Cambodia in the Days of Covid (a largely unedited diary) 16th March (2020)

 

16th March

Coincidentally, today is my father’s birthday. He would have been 101 born, as he was, in 1919. Unlikely isn’t it.

So far all smiles, at least I think so. It’s difficult to tell under the blue masks. A thought concerning Jain Dharma (and ascetics of the Śvētāmbara tradition) runs scampering through my sleepy brain. Perhaps, in a more social distancing future, we shall all wear filtering masks, but maybe not in the face-mask banning France. 

Presenting my, minimal, bags at the x-ray scanning conveyor I feel a little guilty not wearing a belt in my trousers. Scanning officials inevitably ask to see a belt, and I have to disappoint them. My Marks and Spenser baggy cotton trousers need no belt, only a cord with a haphazardly tied knot. It is such a shame. Perhaps on my next trip I shall wear a belt to please the officials, let them show me where I should place it.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport dua (2) appears no less busy amidst the presenting Covid 19 pandemic. I’m not quite sure just what I expected, empty spaces, people cowering, shying away from contact. I notice no bell ringing, no ‘Bring out your dead’, no hook-beaked Charles de Lorme plague masks on black clad doom bearers. There’s none of that. Business, it seems, is as usual at KL airport.

Siem Reap, on the other hand, is sanitiser mad. My host, Phany Phanin Futago, the Khmer Director of the charity Colors of Cambodia, lept to douse me with misting fluid. “Everyone must be spray” she said. I was busy cleaning my glasses at the time. She tells me that tourism is down in the town. And, in a place which relies on tourism to survive, this is very difficult for the locals. Mine host indicated that small businesses will find it hard to survive without tourists from North America, Japan and Europe especially, for those countries are the countries whose tourists are temporarily banned from visiting Cambodia.

I am to be housed on the third floor of Colors of Cambodia. A room made ready to accept people on a ‘residency’, or important guests giving workshops over a period of time. On arrival I sling my small rucksack into the room and, crippled with pangs of hunger, walk to the street running parallel. Over lunch in The Hideout (Barista and Lounge), on Central Market Street and just past Coconut Alley, I overhear one ‘journo’ reporting in. He is questioning the low number of reported cases of the Covid 19 virus in Cambodia, saying that he isn’t sure if that was because of a low spread of the disease or if it were a low incidence of reporting existing cases. It’s not an uncommon thought either. Time will tell.

After that minimalist late lunch, and upon trying to enter the Thai Huot (super) Market...

 “Sorry, sir”, a gentleman in a dark blue shirt, olive trousers and a cap replete with chevron pounces to block my path. He shoves a white electrical device towards my face. It lightens, obviously the correct colour, and my accoster waves me past. Bizarre. Siem Reap is gaining in additional otherness these pandemic days. I gather my immediate needs into a plastic basket, and yes plastic still rules the roost in Cambodia, and troll back to the room set aside for me above Siem Reap’s Colors of Cambodia gallery.

The Khmer child and youth art charity Colors of Cambodia was created by the North American Nuevo Surrealist artist William (Bill) Gentry, in 2003. It has successfully raised ongoing crops of creative individuals to Bill’s credit and to the credit of the hard working students and teaching staff who have made Colors of Cambodia a haven for a newly developing Khmer art. I am constantly surprised at the quality of work being produced here. Today is no exception. 

Tired from my experiences, I hunker down to nap.

I am suddenly alert, seduced into wakefulness by the lilting strains of a gently played banjo. I wander through into the upstairs front studio. Narak sits on a makeshift bed, delicately fingering the banjo. His touch on that instrument is as light as his oil painting strokes - he is working on two new paintings, one a 12 inch square oil portrait of a young Khmer girl, the other (60 cm by 90 cm) is barely sketched out and is liable to change direction by completion. The music stops. He is tired from painting and he also needs a rest. I sigh because he was creating such captivating music.

It’s a little like when you take your eye off of the shuttlecock in badminton. I mention badminton as it’s a national pastime in Malaysia. I was so concerned about what is happening here in Cambodia, I had forgotten about Malaysia.

Well, the big news is........

Malaysia will be on lockdown from the 18th to the 31st of March. My flight back to Malaysia is on the 20th, or rather won’t be. Why do I get the sudden urge to listen to something by Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour?

It is as if Malaysia was just waiting for me to leave. With a little wave and a great big smirk, some large gentleman dressed in some sort of officious uniform firmly closes the gate to Malaysia and gives me the digitus impudicus (middle finger). ‘See ya around sucker, but not today ha,ha,ha.’