"Twenty Thousand Miles in Fifty Days"
JOEL KROEKER'S BLOG
SE ASIA TRIP 2008
(Cambodia, Laos, India, Nepal, Thailand)


"THANK YOU DELHI": LAST NIGHT IN INDIA
Well, it's my last evening in India here, tomorrow I'm off to Kathmandu, and what a journey it's been indeed. Such incredible exotic beauty mixed unashamedly with breathtaking filth and poverty. Infinitely further in both extremes than I ever imagined.
Turns out India had a little surprise in store for me tonight while watching my last sunset over polluted Delhi. Sitting here on the second floor watching the boneless dogs lolling in exhausted apathy, filthy little boys comically gesticulating typical Indian mannerisms like Bollywood in fast forward while playing tag, indescribably thin men squashed nearly to two dimensions pushing enormous carts full of watermelons, and nose-ringed women in brilliant saris expertly avoiding the murderous advances of speeding 'tuktuks' amidst the unholy din of overpopulated traffic.
I've had almost the full gamut of sicknesses on offer here from fever to flu to cold to various respiratory issues.
I guess India has a way of opening one up to all sorts of vulnerabilities and open heartedness...makes it hard to defend oneself...even against simple bacteria.
So, as I sat there pondering all this under the advancing dusk a gigantic iridescent flurry suddenly exploded into the air from a nearby rooftop.
Now, I've always had a natural fondness for birds, but to see a full grown wild male peacock in full flight with the backdrop of the setting Indian sun...worth the price of admission.
That would have been enough, but in an uncharacteristic play of show-offy-ness, India decided to have three more wild peacocks join him as they all bounded seemingly from the four corners of the earth across the rooftops and jumped 20 feet up directly into some ancient tree that perfectly silhouetted the sky, while their cries echoed in the night.
Okay, India, I thought, you win. I forgive you for all the sickness and poverty and human feces everywhere and the eternal logistical impossibilities and the slamming assault on the senses and the oppressive heat and grime and the fevers and flues and colds and exhaust-flavoured asthma fumes and the all night choking cough haunted apniatic respiratoire. How could I not forgive you, India, for every single thing when you show me something like this.
The heart-breaking image of the four peacocks in the tree melted me completely as it sank deep into my soul.
Then it occurred to me that maybe that's what life is like...we live our lives with so much quiet desperation and eternal searching in our hearts and then at the very end, on our last evening here, as the sun finally sets on us for good, our Divine Creator shows us something so ravishingly beautiful and unexpected that we can't help but forgive Him for every single harsh tool He ever chose to use.
What a magnificent Artist, what a Joker, what an Enigma.
Thank you India.

Sunset over Agra, India

WATCHING THE LAOS TRAD FOLK ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE
So, we just arrived in Vientiane, Laos and we're sitting here in this restaurant watching an incredible traditional Laos music ensemble.
We've got the Khuy (bamboo flute), the Nang-nat (marimba), the Khong-Vong (temple bells), the So (spike fiddle), three singers and my personal favourite the Khene (a reed instrument). My Laos friend here, Sillih, just told me that the dancers and musicians get about 30000 to 40000 kip per night for a 3.5 hour performance. That's about $3 per night for an eternal set of intricate cover songs from all over Asia. These players are well versed in various Asian musical styles (songs from Singapore, China, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, etc…) but amazingly the Laos people are still fairly unaffected by Western media. The only Western station I saw in the whole trip was CNN and a little bit of BBC.
I asked Sillih what the songs are about and he translated a few for me. He said "mostly about unrequited love but also historical folklore and some Buddhist songs…very pure things…the beauty of the nature" for example. I think they have to stick to fairly simple themes because the Laos govt (one party, communist) is so extremely against any sign of protest, individualism, or difference. For example, we always had a communist govt representative with us when meeting in villages or talking to Lao people in a group.
Even MCC has to be careful which websites they visit cuz a trail of anti-govt sites could be very dangerous (ex. They can't visit Amnesty International sites)

LAOS: DUST, DIESEL AND A BRAND NEW LEXUS
Here's a question: if everybody is dirt poor here (which they are!) and diesel gas is 10000 kip/litre (that's $1) then who's driving these fancy clean brand new Lexus cars?
In fact, who's driving AT ALL?
The answer given was - "the only real money gigs around here are with the foreign NGOs and the UN, otherwise, we have no idea where people are getting the money to buy and run those cars, especially since tax on cars is 100%, so a $20,000 car is actually a $40000 car in Vientiane". One of the many unanswered mysteries around here.

LAOS: GOVERNMENT CONTROL
It's hard to get the straight story around here cuz the government is very hard on people who bad talk the 'system'. For example, the musicians I'm meeting seem to be giving a fairly sugar coated version of why there's so much poverty here. My friend Sillih, a Laos musician and dancer, tells me how little the musicians are making and how hard it is to make a living as an artist but won't even begin to speculate why, or what the root causes are for this. Same thing in Cambodia. Keo Sophy, for example, says the government folks love his band and that organizations such as AMRITA have been so supportive, but then he goes on to say that great masters like Kung Nay are still dirt poor in spite of international touring careers and supporters like Peter Gabriel and Realworld. Such a mystery, this place. (fyi - AMRITA Performing Arts is an international performing arts production company with US Nonprofit status, based in Cambodia)

Master Kung Nay's house in "Red Soil Village", Cambodia

LAO FOOD
Okay, despite the fact that the blackened chili paste was so hot, it was like chewing on a live battery cable and had the spicy zing of fresh lava from the yawning maw of Mt. Vesuvius, the food in Laos was fantastic. The lemon grass chicken was downright addictive. The steamed fiddlehead chutes that the little kids spent all morning picking for us were phenomenal. But, of course, the star of the show was the glutinous sticky rice, which serves as breakfast, lunch, dinner, desert, snack, utensil and comfort food.

Lao food

THE MIXTURE OF RELIGIONS
It's funny how our expectations get totally trashed as soon as we actually experience the reality of a "foreign" cultural context. In spite of all my training in Ethnomusicology I realized that I'm still embarrassingly susceptible to generalizations and cultural stereotypes. I spent about six months reading and researching the cultures we'd be visiting and creating a framework in my mind of what we might see there. But then all of that preparation was blown away by the reality on the ground. For example, the research says 60-90% of Laos people are Therevada Buddhists, but I dare you to try and find one single Lao person who knows anything about the Buddhist rituals and how they are done. From my short experience there I would have said Laos is largely Animist. (including the widespread belief in "Phi" spirits) Even the Buddhist wats, which play the role of a neighbourhood community centre and take the place of a postal code, have animist shrines at the entrance. So, why doesn't anybody in Lao society know anything about Buddhist rituals and their meaning…for example, "Full Moon Day"?
I asked a practicing novice monk how long, approximately, are the full time monks required to meditate each day, expecting a lofty answer like "well, everything we do is a meditation so we practice all the time" or "twelve hours of non-conceptual meditation per day" since I thought meditation was the Pièce de résistance of all Buddhist activity. His answer, "as much as 30 minutes a day". What?! I meditate more than that myself! But then I realized my naïve concept of heroic spirituality is just a sad extension of my Western achievement oriented mindset that brings me so much torment in my daily life (and in our society in general, I might add). This kind of thing just kept happening throughout the trip…the Eastern view just kept blowing my mind. Not because it's any better necessarily, but because a Western upbringing does virtually nothing to prepare one for this much ambiguity and paradox.

Shopping Monks in Vientiane, Laos


Smokin' Monks…what?!



HOSPITAL VISITS
Out of the nine hospital clinics in the Vientiane area we managed to visit the most under funded one. It's in a fairly remote area and many of the villagers that it services are not able to afford to get there for help, even when they are extremely sick or wounded. Most of them can't afford the gas to get there, or the time away from their planting season or they just don't have enough cash to pay for treatment. So, many people attempt home remedies instead or use traditional methods (ex. Honey and turmeric for stomach pain, leaves, stems, branches…many villages have a formal traditional health doctor …so people know this stuff and it's integrated into daily life)


Thousands of Traditional Remedies, Laos

HUNTING AND GATHERING IN THE CITY
Laos is a hunting and gathering culture. Even in the city some people forage around for food picking out crabs from the open sewers to eat. How can one not question the basic philosophical tenets of modern human need when you see something like that?
There are two very old women of Asian descent who pick through my garbage at home in Vancouver. On garbage or recycling day these women pick out all the recyclables that have carelessly been thrown into the garbage. If you think of the cumulative positive effect this has on the environment over time (I'm sure they salvage a ton of recyclables each, per year, from being tossed in the local garbage dump) shouldn't they be paid for their services? But yet they live off of nickels from the recycling depot.
What a strange world we live in.

GENOCIDE OR RE-LOCATING "NOMADS"?
In spite of the fact that Laos has 134 different people groups that speak 134 different languages, the government of Laos wants everyone to be "Lao". That means only one language (which they call "Lao") and only one culture (i.e. - perspective on life and how to best live it). So, all languages other than "Lao" are outlawed, and all non-"Lao" activity is illegal. For example, living too far from a road is illegal because it connotes old-fashioned nomadic cultural practices, which the government sees as connected to poverty and old outdated ideals. So, with the help of some NGOs the Laos government is actively and forcefully uprooting hill tribe people from upland areas where they have lived for many generations and moving them down to the lowlands close to a road. A few problems here...first of all, upland rice is grown using slash and burn methods (which are now also outlawed) on terraced hills and require crop rotation and a number of smaller plots of land. Lowland rice is grown in a totally different way so the displaced uplanders must completely re-learn how to survive. Secondly, there is virtually no open rice paddy land available in the lowlands so the uplanders are lucky to get one small patch and even that they are not allowed to own, only borrow. Third, major clean water shortage, so big neighborhood conflicts can happen when they're moved too close to another village who are already struggling for clean water.
The government slogan is that this re-location program will "eradicate poverty", but on the ground it looks an awful lot like genocide of non-"Lao" hill tribe groups who don't fit the modern "Lao" vision.

Recently re-located kids in small town Laos


JAPANESE AND CHINESE COLONIALISM
All the evidence seems to show that there is very little money in Laos and that people are very poor. However, for some reason Japan continues to outsource a fair amount of business here. For example, they've bought large tracts of land and have introduced Eucalyptus tree plantations on much of it. These trees are, of course, terribly bad for the water table as they can suck a swamp dry in no time flat. For example, it is common knowledge that the country of Israel owes much of it's nutrient rich and liveable land to the fact that the hardworking Kibbutzniks planted eucalyptus trees to turn swampland into farmland and residential areas. These trees are totally culturally inappropriate for the needs of the Lao people as they need more water, not less. We talked to some villagers who had been digging wells ten metres deep through dry cracked rocky earth and never hit water. They eventually had to give up because they hit too many rocks.

The Lao govt doesn't seem to be sensitive to the ecological or environmental needs of their country either as they are actively putting a plan into motion to turn 70% of the whole country into plantation land. One doesn't need a Phd in forestry to see that this amount of deforestation would be devastating to the country. The newest plan is the strangest one...they have a deal in place with the Japanese government to buy huge amounts of rubber trees and try to build that into a viable Laos export. However, we visited various agricultural colleges in Laos and apparently the research has not even begun as to whether rubber trees will even grow in the Laos climate not to mention how to harvest them. Seems like a hasty and ill-thought out plan.

Here's another half-baked plan...
The Asian games will be held in Laos in 2010. So, the Chinese government somehow convinced the Laos government to build a huge arena right where the most heavily protected forest was. So, they chopped down the entire protected forest, built a humongous green wall (why are these walls always "green"?) so people couldn't see the devastation they were wreaking on this protected national park area, and in exchange for the Chinese building this single use arena (since it'll be a decaying ghost town after 2010) Laos is giving China 1000 hectares of prime paddy land on the edge of Vientiane to build a gigantic "China town" there. This will require relocating the garbage dump and village out of town and, of course, re-locating all of the people that now live and work on that 1000 hectares of paddy land. As for ownership of that land...who knows.

Apparently, Japan and China are competing hard for Lao resources and land because they are running out in their own countries. Sad to watch Laos lose these negotiations over and over again.

EVERYDAY PROBLEMS THAT WE NEVER SEE
It's eye opening (and heartbreaking) to see the difficulties that people live with everyday here in Laos.
Water problems:
- both rivers are extremely dirty but they use them anyway. Corpses go in there, feces, washing and all different waste problems
- due to the lack of clean water, there are problems like malaria, dysentery and even heart problems caused by unclean water
- many villages have an 8 kilometre walk one way to the nearest useable water source. Just imagine how that would eat into your workday.
Physical ailments:
- nerve problems and Rheumatism are common due to extremely hard continuous physical labour
- respiratory problems are also very common due to the incredibly polluted work conditions and lack of treatment
- apparently 40% of Lao kids are under nourished
- in the villages we were told that 90% of the kids had various parasites that remained untreated
Environmental concerns:
- it's common to use the forest as a bathroom, so MCC has introduced more hygenic latrines with roofs in order to keep from getting waste in the water table
...however it has been tricky to convince villagers to use the latrines cuz they're busy working out in the fields and they don't have time to find a latrine during the workday.
- the Namsang river is running out of fish
Electricity:
- the villages have no electricity..but some have tiny solar panels that they rent from a German company that power tiny blue light bulbs for a few hours.
In the biggest towns like Vientiane there are regular (and random) power outages each day and each night.
No medical insurance:
- the 20 cent fee comes out of their pocket and many people don't have that money to spend on treatment.
- even for birthing, many people choose the do it yourself method. for example, they often use a burning piece of bamboo to cut the umbilical cord. A midwife told us that some women die from the procedure.
Medicine costs:
- the pharmacies have to buy their own drugs from private companies in Vientiane. If the hospital has no funds left then no more drugs and medication. The pharmacies I saw in the hospitals were basically a little closet sized room with a small dresser sized glass case half filled with various basic medications. Approximately four or five times the size of the medicine cabinet in an average Canadian bathroom, and this is to service the entire village of many thousands of people.
Government:
- no voting, no elections, no freedom of speech or freedom of religion.
- if you speak against the government you could be "disappeared".
- for example, we were warned quite specifically not to ask the Lao people about the issue of relocation, cuz they wouldn't be able to speak about it at all without endangering themselves.
- propaganda - Heidi (an MCC worker) hears loudspeakers in her village every morning with government propaganda saying (or singing) things like, "you need The Party to take care of you"…and heartwarming songs about love between Vietnam and Laos.
- also the Lao government is good buddies with the Burmese government so maybe that's one reason why they fear any hint of an uprising. Hence, the psychological propaganda techniques to quell the people.

HOLY COW
Even though there are no milk products in Laos, the cow plays a very significant role. Owning a cow is a status symbol of some wealth. One can use a cow to borrow from the bank or in the case of a medical emergency the price of a cow (about $200) can be used to get to the Vientiane hospital and get treatment. So cows are a kind of insurance.
Cows are free to range anywhere they like in the non-rice season (December to June). They don't mark the cows with any kind of ownership symbol. When asked how they recognize their own cows when they need them they all answered in the same matter of fact way, "we recognize them by their face".

Free Range Cows in Ban Veng Ma village, Laos


SLEEPING IN THE VILLAGE FOUR HOURS FROM NOWHERE
Village, morning...4am
Roosters everywhere, on the floor in a stilt house. The family is up around the fire about to start their workday. No electricity here, smell of wood smoke, women in sarongs with babies tiptoe by the fire. Dogs and ducks mutter and protest. Birds start to chirp along with a hundred little chickens. Supper (and lunch) was chicken soup, duck meat, lettuce (can't eat that unfortunately, cuz washed in potentially dirty water) and glutinous rice. The mosquito nets don't keep out the snoring of some of our groups' members but in spite of that and the cold hard floor that is our bed, I slept just fine.
Watched a drama out under the light of the moon last night put on by the health clinic. Was quite a highlight witnessing 300 villagers laughing their heads off in the shadowy darkness as the main character pretended he was an old pregnant woman. There's a relaxed wildness here, especially at night. Might be the animistic beliefs that have permeated the air here for thousands of years. This feeling reminds me of being seven years old as the sun goes down in the evening and that cool wildness starts to free my chains and the anonymity of darkness creeps in and I can be loose again. Such an expansive feeling of spaciousness.

Our stilt house in Ban Veng Ma, Laos

THE SEARCH FOR WATER
The villagers here outside of Vientiane showed us an old traditional way of finding water. They lay a bowl on the ground overnight and if condensation develops under the bowl it's a good place to dig for a well. They also use sticks of fire which they leave overnight and if the fire has gone out by the morning they start digging.

MEN'S FOOD
One of the delicacies here in Laos is raw dog meat and beer. One is considered to be particularly fortunate if it's accompanied by duck blood salad. Apparently, this is "Men's food."

LAOS DREAMS
We had a village meeting under the "Buddha tree" and asked some of the parents what their dreams are for their children. They said "to have their children go to university (maybe abroad)." This is a huge dream since they literally have no money at all.
We asked, "aren't you afraid they won't come back if they work overseas?"
They said "they'll come back when they're tired," and then they laughed and laughed.

Village meeting under the "Buddha Tree"

DAILY LAOS VILLAGE SCHEDULE
WOMEN
3am - get up, steam rice…carry water
feed chickens and pigs
collect food in forest
create lunch in a wok
take a rest
head to the rice paddy to work all day

MEN
"If healthy", up at 4am
If sick, up at 5 or 6am
Weave baskets
Breakfast
Then paddy field all day
Or fishing
Sometimes stay overnight in the paddy
It's a 40min - 2 hour walk to the paddy

Apparently some villages have musicians too, though we didn't see any. We did, however, hear a number of Thai pop songs blasting on the radio.
I realize here that intellectualism and practicing the arts (music, poetry, crafts, visual art) is a luxury that I've taken for granted. There is almost no energy or time for this sort of thing here in the Lao villages because they're just too busy surviving.

WAR STORIES
Laos is the most heavily bombed place on earth. The United States carpet-bombed Laos at a rate of one bomb every eight minutes continuously for nine years! And Laos was never even involved in the war (i.e. US - Vietnam war) A lot of people that we met lived in caves during those war times and they moved around because of so many "bombies" in the ground (i.e. unexploded ordinance). Even the ancient plain of jars was bombed mercilessly for almost a decade.

LAOS: AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE
Teachers at the Lao Agricultural college make about $30-50 per month, which is not enough to live on. (One of the foreign workers added, sarcastically, "just like everyone else…it's the Communist way")
2% of grads get jobs after graduating.
Nobody has a big paying job (Once again, this is the Communist approach)
1986 - Laos opened up to capitalism, so all the NGOs flooded in.
3 year diploma programs
250 students
30 teachers
40% theory, 60% practical (in the plots of land)
Part of tuition is subsidized by the govt. The other part ($37/year) is not
For govt-chosen students there's a $15 registration fee and they get $6/monthly allowance
One problem is that the water table has dropped and there are only 5 wells at the school, which is not nearly enough since they also have a veterinarian clinic and need irrigation water. Therefore, they can't grow larger animals (ex. water buffalo). As a side note, they told us that they "only use traditional medicine (herbs and bitter roots) for the animals" and that there are 107 kinds of medicinal trees in Laos.

ECONOMIC PROBLEM
The Lao tend to export raw products (ex. Logging, perfume trees) and then the other importing country makes all the money by producing the actual final product through refining techniques. It seems that the economy here would benefit from some "value added" export techniques rather than offloading raw materials to be refined elsewhere.

ETERNAL RECESS
It seemed like every time we drove by a school in Laos there were little kids scrambling all over the place in the yard so our running joke was that all the schools here must be Montessori, with endless recess sessions. (ha ha) Apparently the main topics are Math, the 'Lao' language (which is, of course, a government control tactic since this helps quash the other 134 tribal languages in Laos), geography (as a side note, most 'beggars' I met could name the capital of Canada…bizarre), history and the environment, which the teacher told us was actually the science of "diseases" and "social studies".

Hand washing clinic at Lao school

TAT LUANG STUPA
We visited the great gold Stupa of Tat Luang in Vientianne on our last day in Laos. Apparently the breastbone of the Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha) is housed inside this Stupa amongst the other relics. I bought two little tiny caged birds here and released them as a symbolic ritual of liberation. Hopefully they're clever enough not to get caught again. Same goes for me in all my various attachments and hooks. It's amazing how many times we have to imprison ourselves in the bondage of habitual patterns and thoughts before we finally turn to freedom. How to finally surrender the blind ego monster to the empty fire of Self. The human heart is such a mysterious thing. I'm sure I'll never understand it.

Releasing the Birds at The Great Gold Stupa, Laos

Arch de' triomphe: The Runway to the Sky
Funny story, the main tourist attraction in Vientiane is the arch in the middle of town which looks like the Parisian "arch de' triomphe". It's made of cement and they call it the "runway to the sky". Apparently, the U.S. donated thousands of tons of cement for Laos to build a proper runway (probably so US war planes could land after bombing the
Plain of Jars all night) but the Laos government said "hmmm, thanks, actually we have a perfectly good dirt runway, we're going to build this arch instead". So they did. It's now a mall full of souvenirs complete with a kitschy fountain in front that's lit up by flashing disco lights, donated by the Chinese, and plays corny tourist music. But the artwork on the ceiling is fantastically intricate and seamlessly blends Hindu and Buddhist symbology.

Arch de' triomphe, Vientiane


RED SOIL VILLAGE: The Role of Traditional music in Cambodia
In the middle of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, there's a place called "Red Soil Village". It's covered in trash because many of the residents there pick trash for a living. They are, in a way, the ecologists of the society, sorting through all the discarded things that others mistook for garbage. Red Soil Village is about 10 city blocks around and these people have lived here for many generations. This area is now slated for "relocation". That means that all the residents will be "moved" about 20 miles outside of town (where there is no "garbage") and this area will be re-vivified so that it can make money for the city. (This sort of thing is happening all over the world actually…for example, in the downtown eastside of Vancouver to make way for the "2010 Olympics" or in the Exchange district in Winnipeg to make way for wealthy suburbanites to move back into the downtown core) Red Soil Village also happens to be an artist community. Among the people living here are some of the finest Cambodian musicians. In fact, one of the last living masters of the Chapei Dong Veng (an ancient Cambodian guitar shaped instrument) lives here. He is an 82 year old blind man named Master Kung Nay, and is sometimes referred to as the "Ray Charles of Cambodia" and when he goes, he'll take the Chapei tradition with him. Peter Gabriel is one of his fans and he still tours internationally but when I asked his neighbours why he lives here in the apparent squalor of Red Soil Village I got two answers…1) He chooses to live here, maybe as a protest…and 2) He has no money, so he has to live here.
He has one young protégé named Ouch Savy who will hopefully carry on the tradition but this is truly an instrument in danger of extinction. Why? Because between 1974 and 1978 the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia under the guidance of Pol Pot and killed 90% of all the musicians in the country. They also killed anybody that proved to be educated. Writers, poets, artists...all wiped out. Even people who wore glasses were targeted. So, as we walked the streets of modern day Phnom Penh we didn't see a lot of old faces. Chilling…truly chilling.
We also managed by pure luck to find the house of Chieng Rey, an instrument maker, who also lives in Red Soil Village. We asked the oldest person we could find where he lives and she pointed to her own house and it turns out she's his grandmother. She took us in and had her great grandson show us all his instruments and he gave us lessons on the Tro (two stringed spike Fiddle), the Kaloy (Cambodian flute), the Chapei (Cambodian guitar), the Ruman Neer (small percussive instrument). He showed us how to play various Cambodian rhythms (like the Ramkbach, Ramvong and Saravong) on the Sko Dai (like a Lebanese Tabla) and the Kum (a zither).

With Chieng Rey's Grandmother, Red Soil Village

We brought our translator, Sambath, who has a graduate degree in music from the Cambodian Royal Conservatory and he helped us learn how to play simple (and not so simple!) tunes on the instruments.
Red Soil Village is slated for full eviction along with nineteen other sites around Phnom Penh. They can do this because there is no proper land ownership in Cambodia. Even though the residents have lived here for generations, the land is "borrowed" from the government. The typical process used here for eviction is putting up a green fence (why is it always a "green fence"…who makes these "green fences"?!) and then they mow down the village. Check out the website of Likado, a French human rights organization for more info on this situation.

A resident of "Red Soil Village", Phnom Penh



CAMBODIAN FOLK OPERA GOES OFF BROADWAY
Six months before this trip I started researching the musical traditions of Cambodia in earnest and I came across a Cambodian folk opera composed by Keo Sophy and Dr. Him Sophy. The opera is called "Where Elephants Weep" and it tells the contemporary story of the many Cambodians returning to their country following thirty years of civil strife. I discovered that Keo Sophy had just returned from performing the opera in New York and so, with the tireless help of Larry and Sherry Groff (of MCC), we tracked him down and set up a meeting with him in his home near Red Soil Village in Phnom Penh.
In spite of my training in Ethnological research I came in with some expectations of what he'd tell me and he blew most of those away. For example, I asked about how his work as an artist and performer was viewed by the Hun Sen government, knowing that this present government appears to be completely uninterested and unsupportive of all artistic endeavours. He said, "oh, the government loves my band". However, then he went on to tell me that it's only private non-governmental organizations (like AMRITA and Cambodian Living Arts) that financially support the arts in Cambodia. What makes it harder to be a musician in Cambodia is the low wages. Keo Sophy is a music professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and he makes approximately $50 per month. So, in order to survive he plays synthesizer (something he was very shy to admit) in a cover band almost every night of the week. The band makes about $15 for playing three sets a night which is, of course, split between all the band members. Why do governments so commonly miss the point that the health of the cultural industries of a nation is a barometer of the health of that nation. Why always such short term thinking.

MR. TOAD'S WILD RIDE
Driving around here is nuts. There seem to be no rules, no road signs, no pattern to the mayhem, no speed limits and no safety of any kind. Whether it's a taxi, a tuk tuk, a motorbike or on the back of an elephant the roads here are truly death defying experiences. There's only one signal and that is, honking. Honking your horn (which is, by the way, incredibly piercing and ferociously loud) can mean "hey, I'm turning left", "let me go first", "hi Uncle Siddharamayya", "hey, I'm turning right", "stop!", "Go!", "there's a goat in the road", "hey, are you turning right or left?" or basically anything else you like. So, if you happen to be near a road, which is all the time if you're in a major city like Delhi or Phnom Penh, you are undoubtedly listening to a veritable cacophonous horn section of blaring car horns. However, on the flipside, car alarms don't exist here, so that annoying car siren at 4am that I get every week or so when a cat walks by somebody's Hummer just off Commercial Drive is noticeably absent.

TUOL SLENG GENOCIDE MUSEUM
On the second day in Cambodia we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. This was Pol Pot's secret prison, codenamed "S-21" during the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge between the years 1975-79. Between 1-2 million Cambodians (and many thousands of foreigners) were starved to death, tortured, or killed, during his brutal reign of terror. Former prison staff say as many as 30,000 prisoners were held at S-21 before the Khmer Rouge leadership was forced to flee, in 1979.
This abandoned old school still echoes such brutality, but as I stood in one of the tiny cells and imagined the torture and pain, I heard birds chirping just beyond the walls and the gentle breeze in the palms and through the grass. The prisoners, in spite of their inhumane treatment and fear for their lives, would have heard these things too. It made me realize that even in a place like this, a place that was turned into a kind of hell on earth, one just can't completely cut off all beauty and Soul. It's just not possible. Even in these horrible little brick and mortar cells Creation and the Psyche is doing its work to balance all that wickedness by providing endless resources for redemption and transformation. In the words of Leonard Cohen, "There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."

CURRENCY, CONVERSION OF VALUES AND POWER DIFFERENTIALS
Dealing with five different currencies in seven weeks really reveals the power differential in this little world of ours. Begs the question, why should I be able to switch one of my little Canadian dollars for 8,775 Lao kip? For the price of one piece of Canadian ngiri sushi I can hire a Laos musician to play a one-hour concert.
The money thing is so revealing of power differentials between cultures. In Thailand, 100 Thai baht is about $3 Canadian. An air-conditioned one-hour bus ride from the airport into the heart of downtown Bangkok is 150 baht. At less than $5 Canadian, that's a steal from a Canadian perspective, but in Thailand that's a fortune. Puts into question what various services and goods are "worth".
Strange to think that a taxi ride in Bangkok is worth $50 to me, a Vancouverite, but I pay $10 for it in Bangkok and actually in the driver's mind it's only worth $3, cuz that's what locals might pay.
I mean, is a Vancouver taxi ride actually worth $50…and is the same ride in Bangkok worth only $3?
Actually, if you arrive in Bangkok after a 20-hour flight and you haven't slept in 36 hours, that $10 taxi ride is probably worth at least $100. Whereas, in Vancouver, since the new Sky train now goes to the airport a taxi ride is worth much less.
We live in a mysterious and subjective world full of ambiguity.
The practice of bargaining and negotiating a price really puts this into concrete terms.
Maybe it's very "Western" of me to get so hung up on the money aspect of everything but the constant negotiating made me think about the subjective value of things.
How do we decide the value of things in our life?

PASSPORT STAMPS AND IMMUNITIES
Not only did I get to add five new stamps in my passport, but I also managed to add about half a dozen new international immunities to my biological roster.
I think I got almost every sickness available out there...good times, indeed...and I wasn't exactly licking train station floors either...I was practically bathing in Purell hand cleaner hourly. Got a real taste of life in the "developing world".





STILT HOUSES AND MOSQUITO NETS: VIENTIANE, LAOS
After a three hour 'drive from hell' on an old Australian built clay mining "road" that makes Disney's Matter horn look like child's play we stayed in a village last night called Ban Veng Ma. There's no electricity up there so they use tiny solar panels that they rent from a German company for $3/month to power little blue light bulbs and radios that blast the latest Thai hits and apparently some Lao government propaganda as well in the form of heart warming love songs between Laos and Vietnam.
One of the touchy issues here revolves around the Lao "re-location" program, which is meant to strengthen and unify the country and "eradicate poverty". When they find a group or village living too far from a 'main road' (I use the term road very loosely here) they forcibly uproot the village and make them move everything to a more suitable location. Sometimes many kilometers away.
We visited a village like this and it was truly heartbreaking to see them struggling to rebuild their stilt homes (three per day!) after such an devastating uprooting.
There are 134 ethnic groups in Laos and almost as many languages spoken here but the "official" language is Lao and it's strongly enforced that people conform to the "Lao" way including speaking only this language.
Some kids try out a word or two of English on us as we pass by but most just stare and then smile when we've passed by. We must look so pale and strange to these village kids as we fry like lobsters under what they call "unseasonably cold" 30c Lao sun.
One of the issues here is clean water. They can't dig wells deep enough because of rocks eight metres down and they can't use gravity fed pumps because it would divert water from their ethnic minority neighbours up the hill who rely on a small trickling stream. Right now they walk forty minutes one way to the nearest water source so after getting up at three am to avoid the heat of the afternoon it takes up half the day just fetching clean water for cooking, drinking, bathing and latrines.
A mobile health team put on a theatre play last night under only the light of the almost full moon (with one set of truck headlights as a spotlight) as the whole village crowded around the stage to learn about vaccinations and health issues through slapstick comedy. Even with the comedic delay of translation the Monty Pythonesque approach had the kids rolling on the floor laughing.
According to the World Health Organization around 90 per cent of these kids are walking around with parasites in their stomachs. Partly from lack of clean water and the weakening forces of malnutrition in some since they live almost entirely on glutinous sticky rice and whatever they can forage from the surrounding forests. Speaking of which, they must have combed the entire landscape in preparation for our visit cuz the food they served us was incredible. Fish soups, marinated roots, steamed shoots and greens, cooked duck, and of course, a couple pounds of rice each which we were to dip in a blackened chili paste that so blazing hot it'll wipe your mind clean. They said it was prepared "very mild for us Falang (foreigners)", but it had the effect of drinking lava straight from Vesuvius. In spite of the searing pain it was strangely addictive and of course the looks on our faces made them (and us) laugh.
So, we said our goodbyes and headed out onto the roller coaster road and back into town and when we finally made it to the Japanese built paved road and traffic got heavier I started to wonder ho all these folks managed to afford owning and running their cars with 90 cents per litre for diesel and 100 per cent import tax on the cars.
Two nights ago a dancer named Sillih told me that musicians get about 40000 kip (about $4 cdn) for a3.5 hour set and that was considered really good pay
(and with their currency so devolved and wages so low something didn't seem to add up.)
With Laos being "the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare" (yup, you guessed it, the US bombed Laos at a rate of one bomb per eight minutes for nine years) you'd think they'd get a break on gas process, but somehow there's still cars on the road.