Back in the Saddle Again. Plus, Endemic Corruption in Cambodia

It’s safe to say that after cycling 3000 kilometers through Cambodia and Vietnam last year, I was harboring some major cycling nostalgia. But after recently riding a bicycle the 100 kilometers from the Thai border into Battambang, Cambodia, I can confidently say that the best way to cure nostalgia is to revisit it in person. This acts as an antidote to rehashing it in your mind.

In other words, as I cycled up hill after hill, baking in the tropical sun, I often thought, “Oh yeah, cycling sucks sometimes. Hmm, I guess I had forgotten.”

Not to say that I didn’t enjoy myself. I did. The scenery, possibly because it was so hilly, was beautiful. Rolling green hills, luxuriantly green after the recent heavy rainy season. Fruit orchards on either side of a wide paved road. (Wide paved road? Where am I? Can this be Cambodia!?)

About 50 kilometers into the trip, I met a man who had lived in Minnesota, often passing through my home state of Iowa. He spoke with an American accent and while I lay in his hammock, exhausted and sunburnt, he regaled me with stories and cultural references related to the states.

What I remember most, though, is what he told me about Cambodia. There’s a saying I’ve heard bandied about here: In Cambodia, the system isn’t corrupt; corruption is the system. I could illustrate this point with a laundry list of examples, but instead, I’ll relate something that my new acquaintance told me.

There are police checks along every stretch of highway in Cambodia and it’s no secret that these policemen will often pull you over and fine you for any offense—real or imagined, big or small. A truck driver who owned his own transport company said that he regularly paid over $2,000 US in these roadside bribes just to pass through the country.

None of this is a surprise. But here’s what I didn’t know, those policemen have to pay their supervisors (in dinners, socializing, and under-the-table bribes) to stand on that road. They often must pay up to $1000 US just for the privilege of standing roadside and, of course, the busier the highway, the more the police officer must pay to be there.

This puts things into a bit of (depressing) perspective, doesn’t it? Of course the policeman is taking bribes from vehicles. He needs that money to pay off his supervisor and he must keep paying his supervisor to keep his position. The supervisor, in turn, needs the bribe money to pay his superior and to keep his lofty position. Etc. etc.

As conspiracy theorists are so fond of saying, the corruption goes all the way to the top.

These thoughts kept me company as I cycled the remaining and tediously slow 50 kilometers to Battambang.

Another though which kept me occupied: Why are there so damn many Toyota Camrys in Cambodia?

The Road Well Traveled

There’s only one road between Battambang and Phnom Penh—the second largest and largest cities in Cambodia, respectively. Maybe I’ve been spending too much time in Thailand, with its broad avenues, lush medians, and lane-respecting traffic, but it seemed to me that this, er, highway had deteriorated since I traveled it last year.

I was on my way to Phnom Penh, but my visa run was feeling like a slow crawl; the heavy rain and flooding during this year’s wet season created hula-hoop-size potholes, potholes that I could curl up and got lost in. The bus driver was doing his best to avoid them, but the traffic on the road was not helping matters. And the range of traffic rivaled that of India. I saw water buffalo, bicycles, SUVs driven by government bigwigs, cows, pedestrians, motorbikes, dogs, and legions of Camrys. In fact, just a year or two ago, the roads in Cambodia were dominated by Camrys, so much so that every street looked, to a fanciful observer, like it was hosting a Toyota Camry parade.

I sat near the front of the bus and I could see our driver’s face reflected in the oversized rearview mirror. He looks like a criminal, I thought reluctantly, wishing I weren’t so judgmental. He wore Top-Gun-esque aviators which covered half his face but could not cover the permanent scowl he wore. His lips were tensed, pulled into a tight line, and he leaned on the horn as if it were his only ally against the traffic riffraff surrounding his bus.

At a narrow stretch of the road, our driver honked vociferously at two motorbikes in front of us. When they refused to yield the road, refused to pull over onto a graveled, muddy shoulder, our driver’s mood turned from dark to foul. Instead of whizzing by the motorbikes, he slowed down, tightened his mouth in concentration, pulled alongside the bikes, and slowly, gently inched over to the right. He inched over, taking his time, until the bikes were forced off the highway. Had a middle finger carried any impact here, I’m sure he would have flipped them off. Instead he looked over at the motorists and watched with a passive face as they precariously edged onto the muddy, potholed shoulder.

Minutes later, I really knew the driver’s mood was foul after a kid on a different motorbike lost his hat. His neon, bedazzled trucker’s hat found a gust of wind and flew into the middle of the road. The kid slowed down and looked back, trying to negotiate a u-turn. Casually, our driver drifted into the middle of the road and aligned the left wheel of the bus with the bright orange trucker hat. Smush. I watched in the rearview mirror as the driver’s face relaxed and his lips turned up into a smile.

I was surprised. I was initially sure he was trying to dodge the hat. When I realized he was aiming for it, I couldn’t hold back my laughter. This man had a stressful job—six hours of driving on terrible roads, amongst lousy drivers, surrounded by tiny buzzing vehicles, illogical pedestrians, and animals unable to grasp the finer implications of a highway. For six hours he needed to be on high alert, every muscle in his body tensed, every reflex on edge. If he needed to turn a garish trucker hat into muddied roadkill, I certainly wouldn’t begrudge him such a small pleasure.

Just get me to Phnom Penh in one piece.

Chanthaburi World Durian Festival

I came back to Southeast Asia just in time for durian season and the timing was no coincidence. I arrived in Bangkok, jet-lagged and tired, at six in the morning. By two in the afternoon, I was wandering the streets of the Chanthaburi World Durian Festival.

I tried to temper my expectations, but they were absurdly high. World. Durian. Festival. I likely would have been disappointed by anything short of a free 24-hour tasting booth with my name on it.

So when I saw the festival was a modestly sized street fair with only a few booths devoted to durian, I was disappointed. That said, it is hard for someone as obsessed with durian as I am to be wholly disappointed when at least 20% of the vendors have stacks and piles of my favorite spiked fruit.

It would be a bit more accurate to call this a fruit festival. Chanthaburi is a famous fruit-producing province in Thailand, and the bounty is especially impressive in summer. We walked by many booths overflowing with mangosteens, durians, rambutans, snakefruit, pineapples, jackfruits, and more. In addition, there were stalls selling street food of a wider scope than usual (though there was no sticky rice with durian, which surprised and disappointed me anew). The festival seemed more of an excuse to bring the family, have a walk around the man-made lake with the kiddies, and sample the snacks from the street vendors.

There was a parade and a giant stage.

The sign above the cosmic backdrop says Amazing Thailand World Durian Festival Chanthaburi 2011

And floats decorated elaborately with fruit.

Trust me, you want a closer view of this.

Check out those rabbits made from durians, cucumbers, mini eggplants, and chili peppers. Also, get a load of the chili pepper mustache on the turtle!

There were prizes awarded to the best durians in several categories and breeds.

Everywhere you could see statues of durians, pictures of durians, and even two kids dressed up as durians.

But I was hoping for more. I was hoping for a booth comparing and contrasting the different breeds of durian so I could begin to get an idea of which my favorite were. I thought it might have been nice to have durian in every conceivable permutation—ice cream, pastries, chips, preserved and dried, jams, candies. Maybe some hands-on booths which would allow you to create something—durian with sticky rice, for example. How about an informational booth in which you could learn about the process of growing and harvesting durian? I'd like to know more factoids about durian production in Chanthaburi, too. I know that a higher percentage of land in Chanthaburi is devoted to growing durian than anywhere else in the world, but I'd like to learn more. Maybe it could be possible to book a tour with a local orchard through the festival, then go visit that orchard later during the week, while there, sampling different varieties and seeing how durians are grown.

All the same, there was a lot of durian, and that is guaranteed to put a smile on my face. Here are a few highlights:

Watching durian chips being made. Turns out, it’s basically the same process as potato chips. They take underripe (and thus firm) durian, slice it on a mandoline, then fry it up in batches.

I sampled organically grown durian.

Met a kind seller who gave us all the free durian we could eat, even opening and gifting us a whole three-kilo fruit to share.

But perhaps the biggest success of the afternoon was that I finally got a chance to learn about and taste different varieties of durian: golden pillow, golden button, long stem, gibbon. I’ll write up a separate post comparing these varieties soon.

So of course it was a fun afternoon; it just wasn’t the durian gluttonfest I had anticipated.

The Chanthaburi World Durian Festival is held every year at the beginning of durian season, usually in May.

Grammar note: I apologize for the vacillation. I’m not sure whether durian is a countable or uncountable noun and therefore treated it incoherently as either and both depending on my whim in each sentence :)

Angels of the Road: Pietre in Bucharest

The following is an excerpt from my journal. After about a month of hitchhiking around eastern Europe, I found myself in Romania. I was unsure where to go next and was beginning to feel tired of sleeping in a new bed each night and even more tired of not knowing where that bed would be or how exactly I would find it. After staying with a lovely couple on an organic fruit orchard in Transylvania, the early snow forced my hand. I had no appropriate shoes or clothing, so I began to hitch south.

It was a perfect day of hitching. I left Odorheiu without having heard from my next host in Bucuresti, but I figured I could always find a hostel if necessary.

In Vanatori, a few gypsies approached me, asking for money or proffering advice or possibly both. One old man, dressed in baggy black trousers and a light coat insufficient for the cold tried incessantly to talk to me and direct me somewhere. He wouldn’t leave me alone though I kept saying “Multumesc” and avoiding eye contact. I think it was because he appeared to be harassing me that I got my next ride quickly.

I got in the car with an older couple in the front seat and boxes of fruit and vegetables in the backseat. The man, portly and vibrant, spoke a little English and the woman, trim and put-together, spoke none at all. Due to bad traffic and construction, they took me a scenic route to Bucuresti and along the way I shared some of my pears from my last hosts’ orchard in Odorheiu. The couple tried to share their meat pizza with me and the man, Pietre, scoffed when I told him I was vegetarian. “I’m sorry!” he said.

Along the way, they stopped at a 400-year-old monastery so I could look around. When inside the church, the woman, Brendusa, kept talking to me, trying to explain things to me in Romanian. I smiled and laughed and nodded and she did the same. Once outside, we collected walnuts which Pietre cracked in his hands and continually gave to me. I ate them quickly, but could not keep up with his supply.

We drove towards Bucuresti, but it soon became clear that we would not arrive before dark. I explained my situation, saying I needed to find an internet cafe. I hoped by then my host had emailed me back with her phone number and address, but if not, I could use the internet to find a hostel that night. Pietre gave me his card and told me that if there were any problems I should call him and I could stay with him. I was so grateful for this because as it got later and later, I began to be a bit apprehensive about where I would sleep that night.

I loved the way they interacted with each other, affectionate and teasing, with Brendusa always laughing at Pietre. And the way they interacted with me was just as sweet, treating me gently, like a daughter. They tried to find me an internet cafe, but as we got closer to Pietre’s apartment we decided to scrap that plan—instead I would stay with Pietre. “Real couchsurfing” as my friend J would say.

They made up Pietre’s bed for me as Pietre was determined to sleep on his own couch while I slept in the bedroom.

The next morning I awoke to find the first snow that had fallen in Odorheiu had followed me to Bucuresti. Pietre scoffed at my black mesh sneakers which seemed to absorb the slushy snow rather than repel it and he was convinced I needed another pair of shoes. I tried to talk him out of it; I was heading south after all, surely I could keep ahead of the snow. But he was determined to buy me a pair of shoes, warmer ones for the Romanian cold that was settling in so early in October. He took me to a second-hand shop that sold shoes by the kilogram and charged a different amount per kilo depending on the day of the week. Unfortunately it was Friday and the shoes we agreed on were Gortex and heavy. Pietre really wouldn’t let me pay for them. He was completely insistent and I was touched and embarrassed by his kindness. My measly “thank you” was insufficient so I gave him a big hug to accompany it. He even tried to buy me a warm, waterproof coat, but I had to put my foot down and really refuse.

When we got back to the apartment, Pietre turned on the radio and it seemed that every station played the same mind-numbing electro dance music, so I popped in a Louis Armstrong CD and we listened repeatedly to “St. James Infirmary”. Pietre said in the name for this music in Romanian is “Black Heart” and said that the song reminded him of a funeral march—a sublime funeral march. He tucked me very sweetly into bed and I could hear him listen to “St. James Infirmary” a few more times before he retired for the night as well. I surfed the television, intrigued by the late-night offerings of Romanian TV. I was especially intrigued when I found a channel playing softcore porn with fuzzy lighting and 90s-style neon t-shirts and acid-wash jeans quickly removed to reveal skinny women with big fake breasts. The porn seemed like a cheap (and old) American production.

The next day, Saturday, Pietre and Brendusa took me to an open-air museum displaying traditional houses and buildings from all across Romania. It was fascinating and reminded me of a more interesting living-history museum than the one in Des Moines, Iowa where my school sometimes took field trips when I was a child.

At this museum in Bucuresti, there were windmills and watermills for grinding grains, extracting oil from nuts and seeds, and for felting wool. Felting wool is an important part of traditional Romanian clothing, a protection against the bitter winters. I poked my nose everywhere I could—going into all the open houses and peering in the windows of the closed houses, but the day was cold and overcast and gave me further appreciation for felted wool.

The next day, despite the protestations of Pietre and Brendusa, I was determined to leave, to hitch south and jump ahead of the cold. My cotton pants and two thin sweaters were proving no match for drizzling sleet and near-freezing temperatures.

As usual, I planned to use HitchWiki to find the best way out of the city, but Pietre had a different plan. They would drive me all the way to the Bulgarian border, from where it would be easy to find a truck going south, possibly all the way to Istanbul. He was determined to drive me all that distance and Brendusa was determined to come, and what could I do? At a certain point, protesting and saying no thanks simply becomes rude, so that morning I broke in my new (second hand) winter boots and we piled into Pietre’s car. Pietre drove and I sat in the backseat smiling the whole way.

An hour later, after passing by flat farmland remarkably reminiscent of the Iowan countryside I hadn’t seen in over a year, we arrived at the border with Bulgaria. I kissed them both, thanked them as much as I could, hoping they could feel how grateful I truly was, and hugged them both tightly. I saw Brendusa wipe away a few tears which of course made me choke up. I gave her another hug, then Pietre lifted my pack and helped me into it. I walked toward the Bulgarian border officials, but couldn’t resist one final look back.

Pietre stood watching me leave, his arm around Brendusa, comforting her. I remembered what Pietre had told me the day before. He only had one child, a son, but now he felt that I was something like a daughter. And I thought, for the umpteenth time, how well the road provides. When you surrender to the road, to the whims of the universe, you find you are taken care of. At a time in my travels when I was feeling tired and a little frazzled, these two wonderful people came into my life, loving me and taking care of me as if I were their own child.

Photos courtesy of Ainali and Andre Stroe at Wikipedia Commons.

Sneaking into Petra, or, Nothing is Free

I saw Petra for free, snuck in the back route on donkeyback swaddled and clothed like a Bedouin woman. I rode a donkey, a mule, and a camel that day—all for the first time. I drank more Bedouin tea than I can remember, met more people than I can remember, and watched my host free climb the monastery, the largest and tallest tomb face in the compound of Petra.

Does it sound like I’m bragging? I suppose I am, just a little bit, but the truth is that I wish I had just paid like everyone else. For though I laughed on muleback up 800 steps to a view of Petra and heard Bedouin flute played live in the great tomb, I also realized that nothing is free and that my proclivity to trust people and to believe what they say is naive bordering on stupid.

It started with a very fucked up night involving,  if I boil the situation down to bare bones, a man in love with his younger paid male companion, who in turn had been hitting on me all evening and wanted to share my bed. It involved two Bedouin cousins who were hosting our unhappy triangle in their bug-riddled small flat and who offered me an oil massage and asked me to come to them, both of them, in the middle of the night. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.

The next morning (did I just skip over an eventful night? Yes. Yes, I did.) I tried to make it clear to the cousins that I wasn’t interested in their oft-repeated offer.

“I’m sleeping alone tonight,” I said, emphasizing my point by booking a room at a local guesthouse.

“I’m sleeping alone tonight,” I repeated later when they made it clear that they would both like to sleep with me that night. But, and here’s perhaps the crux of the problem, I smiled as I said it. As I so often do, I smiled while I said no. But then, I’m used to people doing me the courtesy of taking me at my word.

Because of ensuing drama between the older man and his paid companion, a group expedition into Petra became, quite unexpectedly, an uncomfortable threesome consisting of me and the Bedouin cousins. They said they could get me, through a back route, into Petra on donkeyback, that they were happy to show me around, that it really was no trouble. So I said “Fuck it,” and left my friends to their arguing and drama and headed into the desert with the cousins.

The ground was littered with small rocks, with pebbles, with sand. If I had been walking, I would have needed to watch my footing carefully. But I was on donkeyback, and after imagining quite vividly what might happen to me if the donkey stumbled, I had a reassuring thought. People in this area had been using donkeys for, oh, let’s say thousands of years. If they trusted the donkey, surely I could too. So I relaxed and leaned back (figuratively and literally) and began to enjoy the view.

The landscape was beautiful and desolate, with pink-tinged rock faces that hid any sign of habitation. But the cousins pointed out carvings and structures in the surrounding cliffs, and suddenly, like that moment when you finally squint just so and a 3-D picture snaps into place, all I could see around me were the too-regular outlines of man-made dwellings and the flourishes of decorative chiseling. Just as I began to enjoy the view and could see Petra approaching, the cousins decided it was time to take a break. We pulled blankets out of the saddlebags and arranged a spot in the shadow of a tomb carved in the cliff face. Then the cousins pulled a bottle of Sprite and a bottle of gin out as well. Oh good, I thought with a grimace, 2:00 p.m. does seem like the perfect time to begin drinking.

The drinks flowed copiously, though not into my cup. An hour later, after three-quarters of the gin bottle was empty, the younger cousin, Hamdu, began his seduction of me in earnest. He offered me another massage (which appears to be a universal allusion to sex) and when his older cousin, Saleh, left to pee, Hamdu tried to kiss me. He pulled me toward him despite my protestations and when I realized he had no intention of letting me go, I pushed against his chest with my arms extended and my elbows locked.

“I don’t want to kiss you. I told you I’m not interested. I tried to be clear,” I said softly, despite my anger.

“Why are you wasting my time? You’re flirting with me and now you say you don’t want it?” He was angry and made no attempt to be polite.

Saleh returned before I could reply and witnessed some of what transpired.

“Don’t worry about Hadmu,” he told me. “We’ll leave him here to drink while we go to Petra and I show you everything. And you can trust me; I never give something to a woman unless she wants it. I don’t need to force anything.”

“Okay,” I said because I did believe him. It was his cousin whom I felt uncomfortable around, but still, I added for good measure, “I’m sleeping alone tonight.”

So I got back on the donkey and Saleh and I left together for Petra. After five minutes, I could see the huge and sprawling compound before us. I tried to orient myself, as we had come in through a side route. Ahead of me was a small stadium of sorts, immediately to the left was a large tomb, and to my right, down a sharp slope, was a colonnaded street and hippodrome.

Saleh ducked into the nearby tomb and spoke to a man he identified as another cousin. I was impatient to begin exploring, but felt compelled to wait, to stick to Saleh’s side, lest a ticket checker come around. While I waited, Saleh played his flute and sang in the resonant and vaulted area inside the tomb. At first I thought he was singing a traditional Bedouin song, but then I caught snippets of the words.

“Look at all the tourists,” he sang, his voice trilling. “I wish they would fuck off.” His was a wavering nasal voice and resonated eerily throughout the high-ceilinged tomb.

I was tired of waiting. I’d been waiting now for hours. “Yalla. Let’s go.”

“Yalla,” Saleh agreed.

My tour of Petra began in earnest—a whirlwind of stone steps and impossibly large carved structures built an inconceivably long time ago. I met innumerable cousins, one of whom let me ride his camel, while another gave me sugary dark black tea. Soon we were at the monastery, one of the highest points in Petra, and I watched in awe as Saleh nimbly climbed up the structure without rope, without gear, without any equipment.

I stood at the base of the monastery with dozens of other tourists, our necks all craned uncomfortably to watch Saleh scale the carved dome roof and jump from parapet to parapet hundreds of feet in the air.

Next we traversed, me still on donkeyback, to one of the highest points in Petra, a point from which I could see no other tourists, only the rocky peaks of gray and maroon hills. It was here that Saleh began to speak vaguely about the magic of Bedouin energy and about giving me Bedouin energy. And I, in my limitless naïveté, thought he was referring to some kind of reiki. When he stuck his tongue in my mouth, I realized that Bedouin energy was yet another allusion to sex.

“I’m so stupid,” I said as Saleh and I sat meters apart. I had made it clear that I didn’t want his “energy” and, in fairness to him, once I physically pushed him away, he left me alone. He was sulking though and unhappy as we sat there, waiting for Petra to empty and the guards to clear out so we could sneak out the same way we had snuck in.

I did feel stupid at that moment, but more than that, I dearly felt my dependence on Saleh. I wanted to placate him. Unless I wanted to get caught by the Petra security guards, it seemed that I was dependant on him to get out, to get back to the town of Wadi Musa and to my hostel.

“I’m so stupid,” I repeated, realizing that I had turned a blind eye to my good sense. I had gotten caught up in my greed for adventure, in the lure of riding a donkey through the setting of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Saleh and I barely spoke as we waited for the sun to creep low and the tourists and guards to head for the exit. Minutes passed, then half an hour. I considered just walking out and paying the $80 ticket if I got caught, but I wondered if that would be the only repercussion. Could I be jailed for sneaking into Petra? It seemed unlikely, but did I really want to find out? Spending time in a foreign jail is high on the list of things that scare me.

Finally we started moving, slowly, back to the Bedouin village we’d started from.Tired of walking, Saleh climbed on the donkey behind me. The donkey’s bouncing, jerking pace put Saleh and I into close contact. Too close; I could feel his erection pressed against me. I quickly climbed off, happy to stretch my legs and to walk the rest of the way. We stopped one last time to watch the orange sun slink behind rosy cliffs, but I couldn’t enjoy the beauty of the view. I wanted to be anywhere else; I wanted to be alone.

From the Bedouin village I made it back to Wadi Musa and back to my hostel, but the rush of relief I expected never came. My body was still tensed with stress and my mind wouldn’t clear. I played over my mistakes on a repeated, inarticulate loop in my mind. And I struggled with the ramifications of the day. It was tempting to crawl inside myself, to avoid talking to strangers, to never smile.

But strangers often approached me, often with true offers of hospitality. So how could I differentiate those genuine offers from the disguised solicitations for sex? I had tried honesty; that didn’t seem to work. Distressingly, my instinct for whom I could trust seemed to be failing me.

I had no answers then and I have no answers now. I am trying to temper my openness with reserve, with caution. But my delight in meeting people and my lust for adventure usually wins out. Maybe that’s for the best. After all, bad memories fade and all that remains is a good story—a story of sneaking into Petra on donkeyback swaddled like a Bedouin woman.

Shelter and Sisterhood in Vietnam

This is the first in a series of posts dedicated to the amazing people I meet while traveling, people who provide me with much more than assistance. These are people who open their hearts to me and whom I will always think of as family. These are my angels of the road.

The following flashback is from my time cycling through Vietnam.

I was hungry after having only fruit for breakfast, so I stopped at the first place I saw. It was on the opposite side of the highway, though, which is something I try to avoid as this is no country road but the busiest highway in Vietnam. From my perch atop Bowie (the name of my bicycle), I could see the place served banh mi. Perfect. Since I had a jar of chunky, Vietnam-made peanut butter in my pack, all I needed was a little baguette (ridiculously cheap too—usually costing about $0.08) for the perfect, tasty lunch.

A young, slight girl who spoke some English approached me as I tried (awkwardly) to balance my bike and unload my small pack from atop the larger one. I walked with her and explained what I wanted, adding, “An chay” to make my bizarre choice of plain bread more understandable. Her father waved me over to sit at the table with him and his wife and daughters. I happily did, but, as he spoke no English, wondered what we would find to “talk” about for the duration of my lunch. We pantomimed about basic things, I showed them my map, and the daughter provided translations for the slightly more complex ideas.

Soon they were bringing out food and treats for me to partake in—candied ginger (a traditional Tet, or Vietnamese New Year treat), fresh papaya, watermelon seeds (damned difficult to open), a sugary puffed rice treat which was crispy and filled with ginger and crystallized sugar.

Then they started outright giving me things! The father packed up the container of candied ginger for me to take and added to it banh in—some kind of special Tet treat that was all white and sugary and rectangular. Then the daughter, An, brought out a heart-shaped gift box. I shyly opened it. Inside was a soft pink wide wristband. She indicated it was a scrunchy for my hair. How perfect! My pink sparkly hairband was in truly awful shape—dirty and stretched out and always catching and ripping on my tangled hair.

I was delighted, but also ashamed. What could I give to them? What did I have? Not for the first time I wished I was carrying a supply of gifts. Then I thought of my books. The Little Prince! It was filled with delightful pictures and the story was simple and maybe someday she would be able to read and understand it. So I fished through my backpack and gave it to her, trying to indicate through hand gestures just how treasured it was to me. “My favorite book,” I repeated.

I don't know exactly how it happened, but when we went back to the table to sit and I began rifling through my smaller pack in preparation to leave, An mentioned she wished I were part of her family. Then she said something to her father in Vietnamese, smiled and turned to me, saying that they would like it if I would be part of their family for that afternoon and night, that I should stay with them. I'm sorry to say that I hesitated. I really shouldn't have; it was an extraordinary offer. But in my defense, I was simply a bit concerned about time. So I got out my map again to see how far I had to go until Mui Ne, the next big town. Could I do the remaining distance in one day? Yes, it seemed completely plausible. So I smilingly agreed.

An was immediately jubilant. She jumped up from the table, lightly grabbed my arm and steered me toward a room in the back which had an altar and old photographs of the family's deceased relatives. She lit a long stick of incense then handed it to me, indicating that I should place the incense above the altar. I wondered, is this a ritual just for family members?

Then she led me into her room which she shared with two younger sisters, one fifteen and one twelve. She herself, despite looking much younger to my eyes, was only nineteen years old. She said I should feel at home and asked if she could call me Sister Sarah. I agreed, tickled by the ecclesiastical undertones, calling her Sister An in return. She invited me to bathe, which was a welcome invitation after a few hours cycling in the hot sun. I bathed quickly in the outhouse, splashing myself with water and washing my hair as best I could. Around An and her sisters, all of whom dressed neatly and meticulously, I had been acutely aware of my sweat-stained outer shirt and tangled, messy hair.

After a light lunch, the girls showed me a video of An singing beautifully at some kind of celebration. She had a lovely voice and did some very sweet dance moves, all while wearing a cowgirl-inspired outfit which might have been ridiculous on someone else, but she was such a cute little thing, I think she could have worn anything. Then we did some karaoke, and after a little persuasion I too decided to sing. I started with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” because it was the only English song, then I passed the microphone to the sisters. The eldest two had simply stunning singing voices and moved with such grace and ease. 

 

The sisters told me I was beautiful, even before I had bathed my fatigued, sweaty body. And they loved my hair. But I didn't see how they could truly think I was beautiful. Oh, that's not self-deprecation. It's just that I violate so many Asian standards of beauty, especially now. I have dark, tanned skin. Really. My legs are the color of a roasted turkey at Thanksgiving. I have freckles and I am too tall and too big and too clumsy. In many ways, I am the antithesis of the standard of beauty here, in which being graceful and pale, with as white skin as possible, is seen as beautiful. I think the only way to reconcile this paradox is to agree that the sisters were holding me to entirely different standards of beauty. So while they may find me beautiful, they would never want my dark tan or my freckled skin.

 

That afternoon, though it was clear that the normal activity would have been to sleep a bit, we all piled onto the family's motorbike. The girls took great care in preparing for the trip. They wore face masks and long gloves, as well as hoodies with long sleeves and the hoods pulled over their heads and tied tightly under their chins. In contrast, I wore my cut-off jean shorts and a short sleeve shirt. I was already as dark as I'd ever been and, while cycling ten hours a day, I simply found it useless to fight the tan. So the four of us squeezed on and rode into the nearby town of Vinh Hao, famous for its mineral water, to take the type of photobooth kitschy photos that are so popular in Japan. You know the ones—you can edit them afterwards, adding bows and hearts and writing to the foreground and a snowy background or a background populated by Hello Kitties. We drank sugar cane juice with ice and a bit of orange juice mixed in, which Sister An insisted on treating me to.

The sisters took a little nap and bathed before dinner, and as she was changing her clothes, An asked me a question I never expected to hear. “Do you think I'm thin?” she asked, her face tight and worried. My goodness! “Of course you are thin!” I answered immediately, knowing the crushing effect of hesitance. This girl was tiny, tiny, tiny. She was pocket-sized—as slim and slight as a child. Why on earth would she worry about a thing like that? But I understand. Girl, do I ever understand. Beauty standards infiltrate and insecurity abounds in everyone; the skinny and the symmetrical are no exception.

I felt like an oaf in comparison to her and in the past few months I had gained weight and no longer recognized my own body. But I was beginning again to feel comfortable in my skin. Especially once I started cycling—on that first day, with no preparation or past experience, I cycled 75 km—I really began to see what my body was capable of and it made me grateful. Grateful for strong legs and strong lungs. Grateful for a constitution which, after cycling for ten hours can still be vibrant and full of energy, propelling me out of my hotel room and exploring whatever town I'm passing through.

I met some of the extended family at dinner—aunts and uncles. We conversed through smiles and laughter and soon An translated her uncle's complimentary comment on how tall I was. They were all impressed with my stately height. Well! At 5’4” or 153 cm, this was certainly a new experience! But he was right. I was a bit taller than him and a few good inches taller than everyone else in the family.

After dinner we lay and watched TV on a woven mat on the floor. An's middle sister brought out pillows and blankets, and so, instead of using the girl's bedroom, we fell asleep there on the floor. All the women in the family—An's mother and her sisters and now me—slept in the open air of the front balcony of their house/roadside restaurant. Though An's mother joined us on the floor, I was aware that she got up several times during the night to serve hungry customers. Their restaurant was located on the busiest highway in Vietnam, after all.

I awoke with the light, as did the entire family. I efficiently gathered my things; weeks of experience had made packing up a well-worn routine, and I was soon saying goodbye to the lovely family that had taken me in and embraced me.  I hugged and kissed them all in turn, saving the biggest hug for Sister An. I saw myself in her—someone endlessly curious about people and the world. I saw in her what I wanted to be—someone open, caring, courageously sharing herself with strangers.

I couldn’t linger; I had a long way until my next stop, Mui Ne. But as I cycled off, I wished I could shelter Sister An somehow, shelter her from the pain that comes with such openness, shelter her from the insecurity of caring what other people think. But who am I to lend her strength, I who know the pain of bending under the weight of my own insecurity? Maybe we can shelter each other, maybe we provide each other with support, with—what is the word? oh yes—sisterhood.

Tales from Vietnam. Cycling over Mountains and in the Dark

The following is a flashback from my time cycling in Vietnam. It recounts the time I was nearly stranded on top of a unpopulated mountain at dusk with no tent, no water, no warm clothes, little food, no sleeping bag, and no flashlight.

So I pressed on, thinking, if necessary, I could flag down a bus. Almost immediately the road began to climb. And climb. I optimistically expected the road to reach the peak around every corner. No such luck. I don't know if there is any way to impart the experience that afternoon. The uphill seemed endless, and in fact, it continued uphill, often steeply, for 20 km and those 20 km took me at least 4 hours to complete. When the grade was too steep (it was quite often 10%) or when my legs were simply jello-like and sore, I got off and pushed the bike until my arms were jello-like and sore; then I either took a break or switched again to riding.

It was the hottest part of the day and the sun was merciless. I can say, on the bright side, that the scenery—the surrounding mountain view—was stunning. Cliché! My breath was taken away from the climb and then again from the view! ;)

Despite the view, though, I was exhausted and when I looked at my cell phone to check the time after noticing the air around me was chill, I saw it was getting on to 3:30 p.m. and the mountain, the uphill, had no end in sight. "Give it some time," I thought. "I can always flag down a bus in a half hour or so."

So I continued up and up and up. Soon it was 4:20 p.m. and the road ahead had a sign declaring a 10% uphill grade. So I flagged down a bus that was going to Da Nang. But they wanted 20,000 VND which struck me and still strikes me as exorbitant. So I waved goodbye to them, wondering if I'd regret it later. (Spoiler alert: The answer is yes. And no.)

So I continued on—nothing to do but move forward. And lo! What's this? A downhill! Yes!

I cruised down the hill, thinking, "This is it! The crest of the mountain." Exuberantly, I used my newly defined phrase: "It's all downhill from here!"

I passed through a tiny village and three boys lined up and held out their hands to high five me as I rode by. I felt joyous, unconquerable. I passed two policemen; they tried to say something to me. Wary, I smiled and waved and kept going. I passed a waterfall, right in the nook, the armpit of the road's curve.

And then I turned the corner. "Motherfucker!" I thought, along with other obscenities. Another uphill sign!

This sign indicated only 150 m, but I knew all too well that those 150 m could drag on for kilometers. I felt completely dejected. I ate a tangerine. Now I had no water and only two tangerines. It was late, past the time when most minibuses ran and it was cold. I waited, hoping to flag down a minibus, but none passed. I had no tent, no sleeping bag, no sweater, no flashlight, no water. The situation was feeling a wee bit desperate.

I gave myself until the end of the tangerine, then when no minibus had passed or could be seen approaching, I had nothing left to do but keep moving. The white and red stone kilometer markers on the side of the road indicated a town 9 km away. Even if it was uphill the whole way, surely I could make it around dusk and find a home to sleep in! So I trudged up the hill. And it was, blessedly, the last!

It really was downhill from that point on, which was lucky because I soon found out that the "town" the kilometer markers were counting down to was not a town at all. It was a waterfall.

So I kept going. The going was easy now—all downhill. Not to mention, there was absurdly beautiful scenery at every turn. It seemed once I had reached the crest of the mountain, the climate suddenly and very noticeably changed. On the way up, the mountains had been arid, often with exposed patches of red dirt and patches of dry, brownish grass. Once on the other side of the pass, the air became absurdly thick with moisture. Every breath I took was like drowning in warm water and the mountains had no dry patches, no exposed dirt. Instead they were filled to bursting with ferns and palms and vines and greenery of every sort. I could hardly believe the lushness. At every turn there was a waterfall.

I stopped often to take pictures but soon realized I had no time to dawdle. I saw a kilometer marker for Kham Duc—my original destination—for about 25 km away. It was already dusk, but I was making great downhill time, so I decided I would try to make it. I might have to cycle a bit in the dark, but so what?

So I pushed on, as fast as my legs and the hill would take me. And the kilometers quickly ticked by. It was just that time of evening when the bugs are out in full force. This fact, coupled with the extreme humidity, soon meant my face was speckled with little black bugs.

With 10 km to go, darkness fell completely. I cycled on, using the weak flashlight mode on my cell phone and holding the phone in my left hand so I could try to make out the road in front of me. The traffic was not too thick, but I still feared some crazy driver (of which there were plenty) would swerve into me in an inattentive moment. But luck was on my side and a little after 8:00 p.m. I finally made it into Kham Duc and though I entered the town slowly and with little fanfare, I felt as if I were in a one-woman parade. I felt like celebrating.

‘The Robin Hood of Boom Boom’

The following is an excerpt from my journal which details a conversation with an unusually frank expat whom I met in Vietnam. Excerpt is the appropriate word here. Keep in mind these are just a few of my thoughts on the sex industry in Southeast Asia. I welcome any comments, perspectives, anecdotes.

“Later that night, I headed back to the shop and after a time, R and I got to talking. He was already a bit drunk—possibly more than a bit. He complained of the term ‘sex tourism’, revealing quite readily that he saw prostitutes. He railed against the feminists back in his Western home country who would hate what he was doing, defended simultaneously himself and his choices, called anyone who judged him harshly ‘fucking hypocrites’ and said they should travel before they judged him. As he spoke, he touched and jiggled his large, obese belly and said with a mix of humor and pathos, ‘Who wants to have sex with this?’

“But the thing that stood out the most was when he called himself ‘The Robin Hood of boom boom’. He elaborated, ‘I take money from the rich tourists [who patronize his shop] and distribute it among poor women and their families’.

“I was intrigued by his candor, and so took the opportunity to pepper him with questions. He actually generally saw the same women instead of spreading his, er, wealth amongst all the prostitutes in the area. He was quite unabashed about his choice and I found myself agreeing in part with what he said. We cannot outright condemn prostitution or outlaw it without giving these girls and boys other options to make good money and support their families. But I still cannot in conscience agree with his enthusiastic glorification of the profession. Nor do I fully understand those men who prefer to pay for sex, even if they can get laid on their own, with willing women.

“But maybe that’s just my ego speaking. I would like to believe that sex with a turned-on and enthusiastic woman would be better than sex with a prostitute, no matter how talented or how compliant she may be.”

The Nature of Hospitality

“Cambodians are different. They are not hospitable,” Chu, a surveyor from Shanghai who was working in the northeastern Cambodian province of Ratanakiri, told me this when I stepped off my bicycle for a break. Later, as I cycled on the desolate red dirt road between Kratie and Banlung this thought stuck with me, bouncing around in my head like tennis shoes in a washing machine. I agreed with him and pined for the hearty hospitality I had been shown while hitchhiking in eastern Europe and Turkey. I rode this train of thought as I rode my bicycle, slowly and ponderously. I was tired and lonely, the road was unmarked, there were no towns or other landmarks to speak of, and my map was proving inaccurate. Hotels awaited me in Banlung, but I had another full day of cycling until I would reach them. Consequently I didn't know where I would sleep that night.

How did I get here? On this desolate road in the buttcrack middle-of-nowhere Cambodia, covered in red dirt, which seemed to permeate my pores and settle into every exposed crinkle in my skin. As I rode along, I imagined myself talking to someone who was thinking of cycling in Southeast Asia. What would I tell him or her? “Don't do it.” Yeah, that'd be the first thing. I had only been on the road for six days, but those were five miserable days. It rained constantly the first two days, despite this being the dry season, and even my long pants and wool sweater were not enough to keep me warm. Then after the rain, the shitty roads began. Dirt had turned to mud, a thick red mud which made traction impossible and pushing my bicycle a necessity at times. Soon after, I began to miss the mud as it was replaced by powder-light dust which came at me like a tidal wave of red dirt every time a motorbike, car, or truck passed me. The soreness abated quickly but still lingered on, especially in my ass, crotch, and lower back. But the worst of all was the loneliness. For six days I had spoken nary a word of English beyond “hello”. Instead I spent ten hours a day on my bicycle, my thoughts on constant repeat. Did I spend the time pondering my plans, my aspirations, my goals? Not at all. Something about the repetitive motion of the bicycle, the repetitive scenery, the physical exertion seemed to make any sort of philosophical pondering impossible. Instead I spent the time decrying my state and setting tiny goals for myself to keep me on the bike and cycling as much as possible. So even for mundane activities like checking the map, getting a drink of water, putting on my gloves, and applying sunscreen, I would make myself wait as long as I possibly could just to eke out every extra kilometer.

The entire day I passed by the same dusty landscape—spindly trees and tall grasses which were as coated in powdery dirt as I. Around 5:30 p.m. the sky started to darken and I knew I had about a half hour of good light left so I began to search for a house I could ask to sleep in. I stopped at the first house I saw and bought a bottle of water. The whole family was huddled on the ground using large metal soup spoons to scoop up and reserve some oil which had spilled on the packed-dirt ground. I isolated the matron of the family and as I paid for my water I made a sleeping pose, then shrugged my shoulders in a cartoonishly exaggerated questioning pose. She stared at me for a bit, then nodded vaguely. I smiled and said, “Akuhn.” I didn't know the logistics of my sleeping arrangement, but she had agreed, so at least I would not be sleeping on the side of the road that night.

I was coated in an opaque layer of red dirt and my junk was feeling a bit itchy. I guess the dried urine combined with tight bike shorts and long hours pressed to the bicycle seat was not agreeing with me. I asked where the bong khon was, only to find that they didn't have one. But I saw the eldest daughter splashing in some water in a small basin out back, so when she was finished I grabbed a half-filled water bottle and a change of clothes and squatted on the flat rock which acted as both kitchen sink and shower. They didn't have access to running water, so I used the drinking water left in my bottle to quickly rinse the most crucial areas.

I sat at a table at the front of the house with my journal and wrote as the light faded around me. There were three children in the family—two teenagers and a young girl. The youngest was inquisitive and came to peek over my shoulder as I wrote. I showed her the half-filled page, then put my journal down and began to draw in the fine dirt around us. First I drew simple shapes—a star, a heart—then started writing basic English words, pronouncing them slowly as I did. “Hello. OK. Bye.”

Just as it became too dark to write, around 6:30 p.m., the father pulled up to the house on the family's one motorbike. Almost immediately I heard the chugging of an engine turning over and then the constant whirring of a generator. The lights came on and the two teenagers, clearly well versed in this routine, turned on the television and stereo and popped a disc into each. As the mother prepared dinner, the remaining members of the family, as well as a few neighborhood children, gathered around the television. I can only imagine the name of the disc was Extreme Bloodlust 3 or something of the sort, as the “movie” consisted entirely of the bloodiest scenes from all the Rambo movies, spliced together with nothing so distracting as dialogue or exposition between them. Not that we would have been able to hear any dialogue. Instead, a mix of Khmer and American dance music blared over the speakers, including my favorite Khmer rap tune called, as far as I can tell, “Mien Loy,” which translate to have money though is used in this sense to mean payday. The lyrics, as they were earlier translated to me, are something to the effect of “I've got money, so I'm going to ride on my motorbike and buy some beef.” I appreciated the prosaic, mundane lyrics—a far cry from the seeming-hyperbole of their American rap counterparts. I tried to continue writing in my journal under one of the three light bulbs hanging from the bare ceiling, but the gruesome scenes on the television entranced me. As I watched Sylvester Stalone slash and shoot everyone around him, an American hip hop song I had never heard came on the stereo. The lyrics were pure poetry: “Don't want no short dick man. Don't want no short dick man. Eeny weeny teeny weeny shriveled little short dick man.” I smiled as I looked around at the four or five young children gathered around the television.

When the matron of the house came out with dinner—a big covered bowl of white rice and a smaller bowl of meat and vegetable stew—the neighborhood children left and the family relocated, their necks craned so they could still watch the television, to the dining table. The mother offered me a bowl, but I declined, saying, “At nyam satch. I don't eat meat. Nyam bai. Eat rice.” This simple phrase accounted for about half of all the Khmer I knew, and didn't entirely get my point across, as the phrase nyam bai, though literally meaning eat rice, is more commonly used to refer to eating in general—such is the importance of rice in Cambodian culture. But after a little gesturing she handed me a bowl of hot white rice and I topped it with soy sauce. I cleaned my bowl quickly but felt far from satiated.

So it was with a half-empty stomach that I prepared for sleep. It was about 7:30 p.m. and the family was closing up their house for the night. The mother brought out a tiny pillow, placed it on the table I had eaten dinner on, then joined her husband and three children on a wooden platform no larger than a full-size bed. The platform was covered in a flat, primary-colored plastic woven mat and sheltered by a light blue, rectangular mosquito net. The family huddled under one blanket and shut off the light. I contemplated my makeshift bed. Just thirty minutes prior I had eaten my bowl of rice on this table. Despite the early hour, I was tired, so I put on my warmest clothing—a pair of cotton pants, short sleeved t-shirt, and a wool sweater—and climbed up on the table.

I slept fitfully, turning from side to side whenever my hips became bruised, laying on my back until my tailbone ached. Around 2:00 a.m. my warmest clothes were no longer warm enough. I slept nonetheless.

The mother arose and began making rice around 5:00 a.m. and when I got up at 5:30 a.m., the kids were still sleeping. I shuffled around a bit awkwardly as I tried to say my goodbyes. I fumbled with my purse, but the mother would not accept any money. Instead she smiled quietly and gracefully as I tried to communicate my gratitude by pressing her hand and saying, “Akuhn,” over and over. I got on my bicycle and waved an enthusiastic goodbye. The air was soft and cool and the sun cast long orange shadows on the red dirt ground.

As I cycled on the silent road, reflecting on my night, I felt a familiar pang of guilt. The family had opened their home to me and allowed me into their lives. All I had left them with were some scribblings in the dirt, a few smiles, and hopefully a story to tell.

When Nature Calls

Can you see our cave? Look for the three black openings.

We were both couchsurfers and had considered trying to couchsurf on our hitchhiking tour of Turkey. But J had a tent and a sleeping bag with him and we found it more convenient and more conducive to cuddling to sleep in his one-person tent and share his sleeping bag. On the trip so far we'd used it only once or twice. We'd also slept on the sandy beach in Patara, at a friend's villa in Bodrum, under a beachside gazebo in Kas, and on the side of a pine-strewn hill near the Syrian border (where it was too hot for the tent). From the moment we entered the Kapadokya region we were in agreement. We would spend the night in one of the caves carved into the soft volcanic rock that makes the region so famous and gives it its otherworldly landscape.

So, in our biggest splurge of the trip, we rented a motorbike for twenty-four hours and toured the region. We saw thousand-year-old churches carved into rocky cliffs, Flintstones-style apartment complexes honeycombed in the rocks, phallic formations carved by centuries of water flow. All the while, we scanned the rocks, searching for a nice little cave we could sleep in. We wanted one that was isolated and difficult to climb into. No nighttime visitors please. We also needed a place to park the motorbike overnight.

When we followed a gravel road up an incline and looked out over a valley filled with rocks shaped like gnomes' hats we finally saw a seemingly suitable cave. It appeared as a dark spot on the golden cliff, but was only visible from a few turns in the road. We parked the motorbike, grabbed our packs, and headed down into the rocky valley to investigate. The cave was two small valleys over, so we needed to scramble down sandy and rocky soil before we could begin climbing up. Even approaching the cave was difficult, far more difficult than it had appeared from the road. I tentatively tried out a few routes before committing to one. The shadows were elongating, so when J saw that I was making headway, he scrambled back up to the road to repark the motorbike so it was as out of sight as possible. He soon followed me down to where I stood, peering up at a nearly sheer cliff face. We peered up together. Even without the packs the climb would have been tough. We climbed slowly. The rock face was soft and sandy, making traction difficult to come by. For every burst upwards, I slid back a few feet as well. The last stretch, just shy of the cave's opening, was the steepest. So I left my pack with J and scraped in, then he handed me our stuff while he climbed up himself. By now, the light was rapidly fading and we both realized we had chosen our sleeping place for the night sight unseen. Luckily, the inside of the cave was hospitable. It was small, though, barely large enough for us to stretch out in. There was evidence inside of recent occupation—by birds—but we felt quite confident, given the difficult climb to reach the cave, that no one would disturb us that night. The rented motorbike was another matter. I could only hope that no one would disturb it.

We ate our dinner—a typical (for us) melange of fresh fruit (peaches, grapes, melon), black olives, a loaf of Turkish white bread, and white sugar-coated chickpeas. Then we arranged our bed for the night, first laying down J's blue crinkled tarp then his sleeping bag. The thought that we would sleep on it instead of under it seemed absurdly hopeful. Though it was August and the air crackled with heat during the day, Kapadokya had cold, desert-like nights. In preparation for such a night, we each layered as much as possible. Since I had hardly any clothes in my small pack, this meant that we split J's warmer clothes. He wore his gray, paint-splattered hoodie and I wore his windbreaker jacket and mismatched windbreaker pants over my shorts and blue tie-dyed sleeveless shirt. It didn't take long for us to give up the pretense and huddle together under his tapered gray sleeping bag.  We lay, sharing stories of childhood exploits as we drifted off to sleep.

Days earlier, sleep in such a situation—on a hard, rocky surface with little room to move and cold nipping in from every exposed gap—would have been nearly unthinkable. But my body had adapted quickly from my apartment-dwelling, bed-sleeping existence in Istanbul to my new hitchhiking and bumming around existence throughout Turkey. So despite the rocks that prodded into my back through the thin layer of tarp, the inability to turn around without bumping into J or the cave wall, and the chilling cold, I slept. You even might say I slept well.

But I awoke in the middle of the night cursing my responsible water consumption. I had to pee. That this was problematic was not immediately apparent in my sleep-muddled state. And then I remembered the layout of the cave. There was one large door and a small, waist-high window carved out the rock. Both looked out over the steeply dropping valley below. It was dark, too dark to try to navigate my way outside the cave—that would have been difficult even in the daylight—but for obvious reasons, peeing in the small cave was also not an option. I would have to pee out the window. Shit, I thought, this would be a hell of a lot easier if I were a man.

The window

I crept to the window, climbing over J in the process, then climbing up to a rocky window-ledge-like jut. I shuffled around, making almost imperceptible changes in my angle and position. It was hard to find the right spot. I pulled down my few layers—J's pants, my own, and my underwear—and backed up to the window of the cave. I had a brief moment of self consciousness as I squatted in the window, my pale ass exposed to the cold, moonlit night. I quickly shook off my modesty. This was not the time. With each hand I grabbed the rocky sides of the rounded hole that served as the window and lowered my ass even further out into the cold night air. I looked down between my legs, but I was still inside the cave, so I leaned even further, now balancing with almost all my weight on my arms. I leaned until I could look between my legs and see the shadowed rocky terrain far below.

It was in this moment that I could visualize my demise. My balance was so precarious that if I lost grip in either one of my hands, I would tumble backwards out the window, rolling down, down, down into the rocky gap below. Caught by surprise, I would likely make a soft squawking noise, like the ejaculation of an adolescent bird, or no noise at all. I could see it now. J would continue to sleep, breathing softly, sweetly. He would awake with the early morning sun, smile and stretch, turn to embrace me. Only then would he realize why he had been so warm in the night; I had not been there to hog the sleeping bag! He would find me, slumped at the base of the cliff with my pants around my ankles, surrounded by a distinct smell of urine, my pale ass shining in the sun.

These thoughts occupied me as I peed out the window then crept safely back into the sleeping bag. Though it seems like a grisly image, the idea of this death actually tickled me immensely. What a way to go! I cherished the idea that it would first be a mystery. How did she get down there? How on earth could she fall out of a cave? And why are her pants down?

I could continue to inspire mirth even after death! No, I thought, as I looked out the window at the crisp night sky, it wouldn't be a bad way to go.

Hitchhiking Tales. Paragliding in Bulgaria, Hated in Bosnia, Brass Band in Croatia

The following is an excerpt from a series of emails I sent to a friend while hitching through eastern Europe:

Piotr and I just said goodbye this morning. He's heading for Poland and right now I'm thinking of staying a day or two in Belgrade.

We started from Istanbul then to Bulgaria where we stayed with a group of people who run a sports outfitter called Extreme Bulgaria. They do all kinds of extreme sports. They took us biking and skinnydipping in an ice-cold lake, then on the last day we went paragliding! It was my second time ever and was so so beautiful. And then to Sofia, and on to Belgrade. It's a cool city, got a great vibe. But my favorite place yet was Sarajevo. Wow. Simply stunning mix of mosques with Catholic and Orthodox churches. Bosnia is an absurdly beautiful country.

In Bosnia we got picked up by a guy who took us home and his sister fed us. That was before he found out I was American! When I went out of the room, he turned to Piotrek and said "Polska good. American..." and made a throat-slitting motion! Eek! But his sister adored me and gave me a big jar of ajvar--a spread made with red peppers, tomatoes, and aubergines.

Piotrek's a good guy, but it was funny how little we have in common. He's anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-feminist! Haha, my opposite.

Hitching alone was easy peasy. I got a great ride in a sleek, swift new black Mercedes which took me all the way to Zagreb in no time flat. He was going 160 the whole time. Awesome.

Tomorrow I leave for Budapest. That's the plan. Hitching alone again! Tonight to a big music festival to hear Kocani Orkestar play! (They play great brass Balkan music, a whole orchestra.)

I made hummus :) And I've been biking a lot through these little Croatian villages, filled with grapes and huge red apples and dogs that bark at me as I pass. And the people in the cars that pass me are jealous because I'm riding a beautiful black bike and singing as loud as I can and filled with so much happiness I think I might burst.

This happens to me: I'm sitting or walking or doing anything really, and then I feel some physical expansion in my heart, like my heart opens up and face itches and has to smile and I feel so much warmth and bliss and true happiness. And I just want to kiss everyone and everything!

I met a girl tonight and we might hitch together. But I just don't know, I get a weird feeling about it. I almost think it might be better to continue alone. You know how I feel about women.

In Zagreb I saw Kocani Orkestar play and danced with a guy who kept clutching at his heart as if in pain over how much the music moved him. In Bulgaria, Piotrek and I hitched with a guy who we think was a mobster. He owned a casino and the cops tried to stop him on the road, but then recognized him and let him pass. And you would be proud of me I think because on the way to Budapest, I hitched with a guy who tried to feel me up, but as soon as he touched my thigh, I just said, quite forcefully, "No." And he stopped and said something in Croatian, probably something along the lines of "It was worth a try!"

And Budapest has these clubs, these underground cellar-like clubs filled with mismatched retro furniture and kids who think they're so fucking cool. Then there's me, in my stinky shoes and tie-dye hippie shirt but no matter because I dance and close my eyes when I dance because it's just for me. I'm not trying to impress anybody. And I let my fucking boobs hang out and jump up and down until they both hurt from bouncing, but I can't stop jumping and smiling and closing my eyes. But why is it that men I'm not interested in want to dance and grind with me? I just jump and dance away from them. This girl I met tonight said I have an energy and that's why I meet perverts. Maybe she's right, I mean you know me, I'm always horny and thinking about sex. So maybe people can pick up on that, even though I don't realize I'm putting it out there.

I think my next stop will be through Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, then Greece and back to Turkey. Then I will fly either to Hong Kong or Delhi. I'm leaning towards Delhi because I have cousins there. But who knows.