Fix non-flushing toilet. Adjust shower trickle. Give thanks. Home from home. Place to rest, think, write. Comfort. A small thing. Anomaly in country emerging from tragic past. Any place you connect, you connect well. Five years. Sense of belonging expands. Familiarity, peace.
Cooler. Nearing rainy season. Eggs tasting like eggs. Sunny side exploding wondrously in mouth. Crispy bacon like real bacon, not beef bacon. Chicken bacon. Coffee. Thick. Strong. Local. Ancient land patined with Americana. Welcomes, fascinates, embraces. Innocent passion of unmarried thirty something Khmer twins, dreaming of beaus courageous enough to match their spirits.
Post breakfast. Sense of Siem Reap stirring. Shutters opening. Honda Scoopys weaving betwixt, between tuk tuks. Nightly burrowed, ever present tourists crawling, seeking sustenance. Mot Douk, military land mine victim, walks streets selling books. Tray, crammed, hangs from neck. Gestures stumps of arms. Hands gone. Politely sells books to and for tourists. I buy, $20, donate book to hotel mini-library. Cambodia has eighty three land mine casualties in 2016, despite money thrown at project and 20th anniversary of Diana Princess of Wales/Princess of the People’s involvement with Cambodia de-mining projects.
Chinese Madam boss discovers Toyota saloon, which chauffeur drove over and parked on pavement, blocked by motorcycles. Lorry crammed with large green coconuts glides, watched by three Khmer young men, sitting, waiting for tourists they know will come. They rest in one tuk tuk. It carries cushion resembling Texas steer. The three men, their interest in one mobile phone and its spoils waned, become animated, walking back, forth, energising for day ahead. Tuk tuk, sir, not question, but hope.
Beautiful season. Midday restaurants barely inhabited. Skies, blue, promote small lazy clouds. White of course. Lunching at Belmiros. Small Italian restaurant and bar. Off maze of lanes, Siem Reap infamous for. Balmy day. Thursday feels like Sunday. Reggae plays in background. Little to do but write, rest and eat. Vacation as Americans say. Seems more fitting than ‘holiday’. Suntans, sangria, quite possibly sex. Siem Reap no beach, too early for sangria solo.
Siem Reap has many pharmacies now. Some not cheap. Due to airline regulations, I need toothpaste, shampoo. I walk to nearest pharmacy, grab said items, present $100 note. Cashier looks at note. Turns it this way and that. Says note ‘broken’. Means damaged. She points to quite minute holes, made by stapler, ‘broken’, see ‘broken’. Says she cannot accept. I am taken aback. I want to argue. She determined not to accept note. A note, incidentally, given by money changer between The Gardens and Mega Mall, Kuala Lumpur. Beware people. Cambodia does not accept notes with minute holes in.
Night brings Angkor draft. Warm breeze. Headlights of Scoopies finding way home. Long black hair escaping fish bowl helmets. Pert riders. Children front and rear. Largeness of AmeriEuropean male. All too revealing shorts. Sleevelessly riding kinglike in tuk tuk. Captive younger Khmer woman opposite, trophy. Dinner, resolve weakens. Beer in Malaysia $3 a glass, Cambodia .75c. Cheaper than water. I plump for beer to accompany evening meal. Tad light headed climbing four staircases to hotel room.
Routine is tempting. Today I order the same breakfasts at Viva. One for me, one to takeaway for Sitha, regular tuk tuk driver. There is no way he could afford, even want to afford Burrito for breakfast. Nice to see smile as I hand it over. That is a routine I developed staying at Viva, where breakfasts come with the room.
Colors of Cambodia staff busy. I don't disturb. I wander streets of old Siem Reap pricing Kampot Pepper. I like to use Kampot Pepper in home cooking. Very peppery, hot, bite, great with pasta, spaghetti. Intense pepperiness only found elsewhere with Sarawak Pepper. Spice trade existed since 2000 BC. Transporting spice. Originally Keralan. South India black gold. Now from Cambodia. Back to West. Romans great pepper fans. Oldest Roman cookbook, Marcus Gavius Apicius ‘De re Coquinaria’ (Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome) 80% recipes using pepper.
Back at Nai Khmer. Good. Cheap. Khmer food. Pumpkin soup with half baguette, sago, banana and coconut milk dessert. One glass iced Cambodian coffee. Another Passion fruit and soda. Still not reaching $7. No air con but view of constantly changing humanity. I write. Thinking of friends not here, Art, Julia et al. Janice Joplin sang ‘Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose’. Our responsibilities, loyalties, memories of smiles and sweet between the sheets, anchor us. Those who understand us, accept us for who and what we are, give us another kind of freedom, the freedom to be ourselves. Greatest freedom of all.
Coolness of Khmer breeze brings Spanish guitar, cerveza scents to salsa tacos. Serenaded. Bar opposite hotel, cheekily called The Laundry, has series of live music. It's apt. Viva offers ‘Fine Mexican Cuisine’ (fine enough for Siem Reap). Mexican here perhaps means Mexicanish, diluted version of Tex Mex for those of who know no better. It is like Chinese, Indian restaurants in England, Western restaurants in Malaysia. Who the hell invented Chicken Chop anyway. I am impressed, ‘music’ ended at midnight.
Opposite, young guy sweeps front Khmer Kitchen Restaurant. Doesn't dampen dust first. Dust clouds thrown up by sweeping, drift across road.
Walk out hatless. Hat now only fit for Worzel Gummidge. Old Market area. Seek art. Discover Cambodia is land where tuk tuks, motorcycles and cars all clamour for pavement. Pedestrians use road. Contrary to common belief, Cambodia is not people friendly country.
Find precisely one art gallery open, 11am, Siem Reap morning. Colors of Cambodia, my other half area manager. Other conveyor belt tourist art shops, only for interior design, closed or closed down. Google gives scant directions to those beyond walking distance.
Kandal Village, supposedly new, up coming, cultural area, simply isn't. Most tourist information out dated. One former art gallery closed. Another children’s charity shop. ‘Art Cafe’ has little actual
art does not understand concept of ‘flat white’ coffee. The Mexican cafe closed. Little interior design bijou boutiques, flashbacks of Covent Garden, prices to match. Whole area appears derelict. Construction site. Exercise worth it. Desire for flat white taken over. Sit at Sister Srey, by river. One day they will recognise me. Maybe not. Drink smallish flat white ($2.75). Have that coffee smell on fingers. I can get much better tasting flat white at McDonalds McCafe in Puchong, Malaysia. Twice the size, half the price ($1.47), air con too. When in Siem Reap …buy coffee at an Australian owned cafe.
Must buy a new hat in Blighty.
Town quiet. Mot Douk , book seller having lost hands while in military, complains to me this morning. Very quiet. Few tourists on streets. Being contrarian, see this as good thing. Small, white pot, Lipton’s tea, at Viva, refreshing spirit like no other. Reminder of home, Malaysia. Two hours away from seeing my partner. Harbour mixed feelings. Know she will be doing Road Runner act as soon as she hits tarmac, visit to Colors of Cambodia gallery, visit Children’s Hospital for mural, visit to this school, that school. What she does. Lady Bountiful. Mother Theresa Cambodia.
In the moment. Pushing airport trolley. All smiles. She here. Telling tales of plane bound, excited, restless children. Tuk tuk back to hotel. Siem Reap quiet. Restive. Lunch Nai Khmer, dinner far distant local Khmer restaurant frequented by young middle class Khmer. Chilli fish, fried eel with red ants (less exotic than sounds).
Morning raga. Tuk tuk passes. Khmer man with half legs kneels framed in tuk tuk metal bars. Di Caprio Titanic moment. Honda Scoopy riders pout bright red lipstick. Cars wake to Monday morning rush. Non Khmer male, thirties, jogs, arm tattoos, earphone, blue Lycra shorts pumping by. Potted Lipton’s tea, obviously made with water off the boil, insipid in my cup. Pot quickly cools in the
Cambodia heat. Breakfast lost its glitter save for the daily passing pageant of Khmer life. Is ennui creeping.
She who must serve charity runs to be made up. Fifth anniversary calls for professional Khmer wedding photo to mark event. Actual wedding March. This is Cambodia. Waiting, not for alibi, but for laundry. Smart stripped shirt needed for wedding photo. 8am means 8.30 means 8.50. Five years ago I proposed. Got down on knees, literally, in small tuk tuk, riding airport to Colors of Cambodia Gallery. Old town, Siem Reap. Proposed. Accepted. Obtained Buddhist priest. Rounded congregation. Students, touring photographers, Colors of Cambodia teachers, Founder, flowers. Banana flower seeds in haze of congratulations, joyous thanks, photos but none ‘official’. Five years later clamber into Cambodian tuk tuk. Twins in Khmer costumes await, angelic, innocent apsaras. We fly tuk tuk chariot (kong by). Traditional Khmer make up, golden wedding costume, Khmer costume jewellery are worn by someone.
Photographer too serious. Sense of play abandoned. Khmer traditional wedding clothes. Strict poses. No variation. Push. Pull. Twist. No my stomach does not shrink. No my head does not turn in unnatural ways. Smile. Grimace.
Photographer getting pissed off with rebel antics. Oh come on, this is us, about us, for us……let's play. One playful photo allowed. Thank mercy. Studio hot. I sweat. Black jacket heavy, constricting. No longer Hemingway or Wolverine, but sweaty Penguin. Back to Colors of Cambodia Gallery. Snap, snap, snap, hand phone cameras twist turn, we twist, turn, happy to be released. We contort, pull, push, crazy people, Khmer, Malaysian, British, happy to play in loving art school gallery. We are all children.
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