In Which I Begin to Understand Why Angelina Jolie Adopted a Child from Cambodia

I've seen a lot in the past couple of days. Some of it good (like hundreds of ladies aerobicizing in front of the Royal Palace and the amazingly beautiful Phnom Wat), but a lot of it depressing. And not just the records of what happened 30 years ago.

Issue one: landmines. There are so many people begging (or trying to sell books so they can earn an honest living) that are missing arms and legs thanks to the landmines that are still all over the place. This is sad.

Issue two: street kids. There are over 20,000 kids in Phnom Penh that live and work on the streets. Yesterday we had lunch and dinner at two different non-profit restaurants whose proceeds go to housing and educating street kids. The fact is that there are a ton of these restaurants because there are so many kids that need help. Really young kids. (Child sex tourism is also a major problem here, which makes you wonder what kind of monsters could come to a country whose people have endured so much and make things even worse.)

We got to talk to some slightly better off street kids yesterday, as they tried to sell us postcards and books on the genocide. They were very sweet and incredibly bright, considering (when the woman next to me said she was from Australia, one of the kids promptly said "A dingo ate my baby"). They're also way more desperate than any child should have to be. I keep on hearing that it will take generations to heal the wounds inflicted on the country by Pol Pot, but I wonder what's going to happen to all these children in the meantime.

Phnom Penh: Much Harder to Handle than Anticipated

I don't know what I was expecting, really. Even having seen The Killing Fields years back, I think I viewed Phnom Penh mainly as a jumping off point for getting to Siem Reap. So I wasn't prepared for S-21, the high school turned detention center turned genocide museum where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed thousands of people (including children) between 1975 and 1979. I wasn't prepared for the photographic documentation of the prisoners being tortured or the photographs of corpses. None of it makes any sense.

Afterwards, we headed to the Killing Fields, to the stupa which houses 9000 skulls found in mass graves, through the paths strewn with the bones and clothing of some of the victims of the genocide, to separate mass graves. According to our guide, Khmer Rouge soldiers killed the children whose bones were found in the mass graves by throwing them against a tree until they were dead. Bombs thrown into the mass graves ensured that there were no survivors.

I can't begin to process the things I've seen here.

Travel Reading

As it turns out, I've been doing more over the past 2 months than just seeing the world, struggling with squat toilets and being equal parts annoyed and amused by my fellow travelers. I've also been reading. A lot, considering I spent much of the first 6 1/2 weeks without electricity, traveling on unpaved roads which did NOT inspire me to read in the car. So, in the list of things I'm thankful for, the Amazon Kindle ranks pretty high. So now, in no particular order, my reading list since leaving LA for Addis:

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (finding books for Kindle by Ethiopians or about Ethiopia is not easy)

Infidel

Dreams from My Father

Boomsday (no, really, I like Christopher Buckley)

Gulliver's Travels (an appropriate reread, I think)

I'm Looking Through You

Soon I Will Be Invincible (fun) and From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (sadly, not quite as much fun)

My Sister's Keeper and Nineteen Minutes (I'm ashamed to admit this. She needs a better editor and/or to stop writing. But her books ARE page turners)

Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

The Alchemyst and The Magician (these two look like a promising start to a new Y/A series)

Assassination Vacation

Lost on Planet China

The Bonesetter's Daughter

Journey from the Land of No

Septembers of Shiraz (I read these 2 back to back, on the recommendation of a friend from the firm)

The Year of Living Biblically (very funny and it made me want to read the bible)

The Glass Castle

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Dear American Airlines

The Blue Place, Stay and Always (Nicola Griffith, and not my type of books at all. I prefer her sci-fi, but didn't read the synopses before downloading).

Trying to pick up more non-fiction, and succeeding, although travel writing, memoirs and autobiogrpahies are not quite the "serious" non-fiction I had in mind. I do love that I have enough time to see the world and read three books a week (trying to pick up the pace a bit, but I fear I'll be seeing less of the world if I do).

Cu Chi Tunnel: Not Recommended

After yesterday's visit to one of the big markets, cocktails with the weird food-smelling Canadian at the Rex Hotel (where foreign journalists hung out during the war, and where one can now get some of the most expensive drinks in Vietnam) and dinner with the group (cute place, terrible food), I was not thrilled to have to wake up at 6:30 to visit the Cu Chi Tunnel. I should have slept in.

What should have been a war memorial was handled more like a war amusement park, complete with a high-priced shooting gallery for people itching to try their luck with an AK-47. To start, we watched a short film about the American devils who indiscriminately killed women and children in a war fought several thousand miles from their country. It also introduced us to the tunnels, where heroic Vietnamese guerrillas hung out while awaiting their chance to kill Americans. I think there were prizes given for those who killed 100 or more. Not really feeling the love, but who can blame them?

After that super-fun film, we started our tour of the area. First, there was a guy in army uniform demonstrating lowering the lid of the tunnel after covering it with leaves. Many of my fellow travelers thought this would be a good photo op. Other good photo opportunities: sitting on a captured tank, in a crater made by a B-52 bomb, and with mannequins dressed as North Vietnamese Army soldiers and guerrillas. All very weird and unsettling. So off-putting, in fact, that I suffered from nausea for a good hour after we left. My question: what's wrong with a tasteful memorial to those who lost their lives, and to the heroes of the war?

Back in Saigon now, having just walked around a little (very little. It's around 100 degrees and humid). Looking forward to touring the Mekong Delta tomorrow, and to Cambodia (day after tomorrow, after a 7 hour public bus ride that I am NOT looking forward to).

In Which I Arrive in Ho Chi Minh City (still generally known as Saigon)

So, I just got to the hotel a few minutes ago. Apparently to punish me for a series of excellent rooms (my favorite being Hanoi), I've now got a windowless room which will never have the smoke fully aired out. Also: dirty. In both senses of the word. One of the tiles in the shower is actually a photo of Cindy Crawford, circa 1990, in a tiny bikini, looking "seductive."

Hoi An ended up being a bit of a bust. My cooking class was more of an experience in helping to cook dishes, along with the two other people in the course. Do I feel like I could make the dishes on my own? Probably not without carefully studying the recipes. Do I want to? Possibly no. We "made" a stuffed mackerel wrapped in banana leaves (really disgusting: the fish completely overpowered the herbs used to stuff it), a nicely seasoned calamari dish (which the other two pronounced "too spicy," despite the fact that no chilies or peppers were used in preparation, vegetarian spring rolls (fried, sadly, although the technique of frying long ones and then cutting them into handheld versions is one I might replicate), and wontons with sweet and sour sauce. A word about the wontons: we didn't make them! We just made the sauce. The recipe given to us actually calls for 6 pre-prepared wontons. So, a cooking class like no other.

Oh, and I am forced to report that there is another tourist in the group that I find intolerable. It seems irrational, because she is largely harmless. Yes, she's kept us all waiting three times this week, while she's done extra shopping or decided to change clothes when we're on a schedule, and she's not particularly bright (which makes her fit right in), but those things normally wouldn't awaken this level of distaste. The real problem: she persists in asking to smell things. Like my food. Or the food that we're preparing in the cooking class. And not at a safe distance. More like, before I've had a spoonful of soup, she's asked permission to smell it, which entails her picking it up and lifting it a couple of inches below her nose. Disgusting. And, frankly, freakish. I would trade her for the 25 year old hedge fund guy we parted ways with in Hanoi in a heartbeat. Among his many good qualities: snarkiness. Fortunately, he and another one of our fellow travelers (charming, but not quite as bright) have been stalking us all through Vietnam.

Weekend Grad School Update

First off, it seems that I wasn't jinxing myself. Not only did I get into Harvard, but they've awarded me their highest honor: a Presidential Fellowship, which covers all five years of tuition, plus a generous spending stipend. Yay.

Even more good news: I heard from Michigan, and they've also accepted me (no word yet on whether they're also courting me with prestigious fellowships and/or scholarships).

It seems that every grad school has an open house sometime between March 5 and March 16. I'll have some decisions to make, because I can't go to all of them, and I don't want to cut in too much to the (incredibly limited) amount of time I have to spend visiting people in LA and New York. Still, very exciting.

Expect more updates next week, since I have a feeling this will all be done this month.

Even More (Good) Grad School News

It's not official, so I may be jinxing myself by writing this, but this morning I received two emails from the admissions office at Harvard, one entitled "Good News." It seems that they've been trying to reach me by phone, but I suspended my phone service when I left the country. I hope I'm not being presumptuous in assuming that this means that I've gotten into Harvard. More details after the call.