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Album of some of my favorite photos from this trip- click on the right for the next photo, on the left for the previous, or in the center for a larger version!

I'm in Cambodia. Everything is still India for me- I think about Indian currency and people and food, poverty and homes and transport. My last meal there was a thali, a set meal with several vegetable curries and often a choice of naan (bread, as seen here) or rice and sometimes with yogurt, salad, papad (fried or baked thin round sheets of lentil flour) and pickled vegetables or fruit. I was so happy the next day, but Thailand left me dreary right from the start...




I had managed a bit of fun on an island that feeds both hedonistic locals and tourists, greed spilling from their suffocated lungs and pocketbooks. It is clear to me that Thailand is more, and I will have two more short visits before returning home to find some peace and peaceful people there. Now that I have a guidebook I can more easily sort it all out.




All of a sudden, in the thick humidity of anxious greed I realized that Cambodia was very close- one hour to the border in fact- and visas given on arrival. So I went to the border and after sorting through some immigration issues with extra cash (no comment), I made it.



Cambodia is gorgeous- dry like many other parts of Asia now, but still brilliantly green. I love it. The children are ferociously friendly, with broad curious smiles and calls of "hello!" at every turn. After some time near the border I headed for the capitol, Phnom Penh.

What a strange place it was, modern, with beautifully paved roads and a fantastic national museum, but there was this marketing mechanism pulling you into the Killing Fields and pushing you to buy t-shirts with land mines on them and books about Khmer Rouge atrocities from fatherless children... It took a few days in Cambodia to realize where I was- the class discussions (when I was teaching Anthropology) about poverty and third-worldness and the fiber-optic cable they were laying through the whole of the country- the connection took time, as silly as it sounds even to me. This is the place where the Holocaust came alive again in the 1970s. Children play there, children beg there, bones pokes through the paths of the Fields and bits of tattered clothing litter the landscape.




Something appeared in Thailand and Cambodia that had been absent from my eyes thus far in Asia- the blatant sex industry. In Thailand, the single guys seem to think the girls like them and that they are on dates- the sheer number of 30-50yo men by themselves or with 22yo girls is staggering. They are paid, they are always paid. But when I saw these mixed couples I wanted to believe that he was an ex-pat and she was a friend or a legitimate girlfriend. Unfortunately this is not true- the girls follow the offers and money- something even I was privy to witness. Cambodia's industry is cheaper, less structured, and centers around brothels and chickenfarms, small villages consisting solely of Cambodian and imported (sold) Vietnamese girls- some as young as 12. It is still very possible to buy children, and efforts of the government and sometimes self-serving NGOs has not made a sizable dent.

Apparently, one of the HOTNEWASIAN destinations is the temple complexes Angkor Wat, Northwest of in Siem Reap. So HOT that today I listened to two nurses from Washington state catch-up after a surprise run-in and talk about dirty alleys and street food making them sick. Three days visiting temples and it wasn't enough. Even in February the heat can be stifling and the tour groups are a pain, but there are bags of secrets to discover- the predictable nature of both means shady reliefs facing West and deserted temples if you time it just right.









Not much time left, here or anywhere near here. San Francisco is soon, New York is soon... But before all that, I head North through Thailand and then spend some time in Laos before kicking my way back to Bangkok and flying to Singapore, Tokyo and then San Fran. Miss you.