The hands get you first. You don't actually cross the eastern Thai border into Cambodia; you are yanked inside. Not a second after you set foot in the bleached frontier town of Poipet, scores of shoeless children grab and grope the visitor for handouts. Swarming motorcycles kick up acrid clouds of dust that burn like nuclear fall-out. The only welcome is the sign outside the passport checkpoint reading "Welcome to the Kingdom of Cambodia." Someone has a sense of humor.
Like many border locales on the doormat of development, there exists a veneer of urgency in people's eyes: The young beggars who fear going home to abusive parents empty-handed; the motodops -- or are they part-time bandits? -- who glare from behind black surgeons' masks; customs officials who are not pleased at our refusal to pay a bogus $5 "medical fee" and myself, furious at our two-timing driver, who moments earlier flashed a picture of someone else's van with AC as I paid for the five-hour trip to Siem Reap.
Standing before a rusted Toyota pickup, packed 16 deep in the back, he had the nerve to invoke the ever-popular south-east Asian mantra "same, same but different". Are you kidding? Now it was a question of: Do I go or do I stay? The scandalized cries of the other travelers did not make the choice any easier.
I found the antidote. A native Khmer boy of about 15 sat in supple calm on the hard edge of the flatbed door with his legs dangling out the back. And he would remain there the entire journey, over roads that had too much in common with Swiss cheese. Suck it up, I told myself.
Red scare
After the hands, you notice the missing feet. As journalist Robert Pelton put it, "few people in Cambodia have two of everything they're supposed to have." Inches beneath the shimmering rice patties and swaying sugar palms, some six million mines litter the countryside; one person in 256 is an amputee from a mine related accident. Their victims, mostly farmers reduced to hobbling around with blocks or homemade prosthetics, are living testimonies to the terror of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Between 1975-79, the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmers) systematically starved and executed an estimated two million Cambodians -- a staggering 30 percent of its own population -- while the West turned its back on a region they would much rather have forgotten altogether after the Vietnam debacle. The plot of now deceased leader Pol Pot and his cronies was to transform the country into a pre-modern Maoist agrarian society totally shut off from the outside world.
In other words, to eliminate anyone capable of independent thought, brainwash the young into cold killers and give them guns to wield against their own families. The sad truth is that while blood is still on the floor, the remains of this tragedy seem to have been swallowed into the vacuum of history.
This might be the first time you've ever heard of the Khmer Rouge and the genocide it carried out just 25 years ago. Aside from the 1984 film, "The Killing Fields," which stands as one of the few mainstream accounts of the grisly events that occurred, little coverage was given in the news media, and less still in present academia. Meanwhile, many KR executioners are free to live out their days in the Western provinces unbothered, thanks to a corrupt justice system unable to conduct a proper trial and the reluctance of government officials once compliant with the KR -- both inside and outside the country -- to confront events that may prove to be self-incriminating.
Dazed on arrival
Siem Reap, Cambodia's second largest city, is the gateway to the country's premier attraction, Angkor Wat. When we finally crashed into town at dusk, finding a restroom was top priority. Even though we had stopped every 15 minutes on the highway for cavernous potholes, military checkpoints, mud slicks and a collapsed bridge, land mine warnings posted along the side of the road made the simple act of doing number one a hair-trigger too tricky.
Like most activities in the third-world, a lot of bidding is to be expected for any service, no matter how small. As toilets are logically to be found in restaurants and guesthouses, I didn't realize my simple request for a hole in the ground and some cover would stir the throng of commission agents that met our truck at the edge of town into a frenzy for my patronage. "C'mah mistah, we go now, we go now," two men declared, each pulling fiercely in the opposite direction.
As I shook free, a cyclo was coasting by and I caught a ride, at once fanning the pages of my "Lonely Planet: South-East Asia on a Shoestring" guide for a bed.
We crossed some threshold unseen and the ride became smooth. The lights switched on. To the distant thump of Eminem's "Without Me," we glided past a slew of low-end lodgings, indochine bakeries, the Angkor What? Bar and net café's on nearly every corner.
The place was wired. Western 20-somethings in baggy sarongs with nappy hair and piercings galore flip-flopped around, while others sunk languorously into rattan chairs on the sidewalk, slurping noodles and inking journals and basking in vagabondom.
Next thing I know, the rain comes down hard. A good thing too, because everyone I could see was in dire need of a wash, myself above all. What I had thought to be a decent tan was in fact the red earth of Cambodia, kicked up by truck tires, now bleeding down my arms and legs.
A son of Angkor
Anyone quick enough to judge Khmer culture based on its recent woes will be chastened upon seeing the Temples of Angkor. The towering stone monuments and exquisite bas-reliefs of this vast archeological complex have survived since the ninth century, when the Khmer empire extended all the way to the Vietnamese coast to the east and the Chinese border to the north. Though looting has been a problem, most of the structures have survived well.
I had rented a 100cc bike from a driver in Siem Reap for just $5 USD a day using my driver's license as collateral. The temple sites -- which number over 100 -- are spread throughout a dense jungle one could easily spend three days exploring. I gave myself a long afternoon. It seemed even longer, what with two flat tires and a near head-on collision that saw me sail over the handlebars of my Yamaha and ski on a gravel road hands first.
The Bayon temple itself is worth the $20 entrance fee to Angkor. When I showed up, a clan of monkeys were running amok around the three-tiered edifice, distracting the other visitors. I hastily snuck into a dark passage, climbed up slick stairs and stood face to face with the Buddha.
Actually, it was the face of Avolikitesvara, Lord of infinite compassion in Mahayana Buddhism, who smiles down wistfully from towers in every direction. A guide then jumped out from behind a wall and proudly related his history lesson, insisting that he take a picture of me air-kissing the stone god goodbye.
After the second blow-out, I rumbled back to the entrance of the complex, where an ethnic Chinese mechanic set about replacing my tire tube. I was convinced it was all one big repair conspiracy -- that my new tube was deliberately punctured the moment it was replaced -- and I'd just as well walk my bike the few miles back to Siem Reap rather than pay for another.
I sure as hell was not going to buy beaded bracelets or any of the other tourist scraps being waved at me as I tried to inspect my other tire for holes. That is until a boy with matted black hair, no older than 10, made a wisecrack about my friend's sexual orientation that got the intended reaction of out of us both. Being called "cheap" or "no good" was to be expected; being called "gay" was not.
Now this kid was sharp, the poster boy for how to get a rise of out of a dazed traveler. In amuse/amazement we set the record straight, and then asked him if he knew where Virginia was. He said he'd heard of Richmond.
"How do you speak English so well?"
"I learned it from tourists that come from all over the world. I also speak some French, Italian, Spanish and a little German."
"So you've never been to school?"
"Only for one year, then I have to leave and work with my brothers."
To confirm, once and for all, that this was no hoax, I asked him what the capital of Alaska was, in french.
"Juneau. Je connais Anchorage aussi."
Stunned, we bought bracelets, postcards and a little Angkor keychain to commemorate our encounter with genius incognito, one balmy evening in Cambodia.
By the time the sun receded behind the haunting silhouette of the main temple, the crowd of sky-gazers had swelled to nearly a hundred. What was once off-limits, and more recently off-beat, was now neither, as the B.O. of backpackers from six continents wafted in the breeze.
Fortunately, it was clear that Khmers themselves continued to return en masse to this touchstone of a brilliant heritage that, if only for a moment, still had the power to overshadow the ills of the last quarter-century.
Les Khmers bougent
Phnom Penh is buzzing again, all white hot and white noise. As we stepped off the hydrofoil we'd taken down the Tonle Sap River from Siem Reap, the scenic tapestry offishermen and gold pagodas was torn by the usual mob of touts, who belted pick-up lines for campy establishments: "Happy Guesthouse"
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