Every Day is Sunday

Energized by Phnom Penh, we were ready to move on to the twin seaside towns of Kep and Kampot on the Gulf of Thailand.  It took all of the accumulated, stubborn, take-no-BS taxi haggling skills of Erin to get us a cab all for ourselves to Kampot for $25 (market price: $35).

We arrived in Kampot just at sunset to watch a brilliant orange-red glow as the sun set on the river. Kampot is a one-street town, with all the hotels, bars, and restaurants along the simple waterfront promenade. Our hotel of choice was booked, but the expat-friendliness that would set the tone for these days became quite apparent when the owner happily found us a room at a friend’s establishment. We were thrilled to meet Ben, an affable, busy, happy Irish guy, who had just opened his joint a few months before, complete with wood-fired pizza oven and large rooms. We ate a big, tasty, dinner outside – the first Sri Lankan food any of us had eaten ever —  and considered going dancing. But when we entered the club, the music was so loud as to be nearly inaudible, and there were only about 10 people (guys) inside sitting sullenly at tables. Combined with the “no guns” sign on the door, we decided that Erin getting up and shaking her booty to the flashing neon lights might cause more of a stir than we wanted, and gracefully took our leave.

The next morning, we took a delicious breakfast of fresh bread and croissants at Ben’s, and geared up for a motorbike ride to Kep, 30km away. We had packed our small daypacks for an overnight stay, or two, depending on what we found. You may remember from Vietnam, that we had already determined that motorbike days are great days.

Unfortunately, this one began inauspiciously. Just a few kilometers out of town, Jeff and Erin’s motorbike got a flat. Fortunately, as is often the case in developing Asia, we were just a few hundred yards from a fix-it shop, and 20 minutes and a couple dollars later, we had a brand new inner tube and were on our way.

We had read that there were some cave shrines along the route to Kampot, so we turned off onto a deeply rutted dirt road into a small village. Bump bump, bounce bounce, into and through a little village on a dirt road we puttered on our motorbikes, doing our best to avoid (or absorb) the potholes. Eventually, we came to natural curve in the road, and inevitably, a bunch of young boys appeared asking if we wanted to see the temples for a few dollars. We obliged them, and though the shrine itself was underwhelming, the precarious scamper up into the caves, the banter with the lead boy in his impressive English, and Seth climbing up into the light of the caves, made it worth it.

Before our departure from the village was done, Seth’s bike went defective, too. This time it was the tire not staying on the rim, and problem was a little more grave and a little more costly. We borrowed a cell phone to call Ben back into Kampot, who called the man who had rented us the bikes, and a lot of back and forth ensued, punctuated by bowls of cheap instant ramen noodles and the absolutely blistering midday heat of coastal Cambodia. Finally, we bucked up, and made a team decision. This was precious rural road-trip time – no time to waste! We’d pay the mechanic, get a new tire, get on our way, and deal with the rental guy on the return.

An hour or so later, we rolled into Kep. Into our stunning little 6-room bungalow getaway, “Les Flamboyantes.” Giant rooms with air conditioning and stone-and-mosaic showers, big front patios, reclining chairs with thick white cushions by a neat swimming pool, and a thatch-roof dining area that promised crabs and steak and good red wine. Mmmmm.

Our two days spent in Kep were relaxing gems. We watched some of the most break-taking sunsets any of us have ever seen, from several different hillside resorts. The colors were pure Monet – a riot of yellows and purples, fading from brilliant to soothing as the sun descended over the water, casting a gentle outline against the surrounding cliffs — and made even richer with passion fruit + vodkas for happy hour!

We rode our motorbikes down to the waterfront to eat delicious and famous locally-caught crabs. The ocean literally washes under the pilings of the restaurant strip, and you can see the water between the floorboards. Those crabs in part so good because they are cooked with fresh “Kampot pepper.”

Apparently, once upon a time, Kampot pepper was a delicious and treasured condiment in Europe, the pinnacle of pepper, so good that every respectable home in Paris had it on the table. Today, the pepper fields of Kep (Kampot is also the name of the province) are still productive, if not as renowned. Up the hills on our motorbikes and we found ourselves touring a pepper plantation. Who knew that pepper grew on tall, staked vines? What a neat sight. The berries on these vines were quite young and green, and when we popped them in our mouths, overwhelmingly hot. Eventually, they will ripen on the vine to red, and then beyond that, go overripe to black. That’s when they are picked and dried in the sun, and become the wrinkly black peppercorns you are familiar with.

Kep itself is a funny little place, which like the famous peppercorns, was apparently once a bit fancier, quite a destination for both French colonial and Cambodian national tourists looking to escape Phnom Penh and take in some sun and water. But during the civil war and genocide, it was deeply shelled, many of the buildings burnt and destroyed, and it basically fell into disuse and disrepair. It is just barely emerging from those doldrums, with many colonial buildings broken and swamped by the jungle, but a few others nicely restored. For our part, we were thankful for the gentle quiet.

One afternoon, we rode a motorized longboat out to a small island a couple miles off Kep. Jeff, to everyone’s amazement, made the bumpy trip both ways without puking. It was worth it, as we found ourselves on another truly idyllic beach, which in any other part of the world would be overrun with tourists. Here, the only available lodgings are super-rustic bungalows with no running water or electricity. We were able to “rent” a raised platform over the surf and just stretch out, the three of us under a palm tree, on a reed mat listening to the waves come in. Nothing but blue ocean in the distance. Ahh, paradise.

But the true clincher for Kep was an our evening back La Flamboyante. A dip in the charming swimming pool, and then a bunch of cocktails, and then dinner. All of the people at the single bar were totally eccentric expats, from the French owner to his cook brought from Madagascar. Wonderufl characters who have spent lifetimes wandering the globe, opening businesses, escaping tax authorities, and doing all manner of wild things. Like the French woman who had in her pocketbook a one-page contract (surely not up to Jeff’s legal standards) she had signed just that afternoon to rent one of the spaces down at the seafood market for an as-yet-to-be-determine alternative to a crab shack. With the care of our host, the whiskey flowed plentifully, and delicious appetizers like good cheese and fresh anchovies appeared before we even sat down to a wonderful French dinner. Once again, I was reminded of the many ways there are to live your way into the adventures of the world, to bushwhack your own path. And lubricate it with good food and drink.  In fact, the dinner and whiskey were so exhilarating that they led Erin and I to convince Jeff it was a good idea to march down to the ocean at night, strip down to our skivvies, and dive in to unknown dark water to disturb the supposed phosphorescents. While no glowing blue flagellates appeared at all, the laughs by the moonlight were entertainment enough.

Kep was my last stop with Erin and Jeff on their tour. I had lived 50 days of Sundays with them. While not a full 365, it was enough to remind me of why I love the Wertkinborns so: their sense of adventure, their kindness, their warmth, their taste for good food, and their desire to include others in it all. My parting advice to you faithful readers? Next time your dear friends invite you to join them on their Round-the-World trip, just say “yes.”

Phnom Penh started out as an inconvenient detour.  The only reason we even stopped in PP was because we needed to visit the Indian Embassy to apply for visas.  Much to our surprise, Cambodia’s capital city was a cool place to spend a few days.

Sadly, the biggest tourist attraction in PP is S-21 – the infamous prison where Pol Pot kept political prisoners of the Khmer Rouge.  We had heard about the Killing Fields before we arrived in Cambodia and accepted the conventional wisdom that Pol Pot was a homicidal maniac who murdered millions of his own people, but we didn’t know the extent of his madness. 

After successfully leading the Khmer Rouge to power against the Cambodian monarchy in 1975, Pol Pot decided that he wanted Cambodia to be an agrarian-based society.  To make this dream a reality, he destroyed the fabric of Cambodia life overnight by implementing a series of disastrous “Year Zero” policies.  For example, he ordered that all calendars be set to the year zero because it was the dawning of a new era.  He declared Cambodia’s currency to be worthless because he didn’t think that people should use money anymore.  And, incredibly, he ordered the 2 million residents of Phnom Penh to evacuate the city.  Many of Cambodia’s educated citizens were either killed in the countryside or forced to work as laborers in the field.

The alliance that Pol Pot had forged to overthrow the previous government wasn’t ready for these sweeping and devastating changes.  Loyalists during the revolution started to object.  Facing internal disagreements, Pol Pot turned on those in his own party and imprisoned many of his former lieutenants in S-21. 

Since he couldn’t trust any of his own people, he went into the countryside to recruit young boys to carry out his orders.  By the end, boys as young as 12 years old were presiding over the prison and torturing its inmates.  We learned how confessions forced at S-21 were extracted through disfigurement, removing toenails with pliers, suffocating a prisoner repeatedly, and skinning a person while alive.

Pol Pot’s reign was only three years long (1975-1978) but his disastrous turn set back Cambodia several decades. 

After learning so much about the history of the city, we were interested to experience modern city life and see how the city has recovered over the last 30 years.

We stopped at Seeing Hands Massage, home to the famous blind masseurs of PP.  Started by blind entreprenuers, this massage parlour helps previously unemployable men and women become professional massage therapists. 

EE: I’ve had a lot of massages in Southeast Asia. Many massage therapists use a standard set of movements which can sometimes feel generic. But it was clear from the first five minutes that my masseur Sophea was more in tune with my body. Sophea would tell me of the tightness and tension she felt as she worked out the kinks.

Feeling relaxed, we ventured to the waterfront to check out the view and found vendors selling all sorts of interesting things.  First we ran into the bug guy.  We hoped he wasn’t selling those giant cockroaches and massive black spiders as food – they made the scorpions we tried in Beijing look like a light snack.

Next we met a woman selling the cutest little green birds you ever saw.

She had dozens of those birds crammed into a small cage, and so we decided to buy three little birds and set them free.

Although not known for its cuisine, PP did have some interesting places to dine.  Our first night we ate at Friends, a training restaurant run by former street youth.  The next night we took a ride out to the outskirts of town where we were treated to dinner and a Las Vegas style show.

On our last night we encountered a culinary delight that we haven’t seen before on this trip: Happy Pizza.  What makes the pizza happy?  Its not the crust, tomato sauce, or cheese.

We awoke at dawn to travel seven hours in the wrong direction. True, we had said goodbye to our chief navigation officer (Danielle) in Siem Reap, but it wasn’t a navigation error that led us to the banks of the Sting Sanker River that morning. We chose the seven-hour boat ride so we could catch a glimpse of river life in Cambodia.

As we navigated through an endless number of floating villages, we saw many different facets of river life: ladies selling vegetables out of their rowboat, men taking seeking refuge from the sun, and crews working the river banks.

At every village the young children were always the most excited to see us. As soon as they saw the boat, kids would scramble out of houses, trees, and even bathtubs to greet us with waves and screams of “Hello, Hello!”

The water level was low and our boat moved slowly down the river. At some points the tributary became so narrow that the crew dropped canvas drapes over the edges of the boat so that we wouldn’t be scratched by the large trees and weeds growing out of the water.

Small rowboats would occasionally come to meet our boat and either take on a departing passenger or offload a newcomer. There were also times when we had to stop and give way to the vessels navigating the river on the way to Siem Reap.

It was an epic boat journey. We took pictures, enjoyed the scenery, slept, and took some more pictures. We climbed on top of the boat’s flat roof and talked about life, love, lists, and secrets (and the inadvisability of keeping lists of secrets).

We finally pulled into the docks at Battambang and wearily dragged our bags off the boat. We walked about ten feet away from the pier and boarded the bus to start a four hour journey to Phnom Penh. Whose idea was this anyway?

At first Siem Reap seemed like a Cambodian version of the Ocean City boardwalk: bars and restaurants filled with tourists and bored employees standing outside stores that all sold the same t-shirts and dresses. We didn’t find boardwalk fries but we did stumble into the (more authentic) Old Market by walking through a labyrinth of stalls selling bootleg Angkor Beer t-shirts and “silver” jewelry. We knew we had strayed from the typical tourist path when we found fried insects, live fish and pig heads displayed with care just a few feet from worn baby clothes displays and pedicure stands. As tempting as it all was, we weren’t there to shop. We were there to see Angkor Wat.

Angkor is a series of Hindu and Buddhist temples that served the Khmer empire from the ninth century to the thirteenth century A.D. These temples are a UNESCO World Heritage site and a holy pilgrimage location. It’s believed to be the largest pre-industrial city in the world with an urban sprawl of over 1,000 square miles. Their beauty has inspired adventurers to risk water-borne diseases, poisonous snakes and malaria to see them. But talk to a Cambodian about the temples, and you might believe that one of the most important developments in Angkor was when Angelina Jolie filmed the movie Tomb Raider here. Seriously, it was all people talked about.

We started our whirlwind two-day tour with the “outer loop” and were proudly shown Ta Prohm, a temple that Ms. Jolie ran across during the film. It’s characterized by a large layout and tree roots growing in and through many of the buildings. We realized that none of us had seen or remembered this film but did our best to recreate the movie magic:

Speaking of movie magic, we also saw the temple of the thousand lingas, a holy place where limestone was cut for temples. The Linga is a phallic representation of the Hindu God, Shiva. More cultured readers might recall that a shiva linga was the sacred object stolen from an Indian village in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” Don’t worry parent readers, it’s all quite tame–the symbol is usually a circle cut into the ground.

We also saw Bantay Srei, a temple further from the main complex that’s characterized by pink stone and intricate carvings. Its name means “Citadel of the Women” and is one of the few buildings that wasn’t erected for the sake of the king’s honor alone. What it lacked in size it more than made up for in intricate carvings that we didn’t see anywhere else.

For lunch, we decided to experience an “authentic” Cambodian meal. We had already come to terms with the fact that Cambodian food isn’t as flavorful or varied as the food in Thailand, so when a simple place was suggested we thought we knew what we were in for. We had noodles and a choice of two stews: fish or meat. I opted for fish. At first I thought my choice was just ok, but it seemed much better when we discovered that the tofu-like substance in the meat stew was cubed congealed blood. Good protein, to be sure, and VERY authentic. We made some less authentic choices as our trip progressed.

Between temples, we experienced one of the more difficult aspects to traveling in a poverty-stricken country. Siem Reap is dependent on tourism, and at some point, it was determined that children were the best group to sell wares to tourists at the temples. It’s not hard to figure out why: they’re adorable, and they tell you they need the money for school. But they’re not in school if they’re selling to tourists at 10am on a Wednesday, and it’s unclear whether children are being forced to sell to tourists. As a result most guidebooks state that it is poor practice to buy anything from children. But when you see kids who live on less than a dollar a day, who may not go to school regardless, it becomes difficult to determine what the best course of action is. I didn’t buy from children, but I understand why someone else would.

The second day we left at 4:45 am to watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat, the main temple complex in the park. I was a little nervous about this because I had suggested it and had no idea whether we would even see the sun rise through the clouds. But six night owls agreed, got up before dawn, learned that our tour guide was missing, got into a van anyway, and were sweating before sunrise in the hopes of having a clear view.

(An aside: Cambodia was HOT. I thought DC in August had prepared me for Southeast Asia. This was true in Thailand but Siem Reap was just as hot and utterly still. Once I learned to accept sweating at all times it was a little easier.)

Fortunately we were rewarded with a clear sunrise. After sunrise we were rewarded again with a tour of temple all to ourselves. For some reason, almost every tourist sees the sunrise and promptly leaves to get breakfast or take a nap. So while we got used to our very tardy tour guide we could pretend that we had discovered it ourselves.

Angkor is one of the largest and most preserved temples. Its roof is still intact and some paint on the walls is still visible. While we were a little tired and grumpy due to the early wake-up call (and waning enthusiasm for our guide) we couldn’t help but be impressed by the massive bas-reliefs of wars and buddhist stories that covered all four outer walls of the temple.

We spent the rest of the morning touring the main complex.

By afternoon most people were wiped out (did I mention the HEAT?) but Jeff and I decided to go to the Roulous group. These are some of the oldest temples in the complex. While they were interesting, we were more intrigued by the setting. We were in the middle of working monasteries and were far from the tourist trail.  We walked past an English class and Jeff couldn’t help but put his new PhD to work by teaching a round of hangman to the children.

As the tour was winding down, bells called monks to the temples and farmers walked their water buffalo back home. It was a glimpse into a less trodden part of Siem Reap and we were grateful to see it.

The final reward of the day came after we had toured the Angkor complex and were searching for a dinner spot. Erin had been craving Mexican food and was cruelly taunted by a “burrito” in Pha Ngan that I cannot even describe. But we knew our lucky streak would continue when we found a Mexican restaurant that served Margaritas and even guacamole. The guac was a strange shade of green but we were too elated to question it.

The next day was our last in Siem Reap. We rented bikes and cruised around town to do some last-minute souvenir shopping and treat ourselves to a massage.

Toward the end of the day, we went back to Angkor to do something I have wanted to do for most of my life: ride an elephant. We hopped on one of the last rides up the mountain that day to watch the sun set over the temples.  Being one of the last rides up has its benefits. While the mahouts (elephant wranglers) were waiting to take people down the mountain after sunset we had a chance to offer them bananas, pet them and generally act like four year olds. At least, I acted like a four year old.

We weren’t sure how to celebrate our last dinner together as a group. But then we remembered how we celebrate back home: with amazing wine and food. Seth found a great French restaurant and we gorged ourselves on a rare treat in Asia: cheese. Erin was in heaven.

We went back to the hotel to pack, share photos, and pretend that our time together wasn’t coming to an end. It was wonderful to be a part of Jeff and Erin’s adventure and get the scoop on world travel. It’s easy to daydream about their trip–I should know, I do it at work all the time–but I went home with the realization that it takes lots of planning, patience and a great partner.