AGENT GREEN
AGENT GREEN
It’s hard to imagine a green more green than new paddy rice. Young Cambodian corn is in the running as is the foliage on a happy rubber tree. I just rode through Kratie (pronounced ‘Kratcheeay’) province where latex is where it’s at and there are thousands of hectares of rubber plantations – the trees standing like ranked battalions of wounded and bleeding soldiers.
It’s cashew country too and those trees are not particularly green. They are in fruit right now though and their dun-green leaves are set alight by the scorching orange or deepest yellower than yellow fruit. It could be a question of contrast, as it’s actually the end of the dry season. I can’t imagine how green it is during the monsoon. Or it could be because I look at the world through amber lenses which tend to bump up the green.
The otherworldly white Ibis standing sentry over the paddy just to point out to you what color means.
By contrast your slate grey water buffalo with the mouse-colored nit-picking birdie on his back… the one you see when you ‘google image’ symbiosis.
I rode from Ratanakiri to Kratie and then from there to Kampong Cham and then on down to the capital and in those few days saw much of what one could ever hope to see in the Kingdom, except the temples, which is the big draw, of course. I am continually struck by the fact that what you look at on the map never has any resemblance whatsoever to what you see on the way… it’s a human nature thing. What we build in our ‘mind’s eye’. The wend along the Mekong from Kratie to Kampong Cham doesn’t look particularly appealing – I had an image of a grind with a few select hi-lights – yet it was one of the most beautiful rides of my entire life.
It’s Cham country, which is already special. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge genocidically did their level best to eradicate the Cham Muslims, because, well, they are Muslim. He got them down into the hundreds before the Vietnamese came packing a slew of other problems but at least stopped the digging of mass graves for innocent Cham. They’re up into the hundreds of thousands now and it is very heartening to see. Plus, in my opinion, their communities are the most vibrant, charming, and certainly most colorful in Cambodia. They have panache and pride and riding through Cham country I noted dramatically less trash by the side of the road and a notch bump up in affluence (they are hard workers, in general). Lots of the houses were not 12 stilts, but 20, and in bristol shape, and still in the traditional and beautiful style, not the gross bourgeois atrocities you see elsewhere when the peeps get a little money.
The traditional stilted hut has become, along with the log cabin, my favorite homestyle. I would be happy with a 9 stilter, or a 12’er if I could convince a nice girl to join me.
Many of these Mekong-side houses even sported lawns (ish), which has got to be tough to do in this region. The lovely Brahma cattle are bigger and more buff and even the chickens have a hitch in their step; they cross the road with purpose.
The people too are even more gregarious than your average Khmer. Teeth like piano keys and lots of waving. The kids are relentless; I’ve never said, ‘Hello!’ more times in one day in my life. And they got style, your Chams. All manner of variations on Islamic dress. I’m thinking of a young man giving me the thumbs-up and wearing an iridescent peppermint green set of silk man-jammas set off by a snow-white ‘songkok’, the muslim cap.
There’s that green again. Then there are the dust-blasted green leaves of the white poplars, whose bark (arbutus-style) peels like paper to reveal everyet more hope.
I stopped on the way down towards Kratie, on a long tough reach of dirt road, to stretch my back and drink some water, I was kinda in my own woe-is-me world. The light was waning and I didn’t know how far I still needed to ride. I look up and there is a lovely village woman in a sarong and her jet hair is flat down her back cuz she’s just had her evening bath. She too appeared to be in her own world; it was an incredibly calm scene and I don’t think she even knew I was there. She was murmuring to a water buffalo and scratching her behind her ears. Another she buffalo – I love them, they are so forward-looking – had lumbered up from her wallow. She was perfectly coated in a thin patina of ochre mud which was kicking off sparks in the last blast of the six-on-the-nose tropical sunset. She was waiting patiently for an ear-scratchin’ and a talkin’ to. Above, there were hundreds of hornet’s nests in the crotches of those peeling poplars. I don’t know if they were domesticated or not. I suppose if you had sharp tweezers and a pince nez that you could render a hornet edible. I mean they eat scorpions.
There’s the swamp-green juice from the sugarcane. I have mixed feelings about the sugar cane because I have treated 3 girl amputees who lost varying lengths of arm in gas-powered sugarcane presses. But the juice is gas in my tank. I can go 70 kms on 12 ounces of sugarcane juice, which is pretty good bang for your buck. The hull of the King Coconut is a mild green. Her heart-shaped heart-held juice is pearline fuel for me too. Chop chop let’s go!
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