The RedCoates in Thailand
an interview with Karen J. Coates & Jerry Redfern
photo credits Jerry Redfern
 ~ it ain't Cambodia ~
Husband and wife team, photojournalist Jerry Redfern and writer Karen Coates, don't really know where they're from.
"Well," starts Jerry, "we have a place in Chiang Mai, a rental place in Oregon, a mailing address in Wisconsin, I grew up in Montana and that's where I want to end up...I don't know. Where are YOU from?"
Notwithstanding their confusion, they wholeheartedly endorse their six-year old expatriate lifestyle: "It's great.The travel is rough, language is a barrier, you never know what to
expect, you sleep in different beds a lot, the showers are cold and
ineffective. It's often a lot like camping in the rough. We love it. Really."
Of course, there are days when the prosaic lives of most of their Stateside friends with "mortgages and kids and a sizeable steady income" look pretty good, Karen admits, after watching a thief put a gun to Jerry's head and take his wedding ring.
When we first went to Cambodia, as newlyweds in 1998, we discovered Phnom Penh to be a difficult and dangerous place to live. We were robbed three times at gunpoint right in front of our house during that first year. We were shot at and trampled by monks in a riot.
Jerry agrees that the violence, ignorance and venality of Cambodia was at times hard to deal with. "And I really hate," he adds, "the small boat between Siem Reap and Battambang in Cambodia. It's hot, unsafe, expensive and overrated."
The trip along the Sangker River is inflicted in small fiberglass boats, overloaded with people, and takes from 3-16 hours depending on the height of the river and how often you get stuck. There is no respite from the broiling sun and there are no life jackets.
And the last stretch is across the Tonle Sap Lake which, while not very deep, is little comfort if your boat runs aground and springs a hole. Plus the teenage boat drivers see the throttle as a switch: on or off. When it's on, it's all the way on and you slap against the waves in the lake and are deafened by the roar. When it's off, it's worse, because that usually means it's broken.
The Cambodian introduction to life abroad toughened the pair for future travel to other countries. "And it has sure made the US seem a lot less intimidating and interesting in the times we've been back there since," they laugh.
When looking at the States from their Asian perspective, certain things stand out:
roads seem really wide and empty
green grass everywhere looks weird
vegetables taste like cardboard
it's really, really quiet and clean
TV's boring and slow
the food is starchy and thick and bland and does not agree with them anymore
people follow traffic signs and speed limits
it's cold all the time - a high of 85 no longer feels warm
Karen also finds it "amazing to be back in a place where there's
absolutely no language barrier. It's almost dull communicating in the US: there's no challenge". Sometimes she "freaks out drivers" when she just steps into the street to cross, weaving her way through traffic, Asian-style, forgetting that people don't do that in the US.
When asked how it all began, Wisconsin born and bred Karen, who used to travel vicariously by spreading National Geographics on the family room floor, admits it's really all her fault:
continued on next page
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| | | Travel Tips: | "If your kid's like mine, she gets a kick out of ice cubes. Ask for some when the flight attendant rolls by."
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| "Put a few twist-ties in your wallet. They provide temporary fix-its as well as keeping things in order."
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