This morning I am making my way back to Kampot again, before going further on to Kep to spend Christmas. It's early, and while waiting for my minivan I stand on Otres beach one last time and look out to sea and the friendly islands and think how I will be heading inland soon, away from these waters.
On the bus a thought emerges, a thought
which I've been feeling writhing and clawing inside me for these last
few months: I'm no better than anyone else. It sounds simple, and
obvious now I put it in print, but believe me, it wasn't simple to
arrive to.
There are so many people in this world,
and I am neither greater, nor smarter, nor more important than any of
them. Not one. I'm no less significant than anyone – or any thing
for that matter -, but no greater or better either. I KNOW this, I
KNEW this. But for too long I let myself believe it may not be true.
Call it arrogance, call it insecurity, call it what you will.
In Stephen Fry's memoirs of his first
20 years, which I'm reading currently – Moab is My Washpot – he
touches on a realisation he made himself about his adolescence, and
which strikes a familiar dissonant chord with me:
“...I fell into the error of
confusing my brain with my self...”
I am not my brain. I am not my brain.
My brain is not me.
In the centre of Kampot I get on the
back of a motorbike for the short ride to the guest house, over the
old improvised bridge.
“Where you from my friend?”, my
two-wheeled chauffeur asks me as we scoot along the riverside road.
“Australia”, I reply.
“Ah! Australie! Number one people. I
tell you. Number one!”
“Who's number two?”
“Um. Canada!”
“And three?”
“New Zealand. And America four!”
“What number are the French?”
“Oh, about eight.”
I'm back at Samon's village overlooking
the lazy river and enjoying the company once again of my Khmer friend
Sareth. I'm only staying one night, a relaxed stopover before Kep,
and Sareth is determined to do “something special” to mark my
last night in Kampot. He scores a bike from a guest who returns the
keys to his rented scooter a night before it's due.
“They left petrol tank full!”,
Sareth informs me, giggling cheekily. “Wanna drive far? We have so
much petrol!”
We don't drive far. After the sun sets,
and when his shift at Samon's finishes (he's so excited he dances and
skips, and trips on a stone, crashing into the dirt, but laughs it
off, and skips on), he drives me to a local “disco”, as he likes
to call it. I'm the only foreigner here, the music, to my ears, is
aa-trocious and the scene in front of me on the dance floor looks as
if the Khmer people read a guide-book on how to party like a
Westerner.
Sareth orders a jug of beer, and we
drink it from glasses of ice – I attempt to drink the majority as
I'm hoping to get back home safely; “just one jug. No problem!”
One corner of the d-floor is occupied by a small group of young
transgendered revellers, who, selling themselves too hard, flirt and
blow kisses and wiggle their narrow hips in our direction.
We finish the jug and leave the dark
club and its strobe lights and as we start our scooter in the parking
lot a small domestic row takes place.
“What were they arguing about?”, I
ask Sareth as we cross the bridge into the main part of town.
“Oh, he goes to disco to cheat on his
wife. His wife caught him. Normal Khmer man.”
We talk about how and why some Khmer men cheat
on their wives and girlfriends, and how many have drinking problems
and drink their money away and their partners feel forced into
prostitution to pay the bills.
“But I never did that to my wife. I
was good husband”, my friend proudly states, voice muffled by the
cool Kampot air rushing past us.
He continues, “My wife leave with an
American man, she lives in America now, “but I tell her 'do it!
You're lucky, you'll have a good life'. She says she can send me money, but I don't want that money.”
He's silent for a bit as he takes a
corner, but then thumping his chest says “but it hurt so much in
here, you know? No sleep, no eat. Aiiii”.
We ride through the streets of Kampot
in that cathartic no-destination manner and talk of our respective
dramas of love and the heart.
“I don't need no woman for a year or
two. But then, I get married. But now – don't need, don't want...
haha”, “I'm over it now, but it hurt, oh my Buddha, it hurt, in
here. You know.”
I tell him I feel like eating something
sweet. Sareth is the right man to ask, it seems, as he treats himself
every day to a dessert at his favourite road-side stall.
We pull up, he makes the order, we sit
and sip on cold jasmine tea.
This dessert is something special, and
I'm so glad Sareth took me out, to find food like this you really
need insider information.
Pumpkin with coconut custard, sweet egg/bean
jelly cubes, shaved ice, covered in sweet milk. Oh my Buddha. We're
healed for the time being, and return back home with smiles and no
thought of sore hearts.
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| My humble 6-dollar-a-night bungalow |
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