The Curse of the Black Panther

If a black cat crosses your path, its considered bad luck.  If a REALLY big black cat crosses your path, its REALLY bad luck.  Here is proof.

Sunday, June 24, 2007, Bokor Mountain, Cambodia: 

An adult black panther crosses our path by leaping across the dirt road 50 feet in front of our  white1989 Toyota Camry, driven by Try (“Tree”).  It disappears back into the tall grass.  The curse begins.

Monday, June 25, 2007, Bokor Mountain: 

A private plane carrying 22 people crashes into the side of Bokor a few miles from where we saw the panther.  All aboard are killed.    

Tuesday, June 26, 2007, Phnom Penh: 

Haley receives an email saying that a friend of hers from Peace Corp Bangladesh was mauled and killed by a bear while trekking in Romania. 

Wednesday, June 27, 2007, Phnom Penh: 

Somewhere along the way I contract food poisoning, which will not manifest till the next day.

Thursday, June 28, 2007, On the road: 

            5:45am:  I throw up my dinner of spaghetti, vegetables, and tofu, along with some H. Pylori and antibiotics.  I chalk it up to waking up so early.

            6:59am:  Right before getting onto the bus for Mondulkiri I walk to the edge of the parking lot and throw up my breakfast of croissant and juice.  I feel better and decide to get on the bus.  Luckily, we are the first two seats on the bus, making it easier for me to jump out if I need to puke again.

            8:15am:  The bus gets a flat tire after only 1 hour of travel.  I get out and brush my teeth on the side of the road, then talk to two female Dutch backpackers and two male Canadian backpackers.  We get onto the bus 20 minutes later.

            12:30pm:  Arrive in Snoul, to change into the “Jeep” that will take us to Mondulkiri.  Roadside ‘restaurant’ is pretty dirty and neither of us is hungry, so we wait around for the Jeep.

            1pm:  A pick-up truck with canvas and metal rod roof and walls around the truck bed arrives.  We, along with the two Dutch girls and a tall British backpacking girl get into the back.  There are a few seats open in the cab.  Haley and I eat a croissant while we wait to leave. 

            1:05pm:  We are on a dirt road known in the Southeast Asia Lonely Planet guide as “the road the devil himself built”.  It is extremely bumpy and we all getting bashed against the metal bars of the roof and walls, as well as the fake wood slabs that make up the benches.  Our driver is absolutely insane, flying down the road and seemingly trying to hit all the major potholes, which are small ponds.  The initial fun of the previous five minutes has worn off and the croissant is making me nauseous.

            1:15pm:  We decide that some of us should make use of the seats in the cab.  The Dutch girls take the first shift. 

            2:00pm:  The three of us are violently flying around the truck bed like rag dolls.  Haley is afraid I will fall out the back the way I’m bouncing around.  We are gripping the bars of the roof and trying to anticipate extremely bumpy parts in order to avoid serious head injuries.  All of us look slightly green, as well as brown from being covered in dust from the road. 

            2:10pm:  I can’t contain the nausea and vomit out the back of the truck while its still moving.  They stop the car and all come out to see me vomit.  A nice Cambodian woman offers me balm.  I totally lose it and start crying out of exhaustion and embarrassment over puking in front of so many other people.  I take the seat of a Cambodian guy in the cab, where it is less bumpy.  Even he can’t deal with sitting back there and instead sits on the roof.  Poor Haley is stuck back there.

            3:00pm:  We stop so Haley and the Brit can sit in the cab.  The Brit is obnoxious.

            3:45pm:  We get to a village at the top of a hill and hope that it is Sen Monorom, our destination.  It is not.  We change into an SUV, a Land Rover.  There are seven of us.  Haley and I squish into the front seat after the Brit claims it can’t be done.  The three backpackers and the Cambodian lady get in the backseat.  The gearshift is poking my back and burning my leg simultaneously.

            5:00pm:  After more than an hour of listening to inane conversation among the backpackers, we arrive at the Arun Reah II Guesthouse and jump out without saying goodbye to the other girls.  They want to go to the Long Vibol guesthouse.

            5:30pm:  After checking in with Vichard, the charming 26 year old manager/owner and putting our stuff away, we go eat dinner.  I have some lime juice and a few bites of noodle soup before I have to run outside and throw up again. 

            6:30pm:  Having finally showered and gotten the dust off, we go to bed exhausted.  I have a few sips of water, then crash.  I am beat.

            9:00pm:   I wake up to puke up the few sips of water I drank and go to the bathroom.  Serious diarrhea has set in.  We decide that we should not go on the waterfall day trek tomorrow, then fall back asleep.

Friday, June 29, 2007, Sen Monorom: 

Blissfully, a day of sleep and not throwing up, although the diarrhea continues.  We go into “town” where we take some pictures of adorable local kids, have some dried watermelon seeds, and meet the Cambodian woman on our Jeep yesterday.  I order what feels like my 15^th bowl of vegetable noodle soup and 1000^th glass of lime juice.  We have another early night.   

Saturday, June 30, 2007, Sen Monorom:

9am-10:30am:  The Immodium is starting to work, finally.  We leave for our waterfall tour around 9am on motorbikes with rather young drivers.  The first 20km of the 37km trip to Bou Sraa falls (the largest waterfall in Cambodia) are fine, well-paved and our drivers are sufficiently cautious.  Then the road becomes hillier, bumpier and muddier, although not terrible.  We nearly both wipe-out several times and Haley is forced to get off and walk when her motorbike gets stuck in the 6in deep mud.  We reach the waterfall, walk around, try not to fall over the edge to the lower tier.  We get back through the mud without incident and head to the next fall.

10:30am-11:30am:  I notice that my motorbike’s gas gauge is reading zero.  I mention this to my driver, who repeatedly ignores my suggestion that we get some gas.  We drive to the next waterfall, eat lunch and leave.  The sky is getting dark.

12:00pm:  On our way to the last fall the sky is getting darker and it is raining on a few of the surrounding hills.  I ask if we should continue, given the remoteness and the fact that the road is dirt and liable to become rather muddy.  We decide to continue.  We get rained on pretty heavily for a while, but it passes.  Our drivers are becoming more daring.  Mine reaches 70km going downhill.

12:15pm-12:45pm:  Haley and I walk around the last waterfall by ourselves; the drivers decided to stay by the road.  We return to find one of them, the one who spoke a little English, gone.

12:55pm:  The other driver, along with a third guy in uniform, show up- with gasoline.  The drivers sheepishly fill up their tanks.  I say I told you so. 

1pm-1:30pm:  We head back to town.  My driver is now going 80km and purposefully trying to get me killed by randomly, suddenly braking.  Luckily we make it back to the Arun Reah intact. 

1:45-5pm:  We nap, read, and relax while it pours outside.  I have a crazy dream about trying to become seaweed.  

5:15pm-6:00pm:  More noodle soup and lime juice.  Neither Haley nor I feel great, and discuss how nice chicken soup would be right now.  We talk to some of the girls who work in the guesthouse about their lives, how they ended up in Sen Monorom.

6:15-8:00pm:  Hot showers and bed.

9:00pm:  My dad calls only to find me dead asleep.

Sunday, July 1, 2007, On the road:

            7:00am:  Waiting for our ride to Snoul to show up, when the Brit and the Dutch girls arrive.  We hope we are going in different cars.

            7:15am-7:30am:  We are not.  We cram into a big jeep with the girls, two young British guys, an overly touchy French couple who look like each other, and two Cambodian guys- eleven of us in the back.  Our driver is a wiry, middle-aged guy who seems a little crazy.  We finally depart after piling seven giant backpacks, various luggage and miscellaneous goods onto the roof. 

            7:30am-10am:  Two and a half hours of terror, obnoxious conversation, being smushed, and mud.  The top heavy jeep slides everywhere in the mud; luckily our driver is a pro and miraculously manages to prevent us from tipping over.  We strategize about what to do if the van tips- which windows to crawl out of, etc.  I get sick of hearing the Brit talking shit and go off on a rant about the complexity the public health issues surrounding HIV.  I stop when we nearly tip because I don’t want my last words to be “Planned Parenthood.”  We are unconsciously gripping each other in terror.  Our driver randomly starts shouting- he is either telling jokes or yelling about having to transport our foreign asses down the mountain.  We pass a few cars and trucks stuck in the mud.  We stop a few times to check on them.

            10:15am:  We arrive at the village where we changed cars on the way up.  This time we don’t change, but pile back into the van and brace ourselves for the bumpy, violent, devil-built road.

            10:15am-12:00pm: We road is terrible, muddy and bumpy, but its much less painful being in this car than in the bed of the pickup truck.  Still, we are all developing headaches from having our brains knocked around our skulls so much. 

            12:00pm: Right before going through a gigantic puddle/small pond, we get a flat tire.  We make it out of the puddle but are still stuck in 8in deep mud.  The other foreigners go sit in the shade and smoke; Haley and I stay to see how the hell they will be able to jack up the car in all the mud.  The wiry, crazy driver finds some slate and stacks them around the tire, and does manage to change the tire, albeit slowly.  We get back in and hope we don’t pop another one.

            12:15pm-1:00pm:  The last fifteen minutes of the ride we are all anxious to see if our buses to various cities are still in Snoul or have left without us.  When we arrive in Snoul, Haley and I jump out of the car and don’t bother to say goodbye to the backpackers.  Our bus isn’t there, but a middle aged woman in pajamas assures us it will be here soon. 

            1:00pm-1:15pm: Our bus to Phnom Penh arrives.  We get on and discover that the bus is totally full, more than full in fact- people are sitting on tiny plastic chairs in the narrow aisle.  Our ‘reserved’ seats are occupied.  We try to convince them that we should have seats, but they just shrug.  Haley is really furious, but I’m too tired to care and don’t see what they can do about it: overselling bus tickets is standard practice.  They put a few more child-size plastic chairs in the aisle for us and we squeeze down into them. The one English-speaking person, a very nice older man, assures us that we will get seats in an hour or so.  Five or six men are forced to stand near the door.  Because the aisle is lower, in my chair, my shoulders are at the elbows of the men on either side of me, and my face is unfortunately in the armpit zone.  About 90% of the passengers are middle-aged, sweaty men, so the bus smell pretty bad.  Diagonally behind me is a little boy, maybe five years old, whose eyes are light blue and white: he is blind, and adorable. He and his father are on their way to the nearest eye clinic, which is three hours from their village, and not much more than a guy with eyedrops.  

            1:15pm-3:30pm: We finally leave Snoul, and I fall asleep instantly, resting my head against the biceps of sweaty strangers.  I wake up whenever the bus makes stops, which is does frequently to drop off people right to their doors.  In Cambodia there is no such thing as an express bus.  Eventually enough men get off that we can get seats.  The man behind me in the aisle, who only has one good eye, tells me to take the two open seats.             

            3:30pm-6:30pm:  We drive some more, making stops to drop people off and for the men to pee in the street.  Because of my power nap in the aisle, I don’t feel tired anymore and spend the trip looking out the window at the vastly different landscapes and communities that make up Cambodia.  A little boy behind me is watching a horrible Cambodian version of James Bond on the bus TV and playing with my hair. 

            6:30pm-7:15pm: We arrive in Phnom Penh.  Although exhausted, we decide not to go home right away, but instead pick up groceries.  Sorya is crazy on Sundays, but we need food. Miraculously, the chicken soup I was craving is in Sorya, for the first time.  It’s the best thing to happen to us all day, apart from surviving the van and bus rides.  

7:30pm:  We finally arrive home.  Felix (aka the Gerber Baby) welcomes us back. 

7:45-8:45pm:  We eat our soups and relive the day, dissecting the many stupid things the Brit said.  We decide that our bad luck this weekend was caused by the black panther that crossed our path.  The Curse of the Black Panther is born.