Cambodian Thirst
-Adapted from diary,
Jan. 2016-
After such a long time in Vietnam, leaving ain’t easy. The first 10 days in Cambodia have been
wonderful – smoky villages, dirt tracks along the Mekong, starry nights under
my mosquito net – but my mind refuses to adapt to the loneliness. I can’t stop
thinking of the life I’ve just left in Saigon: playing xiangqi with old men at cafés,
afternoons swimming, the shaded library courtyards, and evenings alternating between
the pool halls and the embrace of the sweetest girl in Saigon. Add to this a nightly indulgence of street
food, cold beer, laughter, and love, and I found myself knee-deep in a world
that I could happily spend the rest of my life in.
So I left. Uprooting
myself seems to be my instinctive reaction to good soil. Are you getting too comfortable? What if your girlfriend gets pregnant? You’ve been in Asia for nearly 6 years, don’t
you want to get back on the road and see what else is out there? These were the questions I was struggling
with; I had to go. The consequence: my brain
is held hostage by pleasant – and thus painful – reveries of the life left
behind. I know that solitude can be
beautiful and rewarding, but it takes patience and adjustment and time. After years of city life and companionship I need
to relearn how to be alone – think alone, sleep alone, and extract enjoyment
from the world alone. This process is slow
and frustrating because my subconscious will not let go of Saigon.
I have developed some techniques to counter these vexing
daydreams and return my thoughts to the ever-elusive present moment. Whenever I notice my mind wandering (which is
often), I calmly bring it back by taking several slow, deep breaths. I focus all my attention on the smells, the
humidity, and the subtle sensations as the warm air is sucked up through my
nose holes and down into my lungs. I
think: There doesn’t exist, I’m here.
I’m now. Here and now are
tangible… It was one of these
inhalations that brought with it a very pleasant surprise about a week ago.
…
Cycling east into a light headwind, I had just passed
through a small town (Keo Sama), ate a pomelo, and began pedaling up a
hill. It was around noon, scorching hot,
and I was looking down at my handlebars.
I became aware that I was
thinking about Saigon. Deep breath – Boom!
Suddenly, my medial temporal lobe was flooded with vivid recollections
of South Sumatra. I looked up. There was
dense jungle on both sides of the road! Looking back down the hill, I could see
traces of the town and I assumed that I had entered some sort of wildlife
sanctuary. I consulted my map – painfully
low quality – and it seemed to suggest that the next 40-50k would take me from
near sea level up to around 1000m. It
had been years since I’d seen virgin jungle like this and I was excited. I slowly climbed on, stopping frequently to
take pictures and absorb all of the sounds and smells: the caws and chirps of
unseen birds, the canopy rustling with monkeys, and the musky, floral aromas of
plants and trees flagrantly having sex.
My camera, monocular, and magnifying glass saw more action that
afternoon than in the previous 10 days combined. There were no signs of human beings aside
from the tarmac road, some power lines, and a vehicle passing by every 15
minutes or so.
At the bottom of a hill, I saw a path into the jungle and
followed it, leaving my bike up on the road.
It led to a lake teeming with life: algae, dragonflies, tadpoles, green
pigeons, wasps, water spiders and bees that had metallic blue where their
yellows should’ve been. I fought off a
strong urge to jump in and swim because I didn’t want to leave my bike alone
for too long. I got back up to the road,
saddled up, and noticed I had a flat tire.
While I was patching the tube a motorist stopped to see if I was
okay. It was a friendly man in an old sun
burnt Toyota with no windshield or license plates and the steering wheel on the
wrong side. I nodded that I was fine and
waved him on with a smile. Then I
realized that I was quite low on water and I should’ve asked him for some. I’ll ask the next one, I thought.
But there was no next one.
A very painful hour later, climbing at steep grades in belligerently hot
sun, I was really suffering – completely out of water and thirsty. As I
climbed, I watched hot sweat sluicing off of my face, wrists, and knees. I figured that I was losing about a liter
every 7-8 minutes body-wide. Going two
or three days without food is no problem and only slightly uncomfortable after
the first day, but to cycle uphill in intense heat without water quickly
becomes critical. I began getting cramps
and light-headed and was having difficulty keeping my balance on the slow
ascent. I got to the top of the next
hill and decided that I couldn’t go any farther. I sat in the middle of the road waiting for a
passing vehicle. A couple minutes later
a man and wife came up the hill on an old motorbike (you can usually tell a
woman’s relation to a man by how she sits on a motorbike), I flagged them down
and gesticulated ‘drinking water’. They
didn’t have any so I kept waiting.
Blue-faced monkeys were crossing the road high up in the tree tops and I
watched a baby clung tightly to its mother as she glided through the boughs
like a shadow – amazing. The monkeys
were talking but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I began fantasizing about what it would be
like to drink water. A few minutes later
I heard the drone of an engine climbing up the hill in first gear. It was an el dorado-looking thing with a man
and his child in the front and several indigenous people in the cargo bed – presumably
some sort of free-lance jungle bus. As
they passed I did my drinking gestures and they pulled over. The boy came out of the front with two
ice-cold 1 liter bottles. As he ran
towards me I felt a deep sense of relief. The divine properties of water can only be
truly appreciated through extreme thirst.
Pouring the liquid down my parched throat was bliss. Ahhhhhh… I looked up and saw all the people
in the bed of the truck staring at me, about a dozen ranging from infant to
elderly. They had dark, hard faces with
pronounced jaw-lines and wore tattered, faded clothes. They must belong to one of the ethnic
minorities that have lived in these mountains along the Cam-Viet border since
the Angkor Wat days. I gave them a wave
and a big smile and their faces made no reply.
They just kept staring at me with blank, fearful expressions like an
ancient people watching a solar eclipse.
The following afternoon, 24 hours after that first deep breath
in the jungle, I arrived in a town (Mondol Kiri). I was hungry and tired after
a semi-sleepless night alone in the jungle doing battle with red ants (I didn’t
win). I saw a food stall and ate 2 plates
of rice. Cambodians have an unfortunate custom
of leaving meat on a grill for hours until it takes on the texture of rhino
hide. Bone and flesh become
indistinguishable. I believe that the
energy and horsepower that my jaw would require to chew through such meat would
burn more calories than the meat provides, so I take my rice with a sprinkle of
fish sauce and a fried egg. Later, I
found a Vietnamese café and settled into one of the hammocks. I spent the rest of the afternoon chatting
with the owner, who told me all kinds of interesting things about the jungle I
had just come through. She said that
there were still wild elephants living deep in the forest. I asked if poaching was an issue and she said
yes, but not really because the elephant population was now quite small and it
was so difficult to find them. I lay
there with my coffee thinking about those elephants: barely hanging on to
existence in a world swarming with depraved, money-hungry primates. The elephants’ only protection is the
impenetrability of the jungle and their days are probably numbered. I was reminded of the indigenous people in
the back of the truck. In a way, I
thought, those people and the elephants probably have a lot in common.
 |
| The ants are plotting their invasion |
…
4 days later I was nearing the Cam-Laos border. I still had some time on my Cambodian visa,
so I decided to take a detour and get off the main road. My map told me that there was a road between
Ban Lung and Siem Pang, a 60k stretch through forest. Some locals and other travelers had warned me
that there were still “unexploded ordnances” in the region (a cute euphemism
for bombs and land mines). The UXOs are
American-made leftovers from the Vietnam War and they often kill grazing buffaloes
and sometimes farmers or their children.
I was told that there was no danger as long as I stuck to the roads and
didn’t go too far off the beaten path. I
set out from Ban Lung and spent the morning on a nice, packed dirt road the
color of tamarind. I crossed the Tonle
San River on a small motor ferry. After
crossing, there was a village where I ate rice and filled my water bottles (3
liters) with murky river water, which is boiled by the villagers. I met a man who spoke some Vietnamese and he said
I shouldn’t try to make it to Siem Pang on my bike. He said I should turn back to Ban Lung and
circle around on the main road.
“Đường không tốt,” he said, “The road’s no good.”
“How far is it?”
“Oh, about 35 kilometers.”
“Any villages along the way?” I asked.
“Yeah, but not for a while.”
Well, I had already come 25k that day and paid 50 cents to cross
the river. Another 35k isn’t that far and I wasn’t going to turn back because
of some rough road. Most of the
highlights of my travels have been on rough road. On I went.
About 4 kilometers later the road turned into a sandy path. The sand was deep and my road bike had to be
pushed like a plough through the hot, dry forest. This forest was very different from the wet
jungle to the south. Here the trees were
sporadic and angry – dotted with beehives and giant mounds of termite
nest. There were vines as thick as
telephone poles wrapped around and uprooting most of the older trees like some
hundred-year-long wrestling match. When there were people, they were on big-wheeled
oxcarts pulled by outboard ‘lawnmower’ engines (a familiar sight in rural Cambodia),
but as I got deeper into the forest a person passing by was extremely rare.
As I was trudging my heavy bicycle through the sand, covered
in sweat and filth, I began to feel the familiar groan in my belly which
inevitably signals diarreas explosivas.
Diarrhea is something I have extensive experience with and, luckily, it
usually does not involve cramps or pain.
Such was the case on this blistering afternoon. I often stopped to squat and – because there
was no stream or river – I had to use some of my water supply to clean
myself. I knew that diarrhea leads to
dehydration problems and last week’s water shortage was still fresh in my mind. But again I quickly ran out of water and found
myself pushed to the absolute limits of thirst.
There were no people around to help and I was probably averaging only 2
or 3 kilometers per hour in the sand, like a slow walk. The sun was at its zenith. There were horseflies adamantly buzzing
around my ears. Worst of all, the sand
track I was on would often fork or intersect with other sand tracks, so I was
relying on my compass and shitty map. The
thought ‘what if I die?’ passed through my head – but not in a fearful
way, more like a dopey observation. I
considered leaving my bike and trying to hike back to the village, but finding
my way back would not be easy. I began
to get delirious and, at one point, screamed out at the top of my lungs to an
apathetic forest. I was slowly stumbling
along, barely able to think, when I saw a dog ahead on the path. As I got closer, I noticed that the dog had
recently had puppies and her udders were dangling, full of milk. I dropped my bike and began chasing the dog. All I could think about was sucking some of
the life-saving milk from those saggy black paps. Then, a more rational thought struck me: if
there is a dog, then there are probably people! Sure enough, the dog led me straight to a
small bamboo hamlet of 5 or 6 families. They
gave me water and some cassava to eat.
We couldn’t really communicate but they were very friendly and that
night I slept under some banana trees near their thatched huts. Turns out I did get lost, and I’d have to
backtrack a few hundred meters to get back to the main path. The next day, revived and energetic, getting
to Siem Pang was no problem.
…
And now I am here at the Laos border and I realize something
truly amazing: I haven’t thought about Saigon at all since I entered that jungle
nearly a week ago! I feel as though I’ve
been cured of a disease. Like a weight
has been lifted. It’s exhilarating! All that was needed was a little adversity,
some struggle. Saigon is now officially
part of my past, inventoried in my mind’s storage along with all the other
wonderful ‘worlds’ I’ve temporarily been a part of. Not forgotten but at peace. Because the road that now separates me from Saigon
is long; and along that road there are jungles with hermetic elephants, and
memories of myself trying to suck milk from a dog.
