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to take eighteen hours or so, the bus requires only eight or nine hours, but is, people warned me, quite uncomfortable. For example, it had air conditioning with only one setting — full blast — but no toilet, and I was told that it was unlikely that I would meet anyone I could communicate with. So there was no question of what to do: I borrowed somebody’s mobile and phoned Vorn. He reminded me of those hard-boiled private eyes of the old pulp magazines who got twenty-five dollars a day and expenses. Only in his case, the rate was fifteen dollars a day and petrol. For him, this was not too bad a deal. Cambodia’s per capita income is US$500 per annum.
I was to meet him shortly after first light at a bistro called L’Oiseau Rouge. It was a bistro in the classic European sense, a nice dark bar with a small stage and a grill that was kept hot all night. I was off in a corner by myself, carbo-loading on breakfast to see me through the long day. There were three Khmer women, one in her thirties, obviously the manager, and two very young ones, attending to various things behind the bar. There was only one other customer, an immense Australian fellow sitting at the bar with his back to me. He had red hair stored in a ponytail and was wearing a loud tropical shirt and khaki trousers. His feet, resting on the rung of the barstool, were bare. Sometime during the night, which he had obviously spent relentlessly drinking, he had kicked off his shoes and let them drop to the floor. He was still ordering drinks. Why he hadn’t been cut off, I couldn’t imagine — except that he was dutifully paying for them and also of course because without them he might have erupted in genuine violence.
There was enough material in his hideous shirt to sail a square-rigged ship. He weighed, I would guess, 120 kilos, and he was very loud and getting louder. He kept yelling Aussie endearments to the women. This was followed by reaching across the bar as far as he could stretch to grab their bottoms or grope their breasts, whichever were closer. I had a wide-angle view of all this as I sat unnoticed, peering over the top of my newspaper.
Hearing the rumpus, the night security guard appeared out of nowhere. A Khmer fellow, quite small and slight, he surveyed the situation and sensibly decided to take his lunch break early. This isn’t going to end well, I said to myself. But fortunately I was wrong. Once the customer had finished his current drink, the headwoman came out from behind the bar and, using a normal conversational tone, engaged him in chat while she slipped behind him and began giving him a shoulder massage. After five or ten minutes, he crossed his arms on the bar and rested his head in the cradle they made. A few more moments and he was sound asleep.
Of all the ways such a situation might have concluded, this was not one I had imagined. I was recounting the story to Vorn as soon as he scooped me up in his car and we set off through the still largely deserted streets. I explained what had happened, using carefully deliberate sentences, for I had noticed that his English comprehension was diminished when he was having to concentrate on the road. When I finished, he replied: “Man stay sleep when you leave. They take his money then.”
— GOING TO MARKET —
It was thoroughly daylight as we made our way through the seedier streets of Phnom Penh, past the container port, through the bleak and resentful Muslim section where a group of men were at prayer in an open-fronted mosque and women tended small fires in the dirty lanes to dispose of the family rubbish. Eventually, the city just sort of gave out, as though in defeat, and we were plunged into a ragtag industrial area that was waking up to the day’s business.
The proof of this were the motos that had little square trailers hitched to them. Sheets of wood had been laid across the beds of the trailers. These platforms supported young people, girls and women mostly, as many as thirty or forty either standing or squatting or sitting with their legs dangling over the sides. It seems impossible that so many bodies could fit on such a small surface or that one tiny engine could pull so much weight. These were workers going to begin their day in one factory or another and they were illustrative not just of a new generation’s promise, but of a problem, as well.
So many of the social ills in Asian countries are a result of the way cities have been flooded by people leaving their homes in towns and the countryside to find work. For example, Bangkok has 10 or maybe 12 million people while the next-largest Thai centre, Chiang Mai, has only about three hundred thousand. Phnom Penh certainly has a million residents; the total may be nearer 2 million. But Battambang, the second-biggest community in Cambodia, is home to perhaps 150,000. The people we kept passing were rural folks seeking a better life, but being dragged to exploitative dead-end jobs where long days of brutally repetitive labour might, or might not, provide a little money to send back to their families.
We entered Kampong Chhnang province. The name translates roughly as “pottery port,” for the area is synonymous with a certain type of brown clay vessel. Thousands of examples from the smallest to the most huge were stacked up along the highway to tempt customers. Except for long, completely rural, stretches between villages and towns, there was always activity along the shoulders. Nearly every house, however humble, had some sort of little unpainted stand by the road with a few vegetables or soft drinks for sale. Men fixed motos by the berm while women hawked religious articles and general kitsch. I avoided the temptation to read too much significance into the little braziers where people bought frog meat, cut into strips and grilled with a sauce I couldn’t identify and Vorn didn’t know the English word for. Yes, in an earlier age of ignorance many bigoted Anglos referred to French people as “Frogs.” The slur derived from the fact that frog legs were often listed on menus in France. But I doubt very much that the French enthusiasm for that delicacy was transferred to its Cambodian colony. Cambodia simply has a great many frogs: rather large ones, it appears. So does Vietnam. In both places, they are eaten by ordinary folks. They aren’t expensive, aren’t elaborately prepared, and aren’t considered a gourmet treat. I wasn’t finding much of a French presence in the former French Indochina, but I was trying not to reach too far for it, either.
The actual town of Kampong Chhnang may seem the type of place where nothing ever appears to happen, but it does afford something to travellers interested in twentieth-century history. Comparisons between some rundown French houses and Khmer dwellings on stilts give another hint of how life was lived by the people on different sides of the camera lens. Then there is a completely unsubtle reminder of a more recent past. Just outside town are the overgrown ruins of a large airport engineered and financed by the Chinese during the Khmer Rouge regime, supposedly for peaceful domestic uses, but perhaps also, as is widely believed, as a base for the Cambodians to attack the Vietnamese (who instead attacked them). The runway was built by corvée labourers. Once the job was done, Pol Pot is said to have had all of them murdered.
The heat made the road appear to shimmer. It was about noon. The only significant place before we reached Battambang would be Pursat, capital of the province of the same name. The place had more traffic than Kampong Chhnang and seemed a bit livelier, but that may have been my thirst and hunger talking. Here, too, there were colonial-era buildings put to postcolonial uses, but shown no respect. I suggested we stop there for a cool drink and a bite to eat, but Vorn was determined to push on. In time, his reasoning became clear. Not far beyond the city was a restaurant he knew, one operated, I presumed, by a putative grandparent, cousin, in-law, aunt, or uncle. I wasn’t certain which, but whoever was in charge welcomed him fulsomely and seemed willing to tolerate me. The few tables were outdoors, under a plastic canopy. They provided shade for the spike-haired dogs that, between alms from the humans, slept beneath the tables. Fruit flies buzzed all round. There was no menu. Vorn simply exchanged a word or two with his cherished family member and a teenage girl wearing a traditional skirt and a Planet Hollywood T-shirt brought each of us a bowl and a tiny plate. I thought I had eaten most every type of East Asian cuisine, in circumstances ranging from streets stalls to formal banquets. But rice was the only dish I recognized here.
Throughout the meal, Vorn seemed to be looking at me oddly. At first I thought he was watching the movement of my mouth, the way a lip-reader would, for he and I both found that we understood each other better when we were speaking face-to-face and were concentrating on what we were hearing. Or maybe I had dropped a bite of food. Perhaps I had a dollop of bobor in the corner of my mouth or a spot of