A L S O _T O D A Y Mondo Weirdo Nude beaches of the week Favorite nude beaches around the world R E C E N T L Y Tour en Irlande By David Moore Tour de France: Pomp and pedaling in Ireland (07/16/98) Bad news from a black coast: Part Two By Moritz Thomsen Part Two of Moritz Thomsen's unpublished memoir (07/15/98) Bad news from a black coast By Moritz Thomsen Moritz Thomsen in Ecuador: Exclusive excerpts from his unpublished memoir (07/14/98) The saddest gringo: Moritz Thomsen in exile By Pat Joseph An unforgettable encounter with the legendary writer shortly before his death (07/14/98) Dancing in the streets By Ethan Zindler Dancing in the streets -- Paris celebrates the World Cup (07/13/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives		A COASTAL RESORT SEEMED THE PERFECT PLACE FOR A LONG WEEKEND AWAY FROM PHNOM PENH -- UNTIL CIVIL WAR SHUT DOWN THE COUNTRY. BY ROSEMARY BERKELEY Timing in life is everything. I first heard that in high school, from Patty MacVicar, who was giving me the lowdown on the art of kissing. No one had tried to kiss me yet, but I was hoping someone -- specifically Danny Fitzgibbons -- soon would. Patty, who'd gone well beyond kissing, considered herself impossibly sophisticated compared to me. She concluded her instructions with, "And for God's sake, open your mouth when he's kissing you." "How do I know when to open it?" I asked. She shot me a you-are-never-going-to-be-a-popular-girl look, but it seemed like a good question to me. Do I open my mouth as he heads towards me (open wide, here comes the plane)? Do I spring it open as soon as I feel his lips? Do I wait until his tongue gives me a sign of some sort? My timing was off then, and it's not much better now that I've grown up and figured out how to kiss boys. Last July, my timing was so off that I was caught up in a coup d'état. It wasn't my fault, really. Up until the night before the coup, the U.S. Embassy in Cambodia, where I was living, was reassuring U.S. citizens that, while they should avoid crowds, political gatherings and certain streets, there was no real danger, despite growing acrimony between Cambodia's two prime ministers. Word within the expatriate community in Phnom Penh was that Cambodia had been through enough in the recent past and that foreign investment in the country had brought with it some assurance of stability. My boyfriend, Chris, and I were living in Phnom Penh and we really, really needed to get away. Phnom Penh in July is like Paris in August or Buffalo in January -- that is to say, not the place to be. We wanted to get to a coast, to put our backs to the country for a while and stare out at an ocean. It was the weekend, a long one at that since American organizations were closed on Monday to observe the Fourth of July. After learning from security organizations that the road to the coast was clear, we decided on Friday night to take a bus the next day to a little town called Kompong Som, about four hours away. That night, Chris put on his favorite new CD, a compilation of surf classics purchased from the local market bootlegger. I sang along with the Beach Boys while I packed. Let's go surfin' now. I pulled my overnight bag out from under the bed. Everybody's learnin' how. Threw it across the room to let the bugs inside know that their lease had expired. Come on a safari with me. Put in a couple of bathing suits and a pair of cutoffs. I took a big swig from my let-the-weekend-begin gin and tonic and added a short dress from Bali, a couple of T-shirts and a black skirt. On top went my so-called makeup bag, which is about as streamlined as it can be and still be a girl's: shampoo, contact lens stuff, toothbrush and paste, sunblock and a brush. I discovered that I had a Power Bar in there from my last trip back to the States several months before. I decided I didn't want the extra weight and took it out. "I'm packed," I yelled to Chris. He came into the room with some shorts and T-shirts and threw them into my bag. "Bringin' the board?" I asked. Chris is a mondo surfer. "Yeah, baby." We then did a little happy dance -- twisting to the theme music from "Hawaii Five-O" (by the Ventures, in case you're trying to figure it out) because we were kind of young and very in love and we were going to the beach. Think back to movies or old newsreels you've seen of people fleeing. That's what Phnom Penh looks like from about 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day: people heading for the city limits, having just received orders to evacuate. Buffeted by world events for the last three decades and abused by leaders ranging from the merely crooked to the truly mad, Cambodians are no strangers to waking up and finding that their world has once again been turned upside down. In 1975, when Pol Pot came to power, he ordered his army, the Khmer Rouge, to evacuate all of Phnom Penh. Every family was forced from its home, every hospital emptied, every school and place of business shut down. Everyone -- monks and teachers and guys who worked on cars and women who sold bread -- was sent marching to the countryside so that forced labor and the destruction of all things Western could begin. Life in Phnom Penh takes place on the streets, not in living rooms. If a Cambodian is not out on the street -- gossiping or working or eating or selling -- he or she is walking purposefully, or riding a Chinese-made bicycle, or cruising along on a Honda motorbike, or pedaling a cyclo. So it seemed strange on Saturday morning that the streets weren't quite as insanely bustling as usual. Oh, a stranger to the city would still stand paralyzed with fear at the prospect of trying to traverse Mao Tse Tung Boulevard, but I remember thinking that the usual hustle that makes an Asian city an Asian city was missing. What was odder still was that our bus was not full. The driver even let Chris bring his surfboard on without argument. What's more, we and a handful of other passengers set off on schedule. If you've spent even a day in the third world, you know that it's practically a law of nature that buses do not leave on time. We should have known then that something was very, very wrong. But as I say, my timing was off. Unaware of the impending calamity, I was in a festive mood. "Let's just sing beach songs all weekend, " I said to Chris, feeling very light, very Zelda Fitzgerald -- crazy and amusing. "You know we're goin' to Surf City, gonna have some fun," Chris responded. I leaned back and gazed out at the Cambodian countryside, an emerald sea of beauty dotted with rice paddies, yoked oxen, people snoozing in hammocks and naked kids playing in streams. It was a peaceful scene, one that I knew was deceiving. If countries got together in Vegas and gambled the way people do, Cambodia would be among the losers. Many Cambodians attribute their country's recent bloody history to bad luck. It's as good an explanation as any. The country was carpet-bombed by the U.S. during the Vietnam War, starved and worked to death by Pol Pot during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror and then invaded by the Vietnamese. In the early '90s, the United Nations stepped in and spent an estimated $3 billion to $4 billion -- yes, billion -- in Cambodia to ensure free and fair elections. A new prime minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, was elected. At which point one of his opponents, a former Khmer Rouge soldier named Hun Sen, threatened civil war if he was kept out of government. King Sihanouk, Cambodia's monarch, responded by making Hun Sen a co-prime minister, thus subverting the will of the people and ensuring that the government would be nothing more than a two-headed monster, perpetually at war with itself. N E X T+P A G E | "We're on TV"