Tadgh Byrne: Travel Dairy from Cambodia (2016)
Chapter 1
The Bangkok heat is proving rather unforgiving for those amongst us who are carting the last of their few possessions across the world. My suitcase finds a home in left luggage, for a few weeks and I must bear the burden of my other three bags down a long and increasingly less air conditioned hallway to the Airport Novotel.It’s soon to be thirty-seven degrees outside and it’s very humid. The hotel lobby is nice and chilled but the US$270 (not including breakfast) per night quickly reminds me that I don’t belong here. The notion is cemented when I catch a glimpse of my own reflection in the polished marble floor, complete with backpack and scruffy converse. I’m told to chat to the bell boy. He says I can stay in their ‘partner’ hotel for $51 which breakfast. It seems Novotel have gone down the same route as Ryanair, making you pay for all the extras: showers only $30 extra, towels $20, tea or coffee $5 etc etc… just don’t forget to check in online! Besides, Suvarnabhumi airport is built on ancient burial grounds and is believed, by the locals, to be haunted. During its construction, workers claimed to have seen ghosts there. On 23 September 2005, the Thai airports authority held a ceremony where 99 Buddhist monks chanted to appease the spirits.
When I arrive via complementary shuttle bus, my room isn’t ready yet, justifiably so, as it’s still only 6am. They offer me free breakfast while I wait. Novotel could learn a thing or two from The Orchid resort. Naturally, I’m drawn to the most unusual option, prawn wanton-noodle soup. The noodles are kinda slimy but the broth is tasty-as, despite the heat (both the weather and from my overloading on Sriracha sauce).
The sauce is believed to have first been produced by a Thai woman n the town of Si Rachas. According to the ‘Thai Si Racha Lovers’s Association’, the sauce was first made in Sriracha by Burmese sawmill workers. The association interviewed 88 year-old Ah Pae. Her grandmother had a small shop in the town. The Burmese came to the shop to buy chillies, salt, vinegar, and sugar to pound in a mortar to make their sauce. Eventually, she started making the sauce herself, both for family use and for sale to customers. Soon, another customer began to buy large quantities of chillies, salt, vinegar, and sugar using the brand name ‘Golden Mountain’. That was a according to an article entitled “A sauce of Inspiration” in the Bangkok Post, earlier this year.
My room is on the top floor. There’s no lift and no air con on the way up but some friendly kid has been summonsed off the street to carry my backpack up the five flights of stairs. He quickly explains in very broken english how to work the air con and tv, then points out the mini bar. He runs off before I can tip him. From the balcony, I can see the M7 which connects the airport, the city, and the heavily industrial ‘Eastern Seaboard’. It is Thailand’s centre for export-oriented industries. Exports are often high value goods, such as Japanese branded automobiles, which are manufactured there and shipped elsewhere. Factory workers in the region are among the highest paid in Thailand but occasionally suffer physical ailments from toxic pollution in certain pockets. Nice. The region is popular as a retirement area for foreigners and is home to, none other than, the town of Si Racha.
I retire to bed around 10am (yes, am), after a long shower; a much needed wash and sleep after a hectic few days of packing, partying and plane journeys. The afternoon is spent replying to all of heart-stirring goodbye messages I’ve received and in the last few days, as well as ringing all of the institutions of Victoria to cancel my direct debits. My laptop battery dies so I venture out to explore Lat Krabang Road, which is only fifteen minutes from the Airport. The area, like the rest of Bangkok, has plentiful street vendors selling authentic Thai cuisine as well as cheap household and personal items.
I’m at Suvarnabhumi Night Market. Despite being daytime, It’s still busy. The smells and sights of backstreet Bangkok cast me back to this time five years. In similar circumstances, I had just left Australia for South East Asia. Both times with a head full of doubt and a pocket full of sod-all money. However, while I still have no capital, much has changed within me in those years. While I have been travelling, arguably, my whole life, that trip was my first solo mission and it was to a developing region, both of which can be nerve wracking factors for a bewildered twenty six year old. I could rant on about all of the things that I’ve done in those five years and how exactly I’ve changed, all backed up with hilarious anecdotes but at the same time, it can be summarised in four words, I’m older and wiser.
There’s a loud speaker that shouts at the people on street, about every half an hour. The noise pollution and um, the other, regular pollution, are high as swarms of motorbikes race past to the rules of no man. At the side of the motorway, some goats have made a home for themselves on a patch of grass, or should I say, land, as there is as much plastic debris as there is grass on it. Walking past a table full of sleeping Chihuahuas was probably my favourite wasted photo-op. Children scream in the background and chickens peck around my feet while I eye up the colourful street food, most of which, I am failing to recognise as anything remotely familiar.
Everyone smiles here. You know those genuine smiles, with the wide grin and the wrinkly eyes? Many of the vendors bow their heads, with the prayer gesture, as they say “sawaddee krab”. I choose rice, with the three ugliest looking curries on display. The first one is supposed to be chicken but the ‘meat’ looks like and has the consistency of a chocolate brownie. The next, I’m pretending is a chanterelle mushroom curry but is most likely some sort intestine stew and the last she says is pork but then follows with a “moo moo” noise. It looks a little bit like pork but who knows? Maybe that’s the noise pigs make in Thailand. It’s all delicious, really filling and only cost me $2. Again, both types of heat are burning me alive, so I buy what looked like orange juice in a sandwich bag and turned out to be some sort of hot pumpkin and rice milk drink. Feck!
It’s night time and it is now only a cool 32 degrees. The hotel has lent me an adaptor and a lonely planet book on Cambodia. It’s time to figure out what to do tomorrow. Kinda. I’m tempted to just go back to the airport on my free shuttle bus, after my free breakfast and just book the cheapest flight I can find within South East Asia. Cue the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
“Where I go I just don’t know, I got to, got to, gotta take it slow. When I find my piece of mind, I’m gonna give you some of my good time”.
Chapter 2
“I want you high”, were his exact words. “There goes the detox!” I think to myself. Alex is behind reception, chopping up a big bowl of weed and in the middle of rolling a fat joint. He insists I come and smoke it with him.
Checkout time, a casual 12pm, rolled around yesterday and I still hadn’t really come up with any sort of plan. And as we all know – If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I decided to check in for one more night. I might as well savour the tranquility, because I can sense that hectic times lie ahead. Within the next hour I had found a cheap flight to Phnom Penh the following day. Pool time. Where once the may have been a piña colada, now sat it’s healthy cousin, coconut water. Same same but different. The afternoon’s street food consisted of: mystery “chicken”, most likely chicken skin fried to a crispy nugget that looked like sweet popcorn, as well as a thai version of pho. The latter was topped with beef that sits out in the 38 degree heat with flies buzzing around it. As a trained chef, I struggle with the idea of food that isn’t refrigerated but as I often reminded myself in South America; most of the customers are locals and these merchants aren’t in the business of poisoning their neighbours.
I spent the evening watching documentaries about Cambodia. As you are probably aware, they have a horrific past. It was all getting a bit depressing, if it wasn’t the Khmer Rougue it was the French, the Americans or the Vietnamese being mean to them. So, I turned to my old buddy, Anthony Bourdain, who uses food and drink to craft a more approachable history lesson. He has a ‘No Reservations’ episode for pretty much every country (lucky bugger, what a job!) and they are all on youtube. Check them out.
I had to get another free shuttle bus (I only spent $15 in 2 nights/ 3 days in Thailand) from one airport to another. On the way to the airport, the receptionist told me her co-worker was in love with me but was to too shy to ask for a photo with me. The ego has landed. Don Mueang Airport isn’t haunted but it has seen a lot of plane crashes in it’s time. The bus takes an hour. When you’re stumbling around Koh San Road and its surrounds, as I was five years ago, you’re oblivious to the fact that Bangkok is feckin’ MASSIVE. The high rise is widespread and drags on for miles and miles. I’m glad I stayed in my tranquil resort for an extra night. The calm before the storm.
The girl at the noodle place at the departure gate told me I’m a ‘very handsome boy’ for no reason whatsoever. I can see how so many western men end up with Thai brides. I had opted for the deluxe package with my Air Asia flight, which affords you the luxury of bringing a 20kg bag, a meal AND you get to choose your own seat. King for day! My meal was a white bread, ham and cheese sandwich. Not a very big one, at that. They did take the time to cut the crusts of it for me, so for that I am forever grateful to the chefs in the Air Asia kitchens. I might have chosen the best seat in the house, as I was sitting next to a very friendly and might I add, very attractive French girl. Top travel tip – always go deluxe. Unless of course you might want, hmm, a hot meal or something.
Alex, the owner of the hostel checks me in. He’s Cambodian but speaks with an middle class London accent and every sentence ends in “man”. ‘How do you want it?’ by Tupac is playing over the speakers. There’s an English guy standing next to me in a Irish away jersey from the 1994 world cup. It’s orange with the OPEL sponsor written across the front. He found it in an Australian ‘op shop’ , he tells me. The don’t call them opportunity shops for nothing, i suppose. My room in on the top floor again, no air con, no lift. Once I’m checked in and the formalities with the two German girls in my room are over, I proceed to leave my valuables in the courtesy lockers. Alex brings me outside to have a smoke with him and I notice that nearly everyone in the common area of the hostel is smoking weed. I took a few drags, so as not to insult his ancient traditional custom but I was about to head out for a walk around the block, so I wanted to have my wits about me, whatever they are.
Phnom Penh is predictably noisy, smelly and chaotic but as I said, a lifetime of travel has put me at ease with these situations. It’s definitely Asian but it’s also colonial so I can draw a lot of parallels with South American and Vietnamese cities. That’s a nice way of saying “everything has gone to shit since the Europeans left”. Tarantula kebab is a delicacy in Cambodia. A tarantula kebab looks every bit as horrible as you’d imagine but apparently it tastes like a cross between chicken and cod. Not one for the faint-hearted arachnophobe but luckily there’s plenty of more appetising cuisine on offer.
It feels like you’re in a movie here. Street vendors dump their rubbish (sans bin bag) in large piles on the street. Barbers clippings sit beside coconut husks and fruit peel along with plastic, paper, empty cans etc. Cats scratch their flees, kids are running around around naked and there’s no such thing as ‘poop and scoop’. There’s a street of what look like brothels and strip clubs lined with young women tarted up to the nines. I remember reading a horrific book called ‘Sex Slaves’, the last time I was here. And from what I remember Cambodian girls are right at the bottom of the sex industry pyramid, in terms of ill treatment. (There’s also a good vice documentary worth watching about how sex slaves are ‘freed’ by the authorities, only to become sweatshop slaves.) Yeah, it’s not a very happy topic but this is really happening in the world. Your world. Don’t like what I’m saying? Good. Do something about it!
On the plus side, there are lots of good people and good charities working to end sex slavery every single day. Right, back to first world problems. Should I go out and mingle or should I stay in and read?
Chapter 3I ended having a couple of drinks with five American’s at my hostel, while Alex intermittently pushed his soft drugs on me. They asked me to go out with them so as to “even out the gender ratio”. As much as I enjoy evening out gender ratios for my fellow human beings, I declined. I’m here to relax, write and eat good food, cheaply, not to party. Or so I keep telling myself. With an early night under my, er, belt, I managed to get up relatively early and explore the city of Phnom Penh. I always find the best way to explore a city is to go for a big five or six hour walk around it, preferably getting hopelessly lost somewhere along the way. I found the Russian markets, so-called by foreigners because the predominantly Russian expat population shopped here in the 1980s. I also went to the Royal Palace and watched aerobics by the riverfront. Finally, I decided to stop eating mystery meat and take advantage of the beautiful tropical fruit they have here. Fruits in Cambodia are so popular that they have their own royal court. The durian is considered the king, the mangosteen the queen, sapodilla the fruit currently known as prince and the milk fruit the princess. Street fruit is served with a very addictive chilli salt, lovingly named ‘prik glua’. I left that evening for the seaside resort of Sihanoukville or Snookyville as the backpackers call it. I met a couple of Brits, David and Helena on the bus. Chatting to them helped pass the five hour journey quickly. We arrived late and it was dark so I took the first place I could find. A grotty motel, with just a old wobbly fan in my room that served very little purpose and a grubby bed sheets. I went out for a midnight walk around the ‘ville. Neon clad casinos and plastic bottles line the dusty streets on the way to Victory Hill, a tiny little Smurf village within the town. Except, instead of those little mushroom houses it’s noisy, wall to wall bars and instead of Smurfs, it’s populated by attractive Cambodian girls and fat, old men. “Prostitutes, many of them in the mid to late teens, pour into tourist bars. The prostitutes are also known as “taxi girls”: women who rent themselves out to foreigners for a night, a day, a week or an entire month.” (Epicasiatravel.com). I’d never witnessed sex tourism, first hand before and I’d be happy never to witness it again. A dirty place in all senses of the word. I’m happy to be on a boat out of Shit-ville and on my way to the paradise island of Koh Rong. One of the last undeveloped (for now) parts of South East Asia. It has no recorded and administered settlements prior to the year 2000. The island has no atms, no roads and no hospital and the electricity supply is sporadic. The place is overrun with dreaded hippies and you can smell weed everywhere. There’s even a few bars that openly sell pre-rolled joints and weed cookies. I met a German fella, Johan on the 3 hour boat journey. He’s on his way back from Australia too, after only one (gap) year though. We checked into the same hostel and went out to grab some food. Just one hour had passed on the island and we noticed locals running up and down the street frantically. I could tell by their worried faces that something bad was going on. One of the restaurants in the centre of the town had caught fire when flames from the restaurant’s wood-fueled pizza oven reached the thatched roof and accelerated when the flames ignited a gas canister. It looked highly likely that the entire street, including our hostel was about to go up in flames. The region is in the middle of a massive heat wave and hasn’t seen rain in months so everything is bone dry. I went and grabbed my valuables from the hostel and got ready to run. Or swim.
Chapter 4: Foot-loss and Fancy Freaks
I’d just bought what I thought was a boiled egg from a street vendor. When I cracked it open, it a duck embryo in it. Years ago, I remember watching Ramsey eating a ‘balut’ in his show Gordon’s Great Escape but I had completely forgotten that this was a thing, until now. So, you can imagine my surprise when I saw the little beak. According to many people in Cambodia, balut is believed as a folk medicine, a stimulator of sexual drive and a traditional hangover cure. I didn’t eat the boiled baby duck but I could’ve used that hangover cure. The last four nights have been pretty hectic.
The fire raged on for nearly two hours while villagers (And, I have to say, a lot of westerners) worked together to put it out. Every bucket and saucepan in the village was brought out for the occasion. I had a few drinks with Johann, and later two Australian girls, that night. He’d just recently read Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now’ and ‘A New Earth’. He has the same new-found understanding of people, himself and life that I had, when I first read those books, when I was about 24. They definitely changed my life, for the better.
We spent the next day exploring the Island but it’s pretty dense jungle that goes on for miles, so we didn’t get that far. That night, once back on the mainland I beelined it straight for Otres Beach, 5km out of Shit-ville. I met up with a Finish girl, Elsa Panula, who was at burning man last year with a bunch of my friends and acquaintances. She runs a weekly jungle party called ‘Kerfuffle’, every Wednesday. I spent the night hanging out with to her and her mates at the Hacienda hostel. She told me how they were small, illegal, raves three years ago and now she has three business partners and it’s the biggest weekly party in Cambodia. Elsa is moving to Australia in a few days though, to set up a bee farm in Byron Bay.
The next night, I met a mixed bunch: Sergay (Russian), Derrick (USA), Philip and Bianca (German) and we all went for dinner together. I tasted Baracuda for the first time, a huge, mean-looking fish with a habit for biting scuba divers. It tasted good, a bit like swordfish. After dinner we went to the nearby ‘Stray cats’ hostel for open mic night. Here we met Daniela from Cuba, very beautiful and a classic femme fatale, and Daniel, who god bless him, looks like a sex tourist but is actually a really interesting guy. He has worked in local politics all his life, around Manchester is also an human rights activist, runs a nightclub and is a massive music enthusiast. He had been reading poems from Jim Morrison’s ‘The American Night’ before we arrived. He told me how, before the Khmer Rouge started being all mean to everyone, Cambodia had a thriving psychedelic rock scene, that has been somewhat revived in recent times. I might be going to a gig with Dan this Saturday in Phnom Penh.
For my last full day in Otres village. I hired a 125cc scooter for $5 (a day) and set off exploring the beaches, the little villages in the mountains and Sihanoukville Port. I had lunch in Hacienda with Sven, Belgian guy that I met on the first night. I had some Cambodian curry with a funny name. The Kerfuffle team were having a pep talk on the table next to us before going to hand out fliers for the day. They get $5 plus free entry and free drinks for an afternoon’s work. I had told Elsa that I’d go with them, a good way to get amongst it and meet new people but I sliced my foot open on the island and was starting to get infected from neglect. Walking was painful. George, the barman at my hostel gave me two antibiotic pills and a good tip. Crack open one of the capsules and rub the powder into the wound. It cleared up overnight.
Kerfuffle was a very entertaining evening. I went in with Sergay, Derrick, Philip and Bianca. (don’t mention the war) – each one of them as quirky and idiosyncratic as the next. You can’t beat a good old fashioned rave in the woods, especially when it has it’s own rusty ferris wheel. The set up was great, the music was cool and there was no dickheads. It runs from 10pm to 10am but in my old age, i was happy when the guys suggested getting a tuk tuk home at 4am. Besides I had to catch a bus the next day.
It was one of the last parties before the low season starts. The region will soon be inundated with monsoonal rain and Cambodia will turn into an huge ocean of emerald rice-paddies. The large amount of wetlands and floodplains explains why water, and hence fish and rice are such an integral component to the cuisine. Many dishes, in particular the samlors, have a pond-like appearance, and are often loaded with reed-like plants, leaves and vegetables, mirroring the surrounding landscape. Dipping sauces tend to be quite watery, as are most Cambodian curries.
I still haven’t seen any rain since I arrived in Asia. During my three days in Otres Village, I stayed in ‘BOHO’ hostel, where, when I first arrived I met ‘YOLO’. A dreaded, French hippy with a very bulbous, swollen eye and various cuts around his head. He has his default nickname tattooed across his knuckles and the word ‘now’ inked into his arm (i guess he’s read the books too). I would go on to hear various different accounts, over the next few days, as to why he had had seven shades of shit beaten out of him…
Tadgh Byrne 