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The traffic here defies description. It’s nearly complete chaos at times. The traffic is a majority of motorbikes, with some cars, trucks, and bicycles mixed in. All of the rules of the road we take for granted are treated as mere suggestions here.

Driving on the correct side of the road, for instance. Most people drive of the right. Except for when it’s too much hassle to cross a busy road, in which case they drive slowly on the outside, going the wrong way. So there’s effectively four different flows of traffic. The two main ones in the center, and then two more going opposite directions on the outside. Not to mention the occaisonal motorcycle cutting across at an angle going the wrong direction, in the process of making a turn too soon.

Another example is waiting for a break in traffic before crossing, either to turn, or to continue straight on a side road. There is often no such thing as a break in traffic. So you wait for the traffic to lighten up, or at least be largely comprised of motorbikes.

Motorbike traffic is a liquid. It just flows around obstacles. Even on foot, you just step off the curb, and then the traffic just flows around you.

And stoplights. If the traffic is sufficiently light, and/or there are no policemen at an intersection looking to make some extra cash, obeying traffic lights is optional. So you’re never sure someone isn’t on a collision course with you, even if you have a green light.

And lastly, there’s a hierarchy on the road: trucks, cars, motorbikes, bicycles, pedestrians, in that order. Being on a bicycle, I’m nearly at the bottom, which means I get absolutely no respect. I’ve had cars and motorbikes pull out right in front of me, while looking straight at me, and had trucks nearly run me off the road.

Anyone that’s ridden a bicycle in heavy traffic knows that it leads to an intensely focused mental state. You have to ride aggresively, or you’d never get anywhere. But you also have to ride defensively to avoid getting dead.

Riding in Phnom Penh is the most intense I’ve ever been on a bike. It’s also the most I’ve ever involuntarily swore out loud.

I ran across this today. It’s a website about a documentary film put together about a 2 month cycling trip across Mongolia. 5 men on bikes, with 65kg of gear each, totally self sufficient (other than buying food along the way). Pretty cool. Mongolia is one of my dreams, and if seeing it on a bike is anything like being on a bike here… Wow. There’s always another trip:)

I also added the following backdated entries:
The backpacker ghetto

Flying to Phnom Penh

You know you’re sick when…

(more coming after I eat, provided I can hold it down - I’m stomach sick again :P)

If durian is thought of as a savory thing, like a strong cheese (the only frame of mind I can stand to eat it in), then isn’t durian ice cream the effective equivalent to camembert sorbet?

I find it about that appealing.

I had a small scoop of it slipped into my ice cream dish the other night. It ruined the whole bowl.

In learning a foreign language, it’s all about using the words you know to say things you don’t know the words for.

I caught myself in Laos asking a guesthouse owner, “Where can my bicycle sleep?”

There was rioting (see this article on cnn.com and there are some pictures also) in the streets last night, over a thai actress’s supposed comments that “Cambodia should give Angkor Wat back to Thailand.” (Angkor Wat is a World Heritage Site, considered the eighth wonder of the world, is on the Cambodian flag, and is considered far and wide to be wholely Cambodian)

I was in the Diamond Web internet cafe when I heard loud cheering outside and motorbikes honking horns. I thought maybe it was a parade, so I went outside to see what it was all about.

It was not a parade. It was a mob of at least several hundred young men, most wearing the typical slacks and white button down shirt of students, some waving big Cambodian flags. one man climbed the nearby billboard advertising a Thai company, and started beating at it with a stick and ripping it down, to cheers from the crowd.

A part of me was curious to see it, but another part of me was scared to be so close to it, not knowing where the crowd might turn next. I went back inside and got the full scoop off the net, where the story of the burning of the Thai embassy was just starting to be posted.

I holed up in the internet cafe until about 10pm, closing time, occasionally going outside to watch the mob going up and down the main street, often stopping to do more damage to the sign.

The people at the internet cafe said I’d be fine, as the violence was only directed at Thais. Still, knowing that a mob mentality could turn at any minute, I felt uneasy.

I only had 1km or so to go up the main road (Monivon) to get home. As I rode away from the cafe, a huge mob of motorcycles, many passengers weilding stick, raced my direction, shouting and cheering and honking. Very worried, I got up on the sidewalk and tried to be inconspicuous.

I rode a few more blocks further to be confronted by a huge crowd, with ambulances, riot police, and billowing smoke from a large fire in it’s midst. I did a quick U-turn, very frightened. This was not where I wanted to be.

I went down a side street, and pulled out my map. I figured out a detour, and managed to get to the turn off to the backpacker ghetto without further incident.

And that’s when the motorbike hit me. I guess it was partly my fault, for not looking behind me as I went to turn. But at that point, I’m pretty sure I was nearly on the center line. I was signaling though.

I think he hit my rear tire, and I went down hard, skidding on the pavement. He didn’t even stop.

As I got up, and watched him and his wife ride off I felt anger more than anything. A couple people stopped to see if I was ok, and I moved over to the sidewalk to pull myself together. I was fine, only a few small abrasions and bruises on me and my bike. My biggest injury was a healthy size bruise on my inner thigh where I got clocked by the end of the handlebars.

A sucky ending to the day, but I feel lucky my first less in Cambodian road rules didn’t turn out worse than it did. A moto driver I was talking to today said it’s normal to drive away from a crash if you can, to avoid having to pay money, both to the other person, and to the police.

In researching some news links for this entry, I ran across an article published today in The Nation titled How close we came to war with Cambodia in The Nation. I don’t think anyone here had any idea how close things came. It would have been extremely bad, if it had gone that far.

Day before yesterday I went to see S-21 prison. It’s pretty amazing. They haven’t changed it much, just swept the floor and blocked off osme unsafe areas. It’s a lot like it was, without the people.

The prison is a high school which was converted to a prison when the Khmer Rouge occupied Phnom Penh in order to use it as an interrogation/torture/holding facility before taking people to be “liquidated”.

There is woven barbed wire mesh on the balconies, and in side, the first two floors are divided into cells just big enough for a man to lie down in. The upper floor was mass holding cells, the prisoners shackled to a huge iron bar that ran down the middle of the room, twenty people to a bar, on opposite sides.

I think the hardest part, beyond seeing the cells and the torture implements (ranging from lengths of electrical wire and umbrella rods used to beat people to much more gruesome mideival-like torture apparatus) and the paintings of scenes of torture done by an inmate that survived (one of seven that survived out of 10,000+ that passed through the prison), were the photographs. Photos of everyone that passed through the prison - room after room of women, men, and children of all ages. Even a few foreigners.

Also the photos of former Khmer Rouge members, both at the time, and now. I remember one boy in particular, a soldier in the Khmer Rouge. He was 14, the face of an innocent trial. Most of the pictures of the former Khmer Rouge members had an excerpt from an interview with them posted. Most of the excerpts were about how they though the leaders of the Khmer Rouge should be put on trial, and be held accountable for their actions (this has still not happend, despite pressure from the international community, largely because former Khmer Rouge members and friends of former Khmer Rouge members are in power now).

Yesterday I rode my bike to the killing fields 13km out of town. It’s where all the prisoners of S-21 were taken to be blindfolded, smashed in the head with a rod or pickax, and have their throats slit, before being dumped in a mass grave.

Most of the pits are dug up now, just holes in the ground, but there are more than 100 of them. A huge memorial stupa has been built, housing shelf after shelf of skulls. There must be 50 shelfs, easily. It holds over 8000 skulls of people who were killed and buried there.

I’m staying in the backpacker ghetto of Phnom Penh - a cluster of guesthouses next to the small lake. Some of the guesthouses are built on old fishermen hut platforms over the water, though I’m staying on a cheaper one just being, on dry land. It’s nice to come down and eat breakfast and sit in the hammocks and look out over the water, though.

There are good think about staying in a backpacker ghetto: good western food, other travllers, convenient internet, and other nicities and conveniances. But there are bad aspects as well: pushy moto drivers who are also dope dealers hang around in droves at all hours, pushing whatever they have to sell. Things are overpriced. Sometimes you get the feeling the locals see you as just one gigantic dollar sign. It feels like almost every conversation is a thinly veiled lead in to a sales pitch.

But I think it’s the dope dealers that bother me the most. They make me angry in fact. I don’t get angry about that many things. There’s just something about having people, one after another as I wakl down the road, aggressively try to get me to buy drugs.

I rode in on my bike last night about midnight, after far too long on the internet writing code and geeking, and all I wanted to do was go to bed. At least five different men asked me if I wanted to buy dope. I had to resist snapping and telling them off. I would have let them have it, but I’ve heard that losing one’s temper onthe street here can sometimes lead to dangerous consequences. And besides, you’re average drug dealer is not a person you want to pick a fight with.

The cipro finally seems to be kicking in. I seem no longer to have the shits, and am feeling a lot better.

I’ve been geeking out since flying down to Phnom Penh yesterday. At that point I was still having major stomach cramps and the shits, but I couldn’t bear to spend another day in Ban Lung, what with the dust and nothing to do. I’ve been talking with Chris a lot on IM about nanotech and property ownership and the third world. Interesting stuff. It’s taking a lot of brain power to think about though, particularlly when I’m tryin got code perl at the same time.

Flying from Ban Lung to Phnom Penh is like changing worlds. From a dusty airstrip with an open air terminal (little more than a shack with a corrugated iron roof), to a full international airport.

I saw ran into Mette, one of the bicycle gang from Tad Lo. She bought a bicycle in Bangkok, and has ridden here. I was going to meet up with her and a friend of hers at sunset by the lake, but I had to go to bed with stomach cramps instead. She left early this morning, before I got up.

You know you’re sick when:

• You’re in the bathroom, and you’re trying to decide which end of you to put over the toilet first.
• You find yourself perched, squating with your feet on the rim of the toilet seat, “because that’s what feels natural.”

I added the following backdated entries today(in exchange for helping out another internet cafe get multiple computers online):

• The frustration of being sick and alone
• Thoughts on South East Asian child rearing
• Saudia Arabia, lost job opportunities, and bike noises
• If I step on a landmine, will I hear a click?
• Getting shot is not a good first experience in a country

The past couple of days have been lost days, spent being sick. Three days ago I decided to go for a day ride to the Bokheo district to see the gem mines. 40km each way, a decent day’s ride. I decided to take a quick detour first to see the crater lake that all the tourists go to see, which is only 5kms out of town.

After stopping at a mechanic to place a bolt that was holding my rack to the bike which randomly fell off (a surprisingly regular occurance, to the point I’m going to have to start regularly inspecting all the bolts on the bike), I set off. After only a few kilometers, I had excruciating cramps in my legs and lower back, but I didn’t think too much of it.

When I got to the lake, I was still in agony, and sat down for a bit. Within 10 minutes I all but fainted, and vomited repeatedly, lying on the wooden deck of the observation platform. Fortunately, there was a foreigner there with a Cambodian friend, who set about finding some help.

When she returned shortly, I was already feeling better and sitting up. She said they couldn’t find a car, but there was a guy willing to take me back on his motorbike. I was feeling pretty weak and sick, bt agreed, on the condition he understood he might have to stop part way. I grabbed my bag, and they arranged to keep my bike there overnight locked in the toilets. When we got back to the hotel I slipped the guy on the motorbike a couple dollars, I think a bit to his surprise, and he went on his way.

Enter Mr. Lang, the hotel owner. A rail-thin, gold-toothed smiled weasil of a man, he seems overly eager to help out his guests, merely in exchange for “sending him nice people”. Nevermind his apparent underhanded arrangement to have all foreigners arriving on pickup trucks dropped outside his hotel, into his waiting arms.

I took Mr. Lang up on his offer of assistance that afternoon, and said that I wanted to go to the hospital to have a blood test, as I was worried I had dengue fever. NO problem, he could take me on a motorbike. Great.

Off we went, pulling up outside a pharmacy not 50 meters around the corner. They could do blood tests here he said. The woman behind the counter is a doctor.

It took me quite a while to catch on, but I eventually learned that with Mr. Lang, the truth is a very pliable thing; it can be bent and molded to suit his needs. I believe he wants to appear helpfulto his guests, but can’t bring himself to go the full distance, and instead does whatever suits him, that’s close to what was requested.

Thus, as exhibited in saying he was taking me to the hospital but instead taking me to the pharmacy, as well as countless occasions since then, he’s very good at saying one thing and doing something completely different, which is still similar enough to the first that it’s hard to argue.

The lady, with Mr. Lang translating, said she could do the blood tests, and called out a man who spoke better english. I requested he do a test for malaria, dengue, and anything else he could think of. I kept having to emphasize dengue, as everyone kept leaving it off the list, making me think maybe they couldn’t test for it.

After a drawn out conversation in Khmer, he seemed to say he could, and that the results would be ready in an our.

“I send my son pick them up, no problem,” said Mr. Lang automatically, ending with his two favorite words.

Ok, great, I was going to lie down, could his son knock on my door when he had the results?

“No problem.”

Running a temperature of 39 celcius(102.2 farenheight), I came downstairs after two hours, and inquired about the test results.

“I send my son go get them now,” said Mr. Lang, not missing a beat, not betraying any sign he remembered his earlier promise.

When his son came back, Mr. Lang handed me the results.

“My son say the doctor say no malaria. No problem.”

Problem. The sheet said:

• Ht - 46%
• plaquette - 206,000/mm³
• W.B.C. - 7850/mm³
• M/S - negative

“See here - negative.” Pointing at the top like, he said, “This one heart.”

In that instant, he’d shown his hand. He was full of it to the brim.

I told him that it looked to me like they’d checked for malaria “M/S”, but not for dengue.

“No problem. Doctor says everything is fine.”

“But they didn’t check for dengue.”

This went back and worth several times until he finally relented, stamping out one of the endless lines of cigarettes he was endlessly smoking, and drove me over in his car, a new sedan, a true rarity in these parts.

After much frustrating back and forth at the pharmacy, I gatherd that they had not checked for dengue despite my original insistance, and also that the man I’d spoken to earlier, who was clearly doing the tests, was out.

“Come back at 6″. 3 hours away. Ok.

I walked over a little before six myself, despite concerns I might keel over in the street, to avoid the frustrating crosstalk of Mr. Land.

“Typhoid fever.” Standing amoung several Khmers buying things randing from needles and injections to vitamins, he handed me a sheet that said:

• Widal -
  • O = 1/160
  • H = 1/40

Despite my improving skill at reading blood test results after my time in Laos, this meant nothing to me.

“I tested positive for typhoid?”I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I’d had all my shots before I left the states, and I was sure typhoid was amoung them.

“Typhoid fever. But only a little bit.” Whatever that was supposed to mean.

(To be continued soon. I turn out not to have typhoid, but in fact a weird case of food poisoning)