When you last saw me, I was deep in the wilds of Cambodia, speeding through the ruins of the city of Angkor Thom on the back of a moped. I was clinging onto Visal, my driver.  I was pouring sweat and burning my calves on the tailpipe.  And every so often, we'd pass a trundle truck full of schoolkids celebrating the Khmer New Year, and they'd hollar at us and douse us with water from above.  Sunlight sprinkled the ground through the leaves of mighty jungle trees, splashing over the fallen stones of 1000-year-old temples, and I was happy.

It was a year and two days since the death of Pol Pot, who organized the slaughter of millions of Cambodians.  And it was the anniversary of Day Zero, when everyone was marched into the countryside to either start a life of tilling the soil, or begin fertilizing it with their bodies.

But let me tell you a little more about the truth.  The miseries of Cambodia are not over.  Pol Pot is dead, but two of his most important minions have been found.  One professes to have found Christ, that his conscience is clear.  The other is awaiting trial in a country whose justice system can't even successfully levy a parking fine.

True facts. Decades of war have scarred the land and the people.  Water balloons and picnicking at Angkor Wat won't erase it.  There are 8 to 10 million land mines still out there, waiting to kill.  Why would Cambodians commit suicide, render the land unarable and unlivable?  What's the use of gaining power over a land you've made useless?  Ah, but it's not just their doing.  There are also 500,000 tons--tons!--of unexploded American bombs lying around Cambodia.  Kids commonly mistake them for toys (resting on the ground as they are) and are annihilated as they play.  Meanwhile, next door in Laos, the figures are even higher--thanks again to America, within the last generation Laos was the most bombed country in the history of the world.  (Today, it's crawling with backpackers who go for the peace, the beer, and the ridiculously deflated currency.  Strange, as they kick back with banana pancakes by the lazy rivers, they never notice there are no birds or animals stirring in the forests.  When we were starving them, the Lao people ate them all.)

True facts. Three years ago, 1 in about 250 living Cambodians was injured in some way by a land mine.  Now, the figure is more like 1 in 236. Rebels still scour the forests, and until recently, tourists ferryboats on the Tonle Sap were routinely sprayed with AK-47 fire as they passed.  The remaining KR soldiers have even been accused of re-mining land that's been de-mined.  Meanwhile, some Cambodians still run raids on eastern villages settled by Vietnamese.  Entire families are slaughtered in the countryside, even now, today, after all the misery the country has gone through. A quarter of Cambodia was killed off in just a few years--what lesson could be harsher than that?  Why repeat the killing?  If people refuse to be taught by that, they will never learn anything and mankind is indeed in grave danger.

This is not a country where the sun doesn't shine.  The rain comes down and makes the ink in your journal run, just like at home.  Mopeds snarl, food gets cold when it sits out too long. The leaves in the trees whisper the same sounds in the breezes.  This is a place, in every physical reality, that's just like home.  And yet every nightmare has come true there.

There's some truth for ya!

=====

Let's relax a little.  Cambodia's as bad as it'll get from now on.  From now on, it's back to Thailand, on to Malaysia, then to Singapore.  I'll lead you through what I saw.

Speaking of atrocities, when I arrived in Bangkok, Joey McIntyre had the number one album.  His plucked-eyebrow Boston Irish mug is everywhere. Like Ricky Martin's he's forever taking off his shoes and socks for publicity photographs.  I didn't buy that album--there are limits to blending in, even in Rome--but I did take advantage of the insanely low prices to buy the tapes of the aforementioned Mr. Martin (100 baht, or about US$3) and the Barenaked Ladies ($2.50). I also visited several of the many bootleg stalls to finally sample "Ray of Light" by Madonna. $1.25.  Almost worth every penny.

Also bought Michael Learns to Rock.  Who, you say?  You don't know MLTR?  Honestly, there is no other album in the entire world you'll hear more!  And I'm not joking.  Bob Marley rules the roost at the hostels (no more "Buffalo Solider," pul-leeeze!), but on every radio, at every cafe, in every bowling alley from Mr. Abu to Port Elizabeth, Kathmandu to Kuala Lumpur, Michael Learns to Rock is unspooling on the tape deck.  I know the album by heart--I knew it by the time I left Cape Town--and I didn't even own it yet. Their greatest hits CD is like the theme song for this entire trip. They're Danish, and we all know how those Danes can ROCK. Think Peter Cetera without the soul. And don't go rushing out to find them in your local mall. You'll need a passport out of Musicland--they're not available in North America.  Like the off-white majesty of the Taj Mahal or the aromas of the morning wet market, they're one of those pleasures you only begin to understand and enjoy once you travel.

True fact.  You may think traveling is hard.  You might suspect the language barrier to be a problem.  Let me say this for what it's worth, which is everything: I have yet to be on a flight where English wasn't spoken.  Not a single one.  Even within the borders of Cambodia.  And on the ground, there has never, never been a time where I was at a loss.  There's usually an English-speaker (or at least a skilled mime) nearby.  Even in Thailand--never an English colony--fully half the signs are written in both Thai and English.  So if that's what's been keeping you from taking the trip of your dreams, stop worrying and go. English is the language of the world.  Good luck finding someplace they DON'T speak it. (Except, as my friend Sheila points out, France, where they speak it well but pretend not to just to annoy you.)

After a final day in Bangkok--shopping for MLTR and the like--I went to the train station for the night train for Surat Thani, down the peninsula.  While I was waiting to board, I had a Consumer Binge.  I've discovered they can happen quite a lot in Southeast Asia.  You're hot, you're tired of living out of a backpack and haggling with people who don't understand your language. You still disapprove of America, and you're still glad to be here, but you just break apart when you see that Dairy Queen.  I had an Oreo Blizzard right there in Hulamphong Station.  And a fountain Coke--the kind with those yummy mushy ice chips--from the Dunkin' Donuts. And I was just biting into my hot dog when everyone in the station--every last living creature down to the stray cats--stopped in place.  Just halted, like they were all being wound by the Great Watchmaker.  And in the distance you could hear the strains of the Thai national anthem.  Once it ended, the tumult resumed with the exact pitch and fervor at which it had halted.  A funny thing, this nationalism.  And, when you take a step back and see a city halt to listen to a tinny loudspeaker tune, it's downright creepy.

Did you know the actual name of Bangkok is over 100 letters long, and means "City of Angels"?

Did you know there's a shrine there to the Goddess Tuptim that's nothing but giant phalluses?  Piles of 'em, large and small and of every shade, standing upright and at attention.  Of course I had to go.  I think I got some good Christmas card photos.

Overnight, the train made a tight squeeze between the border of Myanmar and the South China Sea.  A trainboard colony of ants--I knew ants were adaptable but had no idea they could do that--also ravaged my packet of snack seaweed, which I bought at the 7-11.

There is no greater marriage of climate and consumerism than the Slurpee, which the peninsula has in abundance.  First, it's icy, so it replaces much-needed fluid.  Then, it's sugary, which is good since I've found my energy flagging much faster now that it's more humid than inside the Devil's underpants. Lastly, it comes in fruity flavors.

From Surat Thani, it was a 3-hour coach to Krabi, on the west coast, surrounded by magnificent limestone upcroppings--like moles on the flat fair face of earth. And from there, a 90-minute ferry to Ko Lanta, island paradise in the Andaman Sea. There I rented a wooden bungalow on the beach, where I planned to do nothing but read, eat, swim, relax, and plan the direction and purpose of my entire future.

That's another topic.

The first day it was fine, if hotter than sin.  Then the rain came in.  Big angry bruisey clouds. They're begin to blow wind at us and the staff would leave off making me banana milkshakes and coconut juice and scurry to take in all the tables.  People would show up from other guest houses saying they old places were closing early for the season.  Then it would rain and I would sit with a few British and Canadian types while they told me about things that had happened to them when they were drunk.  There were a lot of stories, but not very good ones, because, as many British stories do, they often included a crucial segment during which the protagonist blacked out.  I finished "Angela's Ashes," then Vonnegut's "Mother Night."  I'd just traded for a copy of "Cold Mountain" with a bald San Franciscan and his hairy-armpit girlfriend when I decided it was time to go somewhere else.  Somewhere I liked.  Somewhere where the monsoon wasn't starting early.

The day after the rain began, the talk around the table was that Leonardo DiCaprio, who was shooting "The Beach" about 5 miles away, had been caught in the same storm that spoiled my banana shake break.  His boat had started to sink.  Leo was fine, though (whew!). I guess I wasn't the only one caught unawares by the advance of the seasonal monsoon.  (And around the same time, Jodie Foster screwed up her ankle on ANOTHER island, Penang, in Malaysia south of Ko Lanta.  Jodie's all right, too, so we can all breathe easier.  But I guess it'd be wise to stay away from the western peninsula if you're a famous star.)

Weirdly, just across the thin peninsula, it was still warm and dry. And Thailand just wasn't doing it for me?

A Kiwi friend and I later discussed why Thailand was dull for us.  It was because we have been other places.  He said that Thailand's not a traveler's place.  It's a vacation place.  You can tell by the type of travelers who go.  They're amazed by eating food at stalls, by toilets with no seat, by the idea you can't drink the water.  Often, it's the first place they've ever gone, so being somewhere foreign makes Thailand exciting--something it rarely is by its own devices.

The night before leaving, I woke up at 3:45 in the morning.  Three rats were rifling through my stuff.  Few things are realer than a rat. I shooed them away, but one retreated under my bed, the other two back into the rain, and I penned myself under my mozzie net.  Sighing.  Geez, I thought.  The things I tolerate when I travel. And I quickly fell back asleep.

I can sleep with rats.  If you look at it my way, that's a healthy thing to be able to do.

So I went to Malaysia.  Crossed the border and already things were better. And I heard the call to prayer--how I miss that!

But it's like no Muslim country I'd ever been to before.  A man was waiting for someone at the border, and was holding a big fat happy baby named Amy.

"Have you ever been to a Muslim country before?" he asked me.

"Yes," I said, eager not to seem like a judgmental American. "Morocco. Egypt, Jordan. The West Bank, Turkey. I lived in Cape Town for a while, where there are lots of Malays. And Bangladesh."

"Well, it's nothing like those countries," he said. "Wait and see."

What he meant was that in those places, the Muslims can be nationalistic, or have trouble with people who are different. He was ashamed of those other Muslims. In Malaysia, there are many types--Chinese, Muslim, Christian--living together in prosperity and peace.  There are ladies running around with covered heads and ATMs too. In many ways, Malaysia doesn't have a strong identity because, like South Africa and India, it's many things at once.  What comes off is a place a lot like home, with middle-class appearances and values, but populated with people wearing cloth on their heads.

I stayed the night in Kota Bharu, on the upper east coast, and the next day took the ferry to the Pulau Perhentian Kecil, or "Small" Island.

This was undoubtedly the best island I've seen yet.  Mauritius had the stars, but Kecil was better beauty in a petite package.  Imagine a long white beach, sand as fine as sugar, shaped like a deep crescent. It's surrounded by jungle hills, rich with deep green palm trees and coconuts, filled with monkeys and 3-foot monitor lizards. Now fill the ocean, warm as your bed in June, filled with bright blue water and shallow as far as you care to wade into the South China Sea.  Ring the whole area with coral reefs abloom with sea cucumbers, blue brainy coral, clownfish, sea turtles, red spindly coral forests, teeming schools of luminescent greens and blues and yellows. The sun bronzes your back as you snorkel over these submerged worlds.  You get out, play a little volleyball, have a banana shake piled high in the glass, maybe nap in your beachfront bungalow.  For dinner, it's barracuda with garlic butter and vegetables on a table set right next to the waves.

I spent three days there.  Me and Jeremy (a journalist from Gisborne, NZ, the easternmost city in the world, time-wise), and a German girl whose name I never fully comprehended after three days, hiked through the forest to the other side of the island and snorkeled there.  When we got hot, we'd sit under a tree or on the patio of the Moonlite Lodge, where I'd hold up a copy of Time magazine and proclaim it the biggest wad of jingoistic hooey I've ever had the misfortune to read, which it is.  Every time I got all huffy about some propagandist pap--which was often--he'd get my goat by telling me Time magazine is typically American--which is true.

Then down the peninsula on the so-called Jungle Train.  Malaysia is home to the world's oldest rainforest, now preserved (if just) as the Taman Negara National Park. You take a boat ride into the park--69 km--up a lazy dark river plied with longboats.  Nearly three hours upstream, you arrive at a little village that has hostels and four floating restaurants serving identical dishes.

Nepal was the same--every place offers the same dish!  How does this happen?  It has nothing to do with the stars and even less with tradition; when a place becomes a tourist attraction, the Tourist Authority comes in and teaches the natives how to please tourists, and what to cook for them.  Voila--what was once an original experience for tourist and host alike becomes fried rice, momos, and iced coffee.  It's the way of the world--even in Laos.

In said jungle village, redesigned to offer Westerners a semblance of an idea of a shadow of comfort, I met up with Ashley (Winnipeg), Corian (Holland), Jurgen (Frankfurt), and Cheryl (Christchurch), and we trooped around the wilds together.

It's very scary to be deep in the woods.  Very disorienting to be in a place untamed by machete or bulldozer.  You wouldn't believe the trees!  Thicker than semi rigs and up and up and up they went.  Vines worthy of a Hollywood set twisting stiffly across the trails.  Roots punching into the ground, snaking hundreds of feet to the riverbanks.  All around you there's life, but there's also utter stillness.  The life is either on very small scale--little bugs that investigate your delicate orifices--or so large and wooden that motion is measured in weeks, not seconds.

And heat.  No breeze.  Astounding humidity.  Within minutes, I was as wet as if I'd jumped into the river. I went through a lotta Slurpees in the rainforest.

There are some tigers in Taman Negara. There are only about 600 left in Malaysia, but they were out there. And other dangerous creatures, like elephants.  But not many.  We climbed into the trees and walked along the 50-odd-meter-tall Canopy Walkway (or, as the rangers express it on the signs, the Canoopy Walkway).  The walkway's one of those jiggly, bouncy bridges that links tree to tree.  You bounce wildly over a distant ground.  It was fun, but less fun when we got down and realized we had been walking on something essentially made of painter's ladders and rope.  The next day, we walked more than 4 miles into it to a remote waterfall (for a swim) and besides the tail end of a fleeing black mamba the size of a gas hose, encountered not much at all.

Except leeches.

Stupid comment of the day came from me. "Oh, look, Jurgen!" I called. "Check out this funny little worm!"  It was standing straight up on one end, sniffing at the air, and when it caught wind of something, it hustled, nose-to-ground like an inchworm, to get to it.  "Wow!" I said.

Twenty minutes later, I looked inside my socks and found seven of them.  They were fat as grapes by then.

After that, we kept staring at the ground like it was the enemy.  Everywhere we stepped, tiny forests of the little bastards nosed up into the air and starting booking it for our legs. It was like something out of a science fiction film; what an amazing, repulsive creature!  Running, blood-sucking worms!  I had no idea--I'd only seen them in movies and thought they only appeared directly in your underpants when you went down to the swimmin' hole in the good ol' summertime with childhood buddies.

Jurgen had cigarettes and kept burning them off, but after they were gone, the blood came pouring from the holes they left.  And later, our feet were covered with leech hickeys.

The next day, Cheryl and I got revenge.  We stomped through the forest with a bag of salt calling, "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"  This time, our shoes were laced with repellent and when they tried to board us, the little parasites really got it.  I hope they tell their little leech friends.

We also hired moto canoes to whisk us down the rivers, which were canopied with trees. I can't tell you how beautiful it all was; I just can't.  Trees, hundreds of years old, bending over the river.  Green roof above, clear water below, wind in our faces.  That'll have to do.

On to Kuala Lumpur.  KL, as it's known, is famous now for being the home of the tallest towers in the world, the Petronas Towers, or KLCC, for KL City Centre.  They're handsome things.  Tall corncobs of stainless steel.  The day I arrived, the movie "Entrapment," with Sean Connery and that babe Catherine Zeta-Jones, opened in KL and America. The second half is set inside the towers, and it was filmed in KL and in Malaca.  It's a crap movie, but it was a real thrill to see it in KL, with a home crowd cheering on the heroes as Sean and Catherine scaled the proudest monument in town.  Sean Connery is 68, she's 29.  You can laugh now.  Or wait until you see his rug.

You can't go onto the observation deck of the KLCC because they don't have one, but you can go into the KL Menara, or Tower, which is like the Space Needle.  It's the fourth-tallest in the world.  When you get up there, you can also see the World's Tallest McDonald's, which is a total crock because they only sell drinks, and anyway 470 meters isn't that tall, sea-level wise.  But there is a fiberglass Ronald so I guess it must be true or they wouldn't have gone to all that trouble.

They're gonna take away my Cynic's Club Card, but every now and then I'd see the Malaysian flag and get a little pang. That's because it looks so much like America's flag, with the red and white stripes and the blue field.  I think I read once they put the flags on as a nod to the U.S. as its role model.  The blue field as a crescent and a star--the crescent is a symbol of Islam and the star was added by referendum in 1954 to express national appreciation for Humphrey Bogart, who was a star then.

KL's good for mall-going.  The streets are tree-lined and pleasant (think of a well-designed Wilshire Boulevard), but the city is a triumph of modern corporate design.  It's not intended to be walked; you must have a car and you must have plastic.  It's also hot.  Remember--I'm getting closer and closer to the equator.  There are also markets full of pirated DVDs.  Did you know the Hong Kong film industry is about to go under because of pirated DVDs?  You can buy anything--"The Matrix" is the big seller right now. For US$1.

I shopped and bought nothing.  I went to good movies (wonderful "Rushmore," finally "Life is Beautiful" subtitled in my alphabet).  I went to one of those sushi places where you pick what you want off the conveyor belt in front of you.  I love it when the machines feed me.

At the Central Market, I also had a consultation with The Mouth of Truth. It's near Hameed's Famous Fish-Head Curry.  Made of plastic, it's big Italianate head.  And if you put a ringgit in the slot and put your hand it its mouth, it will give you your fortune.  Apparently it's modeled on something Audrey Hepburn did, which I don't see the point of, because she died.  Anyway, you put your hand in and it beeps at you.  Then it tells you to get your hand out of its mouth.

But if you're not careful, you forget to push the English-language button and it talks in Malay, which you don't understand because it sounds like a tongue where people speak backwards.  Then you don't find out what your fortune is because you can't understand it.  But still, I think the Malaysians must be quite technologically advanced people if they can build the world's tallest towers and they also provide oracles that only cost a ringgit.

I've developed a bad habit of embarrassing Asians.  I don't do it on purpose.  I just forget that they hate being shown up.  It's all about "losing face."  They HATE looking foolish; it's sick and vainglorious but it's true.  Me, I was born foolish. I was at a payphone in KL, which didn't work apparently because I was over six feet tall, and a guy came up next to me.  He was about to insert his cardphone into his own phone when I asked him how to get the operator.  He stammered that he didn't know, and the admission so shamed and humbled him he left--WITHOUT MAKING HIS CALL. He just fled--vanished.  Found another phone where he could dial and weep in private.  I hope he doesn't commit suicide because of me. A few days later, I forgot and did it again!  This time I approached a sweet-talking couple, but when I asked them their faces grew stony, they averted their eyes, and told me they didn't know, either.  It seemed clear from their body language that their relationship was now over and I was to blame.

On a bus showing a movie by legendary Malay director P. Ramlee (think along the lines of your grampa's clumsy, zoom-addicted shots of the 1963 Shriner's convention in Detroit), I proceeded by bus to Malaca, where St. Frances Xavier was buried for 70 years, before they moved most of him to India where that lady bit off his corpse's toe.  His old crypt is now a ruin (blame the English again) but it's on a pretty hill that overlooks the pretty brick Portuguese things the Malaysians haven't gotten around to demolishing yet for their condos.

Malaca is also very hot because they built everything from molten stones to punish the Western tourists they knew would be coming one day.  My hostel was in a rickety old house.  In Malaysian houses, you have to remove your shoes before entering.  It's a custom. I kept forgetting. I lay sweltering on my dorm bed (if you want air it's extra), listening to backpacking Britchicks whine about the bat they say got loose in the room last night, and I thanked God in heaven that my days in this abysmal humid heat and undignifed living standard were ending.  I was going to Singapore.

Singapore is Pleasantville.  Everything is modelled on maximum comfort, expense, and aesthetic value.  Every resident gets his very own shopping mall at 16, and each family shares a KFC.  And it's clean.  Chewing gum is illegal, so they say, and many elevators in town are equipped with urine sensors so if you take a leak (or have an accident), the doors won't open until you're delivered to the authorities. Jaywalkers are taken to Raffles Place and shot as a warning to every upstanding citizen.  At the border, I was asked to remove my South African bush hat. I don't actually think they're actually illegal.  I just think the Singaporeans are very fashion conscious people.

They are not past conscious.  Everything old is buried, pulled down, or turned into a tourist museum with talking animatronic characters, gift shop, and cafeteria.  Gleaming glass towers rise everywhere without regard to proportion or the reality of pedestrian traffic--it's so developed and planned and unnaturally gone over with landscapers that you get the grim impression you're not on Earth anymore. Even the buses scoot along politely and on time, and require exact change thank you.

My consumerist hunger is finally being quenched.  I can drink tap water for the first time since Cape Town!  Ice is available and safe!  I was runinted with my travel buddy the ATM.  And A/C is finally mine, although at a price.  My hotel room is S$35--at 1.7 per USD--and for that I get a few inquisitive roaches and some mysterious white dripping stalactites in my bathroom.  They give you bread and an egg in the morning; as I accept them, I feel like I've done something to offend them.

I ride the MRT, the tube system so clean you can eat off the floors, though of course that would be punishable by law. I think they actually pump the MRT with air freshener, because everything has a fresh lemony scent.  Either that or it's the people.  I finally saw "The Matrix" (what better place than in a machine-dominated futurama like Singapore?) and had a home-cooked meal, made by a real live Filipino servant. That was with my mom's friend, who's here on vacation at her sister's flabbergastingly plush house high above Orchard Road. Private lift and the whole deal.

Julie (that's her name) is the first person who I know to cross my path in months and months and months.  Since Britain. It's really great to see someone who knows me, who can tell me how I look, and who can fill me in on how insane things are getting with my lunatic family.  We talked and talked at Borders over caffe late (!!!) last night.  It felt like a night at home in NYC.

Today I went to Chinatown, as colorful and scrubbed as the cutest yuppieville in East Coast America. Then I had lunch in the CBD.  At noon, the lobby doors of the skyscrapers yawned wide and out poured batches of giggling Singaporean girls, all black shining hair and smiles.  They gathered at a large food court pavilion with their noodles and their soups.  In the center was a DJ with an '80s thing, spinning George Michael and Laura Brannigan and Men at Work.  People talked on their cell phones, carefully dabbed at their expensive designer clothes, thanked their lucky gods for being born into the most sinless city in the world.

So that's it.  Asia Lite.  I'm as far away I can get from home now without swimming.  I'm nudging the equator again.  And I'm back into the consumerist world.  If you believe the Mouth of Truth, my luck drive is high, and so is love, so there's enough energy in me to finish this trip yet.

So what AM I going to do with my future?  Do I keep traveling or do I stop?  Do I go back to NYC or not?  What AM I going to do for an encore?  True fact: Don't know yet.

And by the way, I've now been out for one year and one week. Pol Pot took off when I did.

The Mouth of Truth has spoken. Be it so.

Love, Jase

Right now I'm in: Singapore
Day: 347  Countries: 30