CHAPTER ONE

CHRISTMAS IN CAMBODIA

Fishing villages and shrimp farms cling to a narrowing slice of land as Highway 318 winds East from Bangkok, until the looming hills on our left pinch off the beach entirely and all that is left of Thailand is a parking lot on a bluff over the sea.  Touts jog to the Minibus, pressing themselves to the windows when they see our faces – “Hello, Where You Go My Friend?  Tonight Pussy Fuck!”

We walk to the border post.  The Cambodian immigration officer is wearing a wife-beater.  I put $40 on the desk.  The official visa fee is 20 American dollars.

 “For both of us.” 

  “No.” he says.  “You pay baht.  1000 baht.”  He wants the equivalent of $27. 

“$20.”  I say, smiling.  “$20 dollars at Siem Reap.  $20 at Phnom Penh, $20 at Poipet, $20 here.” 

“You pay 1000 Thai baht each,” he flatly replies. 

“Here,” I say.  “Dollars for you.”

“You pay 1000 baht each,” he answers.  “No passport photo?  100 baht ($2.70) more.”

“$20.” 

  “OK, you go.  Outside.  You go.” 

We go outside and wait, wondering if it will cost us 1000 baht to see our passports again, but in ten minutes Officer Wife-Beater summons us back into his stuffy little office. 

  “$20 and 100 baht from each of you and 100 baht for no photo.” 

We hand over the money and Officer Wife-Beater instantly becomes more friendly. 

“Why do you come here?” he asks. 

“We work for a newspaper in America,” says Ryan, stretching the truth.  “We come to write an article about tourism in Cambodia.” 

“For the New York Times,” I add, lying through my teeth, because I’m still salty about paying extra money and want to make this guy think his blatant corruption just ruined a chance at big publicity. 

Somehow the bluff seems to work, because he leans over the desk and begins to speak in earnest tones.  No one else is waiting in the visa line.  

“You want to understand Cambodia?” he asks.  “Do you understand Cambodian politics?  Corruption, this is one thing you must understand.  Yes, the visa fee is $20.  But my salary is only $30 a month.  And for this office, for my travel, when I go back to Phnom Penh, all this money, I must pay.  From the government, nothing.  So an extra 100 baht is money for me, you understand?  Money for my family.” 

He stands to shake our hands. 

“Please enjoy your stay in my country.  When you come back, put 900 baht in your passport and give it straight to me.  No problem.”

Officer Wife-Beater is still standing as we walk through the gauntlet of begging children and enter Cambodia. 

……..

Koh Kong province is one of the last truly wild places in Southeast Asia, cut off from the rest of Cambodia by feral jungle, violent rivers and the uncharted peaks of the Cardamom mountains.  A rough track cuts through the wilderness and eventually connects with Phnom Penh, but it is only passable in the dry season.  When the rivers swell with summer rains, the only way to access the rest of the country is by boat, along 65 miles of untracked coast.

Koh Kong town lies on the far bank of a broad estuary, only a few miles from the Thai border.  Ten years ago, this frontier settlement was one of the last Khmer Rouge strongholds in Cambodia, the sort of place where teenage boys stalked down Main Street with AK-47s strapped across their bare chests.  These days, the police keep crime under control (or at least control the crime), but Koh Kong still boasts the hard-edged trappings of the Wild West – dusty streets, cheap drugs, a glittery casino and a popular brothel that sex-tourists fondly refer to as The Chicken Farm. 

In a town where most visitors are looking to have sex with teenage girls and/or buy marijuana by kilo, it’s important to find the right place to stay.  Our port in the storm is Otto’s Guesthouse, a  wooden house built on stilts in the Khmer style to protect against floods in rainy season. 

Finding a moto-taxi driver willing to take us to Otto’s is difficult, because Otto refuses to pay drivers a commission for delivering customers.  An older driver in dusty clothes finally agrees to take us to Otto’s, where we arrive to find four balding European men silently smoking cigarettes in the sitting room, along with one buck-toothed young prostitute in a red satin dress and an ancient white-haired lady in a wheel chair, who turns out to be Otto’s 90 year old mother.  Hearty German Christmas carols boom from a dusty stereo, turned up too loud for conversation.  I feel as if Ryan and I are crashing a Bavarian family reunion – one that was already awkward before we arrived.  A man with leathery skin and piercing blue eyes moves aside to make room on the sofa. 

“Thanks,”  I say.  “Merry Christmas.” 

“Christianity does not convince me,” he replies. 

…

The road crosses over a tidal creek with shacks wedged tight along its banks.  Two men sit on the dock of a particularly ramshackle little house, intently watching the water flow by.  A plastic chair on their left is set up as a makeshift shrine with an offering of incense sticks, a tea-cup and a bunch of bananas.  As I watch from the bridge, a plank floats by in the current and one of the men jumps into the water, grabs the board and hands it up to his friend, who places it on the dock, carefully lights another stick of incense and turns his hopeful gaze back upstream.
 
People are doing everything outside, eating bowls of rice, shucking tiny shellfish, playing cards, pouring cement, shooting pool, cutting fruit - mothers nursing, fathers mending fishing nets, schoolgirls pedaling around mud puddles in spotless white uniforms.  A father scolds his toddler, who squats down in the middle of the street and sobs.  Children are everywhere, racing underneath the houses, chasing puppies, bouncing balls, popping out of doorways to yell “Hello, Hello, Hello.” 

 A man drives by on an old Korean motorbike, pulling a cart with a huge pig inside, its curly tail and pale pink balls hanging out the back of its cage.  There is more vitality on this one muddy street - more daily drama on display - than in an entire suburban American development.  Families live on top of each other, people pressing on all sides, with every laugh, fart, heartbreak, hangover and orgasm broadcast to the whole neighborhood – a neighborhood of cousins, step-brothers, widows and distant nephews, where no one has anything better to do than hang out and gossip all day long.  

On the road back to Otto’s I pass by a bar and hear an American man with a long gray pony-tail complaining to his friends.  “I came to Koh Kong three years ago,” he moans.  “Now look at me.  I own one water buffalo, eight chickens, three cows, six fucking goats…” 

……

The Christmas Party is in full swing when I return.  Beers have been cracked open, the music turned down and Otto’s seven year old granddaughter flits around the house in an ecstasy of excitement.  A young waitress plugs in the Christmas lights on a miniature plastic tree and manages to pull everything over, scattering cotton balls and broken glass over the floor.  As three Cambodian teenagers bustle about sweeping up broken ornaments and rearranging presents, Otto himself emerges from the kitchen, a beefy man with broken teeth and a broad smile, bearing a platter of roast chicken. 

“Welcome to all,” he says. “Merry Christmas.”

It turns out that Otto’s other guests are old friends from a traveler’s community on Koh Chang, a nearby Thai island.  In a sense, the gathering this Christmas Eve actually is a family reunion of sorts.  Eddie, a lean Swiss in his fifties, fills me in on the history. 

“Twenty years ago the Thai islands were totally empty – no hotels, no paved roads, no backpackers, nothing.  It was like paradise.  We all had small businesses on Koh Chang.  I ran a dive shop.  Otto was the baker.  Of course, the island became more and more busy, until one day the Thais decided to build resorts on the best beaches.  We were in the way."

“Have you heard the story about why Otto came to Cambodia?  Funny story.  The busted baker.  He would bake bread with marijuana, and every day would ride his motorbike home after buying ingredients at the market, a sack of flour in one hand, a sack of ganja in the other.  Well, one time the police started chasing after him, but Otto had the bigger bike and…Vrrrooom – he got away.  That night he cleaned out his bakery, cleaned out his house, got rid of every last marijuana seed.  The next day the police came to his house and searched and found 6 grams – only 6 grams – of marijuana, maybe in the cracks of the kitchen floor, I don’t know.  Anyway they handcuffed poor Otto, leg shackles and all and marched him to jail.  He couldn’t stay in Thailand after that, so he went to Cambodia and we lost our baker.” 

Otto wheels his mother up to the Christmas tree to watch her Granddaughter open presents while his wife hurries about among the tables snapping photos.  The little girl takes her time, pulling on the ribbon ever so slowly until the toy inside falls out and, with a shriek of happiness, she throws her arms around her Grandmother’s neck.

Read the Prelude

Read Notes From the Road

Read "Bat Country"