NEW YEARS IS FOR QUITTERS
Imagine having to make resolutions – and then break them – 3 times over. Cambodians do that and that’s why the whole country is so exhausted.
They do ours, then the Chinese one, then this one which starts today, Sat Ap 13. That’s a lot of pressure. There is nobody in Phnom Penh who is from Phnom Penh (much like British Columbia in this regard) and this is, perhaps, the most familial race on earth. So everybody is off to the provinces. Last year the Cambodia Daily positively Crowed that there were only 58 traffic mortalities during the holiday season (down 20 from the year before). I came down from the provinces on the bus, and happily it felt kinda like the calm before the storm. I roll with ‘Sorya’ (sorryakindakilledurfamilyah)…. Only cuz they ship my mirrors and are nice as hell. They’re murderous, tho. All their drivers are sponsored by NIKE and you’ve never seen a cleaner pair of heels than the pair they’ll show you after they’ve rolled a 48 window limo. This is the country of ‘Beat it’, cuz unless you got 500 bucks to clear your name somebody gonna be tossing your salad right quick
But these people; there’s nothing like how their eyes slide and a smile washes over their whole face while they say, ’I’m going to my home-country’. I know the places they are talking about, and they can be pretty, but more often are not. I guess you have to be there, and it helps if your Mom and Dad are there too.
It continues to amaze me, even in Phnom Penh, how quickly you can leave the cities and towns behind. PP sprawls a lot – there are very few buildings over 4 or 5 stories, but if you go the right way, if you ride across the Tonle Sap over the Japanese-Canadian Friendship Bridge and hang a left, (North) you will instantly be hobby-horsing down a buckety road, weaving around cows and admiring stilted houses and strong-legged men in sarongs. In Siem Reap and Battambang, the only other cities, and they are tiny next to PP, the transformation is even more instant. It always seems to involve crossing the river, in BTB it’s a toss-up which was is prettier. About 10 Kms South down the river I did stumble into what was to become my favourite local for an afternoon beer, a retreat in the purest sense, it doesn’t even have a name. It’s an example of what I call a hammock bar (there are a number of them in Siem Reap too, down by where the ferries are at, but this one takes the prize. You walk through a tunnel of old hardwoods to a deeply gladed small bluff over a river the color of chaipuccino. You can sit in the forest, but the place to be is in one of 6 or 8 totally precarious bamboo floored ‘pods’ stilted high up over the river. Don’t look down and make sure you step on the joists. One of the young girls will bring you a plaited rush mat and (if you’re a giant one-legged white guy) a folding card table and chair. Then comes a small tin tray bearing salted nuts, 3 Angkor Beer and two 500ml bottles of water in a big green beach pail filled with chunks of ice, a single drinking straw and a cheap pair of tongs. There are 3 or 4 hammocks per pod and they are all monk-orange and diaphanous with use. Some have burlap ass-patches where they’ve worn clear through. It’s Love.
North along the East side of the river is even quieter and by and by you come to where the Cham Muslims are at. There will be a gold-domed mosque and if you’re lucky they will be calling the faithful to prayer. The Muslims seem to be prospering which is nice, cuz Idi Amin, I mean Pol Pot did his best to annihilate them. It seems to be a nice warm, moderate, syncretic evocation of Islam without any of the rabid lunacy of Saudi Arabia and many of the other Gulf countries. A simple scarf at most for the women and some eschew even that. It’s particularly festive now, because today is the first real day of the Khmer New Year. The pagodas and temples are full of peeps too; most of them toting tiffin tins and packing playing cards – the fave pastime over the season.
There’s no work to be done for me – even the amps and orphans make their way to their ‘homeland’, so, if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em. I’ll throw in the towel too, for a few days anyhow.
