In Country

Vietnam, on kind of a whim. I just spent the last five days in and around Kampot, a seaside town in Cambodia, and site of this plane crash. I was actually up on a nearby mountain on the morning of the accident. I didn’t see/hear anything at the time but the weather was so bad & visibility so poor, it doesn’t come as a total shock. This morning I saw helicopters returning from the mountain, transporting, I was told, the bodies of the dead.

It cast a pall over what was a very enjoyable time in Kampot and the surrounding areas–the old and hollowed-out French seaside resort of Kep, the spooky abandoned hill station of Bokor, the beach town of Sihanoukville for a night.

I met many interesting people in Kampot. Last night I ate porcupine. It was good–I was about to write “surprisingly good” but the thought of eating porcupine had honestly never, ever crossed my mind until I was about to take the first bite, so I really had no expectation to confound or overcome. Porcupine tastes like venison. I can report this with a high degree of accuracy because I had both at the same meal, a late-night affair with a Sri Lankan restaurant owner named Lucki and a Cambodian named Thom.

Cambodia overall was an amazing place. The temples of Angkor were truly among the awesomest, most awe-inspiring achievements of humanity I’ve ever encountered. The Killing Fields and the S21 Genocide Museum went as far to the opposite pole as you can imagine; the remnants of an autogenocide that wiped out nearly 2 million people, or an insane 25 percent of the country. Phnom Penh was both dirt poor and buzzing with activity, seedy and edgy but nothing like what it used to be 10 or 15 years ago by all accounts. What a country; I’m already a little sad to have left it. More pictures and stories to come (& I’m trying to keep up with the “Picture-A-Day” thing, but I haven’t had good access for the last few.)

Anyway, Vietnam. The sadness of leaving a place always gives way to thrill of going somewhere new. There’s a freshly-opened (to foreigners) border crossing near Kampot, and it seemed a good enough reason to go to Vietnam. I’m in Ha Tien right now, a friendly little town that seems very unaccustomed to seeing Western faces–I’ve done the “Hello!” game with wide-eyed little kids more this afternoon than I think I did in all of Cambodia (this is when children run up to you and shriek “Hello!” and then run off squealing with laughter.)

The excitement of the first few hours after crossing a border is one of my favorite things about traveling. New words, new food, new people, everything open and possible, all anticipation. Ladies suddenly riding bicycles in pajamas and cone hats. Banh mi sandwiches from street carts. A sightseeing ride along the coast with a charming moto driver who, according to his business card, can “Speak More Five Languages as: French, English, Cambodian, Chinese and Vietnamese.”

I’m off in the morning to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City.