Holiday in Cambodia

It's weird not being in Vietnam. New language, new people, new environment. Dang! Just when I was getting the hang of things.

The Vietnam-Cambodian border is not a grand threshold. It is a vast scrubby patch of dirt and debris which calls to mind the outskirts of Tijiuana. Buses do not cross the border. They drop people off on the Vietnam side, where lines snake around snack shops and black market money traders infiltrate the crowd offering ludicrously unfavorable rates. Stone faced officials stare travelers in the eye looking for tiny flinches of deceit. The officials search baggage haphazardly, stamp documents in triplicate, sign their names on yellow custom papers and without looking point former guests out the door into the two hundred meter no-man's land that is the border. I wondered if this was exactly as thick as the blue line on my map that represents the frictioned boundary of these two countries. I imagined myself walking across that blue line in miniature atop the map.

Another bus picked us up on the Cambodian side and carried us to Phnom Penh. The road was generally quite good with a few patches of dirt or stretches of pock marked surface that made the bus seem like a boat as it slowed and maneuvered. My agent in Saigon sold me the bus ticket for six dollars and said that the ride was six hours. We left at 8:30am and arrived in Phnom Penh at 6:30pm. But by now I've learned never to take anyone's word for how long something will take or how spicy, far away, expensive or dangerous any particular thing may be.

The bus was forced to wait an hour for its turn to board a ferry across the Mekong. Hundreds of cars, trucks, motorbikes and pedestrians queued in eight paralell lines. We were at a standstill in a humid riverside assemblage of food shacks catering to the collective boredom of the traffic. Scores of children, from six to sixteen years old surrounded the bus offering everything from Angkor Beer to deep fried baby chickens. Beggars too would reach up, knock on the window, show their deformity or pitiful condition, then reveal an empty tin cup or sometimes just a their unfolded palms, raised high over their heads. We left the bus desperate for air and went walking about the food stalls. A Hungarian named Peter bought a roasted turtle. They take a live turtle, then roast it, then hand it over. The shell acts as a bowl and after picking the little amphibian apart you can drink the remaining juices that have accumulated inside. Looking over Peter's shoulder I discovered that turtles are mostly liver. Peter ate several organs with mixed results. Liver good. Intestines bad. Neck muscles tough. Eventually the process of eating became too messy and too smelly for a Canadian who was sitting behind us, so Peter gave the remainder to the kids outside who deftly dissected and devoured it.

I didn't expect the change in environment I saw after crossing into Cambodia. It is less commercial than Vietnam in that I saw less business happening. Besides two massive and delapidated SAMSUNG and SHARP billboards sitting without context in a dead rice field there was also next to no advertising. Houses were perched on spindly stilts with thin papery bridges attaching the entrances to the road. A surprising amount of people were playing games like soccer, volleyball, checkers, and something that looked like a combination paddycake and roshambo. It was Sunday night, so perhaps people were simply whiling away the last hours of the weekend.

We were deposited in front of a guesthouse not far from the river. I shared a room with a Malasian man named Kong to slightly defray the four dollar per night cost. Since the one dollar per night rooms were full, two dollars each per night was the best we could do.

Peter the Hungarian and I took a walk later in the evening to see the surrounds. We took off towards the river with Peter's uncanny internal compass leading the way. Lining the wide thoroughfares were grassy lawns filled with local people just hanging out, good naturedly enjoying each others company and tossing an occasional hello to passersby. Food sellers place bamboo mats on the sidewalk in lieu of tables and chairs. A fairground sat a block away from the hotel. There we found food stalls, bumper cars, circus rides, fruits of all sorts, many unidentifiable. The riverwalk was again crowded. Warm temperatures made nightime socializing brushed by the cool river breeze quite compelling.

We ventured inwards towards the city and found smaller streets lined with vendors. These weren't the sophisticated mechanized vendors of Vietnam. Here it was wooden and the cookery and decor were decidedly more midievel. Hearing loud music we turned down an alley. The small road was residential and everyone's doors and windows were open. Halfway down, without a car or motorbike in sight was a small dance party which had apparently spilled out into the street. Thump thump thump went the speakers as Cambodian pop was sung over western style techno. The crowd literally pulled us in and we danced for a bit and grinned widely along with our fellow revelers. A man brought an unmarked bottle our way, and with a slight nod we decided to venture on.

This neighborhood looked like I would imagine a post-nuclear-war Detroit. Eight story tenements covered in a camoflage of decaying paint and mold were decorated on every balcony with the mottled foliage of drying laundry. The occupants sat in their balconies yelling conversations to other balconies in adjacent buildings. Nothing seemed whole - everything was either a part, or was missing a part. The theme was operational disrepair. Peter was not as impressed as I concerning our surroundings. We stumbled into other impromptu dances as we made our way back to the hotel but were too tired to accept the beckoning invitations.

If this enthusiasm for good times is any indicator of the country as a whole then I think I'm going to have a good holiday in Cambodia.