Usually Khmer people get this done for their weddings, but we like to do them for fun. It's interesting what some can do with photo shop.

I am still not sure how to do this, how to go about saying goodbye to an entire country. Goodbyes to family, to friends, and to lovers are all different procedures. With countries, you are either with them or you are not. They also never seem to stop coming.

The process really began at the end of June. The teachers at Angkor Chum High School threw a big "Goodbye Adrian" party which lasted from two in the afternoon until midnight. Almost everyone I worked with showed up, even the deputy district governor. They all said awfully nice about me, and we all ate and drank until we could hold no more in our bellies. Four cases of Black Panther Stout were consumed, along with three cases of Crown Ale. By the end of the night, the geography teacher I worked with on the history project could barely stand. He tried to offer me one final toast, but he stumbled back into his chair as soon as his brain decided that they could not support the weight. I had nearly concocted a plan for my counterpart to wed one of the women teachers sitting next to me, but I could not convince her that it was a good idea. (Something having to do with primary school teachers not marrying high school teachers) The music was loud, but when the car batteries wore down the power went out and everyone decided to go home. I helped put my counterpart to bed, and then I went to bed myself. It was a fun night, but it was not something I could repeat. The following week, all of the teachers and students started leaving Angkor Chum. My co-workers either went back to their homes in different provinces or went elsewhere to help with the 12th grade national exams in July. The students dispersed to their villages or Siem Reap town in order to study over the summer.

And so I said goodbye to Angkor Chum high school.

That just left me and a handful of people I knew in town to spend the rest of June and July with. I busied myself with reading, packing, and making last trips out to see Angkor Wat on the weekends. But the days were long, and I found myself staring off into rice fields more than usual during the long hot afternoons after lunch. I even went out into the fields for a week and learned how to plant transplanted rice in the paddies. This was never something I actively wanted to do, but I happened to be on a walk behind the high school when I ran into a gang of people working in one of the paddies. A woman who happened to know my name called me over and asked me if I knew how to stooung (plant transplanted rice). I said that I did not, and would she teach me? She said she would be delighted to, and told me to take off my sandals before I got down into the paddy.

Some agricultural expert named said that the construction of a paddy is like "the fabrication of an aquarium." Sure enough, the earth ridges kept the water inside the space we were working, and the mud reached well above my ankles. It was also warm and sticky, and made a gurgling noise every time I lifted my foot. Ming (Aunt) showed me how to stooung with my right hand while my left carried a clump of rice shoots. With the roots of the plant lined up against my protruding thumb, I pressed the roots into the mud so that the plant stayed upright. Sometimes a boy with a pointed stick would come along and make holes in the earth and I would stick two or three of the plants in there. Ming yelled at me if I planted the rice plants too close together, but I kept insisting that this was my first time doing this. "I’m from the city! I have never done this kind of work. You must believe me!" Ming would not hear of it. When she finally approved of everything that I was doing, she got on to more practical matters like when on earth was I going to marry a girl from the village and stop this nonsense about wanting to marry within my own culture. The banter went back and forth, and the rest of the workers laughed at our antics. On television this kind of thing happens all the time. There is a program on Thursday nights where a man and woman on the stage, and they argue back and forth while an orchestra or a band provides brief musical interludes. If an old man were playing the long necked lute behind us, the scene would have been complete. It could have been memorialized as an exercise sentence in one of my Khmer books. "Grandfather plays the saa dee-ew while aunt argues with the foreigner."

I came out to help them a couple of afternoons each week, wearing an oversized Vietnamese hat that gave me excellent protection from the sun. The gang noticed this, and every time I took a break they called me a lazy yoo-an (not a nice word for the Vietnamese). We wore dark clothing and hats that covered us from the sun. Their company was delightful, but at the end of the week my back ached and could no longer keep up the work. The host family also disapproved of what I was doing, saying that a teacher would never stoop so low as to go and stooung with the people in the fields.

And so I said goodbye to my career as a rice planter.

In the middle of July, I went down to Kampong Cham town to help prepare the new language and cultural facilitators for the incoming group of new volunteers. It was a full week of meetings about what to expect from the trainees, both good and bad. Most of the sessions involved practice teaching sessions where the new LCF’s prepared lessons, taught them, and had them critiqued quickly in a session afterwards. A few of them had never been around Americans before, and they were understandably nervous. Three months is a long time for anyone to deal with a large group of Americans, but we gave them the best advice we could. After our work was done for the day, the other volunteers and I sat in the cafés along the banks of the Mekong and talked about the good old days. We stayed and passed the time long after the sun went down over the Japanese bridge and the students went home from their private classes. The company was pleasant, and it was a very productive week. It was also good to contribute to the K4 training sessions once before I left.

And so I said goodbye to the training staff in Kampong Cham.

When I returned to site, the only thing left to do was pack up and leave. There was little else I could do. The few remaining friends I had were also leaving soon, and it was better to say goodbye to them while I had the chance and leave after that.

In one day, I packed and walked all over the town saying goodbye to the people of Angkor Chum. It did not feel that terribly sad, but then I did not approach it as a terribly tragic event. I told many of the market ladies that I would come back to visit bearing a beautiful American wife so that they would believe all the excuses I made for not wanting a Khmer one. That kept them laughing as I left. Many of them thanked me for all the work I had done, wished me luck back in America, and asked if I would miss Angkor Chum when I was away in America. Miss Sopuhn asked me if I would miss her and her class of 36 students of 12A, and I said in English that I would. She then smiled and said, "I don’t understand English."

"That’s too bad," I said, "Because I would have brought you to America in my suitcase if you did." Both Sopuhn and her mother laughed, but I realized later that such an act would technically constitute as human trafficking.

And so, I said goodbye to Angkor Chum and the two years of my life that I spent living there. It was not so strange leaving the place because I had done that many times, but I always went back. Now it was different. An odd feeling came over me in a hotel room in Sisophon later that night after I left when I was staring at my bags and contemplating the events of the day. I realized that I had left and I could not go back for a long time. To make matters a little worse, I had a sudden craving for mee cha. Not just any old mee cha, but Si Nooan’s mee cha. The noodles she made were always dripping in grease, and if I told her I was really hungry she would put a fried egg on top. Now I will have to wait years before I can satisfy that craving.

This past week I took some time to visit other volunteers and reminisce about our two years together in Cambodia. I believe I once wrote on this blog that I was immensely proud of the work my colleagues and I were doing in Peace Corps Cambodia, and I am still proud of everything that we have all done. It may have seemed like very little over time, but it is remarkable to look back over it over time.

And so, I say goodbye to Peace Corps Cambodia.

Dtuk. Au Luk. In literal translation, these two words put together mean “water, watermelon.” In daily practice, they refer to a kind of fruit shake. In terms of how this substance translates onto the smooth surface of your tongue, it comes out roughly as “a sweet, cold, and delicious blended beverage that is highly addictive to one Adrian Stover on days that are very hot (every day).”

The words “fruit shake” do not have any meaning for Dalis. I have taught her and her class of thirty seven students of 12A for the past two years, but she cannot speak English to save her life. This is my failure. It is her triumph. But I forgive her because her family’s sweets stand supplies me with dtuk au luk on a daily basis, and because her mother has a peculiar sense of humor that makes me laugh. Ming (Aunt), as I refer to her, runs the stand. She operates the blender, which sits behind the glass case of display fruit and the various bottles of ingredients. She knows my usual order for the fruit shake: “Please no sugar, please no duck egg.” When she hands me a glass of thick, pink liquid she tells me “Adrian sum lup bee maong, at?” It means, “This glass of dtuk au luk is so delicious it will make Adrian be unconscious for two hours, yes?”

The joke has a better delivery in Khmer, more of a punch.

Dtuk au luk does not have the same flavor every day. Some days you can taste the carrot, others the Asian pear. They mix it mostly with durian in Stung Treng, and coconut is the chief ingredient in Anlong Veng. Phnom Penh and the surrounding provinces of Kampong Chnnang and Kampong Speu have a mostly apple flavor to their dtuk au luk, and the ones in Sisophon stay true to their name by having watermelon as their chief ingredient.

But the best ones are, of course, the ones that make me unconscious.

The rains come every day now. Water comes thundering down from the heavens, and I can finally sleep at night without waking up covered in sweat. More standing water also means more mosquitoes, and more mosquitoes means a roaring trade in the guppy business.

In my non-teaching hours at school, I usually find a quiet desk where I can work on something for a few hours without having to move my mouth or arms; thus, relaxing the muscles exhausted by the classroom. However, I look up from my desk every so often and find a crowd of little boys staring at me from an open window. All of them clutch empty plastic water bottles. They find them from the big rubbish bins in front of the teacher's dormitory, and they know I like to use them to transport guppies. It usually takes them a little bit of courage to ask for what they have come to buy. I am a big, scary, pink-white, Khmer speaking foreigner after all (Babies are worse. Since they cannot process complex thought, they take one look at me and start screaming in fright). "Loo-at trei?" one of the boys asks.

"Bat bat...loo-at trei."

The school year is ending, and most of my work is done and over with except for this one project. Every day that I am here, I seem to sell more and more guppies. Most of my afternoons are spent fishing them out with nets from the water containers. Afterwards, I hand to my customers pamphlets with information in Khmer on how to take care of their new pets and how they keep people safe from dengue fever.

Everyone wants to buy the pretty looking male guppies with the big colorful tails, but I try to persuade them that they should buy the dull grey females as well if they want to produce guppy fry of their own. This is followed by the embarrassing question that only a seven-year-old boy would ask. "Why do you need male and female guppies to have baby guppies?"

"Ask you parents."

I was afraid that the project would end in ruin, and in my consternation I started peddling my magic fish in the market when I went for supplies in the morning. I sold them off in the same plastic water bottles, touting their wondrous abilities in controlling disease as I walked among the stalls under the tin roof. My usual money changer and vegetable lady bought bottles of fish, but my tailor did not. This is so even after the good money I paid him to make me some pants!

Since then things have been on the upswing for the business, and I no longer have to peddle the guppies on bicycle anymore. I am on track to selling close to 200 fish this month. Can you imagine it? 200 fish for 100 riel a piece will mean 20,000 riel ($5) in guppy sales! I keep the money in a locked desk at the school in an effort to demonstrate the concept of transparency, and declare to all who ask me about it that the profits from the farm will go towards fish food.

Vannak keeps saying that I have become a rich man selling fish. He likes to poke fun at everything I do, but Vannak should take notes from everything that I am doing because he is going to take over the business when I am gone.

These stories simply are what they are. They are the ones you would hear as you drifted into Phnom Penh and found yourself in a familiar watering hole swapping yarns with your friends and colleagues about your friends and colleagues. These are some of the best I have collected since I have been here, and I have transformed them into writing in order to explain our world a little better. While writing these stories, it has occurred to me that someone reading these might not think of Peace Corps volunteers in Cambodia in the best light. I would counter this by declaring an affirmation in our humanity. We do an immense amount of good work in this country, and it is my firm belief that this work is both effective and a proper use of US government resources. But while our work is wholly altruistic, it is important that we are not angels. We have failings, some of which are mentioned here, but these should be viewed not as a reflection of what we do but rather part of the colorful world in which we live. Take us as we are, both the good bits and the bad.

 While based on real events, I have changed the names of the people in these stories to protect their identities.

 Punching A Backpacker

      We loathed the group of people known to the world as the "Backpackers." One look at them and you would instantly know why. They wore dreadlocks, beards, ragged clothing, and exposed far too much skin than decency permits in a foreign country where people pride themselves on personal appearance. As a rule, the requirements for one to be a backpacker were simple: one had to own an oversized backpack stuffed with an excess of clothes, and one had to dress incredibly badly. In the tourist cafes and national monuments, they put their feet everywhere as if the world were their personal footrest. They were also constantly drunk or taking drugs of some kind, lost in a man-made fog unaware of the risks that they were taking. Consider the example of one I saw in Siem Reap town the other day: one white male, aged approximately nineteen to twenty one, who was wearing yellow sparkled shoes with purple socks, shorts with holes in them that revealed underwear, no shirt, large sunglasses, and a miniature fedora. As he was walking down Sivatha Street, he held a two liter bottle of Angkor Beer. His friends were dressed in a similar fashion. I cannot imagine what Cambodians must think of these people. How shocking they must look! I feel embarrassed just thinking about them.

It is true that we were also foreigners, but we lived here. We had jobs, spoke the language, and lived in villages scattered across the country. Our collective self was Lawrence, and this was our Arabia. The respect shared among us for the people was not shared by the grungy monsters which teared through the guesthouses in a haze of cigarette smoke and empty beer bottles. Yet, admittedly, the women were attractive. Bare shouldered European women were not a common sight in our lives, and among crowds of them it was impossible to not catch yourself staring at them. Dave said it best when it came to these situations, "There is too much eye candy here." In a way he was right. After a few minutes of staring at them, you felt miserable at your own loneliness and prayed that you could soon go back to your village far away from temptation.

    B. had actually punched one in the face. It was terrific story the way she told it. With a beer in hand and exaggerating the way her opponent talked, she kept us laughing and on edge at the same time. The way it happened was that she visiting Laos with her sister during the New Year in April. The custom there is that during the New Year people splash buckets of water on each other in a grand water fight that lasts for days. B. was touring Louang Pahbang, and had been doused by little children all day long as she walked to and from the various Wats around the city. At the end of the day, she and her sister showered and went out to dinner. On the way to a restaurant, she was spotted by a group of drunken backpackers. Enthused by the local custom, they were happily splashing other people as well as themselves. Spotting B., one of the girls came over to douse her. B. raised her arms and started saying that she was tired, had just taken a shower, and was on her way to dinner. The female backpacker laughed at her excuses, and started to raise the bucket of water. That was when B. said, "Listen, bitch, pour that bucket of water on me and I will punch you in the face." The girl, to her misfortune, did not listen to such a stern warning. She dumped the foul smelling Mekong water all over B.'s head and freshly laundered clothes. B. let the water pour over her, closing her mouth and nose. When she wiped the few remaining drops from her eyes, she opened them and struck the girl across the chin with a powerful right cross (At this point in the story, B. would ball up her fist and demonstrate how she gave the drunken girl a big whollop in the teeth. We would beg her to continue). The female backpacker went sprawling into the street. The man friend of the backpacker came over from the group and started yelling at B., but she shut him down right there and then. "Listen, you're both drunk, you're not a part of the culture and your being really disrespectful. So why don't you stuff yourself and go sober up!"

B. would finish the story with triumphant applause from all of us. All the things that she had said to the pair she had run into in Laos were the things we had wished we could have said to the collective group of backpackers. Whether we would have punched somebody over the water is another matter.

B. probably had more balls than all of us.

 The Oldest Profession

 C. had been with prostitutes. That is what most people said about him anyway. Nobody knew for sure how many times he had gone to them, but the stories about the man were almost limitless. With each repetition new details were added until nobody knew anything about it expect that he was one of those guys.

    Not that he was the only one, and not that the ladies were hard to find. Prostitutes came by the dozen all over the country, lurking in the dark corners of dancing clubs or trolling the streets looking for customers. They wore high heeled shoes, heavy makeup, and skimpy dresses, and they groped prospective customers when they could. If I saw a group of them on the street, I would do everything I could not come within grabbing distance. Travelling foreigners went to them easily enough. A bunch of us were getting drinks at a bar once and watched a woman take home a foreign man every hour on the hour. We cringed, and swore that we would never stoop that low. C. had, though. I imagine he had never truly fathomed the reasons from staying away from the working girls in a country such as this: the legal ones (you could get fired), the sanitary ones (HIV was here, so was a range of other STD's), or the moral ones (whichever ones you claimed to have). Either the man did not think about any of these, or he ignored all of them in the pursuit of a greater desire. The former seems more logical. I cannot envision who can still go to a prostitute having carefully thought about the hazards of it.

No one talked to him about it, so no one knew exactly all the things that he did. Despite all the stories, D. spoke up once or twice about him. "I don't see that much of a problem with it anymore, now that I'm getting older," he said once. "Ugly men need love too." Was C. that ugly? I cannot remember his face that well. He was not particularly handsome, but not unattractive. D. had his own run in with the ladies of the evening, but he was different. We all felt sorry for him. He was feeling lonely one night, and met a girl who told him he was gorgeous and brilliant. He took her home and did not believe her when she asked him for "two hundred dollars American, American." But he would not pay, refusing to believe he had been duped. He left the guesthouse in a hurry and caught the nearest tuk tuk in the street, thinking that he had given the girl the slip. K. can tell the story better than I can, so I will tell it in her voice: "So he's in the tuk tuk, right, and he thinks he's gotten away from this girl who he has just found out is a prostitute. He heads to the office of this NGO he knows, thinking that he can hide out there and kind of just lay low for a while with the internet and the air conditioning. But this girl follows him all the way to the front gate, and she's about to make a scene right then and there. Of course, he does not want this girl to come and follow him into the NGO and destroy his reputation, so he yells at her to go away and gives her all the cash he has in his wallet. Only then does she go away." D. rested his conscience for a day and then told a few people what had happened. Those people told a few people, who told a few, and that is the reason why I can write that story today.

    When C. left to go back to the 'States, even more stories came out about his nefarious liaisons. One made us laugh pretty hard. The volunteer that replaced C.'s position met someone who used to hang with him before he went back. The man said to him, "Hey man, you're pretty cool an' all, but I used to go get drunk and f&*k hookers with C." The interesting thing was that other people who knew C. never knew about any of the stuff he did when he would come to Phnom Penh. No one wanted to tell them either. The fine young man that they knew and worked on projects with retained his reputation.

His legacy was forever split between those who knew him, and those who knew his legacy.

 Fear & Loathing For R.

 The health hazards were numerous, almost too many to count. You would get some kind of horrible stomach infection, and spend days lying on the bathroom floor puking out your guts. Crying on the phone to the medical officer to come and save you, you would pass the time miserably wishing you had never been born. If the threat of that was not enough, there were the mosquitoes. The nasty little vampires gave you all sorts of fevers, not to mention the dangerous ones. Twice on the dreaded dengue and you could wind up with a plane ticket home and a note saying, "Don't come back!" You would think that someone in our position would avoid doing the things that increase your risk of getting sick or injured. You would think that, but you would be wrong. Human beings are so surprising like that.

    Whatever it was that was going on in R.'s life was anybody's guess. What we did know was that the demon that drove her was terrifying. It made her blind to what she was doing to herself, as well as how it was affecting other people. What it was she was doing was something called "high risk behavior." In the dancing clubs over by the river where people get shot, raped, or beat up, she would go out and pick up men without telling anyone where she was going. She also drank too much, and took any kind of substance that was passed to her without a moment's hesitation. It was the latter that eventually got her fired.

    I could tell it was coming. You could see in the way that she came late to meetings, by her expression that read "Could you please repeat the question?" She also let things slip a little too casually. A group of us were out to dinner one night to an Indian restaurant near Yugoslavia Street and Psar Orussey when she began telling us about the kind of weekend she had had. The story became even more fantastic as she went on, and I cannot even tell it without conjuring up her voice. "So...like my friend and I were like at this club. And there were like all these girls around [she mentioned later they had no clothes on] And they were really chill, and were really happy that I spoke Khmer. And we were all doing 'shrooms."

    This was just too much for me. "Where did you get 'shrooms?"

    "Oh, some guy...?"

    The story of how R. got fired was spectacular, even though no one exactly knew what the details were. She had started off at a bar, as usual, and things had progressed in the evening to the point where she had had too much to drink. This was not the first time this had happened. There were rumors that she had been banned from Equinox because she had passed out and thrown up all over the front bar, all over the expensive bottles of Grey Goose and Fine Scotch Whiskey that the French people loved to sip slowly and hold their cigarettes at arm's length. Her friends dutifully followed her throughout the evening, but they were tired of picking up after her, holding her hair as she threw up in hotel toilet bowls, and making sure she slept on her side so she would not asphyxiate in her sleep. On this particular night they resolved to simply put her in a tuk tuk and send her off to her hotel. From the bar, they carried her limp body over to the big plush seat of a tuk tuk and told the concerned looking driver to take her home. When R. awoke, the face of the night guard of the hotel and the driver were peering over her. "Time to go home!" they told her. R. wanted to sleep in the tuk tuk instead. The details at this point of the story are a bit fuzzy, but one knows that R. was belligerent enough with the hotel staff for them to have called the Peace Corps office at something like four in the morning.

    One can only guess at what happened next, and what was said at the meetings behind closed doors. I imagine a lot of words like "conduct unbecoming a Peace Corps volunteer" were thrown around, and "if you have a medical issue such as substance abuse this is not the best place for a good recovery." Was America a better place for a recovery from drugs?

In any case, R. found herself floating home on an airplane thousands of feet above the earth. That's the moral of this story, if you can call it one.

 K. And The Kampuchea Romance

 K. had started dated a Cambodian man, and F. hated her for it. It was pure and simple as that. K. was previously involved with F., and the two of them had hit it off pretty well during the beginning period of their service. F. had hoped that it would last, but when K. told him she was dating a Cambodian man he could hardly contain his anger. It hurt his pride enormously. Here was this tall, muscular, handsome, American man, the pinnacle of masculinity, being rejected for a Cambodian man more used to the hard life of rice farming than the MTV and hot dogs of his newly acquired American girlfriend. They did not speak to each other from then on, nor did they manage to look each other in the eye. F. and K. might as well have been in the 7th grade for that matter. And they carried on this way as if this was perfectly acceptable behavior for two people in their mid twenties.

Despite F.'s feeling's about the whole matter, relationships between Host Country Nationals (I love the way that the government gives names to things) and volunteers were not that uncommon. It simply happened to a few people here and there, and in some countries it happened more than others. In Cambodia, the people who made them work were usually women, which made sense if you thought about it within the context of the culture. A Cambodian man had free reign to do pretty much anything he wanted to, whereas the women were restricted in most of their social movements. The man could go to prostitutes as much as he wanted, drink as much as he wanted, and father as many children as his bank account would permit him to. Having an American girlfriend probably was probably not that big of a deal to him, although not without its awkward moments. One our language teachers during the training period told us a story about meeting a western woman in a dancing club, and what he thought of western kissing (Cultural note, Cambodians do not touch on the mouths when they kiss. They merely sniff each other on the cheek. In general, physical contact between the sexes is very limited) He said to us, "In the club, I am dancing, and a western woman pulls me over from my friend and starts dancing very close to me. I don't know what to do, so I dance close with her! Although it is very dark, I can see that the woman is very beautiful and has big red hair. I like dancing with her, but then she grabs my head and pulls me to her face! Suddenly my mouth is on her mouth, and her tongue is sliding around my own. [We restrained ourselves to keep from laughing when he got to this point] It was awful! I felt so helpless and disgusted, but I wanted to keep dancing with her because she was beautiful. She kissed me again like before she left the club." After hearing that story, I began to have a lot of respect for any Cambodian man willing to embrace the peculiar dating habits of Americans. It must take an awful lot of courage.

An American man who dated a Cambodian girl was quite different. In this situation, all of the customary rules applied. This made it less like the concept of "dating" and more like a "courtship," in which both families were involved in every step of the way. The man also had to have every intention of marrying the girl he was interested in, and precede knowing full well that if the marriage did not work out the girl would be disgraced for the rest of her life. I found the whole process daunting and stayed away from the whole thing, but others went through with it. The one man I knew who made it work proceeded with proper Cambodian customs, with chaperoned dates, astrology predictions, and the whole shebang. Theirs was actually a neat story. They had met each other while working at a school for the deaf, and both knew American Sign Language. While each of them knew rudimentary forms of each other's native languages, they mostly used their hands to communicate with each other. Cute, isn't it? I never found out what their married life was like, although the man was reputed to have said, "Cambodia is probably one of the last few places where you can get a traditional wife."

I refuse to draw conclusions.

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

To an elderly woman who asked me if I had a Cambodian wife, I said that Cambodian wives were too expensive and that I did not have the 5,000 dollars to pay for one.

To a man who asked if there were many pretty girls in Angkor Chum, I said that there were more water buffalos than pretty girls in that place.

To a moto driver who asked me if I loved Si Noonan, I said that I loved the moto driver's wife and only if he was out of the house.

I suppose this had to come at some point. In a short few months, I will pack my Cambodian life into a few small bags and begin the journey back towards (what I have recently started calling) “The Great American Adventure.” The plane tickets have been bought, COS conference is done and over with, and the paperwork is slowly beginning to diminish in size. I have listened to countless horror stories about what it is like to return to America after living abroad for so long, but I am confident in my abilities to adapt to strange and different places.

There remain only a few projects to wrap up, and I feel that I am busier than usual trying to finish all of the little side projects that I started. On top of this, not a day goes by when someone around here anxiously asks when I have to go back to America, and whether or not I will miss Cambodia when I go over to the other side of the world. In fact, there are lists of lists of things that I will miss and things that I will not. These grow bigger as the days go by. Just yesterday afternoon I added yet another episode of something I will miss when I am back in the “world.” I was out taking a walk in the remaining drops of the monsoon rains. My usual route goes past the house of one of my students, as well as the sweet stand that she and her mother manage. When I walked past the latter, her mother called me over to say hello. We chatted for a bit, and she commented on how silly my Vietnamese hat looked that I was using to shield my head from the rain. I would have bought my usual dtuck au luck from her, but I apologized to her for not bringing out my wallet into the rain. She said it was no matter, and gave me a glass of iced tea anyway. Her daughter came over and we commented on how the rain was badly needed, and that it was wonderful to finally see the fields burst into green. And as I sat there sipping my tea, I thought for a moment about how I will miss all of this; being invited out of the rain for tea, wearing silly Vietnamese hats, and talking about the status of the monsoon rains. Then again I will not miss the constant bickering with tuk tuk drivers, the heat, the mosquitoes, the periodic bouts of stomach illnesses, the really aggressive prostitutes, and the bureaucracy of both the American and Cambodian governments.

It will definitely be a mixed bag of feelings when I do actually leave.

Sunday afternoon I was speeding down the highway in a motorized tin can on wheels from Kampot province. We were going into the heart of the country; it was heading back from the beaches at Koh Tonsai (Rabbit Island) where I had passed the weekend before this week's routine checkup with the Phnom Penh doctors. The woman who organized the cab barked orders to the driver and haggled with passengers to give her more money. I paid the foreigner price, even though I wanted the local price. This was so even though I called her ming (Aunt), and claimed that I was a poor teacher. In the end we had our fun. She asked me where I was from and why I spoke her language.

"Cambodia."

"No, what country are you from?"

"I am from the country of Cambodia."

"I don't believe you!"

"Why not?"

"Because you have white skin and your hair is yellow."

"So? Haven't you heard of the lost tribe of white skinned Khmers?"

"What?"

"Many years ago, among the hill tribes of Rattanakiri province there was a tribe of white skinned Khmers who spoke their own language and had their own customs. But they disappeared into the forest because they feared the other tribes, and have only now come out of hiding. My family belongs to the tribe of white skinned Khmers, and I grew up learning Khmer as a second language. That is why I speak it so well."

Ming laughed and rolled her eyes. "That's the biggest lie I have ever heard."

"It's true! Ask an old man about the white skinned Khmers! They will know. "

"I still don't believe you."

Ming repeated this story to whoever got in the can and pressed the mass of people inside closer and closer together. They laughed as well, and in the end we had our fun. But I still had to pay the foreigner price.

I walked into Vannak’s office at eight in the morning. The sun had risen several hours ago, but it was already letting its presence be known to all. Vannak was sitting in front of his computer near the window with his shirt off and one hand clutching a yellow paper fan. Standards were down that day. Sambok had taken off both his shirt and his pants and was sleeping on top of his desk under the air current of his personal ceiling fan. Sini kept an eye on the door to make sure a student did not walk in and disturb the sleeping beauty. If someone wanted entry, he simply told them that the door was locked.

Such was the day. Who wanted to stay in an overheated classroom and sweat raindrops through your shirt when shade, fan, and cold drink were to be had nearby? The students complained, although you had to ask them to say it. I felt faint after a perfunctory grammar exercise. SaimNou decided let the herd go fifteen minutes early and little old me did not have any objections.

Vannak’s office had a big fan. That’s why everyone who could go in there did. It was a long room with concrete walls on either side, and two large windows at the back overlooking the fish pond and the fields. A red nylon hammock was tied to the door, and a woman in a long sampot sat there most of the morning swinging her baby back and forth. I did not know her name or the name of her child, but I knew that she was in charge in the library. She hardly went in there, and when she did it was to fetch the blue bucket in order to wash her baby. The blue bucket was something I bought in Pourk to collect fish in. I wonder if she knew that. Anyone coming in or out of that office almost tripped on that baby.

Vannak saw me come in, but I have known the presence of the baby long enough that I do not over him. Sitting down at a desk next to his, I pulled out a notebook and began writing some comments on the class I had just taught. After a few moments I remembered the phrase that I had recently learned how to say in his language. “Vannak?”

“I am here.”

“I am melting like a piece of ice.” Some moment of thought followed.

“You are not a piece of ice. A piece of ice is different.”

“It’s a joke Vannak, it’s because its 41° already today.”

“What does 41° mean?” Sigh.

“It means that it is very hot.”

“Yes, very hot today.”

Slowly I spun in my revolving chair and looked out the window. Beyond the fish pond, the brown fields and dusty palm trees shimmered in dull tempered light. The green water in the fish pond reminded me of a disused swimming pool. I looked at my shirt and saw that it was still dark with sweat from that morning’s class.

“Vannak.”

“Hmmm?”

“I want to go swimming. It may be the only way to cool off.”

“You should jump in the fish pond.”

“Ew...Vannak! That water is warm, dirty, and full of fish.”

“No, it’s very healthy!” Vannak had not turned his head towards me, and I imagine that his eyes were still glued on the computer screen. But I am sure that that incredible smile was there even though I could not see it. It spread from cheek to cheek, erasing the usually serious look that he wore. I could sense him wearing a grin while he told me that I should jump in a fish pond.

SreiToit came into the office holding a piece of paper. Her name literally means “little woman,” which would have been ill fitting if she had risen to a taller stature. She was the only student who passed the 12th grade national exams last March, and I’ve made it a point to call her the smartest student in Angkor Chum. It is true, though. There is no denying it. The results of the exams were posted on the announcement board of the school for everyone to see who failed and who passed.

“SreiToit!”

“Jaaa?”

“Don’t you think that Adrian should jump into the fish pond if he feels that he is too hot?” SreiToit laughed. She was not going to be on my side on this one.

“SreiToit, don’t you think that water is dirty and full of fish? Would swim in it?”

“I don’t know.” SreiToit lowered her head and handed Vannak a piece of paper with both hands full of numbers. Vannak studied it carefully.

“Vannak,” I said his name for emphasis, “Would you swim in that water?”

“Busy,” was all that he said. SreiToit laughed, and I went back to whatever it was that I was writing about. Vannak chatted with her for a little while before she left. I resumed talking.

“I would also love a giant bowl of ice cream right now.”

“You can get that at the sweets stand.”

“It’s not the same thing. Hot, sticky, sweet pudding over crushed ice is not the same thing as ice cream.”

“How is it different?”

“It tastes better.”

“I don’t believe you. You say that you want to jump in a pool, but you won’t jump into a fish pond. “You say that you want ice cream, but you won’t eat bong aime. You are very strange.”

“There are just some things that I cannot get over. I have my habits, what can I say?”

“What do say?”

“Oh, nothing. Never mind.”

“Very strange.”

For two weeks I cooled my heels while the students took their national exams and promptly ditched their classes, a week before their scheduled vacation was supposed to start. When all of that was over, I blew every last dollar I had on one big fabulous trip to Vietnam.

Say the name of that country, and all the things that come to mind are ones you learned in history classes or things your parents told you. I imagine that I grew up hearing about the country the same way the baby boomers grew up listening to stories about the Japanese. But America no longer fights wars in East Asia. The Japanese are known for their television sets and cars, the Vietnamese for the turnaround of their economy. Sitting in my room now in Angkor Chum, I can probably look around me and point to five different things that either came from or were manufactured in Vietnam. Given its place in American history and for the influence it has on the rest of the Indochina region, it was an impossible place not to visit and discover.

The bus left from Phnom Penh on April 5th at 8:00 AM in the middle of the sweat, smog, and dusty air that inundates Cambodia’s capital at all hours of the day. 200 kilometers away was Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon.

I only felt relaxed when I was on the bus, and it started pulling out of the city. In the guesthouse that morning, I rode the elevator down to the lobby with a man who carried a small pistol beneath his shirt line. His bleary eyed mistress stood stolid in a polka dot dress. Feelings of calm and security were only going to ensue when I was safely out of the city. The Phnom Penh-Saigon express leaving from Sorya Bus Station was a good one I was told, and they lived up to their reputation. The man in charge of the mission had obviously herded large numbers of barangs across the border beyond the ferry crossing at Neak Lueng.

Neak Leung. We, and by we I mean the United States government before I was born (thus having nothing to do with any actions taken by we), bombed Neak Leung during the Vietnam War. We were after communists. We were always after communists. The trouble was that we always did not get the communists, and when we bombed Neak Leung we killed several hundred civilians who did not give a damn about a dead white German or a dead white Russian who came up with some silly idea of a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” They simply wanted enough rice to eat. There is that scene in the movie The Killing Fields, the one where Dith Prahn and Syndey go to Neak Leung? There are just dead bodies everywhere. It is horrifying. Today there is nothing but a ferry crossing today in NL. There was even a Peace Corps volunteer stationed here a while ago.

In passport control, I wondered if the man behind the counter who looked at my photo remembered the war. It had been thirty five years since it happened. Just like anyone who remembered the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, you would have to be older than forty to remember it. That’s almost two generations who have grown up never having lived through it. I was sure that I was going to meet people who remembered the war, and that I was going to be embarrassed to explain that I was tourist visiting from America. You know, that country that caused the death of nearly five million Vietnamese people? Sorry about that. It all happened before I was born.

When I stepped past the customs area, I was in Vietnam. Suddenly everyone on the street was wearing cone shaped hats, and I felt like I was in an Oliver Stone movie. The fields were all green with plentiful irrigation works, and everyone riding a motorcycle was wearing a helmet shaped like one used for batting in American baseball. Sometimes the seat covers of the moto matched the design on the helmet. Thus, my first impression of Vietnamese people was made for their fiendish color coordination.

The bus dropped me off at Pham Ngu Lao, the backpacker’s area with enough bars, hostels, pizza parlors, drug peddling moto drivers, and prostitutes to make any traveler feel at home. With my backpack, I walked and tripped over the feet of many Vietnamese café dwellers as I scanned the street for an inexpensive hotel. Stopping inside one named Hotel 79, the lady behind the desk barked a friendly “One room with fan, eight dollars!” I took the room on the top floor, and she took my passport to hold behind the desk. To make a fuss about that would be useless; All hotel owners in Vietnam are required by law to hold your passport and report the information as to who is staying there to the local police.

The Hotel was not the best place I found, but I was out during most of the day anyway and I just needed a place to sleep in. Besides, there a little balcony down the hall from me where I could sit at night and peer into people’s apartments as they played cards with each other or sat on their beds. It was cool on that balcony too, and I looked at the skyline some nights and thought about where the hell I was.

Saigon, Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City. There were people and chaos in every direction. The techniques I used for crossing the street in Cambodia worked here as well, but with so much more traffic it was a little more difficult. I walked near the Saigon river during that first late afternoon I was there, and an old lady with a heavy Chinese bicycle helped me cross the street. Here is what I imagine she said to me.

“You need to cross the street? Okay let’s cross the street together. Wait for it...now go! Don’t rush! Hold out your hand like this, palm in front. That’s how you indicate to cars to slow down.”

I thanked her in French, and she smiled.

Thin, tall, concrete houses lined the streets, and noodle stands were abundant in every direction. Everywhere I looked I seemed to see more and more people. I took a walk near the Hotel Continental and The Caravel Hotel, both famous for different reasons. The terrace bar at the Continental, so famously mentioned in The Quiet American, is no longer there, and Tu Do (Freedom) street has been renamed to Dong Khoi (General Uprising). The entire neighborhood was also littered with Cartier, Longines, Gucci, and other high end boutique stores that made me feel very poor simply being in their presence. This was too much to handle. I wandered over back towards one of the main avenues near the bus station. In the noodle shop, I wolfed down my first bowl of Pho. The thick noodles came to me in a steaming bowl with thin slices of chicken. It was incredibly good, and I was incredibly hungry. Somehow in the heated light of a city in twilight I found my way back to the hotel. The shower and slumber did me good, but the bed was hard and I woke up the next day more eager to get going and see the city rather than get more rest.

Through the streets, shops, and women in conical hats selling goldfish, I suddenly found myself standing in front of the Reunification Palace. While the large building was certainly palatial, the truth is that it did not always have the “reunification” part of its name. In the old days of war and countries that acted like dominoes, this was the home of the South Vietnamese president. Like any corrupt regime backed by the largess of American power, it was equipped with lavish dining rooms, meeting halls, movie theaters, map rooms, and other places of importance. It also smelled like my old elementary school.

In the war remnants museum, the full scale of human suffering during wartime was on display. There were artifacts from the My Lai massacre, photographs of people suffering from Agent Orange birth defects, rifles, guns, tanks. In a special corner, the well where Senator Robert Kerry killed an entire family was on display. On the second floor of the building, a collection of photographs detailed the war from its beginning to end. A plaque in a glass case read, “To the people of Vietnam, I was wrong, I am sorry,” and with it were a bronze star, the gold star, and several purple hearts. Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope was on sale in the gift shop.

Lunch was a steamed clay pot of rice, green peppers corn, mushrooms, and pork at a restaurant named Coffee Cup. I was surprised by the inexpensiveness of the place given its decor. The second floor was dark and insulated from the outside glare, and there were oil paintings on the walls. A fountain was seen in a park beyond the window, and I felt a little underdressed. Cole Porter was on the stereo singing “Night and Day,” and I ate while looking at the men and women climbing up the staircase in business attire. Yes, I was the only foreigner in the place, and I was indeed attracting stares. But this is how my life usually is, so what did that matter?

In the afternoon, I strolled over to the green spaces hidden inside the Jade Emperor pagoda and the Botanical Gardens and Zoo. The sun was bearing down a little more now than earlier, and I spent an hour or two sitting underneath a giant tree in the gardens. The animals were on display, but there is something very sad about seeing a caged tiger pacing up and down inside of its cell.

Around four o’clock I was in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. How funny was it to see a Notre Dame, in Saigon in all places! I went inside, but I was disappointed to find that the place lacked any sort of character other than depictions of Jesus as an Asiatic. It was very Norman, and, as a matter of course, very boring.

In the old French post office, a giant portrait of Ho Chi Minh hung above the wooden counters of incoming and outgoing mail. A local man buying postcards told me that the girl working behind the desk wanted to know how old I was, but was too shy to ask. The three of us started laughing, and I almost responded to her in Khmer but caught myself just in time to say it in English. She turned out to be very pleasant, and gave me precise instructions as to how to mail my postcards to America. Another walk on the Dong Khoi happened but only because it was on my way home. In the fading twilight, couples danced in the boulevard pavilions and the sat close to each other on their disengaged motorcycles.

At a table near a busy intersection, I watched the motorcycles roll by as the waitresses in blue Tiger Beer uniforms served the patrons and ate the Vietnamese version of Lok Lak (The Cambodians say the dish is Chinese in origin, but the Cambodian version has more sauce and is therefore better)

I did not plan on going to see the Cu Chi tunnels on the trip, but because the tour included a trip to the Cao Dai temple I decided to go. Most of the day was spent on the bus with our guide Minh. “Easy name to remember, yes? Like Ho Chi Minh!” Minh smiled, but never laughed at any of his own jokes. He had been an interpreter for the 101st airborne division during the war. Now he took people on tours to the former guerrilla bases. “History first, business second,” was the mantra he kept repeating.

The bus ride to Tanyin allowed me to reread some passages that Graham Greene had written about Caodaism. “Caodaism, the invention of a Cochin civil servant, was a synthesis of the three religions. The Holy See was at Tanyin. A pope and female cardinals. Prophecy by planchette. Saint Victor Hugo. Christ and Buddha looking down from the roof of the Cathedral on a Walt Disney fantasia of the East, dragons and snakes in Technicolor.”

Sure enough, the scene in the main hall of the Cao Dai temple was a spectacle. The foreigners wandered around the balconies while the devotees of the temple performed a ceremony and sang for our entertainment. Motionless dragons circled around pink columns, and a gong rang every few minutes to let the congregation to lean forward on their knees and touch their heads to the floor in Muslim fashion. A choir of teenage girls dressed in the immaculate sang to the accompaniment of a small group of instruments. A painting of Jesus with Victor Hugo and Buddha was somewhat comforting, for the former is usually seen bereft of company. I wondered if the followers of Cao Dai, with their robes and cloth hats, thought us as strange as we thought them. “In the Caodaist faith all truths are reconciled, and truth is love,” said the Bishop to Thomas Fowler. Perhaps someone’s dinner is reconciled by the income of the tourist visit.

In Cu Chi, I crawled through the old guerilla tunnels and toured the Vietnamese equivalent of Colonial Williamsburg. While it was all very informative, I thought that the animatronic robots which were making homemade weapons was a bit too much. Graham Greene wrote that the Vietnamese could turn a tail pipe into a mortar, and I did not quite realize that that was entirely possibly until I saw the robots doing it. While the other tourists took pictures of the tiger traps and homemade bombs, I left those alone. The Vietnamese taught the Khmer Rouge how to make those awful things, and they used them in Angkor Chum during the 1970’s. Kroo Sambok told me once how they used to trick people into walking into them.

At the end of the tour, we watched a video about the “heroes of Cu Chi.” Among them was someone named “Thia,” who “despite being cute and shy managed to blow up many tanks, earning her the American killer award.” When the movie stopped, the logo of the DVD player popped up on the screen. It could have been Samsung, or Toshiba, or some brand like that, but it had to be California USA electronics. I laughed. It was incredibly inappropriate, but I laughed anyway. American consumerism conquers all!

I needed to get out of Saigon, so I caught the early bus that went to Dalat up in the central highlands. Out the window, there were multiple skinny houses with statues of the Virgin Mary displayed prominently on the top floor. The girl sitting next to me was from Vienna, Austria, but from the tan on her long lovely legs I would never have guessed that.

In Dalat, I was confronted on every corner by a motorcycle gang named “The Easy Riders.” They aggressively promised tours of the countryside and transportation to various towns around Dalat, and displayed themselves in leather and gleaming metal perched on Chinese motorcycles. How difficult it was to tell them that they frightened me, and that I did not need their services.

The air in the hills of Dalat was lovely and cool. I would have stayed there if there was something more to do. The lake, a central attraction, was dried up during that time of year, and the town itself offered little more than an old French train station and a luxurious art deco Sofitel. The latter was an art deco former residence of last emperor of Vietnam.

In the concrete market near the lake, I took a stroll among the strawberry and flower vendors to the delight of my olfactory senses. The girl who sold me a kilo of the former had an old uncle who had no arms and no legs. He sat on a mat dressed in coat, scarf, hat, and glasses. There was a feeling in my stomach that somehow we were responsible for that.

The morning after I arrived, there was much lounging to do in a coffee shop while talking with the owner and watching the students roll by on their bicycles. The students wore blue trousers, blue sweaters, white shirts, and shoes; this was much more stylish than their Cambodian cousins. The woman, Tu Anh, who owned the shop chatted with me in English and told me that she hated leaving Dalat for any place else.

“Why?” I asked her.

“Anyplace else is too hot,” she told me. That was a good enough reason as any.

In Nha Trang I stared at the tourists, slept, and sunned myself like a cat after the meal. Boutiques, backpackers, and bloated resort hotels lined the beach. I hate backpackers. Yes, I am tourist when I travel to other places and I do carry a backpack. But a backpacker is a totally different breed. The only requirements to be one are as follows: one must own a ridiculously overstuffed backpack, dress incredibly badly and inappropriately, have an obnoxious attitude, and must have a propensity for drink; thus making them more obnoxious.

And so I found myself mixed in among these people in a beach resort town where The Sheraton Hotel looked like it had a flying saucer on top of its roof, and the Sofitel owned its own island.

Sitting on the beach, one could look at the island across the bay or the hills in the surrounding area. It almost reminded me of Cannes, only without the casinos and an abundance of the elderly. A visit to an old Cham temple and the National Aquatic museum kept me occupied when I was not sitting in ocean side cafés or swimming. When I was ready to leave, I discovered that the only transportation services going north were leaving at night. Upon booking myself for the night train to Hué, I found a deserted spot underneath a palm tree and lounged there for most of the day. A bookseller sold me a photocopied edition of Catch-22, and when dusk came I moved myself down the beach closer to the taxi stands. What a bizarre sight I must have been; a white foreigner sitting alone on a beach with a big blue backpack. A student came up to me and asked if she could speak English with me. I invited her to sit, and she peppered me with various questions that most students of English ask. It was also a chance to compare and contrast Vietnamese students with the Cambodian type, and I managed to get off a few questions of my own. In a moment of epicurean curiosity, I also asked her if she often ate Vietnamese equivalent of pro hok (fish paste). The student made a face that suggested “Ew!” as well as maybe “how on earth do you know what that is?” I said to her that I was making my way up the coast from Saigon, and she said she had never been to Ho Chi Minh City.

On the night train from Nha Trang, I slept on a fold out bed in a compartment of six people. I was the only foreigner, and I was very thankful for that. There was an elderly married couple, as well as several gentlemen. They all tried out their English, and I did my best to tell them where I was from as well as where I was going. They explained how to pull down the folding bunk, and I drifted off to sleep to the sounds of snoring and the rumbling of the tracks beneath us. In the morning, I could see through the window rows of steep mountains covered in lush vegetation sloping down towards wide mouthed bays. Wooden boats with fishing nets floated along the edges of the water. We rolled through tunnels and always along the edges of cliffs. When I had climbed out of my bunk, I sat by old man in a gray cardigan who asked me that most wonderful question, “Parlez-vous français?” We smiled at each other, and immediately apologized to one another for our poor pronunciation and usage of grammar. I explained who I was, where I was traveling from, and he explained it to the others in Vietnamese. The old man in the cardigan introduced himself as Laîn, and said it meant “The Forest.” The man asked me if I was afraid of traveling in Vietnam, and I replied that I had had no problems at all. I asked him what he thought of Cambodia, and he confessed that he knew only that it was very hot. We said our goodbyes at the train station when I alighted there.

In Hué, I strolled along the shady riverside, visited Ho Chi Minh’s high school, and took a tour of some lovely summer homes that the Nguyen emperors happened to make their permanent residences when they died.

From Hué I took the train to Ninh Binh, away from the tourists and the backpackers. The landscape was wet, green, and lovely, like Cambodia at the height of the rainy season. The man I sat next to was British, and he let me know it from the minute I boarded the train. From the way he talked, it seemed as if he had very few chances to talk for the past few days. He worked for the transportation authority, and had some interesting comments on Ho Chi Minh City’s infrastructure. When dinner came, we ordered food from the meal cart that came around and ate at a tiny fold out table near the window.

In Ninh Binh, it was cold and rainy. I slept with a blanket on, and reveled in the warmth taken from a hot shower. I feared neither the heat of the sun, nor the exhaustion of being overheated. The tourists were far away, and I spent the day walking around the villages of Tam Coc. Limestone crags shot up from the wet and green rice fields, and the row boats along the river moved gracefully up and down the landscape. Several ladies stopped their bicycles and motorcycles to ask me in French where I was going and if I needed help getting there.

In the afternoon, I made a pilgrimage to the cathedral at Phat Diem. Graham Greene watched the French battle the Viet Minh from the bell tower during the first Indochinese war, and captured it in the beginning pages of Chapter Four of The Quiet American. The structure is still there; a mixture of eastern and western styles with a Christian emphasis. The statues of Christ are there, but the complex looks just like a Chinese pagoda with crosses on the tops of buildings; “More Bhuddist than Christian.” Waiting for the bus back to Ninh Binh, I laughed with an old woman who kept feeding me fried corn cakes because I told her I liked them so much.

From Ninh Binh I rode the local buses all the way past Hanoi along the coast past Hai Phong to Ha Long Bay. The driver stopped at almost every corner, and worked the horn almost as much as he worked the gears. At a concrete rest stop, he told me how to eat my pineapple slices dipped in rock salt and chili peppers. Cambodians do the same for mangoes, but I could not figure out a way to communicate that with him.

In the morning, I went on a tour of the islands in the bay among the slowly lifting fog. A couple from the UK on the boat kept saying, “But we just left Scotland!” I could not have asked for better weather. When the tour was over, I caught a bus back to Hanoi and went out with my new found friends to try to local beer. The pale ale was called Beer Hoi, and was 4,000 Vietnamese dong per glass (somewhere around $0.20). The three of us sat in a small well lit alley next to old Vietnamese men. They were also drinking Beer Hoi and smoking out of long water pipes made of bamboo.

When it came to the last day in Vietnam, I was extremely tired. Hanoi with all of its art boutiques, art galleries, and government buildings did not interest me as much as the frenzy of Ho Chi Minh City. Men in woolen caps, cardigans, and sandals strolled along lake, and wedding pictures were taken and taken again. Of course, there were the usual people in the youth hostel to eat with and explain why it was that I was living in Asia. I love explaining what the Peace Corps is to foreigners. They think it is absolutely bizarre that anyone in the western world should live the way I do.

The night before my 6:00AM flight to Ho Chi Minh, I slept on a marble slab in the airport until 3:45 AM. A large man with a machine gun told me I could sleep downstairs but not where I was. I make it a point not to argue with large men armed with machine guns.

In between airports, I suddenly began to imagine what it would be like fly home to America. But that will not be for another few months.

Monday

Waffles or fried bananas for breakfast? I can't decide. Both of which are sold right in front of my house, but the fried bananas have a lot of grese on them. I eat too much grease already. Too much grease, too much sugar. I'm going to get some waffles and take them over to Si Noonan's restaurant where I'll order some coffee and sip that while I eat them. Am I out of jam? I'm out of jam. I'll have to put that on my list when I go into town next.

Tuna fish sandwhich with lettuce and tomotoes bought from the market. Bread is a little stale today. I wonder how long ago it was baked. Does Mr. Breadman check to see if the bread is fresh? Who knows. I feel awfully full. Maybe the school is open so I can go lie down in there under the fan. Or maybe I can just take a shower. I didn't think I could ever sweat so much making a sandwich.

Fried eggs and watermellon for dinner. The watermellon is getting to be out of season. Someone told me they thought it was the wierdest thing just to put slices of watermellon on their rice and eat it like that. It seems like the most natural thing in the world to me.

Tuesday

Left over bread from yesterday, peanut butter, and an apple. That at least sounds healthy doesn't it?

Fried noodles with beef for lunch. The noodles are a little hard, but the meat is good. More grease. I feel like I'm always eating grease. Bought a whole snak of bananas and brought them with me to school in the afternoon to eat as desert. All the teacher's wanted one. They left me with three or four. Just as well, bananas go bad pretty fast if you don't eat them all.

Stir fry with peppers for dinner.

Wednesday

Went down to Pouk to pick up some paperwork the Peace Corps sent up from Phnom Penh. Managed to eat five pancakes, two eggs, and some hashbrowns at the house of the volunteers there.

Pork and bitter mellon soup. I did not eat all of my rice.

Thursday

Could not sleep at all last night. Terribly hot. No breakfast, just big glass of iced coffee from Si Nooan.

Hard boiled egg sandwich with tomatoes and a little bit of olive oil. Terrible heat cramps. Small glass of saltwater should help that. Mango for desert. It's just about mango season. I can see lots of them on the trees.

Rice porridge for dinner. Host Dad asked me if I liked eating rice porridge. I said yes, to be polite, but I'm indifferent to it. "We ate a lot of rice porridge during Pol Pot." I really did not expect that. We talked a little about how much they ate every day. It was maybe two small bowls of watery rice porridge.

Friday

Waffles again.

Fried tofu at Si Nooan's. I can't remember the last time she had tofu.

Pork and bitter mellon soup.

To read Nate Thayer’s description of an embattled Angkor Chum as it was in 1995 is shocking because so much development has happened since then. With the construction of roads, bridges, schools, health centers, and an ACELEDA bank, the area around the district center is changing rapidly. While markers near Bott village indicate the presence of mines, it seems that organizations such as the HALO trust and CMAC have cleared most of the ordinance in the area. Despite the outside world’s increasing encroachment on Angkor Chum, the area remains, as it always has been, a rural farming community. This is something that is not likely to change, but whether or not the demographics of Angkor Chum will remain the same is doubtful. More and more people have left the district since the year 2000, and it is likely that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future.

There are many incentives for people to leave Angkor Chum. During the war, many people started leaving the area because of the violence and extortion suffered at the hands of both government soldiers and the Khmer Rouge. Today it is more likely that they will leave because of jobs. Events in the 1990s left Cambodia’s economy in shambles. When relations with Thailand were normalized, many people started heading across the border to the north looking for better wages. There are currently reported to be as many as 200,000 Cambodians living and working in Thailand today in fields such as construction, farming, and fishing. Despite calls from Prime Minister Hun Sen for these migrant laborers to return home, Thailand will probably continue to attract workers from Cambodia as long as there are jobs available. This is even so despite wide spread allegations of abuse and numerous stories floating around in the press about mistreatment at the hands of Thai employers.

One man named Mr. Yao, who is from Angkor Chum and worked as a construction worker abroad, reported that he could earn up to $300 per month in Thailand. This is a lot of money considering that Cambodia’s per capita income floats at around $177. It is easy to imagine that many people hear stories of how much money one can make in Thailand and resolve themselves to go and seek their fortune. Consider the example of a young man whom the author’s of Towards Understanding spoke to about the upcoming future. “Last week I met a young boy about 18 years old . I asked him ‘What do you think about your future?’ He had no idea. The only thing he was thinking about was, if possible, borrow money from his neighbor and go to work in Thailand.” A simple story like this can probably be repeated in any area across the country where jobs are scarce and the only hope of employment is to go abroad. Even Mr. Yao stated that the reason why he left Angkor Chum in the first place was because there were no jobs. Some of administrators at Angkor Chum High School claim that people who stop going to school before grade twelve are reported to be working in Thailand.

They may stop and go to Thailand in order to support their family because they are very poor. So they must stop. Sometimes I ask after students. I ask, “Why did he stop studying?” They tell me his family is very poor. And right now he is in Thailand. I always ask them.

While Pol Pot did much for the fragmentation of Cambodian society, it seems that current economic forces are doing much the same. In looking at this example, it is also impossible to ignore in the difference between the current generation and the previous. Only thirty years ago, shiftless young men like these were given guns, taught to hate their own people, and endure relentless hardship during years of conflict. Now they carry farming tools on their backs instead of rifles.

The promise of going elsewhere may seem even more appealing in the years to come. By simple observation, more and more farming equipment are appearing on the roads in the fields. With mechanized farming on the rise, the demand for manual labor will go down and more people will be unemployed. In addition to this, it is unlikely that any new professional jobs will be created given the rural and isolated nature of the district. The professional class of people who work in the bank, NGO’s, and health services are already imported from outside areas to work in this area. It is easy to see why this is so because the absence of educational institutions prevented people from this area developing into the kinds of professionals needed for those kinds of jobs. Whether or not Angkor Chum high school will one day produce candidates for professional jobs is unknown, but it is difficult to say when. For right now, at least, there are very few opportunities after school. One teacher had this to say:

After the students leave school, it is very difficult to find a job. This month, a lot of students completed the form to be a teacher. They need fifty teachers, but many more students applied than can get the job. Maybe 600 people applied. I ask them why they want to be a teacher, “because I cannot find another job!” But this is the only way for them to find a job. ACELEDA? No. NGO? No. Hospital? No. They only need three or five policemen. So they must apply to be a teacher.

For a high school student graduating today, the opportunities look bleak for professional employment in Angkor Chum and will probably leave the district when their studies are finished in order to seek their fortunes elsewhere. How Angkor Chum will continue to develop and change remains to be seen. Given all that it has survived during the last thousand or so years, it seems likely that it will continue to endure as it always has.

Last week, the 12th grade students undertook their final year national exams. The subjects included a variety of ones that they have studied over the past four years: Chemistry, Physics, Khmer, Geography, English, Morals, and maybe one or two others that I forget at the moment. The testing period lasted three days from Monday to Wednesday. On Thursday the teachers graded the exams, and by Friday the results were posted on the announcement board. Out of the 81 students that took the exams, only one student did well enough to pass completely. Statistically speaking, the results indicated a 99% failure rate. The one student who passed is in one of my English classes, and I offered my congratulations to her when I learned who it was that had actually passed. Surprisingly enough, she did not seem in least affected by her success when I spoke to her. She and Mr. Vannak carried on their usual banter when I saw the two of them in the office that morning. Passing the exam meant as little to her as failing it.

Was I surprised at these results? Not really. I am actually impressed by how badly they did. I knew that education was something that the students did not value very much, but this shows a naked, adamant rejection of it all together. How different they are from any other students I have ever known or met, how they contrast wildly with my own experiences in education. While I have obsessed over exams during my entire life from 4th grade math tests to the recent GRE bonanza in Singapore, most of the students I teach will never know this at all. And yet, why should they? They will go on in their life, planting rice, raising cattle, getting married, having babies, and giving offerings to the monks before they die. Why should they ever know the anxiety of taking important test after important test when they can live a life that is simple and uniform in its identity to others?

However, you have to realize what this means to the people who stay and work here. When Mr. Nou and I taught our classes during that morning when the exam results were posted, the students in the classrooms were few and far between. They were also showing their usual reluctance to participate at all. As usual, the two of us resorted to peer pressure and intense coaching in order to get any of them to do anything. It was exhausting, and the two of us walked out of the classroom feeling tired and a little disheartened. Mr. Nou spoke up "Why do we do this? Why do we teach and work hard if the students are going to not pay attention and fail when they take their exams?"

It is always a difficult question to ask, but before I said my usual answer of "We teach because that's our job and responsibility," I realized that Mr. Nou's entire life's work is most likely going to be teaching these students. He will have to go on and teach class after class of lifeless students who do not want to be there, while I will go off to America and pursue other things. A lifetime of teaching English in Angkor Chum. I felt terrible at the thought of this, and I said nothing.

I am not sure if Mr. Nou or any of the other teachers think about that, but if they do I can understand the wanting to numb themselves from reality. If I were in their position, I would constantly be thinking of escape. But then again, I do not posses a powerful sense of fatalism as they do.

But I really do hope some of them escape.

I suppose that there is an alcoholic in everyone's life at some point. The one in mine is a Khmer teacher who will be henceforth referred to as "Kroo SoPiup." There are two different modes in which I usually see this guy. In the morning, he hangs out with me and the other teachers as we wait beneath the trees for morning assembly to be over. He is bleary eyed, and is usually sucking down his first "Luxury" cigarette of the day. He is about my height and sports a black adolescent mustache, but to say he looks unhealthy is a gross understatement. He claims he is twenty nine, but just by looking at his face I would have to put his age at forty something. When morning assembly is over, Kroo SoPiup marches off to class with the rest of us. I usually do not see him until after lunch, and this is when he is just staggeringly drunk. This is the usual conversation I have with him at this hour.

"Kroo SoPiup! Are you drunk?"

"No...I...just drank (hic!) six cans of beer."

"You drank six cans of beer over lunch? How are you still standing?"

"I am...(hic!) very strong! (Laughs) [Cultural note: Cambodians have a formidable connection between drinking large amounts of alcohol and strength]

"How the hell are you going to get through your next class?"

"Maybe I will not teach today...maybe I will go to sleep."

"Kroo SoPiup! If you keep this up you're going to collapse when you're forty!)

"N0! I am too strong to die." (Joey Ramone said the same thing. He died in 2001)

The worst is when he gets a hold of this toy air gun (it is not a real air gun, just a wooden thing with some tubing designed to make a popping noise) that someone brought back from Thailand. He starts strutting around school with it, shouting at people, and singing. You have to remember that he is not dangerous, just extremely annoying.

I keep wanting to find a picture of a diseased liver so I can point out to him everything that he is doing to himself, but I know that would just make him laugh.

Yet, he is not a disgrace as some would call it. He is more like the town fool or the office drunk; someone who makes you laugh and makes you feel less bad about your own vices because theirs are far worse.

In contrast to this guy, my favorite teacher at the school is Kroo Nak. This is a guy who represents the best future of Cambodia. Organized, stern, honest, and productive, he works in the office as an administrator. And I am pretty sure that the schools runs solely because he cares about his work, he does not drink to excess, and because he has a wife and kids.

With the two forces of Kroo Nak and Kroo Sopiup working against each other, I am more than confident that Kroo Nak will triumph and will one day remake the school in his image. At least I hope.

My computer died recently. I know that it was old, that it was bound to break down sometime, and that I should not have grieved for it as much as I did. But I did. The VSO volunteer from India who is now working in Angkor Chum briefly asked me if I was going to have a funeral for the thing when I went over to her house for dinner the other night. As tempting as it was to have some sort of ceremony for it, I did not do such a thing. I will miss it. It was like a typewriter that sang to me, and happened to remember all the photos that I took. It will be remembered as an addition to the list of things that have broken down completely or have been ruined since I arrived in this country: at least three pairs of pants, socks, t-shirts (Cambodian t-shirts last much longer than I expected them to) an wind up radio, the ipod, one large mosquito net (eaten by mice), two metal water bottles, some degree of sanity, as well as countless food items eaten by ants. Volunteers often gripe about how nothing lasts in this country, and it is really true. This is especially poignant for clothes. No matter how much you scrub the sweat stains out of your shirts they are still going to be there. Of course, you can then replace shirts with others you find in the market. Pants are a little harder. You have to get them tailored in the market, and there is no telling how long it will be before they start to come apart. Nothing lasts.

The weather is not the same as it used to be. For a month or two it was cool in the mornings, enough for class to continue as scheduled and work to be done at a normal pace. Now, this is no longer. When the rains came, the sun dried us and made all that was green grow. Now it bakes. It feels as if the devil himself has turned up the thermostat. The fields where green rice shoots once proudly stood are now brown, empty, dead, gnawed upon by cows and burned black with soot. The farmers set fire to their fields now in the hopes that something will rise from the ashes during the monsoons. The fires run wild across the fields, burning smoking, stopping only for the roads made of sand. We used to have mud in those roads.

There is no escape. We are trapped inside an oven. Iced drinks, cold showers, naps in the afternoon. There is desire for movement, but movement causes sweating and we are all tired of feeling salt down our bodies. The wind that once carried a cooling breeze now licks the face and neck with its hot breath mixed with gritty dust. It is best to be avoided at all costs. How can one possibly expect to get anything done living like this? The sweet stands all crowd during the evening; the people wait for their bowls of iced gelatin and fruit shakes.

"Hot today."

"Hot everyday."

"Another glass?"

"We need more ice!"

I hate the sun. In the morning I cannot rise without it, and when it sleeps I slumber out of its influence. It is there everywhere I go, blinding, baking, brilliant. In Africa, I felt alive whenever I was out of its way. Here, there is nothing I can do without it. I ache for rain. Rain rain dark and cloudy for days at a time. The water filling up the cracked canals, the land turning green. Why did you leave us alone since October monsoon? Got stuck somewhere over the Himilayas did you?

How inconsiderate. Your arrival is greatly anticipated.

"Hi, Mr. Nou! How did the test go this morning?"

"The students...they stare and put their pens in their mouths."

For the past few months, I have been studying for the GRE’s in the hopes that I will one day enter graduate school. With school slowing down this month, it seemed that late February would be an ideal time to take them. It would also require me to leave the country, as the GRE’s are not offered in Cambodia. My choices to take the test were Bangkok, Saigon, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore. Two of these places were places that I had already visited, with one I was saving for a future trip to Vietnam. Naturally my choice fell upon Singapore, a place that I would have otherwise never visited. I suppose I did not prepare very much for this trip as well as I should have. To be honest, my head was so pre-occupied with geometry, critical essay writing techniques, and vocabulary words that I could barely comprehend the fact that I was getting on a plane. Somehow I managed to fly there, find the testing center, take the test, and fly back all within a matter of days. Looking back on it, it feels as if I was awake for four nights straight.

On the morning of the 17th of February, I left my hotel in Phnom Penh in a taxi heading for Pochentong Airport. The driver was asking me questions about where I was from, and I gave him the perfunctory answers that I give everyone. Then he started going off about politics, and I could barely comprehend what he was saying. It did not help that this was four in the morning, and that my brain was not awake enough to load the foreign language program. After arriving, I checked in the Jetstar Airways and went over to the airport tax booth to pay the standard $25 in cold hard cash. I have always wanted to say some pithy remark to the people who run this booth, but I know my mouth can get me in a lot of trouble. The airport tax is a bribe, but there is nothing I can do about it. I see people demanding bribes every day, why should this be any different? The flight boarded at 7:30, and the stewardesses in black and orange dresses welcomed us on board. I wonder if they let anyone borrow their uniforms for a Halloween party. The flight only lasted an hour and a half, but I fell asleep during the middle of it.

Touched down in Singapore, and made my way to the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit). Their subway system seemed as modern as any of the ones I have been in. To buy a ticket you have go to a machine that features a touch screen computer and several ports for money and tickets. First you have to select on the computer what kind of ticket you would like, and then it shows you a map of the subway network. The computer then asks you where you would like to go, and upon pressing a selection it tells you how much money you have to put in. If you buy a single ticket, you pay a $1 deposit on the plastic green card, which is redeemable at any ticket machine after your journey is complete. It seems a little silly to put a deposit on a subway ticket, but I suppose it makes those green plastic cards reusable ad infinitum.

After transferring at Outram Park station, I followed the northeast line to Farrer Park. I did not have enough money on the green plastic card to leave the station, and the man working at the desk helped me sort through a pile of coins in my pocket until I produced the right amount. He asked me where I was from, and I said I was living in Cambodia. "Really?" he said. "Isn't that place really dangerous?" I told him the war was over and that it was quite safe to visit. If only Cambodians knew that their country was famous for mass killings and war, and not Angkor Wat.

The youth hostel I stayed at, The Mitraa, was close to the station in a neighborhood of old Chinese houses and apartment buildings. I checked into the hostel, put my stuff in the locker next to my bed, and took a shower in the shared bathroom down the hall. It was a fairly comfortable place, with six beds to a room and free wifi. The people I met there over the next couple of nights were fairly friendly and from a variety of different places. I met four people from the UK, one Australian, and two Americans.

After showering and getting my bearings a little, I went downtown to Clarke Quay to see a little something of the city. Tall buildings surrounded me, mixed in with gigantic shopping malls, and a comfortable breeze that come up from the river. It was very pleasant to walk around, particularly in the evening when an array of colored lights lit up the banks of the river and a white bridge that spanned the easy width of the river. It was also remarkable to see westerners walk around in business suits running to and from important high paying jobs, instead of the usual Cambodian fare of backpackers or creepy looking ex-pats. I felt embarrassed just to be standing next to them on the subway in my dirty hand washed clothing. (“Oh no, is that woman looking at my shoes or her shoes? I should have gotten the damn things washed or polished before I came here. It’s not my fault! You have to believe me. I just walked out of the jungle. I’m in the Peace Corps!”)

Not only were there adult ex-pats there, but also kids as well. To be specific, I saw American teenagers running around the city. They looked extremely well dressed, and polished, which makes sense. I imagine that their parents work in the island’s gigantic skyscrapers. I ate at a Chinese eating house named BK’s Eating House that evening, beef pepper stir fry and an iced tea.

The next morning I went to Starbucks and studied for the test, which I had scheduled for the following day. At some moment after I arrived, ordered a gigantic iced concoction, and started studying with my books, I wrote down in my notebook, “Am I really in Starbucks, studying for a test?” It also dawned on me just how easy I had slipped back into modern life, how easy it was to fall back into safe familiar pace of a giant city.

After lunch, I decided that I felt prepared enough to take this test, and that there was nothing I could do now that I had not already reviewed during the last three months. I went downtown to Raffles Place to go see some museums, thinking that it was an educational thing to do the afternoon before a test. It was. First I went down to Raffles Place, which features a statue of Sir Stanford Raffles himself as well as several museums. The first one I visited was the Asian civilizations museum, which featured many interesting exhibits about Asia in addition to one specifically devoted to the history of Singapore. When I was finished there I walked over to another museum named the Perankan, which featured an exhibit I had read about in the International Herald Tribune. It had to do with the ancient Indian epic named the Ramayana, and featured different kinds of artwork associated with the epic including a marvelous array of shadow puppets.

When I was finished touring for the day, I headed back to the hostel. A college student from the UK had just checked into the dorm that day, and the two of us found dinner at an Indian restaurant down the street. I ordered the Chicken Tikka Masala, he ordered a plate of samosas, a curry, and another Chicken Tikka. He complained that he had nothing but airplane food for the past day, and that he was on his way to Australia. I explained who I was, and what I was doing in Singapore. I tried to explain what the GRE’s were to him, and he casually dismissed them as being “just absolute bollocks.” We went back to the hostel, where we met another Englishman who started talking about his recent expedition to Australia. He said that he had flown over the whole thing, and that during the middle of the trip he looked out the window and thought that the plane had not moved in its position at all. “There is f@#k-all in the middle of the Australia,” he told us. Then the language arguments started. “Bloody yanks stole our language.” “Limeys gave it to us fair and square.” I had to explain where Limey comes from. It is not effective as “yank.” The Englishmen started going off about how Charles is a boring prince, and that the crown really should be passed to Harry. “He’s a proper prince, just like olden times!” Somewhere in this conversation I murmured, “How strange it must be to have a monarchy,” before I nodded off to sleep.

Next morning were the GRE’s. Found the testing center in the science center in East Jurong. Checked in, emptied my pockets, watch, put them in a locker and entered a room full of cubicled computers at nine o’clock. The next thing I knew it was 1:30, and I was done with the test. I did fairly well, considering all the studying I had done in the last few months. The only thing that went wrong was during the math portion of the test. I was working intently on one problem, and I had not noticed that a woman was coming around and collecting used scratch paper. While I was working at my desk, the woman leaned over me to get the paper. It happened that she was a sizable woman who wore a hijab. Out of the corner of my eye, the only thing I could see was this huge black thing coming towards me. It startled me for a moment, but I recovered enough to give the woman the scratch paper and get back to work. The rest of the day I was brain dead. I went back, showered, took a nap, and finally took a stroll along the lighted carnival fanfare of the Esplanade before retiring for the evening. A Chinese youth orchestra was giving a free performance near the main concert hall, and I stuck around long enough to hear them play. At one point, they featured a piece of music evoking a battle between a stalwart ox and a ferocious tiger. My best guess is that neither of them won, but I really could not say for sure.

Saturday was my final day in the city, and I endeavored to see as much of it as possible. After sleeping late and breakfasting with one of the Englishmen (His grandmother was American, who knew?) I went out to see the Chinese garden at the east end of the city, and walked around the carefully manicured plants and stones before heading back downtown to see the play I had bought a ticket for. The title of the performance was entitled “Invisibility/Breathing,” and was written by a Chinese author in Mandarin. A screen hanging down from the ceiling provided an English translation of the lines, not that it helped. The story revolved around a fisherman, a whore, and a poet who comes to live with the couple and periodically reads selections from western authors like Kafka and Dostoyevsky. Themes of restlessness in modern life and police brutality ran throughout the performance. It even went so far as to feature the execution of a mannequin on stage with an oversized double bladed axe. It was thoroughly bizarre, but interesting to some degree.

Following the performance, I went up to Orchard Road and browsed around the gigantic shopping centers until I stumbled upon a Border’s Books and Music. Oh books, wonderful expensive books how I love you. In Cambodia, we only have the cheap thrillers that tourists throw to us like the scraps of a meal. One of the lines from the play I saw kept spinning around in my head. “In the library I floated down the halls of the library, but the books would not speak to me. They were all full of dead men.” So many of them I could read, but I was still not done wandering the city. At Subway, I ate a chicken teriyaki sandwich and a giant cookie.

My flight left at six the next morning, which meant that I had to be at the airport at four and out of the hostel by three. So I decided to run off all the excitement of running around a city and stay up all night. I chatted with some Americans before I left. One was working in Kuala Lumpur as an English teacher, but he seemed rather too churlish to be pleasant company. The other was a delightful young lady from Kenya whose parents had emigrated from India during British colonial rule. She in turn had moved to America and became a pharmacologist and, among other things, a US citizen. She said that she had traveled for six months, staying in hostels and with distant family friends. I could not understand how she could keep that up for so long.

At three in the morning I made my way to airport, and wolfed down a hamburger from Burger King around four thirty before getting on the plane back to Phnom Penh. I then slept on the bus from the Penh back to Siem Reap and site.

I had done it. I had gone to Singapore, taken the GRE’s, gotten a good score, and made it back in one piece. Now I was very tired.

The Vietnamese Occupation

The Vietnamese invasion on December 25th 1978 marked the beginning of the end for Pol Pot’s regime. In the span of a few short months, most of Democratic Kampuchea’s soldiers were forced to retreat into hiding. They would have disbanded entirely if it were not for the help of the Thai military government, which fed and clothed Khmer Rouge soldiers in the areas just across the border from Cambodia. Arms from Chinese military aid enabled the Khmer rouge to become an effective fighting force by 1982. However, the presence of Vietnamese soldiers in Cambodia prevented them from making any significant military gains possible until 1989 when the Vietnamese withdrew.

In the wake of the invasion, the entire country was thrown into disarray. People moved across the country looking for family members or shelter in the Thai refugee camps located just across the border. The situation in the countryside was disastrous due to starvation and loss of life. Because so many men were killed during the fighting between the different factions or by Pol Pot’s purges, some districts contained families that were mostly headed by widows. While local villagers were once put in charge of their affairs, military officers who had defected to the Vietnamese in 1978 were forming a new government in Phnom Penh. Some of these people included Heng Samrin, Chea Sim, and Hun Sen.

Like the most of the country, the 1980’s were years of slow recovery for the region of Angkor Chum. The most significant event during this time was the birth of the actual district. Until 1987, the area now known as Angkor Chum was a part of the larger Pourk district. District offices were established on the site of the Khmer Rouge prison, a secondary school was also established on the site where the high school now stands.

If the 1980’s were mostly a peaceful time for Angkor Chum, the situation had certainly changed by 1989. With the Vietnamese withdrawal, the Khmer Rouge were becoming more active in making territorial gains. Both the Khmer Rouge and the Phnom Penh government resorted to conscripting soldiers from towns and villages as they saw fit. One schoolteacher vividly remembers what it was like to be thrust into military service.

"I remember when I came to live in Angkor Chum in 1989. I had a gun every night. During the day I was a teacher, but at night I was a soldier. I took the gun and walked around the school and the district. If I didn’t go on guard duty around the district, they would not give me any salary. So I had to teach and guard. It was very difficult to live."

Government service in that time also meant compulsory military service even if the person had no training. Even regular troops were only given the bare minimum needed to be able to function in combat. If conscription was not being practiced at this point in time, it certainly was later on.

Angkor Chum and UNTAC

The period in which the United Nations stepped in to run the 1993 elections in Cambodia was probably a very interesting time for people in Angkor Chum. Not only were they allowed to vote in the first free election in their country’s history, but they were able to witness foreign visitors for the first time. According to local accounts, the UNTAC personnel stationed here included a regiment of soldiers from Bangladesh, as well as smattering of UN workers with different nationalities. What these workers experienced here was probably a frightening experience to say the least. The Khmer Rouge, despite being members of a pact allowing the UN to administer elections, were boycotting the process. They sporadically attacked anyone involved with the UN, regardless of their nationality.

The experience that the UNTAC workers went through is documented in an American newspaper article written by Raymond Whittaker. It describes the UN mission through the eyes of a Norwegian woman named Kathrin Brendel. Much of the work that this woman was involved in was the effort to register voters before the election despite the best efforts of the Khmer Rouge, who frequently fired shells at the town and lay mines on the roads. In the article, Ms. Brendel describes how she frequently had to use the sandbagged bunker dug for her by the Bangladeshi troops stationed at Wat Char Chuk. While these soldiers were prepared to defend themselves, they could not attack the Khmer Rouge because they had signed on to participate in the elections. This meant these soldiers had to simply endure the attacks that the Khmer Rouge launched at the cost of injury or death. One eyewitness describes how this could be so.

I remember when the Khmer Rouge would attack the UNTAC soldiers stationed at the pagoda in the middle of the night, shelling and shooting at each other. There was one soldier who was injured. Roboh jongkah? The shelling came down near him, and blew his face off. Parts of his jaw were on a tree nearby. After the fighting stopped that night, a helicopter came down and took him away.

Despite the threat of violence, Ms. Brendel was brave enough to try to organize a meeting with the Khmer Rouge in an effort to start a dialogue. However, her pleas went unanswered.

Two specific events are of particular interest in this article. The first is the attack on the two UN vehicles, which many people in the town still remember. According to the weekly military info published in December 1992, a civilian police vehicle ran over a mine three kilometers south of the Angkor Chum district center. Two civilian police members were seriously injured. Another car suffered the same fate just ten kilometers away from where the first car was blown up, injuring three Indonesians and one Napalese. Many people in Angkor Chum remember this event including Mr. Chee-Ah Bun Too-An. He recounts what happened as “One mine ‘Boom!’ and a helicopter came down and took one person who was injured. And when the helicopter went up, another car came up from Siem Reap along the road, and that was blown up as well. They were taking pictures of the wreckage and damage caused by the mine.” While many people in the town remember the explosion, few know what happened to the people who were injured in the attack. A 1997 interview with Benny Widyono, who served as the head of UNTAC in Siem Reap, reveals what a harrowing situation it turned out to be:

"At one point, there was a mine incident involving civilian police from Tunisia and Indonesia, on the road to Angkor Chum, in which two police were badly wounded. My decision was whether to have their legs amputated in Siem Reap, where we had an Indian field hospital, or evacuate them to Phnom Penh. The Indonesian was still conscious and he didn't want to be amputated, so I went with him to Phnom Penh. The Indian doctors told me 'If he dies on the helicopter, its your responsibility'. When we arrived in Phnom Penh, the hospital here said the wounds are so bad he has to be evacuated to Bangkok, and finally he was amputated there. So there were some close calls."

Despite all of this violence, the elections seem to have proceeded without any hindrance. In the final week of registration, the voters in Angkor Chum coming forth in unprecedented numbers. People walked from as far away as fifteen miles to register for the election, allowing Ms. Brandal to add 500 names to the list. It is remarkable that under such savage threats of violence from the Khmer Rouge that people in Angkor Chum were willing to register at all. It is truly a testament to their courage.

The Battle of Angkor Chum: 1993 to 1997

For much of the 1990’s, Angkor Chum was the site of many different skirmishes between government soldiers and the Khmer Rouge. It was a period in which the KR disintegrated as a national movement, resulting in mass defections over to government forces. These defections would ultimately weaken the KR as an effective fighting force, and by the end of the decade the fighting would stop. Much of the violence done to the people of Angkor Chum was at the hands of both the Khmer Rouge as well as the government soldiers. Both sides practiced forced conscription, extortion, and destruction of property in an effort to cow the local people into helping them. The violence would ultimately lead many people to leave Angkor Chum in an effort to escape these two forces, with many people resettling in the neiboring district of Pourk. Most of the recorded information about the fighting in Angkor Chum comes from weekly UNTAC military reports as well as the Phnom Penh Post. While much of the information found in these sources is incredibly helpful, it is more than likely that other incidents went unlisted. What is compiled here should be viewed as only a partial account of the fighting in Angkor Chum.

The first recorded battle for the control of the district comes from the weekly UNTAC military report from May 15th to the 21st, 1993. The report states that Angkor Chum was attacked from three different directions on May 16th by both ground forces and artillery fire. The government forces (CPAF) tried to resist the attack, but the Khmer Rouge (NADK) managed to come within 500-700 of the district center. The CPAF ceded control over the main road leading to Siem Reap, and retreated to the district center due to lack of ammunition. The NADK attack continued the next day, in which they managed to capture the nearby Kouk Kbat and Ta Soam villages. The CPAF brought in reinforcements, bringing their total number to 220 soldiers, and launched a counter attack against NADK on May 19th. Using mobile rocket launchers and artillery fire, the CPAF were able to push back the NADK from the captured villages and reestablish control over the road to Varin District.

This pattern of attack and counter attack for the control of territory was repeated several times during the 1990’s. The Phnom Penh Post reported that on 17 August, 1993 CAF (government forces) had massed in the district capital of Angkor Chum in preparation for an attack to recapture the capital of Varin district. Col. Dang Sing and Col. Hou Saron were in charge of planning the attack, and predicted an easy victory. The two leaders estimated only 60 NADK soldiers of the Khmer Rouge division 912 opposed their forces, stating that the rest of the NADK forces had moved south of National Road 6 towards the Tonlé Sap. Col. Saron is quoted to have said, “We have enough resources to take Varin.” Whether this attack was successful or not is unknown.

In September of 1994, the Khmer Rouge launched major offenses in several provinces and captured a few districts in Siem Reap. According to Colonel Yang Vuthy, who was speaking at a press conference on September 28th, both the main army in the province and the neighboring district of Srey Snam were overrun during the attacks. On September 20th, the Khmer Rouge attacked positions 7 km east of Angkor Chum. Government soldiers killed one guerilla and wounded two others in the raid. The Khmer Rouge were reported to have burned down 14 houses in captured villages and killed oxen during the attacks.

These attacks verify what was known about the senior Khmer Rouge leadership at the time. By 1994, the government in Phnom Penh had declared the Khmer Rouge “illegal” and had resumed military operations against them. The Khmer Rouge had also lost foreign support, and were now fighting for their very survival. Citing the need to create a dictatorship of the peasantry, they hoped to lay the groundwork for “victory” and recreate the conditions of the armed struggle against Lon Nol. The movement abandoned their capitalist efforts that fed their existence throughout much of the 1980’s, and in doing so pushed thousands of people out. The prospect of mandatory poverty and renewed socialism encouraged soldiers to defect to the other side.

In the wake of the 1994 attacks, many Khmer Rouge guerrillas defected to the government forces citing exhaustion and a general refusal to carry out the new orders by the KR leadership. In Siem Reap, 275 guerillas under the command of Colonel Phor defected from KR division 912 defected with weapons. The division was commanded by someone named “Kong,” a long time body guard of Pol Pot’s military advisor Ta Mok. Kong was not among those who defected. The soldiers who defected were said to no longer to carry the orders of Ta Mok, who ordered the burning of houses, destruction of crops, and killing. However, it was not clear as to what these soldiers would do now.

By 1995, these defections were becoming increasing effective at reducing the strength of the Khmer Rouge. At the start of the new year on January 1st, a ceremony was held in Angkor Chum in which former members of the Khmer Rouge presented their weapons to the Fourth Military Region commander Gen. Khann Savoern. Most of the defectors looked “bedraggled, hungry, and scared,” stating that they simply wanted to go back to their villages. It also seems that government had an answer as to what the newly defected soldiers would do now. According to Major General Tep Vichet, defectors were being given courses in human rights and freedom in a democratic society.

While KR attacks were sources of danger, the treatment of civilians by government troops proved to be no better. An article dated 10 Febuary 1995 reported that 476 families had left Angkor Chum district, stating that they were fed up with being attacked by the Khmer Rouge and extorted RCAF soldiers supposedly sent to protect them. The article states that a total of 2, 678 villagers made their way to a refugee camp in Pourk district, 13km west of Siem Reap. A village chief named Nong Reum stated that their village was shelled, looted, and burned by KR forces. If this was not enough, government troops in the area demanded 40,000 riel ($20) from the villagers. If they did not have the money, the soldiers would confiscate their rice. An army chief named Hel Sam Ol had come to his village and singled out people they wanted to get money from, claiming that they were KR or KR sympathizers.

Despite efforts by authorities to get these refugees to move back to their homes in Angkor Chum, many decided that the journey from Angkor Chum to Pourk would be an exodus. According to Oem Seh, many of the people who escaped Angkor Chum decided to stay and settle in Pourk. The village chiefs in the area found land for them to build houses, and a large number of them set up stalls in the market. Since the KR had a practice of burning down houses and killing livestock, it is logical to assume that many of the people who left Angkor Chum during this time simply had no home to go back to.

The damage done to Angkor Chum by the mid 1990’s was particularly extensive. The opening sentences of Nate Thayer’s 1995 article describing Angkor Chum are particularly haunting.

"Along this isolated stretch of provincial highway, 19 blown bridges isolate the remnants of villages that were burned to the ground in recent months by Khmer Rouge guerillas. Huge craters in the road explain the carcasses of trucks destroyed recently by anti-tank mines. Dozens of soldiers with protective eye-wear gently expose thousands of land mines laid in rice fields, as truckloads of ragged government troops pass by on the way to nearby front lines. Intermittently, deafening explosions mark another mine detonated in place. The automatic weapons bursts puncturing the quiet have been a regular feature of life in rural Cambodia for more than 25 years."

Thayer’s description goes on, describing a scene in which 552 Khmer Rouge guerillas defected in the previous week. The soldiers, still dressed in Chinese PLA style uniforms, lounged in the markets, flirted with vendors, and provided security against their former comrades. The commander of these forces stated that he refused to carry out the orders for attacking the civilian population, and instead led people into the forest to protect them. When he defected, he also brought with him the military hardware.

" …Tung Yun, 38, who commanded two regiments of 600 guerilla fighters until January. He smiled as a 152 mm artillery parked near his house shook the earth as it fired at his former division commander, who with less than 75 men, had retreated into the jungle a few kilometers away. “Don’t worry, I took all the big weapons with me, they can’t fire back.”

With this major defection, the area was able to achieve a state of security that was previously impossible. This allowed infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges, dams, and demining, to happen unhindered. Despite the proclamations coming from the Khmer Rouge that the United States, France, and other countries were waging war against Cambodia in collusion with Vietnam, little attention was paid to them. These warnings seemed especially hollow considering that most villagers now saw millions of dollars worth of donor aid coming in to build roads, hospitals, and schools.

With the armistice declared in 1997 and the death of Pol Pot in 1998, the rest of the decade finished peacefully. While fighting was reported briefly between FUNCINPEC and CPP soldiers during the coup of 1997, no written documents seem to suggest that the violence was ongoing. For the first time in almost thirty years, the country was not at war and was allowed to slowly rebuild itself.

Under The Khmer Rouge

When Angkor Chum was placed under the control of the communists, the Khmer Rouge leadership was concentrating its efforts on capturing the city of Phnom Penh and bringing the entire country under its control. Until 1975, it is doubtful to assume that the various social programs that the communist movement later became famous for were implemented. The areas in Cambodia’s southwest were used as vehicles for these programs instead, which became national when Phnom Penh was captured in April of 1975. These included the formation of cooperative farms, the forced movement of some of the population, the repression of Buddhism, and the dress code that required everyone to wear black. A description from a refugee in Kampong Speu province of Khmer Rouge soldiers taking over his village could have been true for other parts of the country as well: “In 1972 the Red Khmers took over my village. I don’t know how they got there. I just saw them when they came. I don’t know where they lived…They would come by and give you a schedule of what to do and how to live…You could not refuse to do anything.” This description mirrors what people in Angkor Chum thought of the Khmer Rouge soldiers. Oem Hom commented that they were not friendly with the people, and that they fished and ate mostly by themselves. The irony here is that the people living in Angkor Chum were mostly what they are now: farmers grouped in small villages living off the land. These people were supposed to be the base of the revolution, but paranoia and fear kept the Khmer Rouge soldiers confused about what they were actually supposed to be fighting for.

The period of from the fall of Phnom Penh in April 1975, to the Vietnamese invasion in December 1978 is one of the most tragic periods of Cambodia’s history. Trying to explain what the Khmer Rouge leadership wanted to accomplish is difficult. The utopian vision that Pol Pot and his followers wanted to force upon the average citizen of the country is nebulous at best. If any kind of brief description to describe what the communist leadership believed in, it would be the one used by Chandler: In essence, they sought to transform Cambodia by replacing what they saw as impediments to national autonomy and social justice with revolutionary energy and incentives. Family life, individualism, and an ingrained fondness for what they saw as “feudal” institutions stood in the way of this revolution. They claimed that the poor people had always been enslaved and exploited by those in power, and through this revolution they would master’s of their own country.

Under the “Four Year Plan” set forth by Pol Pot in 1977, rice production was to exponentially in order to used for commercial gains. Rice would then be sold to other nations in order to buy arms, equipment, and industry needed to build Cambodia into a nation with a strong independent proletariat. While rice had formed the majority of exports from Cambodia from as early as the 1920’s, the idea of cultivating “three tons [of unhusked] rice per hectare,” as the slogon went, was unreasonable. The people working in the rice fields throughout the country often suffered severely from exhaustion in trying to accomplish this goal. Forced to participate in building this utopia, the victims of Pol Pot’s vision number in the millions.

Angkor Chum was not immune to the tragedy of the time. Official documents and the stories of older generations of the district can paint of grim picture of what the area was like during the era of Pol Pot. How the area was organized seems to resemble a method used in other parts of the country, with mostly everyone working in the fields and supervised by soldiers. Village chiefs still retained their local influence, but reported to the soldiers and their superiors. According to Kroo Sambok, the separation between the village chief and the soldiers was an important one because it allowed the village chief some measure of control over who was punished by the soldiers. For whatever reason, the soldiers would often accuse people of being enemies and would punish them as they saw fit. However, the village chief of Thmei would often protect people as best he could by sending them away or saying that he had already been punished.

During this time, the site of the present day district office was a prison known to the local people as “Tuol Bos Preal.” People accused as being an enemy would be sent to this place to be punished. Kroo Sambok can recount some of the more bizarre acts of violence committed against these people. Hoes that were ordinarily used for tilling the soil were used to bludgeon people to death, as well as tiger traps. Another punishment involved the use of a horse. If a person was accused of stealing from the angka (organization or hierarchy, used here to mean “stealing from the people”) they would tie a person’s hands behind their back, get them to run, and then make the horse run after them. If the accused did not run, the horse would trample them. All of these methods precluded the soldiers from using the ammunition in their firearms, both of which were rare in Democratic Kampuchea. Loung Ung, who recounts growing up under the Khmer Rouge period in First They Killed My Father, recounts a speech made by a child soldier:

"Met Bong picks a rifle from the pile, the same kind that I have seen many times before on the shoulders of the Khmer Rouge. 'This is a weapon I wish we had more of but they are very expensive. The ammunition is very expensive too, so we have few rifles to waste.'"

Although these words were spoken in the west of the country, they were probably true for many other parts as well.

All of the social directives put in force by the Khmer Rouge were present in Angkor Chum. People were moved from one place to another, dressed in black, worked long hours in the fields growing rice, and ate together in communal dining halls. While no one who came to work in Angkor Chum was from a major city like Battambang or Phnom Penh, people were moved from one district of Siem Reap to another. People were moved from Pourk and Sar Sar Sdam to Angkor Chum and vice versa. If a person became sick or injured, they were moved to different places. When Oem Seh became disabled, he was moved from this area to an area near the Kulen mountain named Svay Leu.

If this policy of constantly moving people around did not destroy the unity of the family, the practice of eating communally certainly did. This effectively disrupted the ability of families to cook, make conversation, and allow themselves some privacy. The rationale for this action was that “capitalist framework,” which included families eating together, was still in place in China and North Korea, hindering their progress towards a truly socialist state. This was an extremely unpopular policy, and most Cambodians had little to no understanding as to how complex nineteenth century ideals bore any relevance their daily lives. This was probably true of even the ones trying to live up to these ideals. Sharing food in a central location was probably just another way for the soldiers to monitor the civilian population, whom they largely regarded as containing enemies.

Many people died in Angkor Chum from 1976 to 1979. Official documents from the Documentation Center of Cambodia show that a mass burial site exists near the former prison bearing the name of Tuol Bos Kuy. According to these documents, a survey in 1999 found the presence of nearly several hundred people buried among four different graves. How many of the people buried there were killed directly by the soldiers or by mass starvation and forced labor is unknown.

Post Angkor: From Thai Control To The French Protectorate

From the decline of the Angkorian Empire, Cambodia was caught between the competing interests of the Thai, the Vietnamese, and the French. While much of this had very little to do with ordinary people living in places like Angkor Chum, it is interesting point to point out that this part of Cambodia changed hands between over a period of more than one hundred years. In 1794, the Cambodian King Eng received permission from the Thai monarchy to establish a capitol at Udong. In return, the king granted the Thais control over the northwest sruk, an area comprising of the modern regions of Siem Reap and Battambang. This effectively made the area, which included the present day area of Angkor Chum, a buffer zone for Thailand for the next hundred years. Despite being under foreign control, there is little evidence today from that time that suggests lasting change took place from the province’s overseers. The Thai made little effort to bring this region into the fold, choosing instead to govern it with ethnic Khmers instead of Thai administrators. It is doubtful that anyone living in a remote part of the province, such as Angkor Chum, would have ever known that they were under Thai jurisdiction.

Revenue from the two provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap amounted to low amounts cardamom and other forest products, which made for a mediocre profit. For these reasons, among others, the Thai ceded this sruk to France in April 1907. By this time, France had succeeded in bringing Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos under its sphere of influence in a region named French Indochina. While Cambodians were no longer masters in their own land, and suffered from heavy taxation, the French occupation did have some fringe benefits. French scholars and Cambodian workers began to restore the temples at Angkor, something that they had not been able to do during the era of Thai control. Siem Reap province was temporarily given to the Thais once again during 1945 at the end of World War II, but was given back in 1947.

Independence and Civil War

When Cambodia gained its independence from France in 1953, King Norodom Sihanouk became its de-facto leader after successfully negotiating with the French. While his government was corrupt and his attitudes towards the population mirrored the French (he addressed them as his children), his time in power was the last one before the country was plunged into civil war. Opposition to his regime was brutally oppressed, forcing members of the Cambodian Communist Party to go into hiding. People such as Solath Sar, who was later known by the infamous pseudonym Pol Pot, retreated into the countryside and began forming a communist movement aimed at overthrowing his government.

While all these developments were greatly significant for the government in Phnom Penh, it probably meant very little to ordinary Cambodians during this time. The removal of the French did little to change the fact that taxes were collected by an “unresponsive government” in Phnom Penh, who so called “royal work” made it isolated from its own people. Because the people in the countryside had never been asked to play a part in the government they saw few rewards in resisting those in power. This was probably true for people living Angkor Chum, as well as other parts of Cambodia. Even though this probably meant very little to Cambodians at the time, a conflict was escalating across the border in Vietnam that would eventually bring a dramatic change to Cambodia’s countryside.

While Cambodia had negotiated peacefully for their independence from France, the Vietnamese were fighting a war to win theirs. When that war ended in 1954, following the defeat of the French army at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, the country divided into two parts: North Vietnam, ruled by the communists, and South Vietnam, which was a democracy in theory but not in practice. This division marked the beginning of a conflict that would eventually spill over into Cambodia. The North Vietnamese launched an effort to unify their country under communist rule, and the Americans, who supported the South Vietnamese government, were determined not to let that happen. Thousands of American soldiers were soon in South Vietnam fighting the communists, and the war dragged on for ten years.

The war in Vietnam destabilized Cambodia and drove Sihanouk from his position in power, despite the former king’s best efforts. While the former king sought to protect Cambodia’s national interests by keeping the country out of the war, he was never the less forced to choose sides to prevent Cambodia from being dragged into conflict completely. During the early 1960’s, he broke off relations with the United States and forged a secret alliance with the North Vietnamese. The terms of the alliance stated that the North Vietnamese were allowed to station troops in Cambodian territory, and that arms and supplies would be funneled to them from North Vietnam and China via the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville. The idea behind this was that in supporting the North Vietnamese in the war against the Americans, their soldiers would leave Cambodian civilians alone and the country would emerge from the conflict unscathed. By the late 1960’s, Vietnamese forces were operating in the eastern provinces of Cambodia, and would also continue to play a role in Cambodia’s history for the next twenty years.

The year 1970 saw the end of Sihanouk’s reign of power as well as several important events that would eventually bring foreign troops to the villages in Angkor Chum. The first thing to happen was the coup. In March of that year, a general named Lon Nol removed Sihanouk from office while the prince was on a trip out of the country. Lon Nol supported the American war in Vietnam against the communists, and resented the fact that Sihanouk had given his support to help them. He also wanted the US military support and aid that Sihanouk had cut off seven years earlier. Supplies to the Vietnamese forces in Cambodia were cut off, and Lon Nol ordered all Vietnamese forces to leave Cambodia within forty-eight hours. In response, the North Vietnamese agreed to a full-fledged military alliance with the Khmer Rouge in April of 1970. Soon after the coup, several hundred well-trained Khmer set off from Hanoi to help in their country’s struggle. This was a huge benefit to the movement that Pol Pot had created because it allowed him to have an effective military force that he did not have before now.

Until this point, the war in Vietnam had spilled over only to the sections of Cambodia where Vietnamese had establish their famous supply line to South Vietnam known as Ho Chi Minh Trail. Now that the Vietnamese were determined to bring the fight against the Americans in Cambodia, their troops would be seen in many different parts of Cambodia.

Vietnamese Soldiers Come To Angkor Chum

Several people who lived in present day Angkor Chum remember seeing Vietnamese soldiers acting in collusion with Khmer Rouge soldiers around the early 1970’s. Both Oem Hom and Oem Seh recall seeing both of these soldiers around this time, with the latter noting the Khmer Rouge’s former political training in Hanoi as well as Sihanouk’s support for the civil war against Lon Nol. Mr. Seh also describes that the soldiers wore helmets, and not the cone shaped hats that survivors of the Khmer Rouge saw them wearing less than ten years later. Both of these eye witness accounts confirm much of what was happening in other parts of the country. By the end of1971, the Lon Nol government had abandoned all lightly populated areas of the country the communist forces. Vietnamese forces carried out most of the fighting that occurred in this time, with Cambodian soldiers only taking a supporting role. While it is difficult to determine the exact date that the northern part of Pourk district fell to the communists, the French scholar François Bizot recorded the presence of the Vietnamese in the area on June 6th, 1970. Le Portail (The Gate), an account of his struggle for survival in Cambodia, contains an episode where he describes a run in with some Vietnamese soldiers around the site of Angkor Wat. If what he describes is true, it can be inferred that Angkor Chum was under communist control around this time as well. When the Vietnamese troops left the area is not known, but it must have happened sometime before 1973 when North and South Vietnam signed a cease fire agreement. The former were concentrating their forces in preparation for an all out assault on Saigon, and needed all the Vietnamese soldiers currently disposed helping the Khmer Rouge. The North Vietnamese asked Pol Pot to sign a similar cease fire with Lon Nol, but he refused. The leader of the Khmer Rouge saw this is as a betrayal by the Vietnamese after he had helped them in their war against the Americans. This was one of many reasons for the rift growing between the leadership of these two countries, which would eventually lead to war.

Early Cambodia Through Angkor

The effort to trace the history of Angkor Chum district to its very beginning is really an attempt to describe events in ordinary village life in the many hundreds of years before this one. Understandably, this is a very difficult task. One can only infer that what must have happened to other parts of Cambodia must have happened here. However, what little we do know is extremely useful because it can be linked to practices that are still common today. Much of what is known about prehistoric Cambodia bears a striking resemblance to the modern country we know today. A large source of protein in the average person’s diet came from fish, and their houses were raised above the ground and made accessible by means of a ladder. They also had access to domesticated animals, and grew varieties of rice by the slash and burn method. The very first people to live in this area may have indeed used this method to literally carve out their existence from the surrounding jungle.

The earliest record of human settlement in Angkor Chum can be found in the northern part of the district. Following the laterite road away from Wat Char Chuk, one can discover three man made structures that date back to the time of Cambodia’s ancient empire. Turning left from the road at a gnarled old tree, two crumbling temples standing guard over an expanse of fields. If one goes straight about a kilometer past the tree instead of turning left, a disused stone bridge spans a river. Many of the provincial and district maps of the area do not have these structures marked, and finding them is a little difficult if you do not know where you are going. If one were to make a guess about their origin, one could probably say that they are connected to the great Angkorian structures some forty kilometers away, ranging from the tenth or eleventh century. The local people only know them only Prasat Koul, citing the commune in which they are found. Some refer to them as being part of an ancient highway between Thailand and Angkor Wat, but given its position on the map this seems entirely unlikely. Upon visiting the structures themselves, one can see the damage that centuries of disrepair have done to them. Only a few structures remain standing, and the jungle is reclaiming even those. The second temple, which is a much larger than the first, is littered with stone blocks and round balustrades. Many of the carvings on the stones remain intact, and one can still find a few nagas faced down in the dirt or broken into pieces. Their eroded expressions no longer hold the fierceness that they once did. As unfortunate as it is, these structures find themselves among the ranks of hundreds of temples in the surrounding area that were built during that time. If no effort is done to preserve them, it is likely that they will continue to dissolve into the earth until no trace of them is left.

What kind of society existed in that time is as elusive to historians as the one that existed at Angkor Wat. The presence of a temple in this area may well suggest that the area around it was inhabited enough for a temple to be built there. From a quick survey of the area, one can also guess that many of the practices of daily life in that time are little changed from the ones found today. Unlike the massive irrigation works around Angkor Wat, which were used to grow year round in order the feed its giant population, the farmland in this area was probably used to grow rice only during the wet season from April to October. Animals such as water buffaloes were probably used as a source of manual labor for plowing fields and transportation just as they are today. Houses were made from wood on stilts, with thatch covering the roofs and wooden planks lining the walls. Remarkably, a description of a rural market near the site of Angkor in 1296-1297 by Zhou Daguan, a visiting Chinese diplomat, resembles what the daily market in Angkor Chum looks like today: “The local people who know how to trade are all women…There is a market every day from around six in the morning until mid-day. There are no stalls…only a kind of tumbleweed mat laid on the ground, each mat in its usual place.” Many of these observations are still true. An observer of the daily market in Angkor Chum could tell you that the market closes down before lunch, and that most of the people who work there are women. While stalls and tables have sprung up, most of a person’s wares still lie on a mat on the ground. Other than these descriptions, one can only guess what other aspects of daily life have remained the same.

The following comes from the introduction of a paper I am writing detailing the history of Angkor Chum, which I hope to have translated and distributed before I end my service in July. I will try to post parts of it here as I continue to work on them.

In October of 2008, I arrived in the small rural district of Angkor Chum in Siem Reap province. My assignment as a Peace Corps volunteer included work as an English teacher at the high school, as well as any other projects that I thought could help the community. At first glance, I found that the area resembled many of the towns and villages across the country. There was a market made up of small wooden stalls, an ACELEDA bank, a high school, a hospital, a power generator that supplied electricity, and several NGO’s that operated freely throughout the district. Most of the activity around the district revolved around rice production, and the people moved about on motorbikes and slow moving bullocks carts. As I got to know the town more and more, I began to notice little differences that set it apart from other places in the country. To begin with, the ability of the students in Angkor Chum to speak English was far lower than what I had expected. I had previously taught a week-long English course in Kampong Chhnang province, and there little competition in my assessment as to which group of students had better skills. I also noticed that entire professional class of people came from other areas. Every time that I met someone who worked at the bank, the hospital, the high school, or any of the NGO’s, they would tell me that they came from Pourk, Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, Sisophon, or other places in the country. At some point I slowly began to uncover the history of this tiny place, and what I learned shocked me. The reason why everything in the area was newly built was because the Cambodian civil had dragged on in this area for years after the rest of the country had been able to recover. There were stories about constant shelling, UNTAC Bangladesh troops under fire, villages being burned down by the Khmer Rouge, and other horrifying tales of the civil war.

There is one I remember quite clearly. During my first few months, I became friends with a man who owned a mobile phone shop because he spoke English very well. One day, I sat in a plastic chair in the front space the shop. It was October, and as usual it was raining hard. While I sat and took shelter from the downpour, he was telling me of how he grew up in the Cardamom mountains under the Khmer Rouge. It was the same story told over and over again by survivors of the regime; there was more than enough malaria, starvation, and madness to go around. They shivered during the day because of the fevers, and froze at night because of the cold. Specifically he was telling me about what the soldiers would do to people that they suspected as being traitors to the revolution. It was horrible. They would make them kneel after tying their hands behind their backs. Then they would use some kind of blunt object to smash their heads together. Usually it was a hoe with a long wooden handle and a heavy metal blade on the end. When it was done, the dogs would come out of the forest and feed upon the bodies because there was no other place to put them. There was more there, and I quietly listened and remembered every word of it. This man had lived through hell, and the least I could do was remember his story.

When I heard this story and others like it, I began to make a connection between the Angkor Chum that existed in the past and the place that I knew today. The war had crawled its way like a snake into the heart of almost every aspect of rural life, disabling any chance that the area might have had to develop. The reason why the high school student’s abilities were so low was because the high school had only been completed in 2006. The lack of an educated middle class made the importation of such people a necessity if institutions were to be able to function at all. Everything suddenly started to make sense. There were also connections between this part of the Cambodia and events going on in the larger scheme of things. When I began reading more about Cambodia’s history, I began to realize that Angkor Chum bore witness to many of the larger events across the region. A great example is the fact that Vietnamese soldiers came to this area three times during the 1970’s as direct result of the American war in Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge leadership. It came to a point where I had learned so many of these events and actions that linked everything together, that I needed to write them down. With that, I resolved to write a history of Angkor Chum so that others could read it and understand this little part of the country if they wanted to.

What I have attempted to do is trace the history of Angkor Chum from the beginning of its inhabitance to present day, connecting developments within the site to those within a larger perspective. Much of the information presented in it comes from traditional sources of Cambodian history such as Chandler and Osborne, but the remaining parts of it have been pieced together from newspaper articles, UNTAC military action reports, and interviews with many of the residents in the district. In presenting such a collage of information, I hope to explain how the people and history of Angkor Chum fit into larger events in Cambodia’s history. As a result of this explanation, it is the general goal of this history to give a better understanding as to why the district of Angkor Chum appears as it does today.

I have witnessed this scene played out before me so many times before this one. There sits an old man from the land where there is no sun sitting with a young woman of native descent. They are together, but not engaged in displays of gross affection in the street or the tawdry nightclubs hanging over the river. No, what they are doing is much more intimate. They are sharing a meal at a restaurant designated for foreigners. Where am I in all this? I am listening to their conversation from another table. Its rude, I know, but I cannot help it. Their language is not part of the background noise I filter out every day. It is not my fault if I start analyzing bits and pieces of what they are saying.

“My time is very free.”

He sits in a chair dressed as he might have done as a student in 1962. His neck rises out of a striped shirt with the collar buttoned without a tie. Spots from sun exposure gently appear here and there out of the lightly colored hairline (Maybe this is not his first time in the East?) His accent is American. Perhaps he was involved in the war that happened long ago and fell in love with the thought of being born into a new society without the familiar restrictions. I look at him and I can only think of one name: Fowler. Even though he is not English and sarcastically bitter at every phrase, I can superimpose the fictional character over the person I see in front of me. The young woman sitting across from him must then Phoung. The pairing come to life out of the imagination of an Englishman, who must have dreamed of all Americans being quiet during some moment of rage. Of course, I am being ridiculous. Both the wars in Indochina have run their course, we are not in Saigon, and the nature of their relationship is unknown. Yet there is something very familiar in the way that they are sitting across from each other. The old man could be anyone, but the woman has to be Phuong. Everything that leapt across the page at me fits her description completely. Her gaze is always looking down, always looking at her food or her feet. She is impenetrable in attitude, composed and capable only of expressing complacence and joy. She is the east as Phuong embodied it; indifferent to the major powers that threw bombs around in the name of democracy or communism, but not impervious to the taking monetary rewards that they offered.

“Sometimes I tired.”

His English is slipping. He has obviously spent a lot of time around people who do not speak it as their native tongue and begun to mimic their inflections by habit. He must have had a wife back in his own country for he is far too old and inveterate to have lived by himself for so long. Whether or not he is weighed down by a sense of Catholic guilt is doubtful. From the way he is sitting, his shoulders are raised too high to be weighed down by a millstone of mortality and sin. He cannot be Fowler in appearance. He is too uncomplicated to be the real thing.

“If we study at my hotel, is that okay?”

Does he love her? Did Fowler ever really love Phuong? In small sense perhaps he did, but it was hard to guess if Fowler loved anything at all. He treated everyone he knew with contempt so cold and typical of an Englishman. However, he was trying to save both her and her country from innocent ravages of Pyle. The American had to be stopped, we all know that. The sad part is that he was reborn into the conscience of so many others trying to accomplish the same mission. Maybe this man is trying to save the woman sitting across from him from something, a rescue from a drab little life in the middle of a hot tropical country. I doubt if she thinks that she needs saving at all.

“When I was young, my mother would take me to Banteay Srei, sometimes to Kulen Mountain.”

Does she love him? We would all loved to have read a scene in which Phuong and Fowler embraced in some passionate, fervent explosion of emotion, calling each other “Darling!” and dancing off into the sunset together. This would make us more of a prisoner of our own culture than we already are. Maybe a Hollywood actress in dark eyeliner could perform in such a travesty, but not Phuong. The whole thing would be as foreign to Phong as a man who comes from the land where there is no sun. There will be no big American holiday. These two people eating together will have to find a way to bridge that gap of age and culture just as Phuong and Fowler did. They do not have the war, The London Times, or Pyle to hinder them.

Instead they have only themselves.

Every so often, I have to file an official report to the Peace Corps detailing how my work is going. While most of the report consists of detailing how many students I teach, what the level education is like, blah blah blah, and other things that will never be complied into useful data, one of the questions asks how integrated I feel within the host community. The choices are "not at all," "somewhat," "positively," and "very." This is followed by an essay prompt asking you to explain your answer. When I turn in my report for this quarter, this is going to be my answer:

"As a volunteer, I feel that I have successfully integrated into my host community. In fact, I do not think that I could become any more integrated than how I already am. My reasons for this are very simple: I now receive free vegetables in the market, whereas before such vegetables were not forthcoming. How does this mean that I have integrated? It is quite simple. The woman who sells me daily supplies of lettuce, onions, tomatoes, eggplant, and limes for my daily sandwich lunch has moved our relationship forward. Now when I buy tomatoes, she give me a handful of wild onions! If I buy eggplant, she throws in the lettuce for free. Such gestures are monumental! Think not that she gives me these vegetables for free because of their extremely low cost. (One clump of lettuce is 200 riel [around $0.o5]) Rather, I have gained enough recognition in my community that I awarded with these vegetables on a daily basis. There is no more proof needed that I have become a successfully integrated volunteer. The proof is in the mango salad."

I am not the world’s greatest English teacher, nor have I ever held grand visions of being one. How you could ever hope to accomplish this in the environment that I am in is beyond me. That being said, I consider what I do in the classroom to be more entertainment than real and rigorous classroom work. The majority of the students are not really interested in studying to the best of their ability; They know that, and I know that. If they were, they would find some way of leaving Angkor Chum district in search of a better education elsewhere. Every once in a while I bump into these students in Pourk or Siem Reap. I ask them how they are, and they tell me they have found a better school somewhere else. You cannot really blame them for leaving, but it does leave one less student in the classroom who can do the studies assigned to them. And believe me, these students are very rare. So while I am jealous that other volunteers have students who can read Animal Farm, I try and focus on doing the best I can with the students I have.

On a typical day, I walk into a classroom full of students who all rise to greet me. Standing at the doorway, I try to throw to throw my hat on the teacher’s desk at the front of the room to the amusement of onlookers. I always miss. After the students sit down, I begin the class by writing the date and the agenda on the board. I then ask the class to recite the date, after which I choose one student to read it out loud for the rest of the class. It is a routine activity, and I think it makes the students feel relaxed in the presence of a strange foreigner. The student picked at random to read the date is usually reluctant, but the students are usually reluctant to do anything that does not involve copying notes from the board or repeating words out loud. To get around this, I use the simple, beautiful, and effective art of peer pressure. In response to the answer “Awt Cheh” (“I can’t, I don’t want to”), I say the student’s name with vigor, smile, clap my hands, and encourage the other students to do the same. A sudden rousing chorus of voices and claps comes from the other students, and the poor thing is pressured into trying their best at reading the date. If they have trouble, I help them through it.

The next stage of the class is open ended. I can give them a grammar lesson, play a game, do a writing activity, or any number of things. The only thing I really have to do is teach the lesson from the book, which comes later. Anything that requires creativity is the hardest to teach, and anything formulaic and predictable is the easiest. Creativity is not something they are taught in any of their classes or in anything outside the home. Buddhist instruction, which is what the education system is modeled on, typically requires a student to be a blank slate. This is to say that they suppress all thoughts of their own in order to completely absorb what their master tells them. How this translates into the classroom is very simple. Were I to assign the students an essay, they would simply have no idea how to do it unless I spoon fed it to them piece by piece.

Grammar lessons have turned out to be the easiest things to teach because grammar is mechanical, predictable, and easily interchangeable. Grammar lessons also tend to be very dry, so I often try to put a few jokes in here or there to spice things up. In the example sentences I give, I often reference a long running joke between my counterpart and me. The joke is that Mr. Nou is constantly trying to steal or run away with my girlfriend, who is a travesty of a stick figure that I draw on the board. A sentence highlighting the use of the simple past, the past perfect, and the use of the word “By the time” might run something like this: “By the time I arrived at my home, Mr. Nou had already eaten dinner with my girlfriend.” Mr. Nou will then translate this, and raise his hands in triumph. It usually gets a laugh.

Another useful gag can be used when the students practice using the grammar they have learned. After writing an exercise on the board, I ask a student to come up to the front and do it. I carefully watch them as they write their answer, and if it looks incorrect I start to make sour looking faces and moan. The students laugh, and the person writing the answer knows that they must change their answer. If it looks like they are getting the right answer, I smile widely and sigh. The student ultimately has the chance to save face, something which valued very highly in this culture, despite the silliness of my actions

After this first session is complete, I usually turn the class over to Mr. Nou. He will usually write some vocabulary words on the board and go over the reading passage assigned in the book for that lesson. I usually help with the readings and the vocabulary practice, even though I know that the students could care less about what they are reading about. Here is what they often sound like.

The book was written for students in urban areas such as Phnom Penh, Battambang, Kampong Cham or others. It was never meant to be engaging or interesting to those in rural areas without access to significant amounts of resources. However, the government says we have to teach using this book. Most of what I do during this time is walk around the classroom making sure everyone is paying attention and not playing with their mobile phones. If one of those things goes off, I usually answer it and speak to the caller on the other end. Much hilarity often ensues.

After we are finished with the book, it is usually time for the lesson to be over. If extra time remains, I usually ask the students to translate something for me from Khmer into English. It usually works as a good closer. The students learn how their language fits in mine, and I learn a little bit more about Khmer script. Now the students usually complain that they are hungry, and so we let them go.

The following is a translated account of a conversation I had with a man and a waitress in Bott village near the border with Varin district. It took place at a drink stand after I had bought some bottled water. I arrived and left by bicycle. I had never spoken to these people before now.

Listening Waitress: Where are you coming from, where are you going?

Me: I coming from Angkor Chum High School, and returning there later this afternoon.

Listening Waitress: You are not tired?

Me: No, not yet. I am riding my bicycle for exercise. It is good for one's health.

Man: Many Khmer girls love French men.

Me: Yes, I have heard this already from others.

Man: Many French men love Khmer girls. They give them money.

Me: Then it is a good thing I am neither French nor in love with a Khmer girl.

Man: Love them for a long time... a long time. Give them money.

Me: And how are you today, sir?

Man: (Ignores me, picks up his cell phone and calls a friend)

Listening Waitress: Don't you think that a Khmer girl could love you?

Me: My mother would not approve.

Listening Waitress: But she would love you!

Me: My mother would not approve.

Man: (Puts down the phone) Many Khmer Khmer girls love French men.

Listening Waitress: A Khmer girl would love a French man like you!

Me: Well I must be off. Good day to you both!

January 7th, 1979 was the day that Vietnamese troops marked the defeat of Pol Pot, and effectively ended the genocide enacted by his troops. Cambodians celebrate this day every year, and Angkor Chum a sort of night festival was held to mark the occasion. Food vendors were scattered around the district offices, and the entertainment included a games, rides, movies, dancing, and karaoke. I took a walk over there around seven in the evening, and found the other teachers near some banquet tables near the back of the offices. They were dancing happily maybe six feet in front of some very large speakers, and cheering to each other loudly as they opened can after can of beer. Much pulling and grabbing ensued because they wanted to make me dance. (This seems to happen to me frequently) I finally managed to get away and take some pictures of the place all lit at night. My apologies for the blurriness, taking pictures at night is pretty hard to do.

I could probably write something elegant about going to a Cambodian wedding, but there's nothing particularly elegant about them at all. I will try to describe one that I went to recently. One of the teachers who used to live in Angkor Chum recently got engaged to a woman in Pourk. As custom dictates, they held the wedding there last Wednesday. (He will also cease to work in Angkor Chum, as he will now have to live with bride's family in their house) So after morning classes at the high school, a bunch of teachers and I piled into the school director's car and set off for Pourk. I could hear the loud music from about a half a mile away. In the past, Cambodians employed musicians to play in order to let everyone know that someone was getting married. Nowadays, they prefer a stack of speakers ten feet high and turned to the highest decibel level. When we arrived, the bride and groom greeted us by the entrance to a massive pink and yellow tent. The groom was wearing a long silver coat, with a golden chain necklace around his neck. The bride was wearing some white and yellow polythene dress. Between the arches curving up from her shoulders and the pasty white makeup on her face, she seemed more dragon-like than graceful. I shook the groom's hand, and sat down at a table with the school director and some of the other teachers. Mostly everyone wore the same thing. Men wore what they usually wear to work, and women wore these ghastly wedding costumes that resembled what the bride wore. I have heard from the female volunteers that these wedding outfits are very costly to make, and are extremely uncomfortable. They mostly consist of a long skirt, and elaborate blouse with an open back revealing the shoulders.

Before this stage in the wedding, there is a point where the bride and groom process in front of the house, and a monk chants over them to enact the marriage. I have never seen it, because the party I go with usually arrives too late. Instead, I hold witness to the eating, drinking, and dancing. The food is usually ok, but since they have to provide lunch for several hundred people it is not always fresh when it reaches your table. It can sometimes make you violently ill, but you still have to eat it to be polite. Dogs also pass freely around your legs, eating what the guests have not finished off.

The drinking, however, is what most of the men arrive for. The next few hours can be visualized as this: Imagine a very large and very drunk Cambodian man hovering over you, pouring glass after glass of beer for you and shouting to drink it all in one go. Sometimes you can deflect this (I fill my glass with a centimeter of beer and the rest with water), but other times you cannot. If the groom hands you a fresh glass of Anchor Beer and commands you to drink with him, are you really going to deny him that? It is his wedding after all.

Add also to that vision that it is boiling hot, and that Cambodian pop tunes are being jack hammered into your head by a very large sound system. Now I do not mind talking with the other teachers and joking around with them over a few glasses of beer. Sometimes these weddings can be a lot of fun! At this one, I kept telling my co-teacher that the girl in the white dress behind him was dying to talk to him if not for being nervous. I kept goading him to make the first move, and the whole thing has become a long running joke between us. But when someone grabs me by the shirt, pulls me out of my chair to the ground, and commands that I should dance...that is really too much. Sadly enough, that happens too often.

One usually stays for about two to three hours. After that, things usually get ugly. This is the point at the party where everyone has gone home except a few diehards. Language also gets pretty vulgar. At this last wedding, a man who worked for the local government sat at my table and spoke English reasonably well. By the time the party was over, he was reduced to asking questions like, "Do you like to f$%k?"

When people are ready to leave, envelopes are distributed among the tables. It is customary that the guests put money in these envelopes, about $10 is appropriate, and place them inside a heart shaped box towards the exit. The bride and groom then thank you for coming, and give you a stick of gum as a parting gift.

Then comes the part where you go home and out of the sun, strip off your clothes, shower, and try and sleep off the beer before dinner time.

An entire year spent within the confines of Mother Asia.

Most of the teachers who I know live in dormitories. The women live in an empty classroom in the new building, and the men live in a small house behind the school offices. I never ever visit the women’s house, but I do frequently drop in to visit the guys. Their rooms are small, with maybe five or six beds to a person, and they only have one bathroom. A makeshift open-air kitchen is in the back of the house, with pots and pans strewn about on a chipped wooden table. Under one of their large concrete water containers, a bitch nurses a litter of puppies and barks whenever anyone comes near. The absence of women in this house is evident simply by the pinup posters on the wall and an overall messiness.

The men who live here come from far away places and are usually bachelors in their mid to late twenties. For many of them, this position was the only teaching job available when they graduated from the teacher training center. They share the same misgivings that I often feel about the students: They do not want to study, they do very badly on their test scores, etc. However, they understand the situation completely. One teacher told me the other day, "Jo ree-un at baan twuh kah." (Studying will not help you find a job here)

When they are not teaching, they do what most young men do when they have no girlfriends, wives, or family to supervise them: they play games and they drink. Volleyball, soccer, and alcohol are obviously more fun than working, and there is little to stop them from abandoning their responsibilities. I cannot count the number of times I have popped into that house after lunch and found my fellow teachers drunk, grinning, and falling over themselves. Remarkably, many of them still have the courage to get up and walk to class in their inebriated state. There is one teacher who seems to drink and smoke much more than the rest of them, and I keep telling him that he if keeps that up he will be dead in twenty years. He laughs when I tell him that, even though he looks ten years older than he already is. I would complain, but the directors of the school are often times the ones sitting around that table, and the ones supplying the beer. So I sigh, and have to start thinking about ways in which I can teach the class by myself.

Only once did I ever really get mad at another teacher for drinking. My co-teacher decided one night after a party that it would be a good idea to drive his moto at high speed down the road with another teacher on the back without a helmet on. As you can imagine, an accident occurred. Fortunately for him, he survived with only a few scrapes and bruises. However, this did not save him from the verbal lashing I gave him when I found out what had happened. I was pretty mad, and that is putting it lightly. It was incredibly idiotic thing to do, and I told him so. He merely smiled, and said that maybe he would be more careful. The sad part is that I am probably the only one who told him all this, and he would probably do the same thing again if given the chance. Fatalism and alcoholism are really tough habits to break.

Obviously this kind of self-destructive behavior is not healthy, and I cannot see the male teachers at the school being able to keep up this lifestyle for very long. Either they need to move back home to their families or get married and settle down in Angkor Chum. Otherwise, they will succumb to the average life expectancy of Cambodia: 55.

A buddy of mine recently moved into a huge house in a town really close to the Thai border, so he invited a whole bunch of people over. There was a mix of Peace Corps people as well as VSO (The British equivalent of Peace Corps. They're cool, but paid twice as much, get to ride motos, and have translators so they don't have to learn the language) volunteers from England and Australia. We had a pretty good time explaining what Thanksgiving is to them. We didn't have a turkey, but we had two chickens, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Someone's mother just visited, I think Kelsey's, from America and brought a whole bunch of ingredients with her, which was awfully nice. We also chipped in a dollar a piece to buy a bottle of jack daniels, and spent the whole day cooking, eating, drinking, playing trivia games, and two games of RISK. Just like my home in America, the men were kicked out of the kitchen for the most of the day before the meal because we have a habit of eating things early.

There is a man who I see quite often in Siem Reap. He wears a dour expression on his face, and no shirt. His grey pants are rather dirty and worn, and he pulls a cart behind him by hand. Even during the heat of the noonday sun he does this, and a loudspeaker powered by a car battery announces his presence. One song is repeated over and over again through the piercing monotone it produces through the plastic cone. At certain intervals he stops, takes his equipment of the cart, and sets up his show. Sometimes it is in front of the tourist restaurants on Pub Street. Out of the cart comes a large metal hoop attached to a wire frame stand. Rusty kitchen knives, about the size you would use to cut tomatoes , are attached to the ring pointed inwards. Some are bent and twisted outwards. When I first saw him, I thought he was selling knives or sharpening them. However, I could not understand why anyone would want to buy these blackened, dull knives he had. Then I realized he was not selling them. The man places it delicately on the ground, making sure it does not tip over. Finally, he takes a bottle of lighter fluid and douses the whole thing before lighting it on fire.

Is he really going to do what I think he is going to do? Surely he is mad! The man’s expression does not change as he steadies himself before the ring. The muscles on his stomach tense and become rigid (an involuntary reaction). In one quick movement he is in the air, through the hoop, and standing back on the ground again. He does this trick three or four times. The policeman and the waiters nearby cheer him on while the tourists watch with open mouths. The people who know him have watched this feat done a hundred times. The man's technique is absolutely flawless. He is a machine. Sometimes people give him money. Other times he does his trick in front of no one. I have seen him do it in both situations. The face is the same, the jump is the same. There is virtually no change.

I cannot imagine what drove him to this line of work in the first place, but it must have been terrible. And this is a place where many terrible things happened.

I imagine it would very hard to be a student in Angkor Chum. It is not difficult to speculate why. Pretend for a moment that you come from a family who has only known the backbreaking work of farming rice. You share a wooden house with your mother, father, and siblings, sleeping on a straw mat every night. The clothes on your back are the ones you wear almost every day. Perhaps you own a few cows, enough to raise and sell in the market when the time is right. Your parents have never been to school, and no adult around you understands the value of an education. They believe in what people call “old ideas.” They think you would be better off working in the fields and helping them make a living instead of going to school. However, everyone goes to school because the village chief says you must. You feel you ought to go because all of your friends are there, but like your parents you do not understand why it is you have to go. The teachers come from far away places with names like Phnom Penh, Kampong Cham, and Sviey Reing. They give lectures, but you want to talk to your friends instead of actively listening and taking notes. You chat with the other students in the class, and doodle in your notebook. The teacher seems bored, and does not seem to mind that no one is paying attention. There is no punishment for not doing what you are supposed to. Sometimes the teacher does not show up for days, and time is spent playing games with the other students. The future is unknown to you. You do not worry about what is going to happen to you when you leave school because it is not important. So when the American teacher asks you about post-graduation plans, you do not have an answer for him.

Of course, there is an exception to every rule. There are a few students who seem to recognize the value of education and work hard in their studies. These are the students who I mostly work with and help me in other projects such as the Guppy Farm and other things. But they are rare. Part of the problem is that they have very little to aspire to. If you take a look at the town, there are very few job opportunities for a person with an education. The professional jobs are taken by people who come from far away, which itself is a statement about the Cambodian economy. Think about it. If highly qualified people are willing to move from places like Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, or Sisophon to take posts in a remote outpost such as Angkor Chum, what chance does a student coming from a rural area have in getting such positions? Very little.

From conversations I have had with some of the students, it seems that many of them want to leave to find opportunities elsewhere. I cannot say I blame them. If I came from this town, there would not be a day that went by where I did not dream of escaping to other places. I often thought of trying to help them do this in some other capacity than improving their English abilities, which to be completely honest has never really taken with them. This sounds very disappointing, but I have learned to accept it. Considering the history of the town and its isolation from the outside world, it is no wonder that most students are reluctant to learn. I think I would have a very similar experience if I tried to teach Chinese to students in rural Idaho, and constantly trying to sell them on the idea that it was useful language to know. (The real triumph has been my counterpart, who has learned to imitate the creativity I bring to lesson planning. That's the real success of the TEFL mission here) Since English is not something that I can sell them on, the most I can do is say, “Take your education and do something with it.”

It is going to take a very long time for this part of Cambodia to develop. While other volunteers tell me how they are reading advanced English books with their students, or conducting career workshops, I am happy simply at the fact that my students are even going to school. Soon it will be 2010, and still it will only have been thirteen years since the war ended in this part of the country. Students are going to school, instead of fleeing the shells that came from the sky or the soldiers who burned their villages down.

Things could be a lot worse here, but they also could be a lot better. I recently received a shipment of books from a company in America named Darien Books. I wrote them a nice letter asking for books for my library, and they just arrived. I will use them as much as I can, but I am hoping that when the town develops a little more and education becomes more accepted in the community that the students will come to use them more.

Maybe someday.

I learned that the hard way.

This all started when I came up with the idea of showing a few movies to the students in Angkor Chum. I had at least two DVD’s that I wanted to present. One was a Khmer soap opera about AIDS named “Palace of Dreams,” and the other was film about contemporary Cambodian society called “Les Gens de la Rizière” (The Rice Farmers). The Peace Corps gave all the volunteers a copy of the first film back in February during our mid-service training session. Their expressed interest in giving us a free copy was that we show it to everyone in the community. I took it back with me to site, and made a few inquiries about borrowing a TV or a projector so that I could present it to a large number of people. Nothing seemed promising, so I put the idea aside for a while and focused on other things. Over the summer, I thought about presenting “Palace of Dreams” with perhaps a few other Khmer movies for the enjoyment of the school and the community. World AIDS Day was coming up in December, which gave me all the more reason to make this happen. I included it in the speech I made to the student body at the beginning of the year, and set about obtaining the means to present the films.

However, getting someone to lend me any amount of equipment proved impossible. Other volunteers had told me that they had been able to show the movie through borrowing a TV or a projector from people in the community. Despite having a pretty good relationship with some of the other NGO’s in town, my efforts to obtain what I needed were fruitless. The problem is that TV’s and projectors happen to be worth hundreds of dollars, and no one is willing to let them out of their sight for fear of losing them. I cannot say I really blame them given my recent experience with the guppy farm. If people are going to steal something as small and as useful as a mosquito eating fish for their own entertainment, there is no limit to what they are capable of.

Distraught, I sought advice from the other teachers at the school. They mentioned that the local wat sometimes presents movies, and that I should go and talk to the abbot there. This made me a little nervous. When I first the met the abbot of Wat Char Chuk, I sat before him on the floor of his office while he smiled and chain smoked a pack of Alain Delon cigarettes. He spoke to me, but I was transfixed by the spectacle happening behind his giant bald head; a giant fish was gnawing viciously at the remains of a dead frog. I nodded politely and said the customary “Bat…” at the right intervals when he made his speech welcoming me to Angkor Chum, but I could not take my eyes off that fish the entire time he was speaking. It had to be a sign, a very bad sign.

Since then, I have made the occasional visit to the wat during festivals or to chat with the monks. When I went to see the abbot about presenting some movies, I was a rarely seen but familiar face there. After greeting each other, I explained what I wanted to do. The abbot sounded enthusiastic, and wanted to show the movies in a little more than a week. While I was glad to have the support, I asked him how much it would cost to rest the projector and the screen. He said that it was cost between thirty and forty dollars, which I thought was okay. I said that I would try and fund-raise for a week in the community and see what I could come up with, and we left it at that.

The next week I was at school when the abbot summoned me to the wat. A twelve-year-old boy on a motorcycle rolled up to the window of the school offices where I was working and said I had to go see the abbot immediately. Unsure of why this was happening, I made my counterpart, Mr. Nou, come with me so I would have an ally there. It was almost like making a friend go with you to the principle’s office to vouch for you. Both of us went to the wat and the found the abbot sitting on wooden platform underneath the shade of an enormous gnarled tree. We greeted him and sat with our legs tucked under ourselves for almost five minutes before he spoke to us.

The abbot was in the middle of giving a series of injections to a number of small of birds in his collection. I was not sure what the medicine was, but there was white liquid in the syringe that resembled the empty can of sterilized milk on the ground. The abbot pulled a packet of cigarettes from within his orange robes, lit one, puffed on it for a few moments, and said that he wanted $120 from me. Otherwise, the movie would not go forward. I asked him why the price was so high. He gave me a five-minute explanation that basically amounted to “things came up.” The entire time he spoke, I was trying to remind myself that I was talking to a senior monk, and not a businessman or a mafia figure. Mr. Nou spoke to me in English, which the abbot does not speak, and advised that the abbot was seeking funds to build the new vihira (church) that was still under construction. This was why he was pressing for more money, and doing it with a used-car salesman smile. I smiled back at him, and politely told him that I did not have the money. My counterpart explained to him that I was a volunteer, without any access to the capital he was seeking. The abbot seemed disappointed by this, and he seemed to sink inside his robes a little. I presented a few ways in which we could raise that kind of money for him from the community, but these were all dismissed as soon as I explained them. Frustrated, I started to glance over towards where my bicycle was parked. I think all of us were ready to walk away from the deal if it had not been for one last idea. The abbot suggested that we could use the movies as part of one of the movie nights, but on several conditions:

1. Adrian has to make a sizable donation to the wat. (I offered $25, and this was acceptable)

2. Adrian has to make a speech detailing the importance of the movies to the community. (I agreed, this was not a problem)

3. A photograph of Adrian and the abbot has to taken and shown to people in America so that people will know that supporting Buddhism is a good cause. (A little strange, but okay I guess)

I agreed to all of these terms. Both Mr. Nou and I wanted to set a date for the movie night, but the abbot was against it. He said that he would set something up, and let us know a few days in advance. As a show of good faith, I gave him the movies I wanted to show.

Three weeks have passed since that day. I went to go and see the abbot recently, but he ignored me the entire time I was there. I do not know if the movie will ever happen now. All that effort was essentially for nothing, but at least I know that abbot better.

It is impossible to live in rural Cambodia and not hear the language of the animals, developed and learned by humans for countless years for the purpose of speaking to their pets or livestock. Many different styles exist for a variety of animals. When I first started to write about them in my notes, I wondered for a while if these commands were more than just a way to communicate. I asked a bunch of people I knew if communication with the animals was, in some sense, an attempt to communicate with human spirits making their way through the cycle of reincarnation. The reaction was a blank stare, and statements regarding the idea of reincarnation as a "ridiculous idea." Really? Reincarnation is a ridiculous idea in a Buddhist country? Then again, I would strongly disagree with the description of Cambodia as an orthodox Buddhist country. The common religion is rather a kind of nebulous world of good and evil spirits, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Animism all sort of mixed together. Thus, the language of the animals remains purely a pragmatic one.

Recently, I asked a student if he could demonstrate these commands for me so that I could make an audio recording of them. We went through a bunch of them, and he explained to me what each one was for. This first one is a collection of commands for a cow (Come Here, Go Away, Stop and Wait For Me, Stop Eating Grass). Cows are often wandering around everywhere, and it seems logical that there would be a special set of commands in order to get them to do anything. Not that they follow these commands, but it is better than doing nothing. It makes sense that these would be for a cow, since the low, rough timbre of the voice imitates what a cow sounds like.

This next set of commands is for pigs (Go Away, Come and Eat). Pigs are usually kept around the house, so there are not a lot of commands for them except these. At the beginning of the clip you can hear the word "churoo," which means "pig" in Khmer. The staccato style of speaking is reminiscent of snorting grunt as well.

This last one is for dogs (Come and Eat, Stop Barking, Go And Bite Someone!). It is interesting that this last one should exist, although dogs do serve as an intruder alarm. (My apologies for the picture, I have none containing dogs. Please enjoy this scenic view of some rice fields).

I have a few more of some other animals, but these are by far the most interesting.

It's going pretty well so far. I learned recently that the original fish I had in the tanks were the so called, "fighting fish" that people use to gamble with. (They place bets on which one will win) I learned this when I came back from water festival in Siem Reap and five of the fish were missing, and presumed stolen. Now I have a different kind of fish that does not fight, is much smaller, and probably does a better job of eating mosquito larvae than the fighting fish. It is called boah pram buhl, or "seven colored fish" because of their colorful tails. I wish I could get a better picture of them, but they move too quickly for the camera to focus. I came back from Puok recently with thirty of them, and it seems like they are multiplying already. Maybe next month we can start selling them off to the community.

The blue netting over the water jars is to prevent leaves and other crud from falling into the water, while letting bugs in for the fish to eat. It kind of looks a little haphazard, but I'm working on a new design right now. I'm also hoping to turn this whole back area into a garden somehow.

The subject is difficult to write about. Lingering in the back of my mind, I have spent time thinking about writing something about it. But among the abstract, inchoate thoughts that rise to the surface, the one that clearly doubts the project is always the loudest. Really? You want to write about boredom? How boring! The new arrivals in the province are having a hard with it, and ask questions like, “How on earth have you survived here for more than a year?” that have provoked responses from myself that are bland and meaningless. So I suppose this entry to make for that.

It is easy to understand what their situation is like. All people in this situation go through a similar experience. It goes something like this: Imagine for a moment that you are an American living in America. Your life is full of appointments, meetings, presentations, dinners, classes, accompanied by a regular seasonal change and surrounded with friends and family. Suddenly you find yourself in the middle of a small Southeast Asian nation surrounded with unfamiliar people and having none of the things that keep you busy. You also find that life moves at a much slower pace. So what do you do? You can throw yourself into your teaching work, but that is often not the best idea. I did that during my first year, and it really left me too exhausted to anything else. (I am doing much more outside the classroom this year, and I am much happier for it) Apart from work, which may be interrupted by unforeseeable events or holidays for weeks at a time, there is not a whole lot you can do. A lot of volunteers read, exercise, and socialize with people in the market in their spare time, which are good ways to unwind. However, these can only keep you busy for so long. You might wonder what Khmer people do for fun, and why I am not out doing what they do. As far as I can tell, entertainment options in the village for the locals include playing cards, gambling, volleyball, gossiping with neighbors, watching TV soap operas, and consuming huge amounts of rice wine or canned beer. (Sometimes starting as early as breakfast) Since I am good at none of those things, my options are very limited. And so I continually face the prospect of boredom on the onset of a long, hot afternoon.

Consider the example of what I did last Saturday. While Saturday is technically a school day, the Peace Corps largely discourages us from teaching on that day. So it is a day off. I rolled out of bed at something like 8:00. (This is the equivalent of something like 10:45 in American time, way too late) I looked at the pile of laundry near the bathroom door, and said to myself, “No…tomorrow.” Took a bath, dressed, unlocked the door and walked outside into the bright sunshine. From the couple of minutes it took to towel off and walk around, I had already started sweating already. Bought two waffles from the breakfast stand in front of the house and walked down the street to the café. Ordered a coffee and sat down with a book for about two hours. I also started to compose this little letter on the back of some paper I recently found behind my bamboo bookshelf. Mr. Breadman came by at 8:45, and I bought my usual loaf of bread from him. We chatted about the weather. At 11:00 I went down to the market to buy some eggs and tomatoes. The eight-year-old girl who sells them to me always screams with laughter every time I come to buy them, for some reason. Went back to the house and made myself a hard boiled egg and tomato sandwich with a little olive oil I brought back from Siem Reap. The host mother laughed as I sat down at the family table with the sandwich, and asked if it tasted good. We have the same exchange nearly every other day. After lunch I pulled out the GRE book and studied math problems. After this, I went to visit the Guppy Farm for an hour, and started off on a long bicycle ride. Came back at 6:00, showered, dressed, ate dinner, practiced the violin, read a book, took another shower, and finally made my way to bed. And that was my entire day off. It really does not get any better than that.

Everyone who comes and lives in this part of the world experiences boredom of some kind. It is mentioned through all the colonial literature you can find. (Conrad, Orwell, and Maugham describe it particularly well. Kipling never mentions it) The mornings are usually okay. If there is no school, you can wake up a little later. You can also visit the market, go out to breakfast, or lesson plan while it is still cool out. However, the after lunch period is particularly dreadful. There is nothing worse than slowly realizing you have nothing to do until the hour when you have to go to bed. The sun is strong, and it takes a strong amount of will power not to roll up in the hammock and sleep the afternoon off. Some people like the siesta, but I find it dreadful. I feel tired for the rest of the day, and so I relegate the worst part of the day to studying the GRE’s.

When you settle into a routine, many of the days seem the same. You retreat into the world of books or pirated DVD’s in order to kill the monotony of life. Every couple of weeks, you escape to the provincial town for a little conversation and western food. But even still with this, there are no plays or concerts to attend, no movie theaters to go to, and while going to a bar or nightclub might sound appealing you can only go to a few that are not packed with bored looking prostitutes. Your only real source of entertainment remains chiefly books and DVD’s.

There is nothing that shows you how much your life now is different from your previous one when you talk to people in America. While you have an infinitive amount of time to sit around and swap yarns, they do not. They are Americans! They have things to do, and people to see instead of listening to, “Well this one time in the village…” over the telephone. And it is incredibly frustrating when you realize that.

So how do you keep your mind from going dull? Anything you can. The new arrivals have only just discovered this, and I wish them luck in the weeks and months to come.

Recently, I went to a dance performance at Wat Char Chouk. It was held as part of a kahtin, a ceremony where an elderly woman, a yaye, offers gifts to monks at the wat. From what I understand, the whole purpose of it is to seek atonement before one's final hours.

The ceremony began as a parade down the main street of town. The people involved assembled at the far end of town, near where the road forks in two. They carried several litters of bananas, cooking pots, and two small dark Buddhas carved from jade. A band of musicians joined, clashing symbols and playing the trou-u. Some dancers dressed as peacocks, and together with the large band walked down the main road under the hot October sun. And where was I in all this? I was quietly watching the crowd go by when a man carrying a heavy litter loaded with metal pots asked that I take over for him. Naturally, I took the weight of the wooden beam off his shoulders, and marched towards Wat Char Chouk. The sweat streamed down from my face, and I fanned myself vigorously whenever we took a break. When we reached the gates of the wat, we circled the vihira twice before setting the litter down and going inside. The atmosphere inside the vihira was rather pleasant, for the high ceiling of the building allowed the heat to evaporate. The cool tile floor and the cross breeze from the windows was also welcome. The gifts were placed in a line in the center of the room, and the monks sat in standard formation around them facing each other. The abbot sat at the head with his back to the altar, and beckoned me over to his position before the ceremony started. He asked when I was going back to America, and lit a cigarette as he lamented about the high temperature of the day. I went to go sit back down next to a yaye, who was chewing betel nut and spitting it into a metal cup. An electric fan was finally brought for the abbot, and the ceremony began. The recitation of prayers began, and the people responded with murmurs and prostration when appropriate. When it ended, people began to go outside.

In the courtyard outside the vihira, a dancing troupe was assembled in front of a small stone Buddha. I have seen Khmer dancing in the villages and on display for tourists, and I rather prefer the experience in the village. The people know exactly what they are looking at, and they respond to the story lines of the dance with laughs and jeers instead of vacant expressions and camera flashes. And how nice it is to see what entertainment was like before drunken, loud karaoke and cell phones! An orchestra of xylophones, bells, a reed instrument, and singers sat in front of the Buddha and played behind the dancers. My favorite dance that I saw was the courtship between Hanuman and a magie.

A magie, as a co-teacher explained to me, is a sort of mythical princess. I suppose it is similar to a nymph, or some minor god in Greek mythology. She made her appearance in a splendid blue costume, with a pointed golden crown and a crystal ball. Her movements were languid, and she weaved her hands through the air as if caressing the sides of an invisible snake. Suddenly, Hanuman appeared in a red costume with golden epilates pointed upwards and a splendid expression on his monkey mask. Hanuman, as you may know, is the king of monkeys. His grin reveals mischief, and is often portrayed as a trickster. After making his entrance, he made advances towards the magie. It may as well have been Zeus chasing after a nymph of some kind, although Zeus seemed to have much more luck on his side that poor Hanuman, for the magie rejected his propositions. The orchestra played, and a monk fiddled with an electric light on a bamboo pole. Hanuman tried to place the magie under his spell by a series of finger movements that pushed her backwards, but the magie countered this and returned him to his original place. The crowd laughed at Hanuman’s humiliation, and the king of monkeys suddenly became very angry. He removed a small wooden axe from his belt and waved it threateningly in the air. His actions seemed to frighten the poor magie. In order to propitiate him enough to calm him down, she offered Hanuman the crystal ball that she held in her hand throughout the dance. As soon as he touched it, he became very tired. While he lay down on the ground to sleep, the magie made her escape. When Hanuman woke up, the magie was no longer there. With his efforts foiled, he too made an exit and concluded the dance.

With the entertainment now over, the abbot thanked the crowd and the dancers for coming as everyone shuffled off to dinner.

I suppose this all started in early June when I purchased a guppy to live in the water tank of my bathroom. Something needed to be done about the mosquito larvae living and breeding in my bathroom, and I was considering several options about how to get rid of them. Larvacide was supposedly easy to get from the health clinic, but getting the right amount in the water tank was tricky business. Too much was dangerous to one’s health, and too little was ineffective. Putting some netting over the tank to prevent bugs from getting in and out was another thing I could have done, but it would have been really hard to keep it from tearing. Luckily, a PCV in the neighboring Pourk district told me that he found a place that sold guppies. I had read that guppies could be kept in water storage tanks to eat the mosquito larvae that breeds in them, so I went to Pourk one afternoon to purchase one.

The shop was a little ways off the national highway, and was hard to find if you did not know what you were looking for. When I finally found it, I met the owner just as he was finishing lunch. I explained that I looking to purchase a guppy, and he smiled as he told me to wait a few minutes while he finished lunch. He was a rather charming man, with large eyes and a propensity to laugh in a way that seemed almost crazy. His dialect was also rather strange, and I maybe understood half of what he told me. When he finished eating, when we went behind his house into the interior of his shop. The entire place was filled with ceramic water containers, potted plants, vines, makeshift ponds, and glass tanks. He kept over a dozen kinds of fish there, and I watched him as he went around and tended to each of them. Finally he asked what fish I wanted to buy, and I picked out one that was inside an empty glass bottle. After I paid, I said goodbye and jumped in a taxi to go back to Angkor Chum.

When I returned home, I started asking around if anybody knew about the benefits of having a fish live in their water containers. Not surprisingly, very few people knew about them. Then one day as I was puttering around the town, I came up with a brilliant idea for a project. I could start a guppy farm at school! Students would be placed in charge of taking care of the fish, and everyone would learn about the dangers of mosquito born illnesses such as Dengue Fever, Malaria, Japanese Encephalitis, and a whole range of others that are just simply awful. We could then sell the guppies we raise, and distribute them to people in the town. Brilliant!

To do this, however, I need help getting water storage containers to raise the fish in. I pitched the idea to the staff of an agricultural NGO named ADRA, which had a branch office in Angkor Chum. The staff at the office told me to talk to the Siem Reap office, which in turn told me to talk to country director of the whole NGO. It was a classic case of, “Oh, you better talk to my supervisor,” all the way until I got the email address of someone who could take responsibility for a project. I promptly wrote him a very nice letter about what I wanted to do:

[To the Director of ADRA,

My name is Adrian Stover, and I am a United States Peace Corps volunteer currently living in Angkor Chum district, Siem Reap province Cambodia. I am writing to you to discuss a project I am developing at Angkor Chum High School. As part of a dengue and malaria prevention and education program, I am working on developing a “guppy farm” located on the grounds of the school. Guppies are currently being used in many parts of Cambodia to control the mosquito populations that spread malaria and dengue fever. The small fish are placed in water tanks, and eat the mosquito larvae that breed in them. This prevents many mosquitoes from maturing into adults, and reduces the amount of mosquitoes in a certain area. This practice has shown to be very effective. According to the August 2007 issue of Health Messenger magazine, “A recently completed study in Trapeang Kong commune, Kampong Speu province, found that adding a few guppy fish to water storage containers resulted in 80 per cent reduction of mosquitoes in the commune.” If this technique was applied to the community of Angkor Chum, it is possible that the same effects could happen and could cause the rate of dengue fever to go down.

What I propose to do is to procure several water storage containers, some fish food, some guppies, and start a “guppy farm” of sorts at Angkor Chum High School. The high school is an ideal location for such a project because it would allow the students to learn about the project. Selected students would be trained on how to take care of the guppies on a weekly basis, and would continue the project long after I finish my term of service. When enough guppies have bred, the school can sell them to students or community members as a way of paying for the food and making money for the school. There is also a spare bulletin board at the school that could be used to display information about the fish, the project, and the benefits of having guppies in the water tank.

I believe that a “guppy farm” project would be a great venture between Angkor Chum High School, ADRA, and The United States Peace Corps. Thank you very much in consideration for my request. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

-Adrian Stover]

Two weeks went by, and still I heard nothing from ADRA. I was not too distraught because I was working on the World Map project at the time, which was keeping me busy. However, this NGO was one that I really wanted to work with. Through several visits to the ADRA office in Angkor Chum and Siem Reap, I finally tracked down the phone number for the country director. After a few days of trying to get him on the phone, I finally managed to speak to him about the project. He said it sounded very interesting, and said that he would talk to the staff about it.

The following week, I made an appointment to meet with someone who could take charge on the ADRA side. They agreed to donate some concrete water rings, as well as a few posters about Dengue Fever and the dangers of mosquitoes. By the end of the week, I had four concrete water containers in the area behind the school office and some large glossy posters. And so I went about setting up the guppy farm.

The way the current system works is this: There are four water rings in use. Two of them are used for breeding, and the other two are used as a nursery for the baby guppies. The breeding rings contain two female guppies and one male, which invites a snicker from even the oldest person who works at the school. (Maturity levels are non-existent here) When it looks like a female guppy is going to give birth (you can tell by the swelling in her abdomen), she is moved to another ring where she can produce the offspring. After she has given birth, she is moved back to her original ring. The danger in keeping her in the same ring as her offspring lies in the fact that she may be inclined to eat her children. (Nature can be very cruel) Without a system like this in place, the whole purpose of producing guppies would be lost. It took me a little while to figure out what was happening to the baby guppies when they disappeared, but once I figured out what was going on I put this system in place.

Once I figured how a breeding system would work, I recruited six students from one of my English classes to help care for the fish. I held a training session with them during a Thursday afternoon and made a little pamphlet about how to take care of the fish. I explained how the fish needed a bucket of fresh water everyday to replenish their oxygen supply, and we organized a schedule for a different student to do this on each day of the week. One student also volunteered to feed them twice a week.

Right now the students are completely in charge of taking care of the fish, which is exactly what I wanted. Hopefully they will teach others, and this project will continue long after I have left for America. The people at the school have been very supportive of the project, and I think the students really enjoy it. I have posters hung up on the wall near the water rings, so that people interested in learning about the fish can read about them in Khmer. I am also in the middle of building a small garden around the water rings with flowers and gravel walkways. It should be done by the end of the year.

All that’s left for us to do is to figure out how to sell the guppies to people in the community, and for how much. But so far, this is one project I have done that has been more successful than I thought it would be.

This is the speech I made last week when the flood water went down enough for the students to assemble in the front yard of the school. I wrote it in English, gave it to my counterpart to translate into Khmer script, and then spent a week wrapping my tongue around it. It went pretty well, although a student in the front row fainted during the middle of it. He seemed okay afterwords when he was resting in the school office, but maybe he had not eaten for a while. It kind of threw me off for a little bit, but I recovered nicely with a joke that my Khmer accent was too strong. Anyway, here is the speech...in English.

I wish to welcome you back to school! I hope that you study hard this year and become intelligent and useful members of society. I am speaking to you today in Khmer for many reasons. First I wish to thank the students who helped create the world map last month. With their hard work, they helped to create something beautiful that the whole community can be proud of. [Hold For Applause]

I have been in Cambodia for fourteen months. I will leave to go back to America in ten months. I will not return to Cambodia for many years. I want my time in Cambodia to be productive, and I wish to help the people of Angkor Chum as much as possible. Because I have only ten months left, I ask that you help me. Study hard in your English classes, come to the events and classes that I organize, and learn from me as much as possible. Many schools in Cambodia do not have foreign English teachers. You are very lucky! Use this opportunity while you still can, and you will be rewarded with knowledge.

Perhaps you have seen the fish in the concrete rings behind the school office. These fish are part of a mosquito control program. These fish eat mosquito larvae, which live in water containers across Cambodia. If everyone had fish in their water containers in Angkor Chum, there would be fewer mosquitos and less disease like dengue fever. I ask that responsible class monitors from grades 10 and 11 help me take care of the fish. We will feed them, clean their tanks, and sell them to people to put in their water storage containers. When I leave for America, it will be their responsibility to take care of the fish. Together we can defeat the evil mosquitoes and destroy disease! [Applause]

I also ask all students to respect the fish. Do not throw your trash into their homes! Respect them as you would respect your own family.

For students who enjoy learning English, I am going to start a new class this year. It will be in the library, and it will focus on reading books. I have many books from America that I want to share with you, and reading books will help you learn English more than English for Cambodia or New Headway books. It will give you new ideas and knowledge. I once met a Cambodian doctor in Phnom Penh. He told me that he was able to become a doctor because he could read English, and he was able to read many books. If you can read many books, you may become a doctor just like him.

In November, after the water festival, I will also try to present a special Cambodian Film Festival for all students in Angkor Chum. With the help of a local NGO, I will present to you movies about Cambodia. Two will be in Khmer, and one will be in English. They will all be about Cambodia. I ask you to come and watch these movies, and discuss them.

As many of you know, I like to study Khmer. However, my Khmer is not very good and I need help learning it. Peace Corps is going to give me a test in Khmer, and I am afraid I will not pass it if I do not receive help. I am looking for a responsible student to help me learn Khmer. I will need to study written Khmer and spoken Khmer. The Peace Corps will pay a certain amount of money each month to a student, if you are responsible and a good teacher. I cannot teach English to this student during these classes, you must be a good Khmer teacher. If you are interested in becoming my teacher, please find me and tell me.

Again, I hope that you have a successful year, and I look forward to seeing you in class.

I suppose that I am due for an update, aren't I? The truth is that there is nothing really to report. The flood water has gone down enough for everyone to get to the classroom buildings, and classes have started. Mr. Nou and I are again meeting ten minutes before the start of every class to discuss what we are going to teach, and the students are learning in the same steady pace. Yesterday in 11B we discussed transportation in Cambodia: pickup-taxi, motorbike, airplane, remork, horse, bicycle, elephant, water buffalo, that sort of thing. I had the students compose a brief essay that answered the questions,"If you could visit any place in Cambodia, where would you go? How would you get there? What would you do there." A student named Sohpaul asked me if he could get to Battambang by lion. I told him this could only happen if the lion was of the flying kind. Sure enough, his essay began, "I would like to visit Battambang to visit friends. I would get there by riding a flying lion." Genius.

The monsoon rains are coming at night now, which means the rainy season will end soon. The rice has grown very high recently with all the rain, and I'm sure some farmers will have a good harvest. The main road down to the national highway has been washed out in some places, making the journey down there more arduous than before. A taxi ride to go anywhere now is similar to that of a bean being shaken around in a tin can, and guess who's the bean? The mere thought of it renders me immobile. Besides, I just received a giant collection of George Bernard Shaw plays from the floating library in Phnom Penh, and I would rather just plow through those.

Life continues on. I continue to teach and work in the school garden on Saturdays and Thursdays. I have a small project there which I will write about once I have a more complete story. I often wonder how people in America are doing at this time of year, but then I have to remind myself that they are more than likely having busy American lives doing who knows what. They cannot probably imagine that this life is far more interesting and exotic than their own. Exotic, yes, but interesting? You have to understand that when the bizarre becomes familiar, it ceases to be bizarre. For example, I am looking forward to enjoying the start of water festival in a few weeks. Surely you have a three day carnival to celebrate the changing direction of a major river in your country, don't you? But then again, your country has infrastructure. That must be terribly exciting to move around in! Trains, buses, mass transit systems, roads not clogged with cows or goats, what a wonderful image.

But then, who exactly is looking at who?

Cambodia was hit by typhoon Ketsana this week. While this sounds pretty dramatic, the most that I experienced was a lot of rain. The final two months of monsoon bring a lot of rain already to this region, and the typhoon really dropped a lot of water on an already saturated landscape. The result is flooding, and lots of it. My location in Siem Reap caught the edge of it, but Kampong Thom got the brunt of it. A volunteer told me over the phone yesterday that a tree fell on a house near her village and killed nine people. I read in the Phnom Penh Post how a man fell into a hole on the street in Siem Reap town, where they are doing a lot of repair work, and got sucked into a sewage current. He drowned, and now it is my number one fear when I walk down the street there.

When the rains started on Tuesday night, a lot of water suddenly started coming down at around eleven o’clock at night. The tin roof made a dreadful noise from the water pounding on it, and I had to put in earplugs just to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, it was still raining just as hard. No one was on the road, and I could see that my high school was severely flooded. The rain kept coming all day, which was odd. Normally, the monsoon rains come every afternoon and last for maybe an hour. This was different. The radio was dead, and I did not even know that a typhoon had hit us until my parents called me on the cellphone that night worried about the damage it was causing. When the rain was at its lightest, I rode around the main road and surveyed the damage. The rice fields were all flooded, and children were jumping into gushing streams and currents coming from bubbling culverts. The whole atmosphere rather felt like a snowstorm. People mostly stayed indoors, venturing out under raincoats and umbrellas to the market. I went myself and got soaked buying some eggs, tomatoes, onions, an apple and an orange at the market. The ladies working there seemed to be in good spirits about the turn of events, and no one I met seemed to be in an utter state of despair. I went back to my house, cooked the eggs, toasted some bread over the gas stove, and made myself a sandwich. It was certainly a day for staying inside, making tea, and reading.

The next day was supposed to be the first day of school. While classes certainly did not start, a ceremony was held at the primary school under a light drizzle. At the beginning, the students and teachers walked out and paraded down the street carrying blue and white banners. The students had to walk down past the market and back again, but the teachers and I decided to them do that on their own. We ducked into a nearby restaurant and ordered coffee. When the students came back, we assembled and listened to the district chief give a speech about student behavior, studies, and some other things of which I was vaguely aware of.

Nothing much happened for the rest of week. I came to Siem Reap today to use the Internet and get my bicycle repaired, only to find that the Siem Reap river had burst from its banks and was down flowing swiftly down most of the main streets. In some parts, the water is maybe three feet high I just talked to one of the staff at Common Grounds Café, and apparently the dam that is supposed to be holding back all the water is breaking. If it breaks completely, there could be as much as three meters of water that could come into the town. The rice fields I saw on the way in were completely inundated. I even saw from the national road a boat full of people making their across the fields to their houses. I am even drawing up plans myself to lash my laundry bins together into some kind of makeshift raft so I can visit the school office.

We'll see how this plays out.

Note: This is kind of a work in progress. There are a couple of more stories I'd like to add about Laos as well as upload some pictures, but I thought I'd post what I have so far.

Looking a map of Cambodia, it is easy to identify the major countries that reside across its borders. Vietnam engulfs the entire eastern front, rising up from the gulf of Thailand and ending in the northeastern corridor along the province of Ratanakiri. The border with Thailand is even more massive, stretching from Koh Kong around Banteay Meanchey to the eastern area near Preah Vihear. Both of these countries are key players in the political realm of the region, and their influence upon Cambodia is clearly defined. A majority of manufactured goods in local markets in Cambodia come from Thailand, and a substantial amount of fruit and agricultural products come Vietnam. The occasional tension rises with Thailand, which is referred to in my village as a “country of thieves,” and during the harvest season huge trucks of rice can be seen heading for Vietnam. Given the impact that these two countries have upon Cambodia, one would almost forget that a third country borders Cambodia. Sitting quietly above the border crossing near Stung Treng is the country of Laos. Landlocked and mostly mountainous, this country of 6.2 million people is diverse in its landscape as it is with its people. Its territory begins in the highlands of the north, and widens from the border with China and Myanmar towards the Plain of Jars and the capital city of Vientiane. It then narrows into a space along the Mekong River sandwiched by Vietnam and Thailand, and is mostly flat along the river’s banks. Although Lowland Lao (Lao Loum) make up seventy percent of the population, there are many different hill-tribes, such as the Hmong, and other minority groups who live in different parts of the country.

Like Cambodia, Laos had a reluctant role during the second Indochinese War, and suffered a bombing campaign that is still taking its toll on civilians today. During the war, the American government dropped nearly two millions tons of bombs on Laos in an effort to destroy elements of the North Vietnamese army and the Pathet Laos. The latter was a communist guerrilla movement that acted in conjunction with the Vietnamese, who later came to power in 1975 in a bloodless coup. As a result of the war, the xenophobic government was heavily dependent on Soviet aid until 1990 when it started to ease diplomatic relations with the west. The country is one of the few remaining communist states in the world, although one would never know it just from being there.

I first thought of traveling to Laos about a year ago. Jason Park, now an RPCV, was telling a bunch of trainees and I about his upcoming plans to visit Laos. He listed a bunch of names of places I had never heard of, and then stated the peculiar phrase, “Laos is going to blow up soon.” There was talk of communism and regional stability in the conversation as well, but for some reason that one phrase put the thought of the northern country in the back of my head. Slowly over the year I began to read more about the country from history books by Milton Osborne, the International Herald Tribune, and an entertaining series of detective novels by Colin Cotteril. So when Anthony called me up in July and asked me if I was interested in traveling to Laos in September, I jumped at the chance.

The plan for the trip was to essentially to go in a big circle around central Indochina. Taking a bus from across the border to the Bangkok airport in Thailand, we were to fly on Air Asia to a city in the north named Chiang Rai. From there, we were to cross the border at Chiang Khong, and take a two-day boat trip down to Luang Pahbang. From there it was onto the Plain of Jars, Vientiane, and then heading back to Phnom Penh via Pakse and Tad Lo in the south. It involved a lot of time sitting on busses and boats, but we figured that a book and the surrounding scenery would be enough to keep us entertained. It was a little grueling at times, but the things that we did largely made up for that. When we left Siem Reap we got off to a bit of a rough start. Matt and I arranged for a bus to take us to Bangkok, stopping at Sisophon to pick up Dan and Anthony. This was unfortunate mistake, for bus we took was very slow and stopped several times before reaching the border. We arranged the bus through our guesthouse, The Mandalay Inn, but we realized too late that this was an obvious scam. If it took this long to get to the border crossing at Poipet, what guarantee did we have that it would arrive in Bangkok at a reasonable time? The driver could very well have stopped at a guesthouse along the way and claimed Bangkok could not be reached that day because of engine trouble or some other excuse. The guesthouse would also happen to belong to someone in the family. It sounds paranoid and cynical, but it was a real fear of ours. After we crossed the border, we were worried that we might miss our flight. We decided to pay a taxi a hefty sum of money to take us directly to Bangkok airport itself. This was actually not a bad deal, since we would have had to pay a taxi anyway when we got into Bangkok. Despite what people had told me, crossing the border into Thailand was pretty easy. I think coming back is much harder, but fortunately we did not have to do that on this trip. Getting a taxi was a bit of a hassle, but it was probably worth it.

I’ve been to the Bangkok airport a few times now, and every time I go I marvel at its massive size and gleaming white architecture. When we got there, we checked in and made our way to the food court to have an early dinner at the Burger King. It was everything that I imagined it would be and more. From there we flew into Chiang Rai, and stayed at a dingy guesthouse near the bus station. It happened to be my birthday that day, so we went out to an ex-pat bar that night owned by an Englishman dressed in white linen. We were looking over the drink menu under the watchful gaze of some cat-like waitresses when the owner came out suddenly. “Girls! You’ll scare them away!” he called out, and invited us in for a drink. We spent most of the evening around the pool table and the dartboard in the back. The next day we found a bus going to the border town of Chiang Khong, and boarded it just after the sun came up around six. From the bus station, we crossed through rice fields, hills, and passed giant rock formations that seemed to have just sprung up out of the ground. The air was noticeably cooler. When we got to the bus station on the border, we took a tuk-tuk to the river and crossed the Mekong on a thin wooden boat towards the town on the Laos side named Houyxai. When we passed through customs on the other side, we arranged to take a passenger boat at 11:00 down to Luang Prabang through a local travel agent. We went down to docks for a bit of lunch, and waited for our boat to depart.

It was while waiting for the boat that we had an introduction to the Laotian sandwich. Stuffed with tuna, chicken, ham, vegetables, or all of these ingredients, a sandwich in Laos is a treat not to be missed by the weary traveler. Of course Cambodia has its own version of the lunchtime staple, but the ones in Laos were far more delicious. A lot of it has to do with the bread, which is soft, white, and chewy. This is unlike its crusty, oily, and hardened Cambodian cousin. The reasons for this difference are a mystery, but I would venture a guess that Laotian people use yeast in the production process because the slightly cooler climate allows for it.

The boat we took to Luang Prabang was a small converted cargo ship, which was about six to nine feet wide and perhaps fifty or sixty feet long. A roof covered the wooden deck, and luggage was stored underneath our feet in the hold. The pilot sat at the very front and steered the ship with a wheel that looked like it was out of another age. Passengers sat on wooden seats, concerted car seats, or mats on the floor. A toilet in the cabin near the engine room provided relief, if a little noisy. The further back you went towards the end of the boat, the louder the noise came from the engine. Given this, it was a pretty good idea to come early and get a good seat while you could. Two days on a boat sounds like an awful bore, but it was actually quite the opposite. We made a few friends with other travelers on board, played cards, looked at the scenery, and read our books while the boat continued on downstream. Among the people we met were Ai, a bearded fellow from Israel with a straw hat and a bamboo walking stick, Réné, a Danish man who had previously come from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and Liz, an American woman who was working in a Burmese refugee camp in Thailand. Liz happened to be from the same city as me, and we talked for a while about and favorite places to eat back home. Réné told me stories about fighting the Taliban. Most of the passengers were foreigners heading to Luang Prabang, but there were a few Laotian travelers scattered here and there amongst the throngs of white faces. There was one local couple that we kept trying to chat with, but it was with limited success. I did notice from glancing at them that they were able to hold hands and display small signs of affection. This would never happen in Cambodia.

From Houyxai, we traveled downstream through the hills towards the town of Pakbeng. The Mekong had a strong current, with bubbling ripples arising from bottom everywhere one looked. At this point of the river, the soil it has collected from its path in the Tibetan plateau turns the water a rusty brown color. The mountains cut up steeply from the riverbanks along the way, and the pilot had to carefully navigate between the rapids and the sharp rocks that stuck up just above the water. The boat stopped here and there to let people off and on, as well as for schoolboys and girls to come on board selling candy, chips, pineapple slices, and the ubiquitous large bottles of Beer Laos from woven baskets. Along certain sections of the river, one could clearly see how slash and burn agriculture had made its mark upon the landscape. Huge patches of land were stripped away from the forest, presumably used for growing crops. Occasionally, someone would shout and point to something they saw on shore. Once we saw a cargo ship loading crates onto the shore with the help of an elephant escort. Another time we saw a backpack circling the drain of a whirlpool, and someone exclaimed that it was “backpacker’s worst nightmare.” When we reached Pakbeng, it was around five o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun was making lines on the water behind us. After unloading our bags, we walked up the hill from the docks and quickly found a guesthouse. The owner was a single mother, and we were happy to stay at her place for the night. There was hot water in a shared bathroom, and a restaurant across the street from where we ate dinner that night. The next day was cloudy and foggy. Then monks were out collecting alms when we walked out to find breakfast at six thirty that morning, and the woman who ran the guesthouse made us breakfast and sandwiches for the coming day. When our boat left the dock that morning, the clouds shielded the tops of the hills from view and formed a misty barrier between the jungle and us. The river snaked around the hills throughout the day, until at last we reached our destination. Louang Prabang is one of the most enchanting towns in all of Indochina. Destroyed by Haw invaders in 1887, the city was rebuilt with money from France and labor from Vietnam. The result of all this is a town that resembles a small alpine village tucked away somewhere in Switzerland. European style houses, brick walkways, and iron lampposts dot the streets in Old Luang Prabang, mixed in with Buddhist Wats and UNESCO buildings. From just taking a walk around the area, you can see a lot of really nice old houses. Expensive boutique shops and coffee houses are also abundant along the main streets, with much of the town’s services geared towards the tourist trade. At night, a large Hmong market is set up under tents in the middle of a street. It offers textiles, handbags, old French coins, and other sorts of souvenir items. While there are a great many restaurants and cafés in Loung Prabang, there are a few that we liked. Saffron is a café facing the Mekong that has good coffee, best if ordered in a French press, as well as good pastries and breakfast items. The café is also part of an NGO, which promotes coffee grown by the Hmong people as a cash crop substitute for opium. The Scandinavian Bakery also offers good breakfasts, and the sandwiches made by people in the market and street vendors are exceptional. For dinner, our favorite thing to do was to go to a food stall at the far end of the Hmong market. One can purchase grilled fish, chicken, buffalo, or beef on a bamboo stick, and then order a plate of vegetarian food for nearly 5,000 kip (roughly 2,500 riel or $0.75) at a nearby stall. Finding an inexpensive place to eat in Luang Pahbang was a little difficult, but this seemed like a pretty good option. For two days after our arrival, we walked around the town to see all that we could. Having lived in Cambodia for over year at that point, we strayed far from the tourist sites and saw the local markets and shops to see how they were different from Cambodian ones. Passing by a local high school, I noticed that the student’s uniforms were different. They all wore shoes, and the girls had a kind of striped pattern at the ends of their skirts. Some of the boys we saw had kind of red kerchiefs around their necks. We also went into the hills a bit to visit the Koung Si falls to cool off a bit. This was probably one of the nicer waterfalls that I have ever seen. The water flowed down from a tall cliff into many different pools along the way into the forest. The water had a kind of turquoise color, and was very cold. One of them had a rope swing suspended from a tree, and we spent a good couple of hours there swinging off of it. From Louang Prabang, we took a bus over the mountains and down into the Plain of Jars to the town of Phounsavan. From the many switchbacks and curves that the road took, it was far from a smooth ride. However, the scenery was breathtaking and what a delight it was not to see an elevated landscape instead of rice fields for a change. From the tall mountains, we came down into low lying green hills with pine trees and scattered clumps of forest.

The eerie thing about Phounsavan is that there are remnants of the American bombing campaign against Laos everywhere you go. When we arrived, we went to the Kong Keo Guesthouse near the old airstrip for dinner. The owner, who is named Kong and uses the word “bollacks” frequently to the amusement of onlookers, helped us organize a tour for the next day, and showed a documentary about the bombing of Laos during the war. It was pretty sad to watch, but also very informative. The documentary showed exactly what a cluster bomb casing looked like, as well as what an individual “bombee” (a small object about the size of a small baseball designed to kill individual people from the air) looked like. When we got up to leave, we noticed that Kong had lit a fire in an elongated boat-shaped object. Then there was the slow realization that this was the casing from a cluster bomb. The next day we saw more evidence of the war. After a tour of some bomb craters, we passed by villages using bomb remnants for structural supports, and a cave at Thom Piu where several hundred civilians were killed. According to the documentary and local information, the cave was being used as a makeshift hospital. During a bombing run, an American fighter plane fired a rocket into the back of the cave and killed everyone inside. Today, a memorial and an information center sit at the base of the cave. A path leads up to the entrance, and you can go inside. It goes back pretty far. At the entrance, people have piled stones as memorials for the dead. It is an eerie place to visit, to say the least. Afterwards, we finally got to see one of the jar sites that the Plane of Jars is so famously named after. These large stone jars are scattered across different sites, and mysterious in origin. Although some speculate that they were used as ancient funerary urns, no one quite knows what they were used for. Our best guesses were that they were put there by aliens, that the pitch resonating in them from one’s voice made them ideal for tuning, that they were originally ancient sea sponges, or that they were used to raise guppy fish (my favorite idea). However, they will forever remain a mystery.

After Phounsavan, we made our way down to Vientiane across the mountains and through the town of Vang Vieng. Although, we did not stop there at Vang Vieng the area around there was quite beautiful. The sawtooth-like Mountains rise up sharply from the river that runs through the town, and form knob tops at their summit. Vientiane was like a smaller version of Phnom Penh, with fewer redeeming qualities. There were the usual tourist restaurants and Mekong river views, but with a prostitute on every corner and a karaoke bar always near, I was pretty disgusted with this place after coming from Luang Prabang. We saw a structure that resembled the L’Arc de Triomphe but more gaudy, as well as the golden pagoda that is one of their national symbols. After seeing a western man take a well dressed male prostitute back to his room, I was pretty happy that I only had to spend one night there. From Vientiane, we took a night bus to Pakse in the southern tip of Laos. Taking a night bus sounds pretty uncomfortable idea, but it was quite pleasant. Instead of seats, this bus was equipped with bunk beds, pillows, and blankets. We left Vientiane at eight o’clock that evening and arrived at six in Pakse. From there we found a bus running to Tad Lo, and booked a room that evening in a wooden bungalow. We rode elephants through the jungle that afternoon, and relaxed before the next day.From there on we trucked onwards to Phnom Penh, with a brief stopover in Stung Treng. The only memorable part was the border crossing. We had read in our guidebook that the border guards in Cambodia would demand a bribe, but would back down if we asked for their name and a receipt. Sure enough, the health quarantine inspector asked us for one dollar each. When I tried to write down his name in my notebook, he grabbed it, threw it at me, and told us to move along.

Then, and only then, did we come back into Cambodia