Where I Am Now: Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and A Return to America
- T. Donohue
- Mar 3, 2020
- 20 min read
"I want you to stop running from thing to thing to thing, and to sit down at the table, to offer the people you love something humble and nourishing, like soup and bread, like a story, like a hand holding another hand while you pray. We live in a world that values us for how fast we go, for how much we accomplish, for how much life we can pack into one day. But I’m coming to believe it’s in the in-between spaces that our lives change, and that the real beauty lies there."
Shauna Niequist
Everything that’s happened in the last year has brought you here, my mother says over the phone from thousands of miles away, a feeling that has become far too familiar. Where I am now? I say desperately. I have no idea where I am. I’m sitting on a rooftop in Saigon crying? She tells me that if it’s meant to be it’s meant to be, that she admires my maturity in this situation. I might be mature, but I also just want love, I whisper back, holding the weight of the world in my throat. Only time will tell, she says. I hear the words, mungu anajua tu – only god knows, in my mind. Yes, only time will tell. But for god’s sake, what story is time telling?
The day before this weepy night on a Saigon rooftop, I told Anna, I’m at my best when I cry, and we both laughed at weirdly dark that sounded. But I knew she knew what I meant. She always does. When I find the time to cry, when I take the space, when I slow down to lay my head on the ground, to place my hands on the earth, to let the thoughts and doubts and fears wash over me, these are the days I am at my best. Because the truth is, I’m moving through a moment of excitement and grief at the same exact time. My body and mind have been on overdrive for the last thirteen months. My cordisal levels are surely out of the roof. And I am deeply craving homeostasis. And yet, I am so alive it hurts. The love inside my body feels so big I think, sometimes, I might just burst. How brilliant is it that I get to live this moment? Whether one of joy or mourning? Are they not in some way the same thing? So yes, I am at my best when I cry, sobbing onto a tear-soaked and snot covered yoga mat, feeling the entire world around me, the ocean inside my body? I have never taken myself less seriously as I do now. I have never been so willing to walk so comfortably into the unknown. I have never felt like this vivid; but always rose-colored.
I am sitting in the middle of a rooftop infinity pool overlooking Bangkok. The early afternoon sun is shrouded by smog and overcast skies. The water in the pool is moving like the ocean in the warm wind. I just spent an hour exercising and then laid on the floor and sobbed. A little lake flowed out of my eyes and onto the hardwood floor.
In about 24 hours I will make my way to the airport, and I will board a flight that is San Francisco bound. This alone, the whole boarding a flight thing, has proven to be quite a challenge. As if sorting through the heavy emotional waters of leaving Tanzania and the joyous, yet stressful, experience of traveling for a month aren’t enough. I have been faced with the unique challenge of trying to figure out how to get back to America from Asia during the coronavirus situation. Originally, I had a flight booked from Bangkok to San Francisco, with a layover in Guangzhou China. This was canceled without my knowledge and I spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone with Delta sorting it out. Eventually I got myself situated with a flight from Bangkok to Saigon, Saigon to Seoul, Seoul to Seattle, and Seattle to San Francisco. Only to find out two days ago that this flight had also been cancelled.
Now, when I left Tanzania, I wasn’t ready to be home. I didn’t know what home looked like. I didn’t know what or where I would feel home again. It has taken 38 days, 3 countries and a lot of crying for me to find myself here: fully ready to return. I may be confused about where to call home and who and what I am returning to, but I do know one thing. In a few short days I will walk through the arrivals gate at the Savannah airport into my mom’s arms and we will spend the next many days soaking up the South Carolina sun. I will wake up early and crawl into bed with her. I will fall asleep again to the sounds of her sipping her black coffee and scribbling in the crossword puzzle, wrapped in sheets that smell like a home I have always known when I am with her.
I have no idea how I will feel when I see certain people that I have spent the last year thinking about. I don’t know if I will love the places I used to love, or the food, or the people I used to love. But in the moment where my flight was canceled again, it hit me, I am ready to face that unknown. I want to fall into my mom’s arms. I want to take two showers a day, and eat cereal, and snuggle my mom’s puppy, and wear a white bath robe, and cry in private, and masturbate in private. And just be, alone. I am ready to walk the familiar streets of New York City and watch as the street corners come alive with memories. I am ready to hold my sisters and finally put my hands on their faces and kiss them and tell them how much I have missed them, body and soul.
I am ready to set the course for the rest of this year, and the future. I really don’t care what kind of job I get, because I have three projects I am working on that are so much bigger than “choosing a career.” These three things are where everything in my life has led me towards. And I am ready to confidently step towards the challenge of seeing them to fruition.
The moment I crossed the border from Vietnam into Cambodia, something about the dry and dusty landscape spoke to me. The passing homes and villages, the smoke rising from fields and the flow of people reminded me so very much of Tanzania. If I focused hard enough, I could pretend we were driving West on the right side of the road. I felt myself closer to Tanzania again, just for that fleeting moment.
I have spent years hearing travel stories about Thailand and Vietnam but hadn’t really heard much about Cambodia. Being the daydreamer and travel-planner that I am, I have studied the geography of the area and knew a bit about Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. But one can spend their whole life looking at places on maps. It isn’t until we set foot there, breathe the air, see the people, hear the ebb and flows of the city, that we come to know a place. And even then, the places we know so well continue to surprise us.
I immediately felt myself arrive in Phnom Penh. The city is sprawling, a mixture of urban growth and village culture. Over the last couple of decades this city has witnessed expansive growth. I woke up in the mornings and walked to the corner where I would get a steaming bowl of num banh chok. This is the classic Cambodian breakfast, and I could eat it every single day for the rest of my life. A pile of rice noodles, yellow fish gravy, and freshly cut Cambodian herbs, plants and flowers; add to it as much spice as your heart desires, and it is the most delicious little meal you’ve ever had. And then I could walk from this bustling little village-city corner to the Starbucks down the street. Phnom Penh, and Cambodia for that matter, is a young country. And walking around the city I could feel this. There is a warmth and youthfulness emanating from the people.
This feeling of youthfulness and energy is not nothing. The average age in Cambodia is twenty-four years old. To put this into context, the US average age is 39. The reason that Cambodia not only feels young, but is actually young, is the result of a gruesome and haunting history. Between April 17, 1975 and January 1979, the Khmer Rouge party, led by Pol Pot, carried out a genocide that resulted in the death of a quarter of the 1975 Cambodian population. In other words, between 1975 and 1979, about 2 million out of 8 million were killed. In large part, this genocide was a push towards communism and away from intellectualism. In fact, intellectualism was seen as a major threat to the regime and to the longevity of Cambodia. Pol Pot believed that all people should be working the fields and working for the overall communal welfare, rather than pursuing the lofty goals of intellectualism. For over a decade, Cambodia had been impacted by the Vietnam War and when the Khmer Rouge took power, they were largely supported by the people. Shortly following the regime change, the Khmer Rouge, under the guise of military protection, leds millions of people away from the large cities and away from their homes. The Khmer Rouge proved to be single-minded in their goal of a communist Cambodia, using any means necessary, including mass imprisonment and ultimately murder.
In the center of Phnom Penh stands the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. This old secondary school building was the site of the Security Prison 21, or S-21, where the Khmer Rouge imprisoned a least 20,000 people from 1975 to 1979. There is something visceral about this place. As I walk through the gates and sit under a banyan tree, listening to the audio tour, I look up at the old weathered buildings. It feels like a secondary school, like I can almost hear the laughter of young teenagers rising from the hallways above. But this place holds a horrific truth. On the first floor of the first building, there are fourteen rooms. In each room there is an iron bed-frame with shackles to restrain hands and feet. When the Khmer Rouge fell in 1979 and the Vietnamese troops came to S-21, they found only 14 bodies left. And the photographs of these bodies hang on the walls of these fourteen rooms. There are still blood stains on the floors. This is not some ancient crime, some horrible history, that is hard to imagine. This happened recently. This happened when my mother and father were about my age. I’m not sure why, but that frame of reference makes it feel all the more impactful.
As I continue to walk slowly through the hallways, it’s as if the walls are whispering. As if every corner holds some haunted moment in time. There is an entire hallway filled with thousands of photographs of the prisoners held here over the four-year regime. Young girls and boys, babies, new mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, young men, just endless photographs. As I walk through, it feels never-ending. One little girl’s photograph feels as if it is screaming out at me. She looks so confused; so unsure of what is happening to her. I wonder where is mother is. Where is father? Is she alone? I feel an almost primal need to know what happened to her. There is a photograph of a young woman holding a baby, perhaps one month old. I find out later the baby was murdered immediately after the photo was taken. Every time someone was “accidently” killed during an interrogation, photographic evidence needed to be taken. And so, there is another hall filled with photographs of people laying in blood, contorted and emaciated. I feel a tension so intense in my throat, I cannot seem to catch my breath. The prison cells, made from wood and cement blocks, are dark and eerie. I walk and sit down inside one of them. I do not want to do this. But I tell myself, I need to feel this, all.
During the time prisoners were held at S-21, they were interrogated and tortured in order for the Khmer Rouge to find out how they were connected to the United States, the C.I.A., or other Western Democratic nations, or another sort of conspiratorial matter. They wrote forced confessions. And ultimately, they were blindfolded, loaded into trucks and brought to the outskirts of town to a place called the Choenung Ek killing field. The day before visiting the S-21 Prison, I went to the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center. Again, I walk slowly around, listening to the audio tour, taking time to pause and sit under the trees. It is estimated that during the Khmer Rouge, about 2 million people were executed and their remains placed in these mass graves. And as I walk around the grounds of Choeung Ek, I can still see particles of clothing and fabric arising from the dust and soil. Pieces of bones litter the bottom of these pits. Every week they discover more bones here. The Khmer Rouge did not want to waste money on weapons or bullets, and so people were executed by severe and barbaric means. The sharp edges of palm branches, machetes, rocks. There is a tree that was used specifically for killing babies and young children. As I walk past this tree, the golden hour sun casting it in a honey-colored glow, the tree is now covered in prayer beads and bracelets. I exhale. I sit inside the memorial. I burn incense. I lay down a flower at an altar for a million people who lost their lives here. Again, I have the thought, one I have had so many times this year for so many different reasons, I am not sure I can contain all of this.
I know that that reading about this may not be easy. But nor is visiting the site where is happened. The reality is, that it is important to know about this. It is necessary that we learn about the mistakes and flaws in humanity. It is vital that we learn from these moments in our collective history. Governments and politics can be a fragile balancing act. We do ourselves and those who lost their lives a great disservice by not learning from these events. Perhaps Cambodia could have taken a different path forward following the horrific years of the Khmer Rouge regime, possibly leaning towards hostility, fear, hate, bitterness. But as I walk the streets of Phnom Penh, it is alive. It is renewing and replenishing and there is a vibrancy to the forgiveness and grace that emanates from this place.
The night before Anna and I left Phnom Penh, we asked Rothdy to take us for a drive around the city. Who is Rothdy you may ask? A few years ago, Anna’s brother and sister-in-law lived and worked in Phnom Penh. And while they were living there, they became close friends with Rothdy, the tuk tuk driver. He was thrilled to welcome Anna and I to his home city of Phnom Penh. He picked us up in the mornings, his smile was vibrant and welcoming. Spending time with him felt like coming home. I can’t quite describe it. It reminded me of my time in Jaipur, when another friend of a friend tuk tuk driver showed us around for five days. Every day he decided what we would do. He told us where to drink chai, where to eat, what sites to see, how much time to spend where. And honestly, after a year of making so many decisions, I am exhausted. And so, on the day before we left, we hopped in the back of Rothdy’s tuk tuk and said, Rothdy, take us somewhere near the water where we can drink wine. And he smiled, and promptly brought us to a beautiful riverfront restaurant. Here, we proceeded to drink two bottles of a fine sauvignon blanc from New Zealand, while eating banana blossom salads and spring rolls. We talked about missing Tanzania, and about going back to America, and about the highs and lows of our travels.
As the sun began to set below the river, we returned to Rothdy’s tuk tuk and told him we were ready to go back to our hostel, that we were very tired. And he said, no, my friend has invited us for dinner and beer. So, we are going to meet him. And off he swept us, to a little street corner, where we met Mr. Kern. The flow of Cambodian beer was never-ending. Every time we took a sip, Mr. Kern would raise his glass, cheers, cheers, cheers, moy moy, no money no honey. They ordered buffalo, which I didn’t eat. And for me, Rothdy ordered vegetables. And never in my life have I eaten spicer vegetables. I swear with each bite I needed an entire beer to wash it down. This surely explains why both Anna and I were so very drunk when we left. But in the meantime, we discussed Cambodian politics, we asked Mr. Kern and Rothdy about their lives, their wives, their children. We asked about their perceptions and ideas about America. And when it was time to go, Rothdy brought Anna and I to Bassac Lane, where we bought two pizzas and proceeded to devour them and have a very long, very intense conversation about something really important, that neither of us could remember in the morning.
Saying goodbye to Rothdy at the airport the following morning felt like saying goodbye to a really old friend that I may never see again. But I have a feeling I’ll be back in Phnom Penh. We awkwardly hug, and again I am reminded of how excited I am for American hugs. We arrive in Siem Reap, which is a little town settled into the northwest of Cambodia, in the mid-afternoon. We check into our hostel, which can only be described as a party hostel, and then walk around town for a while. Siem Reap immediately felt like a strange energetic dichotomy.
About two miles outside of town sits Angkor Wat. This massive Hindu-Buddhist temple complex is the largest religious monument in the world. Originally built as a Hindu temple, it was gradually transformed into a Buddhist monument during the Khmer Empire in the end of the 12th century.
As we bike along the roads surrounding the massive complex, it’s difficult to miss the strange balance between the ancient and the modern, between the spiritual and the commonplace. The various temples remain standing despite hundreds of years of weathering, war and theft and vandalism. The monuments and temples have been rigorously restored and maintained. They are surrounded by massive stone walls and imposing, ancient trees. And like every other sight to see in the world, no matter how holy or serene, there are people attempting to peddle their wares and sell waters and juices and paintings and clothes.
On our first visit to Angkor Wat, which interestingly is only the name of one temple but has come to be the name of the entire complex, we arrived in the late afternoon. After an unexpected eighteen-mile bike ride, we were a bit exhausted and walked slowly through the ruins of the monk’s citadel. I walked up to a tree and placed my hand on it. Thousands of years of history contained in its roots. I think if I could have a super power it would be the ability to speak to trees, I think to myself. Afterwards we make our way to Ta Prohm Temple, which has become an iconic site in the complex because of the way the trees surrounding the temple have overtaken it. After centuries of neglect following the fall of the Khmer Regime, the temples were overtaken by Strangler Fig trees, which are closely related to banyan trees. These trees grow through the rocks, the roofs, and every surface of the now fragmented temples. There are trees literally growing on top of the temples, seemingly erupting from every possible surface. After walking through Ta Prohm, we sat outside drinking an Angkor Wat branded beer on some dirty step at sunset, talking to an eleven-year-old boy us about his school and how he learns English. When we tell him we have to go home, he asks if we will come back tomorrow, he says, I’ll see you later. And we bike off down the dusty down towards the setting sun.
Siem Reap is, simply put, a strange town. It reminds me of a town set up and developed only because it is near some world-famous attraction, which of course it is. While Angkor Wat is this sprawling spiritual center, Siem Reap is a mixture of purpose-driven business and general teenage backpacking debauchery. We frequented a number of cafes and restaurants, most notably a lovely café called Sister Srey and a restaurant called Haven. Both of these establishments hire local and underserved youth and then train them to work in the hospitality industry. They serve fresh and authentic Cambodian food with a modern edge. The staff is warm and welcoming. Littered throughout the hallways and bathrooms are posters warning against child sex-trafficking, voluntertouism, and the like. They offer methods to travel more ethically and with a community-driven approach. On the other side of town, one will find Pub Street. This is street is by no means as chaotic as the streets of Saigon, but it’s where one goes to find 50 cent beer and buy one get one cocktails in Siem Reap.
On our second full day, Anna and I woke up before the sun and biked towards the complex. We arrived right as the sun was beginning to peak over the horizon. In India, we learned a very important lesson. If you are going to visit a famous site, especially at sunrise, get there, and then make a b-line for the back of the building/complex/etc. Everyone is shocked and awed to see the site right when they walk in, they all stop to take photos, and there are just thousands of people. If you make the effort, if you don’t get distracted, and make your way to the back, I promise, you’ll find a quiet little piece of heaven. And so, we walked the quiet corners of Angkor Wat as the sun rose up in the East. I knelt before a monk and got a blessing for a long and healthy life. We drank shitty coffee. We biked down the road searching for num banh chok, and knew we had found the right place when it was filled with locals and tuk tuk drivers.
During our last few nights in Siem Reap there were three eighteen-year-old boys from Oxford, England staying our dorm. Their first night there, they erupted into the room in the middle of the night waking both Anna and me. When we saw two of them the next day, they had lost the other friend. We can’t find our friend. He’s gone out to the pharmacy and it’s been over an hour. What do you think we shall do? Anna and I just sat on the bunk beds laughing at and with them. We pulled a prank on the missing friend when he returned. And late that night when they had finally gathered themselves, which I swear takes teenage boys eons to do, they drunkenly stumbled out of the room. Before they left, they turned back, we’ll try our best to be quiet when we come home. We don’t want to disturb you. Goodnight.
Make sure you brush your teeth when you get home...have fun, I say in a mockingly maternal voice. We all laugh as they close the door. Once they left, we took their bottle of rum, poured it into a water bottle, brushed our teeth and went to bed.
The following morning Anna and I woke around seven o’clock. We had a lovely morning of coffee, hours at the gym, smoothies, shopping, brunch and then finally returned to our dorm in the afternoon. The boys were still asleep, unsurprisingly, but began to move a bit when we walked in the door. As one of them sat up we began to chat. Are you thirsty? Anna asked. You look quite dehydrated, I said. Oh my god, you’re amazing! Really you’d share? He takes the huge water bottle and chugs it, only to realize we’ve filled it with rum. The room erupts in laughter, as he spits rum out in shock. We invite them for beer that night. And thus, that night Anna and I found ourselves in our banana outfits; me wearing a hot pink wig and Anna donning bunny ears, drinking an excessive amount of beer with these teenage boys, having an absolutely ball. Anna and I danced on the beer pong table, singing Natasha Beddingfield. Sandy feet and smoky air. One of the boys proposed to me. We played games. Anna and I won games and rightfully free gin and tonics. But more than anything, we laughed. We laughed in that way that makes your face hurt and your stomach cramp.
Here’s the thing, we could have chosen to be annoyed by them. We could have chosen to deem them immature, annoying and gross. Which I’m sure many might have written them off as. But in fact, they were playful and charming and childish. Something we could all use a bit of from time to time. And somehow, by choosing to just enjoy the silliness, to indulge in the childishness of it all, I feel I was reminded how heavy the weight of “being an adult” can be at times; how serious we make this whole “growing up” business to be. But here it is, the plain simple truth: I have no fucking clue what I am doing. And neither do you. Or maybe you do, but I digress. I have no idea what I am “supposed” to do. I make stupid mistakes that I think about for way too long afterwards. I trip over my words. I say the wrong thing. I doubt myself. I fear failure more than probably anything else. And then I stop myself, “what would failure even look like?” I judge myself, I judge others, only to realize it’s a mirror of my own insecurities. I push up against my own edges. And then I remember: I am made of the same light that make the golden hour. My friend once wrote a poem for me and in it he said, “let’s make fun of ourselves, and then make fun of each other, because we only pretend not to take ourselves so seriously.” And finally, maybe for the first time, I’ve realized what it means to not take it all so seriously. To trust that my playfulness and joy is the very essence of how I am choosing to define my adulthood. That choosing to live too close to the surface is part of loving myself fully, to love the world more deeply, to know that what I see as a person’s flaws are just a moment for me to recognize how I can move more fully into my own spirit and process. To learn that through the practice of letting ourselves go, to trust others to hold that for us, to be playful and silly and childlike, we finally find the freedom to just be. And maybe, if we’re lucky, see the world like a child again, even if just for a moment.
I am currently 11,300 feet above the Pacific Ocean, I am about an hour and twenty minutes from landing in San Francisco. I have thought about this moment for so many months, so many days. I did not expect it to arrive so quickly. I did not think that I would be returning to America early. But really, I haven’t expected any of this journey. And now, I am thousands of miles above the ocean and I am trying to figure out how to walk off this plane. I am trying to figure out how to breathe when I see American soil as the plane careens towards the runway.
This year has been the most vivid year of my life. It has been as if everything occurred in technicolor. I remember to perfection the moments I said goodbye to everyone I loved most in America. I remember freezing cold February mornings on the corner of Metropolitan and Lorimer, standing in my pink coat, holding my breath. I remember crying as I bought croissants a few minutes later. I remember hugging my dad after we drank maybe one too many beers at a local watering hole in Annapolis. I remember frantically parking my car in front of my best friend’s office on 5th Avenue and running to her. I remember us weeping together as she gave me gifts to bring on this journey. I felt that it was impossible one body could produce so many tears. But after all, I am made of the same things as the ocean I am currently flying above. Just as I am made of the soil on which I am about to walk. I remember holding my mom, her small frame allows me to envelop her in my embrace. She shook her head, she told me not to cry, she told me to go go go, you’ll be fine.
During this trip I have spoken to my mom a number of times. And as I waxed on about concerns over where I will live and work and what my relationships will look like and if I will still feel the same way with the same people, my mom, as always, listened attentively. And then, while crying on that roof in Saigon she said, Tyler, all these things are just avoidance and a distraction from the pain of leaving Tanzania. Years ago, her abruptness likely would have rubbed me the wrong way. But we’ve both been doing our work, and so when she said this, what I heard, is, Tyler, the heartbreak you are feeling is the heartbreak and homesickness for Tanzania. The other things are just distractions from facing that heartbreak fully. I am reminded of one of the biggest lessons I have learned so far this year, the pain is so big because the love is or was so big. Does anyone else feel like 2020 has already been like five years packed into two months?
I never knew what this year would bring me. I never knew who I would be when I boarded a plane to return to America. I surely could not have expected this. I never knew that I could love so big, dive so deep, explore all my hidden corners and raw edges the way that I have this year. I never knew I could grow like this, all at once I feel like a towering and ancient tree, absolutely unmovable; and a fresh little seedling just waiting to be replanted. I never knew I would fall this in love with the world, with myself, with humans and the way we all love and struggle and laugh and doubt ourselves in the same way, despite language and culture, there is something that connects us, something useable, something magic. I thought I felt it before, and surely I did, but I am awestruck at just how vast and expansive our hearts and minds can be. How forgiving and full of grace and vulnerability we can be. I never knew I could so fully make the choice to fall into it, the deep indigo waters of my life, and trust the waters to hold me, to cleanse me, and to keep me afloat when the saltwater fills my lungs. To trust the waters of my life to keep me nourished, to show me what is really means to be expansive.
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