The Continually Changing Flavors of Dtuck Au Luk

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

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

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

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

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

Photo Exhibit 2: Island Of Rabbits

Photo Exhibit 1: Vietnam

Peddling Guppies

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

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

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

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

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

"Ask you parents."

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

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

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

Going Back

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

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

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

"No, really. I'm Khmer!"

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

"Cambodia."

"No, what country are you from?"

"I am from the country of Cambodia."

"I don't believe you!"

"Why not?"

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

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

"What?"

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

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

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

"I still don't believe you."

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

The Dog Days of May

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

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

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

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

“I am here.”

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

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

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

“What does 41° mean?” Sigh.

“It means that it is very hot.”

“Yes, very hot today.”

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

“Vannak.”

“Hmmm?”

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

“You should jump in the fish pond.”

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

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

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

“SreiToit!”

“Jaaa?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You can get that at the sweets stand.”

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

“How is it different?”

“It tastes better.”

“I don’t believe you. You say that you want to jump in a pool, but you won’t jump into a fish pond. “You say that you want ice cream, but you won’t eat bong aime. You are very strange.”
“There are just some things that I cannot get over. I have my habits, what can I say?”

“What do say?”

“Oh, nothing. Never mind.”

“Very strange.”

Big Trip To Vietnam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thanked her in French, and she smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why?” I asked her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Diary Of Food

Monday

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

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

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

Tuesday

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

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

Stir fry with peppers for dinner.

Wednesday

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

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

Thursday

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

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

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

Friday

Waffles again.

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

Pork and bitter mellon soup.

The History Project: Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a high school student graduating today, the opportunities look bleak for professional employment in Angkor Chum and will probably leave the district when their studies are finished in order to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

How Angkor Chum will continue to develop and change remains to be seen. Given all that it has survived during the last thousand or so years, it seems likely that it will continue to endure as it always has.

The Bad Guys and The Good Guys

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

"Kroo SoPiup! Are you drunk?"
"No...I...just drank (hic!) six cans of beer."
"You drank six cans of beer over lunch? How are you still standing?"
"I am...(hic!) very strong! (Laughs) [Cultural note: Cambodians have a formidable connection between drinking large amounts of alcohol and strength]
"How the hell are you going to get through your next class?"
"Maybe I will not teach today...maybe I will go to sleep."
"Kroo SoPiup! If you keep this up you're going to collapse when you're forty!)
"N0! I am too strong to die." (Joey Ramone said the same thing. He died in 2001)

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

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

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

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

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

The Death of Things

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

March

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

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

"Hot today."
"Hot everyday."
"Another glass?"
"We need more ice!"

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

How inconsiderate. Your arrival is greatly anticipated.

The Literal Truth

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

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

Singapore in Pictures

Four Days In Singapore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The History Project Part V

The Vietnamese Occupation

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

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

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

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

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

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

Angkor Chum and UNTAC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Battle of Angkor Chum: 1993 to 1997

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The History Project Part IV

Under The Khmer Rouge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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