Sylvia's Journal

For the last leg of this interminable trip my luck turned and I flew back on a plane with every other seat empty. It departed on time and the bad weather I had seen approaching while still in the terminal moved out of the way without disturbing us.

I finished the Pol Pot book and then spread out over three seats and fell into a deep sleep of total exhaustion, filled with images of the damage he’d one. When I woke up I felt like a zombie, as if I had been a victim myself.

My entrance into the US wasn’t so great after this magnificent trip. The immigration official treated me as if I had done something wrong with a long list of questions barked out in staccato. It showed how easy it is to intimidate people when you are in uniform.

When I called Axel on touchdown to tell him that I would be out in less than 10 minutes because I had no checked baggage I discovered that he hadn’t even left Manchester. I was indeed out in 10 minutes and after having been on the road for 36 hours that final wait for Axel to arrive was the worst of the entire trip, partially because it was laced with disappointment and anger. Not a very good reunion after an absence of 3 weeks. I pouted most of the way home in between dozing off a few times. By the time I came home the pout was over and all (nearly) forgotten.

Tessa and Steve had left me Rangoon crab to welcome me home – a delicacy from another part of Asia. And then I unpacked the presents which included two ceramic lobsters given to me by the team in Kampong Cham, for Axel, for our house on Lobster Cove. I had discovered these nailed to the doors of traditional houses, off the main road to Kampong Cham. They hold incense sticks or flowers. I never had time to go to the market and find them and then did not need to as they were given to me as a gift.

And that was that. For today Axel has arranged a massage at 10. Not by a blind person and not quite so inexpensive. Still, a massage is exactly what the doctor prescribed and it makes up for the not so great homecoming.