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."