It’s raining cats and dogs! Or rather, it’s bleeding catsand dogs. Where? In Cambodia. When? All the time.

Cambodia's bitches and queens (female cats) are alwayseither pregnant or in the midst of getting pregnant. Dogs stuck together at theasses are common middle-of-the-street sights. Cat love is less visible, but waymore vocal. Shrieking feline sex yowls are part of my nighttimesoundtrack.

These yowls lead to lots of kittens. Lots and lots ofkittens. At last count, nine cats were living outside my host family's house.They sometimes get inside the house, but don't really live inside. The discarded bones and leftover rice from lunch anddinner are the only things that keep them around.

The impregnator doesn't join the lunch and dinner action.He's too busy chasing pussy. He only comes around at night. Like mostcriminals, he's big and black.

Knocked-up Cambodian cats stay in pretty good shape comparedto Cambodian dogs.

With their saggy tits that brush the ground as they walk,Cambodian bitches look more like cows than dogs.

Pregnancy takesa lot out of the dogs. It almost took the life out of Miro, one of theorphanage's dogs.

"I think she will die." Those were the words of aFrench guest about Miro.

Her half-dozen pups were sucking the life out of her. Itdidn't help that Miro was raised on French sausages and now refused to eatanything but meat.

This in a country where "dog food" is leftoverhuman food. There's never any meat left over. Only rice, veggies and bones.

Luckily for Miro, the visiting French guy was good atfinding her meat. He fed her a whole sausage one day, just like old times.

So Miro didn't die. But the orphanage wasn't taking any morechances. Miro is now the only dog I know on birth control.

Miro is a beautiful bitch, especially compared to mostCambodian dogs. Her brown and white dappled fur is sleek and thick, not mattedand patchy.

Most Cambodian dogs are hairless, mangy and rabid. They linenot only the sides, but the middle of the streets. They lounge in the dirt wherethe median should be, only bothering to move in the face of approaching car,bike, moto, truck or tractor wheels.

During a scavenger hunt, Peace Corps Trainees were taskedwith finding and taking a picture of the mangiest, ugliest dog. The hardest partof this task was deciding which mangy, ugly dog to photograph.

Before coming to Cambodia, I read cautionary tales from PeaceCorps Volunteers who carried sticks to beat dogs away.

Volunteers receive a smorgasbord of rabies shots. But therewas still an uproar when a Volunteer was supposedly bitten by a rabid dog.

Dogs used to go after me when biking. One dog in particular— a big, white, crazy beast. A lot like Kasey, the German Shepherd my family waschained to for 10 long years — but fluffy. Like Kasey, this white Cambodian dogis a biter. It bit me on the leg on two separate rides. Luckily, no rabies.

I began to fear this white puffball, and biked meters out ofmy way to avoid it. The dog's image took over my dreams, or I should say,nightmares.

My fear of this dog and every dog grew stronger afterviewing an Animal Planet specialdocumenting packs of wild dogs taking over the world. Their method? Mauling andmurdering.

My childhood fear of dogs was returning. As a kid, Icouldn't enter the homes of people with dogs until those dogs were locked inbasements or spare rooms.

But all this was before I learned the secret to dogdomination.

During my early Cambodian days, my defense against dogs wasto yell and bark. While this strategy sometimes works, it often doesn't. Thedogs call your bluff and realize that their jaws can easily rip off yourface.

Aggression isn't the secret. It's the opposite. Non-aggression.Disengagement. Disinterest. Pretend the dogs aren't even there. Don't look atthem. An internal chant of "calm, calm, calm..." also helps.

Disengagement is how most Cambodians treat dogs. Except fora few cases in Phnom Penh, Cambodians don't consider dogs pets. They're forguarding the house. (Although most the time they're busy guarding the middle ofthe road.)

You know the clicking sound that people in the States maketo call dogs? Cambodians make that sound, too. But here, that sound doesn'tmean "Come." It means "Go away." Grunts and huuuhs are alsocommon "Get the hell out of here" sounds.

The most common dog engagement is violence. Raise a hand topet a dog and the dog's gone. Hands are for beating, not petting.

Dogs aren't allowed in the orphanage's cafeteria. Unless thedog's name is Centhuit. (pronounced Sanweet.) This black and tan puppy gets VIPprivileges.

Why? Because the young French woman who lives and works here has adopted him as apet. In French, Centhuit means 108. That's how many orphans are at theorphanage. As you can tell, the French woman and Centhuit are very close.

Centhuit is fed meat from the cafeteria tables. Meanwhile, anotherlittle tan thing of a puppy is left to whine at the wooden gate at thecafeteria door. But this little tan thing is clever. It wriggles through thehole in the gate, even after this hole is blocked with flip flops, mats andblankets. It simply pushes these obstacles aside and barges in. It wants meat,too.

But the little tan thing can't have meat. Its name isn't Centhuit.It's yelled at and put back over the gate, and it soon grows too big to squirmthrough the hole.

This is what it's like at the orphanage when the Frenchfounder is around. When he's gone, the cafeteria is a den of doggy mayhem. Centhuitisn't the only one allowed in. The tan pup is also admitted, along with Miro,Luke and an ugly bitch whose name I can never remember.

These dogs don't wait docilely for scraps either. They stillare reduced to eating scraps, but they actively go after these scraps bygumming the bones off the tables.

To help me pronouncethe name, the French woman tells me that Centhuit sounds like sandwich. Whichreminds me of another dog-domination technique: eating them.

Woah, woah, woah, before you get all huffy, I don't meaneating all dogs. One will do the job.If you eat just one dog, other dogs will know. They can smell that stuff, justlike they can smell fear.

And what they smell is power. They smell someone whois stronger than them, because that someone can, and will, eat them.

Power. That's what eating dog is all about. Eating dog givesyou power and energy. It's energizing. Especially black dog.

That's the kind of dog I want to eat. The best kind of dogto eat is black and the best time is now, before the sweat-drenched hell ofMarch, April and May.

Organizing this eating of dog shouldn't be difficult. Mytownmate and fellow Volunteer, Rachel, has already found a place. A couple ofmy Cambodian friends have agreed to be escorts, so we don't end up withdysentery and giardia like an Australian volunteer in town.

(Rachel maintainsthat anything could have given theAussie volunteer that combo, especially the warmed-up duck fetuses he likes to scarf.)

Next you hear from me I will be a proud, card-carrying dogeater. Now I just have to find out where to get one of those cards.

I used to believe that I had to wear a certain pair ofunderwear to have a good day. Then I believed I had to match my underwear to myclothes. Next I believed I had to do everything in increments of fives: Fiveminutes, five pieces of chocolate, you get the idea. I don’t have such specificregimens nowadays, but I’m still partial to the number five, and I'm still superstitious.

I have never wanted to know my future. The thought ofknowing what to expect out of life scares me. I don’t know if people really canpredict the future, but I have never wanted mine predicted. I have never wantedto go to a fortuneteller. But I recently went anyway. (A recent nine monthsago!)

It was an assignment for MangoDreams, Peace Corps Cambodia’s prestigious literary magazine/newsletter.Serious stuff. I couldn’t refuse. I also thought it was time to confront myfear of the future.

The fortune teller I saw is the town’s best. He lives on ahuge spread populated by lots of animals — monkeys, crocodiles and children. My Cambodian friend Rath tells me his predictions areaccurate some of the time.

We sit at a polished disc of tree insides. We is me, fellowPeace Corps Volunteer Rachel and Rath, my friend, teacher and fortune-tellertranslator. Oh, and fortune teller Young Lem and his non-fortune tellingdaughter Lem Savry.

Lem, a compact man of 50-something is wearing a whiteChairman Mao pantsuit. His daughter, a woman of about 30, is wearing a peasantblouse.

Lem begins with questions.

What’s your name? How old are you? What year were you born?What month? What day? What time?

He then writes down a lot of numbers on sheets torn from ayellow legal pad. It looks like he’s using the prediction method used in thegame MASH, when you try to predict your friend’s futures by writing a bunch ofstuff and then drawing a giant spiral to zero in on the truth.

But it’s not MASH, daughter Savry says. It’s the methodoriginated by the man she calls Napoleeeown (Napoleon).

Once Lem finishes his Napoleonic scribbles, he startsspouting my future life’s secrets. His foresight is very comprehensive. Hestarts general, then goes through my future life month by month for the remainingmonths of 2011.

His insights bolded, mine not.

General insights:

• Your good fortuneyears were ages 26 and 27. OK. Those were good years. I didn’t win anylotteries, but good years.

• When you are 29 youwill meet a problem. The reason is you will have one guy, you will help a man.

• If you would liketo choose one you love to get married to, ages 30-35 are good opportunities forgood fortune.

• You are kind andgenerous. You want to help people.

• Your successfullife will start at age 31.

• Your adventure lifewill be ages 22-31.

• You want to hideyour secret thing but you cannot. You cannot hide your secret. I don’t haveany secrets — yet.

Monthly insights:

• April – Be carefulof a traffic accident on Thursday and Sunday around 1 and 4 p.m. I musthave been careful, ‘cause I wasn’t involved in any traffic accidents.

• May – You will geta good boyfriend. Nope.

• June – You will geta very big, very good fortune. Probably your supervisor or manager will helpyou. Approved to stay inCambodia another year. Does that count?

• You will go toanother country. I did go to another country! America!

• July – You willlose your stuff. Probably lost some stuff. I lose my stuff every month.Almost every day, even.

• August – You willmeet a good opportunity. Your friend, some guy, will provide a good job, good news to you. Nope.

• September – Youwill get good, good news again. Probably from a supervisor or manager. Goodnews, good job, good opportunity. Not so much.

• October – You willget sick. You could see a Cambodian traditional healer if you want. Maybe acold. Didn't see a traditional healer.

• November – You willhave an argument with a coworker. Maybe a little one I don't remember.

• December – You willbe worried about your friend in USA. Nope.

Fortunes by the dayand month for my whole life:

• Sundays and Mondaysare the best days to buy the main stuff you need in life, ie: a car or a house.Specifically, the best hours are Sundays from 5-7 a.m. and Mondays from 5-7a.m. and 7-9 a.m.

• Sundays and Mondaysyou will have success at work.

• Thursday – Don’t doimportant stuff on this day.

• Saturdays and Wednesday– You always fail on these days and you always lose something on these days.They are not good days .

• October – December– You have a struggle during these months every year – because of your spots.By “spots” he means the two moles I have, one in front of my right ear, one infront of my left. “The spots here arenot so good. You should have them cut off.” My Cambodian dermatologistdisagrees.

Predictions based on my body parts:

• Every human has aspecial thing on their body. Your teeth bring you a lot of luck, and your chin,too. If you change your teeth or chin you will lose your luck.

• If your teethremain until you’re 60 or older your fortune will be greater and greater.

• If your coworkershave nice teeth you will work well with them. Teeth are very important.

• If you get a tattooon your face you will be unsuccessful.

• Your chin is goodand your face is good. It’s not good to get new teeth.

• Don’t change yourface. Don’t put anything artificial in your face. The shape of your face isgood luck from nature. If you change it you lose your luck.

• At the beginning ofyour job your coworkers seem uninterested in you. If you talk to them they willlike you – because of your chin and teeth.

• Your forehead seemslike you think a lot. Even when you sit in the bathroom, you think a lot.

Next, Lem’s daughter Savry asks if I have any questions.Questions like when I will get married, etc.

“No,” I say. I don’t want to know.

But Rachel does. “When will she die?”

“Nooooo!” I yell.

Lem gets the hint. He feeds me more harmless insights.

• Your whole life youalways like traveling, you don’t want to stay at home.

He draws a picture of my house and then tells me my house iffull of success, but I don’t want to stay in my house. I want to leave my house.

Whew. That’s it for me. Rachel didn’t come to have her fortuneread, but Lem’s got something he’s got to tell Rachel. Something no one wantsto hear.

Her chin is very pointy, Lem says. Its pointiness meansshe will either get her business idea or husband stolen. Yikes. Thank genes for my non-pointy chin! Now if I can just stay away from face tattoos...

“What city do you think that is?”

That’s what my mom asks on the top of a mountain overlooking Seoul.

That’s how big Seoul is. It’shard to imagine that an hour's subway ride away, we're still in the same city.

But we are — technically. A bunch of cities are grouped into the SeoulNational Capital Area. A bunch of people are grouped there, too. More than 25million.

You thought New York was crowded? Seoul's population density is almostdouble. Most everyone is Korean.

"I feel like I'm in a pod movie. Where they steal my identity andwe all look the same." Mom says this during one of our cross-currentswims through a wave of people crashing over us in a mall.

So many people and so much to see. We have a week. So little time, butso much done.

At least by Mom and me, who weren’t tied up at the TallBuilding Conference like my engineer dad.

We went from museums and palaces to markets and malls. From traditionalvillages and performances to TV tapings and spas. Plus the mountain, and, ofcourse, lots of restaurants.

We ate lots of Korean — barbecue, bib bim bap, kimchi and Buddhisttemple food, plus Korean pancakes, Japanese noodles and sushi, and plenty ofWestern-style breakfasts.

We did everything but hobnob with Korea’s ubiquitous pop stars. Oh, andmake it to North Korea. Maybe during a future Tall Building Conference.

Below are some of my reconstructed memories of our trip (hopefully minusthe boring bits).

Day One –Cambodia to Bangkok

I leave in the morning by taxi and arrive in the afternoon by van. My flight doesn’t leave ‘til nearly midnight, but I’m here early for thebest Bangkok has to offer: pad Thai, Thai iced tea and movie theaters.

That means MBK, a massive mutant of a mall. The van drops me near MBK. Or at least I think it’s near. The driver points oneway, but no one on the street has heard of the mall. Ifollow one helpful girl up and down a huge concrete overpass and end up at abus. With my huge rolling suitcase? No thanks. I retreat and ask the firstwhite person (hopeful English speaker) I see.

She directs me to the Skytrain, Bangkok’s above-ground subway. It's upanother huge staircase, but this time a kind woman helps lift my beastly bag.

Finally MBK. The promised land of free Thai iced teas — at least forforeigners with passports. The drink’s more ice than tea, but hey, it’sfree.

The phad Thai line is slow so I make for the movie first. The Three Musketeers — in 3D. The flick’sentertaining but feels like a rip-off of several movies, including The Piratesof the Caribbean franchise. Except these boats fly.

Dinner isn’t phad Thai, but some other noodly Thai dish.

Sky train to the airport and then five hours to Seoul. We leave atmidnight and arrive at 7 the next morning. I sleep most the way.

Day Two -Settling in Seoul

The subway from the airport to the hotel takes about three hours. It’slike coming from a different country.

The train goes along highways, past the sea, towers of apartment rowhouses, mountains, flatlands and treelands.

Many of the passengers are old. Those who aren’t old obviously value theold. Seats are given up. I’m not old, but I want to sit. I pretend not tounderstand the seat-giving custom. This gets me a dirty look. I finally standup, but long enough after the dirty look so it looks like my idea.

I immediately notice that Seoul is a high-fashion place. Most men are in suits and women in heels. Even on Sundays. Big, blackBuddy Holly glasses are on lots of faces and black tights are under skirts andshorts on most women's legs.

I expected lots of bright colors and crazy clothes, but it's mostlyblacks. There are also lots of uniforms. Preschoolers wear matching sweatsuitsand older students skirts and blouses and shirts and trousers.

The city is also very uniform — and very clean. No trash, and lots oforder. Escalators have yellow lines down the middle and subway platforms havepaintings of feet showing boarders where to stand. No jaywalking.

I arrive at the hotel 10 hours before my parents. I’m not expectingcheck-in rights. But the deskman takes pity on me and lets me check in early,even without a credit card.

I head downstairs to the Hyundai Shopping Center while waiting to check-in. No cars here, only a luxury food court. After several lookarounds, Isettle on sweet potato salad that I think is a steal at $2. Turns out it’s $2 agram — $6 total.

Our room is faaaannncy, but has only two twin beds. I’m good with arollaway, but my parents are past their twin days.

Back at the desk, I ask if I’m in the right room. The deskman assuresme I am. No rooms with double beds. Maybe Koreans do it twin style.

It’s the wrong room. So say my parents. We move twice. The room’s stillwrong (too noisy), but the best we can get.

Day Three:Hop on, Hop off

A hop-on,hop-off bus takes us on a two-hour course around downtownSeoul.

Through the bus windows we glimpse markets, museums, a palace, ashopping street for extra-large clothes (aka foreigner clothes), towers andmore.

We hop off near Dongdaemum Market — South Korea’s largest market — butwe can't find it. A girl points us toward a row of outdoor shoe stalls lining adumpy building. The stalls end in dark alleys.

The dumpy building is full of dumpy clothes for old Korean women. Later we hear that the market is inside two enormous glitzy buildings wesomehow missed. Better luck next trip.

On our way to the non-market I buy a hot dog. Not just any hot dog — ahot dog on a stick coated in a cubist batter. I think it’s tempura, turns outto be french fries. A french-fried dog!

Korea's orderly, but still in Asia, so there are few lines. There's noline for the hot dogs. The seller is ignoring me and letting others order aheadof me. I get proactive and grab my own dog.

The seller’s alarmed. “Don’t touch!” she yells, and puts the tarnisheddog back on the pile. She then grabs a new dog for me, squiggles ketchup on itand wraps it in paper. Yum!

Post-market, we hop back on the bus and continue the tour past moreshopping areas and another, more important,palace.

That night we eat at a Thai restaurant. Nothing Korean on the menu, andmy parents convince me that’s OK. Not every meal has to be native.

Day Four:A Palace, a Museum, and Temple Food

The day begins for Dad and me with Omelette Oh My God! Served withtriangular croutons masquerading as toast. Mom gets breakfast with a lessprofane (and therefore less memorable) name.

Gyeongbokgung Palace is next. Once the most important of Seoul‘s fivepalaces.

In those days, importance wasn’t measured in architectural bling. Thepalace, in muted burgundies and greens, has few adornments.

Leaders of the Joseon Dynasty were into simple Confucian stuff. Thepalace's brochure calls the architecture "dignified and restrained."

There are a lot of buildings (not as many as the original 120) butnothing more than a few tapestries and tea sets inside.

A visit to the nearby Folk Museum includes snooze-inducingentertainment. A sappy, skipping video tells the story of a girl and guyfalling in love.

A zither!

In between showings of the video is traditional music made with abassoon, cello, keyboard and zither. I fall asleep and wake to hear I missedthe brief dancing.

The best part of the museum is the snack bar. I suck down a brightmagenta cactus aloe juice and a ginseng drink and eat a pumpkin and eggsandwich, which is like egg salad with pumpkin.

On our way out of the museum, Mom and I are interviewed for TV. Justa three-minute clip for an English-speaking eduction channel, but stillexciting.

Before we start, the interviewer tells us not to worry if we can'tanswer her questions, we can make stuff up.

Then she asks if we have ever lost our appetites.

"No," I answer. I'm always hungry.

But haven't I ever been sick and not wanted to eat?

"OK, yeah," I say.

"That’s what I'm talking about," she says. "Remember, youcan make it up."

I tell her a true story about having giardia in Cambodia. Mom spins atale about peanuts.

After our three minutes of future fame, we cruise down Insadong (a hipshopping street) on our way to Sanchon, a temple restaurant. The restaurantisn't in a temple, but its food is the same stuff Buddhist monks would havescavenged for in Korea's forests.

But we're not monks in a forest, so the food's expensive. ($40 a person) The price includes a traditional dance show and lots of courses. No meatand few spices.

Courses:

1. Lentils, bread, turnip, rice and seaweed

2. Lots of tempura vegetables, soup, hot pepper tofu

3. 20 bowls of food including greens, kimchi, potatoes, sweet red beans,tofu, glass noodles, sticky rice and turnip

4. Cylindrical, sweet rice puffs and small cups of a sweet, possibly alcoholic drink

Green tea comes with the food.

Dinner is eaten on cushions in front of a low wood table. Mom's finecross-legged, but the posture is a stretch for Dad and me.

The traditional dance show is 45 minutes of eerie howling andscreeching.

The three of us are invited on stage for the grand finale of foreignerswalking in a circle beating drums.

Day Five:Market Day

Breakfast at the hotel. The buffet has waffles, soups, seafood, cereal,eggs, pastries — everything one could desire — except a fair price. It's awhopping $37 a person. Still not as pricey as the two orange juices and coffee Dad orders during a meeting in the hotel lounge. That trio of drinks costs him $50.

It's a day of shopping for Mom and I. First is Namdaemun Market, Seoul'soldest.

Mostly junk. Mom gets a nightshirt and we offer fashion advice to a guywho wants to know which pajamas he should buy for his 60-year-old father-in-law:Burberry or pink cartoon cows?

Mom and I vote for Burberry. He votes for the cartoon cows.

Lunch is Korean pancakes. Mine is octopus and seafood and Mom's is redchili. We split a sushi roll.

After a brief, unsuccessful shoe shopping trip, we end at Insadong, thehip shopping street.

I want to try Korean tea. We find it in a five-story building decoratedwith antique phones and signs advertising a Paris coffeehouse. The tea's expensive($7 per mug), but delicious. I get five flavors and Mom cinnamon.

Dinner that night is bulgogi beef barbecue. Bulgogi means "fire meat." The meat, in this case, beef, is cooked over fire.

Day Six:Korean Folk Village

Keep out, bad spirits!

Breakfast is the Dunkin' Donuts' equivalent of Egg Mcmuffins and a fruitand yogurt cup. The fruit and yogurt also has an extra healthy add-on of cakeand whipped cream.

Mom asks for a glass of water and gets two, one hot and one cold.

Today is a Korean Folk Village, a swath of land covered with modelhouses from the late Joseon Dynasty. (The dynasty lasted 1392 -1897.)

A middle-class home.

The houses range from one-room thatched huts to stone mansions occupyingseveral buildings.

Each house has a different type of animal caged outside. The rich get a fluffy white dog, the middle class, geese, the poor, pigs, and thevery poor, mules laying on their sides in poop.

Not real humans.

One of the houses also has a human inhabitant. I notice white rubber shoes outside the hut and a fake Coach bag inside. My mom doesn't notice thesedetails.

"Where do you sleep?" she asks, before peering inside.

"In here," she answers. "Here he is sleeping."

As we're walking away I ask her why there's a real guy sleeping inside.

"There isn't," she says. "He's a model."

I insist he's real. She goes back to check, squinting at the realman's face. He opens his eyes and glares at her.

"Oh! He is real!" she shouts.

Headless horseman?

We see more real people standing atop horses galloping around a ring."Equestrian Feats," the show's called.

The acrobats swing and twirlround the horses like the beasts are no more than stationary gymnastic props.

Dancing (and drumming)

Day Seven:Climbing the Bugaksan

Today we conquer Bugaksan mountain.

The road to the mountain looks like the road to Mt. Everest. It's linedwith dozens of shops selling every kind of hiking accessory imaginable. Boots,super lightweight moisture-wicking jackets, pants and shirts, hats, visors,bandanas, gloves, collapsible chairs, cups, towels, walking sticks...

One of the stores has a familiar red and white square logo. Instead of TheNorth Face it's called The Red Face. Is this supposed to mean Korean faces arered? Or just their mountains? The store's logo is "Born in the Nature1966." The North Face was also founded in 1966.

Everyone we pass is decked out in extreme hiking apparel. I can't helplaughing, but surely they're doing the same at the inadequate jeans and T-shirts mymom and I are wearing.

The man at the information office certainly laughs at us.

Is this our first time here?

Yes.

Do we have hiking shoes?

No. Mom's wearing tennis shoes. I'm wearing Birkenstocks.

Our apparel disqualifies us from all four of the trails except one — theone for "senior citizens and the weak."

I'm annoyed. I forged streams and slid down cliffs in Mondulkiri whilewearing only flip flops. I can darn well handle a dinky Korean hill.

I'm even more annoyed because the guy won't stop talking about the bestof the four trails, which is "so beautiful it's beyond words."

What about our trail?

"It's only scenery," he says.

I'm disappointed we won't get to hike along the ancient fortress wall, andwe won't be required to flash our passports to gain entry into the VIP area. But I try to focus on the positive.At least I can walk!

Many of our fellow hikers doubt I have even this simple ability. Atleast a dozen of these Sir Edmund Hillary look-a-likes stop me on the way up —pointing to my sandals and saying the Korean equivalent of"Impossible!" I just laugh and curl my arms like a body builder.

Partway up Mom overheats and has to sit down. She says she feels likeshe's about to have one of the fainting spells she had as a young girl inchurch.

I force her to guzzle water and eat cookies. A nearby group donates acouple bunches of enormous grapes.

I'm puzzling out how to carry Mom down on my back when she recovers.

We continue up until we come to a resting point. Also a hula hooping point.

That's the activity two hikers are engaged in. Several hula hoops hang from a nearby tree.

At another stop I give a group of women some cookies. They reciprocatewith a mini package of strawberry Mentos.

The women point out their course on their map. They will go all the wayto the top and down the other side.

Mom and I don't think we'll make it all the way up. We surprise ourselves.

The way up has several top-of-the-world views (or top-of-Seoul views),but the top is the best. Seoul is reduced to a smoggy haze of buildings.

A Korean man beckons me close to the edge to check out the rock that looks like a cow's ear lobe. Mom discourages me. She's just read the newsabout a Japanese tourist who fell to her death at Niagara Falls. Nevermind thatthe girl was dumb enough to step over the rail.

I go close enough to see the cow's earlobe, but no further.

The way down is much easier than the way up. The paths are clearer andsome are even paved. Maybe this isthe path for the senior citizens and the weak, and we took a tougher one on theway up. We can't wait to brag to the information guy about our lack of seniorcitizenry and weakness.

The bottom of the mountain looks like a day spa. People are lounging onthe flat rocks, eating rice and dangling their feet in the water.

Farther on are more rocks, these ones vertical and implanted with waterspigots for filling water bottles.

Even more intriguing is a shoe-cleaning station equipped with vacuumsfor blowing dust out of eyelets.

Four hours after our ascent, the information man looks impressed that wemade it down, but insists we only conquered the weak and elderly trail. We should come backand do the most beautiful one, he says. "Next time," we lie.

The information man has an annoying habit of looking at and talking onlyto my mom. He also karate chops her arm while talking. Is this Korean flirting?

Day Eight:Dragonhill Spa

I experience my first motion-sensor escalator on the way to DragonhillSpa. The stair machine looks broken until I step on it.

The subway station also looks broken. It's an above-ground station,which means it's not as popular, and I have to wait longer for a train.

Articles in the New York Timesand on CNN's website made the seven-storyspa sound swanky. The outside is anything but. Metal scaffolding covers much ofthe building and the bamboo grove entrance is crumbling.

No one greets me when I enter. I'm confused. My confusion is finallynoticed.

Is it my first time? Where am I from? Do I want a massage?

No, I just want to use the spa... This is a spa, isn't it?

I get a green T-shirt with the spa's name emblazoned on the front and apair of matching shorts, two small towels and a bracelet with a key and anelectronic payment tracking chip.

I pay $10 to enter, put my shoes in a locker and take the elevator tothe women's changing room on the third floor.

Not naked women, but a clever Korean toilet

I am greeted by naked women of all ages. These women seem not the leastbit shy of their flabby, saggy or taut skin as they primp in front of mirrorsand strut downstairs to the baths and saunas.

I don't see any of the Russian models Lonely Planet promised, but maybe some of the Japanesetourists.

I follow the lead of the brazen women surrounding me and get naked,bringing my towels and my clothes downstairs just in case I need them. I don't.They just get wet.

First a shower. Then I try out the baths.

There's a regular hot tub, a hot, hot tub, a really hot, hot tub, and acold tub. There's also a massage bath. Down the hallway are the special baths:an event bath (no event today), a hot bath and a saltwater bath.

Next I try the ocher sauna. I last only a few minutes before retreatingto the cold bath.

I return to the saltwater bath, trying the recommended five minutes in,10 minutes out, repeated three times.

My first 10 minutes out are spent reading the poster advertising thespa's massages and body scrubs.

No one's around to perform these services, so I get back in thesaltwater.

But my interest has been noted. A few minutes later, a uniformed womancomes down and tugs me out of the pool. I tell her I want only the body scrub.No massage.

She nods and strips down to a black bra and undies. Like the womenupstairs, she's not at all embarrassed by her swinging stomach flab.

She pours a tub of water over the vinyl table and tells me to get on it.I lay down and she pours a tub of water over me. It's warm.

She starts scrubbing. I feel like the block of wood belonging to theshop class nerd. She flips me from one side to the other, from back to front, sanding everywhere, under my pits, between my legs, everywhere.

After the scrubbing comes a goopy gel rubbed over the raw patches.

Thena shampooing and neck massage. All part of the "just a body scrub"deal.

After washing off the goop, I'm back in the salt bath, then upstairs tothe saunas.

Two of the saunas are housed in a pair of pyramids. One is supposedlygood for the mind, and in it is a woman studying. The charcoal kiln smellsgood, but the fire sweating room is too fiery. The igloo-shaped building has adoor like an oven, and feels like one inside. I have to duck to get in, and thefloor burns my feet. My glasses immediately fog.

Maybe it just takes practice. I later see a girl enter the igloo ovenwhile chatting on the phone and sipping a Coke, like she's ready for a day atthe beach.

In between the saunas I visit the ice room, inhabited by two snowmen,each made of two balls of hardened snow.

The crystal shining saltroom is my favorite. Socks are required, so Ibuy a pair for $1. Then I lay atop a towel draped over a bed of rock salt,close my eyes and imagine all my body's toxins seeping from my feet. That'swhat's supposed to happen in the saltroom. My feet do feel tingly and warm. Isthat what exiting toxins feel like?

I won't let a person massage me, but a mechanical chair's OK. Or so Ithink. I spend the next 10 minutes grimacing while my back is pounded with whatfeels like sledgehammers. I paid $2, so I refuse to move 'til it's over.

I reward myself with a snack — three eggs the color of used tea bags andstrawberry banana juice.

One more visit to the saltbath and I'm done. I'll save the acupuncture, cupping, eyelash perming and horse riding forthe next trip.

I make it back just in time for Dad's speech. Some dope messed up hisbio for the Tall Building Conference, first calling him a lowly administrative assistantand then leaving out the description of his speech.

Nearly 100 people still show up to hear him talk, and the emcee callshim “One of the most creative and energetic engineers.”

Dad's talk is about a better, faster way to build tall buildings. A wayhe's patented.

Photographers snap his picture and pictures of my mom and I, who seem tobe the only non-engineers in the room.

That night is Korean barbecue. The picture looks like beef, but it'sactually four kinds of pig: ham, bacon and two kinds of sausage. Also mushroom,fish cake, broccoli and bok choy.

The sides are kimchi, a shrimp, greens and onion mixture and a redmixture, plus an over-mayonaised macaroni salad.

Day Nine:Gym and Home Again

Dad and I hit the gym in the morning. We both borrow shoes from the desk. I get apair of white Air Jordans. No socks. Dad gets kicked out of the pool for notwearing a bathing cap.

After lunch we taxi to the airport. I board a plane to Bangkok and my parents to Toronto. So that's a wrap for Tall Building Conference 2011. Next up: TallBuilding Conference 2012: Shanghai. I can hardly wait.

What? You don't need a bowl for cereal anymore?

I was told there would be panic attacks —in cereal aisles, at crosswalks when cars actually s stop for pedestrians, at the cost of everyday goods.

Many Peace Corps Volunteers experience such attacks upon their return to the United States. Still, I thought, surely such mental havoc couldn’t disrupt the life of super-adaptable me.

After all, I grew up in the U.S., and had only been away two years. Sure, with its swampy heat, garbage-littered dirt roads and sluggish pace, Cambodia, the country I had been away in, is worlds apart from the United States, and even Canada, where my parents and sister live. But, come on, it had only been two years.

I’m proud to report that my super-adaptiveness won out and the panic attacks never came. But turns out my adpativeness may not be as super as I thought.

I did experience a fair dosage of shock during my five-week stay in the land of plenty. As predicted, this shock came in cereal aisles, at crosswalks, and at the cost of everyday goods.

This shock typically exited my mouth in this sentence: “There are so many things!” And a moment later, “These things are so expensive!”

Things like drinking fountains! And showers! And hot water! And washing machines and dryers! And city buses and subways and streetcars!

And so many types of entertainment! Movie theaters that play 3-D movies in actual 3-D, concerts where I can understand what the singer is singing, acrobatics and ice shows, men shooting out of cannonballs, swamp boat races!

And the food! Genuine Mexican, wholesome wheat bread, peaches, plums and berries! Deep-fried pickles, candy bars and soda pop! Dutch babies and beaver tails and restaurants that serve only raw food!

At times the land of plenty was too much. Like the time my dad abandoned me in a convenience store because I was taking too long to decide between the five varieties of Whoppers malted milk balls.

And the constant times when I asked friends and family if the prices at restaurants and stores were normal. Any meal over $5 seemed extravagant compared to Cambodia’s meals of $1 or less.

Fortunately, I had five weeks to readjust to Washington (state, not D.C.!) and Toronto’s vast assortment of things and the vast prices of these things.

Below are some high (and low) lights of my trip home to Toronto, Wenatchee, Lake Chelan, Seattle and Toronto again.

Cambodia to Toronto – a mere 30-hour trip!

It all starts with a flight: Phnom Penh to Taipei. Five hours. Then another flight: Taiwan to San Francisco. Twelve hours. By this time I am having so much fun I just have to get on another plane for one final flight: San Francisco to Toronto. Another five hours. After 22 hours of flying (30 hours including layovers), I finally arrive in Toronto around dawn.

My flights are filled with movies: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (in preparation for Part 2 on the big screen in Seattle), Lincoln Lawyer, Blood Diamond.

Taipei airport is a good segue into the developed world.

I take my first drink from a drinking fountain in two years. “Please feel safe to drink,” reads a sign above the fountain.

Fabulous. I then roam the airport, gobbling samples of teacakes and visiting nearby gates, each decorated like a highly specified museum. Among the exhibits: bicycles, books and the country’s postal service.

The Taipei to San Francisco flight has tasty food, but I’m still hungry when I arrive in San Francisco.

Only three restaurants are nearby, and they are expensive! Sandwiches for $8? Is this normal?

I swallow my thriftiness and shell out $15 for ramen soup and tea at a Japanese place.

Dawn in Toronto is early afternoon in Cambodia, but I’m still pooped.

Week one: Toronto

My parents abandoned the United States for Toronto several years ago. My sister followed. That makes my home base Toronto. But I’m not Canadian!

I spend my first week back in North America partying with my sister, shopping with my mom and roaming the city with Archana, my Seattle-turned-Boston friend.

Toward the end of her visit, Archana and I try Rawlicious, a restaurant that serves only uncooked food. Carrot sticks and dill dip it’s not. Rather, the menu boasts a variety of dishes, including pasta bolognese, pizza, pad thai, a taco wrap and lots of shakes and juices.

We order tropical pizza and zucchini pasta with a medley of vegetables and neatballs.

Neatballs are meatless meatballs. I ask our server if we can get awesome balls instead. She doesn’t laugh.

How can pasta be raw without being crunchy and gross? Well, with Rawlicious’ zucchini pasta, the pasta is the zucchini — curled in a spiralizer.

The pasta isn’t the only part of the dish that’s deceiving. The “medley of vegetables” is in fact two fingernail-size broccoli florets and maybe six slivers of sundried tomatoes. Each of the three neatballs is half the size of a golfball. The whole meal is served in a dish much too small for its $14 pricetag.

Like pasta, you’d think pizza couldn’t be done raw. Oh, but it can. Try making the dough out of buckwheat, the cheese out of cashews and the mangos and pineapples out of, well, mangos and pineapples. The buckwheat foundation is so weak that the slices crumble when we try to pick them up. The slices, I should mention, are only two baby pieces. For $11!

The food is edible, but a little flavorless.

When our server asks how the food is, we feed her the standard reply: “Good.”

When the server leaves, Archana scribbles an amendment to that statement: “Good, but can you cook it more?”

Weeks Two and Three: Seattle, Wenatchee and Lake Chelan

My mom and dad and I fly to Seattle. But not together. Each of us is on a different flight. I meet my mom at the Seattle airport and we spend the day in the big city waiting for my dad to arrive on his later flight.

Waiting includes shopping and, when I get tired of shopping, the final Harry Potter. My mom never gets tired of shopping.

That night my dad drives the three of us to our cabin on Lake Chelan.

The two weeks are filled with family: Grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins.

Swimming, darts, badminton and eating.

In my three years absence Chelan has lost stores and sprouted new ones. Gone are a couple boutiques and eateries and “The Music Store,” a decaying hippie room with beads, guitars, records and CDs, run by a ratty guy with straggly hair and funky teeth.

New is yet another wine shop (apparently Chelan is now a hot wine destination), boutiques (including one where you can rent electric bikes), a bookshop and a clothes store where everything costs $12.99.

The lake has also lost and gained. Lost are much of the big speedboats. Gained are fleets of canoes and paddleboards.

I spend a weekend in Wenatchee with my Aunt Patty and Uncle Steve. They are super-active, and every day is a triathlon.

The first day we go on a hike, eat dinner at a Latin restaurant and go to a concert at a winery.

The second day is almost a marathon. We hit the farmers’ market, go for a bike ride, watch Swamp Boat races, go swimming at my grandma’s condo and eat sushi.

The final day is breakfast with my grandma at the Country Club.

Got all that? If you’re like the recent me, you don’t get Swamp Boat races.

I’ll explain. Start with a field. Dig circular canals. Fill the canals with water. Put a teeny, brightly painted motorboat in. Put a driver and navigator in the boat and tell them to race around the canals as fast as they can without flipping out of the water onto the grassy perimeter or circular interior islands.

That last part’s not so easy. The boats scream round the serpentine curves at up to 80 miles an hour. The course takes about a minute. "It's like racing with your hair on fire!” claim Jim Deford and Jeff Schlagel in an article about the sport.

We arrive for the last two hours — the finals. Tickets are $20, whole day or no. Our money and IDs get us American flags stamped on the inside of our wrists and access to the beer garden, which is a set of shaded metal bleachers.

Patty refers to the audience members as a “cross-section” of Wenatchee. This means young guys with grizzled mountain goat goatees and women the color of Chinese barbecued pork.

The white-haired Wenatchee native next to us is keeping times on a scorecard. He’s been to all three of the city’s swamp boat competitions.

We overhear one of the billy-goat goateed guys with a camo shirt calls Wenatchee’s muddy circles “the most technical track on the circuit,” and says it may be the site of the World Finals.

Week Four: Back to Seattle

A Seattle area native, I’ve lived near the Emerald City for 15 years. I’ve never had a sense of direction, and this time around I’m also missing a car and a cell phone.

The result? Lots of bus rides, direction asking and missed meetings.

Despite these handicaps, in only a week, I hit almost every Seattle neighborhood, and beyond!

My first night I get lucky and catch a free concert. Black Mountain, My Goodness and Whalebones.

photo from about.comEven better than a free concert? An outdoor, free concert. At the Mural Ampitheater, which after lots of confusion and direction asking, I discover is a stage in front of a huge-ass mosaic below the Space Needle.

I miss Whalebones, but make it in time for My Goodness and Black Mountain. Rockin’ shows, despite the distraction of the shirtless liquored-up guy in the front with meth teeth. He spends the shows yelling and stampeding through the crowd.

His arms are outstretched and his index and pinky fingers are raised in the rock symbol, which he repeatedly points to the stage and then back into the audience. With each point the chicken-wing flab of his triceps swings like a middle-aged woman’s. A cigarette dangles from his mouth and from his back pocket a comb, which he rakes back through the red hair that ripples over his scalp, making him look like a brilliantined man of yore.

I get lost on the way back to the bus stop and ask a pair of twenty-something kids for directions.

“Where are you from?” they ask. “Born and raised?”

Seattle, and yes, more or less.

I answer these questions several more times during my week in Seattle. Yes, I am from here, but no, I don’t really know my way around.

The bus back to my cousin’s is packed with tie-dyed Hemp Fest attendees. With every seat taken and standers packed shoulder to shoulder, I feel like I’m back on a Mumbai train. A frat boy with jean shorts sagged a couple inches below his gray briefs steps on my foot. Lightly. He spends the next five minutes apologizing.

Frat boy: I’m sorry.

Me: No problem.

Frat boy: I apologize.

Me: It’s OK.

Frat boy: I apologize.

Me: It was bound to happen on this bus.

Frat boy: That was really not nice.

Frat boy then goes up front to talk to the bus driver about a rockin’ Mexican place and Santana, who the bus driver says is playing Seattle soon.

An older guy joins the conversation. He’s met Jimi Hendrix and claims to have almost produced a CD by Leon Hendrix. But he's never heard of Santana.

The next day I experience more directional frustrations, compounded by no cell phone or car. My mission: to find my friend Kyle's house.

I have Kyle's address but forget to bring his phone number. The bus, slowed by Hemp Fest, takes two hours.

Kyle’s address seems clear enough, but three guides can’t get me there. I start from Safeway with directions from a greeter. An hour later, after wandering past parks, cemeteries and nameless neighborhoods, I’m back at Safeway.

I’m due to meet my cousin soon, but want to tell Kyle I’m alive even if I didn’t make it to his house.

I ask to use Safeway’s phone. The courtesy clerk is confused.

“Why?”

“I have no cell phone.”

“…Oh. Well keep it short.”

The number’s long distance.

“Keep it real short.”

My cousin can tell me Kyle’s phone number. But she doesn’t answer. So to Kyle I might as well be dead. I feel bad for telling him not to leave his apartment — four hours ago.

Dinner is a Safeway sandwich. With a Club card, a sandwich, pop and chips is $5. Without a Club card, just a sandwich is $6. My Club card’s in storage and I can’t remember my phone number from two years ago. No Club deal for me. $6 for a sandwich and a quarter for a Dixie cup of ice.

The remainder of the week is a blur of meet-ups with friends, family and former workmates. Lots of food and drinks and that Dutch baby I mentioned earlier.

I usually eat only Dutch adults, but I make an exception for my visit back. Haha. This particular Dutch baby I consume isn’t so much a human as a baked, eggy pancake the size of my face, topped with powdered sugar and lemon.

Week Five: Toronto – One more time

In keeping with our recent family tradition of flying on different planes to the same destinations, my dad, mom and I are booked on separate flights from Seattle to Toronto.

Unfortunately our isolationist plan is foiled by a helpful airport attendant.

My mom and I are flying back the same day, an hour apart. She is leaving an hour before me, and has a direct flight. I, on the other hand, am stuck detouring half an hour north to Vancouver before heading east to Toronto.

My savvy attendant notices this inconvenience and puts me on the same flight as my mom, at no charge. And that’s just the start of our good fortune. At the gate, another equally helpful but less smiley attendant notices my mom’s frequent flier habits and bumps us up to business class. Holler! (Does anyone say that anymore?)

Once you’ve flown business class, you never want to go back. (But if you’re like me, and most of us, you only want to stay in business class if it’s free.)

Each of our seats is wide enough for two asses; I can fully extend my four-foot long legs; and we don’t have to expel any effort in lowering and raising tray tables, ‘cause ours are built into our armrests and therefore permanently accessible.

We get our first beverage service before the plane leaves the ground. Then mere minutes later, our choice of another drink and a glass dish of salted nuts. Our meal comes before I’ve finished the nuts. And it’s big! Salad, ravioli, ice cream and cookies.

Lots of food doesn’t mean good food. The ravioli sucks. And I’m not hungry for the dessert 'cause I gorged on leftover pizza at the gate.

Business class also doesn’t guarantee premiere entertainment. The plane’s entire system breaks down halfway through the flight.

In-flight entertainment or not, we make it to Toronto, and I spend my last week in North America hanging with the ‘rents and my sister, her boyfriend and friends.

On one of my last days, my mom and I hit up The Ex (or the Canada National Exhibition, as it’s never called.)

It’s the 133rd year of the fair, which fyi, claims to be the greenest fair in North America. I don’t notice anything particularly green about the event, but there’s certainly a lot to see and buy. One warehouse has products for sale from all around the world. Laos and Thailand each have booths, but not Cambodia.

Another building houses farm animals — afroed alpacas, brown, black and spotted cows, plus pigs and sheep.

I end The Ex with Canada’s equivalent of an elephant ear — the fried, cinnamon sugar pastry that is often my sole reason for attending fairs. In case you’re unfortunate enough to be unacquainted, the treat gets its name ‘cause it is about the same size as an ear of one of those wrinkled gray beasts that roam around places like Africa and Cambodia.

Canada — or at least The Ex — doesn’t have elephant ears. It has beaver tails. Essentially the same as an elephant ear, except maybe one fourth the size, beaver tails are also available in a wider variety of flavors (chocolate hazelnut, apple cinnamon, banana chocolate, Reese's and maple butter), and, according to propaganda at the stand, they're healthy.

Other healthy, deep-fried Ex treats? Pickles, Mars bars, mac and cheese and pop. Yes, soda pop. How? Why? I have no idea.

The Ex is all about unlikely combinations. Like aerial acrobatics and ice, done to a medley of Broadway musicals, including Hairspray, Les Mis, Rent and Rock of Ages. While the acrobats soar, spin and twirl on ropes and trapezes above, the skaters dance, flit and fly below.

Yet another unlikely combination? A human and a cannon. David “The Bullet” Smith, Jr. has been shooting out of cannons for 14 years.

He holds the record for the longest human cannonball shot (193 feet 4 inches), and he’s on his way to the highest shot.

In preparation, The Bullet is shooting out of the cannon at higher and higher degrees. Today the 35-foot long barrel is aimed at 50 degrees. He will shoot out fast, reaching 80 kilometers an hour in a fifth of a second.

The Bullet strides out to his cannon to the beat of The Prodigy’s song, “Mindfields.” The one with the “This is dangerous” refrain.

The Bullet isn't as sleek as a bullet. A baggy, lightweight shirt and pants cloak his solid build. Atop the cannon he buckles on a helmet.

First he’s posing atop the cannon. Then he’s in the cannon. Next he’s out of the cannon, arcing high, high and higher, then down, head first into the blue net. Then he’s rolled over and up and over the net and doing push-ups on the ground.

The whole movement is graceful, less like a bullet than like a bird — a wingless bird, soaring and landing in a downy nest.

The Final 30 Hours: Toronto to Cambodia

The ticket agent in Toronto has never heard of Cambodia. At least she acts that way. She doesn’t know how to spell Phnom Penh and can’t get my suitcase checked there. I'll have to pick it up in Taipei.

Toronto to San Francisco is a five-hour blur. After finding my TV screen hiding in the armrest I watch “Dinner for Schmucks” and some “Modern Family” episodes.

In San Francisco the gate steward says she can check my suitcase all the way to Phnom Penh instead of just Taipei. Great. Trouble is the case hasn’t shown up in San Francisco yet.

When it does, the steward promises to get me a new baggage claim tag. This never happens, but I give it a rest, and spend the next 12 hours reading, sleeping and zoning out to Woody Allen’s new Midnight in Paris and a Friends episode.

The ticket agent in Taipei says my suitcase never showed in San Francisco. I’ll have to ask again in Phnom Penh.

On the way to the gate I meet a five-person Cambodian family: a dad with his two daughters and their two husbands.

Their destination is the dad’s homeland of Kampong Speu, a rural province just west of Phnom Penh.

The daughters, in their early 30s, were born in refugee camps in Thailand. They have never been to Cambodia. Their husbands left Cambodia as young children and their father fled in 1979, shortly after the official end of the Khmer Rouge.

The Modesto, California daughters are full of questions for me.

What is Cambodia’s traffic like? Is crossing the street scary? Is there lots of crime? Is it easy to find clothes to buy? What kind of shoes should they wear? Will the food make them sick?

They talk to each other in a mixture of Khmer and English. A lot of their Khmer goes over my head, but they still say they don’t speak it well, that they speak like foreigners, which they are.

Back in Cambodia

I didn’t have any panic attacks on my return to North America, but will I have them on my return to Cambodia?

Nah. Just exhaustion, wonder and mild discomfort.

It’s been only five weeks, but in some ways arriving in Phnom Penh feels like it did two years ago, when everything was new and unfamiliar.

Phnom Penh greets me like dog’s breath — wet and hot and steamy.

I balk at the assault of tuk-tuk drivers, each trying to shove me into his moto-driven cart. Back to the bargaining games.

We stop once on the ride to the guesthouse so the driver can fill his moto up with pee from a glass Coke bottle. Wait, that’s not pee, that’s gas! It took me months to figure that one out.

Once we’re hydrated, I watch the city traffic: five and six member families crammed on the backs of motos, crowds of workers on tractor-towed flatbeds, more workers crouched atop towers of rice sacks in the backs of pick-ups.

Piles of dirt and trash line the back roads and the same mangy tan dog is everywhere.

Roadside stands are heaped with bumpy, green jackfruit, spiky green and pink dragonfruit, and bananas. A row of men sleeps in their nearby cyclos.

The posting on the back of my guesthouse room door offers yet another hint that I’m now thousands of miles from the US of A.

Among standard rules like keep quiet and no drugs and hookers is a request most Americans would find puzzling: “Please do not throw your garbage outside the window!”

I check-in to the guesthouse at 2 p.m. Nowhere near bedtime in Cambodia, but past bedtime in Toronto. I want to stay up and acclimate myself to the 11-hour time difference, but I’m too weak. I nap until 6 p.m. and then on and off all night long.

I wake up a few times to the sensation of ants crawling on me — and it’s not just a sensation — ants are actually crawling on me.

The next morning’s shower is cold and out of a hose, and the next day’s clothes are the same as the last two days. My suitcase is still MIA.

Fortunately, I get a call the next morning saying my suitcase has been located and is en route to Phnom Penh.

Three days later, my suitcase and I are on a seven-hour bus back to my Cambodian home.

North America visit complete. One more year and I’ll do it all again.

* This meeting happened way back in February. Proper documentation takes time!

At the beginning of the two-day trek I was sure I had a fractured toe. By the end of the first day I was sure I didn’t. But that’s still the excuse I gave for leaving a day early.

The real reasons? I was exhausted from hiking all day in flip flops, and I knew there wouldn’t be enough food. The second day began with a baguette and coffee. Lunch was going to be a cup of noodles. That was supposed to last seven hours of hiking up and down mountains.

I took the first ride out of there. It took an hour or two to make it out of the hills and back to the guesthouse, but the reprieve from walking was worth it.

Not that the walking didn’t start out fun. My fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and I ogled over lots of wildlife while hiking up and down the hills of Mondulkiri ­— the province Lonely Planet calls the “Original Wild East of Cambodia.”

The beloved travel guide calls Cambodia’s second most northeastern province a lot of other things, too, like the “Switzerland of Cambodia.” Oops, that’s just Sen Monorom, the provincial capital, which supposedly earned that name for its two lakes. But the whole province garners plenty of other geographical comparisons from the traveler’s tome. Africa, Tasmania and Wales: LP claims Mondulkiri’s got pieces of all these locales plus more.

I haven’t been to Tasmania or Africa, so I can’t comment on those likenings, but I have been to Switzerland and Wales. Sen Monorom didn’t remind me of the European country high in the alps, but I didn’t bother to check out the two lakes in the Cambodian town.

I also didn’t pick up on the Wales comparison, but I’ve only been to one tiny town in the tiny British country. Still, in my memory, Wales was more green and less brown than Mondulkiri. If anything, Mondulkiri is a bit like Eastern Washington, with its scrubby ground and dry hills.

Hills are something Mondulkiri has a lot of. Mondulkiri literally means “Meeting of the Hills.” Lots of hills and not a lot of people. With only two people per square kilometer, Mondulkiri is Cambodia’s least populated province. (Again, according to Lonely Planet, 2008.) Most people who live in the province are not Khmer. About half are Pnong and the other half other minorities.

So, back to our hike. We arrived in Sen Monorom (after a nine-hour bus ride) without plans. But it didn’t take long for a travel guide to sell us his two-day trek through the jungle, interrupted by an overnight stay in a Pnong village. We’d see waterfalls, animals and have plenty of food.

The guide spoke stellar English, told killer turtle sex jokes and had a jaunty revolutionary look to him (beret, silky ponytail, combat clothes). How could we say no?

Well, it turned out the long-haired guide wasn’t really the guide. He was just the moneymaker. Our real guide was a quiet Pnong man named Om who spoke Khmer but no English and made a meager $10 a day. (The hike cost $20 apiece.)

Om led us up and down mountains, across shallow rivers and through slashed and burned fields waiting to become farms.

The 20k hike was supposed to take five hours. It took 10. We stopped for a lunch of pork and rice and swam in a chilly waterfall, but much of the delay was likely my doing. I was constantly catching up to the group, because somewhere along my life’s course, I’ve become really slow. Geriatrically slow.

I had to use two bamboo poles to pull myself up and down the hills and the guide’s hand to make it across a log spanning a river.

Part of the reason I went home a day early was to spare the group another day of waiting for me. We left that first morning at 8:30 and landed at the Pnong village high in the hills just before dark, just after 6 in the evening.

We arrived at the four-hut, 20-person village in confusion. The guesthouse we were promised, with hammocks and bamboo beds and mosquito nets for sleeping, was taken by two French girls who arrived on elephants.

With no other choice, we displaced a 12-member family and stayed in their hut, what one of my fellow trekkers called a step up from a cave.

A thatched wooden house lined by a platform for eating and sleeping on two of the walls and by a shelf for cooking supplies on the third. A fire pit on the dirt floor below the shelf.

Dinner, cooked in the fire pit, was a couple stirfry pork and vegetable dishes.

The family living in the hut numbered nine children, plus a dad, a pregnant mom and an ancient, bony man who hocked loogies all night.

The loogie-hocking made sleep difficult. So did the snoring. Not to mention the cold, the hard wood planks for a bed and the laughing and shouting of the men singing and playing a flute while drinking rice wine outside the hut.

But the morning (and my ride back) eventually came.

As often happens in Cambodia, the ride back was lost in translation. I figured this out when we drove a ways and then stopped, to wait for the others, the driver said. Once the others arrived I found out the plan was to walk one hour to a waterfall and then walk about four more hours to get out of the hills. Um, no. I was done with walking. I simply wanted to be done with the hike and go back to the guesthouse. After some back and forth about missing the main road already, I finally got back to town. Being lazy has never felt so good.

Day Nine: April 13 - Bus to Agra

The day begins with a wheat porridge that Diana and I can’t get enough of. It’s a bit like eating delicious raw, hard pellets of wheat.

We take our journey’s only bus to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. The trip takes about 11 hours, and is during the heat of the day. There’s no AC, and the fans mounted above every seat aren’t turned on. The windows let in a cool breeze in the morning, but by the afternoon, the air is hot and stagnant.

We only stop once for food, at a giant bus parking lot where I promptly lose our bus. The only food for sale is fried and packaged. I buy one delicious orange, a package of cookies and another of crackers.

We see our first camel on the way, towing a cart along the highway. A man is perched atop the cart.

A driver from our guesthouse is set to pick us up at 6 p.m. at the bus station, but the bus doesn’t get to town 'til 7:30, and we’re not sure where the bus station is. Finally we get off the bus at a food stand and call the guesthouse. They tell us they’ll pay for an auto rickshaw.

Diana and Edi (a fellow traveler, Japanese) are in the back, and the driver tells me to sit in front next to him. Trouble is, my legs won’t fit. So half my body is hanging out of the cab, getting soaked in the rain. The other half is in the driver’s way. He elbows me in the chest with every shift of the gears.

We arrive in a dark, dirty alley. Our guesthouse is at the end, totally dark. Power’s out. It comes back a few minutes later, and we see a tiny room and bathroom with a shower, but no hot water. No sink either.

The place is shabbier, but more expensive, than our last place. Diana tells me to ask for a 50-rupee discount. A mistake.

The Indian man behind the desk throws a fit. “What? We wait for you at the station for an hour and get you a rickshaw and now you ask cheaper? You pay the man!” He points to our rickshaw driver. “And you go to another guesthouse!”

OK, we’ll do without the discount.

Day 10: April 14 - The Taj, and train to Jaipur

…The Taj ..! The site Diana has been waiting the whole trip to see. I’m more excited about the desert, but of course I too want to see one of the world’s most famous tombs, what “Lonely Planet calls “the most beautiful building in the world.”

There’s no doubt that the pearly, etched stone is stunning. Kudos to the cleaners! (We visitors ease the cleaning by covering our shoes and flip flops with surgical booties.)

Inside is beautiful, too, resplendent with more carvings, jewels and paintings. But there’s not much to see other than a false tomb.

Construction of the Taj took more than 20 years. It was built by Emperor Shah Jahan to commemorate the life of his third wife, who died during the birth of their 14th child.

Diana and I are in Agra only for the Taj, so we take off on a train that evening for the desert – Jaipur. The trip is only five short hours, just long enough to settle into a bunk and catch some sleep.

I am awakened by Diana yelling at me to get off the train. There aren’t any announcements, and no indication of where we are other than the occasional station sign or reports from other passengers.

I scramble to get my bag packed, but I’m not fast enough. The train starts moving before I reach the door. Diana’s outside. I can hear her yelling, “Emily, hurry!”

I stand at the door, ready to jump. We’re not moving that fast yet, and I should be fine if I just drop and roll, right? I’m ready to go for it, when a group of older Indian men urge me back.

“But my friend got off the train!” I yell. “I have to jump!”

The next station is only one or two kilometers farther. I should just wait, they say. What seems like 15 minutes passes and I’m off the train, but near hysterics. Should I wait for Diana? Will she come to the next station to find me? I have no idea. I wait for almost half an hour before the auto rickshaw guys convince me to give up for the night. It’s already after 10, and it will be hard to get a room, they say.

Diana and I had picked out a guesthouse for the night, and I am convinced it’s listed in “Lonely Planet” as a place that offers free pickup. Trouble is, I don’t remember the guesthouse name, and Diana has our “Lonely Planet.” If I can just get a copy of a “Lonely Planet”…

The auto rickshaw driver takes me to a couple guesthouses, but none have the guide. Finally I surrender and book a room at a nearby joint. A huge, clean and decorative room with hot water and TV, it’s the nicest place I stay at in India.

Day 11: April 15 - Jaipur

Despite the relaxing atmosphere, I am still freaked about finding Diana, and barely sleep. We have tickets for a train leaving at midnight, but what if I can’t find her? I wake at 6 and go out on the street, ready to resume my search for a “Lonely Planet.”

Zakir, the taxi driver, is on the right. His young friend is on the left. You can figure out who's in the middle.

But this isn’t Cambodia. People don’t wake at 4:30 with the wat chantings and rooster crowingsZakir, an energetic man with a big black taxi.

Zakir’s friend has an Internet shop stocked with “Lonely Planets.” But of course it’s not open yet. A couple chais later, the shop is open, but all the LPs are with tourists. I e-mail Diana and then resume the LP search. Zakir and I go to several places, but always get the same story. They had the guide, but now tourists have it. “Oh Shit! Shit!” Zakir says after each failure.

Finally we achieve success. A French woman has a LP — in French. She translates, finding two places that say they provide free pickup. I call both places, and the man at one of the places says Diana is there!

We’re off! The man at reception calls a flurry of rooms, asking each of the groggy guests (it’s still before 8 a.m.) one question: “What country are you from?” None of them are from the States. The person named Diana is a man from England.

But I still don’t give up. I ask at a pair of guesthouses across the street, and call a couple other guesthouses. Then I give up. We go eat at a cheapie joint where I eat the Indian cure-all for a poopy stomach: curd (yogurt), daal and rice. And it works!

After eating, I check my e-mail for the billionth time. There’s word from Diana! We’ll meet at 5:30 for dinner.

I can finally relax and see some sights. I go off on an all-day tour with Zakir. He tells me he’s 27, but he looks at least 40. Before entrusting my day to him, I ask to see his taxi license. He acts shocked, then gives me the license as collateral.

We drive through downtown, made up of crumbly buildings in faded salmon, and up, up, up to the royal family tombs. The decorative domes topping the empty tombs are bordered by a stone wall that climbs the hills like China’s Great Wall.

We pull up to the tombs with Hindi music blasting from the open windows. I feel like a wanna-be gangster in high school.

A couple grubby kids glob onto me as I get out of the car. “Chocolate,” they say, motioning to their mouths. Apparently I can buy it at a stand across the parking lot. Nah.

The water palace is next. On the way back into the city we pass an elephant climbing the hill, a boy perched high on the elephant’s back. Zakir keeps the music cranked, playing the same dance-party Hindi tune over and over.

“God gives us a second life, so why can’t we have fun and excitement?” he asks, swinging his arms to the beat.

The Water Palace is just what it sounds like: a palace on the water, used as a pleasure place by kings in the mid-18th century. A couple Indian guys ask to take their picture with me.

“I like foreigners,” one of the guys explains.

Zakir next drops me at Nahargarh, the Tiger Fort, a massive sandstone fortress rising out of the hillside. Zakir leaves me to explore for two hours while he visits his mosque. It’s Friday, Islam’s holy day.

A winding staircase leads to a courtyard; another set of stairs to the empty palace. I’m not sure I want to pay 200 rupees ($4.50) to enter the palace. I ask an exiting tourist if the ticket is worth the price, and get answered by an accompanying guide, who tries to get me to pay an additional 200 rupees for his services.

I buy a ticket and flee up the stairs in an effort to get rid of the pestering guide. I’m glad I do. The cavernous palace is nothing but hollowed-out stone, but it’s interesting to imagine the place as it once was.

Royalty once lived here. Now all that remains in the maze of rooms is the latrines, which contain a few cisterns and slots in the floor that served as toilets. But it’s fun roaming the labyrinthine corridors, which poke out to terraces with glorious views of the city below.

Most of the palace’s visitors are Indian. A couple young guys corner me in a room and take a picture of me. “Maa’am, you look awesome!” one of the guys exclaims. I leave before they can take another picture of me.

A movie is being shot in the palace’s courtyard. A white sheet billows above video cameras and guys in black samurai robes with red sashes.

Back in the taxi, Zakir pulls on his white knit prayer cap and turns on the tunes. We soon stop at a pirated CD stand. I buy a Hindi dance mix (100 songs for about fifty cents), and Zakir buys a couple discs —one, called “Hollywood,” has a collage of girls with big boobs on the front. The songs include American classics like “Barbie girl,” “Who let the dogs out?” and “We will rock you.” Zakir’s CDs are often stolen from his car, and he’s bought this CD several times.

He immediately puts on track 8, and begins dancing and singing along. “Where do you go to, my lovely? I want to know…”

I tell Zakir I can’t afford his proposed daily fare of 500 rupees ($11), and he suggests I visit a couple tourist traps so he can earn commission. The first trap is a craft mall. Zakir gives me his cell phone and tells me to look around until he calls. His call will mean he has received his 30 rupees (75 cents) and I can leave.

I wander in and out of every store, looking at kashmir, pashima, paintings, even furniture. A mall employee tails me, and tries to discourage me from entering the furniture store. I think he can tell I’m not interested in buying anything, especially furniture.

My next duty is watching laborers at a fabric store. I watch one guy stamp pink patterns on a large sheet and another guy weave a rug. I then enter the two-storied store and wander amid the expensive fabrics until I can leave. A seller wants to show me saris and sheets, but I tell him not to bother.

We drink chai in the parking lot, and then I visit a guru. Zakir’s been talking this guy up so much I think he must also make a commission off taking me there. The guru has changed lives, Zakir says. He can help anyone. Lots of tourists are mad about him. And his services are free; he doesn’t expect anything in return for a peek into your soul. What the hell, I decide. I’ll visit the guy.

He works in a jewelry shop. We enter a room with a couple guys lounging in front of the usual jewelry shop cases. Zakir talks to them a bit, then takes me to a back room, opens the door and leaves me in there.

This room is also lined with jewelry cases. At the back of the room, behind a case of stones, sits a normal looking guy in normal looking clothes. He looks more like a salesman than a guru. I stand in front of him until he tells me to sit down.

“You look like you don’t know why you’re here,” he says.

“I don’t,” I answer.

“Why do you think you’re here?”

“I heard there was a guru here…”

“I’m a guru,” he says. “I can help you. You can ask me any question. I can answer anything. So what do you want to know?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what to ask you.”

He starts telling me things about myself. Things he says he gets just from sitting across from me.

He starts out nice, then gets weird.

I have incredible energy, he says. I should help people. After my time in Cambodia I should go back to the States to figure out what I want to do.

My mother’s 56 — or will be this year. She’s been pregnant three times. I thought it had only been twice, but maybe there’s some things I don’t know, he says. (“He’s making stuff up,” my mom says.)

She also has a lump in her breast, he says. (Not true, she says.)

He tells me I had a relationship two-and-a-half years ago. I suppose that’s true, I say, but it wasn’t long. No, he says, I have problems with long relationships because I have trust issues.

I tell him that I’m a unitasker — that I can only focus on one thing at a time, and he says that’s fine, that’s good for me, because my mind never stops.

I’m very nervous, he says, but I hide behind a façade of calm. I doubt myself a lot, and I don’t know how to breathe. My throat chakra is broken. I need to learn how to breathe. He can help me.

He places a tiny chip of dark blue stone in my left palm and tells me to cross my hands, left palm on top of right. Close my eyes, he says, and breathe.

After a few minutes he tells me to open my eyes. Is my breath faster or slower? I can't feel my pulse. It’s faster, he tells me.

I don’t know what that means, but he tells me he can help me. He can make me a pendant of this special stone that will help me repair my throat chakra and be able to better breathe and communicate.

It will take only an hour and cost only 6,000 rupees ($136). Yikes. No thanks, I say.

“No, I knew you would say that when you came in,” he says.

I ask him about the stone and he’s slow to reveal its name, saying I can’t buy it anywhere. But it’s called tangenite, he says. It’s the stone featured in “Titanic.”

After the guru and a lemon soda on the rooftop, we finally meet Diana. She laughs at my efforts to find her. We would have eventually met at the station for our midnight train, she says.

A younger Indian dude has joined us, and I’m glad for his presence. Zakir freaks me out with his touchy-feely nature. He seems to constantly be on the verge of kissing me.

The four of us eat dinner at Diana’s guesthouse and then Zakir and I go to a Rajasthani music show he talks up so much I wonder if my attendance means another commission.

It’s a puppet show that begins with a couple guys playing drums and singing. They tell me to sit in a plastic chair in front. I know this means I’ll be obligated to pay them, but I can’t politely refuse.

The performance is a puppet variety show. Several puppets perform: a traditional dancer, a snake charmer, a horse rider and an Indian Michael Jackson who can detach and reattach his head.

After the show, one of the guys gives me a speech about how he’s a starving artist and can I buy some of his wares. His art includes puppets and those strands of elephants you can buy at Pier 1. Sorry, I say, his art is very beautiful, but I don’t want to buy any of it. Then he asks for a donation. I give him 20 rupees (less than 50 cents — wow, I’m cheap)!

Next I pay Zakir the agreed-upon 400 rupees ($9). He immediately gets sulky, not because of the fare, but because I’m leaving that night for Jaisalmer. Why am I going there? I should stay in Jaipur, he says. He makes me promise to come back and visit his village. I should tell other tourists about his taxi service, he says. And I should call him when I arrive in Jaisalmer.

Day 12: April 16 - Jaisalmer

The overnight train to Jaisalmer is about 11 hours. For much of the trip, Diana and I are joined by a self-professed guru with a walrus moustache who isn’t assigned to our bunk section, but who can’t stay away from us.

He initiates our friendship by asking our help in editing a brochure for him on his yoga and meditation center. I love editing, so it’s no problem. But the guy barely acknowledges our edits. Instead, he launches into how he can do a reading for me.

Under the pretense of editing, he shows me a notebook filled with testimonies from past customers.The guy’s nice – he buys me a couple chais, gives me a packet of biscuits and offers to give me a painting of my choice from the stack in his black duffel bag. But I am exhausted from listening to endless lectures from endless Indian men.

I try to signal disinterest in his dronings by pulling out a book — “The Da Vinci Code” — which I am finally unsnobby enough to read. But he doesn’t take the hint. Instead, he acts surprised that I am reading a book in English.

“A lot of people in America speak Spanish,” he says.

He then tells me that I shouldn’t eat pickles and that I’ll look the same when I’m 60 as I do now.

“I get such a nice feeling talking to you,” he says again and again.

A driver from our guesthouse picks us up at the train station, which turns out to be a good way to avoid the pack of wolves that are the auto rickshaw drivers. I push an elderly Indian couple out of the way in my desperate escape from the wolves.

We stay inside Jaisalmer Fort, India’s only inhabited fort. Within the 12th-century fort is a maze of streets lined with guesthouses and shops with outside displays of books, notebooks, shoes and clothes.

At the hotel, we sign up for a two-day camel safari. As Fatan, the guy behind the desk says, “No knowledge without camel college.”

He knows other rhymes, too, like “No wife, no life,” and “Beautiful wife, dangerous for life.”

I borrow a cell phone to call Zakir that night, as promised. I spent all of yesterday with the guy, and he acted like he was going to cry when he left, but now he doesn’t even remember who I am!

“Sorry, I get a lot of tourists,” he says. “I’m with three girls from England right now.”

A few minutes later he calls me back, employing a much friendlier tone.

“Hi honey,” he says. “How are you? I miss you so much.”

Day 13: April 17 - Camel safari in Jaisalmer: Day one

Day one of our two-day camel safari. Diana and I go with two Irish lads, William and Eoin (pronounced Owen).

Each of us has our own camel. Oh, but wait! They’re not actually camels! They’re dromedaries. Camels have two humps, and these creatures have only one. Camels also have longer hair and shorter legs than dromedaries. India (and most other countries) don’t have any camels, Fatan tells us. But most people still call dromedaries camels. So we’ll go with that. Sorry, dromedaries!

My camel’s name is Bapoo. At 12, he is the group elder. You can see his wiseness in his dark, long-lashed eyes. He is also the only camel on the trip that doesn’t chew cud. (Like a cow, most of the other camels are constantly chewing their food, regurgitating it, and chewing it some more.)

Two guides lead our safari: Matar, a lively chatterbox who has been leading safaris since age 12 and knows English well, and his trainee Gordon, a quiet but goofy guy who Diana says looks like a character from “The Simpsons.” Gordon has been training with Matar for three years, but knows only a little English.

Diana and I are a bit nervous about how to get on the camels, but they make it easy for us. Matar and Gordon simply pull the reigns and make a soothing “chi, chi, chi” noise. This signals the one-humped giants to kneel on their forelegs. A jerk later, and they’ve also folded under their hind legs, and are sitting on the ground.

Each camel is covered in a blanket and a saddle. Bapoo, the biggest camel, is loaded with food and cooking equipment and bedrolls — and me. I grab hold of the saddle and pull myself on.

Gordon clicks his tongue and Bapoo rises — first his forelegs, then herk, jerk, his hinds. “Lean back,” Matar tells me.

Once I’m on, the riding is a comfortable side-to-side swaying. Still, the mere act of straddling Bapoo is a major inner-thigh stretch, and the stretch soon becomes painful.

We travel in a camel train, with each of us holding the lead of the camel directly behind. Matar and Gordon walk alongside. As we walk, Gordon sings Hindi songs and busts rhymes.

“How can we do? Kathmandu,” he says when something is hopeless.

“One, two, three, India free!” when taking pictures.

“No power, no shower,” when, well, I never figured this one out.

I had imagined the desert to be all dunes and swirling sand. It’s not. Most of the area we cover is rocky scrub land inhabited by scraggly trees and goats. It’s hot, but not as hot as I imagined. Still, I am not taking any chances with the sun. Only the strip of calf between my ankles and pants cuffs is exposed to the sun. I wear a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, socks on my hands and feet, and a hat that covers my whole face except my eyes.

Because our camels aren’t really camels, they don’t spit. But they do fart. And poop. A lot. We are engulfed in a continuous farty odor. Must be from all that hay. That’s all the camels eat on the trek, aside from the few leaves they snatch from trees we pass.

After an hour or two of walking, we stop for lunch beneath a large tree.

Getting off the camels is tougher than getting on. I lean back as Bapoo kneels and then sits, but I can’t get my leg over his girth without help. Gordon and Matar stand on opposite sides of me. They both grab my right leg, one pulling and the other pushing it over the knob of the saddle. I ease myself to the ground and straighten. I’ve been riding for less than two hours, but I’m already walking like John Wayne.

Lunch begins with chai and yellow tubes the texture of styrofoam. A soupy veggie mix is next, with yellow ramen noodles and chapatti.

Gordon makes the chapatti and Matar cooks everything else. The two guides insist on waiting for us to finish eating before they begin. Dishes are cleaned with sand and hands. No soap or water.

The camels wander off to scavenge up their own lunch of leaves, but not before having their front legs tied together with a short length of rope. The guides later feed them bags of hay.

Naps and card games while away the after-lunch hours, the day’s hottest.

After lunch we visit a couple villages populated by lots of children living in squat mud huts, some topped by rounded grassy roofs, others simply squared off. The children at both villages ask for rupees and pens. At the first village the children offer us bags of chips to buy and at the second they show us their collection of foreign money, including a $2 coin from New Zealand. The second village is where Matar is from. We drink chai outside his family’s hut.

We reach our sleeping place amid the sand dunes just in time for sunset. Made up of sand that is hard yet crumbles under bare feet, the dunes rise from a field of broken-up rocks.

We climb the short dunes to a flat plate of earth. From here we can simultaneously see the sun setting and the moon rising. To the west, the sun is a neon white disc sinking in a cherry tomato sky. To the east, the moon is a marbled white circle as perfectly round as the sun, climbing a sky of a darkening bruise.

Below the sun stands a trio of windmills, each with three stagnant speared blades. These windmills stand at attention throughout the desert, generating electricity for people who live in the town, but not for the poor village residents we visit. They live without power.

Dinner is tastier than lunch, and even has an accompanying song.

“Daal and chapatti, onion and potato, camel-a safari, camel-a safari,” Matar sings as he cooks over the open fire. There’s also rice.

We sleep on the desert sand, on blankets under thick, Japan-made comforters. I’m wearing most of my clothes, including socks on my hands and feet, but I still wake up cold in the middle of the night.

Day 14: April 18 - Camel safari in Jaisalmer: Day two

Breakfast is toast with jam, biscuits (called cookies in America), papaya, cantaloupe, and chai, of course.William and Eoin signed up for two nights in the desert, so Diana and I decide to spend another night instead of heading back today like we had planned.

The day passes much the same as yesterday. I have to ask to get off Bapoo during a three-hour stretch of morning riding cause my inner thighs hurt so bad. Bapoo lowers himself and I switch to side saddle.

The new position is a reprieve for the legs, but makes for a bumpier, scarier ride. I am now rocking side to side, holding onto the saddle with my left hand and the bedroll with my right. I’m afraid I’ll topple to the ground if I let go.

But it’s only half an hour before we reach the big tree for lunch. The food is similar to yesterday’s noon meal: a veggie mix of eggplant and potato, yellow noodles and chapati, with an appetizer of chai, those yellow styrofoam tubes and semolina flour.

Gordon throws a rope weighted with a rock on each end into a tree to bring a cluster of branches down to Bapoo. Bapoo munches on the leaves while the other camels eat hay from bags.

We camp in a bowl amid dunes even bigger than last night. William and Eoin shoot crazy poses in the fading light while I log roll very slowly down the hill. Rolling down grassy hills as a kid was a lot more exciting. But less exfoliating. When I come to a stop at the bottom of the hill, sand has ground into every pore of my body.

There’s more sand troubles around the campfire. Because of the strong wind, Matar is having trouble keeping the fire lit for chai. But he’s not worried. He is confident the wind will soon die down. I don’t believe him, but a half hour or so later, he turns out to be right.

Dinner is the usual, sing along with me, now: “Daal and chapati, onion and potato, camel-a safari, camel-a safari.”

Gordon eats a packet of something (paan?) that makes him kookier than ever. He is full of laughter and singing. Matar accompanies him on guitar. I try to stay awake to enjoy the tuneless troubadouring, but today’s rough riding has taken it out of me. I go to sleep first, under a warmer blanket than last night.

This blanket — along with two T-shirts, a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, two bandanas, a hat and socks on my hands and feet — keeps me warm the whole night long.

Day 15: April 19 - Camel safari in Jaisalmer: Day three

I wake up last, to calls for chai. Today is the last day so breakfast is a special treat — porridge! And not just any old oat porridge, but the wheat stuff that Diana and I are crazy about. I eat mine and half of Diana’s, plus biscuits and toast and cantaloupe.

I am so done with camel riding. After an hour or so of groin pain, I ask to dismount Bapoo and walk. Matar rides Bapoo for a while, sitting side saddle and singing. Then he dismounts and Bapoo gets a break from human cargo.

Today’s journey is shorter. We stop once at a circular trough for camel drinks and then under a tree just before lunch time. But there is no lunch today. The tree is simply our pickup spot. We take group photos and then play cards for an hour or more before the jeep arrives.

The driver speeds back to the guesthouse and drops us at 1:30. Our camel adventure is over.

Day 16: April 20 - Jaisalmer and train to New Delhi

After a breakfast of muesli, yogurt, fruit and chai I walk to the Jain temples. On my way, I see a dog lunge at an old woman. The dog is snarling and barking like he wants to kill the woman, but the woman has a stick. The woman passes me and the dog ceases its attack. Still, I am afraid to walk by the dog.

“It’s OK,” says a woman outside the shop where the dog is. “He doesn’t like that woman. She’s a gypsy. She steals people’s bags.” She gestures to my bag, as if to take it.

The dog retreats under a bench and I approach. The woman brings me chai and I talk to her and a nearby man. The chai is the best I’ve had in India. Spicy, not the bland, sweet stuff I’ve received for the past 16 days.

The woman tries to get me to buy stuff from her shop, of course, but I say no thanks. Instead, I take a stack of her business cards with the promise to give them to other tourists. (That doesn’t happen.)

I visit a couple Jain temples, admiring their intricate brown carved stone. Locked behind countless carved wooden doors with barred windows are Buddha-like figures, bald, heavy-browed men sitting in lotus positions. Jainism and Buddhism share similar beliefs, but the statues are not of Buddha. They are of Mahavir, or Vardhamana, the Indian guy who established the framework for Jainism around 500 BCE.

Downstairs, three women are praying to a shrine of a large figure of Mahavir as a bell hanging in the entrance rings over tinny spiritual music.

An Indian man is quickly walking around to each figure, clasping his hands in prayer and then moving onto the next figure.

Only two of the seven temples are open. The rest are closed to tourists until 11. I kill time in a couple havelis, which are really nice tall, sandstone houses that belonged to the city’s wealthy merchants. In the first one I just use the bathroom, but a guy working there still invites me to chai later. In the second one, a young guy shows me a posh room before taking me up to the rooftop, where he talks and talks while I zone out.

He talks about women from the villages who are stuck home while men work. It is not until this city that I have seen women working. Here they work in shops.

The face of his guru hangs on a pendant tied around his neck with a piece of string.

“Are you tired?” he asks, then starts massaging the skin between my thumb and pointer finger. Four seconds for my right hand, nine for my left, then opposite for my feet. When he moves onto my shoulders, I say “enough.”

The point of all this? Energy. “After this you’re ready to get up and go!”

The massaging can also help relieve aches and pains. He tells of an English girl whose pain was finally relieved by him after she had paid several thousand rupees to other practitioners.

I escape without further massage, but not without another chai invitation.

Lunch, I later discover is at a “Lonely Planet” pick. It’s a thali place, which here means six types of foods, each in its own section on a tin plate. There’s a green, rooty vegetable that’s native to Rajasthan, curry vegetables, daal, yogurt, crispy fried wonton noodles, parathas and a yellow, milky sweet. My drink is another dessert: a very sweet lassi studded with candied fruit. The yogurt is so thick I have to eat it with a spoon.

Diana and Fatan, the guesthouse host, unexpectedly join me at the restaurant. They eat and then Fatan takes us on his motorcycle to Gadsisar Lake, which is actually a water tank built around 1400 AD. A couple temples and shrines are anchored in the water.

Ahead of us is an 18-hour train ride back to Delhi. In preparation, I buy a sandwich, 10 oranges and some biscuits. I also sprint up the street for a popsicle of homemade ice cream indigenous to the region.

It’s not the mythical camel ice cream I’ve been pining for, but it’s still good, and has an odd taste, like it’s natural.

Our train leaves at 4:30 p.m. and is scheduled to arrive in Delhi at 10:30 a.m. A four-hour delay means it doesn’t actually arrive in Delhi until 3 p.m.

A man with a moustache, striped shirt and workout pants joins us for part of the journey. He gives the same speech several times.

“I’m an army man in Jaisalmer. I no English,” he begins.

Then he moves onto the weather. “Summer is very hot in Jaisalmer. Winter is very cold in Jaisalmer.”

And finally, the festival. “February is the biggest festival in Jaisalmer. Fifty thousand airplanes in the sky.”

Thankfully, the guy finally moves away from our section.

Sitting across from me throughout the ride is a young, quiet, bespectacled Indian guy who is militant about closing and opening the windows as we pass dusty fields. Despite his tactics, I have to borrow one of Diana’s socks to wipe the layer of dust off my seat.

Day 17: April 21 - Train to New Delhi and plane to Bangkok

Breakfast is on a train platform and is far more delicious than the veggie cutlet that tore apart my bowels on our first train. Potato curry and six small chapatis for less than 50 cents.

Back on the train, a woman approaches me with a shrine. A pile of coins topped with a 50-rupee note lays below the small altar, and incense smoke is curling around her face. The woman holds the shrine in front of her face and points to the money. I don’t give her any.

She is just one of the many beggars on the trains. Also prevalent are women with children and people who push rags in front of them as they crawl through the aisles.

After finally arriving in Delhi, we check in at the guesthouse we stayed at two weeks ago and then hit up a food hole with the Irish laddies. Chickpeas and chapatis and a sweet lassi for me.

I later try to casually stroll the street looking for shirts, but there is no casual shopping here. Harassment is heavy. I constantly get called at to come look at shops.

“What country?” a man asks me. “German? Switzerland?” I laugh and shake my head, scowling.

“Angry!” he says.

For our last meal in Delhi we visit Mt. Everest restaurant, a place I’d been eyeing since we arrived. The eatery is at the top of a flight of stairs so steep it’s like climbing the real Everest. I want a beer to soothe my stomach but am too cheap to pay 150 rupees for it. The only beer available in India seems to be giant, expensive bottles of Kingfisher. So I order lemon, honey, ginger tea instead, but it’s not until we leave that I realize I forgot to put the tea bag in! No wonder the drink was so lemony.

Our flight to Bangkok leaves at nearly midnight and arrives about four hours later. The ride is tarnished only by the sour man sitting on the aisle. I’m by the window, so I have to pass him the two times I go to the bathroom.

My first trip is before he sits down. I come back and he jerks his legs back a centimeter and mutters something I can’t hear which Diana translates as, “You should have thought about that before.”

A few hours later I have to pee again. When I tap the man he raises his shoulders in a “What the hell?” gesture and shifts his legs slightly. “Sorry,” I say. When I tap his shoulder on the way back in he lasers me a death stare and doesn’t make any attempt to let me by. I first try inching by with my front facing him and then realize this guy doesn’t deserve that courtesy. I stick my butt in his face and plow through him.

Day 18: April 22 - Bangkok

Our plane arrives in Bangkok at about 6 a.m. We catch a bus to the tourist district, find a guesthouse and sleep for seven hours.

Breakfast is poached eggs and toast while watching boys in swim trunks and girls in cover-ups slurp from beer towers. They look like they never went to bed.

These tourists are packed into the bars and restaurants lining the streets, buying fruit and crepes from the street carts and the same T-shirts and knick-knacks that are for sale throughout southeast Asia.

That night I go to my first real movie theater in nearly two years. The movie? A dudsy sci-fi: “Source Code.”

Day 19: April 23 - Still Bangkok

The morning begins with my first facial. The sensations are like nothing I’ve felt before. I close my eyes and imagine dolphins swimming on my face. Next it feels like the woman is kneading dough and playing piano on my face, and then pawing my shoulders like a dog for the shoulder massage.

After the upper body it’s time for the lower.

“Spread your legs,” the woman commands.

What? Am I in a brothel? I didn’t think I signed up for a happy ending massage, but I comply.

My face is swaddled in cotton and I can’t see the woman, but I feel her straddle my legs and begin massaging my calves, then up higher.

A lamp is shooting heat on my face and it’s difficult to breathe, especially through the cotton. Nearby I can hear an Aussie woman roaring with laughter about the fish chewing her feet as part of the fish foot massage.

A cucumber coating and mask and then it’s over. But wait, do I want waxing? My eyelashes tinted black? No.

The colossal but boring MBK mall is that night. Dinner is soup with five kinds of mushrooms at a Japanese fast food joint.

After dinner is another movie. “Rio," a cartoon 3-D flick that’s way better than last night’s real-people show.

A propaganda video of the Thai king plays before both movies. Within the first notes of the movie’s introductory music the audience is on its feet. The video shows the king among his people, helping with clean-ups and participating in experiments, helping advance his country.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, “an inspiration for all Thais,” the movie says.

Day 20: April 24 - Back to Cambodia

Our van back to Cambodia leaves early in the morning. Several Thai ladies of the night are strolling the streets buying fruit at the street stands, yelling to their men that they will be right with them.

The van to Bangkok 20 days ago had about six passengers, but the van back from Bangkok is packed with 20-some people. Welcome back to Cambodia!

Day Four: April 8 - Varanasi

I wake at 6:30. Breakfast is leftover chips, chai, toast and two “vegetable cutlets” (potato and vegetable hashbrowns) I will spend the next week regretting.

We arrive in Varanasi in mid-morning, but don’t get to a guesthouse until afternoon. Diana and I and two other tourists catch a supposedly pre-paid taxi to a “Lonely Planet” guesthouse. The driver and his assistant want us to stay somewhere else though, at a guesthouse they can’t stop talking about.

They’ll take us by this guesthouse and ours, they say, so we can compare them. To do this, we’ll have to walk, since the cobbled roads are too narrow for cars.

The assistant says the trip will take only 20 minutes, but it seems to take twice as long for the three of us to wind through the twisting maze of people and hulking motorcycles honking to get by. The streets are lined with shops, houses, freshly molded clay pots and the occasional guesthouse.

Signs for the assistant’s guesthouse are painted on every corner, but there aren’t any signs for ours. After 20 minutes of walking, the assistant says “Oops! Wrong way!” and we turn and churn round the maze some more. It seems as if he’s trying to get us lost. Finally we get to our guesthouse, which is disappointingly small and run by people who act disinterested in our business. It also looks too deep into the maze to ever find again.

We return to the taxi and a driver who refuses to give us our bags until we pay him an extra 20 rupees for a parking ticket he got while waiting for us. After much yelling, we finally get the bags for half the price of the ticket.

Next we strike out on our own, sort of. We follow a local who says he can take us to a guesthouse. We reject the place and choose our own atop a giant staircase above the Ganges, but the guy won’t leave.

We repeatedly tell him to go, but he stays in the alley outside the guesthouse, peering in the window and yelling that he can help us with any kind of service we need.

The vegetable cutlets start their assault on my bowels in early afternoon, and I spend the rest of the day in bed. I miss the walk along the Ganges at sunset, when people perform holy ceremonies.

Day Five: April 9 - Varanasi, night train to Khajuraho

I make up for missing last night’s festivities by waking at 6 to tour the Ganges by rowboat. I’m accompanied by Janna, a German tourist who is sharing a room with Diana and me.

Before we leave shore, a young girl sells Janna and I a lotus flower candle each, which we release into the river to bring good karma to us and our families. The girl pockets her 40 rupees and goes on to the next boat. Our young rower pushes off.

“Five fifty-seven. Half an hour, OK?”

We’re afloat in the Ganges — one of the top five most polluted rivers in the world. But it’s holy, so lots of people bathe and play in it and bring their dead to live in it.

All these people make the water really dirty, but looking at it gives only a hint of its dirtiness. Tinged army green, the river’s surface is coated with ash.

The smoky sky is the same color as the river. Bells clang while mystical music plays. Our guide rows us past tall stone buildings towering over the river at the top of steep stairs. These stairs are called ghats, and each of the 84 sets has a holy story behind it.

Men and sari-ed women gather high on these steps near open umbrellas. At the base of the steps, shirtless men suds their bodies clean. Nearby, women clean not their bodies, but their clothes. Other women loose lotus flower candles into the river. Boats loaded with tourists float past.

We’re back at the start by 6:27. At the top of the steps, a yellow-faced man wearing a matching glitter-specked costume greets us. Would we lovely ladies like to pay 100 rupees to take his picture? Not me. Janna gets his portrait for 10. (She later shoots the back of him for free.)

A couple guys lounging at the top of the stairs ask where we’re from and if we want to see a burning ghat. (Where dead bodies are burned.) I kind of do, but Janna says it’s far away, and I’m hungry.

After a day spent laying about, Diana and I catch the night train to Khajuraho, the city known for its sexy temples. Maybe you’ve heard of the Kama Sutra. Well, so had the carvers of these temples, built between 950-1150.

As I step onto the train I nearly collide with a replica of the yellow-faced man Janna and I saw above the ghats. Only this guy is in orange. He comes at me with a “Namaste” and a red thumb. Before I can dodge, the thumb is smearing a goopy red paste between my eyebrows and he’s chanting in a language I can’t understand. Namaste, indeed.

“God bless you,” he says, ending the chant.

I didn’t ask for this blessing, but I still have to pay for it. I put 10 rupees in his basket and climb onto my top bunk, where I can hide from other money grubbers.

Four men in khaki uniforms sit on the bunks below, loading what I assume to be bullets into huge black guns which I assume to be rifles. One of the men, who I assume to be a police officer, assesses me with his eyes. I say hello. He doesn’t respond. Another officer offers me his giant, sliced cucumber. I decline, and the uniformed men exit the train.

Day Six: April 10 - Khajuraho

We step off the train in Khajuraho into a swarm of auto rickshaw drivers. It’s only 6:30 in the morning, but they’re already out in full force, Cambodia style. These guys are harder to swat away though. Finally we jump in a cab with a French guy and hit it.

On our way into town, we pass women, men and children stooped over on the sides of the tree-lined road. They are plucking fruit from the ground and putting it into large baskets. The makings of local alcohol, our driver says.

After a semi-BRAT breakfast (banana rice and ginger tea) I make like a baby and head out… to the sexy temples.

Several temples are smothered in sex poses. But one of the most unsexy temples is getting all this morning’s traffic: The Shiva temple.

Women in bright saris clutching metal tea pots and tiered tins of food climb the temple steps. Water is poured and petals scattered around the temple’s perimeter and on the shelves of shrines built into the sides. A dog follows the women around the shrine, lapping up their discarded holy water.

Inside, I dodge an Asian man with a giant camera. Outside is the Asian woman who comes with the Asian man. She also has a giant camera.

“Hello, picture?” an Indian family asks her.

She complies, and the family gathers to look at her picture.

“Yay!” the kids scream.

One of the sexy temples is caged in green bars. I take a picture of an Indian man sitting inside the temple. Inside, the man asks me the usual questions.

“Hello. What country?”

“America.”

“USA?”

“Yes. You?”

“India.”

The man takes me around the temple, pointing out notable carvings, such as: “Lady sex, lady pregnant sex and lady dog sex.” He also shows me a lady with a scorpion crawling up her leg because her sex is that dangerous.

“Picture?” the man asks as he points to each carving.

Inside, he shows me a stage for dancing and a central shrine with a giant carved ball. The man rubs his head on the ball and tells me to do the same for good luck. Foreign currency is scattered below the ball. “Shiva likes foreign money,” the man tells me.

I don’t have any small bills, so I give Shiva his second choice: rupees. Two, to be exact. Then the guy asks me for a tip. I refuse.

On my way out of the Western temple group, I am approached by a young Indian man with long hair parted in the middle who is wearing sunglasses and clunky white basketball shoes.

“Hello, I know your friend,” he tells me. “She went back to the hotel.”

How does he know my friend? He tells me her name’s Diana and she’s Chinese. That’s enough for me. He tells me he’s meeting her at 4 at an Italian place. I say I don’t want to go there. He asks me where I want to go and I say I don’t know, I am sick.

He says he’ll help me and takes me to a fruit stand. I buy a pineapple juice and a bunch of bananas and we talk. He says he knows Vicky — the guy from Delhi — and he’s just a playboy who wants girls and their money.

This guy's not like that, of course. But he still thinks love is crucial. When I tell him I don’t have a boyfriend, he asks me how I can survive my life.

Then he asks me about the temples. Which carving did I like best? Did I see the man and the horse? Oh, and had I had love in India? He likes talking openly about love, he tells me.

Next we pay a visit to Super Mario Kashmir Goods, the shop of a guy he calls his brother, but who looks old enough to be his dad. Super Mario spends half the year in Kashmir and half in Khajuraho.

The young dude — 22, I find out — tells me to sit down and he’ll bring me green tea with cardamom, good for the stomach. I ask if I’ll have to pay him.

“Why would you say that?” he asks in a voice coated with shock.

Because I don’t know him, I begin. And because I’ve been constantly accosted by Indian men wanting tips for every little thing.

He’s not like that, he says, coming to sit next to me. Ask anyone! He doesn’t want money from tourists. He’s happy having only a little money. OK. we have some tea. Meanwhile, Super Mario starts in on the usual questions.

“What country?”

Super Mario has a lot of friends in America, he says, pointing to their pictures on the post behind him. He shows me a stack of letters and photos from these friends and a guestbook with raves in several languages. His customers love him, he says, because he sells real kashmir, unlike many of the town’s sellers. He tries to interest me in a shawl, but I decline.

Meanwhile, the young dude is telling me he can show me all of Khajuraho’s sites for free. Have I ridden on a motorcycle in India? Do I want to go with him? He can take me up in the mountains.

Maybe, I say. Don’t say maybe, he says. Say yes or no. I don’t want to say yes or no, I reply. I want to say maybe.

He’s quiet for a while. Then he starts back up, telling me he wants to be a tour guide so he can meet lovely people like me. Barf.

I tell him I’ll come back to his shop if I want to go on a moto tour with him. But he shouldn’t wait for me, I say.

“I wait for no one!” he says.

“Good,” I reply, shaking his hand.

On the way back to the guesthouse I run into another young Indian guy with long hair parted in the middle and a red dot on his forehead. He is older and classier than the last guy. He shows me the way

back to the hotel and asks me to have chai. Maybe later, I say. Now I want to rest.

When I go outside later for a soda water, the older guy’s there. He buys me a water and then tells me to ask if I need any help. His name’s Baba. He lives in Spain part of the year, and so he knows not to pressure tourists to visit his shop.

Day Seven: April 11 - Khajuraho

I take a rented bicycle out to the rest of the Kama Sutra temples. The bike’s too small and the brakes don’t work. My knees come above the handlebars when I pedal and I almost plow into a foreigner.

I meet another playboy on the way. He’s tall with vibrant green eyes and a blue scarf covers his long hair. He points me in the right direction to the temples and tells me he’ll escort me around.

After ensuring he doesn’t want any money – “I don’t take money from women” — I consent.

We walk around the temples, some Kama Sutra, some Jain.

We also tour two villages with squat houses and inhabitants belonging to each of India’s four castes. I can’t tell the difference between the houses.

I politely examine the “found objects” (aka junk) that a couple of his friends sell on carts near the temples.

One of the sellers, a boy who walks on all fours and gets around with a hand-pedaled bicycle, follows us across a bridge to the next set of temples.

“He loves you,” my escort says.

Like the other playboys I’ve met, my escort is all about love. “Love is everything,” he says.

He is constantly spouting cheesy rhymes and sayings. Example: “Roses are red, violets are blue, I have one true love, and that is you.”

He tells me he only wants to be my friend, but then feeds me loads of barfy lines, like he wishes he was my bag so he could touch me, and that the sunset is beautiful, but not as beautiful as me.

When is my birthday? I should spend it with him in India. There would be lots of candles and a little love.

I finally leave the guy with a promise to meet him at a restaurant later for local wine. I show up an hour late, and he’s not there. He probably never showed.

On my way to the restaurant I pass a group of guys. One guy calls out to me.

“Hi! Remember me? Sit down, have chai.”

No time, I say.

Come on, he says. In India people always have time for chai.

Two young boys, maybe 10 years old, accost me on the way back to the guesthouse. They’re learning English. English is very important, yes? They ask me what languages I know, and then tell me they’re collectors, do I know?

“We’re having a collection at school to see who can collect the most foreign money,” they tell me.

“Euros, dollars… do you have any? No? Well, we also collect Indian money.”

I laugh, but don’t give them any money.

Day Eight: April 12 - Last day in Khajuraho

I check out Matangesvara, a free temple with an 8-foot-tall phallus that represents Shiva.

A small group of people is gathered around a shrine outside the temple. An old man approaches me with a spool of red yarn he wants to tie around my wrist. “Shiva,” he says. I wave him away, as well as the young boy who offers me a leaf piled with red and yellow flowers.

In the early evening I join Baba and his guru on red plastic chairs in a parking lot. We watch a cloud of parrots descend on a trio of trees in the fading light. The small winged creatures sound more like cicadas or crickets than birds.

I give Baba 50 rupees to buy local wine and whiskey before meeting him at an Italian restaurant for dinner.

Over spaghetti and tomato salad Baba tells me that his dad is both mayor and part of the mafia that runs the town, along with his brother. This means everyone knows Baba and he can get whatever he wants.

Despite his pleas for us ”to have a beautiful time together,” Baba is less heavy on love than the other playboys. He uses a cheesy pun to sum up India’s love epidemic.

“Does India have malaria?” I ask him.

“No, “ he says. “But it has love-aria.”

To celebrate Cambodia’s biggest holiday, Khmer New Year, I went to India. Hey, at least they’re in the same neighborhood!

Seventeen glorious, stressful, lovaria*-filled days. Just me and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Diana and more than 1.2 million square kilometers of country.

We didn’t cover even a quarter of that territory, but we still got around. We made it to six cities: New Delhi, Varanasi, Khajuraho, Agra, Jaipur and Jaisalmer.

In these spots we saw enormous malls and mosques, holy burial rivers, sexy temples, the world’s most famous mausoleum, desert palaces and lots of sand dunes and scrubby bushes.

The sites were varied, but the people the same. Women were few, but men were everywhere, inviting us for chai, lassis, dinner, guru readings, into their shops, for whatever they could get.

Love is everything in India, we were told, but of course none of the guys we met were like that about love. They all already had foreign girlfriends, and certainly didn’t want money or sex from other foreign women.

These men called each other playboys. Archana, my female Indian friend, calls them Roadside Romeos.

Other men were more focused on business, and constantly called us into their shops, where they sold clothes, kashmir, knick knacks. A mere glance in a shopkeeper’s direction was cause for harassment.

The men and shopkeeper hassles soon grew old, but India rose above these annoyances. My 17 days spent on the sprawling subcontinent were vibrant and fun-filled, and too short! I can’t wait to go back.

* More about this later.

Glossary:44 rupees = $1Chai = sweet teaNamaste = hello and goodbyeChapatis and parathas = flat bread, thinner than naan.

The first part of this journey — days one through three — is documented below. Much more to come!

* Thanks to Diana for taking some awesome photos. Some are hers. Some are mine.

Day One: April 5 - Bangkok to Delhi

And we’re off! We want to leave my house at 6 a.m. I wake at 4:30, but somehow, we’re still not ready until 7.

A minivan takes us to the Bangkok airport. These vans are usually crammed with at least 20 people, but there are only six this time around. Diana and I each have an entire row to ourselves.

We get to the airport with only six hours to spare before our flight.

I come with a backpack loaded with liquids I plan to check. But for a $17 fee? No thanks.

The plane is Air Asia, the fun and games, wigs and costumes airline, if the in-flight magazine is true. It’s not. The only entertainment is listening to passengers slurp pop they had to pay for.

Delhi is plenty entertaining though. And a mere three and a half hours from Bangkok. We arrive to a city ablaze with… well, ablaze with fire.

OK, so maybe it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say the whole city is ablaze. Maybe it’s only one block that’s ablaze — or one building. But this building is in our path.

The fiery obstacle is pointed out by a man pounding on our taxi window. Our driver backs around the block to our hotel, but not without taking us closer to the blaze.

“Look!” he says.

A small “Delhi Police” jeep is coming our way. No other emergency vehicles are in sight.

Inside the guesthouse, a bed wide enough for six sumo wrestlers fills our room. It would take two sets of my gorilla arms to reach the other side, but my ostrich legs dangle off the end.

Day Two: April 6 - Delhi

After a complimentary breakfast of cornflakes, bananas, toast, sweet coffee and mango juice, we check into another guesthouse nearby. Our last one is booked for the night.

A white haired man with a matching flared moustache is behind the check-in desk. He’s yelling in rat-a-tat Hindi.

Diana laughs. “I want to know what you’re saying!”

“Today is a very bad day,” he says.

Bad because of lazy staffers who were supposed to be working at 7:30 but are still asleep at 9. And he, at 61, is working hard. Japanese workers are good, he says. His workers are not good.

Both joints are in Old Delhi, a dingier, worn-out version of its younger brother.

We’re tailed to our new guesthouse by a mother and three girls with dirty faces and hair that looks like it’s been washed with gasoline and honey. One of the girls hooks her talons around my arm, wanting a wad of cash crammed into her beak.

We catch a bicycle rickshaw (a cart towed by a bicyclist) to the Red Fort. (A local tells me India also has human rickshaws, which are carts of people towed by people. But these, he says, are only in Calcutta.)

A policeman carrying a switch butts into our bargaining, swatting our driver on the side, assumedly to ensure he complies with the 30-rupees fare.

Apparently 30 rupees can’t get us to the Red Fort. Our rickshawist drops us at the other end of a paved bridge that looks like a freeway ramp. Nothing red or fortlike is in sight.

So we hoof it. Or rather ski it. Walking in Delhi is like slalom skiing. People are everywhere. They are either walking, or packed in cars, rusty bicycle rickshaws, green and yellow motorcycled cars called auto rickshaws, white taxis, or atop motorcycles or carts.

Delhi’s humans are as varied as their modes of transportation. As in the other Indian cities we see, it’s mostly men on the streets. The few women we see are either draped in black cloth with only their eyes peeping out or in glittering folds of brightness that cover everything except swaths of side and back. Men are dressed mostly Western style, although plenty are robed, and some wear turbans or round flat-topped caps.

We weave through the people, past the endless “Licensed Refrigerated Water” trolleys — metal carts stacked with short clear glasses and one glassful of limes — and food holes whose concrete exteriors are painted with “Veg/Non Veg” signs. Outside these food holes frying pans sizzle with breads and curries.

We also pass several sidewalk dentists — men squatting next to blankets laden with metal teeth plates, syringes and scrapers. Next to each blanket is a small painted sign of a row of smiling white teeth. I watch as one of these dentists empties a syringe into a man’s mouth a couple times. After each time, the patient stands and spits onto the sidewalk.

Our first inquiry tells us the Red Fort is only half a kilometer away, but by the time we stop and ask again, it’s two kilometers farther.

We stop for lunch at a place with a chandelier, tablecloths and napkins blooming from wine glasses. We’re the only customers.

Our waiter doesn’t mesh with the finery. “He looks like Snoop Dogg!” Diana whispers. And she’s right, although Snoop has more teeth, both have horsey faces and ratty moustache-and-beard combos.

The meal starts with curry and sweet lassis and ends with a mouthful of sugar boulders and aniseed that are good for digestion.

After the meal, another waiter approaches and asks if I’m Japanese. Apparently this question is simply a segue into a spiel about how the restaurant is popular with the Japanese.

Many magazine clippings later, we find out the eatery is also popular with John F. Kennedy, or was the one time he ate there. Another famous name associated with the joint is Gordon Ramsey, a British chef I’ve never heard of, who was part of a great cook-off against the restaurant’s chef. Ramsey lost, of course.

In addition to its famous associations, the restaurant boasts staffers from almost all of India’s religions. They’ve got a Christian, Hindu, Muslim and a Sikh. Now they’ve just got to recruit a Buddhist and a Jain.

Not long after lunch, we finally spot the looming sandstone of the Red Fort. But the $5 to $6 entry fee dissuades us from entering. We’ve still got The Taj Mahal and its nearly $20 entry fee ahead of us.

Outside the fort, an Indian guy hands me his camera and says “Please.” I think he wants me to take a picture of he and his assumed girlfriend, but no, he wants a picture of his girlfriend and me! Because I’m a perfect specimen of tall whiteness? Or because my picnic-tablecloth plaid hat and flowered shirt make me look like a mismatched crazy who should be mumbling outside a grocery store?

“You should charge,” Diana says.

Next up is Jama Masjid, India’s largest, but hardly most decorative, mosque. The street leading to the holy building is lined with junk stands. Purses, scarves, dishes and thousands of other knick knacks no one needs.

At the base of the stairs to the mosque, a grubby boy with crusted yellow nostrils grabs my arm. He points to his mouth and says “rupees.”

“No,” I say. “Go away.” And he does.

“Lonely Planet” says we’ll “be awestruck” by the mosque. Sure, the place is huge, big enough for 25,000, but not so awe inspiring. Much of the square space is a tiled courtyard, bordered by narrow passages for praying. Squat onion domes and lean cucumber towers sprout from the mosque.

We take off our shoes and tie on ankle-length pink flowered smocks. I keep my head covered with my hat. Many women are bare headed.

The Allah worshipers wash their feet in a rectangular bath before entering the mosque’s passages. Inside these passages, men with round white caps are kneeling in prayer and other men and women are splayed in sleep.

I buy another ticket that allows me to climb one of the cucumber towers – the south minaret. I wind up the narrow stone staircase and come to a platform with a good view of the city. I snap some photos and am about to head down when I see a couple people emerge from another tower stretching still higher.

More stairs to climb. Up and up, past people squeezed against the curved brick walls. I climb to a circular cage packed with Indians. I feel a forest of eyes on me and my obnoxious hat. It seems like all cameras are pointed at me. I’m so vain… All the floor space is sat upon and people line the cage’s perimeter. More people are coming up. I snap some photos and go down.

After watching a woman surrender her yogurt to a demanding tabby, Diana and I leave the mosque and board the subway for Connaught Place in New Delhi. A metal detector and bag scan are prerequisites for boarding the train. There’s no pat-down, but men and women form separate lines. Granted clean scans, we wait on a strip of cement under pink signs that read: “Women Only.” The train arrives gleaming and silver. Inside, most riders have their faces pressed to high-tech gadgets I’ve never seen.

An outdoor mall done in white, Connaught Place reminds me of a less-populated version of London's Convent Gardens. Adidas, Reebok and Lee rub shoulders with grotty holes offering cards and medicine.

Outside the shops, hawkers sell beads and paan, a natural breath-freshener and get-you-high combination of areca nut and betel leaves. The red splotches staining every corner of the building are proof of paan’s popularity.

Dogs cover the pavement like drooling blankets. Always asleep, India’s portly canines look like AKC showdogs compared to Cambodia’s scrawny, sore-covered slumdogs.

Dinner is at a South Indian fast food joint. A flat triangle of bread stuffed with veggie curry, then coffee and an assortment of treats sweet enough to give you dentures.

A rickshaw takes us back to our guesthouse. The cyclist is determined to give us a show. He swerves in and out of traffic, holding his cell phone overhead as it blasts Indian club bangers. He jumps from his bike as a snarling dog bites at his tires, and a bus nearly runs us down before he can remount the rickshaw. Quite the show, but I still give him only the agreed-upon 40 rupees. He makes a face and asks for 50, even grabs my arm.

“No,” I say. “Bye bye!”

Day Three: April 7 - More Delhi and night train to Varanasi

We start the day at the train station, buying tickets leaving the next day for Agra and Varanasi that we will return in a few short hours when we find out the Taj Mahal (Agra’s main attraction) is closed tomorrow.

Breakfast is at one of the Veg/Non Veg holes lining the main street. I point to the veggie curry and parathas on the tin plate in front of the Indian guy next to me.

“I want what he has,” I say.

Instead, I get only a flat disc of bread. When I ask if that’s all I’m getting, the waiter holds up two fingers, like “Wait two minutes.” Wait two minutes, it turns out, not for food, but for someone who speaks better English. I end up with what I want: parathas, curry and chai.

After my afternoon nap I run into my first (but certainly not last) Roadside Romeo. He’s lounging on a motorcycle in the alley outside our guesthouse.

“Where’s your Chinese friend?” he asks. (Diana’s parents are from China, she’s from America.)The usual questions follow. Where am I from, how long am I in India and Delhi, where am I visiting in India.

Vicky, this young guy with a beaky face, seems to already know a lot of the answers to these questions. He knows I came to Delhi two days ago, on the night of the fire.

He also knows a lot of things about the United States that I’ve never heard of. He knows about the bloody river near New York where a serial killer dumped his bodies, and about the biggest bank robbery ever, about five years ago, in some town he doesn’t remember the name of.

He asks me about Burning Man. He wants to know what it is and if he should go. I’ve never been, I say, but I hear it’s a big hippie music and drug fest, with lots of costumes.

“I don’t do drugs,” the guy tells me. “Maybe it’s not for me?”

I can’t answer him.

He asks me if I’m in a hurry. “No,” I say.

He then asks me to have chai with him.

“Oh, no, I’m in a hurry,” I say.

“Maybe later?” he asks.

“Maybe,” I say.

He’s not on the motorcycle when I come back, so I go back to the main street, where a tabletop shrine is set up for the Hindu festival Ram Navami. Music blares as believers approach in prayer. Sitting crosslegged atop the table is a man whose head is covered by a white kerchief.

I take a picture of a guy wearing a misogynistic T-shirt and he takes a picture of me and his friend. Another guy approaches and asks if I want a taxi, then asks the usual questions.

“What’s your name?”

“Mary,” I say.

“Mary, marry me?”

“No!” I yell.

He asks me to go somewhere more quiet to talk. I turn him down. I’m already tiring of India’s chattery playboys.

I run into Vicky, the original beaky playboy, on the way back to the guesthouse. I take him up on that chai and he pays a young boy to buy me a bunch of bananas.

Vicky tells me the Taj is closed tomorrow, and takes me next door to show me Internet pictures of where we should go instead. His friends regale me with stories of their foreign girlfriends — a Swedish bird in Bangalore and a Brit somewhere in England.

Diana and I change our train tickets, then auto rickshaw it to another Indian fast food eatery, which has eateries throughout the world. We order bread puffs exploding with saucy vegetables, plus daal, yogurt , sweet lassis, chai and sweets.

Half the food’s still uneaten when we finally leave the restaurant four hours later. I take it with us on the rickshaw back to the train station, where we have a couple more hours before our night train.

We wait on the plush couches of the International Tourist Bureau near a sign that reads: “WAITING IS NOT ALLOWED, AFTER BUYING THE TRAIN TICKET PLEASE PROCEED TO THE WAITING ROOM ON PLATFORM NO. 1.”

A band of 15 Japanese tourists invades the room while we’re waiting. Nearly all sport owlish black plastic glasses the same size as the ones my parents wore in the ‘80s.

The bureau kicks us out at 8 p.m., and we go to wait with the natives on the train platform. People sit and lay on the dirty concrete floor, others cross the tracks with suitcases atop their heads. Women in saris pass with huge boxes balanced on their heads. They take the place of luggage carts.

We finally board the night train to Varanasi around 8:30 p.m., after six hours of waiting. I’m on the top bunk of our three-bunked sleeper section. The bunks are grimy slabs of blue vinyl, and the top two have only enough head clearance for sleeping.

My only view from the top bunk is of the flabby gut of the man sleeping on his side on a bunk across the aisle.

We’re in the cheap, non-air conditioned section of the train. This means ceiling fans that start off inept against the scorching heat and then, when the cool night air moves in, become too adept, whirring up a constant, freezing gale.

I wear virtually my whole backpack of clothes, including socks on my hands and feet, but I’m still cold. The lights switch off and on and off and on the entire night. Another constant is the cries for money from beggars, some crawling, others singing, and the vendor calls of “Chai… chai…”

If you’ve read this blog before, you’ve read about rice. Most of Cambodia is rice fields, Cambodians eat the stuff with every meal, blah, blah, blah.

I’ve lived in Cambodia for a year-and-a-half. I’ve been to rice fields before. Once for swimming and again for what I had thought was work. Turned out the only work was finding my way out of the field.

Only now can I finally, honestly, say that I have worked a rice field — with only 30 or so helpers!

We visited the orphanage’s fields on a recent Sunday, the only free day for school kids in this country. (Not counting the ridiculously high number of holidays.)

But this Sunday is not a day for lounging. It is a day for working.

I was invited to the fields by the Cambodian man who supervises the orphanage’s children. He gave me permission to simply watch if I didn’t want to work. I assured him I wanted to work. For just one day I wanted to engage in the sweaty, malaria-prone and back-breaking work of a Cambodian rice harvester.

The abundance of laborers ensured that the work wasn’t exactly back-breaking. But we’ll get to that later.

The day starts as all my days start: with the clang of the breakfast bell. The morning clang usually means it’s 5:40 a.m. But this morning, because it’s a Sunday, the clanging means it’s closer to 6. Maybe 5:45.

Breakfast this morning is me soup. No, not soup made out of me, but a basic ramen soup. Nothing added, nothing subtracted. Some days the soup arrives neutered of its salty broth, and in essence, soupless. But today its liquid has been preserved.

Me is the least filling of the orphanage’s rotating trio of breakfasts. Rice porridges at least have organs, fish, or eggs and beans to protein them up. Me is nothing but noodles.

Like one raised during the Great Depression, my greatest fear is going hungry. So after the me and before settling into the rice truck I buy two stale but sweet baguettes from a nearby food stall. These should fill me until lunch.

Upon arrival at the field, I receive another sweet baguette, this one fresh. You can never have too many baguettes!

Most of the day’s workers are middle school and high school students who live at or near the orphanage. Joining the kiddies are the heads of the place —the old Cambodian guy, the old French guy and the young French girl. And then there’s me.

It’s probably between 60 and 70 degrees outside, and we’re all freezing. Of course, the kids are bundled in sweatshirts, socks and gloves, jeans and wool hats. But I am forever underestimating Cambodia’s cold and am wearing only a lightweight long-sleeved shirt, jeans and a bandana.

To get to the work, we stamp over flattened, tawny colored stalks that look like hay. During my last trip, in September, the field was soaked in water up to my mid-thighs. Today, hard ridges of dirt are the only indication of water’s previous presence.

Up ahead rises a mountain of the aforementioned hay stuff. Kids are sitting up there, hanging out. I’m mostly a kid, so of course I want to sit up there, too. And the kids encourage me. So I scramble up the side and get a couple pictures.

I think this pile is just a pit stop before we get to work. But, no, the pile is the work. It’s not hay, but rice. Or soon-to be rice. Our job is to feed bundles of this rice into the threshing machine, which will extract hard kernels of almost-rice from the hay stalks. But first the threshing machine has to show up.

After maybe half an hour of posing and picture taking, the blue-piped contraption rolls in on a tractor. We workers circle and are separated into two groups. I’m in group two, along with several of the 10th grade girls I teach every night. Group two’s first job is to wait, so I join my group mates in the truck bed, watching group one get started.

The labor looks simple enough. About 20 workers stand on top of the rice pile and throw bundles to the small man seated on the thresher. His job is to push the rice through the machine. A motorcycle helmet protects his head from the crush of the incoming bundles.

The machine’s mouth is a smallish slot, so bundles of rice quickly pile around the man. Every few minutes the workers have to stop throwing so the man won’t be buried in rice stalks.

The machine sheds the almost-rice of its surrounding straw strands and sends the kernels rolling down a metal ramp and into the burlap bags and plastic buckets held below.

Meanwhile the straw strand bits, looking like dust and dirt and fragments of grass, shoot skyward through a metal pipe. By noon these fragments have formed two massive mountains of huskings.

The workers who aren’t atop the rice pile are bagging the kernels.

“Sky sa-aaht,” one of my girl students says, pointing above us. Sa-aht means beautiful. She’s right. The sun is just beginning to filter through the patchy clouds.

Soon it’s group two's turn. Each group works 20-minute shifts. We work three or four cycles before lunch and the ride home.

The work is much easier than I expected. I stand near the mouth of the thresher and repeat the same action over and over again. Bend over, pick up a bundle of the rice, toss it on the thresher ledge.

“You interesting in rice field?” one of my 12th grade students asks after I’ve completed my first round.

“Yes,” I say.

“Are you happy?”

“Yes,” I say.

“You not tired?” he asks. “I very tired.”

“No, not tired,” I say.

Lunch is at 11:30, just like at the orphanage. The food’s a regular dish, too: fried fish and sour and spicy mango shreds over rice. We even get one of the usual Sunday desserts: corn floating in a soup of condensed milk and tapioca. For drinks, there’s water or Coke dumped into a cooler of ice.

After lunch I’m ready for my usual afternoon nap. I doze in the grass until the young French girl (young, but still older than me) tells me to get out of the sun and sleep in the truck.

We ride home in the truck about an hour later, atop the bags of rice. There are only 70 bags this year, compared to last year’s 120. Too much rain. The orphanage’s director will have to buy more bags.

After all, the rice we harvested today is the rice the staff and the 50-some kids will be eating three times a day for the next year. The rice is brown, and needs a coating of soup to become edible. I’ve never much liked the taste of rice, especially the orphanage’s dry variety, but I’m betting I’ll enjoy it more this year, knowing I had a hand in its creation.

As we cross the finish line in a blur of speed, applause erupts, engulfing us in a sea of success. Such success I had only dreamed of when signing up for the Angkor Wat Bike Race & Ride 2010 a couple months back.

But then I had never imagined I would be astride the seat of a creature as marvelous as Liquisha.

Fellow Peace Corps Volunteer and townmate Rachel and I weren’t planning on riding a tandem bicycle in the race, but there was no denying Liquisha.

She and a friend stand apart from the boring one-seater bicycles. A hand-lettered sign dangling jauntily from her first set of handlebars proclaims: “For rent.” Her red paint glistens and her basket bobs as she whispers “Come hither.” So we do.

A quick spin around the block and we're in love. Sure, she drives a bit crooked and her brakes could be more responsive, but we know Liquisha is the one.

(Note: Liquisha isn’t just some cutesy black-person name we conjured up to be funny, it was the factory-given name printed across our tandem’s crossbar. We stuck with it.)

Romantic visions of picnics and petticoats pirouette in my head as we cycle to the registration hotel. “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do,” I sing the start of the only song I know about a tandem bicycle. Maybe you know it. The guy singer wants Daisy to marry him. But he can’t afford a carriage. He can only afford “a bicycle built for two.”

One of my life goals is to ride a tandem bicycle, and finally here I am, accomplishing my goal. Goal-making really works! While I am singing, Rachel is behind me giggling, somewhat hysterically, over the novelty of it all.

My legs won’t fit in back, so I am up front, where Liquisha seems like an ordinary, albeit ornery, bicycle. But in back Rachel can see that she is anything but ordinary. “You have to try it back here,” Rachel spurts between giggles. We ride on and on in a romantic haze until a motorcycle hits us. Not fatally or even injuriously, just a brush of the side mirror against the handlebars, but still scary. Rachel begins her intermittent screams of “We’re going to die,” and the mood turns more dour.

Riding a tandem bicycle is serious stuff. I stop singing and start doubting our decision. If we were having trouble riding the kilometer or two to register, how would we fare in the 30-kilometer race the next day?

Things start looking up when Rachel’s feminine charms land us free tickets to that night’s banquet. I love free anything, especially food. Especially when the food’s supposed to cost $12 a plate.

The man who gives us the tickets is also trying to get people to sign up for the next day’s run. His method is somewhat flawed.

His words, more or less, are, “It’s awesome ‘cause you’re in this huge mass of people all running to get to the same place.”

Yeah, awesome, just like the stampede that killed and injured more than a thousand people a mere week before. That started the same way. People all running to get to the same place — off the bridge.

The dinner that night isn’t extraordinary, but it's mildly good. Khmer food wearing a fancy tux. Lemony fish soup, banana plant salad, ginger chicken with rice and sweet egg rolls for dessert. No drinks included, not even water. Fortunately we didn’t pay for our tickets.

The next day we are up at 5 a.m., ready to race. The morning begins somewhat sour when the zipper pops off my bike jersey. Another life goal of mine has been to have a bike jersey, preferably one I don’t have to pay for. And what happens? I finally get a jersey, with a back pocket and all, and I break the damn thing, turning it into the equivalent of a boob-baring evening gown. Thankfully I have a sports bra, so I can still get away with wearing the flawed jersey.

Next bummer: The tuk-tuk driver who had quoted me $1 to the temple doesn’t show up. In his place are a bunch of drivers wanting $5. Forget it, dudes. We need more tandem practice anyway.

A unimpressive pic of the impressive Angkor Wat taken a long time ago — also at sunrise, although you can't tell.

We arrive at Angkor Wat before the sun is up. The race is supposed to start around 6, or whenever the sun rises. The sky’s daytime orb must do it’s job cause the sky gets brighter, but we never witness the spectacular sunrise that The Lonely Planet calls "a must-see."

A gunshot starts the race. But we’re not off until well after the smoke has cleared. Want to give those die-hard 100-k-ers some space. They’re the ones wearing aerodynamic helmets, biking shorts and bike cleats. None are riding tandems.

We spot another tandem in the race, and only refrain from running it off the road since a small child is the back-seat rider.

Despite Liquisha’s competition, we get plenty of attention, partly because Liquisha doesn’t have a bell and we have to scream profanities to let people know we’re coming through.

One 100-k-er tells us to, “Keep it up” in a condescending tone seeming to imply that because we’re riding a tandem we must be retarded.

Still, most of our attention is in the form of wonder and admiration. We ride along to constant cries of “Tandem!”

A former Peace Corps staffer praises us for being creative, as if we built Liquisha. We wish. Maybe if we had, she would ride better. She constantly veers to the right, and my right arm is almost numb with the pain of forcing her to the left and back on the road.

I had imagined the race route would be on a narrow dirt path winding through wild jungles packed with crumbling temples. It isn’t. It’s on a two-lane paved road. Still, we pass by several temples, dating from the early 10th to the early 13th centuries.

We stop at a few of these temples, and also to refuel at the tables of free fruit (unfortunately only the rejects are left by the time we roll up).

And in a flash — only two-and-a-half hours! — it’s over.

My three protein bars are gone and we’re whizzing through the finish line, drawing major decibels of applause. We soon learn the applause began because the crowd mistook us for the first of the 100-k finishers.

We didn’t win any prizes in the race, but we still crossed that finish line. And not atop just any bike either, but atop Liquisha, a flawed but glorious bicycle built for two.

Taking a cop for a spin post-race.

* Acknowledgment: All photos but the one of Banteay Chhmar are compliments of awesome Peace Corps Volunteer Keiko Valente. Thanks Keiko!

In the past two months I’ve competed in two official races – one on water and one on land. I lost both races, but I had fun while gaining new experiences, and that’s more important than fame, fortune and glory, right? (Don’t answer that question.)

The first race was by sea, and was in honor of Water Festival, the annual Cambodian celebration marking the end of the rainy season and the beginning of the twice-annual magical and mysterious reversal of the flow of the Tonle Sap River. Tonle Sap means “Great Lake,” but it’s a river, too! For the momentous occasion, seven friends and I (most of us fellow Peace Corps volunteers) joined several boatloads of oarsmen in races down and back a section of the moat surrounding Banteay Chhmar.

An ancient temple no one knows much about, Banteay Chhmar is in a town of the same name. Chhmar means cat, so my students call the temple and town Banteay Meow. Banteay means fortress. Put the two together and what do you get? Cat Fortress! Terrifying.

In the waters of the Cat Fortress our team —Che Piasa Khmer (meaning “We can speak Khmer”) — twice rowed our hearts out (thankfully not literally) , but the only glory we achieved was the glory of ridicule, and that’s not very glorious.

The announcer’s phrase of the day was “Kenny no win.” Unfortunately, Kenny was in our boat. But Kenny wasn’t to be blamed for our failures. As our boat’s only Banteay Chhmar resident, Kenny was simply the only name the announcer knew.

All eight of us were to be blamed for our losses in the two-boat races. We were paired up with, and lost to, the same team both times — another do-good organization in the form of a French orphanage.

Although Che Piasa Khmer crossed the finish line second, and therefore last, we were successful in other aspects of the race. We didn’t tip, we didn’t sink and we did cross that finish line. Pretty good for a crew of virgin Water Festival rowers.

My last, and as far as I can remember, only rowing experience was last April in a kayak in Laos. I didn’t emerge from that kayak feeling confident about future rowing endeavors. During that expedition our guide first told that I didn’t know how to paddle, and then kicked me out of the kayak.

My Banteay Chhmar watery competition was more personally successful. I was again told that I didn’t know how to paddle — by our steerer, who told me that I was folding in my arms like a dinosaur when I should be extending them to their full gorilla length. A former white water rafting guide, our steerer knew what he was talking about. But at least this time I wasn’t kicked out of the boat. Success!

Che Piasa Khmer celebrated our success by touring the great cat fortress, or Banteay Chhmar temple, which is now more ruins than temple.

That evening we risked our lives once more, but this time above the sea and ground, in cages of death more commonly known as Ferris wheels. Despite the creaks and groans of the ancient wheel, we didn’t die, and basked in our survival by watching people try to punch and kick each other to death. This is more commonly called kick boxing.

Neither of the boxers was successful in his death mission, but a mob of bugs almost wiped out both contenders.

Yes, the match was effectively halted by insects — flying specks which clogged the air as they partied around the fluorescent overhead lights. The bug problem wasn’t addressed until some of the flying specks attacked a boxer’s eye.

Bug exterminators were called into the ring. Their killing method? Not the usual poisonous sprays, but tape. You know, the clear sticky stuff you use to wrap presents, not the stuff you usually use to kill bugs.

During the course of the match (or at least the portion we were patient enough to sit through), the exterminators affixed and re-affixed long streamers of tape to the upper bars of the ring near the fluorescent lights.

The clear strips soon turned black with the carcasses of dead insects. But the tape wasn’t strong enough to defeat the boxing-loving bugs.

The winged marauders continued soaring toward the holy lights and congregating in a thick mass around the boxers’ heads.

Laughable at first, the battle of the bugs soon became ridiculous and stale, and we left. (Or at least most of us left, including me and the other non-die-hard boxing fans.)

Water Festival weekend ended with a trip to the Cambodia’s northern land of scrumptious Western food: Siem Reap.

I am fortunate that my Water Festival was filled with merry making. Not so fortunate were the nearly 400 people killed and the more than 800 injured in the stampede on a Phnom Penh bridge. Cambodia's prime minister is calling the tragedy Cambodia’s worst since the mass murders inflicted by the Khmer Rouge. Donating to Sihanouk Hospital of Hope (SHCH) is a good way to help these victims. SHCH provides free medical care to Cambodia’s poor and needy. To make a donation, go to www.care4cambodia.org and click on “Give a One Time Gift.” Make sure to mark “Relief” in the notes section.

Why? That’s the question Cambodians invariably ask after I tell them I teach English at my town’s prison — not to guards, but to prisoners.

My answer: Why not?

The 16 students at Banteay Meanchey Provincial Prison are eager for something, anything, to do. Most are locked up for 10 years, some longer. My students tell me that the prison has only one lifer — a man accused of raping, cutting up and killing a young girl. Cambodia doesn’t have a death penalty.

The crimes that landed the English learners among the prison's 850 inmates are varied. Drug dealing, robbery, rape, murder.

That’s one of the first questions I ask the students, after their names and ages. Why are they in prison?

Two men volunteer their crimes — drug dealing and robbery. A third makes a crack about the rapist in the first row. The only woman in the class says she can’t talk about it. I later learn she was accused of killing her roommate by using some kind of gas.

My students come from across Cambodia, and one from Thailand. They are behind bars in Banteay Meanchey either because this is where they were accused of committing a crime or because they were transferred here from another prison.

One of Banteay Meanchey’s recent prisoners came from as far as Denmark. The businessman was locked up for about 10 months after being charged with having sex with three girls under age 15. He was arrested with a 13-year-old girl near the Thailand border. My students tell me that the Dane was joined in prison for those 10 months by the mother of one of the girls, accused of prostituting her daughter to the man.

One of my students asks if I’m afraid to teach at the prison. I’m not.

I had imagined teaching at a prison would be scary. My students would carry shivs and wear chains linking their wrists to their ankles. I pictured myself hurrying down a dark hallway, covering my ears to sexual slurs like Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs. At the end of the hallway, I would seek refuge in a classroom, only to be assailed with further insults and racial jabs like Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds.

Fortunately, my imagination proved far worse than reality. Clad in purple pajamas trimmed in white, my group of 25-to-35-year-old students is far from intimidating. Like so many Cambodians, they are quick to laugh, and many of their faces are painted with constant smiles. Still, several of these smiles are contradicted by eyes glazed with sadness and struggle.

I’ve yet to see a shiv, but most the students wear prison-issued tattoos. Chinese characters snake up an arm, a spiderweb peeks out from a pants cuff, a tamer “I LUV U” inches along the outer edge of a thumb – all inked in army green.

“I think all prisoners have them.”

This from the guy with the spiderweb on his leg. He goes by David in class. Because each student has chosen an English name, the class is populated by Allens and Franks and Jerrys, names typically assigned only to foreigners in Cambodia.

“Really? All prisoners?” I ask.

“OK, a lot,” he corrects himself.

“I think they have too much free time; they don’t know what to do,” Vichet, my Cambodian co-teacher theorizes.

Eat, sleep and sing. That’s what the students say they do all day. Some also cook, wash clothes or do other work around the prison. Except for those who stay locked up all day, the inmates typically live 12 to 14 to a cell.

Is life difficult? It depends if your family has money or not, a student says. Visits to the prison cost about $4.

A flood from Thailand sealed out any recent visitors. It took four generators to pump out the two foot-high water. The water didn’t enter the prisoners’ cells, but because the toilets were out of order, the inmates were forced to poop in plastic bags.

“They threw the pee and shit out the windows,” the usually mild-tongued Vichet says.

White chalky powder is now sprinkled atop the dirt of the prison’s courtyard to sanitize the grounds.

An American named Lynn — another Seattleite, actually — started the English teaching program at the Banteay Meanchey prison about five years ago. She taught there for six months before she left Cambodia and Vichet took over. He’s taught at the prison ever since.

I’d known about the opportunity to teach at the prison since arriving at my site a year ago. But it took a run-in with an eccentric American to sign me up.

This white-ponytailed expat, who has lived in my town for several years, told me teaching at the prison would be the most fulfilling thing I’d do in Cambodia. He used to teach yoga to the prisoners.

This 60-something man took to me after I admitted that I didn’t know much about teaching and could use some tips. He gave me tips aplenty, but said the only reason he was helping was because I looked like a Hollywood film star.

“You know, that one in that movie who dressed like a boy and got killed for it.”

Hillary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry.

“You’re thinking of my sister,” I told him. She usually gets that comparison, while I get Anne Hathaway, Keira Knightley or Molly Ringwald.

Regardless of his motive, this big, brash American has helped me as well as the prisoners.

His portable whiteboard hangs from the roof of the grass hut that is our classroom. We teach in the courtyard, outside the saffron yellow houses for prisoners and staffers. The squat yellow buildings are accented with red roofs and blue shutters, giving them a Playskool look. The prison is at the end of a gravel road lined with trees. Dirt roads leading to villages branch off in both directions.

Because our class is just before lunchtime, smoke is often curling above the nearby outdoor kitchen. Men in yellow hard hats above bare brown chests, purple prison pants and yellow galoshes work while we study, squatting in mounds of dirt while they till the soil into rows or churn concrete for the new visitor’s building.

An old man with a buzzcut and wire-rim glasses repairs fishing nets day after day. A cigarette in mouth and needle and thread in hand, he squats at the edge of our classroom, stitching the holes together. Others squat around him, drinking soda from small plastic bags and chatting. A mangy dog is usually roaming the grounds, along with the occasional child.

During one English class, a little girl with a plastic bag full of drink clambers onto a bench behind a desk. She is later scooped up by a woman with a long braid and a weathered face.

This girl and others, like the young boy cycling out with a pack of cigarettes in his mouth, drift in and out of the prison. Others are in for a longer stay.

A boy who looks no older than 12 is loitering around the perimeter of our classroom one morning. He wears the purple pajamas that mark him as a prisoner.

Painting and Khmer classes are starting up for this boy and other young inmates. But for the older prisoners — aside from the occasional visit from a Christian missionary — English is the only option.

In English class, we talk about the usual subjects: families, jobs, past experiences.

“Could you stay out as long as you wanted?” Vichet asks the class about their pre-prison lives.

A couple students say they had to be home by 8 p.m., (two hours past dark in Cambodia), another says 10 p.m. was his curfew.

“No limit!” yells a guy with hair spiking above a smiling face.

The guy with the Chinese characters crawling up his arm raises his hand. He could also stay out as long as he wanted.

“Yes,” he says, “I was a gay man.”

When his friend sitting next to him calls him a gangster, I realize he must have said gang man.

A game of “I’ve never” reveals more shadows from the past.

“I’ve never taken drugs,” teacher Vichet says.

Hands go up. These are the people who have taken drugs.

One of these drug-takers keeps on the same track. “I’ve never taken marijuana,” he says.

More hands go up.

Many of the prisoners have taken drugs, and some have even taken drugs in prison. Students tell me that a guard was recently locked up for selling yama to prisoners. Yama, also called yaba or ma, is meth.

The prison director and three other prison guards also landed in hot water a couple months ago when they were accused of accepting bribes and helping a Khmer-American prisoner escape.

Because bribery is so rampant in Cambodia, these four officials weren’t fired. They were simply given jobs in another arm of the government until the investigation ends.

I met the escapee shortly before his escape.

“Morning!” he chirped in a perfect American accent as he shook my hand. “Are you from the U.S? Me, too… Minnesota.”

He told me he returned to Cambodia two years ago, after a 30-year exile in America. The Phnom Penh Post identified him as only 29.

The Post said he was sentenced to 17 years in prison in 2008 for illegally detaining people. But now he’s free. Missing since late September. My students doubt he’ll be arrested again.

Guards aren’t the only corrupt characters lurking around the Banteay Meanchey prison.

A class discussion about jobs leads us to lawyers, whom most prisoners work with during their stays.

“Did you like your lawyer? Did you think your lawyer was good?” Vichet asks the class.

“No, he just wanted money,” a student replies. “He took the money and when I went to the court he did not go there.”

David, the guy with the spiderweb tattoo, has short, dark hair and perfect nails. Pail pink beds with pearly white tips, sculpted like press-ons. Beautiful moons of keratin at odds with his spiderweb tattoo and the other vicious-looking arachnid stretched across his left hand. The inking is labeled “SCORPION.”

“Very nice for me,” David says about scorpions.

Further up his arm is a white wisp of yarn, like the red bracelets monks give out for good health.

Another student with raised red circles on his forehead like the marks from cupping, a common Cambodian medical treatment that entails suctioning hot glass cups to the skin, has a tattoo on the outer edge of his thumb that reads, “JAIL AMBITION.”

What does it mean?

“I think it’s good for me,” he says. And by it, he means jail.

“I like it ... I remember it all my life.”

(Note: This is not a picture of the monk in this blog. And I did not take this picture. The monk mentioned in this blog looks a lot like this though.)

When I walked into my host family’s house the other night, there was an unfamiliar man watching TV inside. A brown man with a shaved head whose left arm and pec were naked. The rest of his body was wrapped in orange cloth. He was a monk.

It’s hard to avoid monks in Cambodia. I’ve seen them in temples, at ceremonies, walking the streets asking for money, and even in my university classes. But I’ve never seen monks just hanging out, watching TV. What was this holy man doing in my host family’s house?

After peeking in at the guy, I peek back out, to ask my host dad why the monk’s here. He says because construction of his new house is finished. (He’d said that monks would bless his house when complete.) OK. I peek back in.

I’d heard that women aren’t supposed to make eye contact with monks or talk to them, but I don’t want to ignore the guy. I’m not comfortable kneeling in front of him and bowing in prayer like Khmer people. So I joom reap suah him, which means I say the polite version of hello with my hands in a flat-palmed prayer gesture.

He doesn’t joom reap suah me back. He doesn’t respond at all. My family laughs. I think I must have done the wrong thing and go outside for dinner. The monk doesn’t join us for the meal. Monks don’t eat dinner, my host dad says. Water is all they have in the evening.

During dinner, I grill my host dad. Why didn’t the monk acknowledge me? Was I rude? No, maybe he is rude, is my answer. Is it OK for me to talk to monks? My host dad answers by yelling a question inside. “Che Anglais? (Do you speak English?)” “Ought che (No),” comes the answer.

I continue asking questions about monk-female-foreigner relations until the monk emerges. He stands in the doorway and splits his lips into perhaps the largest smile I’ve seen in Cambodia. I smile back, then look away, embarrassed. He retreats inside, before returning a few minutes later to sit on the bamboo bed near me.

I ask my host dad if he and the monk are friends. He says no. The monk finally speaks up. He says my host dad is his brother. I think he means brother in the monky way, but my host dad’s not a monk. Yes, my host dad confirms, they really are brothers.

“What?” I ask. Why didn’t he tell me this half an hour ago when I was wondering why the guy was here?

Turns out he’s not here to bless my host dad’s house after all. He’s just here to hang out with his brother.

The monk gets friendlier after this breakthrough. He tells me he can speak a little English, and I tell him I can speak a little Khmer. I ask him about his monkhood.

How long has he been a monk? Three years.

How much longer will he be a monk? Seven years.

Why did he become a monk? Because he wants to study. Monks can study for cheap at university and assumedly for free at temples.

Do a lot of Khmer men choose the monkhood path to get cheap schooling? Yes. What is he studying? Buddhism.

Does he like being a monk? Yes.

Is it difficult being a monk? No. My host dad says he thinks it would be difficult not eating dinner. But the monk says he can drink coffee and coke for dinner.

Doesn’t coffee and coke keep him awake? No.

What time does he go to bed? 9 or 10.

Doesn’t he have to go to bed at the same time as the other monks? No.

What time does he get up? 5.

What does he do all day? Pray.

Is it OK for me to talk to him and look at him? Yes. But it’s not OK for me to touch him or his robe.

What happens if I touch him or his clothes? Does he have to wash himself? No. Nothing happens.

How many robes does he have? Three.

Does he sleep in the robe? No. He sleeps in an undergarment, which is the same burnt orange as the robe he’s wearing right now.

Why does he wear the tangerine robe instead of the maroon, dark orange or bright orange robe? He likes the color.

So a monk chooses his robe based on what color he likes? Maybe. He says there are only two real robe colors. Those monks who wear the other colors are just poseurs. (He doesn’t say it exactly like this but I don’t understand what he says.) I have repeatedly tried — and failed — to get the robe colors explained to me, and failed. Maybe they have something to do with level of monkhood?

What will he do when he finishes being a monk? (No clear answer.)

Will he get married? Yes.

Will he sleep in my house tonight? Yes. (He then goes to do just that.)

Later, I hear him talking through the wall. “Yes!” I think, “I get to hear him chanting!” Then I realize that I can easily understand his words. He’s speaking English. “I’m at my brother’s house,” he says. “In Sisophon.” He’s not chanting, he’s talking on his cell phone.

When I wake up in the morning he is gone.

Pchum Ben is finished, my host dad says. Fifteen days of parties and temple visits over.

Then why are the shops in town still closed, and the road outside my house still clotted with cars, motos and vans?

Because it’s still a holiday.

“Today people go to play everywhere,” my host dad says. “Or some, like me, stay at home.”

Like me, too — and the orphans — holed up in the playroom watching music videos and Chinese movies dubbed in Khmer.

People don’t go to the wat (temple) today, like on the holiday’s other 15 days.

The ghosts must be full. They’ve been eating for two weeks straight.

And they had better eat up. Getting enough food from their living relatives these two weeks gives these ghosts a shot at reincarnation and admittance back into the living world. But, if after visiting seven wats, the ghosts can’t find enough food, they will remain in hell, and their families will not only have bad karma, they will run out of food the following year.

I witnessed the feeding of these ghosts during three recent wat trips. The first journey was the earliest, and was during a visit with my former host family in southern Cambodia. We — my former host dad and mom and I — set off for the wat at 4 a.m. An hour so early that not even the Cambodian early-rising sun has showed. But the ghosts, who are afraid of the sun, are awake and hungry.

Inside the wat, a small crowd sits folded-leg on either side of a long row of bowls heaped with ghost food. What do ghosts eat? Mounds of rice piled with bananas, guavas and cookies, all drizzled with red goo and black ash dripped onto the food by candles and incense.

These ghosts don’t need bowls or utensils to eat. After the food is blessed by the wat’s resident monks, we lay people take the bowls outside. Around and around and around the wat we walk, throwing handfuls of rice into the surrounding shrubbery. (The handfuls are the perfect size for the ghosts and their shrunken mouths.) While we walk, monks chant, drums bang and a gong gongs. A pair of geese stand in the middle of the hubub, doing their everyday geese things.

Then the food is gone. We wash the bowls and put them in a drying rack. My host dad and mom go home, leaving me inside the wat with the yays (grandmas), who are chewing betel nuts and spitting the blood-red liquid dregs through the cracks in the wood floor.

My host parents say they will be right back, but they’re not. I start regretting my decision to stay when a yay tells me she will remain at the wat until afternoon. The roosters have just begun to crow and the sun is lazing into view. It’s 5:30 a.m.

It takes my host parents two hours to return to the wat. In the meantime, the yays and I offer food to the monks in bowls concealed by shiny homemade party hats. We raise the bowls while the monks chant. To avoid offense, I don’t look at the row of shaved-head men and boys wrapped in bright orange, burgundy and rust orange robes.

Once sated, the monks give us their scraps — fruit, plus what tastes like rice coated in sugar and sesame seeds. After eating, I retreat to the outdoor steps during the middle of a droning report on how much money each person has donated. Next to me is a man with a plastic leg and a crutch.

My host parents show up close to 8 a.m., amid a crowd bearing more food for the monks. Each donor spoons rice into big silver bowls. The rest of the rice goes to the yays.

Then it’s breakfast time for us. Rice, meat and veggies.

At 9 a.m., I think we’re finally about to leave, but it’s time to make more food for the monks. Khmer noodles with peanut sauce and sprouts.

Once the food’s made, I feign sleep, and my host parents finally get the idea. They take me home before returning to the wat for more.

I don’t return to the wat until the next week, when I am back at home. The two visits are short. One is with my host mom and sister and the other with a truckful of orphans.

Both contain the same elements: Lighting incense and praying, donating money and spooning rice and other food into big bowls for the monks, who bless the food before passing it onto the ghosts.

Now it’s been 15 days, and the ghosts have eaten enough. We the living have too. Because aside from temple visits, Pchum Ben involves a lot of partying.

“If you go around to the villages today, a lot of people are very drunk, and tomorrow too.”

That’s how a Khmer man who works at the orphanage explained Pchum Ben revelry to me.

All the parties are to pray for the ghosts and to pray for “good money, good health, good everything,” this man added.

You can’t eat too much during these parties, he told a visiting French man who complained of a full stomach.

“Not too much,” he said. “Another day, too much, but not today.”

* Note: Some English conversations are translated from Khmer.

When you think of Cambodia, do you think of rice? No? Well, think again. It may lack the substance of heartier grains, but rice is the world’s second most-produced grain, and Cambodia’s most important crop.

Cambodians eat rice with every meal. Even noodles, an alternative to rice, are eaten on top of rice.“Have you eaten rice yet?” is probably the country’s most common phrase. And no, it doesn’t mean “Have you ever eaten rice?” it means, depending on the time of day, “Have you eaten breakfast, lunch or dinner?”

Eating rice was my biggest fear about living in Cambodia. I ate my curries and stir-fries riceless, leaving gooey mountains of the stuff on my plate at restaurants or friends’ houses. I couldn’t imagine having to eat those mountains in Cambodia — not only occasionally – but three times a day.

I’ve now conquered my rice fear, and I’m often the one to ask, “Where’s the rice?” on those rare occasions when it’s not brought to the table at restaurants. But until recently, I hadn’t seen where Cambodia’s rice comes from.

I’ve seen rice fields, of course. Drive down (almost) any Cambodian road and you see the oceans of bright green grass flanking either side of the blacktop, gravel or dirt. It doesn’t look like rice, but it is.

The Peace Corps doctor told us not to go to the rice fields. We’d get malaria and dengue, she said. Or parasites. Or a thousand other diseases that bring festering sores and death.

Her warnings kept me away from the rice. So did the heat and the thought of work. For a year, I’ve watched the orphanage’s children (and adults) traipse to and from the fields, planting and harvesting the rice I eat three times a day.

I didn’t join them until recently. Three French visitors staying at the orphanage wanted to get a closer look at Cambodia’s rice. So, finally, did I. The orphanage’s older girls tried to dissuade me.

“Will you go to the rice field?” I asked the pack of high-school females lounging outside their dorm.

“No!” They chorused. “We want to watch TV.”

(In this context, watching TV means watching discs of Khmer music videos.)

“I will go the rice field,” I tell the girls.

They look shocked. “Why?”

“Because I have never been, so I want to go,” I say.

“But so hot!” they say. “Your skin will look like hers,” they add, holding up the dark brown arm of one of the girls.

“That’s OK,” I say, and shrug.

“Wear a long-sleeved shirt so you won’t be so hot,” they say.

I follow their advice. I wouldn’t have a year ago. Wear more clothes to be less hot? How can that be? I dismissed this advice when I heard it from a volunteer before I came to Cambodia, and I dismissed it when I heard it countless times from Khmers who are practicing long-sleeve shirt (and pants) wearers.

But I converted to the fashion after finally trying it for myself. Long sleeves absorb some of the sun’s heat, and prevent skin from deep-frying, thus keeping the body cooler. Life’s great mystery solved.

I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt when I say goodbye to the girls, but they still say, “Oh, Emily, hot.”

I smile and say goodbye.

About 20 of us pile in the truck, a big, military-looking rig that often carries 50 or more. Packed in are a motley of little boys, one little girl, a couple high-school boys, the orphanage’s Khmer director, the French supervisor, three French visitors, and me.

Rolling around the truck with us are a couple liter-size Coke bottles that are now partially filled with water, an enormous metal watering can, and a white plastic water tank with shoulder straps. Not much working gear.

We bump out of our village and through town. On our way out, we pass speed limit signs, rare sights in Cambodia, and even more rarely obeyed. The signs are white circles ringed in red. “40, 60, 25,” they read, in that order, within a distance of 100 feet or so.

“HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010” declares one of the final road signs. This permanent-looking sign hangs above a couple green signs hinting at big cities to come.

We pull over on the right side of the road, but no one gets out. Maybe we’re lost? Nope, just going the wrong direction. A short turnaround later — but one that almost results in a moto casualty — and we are parked at an angle so steep it’s like we’re a ship about to flip.

Down the highway and into the fields we march, outside a small house occupied by a middle-aged woman and some older boys.

I munch on a turnip given to me by one of the orphanage’s boys and watch as he and the other high schoolers prepare for the fields, stripping off their pants to reveal cartoon-print boxer shorts.

Meanwhile, the Frenchies and the Khmer director have disappeared. No problem, I think. We’re all going to the same place, right? Wrong. I follow the boys to a pond on the edge of the rice fields, but they tell me to go back the other way, down the road the Frenchies have presumably followed.

I go that way, but all I see is tall grass. I don’t see any people, and I have no idea where we are supposed to be going.

So I go back. I tell the boys that I don’t know where the road is, but no one offers to show me the way. They’re too busy scrambling aboard a flimsy wooden raft.

So I start down another “road,” across a bridge made of bloated plastic bags, and into the rice fields. I walk the only way possible, by slurping my feet in and out of the mud and water.

The rice field is trying to eat me. My feet are strapped into sandals and aren’t going to escape, but the field doesn’t know that. It’s hungry. With each step it sucks at my feet, trying to drag them into its belly. Only by using the rice as handrails do I stay upright.

I slurp for a while, trying to focus on how new and fascinating an experience this is and not how tedious the slurping is. Flecks of fish flit in the cloudy brown water. The sky is bright blue with bulbous white clouds that look incapable of producing rain.

I’m focusing on these bright details like a Zen master when I hear my name. I’m being called back. I’m a barang. I’m not supposed to go this way. So I turn around and walk back to the house. I’m nearly there when a voice tells me to stop.

A couple of unknown boys are paddling toward me in a canoe. They want me to get in. The canoe is shallow and short, not one of those American-Indian numbers with a row of men singing and grunting while they row. This is a three-seater, and I’m the third.

The boat looks like it’s barely balancing atop the murky water, but the boys tell me that me and my backpack (containing my camera and cell phone) are safe aboard. I clamber atop the middle seat, and we’re off, with a paddle and bamboo pole to guide us.

Now I don’t need to pretend to Zen. The scene is beautiful. I tell the boys this, but they don’t reply. The blue, blue sky, green, green grasses and white clouds reflected in the water are nothing new for these rice-field dwellers.

But they are visual bliss for me. I face back toward the house and watch the captain paddle us through the water, laced with weeds and grasses that hiss like snakes as we glide over them.

We cross a big pond and then slip through narrow passages armed with branches that claw my arms. The captain then rows us to what must be shore. He tells me to get out. He and his boatmate are returning home.

Walk straight, the boys tell me. Straight into the green expanse that is everywhere. Why straight? I can’t see anyone. But they can.

“Boo! Boo!” the boys yell toward a white baseball hat rising above the green. (Boo is the polite way to address a man who is a lot older than you.) They tell me that the wearer of the white hat is Taingho, a guy who lives and works at the orphanage. They tell me he is returning to the house. I feel better knowing I won’t be completely alone in this mass of grass, and start slurping again.

Traversing the rice fields is not unlike tackling the mud coating the road to my house. Especially the other night, when the mud was so ravenous that I had to take off my sandals and walk barefoot to my house. I wish I was barefoot now, but don’t want to carry my heavy sandals.

But the rice fields contain a lot more water than the dirt road. In sections, the water rises past my knees and into thigh territory, thinking nothing of soaking my rolled-up pants. The water is hot, too. Each step is like liquid sunburn. Fortunately, the heat is tempered by a breeze from above.

I finally reach Taingho. He’s shouting to me, pointing to the orphanage’s rice field. Suddenly I’m confused and think he’s no longer Taingho. I think he’s a stranger who’s telling me to walk into the orphanage’s rice field. I’ve been given too many orders to “Go this way,” and “Go that way,” and my brain is confused.

“But where are the others?” I ask.

They went back already, he tells me.

I ask him to take a picture of me in the rice field. Then I ask his name.

“Taingho,” he says.

Oops! I try to explain why I don’t know that as we head back to the house. No work in the rice field today.

But more slurping. I slowly follow Taingho’s shoeless (and therefore faster) lead. “OK?” he asks me. “OK.” I answer. We repeat this one word conversation several times before reaching the house.

On the way, Taingho detours to a rice island. He returns shouldering what looks like a huge, angular dirt clod.

“Food for the kitchen,” he says.

“Chicken,” he corrects himself. (Khmers are constantly confusing kitchen and chicken.)

Taingho tells me to continue walking straight, but I can see the car and house to the right.

“Straight, or right?” I ask him, pointing both ways. I think he says right, but I don’t know anything anymore, so I just wait and plod in his footsteps.

There are some dry patches now, which make it easier to move my feet in a forward motion, but in the place of water are grass and brambles that slice my feet and legs.

Finally I reach the homestretch. I hear kids in the car saying my name, then people near the house say it, too.

“Where you go?” they ask.

“We heard you rode a boat,” a Frenchie man says.

He and his country mates took a straight course in and out of the rice field while I unintentionally slurped in a big muddy circle.

“I was really confused,” I say. “I thought we were going to work.” I pretend to shovel, which probably doesn’t happen much in rice fields.

“No,” a Frenchie girl says. “We were just tourists.”

It starts with wind. Gusting gales that bang my shutters closed and open and closed and open again. Blustery blows that somersault the laundry on the clothesline and choreograph dances for the trees. Wind that whirls the skies into water and sends it crashing to Earth.

That’s how the rain starts.

It usually ends an hour or two later, but in between it pours. None of that sissy sprinkling. Cambodia gets it hard and heavy, a barrage of liquid that leaves the dirt roads a soup of mud and debris.

Even paved roads aren’t safe. The street outside the Peace Corps office in Phnom Penh becomes a dirty brown lake every time it rains. I’ve had to wade through that knee-deep pool many a time, and saw it as only a mild inconvenience until a journey through the muck with a friend. This friend pointed out why the water we were walking in was brown: It was sewer water. This friend then tried to guess how many men had recently peed on the bordering sidewalk. I now wait out the rain in the Peace Corps office.

The rain, which pours from June or July through October or so, is vital for Cambodia’s rice fields. It’s also good for mosquitoes, which makes it not so good for people. The rainy season is the peak of dengue fever, and probably malaria as well. Both dengue and malaria are transmitted by mosquitoes.

In addition to ushering in potentially fatal diseases, the rain coats Cambodia with common colds. Whenever the rains start and the weather cools, my host dad invariably catches a cold, as do many Cambodians. Even the slightest twinge of tiredness is caused by the weather changing, my host dad claims.

I actually did catch the beginnings of a cold when the rains started this year. But I more likely caught it from my sick host dad and his son than the weather.

Despite the flooding and diseases they bring, Cambodian rains aren’t as treacherous as I expected. I had pictured people and cows swimming down the streets every time it rained. I expected all houses to be perched on stilts.

In preparation for Cambodia's floods I packed a new super-light rain coat and monsoon shoes — sandals that would keep my feet from slipping and sliding in the mud.

I’ve only worn the rain coat once or twice, and the shoes give me mountainous blisters.

Instead of the expensive new rain coat, I use a pink-spotted poncho I bought in my training village for less than a quarter. And I haven’t worn that much since training, when I actually had to be somewhere in the afternoons. Now, I stay in, on my bed under my mosquito net.

Teachers and students generally stay in, too. On one of the first days of school last year, I biked to school as usual, thinking little of the water falling from the sky to the ground around me. I arrived to empty buildings. No teachers, no students, no school director. I wasn’t early. I texted my co-teacher.

He texted back: “No school today because of the rain.”

“OK,” I texted back. “Is there never school when it rains?”

“No, sometimes there is,” he wrote.

A later conversation didn’t reveal much more. Aside from the numerous holidays, school never seems to be officially canceled in Cambodia, but if it’s raining, students and teachers rarely come. Fortunately, school is a two-minute bike ride from my house.

For a country that gets steady rain for a quarter or more of each year, Cambodia sure makes a big deal about a little water.

My host dad stresses closing all the shutters of my house when it rains, but I usually don’t bother. I like fresh air, and mosquitoes don’t. Only when I feel the rain penetrating my mosquito net or see it pooling on the floor below the windows will I bolt the blue wooden shutters.

I usually leave my laundry on the line, too. I see it as a second or third washing, and I know the clothes will be bleached dry after just a few hours under the ceaseless Cambodian sun.

After a few rains, Cambodian downpours become easy to predict. They usually arrive in the afternoons, although occasionally sneak up on me. A recent torrential rain prevented me from biking home from dinner, and on another early morning, the skies opened just as I was getting ready to bike home from a party.

Still, the rains usually come with plenty of warning. Just listen for the wind.

After providing months of slimy companionship, he’s gone. No more does he crouch in the sink, in the slats of the dishrack, or atop the water filter. He’s abandoned his home in the decorative plaster blocks in the wall between my kitchen and dining room.

I never thought I’d actually miss the frog. And I’m not sure I miss him. (Since I don’t know how to identify the sex of frogs, I’m simply calling it a him.) But I miss the anticipation I felt before entering my kitchen. Where would he be today? Sometimes I didn’t even notice him until I went to fill my water filter. I would often recoil upon discovering a warty green amphibian perched atop the shiny metal lid.

I also miss the tenacity of that spring-legged creature. I dumped him out of my house almost daily, yet he returned almost as often, determined to claim my home as his own.

That’s what frogs of his sort do, my Khmer teacher said. They seek out cool (temperatured) houses as their own during the dry —and therefore hot — season. They don’t like the heat.

This kind of frog was harmless, my teacher said. It wouldn’t hurt me, and since it was the inedible kind, I shouldn’t hurt it either. Darn. I've always wanted to fry up my own frog dinner.

Catching him would have been easy enough. Aside from his nighttime retreats to my yard and his leaps to safety when his hind legs were prodded, my frog didn’t move much. He mostly just sat hunched in his nook in the concrete blocks.

Despite my near-constant surveillance, I never saw him eat anything, either. Why wasn’t his long pink tongue darting out for flies —or better yet, mosquitoes — like in cartoons?

So I couldn’t eat him, he didn’t move much and he wasn’t catching any bugs — he was pretty much useless.

All I ever got out of the bumpy beast were the crumbly black turds left in the blocks and on my kitchen counter.

But those turds are (mostly) gone now, and so is he. The rainy — and therefore cool — season is here, and I assume he’s out enjoying the weather with the chorus of croakers I hear each night.

I’m glad my frog’s gone, but I can’t help wondering if he’ll be back next dry season. And if he can’t come, I hope he sends an edible relative in his place.

My family (that’s me, my mom, dad and younger sister) spent much of a recent month together on our epic Asian Adventure. The adventure included stops in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and, of course, Cambodia.

(Some pictures taken by my dad and sister.)

June 30 and July 1: The waiting game in Sisophon

I wait the entire afternoon and evening for my parents and sister to arrive. They told me they were spending last night in Bangkok and making their way to my house today via train and taxi. The journey is about seven hours, so I expect them to arrive by late afternoon.

After cleaning and buying breakfast goodies for the next day (baguettes and fruit), I spend the afternoon walking the orphanage grounds and telling everyone I encounter that my family will arrive any minute now.

That doesn’t happen. I still haven’t seen or heard from any of my family members by my usual bedtime of 8:30 p.m. After calling each of their Canadian cell phones again and receiving no reply, I begin praying — and I’m not the least bit religious.

I also make a plan. I will wake up at 1 a.m. and call my aunt, the only person I’m certain has my family’s flight itinerary. By now I’m convinced that their plane has gone down and that they’ll never arrive in Cambodia.

Thankfully, I don’t have to go through with the 1 a.m. telephone plan. I get a call from my mom at 11 p.m. Turns out they forgot that Cambodia is 11 hours ahead of their home in Toronto, Canada, and they were a day behind in planning.

I thank whoever answered my prayers and go back to sleep until the next day, when my family arrives at the orphanage at the time they should have arrived yesterday.

July 2: To market to market — and the Country Love Garden

I wake my mom at 8:30 a.m. for a trip to the market with some of the orphanage’s high-school-age girls and the caretaker of the orphanage’s children. We don’t buy anything, but my mom looks like she enjoys checking out the wares at each of the stalls — except for the live and freshly butchered food out back. “I’ve seen enough,” she says, nearly gagging, as we flee the flopping fish and the skinless chicken she mistakes for a frog.

In the afternoon we walk to the Country Love Garden, a popular wedding venue near my house. Driving bow-wrapped cars that look like presents, wedding parties come from as far as the seven-hours-away Phnom Penh to get married in the Country Love Garden.

The “garden” has nicely manicured lawns, but few flowers. Instead of flowers, the love garden is planted with a bouquet of painted statues resembling characters including Elmer Fudd, a red-eyed gorilla, and a zebra. There are also replicas of a bride and groom and a giant, tiered wedding cake.

I’ve heard the garden compared to both a miniature golf course and Disney Land. My first visit prompted me to ask my Khmer teacher for the Khmer word for weird. (Of course, I immediately forgot that word.)

July 3: Afloat up the lake of Siem Reap

We catch a taxi in the early morning for Siem Reap. The ride is a honk-filled hour. My mom says she’s never heard a driver honk so much. In Cambodia, honking is rarely a sound of anger. It’s a sound of courtesy. A honk means “I’m coming, please get out of my way.”

Drivers honk when they want to pass someone, when they are passing someone, and when they are driving really fast and can’t be bothered to slow down for motos, bikes, pedestrians, or other cars. Our driver wants to drive really fast. He even slams out warning honks to cars and motos on the opposite side of the road.

Because we don’t arrive in Siem Reap until the already sweltering mid-morning, we put off Siem Reap’s famed temples until tomorrow, and catch a tuk-tuk to Chong Kneas, one of the province’s many floating villages.

The tuk-tuk dumps us at the boat-loading site. The boats are small fishing boats with wooden benches. A Cambodian flag waves from atop each boat. It’s the rainy mosquito season, and therefore not tourist season. This means the four of us get our own boat.

We are led up the Tonle Sap Lake by a driver and a tour guide. The tour guide spends much of the ride sleeping atop the life jackets in the back of the boat. He says some stuff about the sites we see, but the roaring motor means I can’t hear any of it.

At least I can see what he’s talking about: Muddy brown water banked by small shacks and houses. According to what my mom hears from the tour guide, the residents of these shacks and houses retreat to the mountains when it floods.

Other houses are floating in the dirty water — predecessors to the floating village.

People are floating in the water, too, and walking in it — some fully dressed. We pass the same woman on the way to and from the floating village. She is walking barefoot along the rocky bank, a large plastic bag slung over her shoulder. Her eyes are trained to the rocks below. I don’t see her put anything in the bag, but I’m guessing she’s looking for food — perhaps the tiny rock-like snails Cambodian women sell from platters atop their heads.

Signs planted on the shores are painted with waves. We assume the signs mean, “Don’t make waves, please.”

Of course, drivers make waves anyway. As they pass us, the offending boats send miniature tidal waves of brown liquid cascading over the side of our boat. One such wave splashes my mom. She swears, apologizes, and scampers to the other side of the boat, only to be sent back by the driver so the boat won’t tip.

There are also pictoral signs on the banks that we decode as “No Passing,” but passing doesn’t seem to be much of a problem during the slow season.

The problem is getting stuck on the bottom of the lake. Early on the ride we pass a boat whose propeller is spinning and spinning but not getting the boat anywhere, only churning up muck from the lake bottom. With help from a long wooden pole, the driver eventually frees his stuck boat.

There aren’t any “No Littering” signs, and some seem to consider the lake a watery dump. We watch people throw trash over the sides of boats and a woman empty a bag of trash from her house boat into the lake. Minutes later, we pass the floating Gecko Environmental Center and our driver remarks upon its merits.

Farther up lake, we pass a boat containing two kids. One has a stump for an arm and is clutching a big lizard. A thick snake coiled around the other boy's neck. “Cool!”, I think. “How unusual!” Then we pass more boats with reptile kids. Not so unusual after all.

These reptile kids want money, of course. That’s not a peace sign they’re making with their fingers — it’s a two-dollar sign. For two dollars we can get the photos of them we’ve already taken, and a soda, which would normally cost fifty cents.

Our driver tells us not to give these kids money because their parents will just spend it playing cards. He tells us we should spend our money at the gift shop up ahead, since that money will go to the lake’s floating school/orphanage.

My softie dad buys a peach-colored Fanta from a boat of kids anyway. The little boy who pockets the money blows my dad kisses.

The school my dad’s pop money doesn’t go to is a boat. A big one, filled with kids learning.

The last stop on out tour is, unsurprisingly, a gift shop. The gift shop that benefits the school we passed. The usual assortment of souvenirs is available, as well as a peek at a pack of drowsy crocodiles. The crocodiles look as dead as the purses for sale in town. A couple of the leathery beasts have their jaws wide open. I throw down a wad of chewed-up gum to try to get a rise out of them. It lands next to an open jaw, but the croc doesn’t react. Then I throw a small rock. It lands on a snout. The jaws snap closed and then gape open again.

After a few gift-shop purchases, we’re back in our boat being serenaded by a pack of kids in a boat pulled alongside ours. My mom is not impressed with the singing. “What, I’m supposed to give them money just ‘cause they can sing?” she asks us. “… Three syllables,” she scoffs.

We start on our return trip and the songboat pushes off in search of more appreciative customers.In the evening we cruise the night market and sample Khmer food at a restaurant on Siem Reap’s bustling restaurant row.

July 4: Saluting Cambodia’s national treasure

Most memorable Siem Reap quote: “Do you want some coffee, Emily?” Said in perfect English by a Cambodian woman selling plastic cups of coffee before our temple tour. I do not know this woman and I did not tell her my name. She was simply mimicking my sister, who moments earlier had asked me the same question.

It’s the Fourth of July, but that doesn’t matter in Cambodia. We spend the day admiring the ancient architecture of not America, but Cambodia.

This ancient architecture is the temples of Angkor in Siem Reap. The more than 100 temples were built between AD 802 – 1432, during the height of the Angkor empire, which spilled out of Cambodia into much of present-day Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

The temples, especially the big-hitter, Angkor Wat, are the pride of Cambodia. Angkor Wat is everywhere — on Cambodia’s flag, money, beer, cigarettes, hotels and practically every other Cambodian product.

Angkor Wat is Cambodia’s top — sometimes only — tourist destination, for foreigners and Cambodians alike. My students can’t get enough of Angkor Wat. They go there on nearly all their vacations and are constantly asking me if I’ve been yet. Now I can finally say yes.

Despite the “Lonely Planet’s” cries of “blasphemy!,” we spend only a half-day at the temples. Time enough to see three of the biggies: Angkor Wat and its trio of iconic mountaintops, Bayon and its 216 giant faces and Ta Prohm and its wild vegetation.

We start our tour before sunrise, in an attempt to catch nature’s golden orb rising over Angkor Wat. But the sun’s too slow and we’re too hungry. We break for breakfast before we’ve even begun. I load up on delicious but overpriced fruit pancakes and coffee.

The magnificence of Angkor Wat is undeniable, but Ta Prohm is my favorite. Who doesn’t love trees that can eat a temple? The gnarled wood monsters look like they escaped a Tim Burton movie.

In the afternoon, my mom and I head to a silk farm, where we witness the creation of silk – from the mulberry tree to the scarf. I learn why vegans don’t like silk: Silkworms are boiled alive! At least they help make some beautiful products.

July 8: Hoi An, Vietnam: Noodles and tailors and no hair removal, thanks!

Most memorable Hoi An quote: “I want you inside me!” Called out to my sister and I by a woman shop owner. I’m pretty sure she meant in her shop, not in her.

I reconnect with my family after a doctor-ordered dengue rest. I catch up with them in Hoi An, Vietnam, after they’ve spent a lot of time traveling to and from Pakse, Laos. I’m bummed to have missed Pakse, not bummed to have missed all that driving.

Siem Reap to Hoi An is a short two hour flight, with a layover in Ho Chih Minh City (formerly Saigon). My house to Siem Reap is a short drive, but I overestimate the length of the taxi ride and arrive at the airport four hours early. I kill time by eating a second breakfast and watching fish swim in the pond through the restaurant’s window. I eat what the restaurant calls an “American breakfast,” but what is really an American-English breakfast. Scrambled eggs, sausage (more like hot dogs), baked beans, toast and coffee.

I change planes in Ho Chih Minh City. The airport is lively and definitely not Western. The gates are filled with brightly colored plastic chairs and countless tiny groceries selling plastic-wrapped snacks including mangos, coconuts, fish, candy and alcohol.

After an uneventful flight, I arrive in Hoi An in late afternoon — hours before my family. I go out on the town. With its café-and-boutique-filled streets, Hoi An has the quaint, touristy feel of Luang Prabang, Laos, But there’s more of an authentic feel here. More Vietnamese, less European tourist. The majority of the town’s shops are clearly targeting tourists, but most of its restaurants are Vietnamese, not Western.

I bop around the boutiques and stop for dinner at a Vietnamese-looking place. Actually, the characters identifying the place look Chinese, but I make a boob of myself by voicing that opinion. (Actually, I’m not that far of base. Vietnam’s alphabet included Chinese characters until French colonials installed a Latin alphabet in the early 1900s.)

Dinner is a delicious four courses — all indigenous to Hoi An. (Or so the menu says.) Shrimp inside won tons, a fried shrimp kabob, a fried egg pancake stuffed with shrimp and greens, and crunchy noodles topped with pork.

I get back to the hotel around 8:30 p.m. and head to bed. I’m woken around 1 a.m. by the phone ringing. It’s my mom. Didn’t I hear my sister ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door? Nope. Getting in the room isn’t made easier by the front desk people, who tell my sister I’m out drinking. After an hour or two of waiting for a moto driver to bring me back from a bar that I’m not at, my sister finally makes it inside our room.

The next day we have some clothes made at one of the tailor shops Hoi An is famous for. Our two skirts and two dresses are ready before the day’s over. My sister and I grab lunch on the street and practice our Vietnamese with a pair of local women. These friendly women rope my sister into an after-lunch manicure and pedicure in a nearby “salon.” The salon is little more than a spare room in a house. We perch on beds while the work is done.

The work isn’t as much as the ladies would like.

One of the ladies has polished fingernails and toenails and has removed most of the hair from her body, including her arms and buzz-cut head. She can’t understand why we don’t want to give her all of our money so that she can polish us up and remove all of our hair, too.

I have to insist several times that I don’t want any polish, massages or hair removal. My sister does the same, but she still partially receives these services.

Not taking no for an answer, the nearly hairless woman starts massaging my sister’s arm and upper back and then threading her leg before she finally realizes she isn’t going to get anymore money and lays off.

July 10 and 11: Driving to and lounging in Nha Trang

We spend the day driving to Nha Trang. Our driver is really slow. We’re in Nha Trang for only one day. It’s a touristy beach town, and we while away the hours on the beach, swimming and saying no to the vendors trying to sell us books, food, jewelry and toys.

July 12 and 13: More of nothing in Mui Ne

The train takes us to Mui Ne. The train is old and rusty, and looks nothing like Amtrak. The toilet empties directly onto the tracks, and despite the “No Smoking” signs, people smoke in the space between cars. But the ride is short and mostly comfortable, and food is served, which is my most important travel requirement. The food is chicken and rice. Delicious.

Mui Ne is another beach town, but less populated than Nha Trang. We stay in upscale eco-lodgey bungalows right on the beach. It’s the type of place with notes instructing guests to place a polished stone on their beds if they want their sheets changed.

We do nothing for our two days in Mui Ne but swim, lay on the beach and eat. Our stay is relaxing, but by the second day we’re ready for more action.

July 14 and 15: Tunneling and smothering in Ho Chih Minh City

With nine million people and five million motos, we hope Ho Chih Minh City will provide the necessary action.

One hundred to 150 people die a month in motorcycle accidents, our tour guide Lim says. Those hip, army-style helmets we see everywhere aren’t good, he says. Vietnam should worry about motorcycle accidents, he says. But not about terrorists.

“Never worry about terrorists. No terrorism in Vietnam,” Lim tells our bus.

Don’t worry about not having enough, either. Vietnam is communist, “but capitalist, too,” Lim says. “Right now we can have everything we want.“

Lim is taking us to the Cu Chi tunnels, part of the network of underground passages that helped the Viet Cong guerrillas defeat American troops during the Vietnam War.

Many guerrillas lived in the tunnels. The camouflaged, booby-trapped tunnels were perfect for hiding people and supplies and for transporting people and supplies. The Cu Chi tunnels stretch 75 miles.

The tour begins with a blotchy black and white film made a year or two after the Vietnam War. The film is straight up pro-Vietnamese, anti-American propaganda.

The Vietnamese built the first Cu Chi tunnel in 1948 for fighting the French, who controlled Vietnam for 70 years. But the tunnels were mostly used for fighting the “crazy batch of devils” — the 8,000 to 10,000 American soldiers who invaded the peaceful Cu Chi during the Vietnam War.

As the film’s narrator says, “The Americans wanted to turn Cu Chi into a dead land, but Cu Chi will never die.”

The people of Cu Chi survived by moving underground, into three levels of tunnels. The tunnels were equipped with an escape hatch to the Saigon River, used only at night.

Only sticks were used to dig the tunnels. Still, “no architect can design such a system,” the film’s narrator claims.

With “a rifle in one hand and a plow in the other,” the Cu Chi guerillas killed by day and plowed by night.

They built bombs and grenades from American scraps and converted bamboo animal traps into spiked death machines.

Garlic kept dogs away from the tunnel’s air holes. Dogs are apparently afraid of garlic.

According to the film’s narrator, the Americans should have also been afraid of the Vietnamese.

“Although day after day Americans wanted to take over Cu Chi, they were defeated,” the narrator says.

For their war successes, Vietnamese guerillas received awards with titles like “American Killer Hero.”

The next part of the tour is ogling the spiked booby traps responsible for killing, or certainly maiming, American troops.

The pits of rusted spikes we see have names like “Clipping Armpit Trap, “Sticking Trap” and the mildly named but mightily feared “Door Trap” that our tour guide says made men into ladyboys.

Next up: the shooting range. My sister and I are excited to shoot AK-47s. Our excitement extinguishes when we learn you can only fire one shot. That one shot makes a lame “blam!” sound, not the fierce “rat-tat-tat” of Rambo’s gun.

Still, tourists parade down to the range to take their turns at one of six guns. Firing one bullet costs a little over $1.

Last up: the tunnels. Or tunnel. One of the dark passages is open for crawling. I go down, but only make it to the first stop, which is only a five-minute walk — if you can call walking doubled over like Quasimodo walking. My dad gets out with me, but my sister scooches like a midget duck to the end of the line, emerging 20 minutes later at the head of the pack. (Well, at the head of the pack behind an amped-up tween clutching her cell phone and can of Coke).

Lim tells us the tunnel has been enlarged for beefy tourists. I’d hate to be down there pre-enlargement.

Hey Ho Chih Minh, where’s all your fun?

Aside from dodging motos and learning about the Vietnam War, my sister and I can find surprisingly little to do in Ho Chih Minh. We can barely find a restaurant, let alone any bars or night life.

But one restaurant finds us. We are looking at the outdoor menu when one of the owners virtually pushes us up the stairs and into his restaurant. “You come inside,” he says. “One minute,” we say, trying to scan the dishes and prices. He then pauses for one second and says, “OK, you come inside now.” We repeat this exchange several times before we finally surrender and go inside.

Not surprisingly, the husband and wife owners don’t understand when we ask for a minute to decide on a menu item, and lean over our shoulders while firing a barrage of suggestions. My sister and I finally just choose their top suggestion: beef noodle soup — like pho but with thicker noodles.

A waiter stands nearby, staring at us until we finish eating. Finally he backs off and we discover that the woman owner is very friendly. She tells us about the man in the giant poster on her wall. The man is her son, Michael Tran, who she says is Vietnam’s first professional golfer.

Our stay in Ho Chih Minh City is short, but by the second day we’re ready to go. Phnom Penh awaits.

July 16, 17 and 18: Shopping, pool and depression in Phnom Penh

The capital of Cambodia since the collapse of the Angkor empire in the 1430s, Phnom Penh is a lively city with about two million residents. My appreciation of Phnom Penh has blossomed after the busy but boring Ho Chi Minh.

Our first day is errands and a trip to Central Market. We eat in a spot on the hip restaurant river row. Then we head to the night market. Best find: Underwear printed with the Apple Computer logo.

After the market, my sister and I ditch the ‘rents in search of an open pool table. Easy. We find an unoccupied bar and make friends with the two bartenders, who are also sisters about the same ages as us. It’s a fun night, but pool is a bust. We both quit well before the table is cleared of either solids or stripes.

The second day ends with shopping, but starts out serious, with a visit to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Formerly a high school, during the 1975-1979 reign of the Khmer Rogue, Tuol Sleng became Security Prison 21 (S-21), the country’s largest detention and torture center.

Between 1975 and 1978, more than 17,000 men, women and children from S-21 were taken to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, where they were killed and then left to rot in secret mass graves.

A harrowing display of the Khmer Rogue’s brutality, the museum is stocked with black and white mug shots of the victims. The most gruesome photos depict the 14 tortured-to-death bodies of prisoners killed just before the Vietnamese took control of Phnom Penh.

Perhaps only seven prisoners survived S-21. Thanks to exploitable talents, the lucky seven escaped a trip to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek.

Today the Killing Fields are empty grass pits surrounded by bits of bones and clothing. Forty-three of the 129 communal graves are untouched. In an effort to give the deceased a proper burial, a Memorial Stupa was erected in 1988. The elegant building houses more than 8,000 skulls behind glass.

The man who ran S-21, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, was recently sentenced to a paltry 19 years in prison. Duch, 68, is the first member of the Khmer Rogue to be punished for his crimes.

July 19-22: Red-lighting, templing and shopping in Bangkok

Oh Thank Heaven: According to Wikipedia, Thailand has more than 5,400 7-Elevens, half in Bangkok. Thailand is third on the list of countries with the most 7-Elevens. The United States is first and Japan second.

July 19: Watching the hook-ups on Patpong Street

Our hotel is in the same neighborhood as part of Bangkok’s Red Light District. So of course that’s the first place my sister and I go.

We watch the happenings while sharing a dinner of pad see ew and green curry at a restaurant on the notorious Patpong Street, which caters to tourists.

The happenings at the club-lined street aren’t immediately apparent. Girls in skimpy dresses dribble out the club doors, but most look like they’re just hanging out, like the group sipping beer out of a giant communal stein.

Young men clutching laminated picture sheets flank the girls. The pictures are of faces and more. OK, so the girls are for sale, but where are the customers? My sister spots the first one — an old, potbellied white man.

After dinner we stroll the street. The formerly demure girls have become aggressive, pouncing on men walking by and shoving the laminated picture cards under their noses.

The girls and their cards slink back as we walk by, but further down the street, sleazy men poke more picture cards in our faces and try to sell us into explicit ping pong shows.

July 20: Sold up the river and into the tourist rip-off centers of Bangkok

The next day is scam day. First scam: My sister and I pay the hotel way too much for a trip up the Chao Phraya River.

At least we get our own boat. “Slow, so we can see” the concierge tells us. A silent woman drives us through the army-green water, past skyscrapers and bridges and later past wooden shacks, row houses and tug-boat homes. Clotheslines and temples line the shores.

Aside from the tourists in the hotel boats that speed by, few people are out. A soldier and a young girl walk the shoreline and a man lounges in a hammock farther up river. Under one of Bangkok’s many bridges is a pair of boys fishing.

Our driver breaks her silence partway through the trip. “Madame?” she says, pointing out a small crocodile near shore.

We turn down the opportunity to see more crocodiles at the Crocodile Farm. The advertised show is about cobras, and doesn’t sound worth five bucks.

We do grab lunch at the Crocodile Farm though. For me, it’s sweet and sour chicken and veggies over noodles.

After the farm, we pass a boat of tourists throwing food overboard. A pair of signs explains their littering. ”Free to donate bread to feed the fish,” and “Please feed the fish.“

We don’t stop at Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn) or the Grand Palace. Instead, we end at a pier housing a market and a tourist-rip-off zone.

I don’t realize I’m in a tourist rip-off zone when a salesman asks if I want to take a tuk-tuk to the Sitting Buddha, Thai Fashion and Thai Export.

I would rather see the nearby Grand Palace, but the salesman says it’s closed because today’s a holiday. He can’t tell me which holiday. I also would rather shop the backpacker zone, but I don’t know where that is. So I agree to the tuk-tuk ride. It’s only 15 baht, or 50 cents.

The Sitting Buddha is mildly interesting. It’s a big gold Buddha, and it’s — you guessed it — sitting. The Buddha is lucky, a tour guide tells me, because it survived a fire in the former Thai capital of Ayutthaya.

I should see the Grand Palace, the tour guide tells me.

Next is Thai Fashion, a warehouse of fabric where tourists can get clothes made in a day. The fabric looks super expensive and I can’t think of anything I want. But I can’t escape the man who herds me into the store and tries to lead me to a chair, which I politely decline, saying I just want to look around. He responds by snapping that “There’s nothing to see here.” He then follows me to the souvenirs and to the door.

Thai Export is another tourist-exploitation warehouse— this time with jewelry. Watching the workers polishing stones and making fittings is much more interesting than the actual jewels and fittings. I’m not a bling-bling kind of gal.

A guide leads me through the building to progressively cheaper display cases. We go from jewels to gold to silver to junky souvenirs to the door. Finally!

Back at the hotel I learn that tuk-tuk drivers get paid to take tourists to the clothes and jewelry warehouses. I also learn that some tuk-tuk drivers are liars. Today is not a holiday and I could have gone to the Grand Palace.

July 21: Now for that stuff we want to do

My mom and I hit the Grand Palace the next morning. It’s her second trip in two days.

The Grand Palace was built in 1782 when King Rama I took the throne and created a new city capital.

A sprawling 218,00 square meters, the glittering gold-and-gem-studded estate includes the unoccupied royal residence as well as government offices, chapels, a library, a miniature Angkor Wat (seriously!) and the esteemed Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha.

I spend a few minutes searching for the Emerald Buddha before I realize he’s that tiny green thing topping the other finery. The small green guy was discovered in a stupa in 1434 and is not actually emerald, but jade.

Even on an early morning in non-tourist season, the palace is swarming with tourists. It’s impossible to stay out of pictures of people grinning in front of the countless golden spires.

After the palace we hit the elusive backpacker street, which we have to sprint across a couple highways to access. We bump into my dad and sister, who are also shopping the zone.The street’s a busy mix of restaurants and bars, hostels and clothing and souvenir stalls. The tackiness of the wares is less than at previous markets we’ve seen, and I actually see a couple shirts I like. Too bad I can’t get them over my White-Giant head.

Our next destination is the answer to the question: “Where should I go shopping in Bangkok?” MBK Mall. (Short for Mah Boon Krong.)

The mall is a colossal eight stories spread over 89,000 square meters. We last a little over an hour. Everyone goes home with a new possession. Mine’s a shirt.

Dinner is at the hotel, and after dinner is Calypso Cabaret. Our guide book describes the show as inoffensive family fun, but it’s a lot more fun that that.

The show is performed by a cast of Thai ladyboys (usually male-to-female transgenders or femmy gay men) and ranges from a geisha cooing in front of a cherry blossom backdrop to a ladyboy with a giant fro screeching and running into walls.

Other highlights include a stage of serenading Marilyn Monroes, a Carmen Miranda, a song by the Korean girl band that is the obsession of many of my high school students, a couple routines from “Chicago” and a staged wardrobe malfunction that puts Janet Jackson’s to shame.

July 22: Back to the land of rice

The bus to the Thai-Cambodian border is a non-stop four hours. By the time we near the border, I’m starving and really have to use the bathroom. Fortunately, our stop is at a restaurant just minutes from the border.

The restaurant provides a good opportunity to shovel down some final noodly Thai food before heading back to the land of rice. Also an opportunity for a final encounter with a Thai ladyboy — my server. She has stylish, short auburn hair, black eyeliner and a squeaky mouse voice.

I’m now back in the land of rice and pork. I miss my family and the adventures we had, but it’s also nice to be back among my orphans and mosquitoes.

I live in Cambodia, and other people cook for me, so I eat Cambodian food.

What is Cambodian food? It’s rice. It’s also pork, fish, beef, chicken, duck eggs and veggies. Usually stir-fried or in soups. Sometimes there are noodles, but often these noodles are served on top of rice — at least at my house. You can’t escape the rice. Dessert is fruit — usually fruit I had never heard of or seen before coming to Cambodia — or soupy, sweetened condensed-milk and tapioca desserts filled with goodies ranging from potatoes and bananas to corn, beans and fluorescent noodles.

Depending on the month, I eat my Cambodian food either with my host family or with the orphans and non-orphans who live with me at the orphanage.

What follows is my food diary for one week. The week happened many weeks ago, because of dengue delays. Edited out are my snacks — usually oatmeal or sweet breads and cakes or crackers. Also edited out are my breakfasts, for the simple fact that they are the same every day: oatmeal, and usually tea. (I finally gave up coffee! Without even trying, of course.) This is the only meal I ever cook myself.

This week was during a month in which I ate exclusively with the orphans. The last entry is a week or so later, when I ate dinner with my host family.

Here is my delicious daily breakfast: Oatmeal and tea. I eat oatmeal two to three times a day. Mostly cause I'm too lazy to buy snacks.

And here's the eating room at the orphanage. There are 10 tables. Of course, everyone sits at the same seat every time. My assigned seat is at the head of the table of big kids. Big boy kids. They are high schoolers, and a couple, who work at the orphanage, are my age. I only sit at the head of the table when the French guy who oversees the place isn't at the orphanage. That's getting to be most of the time, since taking care of business is easier in neighboring, more technologically advanced, Siem Reap. I initially resisted sitting at the head of the table, cause it seemed like it was the special spot for the resident non-Cambodian person, and it made me feel like a white supremacist. But then I realized that making a fuss about a mere seating assignment was stupid.

OK, now here's the food diary. Ready? OK! The picture is above its description. Obviously I haven't been trained in food photography. But any pictures are better than no pictures. Right? Right? Right!

FRIDAY, MAY 14

Lunch: Fried pork with beans, mushrooms and other green stuff. Rice, of course. Mostly sweet, kind of sour fruit, my favorite combination. I’m constantly forgetting its Khmer name, and I have no idea what it’s called in English. I’ve never seen it in the United States.

Dinner: A fish and duck egg mixture that looks like canned cat food, but is good. Green beans and cucumbers on the side, rice.

SATURDAY, MAY 15

Lunch : A couple fried duck eggs, rice, and a spiky red and fluorescent green alien fruit called sow mao in Khmer, rambutan in English.

The orphans eat a soup floating with reddish fish bits, which the cook (my host mom) must have assumed I wouldn’t like. She’s probably right.

Dinner: Salad rolls! That means non-fried spring rolls. Meatless. Served with a peanut sauce. My tablemates tell me the salad rolls are Korean. Back in the United States, I frequently ate the same rolls at Thai restaurants. Regardless of their origin, the salad rolls are a special non-Khmer treat to celebrate the King’s birthday.

SUNDAY, MAY 16

Lunch: Because I’m at the Internet café trying to format this infernal blog, I miss lunch at the orphanage (on dessert day, too)! I eat instead at my usual downtown spot —a Cham (Muslim) place. I get my usual — me cha in Khmer, fried ramen noodles in English. The yellow noodles are topped with beef (no pork here!), spinach, duck egg and sprouts. Tea is served, poured over ice and free, like at all Cambodian restaurants.

Dinner: Fried fish bits, peanut sauce and rice. Yellow market-bought cupcakes for someone’s birthday.

MONDAY, MAY 17

Lunch: Inedible baby fish — sardines — that are barely cooked, swimming in a soup also occupied by a watery green veggie. I take my bag of sow mao and retreat to my oatmeal.

Dinner : Pork fried into curled half-dollars over rice. I forget to take a picture.

TUESDAY, MAY 18

Lunch: Eaten with volunteer friends at a restaurant in town that we call red and yellow chairs. Guess why? I eat a sweet and sour stir-fry of pork, pineapple, mushrooms and green onions over rice. With tea, and unripe mangoes for dessert.

Dinner: Fried fish with pickles and rice, plus a sweetbread treat for someone’s birthday.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 19

Lunch: Eaten at a Three-Year-Death party. To celebrate the fact that three years have passed since the death of the father of one of the teachers at my school. Several dishes are served, including Khmer cheese (cheese atop a pork and fish pate), chicken soup, A cold, noodly mixture of shrimp, octopus, etc, beef, a dish split of half white rice and half pink fried rice topped with duck egg. Water and sodas — Coke, plus Asian varieties such as lychee, winter melon, grass jelly and coconut. Wafer candy for dessert.

Dinner: A couple hunks of fried pork, plus cucumbers and rice.

THURSDAY, MAY 20

Lunch: Pork with greens, and rice. Sow mao.

Dinner: Fried duck eggs and rice.

FRIDAY, MAY 21

Lunch: Pork and veggie mixture over rice. Veggies include carrots, cabbage and green onions.

Dinner: Pork with mushrooms and bamboo over rice.

SUNDAY, JUNE 6

Lunch: Bamboo and beef soup over rice. Plus a soupy dessert of rice, sweetened-condensed milk, tapioca and potato.

Dinner: With my host family! That's them, minus me. On left, host bro, Sothearith, who's 16 or 17 then host mom, host dad, host sister, Banya, who's 8 or 9. Difficult to keep track of Cambodian ages, cause they measure them by the Khmer New Year, not by when people were actually born. I don't really understand the system.

Dinner for me is a mixture of tomatoes, fried pork, greens, yellow peppers and onions. I don’t eat the prahoc (fermented fish paste) and soup filled with unknowns.

That's the end of the diary, but here's an extra bonus! Sorry no pics.

Things I’ve eaten in Cambodia: Ants dangling with larvae, snakes, frogs, all kinds of innards, crickets, beetles, a tarantula leg, a grilled baby bird, and a turkey for Thanksgiving! (The last item is unusual for Cambodia.)

It started with a fever and ended with a week in Bangkok. Well, more precisely, it started with a mosquito bite, and hasn’t ended yet.

It is… dengue fever. The dreaded mosquito-borne tropical disease lovingly referred to as breakbone fever. Breakbone cause supposedly that’s what it feels like.

Fortunately, dengue didn’t make my bones feel like they were breaking. After the initial fever it just made me feel really tired.

The fever lasted only two or three days, but my other symptoms were severe enough to send me to Bangkok, where there’s safe blood.

My severe symptoms: plummeting platelets and white blood cells. According to Wikipedia, platelets are the stuff swimming around in your blood that help form blood clots, or help stop bleeding. White blood cells help defend your body from infectious diseases. As my case of dengue demonstrated, these pale cells aren’t always successful.

But after nearly two weeks of laying in bed and guzzling water, my white blood cells are beginning to get their acts together. I’m now back in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and the only lingering trace of dengue my body has is a giant liver.

I am back at the hotel in Phnom Penh where the staff members now know me as the Khmer translation of “the girl who fainted.”

And she’s down

The fainting was before Bangkok. I had spent seven hours in a taxi from my site without much food on the way.

Shortly after my arrival in Phnom Penh, I was in bed trying to sleep when the Peace Corps doctor called me. It was nearly 9 p.m. She asked if I had eaten dinner. When I said no, she demanded that I eat — without leaving the hotel. She told me to ask the hotel staff for help.

I followed the doctor's advice, but the workers at the desk downstairs said they were “too busy” to help. Too busy booking hour-long bed sessions for the gaggle of girls streaming through the doors. These girls, clad in tiny tops and butt-length skirts, were tripping in, trailed by plain-yogurt-looking men.

The hotel staff told me to get my own food, so after some research, I called a noodle spot down the street and asked for delivery. I was getting my money ready and leaning against the front desk for support when I went down. My last thought was how nice it would be to lay down on the floor.

My body obeyed my brain’s desire. I came to just like in a movie, awakening to a chorus of muted voices in a blurry sea of color.

Then the sea focused. I was sitting in a chair. A Khmer man was massaging my back, and a New Zealand woman was pouring bottled water down my throat. A crowd was gathered, and the delivery man from the restaurant was standing off to the side, holding my food.

After thanking the masseuse and water supplier, I paid for my food and went up to my room to eat. One of the hotel staffers carried my food to my room. Lesson learned: sometimes if you want help, you’ve got to faint for it.

Hospitals and inns in Bangkok

Before Bangkok, I had heard raves from other Peace Corps volunteers about the city’s luxurious hospital treatment.

Luxurious? Maybe, but still a hospital. It still smelled like chemicals, and my sleep was still interrupted every four hours by nurses strapping a blood-pressure cuff on my arm and shoving a thermometer in my mouth.

I selected my meals from a menu, but it was still bland hospital food, and for the first few days until I got a hold of that menu, every meal was fish. Even my scrambled eggs were served with a side of fried fish.

The hospital shower was also cold. Maybe a shower with water at a comfortable temperature is a safety hazard?

But the hospital did have good TV. That’s something that was lacking at the Bangkok hotel where I stayed for about half the week.

The hotel had a shower with hot water, at least, and even a half-kitchen in my suite. But no good TV. The hotel was tiny and old, and really not even a hotel, but an inn. The only English channels were CNN and HBO Max — easily the worst HBO channel. During my stay, HBO Max played only 1960s movies that looked like they were from the 1920s. Movies like “Spartacus” and “Jason and the Argonauts” and some other famous black-and-white movie about the life of Jesus. So famous I can’t remember the name.

Thankfully I had some post-1960s entertainment with me — in the form of more than 50 episodes of “Whose Line is it Anyway?” The British version of the improv TV show. But the DVDs I had weren't much more current than the 1960s. They were of the show’s first two seasons, which taped in 1988 and 1989. The outdated topics and funny accents made the show difficult to understand at times, but made me laugh more than “Jason and the Argonauts” would have.

Like at the hospital, food in the hotel became repetitive. Maybe because the hotel was across the street from the hospital and I ate every meal there. I didn’t have to eat in a patient room, but had the pick of three chain restaurants: McDonald's, Starbucks or the pseudo French Au Bon Pain. I picked the latter for most every meal, until I got brave and picked a couple pretty pictures off the menu at one of the Thai places.

I knew I was getting better when I went in for my blood test on my last day in Bangkok. For the first time that week, I didn’t have to ask the nurses for a blanket and a bed to lay on while I shivered and waited to be called for the test. I was still wearing four shirts on that last day though.

Back to the scene of the crime

It’s now the eve of my return to my site — the site where I live and also the site where a vicious mosquito tried to kill me with poisonous blood. I’m terrified, and am constantly brushing away imaginary mosquitoes. But all I can do is follow the doctor’s advice: wear mosquito repellent on my skin and clothes and pray I don’t get dengue again. I hear it’s worse the second time.

Khmer New Year is April 14 – 16. But in Cambodia, a three-day holiday quickly becomes a month-long holiday. And holiday means no school and few responsibilities. In other words: vacation!

I spent a little over two weeks of my responsibility-free days vacationing in northeastern Cambodia and Laos. My company: six fellow Peace Corps Cambodia volunteers.

Get on the bus, you stupid barang!

The 11-hour journey to my travelmate James’ site in eastern Cambodia begins with me almost missing my bus — twice!

I arrive at the bus station early – by a whole three minutes. So why is the driver yelling at me to get on the bus? He’s waiting for me, he says. I’m the last one to board, and we’re leaving. Early? That’s a new one for me — and Cambodia. Nothing here happens on time, let alone early.

I almost miss the bus again when I get off at a rest stop. I’m loitering outside the restaurant, prolonging the time before I have to squeeze back into my seat, when I notice a bus pull out of the parking lot and start honking.

I stand there watching the bus for a few minutes, wondering what clueless nincompoop the bus is waiting for. I know it’s not me, because my bus is still parked in the lot. It’s the bus on the far left side of the lot. No other bus can fit beside it. That’s the detail I recorded in an effort to distinguish the lot’s seven identical white buses.

Since I know the honking bus is not my bus, I’m not concerned when a restaurant employee tells me that the honking bus is my bus. He’s wrong, I tell him. My bus is that other bus, on the left side of the lot. He keeps insisting the honking bus is my bus. I keep arguing my point. I know I’m right.

I concede that I may be wrong when the driver of the honking bus stops honking, jumps off the bus and runs over to me. “Kampong Cham!” he yells, while pointing to the bus. “Kampong Cham!”

Uh oh. Kampong Cham is where I’m going. This guy looks serious, and it is his bus. I don’t argue, but stroll over to the bus and get on, apologizing to the red-faced driver. The bus erupts into laughter. Decoded, the laughter means “Stupid barang.” I laugh too. I’m just glad someone noticed this stupid barang was missing before leaving the rest stop.

I stay close to my bus during the remaining stops, and after a nine-hour ride, arrive in Kampong Cham. I have an hour or so before the next bus to where James lives.

I spend part of this hour marveling at the attire of the girl at the bus stop dressed like it’s winter in Minnesota instead of summer in Cambodia. It’s not only summer, but April, Cambodia’s hottest month of the year. This 20-something girl is wearing a knit cap, sweatshirt, gloves, jeans, and socks tucked into her jelly sandals. Either she has a disease or she lacks confidence in her skin-whitening products.

Hun Sen, Britney Spears and Cambodian Dance Party 2010

James lives in the teacher dorms at his high school. I’m expecting the linen closets of college dorms, but his room is surprisingly big, and his high school is enormous, with a giant dried up football field and an auditorium. (Both are extreme rarities for Cambodian schools.) James’ high school was built by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, and apparently Hun Sen really likes the school, because his son is buried on the grounds.

Then we learn the song of the day: “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” Yes, that song.. We learn both the words and the meaning of the words to Britney’s first hit. More than a decade after the song’s release, I finally learn that when Britney sings “hit me” she doesn’t mean physically, she means “hit me up” or contact me. Enlightening. After watching the video of Britney dance and sing in her sexed-up Catholic school girl uniform, class is over.

I go to bed early, and am up the next morning in plenty of time for James’ singing class. Yippee! During today’s class, the students review several American pop songs, including classics by the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, plus new favorites by Taylor Swift and Good Charlotte.But the music has just begun. Later that day the students and our travelmates Dave and Julie show up to the dorm for Cambodian Dance Party 2010. (I just made up that name.) The students bring the food, James brings the music and we all bring the dance.

Kratie: Dolphins, kids and biking on beaches.

Kratie, in mid-eastern Cambodia, is home of the endangered Irawaddy dolphins — and not much else. After a two-hour bus ride from Memot, it’s an eight-mile bike ride from our guesthouse to the dolphin boat launch. The ride winds along the Mekong River on a road lined by squat mountains and wooden houses.

It costs us $7 apiece to board the small wooden fishing boat. The six of us have a boat to ourselves manned by a Cambodian dolphin hunter. (A visual hunter, not the illegal kill-‘em-with-a-spear hunter.)

Our hunter starts up the boat’s engine to get us out to prime dolphin viewing waters, then cuts the power. We drift. We see other fishing boats filled with tourists, but no dolphins.

The water is calm and beautiful, but we want to see some dolphins! Fortunately, our Flipper noises call the dolphins out of the water and into our field of vision. Unfortunately, these dolphins don’t leap through hoops or turn backflips. We only catch an occasional glimpse of light gray as the dolphins arch gracefully in and out of the water.

Still, even these flashes of gray cause us to squeal and yelp and point to the patch of water where the dolphin recently disappeared. Other quieter yells come from surrounding boats. But apparently not all of the tourists consider the dolphins the river’s most interesting spectacle.

Judging from their stares and open mouths, the Khmer occupants of one of the nearby boats find our non-Khmer human bodies more visually riveting than the river’s famous finned specimens.

The next day, we bike to Koh Trong Island. A small wooden ferry helps us cross the river. The beach where we land is a long, empty strip of golden brown sand bordering genuinely blue water. A spot ripe for tourist development, James points out. Just don’t market biking on this beach. It’s really hard!

A short climb and we’re in the jungly terrain of Koh Trong. Big leafed palms shade wood and straw huts. Families lounge outside these huts, playing cards and chatting, celebrating the first day of Khmer New Year. Monks with a loudspeaker lead a parade of people down the road.

Julie takes a picture of me with a trio of local girls outside a hut. They ask for a pen as payment. I give them a silver pen I received as a wedding favor. Not really a shareable gift, but it’s the only pen I’ve got. Fortunately, the next group of children I photograph doesn’t ask for any payment. They even pay me — in candy.

Rattanakiri: Lakes and waterfalls and water buffalo

We are exhausted after the seven-hour bus ride from Kratie to Ban Lung, Rattanakiri, in northeastern Cambodia, and immediately check into our guesthouse — an ecolodge in the woods. All six of us are in one room — advertised as the family hut. At least we each have our own bed.

The next morning starts with a delicious free breakfast (scrambled eggs, bread, fruit and coffee) and the search for Yeak Loam Lake. (Yeak Loam means volcanic crater) It’s not as close to our ecolodge as maps, brochures and testimonies led us to believe. Maybe we just walked the wrong way. Finally, after bushwhacking up a hill and wandering along dirt and highway roads, we find the muddy- bottomed sucker.

So do a lot of other people. The lake isn’t the secluded spot I am expecting, and there’s a steady stream of motos and cars.

We pay $1 apiece to gain access to the lake, and then find a shady spot on the bank, which is a convenient launch pad for the black rubber inntertubes we rent for $3,000 riel (75 cents) each. The bank is crowded with people celebrating Khmer New Year with beer, rice, meat and card games, but aside from us and a smattering of children, few people are in the water.

The next day we bike to Cha Ong waterfall. Ban Lung boasts about four waterfalls. We bike to the sign pointing the way to each of these falls. According to James, the group’s organizer, one waterfall is the most breathtaking, another the most enjoyable, the others only so-so. We choose the most breathtaking, which is a shorter distance away than the most enjoyable.

We begin biking as a group, but don’t stay that way. I’m riding a tiny Khmer bike, and when I pedal, my knees brush my chin. This makes it impossible to ride up hills, and I soon get left behind.

I then misread a sign and make a wrong turn, which leads me up and down a series of dusty red hills, but nowhere near any waterfalls. I stop a few times to ask locals if I’m going the right way to the waterfall and they say yes, so I keep going. I then realize that I didn’t specify which waterfall. I stop and call James. Thank God for cell phones!

I am exhausted and upset (as I always am when lost), but eventually make it to the right waterfall. Once again I am surprised by how touristy this attraction is. We have to pay admission, and there are lots of motos and cars, and food stands.

The waterfall is a tall and skinny spout of water showering down upon a pile of rocks. Although I’m hot and dusty, I don’t want to bike back hot and muddy, so I don’t shower under the falls like Dave and James. After all, we still have the waterfalls of Laos for bathing.

We take a detour around a lake in town on the way back to our new, more conveniently located guesthouse. In a field near the lake we watch a group of seven men pull a water buffalo out of a sinkhole. The beast kicks its legs in protest to the grasping hands, but is so weak it can barely stand, let alone fight back.

Twenty-three people in a van and a seventeen hour bus ride – The journey to Laos: Part One

The next day we take off for Laos. The journey starts with a three-hour van ride to Stung Treng, Cambodia. In the beginning, only 10 of the van’s 12 available seats filled, but we know there will be more passengers. Casual bets are placed. Twenty is our top estimate. The actual number of passengers who fit into this 12-seater van? Twenty-three. Two in the driver’s seat and one boy in another boy’s lap. Unfortunately no one on the roof.

We spend the next day in Pakse, Laos, trying to figure out how to get to Vientiane and Luang Prabang. We end up taking the morning bus to Vientiane. We had heard the bus would take 10 to 12 hours. Actual time? Seventeen hours.

It’s the local bus, and it’s still the Khmer and Laos new years (they’re at the same time) so the bus stops every five to 10 minutes to let people off and on. We’re packed in like cattle in a slaughterhouse or sardines in a tin. Choose your own overused simile.

We are lucky to have seats. The aisles are crammed with people. These unfortunate aislers are forced to use us seaters as arm, leg and head rests. Luckily, the bus has plenty of ventilation. The doors and windows gape open all 17 hours.

Toward evening, the aisles thin and the remaining aislers get bags of rice for chairs. The bus is also empty enough for a game of travel Scrabble. Yes!

Our bus is supposed to arrive in Vientiane at 7:30 p.m. but with all the stops, we know it will be late. We place bets for our estimated time of arrival. The earliest bet is 7:40 p.m. The latest is 8:30 p.m. Actual arrival time: 12:30 a.m.

When we finally arrive in Vientiane, a local man I’d been talking to offers us a ride to a hotel. Since it’s late and there are few tuk-tuks, we say OK. Of course, he wants money for the ride: $20,000 kip (about $2.50) per person. We haggle the price down, but still pay too much. He is set on taking us to a certain hotel that he says is popular with foreigners. But one glance at the building and the surrounding spots and we know it is too pricey for our budgets.

After lots of walking around and fielding of suggestions from other walkers — including one, perhaps tongue-in-cheek suggestion about sleeping on the streets — we finally find a cheaper place.

Out of Vientiane, into Luang Prabang, on a not-so VIP bus

After waking at 11 a.m., a few of us take a self-guided mini tour of Vientiane. We see an old stupa (That Dam), visit a wat crammed with an assortment of Buddha statues and walk partway to the morning market.

Chinese for dinner. Pork dumplings, stirfried veggies and Beer Lao. I much prefer Lao’s full-bodied national beer to the thin, pale brew of Cambodia’s Angkor or its cheaper brother, Anchor. Still, my preference isn’t passionate enough to justify buying one of the thousands of Beer Lao T-shirts hawked on every street corner.

The Chinese menu contains a few amusing items. One dish is labeled Confusing meat. On the same page is its cohort — a dish that should be labeled Confused meat. Its real name is chicken pork.

The Chinese food is a good start to our all-night bus ride. The bus is labeled VIP and definitely cushier than the local bus from Pakse. But it’s lacking the beds that we’ve seen on passing night buses.

We were told a meal would be served aboard the bus, and that the bus would have bathrooms. Neither is true. To make up for the false promises, the kindly driver stops every hour and a half so people can buy food and piss on the side of the road.

With the help of earplugs, blinders (a night mask), and possible sleeping pills (unlabeled blue pills rattling around in my bottle of assorted medications), I eventually get to sleep. Thankfully, my battery of sleep aids blocks out the constant upchucking that my travelmates endure and heartily mimic for several days following the ride.

Parlez-vous Francais? Luang Prabang: A slice of Europe in the heart of Asia

I wake around 6 a.m. to the bus winding through the mountains of Luang Prabang. We’ve been on the bus 11 hours. The road is bordered on one side by jagged mountain peaks and on the other side by thatched huts, lots of trees and more mist-shrouded mountains. Our double-decker bus squeals around each hairpin turn. Road signs marked with squiggles, half curves and zig zags hinting at the shape of the journey ahead.

The bus arrives in Luang Prabang at 8:19 a.m. A tuk-tuk lets us off in town at Joma, a bakery “Lonely Planet” calls one of Luang Prabang’s best.. I scarf a breakfast burrito and coffee and grab a bran muffin for later.

We easily find a cheap-enough guesthouse. Later, in a children’s library, I read a book about Laos and learn that it is sparsely populated (six million) and largely undeveloped.

For lunch I have stirfry with sauce that tastes like ketchup and a coconut pineapple shake. (The first of countless Luang Prabang fruit shakes.)

Luang Prabang is like a quaint European town in the middle of Asia. According to that book I read, before World War II the Vietnamese filled the town with French-style buildings. The streets are lined with cafes, bakeries, restaurants, spas, boutiques and sandwich, crepe and fruit shake stands. There are also lots of tour-guide shops. The town is filled with tourists, yet maintains a vibrant charm.

A multitude of nature adventures wait just outside the city center. The tour shops sell tickets for jungle treking, ziplines, elephant rides, kayaking, waterfall visits and so on.

That first day in Luang Prabang we meet a married couple who recently finished their two years in Peace Corps serving in Tonga, a smattering of tiny South Pacific islands I had never heard of. The couple was on the tail end of five months of travels.

We spend our few days in Luang Prabang swapping Peace Corps stories. Unfortunately for us Peace Corps Cambodians, the Peace Corps Tonga stories of tsunamis, murder (seriously!) and mayhem easily topped our less riveting tales.

But there’s hope for us lame-taled Peace Corps Cambodians. Seventy three groups of Peace Corps Volunteers have served in Tonga. Only three Peace Corps groups have served in Cambodia. That gives us oodles of time for dark and dastardly stories to unfold.



Photoshopped waterfalls, Asiatic bears and wat climbing

Our second day in Luang Prabang we take a truck — mistakenly called a tuk-tuk — to Kuangsi Waterfall. We travel the 20 - 30 kilometers on a road curling over wooden bridges and wrapping around mountains, past spindly trees and scattered huts with grass and tin roofs.

The falls are virtually deserted when we arrive in the early morning — and gorgeous. They are a torrent of foamy white water tumbling over several tiers of rocks and greenery into pools that look like they’ve been Photoshopped a clear, light blue.

After lots of pictures, we hike up nearly endless stairs and muddy slopes to level ground and a fork in the road. A sign that points one way reads “Spring water 3 K.” We don’t know what kind of spring water the sign is referring to and don’t want to walk three kilometers to find out.

Once we’ve descended the stairs, part of the group takes off in search of an elusive cave, and the other half (the half I’m in) takes off in search of swimming

Several (natural, non-chlorinated) pools are available for swimming. All are filled with that unbelievable blue shade of water. We splash around a bit, then find a pool with a rope swing. We leave only when the pool is taken over by other tourists, including a trio of boys whose monkey-like ease with the rope swing suggests they are frequent visitors.

On the way back to our ride, we stop at a bear sanctuary. The smallish brown Asiatic bears live behind an electric fence. Even so, I guess life behind an electric fence is better than life turned into meat or bear skins — the likely fate of these bears before their rescue from poachers.

Besides the electric fence, the bears’ new home isn’t bad. Their pen has hammocks, spinning barrels, monkey bars and tetherballs, plus watermelon and bananas to snack on. (For more about these bears, visit Freethebears.org.au.)

That evening, we climb the 328 steps to a wat atop a mountain in the center of town. The wat’s location provides a nice view of the sun setting over town and an assortment of other tourists.

Kayaking with Tom Petty to Whiskey VillageThe next day we kayak to Pak Ou cave. Two guides lead the journey. One is named Tom Petty. Unfortunately, Tom Petty doesn’t know any Tom Petty songs. He says he only knows “Hotel California.” We want to teach him “Free Falling,” but none of us know all the words.

(Caveat): Tom Petty isn’t our tour guide’s real name. It’s Thom Phed, or something similar. He probably got his rock star name from tourists like us.)

The guides have life jackets for us, but not the advertised helmets. I’m glad I’m wearing my bandana. It won’t be the best protection if my head slams into rocks, but it should help with the blazing sun.

It’s two to a kayak except for Superman James who solos. I start out with Diana. After a 10-second tutorial on how to hold a paddle, we push out to sea. Or river, whatever.

The guides soon discover that I don’t know how to paddle. “You don’t know how to paddle,” they tell me. (I maintain that this inability is due to the funkiness of my paddle. Each end of the paddle faces opposite directions.)

Diana is pulled out of my kayak and put in a kayak with Tom Petty. I get the other guide, who doesn’t have a rock star name. My nameless guide sits in the rear of the kayak and does most of the work. Even so, my arm muscles are soon burning with the effort of slicing the paddle through the water.

Luckily we don’t have to paddle continuously. The slow current carries us down many of the river’s stretches. When the river isn’t doing our work, my guide does the work for me. I soon learn that when he says “I paddle,” he’s not inviting me to join him. Decoded, “I paddle” means “Get your damn paddle out of the water so we can actually get somewhere.”

We stop several times along the way, although not at any of the villages the guy at the ticket office said we would explore. Our first stop is thirty minutes in for lunch, eaten on the river’s rocky bank. Lunch for the guides is meaty. Ours is carby: fried rice and baguettes. The guides must have thought we were vegetarians. Or anti-Atkins.

After lunch, we set off again for the cave, and soon arrive at its yawning depths. The two levels of the cave are filled with tourists, and also with Buddhas. Most of the tourists arrive on wooden speedboats.

After the cave, we continue to whiskey village, our final destination and ultimate motivation for all this paddling. My nameless guide says it will take two hours to get to the village, one if we paddle fast. We must paddle really fast, ‘cause we arrive at whiskey village in what seems like even less than an hour.

On the way to the whiskey we see an elephant getting a bath, or more accurately, a dunking. The dunking is done by a small man sitting atop the wrinkled gray beast. This man simply pushes the top of the elephant’s head, and the monstrous mass goes under. The elephant doesn’t seem to mind. After each dunking he simply raises his trunk in the air and sprays lake water.

Three naked children run squealing through the water to our kayaks as we paddle up to the docks of the whiskey village. After acknowledging the hearty welcome, we pull the kayaks aashore and tote them and the paddles up the hill to the van and wait for the whiskey. It comes after a 30-second walk.

The distiller sits outside someone’s house, along with several varieties of the local brew. There’s straight-up, strong clear stuff, sweeter yellow stuff and really sweet, wine-like red stuff. I like the straight-up strong stuff best.

To add to their bite, some of the whiskeys are bottled with poisonous creatures like centipedes, scorpions and snakes. Bear paws, bear penises and other wild animal parts are trapped in bottles of alcohol at a nearby house/business we later visit.

A loom and a few silk goods are also on display in the whiskey village, part of the “weaving and silk making” advertised as part of our tour.

Only 11 hours to Vientiane — try to sleep!

Dinner is Beer Laos, chicken on a stick and sticky rice. Then onto the bus for a restful sleep. Ha. Because of the uncomfortably close quarters, my knees are pressed painfully against the plastic seatback the entire way. The Scandinavian man behind me is assumedly in the same or worse position, because my seat won’t recline.

I give one of my maybe sleeping pills to Lydia and keep the last one as a safety. I don’t need it. I just listen to my iPod and zone in and out of sleep. I awaken during every sharp turn to my head banging against the window or seat back.

We stop at midnight for our free — well, paid-for meal. I am exhausted and not hungry, but buy some cookies anyway, and eating those makes me hungry. I line up for my bowl of noodle soup. Energizing, but I don’t need energy now. We’re only about halfway through our trip and I need to go back to sleep.

We arrive in Vientiane around 6:30 a.m., which makes the bus ride about 11 hours.

10 hours to go in Laos: Time to see those golden stupas and wats

After arriving in Vientiane, we take a tuk-tuk into town and check into a hotel for the day. We have about 10 hours to kill before our night bus to Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.

I get noodle soup and Lao coffee and then walk a really long way to the golden stupa. (Pha That Luang – Laos’ national symbol.) I stop at important looking wats and monuments on the way, like Patuxai, the Laos independence arch. Laos became independent from France in 1949.

Rows of tour buses are idling outside Patuxai, waiting for the wandering hordes of Asians wearing bright, color-coded T-shirts and nametags.

Taking advantage of the swarms of tourists at Patuxai and Pha That Luang are neon vest wearers with bulky cameras dangling from their necks. They are taking pictures of tourists in front of the famous monuments and then selling the tourists the pictures, produced instantaneously on a handheld printer. I don’t know how much the pictures cost because none of the photographers approach me. Maybe I intimidate them, Lydia later suggests. Maybe. I am a white giant.

The stupa isn’t just a stupa – it’s also a museum. But the museum costs money, and isn’t open when I go. “Lonely Planet”” also gave the museum a bad review. Instead of waiting for the museum’s opening, I walk over to a beautifully ornate golden wat. Unfortunately, my camera battery dies just before I can snap a picture.

Back to Cambodia like a true VIP

Now this is a VIP bus. A bus with beds! And pillows and blankets. Two people to a bed. The bed is a bit short for my long limbs, but it’s a bed. Dinner is served on the bus. (Fried rice, bottled water and candy for dessert.) And there is an actual working bathroom on the bus. Amazing. I don’t need any maybe sleeping pills tonight.

Our bus leaves at 8:30 p.m. and we arrive at the Laos-Cambodian border at about 7 a.m. We then transfer to a couple different vans and, finally, the last bus home. (Or, rather, to Phnom Penh.) The travel time from Vientiane to Phnom Penh is 20-some hours.

After a couple days of Peace Corps conferencing and a measly seven-hour bus ride, it truly is home free. It’s good to be back.

EXTRAS:

Interesting hearings/sights on the way:* “Oh my Buddha!” A comment from a young Cambodian woman near the Laos border about our van not starting.* Three to four inch long mole hair! Seen on a man boarding my bus to Kampong Cham. He could braid or pony that hair! It’s the longest mole hair I’ve seen. * A truck piled so high with stuff wrapped under striped plastic that the truck is rocking front to back on its wheel axles. On the way back to Phnom Penh, in Cambodia.

Some facts about Luang Prabang, Laos (from a big ol' factbook): * 700 miles above sea level* UNESCO World Heritage listed (for a wat or somethin'), which means there is a city-wide ban on buses and trucks. * 11:30 p.m. curfew* Luang means great/royal. Prabang means ?

And some facts about Laos (from a local newspaper and a big ol' factual book)

* 1887 - Laos receives French protection from its meddling neighbors * 1945 – Laos casts off its meddling French rulers and becomes independent.* American warplanes dropped about 270 million bombs on Laos between 1964 – 1975, during the Indochine (Vietnam) War.80 million, or 30 percent of those bombs did not explode. 14 of Laos’ 17 provinces and 25 percent of the country’s villages were — and still are — affected by these bombs. 87,231 square kilometers of Laos' 236,800 square kilometers are contaminated by UXOs (unexploded ordinance, in this case, bombs.) About 15 percent of this UXO land has been cleared in the last 12 years.It costs $2,000 U.S. dollars to clear from each hectacre of land.It could take more than 100 years to clear all this bombed land. From 1964 – 2008, 50,000 people fell victim to these bombs. Sixty percent (30,000) of these bomb victims, 40 percent (20,000) were injured. Of the 20,000 of these bomb victims left alive, 13,500 were disabled.U.S. B-52 bombers could drop100 bombs at a time, and often did so during the 580,000 bombing missions the United States undertook upon Laos. The United States dropped planeloads of bombs on Laos day and night for nine years straight. (From 1964 – 1973.)

I started out in Cambodia doing my own laundry. That was back when I lived in the real wilds, down a dirt road in the midst of a dusty village of wood and stone houses. A neighborhood romantically named Handsome Village.

My self-laundering confidence started high. Along with lessons on how to pee while squatting and how to shower with a pan of water, we new Peace Corps volunteers received a “how to wash your clothes in a bowl” demonstration from one of the more weathered volunteers.

Washing clothes without a machine is easy, the volunteer told us. Simply dump your clothes in a large bowl and add water and soap. Remove dirt and dust by rubbing the fabric together with your hands, or by using a scrub brush.

Simple, right? Wrong. My laundry confidence plummeted when I learned, that like many things in life, washing clothes by hand is not as easy as it looks.

Fortunately, my host family was eager to help. A little too eager. Noticing my incompetency, my 17-year-old, pregnant host sister immediately took over my laundry.

I mock protested, insisting I could scrub my own stains. After a few psuedo battles, my host sister relented, and hired me as her assistant. I was assigned underwear duty. Who wants to handwash someone else’s underwear, anyway?

The answer: my former host grandma. That bony old woman would clamber on the eating table, stick her wrinkled brown walnut face into my undie bowl, open her mouth with its few betel-red-stained teeth — and laugh.

Her laugh would summon the other yays (Khmer for grandmas) of Handsome Village. “Come get a load of this barang trying to wash her unmentionables!” the laugh seemed to say.

It was too much for me. I turned mean. I learned how to say “Leave me alone!” in Khmer, and then I said it.

My meanness worked. The old woman and her shaved head came around less, and when she came around, it usually wasn’t to stare at my dirty underwear. It was to stroke my white arms.

I don’t live in Handsome Village anymore. I live at a French orphanage at the opposite end of Cambodia. But the orphanage’s French name is almost as romantic as my former village’s.

My new(er) home is also adorned with lovely gardens filled with trees, bushes and brightly colored flowers, and perfectly behaved, skipping children.

But the orphanage's best feature is hidden from view, in a small room behind a locked door: the wash machine.

The young French man that manages the orphanage told me about the wash machine upon my arrival. He said I could either spend hours a day washing my clothes with my hands or have someone else wash my clothes for me, in the machine. Difficult choice.

I enjoyed five glorious months of machine washing done by someone else. I was simply required to set my hamper full of dirty clothes in front of the machine room. The next day, the hamper would magically return to my house, full of clean, neatly folded clothes.

This system worked wonderfully — until I realized that none of my clothes were actually clean.

I came to this realization during my week in India, with the aid of a bright hotel light that revealed things beyond the capabilities of my weak Cambodian lights.

In India, I saw what I couldn’t see in Cambodia. My whites were gray. My blues were brown. My flowers were mud splats.

I gave up the machine. Wash machines don’t work in Cambodia, many Cambodians told me. The country’s too dusty.

So, I’m back to being intimate with my dust. Once again, I spend several hours a week — sometimes a day — hunched over an oversized plastic bowl full of cold water and soap.

It’s hard work, but at least I can now do the work in the solitude of my bathroom, absent of the prying eyes of an over-curious grandma.

Now I can also admire the flowers on my skirt and the blue of my blouses. My whites never quite returned to white, but, hey, that’s Cambodia. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------NOTE: The contents of this Web site are mine and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace corps. This blog is not an official publication of the Peace Corps or of the United States government.

Cambodians have manners. Cambodian manners are just different than American manners. Way different. Nose picking, for example, is acceptable in Cambodia.

Khmer men (mostly the young dudes) go to great lengths to simplify the booger hunt. Or rather, their nails go to great lengths. Not all their nails — that would be gross. Only one nail — a pinky of course! And sometimes a bonus thumbnail.

When I ask what’s with the girly nails, the possessor is usually silent. He says he can't explain why

his nails are so long, they just are. After further questioning, however, he often points to his nostrils and ear canals and talks about peeling fruit.

My more hygienic host brother claims he doesn't use his two talons for such vulgar purposes. He simply uses the long nails to clean his other, shorter, nails. Of course!

Despite the multiple functions of the overgrown hunks of keratin that seem to live on the hands of every young Cambodian man, I've yet to see a long pinky or thumbnail in action. I should start asking for demonstrations.

Nose and ear picking are just two examples of good Khmer manners. Other examples:

Burping and farting. Mostly heard erupting from men. At dinner tables. No apologies. But women sometimes produce toned-down versions. Again, with no apologies.

Speaking of dinner tables, Khmer people sit on theirs. None of that sitting on chairs nancy-pansy stuff. Good old-fashioned cross-legged Indian style. (And by Indian, I mean American Indian, so not Indian at all. Is Native American still the PC term?)

Or if you wear a sarong like most Cambodian women, table-sitting is done with one leg curled Native-American style and the other bent at the knee with the sole of the foot flat on the table. Cross-legged doesn’t work so well when your legs are bound to each other by a long piece of decorative cloth.

Native-American style also doesn’t work too well — or for too long — if you’re an inflexible Emily. I sit however my giraffe legs feel like bending, and then shift positions once my violin-string muscles start screeching.

My inflexibility created a dinner-sitting revolution at my former host family’s house. My host parents gave me a plastic chair. And, to prevent me from being the only one left out of the cross-legged fun, my host parents gave my host sister her own plastic chair. My host sister was pregnant, so a chair was probably also easier for her and her stomachful of baby. Aside from fidgeting, at the dinner table I also do a lot of reaching into my mouth and spitting out of food. I know both practices are heathenly, but they are also unavoidable in Cambodia — the land of bone-riddled meat.

With its vast collection of bones, chicken is perhaps the most difficult meat to eat in Cambodia. America’s D-cup chicken breasts don’t exist in this country. The chickens here are scrawny, often featherless creatures, with only a thin coat of flesh covering their skeletons.

The bones in chickens aren’t all small, but I have better things to do than spend half an hour detaching a sliver of meat from a bone. Bony hassles have caused me to (mostly) give up eating chicken in Cambodia.

Fish also have a lot of bones, and none of these bones are removed before making it to the breakfast, lunch or dinner tables. (Cambodians eat a lot of fish.) But give up fish? Never! I mostly ignore fish bones, choosing to simply crush them with my teeth and swallow, like the dogs and cats that eat our table scraps. This method results in occasional gum piercings, but who needs healthy gums?

Wusses who don’t eat bones spit or throw them out. My former host family spit and threw bones on the ground, leaving the tasty gifts for the chickens and dogs. My current host family is a bit more civilized about its deboning. My host parents and siblings set bones neatly on the dinner tray for later inclusion in the supper bowl for the cats and dogs. During lunch with the orphans, bones are discarded on the table. They make nice decorations, and when placed on the table's edge, are in a convenient pickup location for the dogs that haunt the cafeteria for handouts.

Answering phones. In Cambodia, it's rude not to answer your cell phone. Eleven consecutive calls from my former host sister helped teach me this lesson. I didn't answer because I was teaching. In America, turning my attention from my students to chat on a hunk of plastic would be rude. In Cambodia, it's expected. Phones aren't turned off during teaching or meetings of any kind. I've seen many a fancy-pants official chat on his phone from the front of an auditorium — during a conference where he is a featured speaker.

Like Americans, Cambodians consider some manners bad. Some examples:

Picking teeth. Not polite. Unless done with a toothpick shielded by a hand in front of the mouth. Then, pick away.

This hand-over-mouth thing is also common when talking, and most frustrating when this talking is in English class. Why the mouth shielding? Most — OK, many — Khmer people have filthy, crooked teeth, so that can't be the reason for concealment. So is it bad breath? A mouth full of food? Whatever the motivator, an invisible muffle mouth doesn’t help ease cross-cultural communication.

Pointing soles of feet toward people. This is a big no-no, especially when monks or Buddha are concerned. Don’t do it! I get scolded whenever my size-13 boats creep too close to the dinner platter. But that scolding is probably about good hygiene, not Buddha.

Women showing their knees, boobs or shoulders. Most Khmer women cover these body parts, and women Peace Corps volunteers were told to do the same. I follow this guideline, but my exhibitionist knees like to expose themselves on bike rides. My teaching skirts and the wind aid and abet this knobby-knee crime.

I haven’t heard (or understood) any complaints about indecent knee sightings other than the usual siren calls of “Barang! Barang!” (Literally, barang means French. Loosely, it means white foreigner.) But before a recent bike ride, a Khmer woman friend imparted a few cautionary words about skirt-biking.

Khmer friend: “You’re wearing that skirt? On your bicycle?”Me: “Yeah. Why?”Khmer friend: “Khmer women wouldn’t do that.”Me: “Why?”Khmer friend: “We’d be afraid that boys would see us.”Me: “I’m a six-foot white girl in Cambodia wearing a bike helmet and safety glasses atop a Western bike. I think boys will see me, regardless of my knees.”

OK, I didn’t say that last part. I probably just growled that I don’t care if boys see my bleached knees. Besides, my knees are hardly the only fashion rule breakers out there. I've seen Cambodian girls attend weddings in butt-length dresses. I've also seen Khmer girls parade down the streets in shorty shorts, and not just in the lawless Phnom Penh.

Speaking of acceptable fashion, in Cambodia, it’s the men who wear the crop tops. These stomach-exposing shirts aren't specifically manufactured for men. They are mostly a do-it-yourself creation. This once-popular U.S. style comes out when it’s hot, which is pretty much all the time in Cambodia.

How to make a crop top:

Step one: Fold your shirt under to sit just below your bra, or where your bra would be if you were wearing one.

Step two: Place hands on hips and strut. Or just stand still.

Step three: Enjoy the wind tickling your abdomen hairs.

Step four: Repeat steps one through three as necessary.

This DIY fashion can be created using any kind of shirt, whether made for the classroom or for playing volleyball with the boys.

Another hot men’s fashion in Cambodia: mole hair! Yep, that's right, mole hair. As in hair growing out of moles. This fashion accessory is hottest when on the face. The longer and curlier the hair, the better.

My co-teacher has a nice-looking hairy mole on his cheek. But I think the hairiest-mole award goes to the mayor of my town. The dark locks sprouting from his cheek mole are so long and luscious that he must condition.

A hairy-mole-less (how do you punctuate that?) Khmer man told me that he wishes he had a hairy mole. Why? Hairy moles are charming, a Khmer woman told me. Too bad I’m not a Khmer man. My body is littered with moles. Regrettably, few of my moles are noticeably hairy, and none of my hairy moles live on my face. Damn. There goes my hairy-mole-farm moneymaker. Rogaine?

Cambodian verbal manners: Bluntness

Cambodians like to tell me about their gentle nature. “That's why we dance so slow," they say. Despite this gentle nature, Cambodians can be extraordinarily blunt. I was warned about this potential rudeness during Peace Corps training. I heard stories of host families telling volunteers they are fat, ugly and stupid. And these families continuing on to tell these volunteers that they are fatter and less beautiful than their host sisters and brothers. I heard these stories, but I didn’t think these stories would become my stories. I was wrong. The bluntness started out as compliments. I was so tall and beautiful, my skin so white and strokeable. The insults (that I understood) didn’t start until three months in, when I moved to my second home in Cambodia.

“You look fat today,” a teacher at school told me. “You look fatter than before,” another Cambodian told me. Rude, right? Not in Cambodia. Cambodians insist that fat is good. Fatness means you have enough money to buy food.

Nice line, but I don’t buy it. I think fat is bad here, as it is in America. Except perhaps Cambodians don't hate and scorn blubber to the same extent as in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

My fat hasn’t been the only victim of Cambodian bluntness. My overall looks have also been verbally assaulted. I'm less beautiful than the stranger’s daughter in the photograph. My looks aren’t as nice as my sister's in the family picture at Niagara Falls. “Your sister is more beautifuler than you,” my 12th grade student tells me.

I would be beautiful, one of my fellow teachers tells me and a group of teachers, if I didn’t wear glasses. Without glasses I may be more beautiful, but I'd also be blind or, according to Peace Corps, have a massive eye infection from my dust and bacteria-coated contacts.

Cambodian bluntness isn’t just targeted at me. It’s for everyone! One of my 12th-grade students asked me who I thought was more beautiful — his girlfriend or his sister — in front of both of the girls in question. I diplomatically answered that both the girls were equally beautiful. He responded by saying he thinks his girlfriend is more beautiful. I guess that’s better than choosing her sister. The ugly sister didn't respond.

My host mom has also been the target of bluntness — harsh bluntness — from her husband, my host dad. She was wearing an especially fetching outfit one night. I told her she was beautiful. “No she’s not,” her husband said. “She’s fat and short.” (He said this in Khmer.) My host mom’s response? Laughter.

The longer I stay in Cambodia, the more often laughter becomes my response, too.

NOTE: The contents of this Web site are mine and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps. This blog is not an official publication of the Peace Corps or of the United States government. é

I visited Mumbai, India, the first week of February. Here's what happened...

Day One: Touring with the locals

Before setting off for the day, my dad and I have (ridiculously overpriced) drinks at the Taj Mahal — the hotel, not the mausoleum. Once hydrated, we stroll over to meet my mom at the Gateway of India, the enormous stone castle-looking archway built in 1911 to welcome King George V and Queen Mary and later used as a landing place for other ruling Brits.

The Gate is the meeting spot for the Local Tour, led by “Mumbai Magic” tour company. When I hear the word “tour” I imagine a horde of sweaty fannypackers. I am pleasantly surprised. Our tour is only the three of us — plus two guides — young freshmen women at a local university. Following their lead, we traverse the city core, gawping at old churches, hotels, police stations and schools — many built during the endless British rule.

We also see Gandhi’s crash-pad-turned-museum. Gandhi lived at this house (which belonged to his friend) whenever he was in Mumbai, between the years of 1917 and 1934. The Great Soul (that’s what Gandhi’s first name, Mahatma, means) even staged a four-day fast at this house. The fast was an attempt to restore peace to the city.

I learn a lot about the famous big-eared Indian while reading blurbs and looking at pictures and dioramas of his life. I also pick up some great advice: “Be truthful, gentle and fearless.” Thanks, Gandhi, I’ll try!

Outside Gandhi’s house I’m harassed by a lady trying to force on me a fistful of brightly colored, mirrored purses. Thanks, but no thanks, lady. Later, while strolling down a trinket street, I am accosted by several men who shove small boxes under my nose while exclaiming, “saffron.”

The liveliest sight of the tour is Dhobi Ghats, the sprawling outdoor laundromat for Mumbai’s dirty linens (and other materials). Somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 (what’s 5,000 give or take) men beat, rub and scrub the dirt from these clothes for a daily wage of $2 or $3. That’s a wage we often hear throughout our stay. These men also live at the ramshackle laundromat, another of the city’s slums.

We see all these sights by foot, taxi, bus and train. Sprinting across the chaotic, honk-filled streets gets my blood pumping, but the train proves even livelier. As people cram into the compartment like cattle into a slaughterhouse, our guides simply tell us to “push!” I stand rigid and clutch my purse, trying to avoid relaxing into the bumps and lumps of the surrounding bodies molded to me like clay.

After escaping the non-free-range slaughterhouse that is the train, one of our guides turns to me and says, “The train wasn’t very crowded today.”

Despite the crowds, we’re lucky to avoid being victimized by the urchins who throw rocks at people visible from the train doors. Supposedly (according to an article in a Mumbai newspaper) the rocks are aimed at hands, and are attempts to knock cell phones to the ground. But, of course the urchins don’t always have the best aim. During our stay, we read about a lady who is hit in the face by one of these errant rocks.

Day Two: Slumming it

(Sorry, not allowed to take pictures)

Today we’re booked for a slum tour, led by Reality Tours. Despite yesterday’s stellar tour experience, I can’t help but dread the horde of fannypackers. Surely they’re out there, and surely they’ll be crammed into a minivan with us while we roar through Dharavi, our (and Hollywood’s) slum of choice.

But I’m again pleasantly surprised. No fannypackers — at least not the obnoxious kind — and no minivan. Instead, there are five of us seated comfortably in a smallish SUV. And we don’t roar through the slums. We walk through their dark, winding alleyways, following closely behind our Indian tour guide. This guide talks to the slumdwellers and receives permission to gape at their homes. No pictures are allowed.

We don’t actually see inside anyone’s home, but the narrow, narrow, narrow alleys just outside the doorways give us an idea of the size of these dwellings. The dimensions, our guide tells us, are about the size of a SUV. My mom says she spotted TVs, and, judging from the wires that dangle like vines from the stone walls, some of the homes have electricity, some of the time.

Although we don’t see inside any of the homes, we see much of the inner workings of Dharavi, which is pretty much a self-sufficient country. As we scramble through the alleyways, ducking under electrical wires and scuttling over crumbling concrete and trash, we bop in and out of many rooms and climb rickety ladders to the rooftops. Some of the sights: Men and women spinning perfect clay pots on hand-spun wheels. Women transport the dried (assumedly heavy as hell) clay pots atop their heads. And not just one pot at a time, either.Men sewing sequins on intricately patterned dress shirts.A man dunking fabric in muddy brown liquid (henna) to make batiked apparel. Several sheets swirling with his detailed designs hang from the rooftops far above him.The many-faceted recycling productions: Workers breaking apart toys and other plastic scraps, sifting through plastic bits the size of confetti, washing out old oil and paint cans to sell back to the manufacturers, reassembling scrap metal into car machinery.Women rolling out dough for papadums and laying out the flattened dough to dry in the sun.Two schoolrooms where the young, young, young kids are learning English. The uniformed brown munchkins assail us with a chorus of “Hi”s, and scramble to shake our hands. They have been learning English since age 3. Their playground, and the playground of the surrounding slumdwellers, is a trash heap — literally.The public toilet I use is surprising clean. A squat toilet with ceramic footholders — fancy!We soon see where the output from this public toilet goes — into a nearby ditch flowing with raw sewage. On a positive side, we later discover that contrary to what our tour guide tells us,

Mumbai’s sewage is treated before dumping into the surrounding waters.

After the sewage sightings, the tour’s over and we head to lunch. The spot? The famous Leopold Café, founded in 1871 and one of the sites besieged by gun and grenade explosions during Mumbai’s 2008 terrorist attacks.

Day Five: Tigers and lions and school boys!

Tigers and lions and grubby school boys, oh my! These are the sights my mom and I see during our safari at Sanjay Gandhi National Park. The tiger is a fancy white one, in a cage. The lions are two or three of the standard, maned variety, lounging just outside our bus.

Our bus’ course is not through grassy wilds, but over a concrete road that travels in a loop — a short loop. Despite the lack of excitement, the safari is inexpensive, and for a good cause (the continuation of non-exciting safaris?) It’s also fun cramming next to another breed of animals inside the bus — dirt-streaked school boys.

Buddha caves

Better known as the Kanheri Caves, these towering rock formations were carved from the first century BCE to the ninth century CE. The caves, many no more than shallow cells with flat rock beds, were inhabited by Buddhist monks. We see them by following behind our tour guide, who is insistent on speeding our progress onto bigger and better caves.

Lounging near the caves are several lovey dovey Indian couples, plus a pack of wild monkeys.

Day Seven: Juhu Beach

Juhu Beach, on the Arabian Sea, is the most famous beach in Mumbai. The stretch of beach is famous for its street food, including an assortment of fried Indian goodies, plus familiar American junk like cotton candy, corn on the cob and ice cream.

Contrary to our expectations, the beach isn’t crowded when we arrive at about 4 p.m. on Saturday, but the people start pouring onto the sands by the time we leave about an hour later. We see only a couple other groups of white people. This makes us prime targets for the beach’s many junk hawkers. Do we want pictures of people we don’t know having fun on the beach? No? How about bracelets or enormous neon yellow balloon clubs?

We are also prime targets for beggars. Baby-toting money-seeking women have been stalking my dad since we arrived. Leaving the beach, one woman-and-baby-duo chases his tall, red-headed figure down the street. Because he makes the mistake of making eye contact or even talking to the money grubbers, they hound him until he eventually outstrides them.

Although I don’t even look at the beggars, I am not immune to their hassles. At one point during our stay, a group of school kids trails me down the sidewalk, poking my back with a stick while demanding money. I don’t give them any money, but yell at them to scram, a command which they thankfully obey.

Back to Cambodia in a sardine can

My flight from Mumbai to Bangkok doesn’t leave until 2 a.m. Still, in true Jet Airways India fashion, a meal is served. I don’t stick around Bangkok this time, but hop a five-hour bus to the Cambodian border. Then it’s a 90-minute taxi ride from the border to my house.

Four people are sandwiched in the back of the small taxi, with two in front. One of the men in back with me is an Israeli here on vacation. “I feel like a sardine, not a person!” he exclaims. I tell him this carload is nothing, and that I have been in taxis with two or more people sitting in the driver’s seat.

As if on cue, the taxi stops and a man crunches in next to our driver. “I can’t believe this,” the Israeli says, mouth agape. “Never have I seen this…” I just laugh. I’m glad to be back in Cambodia, even though the increased humidity and dustiness is immediately apparent.

Cavorting about Mumbai and taking in its varied sights is fascinating, but it’s not a city in which I ever want to spend much time in. Too many people! And the stark contrast between rich and poor, mansions and slums is unsettling.

Still, my opinions of the city aren’t as poisoned as my dad’s. He declared Mumbai a “miserable place” that he never wants to see again. I’m not in a hurry to see Mumbai again, but the rest of India? Bring it on!

NOTE: The contents of this Web site are mine and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps. This blog is not an official publication of the Peace Corps or of the United States government.

Why Mumbai?

I visited Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, the first week of February. I’ve always wanted to go to India, and conveniently, Mumbai was the site of this year’s “Tall Buildings' Conference,” which my engineer dad regularly attends. My mom was tagging along for the tourist opportunities, and I decided to join my long-lost parents. (I hadn’t seen them for six months).

Mumbai: Bling vs. slums

Swarming with some 14 million people, Mumbai is one of the most populated cities in the world. Mumbai is India’s largest city, and considered the country’s financial capital. Mumbai is also home to Bollywood, India’s uber-productive Hollywood, plus most of India’s TV networks and publishing houses.

All these money-making industries mean money-making people ­— lots of money-making people, making lots of money. Assumedly, these moneymakers live and work in the gliltzy towers and mansions bejeweling the city. Mumbai is also studded with an abundance of monstrous hotels for its moneymaking tourists. (My parents and I stayed in two of these urban castles.)

Despite all the bling, there’s also a dark side to Mumbai — a well-illuminated dark side. Stroll near many of these glitzy buildings and you’ll see this dark side, in the form of beggars and scamps, outdoor sleepers and street urchins (Mumbai slang for young hoodlums). This dark side is made up of those left behind by Mumbai’s speedy growth.

Sixty percent of Mumbai’s population lives in slums. What’s a slum? According to Webster, it’s “a populous area with very poor living conditions.” In Mumbai, make that very populous.

Dharavi, the slum featured in “Slumdog Millionaire,” is barely larger than half a square mile, but crammed with maybe 800,000 people — a figure that is growing by the day. But despite its heft, Dharavi is hardly Mumbai’s only slum. It’s simply the city’s largest legal slum — (whatever that means).

Nearly innumerable other slums make up Mumbai’s dark, dingy side. These slums, recognizable by their corrugated tin roofs and collapsing bodies, aren’t tucked out of sight. They’re everywhere. They line the highways, invade the sidewalks and even crouch next to all that glitz I mentioned earlier.

With many Mumbaikers making about $2 a day, it’s no wonder so many live in slums. They want to live in slums. An Indian friend of mine told me a shocking but true story: In an attempt to eliminate slums, the government built subsidized housing for slumdwellers.

Nice idea, but unfortunately the government didn’t create any conditional oversight for the new housing, and shortly after moving in, the compound’s new, former slum-dwelling residents simply sold their new units and returned to the slums. After all, many Mumbai slums are outfitted with TVs, electricity, water and sparkling clean public toilets. Perhaps slumming it in Mumbai isn’t always a hard-knock life.

But slum dwelling is surely not a desirable life, either — for the slumdwellers or the government. That’s why my dad and more than 1,000 other engineers and construction experts from around the world visited Mumbai for this year’s “Tall Buildings’ Conference.” They came not to ooh and ahh over the city’s tall buildings, but to help Mumbaikers pull the plug on the city’s ever-expanding slum life.

My dad spent much of the week in seminars and on field trips. Meanwhile, my mom and I hit the streets, eager to explore this sprawling city of glitz and glamor, poverty and peril.

The way there:

I fly to Calcutta, India from Bangkok, Thailand. Bangkok is about six hours north of my Cambodian town, Serei Sophon/Sisophon/Svay in Banteay Meanchey province — which I still don’t know how to pronounce. Getting to Bangkok takes a one-hour car ride, walking, a short tuk-tuk ride — a tuk tuk is a cart pulled by a motorcycle — and a five-hour bus ride, plus more walking and a taxi ride. Whew!

First impressions of Bangkok:

Wow! Concrete! So much concrete! So many sturdy houses, and an actual highway — with medians — painted medians! Black and white striped. Overpasses and underpasses and bridges, oh my! Where are all the garbage-strewn dirt roads?

The grassy median dividing the highway to Bangkok is lined with billboard-sized photos of the Thai king smiling down on his lowly commuting subjects. With his glasses and dainty features, the Thai king doesn’t look like a king, but like a meek office worker. Where is his crown and purple fur robe? He looks nothing like the bloated, ruddy-complexioned royalty of yore, with their glittering jewels and fur pelts. Well, at least the European royalty of yore.

7-Elevens everywhere! On every corner, like Starbucks in Seattle. But at least the food at Starbucks is edible. The food in the Bangkok 7-Elevens is terrible. Thai junk food crammed next to packaged brownies and Twinkie-like creations. No unsalted or unsugared food here.

Urban Outfitters hostel

I stay at a hostel that looks like it was designed by Urban Outfitters. Outside, beyond the wooden hipster deck, lies a small zen garden and pool. Inside: funky cube chairs and couches. Cutesy robotic cartoon characters are imprinted on the bathroom and shower doors.

Seen-it-all-before outdoor night market

For dinner that night, I eat Phad Thai that tastes like it was made in a mall food court, except worse. Is it bad because it’s served in a touristy area? This touristy area is an outdoor night market that I am sent to by one of my hostel’s smiling staffers. He sends me here after learning that I’m in Bangkok for only a night and not interested in clubbing or “Thai massages.”

The night market’s mazes of good-stocked tables spans several streets. But I don’t buy anything. Many of the goods were probably made in Thailand, yet, despite never coming to Thailand, I’ve seen many of the items before. Thanks, globalization and world trade! I already have a beaded elephant purse (bought in Cambodia), and the elephant statues, landscape paintings and screen-print tee shirts that read “Little Miss Sunshine” are nothing new.

I wander by each of the stalls anyway, pretending to admire the goods in the detached but interested air of a window shopper. After completing the maze, I head back to UO hostel, where I experience the stay’s only downside: a screeching, venomous mosquito determined to keep me awake. The needle-nosed bugger attacks the instant I remove my head or arms from the too-hot comforter. Ultimately, exhausted, I choose sweat over bites.

Breakfast help from a transsexual

My flight to India leaves before breakfast at the UO hostel. So I find my own. Food is for sale at several nearby stalls, but I see nothing but meats on sticks. I try asking a seller if she sells anything besides meats on sticks. I ask her in English and Khmer, and she speaks only Thai.

Then help appears. This help is wearing a barely-butt covering pastel pink dress pasted above stiletto heels. She smiles and out comes a deep-throated man voice. And she calls me sir. “What do you want, sir?” she asks me. “Breakfast,” I say. She smiles again and leads me to another meat-on-a-stick stall. After thanking her for her guidance, I decline, and retreat to 7-Eleven for a brownie and can of Nescafe.

Thanks to my nonexistent sense of direction, once outside 7-Eleven’s automatic doors, I am hopelessly lost. Fortunately, I again stumble upon the friendly (assumed) transsexual, who points the way to my hostel.

Flying next to Blanket Man

Two breakfasts later (on the same morning) I am on the plane to Calcutta, sitting next to a man wearing a blanket. It’s white, and gridded like a large dishcloth — a really large dishcloth. The blanket’s tasseled edges drape my seatbelt buckle, and I have to reach under the blanket’s folds to adjust the volume on the movie I’m watching. I don’t talk to the blanket-wearer on the flight, but am tempted to shiver and then ask to borrow his blanket.

The movie I’m watching is Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds.” An explanation for the misspelling is probably given in the movie, but frankly, I soon get bored and stop watching. Because of the poor sound quality always present on airplanes, I had stopped listening soon after the movie started. Still, it’s Tarantino, and I hope to catch the end of the movie on my next two-hour plane ride.

Unfortunately, the next flight is from India to India, and features a measly two Hollywood movies drowning in a sea of Bollywood movies. Too tired to enjoy an overly dramatic non-English sing-a-long, I end up watching a Richard Gere movie that looks like it was shot in the '80s.

Hello, Calcutta. Goodbye Calcutta.

Despite landing there, I don’t see much of Calcutta. Only the dinky airport armed with rifle-bearing soldiers and the parking lot. In the parking lot I have the sensation of stepping into a bygone era. The lot is filled with miniature black and white cars that look like they were made several decades ago. I later learn they’re Fiats, and are the official taxis of Mumbai. I also learn that the Fiat contract will soon expire, to be replaced by a new contract with some other car company.

In Calcutta, I also see a construction site, which I almost become trapped in during my search for the domestic airport. After directional help from a couple construction workers, I finally end up in Calcutta’s other dinky airport.

Killing time with the non-AIDS-patient German

I have a couple hours to kill before the flight to Mumbai. The minutes easily evaporate while talking to a 60-something German man with a pitted face and a fannypack. He’s on his way to Goa for some sort of medicinal treatment. His jaundiced, sallow skin and scrawny frame give him the look of an AIDS patient, but he insists that the Goa visit is a simple, routine general health procedure. Maybe his AIDS look is simply the look one receives after 28 years in India. He says he spent maybe a decade of those years meditating in the Himalayas.

The non-AIDS-patient German tells me about his past lives over paper cups of chai tea, which he calls India’s national drink. He also calls Bangkok a “terrible city”— “the city that never sleeps.” (I thought that was New York...) Maybe Bangkok doesn’t sleep in the section where he stayed — in a $5 windowless box where the partiers and prostitutes roam. But the city definitely slept in my section, despite the perseverance of my friend, the mosquito.

Although I admittedly didn’t see much of Bangkok, I didn’t see much to refute the German’s scathing critique. Like the wares at the all-night market and the omnipresent 7-Elevens, the city seemed to be constructed of tired sights I’d seen many times before.

I don’t sit next to the German on the flight to Mumbai, and I'm not in the mood to talk to my seatmate, so I have only the boring Richard Gere for company. Fortunately, it’s another measly two-hour flight complete with delicious Indian food.

Waiting, and finally settling, in Mumbai

I eat still more — yet less delicious — Indian food during the four–hour wait for my parents. This long wait is outside — in the airport’s only waiting area. Although it’s nine at night, it’s India, so it’s not cold. But also because it’s India, there are mosquitoes, and their bloodthirsty attacks cause me to spend much of the wait cowering on a stone bench with my fleece wrapped around my bare feet. Of course I didn’t pack any socks — need I remind you it’s India?

Many mosquito bites later, my parents finally emerge from the airport’s open glass doors, and we hitch a cab to our swanky hotel — supposedly Mumbai’s finest. We unexpectedly get upgraded to a suite — honeymoon style — which further ups the swank. I have to sleep on a too-short cot, but hey, we have a killer view of the boardwalk, see-through (sexy?) doors to the shower and toilet, and constant attention from the hotel’s crew of “maám”ers and “sir”ers. Example: “Would the maáms and sir like their free welcome massage now? No?" Five minutes later… “How about now?”

To be continued...

NOTE: The contents of this Web site are mine and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps. This blog is not an official publication of the Peace Corps or of the United States government.

wow. how does five months go so fast? seems like yesterday that i was learning how to take a shower by dumping a plastic saucepan of water over my head; wash my clothes in a large metal bowl; and unloose my bowels without the comforts of a seat, toilet paper or flusher.

and now here i am, in cambodia, doing all of these things with ease. especially the washing clothes bit, which gets done in a machine by someone else. this someone else - a khmer girl who works at the french orphanage where i live - even neatly fold my clothes and returns them in a hamper. way easier than my life even in the so-called prosperous us of a! my life post-living with the parents, anyway.

at the orphanage, i live in a house reserved for french visitors. these visitors are either members of the NGO that runs the joint, or they individually sponsor one of the kids who lives at the orphanage or in one of the surrounding villages. or sometimes these visitors stay at the orphanage while providing free services for the kids, like dentistry and acupuncture.

so, back to the accommodations at my house. er, i mean, the guesthouse. or maybe penthouse. penthouse, because in addition to the laundress, there's a toilet seat in one of the four bathrooms. in cambodia, a toilet seat is a giant stride along the path to the lap of luxury. other strides: electricity (i got it!), western stove (got it!) (cold) running water (got it! .) and ... that's all the attainable luxuries i can think of.

o, maybe a fridge. (don't got it, although came close to getting it.) the french dude who helps run the orphanage told me a french NGO lady requested a fridge for her week's visit to cambodia. said french dude then asked me if i would use the fridge enough to justify the expense. an honest kind of gal - and a lazy, non-cooking kinda gal - i said no. so no fridge for me. i don't miss it.

i don't miss much here in my cambodian penthouse - except my lovely friends and relatives, of course! after much confusion, i have adapted to the workings - or, more often, non-workings -of life in cambodia. my slow-movingness (what an ugly non-word!) fits nicely into cambodia's culture of waiting and waiting and more waiting for things to happen.

take my high school, for example. classes started maybe a month behind schedule. that's how long it took the school director to create a teaching schedule. and that schedule still changed several more times, resulting in multiple classes scheduled for the same classroom and many teachers simply failing to show up. there are no substitute teachers in cambodia and no system for telling the students when there's no class, so when their teacher doesn't show up, the students usually just spend the typical two hours of a cambodian class sitting and waiting.

after a month of sitting and waiting with the students and observing the occasional six or so english teachers at my school, i went the easy way out and selected one teacher as my co-teacher. this fine gentleman was the same teacher originally assigned to me. maybe next year i'll let one of the other teachers experience the joy of teaching with me.

o, that's what i'm doing in cambodia, by the way. teaching english at a high school. as a volunteer with the peace corps, which is a branch of the u.s. government, but not related to the war corps. at least not yet anyway.

i teach grades 10, 11 and 12. i teach 16 hours a week, which leaves me with oodles of free time. (please don't disclose this secret to the hordes of cambodians demanding i teach english to them and everyone they know.)

i surrendered to some of these demanding hordes, and now teach english to three groups:

1. "all" of the teachers at the high school and the staffers at the orphanage (this "all" quickly dwindled to a measly three students: all staffers at the orphanage.)

2. the high-school-age kids who live at the orphanage.

3. the under-high-school-age kids who live at the orphanage. (this teaching is in the form of english songs.)

so plenty of english teaching. i like the game-playing part of english teaching, but not the grammar teaching part. probably cause i don't know any of english's tight-ass grammar rules. i don't know WHY english is the way it is, it just is, ok? fortunately, my high school co-teacher is a grammar stud. so he teaches the students the whos and whoms while i teach how to "put your right leg in and your right leg out, do the hokey pokey and turn yourself about."

when i'm not teaching english, i'm probably sleeping, eating or being harassed by bands of youngsters demanding i draw, race or play catch with them. (i initiated all of these activities, but that doesn't mean i want to engage in these activities ever again.)

or i'm learning khmer, the language of cambodia. i have a teacher who visits my house six hours a week to educate me in the subtleties of the language. these subtleties are currently restricted to mere speaking and listening, since i'm not ready to go anywhere near the crazy loop-de-loop of the khmer script. maybe next year, when i teach with more than one teacher, learn french and wash my own clothes.

NOTE: The contents of this Web site are mine and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps. This blog is not an official publication of the Peace Corps or of the United States government.