osmoala

 

We Gotta Get Out of This Place ... The Animals

 

Vincent is my neighbour back in Sweden. Our houses are on both sides of the road and next to the railroad with a flyover somewhere out in the country. Passenger trains and freight trains pass by now and then a few meters below on the other side of the imaginary fence. The wildgrowing trees at the back make up the fence.

   It’s a peaceful life, simple with not many of the distracting attractions you find in a big city. This doesn’t belong to the fiction section either because the surroundings are all green in the summer and flowers grow in the garden, tulips, dandelions, sunflowers, roses and poppies. Apples, pears and cherries. The fields with corn is a jungle and the colza is a painting by van Gogh. The horses munch on the apples I throw to them on their side of the track. 

   The neighbours are mostly friendly people and Vincent and I are now looking around in his garage, equipped with thousands of tools, blowtorches, grinding machines, nuts and bolts to maintain any vehicle that runs on wheels, looking at the mopeds he has trimmed to the max. 

   “Try this one,” he says, “it makes a hundred.” The body is from the 60s with an engine  upgraded with more horsepower than should be considered if it is legal or safe. 

   So I do.

   “How fast did you go?”

   ”70, but I only went to Bogdan’s place and back.” 

   “It’s gonna make 120 when I’m finished. Well, let’s go inside and try the rum.”

Now Vincent is in Phnom Penh.

   I take the Giant Ibis from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh and there is a beer waiting for me at Golden Home on Street 172. 

   “What’s this commotion?” I take a seat next to him. Vincent has a happy smile on his face. It’s a combination of sun, beer and the expectations of this new country. 

   “I had a few bottles of Angkor at the pool and the barman said he had never seen anyone drink so fast, hahaha.” We clink glasses. The beer is cold and I feel thirsty after the bus ride.

   “So the guy behind the bar gave me the keys to the fridge.”

   “Did you tell him that you like things to go fast?”

   “Maybe I did.” 

   His white Golf back home is a rocket.

   “You clocked 241 kilometres on the motorway. It took only a few minutes to get back from town.”

   “Well, I think it needs some speeding up.”

   

There was the happy irony, the sarcasms and the one word jokes. We were referring to Cambodia as “Kumla”, one of the high security prisons in Sweden, as I had told him I really didn’t travel to the tropics each winter, instead I spent months in prison every year, “But don’t tell anyone”. 

   “What do you think of Kumla so far?” I said. We were sitting at one of the front tables facing the infamous Street 172.

   “I like it here.” It was hot as always and I ordered two more drafts from the manager. She remembered me from years back and she nodded a smile, “Welcome back”. I asked if she had a room for me and she said yes.

   “It’s better than Thailand - beautiful locations with islands basking in the sun, the scenery is breathtaking now when you just climbed that steep hill with ropes attached on the sides and you are thinking of Batman and Robin climbing up one of those high apartment buildings in order to save the day. I took some great pictures. And yet it’s like everyone wants your money. I met a girl and the next day she asked me for more baht because she needed to go to hospital.”

   I didn’t ask why because I’d heard the same story a few times over the years. And I was hungry. 

   “Have you tried the Shepherd’s Pie?” 

   He had the lasagna and he had a taste from my plate. 

   “Next time I’m going to have what you’re having. What else do you have in store for me?” 

   “Maybe.”

Vincent is some 20 years younger than I am. He is a good looking guy with a never ending appetite for new acquaintances, so later he would contact four different girls on Tinder and one of them showed up after an hour. 

   She sat down at the table where we sat with Jade and Melissa. Mel is from South Africa and I have known her for years in Siem Reap. Now she is working at the new international airport in Phnom Penh. They probably wanted someone who could focus on several things at the same time. She was relaxed, as usual, and she knew the right things to say. A pretty face with a smile. Someone had said she has a striking resemblance to Audrey Hepburn. 

   Jade had a pretty face too and she was also smiling. She still looked like Jennifer Jason Leigh. She had gotten fired from her job as the manager at the Irish pub The Wild Rover, a job she both loved and hated with a passion and when the owner broke her contract for usually showing up late for work and now and then contradicting her boss she raised her arms and expressed her feelings with a - “Hurray!” while jumping up and down to handle the reaction of the screaming red face in front of her.

   “So, what’s next?” I said.

   “I have a new job on Koh Rong Samloen in a restaurant - I’ll have to be there in ten days, so in the meantime I’m going back to Siem Reap for a week. Alan is coming too so I want to catch up with him.” Alan is her brother, towering at two metres and Jade reaches up to my collarbones. Alan is the little brother. 

   Vincent had a conversation going on with his new lady friend. He ordered another rum and coke and I asked her, “How are you?”

   “I’m good, thanks,” she said and smiled, pineapple shake in hand. Her English was flawless, she was 26 with a nice and friendly face and she studied at the university to become an accountant. Vincent had a sip of his new drink and wanted to have a word with her, so I turned to Melissa, 

   “What about you, you gonna stay in Phnom Penh forever?” 

   “No, I’m going back to Siem Reap and pick up a teaching job again.”

   “Yes, you are adjustable - is that a word?” I asked Jade.

   “Yes. Let’s have another beer.” She was celebrating having been fired. She said,

   “I’m going to have a day time job at a the restaurant, I’m gonna love it.”

   “You should know - you spent five months there during covid, right? - And now you can’t wait to get back?”

   “Yeah.” She was probably picturing the sun and the palm trees, the beach and the ocean. The easy life. And she was right. The place looked like a postcard. 

   

I had met the owner of The Wild Rover on my last trip to Phnom Penh and he looked like a fairly nice guy. He, Jade and I had a cigarette outside the pub and I had a sip of the free draft. It was casual talk, he displayed a somewhat forced smile trying to connect to the eyes that kept slowly wandering back and forth across the establishment. Later I would think, he is going to lose customers for kicking Jade.

   “Seems to be a popular place here,” I said. He had rented the lot next door from last time, built it together with the bar, now with fresh paint, a pool table and yet another bar. It was more like cowboy style but the both bars melted together somehow - here the Western boys and girls were sipping drinks and Guinness on the inside and outside and the pool table was busy at the moment. Customers liked to come here to get away from flip flop people like me. 

   Jade’s idea of being able to serve a pint of Guinness on tap hadn’t materialised though, but she didn’t seem to care or regret anything. She never did.

Later I hugged Jade and Mel - “I’ll see you both in Siem Reap then.”

   “I’ll be there in three days.”

   “I’ll be there in maybe two weeks.” 

   

Kate walked by. She was in town for a few days with friends but we didn’t see much of her, and now she maybe didn’t see us because we were sitting inside the restaurant. 

   But later at midnight she and I would have a few beers at Golden Home. I was sitting at a table with my computer. 

   “Could I read some of the stuff you wrote about me?” she asked.

   “Sure, there’s a text you might not have read before.” 

   Now she was reading it, “That’s bad.” She was shaking her head.

   “It’s payback for all the shit you put me through.”

   Later when leaving she looked thoughtful, she was holding my hand and she smiled, 

   “I’m glad I met you.” 

   It felt like a slow goodbye. But it was not a slow goodbye. Or maybe it was. What is a slow goodbye anyway? I don’t know. A week later we would meet up in Siem Reap anyway. 

Next morning I went to Vincent’s hotel for breakfast. I met him at the pool on the top of the building overlooking a city with hotels and commercial buildings, houses with colonial French architecture and pagodas stretching as long as you could see into the distance. The capital of 2.5 million people from the poorest to the richest is built around the Mekong River with water that had been warming up on its way from the high icy plateaus in China, through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia through Vietnam to The South China Sea.

   “It’s a magnificent view,” I said.

   “Yes, it is.” We scanned the rooftops for a while, The King’s Palace and Russian Market were there somewhere. Vincent pointed at the pool and the bar where he had his own key to the fridge. 

   “I had a few here yesterday. Now, let’s go and have breakfast, I have the coupons.” He gave me one. Free breakfast.

We walked into the restaurant. It was a good breakfast. Buns and slices of raw pork and beef and eggs any which way. The cook fried your choices in a minute and we chewed the chow. Pineapple juice and orange juice. Fresh fruit on the trays for dessert. 

   We were secretly spying on the Flintstones family two tables away. Mama and papa in their late 50s, one daughter and two sons in their 20s. They didn’t speak with each other and they were staring at their phones with robot faces carved out of flintstone.

   “Where do you think they come from?” Vincent said. “And why are they here? What plans have they got for today?”

   I didn’t know, but no one seemed to be very happy to be here. “Maybe the Eastern block, possibly one of the Baltic States? Maybe a disappointing holiday? And I guess there will be no bungy jumping today.”

   “Or parachute jumping.”

   “Hang gliding.”

   “Deep sea diving.”

   “Formula one driving.” 

   We hadn’t planned for any of those activities either, though. We would take a walk on the riverside looking for Viva! and the frozen margaritas for 6000. 

   The Flintstones left breakfast and waited for the elevator. None of them had said a word. It was a mystery. It was like they were using telepathy to communicate. Or their phones. Or, sad to say, some in the family were possibly deaf and the rest followed the routine. But there is sign language, even I had picked up some of it communicating with deaf individuals.  

“Okay, have a look and say what you think.” We are in Vincent’s room now. He has some space here.

   “You got some space here.” 

   “It’s around 70 square meters.” There is a balcony with a view at the end of the spacious living room. “I got it cheap, maybe because it’s low season - how about a beer?” 

   “Sure.” I was on the balcony looking down at the city. In the streets the traffic was heavy as always. Toyotas, Mercedes, BMWs, the occasional Hummer and thousands of tuk tuks.

   We clinked cans. We tasted the cold beer.

   “So,” Vincent said, “Are we ready to go tomorrow?”

   “Of course. We gotta get out of this place. A few days in Phnom Penh is always more than enough. And we need to see the ocean.” 

So we did. Kampot with the restaurants and the pubs. Even the girlie bars looked quite innocent blending in with the French architecture. Kep, the huge pepper farm where we listened to a lecture about this world famous spice and walked on paths that seemed to stretch for miles. Vincent spent 50 dollars on herbs and spices he intended to use for some creative cooking back home.

We went back to Kampot for a few days sinking cold drafts and then Vincent took the speed boat to Koh Rong and I went back to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. It had been a lovely holiday.