The Summer Backpacking Olympic Games

For most of my trip I did not go too far off the standard backpacking route.  For one thing I only had a month and three countries to traverse.  For another, the roads in Southeast Asia get a little bit interesting during the rainy season.  Picture unpaved roads with many, many muddy puddles.  Let’s put it this way; most of my intercity travel required a sports bra. 

I was not unprepared for this, however.  There are a lot of tales that emerge from the backpacker community, and I had done my research.  I knew, for example, that seemingly innocent locals may invite you to their homes, whereupon they will lock you inside an illegal gambling den and demand that you play Texas hold ‘em with a Japanese high roller.  And of course I was constantly vigilant lest I be smuggled into the Southeast Asian sex trade, because 34 year old Albinos are so hot over there right now, so hot.  So when I was chatted up by a friendly Filipino couple in front of the Grand Palace in Phnom Penh and invited to their “nephew’s birthday party” that evening I made sure that I had other plans.  Actually, I’m still kind of disappointed that I didn’t take them up on the offer, but I figured an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of Syphilis or something like that.  Also, did I mention that I was carrying all the money for my trip with me because of the complete stupidity of my US bank?  Yeah, I was doing that.  I spent much of the trip finding new and exciting ways to staple my bags to my appendages.  So in general I wanted to avoid unnecessary risks.

This is not to say that I avoided locals, but that I often ended up socializing with fellow travelers.  Luckily this proved to be a unique cultural experience as well.  You know, for a bunch of pot smoking hippies, backpackers can be an awfully competitive bunch.  I had a pretty clear idea of what I needed during my trip in order to feel safe and comfortable:  my own room, booked before I arrived, no more than $15 per night.  That’s it.  I didn’t care about fan vs. air con.  I could handle sharing a bathroom.  I just didn’t want to wander cities looking for cheap guesthouses.  I preferred to wander cities looking for attractions that closed just as I got there (I’m talking to you, Saigon!)  Here are just a few of the responses I got upon communicating this information to people I met on the road:

“$15!?!?!?  Wow, that’s waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than I would pay,” said the dirty hippie who walked up to me at a coffee shop and asked for “directions to the guesthouses”.

“You booked ahead?!  How do you even do that?” said the dirty, pot smoking hippie who eventually introduced me to the mystery meat that led to my one bout of food-borne illness.

“Your own room?  I’m sleeping three deep in one hammock over a lit fire next a pond of piranhas while a Donald Rumsfeld look-alike waterboards me.  Only costs $1.50 US.” Oaky, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but only slight.

You’d think I could just avoid these conversations, but backpackers seem to have the same genetic kink that New Yorkers have: after asking your name and nationality, the next question is always how much you pay for your place. 

As I said, I encountered this throughout my travels, but it only really pissed me off in Phnom Penh.  That may be because that city was one of the major stops on my Western Guilt tour.  After gorging on temples in Siem Reap, I gorged on sadness in the capital.  I visited two overwhelming genocide memorials in Cambodia: Tuol Sleng, the former Khmer Rouge prison, and Choeung Ek, one of the many killing fields throughout the country.  There is no way not to feel conflicted about visiting these places.  The history is so horrifying, and so recent.  Basically, any Cambodian my age or older lived through the terror.   Surely the current generation grew up in the shadow of their parents’ trauma.  Whatever justice can exist for the murder of a quarter of a nations’ population has certainly not been achieved.  Much has been made of “Comrade Duch”, the one Khmer Rouge official who was punished for his crimes.   But Pol Pot died while living under house arrest, and the Khmer Rouge retained a seat at the UN until 1993.  The country’s wounds are still disturbingly fresh.  Bloodstains are still visible in the cells at Tuol Sleng.  And the memorial pagoda is not the only place at Choeung Ek to see the skeletons of the victims.  Every year, during the rainy season, the waters bring up pieces of human remains and shreds of clothing from the mass graves.  The question, “is that branch or is that bone?” follows you throughout the area.  And while I did not follow the lead of other visitors who took pictures of each item for later verification, I still think a trip to the memorial is important.  Partly because of the travelers I met who “didn’t even know there had been a genocide in Cambodia”.  Partly because of the statement at the end of the Choeung Ek audio guide that “this was not the world’s most recent genocide, and it will not be the last”.  The survivor’s calm sense of certainty was terrifying. 

Humans are a blood-thirsty, mystifying bunch.  We will go to such lengths to label people as “others”, and then we do our best to destroy them.  Afterwards, we sell tickets to view the wreckage.  I do think these memorials are necessary, that they serve a purpose.  But as I was approached by burnt and maimed landmine survivors and crying, pleading children begging for money outside these sites I also felt that my visit was offensive and unjustifiable.  I am one person, taking a vacation.  I can do nothing.  I offer nothing.  I can’t help.  And if i can't help, do I have any right to be there?

 

I require curry

As my trip comes to a close I have a few regrets: I didn't achieve enlightenment, get a book deal, or take a Cambodian cooking class.  I still have a shot at the first two, but alas, I believe the ship has sailed on my Cambodian cooking dreams.  I had only eaten Cambodian cuisine once before visiting the country, and that was at an unmemorable place in Brooklyn. My pre-reading had told me it was kind of like Thai food (except less spicy) and kind of like Vietnamese food (except less fish sauce). Poor Cambodia. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.  Ultimately, it was an exciting prospect to discover a cuisine in the country of its origin.  So here is the low down on the memorable meals I enjoyed during my visit.

 

Ginger pork and noodles in Siem Reap. During my first day of marathon temple-viewing I was near the point of collapse and asked Mr. Ron (the tuk-tuk driver) if we could stop for lunch. I'm completely and utterly certain that he took me to some place that gives him a commission for delivering unsuspecting tourists, but at that point I really didn’t care. I was exhausted and I needed sustenance. And furthermore, my meal was delicious. The ginger was undoubtedly the star in this dish, and it played its part well.  I’m sure we’ve all had those overly gingered dishes in which the heat and sweetness somehow take a wrong turn at Albuquerque and end up a bitter, sad mess.  This was emphatically not the case here.  The sauce was rich, with bite, and it created a silky coating for the flat noodles.  Also, these noodles.  I recognize that they are of the instant variety, but they were sooooooooooooo good.  Their size and texture really matched the weight of the sauces in Cambodia.  Before I go on to the next dish I must give a shout out to Southeast Asia’s pork.  It’s some of the best pork I’ve ever had (okay, Spain probably wins, but come on, it’s Spain!!)   Always tender, often fatty, and never veering toward the dry, flavorless slabs of meat so frequently found in the US.  Yay Southeast Asian Pork!



Cambodian Barbeque.  Let it be known, I have eaten snake, and it was good. But nowhere near as good as crocodile!  Actually it was rather chewy, so I don't know what James the Thai Tour Guide was complaining about.  But I digress.  My big splurge dinner in Siem Reap was a heaping plate of Cambodian Barbeque, featuring five different kinds of meat, three sauces, and somehow, also, hotpot.  Who knew?  The whole meal is really stupendous.  You’re given your own enclosed mountain of coals, upon which is placed a rounded barbeque altar.  The hill of grilling goodness is then surrounded by a hot pot moat.  Really, the cookery alone won me over.  So here’s the process: the barbeque volcano is lit, and then a huge, glistening piece of pork fat is placed at the top.  The hot pot moat is filled with chicken broth, into which is thrown greens, carrots, squash, cabbage, and those ridiculously awesome noodles.   While the hot pot is working its sultry magic, the grilling begins.  The five “meats” I ordered were chicken, beef, snake, crocodile, and squid.  The beef came with an egg for dipping, which put such a Taipei-nostalgia smile on my face.   The snake kind of tasted like pork, nothing too exciting.  But the crocodile was amazing.  It had the gaminess of lamb, and yet the sweetness of squid.  I know, I know.  Lamb-squid doesn’t sound very convincing.  But it was good, dammit!  A really excellent meat, one which I would search out again.  It must be said that Cambodian barbeque is a lot of fun.  In addition to getting my grill on, I also got to play with sauce-to-meat combinations.  The sauces were explained to me thusly: one for meat, one for fish, and tofu.  Yup.  Just tofu.  I’m still not sure whether the waitress meant that the sauce was for tofu, or made of tofu, but no matter.  The “tofu” sauce kind of had a lemony béarnaise thing going on, and it was particularly good with the chicken.  The second sauce was reminiscent of chimichurri, filled with fresh herbs, oil, and a bit of vinegar.  I was happy to unite it with its crocodile soul mate.  The final sauce was a pepper-lemon oil, and it bathed the succulent pieces of charred squid in its goodness. 

Speaking of pepper, those Cambodians are pepper-growing masters.  There are pepper farms all over the country, and indulging in a product so fresh was a true luxury.  For my last night in Cambodia I decided to go for the official dish of Kampot: Kampot Pepper Crab.  I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this:

 

Crab is a food that makes me incredibly nostalgic. My Uncle Carl used to boil blue crab for the family at least once a summer. I was the only one who could stand to be in the kitchen during the morally-dubious cooking process. What can I say, I was a kid. I thought it was great fun to watch the crabs try to escape, and do to my part to round them up again. Once the crabs were finished we would cover the table in newspaper and break out the nutcrackers. Oh how the butter would flow! I recalled those days with my Uncle as I smeared the sticky, brown pepper sauce all over my hands and face in my attempt to delicately eat the meal. Chopsticks abandoned, I was pretty much just tearing into the claws and chomping down on anything that wasn’t shell. Every now and then a peppercorn popped in my mouth, and I scrunched my face up from the delightful, tickling pain. Throughout my trip the seafood was outstanding. This crab was rich, creamy, briny, and yet of course it also had that necessary burst of fresh sweetness. I wonder what my Uncle Carl would have made of this dish. I'm not sure he even would have tried it, but I'm pretty sure he would be glad that I did.

And those were just a few of the culinary highlights. Sadly I do not have a picture of a particularly kick-ass seafood red curry that I ate on the beach, but alas, not every meal can be captured. And I haven't gotten into the gloriousness that is Amok. Okay, I may have to revisit this topic in a later post. But for now, I leave you with sun-kissed pepper pods to hopefully tickle your fancy.