Tuk Tuks

Tuk Tuks are the only way to get around Siam Reap.

For the uninitiated, "Tuk Tuk" is the colloquial term for a small fiberglass carriage attached to a motorbike, and they basically dominate the cities of Southeast Asia. Tuk Tuk drivers are some of the most fast talking, aggressive, charming, and utterly amoral people you'll ever meet, and unless you possess truly Bodhisattva levels of calm, they are likely to drive you insane. They're also some of the best drivers I've ever seen, and if I ever have the need to rob a bank, I'm importing Hos as the getaway driver.

"Hos" (pronounced huh-oh-ssss) is our personal Tuk Tuk driver. We met him after climbing off the bus in Siam Reap, realizing we were lost, and deciding that, hell with it, we might as well catch a ride to our hostel instead of walking like we do every time.

Hos and his army of other Tuk Tuk drivers swarm the bus stops, looking for people exactly like us. But unlike his buddies, Hos walked up to us, asked, in pretty good English, if we were all right and then waited patiently while we worked out what we wanted to do. More than anything else, his courtesy and respect of our space won us over. So, take note, any blog-reading, English-speaking, Cambodian Tuk Tuk drivers that read travel blogs.

I also have no idea why I've been capitalizing Tuk Tuk this entire time. Huh.

- Doug

New Humans

Exhausted, filthy, and completely and utterly hiked out, Amanda, Machete and I make our way down the only street in Chi Phat. It is the hottest day we've had, and I am near totally fried. I have had longer hikes, and I've had hotter days, and longer hikes on hotter days, but for whatever reason by the time we get to the CBET visitor center, I am so tired that all I can manage to do is rip off my shoes, drop my pack and sit in the first chair I see.

A few days in the woods will make you appreciate the real luxuries – like chairs. Amanda sinks into the chair across from me, and we lock eyes for a moment. She looks as tired as I feel. Amusement tickles behind our eyes, but we don't laugh. Laughing would take energy.

Perhaps an hour and a half later, we manage to stumble back to our guesthouse, which despite being around half a kilometer up the road, feels like about five miles. Being gentlemanly, I let Amanda shower first.

Shower is a relative term. There is a giant tub of water and a bucket. I debate just climbing into the tub, but don't want to dirty up the water for whoever uses this place after us. Heh. Dirty up the water. I'm nine-tenths of the way sure that the tub is collected rainwater, and there's a layer of dirt at the bottom I'm careful not to disturb as I scoop the water into the bucket and dump it over me.

Its one selling point is that it is ice cold. I've no idea how the Cambodians managed it, but the water is cold enough to make me shiver and swear. But it's a good kind of pain. That, combined with the soap and shampoo, is enough to make me feel almost human again.

Which is part of why we do these things – things like take round-the-world trips, climb mountains, and hike through jungles filled with leeches. They hurt. They're painful. They're exhausting. But they are accomplishments – acknowledgements of your labors. Scrubbing dirt and sweat off your body is more than performing maintenance and making yourself feel good. It's a physical acknowledgement that you have pushed your limits. The ablutions after trial let you know that, yes, you are human, and that you have grown, and that it was a painful process, as growing always is. But it was worth it.

It always is.

I scrub the dirt and stink and sweat away, and reveal the new human underneath.

- Doug 

the Jungle Book

Jumping off a waterfall is perhaps one of my favorite things to do. After hiking through the Cambodian jungle for five hours, the cool water and mild adrenaline rush make you feel less like a wrung our wet rag and more like the human being you're supposed to be.

We started pretty early. In the jungle you wake up whenever the sun comes up, because that's when the animals wake up and start making noise. The night before, our guides had assembled a shelter out of nothing but bamboo and some tarps. It took them about half an hour, and was better than anything I could have put together in that amount of time. We were a little crowded, but the tarp kept the rain out, which is the most important thing.
 

We'd spent most of the day before hiking, with a short detour to a jar burial site that was over three hundred years old. It was mildly interesting, but also anti-climactic after all the grand tombs I'd seen over the last two months. I was secretly hoping for some Indiana Jones style boulder dodging, or at the very least a cliff jump, but what I got was a rickety ladder and some broken jars. After that, it was hiking through bamboo forests and a few open fields.
 

So it was a bit of a surprise today when just after lunch we turned off the main trail and found the biggest camp we'd seen yet. It was exactly like the first camp, but with multiple raised platforms, a no kidding toilet (drop toilet, no water) and a picnic table. It was paradise.

 

After dropping our packs Machete led us of down a short path to a series of waterfalls, and then surprised us by asking if we wanted to jump. It had been forbidden at our pervious ones.

Charlie and Carlos broke out their GoPro and proceeded to do some back flips off the rock. Amanda and I stuck with cannonballs. Not all of us can be skydiving, dive instructing, Buddhist retreat going adrenaline junkies.

A few hours later we rested in the shallows, watching some monkeys play in the trees across the water. They jumped from tree to tree, chasing after each other, visible as they ran along exposed branches and then disappearing, but still easy to track through the moving bush. As we watched, we talked, chatting about anything and everything. In a shockingly short time we had become good friends – a team. We shared equipment, stories, and food.

That night I broke out the powdered Gatorade I'd been saving for a rainy day, and we shared the sickly sweet drink – the first not water we'd had since starting this adventure. It was magnificent.

In the morning we would part ways; Charlie and Carlos going for the last leg of their trip, while we returned to Chi Phat, and then on to Phnom Penh and then Siam Reap. That night, I reflected on how lucky we were to have met them and had them as hiking partners. We'd made friends, shared a great experience, and learned a lot, couldn't ask for much more. 

 

-Doug

 

Leeches and Waterfalls

I am skeptical of our guide. He is significantly shorter than me, skinnier, appears to be younger in age, and has a wide toothy grin that makes me mildly nervous. He is also wearing flip flops, which has the pretentious gear junkie in me scoffing and the 2nd Lieutenant of Marines in me wanting to buy him a pair of good hiking boots and smartwool® socks like I'm wearing. Everything I've ever learned about hiking tells me that his feet are going to be ripped up at the end of the day, and we're going to be stuck out in the woods with a Cambodian who can't walk and no idea of where we are.

There is a much more quiet voice in the back of my head telling me that this teenager with his wickedly curved scythe-like machete has been born and raised in these woods, and that there is a very good possibility that he knows a lot more about staying alive out in the woods than I do, and can hike for longer, go faster, and carry more than I could in this particular environment.

I listen to the quiet voice and shake his proffered hand, nodding my head respectfully and asking his name. He responds with something that sounds like a cross between a cluck and some consonants, and I mentally resign myself to not being able to say, remember, or understand it. Of all the languages I've encountered so far, Cambodian is my least favorite and least understood. Carlos would later give him the nickname "Machete", which he seemed to like.

Amanda and I are paired up with two other trekkers, Charlie and Carlos, two of perhaps the most interesting people I've had the pleasure of encountering on my trip so far. Along with the four of us there was Machete, another guide who we called Red Socks, for the blood red knee socks that he wore under his flip flops, and two cooks. Charlie and Carlos are on a 5 day trek, but their route is exactly the same as ours until the very last day, so they might as well have been on the same trip.

Machete points down the one road in Chi Phat, and without any fanfare we start walking.

 

 

Hiking is the kind of physical suffering that I love. Pack weight usually doesn't bother me, nor does walking for hours on end, in heat, cold, mountains, whatever nature, and the route thrown at me usually fades away with the satisfaction of crossing distance under your own power. I love to hike to places; I'm a caveman like that. Real, physical progress makes me feel accomplished, and it is an accomplishment. Humans don't walk enough. 

Hours later, as I always do, I am regretting my decision to walk somewhere with a pack on my back. Sweat drips down my face, my muscles burn and my breath is ragged. My fancy hiking boots are soaked through, courtesy of walking through a few streams just wide enough to be unjumpable while not being wide enough to justify taking my shoes and socks off, wading across, and then putting them back on. I am seriously concerned about my feet because of this; wet feet and hiking are no joke, but no one else seems worried enough to put up with me slowing them down. "Its good training, we understand?" I mutter to myself in my best Sergeant Instructor growl.

The jungle we are hiking through has given me a realistic understanding of how badass any Korea or Vietnam Vet really is. The temperature is unreal, and I've only been hotter in Quantico; this is supposed to be winter for Cambodia, too. After walking through some rolling open plains, we enter triple canopy jungle, following a path that is sometimes wide enough for a Ford Explorer, and other times seemingly non-existent. The few times we've deviated, Machete had to hack us a way through, slowing our progress unbelievably. It takes mere hours before I come to the conclusion that we should never ever fight in this kind of terrain again, and pray that we won't have to. Why can't the bad guys ever fight over some place pleasant, like Southern France . . . Wait, sorry Grandpa Wood.
 

 

 

It really is beautiful though. The plains are dominated by waist-high grass and water buffalo, and provide a great view of the Cardamom Mountain range to our North. The jungle is vibrantly alive with everything from monkeys to birds to a centipede that scared the shit out of Machete when he noticed it on the path. Apparently those things are poisonous. I gave it a wide berth while at the same time trying to get a good look at it.

Around noon on the first day I got my first leech. I didn't notice it until I was stripping my shoes and socks off to cross the first major river we'd run across. I was still hoping I'd be able to keep my feet dry while hiking, and was switching over to sandals to cross to the opposite bank, where our guides were setting up lunch. Just down the river was our second waterfall, the first of which we had stopped at briefly around 10 am. Both were amazing, but this was the larger of the two, by an order of magnitude, and I was looking forward to jumping in.

 

 

So it was with some surprise that I hiked up my pants and realized that the left side of one of my socks was soaked in blood - MY BLOOD!

Huh.

Red Socks looked over and nodded sagely, "Lychee."

I felt no pain. Apparently when these guys bite you they hit you with an anesthetic and a pretty impressive anti-coagulant. They take their fill, and drop off when finished – leaving you bleeding and wondering what happened. I am more curious than frightened or irritated. The leech was gone, and I was already bitten; no point in getting angry about something I couldn't control. My leg bled feely for a while, and eventually stopped, leaving a small ugly bruise the size of a sharpie mark where the bite was.

We dipped in the waterfall, swimming right up next to it and sometimes through it. After hiking for four hours through the sun and jungle it was exactly what we needed.

 

After was lunch. I learned more about setting up a cook fire in those 4 days than I had in all my years of Scouts. One of the deep reservations I have about the scouting community is that, while it puts an emphasis on a lot of very good things, like community service, leadership and appreciating the outdoors, practical outdoor survival skills are not actually practiced by most troops. I never learned how to make a cook fire in Scouts. I learned how to make a fire, but not once did I cook over one. This is true of many "outdoor skills" like water purification, improvised shelters, and about a dozen other things. They may or may not have been covered in classroom form, but rarely did we ever get a practical application lesson. (Mr. Meyer, if you're reading this, I don't want to offend, and would love to lead a camp out sometime that focuses on these things next time I'm back in NM).

Lunch (and dinner and breakfast) for the entire time out the woods was rice, with cabbage, pork, carrots, and some unidentifiable local vegetables. With breakfast we got an omelet which was essentially just scrambled eggs that hadn't been cut up. Sounds pretty boring, but was actually delicious. Cambodian hot sauce (a more badass version of Siracha) is a good way to mix things up, but I didn't want to all that often.

It was after lunch that the leeches came in force. Our guides had cut some sticks for us to flick them off our shoes and socks, and sometimes pants, but they are determined little bastards. By 4 p.m. we were nearly running through the jungle despite our packs, our exhaustion, and the danger of running through such terrain, simply because it made it harder for the leeches to latch on. Despite this, I would estimate that I had upwards of thirty on my body by the time we pushed our way through a stretch of tall grass and made it to that night's camp.

Camp was a raised platform of bamboo that the leeches were too stupid to climb up for some reason. It had a thatch roof and open sides. The jungle pressed in, obscuring the view of a river that you could hear burbling just out of sight.

It was heaven.

We stripped down to our skivvies, desire to get rid of the leeches overwhelming any sense of modesty around our guides or our new friends Charlie and Carlos, who did the same. The little bastards had gotten everywhere, but my worst fears were assuaged when I stripped my trousers off and discovered that the compression shorts below had kept them all away from my crotch. I had several bite marks along my waistline, but nothing had gotten through the spandex.

The guides, making the rest of us look lazy, set up camp, retrieved water, and started a cook fire all in the space of time it took us to get changed into camp clothes. I almost objected when they started setting up my hammock for me, but it had only taken a day of hiking with these guys to figure out that they were significantly better at everything in these woods, and that everything would go a lot more smoothly if I just shut up and went with it.

Night falls quickly in the jungle. During dinner it felt as though we were suddenly thrust into darkness, with the only illumination coming from two candles our guides had set up just before dinner. These flickered and sputtered, yet somehow glowed brightly, illuminating a sphere of faces.

Food is perhaps one of the greatest morale improvers out there, and where we had been really too exhausted to converse much before, after dinner Charlie, Carlos, Amanda and I stayed up in the light of the candles and got to know each other. Charlie was a concert promoter in the States up until four years ago, until he got tired of the lifestyle and decided to do something else. Something else amounted to getting his dive instructor qualification and traveling from job to job teaching scuba diving. This had the side benefit of allowing him to travel from paradise to paradise, and get paid to do it. He met Carlos in Puerto Rico, and the two became fast friends. Carlos is a fast talking and fun loving Puerto Rican native, and perhaps one of the funniest people I've met. His self-effacing humor is both endearing and utterly hilarious, and he would fill our quiet moments with little gems like, "I dated this girl who had this fetish: she would dress up like herself and act like a total bitch."

Carlos and Charlie are both incredibly thoughtful and intelligent people as well. Before they came out to Chi Phat for this trip, they spent ten days in total silence at a Buddhist retreat in Thailand – total silence for ten days, two meals a day, and sleeping on hard stone beds just like the Buddha. Both of them described it as one of the most profound experiences of their lives. Ten days is a long time to be alone inside your head, and I found myself wondering how I would do if all I could hear was me.

Scary thought.

The candle burned low as we talked, and it was with the sudden realization that we would have to walk just as far or farther the next day that we decided to sleep.

-Doug  

Blank Sheet

I have not blogged for over two weeks. It started with Amanda’s and my trek through the woods of Cambodia, and has continued on through Thailand, and now through India. I think the reasons for this are many. One of them was that I was tired. Another is because I was afraid. Afraid of this story, and how big it was. It seemed like an insurmountable task at first, and I hesitated to start. Then, when I did start, some other things got in the way. But I was recently enlightened to the difference between excuses and reasons by a very good friend of mine, and it is clear to me now that I used these things as excuses not to write. Writing is tiring, and sometimes hard, and very, very scary. The blank page is in my top 5 scariest things ever list – dead serious. But I am driven to write, not like I am driven to do other things. Writing has for as long as I can remember been my release, my therapy, my skill, my love, and an intrinsic part of me. It is who I am; it is what my soul is. I grow nervous unless I have something to write with and on close at hand in case I need to get something out. To be a channel for the things inside me, I both fear and love writing, because when you write something really good, it is like breathing air for the first time. Even that is a poor simile, I cannot describe the feeling, though I once read a book where a character was in the presence of a God, he felt like he and everything else was just a shadow, as his mind worked its way around the edges that he might be in the presence of the only thing that is truly real.

That is what good writing is for me – a theological experience.

If you can imagine that there is something divine inside, a story, a beautiful thing that wants to get out and be exposed to the light, please now imagine the utter terror in the knowledge that you are human, and humans tend to screw things up on a regular basis.

My terror seems rightly justified, at least to me.

I have heard the saying that courage isn't the lack of fear, but doing something in spite of that fear. With that in mind, I summon my courage to write, as I seem to have misplaced it two weeks ago. I humbly apologize to you, the reader, because to not write when there is nothing to write is no crime, but to not write because you are afraid to screw it up is, and I have sinned against you greatly.

This all could seem very pretentious; placing great importance on what is, on the grand scheme of things, a very small failure. But as Carl once told me, "Anyone can get the big stuff right. It's the little things that matter."

And they do matter.

Okay. Back to that blank page.

-Doug