Our hero hatches a get-away plan

Nope, it's pretty much only getting worse.

Today's exciting programme of events: a soulcrunching 'workshop' with a couple of cheery Singaporean missionaries, followed by a totally ineffectual one-hour 'English lesson' with the local high school, where the students already have experienced and capable native English speaking teachers (a whole family of American missionaries who wear bobby socks and conservative length skirts and hairties), who we just displaced into the hallways for an hour, only to find we had too many teachers in each class to teach properlly and too many ideas, and not any clue as to the level of their English ability, and no time to actually get anything done.

I am almost about to smash my head in with a rock.

(We Got The) Tsunami Development Blues

It is a light blue sky, a soft bank of sand, a wonderful ocean. We are beached here, each of us slanted on bamboo mats, absorbing the glow of the sun, eyes closed and alone. It is a break in the program, a moment when we ritually grab our books and towels, mats and cream and walk down the tarmac driveway to the beach. A road that, a year ago, was all covered in water, with garbage, with sections of demolished houses, and with slumped, broken bodies.

Things are getting on here in Phang Nga, the Thai province worst hit by the tsunamis a year ago today. Permanent housing is slowly rising up, cookie-cutter residences whose layout and design depend on the group who is funding their construction - Rotary, Tsunami Volunteers Foundation, the Royal Army, the Princess of Thailand (her special colour is mauve, and her houses match in a strikingly flamboyant bodypaint). Foundations of all sorts have been established, and are being established - occupying women with handicrafts, helping kids with art-therapy, promoting culture with special centres and schools. Little clumps of volunteers from across Thailand and the world are still scurrying like insects to clean up shoes, bottles, and housing & boat detritus from the beaches, jungles and mangroves. Christian aid organisations are still quietly handing out bibles, men are still praying for fishing boats, and many children are still not really smiling, and definitely no longer swimming in the ocean. It has been a year and a lot of work has been done here along the Andaman Sea. But most incredible is the excruciating amount of work that is still left to be done.

In Ban Tung Wa, where we have spent a bit of time, various groups of Morgan people are learning to adapt to their new village, and with it their new lives as Thai citizens. The Morgan, a traditionally nomadic sea-living group of people with a distinct culture, language and religion, have for years been denied citizenship by both the Thai and Burmese governments, thus rendering them invisible, and excluding them from schools, health care systems, and so on. Having been veritably slammed on wave-day, the Morgan people began to be noticed by Thais for the first time, and when it became clear that their lack of citizenship meant that nobody could tell in any way how many of their people had died the government caved and decided to register them all, at last. The past few days have marked the official opening of Ban Tung Wa, a group of pretty wooden huts built up by the main road in Khao Lak, tucked away from the ocean - these 'sea gypsies' having been traumatised away from their traditional island and beach homes. The people again have homes, the kids are in schools - the Morgan are obviously glad to be re-settling down. The worry among the people, however, is what will continue to be lost in this tradeoff, as children learn to speak and act Thai, and the many traditions of the people are gradually abandoned. Suddenly with identity cards, just as the very essence of their identity is most at risk.

We are a group of 23, from Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Sweden, Italy and the USA. We range, in age, from 19 to 57, and we certainly range in our reactions and attitudes regarding disaster and development. So far our activities have been scattered and largely touristic; far from developing strong relationships with local orphans as we were all prepared for, we have been hightailing it up and down the coast in air-conditioned vans, visiting villages and displacement camps, meeting chiefs and teachers, hearing stories of loss and survival. Still: there have been more fulfilling pockets of engagement. A wonderful afternoon spent playing games and painting pictures with a group of children who live in a brand new, extremely ordered and suburban looking village, watching as they filled the pages with images of boats they want for New Year, of massive waves shadowing palms and huts (still), of rainbows and kites and something that looked like a BBQ. Christmas morning was spent on a sublime Khao Lak beach, diamond blue water curving gracefully in a wide bay, me in my underwear wading through semi-stagnant beach inlets stabbing broken buoys with sticks and trudging for trash while striped fish darted around my legs. And so on: tomorrow we begin a short burst of English lessons at two schools in a nearby Thai Muslim communitee, and then over New Years we will be holding a two day camp for Morgan children in a National Park. We continue to jump around, frantically getting the full 'tsunami development' experience, and trying, as hard as we all can, to make, where ever we can, some sort of small impact, a task which is seemingly impossible with such a scattered approach.

Its the night discussions that are the most infuriating, as we all sit and well-meaningly try to solve the problems by talking about them and spouting largely uninformed (and often ethnocentic) opinions on What Has Been and What Should Be Done. But, it is on post-meeting downtime at the beach, staring into the night surf that I realise that it is indeed this portion of the project that we are bound to actually take the most from, as we realise the agony and challenges of working together and the difficulties attached to coming into any developing community armed with the desire to 'help'. And that our fleeting glimpse at post-tsunami life, as limited in delivering positive change as it may be, can only, thankfully, be as limited in its negative impact, and that once expectations are remodeled and we all realise that we are tourists, and that this is a tourist experience, but that we can learn a great deal from it as such, it is easier to see that this can be, and is bound to be, a great and important experience for us all.



(The Standard Line Delivery Corporation would like to wish both the subscribers and casual readers of our electronic periodical a snug, safe and spiritually fulfilling Christmas, and a Super New Year to boot.)

O, the storms

Waiting for the camp to begin in Phuket, with Camila from Brazil/the United States:

• It is raining and windy and has been for two days. It is not supposed to do this on a tropical island which rich and not-so-rich people spend very much money coming here.
• At night its like the whole town of Patong is one big, insane go-go bar.
• Often we are playing cards and watching HBO in our tile-floored hotel room.
• I don't much like this island, not that I've really seen much, but I'm just spiteful (at myself) that I didn't find time to go to Krabi earlier. That said Krabi in these storms would really be no more entertaining than here. At least here we can pose for photos with topless post-op transsexuals in the middle of the street.
• Bring on the 19th.

Hangin' with Cambodian kids on the riverbank, Kampot

(in totally seperate news: I now have my first ever internet 'wishlist', which is a hilarious concept I'm sure you will agree, and you can see this tribute to consumption here)

Bokor Hill Station

On top of this quite significant mountain, surrounded in dense jungle, overhanging the southern coastline of Cambodia, sits Bokor Hill Station, a once-upon-a-time luxurious and expensive retreat location for French colonialists wanting to escape the hot temperatures of sea-level Cambodia. Sometime since the 1920s however, this whole place was abandoned and fell into disrepair, and crumbled, and grew bright red fungus on the walls. In the 1970s the whole ghost town was of great strategic importance during the Cambodian wars and was one of the last points of Khmer Rouge defence during the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, when the Vietnamese were shooting from the hotel below at the Khmer Rouge guys, who were hiding out in the old Catholic church about 500 metres away.

Perched on the hillside are many many old, falling-apart buildings (including an unfinished royal Palace, a casino, a police station, a post office...), some overgrown with jungle, some (like the watertank) looking all science-fiction and weird and others, the Shiningesque hotel especially (someone had even grafittied REDRUM on a staircase wall), genuinely spooky, even in the daylight hours.

The old settlement, scattered over the hilltop:

Bokor Palace Hotel:

the old ballroom:

Catholic church:

The view from the hotel:The old watertower:

Now I’ve made my bed, I’ll lie in it

back from Cambodia.
From Kampot (Cambodia): car (2 hours), boat (4 hours), motorbike (15 minutes), [walk across border], minibus (20 minutes), another minibus (1 hour), big bus (3 1/2 hours) -> Bangkok, all lit up and steamy. Slump onto my rock hard mattress in the bright flourescent white boxroom that smells like mildew.

Now, I am just waiting here, waiting for the IPP, truely doing nothing but waiting.

I can't BELIEVE Miss Iceland won Miss World, this is truely spectacular news. I only wish I had put money down on that race. (Although I am surprised that Miss Trinidad and Tobago didn't take the crown after her heartfelt steel drum rendition of the Titanic song during the talent section. Ha!, and hee!)

State Of My Life Address

(a note: While I have been wanted for some time to write some sort of piece inspired by David Berman's graceful, wonderful poem "Self Portrait at 28", and that was certainly the original influence of what we have here, below, it has happened that the basic premise for this writing is much more close in idea and design to periodic pieces written by my Texan friend Rob for his website. I would like to acknowledge the similarity, in many ways, to Rob's own addresses, and to say thanks to him for demonstrating such a lovely and simple idea. I have enjoyed thoroughly thinking about and writing this piece.)

State of My Life Address, 8 December 2005.

A. Today I have lived for exactly 25 years, which is one quarter of a century. This also means I have been alive for 9131 days exactly.

B. Of this I have lived approximately 3.33% of my life in Canada, and 0.66% of my life in Egypt. I have spent 1.66% of my life attending international CISV camps. Overall, I have spent about 10.83% of my life outside of Australia. Within Australia, I have lived approximately 28% of my life in the small apple farming town of Donnybrook, WA, where I remember cubby houses, and picking chestnuts, and a tame sheep named Bridie who hung out near the swingset. The remaining 61% (or so) of my life I have living in or in the suburbs of the city of Perth.

C. At the moment I am in Phnom Penh, which is the capital city of the Kingdom of Cambodia. There is a steady breeze, sending flags whipping along the banks of the fast-flowing Mekong, where bright orange Buddhist monks stroll in twos and the light is a warm glow against the thin dove-grey sirrus up in the sky. Soon bats will teem from the ceiling of the nearby National Gallery, as the sun disappears, again, behind the horizon, towards Thailand. On the roads, a jumbled flux of traffic - goosehootin' lorries, ambling rickshaws, wedding cars crammed with white dresses, 4WD vehicles, thick wheeled and sparkling, with NGO logos embossed on their front doors, minibuses with hairset Japanese tour groups in matching elasticated sun-visors, and of course, the motorcycles, buzzing and spluttering and weaving and gliding like salmon going upstream. Plus: stump-armed beggars, bare foot kids selling pirated history books, dwarf families huddled and sleeping on doorsteps, young lovers on the riverside, tourists heckling over a dollar, women holding see-through hoses gushing water out on vast green lawns, sparrows and dragonflies, fruit sellers carrying trays of pineapples on their heads, and pencil-thin palm trees, soon to be wrapped in nocturnal smog, the smell of fried noodles, exhaust, and the approaching rains.

D. I currently have no house, no girlfriend, no pets, no car, and no real solid idea of what next year is going to be like, let alone the rest of my life. At the moment my loose and insufficiently researched plan is to complete a Masters programme in Human Rights Practice at Curtin University of Technology, which will take me 18 months or so, although I might transfer across to a Masters in International Development in Melbourne part-way through.

E. There are people in the following places who I miss in varying amounts: Denmark, Germany, Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, the Netherlands, Canada, USA, the UK, Sweden, Palestine, Israel, Australia.

F. I do not belong to any organised religion or sect, but do have a sort of personal faith in the power of creation and nature. I believe in the individual and in the rights of every individual to free-will. I believe most strongly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and believe that there is no action or circumstance which can justify the taking away of these basic rights in any way.

G. I am still most confused about what humans are capable of, about love, and about electronic House music.

H. I currently have 126,000 Cambodian Riel, 233 American dollars, 100 Euro dollars and 140 Thai Baht with me, all of which is due to last me until my arrival home in Perth on January 8th, 2006 (one month, exactly).

I. For most of the coming month I will be participating in my sixth CISV programme, an International Peoples Project, involving about 25 other people from Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Australia, Sweden, Italy and the USA. The project will involve running activities and working together with 60 or so orphans from the Morgan people, a nomadic sea-tribe, whose communities were obviously quite affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami.

J. I have never been shot, been significantly hurt, been arrested, been detained for any long period, been significantly depressed or had anyone particularly close to me die or go missing. I have always had available access to health care, education, emotional support, free movement, clean water, shelter, free speech, food and an income. In all of these ways and more, I am certainly one of the luckier people alive.

K. I am a caucasian Australian male, of British and probably Irish heritage. I currently have very short hair, the shortest hair I have had since Heather's wedding in 2001, and about a half-way growth of whiskers, which tend to grow around my jawline, as well as under my nose, before spreading out a bit on and under my chin. There is very little actual growth on my cheeks themselves. I have brown hair and hazel eyes, and I wear black rimmed glasses without nosepieces. On my wrists I wear: (left) a digital watch I bought in Bangkok in July; (right) a thin pink, blue and orange friendship band Erik from Sweden gave me, a red Brazilian wish ribbon which is frayed and may soon break (making my wishes come true), a blue piece of leather with silver beads on which my name is spelt in Hebrew (a gift from Maytal and Leor), a Palestinian flag velcro wristband I got in Balata refugee camp, and two identical wooden bead bracelets from Bangkok. I also have two plain silver rings, one on each hand - one from my sister Kate, and one from a Thai girl called Katie, who I never called back. Today I am also wearing a blue Gooding Soccer Rec t-shirt, blue denim shorts, olive green underwear, tan socks, brown cord Camper shoes and a black military-style cap I just bought in a Phnom Pehn market. I have two ulcers in my mouth and a slight sunburn on my back obtained from the back of a motorbike around Angkor Wat, and which is leaving behind an unfortunate singlet tan.

L. Recently, I am finding it harder than usual to wake up in the mornings. I am also having significantly more vivid, complicated and surreal night and day dreams. I attribute this to the malarial prophylaxis medication I am currently taking. A recent dream involved saving an orthodox Jewish toddler from a large wave, which is an interesting combination of both prior and future projects in my actual life.

M. I am currently reading Vineland by Thomas Pynchon and listening to In the Reins by Iron & Wine and Calexico. The last movie I saw was Stealth starring Jessica Biel, this was on the aeroplane from Tel Aviv about one month ago. The last girl I kissed was Nam, who was born in the Buddhist year 2529.

N. I can speak a very rougly estimated 500 words in French and 400 words in Arabic as well as tens of thousands of words in English. I can also say small things in Spanish, Swedish, Icelandic and Thai, but not enough that you could say I was even a beginner in any of those languages. I plan to be able to speak English, French, Arabic and Spanish fluently by the end of 2014, as part of my 10 year language goal.

O. In 25 years I have been to 31 countries, earned one undergraduate degree, learned to ski and SCUBA dive, been in love at least twice, seen at least 30 shooting stars, lived in 11 houses and apartments, been to every Australian state except Queensland and acted in 13 plays.

P. On my birthday I am hanging out with two Canadian girls, who I met on the bus from Siem Reap, and who only just met each other as well, and may or not be related. Anna is from Montreal, and her surname is Racine (which means 'root') which it turns out is also the surname of Richelle's paternal grandmother, who is also of Quebecois origin, although she, like Richelle, lives in Nelson, British Colombia. They both have long blonde hair, although Anna's is in dreadlocks, and Richelle's remains flowing and unknotted. We have a one day plan, which involves tomorrow going to Bokor hill station, an abandoned and crumbling French colonial retreat on a mountain in the jungle, and including an old casino, church and a hotel which is apparently very much like the one in The Shining (1980).

Q. I have, so far, received ten (10) emails from seperate friends and family members wishing me a happy birthday, for all of which I am extremely grateful. Almost every single one admitted that they remembered my birthday because of the media coverage of the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's murder, which makes me glad that I tell so many people about the fact that we share this date in such a way. It is certainly these emails which have made this day that little bit better than it would have been otherwise.

R. Today I have eaten: 1 x stick of Wrigley's chewing gum, 1 x plate of spicy ginger beef, with rice, 1 x bowl of museli with fruit salad, 1/2 x bag of dried sweet potato chips, 1/2 x mini watermelon. I have drunk: 1 x can of guava juice, 1 x can of lychee juice, 1 x pineapple shake, a certain quantity of water.

S. I have currently been travelling for five months, less two days. In this time I have participated in a CISV Seminar Camp, as Camp Director, in Beit Guvrin, Israel, for approximately one month; studied Arabic language in Cairo, Egypt for approximately two months; travelled and volunteered as an international activist/human rights observer in the occupied Palestinian Territories for approximately three weeks; travelled and visited friends in Israel for one week more, spent a week doing nothing on the island of Ko Chang, Thailand; worked, in Thailand, for one week as a Fake Scottish Guard in order to promote a new blend of whiskey; and travelled, briefly, in the Kingdom of Cambodia. I have enjoyed this trip very much, mostly because I have met unprecedented quantities of wonderful people, and also because I have been doing something almost the entire time. One of my plans was to write a short novel or a long story or such, while in Thailand, however that has not happened, which is both unfortunate and very predictable. The main reasons for this not happening are the job I got and the trip to Cambodia, which was essential at a specific date (tomorrow) for visa reasons, both of which broke up the time here a lot.

T. The sky outside has blackened, and on the grassy riverbanks of Phnom Penh a group of small tumbling orphans play soccer without shoes, legs twirling and feet pounding on the field, while the girls nearby jump elastics. Their carers, older orphans who now work at the NGO-run resturaunt across the street, look on with extensive grins. The night swells around them, the dark vein of river flowing towards its broad delta in Vietnam, the glow of bars and resturants and street stalls and brothels and mobile phone signs hanging in the roadways. I am here in this internet cafe, and officially I am no longer considered 'youth'. But I'm feeling ok with that, because tonight I could be anywhere on earth doing almost anything possible and virtually no one would know. And then tomorrow I could be elsewhere. In this simple way I feel as though I am pretty much totally free.

Tuol Sleng / S-21

Choeung Ek Killing Fields

Tuol Sleng / Choeung Ek

In 1975, the Ponhea Yat High School in Phnom Penh was taken over by the Khmer Rouge and turned into a prison known as Tuol Sleng, or S-21. The school had a large selection of plain classrooms with brown and white checkered tiles on the floor, and a green playing area. It became the largest centre of detention and torture in the country. Between the years of 1975 and 1978 more than 17,000 people were held at the prison before being sent to the extermination camp at Choeung Ek. From all of these prisoners there were 7 survivors.

Each of the classrooms at Tuol Sleng were converted into prison cells. All windows were enclosed by iron bars, and covered with tangled barbed wire. The ground and first floor classrooms were divided into small cells, 0.8 x 2.0 metres each and made from either rough bricks or wood. Each cell held a single prisoner who was chained to the floor. The rooms on the top floors were used as mass prison cells, in which rows of prisoners were made to lie on the floor and their legs were shackled to a long metal bar. Interrogations were done in a neighbouring building. All prisoners were required to ask permission to do anything at all, even change position while trying to sleep, and to follow a list of regulations at all times. Anyone breaking the rules was severely beaten or tortured by a variety of methods, including having their fingernails removed with pliers, then their fingers dunked in vinegar.

Over 1,720 people worked in the S-21 complex over the three years of its operation. A number of these were children aged 10 to 15, who were trained and selected by the Khmer Rouge regime to work as guards. In time, these children became some of the most ruthless and cruel of all the workers at S-21. Eventually, as the revolution continued, many of the prison guards, torturers, executioners and even high-level party cadres themselves were imprisoned and killed as they were seen as posing a threat to the regime.

Every prisoner who passed through S-21 was photographed, providing the only record of the thousands who were killed in this period.

At Choeung Ek (out of town, down a peaceful red dirt road lined with white Eucalypts, where today kids fly kites and buffalo graze in water-logged rice fields) tens of thousands of people were bludgeoned to death with the handles of farm equipment. Their throats were then cut, and they were pushed into mass graves, only some of which have since been exhumed. Walking around the green, empty pits today, you step on and over half buried fragments of bone, and bits of cloth. Dragonflies swarm in the humid air. A silence, but for the wind and the distant giggle of children over the fence. Small piles of femurs rest at the base of trees, accompanied by pots of burnt incense.

In three years the Khmer Rouge killed between two and three million people in prisons, toture chambers and extermination camps just like this one, all over the country.


Sometimes it is entirely impossible to comprehend human beings.

enter the tour buses

The temples of Angkor are indeed very lovely, but I would be totally lying to y'all if I didn't show you the reality of a trip there:




Exploring Angkor certainly aint no solitary, adventuresome type experience anymore, in case you were wonderin'.

Angkor

(i-iii) Angkor Wat

(iv-v) Bayon temple, Angkor Thom

(vi) Banteay Srei

(vii) boy at Banteay Kdei

(viii-x) Ta Prohm

to Siem Reap

Took the minibus from the border at Poi Pet, winding slowly on the dirt road, windows rattling, whole bus squeakingandquakingandbangingandbreaking on the corregations and potholes and the intense noise dattadattadattadattadattadattadattadatta - the darkness closing in and the pressure headaches too, moving around in the chair, trying to find a half-way acceptable position for sleep, an impossible task, and outside the men stand to their waists in stagnent ponds untangling fishing nets while grub faced children send serious waves from the waters edge and women stand under signs proclaiming the Cambodian People's Party and the bus jolts and bucks and every passenger has clenched jaws and as the bus finally decends into darkness, at the front, the wide toothy smile of the Cambodian bus guide, beaming back across the slumped corpses of former tourists.

In Siem Reap, a hundred motorcycle drivers holler for business. The darkened streets, puddled with mud and thick with smoke from food carts. A guesthouse is found, a bed is fell upon, a mosquito net tugged to the edges of the soft white mattress. Sleep is immediate.

And long. Awaking far too late for recommended sunrise temple viewing I realise exactly how sick I have become, with hacking cough and dizzy head, but manage to drag townwards to find throat lozenges and food. The first moto driver to approach gets lucky, and after finding a dry and almost tasteless fluffy pancake and a tray of orange flavoured Strepsils, we chug northwards towards Angkor.

four quick points

An early start this morning, to bring to you all these important announcements:
1. I am about to board a bus to Cambodia, and thus my new mobile phone number will be not usable for the next week or so, until I return to Thailand.
2. I got my haircut last night, short, and it looks baaad - as a result there will be no more photos of me on here for a while. Hehe.
3. On a serious note - you may recently have heard about four human rights observers who have been kidnapped in Iraq, all of them members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) who do fantastic work in not only Iraq but also places like Colombia and Palestine. Three of the four captured have been previously themselves to volunteer in Palestine in a very similar capacity to what I and my friends were and still are, in regions like Hebron, Jenin and Nablus. One of them has, in the past, been a volunteer himself with ISM and was planning on going for another, more long-term stay next week. While I myself do not know any of these people personally, good friends of mine do, and I know that they are obviously hurting and worrying greatly about their capture. I urge you to give thought to these innocent activists and if you are in any inclined to do so, to keep them in your prayers. They were doing, and hopefully can continue to do, crucial work for the people of Iraq and Palestine.
4. And related: a friend in ISM, Andrew from Scotland, is about to be deported for his work in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron. You can read a passionate and well-worded statement written by Andrew's parents here.

bangkok

shopping for King-related merchindise:

fireworks, exploding about 40 metres from my hotel room window:

with my new, and quite wonderful, friend kwan: