Kampuchea Adventure...X-TREME!!!

8-31-08

A few weeks ago, when we got our new schedule for the next two weeks, we were confused. There was something listed on the last weekend of August; it was called “Kampuchea Adventure.” We had to wait until our next hub site visit to find out just what this was supposed to be.

“Kampuchea (Cambodia) Adventure,” or, as I dubbed it, “Kampuchea Adventure X-TREME!!!” was the Peace Corps' way of pushing us yet further outside our comfort limit. We were told to find a partner, and then each pair was given a location in Cambodia. Our mission: to go to that location over the weekend of the 30th and the 31st. We spent the next few weeks learning “travel dialog” in our language classes and preparing to embark.

My partner, Franz, and I had drawn the ruins at Tonle' Bati, in Takeo province. This seemed like it would be pretty interesting in of itself, but there was one fact that made this a very good selection in our eyes, and that is what was between Tuk Phos and Tonle' Bati; Phnom Penh.

Before this, most trainees had only spent one day in Phnom Penh, when we first arrived in Cambodia. I, however, had had the “privilege” of spending a little extra time there earlier in the week. For a week I had no appetite and diarrhea; coupled with a 101 degree fever from a reaction to an immunization I received, it was not a fun week. Finally the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer) pulled me out of my site and took me to Phnom Penh to see what was going on. And so I got to stay in the capital, at a guest house with AIR CONDITIONING, something I hadn't experienced in nearly a month. I got to eat burgers at some of the nearby western-style restaurants, and hang out in the Volunteer lounge at Peace Corps headquarters. It was pretty sweet, even with the stomach problems, which were probably caused by amoebas I picked up from somewhere. Everything was pretty much cleared out by the time I got to Phnom Penh and could provide a sample, so we will never know for sure what it was. I'm fine with that.

The point of the story is that I had a pretty good idea where all the good spots to eat and hang out were in Phnom Penh before we all got there. Our schedule was free the day before our “adventure,” so a lot of us just left a day early and headed for PP. We arranged for a driver and a van to take us all the way to PP, which is about a two-hour trip.

Phnom Penh is an amazing city, even more so after a month out in the countryside. For one thing, there are other foreigners there. I was shocked! Who are all these barangs, and what are they doing here? Why aren't people staring at them, like they do to us in Tuk Phos? And where are all the kids screaming “Hello! What's your name! Where you go!” People ignored us in Phnom Penh...it was mind-boggling.

But of course the best thing about Phnom Penh is the restaurants. There is a fairly good sized expat community in Phnom Penh, in addition to the various NGO's and embassies (speaking of embassies, the Russian one had a huge display outside their gate documenting the “human rights abuses in South Ossetia”). So, for the first time in a month, we got to eat burgers, sandwiches, chocolate, and pizza. It was glorious.

We spent a night in Phnom Penh, in an air-conditioned guest house with satellite TV, another extravagant luxury for us. The next day we arranged transportation down to Tonle' Bati. It was about an hour and 45 minutes to the south of Phnom Penh, located next to a lake. What makes Tonle' Bati worth visiting are the ruins of some Angkoran-period temples. These would have been built around the same time as the famous Angkor Wat complex, sometime in the late 12th century. The ruins were pretty neat, but they were lessened by the fact that we spent the entire time fending off kids who wanted us to give them money. It is not peak tourist season here, so we were pretty much the only people at this site, which made all the kids focus their efforts on us. We made the mistake of buying a few things right off the bat in the hopes that they would go away; do not make this mistake!

There was also a beach area where you could rest a floating platform that jutted out into the lake and go swimming, but I don't want to think about what kind of parasites you might pick up in that water. And that was pretty much the extent of the things to do at Tonle' Bati. We returned to Phnom Penh in the evening and spent the night hanging out in what is rapidly becoming one of my favorite cities.

And then we returned to the quite rice fields of Tek Phos, where everyone not only knows everyone, but knows what you and your friends are up to. I showed my host family the pictures I had taken and shared some of the Oreos I had bought in Phnom Penh. It was good to be "home".