, but not filling. There were crocodiles inside the restaurant that you could feed fish for $.50. We didn't do it, but we watched a French couple do it. They seemed to be really happy doing it. We were just happy watching the crocodiles eat the fish. There was a floor show of traditional Cambodian ceremonial dancing, which I thought was dull. Then there was a couple of overweight American kids who came out and sang 90's hits. Since I am all about 90's hits, this went over big with me. My loud clapping irritated them, though. (They have no appreciation of virility in tourists.)

After dinner we decided, and when I say we, I mean my friend Cranston whose bank I am while we're here, to go to Bar Street. It's this crazy little street with lots of , wait for it, bars. It's cordoned off by police, though. They make sure that none of the little kids who beg can come onto the street and beg from you. The first place we went to was called The Temple. Again, there are Flickr images coming, but it was a cool place. We hung out there for a couple hours. We met a guy who works for Homeland Security, which was cool. He was drunk and said some things he probably shouldn't have, unless they were lies. But it was fun all the same. Then Thompson met up with this girl named Annie. At least, I'm guessing that's how she spells it. She pronounced it Annie. She took us to another place.

This other place was off Bar Street and a lot less… it was a whore bar. Apparently Annie asked for no money at the end of the evening and Thompson still has his passport and both kidneys, so maybe she just likes to hang out there, but it was something else. They don't have strip clubs here, it's not acceptable behavior. They DO have dancers though. These young girls who act like they are about 8, but look like they are older, if you see what I mean, dance around fully clothed; at least, fully clothed for them. The big question of the night was which of them were actually men in drag, it's shockingly difficult to tell with your basic Occidental face. I was coerced into a little dancing with one of them, but it was my usual awkward dancing and I think she got the worst of it. It got a lot of Cambodian laughs, but was not successful as a form of seduction, on either of our part. We stayed there for a while, until I finally was just done.

I gathered up half our party and took off, back to the hotel. We had to be up at 0445, so being out passed 1100 wasn't on for me. As it was, I got to sleep at almost 0100. I was sleepy when we got up the next day and boarded our bus for Th'Mir Pouk. This turned out to be a bad move on my part. Roads are something that happen to other people in Cambodia. The basic design of a road here is a pothole with no paving for miles. Several times I thought my coccyx was going to be fused to the metal of my seat. Most unpleasant. After 5 hours of miserable driving we finally found ourselves at the appointed place. Now, a few of you might have heard that we'd be performing our medicine inside of a Buddhist temple, and indeed, that was the plan. However, it turned out that our advance party had counted its chickens before they hatched and we were not going to be able to use the temple.

We are using the local governor's compound, instead. This is a little bit of a blessing, as it means that there are police around all the time and we don't have to set up our own guard system. That's nice because it means that we can sleep all night, instead of only in shifts. The downside is that there is no way to keep people out. (Don't ask me why not. There are gates and everything, and did I mention police? Yeah, I have no idea how that works. At any rate, it's a pretty nice place. Not great in so far as normal amenities that we enjoy in the West. The toilets are all bucket affairs. After you do your business and bag your toilet paper/baby wipes, you take a bucket of water and pour it down the spout until it finally flushes. Not pleasant. There is no shower capability. We use bottles of water and the back fence line.

Directions for a water bottle shower: Take 3 or 4 bottles of water, wear skimpy shorts, dump one bottle all over yourself, get every area wet. Soap up, don't drop the soap in the dirt! Use the other bottles to rinse the soap off after you drop it in the dirt, walk, covered in soap, back to the tent with the water and get more so that you can rinse off. Endure the taunting yells of your friends, also catcalls. Repeat every other day, when your own stink overwhelms you. Take care to avoid random dogs, chickens, children and Cambodian locals who would like trip you, watch you shower, or just plain lounge near you.

It took us most of the early afternoon to set up our tents and when we finished there were already 200+ locals outside, just waiting to be seen. So we took the late afternoon to see patients. I did vital signs at the start. It was fun. We had to see the 200+ before dark, so we had to move really quickly. The vital signs team had to keep ahead of the triage officer who had to keep ahead of the doctors who had to try not to overload the pharmacy. It was a mildly complicated process, and I enjoyed it. We ate our MRE dinner and went to bed, exhausted. In fact, I Think it might have been the most exhausted I've been in years, probably since boot camp. I did not dream. Wake up a little before 0600 and for many an MRE breakfast. Your intrepid author managed to go without food, though. MREs are foul at the best of times and not to be countenanced first thing in the AM. I require a soothing cup of tea and perhaps a quiet period of reading and a contemplative poop. These, unfortunately, are not an option in the field. I settled for sitting and making fun of my fellow early-morning risers.

A full day of seeing patients, I think we saw over 700 that first full day. The vitals team and I learned a bit of Cambodian and I entertained the crowd at lunchtime with all the hand motions and faces I could think of. The "living hand" thing didn't go over as well as it always did with me, but then I would be the first to admit that I lack the stage presence of a Chico Marx or a Bruce Campbell. The kids here, as I said, are adorable. Utterly, utterly adorable. I think that there is something in the water here though. The little girls are unutterably gorgeous, as young teenagers they have a grace that is not found in Western teenagers. But by the time they are in their mid-twenties they look like life is over for them. I was saying the other day that if this is how everyone used to age, in the old days, then no wonder they married so young. It's shocking, honestly. I have seen a couple of twenty-something girls who are still pretty, but there is a feeling of tenuous timing, as if their days are numbered and everyone knows it.

Several days went just like that, showers when possible, the bucket toilet, vital signs and vital signs and vital signs. We are all ripe, the smell in the tent where the enlisted guys sleep is something like what you'd imagine medieval moat to smell like. Spirits are pretty high though. We are all getting along well. There are two restaurants nearby. We have adopted one of them as our home away from home. I go every other night. We have Angkor Beers and Lohk Lahk. (Or it might be Lahk Lohk, we have not had a satisfactory explanation.) We ate frogs there the other night and bugs that they caught around the lamps. It was pretty special. The fruit! That's what I needed to tell you about. First of all, you have never had a real mango. I don't care where you think you had a mango, you're wrong. Real mangoes are sold, hot off the tree, at stands on the side of the road in Cambodia. And there are mangostines, I have no idea if that is the correct spelling, but they are delicious. There are many different kinds of things that are similar to gnapes. I guess frogs don't count as fruit, but those were good too. So far every growing thing we've eaten has blown us… away. At any rate, like I say, there will be more coming, there is still half a story to tell and part of it will take place in Siem Reap. Hopefully some of it will also be taking place at Angkor Wat. There will be photos and fun details for people in specific. Look forward to more.