Wild Wild West

The day after we arrived in Cambodia we went out for walk to feel out the town.  At that time, we were in Siem Reap (we’re currently in Phnom Penh.)   We were flush with the excitement of a new place after Thailand, and noticing the similarities and differences. 

                “Look!  That woman’s cooking eggs in the shell over a charcoal fire…”

                “I think those are actual chickens in the shell.  Embryonic chickens.  Pretty sure we saw that in Thailand.”

                “We did?!?”  That last bit seemed like something I would have remembered, and as we strolled along, my mind pin-balled against a multitude of questions.  Do you simply chew the bones into swallowable chunks?  Like a dog?  Are there feathers?  A beak?  Eyes?  HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THIS BEFORE?

                I wanted to hang around and wait for someone to buy one.  Watch them eat. Of course, I could have simply bought one and solved much of the mystery of what was actually in the eggs, but was hampered by my American sense of guilt over obvious economic disparity (and its attendant need to show how worthy their culture is) which would compel me to eat it in front of the woman who was making a living cooking these things. Further, I’d need to nod appreciatively as I chewed up the bones, feathers, and beak, sailing over the disgusting truth of my own weakness and swallowing them down with a smile.  It was mid-morning.  Hot and getting hotter, and I was in no mood for a gastronomic field trip.  Besides, we were on a mission. Rebecca has developed a dread of the motion sickness she suffers on any and all things related to public transport, and was in search of a pharmacy where she might locate motion sickness pills and Ibuprofen.    

                “There’s one across the street.”  Pharmacies here are a little like beer stores in India, minus the dark, creepy sense of guilt and the leers of drunken Indians.  They’re also clean—if a bit messy-- and right out in the open.  So, OK, they actually don’t have much in common with Indian beer stores, other than that they sell beer.  Cold beer.  In a glass-fronted case out front, if the pharmacist is an enterprising sort.   This particular pharmacist was napping behind the counter and woke with a smile on her face as we approached.  We asked for various things, and she rummaged around the chaos of boxes and bottles on the shelves, producing quantities of pills and spilling them out on the counter, followed by declarations of impossibly small costs as Rebecca scrutinized the active ingredients and accepted or rejected the various offerings.

“Whole box, eight thousand riel (two dollars.)”  Our pharmacist friend smiled through it all in an almost giddy way.  Suddenly, we were back in middle school and she was showing us the contents of her parent’s medicine cabinet while we tried to determine whether a given pill might make Mr. Drago’s social studies class that much more interesting.  On Impulse, I asked Rebecca a question.

                “What’s the word for valium?  You know…the drug’s name, not the brand name.”

                “Diazepam?” She gave me a quizzical look.  I turned to the pharmacist.

                “Do you have Diazepam?”  She went blank for just a second, then lit up and turned to the jumble, randomly tossing aside boxes, bottles and tubes before holding aloft a small white box, like a bridesmaid who had elbowed out the competition to catch the bouquet. 

                “Diazepam!”  She set the box on the counter before tearing the top off and shaking out the contents—four small foil and plastic strips each containing ten pills.  Rebecca picked one up and turned it over to examine the chemical composition.

                “Ten milligrams.  These suckers would knock you on your ass.” The pharmacist smiled, perhaps sensing our quiet wonder.  I gazed out over the mass of boxes and bottles and wondered over the mind-altering possibilities.

                “You want?” Her frank, open smile made the distance from my hand to my wallet feel dangerously short.  But here’s the thing:  I’m not a drug-user.  That is, aside from caffeine, alcohol, ibuprofen (following too much of the aforementioned alcohol) and omeprazole for acid reflux. Social drugs.  Medical drugs.  Acceptable drugs.  Which is not to say I wouldn’t enjoy a jolt of valium now and then.  Word is, it totally rocks.  Yet I’m sure I’m not alone when I declare certain self-imposed boundaries.  A mental fence, of sorts, encompassing my Ward Cleaver self-portrait.  I don’t want to go all Dorian Grey just yet. Of course, in the states, that boundary is kept solidly in check by a little something known as the food and drug administration.  There are laws, protocols, social stigma, etc.  But here in Cambodia, I could.  And for rock-bottom prices. 

                “No.  No thank-you.”  Then, to show her we appreciated her efforts, “But it looks really good.”  And with that, we set off in search of more wonder.

                Before coming to Cambodia, while in Thailand (and even in India, come to think of it) we heard Cambodia referred to as the Wild West.  The first time was by a Norwegian woman.  She had been a few years before, and related her experience while visiting a shooting range in Phnom Penh.

“There were AK-47’s.  You could fire a live bazooka!  It was crazy.  I’ve never seen anything like it.”  That, and a general rag-tag, lawless approach left her with a definite impression.  Mind, she liked the place, but had a fair measure of caution, perhaps due to her now travelling with a small child. (Not that I didn’t believe her, but I later googled shooting ranges in Cambodia and witnessed live footage of a guy in a Big Bird suit firing an AK-47 into a tank of liquefied petroleum.  It was, “Another great day of shooting over here at cambodiashooting.com”)

                Later, in Thailand, an acquaintance mentioned that he knew of old white dudes who came to Cambodia to gamble and to satisfy their interest in child prostitutes.  “It’s like the wild west…” he said with a shrug, as if to suggest that wild places bring out the animal in old white dudes.  (I didn’t need to Google anything to determine the voracity of his remark.  A simple stroll down the streets of Phnom Penh is most informative.)

                Which brings me to an observation, of sorts, concerning the people of this wild land.  They’re really nice.  They smile a lot.  Make an effort to be helpful, and look closely when speaking with you.  These are a people who endured (and still experience, through the detonation of unexploded ordinance) a scale of hardship and pain under the Khmer Rouge that defies rational expression.  If they chose to be assholes, to be bitter, to even turn their backs on this thing called humanity, I’d understand.  But they laugh freely and take a moderate approach to most things.  In short, they’re very civilized.  Not a terribly lawful group by any Western standard, but civilized nonetheless. 

Here’s an interesting fact:  there are very few traffic lights in Cambodia—or at least in the few places I’ve seen so far.  While walking home from dinner last night, Rebecca noticed a blinking red light in front of a little beer/roadhouse next to our hotel.

“I think that’s the only light I’ve seen in this town.  And it’s not actually a traffic light at all…it just flashes red.”  On closer inspection, we concluded that it was probably strung up by the owner of the beer joint to get people to slow down enough to realize they’re thirsty.  Other than that, the town was void of any stop lights at all.  Things are much the same here in Phnom Penh.  Round-a-bouts are more the norm.  But there’s plenty of intersections where people kind of slow down before wading into the maelstrom.  The intersection itself resembles one of those extreme close-ups of the workings of the vascular system, in which blood cells bump along and into one another on their way to or from the heart.  But it works, and with very little anxiety—at least on the part of the locals.

 The lack of stricture seems to generate a personal responsibility for their fellow men.  A sense of community.  A civilized place.  I could very well be that their recent brush with the horrors of moral/ideological restraint foisted on them by the Khmer Rouge has served as a booster shot, of sorts, and wrong treatment of themselves and each other.

Thailand is known as The Land of Smiles.  OK.  Cambodia clearly has it beat on that score, but that’s beside the point.  Of real interest—to me at least—is the drive behind the smile.  What can you possibly find as smile-worthy in this crowded, traff-icky, dusty place where people cook un-born chicks over charcoal on the curbside?    Dunno.  But I’m thinking it’s probably something stronger than valium.  Even at ten milligrams the tab.