Tuol Sleng Prison, Phnom Penh Cambodia

Creeping through this high school, this place that once housed studious, upwardly mobile Phnom Penh teens flirting and learning their way through puberty, this place with a swing set out back. Creeping and skulking and guiltily photo-taking. Coughing and crying and shuffling, eyes darting and looking for Sean in the small brick enclosures because I am afraid that there are ghosts here. There ARE ghosts here. And its so near to closing time that we are pretty much the only people here, creeping and skulking and coughing and crying.

This is a terrible place, a school turned prison, an ochre coloured hell.



This is the Tuol Sleng Prison Musuem. I am not going to give you a lot of carefully researched facts. I am not even going to spell check. This all comes right from my instant reactions after visiting the notorious prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.



The Khmer Rouge was the most brutal political party in history. No one on this planet has ever dreamed, ever fathomed of such rage carried out against their own people. Long story short – after decades of colonial occupation by snooty France (“we will lift these heathens from ignorance and also make them our slaves!”) invasion by the brutal, rapey Japanese and relentless bombing during the Vietnam War by the Americans, Cambodia was left smoking, blackened and wounded in a way that made the agrarian Maoist communism promised by “Brother Number 1” Pol Pot and his “Red Cambodians” (Khmer Rouge) sound very attractive.

Heavily influenced by China's Gang of 4, The Khmer Rouge distrusted all things intellectual and capitalist, which they lumped into the same category. As they took power in 1975, they emptied the cities - hotbeds of useless knowledge - of Cambodia in days – elderly women, babies, the disabled, the lepers, everyone was expected to march out any city of size and head to the countryside. Three million people had to leave Phnom Penh alone (the population is now in 2009 is only 1.5 million.). Once there, everyone had to pick up a tool and begin farming the newly collectivized farms, all land having been seized by the government. City people were branded as evil, as were doctors, Buddhist monks, Catholics, Indians, Muslims, Intellectuals and anyone deemed counter-revolutionary.

You are an 80 year old woman. The doorbell rings. Outside there are men with guns demanding that you leave your apartment in Phnom Penh, where you have lived all your life, and head to the countryside. You are confused and tired and scared and you protest. And then they bayonet you in front of your neighbours for resisting, not wanting to waste expensive bullets on an “Old Person.”



Old People was the term given to anyone who lived in a city. People who lived in the country were called New People. Wealthy women from the cities frantically dirtied their soft hands, because in this new world you wanted to be a New Person, and no one could know that you were educated. Days after marching people out of the cities - the killing began, and didn't stop for 4 years.

Can I mention that this happened in 1975 – a few years before we were all born? Can I mention that we in the West knew that this was happening but refused to get involved in another potential Southeast Asian quagmire? WE KNEW THIS TIME about the mass graves and the torture and the genocide committed not by “others” but the the same people against one another. We knew.



Famine and exhaustion killed many. The Khmer Rouge exported food as the locals starved, all in a false show of Maoist glory for the West to see. Children were orphaned and abandoned, starving to death in plain view of pork-fattened Khmer combatants. Do you speak English? Death. Do you know too much about science? Death. Do you wear eyeglasses? Death.

Currency was outlawed, and schools and hospitals (bastions of the educated) were closed – and prisons opened in their place. Tuol Sleng was the most notorious. Many peasants were killed in this time period – some estimate half of the population of Cambodia – but anyone suspected to have ties to any resistance or the Vietnamese were jailed and tortured and killed.

Bullets were in short supply so children were bludgeoned to death with hammers.

People were beheaded with sharp, stiff banana leaves.

And we wandered, scared and upset-stomached, through halls of the high school that housed 20,000 prisoners and only saw 17 emerge alive, we were greeted by the faces of the dead. The Khmer kept meticulous records of their prisoners – much in the way of the Nazis – black and white photos of the agitators line the walls, numbers pinned to their chests. Classrooms were transformed into torture chambers. Small rooms had been bricked up to make even smaller cells. Windows were decorated with barbed wire, walls studded with chains. As moans quietly escaped my throat, Sean turned pale, and more leg cuffs loomed in our vision. I have feared ghosts and supernatural things only a few times in my life, and this was genuinely one of them.



In the Third Building, starved and bug bitten people stared at me from the walls, cheeks hollowed and eyes bulging. Old women with proud eyes. Children with terrified eyes. Men with shamed eyes. If you were Pol Pot, these people were threats to your revolution.

As I took a photo of the blackboard covered in mugshots, on the display screen 7 little facial recognition boxes popped up. My camera recognized what the Khmer Rouge didn't.

I don't know what else to say.

Food in 2 Parts.

PART 1 – The Justification, Followed by the Weird.

Go ahead. Roll your eyes, shake your head, whatever you want. The truth of the matter is that I very easily get sick of Asian food. I cannot help it – I get to a point where rice looks up at me from its bowl and it's like “Yeah. I know you're not gonna eat me. I know you're gonna nibble on that tofu and eat some of those weird mushrooms and just completely ignore me, and still feel totally hungry and stop and buy a Mars bar on your way home. We're cool, though. Bitch.”

Do not get me wrong. Vietnamese, Lao, Thai – all beautiful foods. I have had some amazing meals, some of the best of my life, in Asia. Most have been expertly prepared local food, some have been street foods and some have been at chef driven fusion restaurants. BEAUTIFUL, ancient traditions, delicate flavors, bold spices, wonderful street food....but in the way that I can't eat pasta everyday, no matter how much I love IT, I just can't eat stir fried vegetables and fish everyday. Perhaps if I ate meat things would be a lot easier – there would be wayyyy more choice and variety. But even then, my brain – not my stomach - really doesn't feel full unless I have had bread, cheese or potatoes. Preferably all 3. I cannot feel ashamed about this any longer. I eat a wide variety of foods at home, Lebanese one day, Japanese the next, Westcoast Fusion, Jamaican, Italian, Greek, Indian, French.... not to mention simple home cooked meals ( I throw together pretty salads and sear tofu and Ta-da! Sean spends all day in the kitchen and creates culinary masterpieces.) If I tried to eat Ukrainian food everyday, no matter how much I love it, I would die of boredom (and a coronary) so I sure as hell cannot eat rice 3 times a day. I just can't.

If I was only traveling for 3 weeks I would feel really guilty about eating a pizza. It is really important to eat authentic foods in order to experience a culture, otherwise you end up a gawking tourist and not a real traveler. But, for an entire year – I'll eat some mashed potatoes and some tacos if I want to.

I try to have this rule: When I want Western food, I do not go to a restaurant unless it is the only thing on the menu. So, for example, if the menu is the size of a phonebook, there are only backpackers around and they serve Asian/Pizza/Continental/Ge

rman/Mexican – DO NOT eat there. If the restaurant proposes to be an Italian eatery with a cute name like “Little Hanoi” with a whole checked table cloth and candles-in-wine-bottles-vibe but half of their menu is spring rolls and fried rice – DO NOT eat there. If you go to a Tex Mex diner and they do not have sour cream or guacamole – DO NOT eat there.

Let's be clear – I do not expect every small town and village in SE Asia to have a fully stocked Western kitchen and miraculous pasta making skills. But, then again – if you do not know how to prepare, or do not have the correct ingredients - why have the dishes on your menu? (Because backpackers suck and will eat anything.) It is a strange concept to me to offer things that you yourself have never eaten and therefore have no idea how they are supposed to come out. I would make a terrible congee (savoury rice porridge) because I have never even eaten congee, and it is this reason why I would not open a restaurant in Vancouver and serve Vietnamese food.... But so so often in Asia you order something that sounds delicious and it arrives and it is the culinary equivalent of Engrish. Close, and you can kind of make out what it is supposed to be, but still fundamentally and often humourously wrong. It is less humourous when you realize that you now have to eat the 'matter' placed in front of you.


I'll give you a few examples of horrifying food I have been served (most of them were in India, but the same goes here in SE Asia):

*Veg cannelloni – Chinese dim sum dumplings stuffed with cabbage and ginger, covered in melted processed cheese and creamo. Oh, and the sauce was sweet. The manager was genuinely shocked and horrified that I left it untouched. I did not tell him that it was the single most disgusting food item I had ever been served. I told him I was sick. I kind of was.

*Sundae – I got in a verbal fight, an epic war of words with a snobby, frustrated bellboy in a Madurai hotel, each of us insisting that our version of an ice cream sundae was the correct one. It sure the hell was NOT, I assured him, dried fruit and Jello kind of smooshed over strawberry ice cream. He told me, with his nose in the air, that what I was describing (chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream) was called a tutti frutti. “No it's not.” I said. “Yes it is” He said. This went on until I finally dropped the ultimate in spoiled Westerner-speak. “Listen, I'm from where ice cream sundaes are from, and so I know what an ice cream sundae is and you don't!” He slunk away, and returned 10 minutes later with one scoop of the strawberry removed and a scoop of chocolate ice cream in its place. Fucker.

*Veg Shish Kabob – Should be veggies grill on stick, right? Maybe tandoori paneer? Instead was pieces spring roll cut up and serve to Sean on skewer? Does that make party food? Maybe it should be call “Exciting Spring Roll!” instead? Super cool taste - wow!
This Engrish and the spring roll itself made less sense because WE WERE IN INDIA.

*Poached Eggs – These arrived browned on one side and with chalky, hard yolks. I called the waiter over – this was my first attempt to “send something back” in India and a good example of what happens when you try. “Um, these are browned? These are not poached eggs?” The waiter looked at me blankly. “Yah, poach eggs.” “No, ummm, see, my friend had poached eggs 20 minutes ago even though we ordered them at the same time, and they were nothing like this. These are browned. No thank you.” Blank stare. He repeated. “Poach eggs.” I was undaunted - I wish that 'current me' could go back and give 'Varanasi me' some advice. “I won't have these. I'll just have scrambled instead, thanks.” Twenty minutes later he set a steaming hot, microwaved plate of my same browned, poached eggs now cut into tiny cubes. “Scramble eggs.”

*Breakfast in general – the eggs are cooked Asian style, sizzled and browned in an inch of hot oil, so the edges bubble up and are filled with grease. Omelets or fried eggs – both are dark brown and smell like that yucky burnt egg smell. Imagine the shreddy bits of egg in fried rice – now imagine a bowl of just that egg and it is called scrambled eggs and it is served to you with some microwaved white bread. I have nearly cried a few times.

*Cheese – 99% of the time it is processed. Yeah. Deal with that.

In conclusion, it is always better to eat the local food. It is always fresher, tastier and a better experience, not to mention a lot cheaper. But on those days you need a pizza, well. Godspeed and good luck.


PART 2:
Food Porn – Or, The Things the Glutton Will Eat When She Gets Home.

Some people miss their normal clothes. Some miss their comfy beds and their pets. Some miss their neighbourhoods and friends and families. And while of course, I miss that stuff – this is more important to me. It always will be. Sorry guys.

1)Nachos from Foundation: Oh, the sheer amount of cheese. The slightly sweet salsa. The humongous bowls of sour cream and guacamole. Little bits of yummy corn, extra jalapeños, black beans. The surly, navel gazing wait staff. And all that cheese. Cheeeeeese.

2)Eggs Benedict: This is really important. I need this. Commando Benny from Cafe Barney. Asparagus, Brie cheese and tomatoes on an English muffin with extra hollandaise sauce and Barney's amazing hot sauce....sigh. And so, so many hashbrowns. I also need to go to the Reef – theirs is different good, but with lots of Jamaican hot sauce it is mouth searingly divine.

3)Vera's Veggie Burger: I want that fucker smothered in fried mushrooms, onions and cheese, with a healthy amount of Vera's sauce doused on there. It has the proper consistency, and it really tastes like a beef burger without that soyish aftertaste of most veggie burgers. I miss mayo.

4)POUTINE: The jumbo sized one from Fritz on Davie that Xstina and I used to share after the bar, the thermos sized one. (With veggie gravy, of course...) I will dip that shit in Mango Chutney Mayo and probably have a bliss (ie: heart) attack and die right there in front of the bald headed “Onnnnnnnne Mediuuuuuum Poutiiiiiiiiine” guy. I also really like the poutine from the courageous naked fry lady at Wreck, but I think I'll be arriving home in the Fall or Winter, so it'll be a while before I can make Willie buy me one of those.

5)Sushi: 3 times. Once from Miko on Robson for spicy agedashi tofu, extra shitake. Once from Sushiyama for the Crunch Roll (tempura yam and shrimp with Philley cream cheese!) And once, maybe twice, from The Eatery (I will put up with the strange hybrid Kits/Hipster waitresses) for ....FAT ELVIS (tempura battered avocado, deep fried and covered in spicy unagi mayo.) Sushi is like a dear friend to me. I so sad without her.

6)Burgoo: This restaurant is heavily featured in Sean and my conversations about Vancouver food. I NEED 2 things. The gooey grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup, and the homemade macaroni and cheese served in a French onion soup bowl and bubbling over with so much Gruyère and cheddar. I like to pick the browned cheese off of the side when I am all done. Why do you think I was puffy, fat and the pasty colour of Brie cheese when we left home? Burgoo. And....

7)Beer: Anything that is not a light Pilsner. No more Beer Lao, Kingfisher, Chang or Tiger. Give me a honey lager. A Hefeweisen. A Rickard's Red, hell, even a Rickard White. A Trad. A Granville Island anything. A Sleemans. Please?

8)Vegetarian Cannelloni or Lasagna: No, the experience above did not sour me permanently. I want to go to Marcello's on the Drive and cover my piping hot melty dish in hot pepper flakes, salt, pepper and extra Parmesan and forgo my fork, just dip focaccia bread in there and use it to scoop up all of the pasta-y spinach-y goodness.

9)Falafel: I'll go to Nuba, that tiny hole in the wall at Seymour and Davie, and eat the deep fried cauliflower, hummus and falafel pita wrap while I walk around downtown in a tube top and not get stared at, even though I have breasts, white skin and HUGE tattoos. But I mostly wanna eat that wrap. With extra turnip pickle.

10)Granville Island: With my debit card ready to go, I'm gonna buy all this stuff and arrange it on a plate and then make little combo bites and eat the hell out of all of it. Bocconcini, fresh basil, sundried tomatoes in oil, fava beans in tomato sauce, sharp cheese, hummus, roasted red peppers, olive oil, fancy sea salt, focaccia bread, dolmades, garlic shrimp salad, roasted asparagus and garlic (OK, I will roast that myself...I'm not that lazy,) washed down with a bottle of Pinot Noir and finished with every kind of fresh berry that they have.

I figure this will take me a good week. Who wants to join me? Even if you haven't been away, it should be really fun.....I have 6-8 more months, so I'm sure I'll think of more...anything YOU wanna add?

Uncle Ho's Historiorium.

The first thing I noticed about the embalmed corpse of Ho Chi Minh was how HUGE he was. Like, superhero huge. Uncle Ho is displayed in this enormous glass case that warps your perspective – his head alone, always a bit Colonel Sanders-sh, is like a giant white watermelon, each sparse beard hair carefully preserved during his annual 3 month respite to Moscow, where he is fussed over and kept fresh. Russians do, after all, have a lot of experience keeping a stiff dictator public-appearance ready for decades...and come to think of it, Lenin also kind of looked like Colonel Sanders. But back to the hugeness of Ho. The glass case is kept raised off of the floor, and around it is a trench in which 4 guards stand at attention. The walkway around the tomb is slightly below its platform, and so the entire effect of the body being Dr. Manhattan-sized is heightened even further. Red lights, probably important in some way for preservation of the body, beam down on Ho from all angles, accenting the red star and hammer and sickle symbols displayed behind him. Like a humongous KFC ad in an alien space pod the colour of sweet and sour sauce, this is to what Uncle Ho has been reduced. Or, I guess more appropriately, enlarged. Never one for the “cult of personality” that surrounded other Communist leaders Mao and Stalin, Ho actually wanted to be cremated and spread around the countryside with little fuss. But the Vietnamese morale demanded a focal point of glory, and that glory was Ho. (Ha! Glory Ho!) Hence the monolithic Soviet style crypt built in centre of Hanoi. In a weird way, walking inside of the air conditioned-to-the-point-of-freezing crypt, I felt like I was in a shopping mall from my childhood, in that concrete-mega-structure sort of way, that 1970's everything-is-super-modern and grey way. This is a pilgrimage for many Vietnamese, especially those from the North - they LOVE Ho Chi Minh.

In a way, like Gandhi in India, it was the Non-Vietnamese aspects of Ho that made him respected and admired, his Frenchiness, his Western education, his political savvy. It is ironic that the very things the average peasant abhorred were the things that made them love Ho, perhaps because he took the education and ideas offered by the French to promising young Indochinese men, and rather than use his position in the intelligentsia to serve the French interests, he used his elite education (combined with Russian-learned ideologies) to try to FREE HIS PEOPLE. He saw the changes taking place after World War 1, the Wilsonian concepts of National Self Determination, the French “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite” and he thought - “Yeah! That's us! That's Viet Nam! I wanna get me some of this independence!”


Excitedly, Ho rushed to Paris for the talks at Versailles, naively expecting to return home triumphant. Woodrow Wilson wouldn't even let him in the bargaining room to be laughed at in person. National Self Determination it turns out, was for white people in Europe. If you were a brownish person from a European colony, well, you were hardly a person at all, you were more like a trained monkey who could harvest rice or rubber. They saw educated Asian people like Ho as fancy monkeys, like chimps in clothing and eyeglasses – humanish, but still a monkey. And let's face it, when that chimp takes off that men's suit he just goes back to flinging poop.

He was deterred, but didn't give up. He balked at the French, and formed the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1925. We, the West, don't like it when those we colonize don't do what we want them to do. We still kind of see this today, whenever a puppet regime actually tries to start making choices that benefit their own country, the West gets mad. And they got really fucking mad at Uncle Ho.

The madder the West got, the more fierce the love and adoration the Vietnamese heaped on Ho. As we were forcibly prodded through the crypt area (I wanted to stay in step with Sean. The guard wanted me to fill a gap up ahead. He kept poking me with a stick. He won.) people's reactions were solemn and emotional. Here, on a big platter, was the symbol of Vietnamese resilience and spirit. The man who fought the French, Chinese, Japanese and US – and won.



The Museum was next, and I was expecting a Soviet style construction filled with dusty relics (This Ho's book. He read book for pleasures while relax during war with imperialist American scums.”) and a diorama-rama, but I was dead wrong. The humongous (are you noticing a theme here? Ginormous imposing buildings?) white structure is etched with a huge hammer and sickle, and holds one of the most modern, interesting and interactive museums I have ever been to, and I have been to a lot of museums (The Guiness Brewery is still my favourite, but this one almost edged it out). Rather than a plodding obligatory march through a room of letters and photos, the museum brought the history – the art, film, culture and ideology – of the twentieth century alive with a Vietnamese style Communist spin.

As we entered the main exhibit room, the package bus tour Japanese tourists in their matching hats who had besieged us throughout the main floor and hogged the best vantage point of the largest Ho statue for clichéd photo opportunities of themselves thinned out (No one will believe we were here unless we stand in front of the statue! Quick, put Grandma in the middle! Her honour! Her honourrrr!” Japanese tourists even posed in front of the piles of hair and prosthetic limbs when I was at Auschwitz. NOT CLASSY). This was not their thing – this museum was not an endless series of banalities and obvious focal points in front of which to stand and snap away – it was an amazing, strange and modern showcase of symbolism and metaphor.



Surrealist art, portraits of Marx and Lenin, Le Corbusier's architecture, art nouveau and Soviet film stills were etched on glass panels and created a strange hall of mirrors effect as we wound through their maze, and video screens mounted to the wall played newsreels from all periods of the twentieth century. A huge three dimensional representation of Picasso's Guernica jutted out of the wall around the corner – the state of fascist warfare and the ever rising threat of the Nazis in the thirties. Images of the horrors in Europe during World War II followed - a plaintiff question raised – didn't we learn? A huge whited out Ford car crashed through the wall around the corner, an example of the American influence, power and goods flooding the world in the '50s. In one corner, a brick volcano literally exploded with red streamers, the violence and anger felt by the Vietnamese as the French kept them enslaved and prisoners in their own divided country.



As we we followed the path, images of the “American War” (what the Vietnamese call the Vietnam War, go figure) were over almost before they began – this was clearly not a place where people want to dwell on the battles they faced to get here. They won. That is enough – there needed to be no endless wall etched with the names of villagers massacred, no obvious Napalm photos or chemically deformed fetuses pickled in brine (there is a museum in Saigon called the “War Atrocities Museum that takes care of all of those images, as well as an impressive artillery and bomb collection.)
The next bend in the path took us to life sized pears and bananas – a slightly hokey representation of the abundance of life and food in this fertile country, but apt. Rather than focusing too heavily on the horrors of war, the ideology battle with the West or the transition to capitalism, the museum's main themes were art, beauty and light – the friendly, child loving, chuckling Ho a contrast to his austere, heavily guarded and humongous corpse.

The final image in the huge room was of Ho, dressed all in white, waving to us. Beside him, etched in glass and resembling a backlit ice sculpture was his most famous quote, translated into dozens of languages:

“All the Peoples on Earth are Equal. Each People has the Right to Life, Happiness and Liberty.”

Amen, Uncle Ho.

Some Possible Flukes.

I'm pretty sure that something is wrong with me – I am unreasonably tired. Like, everyday I am dead fucking tired all day, while we walk around and see sights and view temples and plod through museums and cycle in the midday heat I am just kind of biding my time before I can go to the air con and lay down.

This is not like me – when traveling I am almost OCD busy, obsessed with seeing EVERYTHING that a city is known for, things I didn't even know existed and certainly did not care about before arriving. (“Oooh, Sean look. Conical hat making! We have to go to the conical hat factory. Conical Hats!”) I plot out walking routes and sight itineraries and choose restaurants in my trusty guide book months in advance, I do research online, I assault other travelers with a barrage of questions and then I take notes of their answers– I have had Pnomh Penh planned for months and we don't even get there for 5 weeks. I am the type of annoying traveler that goes on a guided walking tour and interupts the guide to ask pointed leading questions (“Isn't it true that these temple frescos were designed as moral warnings for the locals in the 15th century under Chinese rule?” “Aren't Rasjasthanis known for their unique chai spice blend?” “Wasn't this statue erected for the Queen's visit in 1960?”) to the point that people start ignoring the irritated, upstaged guide and asking me questions instead. I am a know-it-all. I travel. I read. I plan. This is what I DO. It is my calling in life.

And yet, here I am in the city I love most in the country I love most with the person I love most, and I am incredibly tired. I am not the type of person that this happens to – I like action orieted solutions to problems, and I have run down the list of possible ailments I could have. I have been eating enough protein and iron. I am not pregnant. I do not have malaria. I do not have the flu, a cold, the rheumatiz' or croup. No bends, dropsy or dengue fever. I may have a whole host of disgusting parasites - we did swim in slightly dicey, possibly liver fluke infested Mekong river water in the very South of Laos, near the Cambodian border, and I ate a lot of street food in India.....but those potential parasites seem unlikely to cause this kind of fatigue. (There are also ways to kind of tell if you have most food borne parasites. It is gross. Use your imagination.)
(Actually, please stop using your imagination. I don't want you to think of me that way. The next time you see me, my bowels will be all you'll be able to think about, and neither of us want that.)

No, I think I have to bend my brain and accept the concept that maybe I need to SLOW DOWN. Maybe I do not need to drag Sean to every pagoda, organic farm and handicraft district. Maybe I can forgive myself if I ignore a palace or two. Maybe I do not need to write an epic blog about every experience. Maybe I am mentally, rather than physically, exhausted. This is hard for me to accept. It feels weak willed.

This reminds me of my first tour of Europe, when I was 18. I was determined to see all of Western Europe in 2 months. All of it. One or two nights in each city - museum after museum, night train after night train, palace after palace. By the time we got to Amsterdam at the end of our trip, we stayed for a week., and did NOTHING cultural except the Heineken Brewery Tour (this was almost 10 years ago, mind you, and they hadn't yet put a limit on how many beers you could drink. You had 45 minutes at the end of the tour to eat as much edam and drink as many half pints as you could, which led to me stumbling out into the daylight at precisely 10:45am, smashed and gassy from all that cheese.) No Anne Frank House. No Van Gogh Museum. I remember seeing every single backpacker throughout Europe with a bright yellow poster tube jutting from their bag, filled with prints from said museum, and I felt shame. But this shame pales in comparison to my cultural vapidity in Paris. As it was my final stop before home, and I was freshly 19 years old and stupid and similarly tired (not to mention with eyebrows that looked like catterpillars marching across my forehead) I am mortified to admit that I arrived at the Louvre, asked where the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo were, took a photo of each and left. And then I ate at McDonalds. There are no words to describe that kind of tourism. (Well, maybe one: Japanese.)

And so, in order to prevent my next 6 months from becoming a chore rather than a delight, I guess I have to take a break. In order to be able to sit in temple courtyards and breathe deeply and feel history, in order to care about scenery and beauty and terraced rice paddies, in order to view each experience as more than a photo opportunity and grow mentally and have my own cliched personal epiphanies, I have to sit still for a while. Our last long break, Mumbai – was months ago now. I am justifying this to myself: After 3 days in Sapa, I, Jessica O'Neill, grant myself permission to sit in a nice room in Hanoi for a minimum of 5 days and read magazines, eat junk food and drink cheap draft beer and mocha frappucinos. I will get 2 leg massages and a facial (Sean, stop giggling like a woman. An actual facial at a spa.) I will go to a movie at the theatre. I will buy pirated Gossip Girl and Lost on DVD (so, so incredibly cheap!) and watch all of it. I will not read anything about global warming, harrowing history or corrupt politics. I will watch CSI re-runs on AXN. I will not visit a single cultural sight. I will relax, in the most North American way possible.

And if I'm still tired after all of that, I will go to the damn doctor and get these liver flukes removed.

Myspectacular

I was going through my old myspace blogs in preparation for my new website (don't you all worry, all of these facebook ones will be archived as well) and I realized just how funny I was 3 years ago. And fun. Like exceedingly fun. I know a lot of people who try to have these crazed lives filled with debauched parties and insane fashion, but mine just seemed to happen to me. It often happened accidentally and when I was looking the other way and while Xstina was at the bar getting us another round. My life was like a crazy fusion of a Warhol/Hughes plot – with the added bonus of a lot of late night poutines.

That is, of course, not to say I am boring now....I am a traveling diva as comfortable on a Laos public bus as in a 5 star Honolulu hotel (That is a fucking lie, by the way. I will poop in a filthy squat toilet and spit bugs and pebbles out of my food, but I still love a good towel warmer and crave a polite concierge and some sushi.) But in Vancouver in the last 2 years I was boring. Like super amazingly intergalactically fucking boring (I cut my finger and had to go to the hospital 3 weeks before we left for Asia, and it was like, the MOST exciting thing that had happened on a Friday night in ages.) I like Sean, we like food (wine) and on Fridays I was bone achingly tired and mentally retarded from the week. Putting on heels would have been like WORK - and my pants, frantically undone by the time I was unlocking my apartment door, were not going anywhere near my ass until Saturday morning. Hell, even if Xstina or Brandon were over I just walked around clutching an afghan around my waist (most of the time. Sometimes I went afghanless and just wore Sean's briefs, y'know, for modesty's sake.)

Contrasted to three or so years ago, I could be sitting in my undies (there is a theme here – I do not wear pants at home. I am not wearing pants right now) at 11pm on a Tuesday watching CSI and a random friend would call and say “Be ready in 7 minutes. We goin' out.” And lord love a duck, I WOULD be ready, skintight jeans shimmied up, vintage boots wrestled on and false eyelashes glued in place. It was all about meeting boys and maintaining image. Was I happy? Like, 'HAPPY happy, know I'm loved and in love too, healthy and cute' happy? Fuck No! I was empty and bitter – but man did I have fun.

Sean and I were watching a Lady Gaga video, and reading an article about the uproar of media surrounding her and her “underground party circuit hipster lifestyle”, and I was like “I did that. How is this new?” But I was a bit jealous, I guess. And nostalgic. Sometimes I feel a bit like maybe I would love to move to Toronto or LA and bar hop again, be a part of insane afterhours and avant garde art scenes, but I remember how empty and shallow it all was and I am glad to be in Asia and actually living life rather than drinking it away with scenesters. So when we go home (wherever and whenever that will be) I am happier to eat asparagus and chevre and drink lots of red wine with interesting Sean rather than guzzle double vodka sodas and engage in spurts of vapid conversation with strangers and 'bar friends' in the bathrooms of dive bars.

Well, let me recant a bit. I will go out to bars occasionally, I will party sometimes and OF COURSE I will still drink double vodka sodas (sometimes with supper.....) It just won't be on a Friday night. That's m'pantsless time.




I just want to apologize again to vodka.

Baci Ceremony

Just past dusk after a four hour trek from Savannakhet, five of us sat in the large dining/living room of a traditional Lao teak house. Surrounding us, slowly murmuring protection prayers, were the villagers of Ban That. We all leaned in to gently lay hand on the tiered silver platter laden with fruits, money, eggs and intricately braided bracelets as the dozen Lao adults and their children swayed in incantation. Those whose hands could not reach the offering simply touched the body of someone who could, and we all pulsed together while they blessed us, the visitors. Though the next morning we were to be awake at 5am to give alms of sweets and our clumsily made balls of sticky rice to the Theravada monks on their daily procession, tonight we abandoned Buddha's teachings and focused on Phi. The traditional, millenia old animism has nothing to do with Buddhism – it even contradicts and should offend it – but somehow in Laos they mix like liquids swirling down a drain.



Phi are the 32 friendly spirits that belong to each person's body - like a soul. The spirits like to go off wandering, sometimes because they are scared away by loud noises or bad energy, but mostly just because they are curious and like to play in the forest. People leave treats hanging in trees for their Phi when they are not needed. The Baci ceremony calls all of the Phi back to your body so that you can embark on a journey as a whole person, safely protected by all of your brother spirits.



As the Village Elder called our Phi from the forest, the elderly women approached us one by one and nimbly tied multicoloured string bracelets to our wrists, chanting under their breath as they did so. A small girl watched intently, and then with guidance from her grandma took her turn affixing the bands on Landon and I (she was too shy to touch the boys.) It is her soft, unsure touch that I remember most vividly.



We were presented with a dish containing a candy, a hard boiled egg and a banana, as well as a shot of Lao Lao (fermented rice liquor) to purify our body. Once the foods were eaten and the liquor swallowed the Baci was complete, and jovial sentences spoken in a broken Lao/English/French patois were exchanged. A huge feast of vegetables and fish was laid out in front of us, but no matter how much we ate we could not put a dent in the food - chattering women appeared every few moments to ply us with another ball of rice or scoop of long beans.

Musical instruments appeared, and the open windows slowly filled with local children who had scaled the small fence around the house to catch a glimpse of the five strange farang draped in ceremonial silk scarves, singing and laughing, finishing a final bite or two of sticky rice and picking fish from the bones. Fearing it was rude to offer the staring kids the families food, I waited until everyone in the house was occupied to hold out some candy bars. But it was too late – the children scrambled away when I looked toward them.



Despite the early hour, the entire village started winding down. Five am comes early, and so after a few more folk songs and a rousing off key rendition of “O Canada” we too retired to our gender segregated beds.



We drifted to sleep, filled to the brim with food, rice whiskey, Beer Lao and most importantly - our 32 reunited Phi, fresh from the forest.

(If you want to book this exact trek, or something a little more difficult (up hills, with bikes) just contact the amazingly friendly people at the Savannakhet Tourist Office. For more info about responsible tourism in Laos click here)

Bombs, Drugs and History

The Vietnam War and all of it brutality and ugliness continues today – in the landlocked country of Laos. I do not mean the effects of the war continue: this is not about a damaged national psyche, and I am not even referring to a mounting death toll caused by environmental or chemical hazards – the country that was the scene of the most clandestine of all of the Asian/American conflicts literally has bombs exploding daily. This is still a live battle ground, but in a very different way than you'd expect.

Laos is an achingly pretty place. Mist shrouded mountains descend into the brown rivers of the Mekong and the Nam Ou, bamboo thatches spring up on the edges of electric green rice paddies and haunting karst rock formations jut out of the land. Though it seems paternalistic and cliche to say, the people are kind, funny and deeply spiritual, almost esoteric – as a famous French saying goes “The Vietnamese plant the rice, the Cambodians watch it grow, and the Lao listen to it grow.” In the week or so we have been here the locals have been almost embarrassingly nice to us – even though we have predominantly been in backpacker enclaves along the “Banana Pancake Trail” (the cities in Asia most visited by Westerners in their 20's, and that serve comfort foods like granola and pizza, dotted with internet cafes and bars serving buckets of booze – Kathmandu, Ko Samui, Siem Reap etc.) For Lao people, this form of tourism, or any tourism for that matter, is a new sight to see – the county's borders were closed to foreigners until 1995. At that time, the restrictive form of communism that had been in power for 20 years was relaxed, and now Lao people are experiencing a third wave of colonialism that will perhaps be more insidious that the first two.

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The French strolled in over one hundred years ago and claimed Laos in the same way that they did Vietnam and Cambodia, first splitting the 3 countries into 5 pieces and then lumping them together into a region called French Indochina. But unlike its two companion states, Laos didn't get much out of the deal – highly inaccessible to the French, the journey by river from Saigon (the seat of the French government) to Luang Prabang took longer than Saigon to France by steamship. Laos gained little from the French other than the superfluous “S” tacked onto the end of its name – no railways, no grand boulevards or basic infrastructure – they just took what they wanted (opium and coffee) with little benefit to the people. While this is arguably a better deal (most Vietnamese and Cambodians would have preferred less French meddling) it did ensure that Laos would remain less developed, as they were not even permitted to use their own resources for their advancement – the resources belonged to the French.

And then we all know what happened in Vietnam. The French, fighting off the Northern “Viet Minh” (communist guerrilla soldiers threatening the more Catholic and Frenchified South with a socialist revolution, led by Ho Chi Minh and backed by the Soviet Union) were bitterly humiliated at Dien Bien Phu (wiki that one for a laugh) and left Vietnam in a hurry. The Americans – terrified that the spread of communism in South East Asia would mean a domino affect throughout all of Asia (which is ultimately kind of did) rushed in – and if you don't know the rest of that story, I don't have the space to tell you.

But Laos – sweet, pretty Laos was actually the bloodiest victim and they don't even get mentioned in the name of the war. Facing their own smaller and quieter communist revolution, this country was used as a supply route for the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and was increasingly a battleground between the Viet Cong and the US (sneaky guerrilla soldiers don't respect borders, and drew the US in and out of Laos like cats and mice.) Laos claims the dubious honour of the most heavily bombed country per capita in the history of the fucking planet – the equivalent of one planeload of bombs every eight minutes was dropped on this country for NINE FUCKING YEARS. It was razed – left black and smoking and flat - in a highly classified secret war. An American reporter at the time who was accidentally flown over Laos on the way to Thailand described it as a 'moonscape', and then was forbidden from reporting about it. No one in America knew this was happening, and after the war was over in 1974, Laos was left to try to pick up the pieces without much help, and with a newly crowned communist leader more interested in his own pockets than the plight of his poorest countrymen.

So now Laos is the poorest country in Southeast Asia by far, with World Health Organization statistics on par with Sub Saharan Africa. It is not an obvious poverty like India or even Burma, but the people in villages away from the tourists are sick, illiterate and hungry. If we get sick here, the closest hospital that we can go to for serious treatment as Westerners is in THAILAND. This poverty makes the bombs keep exploding. This poverty shreds skin and breaks bones.

You often hear about UXO's (unexploded ordinance – leftover bombs) and land mines killing children because they are mistaken for toys and wee hands can't resist picking them up when they are unearthed. I knew that education work by NGOs was focused on this problem, and I assumed that the impoverished toyless children must be momentarily overcome with excitement when they saw a shiny object and then BOOM! I thought when I first saw a small rounded 'bombi' in photos that kids must think it was a neat looking ball. I thought it must be rare and completely shocking when a child was injured.

In Laos, people are so poor that children search out and dig up unexploded bombs to sell as scrap metal.

This is not a hard thing to do. An estimated third of all bombs dropped on this country did not explode on contact. Rice paddies, villages, farms, country roads are all FULL of UXOs – most deep beneath the surface. But farmers accidentally unearth them, heavy water buffalo step on the surface and their weight causes detonations and children and adults alike collect them eagerly to sell to unscrupulous scrap metal dealers despite an official ban. Hundreds of people die each year and many more injured in a country where disability may mean you and your family go hungry. This is what I mean – this war continues every day in a real and tangible way.

Sean and I got off of the beaten backpacker track in Central Northern Laos, and headed to a town called Phonsavanh, home to one of the world's greatest unexplained mysteries – The Plain of Jars. Literally thousands of monolithic stone jars cover great swaths of land and no one has been able to proved definitively what these 2500 year old jars were used for. The scenery from Luang Prabang through the mountains was stunning, but occasionally disturbing. Small villages were inhabited by traditionally costumed hill tribe women selling fruits and embroidery – and their husbands who had semi-automatic weapons strapped to their backs.

So, it turns out I came to Phonsavanh to see the ancient jars, but left with much more of an education about UXOs than prehistory. The city hosts a MAG (Mine Awareness Group) museum, where we watched a documentary and saw pieces of UXO and bombs up close for the first time. It wasn't the last time – our guesthouse was decorated liberally with bomb casings, ammo and shrapnel, even a barbecue fashioned from a hollowed out 500 lb bomb. There is a Hmong (a Laos hill tribe) village where all of the houses are constructed of bombs – even the school bell is a UXO. Bomb craters are everywhere – most filled in and used a fish ponds, and trench lines are still clearly visible in fields. During our walk around the Jars we had to carefully follow a demarcated path – red on one side, and white on the other – stay on the white side or boom. Never had I been so aware of my footprints.

So this should be enough to terrify anyone into steering far away from any metal found buried in the ground – and indeed some villages are crippled by poverty when it becomes too dangerous on a regular basis to farm the surrounding fields. But danger begins to seem relative when your family has no food for supper and a Vietnamese trader will pay you 2000 kip (35 cents CAD) for a kilogram of metal. A 500 lb bomb can be enough to feed a family for THREE MONTHS – no wonder people are reluctant or refuse outright to call MAG or the government to report artillery found in the rice paddy – they want the chance to take it apart themselves and earn a lot of extra money. Children gather around, are curious about the process and are then shown by example that bombs are really nothing to be afraid of. MAG does entire presentations for local kids and pleads with them to never ever touch a bombi, the children nod excitedly and swear that they never will – only to innocently present the MAG workers with bombis (and worse) minutes later. With millions of pounds of explosives still planted shallowly beneath the surface of Laos the problem can only get worse.

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Tourism is one industry that is thriving, and that seems like an answer to at least some of the poverty in Laos. After the tsunami in 2004 devastated a lot of Southern Thailand's beaches, Laos became the next party stop on the map, with towns like Vang Vieng transforming into a Mekong river playground packed full of pizzerias, bars showing Friends 24/7 and bikinied girls puking in the gutters after a long day of tubing and 'happy shakes'. And while this behaviour is filling some local pockets with the profits from overpriced bags of Lay's potato chips imported from Thailand, it also is deeply offensive to the traditional social mores of this country. While horrified Lao people look on, young Westerners engage in behaviour that runs the gamut from mildly distasteful all the way to willfully ignorant, pretending that this is in fact Southern Thailand and not conservative Laos. Frankly, I don't think that most of them would care even if a Lao person pointed this out.

Luang Prabang is a good example of this new colonialism. While Vang Vieng has been created as an intentional stop on the party circuit, beautiful, historical Luang Prabang is an ancient capital city with over 60 temples and monastery, and is a UNESCO world heritage site. Its location halfway between the most common backpacker border crossing in the North and Vang Vieng has made it a requisite stop on the circuit, yet most of the people we met there were not interested in seeing the beautiful Wats and the great museum or Royal Palace. Despite signs everywhere reminding people that this is not Vang Vieng and to please be respectful, partiers rage on all night, heading to illegal afterhours and river parties. The penalty doled out to a local caught dealing drugs is death, and the production and consumption of opium is destroying small villages, sapping more and more people of their motivation and hanging the heavy weight of addiction around their necks. Yet spoiled backpackers laze around smoking opium, oblivious to the exploitative and one sided nature of encouraging the drug trade in a poor country where hope is in short supply yet poppies are everywhere. We get to go home and leave the problems behind, like we always do.

This is a relentless 24 hour tourism, because as these backpackers stumble to bed, eager Japanese and Western tourists are just getting up to watch the procession of monks receiving morning alms. Again, despite posters and literature pleading people to stand back quietly and allow the locals to give alms in peace, Sean witnessed people shoving flashing cameras in monk's faces, trying to get the perfect shot in the pre-dawn light. People jostled and pushed and shoved as if this was a parade and not a solemn religious ceremony, and made a mockery of the ritual by trying to simultaneously offer food and take photos, ignoring the signs posted everywhere asking people not to do so. Sean came back to bed in a state of disgust.

This is all in a deeply spiritual and meaningful city for Lao people, people who would probably like to tell us to “Fuck Off,” go home and leave their country alone for once, but who need our precious American dollars to buy food for their families. Like the decision to take apart dangerous live bombs, the decision to deal drugs to tourists or the 'decision' to do anything that is made under the duress of crippling poverty, this is structured choice. That is to say, there is not really any real choice involved.

While we all play a part in this, it is the Americans who irritate me the most. Many are here as part of package tour groups (though it is a ridiculously easy country to travel in) and pronounce the country “Louse” or “Lay- oss” - if they even know that much. I witnessed a girl talking on the phone to her mother and drawling “Um, I dunno what city I'm in. L-U something? It doesn't really matter....” They, like all people, LOVE Laos for its easygoing and sweet nature, but it hasn't really cottoned for them that the reason this country is as poor as it is is BECAUSE OF THEM. They don't leave the tourist ghettos to go see the real damage that they caused, the limbless children and endless bomb craters, the spoiled farmland and drunk old men. They're all about the party, man. They stay on the party circuit and sit and smoke opium with drug dealers desperate to sell to them to support their own habits, eat manufactured tourist food in video cafes and then claim to have seen the 'real Laos' and have communed with locals. All the while, I can't help but see images of the war everywhere, the war that they desperately pretend did not happen here - if they even know about it at all.

Almost adding insult to injury is how genuinely nice Lao people are – they do not judge us as Westerners even though they have every right to. They do not all make the connection between our bulging fists of dollars and the erosion of Lao culture, between the poverty that drives them to risk explosion and death and our extreme wealth. If they too believe America, not MAG or Laos, should be paying to disarm all of these UXOs then they do not mention it to us. But it is true – the United States should have been held accountable by the World Court and forced to foot the entire bill long ago. Lao people were not combatants in the war – Laos was a sovereign nation attacked immorally and illegally and they are still attacked daily – by poverty and the bombs it helps unearth.

Junkboating.

By the time we arrived at Chennai airport I felt like a refugee, stumbling on my last legs toward safety. OK, it wasn't that bad. But my brain was frazzled to the point where I felt like I was on constantly on the verge of frustrated tears. In the last few weeks everything had gotten hard – food (whether Indian or Western) arrived at our table and was nothing like I had pictured, touts were aggressive and mean, buses meant to take 2 hours took 5. The beautiful temples and smiling children we encountered stopped sustaining me and each angering incident felt like a personal affront – I had hit a wall and I needed a break.

Our last real break had been over 6 weeks prior – an idyllic ten days spent snuggled gratefully in the lap of Anjuna Beach in Goa, eating and reading and walking up beaches hand in hand. A month later we were ready for what I had dreamed about for years – a lazy houseboating experience through the backwaters of Kerala. This is where the vast tributaries of India empty out into the ocean, creating a delta of channels and small waterways barely above sea level and populated by easy going villagers with an ancient sea faring culture. For most people, this is the highlight of a trip to Southern India, and is described by Lonely Planet as one of the top ten things to do before you die.



We started the backwaters on a huge high. I had arranged a homestay 12 kilometres from Alleppey (accessible only by boat) staying with a Keralan Syrian Orthodox family, one of the oldest surviving Christian sects in the world. The religion, food and customs fascinated me, and our room and the people we met were amazing. Thomas, the patriarch of the family, led us on a few village walks where he stopped and introduced us to the villagers and arranged for us to try toddy (the local coconut derived tipple.) We canoed through the purple dusk, fireflies illuminating the palms while Thomas and his friends sang haunting local music that echoed and bounced off of the houses and churches on the banks of the canal. The days were spent lazing in hammocks, playing with his adorable daughters and answering the giggling “Hello! One pen?” calls of the local children.



In a rare stroke of genius planning, we had arranged for the boat to pick us up at the homestay so we would not have to backtrack and go to Alleppey to embark. When it pulled up I was delighted – it was decorated tastefully and was quite posh and luxurious. Cool lemonade was handed to us immediately, and we sat down in our comfortable deck chairs to begin our 2 night trip.

Our crew consisted of 3 men – a slightly uncomfortable ratio, but they all seemed eager and happy to be there. There were 2 young men, the cook Adithaya, the server Rajan and an old geezery guy with one jutting tooth in his mouth who seemed to be the captain and whose toothlessness made his name impossible to decipher. Old Chomper donned a leather outback-style Aussie cowboy hat and took his seat to begin steering our boat. Took his seat RIGHT THERE. Practically in our living room. Normally I would be totally okay with this – but as we had not been able to find a “party boat” scenario where we would share with one or more couples on a large boat, this boat was actually quite small and this grizzled little man was kind of in my space. I took a few deep breaths, decided I was being a giant baby and relaxed.


We began the first leg of our journey. I had envisioned our ketuvalum (converted rice barge) as a floating sanctuary upon which we would read, soak in the scenery of the narrow backwater channels and just basically be in love. This was the image that flashed before my eyes when instead we were paraded, along with hundreds of other boats, down a wide shipping channel and docked approximately 2 hours from where we started, near a village. I poked my head down the hallway toward our cook and server. “Um...excuse me? We're stopping?” I asked.
“Yes, madam. Stopping for the lunch.” That made sense to Sean and I, and we sat down to a marvelous lunch of delicious fried fish, multiple curries and chutneys and fruit. The food was delicious, yes...but it was somewhat sullied by the frequent lung clearing hoarking and spitting of the men walking by on shore, some of whom couldn't resist a good “stop n' stare” as they walked by. Laughing at the absurdity, we finished and reverted to our deck chairs to hit the open water and start heading down smaller, more scenic canals.



We sat in those chairs for a good long time, and our crew did not re-emerge. After almost half an hour of throat clearing and loud chair repositioning, our attempts to draw attention to our urge to leave, Sean stole a glance down toward the kitchen and reported back to me.
“Um, hmm. They're all asleep on the floor.” I was indignant.
“What? They're what?”
“They're sleeping. Have a look.” Sure enough, down the hall all 3 men were sprawled out on the bare hardwood floor, mouths agape. Old Chomper was snoring. Loudly.



Finally, probably due to my shameless noise making, the men awoke. It was now approximately 3pm. “Now we go” said the server Rajan, who's English was the best. “Between 1 and 3 sun too hot – we take rest.” I gestured toward the multitudes of other houseboats happily chugging away down the canal.
“Do all boats stop? Um, I mean, these other boats seemed to go....” The server stared at me blankly. “Fine, okay – lets go?”

We spent 2 more hours peacefully cruising down the channel – only occasionally roused from relaxation by the crew coming to talk with the captain, kind of lolling about our living space and shouting (to be fair, speaking volume in India is considerably louder than in the West, so to their ears they were not shouting) – finally turning down a small waterway lined with homes and people fishing and bathing. I immediately began to relax – the dread I had been feeling melted away. To think I had been worrying that they were going to keep us in wide commercial canals! I looked at Sean. “See baby, this is what I've been dreaming of....” The boat began turning again, not toward the picturesque little lanes to our right. No, it turned left.


And we were then a tiny boat amongst many. A speck in a huge shipping channel, at least twice as wide as the one we'd been on earlier. The beautiful scenery melted away behind us and was replaced by supply boats on one side, and a featureless, unending rice paddy on the other. We pulled in for the night, docking within sight of a busy bridge with cars zooming across. Paradise? More like rush hour under the Patullo Bridge. Many other houseboats started pulling into the same area, which made me less angry at the early hour, but I was still irritated. The booking office that we had chosen to go with had seemed like the best in town – the agent had glossy photos, sample menus, had even offered to take us to see the boat himself. And he emphatically stressed that his company specialized in houseboating for people who wanted to see authentic Kerala – that his routes were superior to other companies and took houseboaters down channels normally unseen by tourists. I wanted to find the agent and break his thumbs.



After a lavish Southern Indian supper, we sat down in our comfy chairs and split a few beers. As the hour grew later, our crew's voices slowly began to increase in volume until they were shouting to one another at full volume. This generally signals that people are having a good time in India, and so while I was definitely irritated I tried to take it with good humour. I also realized that the living area was probably where the crew slept at night, so it was with a generous spirit that Sean and I retired early.

I had a much less generous spirit the next morning when I woke up. We had chosen “No AC” as an environmental measure, though it didn't seem to be reducing the pollutants our boat was spewing into the delicate eco-system and it left me waking groggy, confused and coated in sweat in the stagnant 40 degree air. Our crew, we could tell by the banging and loud voices, was already awake. Bleary eyed. I stumbled to the living area and surveyed the morning outside. Every other boat that had been docked the night before was gone. Vanished. I glanced at the clock and it was barely 9am – clearly the rest of the boats had started up and left even though their patrons had still been sleeping. Ours had just lazed around and waited for us to get up. A grey cloud of distrust and anger settled over my head – these guys were all about saving fuel and cutting corners. This was a sham.



We were on our way for mere hours when again, the crew wanted to stop. They wanted us to get off of the boat and have a look at shops. They wanted us to stop at this village and see a church. They wanted us to get off and look at a fish market to purchase prawns at over inflated prices so that they would get a cut. Everything, every stop and every move just began to seem more and more calculating. I was determined to get everything out of the boating that I could, even at this point, and so we declined their offers of shopping and sight seeing and chose rather to stay on the kettuvalum and try desperately to relax.

Today, however, the crew seemed much more comfortable with us. The lolling and conversations of yesterday began to get louder and more invasive they were basically on top of us. Adithya would thump up the hall, pass off a cell phone to the captain and lounge on our bench seating area while the mobile conversation took place. Then the two men would have a full volume exchange, leading Rajan to come barreling up the hall and join in. Even when they were working down the hall, every few minutes a lull in their conversation would happen – my shoulders would begin to drop – and then sharp machine gun bursts of Malayalam would shatter the silence. The thing was, they were so polite and friendly to us whenever they weren't loudly arguing and laughing with each other that we couldn't reasonably get angry – we couldn't tell them to get the fuck away from us and let us relax in peace. So instead I sat and stewed. I felt like the wife of an 18th century pioneer – my delicate sensibilities offended more and more with each hoark and loud burst of Malayalam – I wanted to shout “I. Don't. Belong. Here!” and then possibly have some sort of 'spell' or 'case of the vapours.'



But that can be the rub with Indian tourism – they have absolutely no problems charging extremely high fees for tourist services – fees comparable to those in SE Asia – yet they have absolutely NONE of the customer service training that goes along with it. Ninety Nine percent of the time I am totally fine with rustic. I am fine with non-existent service, with unapologetically bad mannered waiters and hotel staff. But NOT when I am paying a week's budget for 2 days – 2 days that are supposed to be blissful and perfect and high end. The decor, the food the boat itself was perfect. But the lack of personal space, the lazy itinerary down huge canals and the clear attempts to get away with using as little fuel as possible – I was that kind of disappointed that makes you pout and want to slam doors and sleep all day. Except I couldn't, because an old man with one tooth was shouting and sitting in my seat.

Finally Sean had had enough (and you know that means it has gone too far.) After our crew's epic nap on the second day he piped up and asked “Um, are we going down any actual small channels?”
“Oh, yes yes. Of course. Tomorrow. Would you like to buy some beer or wine items?” We were past laughing – I just saw rupees floating away in front of my eyes.

The final morning we woke and were ferried back to the dock in Alleppey by 10am. There were no small channels. No scenes of local life. It was basically a Disneyfied boat trip around a big lake and characterless waterways. We should have stayed at the homestay, where the amazing scenery can be experienced with much less of an environmental footprint and we actually got to interact with the local culture instead of being served by it. This kind of disappointment is hard to get over.

And so I think from that point on we were basically done. We saw the beautiful tea plantations of Munnar, spotted wild elephants in Kumily, and enjoyed the towering statuary and oceanside temples of Tamil Nadu, but everything felt hard. Every bus ride seemed fraught with misunderstanding, every hotel was dodgy and every meal was unappetizing. People, fiercely proud and protective of their threatened Tamil language, refused to speak to us in English, there were no signs posted and people seemed angered when we asked for help. Guides demanded extra tips and fees at the end of tours, and drivers unabashedly ripped us off. Everyday was difficult, hot, dirty and tiring. Nothing seemed beautiful anymore. We started referring to the day we would arrive in Bangkok as “Thaimas.”

I wish I could say that we ended India on a high. Sometimes I wish I could be one of those hippies who comes here and exotifies the people to a point that they can do no wrong, and leaves with images of Krishna and Shiva dancing on their eyelids. But frankly, for me on some days it was hard enough to be tolerant, let alone enamoured.

At the Chennai airport we settled in for a drink and some incredibly overpriced bar snacks at the lounge and breathed a sigh of relief. Sean looked at me, earnestly and said “So, you wanna get a houseboat in Kerala?” I couldn't even laugh at the thought. But somewhere out there, I'm sure Old Chomper sure was......

Thanksgiving.

Samaparp Satpretpry is the greatest friend to have in Thailand. If he lived in Switzerland he would be the greatest friend to have in Switzerland. The same would be said for Ghana, Peru or any country he lived in. The reason is – Sam likes to drive, he likes to chat and he likes to show off his country, and he often utters phrases that start with “Well, you can stay at one of my family's condos and then we'll.....”

Sam, coming from a well heeled family, had attended four years of high school in Winnipeg (of all places to send a Thai person) and he and Sean had been Dungeons and Dragons pals. He moved back to Thailand after University and Sean contacted him for the first time in years on facebook mere weeks before we landed in Bangkok. Not only did he meet us at the airport and take us for 2am Chinese food, the next day he laid out a road atlas of Thailand on the table and over drinks (for him, 4 cokes and for us – Chang beer) detailed a week long trip of the North he was planning. It would take him to the Northernmost point in Thailand, the largest dam in Thailand, the Thai-Burma border and, for good measure, the floating market at Damnoen Saduak. Oh, and did we want to join him?

Well, emphatic yeses were exclaimed, and we set out a few days late,r after Sean and I explored Ayuthaya and Kanchanaburi independently. With Sam we stopped and cycled around the ancient ruins at Sukothai and Si Satchanalai, and as we got closer to Mae Sot (the Thai town on the border with Burma) Sam revealed that he had arranged a day trip into the Burmese town of Myawaddy for us and that we wouldn't need visas. Now we had a bit of a dilemma. Sean didn't want to go to Burma at all, but rather than risk offending his long lost pal he grinned and beared it and we crossed the “Friendship” bridge the next day in a hired van with a driver.

Sean did not want to come here, and I suppose I shouldn't have either, but the Lonely Planet articles I had read described Burma's empty beaches, a remote and ethereal temple balanced on a cliff by a single strand of Buddha's hair, its friendly and open people and of a rich animist tradition. I was excited! I saw this daytrip as a precursor to a longer, thorough tour through Burma, from Rangoon to Mandalay and Inle Lake, and I was thankful to Sam for the opportunity to introduce Sean to the idea of this future trip.

Sean had every reason to abhor the idea of visiting Burma – and the number one reason is Myanmar. Myanmar is the new name (a name that the people do not support) that the military junta has christened Burma in the hope that the West will drop its negative associations with the brutal regime that controls the country. This is the same government that has repeatedly jailed democratically elected president (though she has never been allowed to take office) Aung San Suu Kyi, that has shot peacefully protesting monks dead in the street and that refuses to allow any sort of free speech. This is fascism with no ideology behind it, and these are the officials fattening themselves with pork and beer bought with money bribed out of honest people's pockets. This is a hell on earth. Sean was a member of an Amnesty International group in high school, and Burma was one of his pet causes. I could see on his face that he was also excited to see the culture that he has studied and revered, but was deeply conflicted about this visit.

I, on the other hand, ascribe to a belief that even in countries with highly corrupt and violent governments there can be benefit to visiting. I wanted to remind the Burmese that the West has not forgotten about them, that we care and we are not all ignoring them like our governments are. I wanted to put money directly into the hands of guesthouses and restaurants and small shops. And as we entered Burma in our AC van I realized that this was not the kind of daytrip we were going to have.

Myawaddy is not a normal Burmese town, I should point out. While everywhere in Burma people are crippled by poverty, hopelessness and ennui, Myawaddy is a tribally administered area and these problems are coupled with corruption and violence at the highest levels. This is like “Burma Extreme” where the Karen people who are a minority elsewhere are armed and in charge. There is lore that there are pockets of Thai nationals who have been stuck in settlements in the hills for decades, and that if they emerge and try to make it home they will be surrounded on all sides and shot.

This is not a pretty picture. This is not a pleasant place to be.

We had embarked on a tour of poverty and desperation, and we were those people in a van staring out our windows and gawking at the locals. And, in true ironic style, the day we did this tour was Canadian Thanksgiving.

Our modern minivan began navigating streets and small alleys to visit a few places of note, and immediately I noticed the unpaved streets and open sewage running in the gutters. We pulled up to a strange Buddhist temple, the grounds paved in shiny pool tiles and decorated with humongous statues of “Nats,” half human/half animal gods that are remnants of the native animism of this region and that have been absorbed in Buddhism the way that we have absorbed things like the Easter Bunny into Christianity. The temple was filled with people, lazing around in the cool shade and staring at us with absolute indifference. I realized that this was midday on a Monday, and I asked the guide why so many people were here. Shouldn't they be working? Our guide, and extremely sensitive and educated Thai man who spoke the local dialect well, did little to conceal his laughter.
“No jobs! No work. No money. So come to temple.”

We parked outside of the local market, and left the coolness of the van. A wall of moist heat hit me, making me queasy with its intensity, and I prepared for the mad rush of touts and vendors who I expected would swarm us. But no one even approached us. No one tried to sell us a thing, until we were leaving the market and we passed by a large amount of cycle rickshaws parked in one area, their owners napping in the bucket seats or chatting in groups. One young guy noticed us and shyly asked
“rickshaw?” The small glimmer of hope in his eyes slammed into my chest.

As we got back in the van, I noticed that the bank was closed. It was 1pm on a Monday, and the “Myanmar Bank” was gated up and deserted. The guide saw us pointing and talking about it.
“Yah, banks close now.”
“Is it a holiday?” I asked. “Is this normal?”
“Yah, normal. You put money in bank, government take it. Government take your money if they want it. So, no one use bank. Bank have no business, bank close. Bank close for good.” We stood, stunned, at the prospect of a country forced to close its banks because of its own corruption. There wasn't even pretense here. No one was pretending that things were okay.

Back in the van, we wound through streets and small lanes, seeing one sight again and again – small bamboo and thatch huts filled with men. The guide told us that these were casinos – the only businesses that thrive in this part of Burma. We also passed throngs of women and children just sitting around, their eyes lifting to ours and then slowly sinking back down. No one had discernible expressions on their faces – rather than seem happy or angry at our presence they seemed to not care at all. This was something that I had never encountered. This was hopelessness.

And why not? Why have hope? We passed beautiful houses on our way to the next sight, multistoried mansions in comparison to the reed thatched cottages everywhere around us. These, the guide explained, were the houses of the government men – the Karen tribal leaders. We saw, with our very own eyes, huge shipments of building materials bearing the stamps of the UN – supplies meant for the Cyclone Nargis victims in the Irrawaddy Delta a thousand kilometres from here. We saw them being used to build houses for the local politicians. What must these people think of us? What kind of manufactured truth must have trickled down from Rangoon to explain the presence of these materials here? With the heavy censorship of the internet and state run media, what chance did the average citizen of Myawaddy have to learn about what was happening in the world, what was happening in their own country? My face burned with a mixture of anger and shame.

Though my brain was calling out in was in distress, we had one more sight to see. We climbed to a graceful Wat perched on a green hill, removing our shoes and climbing the hundreds of stairs with our bare feet sizzling painfully on hot marble. At the top we were greeted by snoozing monks and women with babies, as well as a painted and gold-leafed tortoise that a monk roused from under a bench for our amusement. I stood on the top of the stairs, gazing out onto the countryside of Burma, and I felt completely numb. I wanted nothing more than to leave this place and forget what I had seen. Us being here was of no benefit to the locals. Sean and I couldn't even make eye contact.

We descended the steps and a small boy about 9 years old silently approached us, holding out a bouquet of greenery he had in his hand. It didn't even contain flowers, it was just leaves and ferns. I have a policy of never giving money to children (I don't want to encourage the adults who put them there in the first place when they should be in school or playing) so Sean and I ducked our heads and murmured “Sorry, no. Sorry. No....” We got in the van.

As we pulled away the little boy's eyes met mine through the window.

“STOP!” I hollered. “Stop. Stop the car.” I reached into my wallet and pulled out 150 Thai Baht (5 bucks Canadian) and thrust it at the child, accepting his bouquet. He looked at the money quizzically, and our guide explained to him how much it was worth in Burmese kyat. Slowly, and in my memory it is in slow motion, his eyes widened. He was stunned for a few moments, and then magically, his face broke into a huge smile. Our van was pulling away and he chased after it, waving the money in the air in thanks or celebration or shock, like he didn't know what to do. I sat in silence the rest of the way back to Thailand.

We arrived back in Mae Sot mid afternoon, and sat down at a Thai-Muslim restaurant near the town's mosque for a fiery curry. While we were waiting for our food, Sam asked us, “So, what did you think of Burma?” Sean and I both struggled for words.
“Um, interesting. Thank you for arranging the trip.” We headed for the Golden Triangle, and didn't speak about it again.

There was something so ironic, so terrible about being in Burma on Thanksgiving, especially the hope-drained city of Myawaddy. For it is a special kind of evil to rob people of their natural inclination to work and create – when the instincts that make us human have been robbed from us, what is left? When we are herded into casinos, when our money and future are stolen, when we elect a woman democratically only to have her rot under house arrest rather than lead the government – hope is lost. This is not a “triumph over adversity” happy ending sort of story – there is no revolution for Burma, peaceful or violent. The military government is relentless, corruption is rife and human rights are meaningless, yet countries like India and China still trade with them, gobbling up their vast oil reserves and textiles, their greed making the West's feeble embargoes meaningless.

The Burmese government dip their fat sticky fingers into everything, including the small amounts made from the burgeoning tourism industry, and so it is nearly impossible to backpack Burma without lining the government's coffers. Even sacred cows like foreign aid medicines and food supplies are confiscated and profits divided between the rich and important. There is a sense of futility – even activists have given up.

People who speak out disappear.
The only reason Aung San Suu Kyi hasn't is because of her high profile, her Nobel Peace Prize.
In Burma, there is often no hope.

But there can be comfort. One thing – one memory of this day keeps me from despair. Throughout Southeast Asia, spirit houses are found in the yards of those who practice Theravada Buddhism (about 90% of the population.) They are elaborately decorated shrines, a small representation of your home that sits at eye level atop a pedestal, like a large birdhouse that is meant to be a place that disembodied spirits can live happily without cursing the inhabitants of your home. Every evening people present it with offerings – fruit, juice boxes and yoghurt, candies, and it is not uncommon in Thailand and Laos for a spirit house to be very costly and posh looking. It wasn't until we were driving through a slum-like neighbourhood on our way back to the border that I saw one in Burma. It was made of plain, unadorned corrugated metal, the same metal used to roof the more permanent looking structures in town, and it was bent into a simple curved A-frame shape. It was perched in front of a small shack, its crudeness unlike any other spirit house I had seen, but still unmistakable as such. I imagined a woman, filled with faith and love and concern for her family, setting sweets and fruits in front of the shrine whenever she could afford to. I can't decide whether the image is heartbreaking or uplifting.

They can't take everything from Burma. People will still dream, even if they have to be shaken awake to do so.

So there. Now you know. Tell other people.