Cambodia--Late January 1999

Cambodia

Late January 1999

 

There is a difference between the tourist and the traveler.  My parents, for example, were tourists.  When they went to Europe for the first and only time, I was excited for them.  Knowing they were arriving in Amsterdam, I told them they should go a few days earlier.  There’s this to see, I said, and that to see.

 

But no.  My father said that the tour company would show them the most important things.  They were satisfied with that.

 

That is a tourist.

 

Travelers, on the other hand, rarely take tours. Civil Wars don’t stop them.  (Just don’t go to the parts of the country that are dangerous.)  Authoritarian governments and the morality of spending money in that country don’t stop them. (There are always ways to put money in the hands of the poor.) Floods and other eco-disasters?  (Just avoid the affected areas.)  Their curiosity knows no limits.  They always want to know what’s around the corner and are more than happy to explore what’s not in a guide book.  Dubai?  Sure.  Then let’s go to Oman and Saudi Arabia.  My god, says the tourist.  Saudi Arabia?    Yes. It’s open for tourism.  Just do your homework.

 

Lost in Florence without a Baedeker, said a character is E. M. Forster’s A Room With a View.  She was a traveler unphased by fear who reveled in the unknown.

 

Thus it was in my case in the early winter of 1999.  I was in Thailand and the only plan I had was to go to Indonesia from there.  I had an extraordinarily flexible around-the-world air ticket and was due in Brisbane, Australia at some point in the future.  

 

Travelers revel in the stories of other travelers.  Where they’ve been, where they’re going.  The words on the street in Bangkok were Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.   Today they’re mainstream tourist destinations, but that wasn’t the case in 1999.  While the countries were newly opened to tourism, the truth was that tourism was still emerging.  It was really only open to the traveler who dared to jump in.

 

And that is what I did.  Of course, being honest about all this was risky, but in 1999 the world, while connected, was not nearly as connected as it is today.  Phone calls were rare—and expensive.  

 

Where are you? Steve asked.  Thailand, said the gringo.  What are you doing?  I’m going to stay in Southeast Asia for a bit.  Keep vague, but don’t lie.  Steve was, and still is, a cautious and unadventurous tourist.

 

I got a Cambodian visa then bought a one-way ticket to Phnom Penh.  It was hardly a full flight.  The gringo thought it odd there were so many young stoners on board, but that would soon be understood.  Once past customs, I have no idea what happened, but I found myself with a small group of solo, early to middle age travelers.  We were all waiting for a taxi to the city.  One was a woman from Vancouver, another from Paris and other guy from the US whose sole interest seemed to be the brothels that the capital city offered.  

 

Somehow, we became a compatible group who ultimately spent more than a week together.  Our driver found us and hotel and became our Phnom Penh Tour guide.  It was he who introduced us to Cambodian street food, brought us to funky places outside of our guide books and who, on the afternoon of our first day, brought us to one of the local markets which sold the usual stuff—vegetables, meat, a few handicrafts…and huge bags of marijuana for $1.00.  Legal pot on the open market.  That explained the stoners on board the flight.

 

That night we invited him to dinner.  The restaurant was more upscale and catered to tourists.  There were five place settings and at each one was a big, thick, hand-rolled joint.  My travel friends were delighted, but I’d long before given up the ganga and was happy to share mine with the American guy.  

 

I speak of this next because it could happen anywhere in the world.  For almost two decades Cambodia was a closed country.  No one got it and no one left unless he escaped.  The Civil War under the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s led to the death between 1.5 and 2 million citizens—35% of the population.  “Killing Fields” dotted the countryside.  Skeletons poked through the soil, shards of clothing could still be seen (although I wonder if this was true or where they were planted there for tourists.)  The interiors of stupas were stacked with bones, and stupas were everywhere.  What does the tourist do in the face of all this?  Evidence of death was everywhere. 

 

I think about this to this day.  I’ve been to Auschwitz, know what happened in WW 2.  I’ve been to American Civil War sites that have been turned into beautiful parks, the cemeteries white washed of the horrors that took place there. I have been to French WW 1 sites where now tranquil forest glens are still pocked with the indents of bombs, where Germans fought Allies and men fought to the death in rivers of blood.  Man against man.  Now, American against American.

 

It could happen here.  History does repeat itself.  The hate that exists in the United States today can do this again.  I can see MAGA lining up its enemies and killing them.  I can see concentration camps of interred “enemies of the state.”  Proud boys have already said there will be revenge.  Elected officials have said that progressives should be locked up.  I can see a Civil War emerge in the USA.  MAGA has been itching for one for a long time.

 

The truth is that the traveler who sees a lot of the world and who studies what he sees is able to make connections that server him well later on.  It’s not hard to connect the dots from the 1943 and 1977 to what’s happening in our country today.

 

Late the second night, our guide brought the American guy and myself to one of the brothels—a warehouse almost of Cambodian women all of who had price tag on them.  (Picture here that emoji with the startled face and bulging eyes.)  I wasn’t in the market, but the traveler in me had an education.

 

Our guide stayed with us until he put us on a boat that sailed up the Mekong to Angkor Wat.  In 1999, Angkor Wat was still a back water and only the truly adventurous went there.  Siem Reap still had dirt streets, and a guest house only cost $10.00 a night.  (Today, an international airport whisks people in from Singapore and China, more than a million people visit yearly, and a top end hotel will set you back a few hundred dollars.)  

 

On our first night, the four us ate once again at a nice tourist restaurant. We lingered over dinner, and we began to pack up a man approached us.  He asked us if he could take the food that was left on our plates.  I’m not sure what our collective response was, but I was stunned.  We must have said yes, then watched him scrape everything into a container and walk away.)   (It wasn’t the first time people had watched me eat and ask me to share my dinner, nor was it to be the last, but this was the most powerful.)  

 

We settled in for a few days, hired another guide for the ruins, then separated at the end.  (The four of kept in touch for a while.  In 2005, I learned that the Canadian woman had been swept into the ocean when the tsunami hit the island of Phuket in December 2004.)

 

I have no idea what the other three did, but I opted to ride the long distance back to Phnom Penh in the back of a pickup truck. It was slow going.  The road had only recently been cleared of land mines and the truck had to negotiate the huge holes that still remained.

 

All of things I had to keep quiet about.  The traveler learns not to disturb the peace too much.  Vietnam beckoned, then Laos.  

 

But that is another story.