Unaccountably, the Iranian Embassy in Bangkok is not as excited as I am about my plans to travel solo around their beautiful country. Which leaves Plan B, courtesy of my patient travel agent.

On January 29th, I fly to New York, where I will faint at the price of a sandwich and wear flip-flops in the snow. I shall recover in Mexico City, and then head to Bolivia by Chicken Bus. I’ll peer down from the Andes to see if Tierra Del Fuego looks manageable. It’ll be a trip. Anyone coming?

Other updates: I’ll be offline for the next while, in Buddha Bootcamp (a ten-day retreat). When I get back, my hand should be healed and I’ll post all my pent-up ramblings. In the meantime, I’ve added a Comments feature, so please—comment.

My field study of Southeast Asian medical care continues. There was that tiny falang clinic in Saigon, whose proceeds sponsored the heart hospital next door. There was the Phnom Penh hospital run by a stretched, dedicated staff, where they hesitated on Christmas Day before unwrapping an expensive 3M cast for me, after the previous one disintegrated in days. I liked the 3M cast very much, though it was clearly the wrong shape. It glowed in the dark, and I lay in bed pretending it was a Light Saber.

And then there’s Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok, which boasts a King’s Award for Export for pioneering ‘medical tourism’. On New Year’s Eve the lobby was full of prosperous looking Arabs, who no longer wish to go to the US for treatment. Within minutes of arriving—dodging limos in the car park—I had a laminated, barcoded identity card and a chic escort to the orthopedics wing. I had no appointment, and they were busy, so the nurse on duty offered me a complimentary voucher for the inhouse Starbucks or Au Bon Pain. Or perhaps I’d like to schedule a massage or a facial? Some Botox?

My broken hand hurt and I vaguely hoped I’d need an operation, since it was the only way I could afford such a plush hotel. Instead, the doctor clicked his tongue at my latest cast and told me it had been set wrongly again. He’d put another cast on—my fourth!—and said in four weeks we’d see about an operation to undo my well-meaning Cambodian care.
   ‘Next time come to Bangkok first.’

So, no diving, no massage course, no yoga, no cooking class. (I realize this may not seem like hardship to you, but you probably have a paycheck to console you.) Four more sweaty weeks of one-handed typing and dictation bribes. Still, at least I got a coffee out of it this time.

Almost as soon as I left the hospital, I tipped a bowl of som tum salad into my new cast. Some of the key ingredients of som tum—which is delicious—include fish sauce, fermented crabs and chilis. It’s been ripening unpleasantly since. Combined with the fact that this new cast doesn’t glow in the dark to my satisfaction, I may yet be forced to chew my arm off at the elbow, coyote-style.

The ferry from Phnom Penh was white and gleaming as an American fridge. It chugged up the Tonle Sap with a cargo of falangs on the roof and a hundred backpacks down below. As we passed a floating village, a stork looked gravely at a small boy in the water. He was rowing towards the village shop in a large metal mixing bowl, knees drawn up to his chin. His oar was a small plank, and occasionally his ‘boat’ spun slowly instead of going forward, but mostly he exercised great control over his craft. He tethered it to the shop, scrambled out, and a few moments later climbed back in with a white package and set off for home. There was no need, of course, to turn the boat around.

The ferry dock was a few miles beyond, and the boat arrival was clearly the big event of the day. Little naked boys shrieked and swam out to us, scavenging for leftover baguettes and Vache Qui Rit cheese. The dock was thronged with drivers waving namecards, waiting to shuttle guests to Siem Reap. ‘Ivy Guesthouse Welcomes Mister David’. I hadn’t seen this anywhere else in Southeast Asia, and suddenly felt like I’d arrived in JFK again.

The town of Siem Reap is like a laidback host who wakes at lunchtime and rememebers that several hundred guests are coming to the party tonight. New guesthouses are being built, chi-chi coffeehouses and little bookstores have appeared, but people still move sleepily. It seems to exist solely for the purpose of housing the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit Angkor Wat each year. It’s agreeable and moderately pretty, but in a Potemkin village way. I couldn’t find decent Khmer food there. Still, the punters seem to like it.

I bought a three-day pass to the temples, at a budget-busting $40, and got to the first temple at seven next morning. I’d chosen it carefully: not Angkor Wat, two kilometers down the road, but Bayon, famous for vast walls of bas-reliefs depicting everyday life. On one wall, buff sandstone soldiers marched to battle, some on elephants, while their women straggled at the back blowing on cooking fires. Another wall showed fishermen, stonemasons, farmers, and cooks making a feast for the victorious soldiers. None of it looked too different to modern Cambodia, if you added a few sandstone satellite dishes and a Honda or two.

This stuff I could sustain an interest in for half an hour or so. But soon, I knew, I was going to have to knuckle down to appreciating magnificent ancient monuments unrelieved by domestic scenes. At the thought of it, I was overcome by a case of temple torpor even more severe than usual. Objectively, I understood that this stuff was Magnificent. A thousand years old, give or take. Massive in scale. Original and accomplished in artistry and engineering. But I wanted to be in Starbucks with a magazine.

It is a great failing. I can manage castles, just about, if they show preserved bedroom furnishings and galley-kitchens. But religious monuments, which take my own species out of the picture, feel like hard work—and I am no longer used to hard work.

I left Bayon and trudged around Angkor Wat waching tourists in floppy hats take pictures of one another until I fell asleep on the grass. Then I went back to Siem Reap to play hooky for the afternoon. I was wandering around the almost-deserted streets, singing happily, when I bumped into Dougald, whom I’d met in Phnom Penh. Dougald is an archeology professor, and handsome enough for me to entertain Indiana Jones fantasies while feigning an interest in digging. Now I was truly busted.
    ‘I’m out here to do some field work,’ he said. On the Angkor temples?
‘Nah, not my period. My stuff is earlier, Iron Age. We’re going north to Banteay Sreay.’

Thank God.

   ‘So you’re taking a break this afternoon?’ he asked.
   ‘Yep. Went out to Bayon and Angkor this morning. Magnificent. Awesome. Loved the bas-reliefs.’

Dougald and his little team headed off, complaining about the food they were likely to get in Banteay Sreay. I loafed around Siem Reap and drank beer for two more days, while my Angkor photo ID reproached me from the dressing table. Maybe I’ll appreciate them when I grow up.

Mr. Mei took me for a two-day walk in Laos while his wife stayed home with their baby, Kai. His other four children had died last year. The spirits got them, he told me. Kai, which means ‘chicken’, was a nickname to confuse them this time around. It won’t work.

    ‘It was malaria,’ whispered my friend Phone.

Family-sized mosquito nets, impregnated with repellent, cost five dollars. I didn’t see very many of them in villages in Laos and Cambodia, where malaria is the number one killer disease. I’d be chuffed if you could contribute to the Cambodia Daily Mosquito Net Drive.