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Angkor Wat

- March 21, 2006 - - -

At some point during the four days I was in Seam Reap I emailed on of my friends the following, which she found utterly hilarious: "I can honestly say I have never been this hot or even close to this hot ever in my life. Right now it's about 8 pm and I'm sitting with a fan blowing on me and that does nothing to stop the sweat pouring off of me. It's hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot." Which, aside from Angkor itself remains my overwhelming impression of the place.

I have since read in several places that mid March to mid April is the worst time to be in Seam Reap heat wise, but then again I never have been much for planning and that's what you get when you don't plan. So yes, it was hot. Really really hot. Think of Phoenix in the summer and then turn the humidity knob to the Spinal Tap favorite and you'll be in the neighborhood. - -But if it's going to be hot, well you might as well embrace it. We eschew air conditioning (why tease yourself?) and make it a point to do any walking in the heat of the day. Perverse though it may sound it's not without reason, particularly in tourist mecca's like Seam Reap where you can generally have the sites to yourself at those hours since no one else is crazy enough to go out at one in the afternoon. Including the Cambodians who, like the Laos and Thai, generally spend the hours of noon to two sitting in the shade under fans doing as little as humanly possible. The heat of the day is the way forward, trust me, but in Seam Reap we took it to another level by throwing in dehydration, hangovers and no sleep. It may not be the key to longevity if Benjamin Franklin is to be believed, but for Angkor Wat I firmly believe it's the way to do it. Or not.

I have since read that roughly half a million people a year visit Angkor Wat. That first evening we decided to see just how tourist filled Angkor was by heading to the most popular sunset temple, Phnom Bakheng, to watch the sunset. There were a lot of tourists at Angkor Wat. Thousands of them. And that was just at one temple. Thus was hatched the plan. See Angkor in the heat of the day. Yes it will be hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot. But hopefully empty. What we were not counting on was the sudden appearance of Rob and Jules.

After splashing out of a lovely dinner at a posh hotel, the three of us were innocently walking around Seam Reap looking for a spot to have a drink when all the sudden I looked up to see a strange man shaking hands and hugging Matt. After traveling for a while the appearance of random people you know is not all that odd, and in fact we had even heard Matt mention that some of his friends were in the area. We had even heard a few stories, particularly about Rob. Debi and I briefly discussed whether or not we ought to fade away and let friends from home catch up. It's one thing to run into people you have traveled with, that happens a good bit, but it's rare to have visitors from home. After conferring once or twice we decided that what we had here was a beautiful opportunity to hear hilarious stories about Matt from two of the people that knew him best. And Rob did not disappoint, he is a master storyteller, particularly the embarrassing sort of stories that we wanted to hear. And while I decided I would not repeat any of them here, I do have a couple questions for you Matt… what were you planning to do with the toilet? How did you get a large tree into the room? And why of all things a ski jacket?

Anyway we stayed up far too late, drank far to many beer Lao and eventually decided that since sunrise was just around the corner anyway we might as well stay up all night and catch sunrise at Angkor Wat. We started at Angkor Wat, which in spite of the row after row of coaches parked out front, didn't feel as crowded as it was. I went in briefly, but did not spend too much time exploring. I went back outside and made a few quick photos and then lay down on a stone wall and watched the onslaught of temple goers heading inward.

I was feeling a bit grumpy by the time we headed to Angkor Thom and Bayon. Our tuk-tuk driver had put me in a foul mood. Generally speaking the people of Southeast Asia are the nicest and warmest I've met; unless they happen to be tuk-tuk drivers, the majority of whom can choke on diesel fumes for all I care. Our tuk-tuk driver started out nice and friendly and then things went downhill when he found out we didn't want to spend two hours inside Angkor Wat. Apparently he had agreed to another fare thinking that we would be in the temple for the standard amount of time. Unfortunately for him, this was not part of our plan. And this is the thing I hate about guides and drivers, you never get your experience, you get theirs. Eventually after arguing a bit, I simply walked away and let Matt use his diplomatic touch. I was all for the plan I used frequently in India—smile, jump out without paying and move on to the next tuk-tuk.

I snapped to for Ta Prohm, which was the one temple I really wanted to see. Ta Prohm is the least restored, most overgrown of all the Angkor Temples and I was looking forward to seeing it. As I wandered about Ta Prohm I couldn't shake the feeling that it all seemed somehow familiar to me. I started half thinking maybe I was getting in touch with a former life as a 700 AD Khmer priest when I overheard someone saying that Ta Prohm is where they filmed the first Tomb Raider movie. I've never seen the movie, but I did once for about a month get highly addicted to the game. I must confess to Shirley, that I really wanted to do some crazy kicking back flip combination move that would unlock all the cool weapons and find myself suddenly in possession of the grenade launcher, which was, in the context of the game, my favorite and highly overkill means of getting rid of the pesky bats that drain your energy bars.

The real Ta Prohm has no bats, nor sadly, any sign of Angelina Jolie (though Cambodia is missing a small child; if anyone happens to run into her maybe mention it). It may not have been the religious experience it's builders envisioned but I felt strangely connected to it nevertheless, if only through a video game.

The Angkor Temples are difficult to describe. For one thing all the temples are different and while they have common threads, such as sandstone blocks, they vary quite a bit in styles and even religion. The temples were built by various rulers of the Khmer Empire between 800-1400 CE during which time the principle religion was Hinduism. Thus the temples bear some resemblance to those I've seen in India, with bas-reliefs depicting Hindu mythology as well as the various exploits of kings and armies, but the architecture is unique and utilizes massive sandstone blocks. They are also all in varying conditions. Many have been or are being restored. Others are still overgrown to the extent that it's difficult to tell whether the creeper figs (remember creeper figs? They're back) are holding up the walls or the walls are holding up the fig trees. I actually enjoyed the temples that were in various states of disrepair as they had more of a sense of history about them. After all one doesn't really expect buildings over a thousand years old to be in that good of shape, especially in this climate.

But restoration seems to be the wave of the future. I for one hope they don't take it too far. However if they are going to take it too far, I have a suggestion. If they are going to restore the temples to "former grandeur" they may as well take the next step and improve upon them slightly. And what you may ask would I suggest as an improvement? Simple, the same thing I want every time I stand on top of something—zip lines. Think of it, you climb to the top of Angkor Thom or Angkor Wat, you don't want to climb down, the reward is in the uphill; the downhill is just a necessity, or in the in case of Angkor Wat, vaguely dangerous. Zip lines are the way forward. Clip on and away you go. Angkor Wat is only ten years from being Disneyland anyway, might as well get started with the rides.

After falling asleep in the back of the tuk-tuk a second time we decided that perhaps skipping sleep, while adding a vaguely hallucinatory element to the temples, was maybe not the best way to see them. We went home and slept the remainder of the day. That evening over dinner we decided that tomorrow would be full on, none of this stopping at noon to get out of the heat crap. We set off just after dawn and did not return until after sunset. I climbed up and down so many temples I lost track of which were which, though truthfully I don't think it ever mattered to me. I am not a historian nor am I a temple connoisseur. Angkor Wat is a grand experience, but describing it seems tedious. There are a whole lot of limestone blocks, vines, moss and carvings. At its pinnacle it must have been quite a things to behold. But now it exists much like an echo, it gets inside you and bounces about in some way you can't quite figure out. We spent the entire day dragging our grumpy and very reluctant tuk-tuk driver all over the place, not in the usual order, we just glance at the map and went here, then there, then back to here then… it was great, I've never enjoyed temples so much as when we sat in the shade of a pillar atop, well I could look up the name I suppose, but it really doesn't matter. We sat in the shade of a pillar and looked down on the courtyard below and passed long periods of time in total silence praying for the occasional puff of wind the might make you temporarily feel like it was just hot, instead of hot hot hot.

Later in the evening we went back to Angkor Wat proper to watch the sunset which was this time quite nice and not too many tourists about. I climbed up to the top and spent a good while dodging security guards who were trying to get everyone out before the sunset. I wanted to be up there to watch the sun actually set. Luckily the shadows deepen around then and with a bit of walking in carefully timed circles and sliding into darkened corners, I was able to pull it off. Eventually I wandered back out to the courtyard to find Matt and Debi passing a few surprised security guards on the way. If you planned ahead and brought a pillow you could probably spend the night up there. If you wanted to that is.

Like the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat is, despite the hype, a pretty amazing monument. Its architecture is based around Hindu mythology with the five towers representing the peaks of Mount Meru the center of the universe (think of Meru as the Mt. Olympus of Hindu cosmology). The walls surrounding the temple are meant to represent the mountains at the edge of the world and the moat symbolizes the oceans beyond. Naturally this sort of embedded architectural meaning extends down to the smallest levels as well. The Entire wall of the inner temple is lined with various bas-reliefs that tell the story of Hinduism which one archeologist called the greatest linear stone carvings in the world. It's no wonder that everywhere you go in Cambodia there's a picture of Angkor Wat, from the flag to a can of beer.

But that said, I think the best temple is actually outside the immediate area of Angkor. About sixty kilometers northeast of Angkor lies the temple of Beng Melea. Not only has it not been restored at all but the Khmer Rouge helped the forces of nature out a bit. What remains is a truly Indian Jones, buried in the jungle, sort of adventure that could awaken the amateur archeologist in even the most jaded of temple visitors. Beng Melea is also a sprawling large temple which covers over one square kilometer. As with Ta Prohm, Beng Melea is overrun by vegetation, giant piles of crumble stone are now buried beneath the descending roots of fig trees and the walls that still stand are spider webbed with roots and vines. There are very few carvings or bas-reliefs. Our guide claimed that when the temple was active it would have been covered in painted frescos and carvings, but the jungle and rain have claimed their own. Beng Melea was constructed before much of Angkor and may in fact have been a sort of prototype effort so it has a rough around the edges feel to it. At the time of its construction, Beng Melea sat on the crossroads of several major highways that ran to Angkor, Koh Ker, Preah Vihear (in northern Cambodia) and northern Vietnam. Now Beng Melea is quite removed from any crossroads and to get there required the longest tuk-tuk ride ever—something like two hours each way. I ended up thinking that perhaps a compromise is best, let Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom and the other temples be restored, but leave some, Ta Prohm and Beng Melea, the way they are, where they can continue to be slowly consumed by the jungle if only to remind us that while we made build epic monuments, the forces of decay always win in the end.

- - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/angkor-wat.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/angkor-wat.html deleted file mode 100644 index b9c4514..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/angkor-wat.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,346 +0,0 @@ - - - - - Angkor Wat - by Scott Gilbertson - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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Angkor Wat

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Angkor Wat, Cambodia

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- March 21, 2006 - -

At some point during the four days I was in Seam Reap I emailed on of my friends the following, which she found utterly hilarious: “I can honestly say I have never been this hot or even close to this hot ever in my life. Right now it’s about 8 pm and I’m sitting with a fan blowing on me and that does nothing to stop the sweat pouring off of me. It’s hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot.” Which, aside from Angkor itself remains my overwhelming impression of the place.

I have since read in several places that mid March to mid April is the worst time to be in Seam Reap heat wise, but then again I never have been much for planning and that’s what you get when you don’t plan. So yes, it was hot. Really really hot. Think of Phoenix in the summer and then turn the humidity knob to the Spinal Tap favorite and you’ll be in the neighborhood. - -But if it’s going to be hot, well you might as well embrace it. We eschew air conditioning (why tease yourself?) and make it a point to do any walking in the heat of the day. Perverse though it may sound it’s not without reason, particularly in tourist mecca’s like Seam Reap where you can generally have the sites to yourself at those hours since no one else is crazy enough to go out at one in the afternoon. Including the Cambodians who, like the Laos and Thai, generally spend the hours of noon to two sitting in the shade under fans doing as little as humanly possible. The heat of the day is the way forward, trust me, but in Seam Reap we took it to another level by throwing in dehydration, hangovers and no sleep. It may not be the key to longevity if Benjamin Franklin is to be believed, but for Angkor Wat I firmly believe it’s the way to do it. Or not.

Crowds at Phnom Bakheng, Angkor Cambodia Three day passes to Angkor Wat can be purchased starting at 5pm in the evening and that evening does not count as one of the three days. I mentioned this to someone recently and they seemed a little surprised. “You spent three days at a temple?” Angkor Wat is, yes, a temple, but it’s not the only temple. Angkor, as the general area is known, contains more than 100 stone temples in all, and is all that remains of the grand religious, social and cultural seat of the Khmer Empire whose other buildings — palaces, public buildings, and houses — were built of bamboo and are long since decayed and gone. Angkor Wat itself is the largest religious structure in the world (Though I suppose if you wanted to get technical, Animists, Transcendentalists, Pagans and any of the Goddess/Nature religions have the worlds largest religious site, since the whole world is a religious site in those religions).

After splashing out of a lovely dinner at a posh hotel, the three of us were innocently walking around Seam Reap looking for a spot to have a drink when all the sudden I looked up to see a strange man shaking hands and hugging Matt. After traveling for a while the appearance of random people you know is not all that odd, and in fact we had even heard Matt mention that some of his friends were in the area. We had even heard a few stories, particularly about Rob. Debi and I briefly discussed whether or not we ought to fade away and let friends from home catch up. It’s one thing to run into people you have traveled with, that happens a good bit, but it’s rare to have visitors from home. After conferring once or twice we decided that what we had here was a beautiful opportunity to hear hilarious stories about Matt from two of the people that knew him best. And Rob did not disappoint, he is a master storyteller, particularly the embarrassing sort of stories that we wanted to hear. And while I decided I would not repeat any of them here, I do have a couple questions for you Matt… what were you planning to do with the toilet? How did you get a large tree into the room? And why of all things a ski jacket?

Anyway we stayed up far too late, drank far to many beer Lao and eventually decided that since sunrise was just around the corner anyway we might as well stay up all night and catch sunrise at Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat Sunrise, Angkor Cambodia We started at Angkor Wat, which in spite of the row after row of coaches parked out front, didn’t feel as crowded as it was. I went in briefly, but did not spend too much time exploring. I went back outside and made a few quick photos and then lay down on a stone wall and watched the onslaught of temple goers heading inward.

I was feeling a bit grumpy by the time we headed to Angkor Thom and Bayon. Our tuk-tuk driver had put me in a foul mood. Generally speaking the people of Southeast Asia are the nicest and warmest I’ve met; unless they happen to be tuk-tuk drivers, the majority of whom can choke on diesel fumes for all I care. Our tuk-tuk driver started out nice and friendly and then things went downhill when he found out we didn’t want to spend two hours inside Angkor Wat. Apparently he had agreed to another fare thinking that we would be in the temple for the standard amount of time. Unfortunately for him, this was not part of our plan. And this is the thing I hate about guides and drivers, you never get your experience, you get theirs. Eventually after arguing a bit, I simply walked away and let Matt use his diplomatic touch. I was all for the plan I used frequently in India—smile, jump out without paying and move on to the next tuk-tuk.

I snapped to for Ta Prohm, which was the one temple I really wanted to see. Ta Prohm is the least restored, most overgrown of all the Angkor Temples and I was looking forward to seeing it. Ta Prohm, Angkor, Cambodia As I wandered about Ta Prohm I couldn’t shake the feeling that it all seemed somehow familiar to me. I started half thinking maybe I was getting in touch with a former life as a 700 AD Khmer priest when I overheard someone saying that Ta Prohm is where they filmed the first Tomb Raider movie. I’ve never seen the movie, but I did once for about a month get highly addicted to the game. I must confess to Shirley, that I really wanted to do some crazy kicking back flip combination move that would unlock all the cool weapons and find myself suddenly in possession of the grenade launcher, which was, in the context of the game, my favorite and highly overkill means of getting rid of the pesky bats that drain your energy bars.

The real Ta Prohm has no bats, nor sadly, any sign of Angelina Jolie (though Cambodia is missing a small child; if anyone happens to run into her maybe mention it). It may not have been the religious experience it’s builders envisioned but I felt strangely connected to it nevertheless, if only through a video game.

The Angkor Temples are difficult to describe. For one thing all the temples are different and while they have common threads, such as sandstone blocks, they vary quite a bit in styles and even religion. The temples were built by various rulers of the Khmer Empire between 800-1400 CE during which time the principle religion was Hinduism. Thus the temples bear some resemblance to those I’ve seen in India, with bas-reliefs depicting Hindu mythology as well as the various exploits of kings and armies, but the architecture is unique and utilizes massive sandstone blocks. They are also all in varying conditions. Creeper Figs, Angkor Cambodia Many have been or are being restored. Others are still overgrown to the extent that it’s difficult to tell whether the creeper figs (remember creeper figs? They’re back) are holding up the walls or the walls are holding up the fig trees. I actually enjoyed the temples that were in various states of disrepair as they had more of a sense of history about them. After all one doesn’t really expect buildings over a thousand years old to be in that good of shape, especially in this climate.

But restoration seems to be the wave of the future. I for one hope they don’t take it too far. However if they are going to take it too far, I have a suggestion. If they are going to restore the temples to “former grandeur” they may as well take the next step and improve upon them slightly. And what you may ask would I suggest as an improvement? Simple, the same thing I want every time I stand on top of something—zip lines. Think of it, you climb to the top of Angkor Thom or Angkor Wat, you don’t want to climb down, the reward is in the uphill; the downhill is just a necessity, or in the in case of Angkor Wat, vaguely dangerous. Zip lines are the way forward. Clip on and away you go. Angkor Wat is only ten years from being Disneyland anyway, might as well get started with the rides.

After falling asleep in the back of the tuk-tuk a second time we decided that perhaps skipping sleep, while adding a vaguely hallucinatory element to the temples, was maybe not the best way to see them. We went home and slept the remainder of the day. That evening over dinner we decided that tomorrow would be full on, none of this stopping at noon to get out of the heat crap. We set off just after dawn and did not return until after sunset. I climbed up and down so many temples I lost track of which were which, though truthfully I don’t think it ever mattered to me. I am not a historian nor am I a temple connoisseur. Angkor Wat is a grand experience, but describing it seems tedious. There are a whole lot of limestone blocks, vines, moss and carvings. Carved Face Bayon, Angkor Cambodia At its pinnacle it must have been quite a things to behold. But now it exists much like an echo, it gets inside you and bounces about in some way you can’t quite figure out. We spent the entire day dragging our grumpy and very reluctant tuk-tuk driver all over the place, not in the usual order, we just glance at the map and went here, then there, then back to here then… it was great, I’ve never enjoyed temples so much as when we sat in the shade of a pillar atop, well I could look up the name I suppose, but it really doesn’t matter. We sat in the shade of a pillar and looked down on the courtyard below and passed long periods of time in total silence praying for the occasional puff of wind the might make you temporarily feel like it was just hot, instead of hot hot hot.

Like the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat is, despite the hype, a pretty amazing monument. Its architecture is based around Hindu mythology with the five towers representing the peaks of Mount Meru the center of the universe (think of Meru as the Mt. Olympus of Hindu cosmology). The walls surrounding the temple are meant to represent the mountains at the edge of the world and the moat symbolizes the oceans beyond. Naturally this sort of embedded architectural meaning extends down to the smallest levels as well. The Entire wall of the inner temple is lined with various bas-reliefs that tell the story of Hinduism which one archeologist called the greatest linear stone carvings in the world. It’s no wonder that everywhere you go in Cambodia there’s a picture of Angkor Wat, from the flag to a can of beer.

Beng Melea, Outside Angkor, Cambodia But that said, I think the best temple is actually outside the immediate area of Angkor. About sixty kilometers northeast of Angkor lies the temple of Beng Melea. Not only has it not been restored at all but the Khmer Rouge helped the forces of nature out a bit. What remains is a truly Indian Jones, buried in the jungle, sort of adventure that could awaken the amateur archeologist in even the most jaded of temple visitors. Beng Melea is also a sprawling large temple which covers over one square kilometer. As with Ta Prohm, Beng Melea is overrun by vegetation, giant piles of crumble stone are now buried beneath the descending roots of fig trees and the walls that still stand are spider webbed with roots and vines. There are very few carvings or bas-reliefs. Our guide claimed that when the temple was active it would have been covered in painted frescos and carvings, but the jungle and rain have claimed their own. Beng Melea was constructed before much of Angkor and may in fact have been a sort of prototype effort so it has a rough around the edges feel to it. At the time of its construction, Beng Melea sat on the crossroads of several major highways that ran to Angkor, Koh Ker, Preah Vihear (in northern Cambodia) and northern Vietnam. Now Beng Melea is quite removed from any crossroads and to get there required the longest tuk-tuk ride ever—something like two hours each way. I ended up thinking that perhaps a compromise is best, let Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom and the other temples be restored, but leave some, Ta Prohm and Beng Melea, the way they are, where they can continue to be slowly consumed by the jungle if only to remind us that while we made build epic monuments, the forces of decay always win in the end.

Debi, Me and Bayon, Angkor Cambodia Beng Melea took the better part of the day. We arrived back in Seam Reap around three and ate a bit of lunch and lounged for a few hours. Then we decided to utilize our full three days and catch another sunset. Matt opted to take a nap but Debi and I dragged our perennially grumpy driver out to the park to have one last sunset. We went to Bayon since it isn’t a very good place to watch the sunset and there are few tourists there at that time of day. It was a nice quite way to end an experience that had begun rather full throttle, as if maybe Angkor still has a sort of hold over the world, can still make you slow down and be a bit humble in the face of it.

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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/angkor-wat.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/angkor-wat.txt deleted file mode 100644 index bb99521..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/angkor-wat.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,42 +0,0 @@ -Angkor Wat -========== - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Tuesday, 21 March 2006 - -At some point during the four days I was in Seam Reap I emailed on of my friends the following, which she found utterly hilarious: "I can honestly say I have never been this hot or even close to this hot ever in my life. Right now it's about 8 pm and I'm sitting with a fan blowing on me and that does nothing to stop the sweat pouring off of me. It's hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot." Which, aside from Angkor itself remains my overwhelming impression of the place. - -I have since read in several places that mid March to mid April is the worst time to be in Seam Reap heat wise, but then again I never have been much for planning and that's what you get when you don't plan. So yes, it was hot. Really really hot. Think of Phoenix in the summer and then turn the humidity knob to the Spinal Tap favorite and you'll be in the neighborhood. - -But if it's going to be hot, well you might as well embrace it. We eschew air conditioning (why tease yourself?) and make it a point to do any walking in the heat of the day. Perverse though it may sound it's not without reason, particularly in tourist mecca's like Seam Reap where you can generally have the sites to yourself at those hours since no one else is crazy enough to go out at one in the afternoon. Including the Cambodians who, like the Laos and Thai, generally spend the hours of noon to two sitting in the shade under fans doing as little as humanly possible. The heat of the day is the way forward, trust me, but in Seam Reap we took it to another level by throwing in dehydration, hangovers and no sleep. It may not be the key to longevity if Benjamin Franklin is to be believed, but for Angkor Wat I firmly believe it's the way to do it. Or not. - - Crowds at Phnom Bakheng, Angkor Cambodia

Crowds at Phnom Bakheng, Angkor Cambodia

Three day passes to Angkor Wat can be purchased starting at 5pm in the evening and that evening does not count as one of the three days. I mentioned this to someone recently and they seemed a little surprised. "You spent three days at a temple?" Angkor Wat is, yes, a temple, but it's not the only temple. Angkor, as the general area is known, contains more than 100 stone temples in all, and is all that remains of the grand religious, social and cultural seat of the Khmer Empire whose other buildings — palaces, public buildings, and houses — were built of bamboo and are long since decayed and gone. Angkor Wat itself is the largest religious structure in the world (Though I suppose if you wanted to get technical, Animists, Transcendentalists, Pagans and any of the Goddess/Nature religions have the worlds largest religious site, since the whole world is a religious site in those religions). - -I have since read that roughly half a million people a year visit Angkor Wat. That first evening we decided to see just how tourist filled Angkor was by heading to the most popular sunset temple, Phnom Bakheng, to watch the sunset. There were a lot of tourists at Angkor Wat. Thousands of them. And that was just at one temple. Thus was hatched the plan. See Angkor in the heat of the day. Yes it will be hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot. But hopefully empty. What we were not counting on was the sudden appearance of Rob and Jules. - -After splashing out of a lovely dinner at a posh hotel, the three of us were innocently walking around Seam Reap looking for a spot to have a drink when all the sudden I looked up to see a strange man shaking hands and hugging Matt. After traveling for a while the appearance of random people you know is not all that odd, and in fact we had even heard Matt mention that some of his friends were in the area. We had even heard a few stories, particularly about Rob. Debi and I briefly discussed whether or not we ought to fade away and let friends from home catch up. It's one thing to run into people you have traveled with, that happens a good bit, but it's rare to have visitors from home. After conferring once or twice we decided that what we had here was a beautiful opportunity to hear hilarious stories about Matt from two of the people that knew him best. And Rob did not disappoint, he is a master storyteller, particularly the embarrassing sort of stories that we wanted to hear. And while I decided I would not repeat any of them here, I do have a couple questions for you Matt… what were you planning to do with the toilet? How did you get a large tree into the room? And why of all things a ski jacket? - -Anyway we stayed up far too late, drank far to many beer Lao and eventually decided that since sunrise was just around the corner anyway we might as well stay up all night and catch sunrise at Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat Sunrise, Angkor Cambodia

We started at Angkor Wat, which in spite of the row after row of coaches parked out front, didn't feel as crowded as it was. I went in briefly, but did not spend too much time exploring. I went back outside and made a few quick photos and then lay down on a stone wall and watched the onslaught of temple goers heading inward. - -I was feeling a bit grumpy by the time we headed to Angkor Thom and Bayon. Our tuk-tuk driver had put me in a foul mood. Generally speaking the people of Southeast Asia are the nicest and warmest I've met; unless they happen to be tuk-tuk drivers, the majority of whom can choke on diesel fumes for all I care. Our tuk-tuk driver started out nice and friendly and then things went downhill when he found out we didn't want to spend two hours inside Angkor Wat. Apparently he had agreed to another fare thinking that we would be in the temple for the standard amount of time. Unfortunately for him, this was not part of our plan. And this is the thing I hate about guides and drivers, you never get your experience, you get theirs. Eventually after arguing a bit, I simply walked away and let Matt use his diplomatic touch. I was all for the plan I used frequently in India—smile, jump out without paying and move on to the next tuk-tuk. - -

I was going to skip Bayon and pass out in the tuk-tuk but since the driver was aggravating me, I decided to make a quick loop through the main courtyard. I did fall asleep in the tuk-tuk while Matt and Debi went to see a temple that didn't look like anymore than a crumbled wall of stones to me. - -I snapped to for Ta Prohm, which was the one temple I really wanted to see. Ta Prohm is the least restored, most overgrown of all the Angkor Temples and I was looking forward to seeing it. Ta Prohm, Angkor, Cambodia

As I wandered about Ta Prohm I couldn't shake the feeling that it all seemed somehow familiar to me. I started half thinking maybe I was getting in touch with a former life as a 700 AD Khmer priest when I overheard someone saying that Ta Prohm is where they filmed the first Tomb Raider movie. I've never seen the movie, but I did once for about a month get highly addicted to the game. I must confess to Shirley, that I really wanted to do some crazy kicking back flip combination move that would unlock all the cool weapons and find myself suddenly in possession of the grenade launcher, which was, in the context of the game, my favorite and highly overkill means of getting rid of the pesky bats that drain your energy bars. - -The real Ta Prohm has no bats, nor sadly, any sign of Angelina Jolie (though Cambodia is missing a small child; if anyone happens to run into her maybe mention it). It may not have been the religious experience it's builders envisioned but I felt strangely connected to it nevertheless, if only through a video game. - -The Angkor Temples are difficult to describe. For one thing all the temples are different and while they have common threads, such as sandstone blocks, they vary quite a bit in styles and even religion. The temples were built by various rulers of the Khmer Empire between 800-1400 CE during which time the principle religion was Hinduism. Thus the temples bear some resemblance to those I've seen in India, with bas-reliefs depicting Hindu mythology as well as the various exploits of kings and armies, but the architecture is unique and utilizes massive sandstone blocks. They are also all in varying conditions. Creeper Figs, Angkor Cambodia

Many have been or are being restored. Others are still overgrown to the extent that it's difficult to tell whether the creeper figs (remember creeper figs? They're back) are holding up the walls or the walls are holding up the fig trees. I actually enjoyed the temples that were in various states of disrepair as they had more of a sense of history about them. After all one doesn't really expect buildings over a thousand years old to be in that good of shape, especially in this climate. - -But restoration seems to be the wave of the future. I for one hope they don't take it too far. However if they are going to take it too far, I have a suggestion. If they are going to restore the temples to "former grandeur" they may as well take the next step and improve upon them slightly. And what you may ask would I suggest as an improvement? Simple, the same thing I want every time I stand on top of something—zip lines. Think of it, you climb to the top of Angkor Thom or Angkor Wat, you don't want to climb down, the reward is in the uphill; the downhill is just a necessity, or in the in case of Angkor Wat, vaguely dangerous. Zip lines are the way forward. Clip on and away you go. Angkor Wat is only ten years from being Disneyland anyway, might as well get started with the rides. - -After falling asleep in the back of the tuk-tuk a second time we decided that perhaps skipping sleep, while adding a vaguely hallucinatory element to the temples, was maybe not the best way to see them. We went home and slept the remainder of the day. That evening over dinner we decided that tomorrow would be full on, none of this stopping at noon to get out of the heat crap. We set off just after dawn and did not return until after sunset. I climbed up and down so many temples I lost track of which were which, though truthfully I don't think it ever mattered to me. I am not a historian nor am I a temple connoisseur. Angkor Wat is a grand experience, but describing it seems tedious. There are a whole lot of limestone blocks, vines, moss and carvings. Carved Face Bayon, Angkor Cambodia

At its pinnacle it must have been quite a things to behold. But now it exists much like an echo, it gets inside you and bounces about in some way you can't quite figure out. We spent the entire day dragging our grumpy and very reluctant tuk-tuk driver all over the place, not in the usual order, we just glance at the map and went here, then there, then back to here then… it was great, I've never enjoyed temples so much as when we sat in the shade of a pillar atop, well I could look up the name I suppose, but it really doesn't matter. We sat in the shade of a pillar and looked down on the courtyard below and passed long periods of time in total silence praying for the occasional puff of wind the might make you temporarily feel like it was just hot, instead of hot hot hot. - -Later in the evening we went back to Angkor Wat proper to watch the sunset which was this time quite nice and not too many tourists about. I climbed up to the top and spent a good while dodging security guards who were trying to get everyone out before the sunset. I wanted to be up there to watch the sun actually set. Luckily the shadows deepen around then and with a bit of walking in carefully timed circles and sliding into darkened corners, I was able to pull it off. Eventually I wandered back out to the courtyard to find Matt and Debi passing a few surprised security guards on the way. If you planned ahead and brought a pillow you could probably spend the night up there. If you wanted to that is. - -Like the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat is, despite the hype, a pretty amazing monument. Its architecture is based around Hindu mythology with the five towers representing the peaks of Mount Meru the center of the universe (think of Meru as the Mt. Olympus of Hindu cosmology). The walls surrounding the temple are meant to represent the mountains at the edge of the world and the moat symbolizes the oceans beyond. Naturally this sort of embedded architectural meaning extends down to the smallest levels as well. The Entire wall of the inner temple is lined with various bas-reliefs that tell the story of Hinduism which one archeologist called the greatest linear stone carvings in the world. It's no wonder that everywhere you go in Cambodia there's a picture of Angkor Wat, from the flag to a can of beer. - - Beng Melea, Outside Angkor, Cambodia

Beng Melea took the better part of the day. We arrived back in Seam Reap around three and ate a bit of lunch and lounged for a few hours. Then we decided to utilize our full three days and catch another sunset. Matt opted to take a nap but Debi and I dragged our perennially grumpy driver out to the park to have one last sunset. We went to Bayon since it isn't a very good place to watch the sunset and there are few tourists there at that time of day. It was a nice quite way to end an experience that had begun rather full throttle, as if maybe Angkor still has a sort of hold over the world, can still make you slow down and be a bit humble in the face of it. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.amp deleted file mode 100644 index f62eb6e..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.amp +++ /dev/null @@ -1,191 +0,0 @@ - - - - - - -Beginning to See the Light - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Beginning to See the Light

- March 16, 2006 - - -

I once wrote a novel, which thankfully only one person has ever read in its entirety (thank you for suffering through it Rhiannon), and hopefully only one person will ever read. It's a terrible novel (though I like to think well written at least). It is the novel of a very young and very stupid man. While I will not profess to be any smarter I am at least older and I have come to absolutely hate the central premise of the novel. The central premise is so sophomorically postmodern as to be laughable, but here it is— nothing ever happens.

The central character spends most of the novel waiting for something to happen. Yes just like the Radiohead song. When a band can summarize your novel in a three-minute pop song it's not a good sign.

-I have now after seven months of traveling come to have a journal full of notes, verbal sketches, transcribed conversations, anecdotal stories, and writings of that nature, which are chiefly concerned with the fact that something is always happening. In fact so many things are happening that I am sometimes paralyzed by the thought of having to choose what to record and what to ignore.

I could for instance describe the early morning market in Phnom Penh that surrounds the bus station. I could tell about the bananas and dragon fruit, the fish arriving in trucks, the women walking among the stalls, the way they paused sometimes to feel the firmness of the piece of fruit or try a taste of some dried meat, the throngs of flies on the pig guts, the blood on the chopping block, the unidentifiable meat hanging in the dark rafters, the blue plastic tarps, the sound of the motorbikes coming and going, the dizzying rush of cars, the lottery ticket sellers, the taxi drivers waiting, the bamboo baskets full of freshwater clams, baskets full of dried shrimp, baskets full of chilies, baskets full of lotus heads, baskets full of dried fish, the baskets full of cucumbers, full of seaweed, full of tomatoes, full of beetles, full of fish, full of things I've never seen before, and the smell of fish and meat and cigarette smoke and rotting garbage and stale water and grilled meat and sautéed onions and noodle soup in bowls climbing up into the already steaming morning heat.

But none of that is actually in the journal, that's just memory. And that skips all the fun of the dialogue, breakfast at a food stand, Matt and Debi and I bartering for tuk-tuks, waiting in the bus station….

I could write about the bus, the bags of mysterious liquid stuff hanging from the backs of the local's seats, the sticky rice with Soya beans cased in bamboo, the book I was reading, the sound of the woman's voice behind me, the creak of the rusty seats, the grinding roar of the engine, the smell of petrol, the inevitable stopping, the chickens clucking in their baskets, the pig squealing in his, or us falling asleep all askew with our mouths open, or the endless bartering to obtain motorbikes for the afternoon. We were headed you see to the floating village of Kampong Luong, just offshore from Krakor on the edge of Tonle Sap. And yes, you might think motorbikes are a poor mode of transport for a lake, but there was the ride to the lake to consider (and of course I have said before that the Honda Dream is capable of all, I have no doubt that somewhere someone has converted one into a boat). But see even with that I've missed a million little details. I remember for instance that on the way back the key bounced right out of my bike. Disappeared into the ether of Cambodian roads, never to be seen again. I remember the trucks and their deafening horn blasts that nearly unseat you when they sneak up behind you and let loose, I remember the laughter on the drivers face as he passed knowing he just nearly made you piss yourself. I remember stopping for petrol and losing something.

But the one place the notes and photographs fail me are when it comes to describing what it feels like to be there. The further and longer I travel the more I realize that I cannot begin to convey what these places feel like, the smells and sounds can be described, the sights may be captured in words or pictures, but then they are no longer sights, nor sounds, nor smells, they are simply words here on the page, on the screen, repeated in our heads.

I remember the sky was crystalline blue with windswept high altitude clouds that made the water seem brown and paltry in comparison. The villagers, ethnically Vietnamese, were not stoically unwelcoming as the guidebook suggested, but full of friendly smiles and gregarious waves (more or less everything in a guidebook is dead wrong, but you have to actually go somewhere to realize it). I do not know why the village was built on the water, perhaps it's closer to the fish, perhaps all the land was taken, perhaps it just seemed like more fun to them, but I can tell you there is something wonderfully appealing, magical even, amazing, bewitching and any number of other adjectives I can dig out of the Oxford English Dictionary about the place. But I can't tell you how it felt. Maybe ask Debi, she wanted to move in.

But we wouldn't let her. So the next day we headed on around the lake to Battambang. Just outside Battambang is what's known as the Bamboo Railway. After the Khmer Rouge destroyed most of it, the local rail line was abandoned. But the people of Southeast Asia (and I imagine anywhere in the developing world where governments do not do the sorts of things we expect governments to do like build highways) are far too ingenious to let some abandoned track go to waste. They found a bunch of old wheel housings and built bamboo flatbeds for them. Throw in the ubiquitous four-stroke engine and you're away.

It's a bit kitschy I suppose, even by local standards and it probably only persists because tourists like it, and it is fun. We hired motorbikes and rode out to the railroad, this time with guides. We were waiting for the locals to put together a bamboo car to take us back into town via the tracks when we noticed one of our guides was buying a grilled rat. We have seen rat for sale various places in the last two months, typically small villages in Laos, but we had never quite worked up the courage to try any. For me it wasn't so much that it was rat, it was more that it's typically been flattened to the point that it's lost a dimension and hardly seems worth it. Plus, well, it's a rat. We all sort of stood around watching as he ate it. He laughed at what must have been semi-horrified looks on our faces and offered us some. Now purchasing a whole rat always seemed to me a bit of a commitment, but trying a piece was not so daunting. Still I hesitated. Matt went for it, tore off a bit of stringy meat and started chewing it. Not to be out done I grabbed a piece and popped it in my mouth. Somewhere between chicken and beef, not what I would call good, but not that bad either. Eventually after exerting an undue amount of both Cambodian and English and American peer pressure we convinced Debi to have a bite. Some people claim there was physical cohesion, but that simply isn't true. Matt even had seconds.

When I was laid up ill in Sen Monoron I watched a bit of the Discovery channel (and no one was eating rats). I saw one program in particular which fascinated me. Biologists in Africa who study elephant behaviors have come to the conclusion that when elephants lay their trunks flat on the ground they are actually listening (so to speak), to distant vibrations. Not listening to sounds that we could hear, or even sounds they could hear, but rather to the very deep long wavelengths of sound that we might, when they're big enough, feel as an earthquake. And what do the elephants learn from such listening? There were if I remember correctly several theories, but none of them are worth recounting, what interested me was that there are hundreds of vibrations that pass under our feet that we are simply not equipped to sense. In fact when you come down to it our sense have a very narrow biological slant—they keep us alive.

But in narrowing down the world to what was necessary to survive we may have missed out on a whole lot of stuff that was well, fun. Eating rat was not biologically necessary, I wasn't even hungry, but it was fun. Maybe elephants lay their trunks on the ground and "listen" to distant vibrations because they enjoy it the same way your grandmother likes it when you call long distance or your sister likes a postcard from Africa to hang on her fridge or you like to stare at the sunset. Even animals stare at the sunset and you'll never convince me it isn't because they have fun watching it. It's been fun to realize how wrong I was. It's fun to know that something is always happening; you just have to know where to look.

- - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.html deleted file mode 100644 index 14f66eb..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,342 +0,0 @@ - - - - - Beginning To See The Light - by Scott Gilbertson - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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Beginning to See the Light

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Floating Village, Cambodia

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- March 16, 2006 - -

I once wrote a novel, which thankfully only one person has ever read in its entirety (thank you for suffering through it Rhiannon), and hopefully only one person will ever read. It’s a terrible novel (though I like to think well written at least). It is the novel of a very young and very stupid man. While I will not profess to be any smarter I am at least older and I have come to absolutely hate the central premise of the novel. The central premise is so sophomorically postmodern as to be laughable, but here it is— nothing ever happens.

The central character spends most of the novel waiting for something to happen. Yes just like the Radiohead song. When a band can summarize your novel in a three-minute pop song it’s not a good sign.

I could for instance describe the early morning market in Phnom Penh that surrounds the bus station. I could tell about the bananas and dragon fruit, the fish arriving in trucks, the women walking among the stalls, the way they paused sometimes to feel the firmness of the piece of fruit or try a taste of some dried meat, the throngs of flies on the pig guts, the blood on the chopping block, the unidentifiable meat hanging in the dark rafters, the blue plastic tarps, the sound of the motorbikes coming and going, the dizzying rush of cars, the lottery ticket sellers, the taxi drivers waiting, the bamboo baskets full of freshwater clams, baskets full of dried shrimp, baskets full of chilies, baskets full of lotus heads, baskets full of dried fish, the baskets full of cucumbers, full of seaweed, full of tomatoes, full of beetles, full of fish, full of things I’ve never seen before, and the smell of fish and meat and cigarette smoke and rotting garbage and stale water and grilled meat and sautéed onions and noodle soup in bowls climbing up into the already steaming morning heat.

But none of that is actually in the journal, that’s just memory. And that skips all the fun of the dialogue, breakfast at a food stand, Matt and Debi and I bartering for tuk-tuks, waiting in the bus station….

I could write about the bus, the bags of mysterious liquid stuff hanging from the backs of the local’s seats, the sticky rice with Soya beans cased in bamboo, the book I was reading, the sound of the woman’s voice behind me, the creak of the rusty seats, the grinding roar of the engine, the smell of petrol, the inevitable stopping, the chickens clucking in their baskets, the pig squealing in his, or us falling asleep all askew with our mouths open, or the endless bartering to obtain motorbikes for the afternoon. We were headed you see to the floating village of Kampong Luong, just offshore from Krakor on the edge of Tonle Sap. And yes, you might think motorbikes are a poor mode of transport for a lake, but there was the ride to the lake to consider (and of course I have said before that the Honda Dream is capable of all, I have no doubt that somewhere someone has converted one into a boat). But see even with that I’ve missed a million little details. I remember for instance that on the way back the key bounced right out of my bike. Disappeared into the ether of Cambodian roads, never to be seen again. I remember the trucks and their deafening horn blasts that nearly unseat you when they sneak up behind you and let loose, I remember the laughter on the drivers face as he passed knowing he just nearly made you piss yourself. I remember stopping for petrol and losing something.

Kampong Luong, Floating Village, Cambodia A village that floats on the water is not so ordinary as to be forgotten. And yet surprisingly a floating village is not that different than a village on the land. There are the same stores, the computer repair shop, the grocers, the petrol station, the temple, the dance hall and all the other things that makeup a town. I could even say with some authority that the town is laid out in streets, watery pathways that form nearly perfect lines. When viewed from above, I imagine the floating village would be scarcely any different than a normal village. But what made it special was that it was not a normal village and while a computer repair store may not be all that special in the average town, float one out in the middle of lake and it becomes fascinating. That such a thing might exist in floating village is remarkable, I for one was not expecting that people living on water would have computers, let alone have enough that there is exists a market for repair. After all it’s only a ten-minute boat ride to shore.

Floating Village, Cambodia I do not know why the village was built on the water, perhaps it’s closer to the fish, perhaps all the land was taken, perhaps it just seemed like more fun to them, but I can tell you there is something wonderfully appealing, magical even, amazing, bewitching and any number of other adjectives I can dig out of the Oxford English Dictionary about the place. But I can’t tell you how it felt. Maybe ask Debi, she wanted to move in.

But we wouldn’t let her. So the next day we headed on around the lake to Battambang. Just outside Battambang is what’s known as the Bamboo Railway. After the Khmer Rouge destroyed most of it, the local rail line was abandoned. Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia But the people of Southeast Asia (and I imagine anywhere in the developing world where governments do not do the sorts of things we expect governments to do like build highways) are far too ingenious to let some abandoned track go to waste. They found a bunch of old wheel housings and built bamboo flatbeds for them. Throw in the ubiquitous four-stroke engine and you’re away.

It’s a bit kitschy I suppose, even by local standards and it probably only persists because tourists like it, and it is fun. We hired motorbikes and rode out to the railroad, this time with guides. We were waiting for the locals to put together a bamboo car to take us back into town via the tracks when we noticed one of our guides was buying a grilled rat. We have seen rat for sale various places in the last two months, typically small villages in Laos, but we had never quite worked up the courage to try any. For me it wasn’t so much that it was rat, it was more that it’s typically been flattened to the point that it’s lost a dimension and hardly seems worth it. Plus, well, it’s a rat. We all sort of stood around watching as he ate it. He laughed at what must have been semi-horrified looks on our faces and offered us some. Girl with Grilled Rat, Battambang, Cambodia Now purchasing a whole rat always seemed to me a bit of a commitment, but trying a piece was not so daunting. Still I hesitated. Matt went for it, tore off a bit of stringy meat and started chewing it. Not to be out done I grabbed a piece and popped it in my mouth. Somewhere between chicken and beef, not what I would call good, but not that bad either. Eventually after exerting an undue amount of both Cambodian and English and American peer pressure we convinced Debi to have a bite. Some people claim there was physical cohesion, but that simply isn’t true. Matt even had seconds.

When I was laid up ill in Sen Monoron I watched a bit of the Discovery channel (and no one was eating rats). I saw one program in particular which fascinated me. Biologists in Africa who study elephant behaviors have come to the conclusion that when elephants lay their trunks flat on the ground they are actually listening (so to speak), to distant vibrations. Not listening to sounds that we could hear, or even sounds they could hear, but rather to the very deep long wavelengths of sound that we might, when they’re big enough, feel as an earthquake. And what do the elephants learn from such listening? There were if I remember correctly several theories, but none of them are worth recounting, what interested me was that there are hundreds of vibrations that pass under our feet that we are simply not equipped to sense. In fact when you come down to it our sense have a very narrow biological slant—they keep us alive.

But in narrowing down the world to what was necessary to survive we may have missed out on a whole lot of stuff that was well, fun. Eating rat was not biologically necessary, I wasn’t even hungry, but it was fun. Maybe elephants lay their trunks on the ground and “listen” to distant vibrations because they enjoy it the same way your grandmother likes it when you call long distance or your sister likes a postcard from Africa to hang on her fridge or you like to stare at the sunset. Even animals stare at the sunset and you’ll never convince me it isn’t because they have fun watching it. It’s been fun to realize how wrong I was. It’s fun to know that something is always happening; you just have to know where to look.

Matt, me, Honda Dreams, Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia My only regret is I cannot capture details as a whole. I have to pick and chose and focus on individual bits to try and build a whole. But words are reductive, they take wholes and deconstruct them into parts and attempt to put them back together, but they never can. All the Kings men can’t put the rat in your mouth, but I’m glad we have this at least, some little bit to give and take. Though it may not convey the spatial and temporal and it may not get you here or me there, it does serve as some bridge, however rickety, between worlds. And believe me you’d be surprised the rickety bridges that will actually hold your weight. Oh yeah and I regret that I have a really bad novel taking up space on my hard drive.

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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 79a35d7..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,35 +0,0 @@ -Beginning to See the Light -========================== - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Thursday, 16 March 2006 - -I once wrote a novel, which thankfully only one person has ever read in its entirety (thank you for suffering through it Rhiannon), and hopefully only one person will ever read. It's a terrible novel (though I like to think well written at least). It is the novel of a very young and very stupid man. While I will not profess to be any smarter I am at least older and I have come to absolutely hate the central premise of the novel. The central premise is so sophomorically postmodern as to be laughable, but here it is— nothing ever happens. - -The central character spends most of the novel waiting for something to happen. Yes just like the Radiohead song. When a band can summarize your novel in a three-minute pop song it's not a good sign. - - -I have now after seven months of traveling come to have a journal full of notes, verbal sketches, transcribed conversations, anecdotal stories, and writings of that nature, which are chiefly concerned with the fact that something is always happening. In fact so many things are happening that I am sometimes paralyzed by the thought of having to choose what to record and what to ignore. - -I could for instance describe the early morning market in Phnom Penh that surrounds the bus station. I could tell about the bananas and dragon fruit, the fish arriving in trucks, the women walking among the stalls, the way they paused sometimes to feel the firmness of the piece of fruit or try a taste of some dried meat, the throngs of flies on the pig guts, the blood on the chopping block, the unidentifiable meat hanging in the dark rafters, the blue plastic tarps, the sound of the motorbikes coming and going, the dizzying rush of cars, the lottery ticket sellers, the taxi drivers waiting, the bamboo baskets full of freshwater clams, baskets full of dried shrimp, baskets full of chilies, baskets full of lotus heads, baskets full of dried fish, the baskets full of cucumbers, full of seaweed, full of tomatoes, full of beetles, full of fish, full of things I've never seen before, and the smell of fish and meat and cigarette smoke and rotting garbage and stale water and grilled meat and sautéed onions and noodle soup in bowls climbing up into the already steaming morning heat. - -But none of that is actually in the journal, that's just memory. And that skips all the fun of the dialogue, breakfast at a food stand, Matt and Debi and I bartering for tuk-tuks, waiting in the bus station…. - -I could write about the bus, the bags of mysterious liquid stuff hanging from the backs of the local's seats, the sticky rice with Soya beans cased in bamboo, the book I was reading, the sound of the woman's voice behind me, the creak of the rusty seats, the grinding roar of the engine, the smell of petrol, the inevitable stopping, the chickens clucking in their baskets, the pig squealing in his, or us falling asleep all askew with our mouths open, or the endless bartering to obtain motorbikes for the afternoon. We were headed you see to the floating village of Kampong Luong, just offshore from Krakor on the edge of Tonle Sap. And yes, you might think motorbikes are a poor mode of transport for a lake, but there was the ride to the lake to consider (and of course I have said before that the Honda Dream is capable of all, I have no doubt that somewhere someone has converted one into a boat). But see even with that I've missed a million little details. I remember for instance that on the way back the key bounced right out of my bike. Disappeared into the ether of Cambodian roads, never to be seen again. I remember the trucks and their deafening horn blasts that nearly unseat you when they sneak up behind you and let loose, I remember the laughter on the drivers face as he passed knowing he just nearly made you piss yourself. I remember stopping for petrol and losing something. - - Kampong Luong, Floating Village, Cambodia

Kampong Luong, Floating Village, Cambodia

A village that floats on the water is not so ordinary as to be forgotten. And yet surprisingly a floating village is not that different than a village on the land. There are the same stores, the computer repair shop, the grocers, the petrol station, the temple, the dance hall and all the other things that makeup a town. I could even say with some authority that the town is laid out in streets, watery pathways that form nearly perfect lines. When viewed from above, I imagine the floating village would be scarcely any different than a normal village. But what made it special was that it was not a normal village and while a computer repair store may not be all that special in the average town, float one out in the middle of lake and it becomes fascinating. That such a thing might exist in floating village is remarkable, I for one was not expecting that people living on water would have computers, let alone have enough that there is exists a market for repair. After all it's only a ten-minute boat ride to shore. - -But the one place the notes and photographs fail me are when it comes to describing what it feels like to be there. The further and longer I travel the more I realize that I cannot begin to convey what these places feel like, the smells and sounds can be described, the sights may be captured in words or pictures, but then they are no longer sights, nor sounds, nor smells, they are simply words here on the page, on the screen, repeated in our heads. - - Floating Village, Cambodia

I do not know why the village was built on the water, perhaps it's closer to the fish, perhaps all the land was taken, perhaps it just seemed like more fun to them, but I can tell you there is something wonderfully appealing, magical even, amazing, bewitching and any number of other adjectives I can dig out of the Oxford English Dictionary about the place. But I can't tell you how it felt. Maybe ask Debi, she wanted to move in. - -But we wouldn't let her. So the next day we headed on around the lake to Battambang. Just outside Battambang is what's known as the Bamboo Railway. After the Khmer Rouge destroyed most of it, the local rail line was abandoned. Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia

But the people of Southeast Asia (and I imagine anywhere in the developing world where governments do not do the sorts of things we expect governments to do like build highways) are far too ingenious to let some abandoned track go to waste. They found a bunch of old wheel housings and built bamboo flatbeds for them. Throw in the ubiquitous four-stroke engine and you're away. - -It's a bit kitschy I suppose, even by local standards and it probably only persists because tourists like it, and it **is** fun. We hired motorbikes and rode out to the railroad, this time with guides. We were waiting for the locals to put together a bamboo car to take us back into town via the tracks when we noticed one of our guides was buying a grilled rat. We have seen rat for sale various places in the last two months, typically small villages in Laos, but we had never quite worked up the courage to try any. For me it wasn't so much that it was rat, it was more that it's typically been flattened to the point that it's lost a dimension and hardly seems worth it. Plus, well, it's a rat. We all sort of stood around watching as he ate it. He laughed at what must have been semi-horrified looks on our faces and offered us some. Girl with Grilled Rat, Battambang, Cambodia

Girl with Grilled Rat, Battambang, Cambodia

Now purchasing a whole rat always seemed to me a bit of a commitment, but trying a piece was not so daunting. Still I hesitated. Matt went for it, tore off a bit of stringy meat and started chewing it. Not to be out done I grabbed a piece and popped it in my mouth. Somewhere between chicken and beef, not what I would call good, but not that bad either. Eventually after exerting an undue amount of both Cambodian and English and American peer pressure we convinced Debi to have a bite. Some people claim there was physical cohesion, but that simply isn't true. Matt even had seconds. - -When I was laid up ill in Sen Monoron I watched a bit of the Discovery channel (and no one was eating rats). I saw one program in particular which fascinated me. Biologists in Africa who study elephant behaviors have come to the conclusion that when elephants lay their trunks flat on the ground they are actually listening (so to speak), to distant vibrations. Not listening to sounds that we could hear, or even sounds they could hear, but rather to the very deep long wavelengths of sound that we might, when they're big enough, feel as an earthquake. And what do the elephants learn from such listening? There were if I remember correctly several theories, but none of them are worth recounting, what interested me was that there are hundreds of vibrations that pass under our feet that we are simply not equipped to sense. In fact when you come down to it our sense have a very narrow biological slant—they keep us alive. - -But in narrowing down the world to what was necessary to survive we may have missed out on a whole lot of stuff that was well, fun. Eating rat was not biologically necessary, I wasn't even hungry, but it was fun. Maybe elephants lay their trunks on the ground and "listen" to distant vibrations because they enjoy it the same way your grandmother likes it when you call long distance or your sister likes a postcard from Africa to hang on her fridge or you like to stare at the sunset. Even animals stare at the sunset and you'll never convince me it isn't because they have fun watching it. It's been fun to realize how wrong I was. It's fun to know that something is always happening; you just have to know where to look. - - Matt, me, Honda Dreams, Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia

Matt, me, Honda Dreams, Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia

My only regret is I cannot capture details as a whole. I have to pick and chose and focus on individual bits to try and build a whole. But words are reductive, they take wholes and deconstruct them into parts and attempt to put them back together, but they never can. All the Kings men can't put the rat in your mouth, but I'm glad we have this at least, some little bit to give and take. Though it may not convey the spatial and temporal and it may not get you here or me there, it does serve as some bridge, however rickety, between worlds. And believe me you'd be surprised the rickety bridges that will actually hold your weight. Oh yeah and I regret that I have a really bad novel taking up space on my hard drive. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/blood-tracks.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/blood-tracks.amp deleted file mode 100644 index f009412..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/blood-tracks.amp +++ /dev/null @@ -1,197 +0,0 @@ - - - - - - -Blood on the Tracks - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Blood on the Tracks

- March 14, 2006 - - -

It was a fittingly dull grey overcast sky, remnants of the previous night's thunderstorm which kept me up for an hour or more while I sat on the spare bed beneath the window watching the room light up like a dance floor under a strobe, it had stopped raining, but it was still cloudy when I climbed on the back of a moto and headed out to the killing fields.

The killing fields outside of Phnom Penh are in fact just that, fields with depressions, large holes in the ground, some marked with staggering numbers, others with no sign at all. The Khmer Rouge slaughtered over 12,000 people at this site alone. It did not rain any more that morning but the sky remained dark and the holes were partially filled with water. -

As I mentioned in the last entry I came down with a bit of a fever for a few days. This was accompanied by what we in the group have come to term, for lack of a nicer, but equally descriptive term—pissing out the ass. Yes it's not a pretty picture. Nor is it a pleasant experience, but we have all done it, it was simply my turn. Consequently I don't have a real clear recollection of the journey from Ban Lung to Kratie, nor do I have all that great of a recall from Kratie out to Sen Monoron. I do however remember near the end of the journey to Sen Monoron, as I sat in the cab of a Toyota pickup with ass cheeks clenched and stomach rumbling ominously, we came upon an accident blocking a bridge. A large transport truck had rammed into the side of a bridge and apparently been abandoned. The accident did not look recent, but the wreck remained. And was blocking all traffic over the bridge. The majority of the cars using the road to Sen Monoron were four-wheel drive and didn't have too much trouble heading down around the bridge and through the riverbed. Naturally our cheap transport was only two-wheel drive and very top heavy. After studying the situation for the better part of half an hour, our driver apparently decided he could do it. Wrong. The result was a heavily loaded Toyota pickup nearly turned on its side in the middle of a small riverbed. Luckily the villagers in attendance seemed to have sensed our driver's folly and were able to run in with various pieces of wood which they used to brace the truck and stop it from turning completely on its side. It took nearly an hour to get it unstuck and finally across the river. Rather frustratingly about three or four NGOs in their shiny new 4runners passed by without much trouble nor I might add offering much in the way of aid, despite what might have been stenciled on the side of their trucks.

Matt has a fairly intense aversion to NGO's which I am beginning to share, needless to say this experience did not help their cause in our eyes. The thing is we have traveled quite extensively in the backcountry of Laos and Cambodia and we have seen some pretty intense poverty. However we rarely see NGO groups out in these areas. We tend to find them near large resort towns like Luang Prabang or Seam Reap where air conditioning and western food is plentiful, or as we would witness down south, NGO's seem to enjoy a bit of surf fishing from the comfort of their shiny 4x4s. So yes we have developed a healthy disrespect for those that claim to help, but spend their time close to the comforts of home. Lest we seem self righteous let me absolve a couple of spectacular NGO groups, the land mine people, that is, anyone clearing land mines and UXO, and the Friends organization in Phnom Penh which teaches street children how to cook and run restaurants. These two NGOs are superb and beyond reproach in all respects. However the vast majority of NGOs out here are, in the words of the English, a bunch of wankers.

Where for instance were the NGOs in 1974? Where was the west in general when Cambodia needed it? Where was the west when 3 million people were killed in less than four years? It's easy to help when somebody else has solved the difficult problems (that would be the Vietnamese who, fed up with the Khmer Rouge, invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979).

And just who were the Khmer Rouge? For those that don't know here is the sound bite synopsis: in something like 1974 the US backed a military coup by a member of the Cambodian Army named Lol Nol. The coup disposed the King and sent him into exile. Just before he left he told the Cambodian people loyal to him to head to the hills and join the then fledgling Khmer Rouge. Lol Nol lasted some six months in power. The US backed him because he let them bomb the Viet Kong operating on Cambodia soil. Unfortunately he seems to have been quite corrupt and at the bare minimum was not popular. Roughly eight months later the US had lost the Vietnam War, pulled out of Southeast Asia and left behind a power vacuum (sound familiar?) which allowed the Khmer Rouge to step out of the jungle and into power.

In the beginning the Khmer Rouge were simply Cambodian nationalists who opposed Lol Nol, but by the time they seized power the Khmer Rouge had transformed themselves into something approaching Maoists. The Khmer Rouge's goal was to an agrarian utopia in which all people were equal and worked the land. Unfortunately for the average person this meant the economy had to go. Money was abolished, the post service destroyed, and everyone was driven out of cities into the fields where they were worked to death. The Khmer Rouge set about destroying all literature, art, education, banned music, and basically took all the things that make life worth living and destroyed them. At some point a man whose name is undoubtedly familiar to most came to lead the Khmer Rouge, Brother Number One—Pol Pot. Under Pol Pot the killings escalated. Anyone educated was killed. Anyone literate was killed. Toward the end, anyone wearing glasses was killed. Those that survived did so by hiding and trying to blend in.

For the actual killings the Khmer Rouge favored lining people up in a field beside a large hole and then walking along behind them bashing in the back of their skulls with a blunt hammer. If you consider they killed three million people in four years you arrive at a figure of over 2000 people a day. The killing fields genocide museum outside Phnom Penh is not the only killing field. There is no "killing field," there are thousands of them. Cambodia is covered in killing fields, the one outside of Phnom Penh is merely the one chosen to represent them all.

During this time the west did absolutely nothing.

The U.N. finally stopped recognizing the Khmer Rouge in 1991.

Imagine for a moment of the UN had recognized the Nazi Party as the rightful leader of Germany until 1957.

After spending about an hour walking around the Killing Fields, seeing the graves, the tree where children where tied and beaten while their parents were forced to watch, seeing the clothes still leeching up out of the soil, seeing the tree where the Khmer soldiers hung speakers to blare music that would drown out the screaming, seeing the massive towering monument full of skulls and clothes, after seeing as much horror and sadness as I could bear and perhaps a little more, I sat down at a table beneath some trees and smoked a cigarette. I found it somewhat odd that although the bench and table were concrete they had been molded and painted to look as if they were wood. I thought for a while about the tree rings on display at Sequoia National Park in California where each ring is marked with a corresponding event from history. You can see how large the Sequoia was when Christ was born, when China built the great wall, when Columbus discovered America, and so on. The rings painted on the table before me were spaced rather widely such that as best I could count, given that I am not an expert at such things, the faux tree appeared to be roughly thirty years old, as if the artist may well have intended it to be a way to peer back in time, to create a point a singularity if you will from which all modern Cambodian history must come. The Khmer Rouge reset the calendar, calling the year of their rise to power year zero. The fake tree trunk before was, whether intentionally or not, painted to look as though it began life in that artificial year zero.

After a while my moto driver saw me sitting there and wandered over, I was half expecting him to say it was time to go, but instead he sat down at the bench opposite me and crossed his legs. A very sad place no…? he said. I nodded but did not say anything. I was trying the judge his age. As best I could guess he would have probably been around eight when the Khmer Rouge took power. There is an entire generation missing in Cambodia, people of his generation are few and far between and most that you see are actually Vietnamese or Chinese emigres.

I was very young when this happened. He did not go on. I nodded and he smiled. He asked for a cigarette which I gave him. I worked in a field. From before dawn to after dark. I was seven. It was very hard. I got a fever and the Khmer Rouge gave us rabbit shit as pills because they could not afford medicine. My parents were dead already, but I had seen my mother boil the leaves of that tree and give them to my brother when he was sick. I looked behind me and he pointed, but I could not decipher which tree he meant. So I crush the leaves and made tea and I got better.

He did not say any more except to mention that it was time to go if I wanted to see the film at S21, which I did. I sat on the back of the moto as we headed into town wondering what I would do in the face of something like the Khmer Rouge. I decided that I would try to flee, but I'm not sure if that's cowardly or not. If it was too late and I could not flee I do not know what I would do and I do not think anyone can know what they would do until they face such a situation.

S21 is perhaps a little less known than the Killing Fields, owing no doubt to its lack of Hollywood endorsement, but S21 is even more chilling for the fact that it looks as if it were abandoned yesterday. Originally a school, the buildings became the central processing area for Khmer Rouge detainees, which is a sanitized way of saying it was a torture chamber. With the typical despots flair for brevity it was designated simply S21. Of the more than 17,000 people that passed through the walls and corridors of S21 under the Khmer Rouge, seven were alive when the Vietnamese liberated Phnom Penh. Other than scrubbing the stains from the walls and floors it seems as though very little had been done at S21. It looks like it might have been an active torture chamber a few hours before you arrived. The left hand building is a series of classrooms each totally bare save for a wire frame beds, a wrought iron bar and a car battery. These rooms served as torture chambers where prisoners' were restrained while their fingernails were pulled out, their bodies electrocuted and battery acid poured on their skin. Standing alone in the bare rooms you can almost hear the screams.

The creepy thing about S21 is that the Khmer Rouge were methodical in their record keeping. Everyone who passed through S21 was photographed and a detailed biographical record was made. Some of these were lost, but the vast majority remain. Several halls of the museum are now simply rows and rows of black and white photographs of those who were tortured and killed at S21. I have not been to Auschwitz or for that matter any other genocide museum, but I cannot imagine a more stark and yet moving tribute to the victims than the bare walls and floors and endless rows of photographs.

It would be nice to think the Khmer Rouge were just plain evil or crazy, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Pol Pot was educated in Paris, the head of S21 was a former professor of mathematics and the guards were hardened and formed just like the sadistic guards of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Certainly these were not murderous simpletons on a rampage. The truth is there are a million tiny explanations, a million things that can add up to a genocide, but breaking them down and isolating them does not help to explain the overall phenomenon nor in my opinion does it help to prevent further genocides. I do not believe it is possible to stop wars. So long as there is a disparity of resources there will always be wars. And given that different climates are better and worse at generating resources there will probably always be a disparity of resources. But while it may not be possible to stop all wars, it may not be possible to stop all genocides, if we stop just one that would be a step in the right direction.

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Blood on the Tracks

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Phenom Phen, Cambodia

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- March 14, 2006 - -

It was a fittingly dull grey overcast sky, remnants of the previous night’s thunderstorm which kept me up for an hour or more while I sat on the spare bed beneath the window watching the room light up like a dance floor under a strobe, it had stopped raining, but it was still cloudy when I climbed on the back of a moto and headed out to the killing fields.

As I mentioned in the last entry I came down with a bit of a fever for a few days. This was accompanied by what we in the group have come to term, for lack of a nicer, but equally descriptive term—pissing out the ass. Yes it’s not a pretty picture. Nor is it a pleasant experience, but we have all done it, it was simply my turn. Consequently I don’t have a real clear recollection of the journey from Ban Lung to Kratie, nor do I have all that great of a recall from Kratie out to Sen Monoron. I do however remember near the end of the journey to Sen Monoron, as I sat in the cab of a Toyota pickup with ass cheeks clenched and stomach rumbling ominously, we came upon an accident blocking a bridge. A large transport truck had rammed into the side of a bridge and apparently been abandoned. Truck Accident, Sen Monoron, Cambodia The result was a heavily loaded Toyota pickup nearly turned on its side in the middle of a small riverbed. Luckily the villagers in attendance seemed to have sensed our driver’s folly and were able to run in with various pieces of wood which they used to brace the truck and stop it from turning completely on its side. It took nearly an hour to get it unstuck and finally across the river. Rather frustratingly about three or four NGOs in their shiny new 4runners passed by without much trouble nor I might add offering much in the way of aid, despite what might have been stenciled on the side of their trucks.

Matt has a fairly intense aversion to NGO’s which I am beginning to share, needless to say this experience did not help their cause in our eyes. The thing is we have traveled quite extensively in the backcountry of Laos and Cambodia and we have seen some pretty intense poverty. However we rarely see NGO groups out in these areas. We tend to find them near large resort towns like Luang Prabang or Seam Reap where air conditioning and western food is plentiful, or as we would witness down south, NGO’s seem to enjoy a bit of surf fishing from the comfort of their shiny 4x4s. So yes we have developed a healthy disrespect for those that claim to help, but spend their time close to the comforts of home. Lest we seem self righteous let me absolve a couple of spectacular NGO groups, the land mine people, that is, anyone clearing land mines and UXO, and the Friends organization in Phnom Penh which teaches street children how to cook and run restaurants. These two NGOs are superb and beyond reproach in all respects. However the vast majority of NGOs out here are, in the words of the English, a bunch of wankers.

Where for instance were the NGOs in 1974? Where was the west in general when Cambodia needed it? Where was the west when 3 million people were killed in less than four years? It’s easy to help when somebody else has solved the difficult problems (that would be the Vietnamese who, fed up with the Khmer Rouge, invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979).

And just who were the Khmer Rouge? For those that don’t know here is the sound bite synopsis: in something like 1974 the US backed a military coup by a member of the Cambodian Army named Lol Nol. The coup disposed the King and sent him into exile. Just before he left he told the Cambodian people loyal to him to head to the hills and join the then fledgling Khmer Rouge. Lol Nol lasted some six months in power. The US backed him because he let them bomb the Viet Kong operating on Cambodia soil. Unfortunately he seems to have been quite corrupt and at the bare minimum was not popular. Roughly eight months later the US had lost the Vietnam War, pulled out of Southeast Asia and left behind a power vacuum (sound familiar?) which allowed the Khmer Rouge to step out of the jungle and into power.

In the beginning the Khmer Rouge were simply Cambodian nationalists who opposed Lol Nol, but by the time they seized power the Khmer Rouge had transformed themselves into something approaching Maoists. The Khmer Rouge’s goal was to an agrarian utopia in which all people were equal and worked the land. Unfortunately for the average person this meant the economy had to go. Money was abolished, the post service destroyed, and everyone was driven out of cities into the fields where they were worked to death. The Khmer Rouge set about destroying all literature, art, education, banned music, and basically took all the things that make life worth living and destroyed them. At some point a man whose name is undoubtedly familiar to most came to lead the Khmer Rouge, Brother Number One—Pol Pot. Under Pol Pot the killings escalated. Anyone educated was killed. Anyone literate was killed. Toward the end, anyone wearing glasses was killed. Those that survived did so by hiding and trying to blend in.

For the actual killings the Khmer Rouge favored lining people up in a field beside a large hole and then walking along behind them bashing in the back of their skulls with a blunt hammer. If you consider they killed three million people in four years you arrive at a figure of over 2000 people a day. The killing fields genocide museum outside Phnom Penh is not the only killing field. There is no “killing field,” there are thousands of them. Cambodia is covered in killing fields, the one outside of Phnom Penh is merely the one chosen to represent them all.

During this time the west did absolutely nothing.

The U.N. finally stopped recognizing the Khmer Rouge in 1991.

Imagine for a moment of the UN had recognized the Nazi Party as the rightful leader of Germany until 1957.

Killing Fields, Phnom Penh Cambodia I found it somewhat odd that although the bench and table were concrete they had been molded and painted to look as if they were wood. I thought for a while about the tree rings on display at Sequoia National Park in California where each ring is marked with a corresponding event from history. You can see how large the Sequoia was when Christ was born, when China built the great wall, when Columbus discovered America, and so on. The rings painted on the table before me were spaced rather widely such that as best I could count, given that I am not an expert at such things, the faux tree appeared to be roughly thirty years old, as if the artist may well have intended it to be a way to peer back in time, to create a point a singularity if you will from which all modern Cambodian history must come. The Khmer Rouge reset the calendar, calling the year of their rise to power year zero. The fake tree trunk before was, whether intentionally or not, painted to look as though it began life in that artificial year zero.

He did not say any more except to mention that it was time to go if I wanted to see the film at S21, which I did. I sat on the back of the moto as we headed into town wondering what I would do in the face of something like the Khmer Rouge. I decided that I would try to flee, but I’m not sure if that’s cowardly or not. If it was too late and I could not flee I do not know what I would do and I do not think anyone can know what they would do until they face such a situation.

Torture Chamber, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia S21 is perhaps a little less known than the Killing Fields, owing no doubt to its lack of Hollywood endorsement, but S21 is even more chilling for the fact that it looks as if it were abandoned yesterday. Originally a school, the buildings became the central processing area for Khmer Rouge detainees, which is a sanitized way of saying it was a torture chamber. With the typical despots flair for brevity it was designated simply S21. Of the more than 17,000 people that passed through the walls and corridors of S21 under the Khmer Rouge, seven were alive when the Vietnamese liberated Phnom Penh. Other than scrubbing the stains from the walls and floors it seems as though very little had been done at S21. It looks like it might have been an active torture chamber a few hours before you arrived. The left hand building is a series of classrooms each totally bare save for a wire frame beds, a wrought iron bar and a car battery. These rooms served as torture chambers where prisoners’ were restrained while their fingernails were pulled out, their bodies electrocuted and battery acid poured on their skin. Standing alone in the bare rooms you can almost hear the screams.

Victim Photos, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia The creepy thing about S21 is that the Khmer Rouge were methodical in their record keeping. Everyone who passed through S21 was photographed and a detailed biographical record was made. Some of these were lost, but the vast majority remain. Several halls of the museum are now simply rows and rows of black and white photographs of those who were tortured and killed at S21. I have not been to Auschwitz or for that matter any other genocide museum, but I cannot imagine a more stark and yet moving tribute to the victims than the bare walls and floors and endless rows of photographs.

Child Victim, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia After touring the various rooms and halls of S21 I went up to the film room to watch a documentary film about the Khmer Rouge. The film itself was good, but in no way as moving as the simple existence of the place, which has a physical reality about it that is far more chilling than anything cinema is capable of. I found my mind wandering back to the same question I had been asking all day, How? How could the Khmer Rouge have happened? I’ve read a couple of books about life under the Khmer Rouge but I still can’t wrap my head around genocide, I just don’t understand how it happens, or how it can continue to happen. Like most people I want to know some reason, but it’s never that simple, there may not be a reason or even a collection of reasons that could explain the Khmer Rouge.

It would be nice to think the Khmer Rouge were just plain evil or crazy, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Pol Pot was educated in Paris, the head of S21 was a former professor of mathematics and the guards were hardened and formed just like the sadistic guards of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Certainly these were not murderous simpletons on a rampage. The truth is there are a million tiny explanations, a million things that can add up to a genocide, but breaking them down and isolating them does not help to explain the overall phenomenon nor in my opinion does it help to prevent further genocides. I do not believe it is possible to stop wars. So long as there is a disparity of resources there will always be wars. And given that different climates are better and worse at generating resources there will probably always be a disparity of resources. But while it may not be possible to stop all wars, it may not be possible to stop all genocides, if we stop just one that would be a step in the right direction.

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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/blood-tracks.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/blood-tracks.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4008408..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/blood-tracks.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,45 +0,0 @@ -Blood on the Tracks -=================== - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Tuesday, 14 March 2006 - -It was a fittingly dull grey overcast sky, remnants of the previous night's thunderstorm which kept me up for an hour or more while I sat on the spare bed beneath the window watching the room light up like a dance floor under a strobe, it had stopped raining, but it was still cloudy when I climbed on the back of a moto and headed out to the killing fields. - -The killing fields outside of Phnom Penh are in fact just that, fields with depressions, large holes in the ground, some marked with staggering numbers, others with no sign at all. The Khmer Rouge slaughtered over 12,000 people at this site alone. It did not rain any more that morning but the sky remained dark and the holes were partially filled with water. - - -As I mentioned in the last entry I came down with a bit of a fever for a few days. This was accompanied by what we in the group have come to term, for lack of a nicer, but equally descriptive term—pissing out the ass. Yes it's not a pretty picture. Nor is it a pleasant experience, but we have all done it, it was simply my turn. Consequently I don't have a real clear recollection of the journey from Ban Lung to Kratie, nor do I have all that great of a recall from Kratie out to Sen Monoron. I do however remember near the end of the journey to Sen Monoron, as I sat in the cab of a Toyota pickup with ass cheeks clenched and stomach rumbling ominously, we came upon an accident blocking a bridge. A large transport truck had rammed into the side of a bridge and apparently been abandoned. Truck Accident, Sen Monoron, Cambodia

The accident did not look recent, but the wreck remained. And was blocking all traffic over the bridge. The majority of the cars using the road to Sen Monoron were four-wheel drive and didn't have too much trouble heading down around the bridge and through the riverbed. Naturally our cheap transport was only two-wheel drive and very top heavy. After studying the situation for the better part of half an hour, our driver apparently decided he could do it. Wrong. Truck Tipping Over, Sen Monoron, Cambodia

Truck Tipping Over, Sen Monoron, Cambodia

The result was a heavily loaded Toyota pickup nearly turned on its side in the middle of a small riverbed. Luckily the villagers in attendance seemed to have sensed our driver's folly and were able to run in with various pieces of wood which they used to brace the truck and stop it from turning completely on its side. It took nearly an hour to get it unstuck and finally across the river. Rather frustratingly about three or four NGOs in their shiny new 4runners passed by without much trouble nor I might add offering much in the way of aid, despite what might have been stenciled on the side of their trucks. - -Matt has a fairly intense aversion to NGO's which I am beginning to share, needless to say this experience did not help their cause in our eyes. The thing is we have traveled quite extensively in the backcountry of Laos and Cambodia and we have seen some pretty intense poverty. However we rarely see NGO groups out in these areas. We tend to find them near large resort towns like Luang Prabang or Seam Reap where air conditioning and western food is plentiful, or as we would witness down south, NGO's seem to enjoy a bit of surf fishing from the comfort of their shiny 4x4s. So yes we have developed a healthy disrespect for those that claim to help, but spend their time close to the comforts of home. Lest we seem self righteous let me absolve a couple of spectacular NGO groups, the land mine people, that is, anyone clearing land mines and UXO, and the Friends organization in Phnom Penh which teaches street children how to cook and run restaurants. These two NGOs are superb and beyond reproach in all respects. However the vast majority of NGOs out here are, in the words of the English, a bunch of wankers. - -Where for instance were the NGOs in 1974? Where was the west in general when Cambodia needed it? Where was the west when 3 million people were killed in less than four years? It's easy to help when somebody else has solved the difficult problems (that would be the Vietnamese who, fed up with the Khmer Rouge, invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979). - -And just who were the Khmer Rouge? For those that don't know here is the sound bite synopsis: in something like 1974 the US backed a military coup by a member of the Cambodian Army named Lol Nol. The coup disposed the King and sent him into exile. Just before he left he told the Cambodian people loyal to him to head to the hills and join the then fledgling Khmer Rouge. Lol Nol lasted some six months in power. The US backed him because he let them bomb the Viet Kong operating on Cambodia soil. Unfortunately he seems to have been quite corrupt and at the bare minimum was not popular. Roughly eight months later the US had lost the Vietnam War, pulled out of Southeast Asia and left behind a power vacuum (sound familiar?) which allowed the Khmer Rouge to step out of the jungle and into power. - -In the beginning the Khmer Rouge were simply Cambodian nationalists who opposed Lol Nol, but by the time they seized power the Khmer Rouge had transformed themselves into something approaching Maoists. The Khmer Rouge's goal was to an agrarian utopia in which all people were equal and worked the land. Unfortunately for the average person this meant the economy had to go. Money was abolished, the post service destroyed, and everyone was driven out of cities into the fields where they were worked to death. The Khmer Rouge set about destroying all literature, art, education, banned music, and basically took all the things that make life worth living and destroyed them. At some point a man whose name is undoubtedly familiar to most came to lead the Khmer Rouge, Brother Number One—Pol Pot. Under Pol Pot the killings escalated. Anyone educated was killed. Anyone literate was killed. Toward the end, anyone wearing glasses was killed. Those that survived did so by hiding and trying to blend in. - -For the actual killings the Khmer Rouge favored lining people up in a field beside a large hole and then walking along behind them bashing in the back of their skulls with a blunt hammer. If you consider they killed three million people in four years you arrive at a figure of over 2000 people a day. The killing fields genocide museum outside Phnom Penh is not the only killing field. There is no "killing field," there are thousands of them. Cambodia is covered in killing fields, the one outside of Phnom Penh is merely the one chosen to represent them all. - -During this time the west did absolutely nothing. - -The U.N. finally stopped recognizing the Khmer Rouge in 1991. - -Imagine for a moment of the UN had recognized the Nazi Party as the rightful leader of Germany until 1957. - - Killing Fields, Phnom Penh Cambodia

Skulls, Killing Fields, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

I found it somewhat odd that although the bench and table were concrete they had been molded and painted to look as if they were wood. I thought for a while about the tree rings on display at Sequoia National Park in California where each ring is marked with a corresponding event from history. You can see how large the Sequoia was when Christ was born, when China built the great wall, when Columbus discovered America, and so on. The rings painted on the table before me were spaced rather widely such that as best I could count, given that I am not an expert at such things, the faux tree appeared to be roughly thirty years old, as if the artist may well have intended it to be a way to peer back in time, to create a point a singularity if you will from which all modern Cambodian history must come. The Khmer Rouge reset the calendar, calling the year of their rise to power year zero. The fake tree trunk before was, whether intentionally or not, painted to look as though it began life in that artificial year zero. - -After a while my moto driver saw me sitting there and wandered over, I was half expecting him to say it was time to go, but instead he sat down at the bench opposite me and crossed his legs. *A very sad place no…?* he said. I nodded but did not say anything. I was trying the judge his age. As best I could guess he would have probably been around eight when the Khmer Rouge took power. There is an entire generation missing in Cambodia, people of his generation are few and far between and most that you see are actually Vietnamese or Chinese emigres. - -*I was very young when this happened.* He did not go on. I nodded and he smiled. He asked for a cigarette which I gave him. *I worked in a field. From before dawn to after dark. I was seven. It was very hard. I got a fever and the Khmer Rouge gave us rabbit shit as pills because they could not afford medicine. My parents were dead already, but I had seen my mother boil the leaves of that tree and give them to my brother when he was sick.* I looked behind me and he pointed, but I could not decipher which tree he meant. *So I crush the leaves and made tea and I got better.* - -He did not say any more except to mention that it was time to go if I wanted to see the film at S21, which I did. I sat on the back of the moto as we headed into town wondering what I would do in the face of something like the Khmer Rouge. I decided that I would try to flee, but I'm not sure if that's cowardly or not. If it was too late and I could not flee I do not know what I would do and I do not think anyone can know what they would do until they face such a situation. - - Torture Chamber, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Torture Chamber, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Victim Photos, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Child Victim, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

After touring the various rooms and halls of S21 I went up to the film room to watch a documentary film about the Khmer Rouge. The film itself was good, but in no way as moving as the simple existence of the place, which has a physical reality about it that is far more chilling than anything cinema is capable of. I found my mind wandering back to the same question I had been asking all day, How? How could the Khmer Rouge have happened? I've read a couple of books about life under the Khmer Rouge but I still can't wrap my head around genocide, I just don't understand how it happens, or how it can continue to happen. Like most people I want to know some reason, but it's never that simple, there may not be a reason or even a collection of reasons that could explain the Khmer Rouge. - -It would be nice to think the Khmer Rouge were just plain evil or crazy, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Pol Pot was educated in Paris, the head of S21 was a former professor of mathematics and the guards were hardened and formed just like the sadistic guards of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Certainly these were not murderous simpletons on a rampage. The truth is there are a million tiny explanations, a million things that can add up to a genocide, but breaking them down and isolating them does not help to explain the overall phenomenon nor in my opinion does it help to prevent further genocides. I do not believe it is possible to stop wars. So long as there is a disparity of resources there will always be wars. And given that different climates are better and worse at generating resources there will probably always be a disparity of resources. But while it may not be possible to stop all wars, it may not be possible to stop all genocides, if we stop just one that would be a step in the right direction. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.amp deleted file mode 100644 index 1256f82..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.amp +++ /dev/null @@ -1,194 +0,0 @@ - - - - - - -The Book of Right On - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Book of Right On

- March 31, 2006 - - -

The mountaintops were shrouded in clouds and what could have been a view of the ocean was instead a sea of swirling white, misty moisture on our faces. There was an abundance of purple flowers stretching out from the back patio of what was once the king's summer home. Behind us the summer home itself was in a state of disarray, or, actually, disarray is too mild, ruin would be the proper word.

The clouds continued to blow up the valley at speeds that reminded me of scenes from Koyaanisqatsi, where sped up film makes clouds appear to break like waves over a mountain ridge. But this was no trick of cameras and film. These clouds were actually blowing up fast enough that it felt as if a misty white sea were breaking over us. - -Between the seaside town of Kep and Sinoukville lies the hill station Bokor Hill. Once a thriving community and summer home of the king of Cambodia, it now lies entirely in ruins. The king's former house (which I would not call a palace for it was rather small and even in full splendor still too small to be called a palace) is on one side of the mountain and then across a bumpy dirt road on the other side is the actual town which now consists of an abandoned Catholic church and a once lavish hotel and casino, both rumored to be haunted. The town was built by the French and then abandoned presumably when the French decided to do what they do best—retreat.

We had arrived the night before in the coastal river town of Kampot and arranged a tour of Bokor Hill through a local guesthouse. We set out in the early morning with a few other tourists including an English couple named John and Linda who we ran into several times later in Sinoukville. Honest John was a used car salesman (and yes, Honest John's is the name of his lot) and he and his wife Linda were easily the sweetest people I've met on my trip. They were the sort of couple that have been together for forty years and still hold hands when they walk around. The kind of image Hallmark is trying to sell except that John and Linda were unaffectedly natural about it.

We all rode in the back of a truck on hard wooden benches over a rough bumpy road which ought to sound familiar by now and I won't bore you with the details except to say that I have learned to bear the misery with a kind of stoicism I didn't know I had in me.

One of the things travelers love to do is tell stories. eating dinner at night in a crowded restuarant is something akin to Masterpiece Theatre. And people have a natural tendency to retell a good story they've heard, but in the retelling they often put themselves at the center. Everyone does it, even me on occasion. I was sitting with our guide, waiting for the others to finish walking around the casino, half listening to what the guide was saying to another traveler, and half watching the fog blow in. At some point his words began to sound terribly familiar and I realized he was telling a different version of a story Matt had once overheard someone telling and retold to us (without putting himself at the center). In the version Matt heard the events happened to the traveler that told it. And it took place at a no name bar in a small Cambodian town, exactly the sort of embellishment your typical traveler would add. The guide's version took place at Chinese New Year at Bokor Hill Station among a crowd of thousands, not quite as glamorous but infinitely more likely. I have no idea who has the real version, but I suspect that whoever told the story to Matt heard it here first and then placed themselves at the center of it. Remember the telephone game you played as a child? Well stories among travelers often grow in the same way. The strange part was to actually get to hear the other version, usually you just suspect the made up parts, but I got to hear the actual difference between the first telling and the later. Kudos to Matt for not retelling the story with him at the center. So anyway, one night I was at this dumpy bar in this little backwater town in northeast Cambodia and these guys pull up in a Mercedes, windows all tinted, the cars looking hard you know what I mean? And bright, I mean interrogation room bright, fog lights shining right into the bar. So this one local guy who's at the bar gets up and says something in Cambodian and these guys get out of the car looking pretty heavy, Mafioso types you know? And then all the sudden….

After wandering around the church and the casino, which are both burned out abandoned stone buildings that do have an eerie quality to them that would certainly lend itself to visions of ghost and ghouls, we headed back down the mountain for a swim in the local river.With the kind of foresight that I demonstrate regularly I forgot to wear swim trunks and I already knew it takes days for my shorts to dry and they tend not to smell so good at the end of it. I skipped the swim. After a dunk in the water we took a half hour or so boat ride back to Kampot. I've seen sunsets over just about every possible terrain on this trip and sunsets from Southeast Asia rivers are still my favorite. I'm not sure what it is exactly but there is something so completely relaxing about cruising down a river on a boat as the sun sinks behind the hills. It just feels… natural, as if that is in fact what one ought to be doing as the sun disappears.

The next day we continued on to Sinoukville which is Cambodia's attempt at a seaside resort. Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville is a pleasant, if somewhat hippy oriented, travelers haven. The town itself is lovely, but the travelers tend to head for the beachfront bungalows (remember what I have said before, there is a time to head for the hills and a time to embrace and get crazy with the the cheese whiz). We managed to find a decent room about fifty meters from the shore and kicked back for a few days. We rented Honda Dreams and cruised down the coast to deserted white sand beaches, thatched huts serving noodles and rice, where we watched sunsets and dodged rain storms. And yes ate hamburgers and chips and even went to a late night beach bonfire/micro rave sort of thing where plenty of hippies were twirling stick and fire and other things that hippies tend to do.

And then there was that day. That day when everyone went there own way. We have reached the point where I have to say something, but I've lost the script, this was not in the original text, this was adlibbed. And now I have to capture some sort of meaning and summation, or at least I feel like I do, and yet I can't. I could talk about the bus station where Debi and Rob and Jules headed off back to Phnom Penh and on to Vietnam or Matt and I playing a few games of pool that last night after the others were gone. But none of that gets at what I mean. If they had words that could capture feelings there would be no need to write, I think here I'd go for verse, but I'm no good with it. I haven't got any minor chords on the laptop. Someone I was traveling with recently read me an article on the emotions of animals, and the author, in the course of making the point that animals most probably do have emotions but we will never understand them, used the example of human empathy. That is, I can try to understand how you may feel, but I can never actually feel what you feel nor you feel what I feel. It is therefore impossible to explain what it's like to spend nearly every waking minute of every day for three months with someone. Instead I'm having a DFW moment where the narrative thread breaks down and I have to step in and say that even now, writing this nearly a month later, I don't know what to say except… do you know, do you know what I mean…? Can you feel… no I can't do it. Jimmy, that bit just doesn't sound as good as when you said it. Anyway I'm going to give up and just cut and paste from an email from someone who's traveled more than I because this is better than I can do:

- - You meet the best people while traveling, get really close really quick, then the goodbyes come way too soon. Some of my best friends in the world are people I only spent a couple weeks with in some far flung country, haven't seen in years, but still keep in close contact with. Coming home is also a part of travel. People never want to hear all the stories ya have to tell. Life for them has been the same old shit and attention spans for tales of nasty bathrooms and chicken buses only last so long. It's the other travelers that want to hear your stories. It's kind of a club of sorts us travelers. You often have a very clear picture of where people have been before ya know their surnames or what they do back home. Home kind of fades. And yes, the goodbyes are tough, but paths once crossed have a funny way of doing so again. - -

So Jules and Rob, and especially Matt and Debi, wherever you are (oh yeah, I know where you are but forgive me while I go for a little drama) — cheers. I've never liked prolonged goodbyes so I will just go with the song. It was indeed right on and perhaps my friend is right, paths once crossed may cross again (the next rounds is on me). I miss you all.

- - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.html deleted file mode 100644 index 0621a55..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,345 +0,0 @@ - - - - - The Book Of Right On - by Scott Gilbertson - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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The Book of Right On

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Sinoukville, Cambodia

- – Map -

- March 31, 2006 - -

The mountaintops were shrouded in clouds and what could have been a view of the ocean was instead a sea of swirling white, misty moisture on our faces. There was an abundance of purple flowers stretching out from the back patio of what was once the king’s summer home. Behind us the summer home itself was in a state of disarray, or, actually, disarray is too mild, ruin would be the proper word.

Flowers, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia The clouds continued to blow up the valley at speeds that reminded me of scenes from Koyaanisqatsi, where sped up film makes clouds appear to break like waves over a mountain ridge. But this was no trick of cameras and film. These clouds were actually blowing up fast enough that it felt as if a misty white sea were breaking over us. - -Between the seaside town of Kep and Sinoukville lies the hill station Bokor Hill. Once a thriving community and summer home of the king of Cambodia, it now lies entirely in ruins. The king’s former house (which I would not call a palace for it was rather small and even in full splendor still too small to be called a palace) is on one side of the mountain and then across Church Bokor Hill, Cambodia a bumpy dirt road on the other side is the actual town which now consists of an abandoned Catholic church and a once lavish hotel and casino, both rumored to be haunted. The town was built by the French and then abandoned presumably when the French decided to do what they do best—retreat.

We had arrived the night before in the coastal river town of Kampot and arranged a tour of Bokor Hill through a local guesthouse. We set out in the early morning with a few other tourists including an English couple named John and Linda who we ran into several times later in Sinoukville. Honest John was a used car salesman (and yes, Honest John’s is the name of his lot) and he and his wife Linda were easily the sweetest people I’ve met on my trip. They were the sort of couple that have been together for forty years and still hold hands when they walk around. The kind of image Hallmark is trying to sell except that John and Linda were unaffectedly natural about it.

We all rode in the back of a truck on hard wooden benches over a rough bumpy road which ought to sound familiar by now and I won’t bore you with the details except to say that I have learned to bear the misery with a kind of stoicism I didn’t know I had in me.

Burned Out Casino, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia One of the things travelers love to do is tell stories. eating dinner at night in a crowded restuarant is something akin to Masterpiece Theatre. And people have a natural tendency to retell a good story they’ve heard, but in the retelling they often put themselves at the center. Everyone does it, even me on occasion. I was sitting with our guide, waiting for the others to finish walking around the casino, half listening to what the guide was saying to another traveler, and half watching the fog blow in. At some point his words began to sound terribly familiar and I realized he was telling a different version of a story Matt had once overheard someone telling and retold to us (without putting himself at the center). In the version Matt heard the events happened to the traveler that told it. And it took place at a no name bar in a small Cambodian town, exactly the sort of embellishment your typical traveler would add. The guide’s version took place at Chinese New Year at Bokor Hill Station among a crowd of thousands, not quite as glamorous but infinitely more likely. I have no idea who has the real version, but I suspect that whoever told the story to Matt heard it here first and then placed themselves at the center of it. Remember the telephone game you played as a child? Well stories among travelers often grow in the same way. The strange part was to actually get to hear the other version, usually you just suspect the made up parts, but I got to hear the actual difference between the first telling and the later. Kudos to Matt for not retelling the story with him at the center. So anyway, one night I was at this dumpy bar in this little backwater town in northeast Cambodia and these guys pull up in a Mercedes, windows all tinted, the cars looking hard you know what I mean? And bright, I mean interrogation room bright, fog lights shining right into the bar. So this one local guy who’s at the bar gets up and says something in Cambodian and these guys get out of the car looking pretty heavy, Mafioso types you know? And then all the sudden….

The next day we continued on to Sinoukville which is Cambodia’s attempt at a seaside resort. Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville is a pleasant, if somewhat hippy oriented, travelers haven. The town itself is lovely, but the travelers tend to head for the beachfront bungalows (remember what I have said before, there is a time to head for the hills and a time to embrace and get crazy with the the cheese whiz). We managed to find a decent room about fifty meters from the shore and kicked back for a few days. We rented Honda Dreams and cruised down the coast to deserted white sand beaches, thatched huts serving noodles and rice, where we watched sunsets and dodged rain storms. And yes ate hamburgers and chips and even went to a late night beach bonfire/micro rave sort of thing where plenty of hippies were twirling stick and fire and other things that hippies tend to do.

Everyone, Sinoukville Cambodia It was good fun, but for me there was the depressing thought that these were our last few days together. And while that didn’t stop me from having a good time and cleaning up in a few hands of hold ‘em (I told you Rob, I’m no good at tournaments, but I can hold my own in limit and I’ll take your salary in no limit), it did cast a sort of melancholy quality over the days. And strangely the weather seemed to feel the same way, continually providing sunsets that had a certain lingering sadness to them, something my friend Michael and I once termed “the happy sad,” which I can’t precisely explain; it’s something about the right minor chord phrases and and big drums. If you’ve listened to enough Springsteen, you know what I mean.

And then there was that day. That day when everyone went there own way. We have reached the point where I have to say something, but I’ve lost the script, this was not in the original text, this was adlibbed. And now I have to capture some sort of meaning and summation, or at least I feel like I do, and yet I can’t. I could talk about the bus station where Debi and Rob and Jules headed off back to Phnom Penh and on to Vietnam or Matt and I playing a few games of pool that last night after the others were gone. But none of that gets at what I mean. If they had words that could capture feelings there would be no need to write, I think here I’d go for verse, but I’m no good with it. I haven’t got any minor chords on the laptop. Matt and Debi on the Honda Dream, Sinoukville, Cambodia Someone I was traveling with recently read me an article on the emotions of animals, and the author, in the course of making the point that animals most probably do have emotions but we will never understand them, used the example of human empathy. That is, I can try to understand how you may feel, but I can never actually feel what you feel nor you feel what I feel. It is therefore impossible to explain what it’s like to spend nearly every waking minute of every day for three months with someone. Instead I’m having a DFW moment where the narrative thread breaks down and I have to step in and say that even now, writing this nearly a month later, I don’t know what to say except… do you know, do you know what I mean…? Can you feel… no I can’t do it. Jimmy, that bit just doesn’t sound as good as when you said it. Anyway I’m going to give up and just cut and paste from an email from someone who’s traveled more than I because this is better than I can do:

- - You meet the best people while traveling, get really close really quick, then the goodbyes come way too soon. Some of my best friends in the world are people I only spent a couple weeks with in some far flung country, haven’t seen in years, but still keep in close contact with. Coming home is also a part of travel. People never want to hear all the stories ya have to tell. Life for them has been the same old shit and attention spans for tales of nasty bathrooms and chicken buses only last so long. It’s the other travelers that want to hear your stories. It’s kind of a club of sorts us travelers. You often have a very clear picture of where people have been before ya know their surnames or what they do back home. Home kind of fades. And yes, the goodbyes are tough, but paths once crossed have a funny way of doing so again. - -

- -

So Jules and Rob, and especially Matt and Debi, wherever you are (oh yeah, I know where you are but forgive me while I go for a little drama) — cheers. I’ve never liked prolonged goodbyes so I will just go with the song. It was indeed right on and perhaps my friend is right, paths once crossed may cross again (the next rounds is on me). I miss you all.

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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a79d9eb..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,34 +0,0 @@ -The Book of Right On -==================== - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Friday, 31 March 2006 - -The mountaintops were shrouded in clouds and what could have been a view of the ocean was instead a sea of swirling white, misty moisture on our faces. There was an abundance of purple flowers stretching out from the back patio of what was once the king's summer home. Behind us the summer home itself was in a state of disarray, or, actually, disarray is too mild, ruin would be the proper word. - - Flowers, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia

a bumpy dirt road on the other side is the actual town which now consists of an abandoned Catholic church and a once lavish hotel and casino, both rumored to be haunted. The town was built by the French and then abandoned presumably when the French decided to do what they do best—retreat. - -We had arrived the night before in the coastal river town of Kampot and arranged a tour of Bokor Hill through a local guesthouse. We set out in the early morning with a few other tourists including an English couple named John and Linda who we ran into several times later in Sinoukville. Honest John was a used car salesman (and yes, Honest John's is the name of his lot) and he and his wife Linda were easily the sweetest people I've met on my trip. They were the sort of couple that have been together for forty years and still hold hands when they walk around. The kind of image Hallmark is trying to sell except that John and Linda were unaffectedly natural about it. - -We all rode in the back of a truck on hard wooden benches over a rough bumpy road which ought to sound familiar by now and I won't bore you with the details except to say that I have learned to bear the misery with a kind of stoicism I didn't know I had in me. - - Burned Out Casino, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia

Burned Out Casino, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia

With the kind of foresight that I demonstrate regularly I forgot to wear swim trunks and I already knew it takes days for my shorts to dry and they tend not to smell so good at the end of it. I skipped the swim. After a dunk in the water we took a half hour or so boat ride back to Kampot. I've seen sunsets over just about every possible terrain on this trip and sunsets from Southeast Asia rivers are still my favorite. River Journey, Kampot, Cambodia

I'm not sure what it is exactly but there is something so completely relaxing about cruising down a river on a boat as the sun sinks behind the hills. It just feels… natural, as if that is in fact what one ought to be doing as the sun disappears. - -The next day we continued on to Sinoukville which is Cambodia's attempt at a seaside resort. Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville is a pleasant, if somewhat hippy oriented, travelers haven. The town itself is lovely, but the travelers tend to head for the beachfront bungalows (remember what I have said before, there is a time to head for the hills and a time to embrace and get crazy with the the cheese whiz). We managed to find a decent room about fifty meters from the shore and kicked back for a few days. We rented Honda Dreams and cruised down the coast to deserted white sand beaches, thatched huts serving noodles and rice, where we watched sunsets and dodged rain storms. And yes ate hamburgers and chips and even went to a late night beach bonfire/micro rave sort of thing where plenty of hippies were twirling stick and fire and other things that hippies tend to do. - - Everyone, Sinoukville Cambodia

It was good fun, but for me there was the depressing thought that these were our last few days together. And while that didn't stop me from having a good time and cleaning up in a few hands of hold ‘em (I told you Rob, I'm no good at tournaments, but I can hold my own in limit and I'll take your salary in no limit), it did cast a sort of melancholy quality over the days. And strangely the weather seemed to feel the same way, continually providing sunsets that had a certain lingering sadness to them, something my friend Michael and I once termed "the happy sad," which I can't precisely explain; it's something about the right minor chord phrases and and big drums. If you've listened to enough Springsteen, you know what I mean. - -And then there was that day. That day when everyone went there own way. We have reached the point where I have to say something, but I've lost the script, this was not in the original text, this was adlibbed. And now I have to capture some sort of meaning and summation, or at least I feel like I do, and yet I can't. I could talk about the bus station where Debi and Rob and Jules headed off back to Phnom Penh and on to Vietnam or Matt and I playing a few games of pool that last night after the others were gone. But none of that gets at what I mean. If they had words that could capture feelings there would be no need to write, I think here I'd go for verse, but I'm no good with it. I haven't got any minor chords on the laptop. Matt and Debi on the Honda Dream, Sinoukville, Cambodia

Matt and Debi on the Honda Dream, Sinoukville, Cambodia

Someone I was traveling with recently read me an article on the emotions of animals, and the author, in the course of making the point that animals most probably do have emotions but we will never understand them, used the example of human empathy. That is, I can try to understand how you may feel, but I can never actually **feel** what you feel nor you feel what I feel. It is therefore impossible to explain what it's like to spend nearly every waking minute of every day for three months with someone. Instead I'm having a DFW moment where the narrative thread breaks down and I have to step in and say that even now, writing this nearly a month later, I don't know what to say except… do you know, do you know what I mean…? Can you feel… no I can't do it. Jimmy, that bit just doesn't sound as good as when you said it. Anyway I'm going to give up and just cut and paste from an email from someone who's traveled more than I because this is better than I can do: - -

- - You meet the best people while traveling, get really close really quick, then the goodbyes come way too soon. Some of my best friends in the world are people I only spent a couple weeks with in some far flung country, haven't seen in years, but still keep in close contact with. Coming home is also a part of travel. People never want to hear all the stories ya have to tell. Life for them has been the same old shit and attention spans for tales of nasty bathrooms and chicken buses only last so long. It's the other travelers that want to hear your stories. It's kind of a club of sorts us travelers. You often have a very clear picture of where people have been before ya know their surnames or what they do back home. Home kind of fades. And yes, the goodbyes are tough, but paths once crossed have a funny way of doing so again. - -

- -So Jules and Rob, and especially Matt and Debi, wherever you are (oh yeah, I know where you are but forgive me while I go for a little drama) — cheers. I've never liked prolonged goodbyes so I will just go with the song. It was indeed right on and perhaps my friend is right, paths once crossed may cross again (the next rounds is on me). I miss you all. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/index.html deleted file mode 100644 index 80b4251..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/index.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,122 +0,0 @@ - - - - - Luxagraf - Topografical Writings: Archive - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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Archive: March 2006

The Book of Right On - Mar 31, 2006 -
Midnight in a Perfect World - Mar 26, 2006 -
Angkor Wat - Mar 21, 2006 -
…Wait ‘til it Blows - Mar 18, 2006 -
Beginning to See the Light - Mar 16, 2006 -
Blood on the Tracks - Mar 14, 2006 -
Ticket To Ride - Mar 07, 2006 -

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- - - - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world.amp deleted file mode 100644 index 34ed328..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world.amp +++ /dev/null @@ -1,189 +0,0 @@ - - - - - - -Midnight in a Perfect World - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Midnight in a Perfect World

- March 26, 2006 - - -

I lounged for a while in the shallows letting the small waves lapped over my back while I studied the rock and shell bed that lay just under the surface of the waves, watching the stones and bits of shells pitch back and forth to the rhythm of the sea. The undulation of water and light distorted and rippled the size of the stones such that after a while I decided they appeared to be a distant mirage in some watery desert.

Up on the shore I could make out several hammocks, grass huts and some slatted bamboo platforms on which Debi and Jules were lying. Two ducks wandered about beneath the platforms scratching at the sandy dirt and making curious wheezing sounds I didn't know ducks could make. Up the beach to my left were three trees with dense spindly branches which harbored hundreds and hundreds of yellow butterflies that fluttered in and out of the green leaves. Every so often a few would break off and began to drift down the beach toward me weaving about like little bits of clothe torn and floating on the breeze over the blue green water. Rob was down the beach somewhere looking for fisherman with something better than a squid jig and a million reasons to stay on shore. The lazy midday nothingness was briefly interrupted by the curious sight of villager driving a cow into the sea, whether for a bath or for his own amusement was hard to tell from our vantage point up the beach. The cow seemed less than thrilled with the operation. For some time I had noticed Debi alternate between staring out at the infiniteness of the horizon which was shrouded in grey thunderheads such that the boundary between sky and sea was obscured and indefinite, and scrutinizing me or Matt as if trying to memorize us, much the same as I was beginning to do to them, trying all the while not to think too much about our limited time left. I could occasionally hear the strains of The Rolling Stones Sympathy of the Devil drifting out of her headphones, a song that for me has long called up visions of Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky and a Russia that exists only in my mind and probably bears little resemblance to the Russia of today. The image in my head inhabits some boundary world between history and magic. - -After three days of Templing in Angkor we were spent. We joined forces with Rob and Jules and headed back down to Phnom Penh for a day. The next morning, after a bowl of noodle soup at the local soup shop we negotiated a cab down to Kep on the coast. And guess what? Down on the coast things are much cooler. In Kep things dropped back down to just hot. We took a room in a nice hotel overlooking the meager, but ever so inviting beach. I for one parked myself in a hammock and proceeded to do a good three hours of absolutely nothing (unless you count writing as something). Eventually Rob and Jules came to find me and I met up with the rest at the local crab shack. A whole crab can had in Kep for one U.S. dollar. Not Alaskan King Crab by any means, but good size and extremely tasty. We ordered up about thirty crabs between the five of us and proceed to feast—crab in pepper sauce, crab curry, steamed crab, grilled crab, endless endless crab. Beautiful.

There wasn't a whole lot to Kep; as seaside towns go it felt a bit like an appetizer, whereas we were ready for a main course. We decided that what we really needed was an island. Luckily for us there is an island or two off the coast of Kep. In fact there's at least twenty, but a lot of them are Vietnamese and off limits from this side. We settled on an island that shall for selfish reasons remain nameless. Or better yet we'll just give it the name Rob gave it—Death Island.

Yes somehow in the midst of nearly deserted tropical paradise with gentle lapping waves, warm breezes, hammocks and grass huts, Rob managed to step on a sea urchin, bash his head on a bamboo roof, stub his toe on a nail, get bitten by red ants, step on another sea urchin…. Death Island it is.

The island consisted of a few scattered fishermen's huts on the leeward side and some long nets cast out over the rocky shores where the local gathered and dried vast amounts of seaweed. On the leeward side of the islands were three bungalow operations of more or less similar quality, one of which rented us two fairly large bamboo and grass huts, which we called home for three nights. The first day I walked around the island (not far really, only a two or three hour hike) to get a feel for it, see what the locals did all day and find a descent spot for snorkeling. The best spot as it turned out was just up the beach from where we were staying. After renting a snorkel mask that looked as if it had been left behind by a young Jacque Cousteau in the late fifties, but which functioned perfectly well, Rob and I did a bit of snorkeling. For the most part it was just rocks, though here and there were bits of coral and a few fish, but it wasn't much. The only notable thing we saw was a sea snake, a rather fat, ugly creature with black and red rings around his body. Otherwise, while a fun diversion for the morning, the snorkeling wasn't much.

We generally went swimming in the mornings, lay on the sand and read or listened to music and then around lunchtime ordered up crab. I came close to eating nothing but crab for three days, lunch and dinner. The afternoons we spent under the shade of the trees playing cards or telling stories and flicking giant red ants off our legs until the sun began to sink down to the horizon and we moved back out to the beach to watch it set. The restaurant would then start up the generator for a few hours to provide light and allow us to take turns charging camera batteries and ipods and such.

We spent three days on Death Island. Late the second night, after the cards were put up, the generators shut down and everyone had headed off to bed, I decided to go for a midnight swim. As I waded into the water I noticed little bubbles glowing around my feet. At first I thought they were catching the faint glow of the moon which was poking through the sullen thunderheads and casting a bluish pallor over the water in front of me. But, as I got deeper, I noticed that bubbles at my feet continued to glow and were joined then by bubbles coming off my legs and stomach as well. I grew up by the ocean and have done plenty of nightswimming in nearly every ocean and sea, but I have never seen anything like this. I laid back floating looking up at the stars between clouds and watching the phosphorescence of the bubbles out of my peripheral vision.

Off in the distance I could hear the faint mutter of a long tail engine coughing to life and dying and then coughing to life again as some wayward fisherman tried to get home. The mainland was faintly visible through the low clouds. I saw the flicker of lights and the long dance of high beams on the coastal road, which eventually rounded a bend and disappeared. The long tail engine came to life again with a steady puttering that gradually trailed off over some horizon of sound too distant to see in the increasingly cloud-obscured moonlight. I laid down once more, floating on my back and for a few minutes, as the water filled in my ears shutting out the sound of the sea, I felt as if I were actually floating amongst the stars in the sky, phosphorescent blue stars below me and more distant white and yellow ones in front of me.

I had had Sympathy of the Devil in my head most of the afternoon and I noticed then, floating there in the water that the drum beat in my head matched almost perfectly with gentle lapping of the ocean on the shore. I got out of the water for a while and sat with my back to the ocean listening to the waves, watching the coconut palms and pineapple trees rattle in the wind and wondering whether we'll ever figure out the exact nature of the devil's game. If, as Bulgakov would have it, heaven is the dominion of god and earth that of a rather swanky and stylishly likeable devil, then, as Mick Jagger suggests, the nature of the devil's game is also the secret to living well. There are of course those that do not think life is a game, that it is dead serious business, but then perhaps that's just their manner of play, just as there are some that can sit at a hold ‘em table for hours without cracking a smile. I've realized lately that I haven't been playing very well myself, but for a moment or two there on Death Island if you had met me I think I would have had the courtesy, sympathy and taste that we're all looking for.

After a while I waded back out into the water and they there floating under the stars. Directly overhead was a curious cluster of four stars forming a midsized square, a nearly perfect square, either a curious pattern formed by cloud and stars or perhaps part of some constellation I had never noticed before. Whatever the case it quickly disappeared behind a fast moving cloud and a slight drizzle began to fall creating endless ripples on the otherwise glassy surface of the water. The blue bubbles rising off my legs floated up and were pitched about in the rippling surface until they ruptured and disappeared, quickly replaced by new ones. Eventually the clouds covered the stars entirely and as my legs and arms grew still, the bubbles stopped, the water filled in my ears and a general blackness fell over the sky and sea and land until all was one.

- - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world.html deleted file mode 100644 index 6269c07..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,341 +0,0 @@ - - - - - Midnight In A Perfect World - by Scott Gilbertson - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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Midnight in a Perfect World

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Death Island, Cambodia

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- March 26, 2006 - -

Up on the shore I could make out several hammocks, grass huts and some slatted bamboo platforms on which Debi and Jules were lying. Two ducks wandered about beneath the platforms scratching at the sandy dirt and making curious wheezing sounds I didn’t know ducks could make. Up the beach to my left were three trees with dense spindly branches which harbored hundreds and hundreds of yellow butterflies that fluttered in and out of the green leaves. Islands, Cambodia For some time I had noticed Debi alternate between staring out at the infiniteness of the horizon which was shrouded in grey thunderheads such that the boundary between sky and sea was obscured and indefinite, and scrutinizing me or Matt as if trying to memorize us, much the same as I was beginning to do to them, trying all the while not to think too much about our limited time left. I could occasionally hear the strains of The Rolling Stones Sympathy of the Devil drifting out of her headphones, a song that for me has long called up visions of Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky and a Russia that exists only in my mind and probably bears little resemblance to the Russia of today. The image in my head inhabits some boundary world between history and magic. - -After three days of Templing in Angkor we were spent. We joined forces with Rob and Jules and headed back down to Phnom Penh for a day. The next morning, after a bowl of noodle soup at the local soup shop we negotiated a cab down to Kep on the coast. And guess what? Down on the coast things are much cooler. In Kep things dropped back down to just hot. We took a room in a nice hotel overlooking the meager, but ever so inviting beach. I for one parked myself in a hammock and proceeded to do a good three hours of absolutely nothing (unless you count writing as something). Eventually Rob and Jules came to find me and I met up with the rest at the local crab shack. A whole crab can had in Kep for one U.S. dollar. Not Alaskan King Crab by any means, but good size and extremely tasty. We ordered up about thirty crabs between the five of us and proceed to feast—crab in pepper sauce, crab curry, steamed crab, grilled crab, endless endless crab. Beautiful.

There wasn’t a whole lot to Kep; as seaside towns go it felt a bit like an appetizer, whereas we were ready for a main course. We decided that what we really needed was an island. Luckily for us there is an island or two off the coast of Kep. In fact there’s at least twenty, but a lot of them are Vietnamese and off limits from this side. We settled on an island that shall for selfish reasons remain nameless. Or better yet we’ll just give it the name Rob gave it—Death Island.

Beach, islands, Cambodia I found Death Island to be the best island I’ve been on in all my travels. Though that may not be much of a complement since it was also the only island I’ve been on. I knew Death Island was just what I needed the first day we arrived when we ordered crab and a boy in his underwear proceeded to run out of the kitchen and down to the water where he swam out and began unloading crabs from a trap into a bucket. It doesn’t get much fresher than that. Throw in a nice beach, some cheap bungalows and you’re away.

The island consisted of a few scattered fishermen’s huts on the leeward side and some long nets cast out over the rocky shores where the local gathered and dried vast amounts of seaweed. On the leeward side of the islands were three bungalow operations of more or less similar quality, one of which rented us two fairly large bamboo and grass huts, which we called home for three nights. The first day I walked around the island (not far really, only a two or three hour hike) to get a feel for it, see what the locals did all day and find a descent spot for snorkeling. The best spot as it turned out was just up the beach from where we were staying. After renting a snorkel mask that looked as if it had been left behind by a young Jacque Cousteau in the late fifties, but which functioned perfectly well, Rob and I did a bit of snorkeling. For the most part it was just rocks, though here and there were bits of coral and a few fish, but it wasn’t much. The only notable thing we saw was a sea snake, a rather fat, ugly creature with black and red rings around his body. Otherwise, while a fun diversion for the morning, the snorkeling wasn’t much.

Sunset Hammock, Islands, Cambodia We generally went swimming in the mornings, lay on the sand and read or listened to music and then around lunchtime ordered up crab. I came close to eating nothing but crab for three days, lunch and dinner. The afternoons we spent under the shade of the trees playing cards or telling stories and flicking giant red ants off our legs until the sun began to sink down to the horizon and we moved back out to the beach to watch it set. The restaurant would then start up the generator for a few hours to provide light and allow us to take turns charging camera batteries and ipods and such.

restaurant, Islands, Cambodia It turns out that Rob is a card player. I think it was about two hours between learning that tidbit and the start of the first hold ‘em game. It had been a while since I played any hold ‘em, not that it’s a game you forget, but it was nice to play a few friendly hands. After a few beers and a few hands I once again had those fantasies of quiting my job to play cards full time. Luckily I know I’m not good enough to do that. And besides I don’t have a job to quit so it just wouldn’t work. But it was a nice change from the most popular travelers game—shithead. If you’ve never played shithead learn it before you travel. I for one love shithead even if I’m not that good at it. It seems to be one of the universal languages of traveling. Something miraculous happened one day on Death Island when we were playing shithead. But I’m not going to say what it was. Just that that was the one and only time it ever happened. You know how some people are evilly good at cards? Well even those people have their off days.

I had had Sympathy of the Devil in my head most of the afternoon and I noticed then, floating there in the water that the drum beat in my head matched almost perfectly with gentle lapping of the ocean on the shore. I got out of the water for a while and sat with my back to the ocean listening to the waves, watching the coconut palms and pineapple trees rattle in the wind and wondering whether we’ll ever figure out the exact nature of the devil’s game. If, as Bulgakov would have it, heaven is the dominion of god and earth that of a rather swanky and stylishly likeable devil, then, as Mick Jagger suggests, the nature of the devil’s game is also the secret to living well. There are of course those that do not think life is a game, that it is dead serious business, but then perhaps that’s just their manner of play, just as there are some that can sit at a hold ‘em table for hours without cracking a smile. I’ve realized lately that I haven’t been playing very well myself, but for a moment or two there on Death Island if you had met me I think I would have had the courtesy, sympathy and taste that we’re all looking for.

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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 629e493..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,32 +0,0 @@ -Midnight in a Perfect World -=========================== - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Sunday, 26 March 2006 - -I lounged for a while in the shallows letting the small waves lapped over my back while I studied the rock and shell bed that lay just under the surface of the waves, watching the stones and bits of shells pitch back and forth to the rhythm of the sea. The undulation of water and light distorted and rippled the size of the stones such that after a while I decided they appeared to be a distant mirage in some watery desert. - -Up on the shore I could make out several hammocks, grass huts and some slatted bamboo platforms on which Debi and Jules were lying. Two ducks wandered about beneath the platforms scratching at the sandy dirt and making curious wheezing sounds I didn't know ducks could make. Up the beach to my left were three trees with dense spindly branches which harbored hundreds and hundreds of yellow butterflies that fluttered in and out of the green leaves. Islands, Cambodia

Every so often a few would break off and began to drift down the beach toward me weaving about like little bits of clothe torn and floating on the breeze over the blue green water. Rob was down the beach somewhere looking for fisherman with something better than a squid jig and a million reasons to stay on shore. The lazy midday nothingness was briefly interrupted by the curious sight of villager driving a cow into the sea, whether for a bath or for his own amusement was hard to tell from our vantage point up the beach. The cow seemed less than thrilled with the operation. Sunset, Cambodia

For some time I had noticed Debi alternate between staring out at the infiniteness of the horizon which was shrouded in grey thunderheads such that the boundary between sky and sea was obscured and indefinite, and scrutinizing me or Matt as if trying to memorize us, much the same as I was beginning to do to them, trying all the while not to think too much about our limited time left. I could occasionally hear the strains of The Rolling Stones **Sympathy of the Devil** drifting out of her headphones, a song that for me has long called up visions of Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky and a Russia that exists only in my mind and probably bears little resemblance to the Russia of today. The image in my head inhabits some boundary world between history and magic. - -After three days of Templing in Angkor we were spent. We joined forces with Rob and Jules and headed back down to Phnom Penh for a day. The next morning, after a bowl of noodle soup at the local soup shop we negotiated a cab down to Kep on the coast. And guess what? Down on the coast things are much cooler. In Kep things dropped back down to just hot. We took a room in a nice hotel overlooking the meager, but ever so inviting beach. I for one parked myself in a hammock and proceeded to do a good three hours of absolutely nothing (unless you count writing as something). Eventually Rob and Jules came to find me and I met up with the rest at the local crab shack. A whole crab can had in Kep for one U.S. dollar. Not Alaskan King Crab by any means, but good size and extremely tasty. We ordered up about thirty crabs between the five of us and proceed to feast—crab in pepper sauce, crab curry, steamed crab, grilled crab, endless endless crab. Beautiful. - -There wasn't a whole lot to Kep; as seaside towns go it felt a bit like an appetizer, whereas we were ready for a main course. We decided that what we really needed was an island. Luckily for us there is an island or two off the coast of Kep. In fact there's at least twenty, but a lot of them are Vietnamese and off limits from this side. We settled on an island that shall for selfish reasons remain nameless. Or better yet we'll just give it the name Rob gave it—Death Island. - -Yes somehow in the midst of nearly deserted tropical paradise with gentle lapping waves, warm breezes, hammocks and grass huts, Rob managed to step on a sea urchin, bash his head on a bamboo roof, stub his toe on a nail, get bitten by red ants, step on another sea urchin…. Death Island it is. - - Beach, islands, Cambodia

I found Death Island to be the best island I've been on in all my travels. Though that may not be much of a complement since it was also the only island I've been on. I knew Death Island was just what I needed the first day we arrived when we ordered crab and a boy in his underwear proceeded to run out of the kitchen and down to the water where he swam out and began unloading crabs from a trap into a bucket. It doesn't get much fresher than that. Throw in a nice beach, some cheap bungalows and you're away. - -The island consisted of a few scattered fishermen's huts on the leeward side and some long nets cast out over the rocky shores where the local gathered and dried vast amounts of seaweed. On the leeward side of the islands were three bungalow operations of more or less similar quality, one of which rented us two fairly large bamboo and grass huts, which we called home for three nights. The first day I walked around the island (not far really, only a two or three hour hike) to get a feel for it, see what the locals did all day and find a descent spot for snorkeling. The best spot as it turned out was just up the beach from where we were staying. After renting a snorkel mask that looked as if it had been left behind by a young Jacque Cousteau in the late fifties, but which functioned perfectly well, Rob and I did a bit of snorkeling. For the most part it was just rocks, though here and there were bits of coral and a few fish, but it wasn't much. The only notable thing we saw was a sea snake, a rather fat, ugly creature with black and red rings around his body. Otherwise, while a fun diversion for the morning, the snorkeling wasn't much. - - Sunset Hammock, Islands, Cambodia

It turns out that Rob is a card player. I think it was about two hours between learning that tidbit and the start of the first hold ‘em game. It had been a while since I played any hold ‘em, not that it's a game you forget, but it was nice to play a few friendly hands. After a few beers and a few hands I once again had those fantasies of quiting my job to play cards full time. Luckily I know I'm not good enough to do that. And besides I don't have a job to quit so it just wouldn't work. But it was a nice change from the most popular travelers game—shithead. If you've never played shithead learn it before you travel. I for one love shithead even if I'm not that good at it. It seems to be one of the universal languages of traveling. Something miraculous happened one day on Death Island when we were playing shithead. But I'm not going to say what it was. Just that that was the one and only time it ever happened. You know how some people are evilly good at cards? Well even those people have their off days. - -We spent three days on Death Island. Late the second night, after the cards were put up, the generators shut down and everyone had headed off to bed, I decided to go for a midnight swim. As I waded into the water I noticed little bubbles glowing around my feet. At first I thought they were catching the faint glow of the moon which was poking through the sullen thunderheads and casting a bluish pallor over the water in front of me. But, as I got deeper, I noticed that bubbles at my feet continued to glow and were joined then by bubbles coming off my legs and stomach as well. I grew up by the ocean and have done plenty of nightswimming in nearly every ocean and sea, but I have never seen anything like this. I laid back floating looking up at the stars between clouds and watching the phosphorescence of the bubbles out of my peripheral vision. - -Off in the distance I could hear the faint mutter of a long tail engine coughing to life and dying and then coughing to life again as some wayward fisherman tried to get home. The mainland was faintly visible through the low clouds. I saw the flicker of lights and the long dance of high beams on the coastal road, which eventually rounded a bend and disappeared. The long tail engine came to life again with a steady puttering that gradually trailed off over some horizon of sound too distant to see in the increasingly cloud-obscured moonlight. I laid down once more, floating on my back and for a few minutes, as the water filled in my ears shutting out the sound of the sea, I felt as if I were actually floating amongst the stars in the sky, phosphorescent blue stars below me and more distant white and yellow ones in front of me. - -I had had **Sympathy of the Devil** in my head most of the afternoon and I noticed then, floating there in the water that the drum beat in my head matched almost perfectly with gentle lapping of the ocean on the shore. I got out of the water for a while and sat with my back to the ocean listening to the waves, watching the coconut palms and pineapple trees rattle in the wind and wondering whether we'll ever figure out the exact nature of the devil's game. If, as Bulgakov would have it, heaven is the dominion of god and earth that of a rather swanky and stylishly likeable devil, then, as Mick Jagger suggests, the nature of the devil's game is also the secret to living well. There are of course those that do not think life is a game, that it is dead serious business, but then perhaps that's just their manner of play, just as there are some that can sit at a hold ‘em table for hours without cracking a smile. I've realized lately that I haven't been playing very well myself, but for a moment or two there on Death Island if you had met me I think I would have had the courtesy, sympathy and taste that we're all looking for. - -After a while I waded back out into the water and they there floating under the stars. Directly overhead was a curious cluster of four stars forming a midsized square, a nearly perfect square, either a curious pattern formed by cloud and stars or perhaps part of some constellation I had never noticed before. Whatever the case it quickly disappeared behind a fast moving cloud and a slight drizzle began to fall creating endless ripples on the otherwise glassy surface of the water. The blue bubbles rising off my legs floated up and were pitched about in the rippling surface until they ruptured and disappeared, quickly replaced by new ones. Eventually the clouds covered the stars entirely and as my legs and arms grew still, the bubbles stopped, the water filled in my ears and a general blackness fell over the sky and sea and land until all was one. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.amp deleted file mode 100644 index 29a79ae..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.amp +++ /dev/null @@ -1,188 +0,0 @@ - - - - - - -Ticket To Ride - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ticket To Ride

- March 7, 2006 - - -

I can't see. My eyebrows are orange with dust. I cannot see them, but I know they must be; they were yesterday. Every now and then when her legs clench down on my hips or her fingernails dig into my shoulders, I remember Debi is behind me and I am more or less responsible for not killing both of us.

The sudden pain from her fingernails or the flashes of adrenaline that her periodic death grips induce are actually good, they snap me out of my daze and remind me that I am riding a motorcycle on a very bumpy dirt road. I can usually tell where the significant bumps are based on the amount of terror I've managed to induce in my passenger which is good since I really can't see through the dust and wind. The Honda Dream is capable of all. The worst dirt roads are nothing, the dirt bike a luxury no one can afford, fuck it, let's take a Dream. The Honda Dream is capable of anything. I unfortunately am not. The road is shimmering though I can't tell if it's the heat or the tears formed by dust and wind whipping up under, over, and around my glasses as if they weren't even there. Helmets? Helmets? You're joking right? Name your top three memories from this trip A voice. Coming from somewhere behind me, distant. I am simply trying to steer through the hunger and exhaustion right now; all my favorite memories of this trip are light years from my brain. When I get a bit feverish I tend to disappear into fantasyland and right when Debi was yelling her question in my left ear Scotty was yelling in the other ear, it's only a Honda dream Jim, you can't push ‘er any more than you are. And then the wheels slipped a bit on a curve that ended up being sharper than I had anticipated and I realized Scotty was right (is he ever wrong?). I slowed up a bit and tried to organize a response. - -At that moment all time seemed a bit compressed and I couldn't for example have told you if that slippage of the back tire was my fault or perhaps I was still on the back of the bike on my way down from Sarangkot to Pokhara, Nepal when the bike also slipped a bit coming round a corner. I did have a distinct memory that sprang to mind but I discarded it because it was less than an hour ago that we crossed the river and strolled up to the Kachon village, a moment that seemed lifted from Indiana Jones, provided Indy were to finally split into a triplicate of American and British particles. For a moment it felt as if we were the first westerners to have ever entered the village, but the girl with the Brittany Spears t-shirt on seemed to indicate that was not true. And then there was the coca cola and exchanging of money for a tour of the spirit houses. But for a moment, walking up from the sandbar where our boatman dropped us, already feeling the first signs of a fever and the beating afternoon sun cooking my face, for just a brief moment I understood what it must have been like to discover an entirely new world, to make contact with people that had never seen white men or women before, and though it might be illusion, it was nevertheless a curiously exhilarating moment.

Beyond that immediate memory my brain was too fogged to come up with a true answer. Later over a late lunch I finally decided that indeed Sarangkot would be one, Udaipur at twilight would be another and our more recent trip through Kunglor Cave would be the third. Though the food helped somewhat, the fever tapered but did not depart for a few days.

We had come out to Ban Lung, Cambodia because we knew the northeast corner of Cambodia was likely to be the least touristy part of the country and I for one knew that I needed to ease myself back into the concept of other white people being around. From the moment we crossed under the Laos border gates, Cambodia was immediately and obviously different from Laos, though in ways that are difficult to explain; I might be tempted to say Cambodia is more modern provided you were to take modern in the narrowest possible sense, but perhaps it would be even better to say that Cambodia is louder and more exuberant than Laos. Even the landscape changed significantly once we crossed the border, the trees were no longer leafless and dead looking, the timing of the monsoon here is obviously quite different than it is in Laos.

We crossed the border at a no name town about two hours north of Strung Treng. After an uneventful bus ride to Stung Treng we set about hiring a taxi (the main mode of transport in the remoter regions of Cambodia is taxi). But this is not a taxi in the sense of a New York City yellow cab. A Cambodian taxi is a white, late model Toyota Camry. The Camry is considered to hold six passengers plus a driver and the purchase of a ride is by seat, but if you don't have enough people to fill all the seats you are expected either to wait until there are enough people or simply buy up the extra seats. We ended up buying the extra seats since we only have thirty days and Strung Treng seemed more of a crossroads than a destination. We spent the afternoon there waiting on a bus from Phnom Phen which might have been bearing some people interested in going to Ban Lung. We had a bit of an explore around the market and, much to the amusement of the locals, Matt and I decided to get haircuts.

It was nearly nightfall when we gave up and bought the extra back seat and a Cambodian woman bought the extra seat in the front so that we set out with only five people in the car, which I suppose sounds normal to someone who hasn't been traveling southeast asia for five months where the general rule is if you can move, there's room for more.

Perhaps the reason I say Cambodia is more exuberant than Laos is reflected by the curious characters we first encountered, namely a man named Mr. T in Strung Treng who spoke excellent English and spent the afternoon helping us organize the taxi. It is difficult now to recall any exact thing he did that could be called exuberant, but he had a personality that was somehow larger than life, which was shockingly loud compared to the people we met in Laos, who were every bit as friendly and helpful, but simply quieter and more reserved by nature. The second person I spoke with at any length was Mr. Leng of the Star Hotel in Ban Lung. We arrived fairly late at night, round tem Pm or so and Matt and Debi headed straight for bed. My seemingly chronic insomnia drove me downstairs to have a beer with Mr. Leng (a beer poured over ice, Cambodian-style he informed me, which isn't as bad at it sounds).

It was Mr. Leng who gave me the hand drawn map we used the next day to try and find some waterfalls. Debi wasn't feeling well so Matt and I set out on our own. We found one waterfall with relative ease, but then failed to find the others. We did however ride through some quite amazing though obviously replanted clear-cut forests. And we got an introduction to Cambodia scooter riding. We're no slouches with the Honda dream and we'd been down plenty of bad dirt roads in Laos, but neither of us had ever been passed by a man on a motorbike with his wife on the back who had a bag of vegetables in one arm and was breastfeeding a baby with the other arm, all the while bouncing over gullies and ditches as if they weren't there. It makes you feel. Well. Like you can do better.

That afternoon we went back for Debi and then headed out to Boeng Yeak Lom lake, a crater lake formed by an asteroid or something of that nature since it really is a perfectly round lake quite obviously the result of some very large object. Since there are no volcanoes in the area the asteroid story makes since, though I have no idea whether it's actually true. Regardless of origin the lake was a very beautiful, idyllic spot to spend the afternoon swimming, floating and generally lying about doing nothing.

The next morning we set out for the small village of Kachon people one of several ethnic minorities living in the hills here near the Vietnamese border. The ride out was fine and we managed to find a boat and cross the river to the village despite having no language in common with the people helping us. Rural Cambodian villages are not all that different from rural Laos villages, but this was the first time that the chief had come out to greet us, while the entire village gathered around to watch. We walked through the spirit shrines, which are something like a local variation on crypts, but with effigies representing the deceased person's occupation.

But maybe that's just me.

- - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.html deleted file mode 100644 index 6c83641..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,341 +0,0 @@ - - - - - Ticket To Ride - by Scott Gilbertson - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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Ticket To Ride

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Ban Lung, Cambodia

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- March 7, 2006 - -

I can’t see. My eyebrows are orange with dust. I cannot see them, but I know they must be; they were yesterday. Every now and then when her legs clench down on my hips or her fingernails dig into my shoulders, I remember Debi is behind me and I am more or less responsible for not killing both of us.

The sudden pain from her fingernails or the flashes of adrenaline that her periodic death grips induce are actually good, they snap me out of my daze and remind me that I am riding a motorcycle on a very bumpy dirt road. I can usually tell where the significant bumps are based on the amount of terror I’ve managed to induce in my passenger which is good since I really can’t see through the dust and wind. The Honda Dream is capable of all. The worst dirt roads are nothing, the dirt bike a luxury no one can afford, fuck it, let’s take a Dream. The Honda Dream is capable of anything. I unfortunately am not. The road is shimmering though I can’t tell if it’s the heat or the tears formed by dust and wind whipping up under, over, and around my glasses as if they weren’t even there. Helmets? Helmets? You’re joking right? Name your top three memories from this trip A voice. Coming from somewhere behind me, distant. I am simply trying to steer through the hunger and exhaustion right now; all my favorite memories of this trip are light years from my brain. When I get a bit feverish I tend to disappear into fantasyland and right when Debi was yelling her question in my left ear Scotty was yelling in the other ear, it’s only a Honda dream Jim, you can’t push ‘er any more than you are. And then the wheels slipped a bit on a curve that ended up being sharper than I had anticipated and I realized Scotty was right (is he ever wrong?). I slowed up a bit and tried to organize a response. - -At that moment all time seemed a bit compressed and I couldn’t for example have told you if that slippage of the back tire was my fault or perhaps I was still on the back of the bike on my way down from Sarangkot to Pokhara, Nepal when the bike also slipped a bit coming round a corner. I did have a distinct memory that sprang to mind but I discarded it because it was less than an hour ago that we crossed the river and strolled up to the Kachon village, a moment that seemed lifted from Indiana Jones, provided Indy were to finally split into a triplicate of American and British particles. For a moment it felt as if we were the first westerners to have ever entered the village, but the girl with the Brittany Spears t-shirt on seemed to indicate that was not true. And then there was the coca cola and exchanging of money for a tour of the spirit houses. But for a moment, walking up from the sandbar where our boatman dropped us, already feeling the first signs of a fever and the beating afternoon sun cooking my face, for just a brief moment I understood what it must have been like to discover an entirely new world, to make contact with people that had never seen white men or women before, and though it might be illusion, it was nevertheless a curiously exhilarating moment.

We crossed the border at a no name town about two hours north of Strung Treng. After an uneventful bus ride to Stung Treng we set about hiring a taxi (the main mode of transport in the remoter regions of Cambodia is taxi). But this is not a taxi in the sense of a New York City yellow cab. A Cambodian taxi is a white, late model Toyota Camry. The Camry is considered to hold six passengers plus a driver and the purchase of a ride is by seat, but if you don’t have enough people to fill all the seats you are expected either to wait until there are enough people or simply buy up the extra seats. Matt, Debi and I We ended up buying the extra seats since we only have thirty days and Strung Treng seemed more of a crossroads than a destination. We spent the afternoon there waiting on a bus from Phnom Phen which might have been bearing some people interested in going to Ban Lung. We had a bit of an explore around the market and, much to the amusement of the locals, Matt and I decided to get haircuts.

It was nearly nightfall when we gave up and bought the extra back seat and a Cambodian woman bought the extra seat in the front so that we set out with only five people in the car, which I suppose sounds normal to someone who hasn’t been traveling southeast asia for five months where the general rule is if you can move, there’s room for more.

It was Mr. Leng who gave me the hand drawn map we used the next day to try and find some waterfalls. Debi wasn’t feeling well so Matt and I set out on our own. We found one waterfall with relative ease, but then failed to find the others. We did however ride through some quite amazing though obviously replanted clear-cut forests. Ban Lung Forest And we got an introduction to Cambodia scooter riding. We’re no slouches with the Honda dream and we’d been down plenty of bad dirt roads in Laos, but neither of us had ever been passed by a man on a motorbike with his wife on the back who had a bag of vegetables in one arm and was breastfeeding a baby with the other arm, all the while bouncing over gullies and ditches as if they weren’t there. It makes you feel. Well. Like you can do better.

That afternoon we went back for Debi and then headed out to Boeng Yeak Lom lake, a crater lake formed by an asteroid or something of that nature since it really is a perfectly round lake quite obviously the result of some very large object. Since there are no volcanoes in the area the asteroid story makes since, though I have no idea whether it’s actually true. Boeng Yeak Lom, Ban Lung, Cambodia Regardless of origin the lake was a very beautiful, idyllic spot to spend the afternoon swimming, floating and generally lying about doing nothing.

Spirit Totem, near Ban Lung, Cambodia It wasn’t until later in the even when we were having dinner at the hotel restaurant and Debi casually said yeah that was really nice, quite lovely the way the chief came out and the children were sweet and that guy with six fingers and the boat ride… Wait?! What?! Yes it was only then the Matt and I realized we had apparently overlooked the fact that our boatman had an extra appendage on one of his hands. I don’t know about you, but given that we were in a situation where no one could understand each other and there was no harm in saying whatever you wanted in English, I probably would have said, hey guys don’t all look at once but that bloke over there has an extra finger.

But maybe that’s just me.

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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.txt deleted file mode 100644 index bcd2972..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,32 +0,0 @@ -Ticket To Ride -============== - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Tuesday, 07 March 2006 - -I can't see. My eyebrows are orange with dust. I cannot see them, but I know they must be; they were yesterday. Every now and then when her legs clench down on my hips or her fingernails dig into my shoulders, I remember Debi is behind me and I am more or less responsible for not killing both of us. - -The sudden pain from her fingernails or the flashes of adrenaline that her periodic death grips induce are actually good, they snap me out of my daze and remind me that I am riding a motorcycle on a very bumpy dirt road. I can usually tell where the significant bumps are based on the amount of terror I've managed to induce in my passenger which is good since I really can't see through the dust and wind. The Honda Dream is capable of all. The worst dirt roads are nothing, the dirt bike a luxury no one can afford, fuck it, let's take a Dream. The Honda Dream is capable of anything. I unfortunately am not. The road is shimmering though I can't tell if it's the heat or the tears formed by dust and wind whipping up under, over, and around my glasses as if they weren't even there. Helmets? Helmets? You're joking right? **Name your top three memories from this trip** A voice. Coming from somewhere behind me, distant. I am simply trying to steer through the hunger and exhaustion right now; all my favorite memories of this trip are light years from my brain. When I get a bit feverish I tend to disappear into fantasyland and right when Debi was yelling her question in my left ear Scotty was yelling in the other ear, it's only a Honda dream Jim, you can't push ‘er any more than you are. And then the wheels slipped a bit on a curve that ended up being sharper than I had anticipated and I realized Scotty was right (is he ever wrong?). I slowed up a bit and tried to organize a response. - -At that moment all time seemed a bit compressed and I couldn't for example have told you if that slippage of the back tire was my fault or perhaps I was still on the back of the bike on my way down from Sarangkot to Pokhara, Nepal when the bike also slipped a bit coming round a corner. I did have a distinct memory that sprang to mind but I discarded it because it was less than an hour ago that we crossed the river and strolled up to the Kachon village, a moment that seemed lifted from Indiana Jones, provided Indy were to finally split into a triplicate of American and British particles. For a moment it felt as if we were the first westerners to have ever entered the village, but the girl with the Brittany Spears t-shirt on seemed to indicate that was not true. And then there was the coca cola and exchanging of money for a tour of the spirit houses. But for a moment, walking up from the sandbar where our boatman dropped us, already feeling the first signs of a fever and the beating afternoon sun cooking my face, for just a brief moment I understood what it must have been like to discover an entirely new world, to make contact with people that had never seen white men or women before, and though it might be illusion, it was nevertheless a curiously exhilarating moment. - -Beyond that immediate memory my brain was too fogged to come up with a true answer. Later over a late lunch I finally decided that indeed Sarangkot would be one, Udaipur at twilight would be another and our more recent trip through Kunglor Cave would be the third. Though the food helped somewhat, the fever tapered but did not depart for a few days. - -We had come out to Ban Lung, Cambodia because we knew the northeast corner of Cambodia was likely to be the least touristy part of the country and I for one knew that I needed to ease myself back into the concept of other white people being around. From the moment we crossed under the Laos border gates, Cambodia was immediately and obviously different from Laos, though in ways that are difficult to explain; I might be tempted to say Cambodia is more modern provided you were to take modern in the narrowest possible sense, but perhaps it would be even better to say that Cambodia is louder and more exuberant than Laos. Even the landscape changed significantly once we crossed the border, the trees were no longer leafless and dead looking, the timing of the monsoon here is obviously quite different than it is in Laos. - -We crossed the border at a no name town about two hours north of Strung Treng. After an uneventful bus ride to Stung Treng we set about hiring a taxi (the main mode of transport in the remoter regions of Cambodia is taxi). But this is not a taxi in the sense of a New York City yellow cab. A Cambodian taxi is a white, late model Toyota Camry. The Camry is considered to hold six passengers plus a driver and the purchase of a ride is by seat, but if you don't have enough people to fill all the seats you are expected either to wait until there are enough people or simply buy up the extra seats. Matt, Debi and I

We ended up buying the extra seats since we only have thirty days and Strung Treng seemed more of a crossroads than a destination. We spent the afternoon there waiting on a bus from Phnom Phen which might have been bearing some people interested in going to Ban Lung. We had a bit of an explore around the market and, much to the amusement of the locals, Matt and I decided to get haircuts. - -It was nearly nightfall when we gave up and bought the extra back seat and a Cambodian woman bought the extra seat in the front so that we set out with only five people in the car, which I suppose sounds normal to someone who hasn't been traveling southeast asia for five months where the general rule is if you can move, there's room for more. - -Perhaps the reason I say Cambodia is more exuberant than Laos is reflected by the curious characters we first encountered, namely a man named Mr. T in Strung Treng who spoke excellent English and spent the afternoon helping us organize the taxi. It is difficult now to recall any exact thing he did that could be called exuberant, but he had a personality that was somehow larger than life, which was shockingly loud compared to the people we met in Laos, who were every bit as friendly and helpful, but simply quieter and more reserved by nature. The second person I spoke with at any length was Mr. Leng of the Star Hotel in Ban Lung. We arrived fairly late at night, round tem Pm or so and Matt and Debi headed straight for bed. My seemingly chronic insomnia drove me downstairs to have a beer with Mr. Leng (a beer poured over ice, Cambodian-style he informed me, which isn't as bad at it sounds). - -It was Mr. Leng who gave me the hand drawn map we used the next day to try and find some waterfalls. Debi wasn't feeling well so Matt and I set out on our own. We found one waterfall with relative ease, but then failed to find the others. We did however ride through some quite amazing though obviously replanted clear-cut forests. Ban Lung Forest

And we got an introduction to Cambodia scooter riding. We're no slouches with the Honda dream and we'd been down plenty of bad dirt roads in Laos, but neither of us had ever been passed by a man on a motorbike with his wife on the back who had a bag of vegetables in one arm and was breastfeeding a baby with the other arm, all the while bouncing over gullies and ditches as if they weren't there. It makes you feel. Well. Like you can do better. - -That afternoon we went back for Debi and then headed out to Boeng Yeak Lom lake, a crater lake formed by an asteroid or something of that nature since it really is a perfectly round lake quite obviously the result of some very large object. Since there are no volcanoes in the area the asteroid story makes since, though I have no idea whether it's actually true. Boeng Yeak Lom, Ban Lung, Cambodia

Regardless of origin the lake was a very beautiful, idyllic spot to spend the afternoon swimming, floating and generally lying about doing nothing. - -The next morning we set out for the small village of Kachon people one of several ethnic minorities living in the hills here near the Vietnamese border. The ride out was fine and we managed to find a boat and cross the river to the village despite having no language in common with the people helping us. Rural Cambodian villages are not all that different from rural Laos villages, but this was the first time that the chief had come out to greet us, while the entire village gathered around to watch. We walked through the spirit shrines, which are something like a local variation on crypts, but with effigies representing the deceased person's occupation. - - Spirit Totem, near Ban Lung, Cambodia

It wasn't until later in the even when we were having dinner at the hotel restaurant and Debi casually said yeah that was really nice, quite lovely the way the chief came out and the children were sweet and that guy with six fingers and the boat ride… Wait?! What?! Yes it was only then the Matt and I realized we had apparently overlooked the fact that our boatman had an extra appendage on one of his hands. I don't know about you, but given that we were in a situation where no one could understand each other and there was no harm in saying whatever you wanted in English, I probably would have said, hey guys don't all look at once but that bloke over there has an extra finger. - -But maybe that's just me. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows.amp deleted file mode 100644 index 38749d4..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows.amp +++ /dev/null @@ -1,185 +0,0 @@ - - - - - - -...Wait 'til it Blows - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

…Wait ‘til it Blows

- March 18, 2006 - - -

From Battanbang we headed northeast by boat to Seam Reap. The journey was a tedious and very shallow one. The guidebook makes a passing mention of the fact that local villagers are not all that fond of the tourist ferry boats and having ridden some way on the roof and watched the wake sink longtail boats left and right and snag and rip fishing lines and nets, I can see why.

Eventually the river opened up into Tonle Sap and stopped disrupting the locals, but anyone thinking of taking the journey by boat, I discourage you from doing so. This is first thing I've seen in S.E. Asia that I think should be taken out of the guidebooks and avoided until it disappears. The journey isn't particularly nice or scenic and the fact that you piss off everyone along the way just makes it worse. Take the bus.

We disembarked about 30 km south of Seam Reap and were met by a cartel tuk-tuk. There is a sort of cartel among guesthouses in Cambodia where you are more or less handed off to the next town. Typically you book a ticket through wherever you're staying and then they call a cousin in the town you're heading for and often they will meet you at the bus station or boat dock or wherever you happen to be arriving. Not to say that there's anything wrong with such practices, they're generally fine since all the guesthouses we've seen here are more or less the same thing with only minor fluctuation in price (the real secret in selecting a guesthouse is to take careful notice of any construction that might be nearby). The funny part about our waiting tuk-tuk driver at the dock was that he actually had a placard with our names on it, or rather the names Matt had given out when he bought the boat tickets. Fake names of course, and misspelled at that.

The next morning we decided not to head straight for Angkor Wat. We slept in quite late and it was around two (heat of the day of course) when we decided to head out to the landmine museum.

One the things I may have failed to mention thus far in my Cambodia reportage is that this was/is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. The Thais, the French, the U.S. and others have all laid mines in the area, but no one laid as many nor with such sick preference for killing and maiming innocent targets as the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge mined the borders to keep everyone else out and the Cambodians in, they mined roads, they mined circular arcs around villages to prevent villagers from leaving. They mined rice paddies, they mined cities, they mined the jungle. They were the Johnny Appleseeds of land mines, except that it isn't funny. And there are still a lot of mines in Cambodia.

Mr. Aki Ra who set up the landmine museum is dedicated to educating the public in landmines (he's also exhibited art as far away as Salt Lake City and participated in several documentaries on the subject). Judging by the photos around the museum area Mr. Ra has been in no less than five armies, which gives you some idea of the turmoil of Cambodian history, including the Khmer Rouge. But at some point, realizing that he had laid one to many land mines, Aki decided it was time to undo what he had done and he has dedicated the rest of his life to both the removal of mines and helping the victims of landmines. In addition to the museum the small compound also provides food and shelter for a number of landmine victims, most missing arms or legs, some both.

You might think that removing landmines involves sophisticated technology of the sort you see in BBC documentaries on Bosnia, but here in Cambodia landmine removal is most often handled by the technological marvel of southeast Asia—the bamboo stick. (While that last sentence may sound sarcastic it's really not meant that way, In my five months here I have seen people do things with bamboo that had to have taken thousands of years to perfect. Given a choice between a power saw and a good piece of bamboo I would go with the bamboo). The museum has a number of posters showing the techniques used to find and remove the mines. Sadly the removal of mines generally begins with a local villager finding a mine. Provided the mine does kill the person who stumbles across it, Aki is called and comes out with a long piece of bamboo which he used to feel around the mine, determine what type of mine it is and very carefully extract it. Landmine removal has a zero percentage error factor, so the fact that Mr. Ra has been doing this for ten years obviously means he's good at it. Fortunately for the Cambodians most of the mines on their soil are generally older and not quite so deadly as the new and improved mines (like the "bouncing betty" made in the US and designed not simply to blow your legs off, but to actually bounce out of the ground and explode at chest height maximizing the "kill radius" as jargon would have it).

Landmines aren't glamorous. They lack the universal terror of nuclear bombs or long-range missiles. They aren't the sort of thing anyone but the BBC is going to report on, but landmines kill more people than any other weapon deployed in the world. The problem with landmines is they last forever. Long after both sides have faded into history, the mines still exist. The mines lie dormant in the ground until someone steps on one, drives a car over it, ploughs it up in a field, or trips a wire in the bamboo thicket. Landmines are forever and then some. And because they aren't as obviously destructive as say a nuclear warhead, it's tougher to find support for their ban. Everyone is afraid of nuclear weapons, but only people who have actually dealt with landmines seem to understand how much more destructive and immediate their threat is.

The real problem with landmines is that they exist. In late 1999 a treaty passed through the UN calling for a worldwide ban on landmines. Lots of people signed it. The U.K, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, 151 in all, but not, you guessed it, the United States. Ever wonder why? I wonder about these things. Why did China, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and the U.S. not sign a treaty banning land mines? Are these really the countries we want to side with? Landmines aren't actually very effective in today's battlefield where increasingly robots and kids with laptops are the first ones to enter a potentially mined area. It turns out that the five biggest suppliers of arms to the world, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France are also all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. These countries have a necessary economic interest in wars; they manufacture the majority of the weapons used, regardless of whether their own troops are involved. And yet, as member of the U.N. Security Council they are ones who often have the power to decide whether or not the wars happen.

So long as the military industrial complex is pressed between the sheets with the Federal government the landmines will keep getting made. And that's not an indictment against Bush, it's an indictment against the entire US government, Democrats, Republicans and any oddball third parties for good measure. Take away the military industrial complex and see how many candidates can afford television commercials.

Do I sound angry? Good. I am. I've seen too many things over here to ever be able trust American government. I've seen the effects on innocent people. Regrettably I'm too much of a realist to believe anything can be done. Just remember when you head down to the polling booth to vote for whoever you think is right, that somewhere in the world someone is strapping on their prosthetic leg, or pulling themselves onto their wheeled cart. Someone who very likely has had little or no education, no food and no idea why someone s/he's never even met would want to take away their leg, their arm, or the lives of the ones they love.

If you'd like to help I encourage you to do so. If you would like to donate some money to The Landmine Museum in Seam Reap, every bit helps. You can have a look at the international ban on landmines which seems like a step in the right direction (and co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize). Write to your senator/representative and encourage them to pressure Bush. Ask them why the U.S won't sign the treaty. But more than anything I encourage you to try to broaden your understanding of current international events. So much of what happens in the world is ignored by the U.S. media. I for one will never be able to read an American newspaper again. Nor will I suffer through the local ~~news~~ bullshit ever again. The whole global village thing that lots of pundits in America like to talk about already exists. America just isn't part of it. We remain with our heads in the sand. Someday the landmines will be on our soil and then we won't be able to bury our heads in the sand any more. We have a choice I suppose, do something about now while we have a choice or wait until we have to do something about it. Choose wisely.

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…Wait ‘til it Blows

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Seam Reap, Cambodia

- – Map -

- March 18, 2006 - -

Eventually the river opened up into Tonle Sap and stopped disrupting the locals, but anyone thinking of taking the journey by boat, I discourage you from doing so. This is first thing I’ve seen in S.E. Asia that I think should be taken out of the guidebooks and avoided until it disappears. The journey isn’t particularly nice or scenic and the fact that you piss off everyone along the way just makes it worse. Take the bus.

We disembarked about 30 km south of Seam Reap and were met by a cartel tuk-tuk. There is a sort of cartel among guesthouses in Cambodia where you are more or less handed off to the next town. Typically you book a ticket through wherever you’re staying and then they call a cousin in the town you’re heading for and often they will meet you at the bus station or boat dock or wherever you happen to be arriving. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with such practices, they’re generally fine since all the guesthouses we’ve seen here are more or less the same thing with only minor fluctuation in price (the real secret in selecting a guesthouse is to take careful notice of any construction that might be nearby). The funny part about our waiting tuk-tuk driver at the dock was that he actually had a placard with our names on it, or rather the names Matt had given out when he bought the boat tickets. Fake names of course, and misspelled at that.

The next morning we decided not to head straight for Angkor Wat. We slept in quite late and it was around two (heat of the day of course) when we decided to head out to the landmine museum.

One the things I may have failed to mention thus far in my Cambodia reportage is that this was/is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. The Thais, the French, the U.S. and others have all laid mines in the area, but no one laid as many nor with such sick preference for killing and maiming innocent targets as the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge mined the borders to keep everyone else out and the Cambodians in, they mined roads, they mined circular arcs around villages to prevent villagers from leaving. They mined rice paddies, they mined cities, they mined the jungle. They were the Johnny Appleseeds of land mines, except that it isn’t funny. And there are still a lot of mines in Cambodia.

Faux Minefield, Land Mine Museum, Seam Reap, Cambodia The museum is on the edge of town (though give it a couple years and the town will have far over taken it) and consists of a large shed full of information on various landmines, their manufacturers and techniques for removal as well an educational video and, most fascinating, a faux minefield for you to stare at and try to determine how many you can see. Even when they aren’t hidden, as they would be in the actual jungle, landmines are very very difficult to spot. I was feeling pretty good about spotting what I thought was most of the obvious ones when I happened to look up and notice that I was standing under a mortar shell with a bit of fishing line wrapped around a tree. If I were to have stepped to my left I would have tripped the wire. Or course none of them were real mines, but it was a bit unsettling nonetheless.

Mr. Aki Ra who set up the landmine museum is dedicated to educating the public in landmines (he’s also exhibited art as far away as Salt Lake City and participated in several documentaries on the subject). Judging by the photos around the museum area Mr. Ra has been in no less than five armies, which gives you some idea of the turmoil of Cambodian history, including the Khmer Rouge. But at some point, realizing that he had laid one to many land mines, Aki decided it was time to undo what he had done and he has dedicated the rest of his life to both the removal of mines and helping the victims of landmines. In addition to the museum the small compound also provides food and shelter for a number of landmine victims, most missing arms or legs, some both.

You might think that removing landmines involves sophisticated technology of the sort you see in BBC documentaries on Bosnia, but here in Cambodia landmine removal is most often handled by the technological marvel of southeast Asia—the bamboo stick. (While that last sentence may sound sarcastic it’s really not meant that way, In my five months here I have seen people do things with bamboo that had to have taken thousands of years to perfect. Given a choice between a power saw and a good piece of bamboo I would go with the bamboo). The museum has a number of posters showing the techniques used to find and remove the mines. Sadly the removal of mines generally begins with a local villager finding a mine. Provided the mine does kill the person who stumbles across it, Aki is called and comes out with a long piece of bamboo which he used to feel around the mine, determine what type of mine it is and very carefully extract it. Landmine removal has a zero percentage error factor, so the fact that Mr. Ra has been doing this for ten years obviously means he’s good at it. Fortunately for the Cambodians most of the mines on their soil are generally older and not quite so deadly as the new and improved mines (like the “bouncing betty” made in the US and designed not simply to blow your legs off, but to actually bounce out of the ground and explode at chest height maximizing the “kill radius” as jargon would have it).

Landmines aren’t glamorous. They lack the universal terror of nuclear bombs or long-range missiles. They aren’t the sort of thing anyone but the BBC is going to report on, but landmines kill more people than any other weapon deployed in the world. The problem with landmines is they last forever. Long after both sides have faded into history, the mines still exist. The mines lie dormant in the ground until someone steps on one, drives a car over it, ploughs it up in a field, or trips a wire in the bamboo thicket. Landmines are forever and then some. And because they aren’t as obviously destructive as say a nuclear warhead, it’s tougher to find support for their ban. Everyone is afraid of nuclear weapons, but only people who have actually dealt with landmines seem to understand how much more destructive and immediate their threat is.

The real problem with landmines is that they exist. In late 1999 a treaty passed through the UN calling for a worldwide ban on landmines. Lots of people signed it. The U.K, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, 151 in all, but not, you guessed it, the United States. Ever wonder why? I wonder about these things. Why did China, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and the U.S. not sign a treaty banning land mines? Are these really the countries we want to side with? Landmines aren’t actually very effective in today’s battlefield where increasingly robots and kids with laptops are the first ones to enter a potentially mined area. It turns out that the five biggest suppliers of arms to the world, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France are also all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. These countries have a necessary economic interest in wars; they manufacture the majority of the weapons used, regardless of whether their own troops are involved. And yet, as member of the U.N. Security Council they are ones who often have the power to decide whether or not the wars happen.

So long as the military industrial complex is pressed between the sheets with the Federal government the landmines will keep getting made. And that’s not an indictment against Bush, it’s an indictment against the entire US government, Democrats, Republicans and any oddball third parties for good measure. Take away the military industrial complex and see how many candidates can afford television commercials.

Do I sound angry? Good. I am. I’ve seen too many things over here to ever be able trust American government. I’ve seen the effects on innocent people. Regrettably I’m too much of a realist to believe anything can be done. Just remember when you head down to the polling booth to vote for whoever you think is right, that somewhere in the world someone is strapping on their prosthetic leg, or pulling themselves onto their wheeled cart. Someone who very likely has had little or no education, no food and no idea why someone s/he’s never even met would want to take away their leg, their arm, or the lives of the ones they love.

If you’d like to help I encourage you to do so. If you would like to donate some money to The Landmine Museum in Seam Reap, every bit helps. You can have a look at the international ban on landmines which seems like a step in the right direction (and co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize). Write to your senator/representative and encourage them to pressure Bush. Ask them why the U.S won’t sign the treaty. But more than anything I encourage you to try to broaden your understanding of current international events. So much of what happens in the world is ignored by the U.S. media. I for one will never be able to read an American newspaper again. Nor will I suffer through the local ~~news~~ bullshit ever again. The whole global village thing that lots of pundits in America like to talk about already exists. America just isn’t part of it. We remain with our heads in the sand. Someday the landmines will be on our soil and then we won’t be able to bury our heads in the sand any more. We have a choice I suppose, do something about now while we have a choice or wait until we have to do something about it. Choose wisely.

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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows.txt deleted file mode 100644 index c39325d..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,36 +0,0 @@ -...Wait 'til it Blows -===================== - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Saturday, 18 March 2006 - -From Battanbang we headed northeast by boat to Seam Reap. The journey was a tedious and very shallow one. The guidebook makes a passing mention of the fact that local villagers are not all that fond of the tourist ferry boats and having ridden some way on the roof and watched the wake sink longtail boats left and right and snag and rip fishing lines and nets, I can see why. - -Eventually the river opened up into Tonle Sap and stopped disrupting the locals, but anyone thinking of taking the journey by boat, I discourage you from doing so. This is first thing I've seen in S.E. Asia that I think should be taken out of the guidebooks and avoided until it disappears. The journey isn't particularly nice or scenic and the fact that you piss off everyone along the way just makes it worse. Take the bus. - - - -We disembarked about 30 km south of Seam Reap and were met by a cartel tuk-tuk. There is a sort of cartel among guesthouses in Cambodia where you are more or less handed off to the next town. Typically you book a ticket through wherever you're staying and then they call a cousin in the town you're heading for and often they will meet you at the bus station or boat dock or wherever you happen to be arriving. Not to say that there's anything wrong with such practices, they're generally fine since all the guesthouses we've seen here are more or less the same thing with only minor fluctuation in price (the real secret in selecting a guesthouse is to take careful notice of any construction that might be nearby). The funny part about our waiting tuk-tuk driver at the dock was that he actually had a placard with our names on it, or rather the names Matt had given out when he bought the boat tickets. Fake names of course, and misspelled at that. - -The next morning we decided not to head straight for Angkor Wat. We slept in quite late and it was around two (heat of the day of course) when we decided to head out to the landmine museum. - -One the things I may have failed to mention thus far in my Cambodia reportage is that this was/is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. The Thais, the French, the U.S. and others have all laid mines in the area, but no one laid as many nor with such sick preference for killing and maiming innocent targets as the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge mined the borders to keep everyone else out and the Cambodians in, they mined roads, they mined circular arcs around villages to prevent villagers from leaving. They mined rice paddies, they mined cities, they mined the jungle. They were the Johnny Appleseeds of land mines, except that it isn't funny. And there are still a lot of mines in Cambodia. - - Faux Minefield, Land Mine Museum, Seam Reap, Cambodia

Faux Minefield, Land Mine Museum, Seam Reap, Cambodia

The museum is on the edge of town (though give it a couple years and the town will have far over taken it) and consists of a large shed full of information on various landmines, their manufacturers and techniques for removal as well an educational video and, most fascinating, a faux minefield for you to stare at and try to determine how many you can see. Even when they aren't hidden, as they would be in the actual jungle, landmines are very very difficult to spot. I was feeling pretty good about spotting what I thought was most of the obvious ones when I happened to look up and notice that I was standing under a mortar shell with a bit of fishing line wrapped around a tree. If I were to have stepped to my left I would have tripped the wire. Or course none of them were real mines, but it was a bit unsettling nonetheless. - -Mr. Aki Ra who set up the landmine museum is dedicated to educating the public in landmines (he's also exhibited art as far away as Salt Lake City and participated in several documentaries on the subject). Judging by the photos around the museum area Mr. Ra has been in no less than five armies, which gives you some idea of the turmoil of Cambodian history, including the Khmer Rouge. But at some point, realizing that he had laid one to many land mines, Aki decided it was time to undo what he had done and he has dedicated the rest of his life to both the removal of mines and helping the victims of landmines. In addition to the museum the small compound also provides food and shelter for a number of landmine victims, most missing arms or legs, some both. - -You might think that removing landmines involves sophisticated technology of the sort you see in BBC documentaries on Bosnia, but here in Cambodia landmine removal is most often handled by the technological marvel of southeast Asia—the bamboo stick. (While that last sentence may sound sarcastic it's really not meant that way, In my five months here I have seen people do things with bamboo that had to have taken thousands of years to perfect. Given a choice between a power saw and a good piece of bamboo I would go with the bamboo). The museum has a number of posters showing the techniques used to find and remove the mines. Sadly the removal of mines generally begins with a local villager finding a mine. Provided the mine does kill the person who stumbles across it, Aki is called and comes out with a long piece of bamboo which he used to feel around the mine, determine what type of mine it is and very carefully extract it. Landmine removal has a zero percentage error factor, so the fact that Mr. Ra has been doing this for ten years obviously means he's good at it. Fortunately for the Cambodians most of the mines on their soil are generally older and not quite so deadly as the new and improved mines (like the "bouncing betty" made in the US and designed not simply to blow your legs off, but to actually bounce out of the ground and explode at chest height maximizing the "kill radius" as jargon would have it). - -Landmines aren't glamorous. They lack the universal terror of nuclear bombs or long-range missiles. They aren't the sort of thing anyone but the BBC is going to report on, but landmines kill more people than any other weapon deployed in the world. The problem with landmines is they last forever. Long after both sides have faded into history, the mines still exist. The mines lie dormant in the ground until someone steps on one, drives a car over it, ploughs it up in a field, or trips a wire in the bamboo thicket. Landmines are forever and then some. And because they aren't as obviously destructive as say a nuclear warhead, it's tougher to find support for their ban. Everyone is afraid of nuclear weapons, but only people who have actually dealt with landmines seem to understand how much more destructive and immediate their threat is. - -The real problem with landmines is that they exist. In late 1999 a treaty passed through the UN calling for a worldwide ban on landmines. Lots of people signed it. The U.K, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, 151 in all, but not, you guessed it, the United States. Ever wonder why? I wonder about these things. Why did China, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and the U.S. not sign a treaty banning land mines? Are these really the countries we want to side with? Landmines aren't actually very effective in today's battlefield where increasingly robots and kids with laptops are the first ones to enter a potentially mined area. It turns out that the five biggest suppliers of arms to the world, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France are also all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. These countries have a necessary economic interest in wars; they manufacture the majority of the weapons used, regardless of whether their own troops are involved. And yet, as member of the U.N. Security Council they are ones who often have the power to decide whether or not the wars happen. - -So long as the military industrial complex is pressed between the sheets with the Federal government the landmines will keep getting made. And that's not an indictment against Bush, it's an indictment against the entire US government, Democrats, Republicans and any oddball third parties for good measure. Take away the military industrial complex and see how many candidates can afford television commercials. - -Do I sound angry? Good. I am. I've seen too many things over here to ever be able trust American government. I've seen the effects on innocent people. Regrettably I'm too much of a realist to believe anything can be done. Just remember when you head down to the polling booth to vote for whoever you think is right, that somewhere in the world someone is strapping on their prosthetic leg, or pulling themselves onto their wheeled cart. Someone who very likely has had little or no education, no food and no idea why someone s/he's never even met would want to take away their leg, their arm, or the lives of the ones they love. - -If you'd like to help I encourage you to do so. If you would like to donate some money to The Landmine Museum in Seam Reap, every bit helps. You can have a look at the international ban on landmines which seems like a step in the right direction (and co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize). Write to your senator/representative and encourage them to pressure Bush. Ask them why the U.S won't sign the treaty. But more than anything I encourage you to try to broaden your understanding of current international events. So much of what happens in the world is ignored by the U.S. media. I for one will never be able to read an American newspaper again. Nor will I suffer through the local ~~news~~ bullshit ever again. The whole global village thing that lots of pundits in America like to talk about already exists. America just isn't part of it. We remain with our heads in the sand. Someday the landmines will be on our soil and then we won't be able to bury our heads in the sand any more. We have a choice I suppose, do something about now while we have a choice or wait until we *have* to do something about it. Choose wisely. - - -- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2