Going Abroad

Shortly after walking across the border into Cambodia, I was approached by a man on a motorcycle who wondered if I wanted to visit the chicken farm. I must have given him a look that said, “Why on Earth?” because he elaborated: “You know, lay-dee!” First time I’d heard that term for that kind of place. I decided to pass up the offer.

Soon I found myself in a shared taxi, heading for the town where I planned to spend the night, about 50 kilometers inside the country. Nobody in this taxi was especially comfortable. There were eight of us inside, roughly 25 more in the back of the pickup, and one guy sitting on the hood. When road got bumpy, our “navigator” kept from being bounced off and into a ditch by holding on tighter to the windshield wiper.
Although it was my first time inside the country, Cambodia triggered lots of memories from our time in the refugee camp, which was sited minutes from the border. Certain smells transported me instantly: smoke from fires set by villagers in their fields, stagnant water, curry pastes in the markets. I also began to remember parts of the language that had long been buried. After a day or so I even started to figure out what people were talking about.

And I picked up right where I left off with a pair of American friends who had also worked in the camp. These two had followed the refugees back home when the camps closed in the early ‘90s. We spent our evenings having those endless conversations people have when they’ve hardly seen each other for twenty years. We didn’t manage to solve all of the world’s problems, but we did decide that most of the world’s politicians could have learned something from listening in on what we discussed.

(Billboard outside Mongkol Borei: The words on the sign say, "We no longer need weapons.")