osmoala

Where Traveler goes to the South in search of beauty but only finds a ghost town. He ends up meditating on the running water in front of him and comes up with the not so original idea – life is a river.

Traveler was his name. And why not? There are many Trevors and Tyrones but to his knowledge he was the only Traveler.

If there is a god, he thought, he probably has some kind of a narcissistic personality disorder. And if she is a goddess, then she is an attention whore. Just talk to any deeply religious person you meet and you'll know what I mean. A totally sane god or goddess, with all the power that comes with being almighty, wouldn't like millions of delusional fanatics following them. So, maybe the multiverse is being run by the devil after all? As they say in the movie The Usual Suspects: ”The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist.” And do we have any kind of proof of some super powers at work? No. It doesn't necessarily say I'm right, only stating a fact here.

   And Traveler was not a hardcore ateist either; he believed in the energies floating around us. Some would label it as physics or chemistry. Or Shamanism. He trusted these things because he had first hand encounters with these matters, and they usually came to him half way through a bottle of good Russian vodka.

By the way, it was hot like hell. Traveler checked into Footprints at Otres two, and he was lucky to get a room because it was The Cambodian New Year and all places he'd been to were fully booked.

   The owner was a blond woman in her sixties with a British accent. ”I don't know where my staff is. Where is the girl? And the guy called in sick today.”

   ”The sickness is spelled hangover”, I said thinking about The New Year. She flashed her white teeth, ”I'm going to call them, I need them here. But let me show your room first.”

Traveler walked the ten metres to the beach and the sea was there and it had been there for ever. The land had mostly been taken over by the Chinese today. He took a walk over to Otres one. The bungalows on the beach were 20 dollars last year, now they were 30. Across the road Ross and Traveler paid 15 each for the nice rooms. He talked to the manager, a khmer guy with a happy smile. He said:

   ”Yes, I remember you from last year. There is a new owner now, he's Chinese. They put in air cons in the rooms and now they are charging 35 dollars a night.”

   ”That's a bit steep,” Traveler said and took a sip of the Cambodian beer bottle.

   ”Yes, it is. I want to treat everybody nice. Every room is full now, with Chinese people.”

   ”Are they nice?”

   ”Some are, some are not.” He shrugged his shoulders and for a moment his happy smile was gone. ”But what can I do?”

But it was Sihanoukville that was the ghost town. Traveler had never seen a city change so fast. The seafood restaurants were gone, so were the guest houses, supermarkets and the beach. No one walked there anymore because the stench of the garbage dumps made you want to throw up.

   Instead, shops and restaurants with the rounded Chinese letters, where the new holidaymakers were slurping noodle soups like there was no tomorrow. Cranes everywhere working on the skeletons of the new skyscrapers. Traveler looked for a guest house for a while but even Monkey Republic, the famous back packer place was gone. Somebody said:

   ”Everybody escaped to Kampot from here.” She was French. ”I wanted to share a taxi to Kampot yesterday so we could pay 40 dollars each, eighty for the taxi, but nobody wanted to go. So I'm still here.” She didn't look like she cared anyway, and Traveler didn't care what she was up to, with that stoned look on her face, so he said, ”Good luck to you.” ”You too.”

   Traveler walked up to the first travel agent on the street and they said eight dollars to Kampot.

   The mini van took him there in less than two hours.

The day before, at Otres two, his phone started ringing, messages on Facebook, and they all said the same thing – Papa John just passed away. Traveler had known Papa John for years in Siem Reap and it was a sad day for us all. He died of the cancer that had been there like an alien force for years. Traveler was not feeling so good now.

   ”Keep it, Papa John had said about the ukulele. I can't play anyway.” He stepped into the the tuk tuk outside King Kong Bar and shouted, ”Love you!” ”I love you too.”

   Traveler had this eerie feeling he would never see Papa John again. He called the uke Jane as it was the female variant of John. Now here in Kampot, he poured some vodka on the floor for absent friends and played a song on the ukulele. What a Wonderful World. Papa John loved that song.

   Traveler stepped outside on the balcony overlooking the intersection and smoked a cigarette. People were walking and driving around, but nobody never looks up. It's a good thing too, because no one saw the tears in his eyes.

   Enough of this, he thought, let's go down to the river. But he only made it 25 metres, and he was soon talking to a lovely couple at one of the restaurants. They were from New Zeeland, John and Erin, eyes with a good sparkle. They had been here for four months and they looked like a happy couple.

   ”I'll have a draft, please”, Traveler said to the happy waitress.