Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

None of this travel had been possible before, and the Thai side of the border had been thick with refugees, because the whole of Cambodia was in the grip of the Khmer Rouge, ruled by the reclusive tyrant Pol Pot. The Cambodian nightmare had ended in the late 1980s, but there were plenty of people who said that Cambodia was still tyrannized and hopeless. Now at least I could get a train to the frontier, and probably a bus after that.

I was bleary-eyed in the predawn darkness when I boarded the train, which was almost empty, except for a Thai family and some huddled women, and at the far end of the open carriage, an Indian, obviously a trader, traveling with cardboard boxes.

Indians were hated in Thailand, a Thai man had confided to me once when he saw an Indian standing on a street corner. I asked him why.

"Because he is a kaek"

"What's a kaek?"

"Kaek is Indian. Also Pakistan man. Arab. Sri Lanka," the Thai man said. "Dark face, round eye."

In the land of smiles, the races didn't mingle as much as it seemed.

"We have a saying. If you see a snake and a kaek at the same time, kill the kaek

first."

The Indian got off at Chachoengsao Junction, about an hour into the trip. The train rattled eastward into the heat, past mango orchards and cane fields. I was happy being on the move again, with the pleasant prospect of crossing into Cambodia later in the day. All the way to the border were tidy villages and little shops, flags of royal yellow, and portraits of the king, commemorating the sixtieth year of his rule. After high-density Singapore and Bangkok, this was sunny, empty countryside and fresh air. Here and there I saw a rural village that was like a village in my Asiatic dreams, pretty bungalows surrounded by fruit trees, bananas, coconut palms, vegetable gardens, and browsing cows, in a wide-open landscape that ventilated my mind.

I did not need to be told that we'd arrived at Aranyaprathet: everything about it suggested that it was the end of the line. The little station was empty, the road leading from it to the few streets of shops was empty except for some tuk-tuks. The town itself, like all border towns, had an unfinished look, a bit lawless, fatigued, provisional, undercapitalized, exactly the way travelers feel when they arrive in such a place, weary and noncommittal. The businesses cater less to the people living there than to the ones passing through. No one ever intends to stay long in a border town, and this antiromantic note makes them attractive to travelers, reflects their own restlessness.

In Southeast Asia it seemed there was always a noodle shop that served as an agency for dealing with border formalities; that took passport pictures; that provided visa applications; that also sold cold drinks and fried rice and beer and stringy chicken; that owned a van for ferrying people to the border; that probably did laundry, too. And had waitresses who flirted with the travelers, because it was harmless, a gratuitous gesture—the guys would be somewhere else in an hour or so.

I found the noodle shop in Aranyaprathet that provided all these services. I had my noodles and caught the next van to the border post, a mile or less from the town. I fell into conversation with an American backpacker, a recent college graduate, about the onward journey and Angkor. Somehow the subject of India came up.

"I heard India sucks," he said.

At the frontier on this hot day, children and young boys waited with big rubber-wheeled wagons to take the travelers' luggage and boxes, since, as with most national boundaries, the checkpoints were far apart, a town on each side. In this case, the salubrious one of Aranyaprathet was here, and over there was the disorderly gambling-paradise-on-the-rise of Cambodian Poipet, a few new casinos amid the rubble and slums of the scruffy town.

I walked across carrying my small bag, finding it remarkable how similar this rural border was to others I'd crossed elsewhere in the underdeveloped world: the usual junk-filled creek, the usual touts and hawkers and moneychangers, the pests, the lost souls, the overburdened women with small children, the nervous-looking men.

Then the line at Thai immigration, a little paperwork, a passport stamp, and out the door and the long walk to Cambodian immigration, more paperwork, another stamp, and a gauntlet of touts and hawkers and moneychangers. The Cambodian side was dustier, poorer, noisier, much more chaotic than the Thai side, and something of a shock.

It is seldom necessary to look for transportation in such a place. At most borders of this kind the transportation is looking for you—buses needing passengers.

"Battambang! Siem Reap! Phnom Penh!"

"Siem Reap," I said.

I was hustled to a waiting bus, an old one, with weary faces at the windows. I handed over my $5. It was very hot inside.

The tout said, "No a.c., but we can open the windows."