Six Perspectives on Phnom Penh

1.  Three years ago I visited Cambodia for a couple of days just to check Angkor Wat off my bucket list.  More inspiring than the otherworldly magnitude of the temples was the earthly vibrancy of the people.  These folks have been through hell and yet they smile, laugh loudly and connect.  I suppose when a whole culture has walked through death, it gains an immediacy for life.  I promised myself I would return to learn more.

In Phnom Penh, I'm sitting at the Foreign Correspondents Club enjoying the first well-crafted cocktail I've had since Cebu.  The sun has just slipped behind the buildings erasing the glare from the Tonle Sap river below me and casting well-earned shade across the city.  An elephant walks down the street.  Captive elephants depress me.  These huge, intelligent creatures are broken down to serve as slaves of burden and tourist amusement.

On my walk here, I chanced across a strange and scary occurrence.  A local woman suddenly ran down the steep concrete bank into the river [see video here].  I thought she was cooling off, but she flopped in the water, unable to swim, slowly slipping under.  A policeman ran after her and jumped in and pulled her out.  There was a man with her.  Was he breaking her heart?  Telling her of the other woman?

I'm alone for the first time in weeks.  I feel alone - my extrovert natures stirs and shifts, unsettled.  I don't want to make a friend just yet.  I want to sit.

And write.
And think.
I want to experience my own unadulterated company for a bit.  With a cold and dirty martini, of course. 

2.  I do the obligatory death tour.  I'm not going to write a whole lot about this because I'm here to delve into Cambodia's present.  But one can't understand the intensity, intricacy and layers of Cambodian life without understanding the Khmer Rouge legacy. Here's the uber-abridged version.  In 1975 - in my lifetime - Pol Pot came to power and led a sadistic version of agrarian communism.  In the process, he attempted to kill anyone who was or seemed urban or intellectual.  This included city dwellers, teachers, artists, monks and people with glasses.  One fifth of the population of Cambodia was murdered.  The west and the United Nations were so humiliated and wounded from the Vietnam War that they refused to cast a glance at the atrocities in the region.  Fortunately, Pol Pot and his cronies were tactical morons.  A culture of paranoia infected the leadership and naming members of their own movement as subversives was commonplace.  They also kept pissing off their natural communist allies, the Vietnamese, with frequent border raids.  The Vietnamese finally had enough and invaded Cambodia, putting an end to four years of insanity, but not before an entire generation of educated people had been exterminated like termites.

I visit the Tuol Sleng killing center where people were detained, tortured and executed.  Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge carefully documented every victim with photos and fingerprints.  The photographs line the walls of Tuol Sleng.  I walk through the stifling halls and my mind starts playing games and I notice strange things.  Like how many of the photos are outstanding portraits.  Or the expressions.  Shockingly, very few faces radiate overt fear.  Most are stoic.  But there are stark gender differences.  Many of the men and boys are smiling a slight, twisted smile as if to say, things come full circle.  The women look pissed off.

A group of young monks walks the corridors alongside me and I am glad of them.  I am glad that there is a younger generation that is dedicated to learning, to intellectual and spiritual pursuit, to learning it's own gruesome history.

[missed photo here]

3. This is the shot or video that I didn't capture; one of my favorite images from Phnom Penh.  I'm in a shopping center escaping from the  monsoon rain.  A group of barefooted novice monks, probably from the countryside, has the same idea.  They are pathetically attempting to navigate an upward escalator for the first time.  They cluster at the bottom, stepping forward and stepping back in fear.  A crowd backs up behind them, entertained and cheering them on.  A security guard steps forward and one by one, nudges them onto the moving stairs in a frenzy of squealing and saffron fabric flapping.

4. I've become somewhat of a connoisseur of drag.  Cambodian drag performers are the worst I've ever seen.  They don't have the creative bravura of Americans and Mexicans.  They lack the fragile feminine faces of the Thais, or the performance talent of the Filipinos.  They generally lack beauty, talent or grace; I see absolutely no relationship between the movement of their lips and the song they are trying to emulate.  The shows are horrid, even terrifying.  I go every chance I can.  I'm drawn in the way one rubber necks a traffic accident or watches 70s porn.  There is a perverse delight in the absence of aesthetic. At the Blue Chilli bar, I befriend all the not-so-lovely ladies (see video here).  They pull me regularly up on stage, which is really just the bar.  They coax me to dance and sing, but I won't sing since I actually know some of the words to the songs and that seems a violation of Cambodian drag policy.  But I bump and grind and spin and take shots - all with one hand over my wallet.

Da













5.  There are two types of westerners that settle in Cambodia; those that open bars, and those that open NGOs.  Cambodia's brutal history of colonialism, war, genocide and poverty make it ripe for non-governmental organizations (in the U.S. we call them non-profits) to jump into the fray and attempt to impact positive change.  Many of these organizations are doing tremendous good; schools for the poor, agrarian development, providing capital for poor women, rescuing people from the sex trade.  NGOs are not without criticism.  Some describe western NGO workers as nouveau-colonialists who set up pockets of positivity like pepper plantations, impacting single lives while making the locals dependent and without creating systemic change.  Afterall, where is the pressure on the government to cut through rampant graft and corruption if NGOs are doing the work that should be provided by the government?  With any colonialism, there are those who figure out how to hustle the system.  I met a guy named Da who went to high school at an excellent NGO school with western educators.  The school was set up to help street children.  Da comes from a middle class family.

 "Cambodian government schools not so good," he tells me. "Also expensive for uniform and books.  So we tell them I have no family.  After two years they know, but already they like me so I can stay."

6.  Occasionally, I have a drink without alcohol, but never after 11am.  I sit at a restaurant literally on the water of Boeung Kak lake enjoying a mango lassi.  Its still and peaceful.  I'm the only customer and the watier is keeping a blessed distance as he tends to me - giving me the gift of quiet time, thinking time.  I watch a young boy slowly paddle past the dock.

I write.
I sip.
I watch.
I breathe.

My precious moment is rent apart as a gaggle of young local men come barging onto my barge in a whirl of slipper clacking, nasal laughter and puffs of cheap cigarette.  They have a throw net.  One of them climbs onto the roof of the floating dock and prepares to cast.  He tosses but it catches on a pole and falls impotently to the side.  Hoots of laughter and jesting erupt and I find myself cracking up along with them. Someone has a guitar and starts playing.  Another offers me a smoke.  The net is thrown successfully and as it is pulled up, everyone begins oohing in anticipation (see video here).  I finish my lassi.

I've traveled extensively in Southeast Asia.  But for the first time, a thought creeps into my head.

Phnom Pehn.  I could live here.