Life in Cambodia

Paradise Lost

It was a dark and stormy night, um….Ok, so it was neither dark nor stormy, more akin to something like full-mooned and waterless, but that just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? Ok, I’ll try since you asked, ahem. It was a full-mooned and waterless night when we fled Svay Rieng Town for the comfort of the coast. In the midst of the Cambodians ushering in their Year of the Pig (not be confused with the Vietnamese Year of the Golden Pig, which began in Feb), Maggie and I took the opportunity to seek out new corners of the country and headed to the city of Kampot. We had originally planned on staying the entire week, but work schedules and whatnot unashamedly got in the way and it turned into a longish weekend. Down on the coast, east of Sihanoukville, which is Cambodia’s main (and perhaps only) deep water port, is the tourist trifecta of Kampot/Kep/Bokor Mountain. Figured we’d try to save a bit of money, so on the way south, we took The Bus, which, needless to say, we didn’t take on the return trip north. Mind you, it was no African bus ride for sure; no goat was peeing on me from the roof, not a single 300 lb market lady to be seen, much less so any one of them taking up their seat, and mine along with it. We did however, like the days of yore, stop every 25ft to either drop someone off or pick someone up. The Cambodians, seemingly without a sense of time, seemed happy with this protracted Saturday drive; we, however, had places to be and sweating on a slow bus was not one of them. Praise be to Buddha, in time, as all things, this too had passed and we arrived in Kampot. What are my initial impressions of Kampot you may ask? Ok, even if you didn’t ask, I’ll tell you anyway. One word: “cooler.” And that adjective is applicable to many things: temperature-wise, scenery-wise, in fact, everything-wise, but these tales are for later. We trundled our way to our guesthouse and despite making a reservation and arriving late, still had to wait over an hour until they cleaned out 10ftx10ft room. “Its Khmer New Year” was a common excuse for things happening even slower than usual. Fine, I said, but does Khmer New Year mean that the maid gets to sit and watch Cambodian pop music videos at the table next to use while we wait? Well, in fact yes, apparently it does. Once the dead bugs were swept off the bed and the hairball in the bathroom hygienically removed, we moved in, sat in the AC for a bit, gathered our wits about us, and sallied forth into the relative unknown of Kampot Town. Kampot is not directly on the coast, so there is no beach, but it is split in half by a large river running through it towards the sea, which is only a few kilometers away. Unlike Svay Rieng, Kampot is quite hilly-ish (I hesitate to call them mountains, so as not to provoke “Rocky Mountain” thoughts, which these are far from, though to sate my sloth-like tendencies, I will refer to them as mountains from now on, so as to make it easier on myself.) The majority of the town itself is relatively unimpressive, something like a little bit bigger version of Svay Rieng’s “Main Street.” Needless to say though, that did not stop us from renting a little moto and cruising around. I also want to quickly point out that we found a little shop selling damn fine carrot cake, not your usual Cambodian staple. Admittedly, a lot of the buildings seemed a little bit older and had some character to them, but the real deal was the stretch of stuff along the River Front. It had character, actual character, had a cool breeze coming off the water, had a good view of the mountains in the distance, and it was even clean! In short, a little piece of paradise if I should be so bold. We sat at a little café, watching the boats scurry along the river as the sun slowly lost its battle with the night and descended into the mountains, giving the clouds and river below a ruddy glow; debating whether to eat the $9.95 all you can eat BBQ at this particular café. Just then, however, from across the road came our friend Irad. Allow me first to say that Irad is the unnamed Algerian doctor we ate Thanksgiving Dinner with way back when. If you recall, he was the one that was barred entry into Cambodia, despite having a legitimate visa because he is Arab and the US Embassy warned the Cambodians to be on the lookout for those Arabs. So instead of “Thank you Dr. Irad for offering your services to the people of Cambodia free of charge for two years,” it was deportation to Thailand and subsequent arrest. Regardless, his winds of fortune have shifted, as the now the lucky guy lives in Kampot. Irad, however, was not interested in the aforementioned BBQ (“how could you not be,” I cried. I’ve seen people in Texas get shot for turning down a $9.95 all you can eat BBQ,…really. The sweet tangy sauce, I already even had my bib on, gazing lovingly at the various hunks of meat, salivating, wondering how far I could make it if I grabbed the pig off the spit and made a break for it since these blue-bloods seemed to have no interest.) Alas, we deferred to Irad to find our dining locale, who located a suitable culinary experience just down the road, and as tasty as it may have been, let me mention that it was also no $9.95 all you can eat BBQ. Afterward, we made plans for meeting up soon in a few days with Irad and called it a night.

The following morning, we tackled that which I wanted to see most on this trip; Bokor Mountain. Now a national park, the top of the mountain is an abandoned French city. People lived up there, but I think it was actually less of a city and more like a large villa/resort/playground of the French elite. At its heyday, it had shops, a church, post office, police station, houses, and a large and imposing hotel/casino, which was definitely something in its day. Built in the 1930s, it was abandoned during WWII and again during the Khmer Rouge (after which it never recovered). The road to the top of the mountain is billed as one of the worst in Cambodia, and I’d believe it. Way back when, it was a paved road, but over the course of 50 years without repairs, it is in a sorry, sorry state. Maggie and I shared a ride up with two Estonians; I had never met an Estonian person before. Turns out they are regular people just like me and you. Anyway, we left Kampot around 8.30 or so, but we took time. I kinda wanted to go straight to the top, but unbeknownst to me, our ticket up included an hour long hike through the forest. Unbeknownst to me apparently meant unbeknownst to everyone because we were with some other folks who were in no condition to hike for an hour up a mountain. It was a nice hike though. We arrived at the top around lunch time and I am happy that Maggie and I decided to spend the night on the top (there is a small ranger station/guesthouse there) as we do not particularly enjoy the tour-group mentality. “You have 30 minutes to visit the abandoned Hotel/Casino.” No-no, I said. “Time up, go to the Church, you have 20 minutes.” “Ok, lets go back down.” If it took me 4 hours to get to the top, I sure am not turning right back around, especially when there is a whole ghost town to explore. We tried to get one or two other folks to stay, but alas (for them at least), they had unfounded and misplaced priorities. Once we shed the debilitating weight of our tour group and dropped our bags at the ranger station, we went back into the ghost town. There were a few other day trippers and what not, but as the afternoon wore on, their numbers dwindled until, for the most part Maggie and I had the entire place to ourselves. Allow me first to comment on the Hotel/Casino, as it is the Bokor showpiece. If you ever happen to see the movie “City of Ghosts,” the final scenes happen there, though trust me, unlike Matt Dillon, you cannot walk there. It is completely in shambles, yet still retains its magnificence and splendor. It is often compared to the hotel in “The Shining,” and rightfully so I say. It is shamelessly gutted in every way, but as you walk in, you can still easily imagine how it once was. There is a huge ballroom open to the distant sea, with huge winding staircases spinning off in many directions to the floors and rooms above. Smaller, almost secret staircases twirl upwards into hidden balconies and alcoves, or downwards into dark cellars. Everything of value has been stripped, including the copper wire from the walls, leaving huge gashes running along the wall as they chipped away the concrete. Beautiful tile work on the floors remains though, often differing room by room, giving a sense of how things must have once been. The hotel is on the edge of a sheer cliff, with the sea in the distance. An eerie fog continually rolls through the hotel, curling into every room as with a life of its own, filling the room, and cooling the temperature considerably. And that which you see now will be enveloped by the haze; lost. In the back, along the stone wall that runs along the cliff, there is a silence as the earth gives way to the sea. Leaning over the edge though, you can hear the cacophony of sounds coming from the huge forest below, yet in leaning back again, you return to silence as apparently the sheerness of the cliff directs the sound above your head. As the hotel rested in the afternoon light, I ventured back in alone once everyone else had gone; Maggie sat outside on the back wall. I crept deep into the rooms; fog rolling in. The red moss on the walls grows in a direction that looks like blood splatter. The breeze whispering through the broken windows, the cool gust of the fog as it took me in. The feeling that if I turned around, someone would be there, watching me from the corner. I spun around, only to see “REDRUM” “REDRUM” written on all the walls; I tried to walk away, but knowingly felt something would grab me from behind; the walk turned into a trot, which turned into a run, bursting through the ballroom and out the back door. “Did you see something cool?” asked Maggie, to whereas I recounted my little story, and rightfully, was mocked. From there, we moved around, popping into any building we pleased; the King’s former villa, the post office, the old police station, some old houses. Behind the church is an equally abandoned Vietnamese gun emplacement. When the Vietnamese invaded in 1979 to knock out the Khmer Rouge, there was apparently some pretty tough fighting up here, as apparent by the bullet pockmarks and damage to many of the buildings. As the sun faded and darkness neared, we headed back to the ranger station. We had read and been warned that sleeping conditions at the ranger station were bare bones. “They don’t have water to drink or food to eat.” “You sleep on a cot.” “They beat you in the night with sticks.” And anything else that makes it sound horrible. Not only did they have food, we ate spaghetti. I saw they sold cokes and beers. “I’ll have a beer,” I said. “Do you want a cold one?” they replied. “Do I want a cold one? Come here and give me a hug.” We were sitting outside talking to another American, who wanted to take a chance with a bottle of Cambodian wine, and let me tell you Cambodia is not exactly a vintner’s paradise, but we went ahead anyway. We should have given up when the wine foamed up like a beer poured too quickly when we poured it into our glasses. For whatever reason, we drank that vile sauce, though it took the three of us two hours to get through it by sheer strength of will alone. None of us were feeling all that well by the time we went to sleep.

We woke up early to watch the sun rise, and walked over to an old yet operational pagoda about a half mile away. The pagoda wasn’t too exciting, but the view was amazing. You could climb down a bit on the cliff and basically look up at the hotel on the horizon. It would have been a nice place to sit and relax in the shade of the rocks, but our taxi was waiting for us and we headed back down. I had mentally prepared myself for a long ride down, but our driver was a Man of Men and we got down in an hour or so and immediately met up with Irad. He took us to a few places where he worked, including a strange and unfortunate AIDS village. A few years ago, some quack was selling a traditional AIDS “cure”, so a lot of villagers sold off all their property to come here, only to find it not working and having no way to go back, so they stayed and have been fed since then by various NGOs and organizations. Some moved home, but Irad says they’ve grown accustomed to this assisted living and seem to have no desire to move on, so he does what he can do. He took us to Kep, which is the old seaside resort, which was basically destroyed and never really bounced back completely. The coastal road is littered with old gutted homes and formerly stately villas from a more affluent time. Now, its beaches draw the common man (which was packed for Khmer New Year). We ate really good seafood and while I slept on the beach, Maggie and Irad went swimming. That evening, we slept at Irad’s compound. He is somehow affiliated with the Catholic Church, so stays with them. They have a really nice set up and we chose (poorly, time would show) to stay in the empty dorm room. There were enough mosquitoes to have carried us off, had there been any windows for ventilation. I’m a bit surprised they didn’t drown in my sweat when they came to bite me. Maggie fled outside only to be pooped on by geckos in the night.

Since then, things haven’t been too exciting. A lot of work on both our ends, but not for too much longer! Maggie gave her resignation, I passed my word along as well, so it’s official, we’re shooting for a June 15th heading out date – Laos here we come! Still a lot of work to be done, but June 15th is coming up quick, and we are both excited for what the future will bring. We’re hosting a few parties in Svay Rieng over the next few weeks, so those should be fun—drinking, merrymaking and whatnot. There is more to say, but I have grown weary, perhaps as you have, so I will call it a day.

posted by Life in Cambodia @ 9:01 PM