Sareth borrowed my laptop last night so he could listen to some music as he lay in his hammock (that's where he sleeps). In the morning, still feeling chipper from the night before, I stride into the bar area looking forward to a coffee and some breakfast before my bus pick me up to take me to Kep.
Sareth, looking awkward, tells me something is wrong with my computer. I take a look and the screen is busted. Cracked right through and I can't see anything on the screen. Completely stuffed it is.
I ask him if it fell, or whether he dropped it. He tells me he doesn't know, maybe someone used it last night while he slept (he left it behind the bar). I believe him, but can't help showing my anger and frustration. Poor Sareth. I assure him I will get the money back from insurance. He's a little dristraught and even offers to go all the way to Phnom Penh to fix it for me. “I fix it, I get it fixed for you”.
I'm very frustrated, but as I'm cruising along in the back of the minivan – the only passenger – towards Kep, I feel terrible for Sareth, and promise myself I will write him an e-mail to ease his mind.
Pau Kelly accompanies me on this short trip.
How many cabs in New York City, how many angels on a pin?
How many notes in a saxophone, how many tears in a bottle of gin?
How many times did you call my name, knock at the door but you couldn't get in?
I know I've been careless
Sometimes I have this feeling, when recollecting an evening or a conversation or day, that it was a big long outdoing-one-another match; outdrawing eachother with knowledge, humour, anecdotes, wisdom, irony – I feel like that about some of my time in Sihanoukville with the American.
The minivan stops to pick up a Danish girl, and the driver discovers two flat tyres. I ask him how far I'm off from my guest house. He tells me 400 or 500 metres. I can wait, I'm told, at least 30 minutes, or walk, or catch a tuk-tuk. Making my decision for me, a tuk-tuk suddenly stops next to the van. I say goodbye to the lovely Danish girl with whom I have struck up a conversation in that easy way you do with strangers while travelling and something out-of-the-ordinary occurs (which is almost always in this part of the world), and jump into the tuk-tuk for the two minute ride.
I figure Patricia (a passionate, wonderful Portuguese girl I know from my time living in Riga) and her friend Marissa will already be waiting, but I'm wrong, you see, for Cambodian transport NEVER arrives when it's supposed to. You can rest assured you'll reach your destination, but it's pointless in worrying when you'll arrive.
This isn't the best guest house; I prefer mine a little less modern and more rustic and basic and cheap, but I don't think Kep offers this, plus it's Christmas and most accommodation options are booked out.
Patricia and Marissa arrive and in the evening we watch the sunset from the small pier at the Sailing Club down the road – a linen-suit-and-evening-dress kind of establishment where we don't dare even glance at the menu.
We wander on to Kep's famous crab market for dinner (where we'd earlier also had our lunch), passing by one of the numerous crumbling French colonial villas from Kep's hey-day as Cambodia's main beach-side getaway.
At dinner I try stingray for the first time (better than I imagined, a little dry, probably wouldn't order it again) and as we eat, two fishermen, who have waded in from their boat which is bobbing out front of the restaurant, climb up into the main dining room, trudging in their wellingtons, empty a few bag of shrimp into an esky in the kitchen, collect some money from the owner, and squelch back out past the diners.
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| My buddy Sareth |
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| Kep crab market restaurants |
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