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Tethered

Tethered

Last night I watched a movie called “Free Solo,” a
documentary that chronicled Alex Honnold’s untethered ascent of El Capitan in
Yosemite.  Using only his hands and feet — and most of
all his brain (which apparently has a less-responsive amygdala than most), Honnold was able to climb up the sheer face of the 3,000-foot cliff.
No ropes, no belts, buckles or belays. Just the man and the mountain.
By contrast, I recently ascended 400 feet in a balloon to see the temples of Angkor Wat. It couldn’t have
been safer. The balloon was tethered to the ground and the passengers were
encased in wire mesh. I was still weak in the knees.

And last night, I was weak-kneed again. It didn’t even help that I knew the guy survived. There’s something primitive about it, something hard-wired in us to recoil when we see another human being clinging precariously to a sheer rock face. 

No doubt about it, the untethered experience makes for great cinema — but when it comes to my own ascents, I’ll take them tethered every time. 

Coconuts!

Coconuts!

I’ve yet to write about the food in Cambodia, a topic worthy of several posts. But let me say a quick word about coconuts.

They were everywhere, at roadside stands, alongside Angkor Wat, in the city and in the country. Families served them to quench our thirst after a hot, dusty drive. And as long as the straws weren’t used (and I don’t think they were), they were the most hygienic drink of all.

The ones pictured above were served at the Vietnam border, where we sat for a few minutes to look nonchalant in our pursuit of photos. Maybe that was why their milk tasted all the sweeter.

Other Side of the World

Other Side of the World

Coverage of the president’s trip to Vietnam last night has me already nostalgic about my trip to Cambodia. There the newscaster was, standing in a Hanoi street while motorcycles and pedestrians buzzed around him.

I was just there, I thought, I was just on other side of the world — because Cambodia is right next door, of course, and I did glimpse Vietnam when we visited the border region.  
These trips I’ve taken recently to Cambodia, Malawi, Nepal and other countries are for information-gathering and storytelling. They are, above all, business trips. But I have a personal mission for them, too. I’m hoping they keep the wonder alive, that they help me appreciate every scintilla of difference I see when I’m abroad, that they remind me always that we live in a big old world.  
Longest Day

Longest Day

When the plane took off from a steamy Phnom Penh runway, it was a few minutes after midnight, February 27. That was almost 35 hours ago — and it’s still February 27.

I have nothing against February 27. It’s a perfectly fine day. Nearing the end of winter, promise of spring to come.

But by the time I turn off the light tonight, I will have had about 40 hours worth of February 27, and that will be more than enough.

Fifty-six hours ago I was interviewing a trafficking survivor as the sun set behind a palm tree.

Now I’m back in Virginia, glad to be home — and waiting for February 27 to end!

Leaving Cambodia

Leaving Cambodia

We are leaving today, leaving the rice fields and the temples, the motorized rickshaws and the funny little plows, leaving a country that made me feel at home the second I arrived and hasn’t stopped since.

In a great irony of traveling, I feel like I’m just getting the hang of the place — able to pick up a few words from the jumble of foreign sounds, knowing what to order on the menu — when it’s time to leave.

But though my physical body will be whisked from this place at the end of the day, my mind will linger, will puzzle out the sights and sounds, will recall the gurgle of fountains in the Golden Temple Hotel and the generous hospitality of every home we entered, no matter how humble.

Today it is summer heat and warm breezes. Tomorrow will be damp, chill winter. But I’ll keep in mind, as I always do, that the world is large, and there are more worlds within it that we can possibly imagine.

Smiling Faces

Smiling Faces

It’s a smile of knowledge and kindness, of wisdom and mercy. It’s the smile of a bodhisattva, and it appears 216 times in the Bayon temple of Angkor Thom, the last stop on yesterday’s temple tour.

The smiles are both inscrutable and accessible, plain and adorned. They were hewn not in solid rock but in huge blocks of sandstone. The smiles were carved in pieces, and in this way they resemble real human smiles, which are often constructed of humor and rue, laughter and longing. 

                                                                                          
The faces of Bayon are a good memory to take home. A smile of compassion for the people I’ve met, for the lost and hopeless, for children playing marbles in a dry and dusty yard, for shop owners sweeping the dirt floor of their new business, for all the blurred scenery on the road, for life itself.

Temple Day

Temple Day

My day off was conveniently timed with our presence near one of Earth’s great World Heritage sites.

We began in the dark, walking across the moat on a floating bridge with only moonlight and phone light to guide us.  We ate a picnic breakfast as Angkor Wat emerged from the night.

A couple of hours exploring it …

then it was off by tuk-tuk to Ta Prohm, the ruined temple pictured at the top of this post.

Bayon with its great carved faces is still to come, but I’m thinking it will be hard to match the evocative world of Ta Prohm with its twisted trees and downed pillars, its roots and its riches.

“Look on me, ye mighty and despair,” Shelley’s lines, come to mind. But in this case there are no “lone and level sands” stretching far away.

Instead, there are piles of rock and lichened carvings and tree trunks still as stone.

Bamboo Bridge

Bamboo Bridge

An early walk yesterday morning along the Mekokng, my first solo stroll since arriving in Cambodia.

Eventually I found myself at the Bamboo Bridge, a rickety contraption that made me feel as if every step would be my last. It squeaked and it rustled and gave enough with each footfall that I almost turned around immediately.

But in the spirit of travel (which means doing things I don’t usually do), I made it almost a third of the way across before making my way back.

I read later that every year locals disassemble the bridge before the rainy season and rebuild it again in the dry. Which could mean they’ve very, very good at this — or that the bridge has all the stability of a carnival ride.

Cheep Cheep!

Cheep Cheep!

Yesterday began with an interview I’ll never forget. A woman who left home and family to work in a factory in Malaysia — but ended up in domestic servitude, beaten and abused. She finally returned to Cambodia but was paid not a penny of what she earned.

She exuded sadness and regret, but you could tell how much her children loved her. They knew what she had done for them, even though they couldn’t express it.

Luckily, we ended the day on a light note — at a chick farm that’s providing a good income for a father and his family.

Years ago, this man also left Cambodia in search of work. He wasn’t cheated as the woman was, but this successful business is guaranteed to keep him here. After the interview, I took a tour of the chick farm.

Is there anything cuter than a clutch of baby chicks?  I’ll let you decide!

Moon over the Mekong

Moon over the Mekong

It was dark when we arrived at Kompong Cham, and the bridge over the Mekong was ablaze with blue lights. We had driven a long and dusty road, so the two high-rise hotels (10 or 11 floors each!) and the bustle of restaurants and traffic had a mirage-like feel.

After dinner, we strolled back to the hotel along the river. There were street vendors and skateboarders and a group of school kids playing a game. There were open-air shops and music blaring. It was nothing like what the word Mekong means to me.

The Mekong flows through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. But it’s Vietnam that has colored it for me. Seeing the river now makes me feel like my mother did when we rode a train through Chateau Thierry and other World War I towns in France, names she remembered her father mentioning from his time in the signal corps during the Great War.

Hanoi, Gulf of Tonkin, the Mekong. These are not names I associate with ice cream carts and a warm summer evening. They are full of war and pain and death.

Or at least they were. I changed my mind about one of them last night.