Confessions of a Tunnel Rat

Day the last. I woke up to find a plate of breakfast sandwiches in the reading room. Hot cheese and some sort of pink meat. So sweet. I read some more Dog Years and ate them up. Then I got the camera bag together for the last day.

The schedule called for an afternoon trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels, and I had three hours to kill. I might have walked down there but there was sudden pressure to take a ride with my host's dad. He's retired and loves to get out of the house.

If nothing else, this was a really cool slice of domestic life in a major Southeast Asian city. So, I hopped on the back of the old man's bike and we zipped back to the mall food court they call downtown.

A few weeks ago, I would have used this opportunity to blitz-visit an outlying neighborhood, like when I slithered over to Cobra Town, but the hot outlier here is "Chinatown." And as interesting as the idea of a Chinatown just a few hours away from actual Chinese towns might be, it didn't feel like anything I needed to negotiate with a tuk tuk for.

So, I took a slow walk over to the areas I'd sped by yesterday when I was trying to ditch the aggressive cyclist. Fountains, columns, gift shops, tours to the Cu Chi Tunnels, day cruises to floating markets on the Mekong.

On a dirtier side street, I saw a dude reading the paper in a duct-taped old chair. He had a bunch of barber-shop equipment hanging on a chain link fence, and I touched my scruffy face and tossed my shaggy travel hair and thought, "Hef won't like me like this."

So, I was like, "How much for a cut and a shave?"  Four of your Earth dollars was the reply. He got out of the chair, and I got in.

None of your blue liquid here, the scissors were in a coffee can. He used a straight razor, and right before he made the first swipe, he said, "New! New!" I'll assume he meant the blade and not my look. My camera and stuff were in my bag at my feet and completely out of my sight and control.

So, it was an exercise in trust and letting go.

And it paid off with a clean look and a comfortable face. I felt like a million dong afterward. I paid him $10 instead of $4 and he lost his mind. Pay attention, shoe shiners.

Sidewalk haircut!!

I looked like I was ready to read at my Bar Mitzvah.

It actually entered my mind that my host family would appreciate my clean, new look. It's funny how folks you'll never see again become important to you. Our manners are how we show respect for other people.

Got some chicken fingers and coffee and made my way to the bus station. There was the usual half hour of collecting folks from hotels and then the trek to the Surrounding Environs.

There was an articulate guide who gave us a quick capsule history, and it was noticeably more sanitized than the one Lics gave on the way to Ha Long Bay. In this version, the Japanese "left" after WWII, no mention of the bomb.

Some things came into better focus. Like, it makes sense the Communist portion of the Vietnamese Army was in the North, since that's closer to China and Russia, the Communist countries sending them weapons and support.

Down South was where the Euros and Americans had their base, but they were constantly being harried by a rogue guerrilla force called the National Liberation Front. These guys were based in Cu Chi and lived in a sort of ant farm safe from the bombs.

                                             
Down there, they planned attacks on US bases and coordinated with the actual army up North and generally made life difficult for the invading Americans. Like, the US soldiers would be camped out when, suddenly, the ground would open up and, Cu Chi Cooo, they'd get tickled with AK47 bullets.

Then the attackers would slip back away and pop up somewhere else.

As we pulled over for a rest stop, we were reminded that some of the US bombs found their targets and, by the way, Agent Orange caused birth defects and here we are at another craft shop populated by victims of napalm poisoning.

And, like everything else in comparison to Hanoi, it was clean and expensive. The workers had all their limbs, which is not to say they weren't victims, but the presentation was so much "cleaner" than up North, that it felt like they thought they were making a more "dignified" appeal.

Up North, kids were painting with their flippers and sculpting with chisels in their twisted mouths. Here it was artist-looking folks making duck-egg mosaics and doing delicate brushwork. Everything was a zillion dollars.

I bought a dragonfruit smoothie outside.

                                               

Then we were way out in the country and entering the National Park-type area where the tunnels are, and it was supremely interesting. First, you pass by a giant collection of weapons they took off of dead US soldiers and then they show you an old propaganda film about a brave country girl who learned how to fire a gun and set traps to kill nineteen-year-old boys from Nebraska.

"She carried a rifle in one hand, and a plow in the other."

I try to be a thinking, curious, open-minded person, and it's always surprising to me that I get a chill when I hear "anti-American" stuff or stories where the Nazis win or whatever. That visceral, knee-jerk patriotism shit is deep, man.

Like, the American flag is basically the Yankee Swastika and means trouble, but... it's my country. So conflicting. Like, the rational side of me is like, "We didn't belong here, the Vietnam War was an abortion, we deserved to have our asses kicked," but then you see triumphant villagers with captured American rockets and weapons all trussed up like pigs on a motorbike and the smoking wreckage of a US Army truck, and you're like, "Fuckers, you killed that sweet Iowa boy! He asked Suzy to wait for him! They were going steady!"

                                                 

Then you get taken to a display of trap doors and spike traps and booby traps, which the tour guide gleefully sets off. Hee hee, look how this would have mangled someone. Haw, Chad sure got his banana split when he stepped into this one.

It's gross, like going to a medieval torture museum is gross. It's just easier to separate "ye olde days" from modern times. Like, "Oh man, that rusty thing sure messed up that witch's thumb three centuries ago," is so different than "The drunk with the limp in my neighborhood probably fell into this thing right after high school, and now he pees out of his elbow. And the guy who drove me to the river yesterday probably loaded the spring that set it off."

Just watching the guide dancing around and triggering the various traps like some murderous Chip and Dale was making me sick.

But, I sure took advantage of the photo op to lower myself into the tunnel entrance and pretend I was a guerrilla.

I'm 5'10" and weigh 180 pounds, but I had to go into the special tunnel that had been "widened for Americans." And it was scary. Hard to get into, and of course I put myself in the position of the villagers who would be fleeing bombs and bullets. Like, it was painful to lower myself in, I can't imagine running or jumping in. Though, of course, a banged-up knee is better than a hat full of Agent Orange.

We snaked through the tunnels, and the walls were scraping my shoulders, and I had to walk in a three-quarters crouch, and my neck and back started to hurt. Can't you make this thing taller, and maybe serve iced coffee?

I got sweaty immediately, and there was a "chicken tunnel" off to the side where you could punk out, and most of the tour did, but I stuck it out for one more leg. Then I started getting acid reflux and I could sense that I was suppressing actual panic, so I took the next chicken tunnel.

Squeaked out gasping and heard loud gunfire in the near distance. Easy movie plot, right? Guy goes into the tunnel, gets dizzy, emerges in the past.

I was near the firing range, which was the next stop on the tour. But first, some tea and cassava root. Tea was nice. Cassava tasted like a sad potato. Then the gift shop, where I bought a (probably fake!) stamp collection and turned down the opportunity to fire vintage weapons.

They have all these crazy things from the war. M16s, AK47s, M30s, etc. You buy a clip of bullets and go to a range to mess up some targets. Cu chi cooooo. Most of us said no, but three British boys were way up for it.

When I asked one later what it was like, he said he wanted to do it because he felt like he'd never have a chance to hold a gun again. "No guns in London, never fired one, no shooting ranges. It's not like America."

I said it was the equivalent of me going falconing in Wales, and he was like, "No, it's not really."

Then a quiet ride home. School was letting out in the village and it was like a Sailor Moon convention. Everyone wore those cute uniforms with the white shirt and the red tie. Hundreds of kids running home. It was sweet to see and also like, "Your grandfathers lived in caves so that you would have this chance."

Folks napped or read in the bus. I slogged through Dog Years. The Brits didn't know one another before the trip, and it was interesting to hear them discussing different neighborhoods back in Blighty.

We got back to Saigon at rush hour, and you've never been to a party like this one. Tens of thousands of motorbikes. It was overwhelming and fascinating, like seeing pulsing schools of hammerheads following magnetic signals from the Earth's core. Endless waves of them, colorful helmets, tight facemasks.

It took two weeks for me to put together that it's probably like this because there's no public transport infrastructure. Then I made myself laugh thinking I'd just been crawling through the closest equivalent to a subway.

When the traffic broke, we made our farewells and I went back to one of those "piles of army crap" stores and bought a Tunnel Rat patch probably salvaged from Wisconsin Billy's hacked-off arm. I figured I'd earned it from having made it past the first chicken tunnel.

Then, you know, that was it. The sun was almost down, I had a 6am flight back to Blighty, and the trip was done. Had a last meal in a little courtyard and drank a local beer. I watched a bunch of conger eels twisting in a tank and ordered a second beer, and then I was buzzed.

The town was really hopping now with young people running around in fountains and doing that two-straws-in-one-glass thing and holding hands. Just a big, easy early-evening public party with cosmopolitan locals. Nice to see.

So then I went to a club called Apocalypse Now to see if they could help me miss my flight, but it was too early, the pimps were still sorting the pills, so I escaped without any trouble. I reckon I was lucky it was closed. From whence sprang this sudden destructive impulse?

There was a sign on the door that was like, "no pictures, no weed, no tank tops, and no... getting killed?" I couldn't figure it out.

Took a cab home to show my naked face off to the host family. We had a pleasant farewell and they arranged a 4am cab for me. Total sweethearts. Showered, packed, slept.

In the morning, they had a bag of sandwiches for me to take on the flight! Highest rating.

Cabbed to the airport and kicked off a 22-hour flight (with layovers). They had a little picture in the airport souvenir store of a boy in Sapa and I got immediately nostalgic for... a week ago. It really was very beautiful up there. They had some toys like Poor Lost Snitchy, though no water buffaloes. I bought a rag elephant to replace him.

Then, you know, planes and airports and lines and planes and passports controls. I slept a lot and watched Straight Outta Compton. The flight landed before the movie finished, though, so I'll never know what became of Eazy-E.

The plus end equals the end.

It was a great trip, a fantastic opportunity to learn, and explore, and challenge myself. I loved it.

I had hoped to come back bragging about how the pho is better in Vietnam, but we pretty much get it exactly right.

Thanks for reading, fooooools.

Saigon, I'm Still Only in Saigon

The host family was really treating me well. Plates of fruit, meals delivered to the little sitting room, smiles and offers of help. It was really tempting to just take a day off and succumb to their charms. So, I did. It had been 12 days of go go go, but this was a nice opportunity to just think and write and to eat chunks of dragonfruit.

Hanoi had been a wild landing (exciting and vital) with day trips that extended into overnight trips, and Cambodia had been emotional and inspiring, so maybe Saigon was going to be the comedown.

Several folks I'd run into throughout the trip had told me how nice it was and how at home they felt here. Nice? Groan! Homey? Groaaaan! That plus the shopping-mall-like entry didn't make me want to run out and see it. I slept in. I wrote a little and read a little.

After a long shower, I walked out into the city. Nice, rambling exploration with no agenda. More traffic than Hanoi (if you can believe it) but all contained in the road.

At one point, I came across an amazing, large, pink cathedral. It was awesome, and the hot-pink exterior was so excitingly out of place. There was nothing of interest around it, so that made it feel like a surprise or reward for poking around.

I called it the Barbie Dream Church.

One issue I have in general when I travel is an inability (or unwillingness) to really sound out and memorize "difficult" street names. Part of that is an acceptance that getting lost is part of the fun.

I glance at them, make a shortcut nickname and then usually do ok. Sometimes, though, I just can't remember the actual name or articulate to locals what I'm looking for.

An example here was Dong Khoi Street. I called it Donkey Lane and Don Quixote Blvd. in my head, and figured since it's one of the main drags, the most tourist-centric street in the city, that I'd be able to find it without a map.

But I forgot the real name and had to draw a picture of a tank to get a cab driver to take me to Reunification Palace.

This was the headquarters for the Americans during the Vietnam War, and after we quit, they smashed the gates with a tank, kept the tank in the front yard and left the building abandoned. It's a symbol of their victory.

It kind of just looks like an old Sears.

It's at one end of an enormous park area in which I saw hundreds of folks strolling around in nice clothes, drinking coffee in to-go cups, holding hands, picnicking and just generally having a pleasant Euro-style weekend. It may as well have been St. Paul, Minnesota.

The street vendors had carts!! None of the old Hanoi run-after-you-with-a-basket-of-shrimp action here. None of the Cambodian touts offering one thing and sneaking you around the back to deliver another. Just, safe accountable transactions.

Insert coin, receive yawn.

The park opens up into a large plaza dominated by a fairly large and definitely uninteresting Christian church surrounded by Popeye's Fried Chicken, Coffee Bean & Leaf, and Dunkin Donuts. Who won the war again?

More like Zzzzaigon.

I wasn't unhappy, just sort of disengaged and uninspired. Walked around for a few hours, checked out the old post office, the only legitimately exciting interior, and looked for some magnets.

I wondered if having looked for work the previous day is what broke the spell. Was I mentally home? Were my cares starting to seep into my thoughts? Or was this just too...nice of a place?

Grabbed a coffee and headed down Donkey Street toward the river.

Some cool vendors along the way selling boxes of soldier's stuff from the late '60s. Uniform patches and more engraved Zippos. One read "If you got this lighter off my dead ass, I hope it gives you the same luck it gave me."

Another said, "If you have problems, kill the enemy. No more problems." on one side and the worst bootleg scrawly, scrawny Mickey Mouse on the other. When I flipped it and saw the Mickey, I doubled over laughing. The vendor saw me, so there was no way I was going to get a good price on it.

To get a fair price or a bargain you have to act like you're disgusted and only buying something to have it disposed of properly. "This belongs in a Dumpster. I'm taking a tour of the landfill later, so I'll take it off your hands and drop it there for you."

Out of boredom, I let a guy shine my shoes. I wish I'd let the "Ugly shoe! Ugly shoe!" guy in Hanoi do it. He gave me some paper sandals to wear while he worked.

His jealous buddy came over and critiqued him in Vietnamese. He took the completed (black and shining!) left boot and glued something that looked like cardboard to the sole. Uh oh. Then he put a soft insert inside.

He did the same with the right boot (oh, how it gleamed!)

I had arranged a price of fifty-thousand dong with the shiner. That's about $3. When I put the shoes back on, he asked for 880K dong, $40.

I was like, "You're going to have to shine this boot again after I pull it out of your ass."

They either didn't speak English very well or pretended not to. They started yelling at me and pointing. They wouldn't take the money.

I was like, "You amateurs wouldn't last three minutes in Hanoi," and put the 50K on the ground.

Finally, some action!!

Neither of them moved to pick it up. I walked away and weighed my risk factors and acceptable loss factors.

Going to jail? Fine. Getting stabbed? Uncool. Having shoe black swabbed on my AllSaints t-shirt? Completely unacceptable.

They both chased after me yelling. I kept walking past a boring opera house and toward a tour center. They caught up and got in front of me and one of them jumped up and down pointing at my shoe. He waved a piece of plastic in my face.

I realized he wanted those Dr. Scholl's things back. They were the secret ingredient that made the $3 shoe shine into $40. To give them back, though, I would have to take my shoes off. Would they grab them and escape to their secret, shining lair?

Risked it. Took off my shoe, held it tight, scraped out the precious, precious insert and gave it to the guy. Put the shoe back on before I did it again with the next one. Fine and fine. They fucked off grumbling, and I went into the tourist center to get an actual map.

Booked a tour for the Cu Chi Tunnels for the next day. I figured I'd spend the last day of the trip wriggling underground like a grub-boy.

Outside, a motorcycle guy was like, "Where you go I take!" and I was like, "No thank you," but he was ON ME. Where I went, he went. Couldn't shake him. Very aggressive. Almost no English. He went on sidewalks with me, down skinny alleys. "Where want go? Temples? Churches?"

I decided there was a kind of fading class here. The shine guys, this guy. These were dudes being squeezed out by the rapidly gentrifying city. Like, they couldn't speak English, so they weren't going to get a job at the Popeyes, and the hotels and tour services offered free shines and rides.

They had to be aggressive for the remaining few months they had in the city before some Vietnamese Guliani got them kicked out. He was the Saigonic equivalent of the dudes who used to "wash" your windshield with newspapers at stoplights.

So, partially out of feeling sorry for him and mostly because everything downtown looked like a dollar-store Vienna, I told him he could take me on a one-hour tour for $5. He lost his mind with happiness.

And, oh my god, did I have the best time. He just drove right out of the city, and we took pictures of the skyline from bridges and watched poor fishermen smoking and slowly tossing their lines into the brown water. Drunken locals waved hello from the grass.

I held him with my thighs and took photos while the bike sped through tunnels and past neglected statues. The pictures were all blurry garbage, but it was insane fun. One of the most dangerous and exciting adventures of the trip.

Not such a bad place if you get bored and risk a ride with a persistent creep.

Then he was like, "Time's up," and it really was. It was a magical hour of nothing but speeding along highways and stopping at the lamest "picture spots" on the map and having an absolute blast.

He ditched me at an old fruit market, and I watched a tiny dog sit with its eyes closed in front of an electric fan. Then I ate some pho at a hole in the wall and went home to nap.

I woke up to a knock at the door. It was the host's mother inviting me down to dinner. I went down in my jammies and she and I and the five year old ate soup with bitter greens and some kind of meatballs with bitter greens.

There wasn't a lot of English going on but a lot of smiling. The kid liked showing me the food in her mouth, and I liked flaring my nostrils at her. We cracked one another up, and grandma just grinned at us. She was watching a channel that seemed like a six-hour block of phone commercials.

Then the kid played We Wish You a Merry Christmas for me on the piano again. No vocals. I clapped, pat my belly to show I was full, and went back up to do laundry and take another shower. I had developed a two-shower-a-day habit in this not-so-bad town.

Exeunt, Pursued by Ants

I neglected to mention that Siem Reap, the city closest to the Angkor Wat temples, means "Siam Defeated." Siam, of course, was the previous name for Thailand and Siem Reap was the site of a famous Cambodian victory in one conflict or another.

It's funny to me that the name stuck and that Thailand has to use it all the time on airlines and in tourist packages, etc. It would be like if there were a town in Michigan called Chicago Sucks.

It was my last day in Cambodia, the bus to Ho Chi Minh City was scheduled to leave in the early afternoon. I figured I'd grab a coffee and catch up on things back home. Maybe there was news on the job front.

I realized those ramen noodles I ate last night were my Thanksgiving dinner! Holiday in Cambodia.

Dodged the tuk tuk drivers and hit the coffee place with no trouble. That ridiculous "Western" coffee place.

Took my drink and a muffin back upstairs. Those stairs! That padlock! The scramble over the lobby motorcycle! Fired up the machine and disappeared into a job search for a while. The afternoon music from the hotel next store made a fine soundtrack.

I haven't had my usual relationship with music on this trip. Ordinarily I end up with a little soundtrack of songs I listen to and forever remind me of the vacation. Whenever I hear Future Islands, I can see myself walking in Croatia for example.

The job stuff was, as job stuff is, depressing with little bursts of "I could do that!" mixed with "Hey, what if!?" and "I'm perfect for it, but they'll probably hire their cousin!" and "Maybe I'll just move to a mountain in Bulgaria. You can have a mountain there for $6 a day."

Reached for the muffin and discovered it was covered with ants. It was like a Charlton Heston movie.

                      

An enormous, throbbing red river flowing up to the ceiling. The shocking efficiency of it. It felt like I'd only set the bag down for a few seconds, but... a few seconds is all they need. When you hear the drums, you're already dead!

I let them have their way and finished applying to the Shots in the Dark. Took a shower (the water was working!) and packed being careful to avoid Muffin Corner. Got everything into my little packs and gave them as much time as possible to gather their crumbs. Then I had to throw it away.

I try to be neat with these airbnbs, I strip the bed, etc. I put insect-covered muffins in the waste bin.

Waved farewell to the relocated scavengers and locked up. I probably should have taken two trips to navigate these crazy stairs, but I didn't want to ever have to climb them again, so I made a daring escape with everything on me.

Barely pulled it off.

Lim had agreed to meet me at this time, but he also didn't speak English very well, so... he wasn't there. But it's not like I didn't have ten more dudes sleeping in the alley and ready to take me anywhere I wanted to go.

Some rando took me to the station with no trouble. I had my ticket stubs from yesterday to prove I'd been to all the genocide museums in case he wanted to stop by there first.

I was hungry, since nature stole my breakfast, but it was time to board the bus. I met a nice Mancunian lady. She'd been in Asia for two months. I asked if she were a student, and she was like, "Nope, I live with my parents and I've just saved up my paychecks for ten years. I've been planning this all my life."

How about that. A lot of my single female friends back home tell me the wish they could travel but they have nobody to go with and it's "not safe" for a woman to travel by herself. Everyone's different, of course, but I always see tons of solo chicks on these trips. Usually Australian, German, or English.

Ride was the by now familiar countryside. Cows, farms, dirt villages. I finished Tar Baby and started in on Dog Days by Gunther Grass. I figured I'd never finish it, but I'd give it a go. I also tried to make up for lost time with music, but it was too weird to see people digging for yams in the dust while "Don't Pull Your Love Out On Me, Baby" played in my headphones.

We stopped at a gas station and I bought some fruit. A gang of runny-nosed kids swarmed around saying "mah nay, mah nay." It made me incredibly sad. Some of my earliest memories are of tv commercials for donations for starving Cambodian children.

They were usually on PBS, so I'd see sad, skinny kids my own age and wonder what was up. Then a cartoon would come on. In the 80s, the Cambodians were replaced with Ethiopians. So, here were the grandchildren of the children I had seen when I was a boy.

I got back on the bus filled with sad, dark thoughts about all the fat, happy babies in my facebook feed. All my wealthy coworkers and the dogs they buy from breeders and all the breeding they themselves have done.

Everybody had their visas and papers and passports in order. Different countries have different relationships, so some folks sailed through with no trouble and some got the stink eye and some angry stamps.

A nice lady from the Philippines gave me some candy she said she could only get when she traveled. It tasted like a garlic Starburst, it tasted like a prank advertised in the back of an old comic book. You say you can only find it when you travel? They've banned it back at home have they? I thanked her.

I didn't ask for another, but I made myself laugh by calling it a Manila Wafer.

Ho Cho Minh City, which everyone still calls Saigon, was an interesting contrast to everywhere else I'd been. It seemed larger and more spread out then Hanoi. There were still motorbikes as far as the eye can see, but wider streets and less living-room activity on the sidewalks. Also, huge neon signs and storefronts for familiar companies.

There was an enormous Starbucks, and a Dunkin Donuts, and a Carl's Jr.

Christmas decorations were everywhere. None of your Water or Moon festival here. None of your roadside fish amok.

So, all right, this last leg of the trip was going to be a little more Westernized. A comfortable way to go out, I reckon. I'm sure there's trouble somewhere, though, and I'll find it.

My hosts were a charming Vietnamese family who were giving me the top two floors of their home. I had a large bed and a separate reading room with a kitchen and laundry machines. Decadence!

It was Linh, the host I'd met on airbnb, her parents and her five-year-old daughter. The little girl played "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" on the piano to welcome me. Hilarious.

When she finished, I clapped and she went back to playing with some English/Vietnamese word tiles on the floor. I went up to wash the bus off of myself.

When I unpacked, I realized Stitchy was gone. My little rag buffalo! My mountain-town lesson in fixing things instead of buying new things. Lost or stolen! Maybe he got wrapped up in the sheets when I stripped the bed.

I could add him to the list of careless moments. Alas!

A shame, since I loved him. I hope he ends up in the hands of one of those starvelings from the gas station. Maybe they'll have wild adventures together.

Farewell. Stitchy. I dedicate this blog to thee.

The Gift Shop at the Genocide Museum

                                        

I dreamed about my mother. I was sleeping in my dream. My head was in her lap, and she was brushing back my hair and kissing my forehead.

Awake at first light and saw in a guide that a coffee shop was close by and open. Showered and went down there. Leaving the apartment (those stairs!) was a little difficult. There was a motorcycle that was almost the exact size of the lobby. I had to climb over it.

Walking outside triggered all the tuk tuk drivers who sleep in the alley. Want ride, want tuk tuk?

It was actually getting a little stressful having to disappoint so many people who badly needed your two or three bucks.

Here in Cambodia, they actually smile back when you smile and say "no, thank you." In Hanoi, they would scowl and sometimes their friends would mock them. No one wants to ride with you! A much friendlier acceptance of rejection here.

However, the pressure of trying to minimize those interactions means you don't stand still and look at a map really. Where are you trying to go? I take you!

So I just walked. The streets here are numbers on the map but have names on the signs, so it's sort of a guessing game. I guessed wrong and walked away from the coffee shop. So, I was just you know, in Phnom Penh. I explored.

The area I was in had a lot of government buildings and an enormous monument surrounded by a massive roundabout. It's called The Independence Monument and sort of looks like a Khmer rocket ship. A park stretched out for miles beyond it. I watched boys play some sort of game where they kicked a long beanbag back and forth. I called it footminton.

In general, throughout Southeast Asia, you see folks in parks playing netless badminton or exercising in groups. This was a new one, a kind of floaty hackysack.

One of the government buildings had a gorgeous art-deco fence, but when I took a picture of it, guards came out of nowhere and pointed to the Independence Monument. The message was clear - you want to take a picture of something? There you go, that's what it's for.

It still wasn't quite 7am and I wasn't having too much difficulty crossing the street. They have the same deal here with motorcycles and the "no rules, just right," method of getting from Point A to Point B. It's as dangerous and anarchic as Hanoi, but... it was early and I was able to cross over lanes and only get nearly killed instead of almost certainly killed.

A little pho kitchen was open, so I went on in. One lady served the food and one lady ladled the broth. I still needed coffee, but they didn't speak English, but coffee sounds the same in most languages, but... she still wasn't getting it. Coffee? Ka-fay? Coughy? Um.... I drew a picture of a mug with steam lines coming out of it.

She nodded and came back with coffee!

The pho was great and kept up with the theme of having dinner for breakfast. They don't seem to differentiate here. People just eat what they're hungry for when they want it. There was a little shrine in the corner with some snack cakes on it. Twinkies for Buddha.

Quiet little breakfast and I went out for more poking around. I had arranged to meet Liam at 10am, so I still had plenty of time. Eventually found the coffee place I was looking for in the first place.

It was called Costa and... it costa lot. Hoo boy, I've been waiting to use that one for a week! Big, "Western-style" coffee shop with absurd drinks like a "popcorn latte" which was coffee with foam on top and sprinkled with kernels of popcorn.

That's how they drink it in New York and Paris, we swear.

I spent more on an iced coffee there than on a bowl of pho, a side of greens, and a hot coffee at the breakfast place. Stoopid.

Outside, though, I saw a monk in an orange wraprobe open an orange umbrella and I lost my cool. It was so beautiful and strange. I followed him until I could get a shot. He was going to different businesses and trading prayers for money.

It felt good to get excited. I set the pricey coffee down during the chase and I lost track of it.

City was waking up now and there was more traffic. The sidewalks have more room to walk on here, the business I could see was going on in actual storefronts.

Back at the hotel, I wanted to clean up, but the water was off. I wrote my host, and he was like, "It's off at my place too. Cambodia, right?"

I went back down to find Liam. Those stairs! That lobbycycle!  He was there all right. He was like, "Ok, next stop, the Killing Fields!" and I was like, "Ahh, I want to go see this market and this palace," and he was like, "Killing Fields it is," and I was like, "Ummm,"

When I was in Poland I made a point of avoiding Auschwitz. I've read about it, I don't need to see it. Like, was I going to take a selfie at the "Arbeit Mach Frei" gate? Was I supposed to be like, "Hashtag really important, you guys. I'm serious, guys. Hashtag frowning. Shaking my head."

But here Liam seemed almost offended that I didn't want to go, almost like I was rejecting his culture and his people. He was like, "You NEED to see this," so I was like, ok. Then he was like, "ok," so he drove me one block and was like, "I have to go to English class, this is my brother Lim. He doesn't speak English too well, but he knows where you want to go."

Ah, the old Cambodian Liam-to-Lim dodge. You paid for Liam, but you got Lim.

Lim seemed earnest and honest behind his airmask, so I was like, "Fine!" and we were off.

Very cool escape from the city down dirt roads and through crowded markets and fields with more of those hunchbacked white cows. Dudes with carts of Pepsi, Fanta, and Coke bottles full of gross yellow liquid were everywhere. It took me way too long to realize it was gasoline. That's how you tank up here.

School kids on bikes, woman with large baskets of fruit, machine shops, colorful power drills hanging from their cords like pheasants on a string. Industry. Commerce.

Huge garbage trucks painted like birds. Fascinating ceremonial trash buses.

I got pretty dusty in my open-air carriage, but I felt like I looked cool in my $3 Ray Ban knockoffs.

Lim seemed to get a little lost at some point and we nosed down a few nowhere alleys with faded cell phone ads, but he was just poking around looking for a backstreet. He found it, and we sneaked up on The Killing Fields.

                                              

(not my pic)

This was a very sad place where the veil of my ignorance surrounding the reign of Pol Pot and the story of Cambodian genocide was lifted from me. It's one of the most moving/powerful museums/memorials I've been to. There was a really excellent audio guide. 

In a nutshell, after WWII the French tried to retake their colonies here and were kicked back out. Then the Americans came here to "fight Communism" and then they lost/left, and then... there was a power vacuum. 

Which is a story we're seeing all over the world right now. And I guess there's no excuse for it? Like, if nothing else, the government did an excellent job in the 80s of making our deserved humiliation and failure in Vietnam seem like it was the people's fault that it didn't succeed. If you had only supported the troops, guys, it would have gone differently, guys. 

When we kicked off GWI after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the narrative was, "We can win this if you just stop criticizing the military and the government. If you hadn't spit on Vietnam vets and protested in the streets during that war, we would have won it."

"Patriotism" was redefined to mean, "Accept what the government says is right when it comes to wars."

Take pictures of the tower not the gates.  

"Support Our Troops" sounds the same as "Home of the Whopper" to me and means, "Think about these sexy young people. Don't they have cool clothes and faces? Don't question why we're sending them off to kill and die. They're definitely fighting for your freedom and not for Exxon, we swear to god. They're doing this for you and not for Boeing. Definitely." 

We will be at war for the rest of our lives, because it's the only thing we make. It's our leading export. Which, you know, is good for business. "Support Our Troops" doesn't mean anything different than those Soviet worker statues where the guy has a hammer or a woman is farming. Soldiers are our farmers, they are the American Worker, they're porn stars. 

Pol Pot fired up all the poor people, gave them guns and told them the "rich" were exploiting them and needed to die. "Rich people" were defined as anyone with soft hands, wore eyeglasses, could read, etc.  Then the definition expanded to include, anyone who isn't already on their side, folks who weren't down with the sickness or had too much fancy book learnin'.

It's the usual tactic. It worked in France and Russia and China and in most revolutions. It would work in the US if we didn't believe that being poor was our own fault.

So this place is mostly empty land with a giant stupa in the center. A stupa, I learned, is a Buddhist memorial structure and place for reflection. This one is packed with the skulls of the people murdered here.

The revolution swept through the country, packing folks into trucks and bringing them out here away from the city to be murdered.

There are still teeth and bones in the ground where you walk. You can see them. I saw them. The "litter" on the ground is actual scraps of clothing from the corpses. There's a lake still bubbling with corpse gases. They haven't dredged all the bodies out yet. You're standing on bodies, walking on them.

It's an incredibly sobering and moving experience. And nobody helped these people. The murderous government of Pol Pot was accepted as legit by the UN and when folks would escape and try to tell the world what was happening, nobody believed it.

And there was zero will to help out after Vietnam. Just like now we don't want to go into Syria and didn't go into Darfur or Rwanda. We really only helped out in Bosnia to distract from Clinton's blowjob. We had genocide fatigue.

Also, there was no Twitter then.

So, we decided not to believe it, the whole world decided this, some Swedish ambassadors came here on a fact-finding mission and were shown some "Potemkin Villages," and said it wasn't so bad here after all and you shouldn't believe the rumors, and millions of people were killed.

"Purified"

Bullets were too expensive, so they killed them with old farm tools and, in some cases, cut their throats with hard palm leaves. They have these things on display. They blasted music from the trees during the killings so that the people yet to be killed and waiting in the holding pens wouldn't panic.

It went on like this for YEARS until the Vietnamese got sick of the refugees and some expansion attempts at the border and they came in to regulate. I burst into tears at that. Someone had to help them, and it was the Vietnamese. Not Thailand, which shared a border and stole all their culture through the centuries, not the US or the French, whose policies and occupation made this situation possible, but the war-weary overstretched Vietnamese.

This was all in the 70s, and they are still recovering from the murder of 25% of the population.

So... terrible but important, and I was glad Liam insisted. There was a gift shop, but I didn't go inside. I found Lim, and he took me away. I wanted to take a picture of a weird old market building, but he drove me to a school instead.

The school was used as a prison during the genocide, so.... after your breakfast of genocide, we suggest pairing it with a side order of genocide.

Anyway, fucking terrible. Giant classrooms filled with photographs of the prisoners as they were checked in. Endless corridors of terrified, crying, beaten faces. It was like a yearbook. Most likely to be lashed with wire. Most likely to be thrown off a balcony.

There was a display of a few people who knew how to paint or fix cars, and they were allowed to live because the guards wanted their portraits taken or their jeeps repaired.

I couldn't stand it for more than an hour.

These signs were everywhere, which I think mean, "No laughing at the genocide museum."

I bought some water for Lim and myself and asked him to take me please to the market for real this time. I expected he would just take me to a graveyard, but after a thrilling race through a completely awakened city, we found what I was looking for.

Big, cool, old domed building with a really interesting design. It's pretty surrounded by other buildings, so difficult to photograph. I got some decent shots of the interior. Sort of.

Then I asked him to take me to the royal palace and to go away. He took me to the river instead. I paid him and waved goodbye. In retrospect, making it to the market seemed like an accident. Every other time, he just picked someplace and drove there.

I brushed off more tuk tuk drivers and stopped into a hostel to ask if they knew where the bus station was. The guy was like, "You can buy the ticket here," and I was like, "Ok, where is the bus station?" and his answer was essentially, "Buy your ticket here, and I'll tell you."

Everything's a hustle in this town. So, I bought a ticket for Ho Chi Minh City for the morning and he told me where the station was. It was across the street. So, I went over there to see if the ticket I had just bought was real. It was.

When I stepped out, I was surrounded by tuk tuk drivers who wanted to know where I was going.

Hey, pretty lady! You're looking good! You going to your boyfriend's house? How long does it take to shave those legs, baby? That your real hair color? Oh, honey, you don't know what you're doing to me. Honey, it ain't fair.

                                              

(not my pic)

I had a picture of some street art I'd seen online, and I was like, "Whichever one of you assholes knows where this is, you can take me there," and they all gathered 'round and were like, "No, ummm, no... this is Phonm Penh?" and one old guy was like, "I know where it is, I think," and I was like, "You think or you know?" and he was like, "Know!"  

But he probably meant "No."

He didn't have a tuk tuk. He had a motorcycle. So I had my first "xe om," which means "Hug Ride" which means you get on the back and hold onto the driver and become one of the thousands of people you're afraid of the rest of the time. 

It was awesome. I loved the way it felt. Maybe I'll buy a Vespa when I get home and be afraid it will get stolen or damaged!

He dropped me off a few blocks away at the National Museum.

I cracked up. Oh, you sweet old man. If it's art, it must be in the museum. You dear thing.

I could see the palace in the distance, so I got rid of him and walked over there. It was closed. ANOTHER tuk tuk driver was like, "What's up?" and I was like, "At least the tuk tuk drivers survived the genocide," and then I wondered how many of the older ones had taken part in it, and then I banished my own shameful thoughts and that sort of speculation.

He was like, "Palace is closed for lunch, but I know everything in the city. I've been driving for twenty years. Yup, not a corner in Phnom Penh I don't know. I can take you to the Hill Temple, the Monkey Temple, the Golden Temple. All over, really. Anything you want. Then I'll take you back here to see the palace when it's open."

I showed him my street art picture, and he was like, "The museum, maybe?"

I was like, "Just take me to the monkey temple,"

So, I took the Secret Temple Tour.

Which was fan-fucking-tastic, actually. He really did know where all the cool stuff was hiding. He even showed me a tree filled with enormous bats. They were just hanging out there. I climbed the steps of a temple dedicated to stray animals and had my heart broken at the sweetness of seeing monks feeding kittens and puppies.

Everybody got some.

They were rows of birds in cages, and you could pay a buck to release them. So, I paid a buck. The monk told me you're supposed to tell the bird what you want to happen, and the bird will fly to God and tell him. Hey, sparrow, tell him I want a Red Ryder BB gun.

I held the bird in my hand, it was very still, and I whispered the name of a friend of mine going through a rough time. He flew into the trees and out of sight.

Found the Tour Guide downstairs and he took me across the river to The Golden Temple. Which was also amazing. Deserted but for snoozing monks. Huge murals and more enormous statues of monkey people trying to restrain cobra things.

I bought myself some water and bought him a Red Bull, and we were off again. He tried to get me to pay extra to see a silk-making facility. He figured maybe I was a live one, but I wasn't a live one. We found the monkey temple, which was crawling with monkeys. Actual monkeys, just like I've always wanted to see. 

There is usually fruit for sale for you to feed them, but it was the time of day where the fruit seller is getting a massage, so nothing doing. The driver was like, "No fruit now, so stay away from the big monkey."

I didn't need the warning. I was very aware that even the smallest monkey could ruin my good looks, tear off my person through my jeans and sell my camera on ebay with little difficulty. I used the zoom lens. 

It was incredibly sweet to watch them groom one another and play. 

He couldn't talk me into the jewelry store (for wife might like?) or the garden gnome Buddha factory (for mother like?) and he took me back to the palace. He had done a really good job. Took me to interesting, almost deserted, places where I had some memorable visual and personal experiences.

I had blown a lot of money on tuk tuks today and none on food (except for that ages-ago pho) so I was getting pretty cranky, but the palace was right there and maybe they had french fries inside.

They didn't, but they had some pretty cool buildings. When I bought the ticket, he gave me my change in the local currency. The careful reader will recall everything else uses/takes US dollars here, but they have a money of their own. They use it instead of coins.

So, if something costs $3.50, you give them a five and get back a one and a bunch of colored lottery tickets.

Palace was cool, a sprawling complex of large, pretty buildings all with the special roof they have here. This sort of gabled, spikey, Khmer roof. It's nice but gets pretty similar after a while. It had been a very long day, and I took a few pics.

I yelled at a Japanese woman who was standing in everyone's shot and decided it meant I should get something to eat.

Outside the palace, a tall tout was loudly asking everyone if they needed a tuk tuk. It was like, "Oh, thank god you're here. No one would EVER get a tuk tuk without you. It's so hard to find a ride in this town."

I found a guy and asked him to take me home. His tuk tuk was filthy. It... suck sucked.

We passed some actual street art on the way, and I beat on his back and asked him to pull over. He did and expressed amazement that someone would paint on the wall and that someone else would take a picture of it.

That was very sweet to me as was the ideas of the other drivers (so many drivers this day!) that the art in my pic was probably in the museum.

Climbed back up those screwy stairs, soaking wet, shaky and exhausted. What a day! TWO genocide museums, temples, palaces, markets! The water was back on, so I took a shower. Then I was too tired to climb over that lobby motorcycle again, so I just ate ramen noodles and went to bed.

The club next door fired up and Taylor Swift conveyed me to sleep on her disco tuk tuk.