Steep and Shallow

As we sat sweating in the lobby of our hotel on our last day in Phnom Penh (and last day before travelling to Vietnam), Rob captured our exprience in every place that we have visited. He said, "It seems like we do a whole lot the first day, sleep in and are worthless on the second, and then travel on the third." After some brief reflection, we all agreed that he was right. It was day 2 of Phnom Penh, and we - in true form - were moaning about the prospect of visiting the Royal Palace.

I promise, though, we were tired for a good reason.

We had arrived in Phnom Penh two days before in the late afternoon, had found a place to eat a late lunch, and then arranged a boat cruise down the river that our guest house lay next to.

As few boat cruises are complete without it, we bought some Angkor beer (a real gem for those of you who have never had it) and shimmied down the dirt-mud path that led to our boat where our hostess - a nice woman with an enormous white visor - met us.

We found out that we would be the only six people on the boat (not counting our hostess and the captain), and moments after this realization, the awkwardness began to settle like heavy snow upon us all.
We sat in little red plastic chairs (many left unoccupied) facing each other on the boat's main deck while our hostess - sweet as she was - tried to interest us in karaoke. We smiled graciously while trying to quietly decline her requests when we all decided to move up onto the smaller deck on top of the boat to enjoy our drinks.
Good move. The smaller setting with no roof eased some of the cramped openess of the deck below and we watched as the sky began to grow dull for a moment until it finally extinguished into darkness, leaving only our boat - green christmas lights lining its deck - as a tiny speck floating through the water.

Our first full day in Phnom Penh was much more eventful. We started out the day driving in a tuk-tuk 7 miles south of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Arts Academy to see traditional Cambodian dancers perform "Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magical Flute".

Pulling off a dusty road filled with street vendors and "gas stations" consisting of men sitting under umbrellas with liter size coke bottles filled with a strange yellow liquid, we turned into a driveway with a sign with a drawing of a backwardly curved finger pointing right and the words "Khmer Arts Academy" written below.

Suddenly, the sun went out as we came under a cover of trees and to our left we beheld a massive pavillion theater with enormous stone heads looking over it - much like those we had seen at Angkor Wat.

Shortly after we would meet John and Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, the two directors of the Academy (John is American while Sophiline is Cambodian). After a few quick words, we were escorted under the pavillion to six white plastic chairs that lined the side of the main performance space, and minutes later, drums, xylophones, and oboes began in a cacophonous harmony, escorting a line of gracefully arched dancers across the stage in front of us.

They told a story of love, one of following your heart in the midst of chaos - even when others may be telling you extreme ways of finding peace. It was a story of balance - one where both man and woman offer their own unique strengths to endure through seemingly hopeless situations. It was a story of home - one where a hopelessly lovesick birdcatcher finds that his true soulmate is the bird that he has carried on his back throughout his entire journey for love.

We all watched with amazement as the dancers would bend their bodies and fingers - like snakes, Sophiline explained - to tell this story. It was a performance of delicate details as we watched Sophiline move in to guide her dancers, carefully adjusting the curvature of their fingers.

It was beautiful.

Afterwards, we sat crosslegged on the dancefloor in our bare feet and spoke with Sophiline and some of the dancers. I recorded the conversation and will try to summarize it later at some point - I think I could fill a whole entire blog with it.

When we left, John told us a few places we needed to hit while we were still in Phnom Penh. One was the National Theater and the other was Tuol Sleng - one of the prisons used by the Khmer Rouge during their rule from 1975-1979.

We knew we had arrived at the National Theater when we saw the towering steel spire that Sophiline had told us to look for (it had carried the hammer and sickle previously but now spires with nothing atop it). We pulled up and saw children playing soccer in a dirt patch between some palm trees and some guys working on a broken down bus (one of many in the parking lot).

Truly, the parking lot is more like a junkyard - filled with broken down buses, motorbikes, and cars. There is no pavement for people to park primarily because the theater was destroyed by fire 12 years ago.

We decided to step inside to check out what was left within the shell of the pink brick building. Inside, we found water filling the lobby, cars parked beneath the grand stairway, grafitti written on the walls, men sleeping in hammocks held up by the doorways leading into the main performance hall, and beautiful leather shadow puppets hanging carelessly on a blackboard in the lobby. We passed a man watching a static-filled television in a plastic fold-out lawn chair and came into the main hall.

The hall itself has the sky as its roof. Plants grow out of the orchestra pit, and a woman sat cooking something in a steaming pot where the fifteenth row probably would have been. It is easy to imagine what a beautiful space it must have been; however, the building continues to lie in sleep, waiting for the plants to swallow it alive.

From there, we went to Tuol Sleng - a prison made from a school with barbed wire snaking jaggedly around its walls.

I don't have any facts or numbers to give regarding the horrors that went on within the walls of this prison; however, seeing the pictures of some of the two million people killed during the Khmer Rouge's reign, it grew sickening to learn more. I won't try to be cliched in my response to seeing the prison. It was terrible, and it is horrifying to think of what we have (and continue to) do to one another.

The rest of our day was spent resting and keeping inside from the sweltering weather until dinner when we went to a restaurant (also recommended by John) called Pop Cafe - an Italian place around the corner from our guest house. It was a sleek, modern narrow restaurant with few seats, white walls, and black furniture. I felt terribly underdressed.

The food came out (one of the best pizzas I've had in years) and we were having a good time until the power in the restaurant went out (something that supposedly happens from time to time in Phnom Penh).

We would end the night sharing food and stories over two candles in the cafe.

(and of course the next day, we rested.)