The Ghosts of the Past
The reason Odysseus knew so much about Helios’s cattle and Charybdis and Scylla was because he consulted with Tiresias. Tiresias was a blind prophet who was consulted by everyone. At one point he dressed in drag for 7 years. Basically, he was a unique character. He gave Odysseus a lot of advice on how to get home. He also gave him fashion and skin care tips because the sea salt air was murder on the complexion.

Tiresias also happened to be dead and lived in Hades. So after sailing to the River Acheron which bordered the underworld, and making all manner of sacrifices, Odysseus was allowed to contact the dead.

Not only did he meet Tiresias, he also ran into his late mother, some old friends from school, and numerous other people he knew who had died during the Trojan War. He was able to reach closure on his past and so it was a fruitful detour. Although, while he was busy with his reunions, his men were a little freaked out, shivering in the bone-chilling creepiness of the underworld.

Then and Now
If there’s a town that represents my past (but not the underworld!), it’s Eugene. I’ve already reached closure on many levels. Many of my friends have moved north to Portland, just up the highway. I still keep in touch with a handful of very special people, but the rest I’ve long fallen out of touch with.

Eugene is where I lived for a decade, performed modern dance, played guitar like every other guy, and held court at one of the oldest natural foods stores in the US. I biked everywhere, year-round, didn’t wear a watch, didn’t have a cell phone, always had fruit and bread in my bag (usually challah), a nalgene bottle of water, and a notebook.

I had a Mohawk ponytail that I tied back, wore sunglasses, a pair of shorts, and a tank top. My wallet was a tacky retro brown velcro thing that never had more than $20 in it. And that was it. It was a simpler life.

I ate only organic food, usually bought in bulk, assiduously avoided sugar, rarely drank alcohol or coffee, consumed gallons of green and herb teas, sometimes baked my own bread, grew my own fruit, vegetables, and herbs.

Now I wear a tie to work, have several watches, have a cell phone, a mobile phone and a keitai (that’s 3 handsets for 3 countries), buy sports drinks from vending machines, use hair wax. I usually carry around a digital camera, an ipod, and probably an implanted tracking device that I don’t know about.

My wallet now bulges with point cards, a commuter pass, lots of cash like everyone else in Japan, an immigration card that I must carry at all times, all encased in a nice leather wallet that I was shamed into buying many years ago. Life is a little less simpler now.

Sometimes, I wonder how I lived in Eugene for so long. Passing through there this time around, it felt like an unfamiliar place. Many of my favorite restaurants are gone. And I’m out of touch with most of the people that I knew. By my last year in Eugene, I knew just about everyone. Biking around town, I’d be greeted by soccer moms, street musicians, skater punks, police officers, and homeless artists. Now I feel like any other tourist.

The city has become a little more gentrified, a little more suburban. In the six years I’ve been away, there have been all sorts of new construction. My favorite is the gleaming public library. When I lived there, Time magazine called Eugene the anarchist capital of the US, because of the high density of activists, protesters and hippies, some of whom professed to be anarcho-syndicalists. I have a feeling this title has passed onto another city.

What made Eugene unique for me was the thriving dance scene. In terms of quality of dancers, the number of dance companies, the varieties of dance, and the frequency of performances, as well as the opportunities to join in, it surpassed Seattle and was comparable to San Francisco, in my opinion.

Eugene has a number of, who I consider, high priestesses of dance.  And these are some of the people who I’m most in touch with.  They are fabulously creative and charismatic.  I met two of them while in Eugene.

There’s the incomparable, innovative Margo. Her choreography resonated deeply with audiences, her movements rooted in emotional authenticity. And she’s always been able to attract a devoted fan base.

And I also met with the magnetic Nanci, whose choreography was imbued with a sense of soaring and expansive space often with a political message.

Tiresias
If there’s a Tiresias on this trip, that would have to be Mike. He’s not blind, nor particularly prophetic. Nor have I ever seen him in a skirt. He does, however, offer a kind of support that could be mistaken for advice. But it’s nothing so pretentious. He’s always been a great friend. And people seek him out for something that could be called guidance, but it’s nothing so presumptuous. He’s just a sincerely, good guy who people trust. The kind of friend you would go to Hades for, just to have a chat and a few laughs.

The Oregon road trip is over and I’m soooo behind on writing about it. There was Crater Lake, meeting friends in Eugene, partying in Portland, driving down the Oregon coast, and today, hiking around the redwood forests. Tomorrow we head back to my parents’ place. I’ll start filling in the blanks and dating them backwards.

Scylla and Charybdis
At one point during Odysseus’s journey back they had to pass a narrow strait. On each side were two creatures, Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla was a six-headed monster that plucked sailors from their ships. Charybdis was just a big belching mouth that sucked in and gurgled up water creating a big whirlpool that sunk ships. You could try to sail through the middle but only the Argonauts (a group of demi-gods, heroes, and expert navigators) had achieved that feat.

Odysseus’s men were a collection of conscripted goatherds, winemakers, and aimless teenagers, so Odysseus didn’t have any faith in their boating skills. So he opted to sail nearer Scylla and sacrifice 6 men rather than risk sinking the whole ship near Charybdis. When the ship neared Scylla, Odysseus mumbled something about some paperwork he had to do in his quarters and went beneath deck, leaving his men to face the creature.

Crater Lake
We avoided any Scyllas on this road trip. Thank goodness for that because there are only two of us to sacrifice. We would have had to pick up a few hitchhikers to make the numbers work.

We did take our chances with a big body of whirling water however. And that would be Crater Lake, probably the world’s purest water and deepest lake. Located in southern Oregon, the lake is in a caldera caused by a massive volcanic eruption. It was one of the biggest explosions in earth’s history. The result is a lake that is formed only from snowmelt and rain. It’s also the bluest water I have ever seen.

For years, I told T that I would take her there and we would go on the boat tour inside the lake to an island that is another volcano within the volcano. But because of possible bad weather the boats weren’t operating that day. Darn! We hiked down from the rim to the water anyway just to look at how clear and blue the water was.

It’s a massive lake. You can’t capture how big the lake is from driving around the rim because you’re so far up from the shore. The rocks that jut out from the lake seem small, but once on the water on the boat, you realize that they are proper islands with ancient trees. The tickets for the boat tours are limited and only the first boat of the day allows you to stop off at Wizard Island (the volcano within a volcano). I highly recommend hiking around on the island, and if you dare, swim in the icy water.

The Wind Bag
Aeolus is the wind god, or he controlled the winds anyway. In exchange for stories from Odysseus, Aeolus gave a bag of winds that would help Odysseus find his way back home. Odysseus told mostly stories from the Trojan War, with other tales of fishing trips and crazy relatives in between to pad the mostly uneventful decade of half-heartedly laying siege to Troy. Aeolus wasn’t really into the stories, but he liked to listen to people talk while he cracked open a beer.

The bag of winds was really big, made of blue silk and lined with the feathers of doves and peacocks. Odysseus’s men thought it was treasure that he didn’t want to share, so they opened the bag to see what was inside. The winds were released and the ships got blown back to where they started.

One place I find myself blown back to often is Ashland.

Shakespeareville
Ashland and I go back a long way. Back when I was in high school I first visited my buddy Kevin who had just moved here. For a Southern California boy, my image of Oregon was of log cabins, rednecks, bears and forests. They all certainly exist here, but I also found a town full of artists, musicians, dancers, hippies, America’s largest Shakespeare festival, fresh air, rivers, and a sky full of stars I’d never seen through the haze of Los Angeles.

It was a revelatory vacation. I got to see an alternative to the materialistic, status-loving, car culture of Hollywood. And I questioned everything about the superficial life that I felt I’d been living. Once I returned to LA, I went through more than a decade of navel-gazing, studying religions and philosophies, to try to break through the veil of the illusory, physical world. I read a lot. And pondered over Sartre, Nietzsche, Chuang Tzu, Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, bell hooks and many others.

That was a heavy time. Since them I’ve discovered the meaning of life and I’d like to share it with you. Just send $49.99 to: Universal Secrets, P.O. Box 13, Lagos, Nigeria.

Ramana
If you really want answers to the big questions you want to consult with my long-time friend, Ramana.

We met with her and her husband, Stacy, at a Japanese restaurant called Kobe. Surprisingly the sushi was outstanding, but very California. The delicious rolls had stereotypical names like, Red Dragon and Kamikaze, with sushi ingredients never seen in Japan like avocado and sun-dried tomatoes. When we asked for more shoyu, the waitress had a perplexed look on her face until we said, soy sauce.

Ramana is a dedicated Soto Zen practitioner. She’s the seer in my life story. She’s a combination of spacey mystic and grounded explorer. At various times in her life, she went to a prestigious art school to study film, wandered in the desert as an apprentice shaman, collected lovers in Europe like Starbuck’s city mugs, lived in Buddhist monasteries, wrote erotica.

During one of the many times I’ve crashed at her place, she kept parakeets and lived in a charming house with a sloping floor. Another time she lived in an even cuter house behind the bakery where she worked. Now as a mother and wife, she still has a priestly vibe to her, and her house is like a redwood cathedral.

In short, she’s led a fascinating life. And she’s filled my bag of winds many times over.

Bloomsbury Café
Cafes are the best places to find meaning. One café I get blown back to often, and so I guess is my favorite Ashland café, is Bloomsbury Café. It’s upstairs from the Bloomsbury bookstore. They have a large shady outdoor seating area, a cozy interior with lots of stuffed chairs. Here, I suggest reading children’s books with dark themes, after meeting a friend you haven’t seen since you were a teenager.

Lithia Park
Nature is also a good place to seek answers. One of my favorite parks in the world is Lithia Park. It’s enormous, stretching for miles it seems, along Lithia Creek, which has natural lithium. Lithium water tastes like rotten eggs and the element is used to treat schizophrenia. So it’s an excellent place to stop hearing the voices in your head. The park has a pond with a pair of swans (though I didn’t see them this time around), a sycamore tree grove, a crumbling white fountain, an amphitheatre, tennis courts, roses, deer, and at one time had monkeys.

Yup, I love Ashland.

The Cattle of Helios
My Odysseus references are all out of order. This one happened sometime during the middle of the voyage, but literary allusions are not bound by time. So there.

Odysseus’s fleet landed in Thrinacia, an island where a herd of beautiful cattle were raised. They were tended by Helios, the sun god. But he was busy doing sun god things so he put his daughters in charge. This bit of the story really should be called the Cattle of Phaethusa and Lampetia. They did all the hard work.

Though they were hungry, Odysseus warned his men not to eat the cattle because they were grown for the gods. But nothing can stand between a sailor and a juicy hamburger, so the men slaughtered a few cows and had themselves a feast.

In retrospect, the men should have portrayed themselves as freedom fighters, fighting for equal rights, opening up fair access to all resources, especially the choice magical beef. Instead, history knows them as a bunch of greedy, impatient louts.

The daughters told Helios, but since he was busy doing sun god things, he told Zeus, knowing that Zeus was a hothead. Sure enough, Zeus destroyed Odysseus’s last ship, and they all ended up adrift at sea on loose planks and masts.

The Sacred Cow Slam at Denny’s
On the drive up to Oregon today we stopped off at a Denny’s for dinner. T wanted to see what a real American Denny’s was like. The Denny’s in Japan has totally different food. For instance, one of my favorite dishes there is a sashimi rice bowl. At the Denny’s in Yreka (the last California town before entering Oregon), I ordered the Lumberjack Slam, and T ordered the All-American Slam. Mine came with grits (which is just fancy talk for polenta), bacon, sausages, pancakes with a pile of creamed butter on top, an extra thing of creamed butter on the side just in case I wanted to increase my chances of a heart attack, and some kind of bread.

You can have white, whole wheat, sourdough, rye, English muffin, or ciabatta with buttered garlic. With the butter shortage in Japan, I ordered the ciabatta, just to stock up, because that creamed butter on the side wasn’t really enough. Then of course, how would you like your eggs? I like mine as an omelette lightly fried in olive oil and garlic folded with whole basil leaf and avocado, but I settled for scrambled. So many choices.

Also: free refills of coffee. Miss that. It was pretty good too.

In the past, whenever I ate at a diner in a small town like Yreka, little white kids would stare at me, and mustachioed white men would eye me suspiciously from under their caps. I’m sure it was because I was so good-looking. But probably it was because they didn’t see too many people of color.

I also had waitresses talk loud and slow to me. Maybe they thought people of Asian descent were genetically predisposed to deafness. I’ll tell you one thing though. I was impressed at how well the waitresses could speak English.

This time around, at this Denny’s anyway, I didn’t feel like I attracted much attention. Maybe America has evolved. Or I theorize that maybe they think I’m a soldier. So they afford me a little more respect and less gawking. Ever since the Iraq War began, I get more people assuming that I’m a marine. It’s probably my excellent posture, and penchant for military colors. Or maybe I have a look on my face that says, “I’ve killed men, but I’d rather not talk about it. More butter, please.”

In the 1980’s, there were numerous instances of African-Americans and Asian-Americans being refused service, being given atrocious service, forced to pay in advance, or pay more than white customers at Denny’s. There were other uglier incidents of these customers being forcibly removed by security for demanding to be served.

In 1994, a large class-action lawsuit was successfully filed against Denny’s. After that, the company implemented sensitivity training for all its employees. And by 2001, Denny’s was deemed by Fortune Magazine as “the best company for minorities”. So maybe America did evolve a little more in the last decade. Now we all have equal access to more butter and increased risks for heart disease!

On the plane ride over the Pacific there were no individual TV screens. This made me not watch 3 movies, play video games, and stay up for the whole flight. I didn’t even read anything or write. I closed my eyes and slept. That was new. It also helped that the movies being shown on the overhead screens were a a movie I’d never heard about, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and I Am Sam.

I did watch The Spiderwick Chronicles though. The movie was about a notebook writen long ago that held secrets of supernatural creatures, collected by Mr. Spiderwick. An ogre and his evil toad-like followers want this book so he could have power over all magical creatures.

The adventures center around a boy with anger issues who blames his mom for his dad leaving. His sister is tough and wields a saber. His twin brother often exclaims, “I don’t do conflict.”

There are fairies, sprites, brownies, a griffon, hobgoblins. And the elderly daughter of Dr. Spiderwick, who’s dealing with abandonment issues of her own.

Seeing imaginary creatures is always cool and the allegory of moving beyond daddy wasn’t tiresome. Clearly the writer had an absent father. The more interesting subtext is about the misuse and dangers of knowledge. Because Spiderwick refused to destroy his notebook, the bits of knowledge that leaked out to the ogre was used to hurt others, including his own family. And the message? Maybe we should just experience the wonders of the world instead of trying to unlock it’s secrets.

The Lotus Eaters
Early in Odysseus’s voyage, his ships anchored among the Lotus Eaters. They were a friendly, easy-going people, who fed the tired travelers tasty lotus. There was lotus tempura, lotus meatballs, lotus dip, lotus frappucinos, and best of all, lotus tiramisu. Even the women were clothed only in skimpy lotus bikinis.

Eating all this lotus made the men not care about anything. Many of them fell asleep and stayed asleep. Some of them were just spaced out and spent their time lighting lotus incense, doodling, and eating lotus chips and lotus brownies. Fortunately, Odysseus wasn’t a big fan of lotus since he was forced to eat the canned stuff in pre-school, so he stayed awake. Once he figured out what was happening, he woke the men who were wakeable and left that decadent land.

Space
I’m back in the land of shopping carts the size of small boats, gallon jugs of juice, thick fluffy q-tips, cheap fruit, bulk buying, second refrigerators, decaf (!), honey, organic food, doggy bags, creamy sweet soy milk, Mexican beers for $1.25 each, outdoor barbecues, turkey jerky,

Three-car garages, SUVs, car trunks stuffed with expensive speakers blaring out into the wide empty streets, cars being washed on driveways filled with autos for each family member, free street parking, expansive parking lots, clearly marked streets, pedestrian right-of-way,

swimming pools, tennis and basketball courts in every neighborhood, sunglasses, baseball caps, sweats, minimal make-up, sun-damaged skin, non-smokers,

walk-in closets, media rooms, vaulted ceilings, master bedrooms, hired gardeners, termites and dry rot,

and space. Lots and lots of space. In the clear blue skies, the supermarket aisles, the loose pants, the unused sidewalks, the sparkling ocean to my left, the prickly hills of oak and manzanita to my right. Room to breathe, room to walk around without having to worry about bumping into people. Space and room and breath.

Greeting Strangers
It’s great to have T here with me because she’s always noticing things I’ve taken for granted. For instance, she pointed out that there was no short size for drinks at cafes. The smallest is tall. And a small drink here at a restaurant would be considered a medium or large in Japan or Europe. Or the way restaurant servers and store clerks casually chat with customers.

Then there are the myriad of things about California or West Coast culture that makes me feel more at ease. Like I can wear sunglasses without people suspiciously looking at me as if I could be a gangster. Here, everyone wears sunglasses.

And on the drive from the airport to my parents’ place I observed a total of 5 men wearing tank tops, my upper body attire of choice. Here, the men wear loose pants, a t-shirt, a baseball cap, sneakers, and are good to go. No $50 haircuts, designer t-shirts referencing rural Americana, and pointy alligator-skin shoes. I’m not putting the alligator-skin crowd down. I just don’t relate to that. Of course, many young men here wear $200 sneakers. And I don’t get that either.

On the walk down to the neighborhood tennis courts, we passed by a total of two people on the sidewalk. They, strangers both, smiled and said hi. I forgot about this ritual, of greeting strangers on the street. But it made me happy to be back home.

I’m happy to eat lotus again. For a while anyway.

2 hour bus ride. 12 hours of flight. 4 hours of sleep. 3 hours in transit. 3 countries. 1 hour delay. And 1 random bag search and pat down later, we’re here in America.

Since it’s been years since I’ve returned to the US, I’ve decided to chronicle my adventures with references to Odysseus, another man finding his way home. I’m not the first to do this. It’s one of the most commonly recreated myths. James Joyce wrote Ullysses, about a day in the life of an Irishman that closely follows the original tale. And the Coen brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou is another adaption of the story.

Odysseus
The Odyssey is the saga of Odysseus (or Ullysses in Latin) who unwillingly fought in the Trojan War. After years fighting to a stalemate, he thought up the Trojan Horse, which led to the conquest of Troy and the end of the war.

Now free to return home to his island kingdom of Ithaca, he and his fleet attempt to get back only to experience various monsters, giants, seductresses, and the wrath of several gods. By the end, he is the only survivor and he arrives home to find that his palace is filled with suitors for his queen, Penelope. They eat everything, rape the servant girls, and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

Penelope had for years delayed choosing a suitor because she believed Odysseus to be still alive and also because choosing a suitor would lead to violence from all the other men. She probably also enjoyed the independence. A novel from the perspective of Penelope was written by Margaret Atwood called the Penelopiad. It’s on my reading list.

Windysseus and Tomolope
My own Odyssey will be quite different. Not only will my Penelope be traveling with me, I also have no idea where my Ithaca is. Is it my parents’ home, which I’ve barely lived in? Is it Oregon where I lived for 10 years? Is it my hometown in Southern California, where I have no plans to visit this time around? Or is it Tokyo, where I live now? As I wrote earlier, I’ve had so many address in my life, my home is wherever I am. Or as Ursual LeGuin wrote I am “always coming home.”

Pining for Thorns at The Rose and Crown

Monday was Sea Day and most people had the day off. We had a mini UK reunion at a pub in Yurakucho, which is near Ginza. The Rose and Crown, on the surface, is quite authentic. As shabby as much of England is, the pubs are always meticulously cared for. And the Rose and Crown follows this practice, with its busy baroque patterns, dark woods, and dour bartenders.

Though they serve the beer in imperial pint glasses (which are larger than American pints) there is a bit of foam on top unlike in England. Real British pints are filled up to the very top. No foam. Still, it’s far better than other Tokyo bars where the beer is about 25-33% foam. Their signature beer, the Rose Ale, has a bit of bite, but it’s suited to Japanese tastes. It’s better in the half-and-half.

We all ordered fish and chips but it wasn’t anything like real fish and chips. First of all, it wasn’t greasy enough. It was served in four small pieces, accompanied by pretty potato wedges. Fish and chips should be big, in one piece, liberally breaded, wrapped in newspaper, soaking up the oil. The fish and chips at the Rose and Crown was disappointingly healthy and palatable.

Nevertheless, whenever I’m in the neighborhood, I like to pop in for a pint. It felt like “home” the first time I wandered in, fresh from England. And by “home”, I mean like an ex-con pining for the prison mess hall. There’s a happy hour until 7pm. I recommend going there then because otherwise the beer costs nearly 1,000 yen. There’s also a fine scotch list if that’s your fancy.

But pining for “home” was really about missing the great community of friends I had in England. Of the 100 or so who were in my MA program, about 80 were non-British. We were a close-knit multinational group of fun-loving people. Our department, Peace Studies, was referred to by others as Party Studies since we were always organizing events with each other.

So it’s always great to see my old friends from England. On Monday, though they were all Japanese, they still spoke English with each other. Probably out of respect for my terrible Japanese, and maybe because that was the language they spoke when they lived among each other in England. It’s also typical of Japanese hospitality. I’ve found that most Japanese don’t mind that foreigners have lived in their country for years and still can’t speak the language. I think it’s embarrassingly arrogant that so many of us can’t. I’ve got to write more about this later.

Disturbing the Peace in Hibiya Park

We had a good time at the pub, but afterwards we opted to buy liquor at the convenience store and continue our party at Hibiya Park, which used to be owned by feudal lords. There were lots of couples taking in the breezy evening air, and a small homeless encampment made of blue tarps and cardboard boxes in one corner of the park.

Unlike in the US, it’s perfectly legal to drink in public. We sat outside in the warm breezy summer night and chatted and laughed. Continuing the British theme, the gardens at Hibiya Park were landscaped to look like something out of Kensington Gardens. The lawns are cordoned off with decorate wrought iron chains.

I suggested that we step over the low chain and sit on the grass, but my fellow merrymakers felt this was forbidden, which it probably was. So public drinking and homeless squatters are acceptable but the lawn was off-limits? After hanging out on the benches and looking at the inviting grass, the American in me said, hey who’s it hurting if we sit down on the grass? So that’s what we did. After all, in this globalized world, we should be blending the best of all traditions. In this case, public drinking and sitting on the lawn were an excellent cross-cultural match.

Apocalypto is the story of a young Mayan tribesman, Jaguar Paw, whose village is destroyed and the villagers killed or taken captive by a party of fierce raiders led by the intimidating Zero Wolf and taunted by the cruel, menacing Middle Eye. Because of a recent plague and drought we discover that the men will be sacrificed to appease the gods, and the women will be sold to slavery.

As in all of Mel Gibson’s movies there are many inaccuracies or distortions. For instance, mass human sacrifice was more a feature of Aztec culture, and was only practiced by some Mayans that neighbored the Aztecs. The first Spaniards arrived long after the Mayan civilization had collapsed. There is no evidence to support mass graves, or even widespread slavery.

The movie also ignores Mayan achievements, focusing on imagined depravities instead of their mastery of mathematics, agriculture, astronomy, literature and art. However, the film is a fable of the collapse of a society. Many of the reasons for their collapse correspond to what Jared Diamond writes about in his book, Collapse. Diamond devotes several chapters to the Mayan case study, citing drought, possibly lasting 200 years, as a factor.

Historical inaccuracies aside, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto is gorgeously made. The costumes, the hair styles, the tattoos and piercings were all copied from Mayan artifacts. Although, elements from various historical periods and geographic locations were conflated into one Mayan aesthetic. The Classical Period, for instance, lasted almost 700 years. So I imagine it would be like mixing George Washington’s wig and breeches, with Kennedy’s pinstripe suit and Lincoln’s top hat to represent an American aesthetic. Still, for someone not well-versed in Mayan culture, it was pure, enjoyable eye candy.

The use of the Mayan language is an inspired layer of realism, with most of the cast actual Mayans. Several of the leads weren’t Mayan, but the exclusive casting of an all Native American cast lends an aura of credibility to the film.

From a narrative standpoint, the story moved briskly, with lots of action. Jaguar paw’s escape is one of the highlights of the film as he begins to hunt his pursuers in his own element, the jungle. But if you’re sensitive to graphic violence, this may be a movie you might avoid.

Knowing Mel Gibson’s evangelical Christian bias, the arrival of the Spaniards probably represents the salvation of a sick, heathen society. The allegory of a decaying society, rotting away from within, is reinforced several times throughout the film. A shaman tells of the story of a never-satisfied man. A girl, afflicted with disease, prophesizes destruction of the captors.

All of these commentaries within the story are warnings of the possible decay that we may be facing, contributing to our own collapse. Intended or not, we are warned of the false embrace of religion that arises out of fear, whether it be sacrifice to one priest in a headdress or another bearing a crucifix.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about my Cambodia trip. It’s been over 6 months now and I still haven’t finished downloading all the pictures from that trip into flickr. I put in another batch tonight and now I’m halfway through. While linking to those pictures, I’ve decided to reprint some parts of my journal from the trip.

In this excerpt, I’ve put together some passages about our tuk-tuk driver, Mr. Vey. A tuk-tuk is a moped-driven carriage. I’ve seen them all over Southeast Asia. I was surprised that T wanted to travel around exclusively in them. They’re open to the wind, dust and exhaust. The ride is bumpy and in the early mornings it’s quite chilly. But T loved them and that’s how we got around. Thankfully, we had the good fortune to have a great, reliable, courteous driver.

Mr. Vey, December 2007
Our driver is a young-looking man named Mr. Vey (pronounced “By”). The hotel referred him to us on the first day, and we’ve been hiring him every day. We like him because he’s not aggressive, pesky or talkative. Most drivers try to arrange other trips or take you to shops where they get a commission. But he’s totally mellow. We like that.

In fact, he seems reluctant to be hired every day. It’s almost comical. Maybe he’s doing pretty well already. Doesn’t need the money. Or maybe he doesn’t want to pick us up at 7:30 am. I know I wouldn’t. But he’s stuck with us. And leaving for the temples at 7:30 is the only way to avoid the heat and the busloads of the tourist hordes.

On the second day, in a hushed tone he asked us to pick us up around the corner because the hotel charges him some amount. I’m not sure what the system is but the hotel staff appear to be very powerful since they can heavily influence where and to whom tourist dollars are spent.

After a few days he warmed up to us and I started asking him questions about him. It turns out that he’s not so young. In fact he’s 38, a little older than me. He shook my hand when I told him my age. It also turns out he has a wife and two daughters, lives in a village near the Central Market, and has been driving for seven years. He couldn’t understand that I didn’t have kids. He asked me several times just to be sure. And then looked on us in pity.

He has an understated sense of humor like when I asked to take a picture with him and he mimicked a street urchin and said, “one dollar, one dollar” with a straight face that broke into a mischievous smile. I get the feeling he’s a pretty sarcastic guy when he’s relaxing with his buddies. But he’s low-key about it.

On the last day, he was supposed to pick us up to go to the airport. But, uncharacteristically, he never showed up. After an hour of waiting we hired another driver to take us there. After over a week of punctuality, we were afraid that maybe he’d gotten into an accident or had some kind of trouble. Hopefully he’s okay.

Thank you Mr. Vey for driving us around safely!

For more posts about Cambodia click here. For the burgeoning photo set click here.