Richard W. Frank

Why Do You Laugh?

"Why do you laugh? There are many starving people in the world. Free cheese is nothing to laugh at."  

-Tibetan Jim

 

   My trip ended on a grey Thursday morning in Warsaw. I was losing myself in the twisted stone-flagged streets of the former Warsaw ghetto. Hunched old ladies in grey wool sweaters and mismatched head-kerchiefs stood in line to buy radishes and parsnip with small clots of dark earth clinging to the roots. I watched cars speed by to their myriad destinations hurrying to the future. What chaos this crossroads of Europe had seen over the centuries.

 

   Climbing to the 30th floor of the Palace Kulturi (often called the wedding cake) black and white photos line the custard walls that overlook the city. These pictures document the town in 1945 and 1961. Stan Roku snapped the endless brick rubble engulfing what was once the Stare Miasto at the end of WWII. Sixteen years later there was no indication that these buildings had not stood for decades. The Polish had painstakingly reconstructed the past to take back symbolically what had been taken from them. Although the Al. Jerozolimskich is now littered with Taco Bell, McDonalds, and stalls selling Levis and platform shoes, it is the lined faces of people who had lived through one of the most difficult of times that struck me. From the peasants in the jungles of SE Asia to the survivors of the Leningrad siege, the most amazing discovery I made traveling the globe was man's resilience and illogical hope in the future. Like Nero's Rome destruction creates the capability to reinvent the self.

 

   In Northern Cambodia I met an 18-year-old whip of a boy named Somnang with a shock of black hair shoved into an ill-fitting 49ers hat. He supported his extended family by guiding tourists around the temple complex of Angkor Wat. Business was poor because tourists were afraid to visit before the upcoming elections that promised unrest. The country had been kicked out of the UN after the recent bloody coup by Hun Sen who was extremely reluctant to relinquish power. The Khmer Rouge after the death of Pol Pot was almost dead but still kicking in the nearby jungles abutting the Thai border. One of man's most impressive monuments to immortality was almost deserted. The sandstone temples stood placidly against the rainstorms that slowly wash it back into the ground, the world's biggest sandcastle being slowly reclaimed by the ocean.

 

   The $5 a day that I paid him included scaring me half to death airborne on the motor cross circuits that pass for roads in this neglected country. On the very first day with Somnang on the 90-minute drive from the river boat to Siem Reap we witnessed a scooter manned with a teenage boy and two girls under five get creamed by an overloaded truck. The boy was able to rise but the two girls did not stir from the red dust. Somnang swore softly for awhile and finally heeded my bleats to slow down. Cambodia like many places has witnessed it's share of death. I will always remember the bits of clothing and bone peeking out of the ground in the bleached and barren fields of Choueng Ek. Up to 2 million out of 8 were slaughtered between 1975 and 1979. All in a twisted version of Marxism. As Paul Johnson wrote: "Reason might have more blood on it's hands that can ever be washed off."  And yet the locals sang karaoke and played and smiled as I passed by. Amazing.

 

   Somnang and the thousands of locals and travelers I had the pleasure of talking to on this little trip flashed in my mind as I wandered the chilly Polish streets. Every once in awhile I would chuckle to myself like the bums in Venice beach as I indulged myself in retrospection. I found myself at a cafe reading through my chaotic notebooks.

 

-Sitting on the roughly hewn porch of my bungalow on Ko Samet with the South China Sea reddening in the distance. I can hear the surf pound instead of hearing it. A mosquito whines in my ear telling me it is time to dress for the evening for Tossers Hour.

 

-Sweating my way to countless ruins, temples, local villages, and Buddhas under the punishing equatorial sun.

 

-Watching the world watch the World Cup. Ole! Allez! Alle!

 

-The dust of country roads getting stuck in between my toes and my sandals

 

-Learning that a Donald Duck impression transcends any language barrier and is an universal icebreaker. Making a fool out of oneself is easier away from people who will never let you live it down. Local firewater is also a painful way to endear oneself to the local honchos.

 

-A sunset, sunrise, meteor shower, or other natural phenomenon is always more memorable when shared.

-chewing betel nut is not a habit that I am in danger of falling into.

 

-The tedium of the gorgeous.

 

-A perfect moment momentarily slows down time's arrow.

 

-Racing a teenage Buddhist novice in brown robes and an oversized Canadian Mounties hat on old bicycles by the river in Hue.

 

-Coke and Celine Dion rule the world.

 

-Steam rising off Hoi An's hot concrete in a rain shower.

 

-Sublime Viet girls slowly cycling with flower hats, long silk gloves, pajamas, and a pink handkerchief to shield their faces from the sun.

 

-A 14-yr-old highlands girl in torn tan slacks carrying her 3-yr-old brother on her back staring at us with liquid dead black eyes.

 

-Acquiring the taste for karaoke.

 

-The simple bliss inherent in falling asleep under a mosquito net as geckos croak on my bungalow's thatched bamboo roof.

 

-Hiding in my hotel room in Phnom Penh with a pate baguette and warm water learning from French TV how to make N. African musical instruments with various household materials.

 

-The "welcome to Marlboro Country" billboard outside the empty, rundown Cambodian Int'l Airport.

 

-The deformed pickled babies in bottles at the American War Atrocities Museum  in Saigon.

 

-Taking photos with Vietnamese Dalat cowboys in the honeymoon getaway, Valley of Love.

 

-Massages, sunshine, dragon fruit during endless days on the beach in Nha Trang.

 

-The flying roach the size of a robin that flew in the open window of the Foreign Correspondent's Club, smacked into my nose, dropped to the ground, and scurried away. I did not know that roaches could fly!!

 

-Dog hot pot, banana pancakes, durian, Thai curries, Yunnan coffee, Claudia's brownies, Sichuan Chicken, and rice, rice, rice!!

 

-The futility of "No!"

 

-Getting caught in a 6am immigration raid at a seedy Hong Kong hostel in Tsimshatsui without my passport.

 

-"Locke accepted that inequalities of property were inevitable part of man's leaving a state of nature." Dealing with the inequalities first hand.

 

-Playing pool all night in old town Hanoi as the locals enjoyed the breezes blowing off Hoah Kiem lake.

 

-A curious girl on a North Vietnamese train stealing a hair off my head and defending her prize against the rest of the little laughing hyenas.

 

-Trying not to appear shocked at the dejected array of wildlife in cages while visiting the Qing Ping market in Guangzhou.

 

-Dressing up and trying to break the bank in Macau.    

 

 

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© Richard Frank 2007-2008. All rights reserved.

Back home in North Wales with Carwyn

Gareth clowning