Cambodia

I have been sucking at this lately, so my Year of the Rat resolution is as follows: be a better blogger. If it means anything to you, I am constantly chastising myself for not posting more and am often afflicted with a vague sense of dread and self-loathing for shirking my responsibility. It’s like a steady low-grade fever, which I believe is also a symptom of malaria.

Anyway–doings a-transpirin’. I’m using the free wifi in Singapore’s futuristical Changi Airport right now as I wait to catch a flight to Melbourne. I’m going to meet with my editor there before heading to New Zealand to write for this guidebook. I’ll be covering the entire North Island, which includes, among other things: the cities of Auckland and Wellington; geothermal oddities like geysers, exploding mud pools, and volcanic lakes; and an attraction called Sheepworld.

I left Vietnam ten days ago and have been in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and even Indonesia (for a half day) since. It’s been a fantastic, if wallet-destroying, time & I will write about it all in the next post.

Just one other thing to mention for now: it almost passed without my noticing it, but in the midst of all the Tet/Lunar New Year festivities, February 9th marked my own new year–one year since I left New York and started traveling. It’s not even a trip anymore; I don’t know what exactly to call it, but it’s been real interesting.

Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, 2007

When I’m not walking or riding on my friends’ scooters, I get around Saigon by means of the xe om, the omnipresent and omniannoying-until-you-need-to-use-one scooter-taxis. “Xe,” I am told, means “vehicle” and “om” means “hug”, which is an adorable if entirely misleading depiction of the experience. I’ll be buying a cheap used scooter in the next couple of weeks, so not many more vehicle hugs for me. In the meantime, I took a moment to consider the many means of transport I have used over the last six months (I’m sure I’m forgetting something):

Car; bus; ferry; canoe; rowboat; longboat; slowboat; raft; cable car; bicycle; trishaw; tuk-tuk; sangthiew; cyclo; pick-up; minibus; truck; plane; horsecart; horseback; stagecoach; ox cart; locomotive; elevated train; monorail; subway; motorcycle; scooter; elephant.

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.

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I’m in Cambodia. I saw Angkor Wat today. Initial reaction: “This place makes me proud to be human.”

Angkor Wat