Two friends and I took a trip to the seaside area during a national holiday where the city was due to be overflowing with people. On the drive down to Kaep, the country side bounded and bounced before my eyes, rising and falling above the line that slit the tinted window of the bus in half, like a water table line in the portholes of a boat. Tiny splatters of orange mud hit the windows and dripped down. I wanted to jump through that pane of glass. jump straight through and out to the people bent over their rice in the field. and say, look at me! I am like you. we are the same, touch my hands, laugh with me, open your mouth and sing. but I am mute, and I remain behind this protective layer. and when I push my palm up against it, on the other side, small orange splatters drip down, touching my hand and not at the same time.
Once in Kaep, we took a small fishing boat out to Rabbit Island, which is the primary place for tourists to go, although there are only a small number of bungalows and a couple of fishing villages.The real beauty of it was on the other side of the island opposite the beaches where all the bikini clad tourists resided in the sun by their bungalows. Lauren and I traversed the whole island, through mud, over sharp rocks, along long stretches of beach. we talked to the residents of the other side - using my limited khmer and gestures - who’s homes faced out to the open ocean. They lived in relative simplicity. fishing, making nets, collecting pink and purple stripped clams to eat in water bottles. I thought about how often we glorify poverty and simplicity. I wondered if they were happy. I wondered what they knew about the rest of the world. I wondered how often they walk to the other side of the island, or leave it. They live on a tropical island, surrounded by coral, glowing fishes, palm trees, white sand, and the grand mountain islands of Vietnam in the background. I hate using the word exotic, because to them, it must be mundane. well. there are other reasons why i hate the word exotic.
After this we went to another town called Kampot where we visited a pepper field, sampled some fresh green pepper, and tried the strongest alcohol I had ever tasted made by a local pig farmer. It was served to me in the filthiest cup I had ever put my lips to, but I figured, you can’t get sick drinking alcohol. and this will kill every bacteria in my mouth, so why not. we thanked him and went back to our tuk tuk.
The next day I was the one who suggested that we bike the 12 kilometers to visit some caves, which was a little bit crazy considering how little time I have spent on bikes in my life. So I fell off my bike twice, of course by the fault of the bike and the road. The first time I got nervous because I thought another child on a bike was going to run into me, and shortly I was careening off the side of the road into a huge puddle in front of a modest grass hut and a rice field. Some one was saying phone? phone? as they pulled my dripping, broken cell phone from the water, the only connection to my worried cambodian family back in the city. A crowd of kids circled around me, and a mother with no teeth. the one who knocked me off the road slunk off while the mother helped me wash my feet and scrapes with bottled water. They all had their pictures taken by my dutiful friend with a camera, said 100 hellos! and we were off again.
The caves were pretty amazing. we didn’t do much in the way of exploring, but we climbed the 302 (or was it 212?) stairs to get there, saw a tiny temple and huge rock formations hanging from 100 feet above our heads. we were given the stories about the caves by 6 uninvited tour guides, local kids trying to get some money from the friendly barangs.
On the way back, I hit a rather large bump in the road and the kick stand of the rickety bike fell down, got cut in a rut, and sent me flying front wards over my bike, into soft mud. I sustained only the bruises from the bike, but my camera wasn’t so lucky. Once I realized that again, nothing was broken and I was just a little shaken up, I turned around and saw my camera floating in a nearby pond. The camera I just bought, a week ago, to replace the one that had been stolen. Life could be a lot worse I told myself, simultaneously cursing out loud.
Despite all this, biking is by far the best way to travel through Cambodia. On a bike you are still a tourist, but you are more curious. and you are different, but you are on the same level in some ways, as the people you wave to on the side of the road. You know many things they can never know and they know things you can never know. But you both know something about the joy of riding a rickety bike down a jumpy red clay road with the wind blowing over your skin. you can talk to people. you can breathe in the air and the mountains and the waving rice fields of the country side without rushing by it. you can wave at the kids screaming the one word they know in English at you. hello! Or you can stop and take a picture. or, you can just stop. you are powerful, and totally vulnerable at the same time. and there is no pane of glass between you and the world that you are in. Or at least, it feels less tangible.
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