Bong Battambang
Here in Cambodia the Khmers generally call each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister’, unless they are actually brothers and sisters in which case they probably just shout: ’Hey you!’ Anyhow, it’s charming and a whole lot better than ‘comrade’, which must have been the reluctant vogue for a grim long while. So by now I have a few Khmer friends and they call me Bong Steve, only it comes out more like ‘Bong Stayeu’, which I like.
Now, man, I’m Bong Battambang. I arrived here just yesterday afternoon and already I like it very much, which is handy, cuz it’s going to be my new crib for a small handful of weeks. In the near vicinity and within easy day-rides I can access many places to the NW, towards the Thai border and the NE towards Lao. These are areas where decades of militarism have left behind thousands of tonnes of unexploded ordnance, where the de-mining outfits of all sizes are most active, and where, sadly, amputees can be found in appalling abundance. These are the ‘Maiming Fields’.
It’s a 3 day ride up from Phnom Penh; roughly 100 K a day. You gotta get started early cuz by 10h30 the heat’s on. There’s 20 K of pretty ugly sprawl getting out of Phnom Penh and from there all the way it’s kinda hit and miss. Some of the longest straightest hottest stretches of unabashedly demoralizing road, full of marauding lorries and buses gnashing by like Great Whites late for a feeding frenzy. Happily, that shit is well-interspersed with landscapes that make you hold your breath and village scenes that make you want to round everyone up for a group hug. The same river that lends so much grace to Phnom Penh, the Tonle Sap, comes in and out of view all the way to Kampong Chinang: whole floating villages and the most unlikely vessels, countless fishermen and fisherfamilies, bathing livestock, and frolicking kids. The humble stilted house has become my all-time favorite abode. There are many variants, from fancy-pants ones with terracotta roofs and stuccoed walls, to the down-market huts with frond roofs and woven reed sides. The middle-tiered ones are the nicest: roofed in tin and clap-board walls and steep, often gaily painted wooden steps leading up to the door. They’re often ornate, with wooden lacework under the eaves and fluted Chinese gables; a cross between a Tyrolean ski hut and a Kathmandu condo.
Kids ‘hallllooo’ at you all day long, it comes out more like: ‘Hayloh!’ I get hoarse returning their salutations and half the time I can never spot them. Now I know they are often in the shade under those stilted houses hanging like fruit bats from hammocks or using ox-carts for monkey bars. Water buffalo everywhere and I can’t quite figure it out. You never see them actually working as beasts of burden and they make an unlikely pet, mind you, Manhattan did llamas for a while; I can only surmise that the water buffalo’s purpose is dietary. This is Brahma beef country too, and they are more common than poodles in Paris. I have a dozen haunting memories of a ghost-white Brahma cow wreathed in cookfire smoke and ruminating on me with her maple syrup eyes.
So, great snippets of river life peeked at through domino piles of stilted houses and a different river in each layover town. Next stop was Pursat and at golden hour I sat in a bar with an Angkor beer in my hand looking over a failed and abandoned Khmer Rouge damn watching kids use it as a water park. Kids whose grandparents miraculously survived the slaughter. At least some small good has come of the mindless and unspeakably vicious annihilation of two-and-a-half million innocents. But Cambodians are replenishing the population with a vengeance. The schools are packed and there are incredibly beautiful kids everywhere; often in the white shirts and blue bottoms of their uniforms. When the wee girls are in their leisure wear, it’s quite clear that ‘Angry Birds’ is the new ‘Hello Kitty’. I kind of like the transformation.
Battambang has the best collection of semi-intact French Colonial buildings in Cambodia, and they are ranged along the banks of BB’s own river, the Stung Sanker. It has plenty of charm and a languid pace; Cambodia’s famous non-rush rush-hour.
There’s a small yet surgent and welcome busyness in tourism here and plenty of NGO activity. I imagine they’re here for the same reasons I am: pleasant place to be and real close to plenty of people who need all kinds of help. The big de-mining orgs all have bases here: MAG, HALO, CMAC etc., and the aforementioned Aki Ra and his grassroots outfit is stationed in the jungle 2 ½ hours north of here. I’m gonna go find him. MAG, famously, has a cadre of female amputee de-miners who I’m going to track down too. All the agencies employ at least a few amps in their de-mining operations for compound reasons: many of the amps simply want to help make their country safer in the future and, for the NGOs, of course, it’s good press. In addition to treating these men and women, I’m determined to contact them because, though many of them camp in compounds close to their worksites, they come into contact with hundreds of amputees in villages spread throughout the area and if I can get some success stories amongst them and in turn get them to disseminate Mirror Therapy whenever possible, well, what more could I want. Could we want? Should I be lucky enough to find one who’s inspired enough to carry the torch for me when I leave the Kingdom, well that would be thick icing on a phat cake. I’ll eat that.
Right here in Battambang is the BB Emergency Hospital and the BB Rehab Clinic as well as diverse other clinics and hospitals; all hotspots for Phantom Limb Pain. I’ll be knocking on their doors with an armload of mirrors too. Which reminds me, I gotta make a bunch now, but it’s starting to get a little sketchy money-wise, and I don’t want to quit, having already done so much and come so far and being on the threshold of the most traumatized area. So, couched within this seemingly innocent travelogue is a blatant plea for help. For donations of any size. There’s a ‘DONATE’ button on the page; don’t be shy now.
I’m just a little guy doing a little good, but at least you know where your cash is going, basically: mirrors, sustenance and housing. No convoys of armoured Land Cruisers, no ranks of laptops and satellite phones; no Girl and Boy Fridays and FatCats hauling down triple-digit salaries, no offices in Connecticut and trans-oceanic flights. I leave an itty-bitty carbon footprint for a somewhat biggish fellow. Why, yesterday I was able to get about 60 kilometers out of the sweet pearline juice of one King Coconut. 60K/Coco – gas in my tank – and that beats a Toyota Pious by a Cambodian country mile.
Help put a little more gas in my tank and I promise I won’t ask again … .
Peace.
