360 Degrees Longitude (33 page)

But they declined in a very Australian sort of way, which consisted of a graceful taunt and a put down about our country, which we interpreted as “We would be happy to join you if you had beer and sang different songs.” They kept moving along the beach to be with the rest of the young backpacker types who pretended they were too cool to notice that it was Christmas Eve.

• • •

Ko Tao was to be a relaxing vacation from our travels, meaning no structured activities. We sort of failed on that, chartering a boat to take the six of us snorkeling one day. The captain brought his wife and two-year-old son as well as a bunch of squished, overripe bananas. “I hope that's not lunch,” Jordan whispered to me, pointing at the bananas.

At our first stop, I quickly donned my fins and mask and jumped in while the rest of the group were still on the boat sorting out equipment. The water seemed to boil over with a kaleidoscope of colorful fish. I could clearly see the bottom, about 20 to 30 feet down. We were in a city of huge sea urchins and I went down to get a closer look at them.

When I surfaced for air everyone on the boat was squealing with delight. Only then did I notice why the water was roiling with fish; the captain was tossing the overripe bananas into the water, driving the fish crazy.

These were the varieties of fish you might see in an average saltwater aquarium, about four to six inches long and brilliantly colored with all shades of the rainbow, and utterly harmless. Fish are pretty stupid, yes? I thought so, too. It turns out that fish are stupid, but not as stupid as I am.

I decided to lure the fish over to me by pretending I had food. It worked. Soon I was surrounded by hundreds of eager mouths, each about the diameter of a soda straw, looking for a handout. It was about this time that I noted the captain was feeding the fish from inside the boat; whereas I was pretending to feed them while
in the water
. All the little fishies were very cute when viewed from far away, but less so when they were brushing against me with their mouths working furiously to find something to fill them.

A little voice in my head told me it was time to stop pretending I had food and to get the heck out of there. No sooner had I decided to obey the voice when one of the little fishies found something to munch on. Not to be too graphic, but the water was a bit cold for a warm-blooded mammal such that my, er, “headlights” were on high beam. So this fish took a mouthful of the one thing that was poking out—my right nipple.

A blood-curdling scream ripped through the air. Or it would have, had I not been under two feet of water at the time. My scream just sort of gurgled out pathetically, unheard. It was now clear why September had refused to breastfeed after the kids had sprouted both upper and lower incisors.

While making my getaway from the nipple-nibbling fish, all I could think of was how in some future scenario I would be lying in a morgue while someone was trying to identify my remains:

“Scar on knee—check. Scar from appendectomy—check. Right nipple missing—check. Yup—that's him all right.”

It's funny how your brain works when flooded with adrenaline.

I spent the remainder of the day snorkeling with my arms folded resolutely across my chest, hands tucked under my armpits. Everyone else in the group spent the day snickering conspiratorially, sneaking bits of food into the water wherever I happened to be.

 

Jordan's Journal, December 27

Today I ordered lemonade from a restaurant. It tasted horrible! Mom said they must have accidentally put salt in it instead of sugar. We sent it back and the new one tasted the same. We sent that one back, too and told them it was salty. The new one had even more salt! Apparently, they like salty lemonade in Thailand. When we asked them to make one with sugar, they looked at us like we were from Jupiter
.

Before we knew it, we had spent a week accomplishing nothing. September's cousin Melissa had that thing called a “job” where she did something called “work.” This all sounded vaguely familiar, but we tried to talk her out of returning anyway. Initially she considered ignoring this “job,” but something called “guilt” came into play and she was off to Bangkok to catch a flight back home. Granny was going to travel with us for a while longer.

After we bid Melissa adieu, September announced, “I'm bored here.”

“Boring can be good,” I said. “I'm boring, and I'm good.”

“Yes, be that as it may, I have something else in mind.”

“Don't tell me. You want to find a nice police line and cross it to keep ourselves entertained.”

“Sort of. It's just that the line I want to cross is the border into Cambodia. I want to go see Angkor Wat.”

I didn't know much about Angkor Wat, just that it's a huge temple complex, known to be one of the world's premier archaeological sites and considered a “must-see” on the Southeast Asia circuit. I was happy just to watch the sunset from our beach bungalow and work on retaining my one remaining nipple. I lobbied against going to Cambodia (the ruins of Angkor Wat being our sole reason to go there) because we had seen countless ruins and temples.

“If I have to put one toe inside another temple, I'll explode!” Jordan cried when I leaked the information about his mother's plans at lunch.

That's my boy! I was completely willing to let Jordan take the blame for us not going to Cambodia.

Unfortunately, September has the exasperating trait of being one step ahead of me, and she really wanted to go. “Jordan,” September casually commented, “I'm not sure children are allowed to go to Angkor Wat.”

Jordan, Katrina, and I all sat up straight in our seats. I knew darn well kids could go to Angkor Wat. What was September playing at?

“Why, Mom?” Katrina asked, bewildered. “Why aren't kids allowed to go to Angkor Wat?”

“It's too dangerous. Cambodia still has thousands of buried land mines left over from the war. Plus, it has poisonous snakes, including king cobras. If you go to Angkor Wat, you have to be really careful not to stray off the marked paths.”

“Really, Mom?”

“Why can grown-ups go?”

“We can stay on the path!”

“How old do you have to be?”

“What kind of snakes are there? How poisonous are they, really?”

“How big are the explosions from land mines if you step on one?”

“Can you look it up in the guidebook? When will we know if we can go?”

In one stroke of genius, September had sold Jordan and Katrina on the idea of going, warned them of the small, but real, dangers, obtained their promise not to wander off as they are prone to do, and scuttled my plans for hanging out on the beach in Thailand for another week.

In short, we were going to Cambodia.

January 2–January 9
Cambodia

C
ambodia shook us. We had seen abject poverty in Tanzania and the Chinese countryside, but it did little to prepare us for what we would experience in Cambodia. Months after we left, I couldn't get the images out of my head.

• • •

“Lonely Planet
says don't take the bus. They state this most emphatically,” I said.

“Why? How else are we going to get to Siem Reap?” September asked.

“Fly. The roads are supposed to be horrid. Unfortunately, judging by the price of a ticket, it appears that the airline is aware they have a monopoly.”

“Well,” September said, “we've survived bad roads before. Nothing can be as bad as the roads in the Serengeti, could it?”

We found a bus company operating at the main train station in Bangkok that could take us to Siem Reap. The ticket agent assured us it was only three hours to the Thai-Cambodian border, then another four hours to Siem Reap. “You'll enjoy the ride in our air-conditioned Mercedes-Benz bus,” she told us.

As promised, we started our trip in style, but once we arrived at the Thai-Cambodian border we would never see that bus again. Our driver simply pointed vaguely in the direction of the border, saying, “Someone will meet you on the other side and take you the rest of the way.”

Three hours and 300 yards of sidewalk and 300 yards of red tape later, we were in Cambodia. “So now what happens?” I asked no one in particular.

“I guess we wait,” September replied.

So wait we did. We waited with a group of Europeans who were traveling with us, and we talked amongst ourselves. Katrina and Jordan had become savvy travelers, but the mixture of the heat and not knowing when or how we were to depart was trying for all of us. Luckily, Granny was able to keep the kids occupied looking for food and snacks while September and I tried to sort out our next move. We queried the other travelers. “Anyone know who we're waiting for?” “Any idea how long we need to wait?” “Does anyone have any documentation, like a travel voucher?” Unfortunately, no one did.

Even though we had all paid for a full bus ticket onward to Siem Reap, many people ultimately hired private taxis for what was believed to be a four-hour drive. More than an hour later the 27 of us who remained were herded into the back of a dual-axle cattle truck.

I could easily see the road ahead from where I was perched in the back of the truck. The truck approached a bridge that went over a small river. As the bridge came into focus, I grabbed the sides of the truck in a panic, braced myself for a collision, and let out an expletive.

“Watch your language!” September demanded.

“Did you see that? There were planks missing on that bridge wide enough to swallow a tire! The driver didn't even slow down!”

We were following a river and switching banks every so often. Everyone gradually relaxed as we became desensitized to the state of the bridges. Then the driver zipped over a bridge composed of no more than two wooden planks, each just wide enough to accommodate a tire; I wouldn't have walked across it for fear of falling off. All the passengers collectively held their breath for a moment, but the driver zipped over as if nothing were amiss. Halfway across the bridge I found that I had unconsciously lifted my feet off the floor as if the action would somehow make me lighter.

After several hours of bone-jarring roads, September finally admitted, “Okay these roads are worse than the ones in the Serengeti.”

“I beg to differ,” I replied. “True, this is more miserable, but the difference in the Serengeti is that we traveled in a rugged Toyota Land Cruiser that was up to the task. I swear this truck has no shocks and its tires are square.”

Katrina and Jordan took this journey stoically, having had several months' experience with uncomfortable travel. Granny, on the other hand, was having the time of her life. My mother-in-law has traveled extensively around the world, often alone on a bicycle, her favorite destination being rural Yemen. The dust, heat, and noise, and nonstop near-death bridge crossings seemed to provide exhilaration such that she commented several times, “I'm so glad we didn't fly!” Fourteen hours after leaving Bangkok, in the wee hours of the morning, heads buzzing, we were in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

• • •

Siem Reap, literally translated, means
Siam Defeated
, in honor of the Khmer defeating the Thai in a bygone era. It is a now a town of seventy thousand people with an international airport and an endless row of glitzy hotels with rooms that can be as high as $500 per night. For $13 we landed in a clean, comfortable guest house with much-needed AC.

I paid close attention when school was in session that first morning. September explained, “In Khmer, a
wat
is a temple. The entire area surrounding this town is known as Angkor Wat and it was built during the height of the ancient Khmer civilization, which lasted from the 9th through the 15th centuries. Angkor Wat is often cited as the largest religious complex in the world. Being so deep in the jungle of Cambodia, it was unknown to the outside world until the 1860s when Europeans colonized the area.”

After the early morning history lesson we found ourselves walking down the main street that is lined with restaurants and gift shops, all catering to Western tourists. One place caught our eye because it advertised fruit smoothies made with “commercial” ice, meaning the ice was clean. As it was humid and stifling hot, an ice-cold drink sounded wonderful. We walked into the open-air restaurant and all ordered a smoothie, along with breakfast.

I'm always the first to finish eating, having grown up in a large family. Enjoying that contented, full-stomach sensation, I leaned back in my chair and watched a truck pull up in front of the restaurant. The driver hopped out and brought in a massive block of commercially made ice. He shooed away the feral dogs that were resting in the shade on the floor of the restaurant and placed the ice on the floor in the same shade that had been occupied by the dogs. As he began to hack away at the ice with an axe, large chunks of ice broke off and went skidding across the concrete floor.
His assistant chased after the ice chips and dutifully placed them in a chest.