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?