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.
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