A Few Things I've Learned in 2 Months of Solo Travel

Jenne Raub June 9, 2015

Last week marked the official halfway point of my four-month trip, so I thought I'd share a few reflections about my trip so far, and what it's like to travel solo as a female out here in our crazy (but basically pretty non-crazy) world. I'm numbering this because it's going to be long and I figured your eyeballs will want some way to break up the words.

1. Internet is not going to work well in some places, and it is going to make you crazy

You are going to have blazingly fast Wifi in some places, and, in others, Wifi that makes you want to throw your iPad out the window in frustration. DO NOT THROW YOUR IPAD OUT THE WINDOW. (I am writing this to remind myself next time I want to hurl my iPad out the window in a Wifi-less rage.)

2. I miss working. And, more amazingly, I miss advertising

*Feasting with the locals of Damskal village on Koh Rong, Cambodia during a village party*

Only the Strong (Stomached) Survive

Jenne Raub April 29, 2015

During my second stint in Otres, I had the good fortune to be invited to a Khmer New Year get together thrown by the contractor/construction worker who's been building the new bungalows for the guesthouse where I stayed, Mama Clare's. Hung (ethnically Vietnamese but living in Cambodia) invited Clare and her guests to come round for some afternoon food and drinks, so I hopped on Clare's motorbike and off the small group of us went.

Hung's house lay just down the road behind the few stalls that comprise Otres Village, located in a cluster of makeshift dwellings made up mostly of wood and corrugated metal. There was an awning hanging over a concrete rectangle, where Hung and his wife and friends had unfurled a bamboo mat and had laid out dishes of a river fish smoked in fish sauce, fried eggs, and spring onions sautéed with dried shrimp and peppers. We sat around cross-legged and picked at the food with chopsticks, cheers'ing every few minutes with freshly cracked cans of Angor beer -- the Cambodian custom seems to be to open a new can and say cheers and drink about half the can before opening a new one (or polishing off the can immediately and opening a new one, perhaps I'm just a slow drinker).

All around us the children played in the dirt, threw talcum powder on each other and squirted each other with water guns, while chickens waddled by and water buffalo lazily slept in a field just beyond Hung's home. Clare had mentioned that Hung might have children with more than one woman -- it was unclear. But there were maybe 30 some children running around, and a handful of adults, the women mostly shyly out of sight, minus Hung's wife who joined us for beers and food and a bowl of her own noodles after spending most of her time in the wooden hut where the cooking is done over hot coals.

*Bed where a prisoner (in this case a “VIP”, a member of the former ruling party) lay shackled to the bed, tortured until finally executed at the Tuol Sleng Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia*

A visit to the Tuol Sleng Museum and the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek

Jenne Raub April 20, 2015

The Tuol Sleng Museum is located in an old high school. That's because when the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, they swiftly converted the high school into a detention center that would come to symbolize many of the great horrors that took place during the Khmer Rouge's reign until the Vietnamese invaded in January 1979. So that when you enter the compound, the first thing that strikes you is not the grim horrors that took place, but wondering what it must have been like to attend high school in Phnom Penh during peaceful times, picturing teenagers coming in and out of the shuttered classroom doors carrying books and lunches and hopes and dreams.

But as you move from room to room, you realize how quickly things can turn on a dime, how one wooden desk can be quickly transformed into a work station for an interrogator, and how all the other furniture can be removed to make way for torture facilities and imprisonment. It is, after all, just a building.

A funny thing happened on the road to Kampot

Jenne Raub April 18, 2015

I was bouncing up and down in a tuktuk along a road outside of Kampot, my shirt glued to my back, the relentless sun beating off the orange dirt and the metal railings of the carriage, the only relief from the oppressive heat found in the slight breeze caused by moving through the air at a snail's pace. Maybe this country actually sucks, I thought, angrily glaring at a dusty shop set up in the open part of a home contructed of corrugated metal where a pants-less little boy stood lethargically watching the world pass by.

We passed another shack where a mother was bathing her naked child by pouring a bottle of water over him. The child squirmed with glee as the water fell over him, while the mother chucked the empty bottle into a pile of litter nearby.

Maybe I actually hate it here. This question had been percolating in my brain since arriving in Cambodia and finally surfaced now. Because unlike other places I've visited, it hadn't exactly won me over at first sight. I started racking through the countries and cities I'd been, trying to remember how they first made an impression on me; I had instantly loved Portugal and Italy and Hungary, was smitten with Madrid and London and Buenos Aires and Melbourne; had been swept away by the scenic beauty of Chile, Kyrgyzstan, the Alps, and, closer to home, the landscapes of Wyoming and Maine. Even India, as challenging as it can be, made an impression where the ultimate takeaway was one of being charmed -- once you got past the culture shock and despair and peoplepeoplepeople everywhere, it had a kind of mystique that made you want to discover more.