Category Archives: Cambodia Motorcycle Diaries

Life looks different when you’re on a motorcycle in the far reaching countrysides of a country like Cambodia. Come and seek what life looks like in my Cambodia motorcycle diaries.

Cambodia Motorcycle Diary #4

March 3, 2010

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There was a long road just next to the house where I lived nicknamed the “Dike Road.”  It was named that because the road separated the side of town that flooded during the rainy season from the side that stayed dry.  All the houses in that area were raised on wooden beams and the residents would travel by boat when the waters rose during the rainy season to the markets and everywhere else they needed to go.

Rain, in southeast Asia, is something altogether different than here.  Here we avoid the rain, escaping its touch with jackets and umbrellas and swiftness of foot.  But there, the rain is different.  The rain was the only truly clean water you’d ever encounter, and it would fall with such ferocity that a person could barely see their own hand stretched out in front of their face.   I often would venture out of doors during the fiercest storms, stand in the courtyard and let the rain wash over my whole being.  The rain was never cold, even in the winter months, and standing in the midst of it, a sense of timelessness would emerge, and one would get the distinct impression that all was right in the world.

It’s odd to feel that way, a deep sense of well-being, especially when there’s so much desperately wrong with the world.  Just yesterday, in my home town of San Diego, we learned the a 17 year old girl who had gone missing a week before had been found murdered and buried by a lake she often jogged around.  The world is indeed a dark place.  Feeling peaceful in it and content about it seems like ignorance and folly.  I’m very conflicted.  I love nothing more than being on a lonely morning trail clad with mist, feeling alive and feeling like the world is full of possibility.  But the world is a desperately dark place, full of tragedy.  How could I find contentment and peace roaming the same trail that a 17 year old girl was murdered and buried on?  I don’t know that I ever will again.  It’s easy to simply forget and move on.  But there’s a verse in the Psalms that convicts me:  “They are enclosed in their own prosperity and have shut up their hearts to pity.”  I don’t want to be like that.

I’m still trying to figure it all out.  Is it fine to find peace and contentment in a world that houses so much darkness?  Or is it better to ever be reminded of tragedy and keep it hidden in the recesses of the mind?


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Cambodia Motorcycle Diary #3

February 3, 2010

A few friends and I took a backpacking trip into the furthermost reaches of the Cambodian jungle, on the borderlands of Vietnam.  It was odd to see that even in a place so removed as this, still the distinction between civilization and the natural world could be clearly seen.

Jungle meets Civilization

In the picture, a farmer has cleared a small plot of land away from the groping arms of the impenetrable jungle to grow rice for his family.  Our foot path led along the border of the jungle, with just enough room between the rice and trees to walk and make our way.  I was mesmerized by such a stark contrast, and also how it related to man — how each of us, in our own hearts, retains some of our natural, freeborn spirit, while on the whole, society is chipping it away piece by piece, creating for itself a subdued and productive model citizen.

Our journey through the Cambodian National Forest led us to some interesting encounters.  A French journalist was also there, making a documentary of the forest, and we being the only foreigners hiking through the forest at the time, were asked if he could document our experience and follow us along.  He was overjoyed to find us, having traveled all the way to the end of the road, as it were, and expecting to find many people to film, but finding no one.  Apparently he had been there for two days, filming the wildlife, when we finally came sauntering through.  By day, he went ahead of us as we walked through the unknown.  And by night, sitting around a small fire with a deck of playing cards, laughing and talking about life, he was content to slowly circle.  Reality TV at its finest, I’m sure.  I’ve tried dozens of times to find that documentary, but sadly, none of us ever thought to ask him what he was going to name it once it was finished.

But back to the farmer.  I was very intrigued by their method of building a life for themselves.  It seemed, as far as we could tell, that when a man came of age in their village, he would begin clearing for himself a section of the nearby jungle, and would build himself a small hut from the wood and begin to plant rice.  However much jungle he wished to clear would be his allotted portion, and he’d be able to farm it to his hearts content for the rest of his life.

Ratanakiri Farmer

This farmer lived in the middle of her field, her rice growing all around her.  A small hut a few hundred feet away was her son’s farm.  I’ve always had a fascination with American history, especially the pioneers who went out west and established farms wherever their feet happened to lead them.  In coming to this place in the forgotten jungles of Cambodia, I was mesmerized by the lifestyle that seemed so similar.  But soon, we were compelled to return.  Our trip lasted only a short week.

And though we have returned to normal civilization, I often recall fond memories of tromping around in the jungle.  Being there reminded me of something that’s been lost in the modern age.  For though civilization as a whole has made many advancements, it’s lost something as well — namely man’s struggle against the natural world, being limited only by how hard he’s willing to work, making a living by the sweat of his brow and the work of his hands.


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Cambodia Motorcycle Diary #2

June 23, 2009

I’ve come to love the feeling of being a foreigner, of traveling through a strange land where I don’t belong. It’s only in places like that when I finally come face to face with life’s most pressing questions. “What is life?” “Am I living it well, or am I living in resignation?”

We rode down the long dirt road for many kilometers. The terrain was mostly flat and brown, a stark opposite to six months ago, during the rainy season when the vegetation had laden the countryside with green. Occasionally we passed a house here and there, each suspended in mid air, built on four 6 by 6 inch beams of wood. It was hard to imagine the need for it now, when everything was brown and lifeless. What would it be like to be on this road six months from now, during a torrential downpour, passing houses hung in the air to keep themselves from being swept away. The thought gave me a shudder.

Soon, nighttime came. The first day had come to a close. We had traveled to one of the outer villages still associated with the capital city. The leader of our small pack asked one of the villagers if we could tie up hammocks on the large beams beneath his house. He agreed warmly, and even invited us to sit by his fire until sleep came to steal us away. We took showers at the town well, which was quite a sight. It was the only place for miles around where water could be found, and it was free and abundant for all, even us, who were just passing through.

Once night had fully descended, we sat around the fire and watched the night world come alive. We sat together around the fire and laughed and told stories. Again, the familiar questions of life began to fill me. When one lives and work in the same familiar places, life always seems to be just more of the same of what one has always known. For me, life was always just work, fun, friends, and the Lord. But then I went to a different place, one where the familiar was swept far away and the new was all that remained. It was then that I first seriously pondered the question, “What is life?” on a motorcycle in Cambodia, traveling to the jungle.

Why do I strive so hard after the things that the rest of the world doesn’t even seem to need? Why am I more content sitting around a simple fire and sleeping outdoors in a hammock, than I have ever been sitting on a comfortable couch watching TV? I felt immensely thankful, in those moments, just to be alive now, in a place like this. I thought of the words of many famous men. Of Thoreau who said “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as one, two, three and to a hundred or a thousand… We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.”

And I thought of the words of Jesus:

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you?”


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Cambodia Motorcycle Diary #1

June 16, 2009

It’s odd, the things a person learns about life while riding a motorcycle into the far reaches of the borderland jungles of Cambodia and Vietnam, backpacking into the wild. We had left in the stillness of the dawn, the capital city already alive and bustling, many of its citizens silently watching and wondering what a handful of foreigners were doing at such a time and place.  We were on our way to the northeastern corner of Cambodia, Ratanakiri, my mentor, his friend, and myself.  My mind was already conjuring a thousand images of what was out there — ancient ruins, mystic peoples, unexplained phenomena.

We pulled up to one of the sparsely placed stop lights in the city, next to a moto-taxi driver, not yet in possession of his first customer. The sun finally crept over the low-lying buildings. The light turned green. No one moved. The traffic from the other side continues their cautious flow through the intersection. For some reason that none can seemingly tell, in Cambodia, green means wait. The cars and motos on the other side continue to stream into the intersection through the red light. A few impatient motos on our side see their moment and burst forward. The rest of us linger. Slowly the stream of traffic on the other side dwindles, our side now ever creeping forward, until the deluge is allowed to release.

As I moved off at last, my two friends just ahead, the light on our side has already turned yellow. Heading down the end of the main road, and transitioning away from the traffic of the city, and into the quiet countryside, I remember feeling something for the first time that I would feel only a handful of times later. The feeling is difficult to describe. All I know, is that looking back, it was as though my mind changed from being a thinking thing to an observational thing – simple things never before noticed now pushing to the forefront of my mind. The wind in the trees, the distant clouds – each took an elevated importance that was never there before. The entire world seemed more alive, as though my role were only to watch that same powerful play, still in quiet narration since the dawn of time.

It’s fun to be in a place where the mind takes on that different role, of watching the world as though an observer, and not an active participant. It’s as though the entirety of life comes to a single point, my life seen from beginning to end. I feel strangely connected to the rest of men who had come before, who had spent the wages of their lives with freedom and resolve – who had done great things, lived courageously, loved fiercely. Will I do better?

I would have to wait and see.  For now, all I can do is continue on. The dark jungle in the northeast corner is over 500 kilometers away. It will take us almost two days to get there.  And as often proves true in life, the journey would turn out to be better than the destination.  Thanks for reading!


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