My Night in a Cambodian Clinic

this isn't a picture that i took at the hospital. i'm sorry if it's misleading. i just don't feel like posting a picture of my sister in her semi-conscious state with a busted lip and black and blue arms is appropriate.

My sister V has been seizing all day. She goes through spells like this--where she can seize up to 13 times in one day. Each seizure that V has suffocates her brain and kills thousands of brain cells. V is only 34 years old, but has over 70% brain damage. Everyday she takes two different types of medication, three times a day to keep her from seizing. She's been doing this for as long as I remember. V doesn't like taking her meds because they make her feel like she's sleep walking but she knows that if she doesn't, she'll keep on seizing and that her condition will only get worse.

My sister wasn't born disabled. She was, in fact, born perfectly healthy and able-bodied. When she was a baby, the car that she was in was thrown from a bomb that fell from the sky, emptying its passengers and killing every person except for my sister and mom. She went into a coma that lasted for 2 weeks and had a fever so high that it should have killed her. When she came out of the trauma, she immediately had a grand mal seizure that started in one part of her brain and then traveled and took over the rest of her, causing her whole body to convulse and shake like a rag doll in a rabid dog's mouth.

We had just gotten to my mom's house when she fell into another seizure. I remember hearing glass shattering, seeing her body keel forward in slow motion. The crack of her mouth hitting the concrete floor, the sound of flesh splitting and the burst of blood that splattered against the tiles and bled out in all directions underneath her face. Afraid that she would choke on her own blood, we sat her up and stabilized her, cleaned up the broken glass so that she wouldn't get cut up even more and grabbed some ice to hold up to her rapidly swelling mouth. We walk her down the block to a clinic that is luckily on the corner of the street that my mom's house is on and was instructed to bring her to the surgical unit.

As I walk into the room with my sister's arm slung over my shoulder, I look up at the one hanging light in the room, my eyes slowly adjust and notice the worn down and ripped hospital bed and the plastic tarp that is on it. Before laying her down, I ask the nurse to get a new tarp and she tells me that it is the only one they have. I ask her to spray down the tarp with alcohol and wipe the blood off. When they wheel in a tray full of medical supplies, I tell my cousin to inspect the equipment to make sure that it's not used and dirty.

Welcome to a clinic in a third world country.

The doctor comes in and injects some local anesthetic into her lip. When he pulls out the needles, he accidentally spills some of it into her eye. He quickly threads a hook and starts sewing her lip together. Throughout the procedure, V goes in and out of consciousness and has three more seizures. Every time she goes into a seizure, she rips out the stitches, her teeth biting down hard on her tongue and her lip.

The doctor finishes stitching up the outside of her lip, peels back her bottom lip to take a look at the inside--it's bleeding dark red blood, mashed and mangled from glass and teeth. Her eyelids flutter open, only the whites of her eyes showing. I ask the doctor to wait for a few seconds because I know that she's going into another seizure. When her eyes start to focus and I know that she's becoming slightly aware of what's going on, I call out V's name so that she can hear my voice and maybe feel a little safer, maybe a little less scared.

In these moments I feel like I am 8 years old again. All the collected and stored memories I have of V, her seizures and countless visits to the emergency room, merge together. I relive holding ice to my sister's swollen and bleeding eye after she fell out of bed and gashed her eye open on the corner of an end table, I break the bathroom door to grab her after she fell in the shower, I yell for my mom when I hear her breathing pattern change and I know she's about to seize, I explain to the doctor, every single doctor that helps her, that she has had epilepsy for most of her life.

I am abruptly pulled away from my thoughts when I notice that there are people coming in and out of the room and standing around and looking. A medical assistant makes a joke about how incredibly swollen my sister's lip is and then tries to get a better look by nudging me out of the way and reaching for her lip with a gloveless hand. I grab his hand, look him straight in the face and tell him to leave before I beat him so bad that the only way they'll recognize him is his dental imprints.

After the doctor is finished stitching her up, V falls into a deep sleep. I ask the doctor about V's meds and ask him when I can have her take her next dose. Not quite understanding me, he replies that whatever meds she takes isn't available in Cambodia. But before I can clarify my question, another patient is rushed in. Her head is bleeding and I overhear another person saying that she was run over by a motorcycle. The doctor shoots her up with anesthesia and starts examining her wounds. I notice that he's using the same medical tools that he just used on my sister...


The hospital visit ended up costing us $70 US. That doesn't seem like a lot of money but that is what a Cambodian person makes in almost 4 months. When I left the hospital with my sister I couldn't help but think about the lack of infrastructure in Cambodia. Though Cambodia's landscape is rapidly changing from all the urban development that is going on (there are new high rises and skyscrapers being built every day) the infrastructure of the country is comparatively very underdeveloped. There is no health insurance that exists in Cambodia and a lack of funding for hospitals and clinics. Most families will only go to the clinic when they absolutely have to because they cannot afford it. I was told that the most common reason for land and asset loss in Cambodia is due to debt from health related treatment.

When V was finally settled, I sat down next to her to give her her meds. As terrifying as her experience was, I'm grateful for the fact that we have access to the meds that she needs and the funds to pay for her medical treatment. And though she'll have a gnarly scar from the accident, at least she'll have a pretty awesome story that she can tell to go along with it.

Phoenix Rising from the Flames

No more AIDS! My mom helps us pack a donation of over 10,000 condoms

“Meep sua. Meep sua. Bhat. Bhat.”

I’m staring face to face with a tiny bird that can speak Khmai. I am told that the bird was originally kept in a small cage and not treated well. I watch it fly from branch to branch in its newest home, a spacious glass enclosed terrarium. I don’t know it yet, but this bird will become metaphorical to almost everything I experience with my time with Korsang—perseverance through the hard times, survival through adaptation, growth from being nurtured properly, and finally the ability to be awe-inspiring after being given a safe space to exist. I move away from staring at bird and sit down to dinner. Tonight I am meeting with Holly Bradford, the founder of Korsang.

Korsang, which means “to rebuild” is an organization that is dedicated to bringing high quality services to some of Cambodia’s most stigmatized populations: sex workers, injection drug users, and incarcerated persons. Through the philosophy of harm reduction, Korsang not only provides quality services through their street-based outreach but also by providing programs, education, medical services and real leadership developing economic opportunities to their clients. Korsang’s reputation for treating every participant with the highest level of respect and compassion has won them recognition from national officials, international health workers and most impressive, an ever growing list of registered participants. Up to date, Korsang works with over 3300 registered participants.

As we sit around Holly’s dining room table, a crew of her friends and colleagues come through: Marcus, a documentary film maker from the states, Wendy, an Aussie ex-pat who runs a bar called Talking to a Stranger, Holly’s daughter Sara, a consultant to the UN, and Holly’s beautiful grandson Teak. There is one more person that sits with us at the table, Wicked, a spirited Khmer American that now lives in Cambodia and has helped Holly develop Korsang into the organization that it is now.

Wic was born in Cambodia but spent most of his life in America. During the late 70s and early 80s, the US granted refugee status to Cambodian Americans because of its indirect involvement with the Khmer Rouge’s radical take over. During the Vietnam war, the US illegally dropped over 500,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia, three times the explosives dropped on Japan during World War II, despite the fact that the country had declared itself neutral during the conflict. After the bombing, the US supported a military coup to overthrow Cambodia’s monarch Sihanouk, providing the perfect breeding grounds for a radical take over that would eventually lead to Cambodia’s genocide. With the support of China and North Vietnam, coupled with anger over US bombardment, the Khmer Rouge were able to develop their once powerless armed forces to a well-organized force of over 40,000 soldiers. In 1973, the Khmer Rouge controlled most of Cambodia’s countryside and on April 17, 1975 took over Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.

What came to power was one of the most brutal radical Maoist regimes in history, Democratic Kampuchea, whose political and social politics devastated Cambodia. All Khmers were forced to evacuate out of cities and into rural areas where they were forced to work all day and night in the rice fields. Past government officials, those that were highly educated, doctors, professors and artists were systematically executed. Children, brainwashed by the new government, were taught to spy and tell on their parents that did not work hard enough, who were then taken to the fields and strangled to death with plastic bags. And the country, lain with more landmines than any other country, killed the majority of Cambodians that tried to flee to Thailand and Vietnam for refuge. During Cambodia’s genocide, 1 out of every 6 Cambodians died.

I look across the table at Wic and try to imagine him, only a few years old, being held tightly by his mother as they escaped the nightmare that consumed our country and finally found peace at the hands of the people who had unknowingly set that series of events into motion. Wic was raised in San Diego, CA and was the only Cambodian person, other than his immediate family, in his town. One of only five Asians in his school, he did not find the community and support that he craved as a young person. He eventually joined a gang to fill that void in his life, something that many young Cambodian American men do. The gang’s encouragement of criminal behavior landed him in a correctional institution where he was instructed to serve community service hours to a youth organization. Even after his mandatory community service hours were completed, he stayed on as a volunteer with the youth organization for several years.

After 9/11, the US put pressure on Cambodia to accept Cambodian American deportees into the country. I was told that one of the pressures that the US used on Cambodia was putting a hold on granted visas into the US. On May 3, 2002, American and Cambodian officials announced plans to forcibly deport Cambodian Americans to Cambodia. Cambodian Americans that were not yet naturalized and had committed aggravated felonies (this includes shoplifting and driving while intoxicated) were eligible for deportation.

At the age of 22, Wic was called in to INS under pretenses of having to refill out “lost paperwork” and was immediately arrested, sent to a deportation detention center and forcibly removed and banned from America, where all of his immediate relatives still live. When he arrived in Cambodia, he was sent to Cambodia’s assimilation program –the only in the country – where he was given a sarong and $3 US. Though the program was riddled with embezzlement and a complete lack of comprehensive support services for detainees, it was where Wic met Holly, a therapist who moved to Cambodia to provide mental health services for Cambodian deportees. It was there that Holly and Wic developed plans to create an organization that would provide a meaningful community and economic opportunity to other Cambodian deportees who would then in turn work with peer leaders to outreach to the populations that Korsang now serves.

I asked Wic, “What’s it like being a Khmer American who now lives in Cambodia?”

He tells me that when he was in America he never felt American and here in Cambodia, people try to look down on him. But Korsang is his home now, his community, and his livelihood. The respect that he garners now from the incredible work that he does provides him with a sense of freedom and purpose that he never felt in the States.

The passion and devotion in his voice whenever he talks about Korsang is infectious and I immediately ask if it is possible to visit their drop in center. But that will have to wait until tomorrow. We start to pack up our stuff, tonight Wic is taking us clubbing.

On the way out, I say goodbye one last time to the Khmai talking bird. I steal a glance at Wic. Having survived two displacements—one at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, the other by those that had welcomed him only to cast him far away, scars his kind face. I am amazed by how charming he is despite how incredibly bitter he could be, awed by the fact that he, once a gang member, now writes grants and develops programs for one of Cambodia’s most successful and innovative programs.

I come to realize that Wic is not the American Dream, he is something beyond that. His wealth does not come from being able to completely assimilate into American life and cultivate financial success, but rather from his ability to rise above the two life damning sentences he was given to create an organization that does not just empower himself but every single person that is involved.

“Ja meep lia ai, ja meep lia ai,” I tell the bird. Bye for now.

In my dreams she is running through the jungles...

In respect of the children at Rappha House, I cannot post any photographs of them.

This is a photograph of two children I saw making a sand Angkor Wat at Ta Prohm.

It’s 5 in the morning. I haven’t been able to sleep that well tonight. After my failed attempts at sleeping for the past few hours, I’ve finally decided to enclose myself in the bathroom so that Ican try and write in order to find a bit of peace.

My dreams are haunted by a 13 year old girl who is running through the jungles looking for her mother. She is small from malnourishment, ragged from homelessness, and dirty from the earth that clings to her skin as she tries to hide from people who are hunting her down. Her eyes—red and swollen from crying, are not the eyes of a 13 year old but rather the eyes of a person that wants to die but still clings to a desperate attempt to live because she does not know what else to do. The jungle, swollen with the hot humid heat, swallows her into its safety. She hides behind the strong trunk of a banana tree. Her mind and body, focused on surviving has forgotten for a merciful minute how she ended up in the jungle…

If this were but a dream I would be able to fall back asleep. But this is not a dream. This is the story of Ng (name has been changed), a 16 year old girl that I met yesterday at Rappha House, a safe house for trafficked and sexually abused children.

We sat in a circle in the teacher’s room upstairs from the shelter when the heavy wooden door was pushed open. Ng, a Cambodian girl with a beauty mark on her right cheek, black curly hair that was tied back and a smile with upturned corners that showed slight signs of her mischievous nature, walked in and sat down across from me. I had met her last night when she shyly asked me to sit down next to her during the night’s program and asked me if I would be her bong srei (older sister).

The room, decorated with drawings that the girls at Rappha house made crisscrossed the top of the ceiling and lined parts of the wall. The room, chosen for it’s safe and nurturing feeling, was where I had been granted permission to interview Ng as well as some other girls.

I remember looking down at the page full of questions in my hand, trying to hide my nervousness. I looked up and smiled at her and began the interview.

When Ng was 6 years old she watched as her step-father ripped the gold necklace from her mother’s neck and grabbed a knife to slit her throat. Ng screamed as she threw herself towards her mother to instinctively protect her. Her step-father then ripped her from her mother’s body and beat her until she was unconscious, then took all the money and jewelry from the house and left. Forced to find money in order to eat and feed her four children, Ng’s mother took all of her kids and moved into the city to find a job.

Barely making more than $1 US a day and finding it harder to provide for her children as they grew, Ng’s mother sold her daughter to an elder man so that she would be able to work in his house as a servant. Ng was 7 when she left her family.

When Ng arrived at the elder man’s house, she was scolded by the other servants, slapped around by others living in the house, told that she was worthless and immediately put to work. Her small hands grasped a towel that she dipped into a bucket of soapy water over and over again as she cleaned the floor on her hands and knees. The other servants, unhappy with the amount of time she was taking to mop the floor, came by and hit her over the head whenever they passed by. That first day, she washed the dishes, dried and put them away, swept and mopped the floor again, helped to do the laundry and was told to massage the elder man’s feet.

As I watched Ng tell her story, I noticed that her demeanor had completely changed. She was no longer the happy and mischievous child I had seen walk in the door. Her head, hanging so low that I couldn’t see her face, focused on her hands as she scraped the chipped nail polish off of her fingers. She paused and looked up at me for a second, then averted her eyes and looked back down at her hands and continued to tell us her story.

Later that night, she was woken up and told to go to the elder’s room. She remembers hearing the crickets outside. She remembers the yawn gathering in her mouth and lungs. And then she remembers him grabbing her roughly and tearing her clothes off.

She doesn’t look up. She focuses on her hands and she says, “Koat tva bhap.” He was bad to me.

I notice that I am also staring hard at my hands, ripping the hangnails at my thumbs, stealing glances at her but afraid to make any eye contact. The therapist, breaks me out of my focused silence and tells me, “she was repeatedly raped by this man over a long period of time.”

I look at Ng, 16 but smaller than most 16 year olds I’ve seen. And then try to imagine her being only 7. The image of a much older man forcing himself upon her makes me instantly nauseous and I force the image from my mind so that I can stay present.

Day after day she was beaten and treated like an unwanted dog. Night after night, he raped her, ripping her insides and causing her so much pain that she passed out. I ask her how long she stayed.

“6 years.”

She paused to take a deep breath and rushed through the next part of her story. Someone in the house told her that her mother had moved. Desperate, she ran only with the clothes on her back to the jungle to get away from the man. An older woman took her in and fed her. This woman knew her mom. When Ng asked this woman where her mom was, she told her that her mother had met another man and had moved away with him. When she asked her where she went, the woman said that she did not know. Ng was 13.

Ng told us that she left the woman’s house after a couple of days because she did not want to be a burden. She slept on the jungle ground, ate food from the trash and begged for money. When she had diarrhea, they would not allow her into any restroom, so she went in the river or on the road. Several days later, two young men grabbed her as she was passing them by, pushed her behind a house and raped her.

With another heavy sigh, she told us, “I ran when they were done and I saw a police man. When I ran up to him he told me at first to stop begging. Then he saw that my pants were ripped and there was blood.”

Ng was taken to an emergency shelter and transferred to a NGO in Phnom Penh, where from there she was transferred to Rappha House (the location of Rappha House cannot be disclosed for safety reasons). When she was finished telling her story, a long silence followed. The fan quietly spinning above us now seemed to roar. And again, I noticed that I pulled at the hangnails on my thumbs.

“Tell me what living at Rappha House has been like,” I asked, trying to make a transition from her past to her present.

“La ah.” Good.

When Ng first arrived, she was incredibly small, skin darkened from constant exposure to the elements, and hopelessly depressed. According to the staff, she raised hell, was the unruliest of all and would fall into long periods of deep and utter sadness. At some point during her stay, when she starting making friends with the other 63 girls, started going to school for the first time to read and write Khmer and English, and started trusting adults, she became more stable and felt safe. Ng has been at Rappha House for over a year now and has started vocational training in Rappha’s beauty school program.

When I ask her, “What do you want for your future,” I know that what she wants most is to see the mother and brother and two sisters that she will never see again.

And she, looking at me, knows that I know this, so she smartly says, “I want you to be my bong srei and to become a good hairdresser so that I can do your hair next time you come here.”

Ng has a long way to go. When talking to the director, I found out that because she has no family to go home to (the shelter works with the families of the girls to make sure that the home is safe to return to, often times, Rappha house also works with the family to teach them about sustainable mushroom farming as an economic development project for them) she will stay with Rappha House until they can find a safe and permanent solution for her.

Before I left Rappha House, I gave my San Francisco address to Ng and asked her to be my penpal. She came up to me later on and gave me her favorite piece of jewelry that she had made. The necklace, made of beautiful crystal clear beads and sea shells is in my bag, safely tucked away.

Though I think of her and feel an immense sadness weighing so heavy on my heart that it is difficult to breathe, I know that is because I left Rappha House just half a day ago. Overall, I know that the hardest part is over for her. And that as much as she has gone through, her ability to continually fight to survive and the fact that she can now have a smile on her face, makes me know that she is an incredible survivor.

I hope that Ng writes me. And I know that within the next couple of years, I will make that journey back again to Rappha House in order to see her, with her beautiful necklace around my neck, so that at least she knows, I have not forgotten her.

I don’t think anybody knows what her exit strategy will be when she is ready to leave Rappha House. The organization has only existed since 2003 and has kept every single girl that they’ve been referred to work with who has wanted to stay (almost all the girls who go to Rappha House choose to stay there). They have yet to find a permanent solution for those who have no family.

Whatever ends up happening though, I know that I will stay in touch with her until that point not of return but of new beginnings, and probably afterwards. And I know that the more time I have with her to build a more meaningful relationship, I will no longer be haunted by images of her running through the jungles, but rather by memories of her being happy, healthy and whole.

In my dreams, she is running through the jungle. But I hope that one day she will stop running away from the demons that haunt her and instead, towards the hope that will guide her.

One Perfect Day—or rather the series of events and disasters that occur in order to prepare for that day

Ok. See that Demon? That's how I felt throughout parts of the day.

Day 1—I don’t know what this fabric is exactly (because I don't know the Cambodian word for silk organza) but it’s perfect!

Days have been flying by faster than the amount of time it takes locusts to descend upon a season’s crop to consume and decimate a village’s livelihood. The early morning hours, before everyone else is awake, is the only time I find enough peace and quiet for myself. This trip has been all about figuring out how to balance the expectations, needs and desires of several different people, all wanting different things and unable to communicate with one another directly. It’s been difficult to carve out time for myself but this morning, before our sight visits and meetings with individuals, is going to be all about me. I’m going to go shopping for the material that I will be using for my wedding dress.

Today Eng, a second cousin of mine, is taking the day off from her business—making and cooking pro hut trei, a delicious and salty fish paste that when friend is a yummy fish cake, in order to help us navigate through Olympic’s labyrinth of a textile warehouse. Yesterday, our failed attempt to shop in Olympic on our own made me break down and cry in frustration. The thousands of shopper, hot heat and entourage of 15 people (including my 77 year old mother and two disabled siblings) also contributed to the breakdown. Today will be different because I’ll only be going with Momo, Sakura and Eng as opposed to my whole family (that was my mom’s idea) and today is Monday (peaceful) and not Sunday (totally not peaceful).

Olympic is 3 stories of outlets, textiles, motorcycle parts, noodle shops and a fresh local market. It is a city block wide and long and is filled with stalls that are about 4’x6’ stuffed with reams upon reams of fabric and one or two people waiting to strike a deal with you. In one section you can find stacks of beautiful hand dyed Khmer silks, in others intricate batik designs on cool cotton, cashmere Burberry and Chanel prints and occasionally creamy satin organza. It is really easy to get lost here because the sight of so many beautiful textiles, all at a fraction of what you would pay in any US store, steals and holds all of my attention. I can't answer Sakura's questions because I'm so focused, I don't hear all the whispered comments about my tattoos because I am touching everything I can get my hands on.

I don’t know the Khmai words for silk organza or sateen, so instead I walk or jump into stalls (some are elevated), to feel and touch. The dress I want, a 40’s inspired wedding dress is remake of a vintage dress that I was given this past summer in Wisconsin during my first bicycle tour. The dress, not traditionally like any other wedding dress, though worn around the shoulders and faded in some areas from wear, is more significant and perfect to me than any impersonal commercial wedding dress that I could ever find.

An hour into wandering around Olympic I find a beautiful champagne colored satin like fabric, it’s perfect. I buy 5 meters of it, enough for the dress, a skinny belt, and a short-cropped jacket—all for $7.50 US. It’s time to go.

After spending the past couple of hours slowly wandering through Olympic’s textile wing, we pick up the pace to snake through it’s market place. The sun is heating up the wet ground and the smells coming from the food and animals that the vendors are selling fill the air. We pass by a noodle stand, steam carrying the scent of freshly fried garlic, green onion, rice noodles, pork and fishsauce. Then we duck around stalls full of somewhat live mud fish where women delicately perched on small pads, skillfully hack off head from tail and separate filet from bone. To the right are freshly plucked and slaughtered chickens, rows of rubbery looking carcasses with heads still intact. And directly to the left of that are live chickens waiting for their fate as each customer carefully examines them to pick out the game that will feed a family of 8 tonight. It’s starting to rain again so we quickly hail a TukTuk to take us back to my mom’s house so that we can gather radio equipment and other materials for our meetings today.

Riding a TukTuk is not as romantic as it sounds. Though the benches are comfortable enough, most of the time you’re sitting in gridlock traffic inhaling the exhaust fumes of motor vehicles that wouldn’t pass any smog test if there was such a regulation that existed here. And remember that game frogger? Well, it’s like real time frogger times ten thousand in Phnom Penh—almost comical, almost surreal, definitely hectic and crazy.

Tomorrow Sew Yin, my cousin Hun’s mother, will help us make our way through the maze of another market. It’s stalls, shielded by alternating blue tarp and thin sheet metal, are made of plywood, all elevated two feet above ground in case of flooding from the monsoon season, and all much smaller than 4’x6’.

Day 2—the making of two dresses

This morning has been full of tears, yelling and wanting to ram my head against a concrete wall repeatedly. It’s 8 in the morning and I can’t find the material I bought yesterday for the wedding dress. Everyone is frantically searching through everyone else’s stuff and yelling at my sister who has this terrible habit of needing to put everybody else’s stuff away and in the process, accidentally misplacing things. My mom who becomes more and more angry with each passing minute of futile searching, looks at me and see’s that I have given up and am sitting on her bed and crying.

“Forget it, it’s not worth it. It’s just a dress any way,” I try to say in between the snot and tears of my hysterically sobbing.

“We are NOT going anywhere until we find that damn material!” my mom yells at everyone, refusing to give up.

I suddenly hate having to make a wedding dress. Who would have thought that doing such a simple thing could have turned into such a fiasco. And again, I think about all the research I’ve done about wedding culture, all the conversations that Liam (my amazing partner) and I have had in order to create a meaningful wedding that wasn’t about consumerism and whatever other bullcrap that the wedding industry pushes on us—I just can’t believe I’m having this moment where I can’t find this damn material, where I’m laying on my mom’s bed sobbing, and where I just want to say screw the wedding! What was the point of reading, "One Perfect Day--the Selling of the American Wedding"?! We should just elope! Or have permanent partner status dammit!

And then Momoko walks in. And says, “Oh, sorry. I’ve had your material this whole time with me.”

A series of we found it, we found it! echoes throughout the house in English and Khmer. My mom, relieved, looks up and laughs. I am part stunned and relieved but mostly embarrassed. So this is what it’s like to be a Bridezilla.

Sew Yin guides us through the marketplace. We meet up with a skilled seamstress tucked away behind an industrial sewing machine that sits among stalls of traditional Khmer wedding textiles. The glint of a deep teal bordered by a traditional Khmer motif catches my eye—I find the perfect material for my Khmai wedding dress. I get measured while explaining what I want.

And then I ask, “How much is it going to be to make my wedding dress?”

$15 US.

On the way back in the TukTuk, Momoko squeezes my leg, “it wouldn’t be a wedding dress without the tears.”

And I am grateful for having a good friend that can see how embarrassed I am, is still supportive and there for me even in my worst moments. I realize all of the hyper emotional traps that I’ve been trying to avoid in order to be “above it all” well, maybe wasn't so bad to go through; afterall, when else can you justify throwing temper tantrums in your adult life? I realize that instead of trying to be calm and cool about everything for the sake of trying to be calm and cool, I should just enjoy the process regardless of it’s ups and it’s downs.

And getting a wedding dress made for under $25? Well shoot, throw in the misplaced fabrics fiasco, I'll take the stress on to gladly save $1500.

and we're here!

Mom and Sew Hun meeting us at the Airport

After picking us up at the airport, we dropped off our bags and took off to check out Phsat Tmei. Wow, I think I just completely butchered the spelling on that and I'm definitely not going to check out how to properly spell it on the internet because the connection here is sllooowww. Apologies for those that are offended. Phsat Tmei translates to 'New Market' and is basically any flea market lovers dream. Set in an old historical building, the market is chock full of $2 t-shirts, beautiful flowers, amazing street vendor food, copy cat designer bags and second hand designer shoes and luggage. Oh and it's also filled with this:

yum. We bought a bag of crickets and ate some but after the novelty wore off, gave away the rest of the bag to some friends. Fried crickets taste kinda like a cross between fried prawn heads and shrimp chips. Delicious but really rich.



Another thing that markets are great for is people watching. I couldn't help but notice subtle changes since the last time I've been here, which was two years ago. I noticed the differences in the handbag designs that they were selling (not too crazy), that the market was full of trendy clothing that I could find in the US (mildy crazy because Cambodia has never been on the cutting edge of fashion trends) and that there was a complete absence of land mine victims that were begging for money (this is totally crazy).

I've been thinking a lot about changes. Before leaving on this trip, I found an old journal that I had started writing in during my first trip to Cambodia, back from 2000. I know it doesn't sound that long ago but for a 25 year old, seven years ago is a long time ago, especially when you consider the fact that I was definitely in a different developmental stage and life style time than I am now. But beyond just the changes that I've been thinking about of myself, I've been really noticing and theorizing about the changes that I've observed in Cambodia.

I'm not talking about stupid Louis V bags or hip fashion trends, I'm talking about the noticeable decrease in visibility of really really poor kids everywhere, the growing amount of heavier women and children and the crazy amount of construction that is going on. At one point, I was afraid that we'd turn a corner to find a McDonald's. Oh FYI there's no McDonald's here (yet).

Are these changes due to some systematic change that has happened? Are NGO's doing really great work? Are there more economic opportunities because of the urban development that's being funded by foreign money? Is it because Cambodia is really starting to move on and rebuild after the shock, obliteration and complete devastation from the Khmer Rouge? Or is it something completely lame like me just noticing things more because I don't have my head up my ass anymore?

Ah! Only 2 weeks left here! So many questions!

I'll have to investigate a bit further and ask some questions with people that I'll be meeting with. But until then, toodles, I've got a swarm of mosquitoes feasting on my flesh and some really good homemade fish curry and veggies waiting at my mom's house with my name on it.

Almost There...

Jen, Charles and Hello Kitty at the Taipei Airport

Have I ever told you about the time I traveled with another person to Cambodia who unknowingly was smuggling contraband? Yeah…

On a crisp cold San Francisco morning, Liam walked out to his car on Shotwell to find an inebriated man passed out in his back seat. Already late to work, Liam told the man to get out. The man barely bothered to open his eyes and refused to leave. Liam then opened the car door, yanked the man out of his car, threw him on the street and got in and drove off to work. Later in the day he noticed that there was a backpack in his back seat—a nice reminder of the events that happened earlier in the morning.

Thinking nothing of it, Liam started using the bag. It was after all, a nice clean looking bag and besides, he had already emptied and cleaned it out, so really, there was no reason to not be using the bag.

Fast forward several months later. We’re going through the airport security line in SFO. They scan the bag, then scan the bag yet again, and finally pull Liam aside to search the contents of the bag and ask him what was in it. Not that big of a deal right? After all it was post 9/11 and not all too uncommon for airport security to be really anal about everything. Well, now let’s repeat that sequence several more times—in LAX, when we arrived in Thailand and then again in Cambodia.

At every single check point, Liam’s bag was scanned several times, was questioned on the contents of his bag, had his bag thoroughly searched and questioned again. And every time his bag was searched, they found nothing.

I remember when we were at the security check in Thailand, there being huge yellow signs everywhere that said:

TRAFFICKING ANY ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH

And then I remember thinking, what was that movie again? Where the two chicks get tricked into trafficking drugs and then get thrown into Thai jail? What dumb asses…

Well, when we finally arrived at our hotel in Phnom Penh, Liam decided to thoroughly search his bag himself. Dumping the contents all over the hotel bed, and searching all the little pockets, he eventually found a secret compartment. Inside the secret compartment that had been cleverly sewn to the inseams of the bag, he then found a secret pocket. And in that, he found, well he found a crack pipe.

So the moral to the story is: if you kick a dude out of your car who leaves a bag behind and then think it's a really awesome idea to use it--uh, don't be a dumb ass.

and we're off!

masa trying to sneak on board

in a couple of hours, i'll be boarding a plane to go to cambodia. i don't think it's hit me until just now that i'm going to spend the next three weeks visiting orphanages, safe houses, human rights organizations and womyn's organizations in both cambodia and vietnam.

i've got a 100lb bag the size of two small women sitting at my feet right now. it's full of clothing, medicine and thousands upon thousands of condoms and lube. going through cambodian customs is going to be AWESOME.

i wrote this earlier to a friend. this is pretty much how i'm feeling at the moment:

last night, on the drive back up, someone asked me--so what are you going to do in cambodia? i took a second to think about it all, and i got really emotional. i know that going to cambodia on this trip, that the experiences i'll have there will have an impact so great on my soul that i'll return a little different.

i can't stop thinking about this image i have in my head. it was six years ago, on top of a hill in siem reap, in the midst of an ancient site. i was sitting down, watching the sun slowly dip back into the folds of the jungle, hearing the buzz of a million dragonflies everywhere, thinking about my life. at the time, i was in the sixth month of a self-imposed period of celibacy and was thinking about the relationships i had in my life, my fear of allowing myself to connect to others in a truly intentional and loving way. i heard a rustle, looked up and saw a young monk, wrapped in his modest orange robes, slinked at the bottom corner of an ancient doorway, who had also climbed the mountain to watch the beautiful sun set.

being there, in a moment that felt so surreal but completely grounded in reality did something to me. i felt as if this deep sense of oppression that i had been carrying for most of my life but hadn't ever noticed before, all of a sudden broke off. i remember taking in a really deep breath, almost gasping, like it was my first time breathing really clean and fresh air. and i remember being shaken by this intense emotional feeling that seemed to take over my body and loosen all this happiness that had been so carefully and closely guarded within my body.

i have never been the same since.

i imagine that this coming trip is going to be full of experiences like that again.

::sighs::

prep time

you might be wondering, why fish sauce and cupcakes? you might even be wondering what the hell fish sauce is (sad to be you). ok wait, before we can move on--if you've never tasted fish sauce (vegans you're excused) well you have to steam some rice, fry up some eggs over-easy, sprinkle with some freshly fried garlic and drizzle with this delicious elixir of life also known as fish sauce. that or just become my really good friend and ask me to make it for you.

but i digress. fishsauce and cupcakes...kind random, kinda gross, kinda cute. well, for the purposes of creating a publicly visable part of myself, in this context--fishsauce and cupcakes is a metaphor of the best things of all the different parts of my life. different parts pulled mainly from my work life, some (sparingly) from my personal.

oh and i guess this would be a good time to introduce you to my work life. blog voyeur meet work life aka Banteay Srei. Banteay Srei, you're doing far too much to really care if people are sneaking peaks into your life...

Banteay Srei is essentially this: an organization based in Oakland, CA that works with young Southeast Asian women and girls that are being or are at-high risk for being sexually exploited. If you want more information, you're going to have to wait for our website to go up. That or you can email me and ask me specifically.

On a personal level, Banteay Srei is like the super cute kitty that was left on my doorstop that i've nursed and have now found out that it's not a cat but rather a puma. or a tiger, or leopard or whatever big feline type animal you can think of.

Banteay Srei has meshed with so many aspects of my personal life that it's hard to separate the two from one another but i guess that it's a blessing in disguise because who else loves their work so much that they're willing to be one of the biggest part of their lives.

And something that's come from my work life meshing with my personal life is an adventure i'm going to embark on in a week--a human rights trip to Cambodia and Vietnam where i'll be meeting with various human rights organizations, sex worker rights organizations, safe houses, orphanages, oh and the people who helped my family escape from Cambodia during the oppressive rule of the Khmer Rouge. i think i forgot to say that i'll be traveling with work colleagues, two of my childhood friends and meeting up with my mom and siblings in Phnom Penh.

so it's prep time right now. that and gorging myself on all the cupcakes i can eat. because even though there will be fish sauce in practically everything that comes in contact with my mouth, there's won't be a single cupcake in sight.