Someone Else is Living Your Parisian Dream

Another Christmas abroad just came and went. I spent most of the day reading in one of the sunny hideaway jungle inspired rooms at The Best Hostel on Earth. Eventually, I mustered the energy to catch the Skytrain down to MBK mall to get my 100 + baht gift for the Holiday Dinner. At the mall, I observed the scurry of ants on a mission. Each year, I notice more of our Western Habits bleeding into the culture here. This year, here is Bangkok, Thailand. Maybe I’m just getting a little more cantakerous as the years pass.

Looking down onto Sukhumvit from aboard the skytrain, I follow the western lights of Christmas. Store clerks wear Santa hats and people greet me with a wai, immediately followed by a Merry Christmas. The clash of cultures, indeed. “Happy Holidays”, I reply. I wonder whether they’re comfortable under the meaningless cover of the hats…..I don’t quite remember what else I did that day.

* * * * *

Cambodia….Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville for a month. You can only stand so many suggestions of “Buy my fruit, madam…” before the kids take a Godfather tactic. “I’ll be here at 2 tomorrow and you’ll buy my fruit,” they tell you with the mafia authority that no 7 year old should yet possess. Without watches to tell time, they will still be there at said time, and they will find you under that rock that you crawled under when you saw them coming, whereupon they’ll change tactics. They’ll pull the Jewish mother trick and guilt you into your fourth bag of pineapple of the morning.

“You promised yesterday that you would buy my fruit today at 2.”
You will lamely challenge, “Ok. What time is it now?”
They’ll answer, “It’s 1:50. I have to go to school early. Buy my fruit now.”
To which you will reply lamely and ashamedly because you really do want them to go to school if it’s true, “Come back in 10 minutes,” because really, those 10 minutes are the only victory you’ll get with them, small as it is.

They don’t care that you don’t want fruit. They don’t care that you didn’t promise because they’ll circle talk you into believing that you did. They don’t care that you’re not hungry or that all you eat each day is fruit because all of them have to go to school early and you’re a total sucker. They care that you buy at least a pineapple for $1.00 if not the fruitsalad for $3.50.

I finally got wise though. I was less wise than them, but not bad for me. If more than one child showed up to bum-rush me at once, I learned that pitting them against each other worked fairly well. “If I buy fruit from you, I’ll take half from each and this is what I’ll pay $3.00 total. You guys work it out.” It’s not at all about the fruit; it’s everything about getting the kid off your back and not falling victim to a child for whom English is a fourth language. I’m going to hell in a handbasket carved out of watermelon, for sure.

I had my favorites though and they sweet talked me into buying something everyday; scarves, bracelets and bags upon bags of pineapple. One boy played with my hair, and in his pubescent uncontrollably high voice told me with his accent, “Your hair looks terrible.” He pulled neon green bracelet string out of his bag and tied it lovingly in a ponytail while I asked him about girlfriends at school. He didn’t charge me. He didn’t admit to girlfriends either.

Dave on the other hand, woke up one afternoon with a child weaving a bracelet on his wrist. He had to pay for that bracelet. The kid knew him from the art class he taught the day before.

Three little girls took a break from collecting cans and bottles on Serendipity Beach and sat down next to me while I was reading my book. They crowded around me, touching my hair, caressing my arms and simply laughing. They wanted to be friends. One climbed in my lap and I combed her tangled hair with my fingers. She was ecstatic. I became conscious of their purity and lack of inhibition to make physical contact with someone that they wanted to make contact with. I wondered whether at the end of a 20 hour hard-work day, their parents had the time or energy for play. I doubted it.

I got and ran to my room for the string that the boy used on my bad hair day. I burned it into 3 pieces and pulled the little girl back into my lap. I braided one long pigtail in the back. They walked away proud and satisfied with three matching pigtails swinging.

Later in the afternoon, they came back disheveled. They had gone swimming with about 7 other little girls who wanted their hair done as well. We had a little party right there, me braiding and them scrounging for little pieces of string for a tie. Poor girls who didn't have string got some from other poor girls who did.

I pulled the curtains aside to check the weather. One floor down and to the left, I could see into the back of the neighbor’s dilapidated building. It wasn’t any more ruined than any of the other structures in the area, but years of pollution and humidity had painted the building run-down. I hid behind half pulled back curtains into a back porch as I spied on her.

It was 7:40 am and a young woman slung her purse over her shoulder purposefully. From the back, I could see that her long black hair was pulled back in a conservative, low slung ponytail. Her collared shirt was tucked into a conservative black skirt that hung below the knee. She was going to work like everyone else does at home about this time.

This normalcy is a part of Phnom Penh where the entire city was evacuated in 1975 and nearly 2 million residents of Cambodia were tortured and killed by the Khmer Rouge, a Communist faction of their own people.

Antti reminded me in a quick e-mail:

I’m writing the tattooing scene for my article and I’m reading my notebook. Do you remember: you wanted to say thank you to Ernesto (the tattoo guy) but he said that you don’t need to say it. The Iban never say thank you cause if you appreciate someone you’re happy to give.

“There’s no need for thank yous. It’s just the propaganda of the colonialists”, Ernesto said.

“Ok”, you said. “Okay….fuck you. It hurt.”

That sounds like something I’d say….

I was scheduled to depart for mainland Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur on a 7pm flight, but I accompanied Antti to the http://www.borneoheadhunter.com/ target=”new”>tattoo parlor anyway.  He needed retrieve some additional information for his magazine article on the tribal tattoos of Borneo.  As he and Ernesto spoke, I perused samples of the tattoo art with mild interest.  One struck me immediately, and I half seriously and non-committedly asked, “How long would it take to get this one done?” The circle of life, encased in a petal like pattern, bestows protection for a “safe journey” upon young Iban boys who depart on their “coming of age” journey into the wild as they approach their early teen years.  I hadn’t planned on a tattoo, but I couldn’t think of a more appropriate mark to signify this period of my life.

“About 3 hours.” Ernesto told me in the slow, relaxed manner of someone who doesn’t and wouldn’t ever rush - especially when it comes to his art.  He would tap the ink into my skin the old fashioned way.  I had 5 hours before my flight; 1 hour to think about this very impulsive, very permanent decision on my way to and back from the bank, 3 hours of ink and 1 hour to rush back to the guest house for my bags. Barely reasonable, but impossible.  By now, I was convinced that this was a must-have.

On the way back from the bank, Antti and I stopped off for a 6-pack while I drank and gave myself an extra 10 minutes to change my mind.  I wouldn’t.  We called Ville, Antti’s friend and photographer for this article, who would snap photo after photo with hopes that one could be used in the magazine.

To be cont’d.

as MaLy added…

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

–Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)

If he was around, and we were sitting on some dusty floor in cheap candlelight (because that's the only source of light available), I'd shift a bamboo slat on the floor of the hut. I'd peer down it to make sure some pigs or goats weren't hanging out down there, then probably spit through the crack onto the ground below.” I'd move the slat back, look up at him with feeling eyes and tell him with all my American-ness, “oh totally. I totally hear ya', dude.”

He didn't invent the concept, but he's sure got it nailed.

Princess Diana’s primary cause was a push for the ban on land mines. Aside from snippets of that in the papers, I didn’t think much about them. It was a far too distant concept. Explosives were not my reality. Not my leg. Not my arm. Not my body. Not my life.

Just a bit closer to home though, at Mae Hla refugee camp last December on the Thai/Burma border I asked, “What kind of vegetables are planted in this plot over here?” Instead of identifying the vegetable, they replied, “Don’t step off the path. We’ve found land mines there.” Unfortunately, they weren’t actively looking when they found them.

It started to hit just a bit closer still during the planning stages of my trip earlier this year to the jungles of Burma's civil warzones. They went over the risks with me and one of the many life threatening risks included land mines. During our 2.5 day trek in the Burmese jungle this last April, M.O casually stated,”Watch where drop your walking stick, there are land mines all over the jungle.” “Okay,” I replied. What else can you say when you receive reminders like that?

Before that trek though, I was on a train in Burma proper. The heat and my own paranoia made me delirious as I drifted in and out of sleep. I saw a white box in the next car directly in front of mine, in the overhead compartment. It was wrapped up and there were red streaks running down it. Each time I saw it, I closed my eyes to erase the image but it wouldn't go away. I couldn’t make the blood streaming from the box. I must have been edgy from the nature of this trip.

I saw that white package again while I was in the jungle at Brigade 5. It appeared in the form of a human head, wrapped in bandage. Blood was seeping through it. The young KNLA soldier was planting a land mine to deter the dictating regimes attacks when it exploded in his face. A casualty of a war waged on his own land.

An officer of the KNLA whom I got to know lost his leg just weeks after we emerged from the jungle back into civilazation. He was trekking back from a meeting. All in a days work? Not for the majority of us.

* * * * *

Aki Ra not only runs the Mine Museum in Siem Reap, he also hunts and clears them. Aki Ra lost his parents to the Khmer Rouge as a child. At the age of 10, he began planting land mines for the government.

In his museum are hundreds of different types of land mines and bombs found in around Cambodia. Some were supplied by China, others by Russia and of course, by America. One from America is called a Bouncing Betty. Bouncing Betty, when triggered, lets out a sound and pops straight out of the ground about knee-high or so. Seconds later, she combusts, unleashing a long, thin, 2-3 inch wide steel ribbon. That ribbon comes apart in approximately 1×1 inch squares, basically slicing up its victims.

It’s not hard to imagine the damage when you’re in Cambodia. Just look around at the people. They’re not just a display for tourists. There’s a story of war behind each and every person who lives there. No exceptions.