Sanitation Brigade: Part 2--There is No Part 3 or 4, I lied

That night in Prek Toal, Osmose arranged for everyone in our group to do the homestays they offer as part of a package to the tourists who come to their village.  About three people per family were dropped off in a big boat at a number of floating shacks situated right next to each other.

                “He he he,” my father poked me, “Bet you get the house with all the kids.”

                “Yeah, dad, very funny.  Bet you get the house with all the crocodiles.”

I and two other women from my father’s team, Irina and Solyka, got off the boat and hopped onto a plank that lead to the front porch of a comparatively large house...and were immediately greeted upon entering by four screaming kids.  I was mildly irritated, not because I don’t like kids, but because I don’t like my father’s glee at being right about anything. ANYTHING. I’m on a personal journey to prove him wrong about everything.  Dad: It’s raining right now.  Me: *eyeroll* No, dad, it’s drizzling.

“HELLOOOOOO!!!  HELLLLLOOOOOO!!!!!!!” The kids shouted.  Little hands started determinedly pushing towards the edge of their front porch, suspiciously in the direction of their bait farm, a sectioned off area of water, which, according to one of the proud women housing us, contains 50,000 tiny fish.  What was this?  A guest initiation right?  I’m not much for initiations and I was definitely not for anything that included ending up in this water.  I circumvented out of the grubby, pushy little hands and the kid squealed and shrieked and started chasing each other.  I wandered inside the house where it was surprisingly modern and well-kept, given the rather ramshackle outside appearance.  It was also obvious that this family was specifically selected and paid to house tourists; a generous section of the living room was quartered off and housed four clean floor beds with colorful sheets lined up neatly side by side, each separated by individual mosquito netting, giving a small but appreciated illusion of privacy.

Irina, Solyka and I spent most of our time before bed watching the children wear themselves out.  We sat on the front porch, slapping mosquitos and staying out of the way while they dive bombed each other, wrestled,  and played “rock, paper, scissor” in Khmer.  Or as one of the girls insisted, “rock, paper, SHIT. SHHHHHIIIIITTTT! SHIT SHIT SHIT!”  When the little munchkins got bored, we took pictures of them as they posed and then showed them the frames, their faces avid in the small glow of the camera screen.  One of the children, a small girl, had rickets, a bone deformation caused by a lack of Vitamin D.  Often this happens during infancy, if the mother’s milk dries up and there is no good formula alternative. Her shins curved outwards quite noticeably.  This, I am happy to say, did not stop her from jumping around the house, tackling her little brother and shouting out the occasional, “SHIT.”

At some point in the evening, I figured out where the toilet was and was making my way along the side porch towards the back wash room when I happened to look out over the railing and froze, for the second time that day, as I stared into the utterly disinterested, reptilian eye of another huge croc.  Once again, only chicken wire and some flimsy wood planks were separating me from forty or so of the scaled beasts.  One roared-THEY ROAR??-and I, again for the second time that day, jumped theatrically into the air before resuming my walk in what I hoped to be an unruffled, nonchalant manner.  And yes, crocodiles roar.  Like lions.  In my case, all night long right next to my bedroom.

The next morning, Rick, Alex and I headed out for some last minute exploring, this time in one boat, propelled by a motor and steered by an appropriately aged man.  We saw…

A really cool Watt

The murals depict the story of Buddha.  It's amazing to see the interplay of the Hindu and Buddhist religions.  Some of the panes and themes seemed very...medieval.

A floating garden

Garden herbs!

And lots of friendly kids!

Everybody headed back to Siem Reap that afternoon, with nothing remarkable happening except for the briefly disturbing and invasive event that occurred as we stepped off our boat and started slip sliding through mud to our bus.  A girl walked up to me and handed me a photo.  Of myself.  From two days ago.  My mind was caught between the polarity of being creeped out and reconciling that with the innocent, harmless face of the little girl showing me the photo.  Blessedly, it turned out just to be another harmless way to make a buck.  The locals snap your picture before you leave without you taking any real notice and then put it in a kitchy frame and sell it to you when you come back.  My father bought mine.  More, I think, because he didn’t want a random picture of me floating around rural Cambodia than for sentimental value.

The rest of the crew went back to Phnom Penh, while my Dad, Rick, Alex and I all stayed in Siem Reap for a few more days.

We saw…

A reclining Buddha

A thousand lingas/yonis (can you see the faint outlines in the riverbed?)

A link to more about lingas with a more Hindu orientation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingam

A picture a self-appointed guide drew of a hard-to-see statue, also on the riverbed

An awesome waterfall with some great swimming and fun!

And another less traveled temple complex…

…where I got the opportunity to wander off a bit on my own and climb the side of the mountain where I found a secluded spot to chill and take some pictures of the view

We also had a lovely dinner with a friend of my father’s whose husband gained professional recognition through his photography of the famous Angkor Watt complex and we all lamented over wine at the increasing number of tourists swarming the ancient ruins.  I have been to Angkor Watt many times, my first visit as a child of five, and each time the surrounding area gets more developed.  Hotels and 7-Elevens sprout up faster than jungle vine and droves of buses shuttle in tourists from all over.  We decided to forgo our usual Angkor excursion, but if the temples are something you wish to experience (and I still recommend that you do), then avoid the crowds and either go early, very early, in the morning or at midday when everyone sane is basking in a/c.

And that’s that.  I spent most of the rest of my time Phnom Penh; helping my dad, pouting when monsoons got in the way of my allotted pool hour, and stocking/holing up for the protests that occurred last Saturday.  But more about all that later.

Sanitation Brigade: Part 1

This past week the heat has been no joke.  And my dad doesn't believe in a/c, which is also very not funny.  It's the kind of hot where it feels like there is no barrier between you and the sun.  Where the heat is actually another person in the room and you walk around (or lie around not moving as the case may be) perpetually oily and hungry, unmotivated except for the small rivulet of sweat running down your butt-crack that forces you to do an kind of half-hearted shimmy in your seat so that it absorbs into your pants.  Bleh. Basically, I'm giving excuses for why I haven't updated this blog and have already eaten half a bag of my father's prized and very expensive cashews he keeps hidden in the fridge.  Note to dad, don't hide anything from me in the fridge.  We're in a committed relationship.

Besides the heat, there's the ever present chorus of "You're-not-doing-anything-with-your-life-and-will-die-with-no-significant-accomplishment-other-than-possibly-through-other-people-and-then-only-if-you-have-kids-which-is-very-unlikely-as-that-would-take-energy" that is making it difficult to motivate myself to do anything besides order fancy cappuccinos, work on stuff for my dad and read David Sedaris.  I know people, life is hard.  In all seriousness, I'm going to take this running soliloquy as a sign that I'm on the right path.  Because honestly, not having a plan or laboriously striving to some far off goal that requires a mountain of hard work that I can fall back on comfortably to define myself, is the toughest, loneliest thing I've ever done.  I can't claim that I have been through shit relative to the suffering in most of world, but that's sentence up there is still saying something.  And if I'm this out of my comfort zone, I'm pretty sure I'm in the right place, or at least heading there.  I'm trying to picture Jesus as an air-traffic controller, robes flowing as he frantically (or in a holy dignified manner) makes landing motions with neon orange traffic batons. "Don't stop Zilla, you're getting there!"

So what has my life of new found meaning, soul searching and non-attachment so far led me to?  Well, contrary to the taste my last little post left in your mouth, it has resulted mostly in deep thoughts such as "I should, like, really order purified water instead of, like, diet coke as it would be karmically kinder to my enamel."  Just kidding!  Sort of...I really can't stop drinking diet coke and it's horrible for your teeth.
Anyway, this long rambling explanation/intro is just background to inform anyone who cares (my mother and aunt) that I am now posting further about my trip to the floating village.

You can't tell, but the old lady paddling on the back is wearing a pair of badass aviators.

Off to Prek Toal!  My dad, his team and I boarded a surprisingly comfortable bus for a surprisingly comfortable trip to Siem Reap where we stayed over night at a guesthouse called Sweet Dreams.  There I met some super cool people doing super rad things.  Namely, my dad's cousin Alexandra and her husband Rick who live in Australia and were visiting Cambodia for a couple months.  After staying with my dad in Phnom Penh, they had been teaching English to children in a village not too far away from the guesthouse we stayed at and they accompanied us to Prek Toal.  A very good thing, too, as otherwise I would have been not-so-proverbially stranded on an island by myself while my dad and his team surveyed the villagers in their floating homes.

Intrepid surveyors!

The night before we went to the village, we had some mini markable events, such as going to a Khmer BBQ joint where you pick out the ingredients yourself buffet style and cook them yourself on a little stove.  I'm still not sure what I ate but I do now know that the tapioca dessert is not supposed to be eaten by itself but with the coconut milk and sugar that are provided right next to the dessert table.  Blech.

Also, I was very frustrated to notice that when I tried to use the computers at Sweet Dreams a "K9 Security" message would pop up and not let me go to any sites.  Some further exploration into the system showed me that the security settings had been programmed not to allow sites with content pertaining to "social media, entertainment, sports and life style."  When I mentioned this to Rick, he informed me that it was the work of a nefarious long term guest at Sweet Dreams; a greasy French guy who didn't want people taking up the computers he could potential be on and who enjoyed feeding the stray cats on the dinning area tables.  As this man was already not a popular figure at the guesthouse and it was easy enough to get one of the staff to change the settings on the computer, I contented myself with the knowledge that a couple of the other guests had taken to hiding his shoes.

The next morning we took a little van to a port.  Or at least, an opening to the lake where lots of boats were packed side by side, floating on brackish, smelly water that dense vegetation and the occasional flip flop were trying unsuccessfully to hide.  We hopped on board and with much trouble and positional adjustment, our driver backed out of his parking spot, turned the engine on full speed, and with frogs leaping desperately out of the way, we propelled up the muddy stream.

Arriving in Prek Toal, the boat pulled in and dropped us off at Osmose headquarters, which also serves as a center for their recently enervated eco tourism program.  Comprised of three moderately sized, open air rooms, bobbing gently up and down with the current, the Osmose headquarters house a restaurant, where we had all our meals, a small school room for village children, and a workshop that employs low income women--mainly heads of households--to weave bowls, hats, mats, hammocks and almost anything else you could come up with, out of hyacinth.  Hyacinth is an invasive water plant species that quickly over takes the surface area of bodies of fresh water, pushing out native plants and the animals dependent on them and making water traffic a pain.  The inside of the stalk is, however, rather squishy and soft, lending itself to being easily shaped into laundry hampers and snazzy purses.  Alex and I partook in a weaving class offered, resulting in two beautiful, tidy coasters with a pleasing and subtle pattern.  They were beautiful and neat because after showing us the basic weaving patters, our instructors became rather proprietary and discouraged our continuing efforts to help.  I still very much recommend that should you ever find yourself in the middle of a lake in the floating village of Prek Toal in the Battambang Province in rural Cambodia, that you take a weaving class supporting the livelihood of the women working there and maintenance of their ecological infrastructure.  You will also get a very well made coaster.  No thanks to yourself.  But that's why it's well made.

Beautiful, right?

After lunch, Alex, Rick and I hired some paddle boats for the day and took off into the unknown, to explore and to not bother the Wetlands Work! team who were actually getting stuff done.  And when I say we took off into the unknown, I mean we took off with guides giving us a structured(?) tour and paddling for us.  And by guides, I mean children.  Little girls to be precise.  And before you become appalled that two little girls were paddling us around in the hot sun, I'd like to point out that they were helping out their mothers (also paddling us) and that they only had to suffer in the sun for a little bit before they got some relief in the form a rain storm.  Feel better?  We didn't either.  Rick managed to commandeer a paddle and take over for one girl and Alex and I did our best to hold an umbrella over the girl in our boat.  We would have taken over as well, but the girls are startlingly proficient and we were afraid to move in the tiny rickety boat which had the tendency to rock alarmingly every time we tried to adjust our long limbs.  And there was the fact that we would inevitably embarrass ourselves paddling around in little circles to nowhere while the village children pointed and laughed.

One of our awesome paddlers.  She liked us, I swear!

The tour turned out to be awesome.  Having no idea what to expect and increasingly gaining appreciation for the size and scope of the village (it would be easier to get lost here than in cookie cutter suburbia), we let ourselves be taken to wherever we were being taken to...aaaaand we ended up at what looked like a store front.  We were resigned to hand over money and buy the customary trinkets and souvenirs, but a woman led us through the house, past the surprised old man hanging out in his hammock, scratching his balls and onto to something of a floating back porch where the woman took my hand and pulled me up to what appeared to be a tub.  I peered inside and squealed a dignified Zilla squeal of delight.  Baby crocs!  Dozens of them!  Looking up at me balefully and doing a weird croak/coughing noise which is surely croc speak for "pick me up!  pick me up!"

I was cooing over a particularly cute baby glaring at me resentfully for having the audacity to try to cuddle it when Rick interrupted with an ominous, "Ummm, hey there.  You might wanna look under your feet."  In comic slowness, I looked down under my flip flops, past the chicken wire and thin wooden plank holding me up, and gazed into the giant gaping maw of what had to be a 10 meter croc.  As my eyesight adjusted, I realized there were maybe 30 or so other equally as big crocs spread out under the porch, or as I now realized it was, the crocodile farm.  The lady who had shown me the baby crocodiles motioned for me to watch out for my toes.  I stood rooted to the spot, curling my precious mini-appendages as far into the flimsy safety of my rubber soles as possible.  Pleased with my reaction, she encouraged us to walk around.  Hesitantly at first, like the baby chickens these monsters probably ate, we began to move, exclaiming at the size and number of the animals.  One of the little girls from the paddle boats had ventured out with us and when two of the crocs roared and started belly flopping onto each other and into the water, we both jumped a rather impressive height (in my humble opinion) into the air.  Besides fecal contamination and poor visibility, I now had another reason not to go swimming.  There were no discernible markings on their scales and I could conceive of no way to keep track of how many there actually were, given the large amount of entangled reptilian limbs.  Soooo...how did they know if any escaped?

With that experience under our belts, we were herded back into what we now viewed as the woefully vulnerable, precariously balanced boats.

Next in Prek Toal: A homestay on the river, floating gardens and a reclining giant Buddha!

Monkey Bars

It has occurred to me, through some divine insight that must, in it's simplicity and obviousness, be a miracle, that all my future projections and alternate past scenarios, swinging from monkey bar to monkey bar and back again in this fantastical whirling gymnasium, are but rehearsals for a play that will never happen.  A compulsive defense against illusion and an imaginary version of my self that exists no where and in nothing.