Diana At the Crossroad: Turn Right at the Banyon Tree

Last weekend, I had quite the adventure. I went to the one place in my entire province that the Cambodian Ministry of Tourism says is worth visiting- Ba Phnom. My province, Prey Veng is kind of like the arm pit of Cambodia. I’ve noticed that Peace Corps volunteers like to compete with the places they live. The people who live in awesome places brag about it. “My site is the best because I have ice cream, shakes, a roller skating rink, the beach, cheese, a mountain, etc.” Volunteers who don’t have obvious exciting things like that still compete, but the other way around. “My site is the worst, or the most hard core. I have a dirt road. No one speaks English. Etc” When I am involved in these conversations, I like to listen to why people think their sites are so small and forgotten. Then I remind them that I live in Prey Veng Province.

Prey Veng is the only province that the Lonely Planet just flat out says “There is nothing to see in Prey Veng. Just go straight on through to Phnom Penh.”

The first year or two, Peace Corps put a few volunteers in Prey Veng province. Every single one of them ETed (Early Terminated). So Peace Corps stopped putting volunteers there until this year. No one has ETed, but with only 4 volunteers, we are still the smallest province.

Now don’t get the wrong idea. I LOVE my province and I love my site, and even if I was given the opportunity to change sites, I wouldn’t.

So anyway, I had been wanting to see Ba Phnom for a while now. I knew very little about it, other than there was a mountain, some sort of special pagoda, and some ruins that are 500 years older than Angkor Wat. So when my friend who is stationed in Prey Veng town told me she was venturing out there, I invited myself to come!

Friday night, I stayed at her place in the town, to save me from biking an unnecessary 15k in the same day, in addition to getting to Ba Phnom and back. After we ate, we went to her friend’s house (an adorable old Khmer man with amazing stories and impeccable English). He was the one who gave my friend, Taylor, directions to get to Ba Phnom. She said “Wait a minute, I want to see if I can get more specific directions than ‘turn right at the banyon tree.’” I laughed. Then when we went in, she asked her friend “what does a banyon tree actually look like?” I said “wow, you’re serious? I thought you were kidding about turning right at the banyon tree!” But no, it was our only instruction. There were 2 banyon trees we had to look out for. After all, who needs street signs when you have banyon trees?

The next morning, we bought surgical masks (a fashion statement most Cambodians make to keep the dust out of their lungs) and we were on the road by 7AM. We weren’t even on the road a mile when I realized something was very wrong. Taylor was ZOOMING down the road with very little effort, and I was exhausted and sweating through my shirt already. For every rotation that she did on her bike, I did 2, and I was STILL slower than her. Well, I learned just how big a difference having a MOUNTAIN BIKE makes. My bike and I have gotten along pretty well up until this point. It’s a cute city bike with a bell and a basket. But watching Taylor zoom ahead while I pant about a half a kilo behind, I realized what I was missing. She had to keep stopping to let me catch up. It was kind of embarrassing actually…

We biked the 30k in about 2 hours and 15 minutes. When we arrived, we were filthy and exhausted. I was sweating EVERYWHERE. My butt had a giant sweat stain, which was really cute. We successfully found the banyon trees, and didn’t even get lost once.

Taylor’s old Khmer friend lives in Ba Phnom, so we went to his house, where we downed a water bottle each, some sugar cane juice, and 2 bags of crackers. Then the old man said “alright, back on your bikes. We’re gonna tour around the mountain, about 12k." Taylor and I had a laughing fit. We needed to break for a while.

After my butt finally dried, we first went to the ancient ruins. History says that the first big civilization in Cambodia used to be in Prey Veng. Now all that remains is a very small structure. There used to be more, but the Khmer Rouge destroyed a lot during the 70s.

Then we went to the mountain and started climbing. It’s not ‘climbing’ as you might think. There were staircases. But the staircases were so… weird. The higher you got, the steeper the stairs were. Atop the stairs was a very beautiful and elaborate wat. We ran into a Khmer family in the Wat and started talking to them in Khmer. Then the woman says to us in near perfect English “Where are you from, America? Because we live in America now.” Oh- it’s a Kkhmer American family. We should have known, judging by the fact that one son had a laptop, another had an ipad, and the youngest daughter was downloading youtube videos onto her iphone. Well, it actually turns out that this is the family that paid for the Pagoda to be built on the mountain- a whopping 2 million dollars! I’m not going to get too into it right now, but from talking to her we were able to deduce that there are fishy things going on with this is family that is making them so successful.

The most awkward part about meeting this family was this one man who asked the most ridiculous questions, in nearly incomprehensible English. His first question was something to the effect of “Why is it that some countries like America are allowed to make bombs, but other countries aren’t?” His second question was basically “Why does the Arab world hate Americans so much?” We did not respond to either of these questions.

Through the entire dialogue, Taylor and I were eying the plate of sandwiches sitting on the table. They looked like beautiful roast beef sandwiches. I haven’t had a sandwich like that in 6 months. I WANT!

The family invited us to stay and eat… jackfruit with them. Taylor leaned into me and said “her lips are saying jackfruit, but all I keep hearing is sandwich”

We told them we would come back and join them. But we didn’t. No thank you. We also learned that Khmer people in the area are not all that thrilled about having this new pagoda. They miss the thick, cool forrest that used to cover the mountain. I don't blame them! I would too!

We had lunch at a little Khmer restaurant. Then toured around Ba Phnom a bit more. We went to a bunch of Pagodas that are special for different reasons. Not gonna lie, I don’t really remember those reasons.

We also went to the killing fields. I have already been to killing fields in Takeo and Battambang provinces, so I was curious to see what Prey Veng did in their location, and it was exactly what I was afraid of. Takeo and Battambang had memorials built, and a safe place for peoples’ remains to RIP. In Prey Vang, there was literally a tiny bucket filled with mismatched human bones. Taylor's friend said there used to be more bones, but he guessed dogs took them. There was no indication to locations of where things happened 40 years ago. The old man said 40 years ago, this place was filled with huge trees. Now there was only one left for people to see. Khmer Rouge soldiers would kill people by slamming them against the trees, and then throwing them into a pit, so as to not waste bullets or get their weapons dirty.

And that was our day in Ba Phnom. We were back on the road around 2:30. We made it back to Prey Veng town in a record 2 hours (again, with me panting behind Taylor). We stopped for more sugar cane juice, and then I rode the last 15k home.

All together, I rode my bike more than 75k on Saturday, which is about 50 miles. But I now say, it’s not the distance that is impressive, but pathetic bike that I managed to do it on.

I have been enjoying telling Khmer people that I rode my bike to Ba Phnom. They either tell me they think I am a liar, or they look at me like I’m crazy.

I have much more to update you all on, but I’ve been so busy and haven’t had much time to blog. So I’ll try to get in another blog post a little later this week.

I splurged with pictures this time! enjoy!