Nikki Yeager

I was riding my bike along the river in Siem Reap and I tried to smile although I knew it was over. In a day I'd be gone. I tried to imagine the US, to prepare myself for reverse culture shock, to get ready for the change.

So I started with the simple things, hot water showers, clean smelling clothes. I imagined them and even tried to imagine enjoying them. Then I pictured the bigger things- large houses, stable electricity, computers, wifi in every house, cars. That's when I started to panic. I pictures myself in a car, behind closed tinted windows. Hiding behind walls with airconditioned, recycled air. Clean seats. Clean shoes. Locked doors.

And I started to panic. Breathing harder and harder, tears started pooling behind my eyes. I took a deep breathe and tried to think of it positively, I tried to imagine the comfort of not sweating.

Then a little girl stuffed between 2 parents and 1 brother turned around on her mother's lap and smiled at me from a speeding moto. She shouted 'hello' and then giggled in a typically Khmer way. I rode along fighting tears, pedaling next to their moto. Everyone outside in the open air, dirt and pollution touching our skins. Faces exposed to the public and nature. Expressions shared between passing vehicles.

And I lost it.

For the first time (but hardly the last) after my decision to go home I started crying. Big fat tears like monsoon raindrops falling down my cheeks, mixing with my sweat and little specks of dust already caked on my skin. That's when desperation hit.

With an overwhelming sense of need I felt the urge to cement every image of Cambodia permanently on my brain. But as soon as I made the resolution I must remember it all, my brain shut down. I watched tuk-tuks with tourists rattle along, stared intently at the passing FCC building, tried to grasp the image of food stalls and Pub Street. But the minute I saw it, the minute it woudl be gone. My memory rejecting my efforts.

That's when I realized it was gone. One of the largest experiences of my life will now just be a little story in my brain, something I once did but I hardly remember. The spec ifics will elude me, people will fail to understand and the experience itself... well, it's over.

And I never had a chance to record it all. 28 hours on a plane and it's all gone.