Bangkok Wednesday April 15, 2009.

6 A.M. train to Aryanaprathet on the Cambodian border. I’m boarding the old rickety train as the sun wakes up after spending more money on 2 pastries from Dunkin Doughnuts than the price of the ticket. Amazing how prices work themselves out in emerging economies. All the passengers are half awake but my neighbor is chatty so we talk together as then sun rises. He is Thai and going to visit his wife and her family. A jovial man, typical of the Thai style, eager to make friends and share his food and drink with me. He warns me to be careful in Cambodia as there are pickpockets everywhere. The train is a local, it stops at each town, but is surprisingly fast and remarkably clean. No aircon but lots of fans. Hawkers walk up and down the aisles slowly offering mangos, chicken rice, drinks and chewy candies. In between each car the doors remain open so one could essentially jump off at any point, it made for a nice respite from the hard seat. I arrived in Aranyaprathet, said goodbye to my friend and took a tuk tuk (a little motorized rickshaw by design) to the Cambodian border. I had read that this process could be both dangerous, long, and very corrupt. There are fake Cambodian “consulates” set up near the border whose sole process is to issue fake Cambodian visas. I saw one and it looked amazingly official. Right down to the flag, sign and very official government logos everywhere. We zoomed on by, I had gone ahead and gotten my visa in Beijing. Of course, once you get to the border station you can buy a real visa, but there is no instruction telling you not to do so before you get there, that is unless you google this sort of thing. In between Thailand and Cambodia, there is this small strip of land along the river which is essentially without a country. There are giant casinos and warehouse malls there for the gambling and disconcerning discount shopping sort. You walk past these places and then reach the Cambodian border. Same old story here, show em the passport, get your picture taken, get the stamp and walk out. Cambodia hits you right away though; the streets are littered, lots of beggar children and it has the look of disorganization which has so long left the places in which I grew up. Old and new all mixed together, starving kids, unfinished roads and clunky old vehicles that limp along. Yet the people are remarkably strong here. There is a unique grace to the rythym of life here that overtakes you as soon as you enter the country. I paid $10 to share an old Toyota Camry with 6 middle aged women to Battambang-the country’s second largest city and definitely one of those “off the map/Apocolypse Now-y” type of destinations for the adventuresome. We listened to rap music the whole way (Jay-Z, Lily Allen, Kanye) and yelled at kids who were driving their mopeds too slow. The women wore big sunhats, black gloves and chatted the whole way. Khmer is a beautifully harsh language for the Western ear. Especially when it is being screamed at you from the street. “BATTAMBANG, BATTAMBANG……”

The road to BANG was surprisingly smooth and paved the entire way. Since it is Khmer New Year, there are kids all alongside the roadside spraying each other with buckets of water. If you are on a motorcycle, be prepared to get drenched and possibly knocked over by the force of the water. We stopped along the way to get coconut juice (straight out of the fruit) and these unique chicken noodle dumplings which were very sweet. The dumped along the side of the road once we arrived (also I should note that my pack was in my lap the whole ride and I shared the backseat with 4 other people), and I sort of regained my sense of purpose then and there after being taken aback by the trip and the overwhelming sense of place that Cambodia emits, and I walked towards the town to find a hotel I had read about. Battambang is the “real” Cambodia, as opposed to the touristy sort which will be written about later. It was a French outpost and the clock stopped ticking really when they left in the 50s. The town looks like it did back then, with old French buildings and verandas, old cars and ice cream parlors. It’s a timeless place. I wanted to stay in guesthouse managed by an Australian and his Khmer wife since I had read good things about it online, but when I arrived it was all booked up. The town and the guesthouse manager really had the “Apocalypse Now” vibe thing going on, and I couldn’t help but bring it up in conversation. He was an interesting guy and really set the scene for me on how laws, political parties and people work in one of Asia’s most notoriously corrupt states. After an afternoon beer, I walked the town for a few hours. Passing by old French townhouses and markets, the people sort of looked like they were in a daze. It was so hot and everything seemed to feel like it was melting. I had dinner with a South African backpacker I met and went to bed early at another guesthouse where the 12 year-old management tried to get me to take him to dinner with me (it was odd and uncomfortable), I was tired after a long day of traveling.