LZ - Thailand

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Operation: Rolling Thunder

Our story picks up with Col. Lewin (yes, he's been promoted) scaling the walls of temples built by ancient civilizations. He was close to completing his mission to terminate a colonel in the US Army. Col. Kurtz had been AWOL for some time and the Army couldn't afford him out there any longer. Lewin thought to himself, "How many people had I killed before? But this time it was an American and an officer. That wasn't supposed to make any difference to me, but it did. Shit... charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do?" Finally, Lewin was able to find a photojournalist that spoke in riddles. He would lead Lewin to Kurtz and allow him to complete his mission. Lewin thought, "Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier, standing up, not like some poor, wasted, rag-assed renegade. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway."
So, Lewin managed to have one final conversation with Kurtz before he carried out his orders. Lewin recalls Kurtz' final words, "I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."
With his mission complete, Lewin had no other choice but to head to Bangkok and eventually to his ultimate destination...Koh Phi Phi, a small island in the Andaman Sea that was utterly destroyed by the December 26th tsunami. It is on this remote island where Lewin would put into motion his master plan of creating a supreme race of human beings. The population would be comprised solely of Lewin's own genes and those of his many female hosts. Each of his offspring would be cultivated into perfect subjects. Subjects who's only purpose was to infiltrate the top government seats throughout the most powerful countries in the world. Once they reached their positions of power, they would then appoint their father as the supreme leader and relinquish all of their authority and bestow it upon him. Lewin's rule of the world, as foreseen by the prophets, would bring forth a utopian society. Those who wished to remain in this society would need to pay homage to their supreme leader. Those who opposed his leadership would be used for spare parts to keep Lord Lewin and his loyal subjects alive for an eternity....
...Ok, ok...I can't give away too much of my plan or I will jeopardize it from coming to fruition.
So, back to Cambodia...or should I say my Escape from Cambodia. It was early, maybe 6am when a knock on my hotel room door came from mamma-san. As I quickly zipped up my bag, checked around the room and frowned at the puddle of sweat that I had left behind on the bed, I was looking forward to my next, less humid, destination. Little did I know, another tough travel experience was upon me. One that would make the episode titled, Operation Rosa Parks, look like a cakewalk.
As I ran to my awaiting minivan, I snatched three bottles of water from a street vendor for the 6 hour ride ahead of me. I was already covered in sweat, so hydration was critical as it had been throughout my stay here. To my surprise, the bus was almost empty, the AC was pumping cold air, and I had two seats to myself. Things almost couldn't be better. However, as this temporary euphoria began to set in, my conscience had to ruin it for me. He told me, "you know better than to think things would be so good. You've experienced enough asian travel agency shenanigans to be getting ahead of yourself here." I never hated my conscience so much before...especially as things started to unravel almost immediately after our talk. Our first stop, around the corner and down some alleys to pick up additional passengers. Ok, no big deal here, this was purely a tourist minibus and it was doubtful I'd have to relinquish my window seat once again. As we spent a good half hour stopping off at other hotels and picking up more people, the bus became a bit more crowded, but it still wasn't so bad. Then our minibus pulled along side another and the driver put it in park and barked something at everyone in the back. A dreadful feeling seemed to come over me. You see, the minibus we pulled up to was packed to the gills with other tourists. "Are we all transferring into this already overcrowded and rather run-down minibus?" I thought. Well, you know the answer...of course we were!
The possibility of this being a ride in comfort completely disappeared, but something came over me. It was an optimistic point of view this time. It was as if something was telling me it really didn't matter. They could strap me to the roof of this piece of crap minibus and I really didn't care. I figured, this won't kill me, unless of course the bus loses a wheel and goes tumbling down a cliff in a fiery ball of death. Then again, maybe I'll meet someone cool along the way. I had been traveling for almost 4 weeks now and experiences that look like nightmares often become good writing/reading material...haha.
So, looking into this bus, you had three rows of tired, scrunched, sweaty bodies. You also had an entire back seat stacked to the roof with huge backpacks. Now where was my little pack going to fit?...as well as the packs from the other new passengers? The driver took care of this and shoved them on the floor in the aisle. However, the aisle would soon disappear because a few rinky-dink seats unfolded down from the real seats into where the aisle was. When I say rinky-dink, I mean a seat that was 1 sq. ft. for my butt and 8 sq in. for my backrest. This is the one time I was glad not to have much of a butt. Then again, there was about an inch of padding on the seat, so on second thought having a butt would have worked out. Anyway, enough about my non-butt, although it was about to be abused for the next 5 hours. With the elminiation of legroom due to the backpacks underneath my feet, the accommodations for a long drive were fairly trecherous. However, nobody had it worse than the poor Cambodian guy sitting in front of me. He was the last to join us and his foldout seat hung at a negative 45 degrees below where it should have been. His back must have hurt for days after what we were about to endure.
My two neighbors on the minibus were Americans! Wow...three Americans in two days in Cambodia of all places. After not seeing one for almost a month, their presence was welcomed. As we set out of town in this minibus, the three of us began to joke sarcastically about the conditions onboard. Our driver made sure that every single seat that was available in the minibus, whether it was broken or not, was occupied. He surely must have been getting paid by the head when we arrived to our destination. However, it was amazing that this vehicle was actually going to make it to the border.
With no AC, we ventured out of Siem Reap and were on our way to Poi Pet, the Cambodian border town to the land of smiles...Thailand! For a few miles the road seemed bearable and everyone on the bus was in a fairly good mood, even without the precious AC. It was probably after 5 minutes into the trip when the minibus seemed to drop a few feet and landed with a loud thud. Immediately following this disturbing noise came a continuous rumbling beneath us and the spread of human bobble head syndrome. The pavement was gone and we were driving on something that resembled the results of a bombing run. There were more craters on this dusty, dirt road than were on the moon and a teenagers face combined. Our rear wheel drive beater of a bus felt like it was coming apart at every possible seam. There were times when it sounded like the axle had protruded through the floor. To put it mildly, this was the worst "highway" I've ever been on. The only suitable vehicle for travel on this path could only be a Hummer. Although, the cost of a Hummer could probably feed the city of Siem Reap for a year and the likelihood of seeing one of those, let alone a yellow one, in a third world country was slim to none. Well, low and behold, somehow a yellow H2 passed us by in a cloud of dust. For a minute I was completely shocked and managed to forgot about the incessant bouncing and freakish noises that were coming from the undercarriage of our chariot. I was amazed that I had to go to Cambodia to find a practical use for an H2, but here it was...Route 6 from Siem Reap to Poi Pet.
Our first rest stop came an hour and a half into the bouncefest. We stopped at restaurant in the middle of nowhere that charged retarded prices...where was I again? $1 for a warm coke? It felt like a rest stop somewhere in the middle of Georgia...the only thing missing was the pickled pigs feet. Although, there was an entire pig split in half (horizontally) by the kitchen. Ummm, that looks good, I'll have some of that! Adding to the charm of this roadside diner were the not-so-free bathrooms that were guarded by a sleeping monkey and some 10 year old kids who collected the bathroom fine. The monkey, which I believe was a macaque, was sleeping in a tiny makeshift hammock and was chained to the wall by his collar. Nobody noticed him because he was wrapped up inside the hammock, but I spied him and started messing with him. Actually, I fed him some pineapple and he began getting rowdy on me. He would grab a hold of my hand and start pulling at or biting the bracelets I was wearing. This made me nervous as being bitten by a monkey in a third world country, hundreds of miles away from any form of modern medical facilities was not my idea of a fun time. He was a fast one, too. He even managed to unbutton one of my pockets, pull out a very precious item and attempted to run away with it. Thankfully, the chain held and snapped the poor little guy's neck back within reach where I retrieved my PASSPORT! from his little hands. He promptly exchanged the passport for my hat and took off again! I actually consider my Brooklyn Dodgers hat more valuable than my passport, so I quickly grabbed the chain and made sure I got my hat back. The kids said he had been trained to steal things from tourists and bring them to his owner. Thank god for the chain.

It was time to go, or so we thought. The driver was struggling to turn the engine over on our finely tuned and thoroughly pummeled Toyota minibus. Everyone's heart sunk because the possibility of the 5 hour trip turning into an 8 hour trip or longer was becoming a reality. After some frantic maneuvers to get the engine started, our driver found success and we found ourselves back on the road from hell for another 4 hours. During the break I also met a great guy from South Africa named Aiden who had some great stories to tell about his homeland and his travel experiences. To sum up the rest of this ride, one can best describe the experience as sitting in a 6.2 earthquake for 5 hours. Of course, when we arrived at the border, covered in dust and shaken to the core, it was only fitting that my experience in Cambodia ended the same way it began...with a travel experience that will never be forgotten and the making of some new international friends.
Before we left the minibus, the driver put a piece of red duct tape on all of our chests. None of knew what to make of our new makeshift scarlet letter and didn't bother to question it. As we made our way through Cambodian immigration and walked passed a tremendous and very oddly placed casino, Aiden and I finally found the line for Thailand immigration. As puddles of sweat formed at our feet during the wait, Aiden talked about his run-ins with elephants and baboons at his summer home in Krugar National Park, one of the oldest and largest reserves in all of Africa. Unfortunately, the only baboon run-ins I could recount to him were the ones I had with my roommate Dan on a daily basis.
As we finally got our 30 day visas, we walked across to the bus depot where we checked out several of the largest and most luxurious tourist busses I've ever seen. They looked like heaven compared to what we had just been in for 5 hours.
We found the other members of our tour who were brandished with the red duct tape as well. None of us knew what our next ride would look like. Was it going to be one of the heaven sent tour busses sitting across the way or perhaps the beat up, covered pickup truck that contained two long wooden benches alongside the truckbed? Well, of course it was the pickup truck. How silly of us to think otherwise. The next question was, were we taking this pickup truck all the way to Bangkok? Another 6 hour drive? Stay tuned for that answer in the next episode titled, LZ - Bangkok.

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Photos

Col. Kurtz
Mission accomplished...Kurtz was terminated with extreme prejudice.

Apocalypse Now
The movie that I've been referencing all along. Go see it.

The Minibus and The Road
Here's a picture of the Toyota minibus similar to the one that took us to the Thai-Cambodian border. Piece O' Crap.

The THIEF!!!
This little guy managed to steal a few precious things of mine. Luckily he was chained up or I'd still be in Cambodia without a hat.

The Gas Station
A typical gas station along the roadside. Those yellow-ish glass bottles on the left are filled with petro.

The Border
The entrance/exit to the Kingdom of Cambodia.

The Border
Close-up

Welcome to Thailand!
Red, White, and Blue...a more than welcomed site for sore eyes and a sore ass.