My Orient: February 2010

Today I am letting the temporal schizophrenia of this blog appear in full glory: my practice during this trip has been “processing” (both artistically and operationally) the place where I am and researching the next one I am going to, while taking pictures where I am and editing the ones I took 3 weeks or so ago, then posting them in the “present” of the blog, visible to all in “my” world. Now I am leapfrogging the blog to my travel-present, though I don’t know when I will be able to post this as wi-fi connections are not as ubiquitous in Phnom Pen, Cambodia, as they were in Vietnam, which will augment the displacement between narration tenses. But I must be able to do this every now and then, this time I plan to post matching pictures as well, before reverting to the past in future entries.

My Phnom Pen arrival was a bit traumatic, as I realized the bottled water I was given by the bus company that took me here came in a very thin plastic shell: the guide books and ancient red cardboard folder inside my napsack soaked it all. Now it is late at night and I am trying to have the fan finish drying them (and the folder’s contents, from newspaper clippings to bank checks) before I leave in the morning.

Phnom Pen appears as a tired and depressing city, yet bustling with life and a quiet spiritual vibe. I went native immediately upon arrival: I had the choice from “easy”, staying at the hotel of the Vietnamese tour operator that also owns the bus that took me here from Saigon and those that go from here on to Siem Reap, the city of Angkor Wat. And truly, this very enterprising firm, which began just as a tourist café, do a good job: in my last days in Vietnam I did not have to worry about a thing, everything was “at your door” service (the opposite of the beginning of my Vietnam crossing, though some of it must be ascribed to Southerners being much friendlier than Northerners). And that is precisely why I walked a mile towards the unknown, with all my gear, in the scorching sun and polluted air, of Downtown Phnom Pen, dodging the mopeds that are everywhere, including sidewalks, when these have not been requisitioned as parking lots. But I walked in the street, serenely and accepted a level of discomfort that I would have not had at the bus/hotel stop: The hotel personnel speak English, meals are included and wi-fi is available. I would have not had to take a step outside before leaving tomorrow and probably would not have, like I didn’t in Saigon last night. Travelling in these parts is exhausting, resting and the comfort of the internet are always tempting options, whenever possible, often renouncing the curiosity and extra effort needed to go out and more in depth. While walking, I pondered the undue importance of guide books in foreign and impenetrable lands: they truly design the entire travelling experience, which is why I try to avoid taking them along. This time though, I brought 4. And I realized that as I was breaking loose of my guide book world, I temporarily entered the one of the Japanese backpacker’s guide book whose suggestion for a hotel I was following, another bookbound parallel travelling universe. There are several, even just for travellers and backpackers: I arrived at another Bus/superbudget hotel complex, this one further down market, and noted that the economy of this segment of the tour and travel business revolves around good people manners and a reliance on the word being spread: it is difficult not to rely on the guide books reccomendiations when it is mostly impossible to even talk to locals. In the end, the hotel was inadequate and two locations later, I found one that filled my needs and was only frequented by locals, so I strayed off the printed path somehow. But I took the reasoning a bit further: when I don’t rely on travel books, I rely on information generated by other readings or other conversations with people who opine about a place and their experience of it, or I rely on the narrative provided by my previous experiences of places I return to, sometimes boosted by recent journalistic updates. So when travelling, but not only, stories, however narrated, are all we have to go by and the good ones are the ones that proof reliable (when travelling: there is usually no proof in everyday life).

The pretended universality of my education is again exposed, as it is increasingly clear that the illusion of potentially communicating with all other humans is a completely utopistic idea. I am only interacting with people whom I think can help me and I vigorously do so with any means at my disposal, when I need information or anything practical. But because it is so challenging and difficult to do with people whose language is too complex for me to try to learn without a multi-year comitment (which is out of the question, at this point in my life), I make an effort only when in need, though I am always making eye contact, smiling and waving to people who appear eager to do the same.

Another benefit of walking was getting some (grueling) exercise, as well as being exposed to the locals and how they interact on the street, which I further researched later from the back seat of a moped, the preferred taxi here, though tuc tucs are popular, but much slower as they are cumbersome three wheelers. Everybody goes the way they need to, often against traffic and light, but not in a craven manner: just pursuing the shortest or most direct path. And everybody else factors that in, while apparently ignoring all violators (till they themselves become one, as needed) and zipping by, without ever touching each other. It would not be possible in a society of coffee drinkers: tea is the drink of these people and I feel the difference, even though tea is supposedly more caffeinated than coffee itself. Nobody is jittery and I feel right at home walking fully loaded in this environment, as the “rules” are not too different from the instinctual precepts I apply when riding a bicycle in New York or other large cities.

My foray to the local markets (my reason for taking the moto-taxi and spending a day/night in Phnom Pen) was a disappointment: none of the textiles I would have liked to bring back were what I expected and scarce to find as well: knick knack “antiques” and jewelry were ubiquitous, but nothing worth the trouble to pack it. On the up side, the contiguous food market where I took lots of pictures, which will probably turn out to be my only haul at the end of this trip. Better quality merchandise, for cheaper, can be had in New York, it seems, as ridiculous as this notion is to admit it. As an offshot of encroaching globalization, all the good factories are producing for western labels, then naturally dumping the surplus quality control production quota on the local markets. The net result is the disappearance of local crafts, unless they are supported by a thriving local market: I can’t imagine the 2 plus meters (7 ft.) wooden idols I see by the thousands are for export, there must be a bristling demand for local interiors. But market vendors probably prefer this outcome: the factory produced articles are cheaper, insure higher margins and there is a steady supply, demand must be constant, from locals and t-shirt and nap sack buying tourists.

As I ponder this, I consider the people around me: while by the standards of my world I live like a pauper (especially when I go on my “exotic travels”, which paradoxically are seen as a luxury by my peers: I am essentially a cold weather refugee in winter months), just in my luggage I have so much more than most of the people around me here. And they seem to fare just fine, without worrying about how much gear they are carrying, whether they will find nice silks to bring back to friends and relations or having a blowdrier for added comfort. They live with little more than what they are wearing and an incredible amount of revolving compassion, the only currency that keeps social interactions to a peaceful level where most people have nothing, but they are still coping with their meager financial and complex social obligations. They must be complex and solid, for all to manage in such a tough environment: there seems to be a lot less than in Vietnam, where at least the predominant color in the country side is green, here it’s yellow. In spite of realizing that harvest seasons may vary, even just a few kilometers and whole climatic condition away; I did see some end-of-harvesting-type operations in the fields, but agricultural land seems a lot less well managed here. And another obvious realization: most of mankind lives this way everywhere, no matter the stripe of their believes, not the “normal freedom” we are used to in the affluent West, which cannot seem but incredibly wasteful, obstentatious and vain, by inevitable comparison. And pointless: this morning on the ferry our bus boarded to cross the Mekong River, I was observing a woman who was selling food she had clearly prepared in her kitchen. I could not help but notice that if much more basic, her daily life plan is much more developed and defined than my own: getting up, getting supplies (if not gotten from the night before) fresh from her garden and the market, cooking, going to the ferry to do some commerce. Come home, feed whom she has to, eat, go to sleep and do it over the next day and the next. Most people around me in New York and other places I call home have nothing as comparably simple. And yet, having running water (hot and cold), a fridge, a stove and heating when it’s cold should make life less hard than for those who live their entire lives without what we come to consider as fundamental necessities.

It is the morning after and I am on the air conditioned territory of the other bus’s realm. It costs little over half of what the firm’s I came to Cambodia with charges; though the air conditioning works better, people are mostly locals, the seats are less comfortable and they play Cambodian tv comedy packaged for Cambodian emigrants, I am told by my attractive neighbor, a young student in medicine. It seems the shows were very popular on tv, but now they can only be purchased on DVD, tv shows them rarely. And the large Cambodian community in California snaps them up, they are big fans. So the chatter goes on uninterrupted, the situations seem to be the standard ptboilers: couple life, trouble with neighbors and in-laws. Eventually a Bruce Lee movie is played, I must say that not having viewed more than one or two prior to this, the movie was amusing and very well made, good entertainment. It doesn’t just have kung fu fights, there is plenty of narrative and comedy (see above, all of them, plus pitting the protagonists against a nasty world ruled by thugs that are eventually routed). And the production values are totally professional, under any profile

I do realize that perhaps due my professional deformation from my years as a tour guide, I make a miserable tourist: I don’t really care for the sights or even monuments, unless I chance upon them, though today I am travelling to the must see that everybody who has been to this area has lionized, without any expectations: Angkor Wat, mostly because it is on the most direct route to Thailand and the beach, which I am yearning for. I find the notions, advertised in all guide books and budget travel cafés, of a “Killing Fields Tour” grotesque beyond taste, though I never flinched when clients asked to see "Ground Zero" and told them about my 9/11 upon request. On a personal level, I just want to “cop a feel of a country” as I course through it, observe it with sceptiscism towards the meaning of what I see and towards my powers of observation and analysis, for my confidence in meaningful communication is limited and I have seen enough monuments to understand that differences in décor and demonology aside, they all manifest the vain attempt to transcend the tragic banality of the human condition, an uneven fight that is painful to watch happening over and over again. And the collective will channelling, managing people sometimes for centuries, in order to build them, scare me. I naturally have a completely different outlook on individual artistic expression: that is the true voice of the human soul, though the result doesn't change: we are doomed, no matter how many monuments we collectively as humans, or individual workds of art we create over the span of our evolution, to celebrate the human spirit or to millions of gods, all creations of our imagination to exorcize the fears that our imagination also created. I accept serenely that we are only passing through this planet and while I hold no religious believe, I respect them all and I do remember that when I started hearing about religion (probably before kindergarten and definitely by the time I was being setn to cathechism for First Communion), my vision of the future was of being a ray of light travelling through the dark universe. Apparently, I found out 20 plus years later in the IBM building in New York where “Kalachakra: The Wheel of Life” was being exhibited, that is the condition described in Tibetan Buddhism as Moksha: after one’s last reincarnation, that is (exactly) what supposedly happens. I don’t hold myself in such high esteem: I learned in Guangzhou that there are only 500 chosen admitted to such bliss (I guess in Chinese Buddhism, things may be brighter in other branches), they are all portrayed in gold gilded statues in the ancient Hailin Temple (first artifacts found are dated, in writing, AD 182), which I made a point of going to see. That, to me, has a personal connection, the same type that drove me to visit all the Maya sites that had been excavated till then in my travels to Yucatan in the 80’s. I liked the fact that the locations were mostly unused, immersed in the jungle and very sparsely visited then, true places for meditation (though I don’t call it that in my personal onthology: just thinking). In India, which presents similarities to Cambodia, the antiquity of a shrine is a marketing chip, but completely secondary to the continued use of it as a place of cult; and preaching. Another similarity with India I observed, is the attitude toward the public highway in a large city: after dark, it is for those who need private quarters and it becomes possible to raise a net pavillion, a hammock, or recline on one’s rickshaw or tuc tuc (the omnipresent motorized tricycle that serves as taxi in most of Asia), and go to sleep. In India I have seen entire families reclining directly on the sidewalk with no kind of remedial bedding, sleeping soundly.

I continue to wonder how much weight weather and climate carry on the potential for development of any given people: Vietnam is in the same area, but in spite of thousands of years of invasions and foreign domination (the XX century was just a brief episode, Chinese rulers enslaved the entire country for centuries at a time), it is much more developed than Cambodia. The untold suffering of the Cambodians is mute, like the desolate countryside on the way to Siem Reap. Perhaps people don’t want to be there anymore, unless they have to. 20 years (since those responsible have been removed form power) is not a long enough time to exorcise the living memory of genocide, which took place in the countryside. The damage still hovers in the air, mixed in with the hot dust.

And I also wonder: why must a nation, any nation, impose its dominance on others, in order to feel great and powerful? It seems the two things are correlated in history: now that China is asserting its power and influene, even Chinese People are enjoying an unprecedented degree of well being, though in a still small minority and with a yawning (and spreading) chasm between them and the overwhelming majority of the population, which can only be called have-nots. Progress is increasing the numbers of those who do better, but I have no illusion that wealth will be spread to any degree fo fairness, in spite of trumpeted ideological bluster.

The senselessness of war, any war, becomes clearer when travelling: how can a nation, any nation, but more so the most powerful and removed, attack a country it understands very little of (not even the language) and pretend to retain control of it? It is impossible to even understand what goes on in it, how can one (or one nation) pretend to control it without first understanding its history, which is its destiny and holds the keys to the workings of a nation. It is incredibly naïf, and I am thinking to the American adventure in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, but all colonial wars and not only in this part of the world, have borne the same fruits of misery long after they ended. Ultimately, it is hubris, the conviction that “it can be done” and “it is imperative”. The US had very good historical reasons for intervention, if seen in the short span of the geopolitical moment, but ridiculous, both in scope and possibilities of success, if regarded through the length of the countries’ history. And tragically, a half century later, the same mistakes, brought on by the same premise, is bringing disastrous results to all parties involved in nearby parts of the world, equally removed, at least geophysically, from the attacking power. What is even more incredible, is that the US population is totally untouched, unconcerned or unaffected by the wars going on now, except in the very small segment that makes up its military. It’s not the way things work naturally, though what’s natural anymore. It makes one wonder what will come next, after the towel(s) will be thrown in and direct US involvement in the fighting stops, as it came to an end in 1973 in this part of the world: will the world be a better place? Was it then? Was the sstatus of the American Nation diminished by the retreat? Will it be when the senseless present invasions come to an end? Will the prolongment of the unjustifiable "involvement" bring any tangible benefit to the world? To the American Nation? To those we are supposedly defending? And how long will it take, if ever. to undo at least some of the damage of the current occupations?

While I was in the Philippines, I found out that Chinese State tv is incredibly interesting, informative, thorough and convincing, an amazing propaganda tool: they have the English version on CCTV9 which is what I was watching. I kept wondering if they show thew same in China and to this day I don’t know: there were 14 CCTV channels on the set I had in Guilin, the only place where I turned it on and they were all in Chinese, broadcasting New Year’s Eve Specials. No commercials, it is a throwback to my childhood days when Italian tv used the journalistic standards of the BBC (no longer in use there as well) and a “betterment of the people” approach. Unlike Italian tv of the 70’s though, nothing seems to be off limits, including a one hour special on the international debacle of the Made in China poisonous toys last year (from the lengthy patronizing angle of what’s being done to avoid such incidents in the future, but at least they are discussing it in depth) to talks between China government officials and Dalai Lama envoyes, carried live (this was before the visit to the White House). It is very interesting and unusual for Westerners to see how the Chinese leadership unabashedly, but shrewdlly, promotes its point of view. In contrast to the American propaganda machine, which on soundbytes and a limited message repeated over and over, the Chinese will sicken you with a surfeit of detail, eviscerating endlessly all (seemingly) possible data until one can take no more and changes channel, after a good 15 minutes. And some of the content is very informative, in a way that either by omission or by actual censorship (or “editorial choice”) does not get to Western Newscasts.