Five weeks in the Land of the Free - oh, and Canada, too

Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms can be eaten in bars?

I was told there would be panic attacks —in cereal aisles, at crosswalks when cars actually stop for pedestrians, at the cost of everyday goods.

Many Peace Corps Volunteers experience such attacks upon their return to the United States.

Still, I thought, surely such mental havoc couldn’t disrupt the life of super-adaptable me.

After all, I grew up in the U.S., and had only been away two years. Sure, with its swampy heat, garbage-littered dirt roads and sluggish pace, Cambodia, the country I had been away in, is worlds apart from the United States, and even Canada, where my parents and sister live. But, come on, it had only been two years.

I’m proud to report that my super-adaptiveness won out and the panic attacks never came. But turns out my adpativeness may not be as super as I thought.

I did experience a fair dosage of shock during my five-week stay in the land of plenty. As predicted, this shock came in cereal aisles, at crosswalks, and at the cost of everyday goods.

This shock typically exited my mouth in this sentence: “There are so many things!” And a moment later, “These things are so expensive!”

Things like drinking fountains! And showers! And hot water! And washing machines and dryers! And city buses and subways and streetcars!

And so many types of entertainment! Movie theaters that play 3-D movies in actual 3-D, concerts where I can understand what the singer is singing, acrobatics and ice shows, men shooting out of cannonballs, swamp boat races!

And the food! Genuine Mexican, wholesome wheat bread, peaches, plums and berries! Deep-fried pickles, candy bars and soda pop! Dutch babies and beaver tails and restaurants that serve only raw food!

At times the land of plenty was too much. Like the time my dad abandoned me in a convenience store because I was taking too long to decide between the five varieties of Whoppers malted milk balls.

And the constant times when I asked friends and family if the prices at restaurants and stores were normal. Any meal over $5 seemed extravagant compared to Cambodia’s meals of $1 or less.

Fortunately, I had five weeks to readjust to Washington (state, not D.C.!) and Toronto’s vast assortment of things and the vast prices of these things.

Below are some high (and low) lights of my trip home to Toronto, Wenatchee, Lake Chelan, Seattle and Toronto again.

Cambodia to Toronto – a mere 30-hour trip!

It all starts with a flight: Phnom Penh to Taipei. Five hours. Then another flight: Taiwan to San Francisco. Twelve hours. By this time I am having so much fun I just have to get on another plane for one final flight: San Francisco to Toronto. Another five hours. After 22 hours of flying (30 hours including layovers), I finally arrive in Toronto around dawn.

My flights are filled with movies: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (in preparation for Part 2 on the big screen in Seattle), Lincoln Lawyer, Blood Diamond.

Taipei airport is a good segue into the developed world.

I take my first drink from a drinking fountain in two years. “Please feel safe to drink,” reads a sign above the fountain. 

Fabulous. I then roam the airport, gobbling samples of teacakes and visiting nearby gates, each decorated like a highly specified museum. Among the exhibits: bicycles, books and the country’s postal service.

The Taipei to San Francisco flight has tasty food, but I’m still hungry when I arrive in San Francisco.

Only three restaurants are nearby, and they are expensive! Sandwiches for $8? Is this normal?

Worth $10?

I swallow my thriftiness and shell out $15 for tea and ramen soup at a Japanese place.  

Dawn in Toronto is early afternoon in Cambodia, but I’m still pooped.

Week one: Toronto

My parents abandoned the United States for Toronto several years ago. My sister followed. That makes my home base Toronto. But I’m not Canadian!

Me and Archana on Toronto Island.

I spend my first week back in North America partying with my sister, shopping with my mom and roaming the city with Archana, my Seattle-turned-Boston friend. 

Toward the end of her visit, Archana and I try Rawlicious, a restaurant that serves only uncooked food. Carrot sticks and dill dip it’s not. Rather, the menu boasts a variety of dishes, including pasta bolognese, pizza, pad thai, a taco wrap and lots of shakes and juices.

We order tropical pizza and zucchini pasta with a medley of vegetables and neatballs.

Neatballs are meatless meatballs. I ask our server if we can get awesome balls instead. She doesn’t laugh.

Psst... we're not really noodles.

How can pasta be raw without being crunchy and gross? Well, with Rawlicious’ zucchini pasta, the pasta is the zucchini — curled in a spiralizer.

The pasta isn’t the only part of the dish that’s deceiving. The “medley of vegetables” is in fact two fingernail-size broccoli florets and maybe six slivers of sundried tomatoes. Each of the three neatballs is half the size of a golfball. The whole meal is served in a dish much too small for its $14 pricetag.

Like pasta, you’d think pizza couldn’t be done raw. Oh, but it can. Try making the dough out of buckwheat, the cheese out of cashews and the mangos and pineapples out of, well, mangos and pineapples. The buckwheat foundation is so weak that the slices crumble when we try to pick them up. The slices, I should mention, are only two baby pieces. For $11!  

The food is edible, but a little flavorless.

When our server asks how the food is, we feed her the standard reply: “Good.”

When the server leaves, Archana scribbles an amendment to that statement: “Good, but can you cook it more?”

Weeks Two and Three: Seattle, Wenatchee and Lake Chelan

My mom and dad and I fly to Seattle. But not together. Each of us is on a different flight. I meet my mom at the Seattle airport and we spend the day in the big city waiting for my dad to arrive on his later flight.

Waiting includes shopping and, when I get tired of shopping, the final Harry Potter. My mom never gets tired of shopping.

That night my dad drives the three of us to our cabin on Lake Chelan.

Me and Grandma Merle.

The two weeks are filled with family: Grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins.

Swimming, darts, badminton and eating.

In my three years absence Chelan has lost stores and sprouted new ones. Gone are a couple boutiques and eateries and “The Music Store,” a decaying hippie room with beads, guitars, records and CDs, run by a ratty guy with straggly hair and funky teeth.

New is yet another wine shop (apparently Chelan is now a hot wine destination), boutiques (including one where you can rent electric bikes), a bookshop and a clothes store where everything costs $12.99.

The lake has also lost and gained. Lost are much of the big speedboats. Gained are fleets of canoes and paddleboards.

I'm Wenatchee!

I spend a weekend in Wenatchee with my Aunt Patty and Uncle Steve. They are super-active, and every day is a triathlon.

The first day we go on a hike, eat dinner at a Latin restaurant and go to a concert at a winery.

The second day is almost a marathon. We hit the farmers’ market, go for a bike ride, watch Swamp Boat races, go swimming at my grandma’s condo and eat sushi.

The final day is breakfast with my grandma at the Country Club.

Got all that? If you’re like the recent me, you don’t get Swamp Boat races.

Just some boatin' in the swamp.

I’ll explain. Start with a field. Dig circular canals. Fill the canals with water. Put a teeny, brightly painted motorboat in. Put a driver and navigator in the boat and tell them to race around the canals as fast as they can without flipping out of the water onto the grassy perimeter or circular interior islands.  

That last part’s not so easy. The boats scream round the serpentine curves at up to 80 miles an hour. The course takes about a minute. "It's like racing with your hair on fire!” claim Jim Deford and Jeff Schlagel in an article about the sport.

We arrive for the last two hours — the finals. Tickets are $20, whole day or no. Our money and IDs get us American flags stamped on the inside of our wrists and access to the beer garden, which is a set of shaded metal bleachers.

Do we look like goats?

Patty refers to the audience members as a “cross-section” of Wenatchee. This means young guys with grizzled mountain goat goatees and women the color of Chinese barbecued pork.

The white-haired Wenatchee native next to us is keeping times on a scorecard. He’s been to all three of the city’s swamp boat competitions.

We overhear one of the billy-goat goateed guys with a camo shirt calls Wenatchee’s muddy circles “the most technical track on the circuit,” and says it may be the site of the World Finals. 

Week Four: Back to Seattle

A Seattle area native, I’ve lived near the Emerald City for 15 years. I’ve never had a sense of direction, and this time around I’m also missing a car and a cell phone.

The result? Lots of bus rides, direction asking and missed meetings.

Despite these handicaps, in only a week, I hit almost every Seattle neighborhood, and beyond!

My first night I get lucky and catch a free concert. Black Mountain, My Goodness and Whalebones.

From about.com

Even better than a free concert? An outdoor, free concert. At the Mural Ampitheater, which after lots of confusion and direction asking, I discover is a stage in front of a huge-ass mosaic below the Space Needle.

I miss Whalebones, but make it in time for My Goodness and Black Mountain. Rockin’ shows, despite the distraction of the shirtless liquored-up guy in the front with meth teeth. He spends the shows yelling and stampeding through the crowd. 

His arms are outstretched and his index and pinky fingers are raised in the rock symbol, which he repeatedly points to the stage and then back into the audience. With each point the chicken-wing flab of his triceps swings like a middle-aged woman’s. A cigarette dangles from his mouth and from his back pocket a comb, which he rakes back through the red hair that ripples over his scalp, making him look like a brilliantined man of yore.

I get lost on the way back to the bus stop and ask a pair of twenty-something kids for directions.

“Where are you from?” they ask. “Born and raised?”

Seattle, and yes, more or less.

I answer these questions several more times during my week in Seattle. Yes, I am from here, but no, I don’t really know my way around.

The bus back to my cousin’s is packed with tie-dyed Hemp Fest attendees. With every seat taken and standers packed shoulder to shoulder, I feel like I’m back on a Mumbai train.   

A frat boy with jean shorts sagged a couple inches below his gray briefs steps on my foot. Lightly. He spends the next five minutes apologizing.

Frat boy: I’m sorry.

Me: No problem.

Frat boy: I apologize.

Me: It’s OK.

Frat boy: I apologize.

Me: It was bound to happen on this bus.

Frat boy: That was really not nice.

Frat boy then goes up front to talk to the bus driver about a rockin’ Mexican place and Santana, who the bus driver says is playing Seattle soon.

An older guy joins the conversation. He’s met Jimi Hendrix and claims to have almost produced a CD by Leon Hendrix. But he's never heard of Santana.

The next day I experience more directional frustrations, compounded by no cell phone or car. My mission: to find my friend Kyle's house. 

I have Kyle's address but forget to bring his phone number. The bus, slowed by Hemp Fest, takes two hours.

Kyle’s address seems clear enough, but three guides can’t get me there. I start from Safeway with directions from a greeter. An hour later, after wandering past parks, cemeteries and nameless neighborhoods, I’m back at Safeway.

I’m due to meet my cousin soon, but want to tell Kyle I’m alive even if I didn’t make it to his house.

I ask to use Safeway’s phone. The courtesy clerk is confused.

“Why?”

“I have no cell phone.”

“…Oh. Well keep it short.”

The number’s long distance.

“Keep it real short.”  

My cousin can tell me Kyle’s phone number. But she doesn’t answer. So to Kyle I might as well be dead. I feel bad for telling him not to leave his apartment — four hours ago.

Dinner is a Safeway sandwich. With a Club card, a sandwich, pop and chips is $5. Without a Club card, just a sandwich is $6. My Club card’s in storage and I can’t remember my phone number from two years ago. No Club deal for me. $6 for a sandwich and a quarter for a Dixie cup of ice.

The remainder of the week is a blur of meet-ups with friends, family and former workmates. Lots of food and drinks and that Dutch baby I mentioned earlier. 

Not a Dutch adult.

I usually eat only Dutch adults, but I make an exception for my visit back. Haha. This particular Dutch baby I consume isn’t so much a human as a baked, eggy pancake the size of my face, topped with powdered sugar and lemon.

Week Five: Toronto – One more time

In keeping with our recent family tradition of flying on different planes to the same destinations, my dad, mom and I are booked on separate flights from Seattle to Toronto. 

Unfortunately our isolationist plan is foiled by a helpful airport attendant.

My mom and I are flying back the same day, an hour apart. She is leaving an hour before me, and has a direct flight. I, on the other hand, am stuck detouring half an hour north to Vancouver before heading east to Toronto.

My savvy attendant notices this inconvenience and puts me on the same flight as my mom, at no charge. And that’s just the start of our good fortune. At the gate, another equally helpful but less smiley attendant notices my mom’s frequent flier habits and bumps us up to business class. Holler! (Does anyone say that anymore?)   

Once you’ve flown business class, you never want to go back. (But if you’re like me, and most of us, you only want to stay in business class if it’s free.)

Each of our seats is wide enough for two asses; I can fully extend my four-foot long legs; and we don’t have to expel any effort in lowering and raising tray tables, ‘cause ours are built into our armrests and therefore permanently accessible.    

We get our first beverage service before the plane leaves the ground. Then mere minutes later, our choice of another drink and a glass dish of salted nuts. Our meal comes before I’ve finished the nuts. And it’s big! Salad, ravioli, ice cream and cookies.

Lots of food doesn’t mean good food. The ravioli sucks. And I’m not hungry for the dessert 'cause I gorged on leftover pizza at the gate.

Business class also doesn’t guarantee premiere entertainment. The plane’s entire system breaks down halfway through the flight.

My sister, mom and me, post dance party.

In-flight entertainment or not, we make it to Toronto, and I spend my last week in North America hanging with the ‘rents and my sister, her boyfriend and friends.

On one of my last days, my mom and I hit up The Ex (or the Canada National Exhibition, as it’s never called.)

It’s the 133rd year of the fair, which fyi, claims to be the greenest fair in North America.

I don’t notice anything particularly green about the event, but there’s certainly a lot to see and buy. One warehouse has products for sale from all around the world. Laos and Thailand each have booths, but not Cambodia.

Not a cow, pig or sheep.

Another building houses farm animals — afroed alpacas, brown, black and spotted cows, plus pigs and sheep.

I end The Ex with Canada’s equivalent of an elephant ear — the fried, cinnamon sugar pastry that is often my sole reason for attending fairs. In case you’re unfortunate enough to be unacquainted, the treat gets its name ‘cause it is about the same size as an ear of one of those wrinkled gray beasts that roam around places like Africa and Cambodia.

Canada — or at least The Ex — doesn’t have elephant ears. It has beaver tails. Essentially the same as an elephant ear, except maybe one fourth the size, beaver tails are also available in a wider variety of flavors (chocolate hazelnut, apple cinnamon, banana chocolate, Reese's and maple butter), and, according to propaganda at the stand, they're healthy.

Other healthy, deep-fried Ex treats? Pickles, Mars bars, mac and cheese and pop. Yes, soda pop. How? Why? I have no idea.

The Ex is all about unlikely combinations. Like aerial acrobatics and ice, done to a medley of Broadway musicals, including Hairspray, Les Mis, Rent and Rock of Ages. While the acrobats soar, spin and twirl on ropes and trapezes above, the skaters dance, flit and fly below.

This is dangerous. 

Yet another unlikely combination? A human and a cannon. David “The Bullet” Smith, Jr. has been shooting out of cannons for 14 years.

He holds the record for the longest human cannonball shot (193 feet 4 inches), and he’s on his way to the highest shot.  

In preparation, The Bullet is shooting out of the cannon at higher and higher degrees. Today the 35-foot long barrel is aimed at 50 degrees. He will shoot out fast, reaching 80 kilometers an hour in a fifth of a second.

The Bullet strides out to his cannon to the beat of The Prodigy’s song, “Mindfields.” The one with the “This is dangerous” refrain.

The Bullet isn't as sleek as a bullet. A baggy, lightweight shirt and pants cloak his solid build. Atop the cannon he buckles on a helmet.

First he’s posing atop the cannon. Then he’s in the cannon. Next he’s out of the cannon, arcing high, high and higher, then down, head first into the blue net. Then he’s rolled over and up and over the net and doing push-ups on the ground.

The whole movement is graceful, less like a bullet than like a bird — a wingless bird, soaring and landing in a downy nest.

The Final 30 Hours: Toronto to Cambodia

The ticket agent in Toronto has never heard of Cambodia. At least she acts that way. She doesn’t know how to spell Phnom Penh and can’t get my suitcase checked there. I'll have to pick it up in Taipei.

Toronto to San Francisco is a five-hour blur. After finding my TV screen hiding in the armrest I watch “Dinner for Schmucks” and some “Modern Family” episodes.

In San Francisco the gate steward says she can check my suitcase all the way to Phnom Penh instead of just Taipei. Great. Trouble is the case hasn’t shown up in San Francisco yet. 


When it does, the steward promises to get me a new baggage claim tag. This never happens, but I give it a rest, and spend the next 12 hours reading, sleeping and zoning out to Woody Allen’s new Midnight in Paris and a Friends episode.

The ticket agent in Taipei says my suitcase never showed in San Francisco. I’ll have to ask again in Phnom Penh.

On the way to the gate I meet a five-person Cambodian family: a dad with his two daughters and their two husbands.

Their destination is the dad’s homeland of Kampong Speu, a rural province just west of Phnom Penh.

The daughters, in their early 30s, were born in refugee camps in Thailand. They have never been to Cambodia. Their husbands left Cambodia as young children and their father fled in 1979, shortly after the official end of the Khmer Rouge.

The Modesto, California daughters are full of questions for me.

What is Cambodia’s traffic like? Is crossing the street scary? Is there lots of crime? Is it easy to find clothes to buy? What kind of shoes should they wear? Will the food make them sick?

They talk to each other in a mixture of Khmer and English. A lot of their Khmer goes over my head, but they still say they don’t speak it well, that they speak like foreigners, which they are.

Back in Cambodia

We like dirt.

I didn’t have any panic attacks on my return to North America, but will I have them on my return to Cambodia?

Nah. Just exhaustion, wonder and mild discomfort.

It’s been only five weeks, but in some ways arriving in Phnom Penh feels like it did two years ago, when everything was new and unfamiliar.

Phnom Penh greets me like dog’s breath — wet and hot and steamy.

I balk at the assault of tuk-tuk drivers, each trying to shove me into his moto-driven cart. Back to the bargaining games.

We stop once on the ride to the guesthouse so the driver can fill his moto up with pee from a glass Coke bottle. Wait, that’s not pee, that’s gas! It took me months to figure that one out.

Once we’re hydrated, I watch the city traffic: five and six member families crammed on the backs of motos, crowds of workers on tractor-towed flatbeds, more workers crouched atop towers of rice sacks in the backs of pick-ups.

I'm everywhere!

Piles of dirt and trash line the back roads and the same mangy tan dog is everywhere. 

Roadside stands are heaped with bumpy, green jackfruit, spiky green and pink dragonfruit, and bananas. A row of men sleeps in their nearby cyclos.

The posting on the back of my guesthouse room door offers yet another hint that I’m now thousands of miles from the US of A.

Among standard rules like keep quiet and no drugs and hookers is a request most Americans would find puzzling: “Please do not throw your garbage outside the window!”

I check-in to the guesthouse at 2 p.m. Nowhere near bedtime in Cambodia, but past bedtime in Toronto. I want to stay up and acclimate myself to the 11-hour time difference, but I’m too weak. I nap until 6 p.m. and then on and off all night long.

I wake up a few times to the sensation of ants crawling on me — and it’s not just a sensation — ants are actually crawling on me.

The next morning’s shower is cold and out of a hose, and the next day’s clothes are the same as the last two days. My suitcase is still MIA.

Fortunately, I get a call the next morning saying my suitcase has been located and is en route to Phnom Penh.

Three days later, my suitcase and I are on a seven-hour bus back to my Cambodian home.

North America visit complete. One more year and I’ll do it all again.