Quite Random

Bank holiholiholiday

So today is a bank holiday for some reason, Wednesday is King Sihanouk’s birthday, and as for tomorrow, well, there’s a holiday either side of it so everyone’s taking that off as well.

It’s a miracle anything gets done here.

This morning a few of us helped escort about thirty-five children to an optician in Siem Reap for check-ups. A few myopias, an astigmatism, and a lot of rolling around the waiting room on wheely chairs ensued. The kids are very well behaved, and do such a good job of keeping each other amused that you feel like you hardly need to be there and they’re only including you in their fun because they actually like you.

This afternoon has been unproductive, even though there is rather a lot I need to produce. A failed mission to buy a copy of Shantaram, a successful mission to eat potato cakes, and doubtless a Christian missionary was sat somewhere looking smug in the Blue Pumpkin when I met up with a few friends. I have websites to complete, reports to write, lesson plans and course materials to prepare. This is great; I have always wanted about three jobs, and it’s always better to have stuff to do and not get it done than to not have anything to do.

South America is slowly being taken over by women, communists and peasants. With any luck they’ll come up through Mexico, invade the US, and the whole world will have cheaper fuel for pensioners, quesadillas, and alpaca socks.

My good mate Cookie is coming to stay soon. I told him that he should bring his swimming gear so we could go for a dip. He sounded surprised and maybe thinks I’m suggesting we go for a swim in a crocodile-infested swamp. No. We have pools here, actual swimming pools with fat Germans and everything. Just in case you’re curious, we also have:

• Recycling – except no-one has to be told to do it or threatened. People here collect recyclables because they can sort and sell them, and as is the case in dozens of other countries, Coke bottles are made of glass and are re-used.
• Wi-Fi – at most larger cafes and bars in town, free Wi-Fi. That’s free, Starbucks, you money-grabbing bastards.
• A 24–hour travel network – which is staffed by professional moto and tuk-tuk drivers who also offer temple tours, sunsets, drugs, and boom-boom. Take that and smoke it, TfL.
• A daily farmer’s market – never mind wandering up Northcote Road being sold pumpkin bread or pretentious tomatoes by Oxford graduates with inexplicably red cheeks, here we have a daily cornucopia of organic food and drink, fished, killed or picked that very morning, and frequently not even dead yet.

Pile stuff on the drunk bloke

I had a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to be a parent last night. A few of us went to see some of the kids from the Sangkheum Centre perform traditional Khmer Apsara dancing at a groovy hotel in town. The kids look amazing, with immaculate costumes and make-up, and they’re so well practiced, the dancing is really slick. One by one, as the kids who are in my classes saw me, they flashed me huge smiles and even snuck in a cheeky wave.

I want to be a dad.

So the rugby didn’t go England’s way last night, but the night was superb. Apart from the three very deeply confused lads who kept shouting ‘Scotland!’, everyone was in great form. We finished the night in X Bar (a very cool rooftop bar with big wicker chairs and fairy lights) until gone six this morning, when we de-camped to a Vietnamese restaurant for a noisy breakfast. Only one person fell asleep, so naturally he had things piled on top of him and photos taken. It wasn’t me, hasn’t been for a while now, but I’ve been there and got the T-shirt.

Lumpy bumpy rugger bugger

So it’s the Rugby World Cup final tonight, everyone’s bound to end up shouting ‘come on Jonny’, and when it’s kick-off in Paris, it’s 2am in Cambodia. Good job a bunch of us are out in numbers tonight for a birthday, and a place in town will have the rugby on the big screen. It’s going to be a late night.

I’m covered in rashes again. I swear, my arm reads like a braille page (which says ‘hit me if you catch me scratching’). I’m going to have to brave the local doctors, and hope they don’t do what they usually do which is sell you three different kind of pills that have no effect on your condition but might well tranquilise you, kill any stomach fauna you have, or give you a massive erection for three days. They just like selling pills from what I understand.

I gave my young adults a test yesterday, to round up a unit of English work we just completed, and to form the basis of their first assessments. Before the test I handed out bananas, as sometimes they’re a bit sluggish in the afternoons and I thought the sugar would help. 45 minutes of silence, with only a few interruptions to ask about vocabulary. Bliss. So, I’m marking test papers this weekend. I feel almost like a proper teacher.

Come on Jonny.

What am I doing with my life?

…is a common thought for many who come here, or indeed go travelling anywhere. Unfamiliar places, meeting new people of all nationalities, sensory overload or just too much cheap booze gets people all introspective.

Siem Reap can be an intoxicating place, and not just because of Free Beer Friday at the Warehouse. There is seemingly a strange and exotic mix of people, a cock-eyed version of reality, you can do anything you want with impunity, and it’s really cheap. In reality most of the people here are quite normal (only the occasional loony spends a few days here working out his disfunctions), everything seems to make sense after a while, you can’t get away with that much, and it isn’t that cheap if you go out every night or buy luxuries like Marmite.

Some of the loonies do stick around, but you really don’t want to know them.

I saw a lot of people in Northern India who looked like they expected to find all of the answers to Life, The Universe and Everything in the Himalayan foothills. All some of them found was a shop that sold good falafel, a grope from a dodgy yogi, and a headache from the local whisky. Some characters travelled on the trains or hung out in backwater spots, and seemed to have forgotten who they were, what they were doing there, or where they were going. Lost souls with deep tans.

I’ve had a few conversations with people here who are looking for a new direction, and to an extent I’m one of them, but what I’ve said to all of them is the same – don’t expect to find any answers here, go home and figure out what you want, then come back if this is really it.

Rainy holiday

It’s Pchum Ben here in Cambodia, a time when the spirits of dead ancestors walk the Earth, and the living may ease their suffering by offering them food to eat. Khmers rise early and scatter food on the ground for the spirits. The local dogs have a field day. I don’t mean to be disrespectful - Buddhism is one of the main things that has prevented this country from going completely insane, and monks, the poor and the disabled also benefit from the distribution of food.

Several shops are closed as people return to their families and spend time around their local pagoda, so there are maybe less Khmers in Siem Reap, but the number of Westerners is swelling as the rainy season comes to a close and peak tourist season for Cambodia is on its way. Just as I type something about rainy season coming to a close, it has started chucking it down outside. Typical.

Laos was beautiful, cool and calm, and in the case of Luang Prabang, very tidy and not very exciting. I saw landcapes that were reminiscent of the Central Highlands of Vietnam or Yunnan province in China, and the people were polite if cool. Luang Prabang has doubtless benefitted from preservation as a UNESCO World Heritage city, but like Lijiang, preservation in this way seems to lose some of the colour and character of the place, and I get as much enjoyment from rounding the corner to a part of town that isn’t preserved, where everyone isn’t sat at stalls selling pashminas or tickets to attractions.

One weird episode in Luang Prabang was when we visited a French-run pub with a landlord who got everyone drinks, gave everyone a free shot of Lao Lao (strong rice whisky which was enough to have me gagging for the next hour) and then promptly disappeared for half an hour, leaving seven punters in the pub alone. We could have emptied the bar and the till, trashed the place and sold his Pastis for a thousand kip to the nearest degenerate, but of course not. Like pathetic baby rats we sat there for half an hour, no drinks, unable to pay, watching a Bob Marley concert on the TV. Never again I tell you.

It’s still raining outside and I have no waterproofs.

Cold hot dogs

We got to Luang Prabang, UNESCO World Heritage museum-piece city of Laos on Thursday, and it has been drizzling ever since, that ‘wetting rain’ that doesn’t look much but soaks you through in no time. At least in Cambodia it chucks it down then stops. Here it just rains, and rains, and rains. It is cool though, and the air is fresh and crisp, where sometimes in Siem Reap the air feels re-used and gritty.

Lao Airlines must have a fascination with hot dogs. The flight from Siem Reap was in two stages - the first stopping inside Laos at Pakse, then carrying on to Luang Prabang, landing amongst hills that reminded me strongly of the flight to Lijiang. On the first step we got our boxes of food from the steward - a cold hot-dog in a roll, a cake, and an orange. Then on the second stage, another smaller box, with a cold hot-dog in a roll, and an orange. Good job I’m such a massive fan of cold hot-dogs. And oranges.

Luang Prabang is cool, hilly, beautiful, and like Lijiang, all a little bit sterile. Since being designated a World Heritage city, it has apparently been cleaned up, the roads are all sealed, and unlike Cambodia there is a distinct absense of packs of dogs, rubbish, and dirty great ugly hotels. It’s a lot quieter than Cambodia as well - even the rickshaw drivers nearly whisper at you. Last night we were sat in what turned out to be the town’s only gay bar, and the police arrived just before eleven and told the owner to turn the music off. At eleven o’clock, this place goes to sleep, that’s everyone including you, and if you want to carry on having fun you had better do it quietly. The bar was apparently called the Cruisin’ Gate, but was renamed to Khob Chai (Lao for Thank You) as soon as someone twigged that Cruisin’ Gate really wasn’t an appropriate name for a bar in a town like this.

Our guest house is very pleasant, and our room is a barn - disgusting amounts of dark wood, large windows, and a bath, so a good excuse for a soak for the first time in two months. The Lao people I have met so far are quiet, polite, and unlike Cambodians, haven’t poked me in the belly and laughed. I kind of miss that.

With a Cambodian public holiday next week I might be staying in Laos for longer - to maybe get a break in the rain, and see more of the place, including all the beautiful stuff I’ve heard about, and less of the museum-piece atmosphere of Luang Prabang.