No Trace

We’ve all gone back to visit a place years later and said, “Whoa! I can’t believe how much they’ve built this up since the last time I was here … and nobody asked my permission.” Much rarer are the visits when we’ve said, “Whoa! Where did everything go?”

Some friends and I had that kind of experience last weekend, returning to the site of the refugee camp where Jip and I used to work back in the ’80s. I wasn’t expecting to find much—somebody had told me that the formerly huge Cambodian city (at that time it was the second-largest concentration of Khmer on the planet, after Phnom Penh) had become mostly rice fields. But even being prepared to find nothing familiar, we were shocked at the emptiness.

Back then the land held nearly a quarter million people. Today there’s a just a small settlement under the patronage of the king’s youngest daughter—sort of a planned community, with roads, electricity, and water all subsidized. Buffaloes there probably outnumber villagers.

About 95% of the land that I remember as being packed shoulder to shoulder with refugees is now filled with rice, taro, or papaya. No trace of foundations for hospitals, or pieces of leftover blue plastic, or signs that a rice distribution took place, or anything that would let a first-time visitor know how much life had once been lived there.

Reverse Birthday

Jip says she doesn’t care about her birthday and doesn’t like anybody eating cake on her behalf. Instead of receiving presents, she wanted to give a gift this year. She chose a donation to the Home for Disabled Children.

Retreat Month

Courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer I stayed at two fancy resort hotels in the past four weeks. We got lots of work done, but we also had time to play and explore the grounds.

At the first spot, the architecture and the food were Thai, but scratch the surface a little bit and it might have been located anyplace in the world where Westerners enjoy beaches. English was the lingua franca. The behavior code was American. A high-intensity water slide towered above the pool.

The second resort was also by the Gulf of Thailand, but nobody seemed to be going into it. In fact it was hard for me to figure out what the guests were into, because they were mostly speaking Russian, German, or Korean. They hung out, nearly nude, in the lobby.

At the buffet, besides rice and curries, we found goulash and sauerkraut. In the rooms, the cable channels included Deutscher Bundestag and Al Jazeera, as well as broadcasts from Moscow and Malaysia. Signs were sometimes in Russian, sometimes in Thai, but rarely both.

Down the beach was another curiosity: a huge wooden temple known as the Sanctuary of Truth, which I gather was built around 30 years ago by an eccentric Thai billionaire to celebrate the religions of the world. Seems like he chose the right neighborhood for it.

(Not to Mention That It’s a Pretty Good Meditation Technique)

Last night I ran the annual midnight run. The UN Day 10K is coming up in a couple weeks. I know both courses from having raced them a year ago. They’re motivating me keep up my routine and join the half marathon at Angkor Wat in early December. As if I needed more reasons to return to the Cambodian ruins, my childhood buddy Vinnie plans to fly in from Eugene for the event. This schedule could be habit forming.

Groundhog Day

I read recently that American soldiers use the phrase “Groundhog Day” to describe their time in Iraq, in reference to the Bill Murray movie about cyclical and disagreeable circumstances.

Chicago Cubs fans (Bill Murray included) also have a legitimate claim to the phrase. Yesterday marks the 99^th season in a row to end without a baseball crown.

Nobody is shocked, we’ve come to expect it. A friend of mine wrote to say that “it’s all part of the master plan.” Yet I still found myself wanting to tune in to the playoff games, just in case.

In this time zone the games take place at the beginning of the day, while I’m at work. My plan, to stay reasonably productive, was to check a website periodically for score updates. But I soon succumbed to the live radio broadcast over the Internet. My rationalization was that I was less distracted by a continuous feed than by the wondering.

Alas, I needn’t have wondered. Maybe next year? An even 100 years?

There’s never a wish better than this.