17th March (2020)

 

17th March

And still reeling from the Malaysian news. That ‘lockdown’ has dire consequences for most in Malaysia. We talk about the raiding of shops, hoarding of essentials, and non-essentials, enforced seclusion and non participation in mass gatherings, including Friday Prayers and Sunday Masses. However, for some of us, those of us who have no permanent place in Malaysia, it makes us reflect on little things like status, belonging, otherness.

Some say that Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) originated the phrase ‘home is where the heart is.’ My heart is in Malaysia. I feel for Malaysia and Malaysians regardless of race, religion, politics, gender or sexual orientations. Yet I am other to them, foreigner, orang asing. To some I am forever ‘Mat Salleh’, ‘Orang Puteh’ or Laowai/Gwai Lo, stuck in a perpetual otherness because of my place of birth and the colour of my skin. These things I cannot help. There is difference between us, constantly stirred by a history that I had no part in.

My enforced absence. My extended vacation in the beautiful land of Cambodia/Camboge is not really a hardship, merely an inconvenience. My, now distant, partner (via Facebook PM) has suggested that I....

‘Take it as a holiday/retreat

Practice meditation

Do more writing’

That I

‘Hardly got the chance to rest so long, take the opportunity to do some things different.’

‘Does this person even know me?’ I silently scream. And yes, said partner has been reading Jack Canfield’s anthology series ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ recently. You can tell, can’t you.

Since the perceived urgency of this Covid 19 virus has bitten in the psyche of many nations, demarkation lines and the concept of ‘Othering’ have been reinforced. I and Other, Us and Them, In group and Out group are emphasised by urge for social distancing. Quarantine for those who belong, banning for those who do not. Some outwardly proclaim foreigners to be ‘filthy’, not at all like us. Erving Goffman would have had  a field day considering all the ‘Stigma’ involved.

Even in the times of virulent viruses there must be breakfast.

Two beautiful Khmer young women (twins Phany and Phanin) stop by this morning with Sita our unofficial Tuk Tuk driver. They escort me to breakfast. Our destination is Bangkok Boat Noodle, along Wat Polanka Road. It is a tiny eatery about fifteen minutes from Colors of Cambodia, and through the dusty and warming Siem Reap streets. According to the twins the concept of  ‘Boat Noodles’ or guay diow rua, hails from Thailand, and specifically the Bangkok canals. I have mine with sen lek, which is rice noodles, beef balls and a variety of fresh local leaves including ‘Saw Leaf’ and ‘Thai Basil’. The meat is thinly sliced beef, and the soup diluted cows blood. I ask ‘not pig’s blood’, but no, ‘to be real should cow’s blood’ I am told.

It is later. I sit, looking out the upstairs window onto the world, I cannot help but reflect on these superficial distances we put between us, now being officially told to isolate, distance because of potential infection, passing one to another. If only mankind could spread love so easily. 

Well, that all got very serious very quickly.

I’m conscious that I am choosing eateries where I am distant from other customers. I’ve never liked groups of people, so keeping away from others is not one of my problems. I’m back at The Hideout, diligently spraying my hands with the sanitiser left outside. I order the house lok lak because now I’m on a much smaller budget than I was yesterday. Today is a whole different world which has lengthened my stay in Cambodia.

Tea. I finally have Liptons tea. I love coffee, and I do like water but I am British. British equals tea. Do ask Ben Miller’s British Detective character (Richard Poole) in season one of TV’s ‘Death in Paradise’, he’ll tell you.  Okay, yes, this tea does come with a minute stainless steel jug containing condensed milk, and another similar jug filled with sugar syrup (don’t ask).

Not to be deterred, I once more brave the Khmer gentleman with his temperature gun and am given the okay to enter Thai Huot Market again. I dash for Lipton’s tea bags, buy Hale’s (fast dissolving) sugar cubes, more water and cheap ceramic mug. Phany provides a kettle. I have already bought volle melk (Dutch milk), and am all set for a self service ‘cuppa’. When I lived in Britain, I had no idea that the Dutch supplied milk to Asia.

This evening I disappear to Mamma Shop (Italian restaurant) for the second evening, for dinner. Last evening I had Four cheese (quattro formaggi) pizza, which was most excellent. So, this evening I try Ravioli di peche pomadoro e panna and a glass of Rosé. Tiramisu for dessert. Yes, yes, yes I am supposed to be on a budget, and I have overspent for today, but the truth is that all the budget meals are open during the day. Not at night. To buy the ingredients for a sandwich or two would cost as much as having an evening meal out. Okay, okay, yes I am trying to justify the unjustifiable. Today is excessive, true. However, there is soupçon of self pity in this meal, a tad comfort eating/drinking to gloss over my situation, and the situation of many, many, people are in right now. The glass of Rosé helped me gloss over a moment of self indulgent loneliness.

Through the half lit streets I walk back to Colors of Cambodia. The twins, with Kosal Son, are having a party. I am delighted to hear the tender strains of traditional Khmer instruments being played, observe fried grasshoppers being taken like another culture might absentmindedly devour peanuts, or cashew nuts ... I try a grasshopper or two, to be polite. They taste nutty, but a tad too dry for my throat. 

While here in Siem Reap, staying above the gallery of Colors of Cambodia, on the third of four floors, I am constantly reminded that this charity does not stop at just offering an art education, but extends itself to envelop Khmer creativity per se. Because of the loss of so much cultural learning during the time of the massacres by the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979), it has been left to this new generation of Khmers to re-capture Cambodia’s traditional ways. Twins Phany and Phanin work towards a regeneration of Khmer culture not just through teaching, but creating their own art works, playing tradition instruments as well as practising Bokator (a Cambodian martial art). These young Khmer simultaneously struggle to move forward with the rest of South East Asia, towards an undesignated point between ‘Modern’ and ‘Contemporary’ art.

Colors of Cambodia’s Director Phany avidly promotes knowledge concerning Cambodia’s artistic past. She teaches her young students to appreciate art and music dating back to the early days of the Khmer Empire, back to Kambujadesa, and to the 9th through to the 13th centuries. Phany uses a book of Khmer line designs found on surfaces and architecture from Hindu and Buddhist carved bas reliefs across Cambodia, many from the remains of the ancient Khmer city of Angkor (from the Sanskrit word nagara, or holy city) standing some 5.6 kilometres from Siem Reap town, and the Colors of Cambodia art school/gallery. 

In Phany’s book (Kbach, A study of Khmer ornament, with line drawings by Chan Vitharin, and published by Reyun Publishing, in 2005) are drawings of Angels, Apsaras, Asuras (demons) and Devas (gods) as well as intricate graphic designs representing all aspects of the natural world (as carved at the five peaked temple which itself represents the five mountain ranges of the mythical home of the ‘gods’ at Mount Meru). Khmer tradition and the contemporary world become intermingled in the works of art spilling out from Colors of Cambodia’s doors. Bill Gentry’s founding of the Siem Reap art school, the initial tutelage by artists from Batambang’s free Phare Ponleu Selpak school of art and circus skills, the coming and guidance of Malaysian artists and the current direction by Director Phany, have led to the fragrant blossoming of this Khmer school of art and a maturation of its students.