Firefly

Greetings,

Culture is what you are. Nature is what you can be. 

I faced a challenging ethical decision at the Chinese steamed bun and iced java joint. I pulled up on my little simple blue bike. There were three HUGE extraterrestrial vehicles parked on the sidewalk. A group of men were having a morning snack and discussion at round tables. They were the economic Knights of the Round Table. 

All the men wore buttoned down long sleeve shirts except for the leader. How did you know he was the leader? When he spoke all the men at his table listened. He wore a striped short sleeve shirt. He wore a gold watch and a big radiant red ruby stone set in a gold ring. He looked well fed and rested. 

His driver held the keys to a big black Caddy. It looked like a tank. I showed him my bike. Want to trade your bike for the Esplanade? he asked me. No thanks, my simple bike meets my needs. It's really efficient. Ok, he said, just asking.

The leader shifted in his plastic chair. He got up. Everyone got up. He walked out. Everyone followed him. The driver opened the back door. He got in. Let's go for a drive through luminous green country, he said. The driver gunned the engine making powerful noise. His friends followed him down the broken rutted dirt road.

There are no stop signs or traffic lights here. Everyone operating a moving vehicle trusts everyone else. This is fair. 

Cambodian children, like children everywhere love to play. They have a game called Kick The Sandal. They use their sandals. They take turns kicking a sandal on uneven cement pavement to see who can reach the goal. It''s exciting and fun. The cement comes from Siam.

A firefly named July zoomed around my dark room one night. The yellow flickering light was illuminating, mesmerizing and hypnotic. A multi-facted dancing yellow white gemstone. It was looking for a way out. I opened the door so it could live in nature.

Metta.

My girlfriend is smart. She wears a helmet. We are happy. We are going nowhere fast. Passengers wearing a helmet here is almost as rare as clean drinking water. 

Japanese explorers among others

Greetings,

Tomorrow is the BIG new year day here in the kingdom. I am a shamanic camera. SNAP!

It is morning. The four Japanese tourists left on 125cc motorcycles for a day in the country. The man had long gray streaked hair and wiggled his bare feet when the authoritative diminutive black haired elf woman spoke. Food was more important to her than conversation. Nodding her head in agreement helped her chew.

They agreed on everything. This helps them avoid losing face. Losing face is the worst thing in the whole wide world in their culture.

Her female friend was bigger than an exploding astroid eating space at the speed of sound. The man talked with his mouth full of pliable eggs. Another woman hiding behind big dark sunglasses appeared. Everyone talked in staccato preparing plans to have a grand adventure along the river, through flat countryside filled with land mines far away from Tokyo. 

An arisotocratic French couple sat in front of the lodge facing the river. He was 40. Fat and morose. He blamed everything on her and she cared less and less. He covered his mouth while speaking with her blocking his deep unconscious emotional secrets about guilt, desire and fear. She was 32, wore new brown Birkenstock sandals and picked her toenails out of boredom. Sex was their glue.

Wearing biased blinders they comfortably ignored small brown faced humans as they traveled through Asia.

A Swedish man in a safari hat with his conservative white checked shirt tucked into his pants asked another Nordic man how to work his digital camera. He ran across the street, took a photo of the river and mountain and ran back to show his friend. He was very excited. 

Five bored tuk-tuk drivers sat across the street in their chariots of fire playing with their cell phones.

A foreigner's girlfriend had a simian face. He rescued her from a bar called The Heart of Darkness. She knew how to peel his banana. She deserted him. She ran to the market to find Boredom, her secret lover.

"I love Boredom. I can't get enough Boredom. It's a genetic necessity. Goodbye." He returned to The Heart of Darkness to find a temporary replacement. Life is a temporary condition.

Metta.

Sappho, the Greek lyric poet of Lesbos

No women in tuk-tuk land

Greetings,

Now here this. The tuk-tuk is leaving in five minutes. Departing for points unknown. A massive celestial event known as YOUR LIFE will depart in five minutes. You are advised to assemble all the necessary documents, certified seals of approval, water, guide books, sunscreen, funny money and so on...you will visit the following areas on your short, fast, easy tour.

Bring your life with you. And a guidebook with heavily creased pages. If you attempt to read while moving at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, you will discover a new sense of perspective.

You may be surprised or traumatized  to realize your experience at Angkor is not about "seeing" the temples. 

Angkor, Bayon and Beyond...

Please conclude various private and group discussions to ascertain your destination. The tuk-tuk driver has his helmet and vest. His vest has a green four-digit number. If he tries to bring you into Angkor without the vest he faces massive problems. For starters he will lose his job and have to return to his small, isolated village where he will plant rice. The biggest dream for many young men is to become a tuk-tuk driver.

If he loses his tuk-tuk job his family will starve to death. This is a common problem here. Death by starvation.

A tuk-tuk river driver has an easy job. An easy life. He drives you to a temple and crashes out. You feed him. He takes you back where you started. He makes $15-20 for the day. The average person's daily wage is $2.03.

Not a single woman in Siem Reap is a tuk-tuk driver. There are 3-4 women tuk-tuk drivers in Phnom Penh. They are as rare as clean drinking water, sanitation, hospitals and schools.

Why? A woman doesn't work as a tuk-tuk driver because: 

1. it's too dangerous
2. it's inappropriate
3. it's foolish
4. they lack the education, intelligence, drive, initiative
5. they haven't broken free of deeply ingrained social and cultural stereotypes: a woman's place is in the home, taking care of kids, washing, cleaning, and cooking.

Thirty years ago a woman was lucky to finish 9th grade. She married and stayed at home. It may take another generation before women become tuk-tuk drivers. So it goes.

Metta.

Lina studies Engineering in Phnom Penh. 

Prom Rath Wat

Greetings,

I've been sitting down in Siem Reap for a week and it's delightful after the hysterical hustle of Saigon in particular and Vietnam in general. 

I've been exploring Siem Reap on foot, hearing and speaking with a variety of tourists and travelers and settling into the pace and rhythm. I will visit the Angkor Wat site and multitude of 7th-16th C. history, art and spiritual wonders down the road.

An orphan girl at a Christmas party.

Siem Reap population is about 130,000, a far cry from the 8 million in Saigon so you can appreciate the lack of motorcycles, noise and chaos as previously written. There are also 7.99 million fewer hustlers.

Minus small guesthouses and hostels there are approximately 110 hotels and 10,000 beds. Inflated stats say there is a 60% occupancy rate. Tourism is down due to world economics, tighter travel money, and small yet significant regional internal and border troubles. So it goes.

The Angkor National Museum was amazing. An excellent introduction into the Khmer culture. 

Angkor National Museum...

My first Cambodian photography gallery is of Prom Rath Wat, a serene temple complex in Siem Reap. Enjoy.

Metta.