Toerke

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Home is where the hurt is, where the chips are greasy and the sauce mayotastic. Where chocolate is made with real milk, tap water tastes nice and is actually safe to drink. It feels good to recognize things. Even if it is just the Witte Tornado uniform, the smile on the face of my favorite Turkish grocer, the stone mandala in the Scheldetunnel. I look at things as for the first time, sometimes from another viewpoint

but always as if with brand new eyes. And should I get the blues for lack of Asian heights, should I long for yet another Zen master, then there is still the bittersweet mercy of the Kriek Lambic. It is there that I call home…

So, this is it. I’ve put Asia on my memory stick! I’ve seen, smelled, tasted and felt a lot. I now know a little about the where and how, and what really matters. Now is the time for family parties, Amsterdam canals, Edam cheese balls and barflies. But now is also the time for action. I am busy organizing a neighbourhood benefit-raffle-concert for the Dicky orphanage in Lhasa, Tibet, China. Probable date of birth is 17.06.2006, also big brother Thomas’ birthday. The more the merrier! All help is welcome. Don’t hesitate to contact me about your talent.

Also, my fairy web wizards are preparing the launching of the Stoerke.be website, where my smart gnome alter ego will dwell. I’ll keep you posted on the where and when.

Last but not least, this site will be updated whenever we undertake small-to-XXL travel plans. The dream to publish this site in a multimedia fashion sits quietly reading in the Library of Life. Che sarà, sarà…

A lot of impressions, nothing in press. A lot of temples, little faith. Chiang Mai can make you or break you. After a round of anger, rage and soaking mourn drops, we came Home via Bangkok Hospital. Seven months of travel is a long time. I have, I think, written a thousand books inside my head and now I need to learn to talk haiku.

I am presently working on a benefit project for a Lhasa child. You can read more about it on the site presently under construction. Chances are it will be stoerke.be [please hold].

We are dwelling again at: Prekersstraat 57 bus 5 2000 Antwerpen. Kees +32 (0) 499 271 042 Sarah +32 (0) 475 415 818

Let your SMS be to the point and the conversations direct. We are catching our breath after a long walk…

On the national flag, on the beermats, on the banknotes: Angkor, everywhere Angkor. A visit to the mother of all temples is quite unavoidable, a must-do so to speak. After a 9-hour boat ride from hell on a much too shallow river among a bunch of white-socked German prepensioners, each carrying a suitcase of over a ton thus taking up more than half of the available seats, we arrive in Siem Reap - at last! The vicinity of the temples is played out to the limit: Angkor Hotel, Angkor Lodge, Temple Lodge, Angkor Spa, Angkor Massage, Angkor Bar II. You are here for one reason only, Angkor Wat, let there be no doubt about that.

We pick the smallest one first, the pink temple of Banteay Srei. It is the temple with the best preserved and most refined stone carvings, beautiful scenes from the Reamkar, Cambodia’s version of the Hindu epic Ramayana. Here we celebrate man’s artful victory over nature, at Ta Phrom the tables are turned. The temple is surrounded and taken over by the jungle. Giant roots work their way through the stone puzzle. At Ta Keo’s temple I am taken over by an acute case of vertigo. Without a second thought I climb the steep stairs to yet another level, paying no notice to the height and steepness of the narrow steps. When we start the descend, I suddenly become very aware of these facts. My knees start trembling and I break into a sweat. I sit down, frozen solid and refuse to move an inch in either direction. I try to focus on the matter at hand, take a few deep breaths and start to climb down, step by trembling step, fingertips anchored like fish-hooks around the stones. With both feet back on solid ground, I can smile again. Two hundred peacuful Bayon faces smile back. We keep Angkor Wat itself until last, a beautiful ending to a very special collection of stone art. Definitely worth a beermat!

We want to visit Battambang’s countryside. Because foreigners are not allowed to rent motorcycles, we let ourselves be chauffeured. Dusty roads zigzag through a system of small irrigation canals passing rice paddies, mango plantations, banana trees, coconut palm trees and kampot. Some rice fields are harvested three times a year thanks to the dam at Kamping Puoy that provides water. The dam is useful now, but no less than 10,000 starved and abused workers lost their lives building it under the Khmer Rouge. Today it is a place of beauty, a wonderful lake on which you can row idyllically among thousands of lotus flowers and fishing boats. A remainder of the French presence here is the bamboo train or norry. To transport wood, rice and passengers between the villages and to Battambang, they put wheels on the tracks and a platform of bamboo sticks on the wheels. The construction is powered by a would-be lawnmower. At Wat Banan we get a taste of the Angkor temples. Five years from now, down by a massive rock wall, where an impressive bamboo scaffolding surrounds the rock, there will be a 112m rock carving about the life of the buddha. It is a project by Morodaki Angkor to learn the poor a trade and to give them hope for a better future. After five months without a pot and pan, I can do my thing in the kitchen. The Smokin’ Pot restaurant in Battambang organizes ac coocking course. First we go to the market where we carefully pick our ingredients among the many strange food(?) supplies - turtles, stinky fish paste. After a morning of wokking I can make three dishes: the Cambodian amok (coconut scurry) and lok lak (beef cubes with egg) and the Thai tom yam (hot soup). Mmmm. No doubt that you will spot me, recipe book in hand, in the isles of the Sino-Antwerp Sun Wah in a few months time.

No better way to counter a case of asiatitis (see Asiatitis) than spending the weekend at the beach. Just floating in the Gulf of Thailand, midnight cocktails, sand between the toes and waves rolling all the way up to the lazy chair. Aaah. Breath in, breath out. Stars are twinkling and are accompanied by the fire dance of the beach artist. Away from the crowds, the heat and the bitter taste of war memories. Just taking it easy, resourcing, destressing and detoxing. Or simply enjoying the sea sunset sights.

I am not quoted in the stock exhange. I know what the weather will be like: continuously warm and humid. I don’t care much for soccer results. When on holiday, no news is good news. Only sporadically do I open the newspaper and read what is being written about “the world”. Today was sporadically, with the Bangkok Post and The Herald Tribune accompanying my morning cups of tea. And what do I read?

The pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithkline is striving for a patent on the anti-AIDS/HIV medicine Combid. Once the champagne uncorked, the Thai Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO) will no longer be allowed to market the cheaper alternative product GPO-VIR with the same formula. It doesn’t look like the Intellectual Property Department will lose any sleep over this. And the AIDS patients won’t need to lose any sleep over it. In fact, they just won’t wake up anymore. Easy, not?

The editor of the Chinese newspaper Taizhou Wanbao died three monts after he was severely clubbed by the police. He had risked - what was he thinking? - to publish criticism on the traffic police corruption regarding licenses for electronic scooters. On the telephone, his widow mumbles something about liver problems and that she doesn’t want to answer any questions, whatsoever. China PD black & blue?

Imagine being a Dane on a world trip. Or a Turkish chicken.

The Indian monk Ngawang Tashi Bupa is nominated for a Grammy Award for his buddhist chants. Good for him. Not that is makes any difference. The Dalai Lama once received the Nobel Peace Prize, but in 2005 was refused to speech in Belgium. Something about timing. Or a trade mission to China. Or both.

Google, once Mr Right among the search engines, has lost its innocence bending for the yellow censorship dragon. Keep on surfing in the free world!

I read the news today. Not that it makes a difference. The Cambodian paper boy and paper collector have earned at least a nickle this morning. That is, I think, the best news today.

The woman looks straight ahead. Her child is seated in her lap. If you look carefully, you can see a single tear halfway the woman’s cheeck. She sits unnaturally straight and cannot sit any other way. She is not allowed to move nor could she if she had wanted to. She is tied to the chair against an iron pin. This is how she has to pose for the camera. Her intuition tells her that, as soon as the picture has been taken, she will be separated from her child. Forever.

It is one image that has stayed with me. One of the many black and white photographs here at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Tuol Sleng, or S-21, was one of many prisons in the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge in the late ’70s. Over 12,000 “enemies of the state” - including all (!) family members - were held prisoner, interrogated, abused and tortured in these former school grounds. At night, truckloads of prisoners were deported to the fields of Choeng Ek, 15 km from Phnom Penh in the countryside, better known as one of many mass graves of “the killing fields”.

The barbarity of this operation in unimagineable. Babies cry, need attention and care and are thus disturbing for the daily management of such a camp. Therefore, they were often the first victims among new arrivals. Their heads were smashed into the wall, or they were thrown into the air and skewed on a bajonet. Things went slightly slower for those that needed to be interrogated and of whom the Angkar regime wanted to obtain a confession in writing. Women’s nipples were torn open and filled with scorpions that were collected in bamboo cages for this purpose. There was of course the usual pulling of the nails, after which alcohol or acid was poured into the wounds. The gym racks proved to be extremely handy for the hanging of prisoners. With arms tied to the back, the prisoners were hung on the bar thus dislocating the shoulders. If this could not move the poor souls to a false confession, there were always the buckets with faeces for a round of drink-or-sink. The wardens at S-21 were often 10 to 15 year olds who lived a prison life themselves. Their experiences in the civil war and their stay at S-21 had rendered them capable of extreme violence. To secure the secrecy of the prison’s practice, the wardens and executioners were killed and replaced.

The man who orchestrated this hell, Political Potential, aka Pol Pot or Brother No.1 never set foot on these premises. He died a natural death in neighbourghing Thailand in 1998. Some of his allies-Brothers are members of the current Cambodian government. It is not surprising that Pol Pot’s picture at the exhibit is heavily damaged. The eyes are burned out of the picture, the cheeks and mouth covered with slogans of anger and hatred. In the guestbook people are still throwing stones and pointing fingers at the west, the east and anyone. One pleas for a Cambodian tribunal, another would only trust international justice, yet another fearfully doubts whether Pol Pot is actually dead. Cambodia is not through healing yet.

What maybe struck and saddened me most this day was the offer of the friendly tuktuk driver: “Want to visit shooting range? Only four kilometers!” Apparently, just around the proverbial corner, you can empty a round of AK-47 amo on a local cow. So much for justice.

Information: Documentation Center of Cambodia

You know what it is? The road passess endlessly through nothing. It follows the Mekong, that’s true. Not that you’d notice. There is just heaps of dust, piles of plastic garbage waiting for a recycling scheme, but not a much as a hill in sight. I take a nap on the bump-bus, wake up one hour later thanks to the inevitable potholes and the landscape is still the same. Heaps of dust, piles of plastic garbage, not even a hill in sight. I have to get off this road! Travelling over water is virtually impossible. Everyone swears by the comfort of highway 13. Asphalt, a blessing for progress! Gone are the boat trips, the long tail taxis, the Mekong river cruises. All that is left are a handful of slick guys offering a slick speedboat deal to the Cambodian border for more than a handful of easy cash. I don’t think so. There is still the motorcycle option, though. The wooden butt ordeal still fresh in mind and somewhat lower body parts, I set off on a waterfall route with mixed emotions. I grumble and pay the entry tickets to the entry, the tickets to the parking lot, the tickets at the entry itself and the damned ticket for crossing the resort to get to the actual splashing sight. Tourism is alive and kicking, kicking hard! But I had to get off that dusty road and warmly welcomed every drop of wate.

Could it be the slow Lao rhythm? Maybe, but not really. Or is it a case of the notorious asiatitis? Probably. After five months on the road, for the first time now it feels like a road to nowhere. Just yesterday could I, in childlike wonder, admire the mysterious plumeria blossoming, the beauty of man’s artistic power and the virginity of a handful of landmassess in a sunset bath. Today, however, I look at yet another guesthouse menu, I read: pancake, hambuzger, flench fies - and I wonder what the hell I’m doing here. I can feel the time has come to move on and focus on a different diet altogether.

- We were lucky, weren’t we? Only three flat tires. Besides, the last one was right near a garage. That was good timing. - Yeah, and with the first one we could load the bike on a dok-dok. That was ok, wasn’t it? - Yeah, we were lucky. That bruise of mine won’t show in a couple of weeks. - What was that again? - Well, I slipped in the sand, didn’t I. The bike started spinning and the footrest slammed into my calf. Could have been much worse. Imagine looking for a doctor out there. There was nobody around. F*cking middle of nowhere! By the way, how’s the knee? - Oh, disinfected. It’ll be fine. Could have been worse. That is so dangerous, a bike just jamming into steerlock! You don’t want that happening in a curve, do you? It’s a good thing that lock just rattled out of the bike in the end. - Yeah, much better. The kickstart is all you need, really. No use for anything else. Funny actually, that sticker on the side “electronic starter”. - Yeah, surreal! Say, fancy another beer Lao? - Mmm sounds good. My teeth are still grinding with all that dust. I think I’m just gonna dump my jeans. I’ll never get them clean. And look at our boots! - Nice shower later. - Mmm. Shall we have another Lao? - Good plan! What a fun ride, hey? - Great laugh!

Route Tha Khaek - Nakai - Lak Sao - Ban Na Hin - Kong Lo - Vieng Kham - Tha Khaek. A.k.a. “The Loop” (circa 350 km). Terrain Asphalt - gravel road - sand road - rice paddies (with walls!) - dry and wet riverbeds - rockhard earth road with deep tractor tracks. Vehicles Chinese Yincin 100cc work horses with a rather shabby-nonchalant demeanor. Team Yincin pilots Caveman and Woodbut Pitstops Guesthouses and homestay Highlights A small, somewhat larger and one gigantic cave. Top of the bill is the boatride through the 7km-long Kong Lo cave with her spooky stalag… (what do you call these things?). All this surrounded by the beautiful Khammouan karst scenery. Sponsors Beer Lao - Toughlick leather cream