Vietnam, the American War of Aggression, and the Killing Fields of Cambodia...

Hello from Australia, where I’ll be post-dating the next couple of entries that I hand-wrote for lack of Internet access. Here in Melbourne I’ve finally had the chance – and the access – to type the journal and upload it.

I left off in Luang Prabang, Laos way back in early January. After leaving Luang Prabang on January 6th, it was off to Vientiane, Laos (the capital) for one night before connecting to Vietnam. Unfortunately, our flight to Vientiane from Luang Prabang was cancelled due to lack of passengers (doh!), so we had to catch the next flight later the same afternoon. Our guide Sampong took us to his house for lunch (he didn’t know what to do with us since we had already checked out – it was a really nice gesture) and his wife made the most amazing creamed rice, egg, scallion, and peanut omelets (there’s no other way to describe it) that I’d ever tasted. Actually, they were the only creamed rice, egg, scallion, and peanut anything I’d ever tasted, but they were the best… There were some other grumpy tourists when we arrived at the airport, so I can only assume there were about 10 of us on the morning flight and they just consolidated us all into the afternoon flight. Welcome to Laos, have a nice day. Jeez. Sucks for them, though – less time for us in Vientiane meant less time for us to be consumptive tourists and contribute to the local economy! We arrived in Vientiane in the late afternoon and rushed to a few temples before they closed… to tell you the truth, if we were going to “miss” a city, Vientiane was it. A few temples that looked like many others, and not much else to see. We didn’t feel bad about missing the day. It was my birthday after all, though (January 7th) and we did have a nice dinner in the hotel in Vientiane. We actually had something other than Asian food for the first time in weeks, drawing on the French colonial history of the area and enjoying some nice French wine and cheese.

From Vientiane it was off to Vietnam. We flew to Hanoi, the onetime communist hub of Vietnam and it’s cultural capital. A word on our travels so far – Thailand is like a beautiful woman who gracefully invites you in with a sweeping, silky gesture…Burma shyly looks down, a bit ashamed, shuffles its feet in the dirt, and opens the door for you… Laos eyes you warily, but is polite and warm in time…but Vietnam looks you up and down, slaps you five, and just brushes right on past you. Hanoi was busy, bustling, noisy, dirty, loud, edgy, and awesome! There is a point in travel that you appreciate anonymity, you appreciate when people don’t pay attention to you, and Hanoi provided that and then some. Some people may not like it, but it was a welcome relief to see people too busy to bother with us, and move on with their own lives. Normally everyone stops and approaches us as the “rich, white, westerners,” knowing full well they can make more money off us in 5 minutes than they can make in a normal month. Not so in Hanoi. The noise and pollution alone reminded me of Times Square…a sweetly familiar taste of home.

The first thing we did on arrival was head to the ethnology museum, which we learned will be shipped off to New York for display in the Museum of Natural History this spring. Vietnam is a nation of tribes, 54 in all, and each with different dress and customs. The detail was dizzying, and I must admit I didn’t absorb it all. Here’s a run down of what I did get: The Viet are the largest ethnic group, followed by the Tay… The Dao is a small group in the northern hills and it’s pronounced “Zao”… The Hmong come in two varieties, depending on dress and not skin color, Black Hmong and White Hmong. They are from the northern hills that border China and have been known to dabble in opium. It was pretty amazing to read about all these different peoples and tribes, most of which had unique religious and burial ceremonies as well. Most of the people, we learned, are animists, who worship various animal gods that manifest themselves as celestial bodies or elements, and many practice ancestral worship. (that’s right – they put up a photo or painting of grandma and worship her spirit) Notable to me was the fact that Vietnam is not mostly Buddhist. More like 30%. I have to imagine that a long history of war has hurt the Buddhist cause there. If you have been under attack as a nation for over 1000 years, I don’t think a passive religion does it for you. After the Ethnology Museum, we checked into our hotel and rested up to prepare for a full day on the town in Hanoi the following day. We started early the next morning and went first to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, an eerie testimonial to the “Father of Vietnam.” Beloved as a national hero and known as “Uncle Ho” to all, Ho Chi Minh spent 30 years away from Vietnam before returning home with a blend of socialism and communism that helped propel his people toward independence from colonizing France. Interestingly, Ho spent time in New York as well as Russia before heading back to Vietnam. The mausoleum is a very strange place. First of all, it was strange to “pay homage” to a man who was our sworn enemy during the Vietnam War. Second, it was a foreboding place, full of stiff, armed guards at attention. We were warned not to talk loudly, or laugh, or mess around in general. It is place of somber, deep respect for the Vietnamese. Finally, it was really eerie to see Ho Chi Minh right there in front of us, embalmed and on display for all to see. We entered the actual viewing room from the bodies right hand side, walked along the prone body, turned left to view it head on, then turned left again to view his left side. It was a horseshoe-shaped walkway, I suppose, and it happened very quickly. We were shuffled through at a brisk pace and we saw a new group lined up to enter as we exited. 80% of our “group” (which just means the people we lined up with – think of the random people you end up on a roller-coaster with) was Vietnamese military, paying respect to the Father of Vietnam on their day off. IT was interesting to see the stiff, formal way they passed through the mausoleum. It is also interesting to think about the fact that Ho Chi Minh died during the Vietnam War (1969), never seeing his great campaign through to its end (imagine if George Washington died in 1777 – how would the nation have reacted? Amazing the Vietnamese stayed resolute until finally pushing us totally out in April 1975!) and that he is embalmed there in Hanoi against his wishes! He wanted to be cremated, yet the decision was made to keep his body on view in perpetuity. Weird, funky bad karma for those who made that decision, if you ask me. If the guy is so beloved, follow his dying wishes! It was really spooky to see the dead body of a historical figure like that. It’s strange enough at funerals, right? But here’s a historical figure – a total stranger to me – and yet I walked through a room to view his dead body… creepy. Really creepy.

The history of Vietnam is one of turmoil, and it is far too complex to expound here. For starters I recommend Vietnam by Stanley Karnow. Here’s the cliff notes, though: China tried to swallow Vietnam for nearly a thousand years and never accomplished it. Next, France spent nearly 100 years as colonial master to Vietnam. And following France, the US tried to impose its will on Vietnam. Needless to say, the people of Vietnam carry an edge, a sharpness, a grittiness, than I have seen nowhere else. These people are tough. Life and death are quite differently viewed in Vietnam, and I think the petty problems I might carry around with me would be laughed at in this part of the world. They are survivors, and I developed a deep respect for them. By the way. They haven’t just survived, they are booming with growth. I believe only a handful of economies grew in 2002. China was #1. But Vietnam may have been #2. The economy grew nearly 8%, I think. (Thailand was up there, too… I may have to look into a SE Asia Fund when home… the whole area is taking off) There are projects going up and road works taking place all over Vietnam. I never saw more road construction anywhere, at any time. Good for them. Back from decimation, and really building themselves back up. I know we were on the other side of a war with the Vietnamese, but they really are an inspiring people in many ways.

A few words on the Vietnam War while I’m on the subject. Over here, there is a lot of propaganda – posters, art, and exhibits in museums refer to the “American War of Aggression” rather than the Vietnam War. (That actually made me wonder… is this the rule for all wars? It must be…what do the British call the American Revolution? The “Annoying War of Uprising”? or the “Cheeky Colonial Riots”? But seriously, do the Koreans call the Korean War something else? They must…if you named everything after yourself, you’d never be able to distinguish one war in history from another – they’d all be called the same thing!) Unfortunately, for someone my age, the Vietnam War I know stems from movies, books, and TV shows. It’s almost a cliché in popular culture. People joke about an experience so rough it gave them “Vietnam flashbacks.” I think most folks my age would admit to the same phenomenon. We didn’t ‘live’ the war, either as soldiers or as spectators tuning in to Walter Cronkite’s nightly updates from Saigon. It is against that backdrop – that lack of ‘experience’, I’ll call it, because it’s not a lack of knowledge, really…I do know a few things about the war and its history, and I have read a few books, but it just always seemed more like fiction or really distant past to me so I lack an ‘experience’ of the war – that I entered into Vietnam. And since then, everything has changed, dramatically so. To read the Vietnamese perspective on why we were involved, to see the protests worldwide that precipitated our involvement (a parallel, strangely enough, to our involvement in Iraq right now), and to see the history of the Vietnamese leading up to war, was simply incredible. This was not a movie – this was not a story in a book – it was real, it was tragic and depressing and sad and incredible all at once. I can’t say that I actually underestimated war before all this, but I can say now that I will never look at war the same way again. We saw one exhibit in Saigon that literally blew me away. I was affected for days after and still continue to be haunted by certain images. The exhibit was a tribute to War Correspondents – those journalists and photographers that lost their lives in the Vietnam War – held at the Army Museum in Saigon. One a blisteringly hot and stifling day in Saigon (I mention this only because it continually gave me some indication of what it must have been like to be outside living in this heat and fighting in this heat), Cathy and I shuffled through a large room containing some of the most amazing footage I’ve ever seen. All the photos were taken by journalists before they themselves were killed. Often the photos were marked ‘so and so’s last roll of film’ or were accompanied by explanatory descriptions like ‘joe smith took this photo on seconds before he stepped on a land mine…if you look closely at the photo you can actually make out the mound he is about to step on and thereby blow himself up.’ It was chilling, and shockingly dramatic. I felt such a bond with these men – these brave men who walked the same path as the soldiers themselves in order to get the shots and the images for the rest of the world. Nothing I have ever seen has put me ‘in the moment’ the way these photos and descriptions did. Incidentally, it wasn’t just US journalists exhibited – far from it. There were Vietnamese journalists, Germans, French, British, Australians, etc. Three stories, though, stick out from that exhibit: The first was the story of a guy named Burrows who I think provided the first full color photos of any war for Life Magazine. Shortly before dying he had done another amazing piece of both photography and writing on ‘A Day In The Life…’ The idea was that he featured one man and followed him all that day and wrote and took photos on what he experienced. He ended up flying in a helicopter with a young officer placed in charge since the rest of his platoon was dead. They were to provide tactical support for a group of ground troops. Burrows photos captured the entire operation, including the death and destruction the young officer caused with his mounted machine gun as well as the casualties suffered within the helicopter itself. The final photos from the piece were of the young officer, back at base after this mildly successful raid, slumped in a chair, crying his eyes out. Crying over the death he caused, maybe, and crying over his friends lost in the helicopter that day. Burrows comment was that he hated exploiting this young man for profit and for such excellent photos… he wanted to help in someway, to reach out, maybe, and instead he stood there snapping photos of the crying, broken soldier. But he clung fast to the determination that his job was to fully report the truth of what was occurring, and he wrote that he took solace in the fact that his job, albeit very difficult at times, might actually make a difference in the long run, if he reached just one person – if he made one person realize what war was really like people might avoid it altogether. (Again, very powerful stuff, especially in light of the potential of Gulf War 2 in the coming days) After reading this with great respect and admiration for a man who truly seemed to be aware of his role in things and to constantly question himself, and war, and the ‘bigger picture’, I was sad to move to the next panel and read about how he died in a helicopter crash a short while later. His last role of film was later recovered from the wreckage and his last photos were on display. I promised myself I’d do more research on this guy when home – he seemed, as all the featured journalists did, pretty incredible. Another featured journalist was Sean Flynn, son of the famous Errol Flynn, actor of Robin Hood fame. Sean Flynn was apparently a wild guy, and he got some amazing close-up photos of the action in Vietnam. Acting on a hunch, he and a friend hopped on motorcycles and drove from Vietnam to Cambodia in 1971, I think, and were never seen again. Lastly, I remember a grisly old WW2 reporter sent over to do a piece on Vietnam. His spin was tying together tanks and farms, machine guns and baskets of rice, etc. He was always after the angle that played up the war machinery amidst this humble place of rice fields. Walking on patrol with a group of soldiers, he declared himself bored and said he’d walk up ahead and see what he could see. He started off on his own, and 5 minutes later stepped on a land mine and was dead. He’s the guy who basically captured his own place of death on film seconds before it occurred. The exhibits were really something. It made me respect those who braved war, yet gave me goose bumps at the same time. Eerie to see people’s last moments captured on film like that. The museums mixed such incredible exhibits with blatant anti-American propaganda. Some old headlines said things like “15,000 American troops killed” when in fact only 500 American troops took place in the exercise. Some of the stuff was amazing to see, though, and from the Vietnam perspective, was quite accurate in light of what we know today. I came away thinking, “What the hell were we doing fighting in Vietnam?” Brutal photos of the effects of Agent Orange were everywhere, as were photos of atrocities committed by American soldiers. The latter was mostly made up of grisly images of dead children. I felt sickened by them. We now know, however, that many of those same kids were armed and dangerous enemies to American soldiers. They had machine guns and hand grenades, and many times, our soldiers were simply defending themselves. I think. I hope. Man, war sucks. Another chilling image was the collection of wreckage, helmets, patches, and uniforms from dead or captured US soldiers. That caused a lump in my throat, for sure. Do American museums exhibit the war regalia of fallen foes? Isn’t that a bit tasteless? I could only imagine what these soldiers families would think, to visit that museum and see their son’s helmet tucked under glass with the inscription: “Helmet from shot down US pilot.” It was tough to stomach, and made me long to see an American flag amidst all the yellow and red of Vietnam. Nothing makes you patriotic like leaving home for a while. God Bless the men who fought for us, some against their better judgment, in Vietnam. God Bless their families. God Bless the South Vietnamese they fought beside, and the North Vietnamese that were their enemies. The USA lost something like 58,000 men in Vietnam. The Vietnamese lost 3,000,000. What a powerful statement Vietnam is. Visit if you can. For better or for worse. If nothing else, war is no longer something I see played out in movies. It is real, it is gruesome, and it is horribly sad.

Our itinerary in Vietnam took us from north to south. In Hanoi, as I mentioned, we visited the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, the Ethnology Museum, the Army Museum, the Art Museum, and the famous Hanoi Hilton (real name: Ho Lao Prison). A few words on Vietnamese Art. It is dark! Surely the pieces in the museum were well chosen, but all of those from 1950-1980 were dark and somber reminders of the hell this country was going through. I particularly remember two sculptures that stood out. One was just a heavy cloaked figure of death whose face was blank. It was just the somber shape that grabbed you. Another was a dripping stone figure, melting away in pain and sorrow. It was called “Mother,” an obvious reference to the mourning war mother that lost her son or daughter. Despite the dark gray imagery of the day, the Hanoi Hilton made me laugh. Here was a place now surrounded by a high-rise apartment building (the irony…) and considered a memorial for the Vietnamese rebel heroes held there back in the 1930s and 1940s. The only mention of American prisoners, was a little wall that depicted what life was like there for the Americans. Obvious propaganda, the photos showed Americans having a beer with their guards, laughing with journalists, chatting with reporters, etc. The funny bit was a photo from mass showing the soldiers deep in solemn prayer, except for a GI in the back who is scratching his nose, clearly for the camera, with his middle finger!! It’s pretty funny, and I guess the current operators of the museum missed the subtle reference to the BS those pictures exhibit.

Away from the war experience, we did get to enjoy Hanoi and Vietnam for what it is today. We visited some lighter-hearted places as well, and our time there was far from dismal. The Temple of Confucius and the famed One-Pillar Pagoda were particularly cool. The French Quarter was a terrific buzz of noise, people, movement, chaos, grit, grim, beauty, and grace. Yep, all at once. I loved it. We ate in the French Quarter, in restaurants with few, if any, tourists. Our first lunch was at Cha Ca restaurant, which means, ‘fried fish.’ It’s an institution that has been there since the early 1900s and there is no menu whatsoever. They serve one thing – a plate of sweetly sautéed fish along with rice noodles and herbs. All the ingredients are mashed together in a ‘crock’ that cooks on your table, and are added to cold rice noodles in your tiny bowl. Garnished with peanuts and a salty, vinegar fish sauce, and then washed down with the local Beer Hanoi, the dish is a masterpiece. Total bill for 3, by the way, about $12. Cha Ca restaurant predates the street, which is now called, aptly, Cha Ca Street. The next day we showed an enthusiasm for spring rolls, and boy, did we get them. Piles and piles of them. Again, the restaurant served only one item, and we got it. It was awesome. (Pathetic side note: meals in Vietnam were so good and so cheap, I actually took photos of the food and the restaurants themselves. Food is king, and those places and dishes will forever be immortalized in my scrapbook!) Another cool thing is Hanoi (there were many) was the Water Puppet show we caught. Water Puppets are an ancient art form that grew out of seasonal flooding. Stories were passed down from generation to generation via acted out shows that took place when the mighty Mekong (or other regional rivers) flooded their banks. Special puppets were manipulated from below, from under the water, and depicted daily life and local legends, going back hundreds of years.

Speaking about ‘going back hundreds of years,’ let me rant about something for a second here. As I mentioned before, China was at war with Vietnam, on and off, for nearly 1,000 years. France was at war with Vietnam for 100 years or so. And the USA thought it could just sweep in there and impose its will on the Vietnamese. Not so. In hindsight it seems so clear. However, I did learn about one episode that seared the resolve of the Vietnamese into my brain, and I had to wonder – as I read this story – why the analysts at the Pentagon didn’t pick up on the significance of it. In 1954, the French were itching for a final showdown, once and for all, with Ho Chi Minh. They controlled the northern city of Dat Bien Phu (I think…sorry if wrong), which was an imminently defensible city surrounded by mountains. The French sought to goad Ho there and cause massive damage to the Vietnamese, thus winning back control of the country. They were sure Ho would fall for suck a ploy, and march right into Dat Bien Phu and try to take the city. How wrong they were. When Ho assessed the French position, he immediately figured out their ploy and sought to turn the tables and take decisive victory for himself. He gathered his troops for one final offensive, but instead of marching into the city, they did the unthinkable. The troops dragged artillery weapons up the surrounding mountains throughout the night through the dense jungle, heat, mud, and wildlife. They worked tirelessly with a simple rope pulley system, literally pulling these massive cannons up to the mountaintops by hand. It was a monumental, stupendous, resilient, and unexpected effort, and the next day the French awoke to find themselves completely surrounded and trapped by their enemies. The complacent French found themselves defeated before the fight even began, much as the cocksure cowboy looks up from his valley to see it ringed with silent Indians. Needless to say, the Vietnamese took the city and expelled the French once and for all with that crushing victory. And don’t you thin we, as the USA, might have said “hey, don’t underestimate these guys…they are extremely resilient and resourceful and they are defending their nation at all costs”? No, it seems we never did…

A quick run down on the rest of our time in Vietnam… from Saigon we boarded the evening train to the town of Sapa, which borders China to the north. Sapa was used by the French as a ‘Swiss’ resort town of sorts – the French colonial architecture belied the town’s onetime status as a cool mountain alternative to the summertime heat. Most impressive about Sapa was the time it took to get there! What a hike! Overnight by train and then 2 hours by old Russian jeep directly up a muddy mountainside to the ends of the earth (or of Vietnam, at least). Sapa was also notable for yet another Amherst moment…a chance encounter with Mr. & Mrs. Ziegler, the parents of Nancy and Susan Ziegler ’96 (I think…and what a random place to meet folks. It really was the ends of the earth – I wasn’t just saying that). After Sapa we trained back to Hanoi and flew down to Danang. From Danang we drove 30 minutes to the charming UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hoi An. Hoi An was full of charming cafes, street vendors, markets, bikes, and art shops. It was a throwback of sorts – a time warp back to its time as the ancient Japanese fishing village in the 1600s. Incidentally, the crab wontons we ate at the Mermaid Restaurant in Hoi An were among the best things I have ever eaten. Untouched and relatively clean and friendly, Hoi An also served as the set for the movie “The Quiet American,” which Cathy and I saw whilst in Vietnam. Movies are always more powerful when you see them fully in context, and The Quiet American was an uneasy reminder of America’s tendency to stick its nose in places a good 10 years before it even appears on the publics radar screen. I ran along the beach in Hoi An and thought back to US beach landings a short 30 years ago, probably on those very beaches. I started to wander off the beach but literally feared treading off a beaten path. Unexploded bombs and land mines are a very real and ever-present threat in Vietnam, and it boggled my mind to be wary of such things while out for a morning jog… From Hoi An we flew south to Saigon (formally known as Ho Chi Minh city, but widely known only as Saigon), the commercial capital of Vietnam (whereas Hanoi is the real pulse of Vietnam, in my opinion…much like NYC and Washington, maybe?). Cathy and I had only a short time in Saigon, but time enough to wander the city a bit (have I ranted about simply walking in Vietnam yet? Do you remember the video game Frogger? No joke – that’s what crossing the street is like in Vietnam. There are no traffic signals of any kind – or if there are, they are ignored – and there is never – I am not kidding – a break in the action to cross. The trick is, our guide told us, to creep forward very slowly and let traffic flow around us – like water flowing around a rock, Cathy astutely described it, and that’s exactly what it was. The only rule was to never walk backwards, as that would screw up the oncoming traffic that prepared to go around you on the basis you are moving forward only. So now picture this…you must fight every instinct you ever had each time you want to cross the street in Vietnam…you must step out into rapidly moving oncoming traffic, shuffle your feet forward, wince and close your eyes, and hope you make it to the other side ok. I always did – albeit with a few brown streaks in my pants – but never, ever got used to it), to find cheap knock-off video games (50 cents a disk!), to have a full moon beer at the Saigon Saigon Bar overlooking the Rex Rooftop Bar, famous for Walter Cronkite's nightly updates from there, to drive past the re-unification palace (the sight of the famous “fall of Saigon” photo that shows a tank breaking down the gate in April 1975), to visit a museum or two (see the journalist exhibit write-up above), and to take a boat trip along the Mekong River. Saigon was also a place where you heard many more western voices, and saw plenty of businessmen at breakfast, readying themselves for a day of bargain hunting for business relationships, I suppose. I even saw some Americans window-shopping for what they could bring back and sell in their department stores. It was all talk of “can we really get them to make 100,000 of those?” and “how can we ship that?” If you see strange green vases at Sears soon, I saw the buyers there on the street in Saigon, talking out front of the shop. And if the American stores charge over $10 it’s robbery, since the stuff inside was about 50 cents! As I mentioned, though, Vietnam is booming, and Saigon was in full swing when we were there…

Two other side-trips from Saigon. First, we drove to see a Cao Dai ceremony…this strange religion is a mix of Taosism, Confucianism, ancestral worship, and I think Buddhism. It is pretty bizarre and cult like, and was started in the 1930s in Vietnam. One of its patron saints is Victor Hugo. Go figure. To each his own, I suppose, and they must be doing something right when 3 million people in Vietnam practice it. Second. We drove to the tunnels at Cu Chi, a chilling labyrinth of underground routes that befuddled the US soldiers trying to root out the entrenched Viet Cong. What efficiency. Everything was underground, including kitchen with many separate smoke exits that just smoldered like the smoking shrapnel and wreckage that was already everywhere. Everything was connected and a portion of the tunnels even went under the nearby US military base! So these Viet Cong dudes dressed all in black, had “Uncle Ho” sandals made from tire rubber, slept in hammocks in the deep jungle, then crept into combat zones via these tiny, tiny tunnels (I was too big to get in…Cathy at 5’6”, 130, barely made it in) to terrorize the US troops with guerilla warfare tactics. I know the war is still fresh in people’s minds…but, jeez, I had to respect the amazing resourcefulness of the Vietnamese. Time and time again I had to respect it.

Visit Vietnam sometime soon, before the boom really gets out of hand. It won’t disappoint, and Vietnam has the power to affect on many, many levels – some good, some bad, but all worth the experience.


The Killing Fields of Cambodia...

From Saigon, it was off to Cambodia, as if I could take any more somber political history! I was starting to really look forward to Australia (only days away) and its relatively straightforward simplicity. Originally Cathy and I had planned to skip Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, and head directly to Siem Reap and the majestic temples of Angkor Wat. Somewhere along the way, however, this struck us as like someone only visiting Disneyland and skipping New York City. Rather than be blatant tourists (which we self-admittedly are, no matter how hard we try), we decided to be travelers (there’s a difference, I guess) and visit the capital city, despite its shaky reputation. (By the way, that reputation amounted to nothing while we were there, yet proved valid days after we left. A Thai actress made an off-hand comment about how Angkor Wat rightfully belongs to Thailand or something, and the people of Phnom Penh went out and promptly torched and trashed every Thai business in the city…days after we left. Glad we missed out.)

Earlier I wrote about the overall characteristics of each country to date: the grace of Thailand, the shame of Burma, the uneasiness of Laos, and the brusque pace of Vietnam. Cambodia is not so easily identified. If I had to make an attempt to sum it up, I’d say that Cambodia has no sense of itself, really. Current political turmoil still exists, and UN attempts to try former Khmer Rouge leaders for War Crimes stirs up memories too recent for the Cambodian people. Tourist dollars are made on attractions that should repel, not draw, the international world. Cambodia is a blank stare, blinking from time to time, unaware who or what it is, and moreover, how it feels about that. It is a moldable shape, happy and proud of Angkor Wat at one moment, but sad and downtrodden over the Killing Fields the next. Frankly, it was hard to know what to make of Cambodia.

Our very first hour in Cambodia we were thrown into the fire that is Phnom Penh. Hardly a pretty city (although it was once regarded as Indochine’s “Paris of the East” and it is laid out beautifully along the Mekong River), Phnom Penh is all dirt streets and grit behind its few graceful boulevards. Upon arrival, we headed to the Foreign Correspondents Club for lunch. The restaurant sat overlooking the river, soaking in the stench of the garbage-strewn Mekong as it passed through the city. Cathy and I were excited to look at photos in the Club, though, and read a bit more about Cambodia’s history. What we got, however, when we stepped out of the cab, was the most tangled and grotesque mass of humanity I’d ever seen. A man with no legs. A man with one leg and a stump. A grizzly old lady. And a boy in a makeshift wheelchair with no arms, or legs…just stumps. Steeping out of that cab, we were jolted from our western slumber of peace, tranquility, and plastic-coated insulation into the reality that is life for a huge number of human beings on this planet. It was mortifying, it was humbling, it was scary, it was sad. Defense took over after panic subsided, and we quickly rushed to the door of the Club to escape the moment. A budget British backpacker chided us. “Don’t be tight,” he yelled. “Give them some mon-ay!” “Screw you!” I wanted to yell as I ran away. “Mind you own business!” I didn’t though – I just swallowed the moment whole, nearly choked on it, and make my way into the restaurant to eat and drink food I didn’t need. Peace in the restaurant gave me time to reflect, and I thought about my options. Typically, people will tell you not to reward beggars – that it only reinforces more begging. Even the most liberal of people have told me they stick to that plan. It was practical, I thought. Besides, there wasn’t enough money to feed all the handicapped people (usually mutilated by torture years ago, or by land mine detonations in recent years) in Phnom Penh. What to do? How to be human? How to be compassionate? How to beat back the sick urge to run away from it all? I decided my best option was two-fold. First, I’d order extra food for lunch, then give some away. That’s the old NYC standby – it ensures that folks get a meal instead of using your money for booze or drugs. Second, I sought out some change. If 3900 riel made $1, I’d make the dollar last as much as possible so everyone got something. Hardly the most generous of gestures, but fair…

Lunch was good, but repulsively wasteful and western. I felt ashamed of myself, really. I do try and remind myself daily of how lucky I am – just to have family and loved ones and working eyes, ears, and limbs – and I truly feel that I am incredibly fortunate to have been born thus. But sometimes all that could be – the little mirror image that shows the negative exposure of your life – pushes its way in front of you without your being ready for it. Lunch in Phnom Penh was just one of those moments, and I will carry that memory around with me for a long, long time. As we left the restaurant, only the one-legged man and the old lady remained, and I gave them each half a sandwich. Both scoffed a bit at my offering, as I thought they might, but I tried to tell myself it was the best option for now. Who knows if it was? I surely don’t. The answers weren’t there that day and still aren’t…

Our second day in Phnom Penh was just as moving as the first, but for different reasons. The first day we were approached by the present, but in Tuol Sleng Prison and The Killing Fields of Choeng Ek, we met the past head-on as well.

A quick and dirty history of Cambodia. Once upon a time, the Khmer people ruled all that is now SE Asia. The empire stretched into modern day Thailand and modern day Vietnam. In the late 1100s the Khmer built their masterpiece, Angkor Wat, the largest religious structure ever built. After a series of battles, first the Siams (Thais) and then the Viets took their chunks out of the Khmer empire, and it took the form it now holds today. In the 1960s, a communist rebel named Pol Pot took to the hills to fight against the ruling monarchy of Cambodia. Pol Pot’s movement became known as the Khmer Rouge. The USA and France backed the regime against the upstart rebels, and during the Vietnam War the US fought the Viet Cong deep into Vietnam. Unfortunately, this had a disastrous side effect – the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge (sworn enemies) strengthened under an alliance to fight the US together, and had success in giving the US all it could handle in the jungles of Cambodia. After the Vietnam War ended, the invigorated and strengthened Khmer Rouge wiped out all resistance in Cambodia, and took Phnom Penh in 1975. The US held its support for a while, but ultimately packed it up and left. Firmly in command, ruthless and crazed leader Pol Pot put in place the fabric of a cultural revolution, torturing and killing by the thousands in his own brand of ethnic cleansing. He sought a new, pure nation – one free of any connection with the past. He split up families, killed any who spoke French or English, and exterminated any who had enjoyed higher levels of education. He wanted moldable clay subjects, and used blood-crazed children as his instruments of death and torture – they were his judge, jury, and executioners in many cases. If you have not seen the film The Killing Fields, I would strongly urge you to see it as soon as possible. People should know the story of the Cambodian people.

Toul Sleng used to be a school, and it was turned into one of Pol Pot’s most notorious processing camps. People were force-fed the Khmer Rouge litany and ultimately sent off to the Killing Fields for execution, if they did not die at Toul Sleng while undergoing torture. We walked through the school in a somber haze. My hairs were on end and a lump was in my throat. The walls were crawling with history. Not history that is no more – not history that requires your imagination to fill in the blanks. I’m talking about recent history. Almost yesterday. Sickening torture and blood and death and horror. I felt it on me like a film. I smelled the terror and fear. We toured the torture rooms, most well scrubbed but some with dark stains misplaced on schoolroom tile. Each room held an iron bed that prisoners were tortured on. Each room held a photo pf a dead prisoner, most on the very bed quietly lying there before us. The next wing held the cells, hand made brick solitary confinement spaces that barely allowed prisoners to stand or walk. This wing also held the most chilling aspect of all – the pre-execution photos. The Khmer Rouge recorded their atrocities with a camera. They took a photo of each prisoner as it was his or her turn to die. The prisoners knew this. The photo meant death. And the looks on the faces support this. Those looks – it sounds cliché but it is wholly true – will haunt me forever. One room - all four walls – was devoted to thousands of snap shots of the about-to-be-murdered. Some were in shock, some in tears. Many winced with the pain to come. One man had on a cartoon t-shirt. A goofy lion of some kind, and the innocent cartoon humor was sorely misplaced. Another woman was photographed in the primitive electric chair sometimes used for executions, a lone tear streaming down her face. I have never seen anything like it in my life. Your heart goes out to those people, whose faces are so real, so alive, on the wall in front of you. You want to go back in time and help them, reassure them, comfort them, ANYTHING to ease the feeling on their faces in that photo. The power of those images was staggering. Staggering and heartbreaking. I left there feeling sick.

From Tuol Sleng we followed the path of the executioners and headed to the Killing Fields of Choeng Ek, where 10,000 bodies have so far been discovered through partial excavation. All told, the Khmer Rouge murdered 2,000,000 of their own – Cambodian – people. Our guide sat cool-ly in the front of the car on the way to the Killing Fields, strangely detached from the morning’s tour. Born in 1980, she is of the generation born just after the genocide. Yes, her parents were separated. Yes, they worked the fields like slaves and made it through and found one another again. Just like that. Matter of fact. Some made it, some didn’t. Life is random, life is cheap.

Choeng Ek is punctuated by a tall memorial pagoda filled with the skulls collected from around the area. It sits 30 minutes from town, along a dusty red, road in what is now just a rambling suburb of the city. How things change in 20 years. As we pulled in to the monument, a man sat on a bench reading a paper, and another man sold ice-cold cokes to tourists. My mind played a time warp trick with me, and I imagined a man about to be executed in 1978 looking over with a puzzled expression just before he is shot. In the second before the bullet enters his brain he sees a man selling cokes and another reading a paper on this very spot in the very near future. He doesn’t have time to smile before he dies but he laughs inside as he thinks that his death, his sacrifice, will mean not very much in the years ahead. Just another random killing in a genocide no one cares much about, and they’ll be selling cokes here in 20 years. The thought actually reassures him as he dies. The only thing that’s permanent is change.

Snapping back to reality, I looked across, past the memorial, at the dug-up pits circling the area. Signs on posts said things like “Mass grave: 454 headless bodies found here” or “237 female bodies found here.” I was stunned to find a sign on a tree that read “Tree upon which children were beaten,” and it hit me all at once: this wasn’t a memorial to that tree, this wasn’t representative of that tree. This was that tree – the very tree that lived it and saw it all. The very tree that looked out on all the killing in the area and took it all in, even becoming an unwitting instrument of that death. It wasn’t a different tree or a representative tree – it was the SAME tree. Just 20 years later. My god. A botanist told a story in Africa a few months back about plants. Scientists performed a test on the electromagnetic waves plants emit. The idea – in short – was to see if plants are intelligent in some way. The test was simple… a man came into a greenhouse and ripped a plant to shreds. A response was measured in all the surrounding plants. Other men were shuffled through in the weeks following to water the plants, and no major spike in activity was recorded. However, the day the man who ripped the plant was sent in to water them, all the waves jumped off the chart again. They recognized him. True? No idea, but it popped to mind when I looked at that tree. What horror is stored in its bark? What does it think about what it saw as a passive witness 20 years ago…?

Phnom Penh knocked the wind out of me, and I was happy to get on the plane to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat to simply catch my breath. After Burma, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia…enough sadness…enough war and political turmoil. I wanted to run just like I had wanted to run from the beggars outside the Foreign Correspondents Club. But there’s nowhere to run to. This is life. This is real.

Angkor Wat was, well, magnificent. I looked upon it with the untrained eyes of a man with no archaeological training whatsoever, and it stunned me nonetheless… In truth, there is not much to say about Angkor Wat that hasn’t already been said, and in time, the pictures on this page will speak for themselves better than I ever could. In short, Angkor stimulates us because it is the hidden city – the long lost civilization found by Indiana Jones (actually it was a French biologist – Henri something -- who died of malaria in Luang Prabang, Laos, of all places, one year later…also, like Victoria Falls, it wasn’t “found” – it was always there! Except only the locals knew about it) in the most romantic, vine-hacking, swashbuckling manner possible. And while I enjoyed Angkor Wat (really I did), I still couldn’t help but wonder… weren’t the Pyramids 5,000 BC or something? Wasn’t the Parthenon 2,500 BC and the Coliseum 90 AD? This was 1200 AD here folks… is Angkor Wat really that amazing compared to what was done elsewhere millennia earlier? Not sure of the answer to that question, but I’m sure your resident local archaeologist would know better than me.

Here’s a quick list of what we saw and did in the Siem Reap area:

Angkor Thom + Bayon – built by King Jayavarman VII and Bayon is adorned with something like 163 images of his face.
Angkor Wat – Honors Vishnu and is the funerary temple of Suryavarman the 2nd – the largest religious structure ever built. I said a prayer at the central Buddha image in all four sides of the temple (there’s a Buddha facing north, one facing south, one east, and one west. Usually this is standard in most temples with a central area for prayer)
Banteay Srei – The citadel of women, made of pink sandstone
Banteay Kdei – Exists almost in its entirety – Bought a brass Buddha image from a handicapped soldier out front
Ta Prohm – A famously photographed temple, and I was no exception. Completely overgrown with tree roots. Creates a real “lost city in the jungle feeling.”
Sunrise at Phnom Bakheng, 1st temple built in the area – set on the highest hill in the area
Elephant terrace
Terrace of Leper King
Palace grounds
Angkor zoo – terribly sad with poor conditions for all the animals. Amazing variety, just not well cared for.

We spent 3 days traipsing around Angkor Wat and I really enjoyed getting away from the history of recent weeks. Angkor Wat was spiritual and uplifting, and it proved the perfect segue to the next step in the trip, and was a perfect high note ending to our adventure in SE Asia.

Next up…Australia!


Random notes:

I have plenty more to say about Vietnam (and Cambodia, for that matter), but the experience is still digesting in my head. I wrote down what I could, as it came to me, but it is an amazingly complex place. For instance, our guide’s father had been a Major in the South Vietnamese Army, we found out near the end of our stay. This changed his view of life in Vietnam a bit, as the South Vietnamese are still regarded with subtle contempt by many North Vietnamese… Vietnam is a country of angles – angles upon angles upon angles. The Vietnamese angle on the French occupation. The Chinese angle on swallowing up Vietnam. The US angle of fear of communism and the Domino Theory. The South Vietnamese farmers angle of keeping their farms and not turning them over to the North Vietnamese communists for the good of the state. The American angle on funding Ho Chi Minh in early days to fight the Chinese. The French angle of needing the SE Asian resources to help rebuild France after WW2… There is simply too much to write lucidly, but I may sit back down and try again from time to time when it comes to me…

The Vietnamese Dong now takes the prize for the “most currency for your dollar” award. It surpasses the Laotian currency by nearly 5,000 units: As of January 2003, a US Dollar was equal to 15,400 Dong!!

3,900 Cambodian Riel = $1

Life in SE Asia surrounds the daily markets. Refrigerators are a non-event here, as are supermarkets. People shop at the market each day for their daily intake. Fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, etc. You name it, they buy it anew each and every day. Imagine that?!! Fresh food, bought daily. It is the way of life across SE Asia.

Siem Reap means “Siamese defeated.”

People in SE Asia love toothpicks. They are a must after every meal, and skilled practitioners subtly pick with one hand while the other deftly covers the ‘offending’ open mouth. Once you get started tooth picking, it’s hard to stop.

Vietnam has 78 million people.

Little girl’s address whose photo I took (and promised to send a copy to – I put this here just so I remember it myself):

Sreyneang or Srey Neang
57 Eo2 St 19
Phnom Penh
CAMBODIA

In Thailand, where we saw the movie The Two Towers, regular previews and commercials were shown before the feature presentation. Just before the start, however, a voice from the speaker rang out in Thai and everyone in the theater stood at attention. An American voice was next, asking us to “Please stand and pay respect to the King.” A song followed (the national anthem?) and lasted about 3 minutes. A silhouetted profile of the king appeared on screen. Cathy and I stood at attention with the crowd (when in Rome…) and took it all in. That was definitely a first for me…

Way back in Africa, on safari with Richard Knocker in Tanzania, he made us do something amazing. He forced us to take off our watches, which we subsequently lived without for 5 days. We rose with the sun, turned in with the heat and overhead sun of midday, and went to bed around sundown. It was so refreshing it was almost exhilarating. The first few hours were extremely difficult, and it was a real cold turkey-type trial to live without the watch at the beginning. But after that? Simplicity and bliss. And what a great exercise for us. Try it at home yourselves one weekend. See if you can do it. It feels great when you finally ‘break away.’ Thanks for that, Richard.

Also back in the Africa journal I wrote about those things universal. These included, among other things, beer, Chinese food, the YKK zipper, and jokes aimed at one particular group of people (the Polish in the USA, the Masai in Kenya, the Tasmanians in Australia, the Irish in the UK, etc.) I would like to now formally add “the consumption of chicken on an enormous, unchecked global scale” to that list. Everywhere we have been, people eat chicken. Chicken breast, fried chicken, white meat, dark meat, scrambled eggs, poached eggs…it goes on and on. I am here to say, “Stop the madness!” On behalf of chickens worldwide, end the shameless persecution of the two-legged clucking fowl many of you know only as breakfast, lunch or dinner. Anti-veal has its lobby. Cows are revered in India. But what about the chicken? I urge you all to, please, Save The Chicken, in any way you can.

Joke (now that I am on the topic…sorry):

Paddy Englishman, Paddy Scotsman, and Paddy Irishman walk into a pub, belly up to the bar, and each orders a pint. As the barman serves up the tasty brew, each man notices a fly flopping around in the head of his beer.

Paddy Englishman snorts in disgust, slides the pint back to the barman and says, ‘I’ll not be drinking that. Another pint, please.”

Paddy Scotsman looks down at the fly and shrugs. He flicks the insect out of his drink, and takes a satisfying gulp of the amber liquid.

Paddy Irishman glares at the fly, plucks it out of his beloved brew, shakes it over the glass and shouts, “SPIT IT OUT, YE BASTARD…SPIT IT OUT!!”


Books Read To Date: (no time for reviews yet, but send in questions if you got ‘em)

1) The Rapture of the Deep, Michael Zinsley
2) Sex and Sunsets, Tim Sandlin*
3) How To Be Good, Nick Hornby
4) Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut*
5) Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem*
6) Travels, Michael Chricton
7) The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche
8) Too Loud a Solitude, Bohumil Hrabal
9) My Date with Satan, Stacey Richter
10) English Passengers, Matthew Kneale*
11) The Riders, Tim Winton*

* = Recommended


All the Best,
Ben

Postdated 22 January 2003
Typed 3 February 2003, Melbourne