Quite Random

New Year approaches

Damned unreliable memory. I heard something really funny last night and I was going to blog about it but it’s gone.

One thing that happens when you’ve been here a little while, tourists approach you and ask you questions about Cambodia. Might be to do with having a telephone conversation with a mate and getting up on my high horse about something. I always answer their questions, but I still feel like I’m a fraud – always feel like a fraud in fact when anyone asks me about practically anything. Maybe studying, reading or living in a place is something people do just so they can bullshit more convincingly. After two weeks in Cambodia in 2005 I posed as the author of Lonely Planet for a Dutch girl after the real author, who I’d been drinking with, decided he didn’t want to play the expert for the night. This poor girl listened to me making up a load of utter rubbish for an hour. So recently I have been asked what is the best thing to do when you want to report a suspected paedophile to the authorities, why the Third World is called the Third World, and why they don’t have lasers in Battlestar Galactica. I have bullshitted convincingly about all three.

Khmer New Year is approaching, a big party to see in year 2552, offer prayers and respect for dead ancestors and elders, resolve disputes from the past year, wish for better things in the next twelve months, celebrate harvests, and have some fun before rainy season kicks in next month. I’m not going anywhere – can’t afford to, and I’m also fascinated to see just how much more chaotic this place can possibly get when a Khmer Hogmanay happens.

I also didn’t do such a good job of sticking to any resolutions I made at the end of 2007, so it’s good to get another new year and have another go.

Last weekend I went to Beng Melea with Dave, both of us on our bikes, me singing “Born to be Wild” inside my crash helmet while getting rattled to bits up Cambodian dirt tracks and gravel roads – the bike ride was fantastic, and Beng Melea was beautiful, a pre-Angkor Wat temple all but abandoned to the forest until the 1990s, bombed by the Khmer Rouge and now a leafy oasis 65km from Siem Reap. It’s my new favourite not least because I’m not tripping over thirty Japanese people who all think they’re Lara Croft.