Khmer Wheels

Here, anything that can be equipped with wheels is. Anything that accelerates the transition from here to there is utilized to maximum possible impact. The wheel might be the single most prized tool in Cambodia.

Little kids ride bikes that I’d have trouble pedaling. Back and forth to school over the muddy pack of rocks that serves as a road, a six year old boy with an unflappable grin stands on the pedals of his rust brown bike, gripping the rubber handlebars high above his face with both arms stretched to their limits. The hard plastic bike seat threatens to poke him in the back of the neck each time he stands up to coast.

In a temple courtyard, a boy of four can’t even stand on two pedals at once. Grabbing the seat in one hand and the left handlebar in the other, he stands with his right foot on the downed pedal and pumps the bike across the ground like a scooter – 3, 4, 5 steps and he stands upright, supporting his full weight against the single pedal, tilting the bike sideways to achieve a vector equilibrium with his spindly arms. His inertia brings him in a slight circle, and he pumps his way around the gravel with his shirtless friends shouting encouragement.

 

Cambodia’s more remote corners are only accessible by dirt roads in various stages of construction, repair and natural degradation. Every wet season brings a deluge of mud across the country, and in the northeast province of Rattanakiri, the Mars Red dust that defines the landscape becomes a sweeping mudslide of infrastructure destruction. The roads offer unlimited employment opportunity for repair workers. As such, big, luxury busses are not the best choice. Their slow, lumbering bulk outweighs any comfort achieved with a more expensive ticket. The road is much more navigable in a large van, which is the favored choice for locals moving from place to place.

These rebuilt Japanese vans are outfitted with jacked-up rear suspension, additional rows of seats built up for extra storage space between cushion and floor, and roof-rack rope rigs for holding anything from chicken coops to generators to motorbikes. In a typical van, one that would be noticeably uncomfortable if all seats were filled – four rows of four, plus the two front seats, for a total of 18 tight spots – twenty five to thirty people are regularly jammed. Elbows and armpits find homes in the curves and soft corners of your sweaty neighbor. Enormous bags are stuffed and tied down in any available airspace. The cubic capacity of the van is filled, no matter the consequences. Comfort is not a factor for these people. It hasn’t been for their entire lives.

Two people sit in the driver’s seat. From a perch in the center of the second-to-last row it’s impossible to tell which one is at the controls, or if they have achieves some reliable hybrid driving team – one guy on the pedals while his friend mans the wheel.  With an extra row of seats bolted to the floor, the space between cushions is far shorter than the average Western femur. To contort your body into your designated spot your feet rest atop the canvas bag of rice on the floor, just about butt-height. Your knees are at their extended limit, bent to 75 or 80 degrees and jammed into the leather cushion in front, hopefully bridging a gap between that seat’s vertical steel internal framing members.

After thirty minutes, the pain starts.  It begins like a yawn – a mental itch – almost anxiety provoking, that you feel for some reason you can flex away. But your butt is not going to feel better. It hurts more and more as blood rushes to your lowest point, then pools there. You want it to go numb, isn’t that how bedsores start? But numb doesn’t come. It’s a swelling, almost tidal pain, which at its peak demands affirmation. The only solution is to brace yourself against the seats, front and back, and flex your quads in a half squat position, trying to support your butt in midair to relieve pressure for twenty or thirty seconds. Quickly, you realize that, as the largest human on the bus to begin with, you are now interfering in your neighbors’ personal space even more. Shamefully, you sit down to continue the bumpy torment.

This personal space qualm is not shared by the locals. Touching, bumping, coughing, sweating, they simply don’t register as offensive. It’s a Zen-like confident ease that quickly provokes jealousy. People that live in these conditions day in day out are cut from something hardier.

Is it with shame that we demand with seeming helplessness the comfort of an independent seat? Is it a product of our upbringing – everyone with their own seatbelt and their own air-conditioned little personal space with your GameBoy and pillow for the four-hour ride. Is it weird to be jealous of people with so much less? And to aggressively compare their mental fortitude to your own?

Complaints about the low cost van ride are nothing compared to what you see on the road. One of the more popular getups you see hurtling down the highway is a reconfigured lawnmower engine. It’s been ghetto-rigged to a set of tractor wheels – a single axle, two thunderous rubber wheels – and from the top of the motor sprout two long control handles, almost like the kind you would use on a snow blower. Below each rubber grip is a metal lever attached to a spring mechanism and a cable. Each lever actuates one wheel along an analog scale, so that once you get the feel of the machine, slight increases in pressure in one hand or the other results in a deft turning radius. This two-wheeled sputtering engine – with the pull starter that you have to yank on six or seven times to get it to turn over – is rigged to a set of ten-foot long wooden beams, extending diagonally back and mounting on a rickety wagon with its own single axle. The wagon is built up on the sides; huge slats of wood create a bed for carrying anything and everything. The driver sits at the front, as if driving a team of oxen. His feet dangle precipitously over the zooming asphalt as he crouches over his levered controls, directing the churning motor way out in front of him. In the wagon you find people, animals, suitcases, anything that people bring from one place to another. The strain on the lawnmower must be incredible. Often it’s driven by a young man in a ubiquitous garish trucker-style hat, a grin plastered on his face; he probably makes a good amount of money driving this wooden death trap up and down the highway.

And even that isn’t the most dangerous thing you see on the road. Every once in a while a pickup truck will pass. In the long bench seat a minimum of five people are squeezed on top of each other. In the bed, 15 to 20 people, grandmas and babies and everyone in between, are packed like cattle. Often the tailgate is left down and an intrepid and/or unlucky youth hangs out over the edge, bringing up the rear.

Sometimes, massive diesel cargo trucks carry their loads back and forth across different provinces. They also operate as makeshift taxis for hitchhikers with enough dough. Once, a quivering stack of hay was being flown down the bumpy highway, tied to the bed of a truck. It wasn’t the twine that held the load in place however; it was the two children perched on top, twenty feet above the ground, riding their spiky load down the road at 50 mph.

When you need to get somewhere, you find a way.  

No Apple Pie

When we entered Cambodia, we got our first taste of institutionalized bribery, and once you see it first hand, it becomes impossible not to spot on a near daily basis. The problem for us was passport pages. You see, in an aggrandizing display of paperwork, many of these poorer countries require a full blank page on which to stick their flamboyantly colored seal of entry approval. Cambodia even staples your departure form on additional page for you to carry around the entire time your in the country.

Anyways – I scraped in with one last completely blank page, enough space to stick a visa and get stamped and allowed in. Zane however, had already run out of blank pages. After a solid minute while the border officer stared at us in apparent obliviousness as to how he could possibly proceed to get a sticker in the passport, and us staring back, knowing what was coming but not wanting to be the first to broach the subject, he pointed to page 22 of the passport, the part after the pages that say “Visas,” in the back where they are titled “Amendments and Endorsements”.

“You pay me 5 dollar and I can put in there.”

Five. Not the end of the world, by any means. We get in for an extra 20%; this “lieutenant” in the T-Shirt gets an extra five to take home tonight. “You have to get new pages in Phnom Penh,” he explained shifting to what became a very sage tone.

“OK. Yeah. We will go to the embassy.” Avoiding this process at future border crossings (which are already hellish financial rape centers) was a priority. Zane was forced to hand write a note on a scrap of blank paper that read

I give permission to the Cambodian Police to put a visa on page 22 of my passport.

And that signed piece of paper went into the drawer and will most likely never seen again.

Fast forward four days and we are in Phnom Penh, determined to get some new passport pages at the embassy. Neither of us had been to an embassy before and expectations ran high.

This was, after all, only a week after Thanksgiving, and it’s no stretch of the truth to say that both of us were missing some of the creature comforts that American life offers this time of year. On this little patch of American sovereignty abroad we would surely be welcomed home with open arms and smiles framed by natural blond hair. They might even have some apple pie for American visitors, who surely get the all-star treatment for these brief visits to State Department property. I imagined leftover turkey sandwiches, maybe with some stuffing and cranberry sauce. Or a Budweiser. How cool would it be if they employ a cowboy from Texas to welcome each American in with a cold Bud and a pat on the shoulder? “Welcome home, son.”

Giddy, we rounded the corner of Street 61. There it was, beautiful spiked fence and all.

The first thing to go wrong was with the guards. To start our train of disappointment, they aren’t American. Although the star spangled patches stood glaringly from their police-blue uniforms, the heavily armed Cambodians in the booth spoke almost no English. And they yelled at me for taking a picture. National Security issues, you know, like taking a picture of the George Washington Bridge. Who knows what terror cells I might send it to? And they told us we weren’t even in the right place; we needed the consulate, which is on the other side of the compound. This being America again, there is a bit of a machismo sprawl to the Embassy.  We own an entire city block in Phnom Penh, filled with a series of featureless corporate-looking boxes that are uniquely at odds with the surrounding French and Buddhist inspired architecture.

So through the blazing early afternoon sun we plodded around the block again, following the steaming sidewalk and knowing that Homeland Security can probably see us in the eagle-eye cameras. There is most likely a missile silo in the ground here. On the other side of the 12-foot spiked fence, every featureless grey expanse of reinforced concrete wall states IMPENETRABLE: American money hard at work. This made us giddy. Good old American Might right here in Cambodia. Anticipation was building.

The consulate’s working hours seem like something out of pre-bailout Greece. One hour in the morning from 10 to 11, and then two hours in the afternoon: 1 to 3. These people only work with visitors for three hours a day. It was 12:45 when we got there and there was a line around the block. We were the only white people. Everyone in line standing with their hopes and dreams clutched in folded papers and unsealed envelopes – double, triple checking their American visa paperwork, mentally preparing for an altogether terrifying process of multi-level scrutiny and interrogation.

We bound in through the herd, shining like the two young American bucks we are. Our opportunity presented itself immediately: We bulldoze to the front of the line, stand in front of the glass door and wave to the guard, flashing that über-valuable piece of leather with the American seal.  Another Cambodian (where are the blondes?) opens the door and sticks his head out.

“You have appointment?” he asks.

“No. We are American citizens. We have a problem with our passports. Can we come in?” It feels good saying this. The proud assertion of our inherited global status.

“No appointment, sorry.” He hands us a piece of paper and closes the door. Now we are bathing in the vindictive glare reflected in dozens of sets of eyes; everyone we had cut in front of was staring at us. Watching us flail in the fettered contingency we had no reason to expect. We were flummoxed, angry and ready to scam the US Consulate to get in today.

The paper listed phone numbers to call for different types of appointments – Immigration, passport questions, visas, emergency line. They were all the same number. There was also a website listed where you could make appointments online. We try the phone first, right outside the door, to make an appointment for five minutes from now and just walk in; let’s hope it works.

This is how we met the smiling man and the helpful wife. She, a well-cushioned looking woman, had overheard our exchange and subsequent muttered cursing. She offered her phone and, in great English, explained that I should calm down and just make an appointment for tomorrow – easy, she says, she and her husband have been here a lot lately. They are trying to help their daughter-in-law get to America, where they live with their son.

“We live in a really nice place,” the man exclaimed from behind me. Turning around, I see he’s doing whatever is beyond grinning. Every tooth is bared, eyes are wrinkled slits, he can’t contain himself. The house in Phoenix was clearly The Accomplishment of this man’s life. Unlike other late-middle-aged Cambodian men, this man doesn’t have the wiry build and sun-browned skin that comes from working outdoors every day of your life. He is well plumped round the middle, has a nice set of glasses and doesn’t look like he’d be comfortable in jeans. He’s also bouncing on his toes like a 10-year old boy waiting to show how big his candy collection is. 

He has the dual effect of calming and infuriating me. With his uncontrollable giggles and restless feet, I can’t help but smile with him. But inside I’m boiling. Where is my star treatment? Why is the juggernaut façade of bureaucracy holding us back? How is this man’s American experience going so much better than mine?

I came (half actually) expecting everything I loved about my country to sit in front of me on a silver platter. Instead I’ve ran headfirst into the stagnant pool of everything I hate about it. This is the DMV in Cambodia.

Across the street is the SunWay Hotel. It looks nice; there are valets at the door and ushers to bring you inside. (Our hotel, for purposes of comparison, doesn’t have locks on the doors.) They most likely have a business center we can sneak into – we can make an appointment online for later today and just hang out at the hotel for an hour or so. We are sneaky geniuses and this can’t go wrong.

Until we remember that neither of us know how to hack a password. After shuffling dirtily past a lobby full of business suits and smiles, we scampered downstairs in our tank tops and flip flops to find four waiting computers and an unending set of frustrating keystroke failures. We call up to reception, which gladly sends down a young woman who explains to me how much money we will have to spend to get online. OK, fine. Here is two dollars. For that we get fifteen minutes. We could buy lunch for the both of us with the same amount.

Once online, the process is remarkably quick. We jot down an appointment to get new passport pages for tomorrow at 10:15 and print out our receipt. It’s there that we notice the dollar sign. Oh, shit. This is going to cost money. Yes. A lot of money, the computer tells me. $82 amount of money. What I could live off for four days here. Cash only.  This day has incrementally shattered my happiness, thirty minutes at a time. 

At the consulate the next day we are shuffled between windows where people with unidentifiable accents hand us forms under glass windows with little metal recesses at the bottom. It’s like the bulletproof glass in scary urban area minimarts. The striking imperial grandiosity of the outside is gone in the sterile air-conditioned space of paper and staples and stamps. There weren’t any turkey sandwiches. 

Cambodia First Thoughts

I’ve only been in Cambodia a day, twelve hours actually, and I can already see why so many people claim it as their favorite country. When you arrive in a new place, step off a plane and take stock in your new foreign surroundings – signs in new languages, unreadable traffic, delicious and at times sickening food – it’s shocking. This is a good sort of shock, the kind that people travel for. The catch-your-breath, don’t know which way to turn sort of exhilaration that can only come from being somewhere so – there’s no other word for it – foreign.

I certainly felt it in Vietnam. When I landed in Hanoi I couldn’t sleep for the first two nights; between the noise, the newness of everything and the sheer remoteness of the life I had split from, I turned into a walking set of compulsions. I would stumble around without assertion or plan and just look and listen. Everything was different.

Cambodia is the first country I’ve entered without this sensation. Even in the deepest aspects of homogeneity that cosmopolitan Europe can sometimes bring, when you move from country to country the ideological and societal shifts make their presence felt. Where cultures have been so deeply gouged into the geography for thousands of years, everything in the vicinity reflects a certain atmosphere, whether tangible or not.

 

Cambodia feels different. It’s a feeling I have yet to put a finger on, somewhere at the intersection of chill and simple, warm and level. If you flash a smile at a Khmer, he or she will hit you back with a beam of glee so profoundly authentic and encompassing – smiling with the eyes in a way I don’t even think I can – that I found myself just walking around the streets of Kampot this evening, just smiling at as many people as I could. It’s contagious!

This country has a brutal and beautiful past, containing both ancient wonders and modern demons, and I’m sure that this rebounding national psyche has something to do with the vibe I feel here. That issue however, is best explored in length at another date. I think more poignant now is my personal movement over the past week or so. I’ve moved overland from Saigon, a gyrating coronary beast driving a country of 86 million, to a country with a seventh the population.

 

I think the overland part of this is important to this lack of “shock” I feel (or don’t) here. Moving through the Mekong Delta, I watched from a window as skin color darkened, water became stagnant and horizons flattened. It’s easy to forget that even though borders are, for the sake of argument, imaginary lines, and they don’t necessarily reflect the natural borders of either peoples or landscapes, things often look very different on either side of the line.

 

Today, for instance, at the Xa Xia to Prek Chak crossing, the asphalt road from the much wealthier Vietnamese side ended abruptly in a cloud of red dust and a cratered dirt road that begged for attention. Things were quite literally dirtier, a testament to how easy it is to get accustomed to filthy floors and motorbike exhaust and sweat.

It might just be a euphoric glaze because I’m finally somewhere new, but even though this is one of the most decrepit guesthouses I’ve stayed in this trip, with mosquito nets held together across rips by Band-Aids and a fan that seems to be unscrewing itself with enthusiasm as I stare up at it like a whirling death wheel, I feel just good.

A friend of mine who recently traveled through this country told me that “Cambodia is pretty cool…not really much to ‘do’ but the feel is interesting and the people are really nice.” I think its this not doing anything that strikes at home for me. What I do when I travel is move, from place to place or up and down alleys. In a cynical sort of self-doubting paradox, when you are traveling on a tight budget you find pretty often that you have nothing do to for good chunks of time. Nothing for it but to walk around and look at things. Take in the sunset; try to feel the place.

 

This is the first place I’ve been where the locals seem to be doing the exact same thing, with a wide smile.

It gives meaning to my movement.