Ticket To Ride

I can’t see. My eyebrows are orange with dust. I cannot see them, but I know they must be; they were yesterday. Every now and then when her legs clench down on my hips or her fingernails dig into my shoulders, I remember Debi is behind me and I am more or less responsible for not killing both of us.

The sudden pain from her fingernails or the flashes of adrenaline that her periodic death grips induce are actually good, they snap me out of my daze and remind me that I am riding a motorcycle on a very bumpy dirt road. I can usually tell where the significant bumps are based on the amount of terror I’ve managed to induce in my passenger which is good since I really can’t see through the dust and wind. The Honda Dream is capable of all. The worst dirt roads are nothing, the dirt bike a luxury no one can afford, fuck it, let’s take a Dream. The Honda Dream is capable of anything. I unfortunately am not. The road is shimmering though I can’t tell if it’s the heat or the tears formed by dust and wind whipping up under, over, and around my glasses as if they weren’t even there. Helmets? Helmets? You’re joking right? Name your top three memories from this trip A voice. Coming from somewhere behind me, distant. I am simply trying to steer through the hunger and exhaustion right now; all my favorite memories of this trip are light years from my brain. When I get a bit feverish I tend to disappear into fantasyland and right when Debi was yelling her question in my left ear Scotty was yelling in the other ear, it’s only a Honda dream Jim, you can’t push ‘er any more than you are. And then the wheels slipped a bit on a curve that ended up being sharper than I had anticipated and I realized Scotty was right (is he ever wrong?). I slowed up a bit and tried to organize a response. At that moment all time seemed a bit compressed and I couldn’t for example have told you if that slippage of the back tire was my fault or perhaps I was still on the back of the bike on my way down from Sarangkot to Pokhara, Nepal when the bike also slipped a bit coming round a corner. I did have a distinct memory that sprang to mind but I discarded it because it was less than an hour ago that we crossed the river and strolled up to the Kachon village, a moment that seemed lifted from Indiana Jones, provided Indy were to finally split into a triplicate of American and British particles. For a moment it felt as if we were the first westerners to have ever entered the village, but the girl with the Brittany Spears t-shirt on seemed to indicate that was not true. And then there was the coca cola and exchanging of money for a tour of the spirit houses. But for a moment, walking up from the sandbar where our boatman dropped us, already feeling the first signs of a fever and the beating afternoon sun cooking my face, for just a brief moment I understood what it must have been like to discover an entirely new world, to make contact with people that had never seen white men or women before, and though it might be illusion, it was nevertheless a curiously exhilarating moment.

Beyond that immediate memory my brain was too fogged to come up with a true answer. Later over a late lunch I finally decided that indeed Sarangkot would be one, Udaipur at twilight would be another and our more recent trip through Kunglor Cave would be the third. Though the food helped somewhat, the fever tapered but did not depart for a few days.

We had come out to Ban Lung, Cambodia because we knew the northeast corner of Cambodia was likely to be the least touristy part of the country and I for one knew that I needed to ease myself back into the concept of other white people being around. From the moment we crossed under the Laos border gates, Cambodia was immediately and obviously different from Laos, though in ways that are difficult to explain; I might be tempted to say Cambodia is more modern provided you were to take modern in the narrowest possible sense, but perhaps it would be even better to say that Cambodia is louder and more exuberant than Laos. Even the landscape changed significantly once we crossed the border, the trees were no longer leafless and dead looking, the timing of the monsoon here is obviously quite different than it is in Laos.

We crossed the border at a no name town about two hours north of Strung Treng. After an uneventful bus ride to Stung Treng we set about hiring a taxi (the main mode of transport in the remoter regions of Cambodia is taxi). But this is not a taxi in the sense of a New York City yellow cab. A Cambodian taxi is a white, late model Toyota Camry. The Camry is considered to hold six passengers plus a driver and the purchase of a ride is by seat, but if you don’t have enough people to fill all the seats you are expected either to wait until there are enough people or simply buy up the extra seats. We ended up buying the extra seats since we only have thirty days and Strung Treng seemed more of a crossroads than a destination. We spent the afternoon there waiting on a bus from Phnom Phen which might have been bearing some people interested in going to Ban Lung. We had a bit of an explore around the market and, much to the amusement of the locals, Matt and I decided to get haircuts.

It was nearly nightfall when we gave up and bought the extra back seat and a Cambodian woman bought the extra seat in the front so that we set out with only five people in the car, which I suppose sounds normal to someone who hasn’t been traveling southeast asia for five months where the general rule is if you can move, there’s room for more.

Perhaps the reason I say Cambodia is more exuberant than Laos is reflected by the curious characters we first encountered, namely a man named Mr. T in Strung Treng who spoke excellent English and spent the afternoon helping us organize the taxi. It is difficult now to recall any exact thing he did that could be called exuberant, but he had a personality that was somehow larger than life, which was shockingly loud compared to the people we met in Laos, who were every bit as friendly and helpful, but simply quieter and more reserved by nature. The second person I spoke with at any length was Mr. Leng of the Star Hotel in Ban Lung. We arrived fairly late at night, round tem Pm or so and Matt and Debi headed straight for bed. My seemingly chronic insomnia drove me downstairs to have a beer with Mr. Leng (a beer poured over ice, Cambodian-style he informed me, which isn’t as bad at it sounds).

It was Mr. Leng who gave me the hand drawn map we used the next day to try and find some waterfalls. Debi wasn’t feeling well so Matt and I set out on our own. We found one waterfall with relative ease, but then failed to find the others. We did however ride through some quite amazing though obviously replanted clear-cut forests. And we got an introduction to Cambodia scooter riding. We’re no slouches with the Honda dream and we’d been down plenty of bad dirt roads in Laos, but neither of us had ever been passed by a man on a motorbike with his wife on the back who had a bag of vegetables in one arm and was breastfeeding a baby with the other arm, all the while bouncing over gullies and ditches as if they weren’t there. It makes you feel. Well. Like you can do better.

That afternoon we went back for Debi and then headed out to Boeng Yeak Lom lake, a crater lake formed by an asteroid or something of that nature since it really is a perfectly round lake quite obviously the result of some very large object. Since there are no volcanoes in the area the asteroid story makes since, though I have no idea whether it’s actually true. Regardless of origin the lake was a very beautiful, idyllic spot to spend the afternoon swimming, floating and generally lying about doing nothing.

The next morning we set out for the small village of Kachon people one of several ethnic minorities living in the hills here near the Vietnamese border. The ride out was fine and we managed to find a boat and cross the river to the village despite having no language in common with the people helping us. Rural Cambodian villages are not all that different from rural Laos villages, but this was the first time that the chief had come out to greet us, while the entire village gathered around to watch. We walked through the spirit shrines, which are something like a local variation on crypts, but with effigies representing the deceased person’s occupation.

It wasn’t until later in the even when we were having dinner at the hotel restaurant and Debi casually said yeah that was really nice, quite lovely the way the chief came out and the children were sweet and that guy with six fingers and the boat ride… Wait?! What?! Yes it was only then the Matt and I realized we had apparently overlooked the fact that our boatman had an extra appendage on one of his hands. I don’t know about you, but given that we were in a situation where no one could understand each other and there was no harm in saying whatever you wanted in English, I probably would have said, hey guys don’t all look at once but that bloke over there has an extra finger.

But maybe that’s just me.