Arun Khmer photo link:
I wake up gasping, thinking I have overslept. Metallic string notes fill the air with beautiful music. Beautiful but… very loud. I open my eyes and feel so tired. Perhaps I spoke too soon about the jetlag. I look at my watch.
5 am.
I hear brooms sweeping, intermittent running water and pots clacking in the kitchen across my room on the ground floor. I know the Khmer get up really early, eat lunch usually between 11 and 12 and also sleep very early- a timetable that helps them cope with the hot and humid climate. (Well it helps those who can stick to it if they are not running a late night business in the tourist areas).
Still it is 5 am, it is the beginning of the cold season and generally quite cool (mid to late 20s Celsius scale) and I can’t help but feel a bit pissed off that someone decided to turn up the radio. How do I explain to the women running this restaurant and hostel (with its only guest me) that I NEED TO SLEEP, whilst being polite and keeping face?. I spend half an hour trying earplugs, sandwiching my head between pillows, swearing in Greek to myself and then I breathe in, smile and walk out to the veranda. The women are washing in sarongs by the water tanks between the restaurant and the residential building. No running water for the Khmer, just my highness (I am so embarrassed). They look at me kindly smiling, pointing at the building behind our ‘home’ immediately grasping why I am up.
I speak with Papok the only girl that speaks some English at the place. Buddhist families here have random celebrations that involve playing beautiful traditional music on loudspeakers. Apparently this could go on for days…
Arun is the hostel I am staying at. Papok is a bright young girl and the niece of the owner, a rich but honourable Khmer who had time to listen to Phalla and give me place to stay at a reasonable price (other people just dismissed his gentle and unassertive manner). His restaurant is run by a collective of smiling, proud, caring women and their children, who are given board and payment in return. Ming Pow (Auntie Pow) is my favourite. She comes and sits with me every morning talking to me in Khmer. I don’t understand a thing but I am so grateful for the company and her loveliness. I see her as the leader and Matriarch and I think they all do too. But I have not yet established whether they are all related. Another girl tells me they are in broken English but when she says ‘ No father’ and wells up I stop and embrace her. It is clear by the resemblance that Ming Houn and Houn are mother and daughter. And so are Ming Pol and Seng Chium. There are also other girls who are very shy and I have not met properly yet. There are also two boys who roam the site and sleep outside in net beds guarding the yard.
I had a curfew the first couple of nights. A metallic fence is wheeled over in front of the restaurant as soon as the last customers leave as early as 10pm. The first night I went for a walk at 10 as I needed to shake off 17 hours of flight. I had to wake up the boy to open the gate when I returned half an hour later. After this I had to ask the owner for a gate key. It is not ok for me to wake up the young boy just to let me in (even if is just 11 I come back and despite the owner’s assurance that ‘this is the way things are done’. I was prepared to move rather than be a heartless cow or run to return to my room at 10.
Mr Green I think when you asked Phalla to take care of me, he decided that the best way to do this is to lock me up in a ‘nunnery’ and give me a curfew. But no! I now roam the streets of Siem Reap free on a bicycle, occasionally getting lost and going around in circles.
Phalla, like the Khmer people I am staying with, is a good and honourable Khmer respected by his community. Do not be fooled, I have not romanticised Cambodia at all. Like every country and culture it has a good and bad side because this is how they world and humanity is. But I am saving these other type of observations for later and still feel privileged this place is letting me in.
Today Phalla has planned a tour cycle ride for me to show me routes, important places and sights and of course one way systems. I try to tame my urge to go fast on the bicycle: after all I have nowhere to be or to rush to. Cycling in Siem Reap is not dangerous because of heavy traffic or high speed. It is dangerous because of the opposite. Everyone has their own slow rhythm that they will not speed up or slow down for anyone. Sometimes I have to waive and point to make sure that I am acknowledged before I take a turn onto a busy road. It is like I don’t exist and clearly I have to go for it if I want to move, hoping for the best. It somehow works!
Today we visit the heart of the city centre, the old market, the Golden Temple where Dan and Lucy stayed (I like!), the night market, a free wi fi internet café. I learn where the banks, the hospital, the most beautiful Wat (temple) of Siem Reap are. I love the cycle ride. There is a nice breeze and I am enjoying this despite the lack of sleep. I mind map Siem reap and hope that I can find my way back. The Old market is full of Barrangs and tourist spots. Barrang is a derogatory word used for the French colonialists and consequently for all similarly looking westerners. Phalla tells me that it is used to reprimand children who don’t behave. ‘Eat your food or the Barrang will come get you’. It has a negative connotation. Could you blame the Khmer? (At this point I am embarrassed to admit that I have missed a bit of Barrang conversation).
Sivatha Boulevard, our next destination, is a big avenue that sits in stark contrast to the villages I visited yesterday, where there is no electricity and running water. A big busy road, with many banks, a shopping mall and a KFC! Two different worlds just 20 minutes away from each other.
We next cycle through the French quarter, named after its French styled architecture and buildings. There is nothing else there. It is quiet and seems like an area reserved for luxury accommodation for the fortunately wealthy. The Rich Khmer or rich visitors as Phalla says.
The final stop is the Khmer people’s shrine. I have been reading about the killing of many Khmer in the late 1970s and early eighties (the killing fields). I see a glass tower with the bones and skulls of many of the victims. I see pictures of Pot Pol (the beloved one), the leader of the Khmer rouge. I am not left indifferent by such historic events. It hurts when nations attack their own and bleed themselves. But I have read very little about Cambodian history, so I can’t pretend to be the best informed. During the Pot Pol regime, everyone was made to work in the rice fields. Educated people and the rich or non farmers who did not abide by the rules of the regime were the first killed. The aim was to create a society of equals and they judged that drastic measures were necessary. But then it got out of hand. It was a general Lon Nol that did most of the killing. Funnily enough, I read that Pot Pol came for a very privileged and read family (something that he had in common with other communist regime leaders).
Phalla tells me that his parents were introduced during that time. They did not fall in love but the regime matched them up, asked them to reproduce and took away their first son to indoctrinate. Phalla does not know where his brother is. But he is not upset about it. I think this is because the Cambodian just deal with things as they come and do not waste their energy. The hurt and pain is internalised and dealt with. Nor does he think that the regime was necessarily bad. And this is not because he supports the regime. I listen to the stories he tells me and am amazed to find out that the Khmer are not taught history at school. People who want to find out about Cambodian history have to make their own enquiries and look to accounts from abroad. I think it is horrible not to know your own history but could dwelling on the past prevent you from building a future? And is it not true that sometimes that international accounts are the most accurate or the only ones at times of great destruction and war? I don’t know. I am left with a lingering question.
Soon I remember an earlier conversation with Phalla: the Khmer language has neither past nor future tense. Could these be the most fortunate people on earth truly living in the moment?
I reserve forming an opinion.
My good Khmer is tired and I need some Barrang time alone and hopefully with some other wandering travellers. And the discussion of politics should be left alone when tired…
