If You Can Dodge Traffic You Can Dodge a Ball

If Patches O'Houlihan is to believed, ESPN8 "the ocho" ought to start filming dodgeball games in Southeast Asia. No crosswalks, no traffic lights or signs, and sidewalks that exist solely for parking; as of this writing, I have not seen an accident or near miss. The difference seems to come from a recognition by drivers that the road is not personal property. It is a space shared by cars, motorbikes, bicycles, pedestrians, vendors, and animals. My observation is that the maximum speed for any given vehicle on a stretch of road is much lower than what an American driver would hit; the difference between the minimum and maximum speeds for the American would be much larger. Drivers here don't stop but they seem to be aware of their surroundings so it is safe for a pedestrian to cross eight lanes of traffic while no driver is inconvenienced. Traffic moves much more fluidly.  There are many motorbikes on the roads and they are able to dodge pedestrians much more effectively than cars and trucks.  It seems to terrify most of the people that I have tried to cross the road with, but I am continually amazed at just how fluid it is.

Although I can handle the traffic, it does make it much more difficult for those who are not as agile.  Near my hostel in Chiang Mai there was one pedestrian light.  You had to call it yourself and it would give you a 15 second red light to cross four lanes of one way traffic.  Usually, once the drivers didn't see anyone else crossing the street, they continued on, regardless of the light.  One night I saw a three legged dog trying to cross the road.  The curbs are over a foot high and there is no shoulder on the road so it was difficult for him to cross one lane at a time which is what I often did.  Instead, he patiently sat by the crossing button until someone came along and pressed it, allowing him to cross.  Although it took him longer than the allotted fifteen seconds to cross, drivers still waited for him.

Being in Singapore for the last few days has made me realize just how much I missed orderly traffic.  As much as I got used to dealing with dodging traffic, it is so much less stressful when you are reasonably certain that someone won't run a red light and kill you.

Thanksgiving, Cambodian Style

I'm one of the few Americans who does not particularly enjoy Thanksgiving. I find it stressful, I'm not a huge fan of traditional Thanksgiving foods, and it is placed so close to both Veterans Day and Christmas on the calendar that I think it would be more useful in March or August when you've been in long period of no days off.

I haven't met many Americans so far in Cambodia so I didn't find anyone who was longing for a Thanksgiving. This is the third time in the past four years that I have spent the holiday on my own so I wasn't too upset because I didn't have my turkey.

S-21

I arrived in Phnom Penh on Tuesday. On Wednesday I went to the museum at the site of the former S-21 prison of the Khmer Rouge. The site was a school that had been repurposed as a prison and you could still see how it looked like a school. The buildings still were set up as classrooms, except for lines set apart every few feet, indicating where a cell wall had been located; one of the buildings still had the cells intact. The playground equipment was still in the yard. Only later is it revealed that the equipment had been utilized as instruments of torture. The area is full of flowers and palm trees; the complex is still surrounded by double metal walls and barbed wire. The museum was emotionally draining and I went back and had a pretty low key evening.

Excavated graves

Memorial stupa

The next morning I rented a bike and rode an hour through Cambodian traffic to the Killing Fields at Cheung Ek.  I was shocked at just how small the complex is. The prisoner drop off, detention center, and office were all within ten meters of each other. No buildings were left after the war so the complex is just fields, along with a memorial near the entrance. As I looked out, the fields are marked with depressions in the earth. It looked a little strange at first but I later learned that these were the sites of graves not massive enough to designate with extra signs. I spent a few hours taking in the area and learning about the Khmer Rouge. At the entrance (and the end of the tour) is a memorial.
This stupa is filled with bones so high that it was impossible to stand in it and see what was in the levels near the top; a photograph could only capture maybe a quarter of it in any given shot.

I had an hour ride back to Phnom Penh in the early afternoon heat to contemplate everything I had learned in the past 24 hours. This genocide is so recent that I have met Cambodians who are not too old and remember relatives fleeing the country. I have never been one to take account of what I have; this is the first Thanksgiving where I felt compelled to think through what I take for granted in my daily life. This trip as a whole has made me much more aware of what I have come to assume is normal but is actually a sign of privilege. However, spending Thanksgiving seeing the mechanisms of genocide first hand was by far the most thankful that I have ever felt for all that I take for granted in my life.

Scuba weekend

The only hard dates that I had for this trip was 9-23 Dec I had a massage course in Chiang Mai. I had almost three weeks from when I left Bangkok until the start of the course so my original plan was to spend a few days in Phnom Penh, another few days in Siem Reap (near Angkor) then the rest of the time in Laos. It always seems like there is so much time when you write plans down.

After spending a depressing few days in Phnom Penh and realizing that I had no beach plans until Christmas, I decided to pull out my scuba referral from last winter and finally get my open water certification. A dive shop in Sihanoukville, Scuba Nation, had an overnight trip that worked perfectly with my schedule and they were very accomodating of my last minute plan to get certified. So, Saturday morning I hopped on a bus and a few hours later I was in a pool. A few hours at the dive shop doing drills, written work, and talking to the instructor and I was cleared to go on the boat the next morning.

The boat ride out was a little rough but I was fine at first. Almost everyone else was feeling a little sick so they skipped breakfast, leaving only a few of us to eat it. I should have remembered how pineapple makes me sick. It is one of my favorite foods but it makes me sick every time I eat it. So, after eating at least two thirds of a pineapple in pretty rough water, I decided I needed to lay down. Of course, I had been applying sunscreen but every place to lay down on the boat was sunny so I laid with my back to the sun. I think you can figure out how this story ends. I hadn't been sick my entire trip but the combination of pineapple, rough sea, and sunburn proved more than my stomach could handle.

Soon we arrived at the dive site. One other diver was also doing his open water dives so we were paired up. Actually being in the ocean was so different from being in the pool. The water was warm and we had over 20m visibility. We did a few drills at the beginning of each dive, then floated along for the next 45 minutes or so, doing two dives each day.

Aside from the burn (which seemed to bother everyone else more than me at the time) the trip was exactly what I needed: time to sit in the sun, float around in the water, and let my brain be overwhelmed by something crazy, such as breathing underwater.