Saigon

My Aunt Joan, a high school teacher in New Jersey, has a student from Vietnam, and when Aunt Joan told this student I was visiting her home, she very kindly hooked me up with her family. I called them my first night in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City, technically, although District 1, where I stayed the first night is still officially called Saigon, and locals tend to call the whole city by its former name) and they arrived at my hotel early next morning. Ms. Quyen, my Aunt's student's mother, does not speak English, so had brought along Ms. Anh, her daughter's English teacher, to translate. Over breakfast pho (Vietnamese noodle soup), they explained that where I was staying (the tourist district in the city center) was very dangerous and expensive, and I'd be more comfortable at Ms. Quyen's house.

So, I hopped on the back of Ms. Quyen's moto and she took me to her neck of the woods. I haven't written much yet about the whole moto thing, so let me take this opportunity to say that it is the most terrifying form of transport I have yet experienced, and it is also the main form in all of these countries. Everyone rides motos - whole four-person families crammed on one, women in short skirts riding side-saddle (which is tougher than they make it look), babies barely old enough to hold up their own heads loosely grasped by one parental hand, or even clinging themselves to the handlebars or the back of the seat. All motos drive at breakneck speed, do not ever stop, and frequently squeeze between turning vehicles or play chicken in the oncoming lane. When you cross a street in Southeast Asia (on foot, or by moto or bike), you don't wait for a break in traffic, because there will not be one; nor do you run (though every cell in your body is screaming for you to do so) because they'll hit you. Instead, you stroll slowly and purposefully into the street and allow all the motos, bikes, cars and tour buses to zip to either side of you. If you are on a moto, and the driver needs to turn left, she just turns into the oncoming lane and sort of wades her way across.

Ms. Quyen's house is very large and nice, and her husband is friendly and always laughing, and their little girl is adorable and shy and always prancing around like a little fairy. Most people in Southeast Asia try not to go out between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., as the sun is most intense during those hours, but about 3:00, Ms. Quyen took me out to see a few sights. Another general Southeast Asian thing I've neglected to mention is how much clothes everyone wears. I don't know where the whole 'light, loose, full-coverage clothes are better for hot climates than shorts and tanks' idea came from, but it's honky. I've tried it; within five minutes I look like I've been pushed in a pond and everything begins to chafe. In these countries, the Western tourists can barely stand to keep their naughty bits covered, but the locals wear full on jeans and jackets everywhere: not even light and loose! In the house, Ms. Quyen wore a light sundress, but every time we ventured out into the blazing sun, she put on jeans, a short-sleeved sweater, a cordoroy jacket, socks, leather booties, gloves, a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses and a dust mask that covered the bottom half of her face. My refusal to wear a hat worried her no end.

We had a nice afternoon visiting a pagoda, friends of Ms. Quyen with an 18-year-old daughter who speaks English, and a giant Catholic church that makes liberal use of neon bars in its decor, then had some beef pho for dinner.

The next morning, I was picked up at 9:00 by Ms. Anh's 29-year-old son, Rene, who'd been instructed to take me wherever I wanted to go all day long and pay for it. I wanted to go to the War Remnants Museum, which used to be called The Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes, until the directors realized it was mostly a museum for Chinese and American tourists. Still, it's a museum totally filled with graphic photos of what my country did in Vietnam, and you don't know what awkward is until you're standing next to your new Vietnamese friend solemnly regarding a wall of blow-ups of My Lai. I should have said I wanted to go to the Fine Arts Museum. (By the way, I will undoubtedly sound hopelessly naive when I admit that, until I saw this museum, I didn't really realize just how bad things in Vietnam got. I believe most of these photos were published in the US at the time of their taking [except those of all the Agent Orange babies], but they're hardly the type of thing to be trotted out each decade in retrospectives, so they were new to me.)

Rene didn't seem to speak English at all, and didn't seem too chatty a guy in his own tongue, so I had no luck drawing him out. After the atrocity museum, he took me back to Ms. Quyen's for lunch (and a two-and-a-half hour rest), then picked me back up that afternoon, and took me to the former Independance Palace, the fancy hut in which the US helped install Diem before he got carried away killing monks and we had to take him out. These days, the building is called 'Reunification Palace' and I was surprised to find that it's, like, soooo '70s. There's even a gambling room done in pea green and orange, with a white, plastic circular sofa unit and a bar shaped like a wooden cask. In the basement were...more photos of American war crimes!!! A big group of women in the dark green uniforms tutted and gasped over the photos while I, the only foreigner in the room, stood around trying to look Canadian.

Rene didn't know what to do with me after that, so he took me home to his mother, who thought I might like another nap. I kind of flat-out refused to rest any further, and so we ended up talking for quite awhile about my travels and my budget. Ms. Anh and Rene were both thrilled to see my open bus ticket: for $22 through an agency, I'd booked a month-long open ticket all the way up Vietnam, with stops at each of the cities I wanted to visit, and I can just hop on and off. Rene has been wanting to go to Hanoi and Halong Bay, but they both thought it would be prohibitively expensive. They were shocked to hear how little I'm spending on my travels overall. I told them to get themselves a Lonely Planet. They got really excited.

After that, Rene took me for dinner (pho) and suddenly opened up and talked a blue streak in perfectly fine English. I don't know why he'd been so silent all day. Back at the Quyen's, we went on a family outing to the supermarket. I'd assumed Ms. Quyen had to do some shopping and we were all going along for an activity, but turns out we just went to show me the supermarket. It was a pretty impressive supermarket: an enormous two-story affair with an arcade, and packed with people.

Next morning, I left my new friends and went to Mui Ne, which is a beach town. Mui Ne is expensive (by SE Asian standards) and I had to flee my open bus (which won't let anyone off, but insists on taking you to each hotel on its list because the company gets a commission) to find a cheap(ish) room. But it is a beautiful beach, wide and white-sand, with clear waters. The fishermen all row around in these little basket-boats shaped like bowls and, because it's so windy, the sea is packed with kite-surfers. Have I mentioned that SE Asian women bathe fully clothed? Most of them wear long-pant, long-sleeved pajama sets. Meanwhile, many of the European women have trouble even keeping their tops on, which contrast makes the beaches here really entertaining. The local women glare at the Western women because they're naked; the Western women glare back because the locals all have perfect figures; the Western men have all rented local girls, so everyone glares at them; and the local men blatantly ogle the Western women, which pisses them and their boyfriends off at the local men. Oh, it's a high old time at the gay seashore!

Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville and On

Our first night in Phnom Penh, April and I took a walk out of the backpacker's ghetto (where the guesthouses all charge three bucks a night and make up the difference with the 24-hour bar out back), past the mosque (how I love chanting Muslims in the morning), into the alleys and industrial districts in the Northwest of the city, so April could get photos of picturesque squaller for her portfolio. We found squaller aplenty. The kids had bald patches in their hair, everyone had skin conditions, a beautiful woman posing for April started leaping around, and a roach ran out from her sarong. There was green, slimy, standing water around many of the houses and people were just going about their business through it, wading up to their waists.

I stayed in PP two days. The first, we went to markets and angered all the vendors by stretching out their wee, little clothes and then not buying them. The next day, we went to the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The Killing Fields are a good way outside of town, and the roads there were so muddy the tuk-tuks kept getting stuck and passengers were asked to get out and walk to release them. There were also a lot of traffic jams, and April and I were thus trapped when our tuk-tuk was stopped next to a tour bus full of Asian people who leant over and snapped away at us with their giant lenses. I felt like an Olsen twin.

The Killing Fields is only one of many such sights throughout Cambodia. This one has been set up into a memorial, with a number of uncovered mass graves around a central glass tower, which houses thousands of skulls of victims. Our guide matter-of-factly pointed out the fractures and explained how each was killed: 'Hatchet, whap! Bamboo stick, shfft! Gun, bang!' He also pointed out all the many bones still scattered around, half-buried in the ground: 'This? You know? Collarbone. This here? Legbone.'

From the Killing Fields, we proceeded to the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, which is in an old high school that the Khmer Rouge converted into a prison and interrogation facility. The museum is extremely grim, with all the cells preserved as found and blood still spattered on the high ceilings and walls. Most disturbing, however, are the rooms of row after row of photographs of the 17,000 inmates, who were all photographed upon their intake. Seven of them survived. They are men, women (some holding infants), teenagers, little kids. The expressions they wear are as varied as fingerprints: some look terrified, some resigned, some furious. A few are rolling their eyes. Nearly all the teenage boys wear the same carefully crafted smirk, most adults are trying for a poker face, the kids just look totally confused. Skulls may be gruesome, but skulls all look the same. Living faces are far more devastating.

After that, I was ready to lie on the beach awhile, so I went to Sihanoukville on the Southern coast and checked into a $2 room in the backpacker's district. I should have sprung for an $8 bungalow on the beach. If you're ever in Sihanoukville, folks, don't go to Weather Station Hill, no matter what the Lonely Planet says. It is a horribly depressing red light district. Two small streets of nasty, socially stunted, middle-aged white men sitting in bars and throngs of beautiful, giggling, teenage Cambodian girls pathetically fawning all over every Westerner in sight, even me. Not my idea of a beach vacation: I felt like a free black person on holiday in the slave-holding South.

The next day, however, I took a moto to a much nicer beach and spent an entire day lounging in a little bamboo pavilion and eating fresh pineapple, mango, and grilled prawns bought from ladies who come around with platters on their heads. I stayed there, drinking with friends, until all the motos had gone home, so I ended up crashing in my friends' room in my salty bathing suit. Next morning, I returned to PP and got the bus to Saigon the following day.

Genocide, prostitution and poverty, oh my! My next blog will be lighter, I promise. I'm in Vietnam now, and yes, they do all wear those hats.

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is the main temple in a complex of hundreds, built from the 9th to 15th centuries. There's a formula for viewing these temples: most people purchase a three-day pass for $40 and hire a tuk-tuk driver to cart them around. Most of the temples are built in levels and require climbing up steep and narrow stone steps. (Climbing down from Angkor itself, I freaked out a bit and inched down on all fours. I was thus powerless to do anything when a strong breeze blew my flowy skirt up to my chin and kept it there. Oh, I'm in so many photo albums now.) Other temples, such as the 'tombraider' temple (Ta Prohm), are long halls spread out through the jungle with trees growing into the walls and shafts of sunlight filtering in through the crumbling roofs. My favorite temple, Banteay Srei, is a very small temple, consisting of about half a dozen stone pillars covered in intricate stone carvings, detailed statuettes and chiseled scenes. Because of the delicacy of the carvings, Banteay Srei is often called 'Temple of the Women.'

Nearly every child in Northern Cambodia appears to spend his or her days at Angkor hawking postcards, flutes, photocopied guidebooks and the like. The children's sales pitches are as impressive as they are relentless. In addition to naming the capitals of every country and each of the fifty states, they can count to 10 in every language, living or dead (including Gaelic, would you believe), reeling them all off in a rapid, synchronized sing-song. They're also well versed in currencies from around the world - one little girl told April (who's Canadian) that she happily accepts loonies and toonies. Their patter is delivered in a consistent, whiny monotone and continues no matter how far you run, or how much you scream and cry.

'Hey lady, bracelet 10 for one dollar.'

'No, sweetie. Not today.'

'Buy bracelets, cheap cheap.'

'No, I don't wear jewelry.'

'Buy bracelets, give to your friends.'

'I have no friends.'

'Buy bracelets and send them back to me.'

'No. Go away now.'

'Buy bracelets lady, I go to school.'

...

'Buy bracelets madam, I give you peace and quiet.'

This from a lisping child of five. Their mothers all work at Angkor, runing food stalls outside the temples where tourists can buy bad fried rice at insane prices. The restaurants are identical, all in a row, and creatively named '1' through '10.' Each tuk-tuk driver does business with a particular restaurant and is supposed to bring his charges there to eat. While tourists look at the temples, their driver naps in a hammock in his restaurant and when the tourists emerge, the women attack.

'Lady, your driver sleep in here! Come in here, lady! Lady, you buy something to eat! Buy cold drink! Lady, lady, lady, lady! I KNOW YOUR DRIVER!!!'

And all the while, throngs of chanting, whining, suddenly-last-summer children flock about you, blowing flutes and flapping postcards. It's enough to drive a person absolutely stark, screaming mad. I do not know how the ancient temples retain their composure.

When you visit Angkor, you're supposed to experience sunrise and sunset within the park. The drivers (who, like everyone in every industry in Cambodia, stick to a formula that made some money once and absolutely refuse to divert from it in any way) take everyone to Angkor itself for sunrise and to a hilltop temple for sunset. The two events are equally embarrassing - a gagillion tourists point their cameras at the gradually lightening or darkening sky and snap fifty photos of each other's heads. Sunset was particulary frightening, as it involved a constantly replenishing stream of tourists throwing themselves, salmon-like, up the sheer side of a very high temple and then clambering back down with equal impatience after dark.

Of all the weary travelers at Angkor, I think the monks have it the worst. I imagine a pilgrimage to Angkor might be a truly meaningful experience to them - they surely at least know what the frescoes are meant to depict - but they have to spend the whole time being posed and photographed by various Japanese and Europeans who want to capture them against picturesque ruins, or from behind as the monks climb stairs, or flitting in between pillars. They're real good sports about it. At least the kids probably leave them alone.

By day three, April and I were templed out. Sure, the temples are ancient and breathtaking and all that, but all of them are...well, temples. By the end of the second day, I wouldn't have known any different if Chin were driving us up to repeats. So we asked him to take us to some villages instead. Non-tourist villages. We thought three was a nice, round number. In village number one, we visited a school. Like most schools in Southeast Asia, this one was packed with kids, but seemed to have no teachers. April and I wnadered into a classroom and the kids immediately reeled off 1 through 10 and the English alphabet. April and I then led them in some songs. Whereas American children might have questioned who the hell we were and why we thought we could wander in off the street and claim authority over their behavior, these children were charming and enthusiastic and extremely polite. After leaving them, some teachers found us and gave us a tour. The school is for four- and five-year-olds and has very nice facilities, sponsored by an organization called 'Caring for Cambodia.'

On the flipside, we also visited an orphanage that afternoon that could really use some caring. April volunteered at an orphanage in Thailand for five months, so has a particular interest in them; she struck up a conversation with the director of one who'd been holding the donation box outside a temple, and he'd invited us to visit any time. But apparently any time meant morning, because when we alighted from our tuk-tuk at two, he told us he'd kept the children out of school that morning becuase we were meant to be coming. We felt terrible. The orphanage currently has 15 kids and the facilities are a single pavilion with no walls. Every night, they move the desks into the yard and sleep head to toe on mats on the floor. The director told us excitedly about a facility he is building down the road, where he has obtained a five-year lease for $30/month, which is an improvement over the 4-month lease that is almost up on the current property. He walked us over to show us. The new place is currently a heap of 2x4s and another of bamboo poles, plus the house of the family who owns the property, which will have to be picked up and moved further back to make room for the orphanage. They had to be out of their current building and into the new one in 10 days. The director was optimistic.

After the orphanage, we had to go to Chin's girlfriend's restaurant for lunch, because she was pissed at him for something and he couldn't be easy until he'd talked to her. They're supposed to get married next year; Cambodians cannot even kiss until they're married. Chin is trying to save some money for a house for them (currently he sleeps on the lobby floor of a guesthouse in town, with the five other guys who staff the guesthouse), but he's a tuk-tuk driver and sadly, so is every other young man in Cambodia. There are about 20 tuk-tuks (not to mention motos) to each tourist, and Chin asked us if we had any idea how he could differentiate himself in the fray. We told him to just sit in his tuk-tuk and be quiet, rather than joining the storm of drivers who pounce on tourists as they come off the bus.

'If you grab us or run off with our bags,' we explained, 'We'll sit in a cafe all day until you leave, and never go with you.'

'You won't,' agreed Chin, 'But the Japanese will go where we push them.'

He thought a sign might help, but I think he's just screwed. Basically, you can't make money as a tuk-tuk driver, but there is no other job. Chin worked for this insanely fancy hotel for awhile and made $40/month.

April and I stayed an extra day in Siem Reap to attend a wedding party with Chin and his friends. In Cambodia, the party is the day after the wedding and each of the guests gives $10 to the couple, thus paying for the party. Because Chin brought two guests to this man's wedding, the man is now supposed to scare up two guests to bring to Chin's wedding next year. The party was in the country, so April and I were treated to a 45-minute ride over rutted roads on the back of Chin's moto. When our group arrived, we walked through the reception line, where we were wei'd and given a chocolate sucker, and then led to our table, which was piled with canned beer. Girls came around and constantly replenished our glasses with ice (they drink beer over ice here - even stout), and guys piled more cans on the table as fast as we could knock them back. Poor kids from the village came around collecting the empty cans. The meal was in courses and was devoured as rapidly as the beer was drunk. Ideally, you are supposed to toast before each drink of beer, which practice means you can scarcely ever get a fork to your mouth, so frequently do you have to stop and toast everybody at the table. After the meal, there was a brief spurt of dancing. The whole thing lasted two hours - no speeches, no socializing. Eat, drink, pay, get the hell out. But not before April and I were led up to be photographed with the wedding party: wearing our disgusting backpacker clothes, we were positioned on each side of the glowing bride, like giant, sweat-drenched bookends.

Wednesday must be the day for weddings, because we ended up going to another one that very evening. This one was a town wedding, which meant it was in a big, fancy restaurant in the city, and Chin and his friends scared up a car for us to arrive in. This party was bigger than the first, but almost exactly the same in all respects. I got a plastic chicken keychain in the reception line, rather than a sucker, and there was Johnnie Walker red label (which the Cambodians call wine, and seem to have no idea how to drink) in addition to canned beer, but the meal was nearly identical and eaten with the same frantic urgency. Directly after the last course was served, all the women (who were dressed to the nines with professionally done hair, and who no one had spoken to at dinner) got up and filed out. Women don't get to do a damn thing in Cambodia - all the girlfriends of the guys we were with didn't get to come to either wedding because 'they have to work.' When April and I expressed surprise that all the women were leaving so early, the guys all explained that women do not like to drink and smoke and so are very bored at parties and prefer to go straight home and never leave it again.

'Cambodian women,' they clarified. 'Very different.'

Shortly after this conversation, some drunk guy veered up and slurred an introduction into my face. I told him to go away, but the incident so upset Chin and his friends that we all left immediately. We went to a nightclub where six young girls dressed like deranged ballerinas sang whiny Thai songs, and the guys ate platters of venison and drank stout over ice until April and I positively fell asleep at the table.

Cambodia has a bad reputation among backpackers. I expected to hate it, to feel very unsafe and to find the people unfriendly and threatening. But it has ended up being my favorite of the countries I've visited so far. It's extremely poor here, and the people are clearly struggling, but I have found them delightfully friendly and open. They also have a sarcasm (or maybe a sense of irony) that is very Western, and I can relate to them better than I could the Chinese or Lao. Last night, I passed a tuk-tuk driver on a corner. A couple of his friends were sitting in the tuk-tuk helping him solicit passers-by. Suddenly, the entire tuk-tuk just fell over, dumping them all out onto the pavement, right as I passed by.

'Tuk-tuk, lady?' offered the driver, only half joking.

Savanakhet to Siem Reap

Perhaps it's only because 'Savanakhet'sounds like 'Savannah,' but it reminded me of a slow, Southern town in the States. On the day I visited, the streets were nearly empty, the pavement hummed in the constant heat, and people lurked around in what shady nooks they could find. I tried to locate the local museum (Savanakhet also has a dinosaur museum, which is hilarious to me, though I didn't attempt to visit it). I'd heard the museum was an old building with goats in front, and you had to turn on the lights for yourself. But there were several buildings in the area fitting that description, and the heat annhilates my sense of purpose. If things don't work out immediately, I think to myself, 'Well, why would I ever do this? It's not easy.' And I give up right away.

As I was listlessly looking for the museum, I found myself sucked into a Laos...well, I eventually managed to establish that it was a Laos housewarming party. I was there for about two hours, dancing endlessly and doing shots of beer (yes, they do shots of beer in Laos - China, too). Laos dancing is as relaxed as everything else in Laos, and involves a lot of rocking back and forth and paddling your hands in the air in front of you. Two young girls adopted me and taught me how to dance, and a pretty cute guy who said his name was Tiger (I don't know about that) sat by me and asked me the same question all day long. I never did understand him, but he never gave up (it sounded like, 'You making hum for one?'). Every so often, I'd get to sit down for a minute, but then the band (a keyboardist with speakers) would call me up to lead off the dance again, and away we'd all go. After I'd been there about an hour, a very tall fellow from Portland happened by and was absorbed. Everyone assumed we were together, and when they learned we weren't, they all thought we ought to immediately get together, because, as Tiger explained, 'Two Americans in Laos!' Just as I was beginning to wonder how I'd ever get out of this party, one of the girls turned to me and said, 'You go to your guesthouse now!' And that was that.

That night, I met a British gal named Louise at my guesthouse, and we agreed to travel together to Champasak the next day. Sounded simple enough, but that simple decision was the beginning of two days of confusing, exhausting travel on jam-packed, constantly stopping public buses, ferries, tuk-tuks and trucks. Each mode of transport had to be (1) located (no small task) and (2) haggled over endlessly in the hot, hot sun.

'One dollar, one person.'

'One dollar?! That's crazy! We paid less than that to come all the way here on the bus.'

'Bus have many people, I have only twelve people in truck. One dollar, one person.'

'It's only three kilos!'

'Then I see you walking.'

'Come on, be fair. One dollar, two people.'

'One dollar, one person.'

'No. We'll sit here all day.'

And so forth. At some point in all this traveling, Louise and I were joined by Portland from the party (Jason) and an Irish construction foreman named Aidan. The four of us stayed the night in Champasak, a very small town with the very ancient 'Wat Phu' not far outside it. The next morning, we cycled to Wat Phu, which is a Khmer wat built from the 6th to 13th centuries. It's Laos' second World Heritage sight, and it was worth the stopover. A long, crumbling road of flat stones leads to the first terrace, with a ruined "palace" on either side. Steep stairs lead from there up the mountain side to the main sanctuary, and behind that is a spring and some small shrines in the cliff face. There are many depictions of Shiva, Vishnu and other Hindu gods on many of the Buddhist temples in Laos (and Cambodia) because they began as Hindu Khmer structures.

After viewing the wat, we began day two of our traveling marathon, down to Don Khong, which is the largest of the islands in the Si Phaen Don, or 4000 Islands, area at the Southern tip of Laos. The traveling was just as arduous on day two, but we did manage to hitch a ride in the back of an Australian expat's truck for a good ninety kilos, and oh, it was bliss - no stopping, no slowing, no live chickens under my feet. We got to Don Khong just in time to meet up with a four Candadians and four Irish guys at a restaurant. Our party then drank every single beer in the kitchen, creating a terrifying glass forest on the table top. I left the group around 11, thinking they were hilarious and great fun. An hour later, the party relocated to a table just outside my open guesthouse window and raged on until 3:30, as I layed under my mosquito net thinking how much I hated them all and how not at all cute they were, and how Irish people and Candadians in general just suck.

Next morning, we all relocated to Don Dhet, which is a smaller, quainter (and thus more touristy) island south of Don Khong. I spent two and a half days there. It was lovely - I had a hammock on the porch overlooking the Mekong just outside my guesthouse door, and there was nothing to do all day but lay in it and read. At night, the town runs generators from six to about ten, and I'd shower and then walk up the pitch-black main drag and peer in the occasional lit bars clogged with Westerners until I found the Irish lads (who became funny again once I'd slept a full night). I'd have dinner and a drink or two, and then tiptoe back to my guesthouse (which had a ten o'clock curfew) and climb over the porch rails and down into the center courtyard. Every morning, the woman who ran my guesthouse would grill me, trying to figure out when I'd gotten back and how I'd gotten in.

'Last night, you walk walk walk walk? You open gate yourself? You come in through gate? Walk walk walk...down there? What time?'

'I don't know. Must have been before 10 - gate was open.'

'Hmmmmm.'

On Wednesday morning, I got on a minibus to go to the Cambodian border. The road there was...well, it wasn't. It was not so much a road as a great deal of holes strung together, and before we'd gone very far, the driver jerked off the road into a muddy ditch, tipping the whole minibus over to a terrifying angle and miring it there. We all got out. A public bus happened by. The public bus was waved over and a rope was tied from its rear bumper to something under the minibus. The public bus was so rusted and ancient, you could see right through it to the other side of the road. It started up and drove forward, and whatever the rope was tied to immediately broke off and fell in the road. The public bus took its rope back and drove on. Another minibus was brought and bags began to be unloaded. A long, long time after that, we arrived at the border, and another day of hard traveling officially began. I'd paid ahead to go all the way to Siem Reap in the Northeast, as traveling in Cambodia isn't too simple. We drove (in various minibuses) until 9 last night over the most unbelievably terrible roads. The minibus could only go about 20 mph and had to weave all over the road continually to avoid the worst of the potholes, and every so often it would veer to the edge and tip precariously. And then the oncoming traffic and the dogs and the nighttime driving...I kept my hands over my face most of the time. We finally arrived in Kompong Cham (we had to go nearly as far South as Phnom Penh on the 'new' highway (!) and then back North to Siem Reap, because the roads going straight West from the border to Siem Reap are too bad to travel on. We spent the night in a very filthy hotel and then got on a bus to Siem Reap this morning.

I am very glad to be here. Siem Reap is the city outside Angkor Wat, Cambodia's number one (and pretty much only) tourist attraction, and nearly everyone in Cambodia has descended on Angkor trying to get in on that gravy train. Getting off the bus, we were all swarmed by dozens of moto drivers waving signs and banners, and our bags which they were carrying off and putting in their motos. It was beyond alienating. The deal is, they give you a free ride to whatever guesthouse in hopes that you'll then hire them to drive you around Angkor for the next day or so. The trick is to find a good driver who speaks English well, and who won't screw you. I have joined forces with a Canadian girl named April, who is also traveling alone and wants to do three days in Angkor, and we found a really cool moto driver. Actually, he found us - as soon as we'd grabbed our bags, it started pelting down rain so hard we were in his moto and under the rain flaps before we knew what was up. We've hired him for tomorrow, and are supposed to leave for Angkor at the terrifying hour of 5 a.m. to see the sunrise over the wats. I'll let you know how that goes.

Vientiane and On

My mood, you will be happy to hear, improved upon arrival in Vientiane. Not that Vientiane's so wonderful - it's just a city. But it's a city that would exist whether or not tourists came and that's all I really required. Laos' capital is not nearly as well-kept as Luang Prabang. The sidewalks in Vientiane are particularly unwalkable: most of them are the outlines of sidewalks with great mounds of sand within, or they have trees planted all along that so fill the sidewalk you have to keep stepping in and out of the street continuously. It is also necessary to keep a lookout for big, open holes leading down into the sewer system. Vientiane has about five million more tuk-tuk drivers than it needs (I long to have a T-shirt printed up that reads 'I do not need a tuk-tuk' in Lao script), and not nearly enough decent guesthouses. I had trouble finding one with vacancies, and in my search was shown som truly dreadful rooms (bed in the middle of a restaurant kitchen, anyone?) for quite high prices.

I did a bit of sightseeing in Vientiane, like a dutiful tourist. There is a big stone arch in the middle of the city called the Patuxai, which means 'Arch of Triumph.' It's clear where the idea for the arch came from, and the concrete for it came from the US (which intended it for construction of a new airport, according to my Lonely Planet). Vientiane also has the Laos National Museum. Downstairs are several exhibits on archaelogical digs, of both the artifact and dinosaur bone variety. These exhibits mostly consist of photos and crude dioramas of the digs themselves. Upstairs are many rooms devoted to Laos' history. After a room or two on the French colonialists (including a mural depicting French soldiers snatching Lao babies from their mothers' arms and tossing them into a well), the museum basically turns into a warehouse of minor possessions that at one point passed through the hands of various 'revolutionary heroes.' For example: 'spoon used by Comrade X when fleeing the US imperialist and its puppets' and 'shirt button of Comrade Y from shirt worn while planning the liberation of the Lao people.'

I only intended to stay a day in Vientiane, but ran into administrative difficulties. First of all, the Cambodian embassy was closed on Tuesday because of the King's birthday, so I had to stick around on Wednesday. I then paid double for my visa because I didn't bother to check what the price actually was before having an agency sort it for me, all because I was too cheap and lazy to take a tuk-tuk to the embassy myself. Then, the guy at the late-open exchange counter (where I had to go because Cambodia had my passport all day) refused to change my traveler's checks because the signature on my passport (signed in 2000) didn't match the signature on the checks (signed in 2006). Why this would matter, I have no idea. The 'big' bank where he said they'd assume the perilous risk of changing my checks didn't open until 8:30 the next morning, and the last bus to Savannakhet (where I was headed) left at 9:30. I had to get money, though, because Vientiane was the last good shot before Cambodia to obtain US dollars, which I would need because Cambodia has no ATMs. So I cut it really close (though I still took time to haggle with three different tuk-tuk drivers on the fare to the bus station), but managed to get on the bus at 9:28. The bus then pulled right outside the station and sat there for 20 minutes, while vendors swarmed the aisle, spilling squid juice everywhere and leaning into my lap and leering at me.

The nine-hour bus ride started out pleasantly enough and slowly turned into hell on wheels, as long bus trips are wont to do. This bus made it all the way to Tha Khaek (two hours from Savannakhet) before breaking down. We all sat around the bus station there for well over an hour while they worked on it. And lucky for me, one of my fellow passengers sitting near me (all men, as the women disappeared somewhere as soon as the bus parked and didn't reappear until it left the station again) spoke English, so I got to have a lot of quality conversation with a genuine Lao person. Here's what he had to say:

'Where is your husband? Why you're not marry? You look for a husband in Lao? YOu like Lao boys? You cannot travel alone! Oh, with friends. Men friends? Where are your men? Why they're not with you? I have phone - we call them now to meet you. This lady want to know, do you like this boy? He will travel with you to Savannakhet. No? I have house - you stay tonight, tomorrow I take you to find you boyfriend. (Here, here, you like baguette? Take, take, I buy too much!) This boy, he not marry.'

And so forth. I have this conversation with everyone in Laos. Women just do not travel (or do anything at all) unaccompanied in this country, and it worries the hell out of everyone when I get on a bus alone. They feel it is up to them to remedy the situation immediately. I have kicked up my China lie (my boyfriend is at the hotel bar because he hates China and won't go with me anywhere) to a new, sturdier Lao lie (my husband is in Wherever already, because he had to go yesterday, because [something garbled to do with money said too fast for an ESL-speaker to grasp]). The most annoying thing about all this is that I would love at soem point to discuss something - anything - other than my imaginary husband and his whereabouts, but the conversation simply cannot move past his absence until he is reassuringly there in the flesh beside me. I guess women can travel the world alone, but their interactions with others are going to be limited and redundant.

At any rate, I finally made it to Savannakhet, before midnight and still single, so it could have been a worse day overall.