back in kl, malaysia. 6pm tuesday night.

i'm nestled happily back in malaysia. in an air-conditioned internet cafe---"manic monday" by the bangles just played and now a song by anguun, an indonesian pop singer, is playing. i feel at home. being back in kl between countries is cool--- i'm able to clear my travel palate... and re-realize how cool malaysia is. the books say malaysia is often overlooked by tourists and that it's worth checking out. it's so easy and interesting to be here!

the contrast is amazing. for example, there are traffic lights here. no garbage/sewage in the streets etc.. you get the idea. and people are generally busy. in cambodia, so many people have nothing to do.

hmmmm. what to say about cambodia? i feel shaken and exhausted by the whole experience. the shortest summary would be that i would definitely go back. would love to be there for about three weeks, but stay away from the cities/tourist scenes.

i had a blast on my 3 hour bike ride to and from the temples yesterday. tourists typically take motos or taxis to the temples, so the locals got a huge kick out of seeing me sweatily peddling along. SO many huge smiles and hellos. i loved it. old people, young people, teens, cops, military, whatever. i soaked it up, healing my tattered tourist soul from all the rest. even the water buffalos were friendly and didn't want a thing from me! yahoo!

the people in cambodia rock. so many folks are so sweet and funny and interested/ing. it's beautiful place and culture.

however, an accumulation of exhaustion and frustration sent me over the edge yesterday afternoon, shifting my attitude from feeling sad and of guilty about the condition of folks (abject POVERTY; and/or a woman at the temples hobbling around with neither hands nor feet) to mild resentment and annoyance. the people and place are great when you aren't treated as a huge american wallet. got so tired of EVERYONE trying to cut a deal on all kinds of things. everyone trying to hook you up with a "good price"==== translate to something they get a commission for... ugh!

chatted last night with linda, an american (sacramentan, in fact) ex-pat who's lived in cambodia for 10 years starting and running an NGO. she's a friend of a sacramento friend.

i told her about my trip--- that i loved cambodia, but felt overwhelmed by the pandering, selling, begging, deal making, handling... she pointed out that cambodia's only recently opened to tourists or outsiders of any kind and the people are "not used to the world being up in their face". makes a lot of sense.

would like to chat with her more--- seriously thinking about whether i would like to work/live abroad in the coming years. met a world health organization dude at the airport today who gave me his card. he's on his way to harare, zimbabwe. has been in cambodia for 7 years doing malaria prevention work. i bet i could get some interesting work- just a question of how "evil"--- the organization who might be easy to work for would be--- WHO, USAID, the world bank, the peace corps etc...

monday morning. siem reap.

i fly out this evening to pp--- i am going to be so bold and stupid as to rent a bike for $2 and ride to the temples--- (you can get a moped ride for a dollar or two). i have already been to the temples the past two days, but the pass was $40, so i'd better use it! i'm gonna hit my favorite temple, banteay kdei none of the photos of these temples, except maybe the aerial ones do them justice. generally, even it looks like you can see how big the place will be as you approach, inevitably it goes on and on and on for hundreds of yards in every direction once you dig in!

biking is a silly idea because it's like 100 degrees and a million percent humidity.

perhaps sit and read in the shade and spread some more of aunt bernice's ashes. i have left some at lake tahoe, the beach in thailand, and at a mountain temple in thailand. and some here.

reading another book on cambodia today, by an american... and so much of my few, intense days are validated--- yahoo. i'm not such a fragile weirdo. i don't have the quote in front of me, but he says something like, "the beauty and courage of the cambodian people is only matched by the violence and loss they have and continue to suffer." will have to enter the quote in it's entirety when i find it. the author echoes what i have said here, which is the knowledge of the histo-socio-political context profound-ifies (made that verb up) the experience immensely.

for folks who want to know my whereabouts at any particular time, here's my flight itinerary.

8pm, saturday night, siem reap, cambodia (got here by the five hour express boat from phenom phen yesterday, midday)

whew! i can't remember being as exhausted as this in quite some time. the trip's great--- and i've grown quite attached to cambodia in some odd way (i'll probably understand more about what this has been about when i'm nestled back in malaysia)--- but this is soooo way different than my other travel experiences. and the traveling "alone" component has been eliminated as a major difference from other trips, as i've been loosely traveling with stephanie, a 34 year old attorney from colorado, most recently. three days/nights of hanging and staying at the same places etc... she's doing the whole circuit for three months, and has never been to this part of the world! she's off to nepal next when i head to vietnam.

with both malaysia and cambodia i've had moments of "gee, i'm really gonna miss this place and/or i would love to stay longer"-- so that's a good sign for the trip, yes?

at the moment, i'm so pooped, because i was woken up by very loud american women right outside my door at 3am...i'm staying at this adorable hotel in a french colonial building called the red piano-- owned by a belgian guy. $12 a night. perfect price!

i needed to be up before 5 am to go see the sunrise at one of the temples (angkor wat etc... is obviously the deal here, though i think i'm already templed out!). here's angkor wat.

so instead of trying to sleep, i just finished the amazingly horrific book that i sped through yesterday:"first they killed my father: a cambodian daughter remembers": ... a cambodian anne frank story of sorts. harrowing and so relatively recent, the author must be close to my age? she was a little girl in these work/death camps here in the late 1970s. and the stuff she describes is familiar to all cambodians. up to 25 percent of the population died in the most recent decades of war. this country has been at war for decades literally and 100s of years in some greater sense! and economically, a fair comparison might be (maybe i'm stretching it) the situation of african americans just after the emanciaption proclamation?

so all this learning i've done and been doing here has spiced up the visit quite a bit. and i'm the better for it in the sense that i think it's a much "richer", though difficult, experience.

and to back track to a whole 36 hours or so ago. stephanie, mike (a 24 year old from virginia doing the circuit for six months!!), and i went to the killing fields on thursday. it didn't freak me out at much at the "torture museum" where people went before the killing fields, but i must say that 8,000 skulls stacked up by age and gender should, perhaps, get a little more of a reaction out of me... and teeth strewn around the ground, bones embedded in the earth, etc...no joke. and it couldn't be for "effect", the cambodians haven't hooked into how to jack things up in that kind of way.

the children: cambodia is a very young country, with half it's population under 15 years old. i think this may be from all the wars, though i'm not sure. as a result, children are omnipresent and uniformly irresistably ADORABLE. huge brown eyes, huge smiles and often waving "hello! hello! goodbye!" etc... they are always playing and laughing, regardless of their circumstances or surroundings.

one of the hardest things about being here as a tourist (which i knew before i left) is the the children begging and selling. at the temples, children as young as three run alongside you with angelic/whiney voices chanting/singing "madaaaaame, buy postcard? flute? buy from meeeeeee when you return? where you from?" so it's painful to just stare straight ahead, engage by answering questions or speaking at all and risk never being left alone...

the savvier kids, perhaps 8 or 10 years old at the temples can speak english, french, japanese and have certainly got quite a little act going: "ohhhhhhh, you from america, which state? california? oh, the capitol is sacramento, the capitol of alaska is juneau, and your nation's capitol is DC. you have 280 million people living in america..... buy postcard? pleeeeeeese, madame?" it was astounding, endearing, and tragic all at the same time. and then, of course, there are the the amputees.

back to phnom penh tomorrow afternoon by plane, there a night and then back to malaysia for two nights before heading off to meet sona on thursday in hanoi. .

6:00 pm, phnom penh, cambodia. sept 11th----- whew!

glad that i studied pretty hard about this place, so i could "understand what i am seeing," as i put it when i was at home in cali studying my ass off--- i'm also so glad i warmed my trip up with a week in malaysia. i think this scene would be totally overwhelming, without having been around for a week, getting my travel sea legs set on my own. and if i had arrived on today, sept 11th, with all the warnings and stuff, it would have been additionally overwhelming.

from my hotel room in kl, malaysia last night, just as i was readying for sleep, i caught the announcement on cnn that the american embassies in cambodia, malaysia, and indonesia were being closed because of threats. i simply laughed outloud and thought, "wow, i have some good taste, eh?" it bothered me more than i realized, as i had some restless sleep over that... but as the chinese-malaysian biz man on the plane next to me this morning said "aww, america's always paranoid"-- and i must agree to a large extent. he studied in connecticut, his brother lives in boise, and his daughter went to kansas state.

so my only activities today: the now usual orientation to my setting by walking and walking and walking and walking. don't remember ever wandering aimlessly when traveling with others. i'm finding it a really good way to get a read on the vibe in all kinds of ways (including safety/how people react to me....)

a couple of hours and my shirt was drenched from neck to waist. went to the central market where the most remarkable things were: (1) the amount of STUFF (as with every asian market?)--- acres and acres and acres ; (2) the many, many people having NO business, just lounging around (sad); and (3) the food!!!

i can't even begin to describe all the creepy crawly stuff, alive, half-alive and plain ol' dead. much of it is identifiable, but much is not---- i have no idea what it is, except that it's some sort of edible animal. acres and acres of meat... (and less interesting, though pretty, fruits, veggies, and spices)--- where does it all go? certainly can't all be sold today... reminds me to be careful of what i eat!!

as i trudged through the streets, i was having a little macro/micro(?) econ conversation with myself: supply and demand. haven't folks heard that the LESS stuff you have the more you can charge? just a thought, especially with respect to tourist goods. it's painful to see so many vendors/hawkers with exactly the same stuff, dozing off, 'cause of no business. the annual GDP here is $200 while in malaysia it's $12,000. you can sure tell the difference. i think i was somewhat prepared.

and my other activity, the toul sleng genocide museum. wowza. someone else already wrote what i would have, so if you're interested in the eerie, sad, disturbing etc... story of stuff similar to the concentration camps, all at a former high school--- click on the link. incomprehensible, what drives people to do this stuff. i'd seen some exhibit of these photos in san francisco, but being there, in person was deep, deep, deep.

being in these buildings where 17,000 people were tortured and killed. and the photos for days. if i didn't know better, i would think many of them were simply beautiful/stunning portraits. the first few hundred i saw, i was having trouble comprehending that these people were in this torture camp, because while they didn't look cheery, they were healthy and clean etc... those, evidently were the entry photos, the torture and death ones were later.

it was my first acute moment on this trip of regretting being alone, as i got chills several times and actually felt scared. i didn't go to the upper floors of the complex. it was raining, no electricity and it truly felt so creepy, knowing how many people were killed where i was standing. the "chi" :-) was so bad that several of the rooms i simply couldn't enter, i was sort of physically repelled away from the entrance.

tomorrow: the king's palace and the killing fields. tonight: off to hunt down dinner, ward off hawkers, and beggars, and perhaps enjoy a beer at the hottest club in town: where i'm staying! i'm at the foreign correspondents club!