Cha-Chiang Mai

With the Angkor temples firmly in our rear view mirror, we caught a flight back to Bangkok. Once there, we killed a few hours by leaving Kaberi’s recalcitrant Nikon camera in the capable hands of the Sukhothai’s concierge staff, dropping by unannounced at our not-entirely trustworthy tailor and stopping for a forgettable lunch at the campy Cabbages and Condoms restaurant (run by an organization whose ostensible mission is to make condoms as accessible to Thailand’s high-risk communities as cabbages). 

As evening approached, we made our way to the newly-reopened Don Muang Airport, now the home of domestic flights on a select number of Thai carriers, including ours. Upon arriving at Don Muang (this time, leaving ourselves more than enough time before departure), we discovered to our chagrin that the flight had been delayed indefinitely. As a result, we were left with at least four hours to take in our immediate surroundings. Compared to Bangkok’s shiny and modern Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Don Muang is meager and uninspiring. With old, musty carpets, dim lighting and cramped seating areas, it appears better suited to the role of bus station than major metropolitan airport. Vik thinks it should be renamed Don Johnson Airport. Don King, Don Knotts and Don Ho were some of his other unsolicited contributions. Time ground slowly to a halt, leaving us to stare at our watches fitfully. When the bright afternoon turned to dusk and then pitch-black nightfall, the airline finally boarded the plane. We touched down in Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city with a population roughly one fortieth that of Bangkok’s, at 10:00 pm, about three and a half hours later than originally scheduled. 

Nearly five years had elapsed since our last trip to Chiang Mai, and we were quite struck by the changes to the city during that time. The Chiang Mai of 2002 appealed to us as a sleepy northern hamlet best known for peaceful trekking excursions and unintrusive handicrafts. The Chiang Mai of 2007 was almost a mini-Bangkok, with omnipresent noise and neon, myriad hotels and commercial developments, and formidable motorized and foot traffic. On our last visit, we had the made the unfortunate decision to stay at the local Westin. The inadequacy of our choice had been punctuated immediately upon arriving to a Thai lounge singer’s live rendition of Abba’s Dancing Queen in the hotel lobby. This time, with the benefit of advice from TripAdvisor and Kaberi’s handy LUXE guide, we settled on the sleek, mod D2 (think of a W with orange tones and more attentive service) located next door to Chiang Mai’s Night Market. 

Given our late arrival at the D2 (thankfully devoid of any late 1970’s covers), we made a quick dash to a food cart stationed across the street for a generous helping of hot, freshly-cooked-on-the-spot pad thai. For 25 baht, or approximately 75 cents, we feasted on the best pad thai we had ever tasted. In contrast to our earlier visit, the theme of this Chiang Mai trip centered around indulging our inner foodie. This was largely driven by circumstances – northern Thailand’s slash and burn agricultural practices had wrought havoc on the air as a thick haze of particulate matter lingered on Chiang Mai’s outskirts. Furthermore, the associated visibility constraints rendered treks and other outdoor excursions untenable. With that in mind, we slept in the next morning (Kaberi awoke at a gallingly-late 8:00 am) and got a late start to our day. 

Turning the corner from our hotel, we arrived at the Siam Celadon Tea House. Although Vik grumbled about the damage inflicted on his rapidly-fading Y chromosome, he quickly changed his tune once he tasted the lapis tea cakes, made with a divine combination of Indian spices, and crisp tea sandwiches. With his stubborn masculinity waning with every additional bite, Vik took an oath never to question his wife’s culinary judgment again. He then shamelessly lobbied for a return visit on the very next day. 

Given Chiang Mai’s well-deserved reputation as Thailand’s arts and crafts hub, we spent our time accordingly. We explored the artisan shops on Thapae Road one day and on Nimanhean Road the next. On both occasions, Kaberi browsed to her heart’s content while Vik occupied himself in efforts to find an open wifi connection nearby. Our culinary forays in town were varied and exhaustive. On our second evening, we returned to a traditional Thai restaurant on Charoenrajd Road that sadly failed to live up to our fond memories from a 2002 visit. The following day, we snacked through the day before partaking in refreshing lemongrass and ginger-infused drinks and a special Japanese tasting menu dinner at our hotel. On our last night, we splurged on a superb dim sum lunch at the over-the-top Mandarin Oriental hotel before concluding with an amazing northern Thai meal of khao soi at the swanky Chedi hotel’s restaurant. 

Our down time in Chiang Mai was used not only to eat, but also to plan the next legs of our journey in southeast Asia. Despite countless hours on the Internet, our efforts to secure an expedited Vietnam tourist visa on arrival were stymied by insufficient advance planning, intermittently-responsive Vietnamese online travel agencies and prohibitive itinerary costs. With a Vietnam visit proving not to be in the cards on this trip, we shifted our attention to revising our itinerary and locating reasonably-priced flights and accommodation. The net result of these machinations was to make Laos our next destination, followed by a week split between two of Thailand’s renowned beach destinations: Krabi and Ko Samui. Faced with this seemingly-surreal itinerary, we had to pause to take inventory of our strange, charmed position.

The Keys To The Kingdom

Having completed two full days in Phnom Penh, we traveled to Cambodia’s northwestern city of Siem Reap, the gateway to the famed temples of the Angkor civilization. After an uneventful, 40-minute flight on a well-behaved turboprop, we touched down in sweltering heat and humidity amidst a potpourri of sage-green foliage and bright orange soil. The 10-minute ride to our hotel felt like an eternity, however, with our quite-literally-salivating-at-the-mouth cabbie ceaselessly hectoring us to put him on a $25 per day retainer. We arrived at our hotel breathless, having run through the front door to avail ourselves of a little peace and quiet.

As it turned out, the hotel was upscale, but not in keeping with our personal senses of style (the large saline pool had small waterfalls pouring out of the mouths of two gaping terra cotta lions). The Asian tour groups wandering around the lobby seemed not to mind the décor, nor the three prominently-displayed pictures of the Cambodian royal family, so our views appeared to be in the minority. After arriving at our poolview room (by now, the lions were very clearly taunting us), we took advantage of a much-needed hour of downtime in some good, old-fashioned air conditioning.

Refreshed, we made our way back to the lobby to locate the first U.S. friend to meet up with us during our around-the-world travels. It came as little surprise to either of us that our Boston pal Scott, a true gentleman epicurean, had crossed paths with us in Cambodia. Five years earlier, he had taken two red-eye flights from the West Coast to attend our wedding in Chicago. Granted, we had some compromising photos in our possession at the time, but we’re reasonably confident that Scott would have made an appearance, regardless.

This time around, we were meeting up with not only Scott, but also two of his college buddies: Adrian, who, in the small world department, just so happened to be a contemporary of Vik’s during their Booz Allen days, and Mike, a college professor currently braving a grueling sabbatical in dreary Bali. The five of us formed a motley crew: 4 men and 1 Kaberi.

After a satisfying traditional Khmer meal at a modest family-run restaurant in Siem Reap’s nearby Old Market (the total tab for the five of us, including appetizers, drinks and tip, came to a cool $25) and an ice cream pitstop on the walk home, we finalized the following day’s sightseeing plans. At 8:30 am sharp the next morning, we piled into a wonderfully-air-conditioned van along with our driver and guide and set off for the temples.

When we pulled onto the Angkor entrance 15 minutes later, we were shrouded on both sides by dense green underbrush. With our sense of anticipation mounting, we rounded a corner and saw the underbrush clear and an expansive moat unfurl before us. To our unaccustomed eyes, the moat appeared to be a uniformly-wide river. Within moments of our guide disabusing us of this notion, the undeniable gray form of Angkor Wat’s entrance gate came into view. Its five striking towers hovered tantalizingly in the background as we drove past.

Our first stop of the day was at Ta Phrom, an 800-year-old temple quite literally entwined with the nearby foliage. Built in the 12th century, Ta Phrom has had very little of the jungle cleared away from its footprint, and appears almost as unspoilt as it did to its French rediscoverers. The visual result is captivating with the temple’s sandstone exterior taking on a greenish tint through its lengthy exposure to Cambodian moss. We devoted two hours or so to exploring the site and marveled at the relentlessness of the nearby banyan trees whose roots had snaked around various crevices to make their way toward the temple’s foundation. In some cases, it wasn’t immediately obvious where the stone ended and the trees began.

Next on our agenda was Angkor Thom, an erstwhile city of temples surrounded on all four sides by walls, each with an entranceway running beneath a large stone face. We entered the complex from the east and began our explorations at the Terrace of the Elephants where three-headed stone elephants stood watch over the stairway. As our well-meaning guide tried to explain the method of historical construction, he displayed an unfortunate tendency to pronounce the word cement as semen. This idiosyncrasy cast the guide’s explanation in an unusual light, and gave all of us the occasion to consider the astonishing virility and endurance of Khmer laborers.

The piece de resistance of Angkor Thom was to be found at the center of the city in the form of the Bayon temple. Bayon is famed for its large stone faces, all boasting likenesses of the temple’s patron, King Jayavarman VII, carved onto its 54 towers. Despite its weathered look, Bayon was pronounced by Kaberi as her favorite. We carefully made our way through the temple in a clockwise route, relishing the refuge of shade offered by the small passageways and tower chambers. After an hour of exploring Bayon and admiring the detailed reliefs depicting everyday life on its inner and outer walls, we made our way back to the hotel for a 3-hour respite from the noontime sun.

Refreshed by a few hours lazing around the pool, we made our way back to the Angkor complex in the late afternoon. We took this opportunity to see the flagship Angkor Wat structure in the impending sunset. As we made our way across the causeway spanning the moat, and the structure neared, it was hard not to be awed by its stunning, symmetrical beauty. One inside, our guide gave us a passionate and exacting section-by-section explanation of Angkor Wat’s seemingly-endless, detailed sandstone bas reliefs (most of which remained in excellent condition and portrayed scenes from the Hindu epic, The Ramayana). Somewhere around the Sea of Churning Milk section, we roused ourselves from a collective self-induced stupor, to deliberately make our approach toward the inner sanctum of the temple.

Within minutes, we had reached the central chamber where a steep ascent to the second level awaited us. After a steep climb, we strolled around the antechamber for excellent western views (Angkor Wat is the only temple that faces west, suggesting its possible role as a mausoleum). We then made a slightly nerve-wracking descent down the steep exiting steps. At the bottom, Kaberi realized that her eyeglasses (removed in a brief picture-taking moment) had disappeared. After being inspired to make a second ascent to and descent from the upper level in a futile search for the glasses, we exited the grounds into a hazy, cloud-scattered sunset. Foremost in our minds was a faint hope that a needy, young, astigmatism-afflicted Cambodian would benefit from his or her newly-found, impish designer frames.

Our party ended the day with a well-earned, highbrow dinner at the restaurant of the posh Hotel de la Paix, a building which appeared to have been transported directly to Siem Reap by way of Soho. We feasted on another terrific meal, enjoying the cool background lounge music while basking in the glow of the day’s fulfilling activities. Mercifully, the topic of cement only came up a couple of times, saving our abs from yet another convulsing fit of laughter. As we prepared to settle our bill, the inimitably-generous Scott surprised the group by treating all of us. We didn't have the heart to tell him that we had long since sold the compromising photographs. Or that we still had Mr. Underhill's American Express card.

Our time in Siem Reap passed more quickly than we expected, and our final 24 hours in town were eventful. In the early afternoon, we toured Artisans d’Angkor, a Cambodian NGO that provides traditional Khmer craft apprenticeships to disabled youth. After a quick stop at the hotel to change our sweat-drenched clothes, we commandeered a tuk tuk and driver to take us to the Preah Khan temple ruins. Billed as a “battle” between wood and stone, Preah Khan managed to live up to the Lara Croft Tomb Raider-inspired images of Cambodia in Vik’s head, minus, of course, one form-fitted Angelina Jolie.

From Preah Khan, we visited the Sara Shraj bathing pool and then returned to Angkor Wat to observe a second sunset. The next morning, we roused ourselves at 5:00 am to join Mike in seeing Angkor Wat at sunrise. We enjoyed the majestic view of the structure’s silhouette against orange and then pink skies, and found that we were not alone in doing so. Our close proximity to hordes of tourists and mosquitoes, both of which proved stubbornly resistant to our fruitless attempts to swat them away, made us grateful for our earlier visits. By 7 am, the sun had almost fully risen, and it was time to bid Angkor farewell.

The Khmer Rouge's Shameful, Tragic Legacy

Before coming to Cambodia, we had both heard of the country’s killing fields. Nevertheless, neither of us even vaguely appreciated the complete extent of the suffering imposed on this friendly country’s people a mere 30 years ago – representing recent history that transpired during our own lifetimes. As a result, we were not prepared for the abounding evidence of brutality and inhumanity that we witnessed firsthand at Phnom Penh’s Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. The haunting, all-too-real visit deeply troubled us, caused us to bemoan the dark savagery of humankind and led us to draw parallels to the current state of affairs in Darfur and Iraq. We hope that the writing below does justice to what we saw.

Toul Sleng is located in southern Phnom Penh in a relatively-quiet residential neighborhood characterized by multi-unit dwellings and small shops. The building originated as a place of learning, serving as a high school until May 1976. That the structure would become Security Prison 21 (S21), a gruesome torture chamber in which mostly-adolescent soldiers brutalized the country’s intellectuals, holds a particularly cruel irony.

By way of background, Cambodia’s descent into the dark days of Khmer Rouge rule began in the early 1970’s. As North Vietnamese soldiers sought sanctuary across the border, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces followed in pursuit, and Cambodia became a flash point in the Vietnamese conflict. The escalating violence in combination with an ineffectual and undemocratic leadership fomented considerable leftist discontent. This backdrop laid the foundation for the rise of the madman Pol Pot and his communist Khmer Rouge party.

Pol Pot defied a Cambodian public hopeful for long-awaited peace and freedom by forcing the country’s entire urban populace to migrate to the countryside. His demented and revisionist agrarian ideology suspended basic freedoms throughout Cambodia (renamed Kampuchea), used force to restrict border access, and, worst of all, authorized the mass execution of intellectuals and their family members, Buddhist priests, those accused of petty crimes, foreigners, and anyone suspected of being disloyal to the state. In four years (1975-1979), half of Cambodia’s population (representing roughly three million lives) was butchered at the hands of the Khmer Rouge as the West stood idly by.

In Cambodian, the phrase Toul Sleng roughly translates into “poisonous hill,” which understates the facility’s horrific purpose. Civilian families, including children and newborns, were imprisoned here and systematically tortured until the arrival of Vietnamese liberation forces in 1979. At any given time, Toul Sleng held 1,200 to 1,500 prisoners with an average incarceration period of 2 to 4 months (some prominent political prisoners were jailed longer). Of Toul Sleng’s estimated 20,000 inmates, only 7 survived. The 14 corpses found in the individual cells by the Vietnamese are buried in the school’s playground.

As we approached the site, we took note of the ominous barbed wire atop the schoolyard’s perimeter walls. Once inside the grounds, a grim three-story block building stood before us, left in the same condition as it was found in 1979. The high school’s transformation was horrifying: ground floor classrooms subdivided into 15 square foot cells and interrogation rooms adorned with blood-spattered walls and blown-up pictures of disfigured prisoners. Middle floor rooms were designed to hold female prisoners in claustrophobic makeshift wooden cubicles. Undivided top floor rooms once housed rows of prisoners shackled together by their ankles.

The adjacent building housed an extensive and haunting exhibition of victims’ photos, as taken by their captors. The array of faces staring back at us in black and white poignantly personalized the depths of the tragedy that unfolded here. In one austere photo, a young girl of perhaps 9 or 10 manages a brave smile that immediately reduced us to tears. In another, the harrowed eyes of a desperately-thin man in his early 20’s reveal his sheer terror. Other photos appeared to reflect stoicism, disbelief or resignation.

In an adjoining room, we overheard a guide tell her tour group that she was one of Toul Sleng’s seven survivors. She had lost her parents in the prison and still bore shackle scars on her ankles. She had returned to Cambodia in the late 1990’s after more than 20 years abroad. She now gave tours at the scene of her life’s greatest sorrow in order to remind others of the heartbreaking events that took place here three decades ago.

Another photo exhibit depicted a chilling incident at the prison in two frames. In the first frame, we see a young woman from the front. She is seated holding a baby, but maintains her gaze forward at the camera. In the second frame, we see the side profile of the same woman, from the neck up, with a single tear running down her cheek. From this vantage point, we realize that the woman’s head has been secured in place to the wall, preventing her from looking down to see or tend to her crying baby. As the photograph was being taken, jailers silenced the baby by throwing it against the wall in plain view of its cruelly-immobilized mother.

By the time we had moved into the exhibition's final room -- past photos of slumped, lifeless bodies, photos of countless skulls uncovered from mass graves, cabinets of the Khmer Rouge’s preferred implements of torture and painted reenactments of scenes portraying prisoner mistreatment -- we were thoroughly shellshocked. Exhausted and emotionally-drained, we exited the grounds quietly. At that moment, we felt very small and insignificant. Once the facility faded from our sight, we felt a palpable sense of relief overcome us. We both knew that we still needed more time before we would be able to recount the experience in our own words.