Phnom Penh is quite something

Such a weird and wonderful, sad and harsh, wounded, struggling and hopeful city. It's hard to grasp, due to its shere size as well as to staggering extremes when it comes to income, living standards and education. 

A few days ago, I was talking to a  young Cambodian woman (24), who helps Dariush and Rita with household chores. She asks me about my travels and I tell her about Thailand, about my recent trip to Siem Reap, and about my plan to go to Kampot. The latter are both Cambodian cities, only a few hours by bus from Phnom Penh. She smiles sadly and tells me that she’s never been to Siem Reap, the city of the temples that Cambodians are so proud of (and understandably so). In fact, she saves money all year long in order to go away just once, on a weekend trip to the coast south of Phnom Penh, during the period of the most excruciating heat, just to cool off in the ocean. Not for a swim though, because she never learned how to do that. She would go with her two sisters, but this year, the family’s computer died, which she and her sisters need to study English, which in turn is crucial to work for expats, who can afford to pay higher wages. So there’s no holiday for her, this year, the computer needs to be fixed. When I ask her where in Cambodia she has been she points out the rural area where her grandparents live, north of Phnom Penh.  I, naively, ask her if life might be better up there, what with less pollution and less of the stress that being poor in a city of 1.5 million brings about – she lives with her family in a tiny place, only meters from train tracks. Everybody is scared, she says, because the freight train has already derailed once and destroyed people’s houses and lives. But, anyway, her grandparents’ place would not be such a good idea, because there’s neither electricity nor running water.

Everyday Superheroes

Family life is what I got to share and enjoy, those last few beautiful weeks in Cambodia, thanks to my dear friends Dariush and Rita and their amazing superhero kids, Nouchine and Jonathan.

 

 

Nouchine and Jonathan conquer Phnom Penh -  every day anew, they effortlessly defeat crocodiles and mice, beat the heat, tame geckos and ants, and along the way they enchant entire kindergarten troops, staff included. 

Meanwhile, Dariush and Rita are busy settling in, managing the family and saving the world, or - that is - whatever there is left to save, after the kids are done working their magic. The four of them came over about 6 months ago because Dariush works for an NGO here in Phnom Penh. They have an awesome blog (http://www.idaab.com/), and we had awesome time - thanks, guys, for letting me share your exciting expat life!   

    

That was a beautiful month full of 'first times': my first time to watch hermit crabs going walkabout, first time to attend a Thai full moon party, first time to listen to the sounds of gibbons calling in the distance, their mournful songs travelling far through the misty morning in the awakening jungle. Oh how I do love first times! Also: some of you know how much I had been longing for the company of animals during the last few months (that night in the bar, when everyone had deep and meaningful conversations while I spent the evening bonding with the owner's dog? Great night out in Berlin!). By now I've definitely met plenty of amazing creatures, so this entry might have a slight emphasis on animals. 

My dear friend Kristina and I had finally made it to the coast, travelling from Bangkok to Hat Yai and from there to Pak Bara, where we managed to miss the last boat to the islands. Pak Bara turned out to be a sleepy little town, sporting a tiny supermarket, two very friendly street food vendors and a stranded Norwegian, nursing a lukewarm beer, who told us that he had spent the last seven years in Pak Bara. Kristina and I were wondering what he had been up to during all that time in such a tiny place, so we asked him and then the three of us wondered together. I don't think he came to any conclusion.

We spent the rest of the evening admiring our first glance of the Andaman Sea, sipping on a fruit shake and enjoying the company of the friendly cat shown on top of this page. Another little creature was waiting for us when we returned to our hostel 'Happy House' that night. I think it likes yellow.

The next day and a short boat trip later we found ourselves in paradise: in the Koh Tarutao national park. Endless beaches, clear, warm water and so few people that you could tell which couple had marital problems and whether or not the argument was solved next day at breakfast.

We were clearly outnumbered by monkeys, which seemed to have a great time roaming the island but - sadly - also had to deal with people's idea of 'civilisation'. This one here was disappointed to find the can empty, even after thorough inspection.

Kristina and I ventured out onto the beautiful mangrove waterways, admiring lots of little fish and trying to identify the sources of all those unfamiliar sounds and splashes. We were, after all, on our way to 'crocodile cave'...

But since we had been told that the cave is devoid of any hungry reptiles these days, we bravely scrambled across that blue ponton and onto a floating piece of plastic and pulled ourselves deep into the cave, hand-over-hand along a slippery, muddy rope, into shadow and silence. But we were not alone - once we switched on our head lamps we discovered, if not crocodiles, hundreds of little bats, hanging from the ceiling and probably laughing about our clumsiness. By the sound of it there were also a few crickets, chirping gloomily in the pitch black darkness. 

Back in the daylight we shook off the darkness-induced melancholia and decided it was time for a beer and ultimately for our daily dose of too-pink-to-be-real sunset, and ideally the combination of the two. 

We found both at the beach, where some of the locals took advantage of a cool(ish) breeze and went for a jog. 

We spent a couple of days on this beautiful sleepy island, showing off our newly aquired technicolor fake batik hippie pants to the monkeys and fighting over our lunch picnic with the local grumpy kitten.

Eventually and reluctantly, we moved on to another island, Koh Lipe, to try out our snorkeling gear. Koh Lipe is a lot more touristy, with numerous bars, restaurants and shops. The island is home to the Urak Lawoi, the "sea people", and one can only hope that the indigenous culture can be preserved despite an ever growing number of bungalows and holiday resorts. Nevertheless, the island is absolutely beautiful, and we happily waded into the warm water and admired our fabulous instant tan. Why is it again, that everyone looks so bronzed against a background of turquoise waves?

The island has several nice beaches, two of which are called 'Sunrise' and 'Sunset', respectively, for obvious reasons. We pretty much alternated between them, with short stop overs at a very friendly elderly lady's pancake stall, where we managed to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, only varying the pancake toppings. In between we became good friends with the dogs that roam the beaches and are always up for a cuddle and belly pat.

 

Mostly, we were all just hanging out together, enjoying the view and each others company. Not much was said, but we got along very well. I was very, very tempted to take one or two of them with me, but besides a moderate flea infestation most of the dogs seemed quite content to live at such a beautiful place, so after a couple of days we left without any furry companion, but with countless photos of either sunrise or sunset, and with the realisation that our outfits and belongings were gradually and irreversibly changing from subdued blues, blacks and khaki to bright and colorful. And so were our hearts and minds.  

My memory of the trip to Koh Muk is slightly blurred, as a result of chewy, halfway barbecued chicken-skin-on-a-stick that I had bought from a street vendor the last night on Koh Lipe. Why anyone would like to eat such a thing in the first place is not quite clear to me anymore, but at that time (and after some farewell drinks with the staff at the local electro/beach bar) it seemed like an excellent idea. Anyway, I meditated my way through a two hour speed-boat trip, trying to control all bodily functions through sheer willpower, and then had to spend an entire day in our shady tent to recover from the effort. And from the chicken-skin. After I had re-emerged, however, Kristina and I found ourselves endlessly fascinated by the curious and mysterious ways of the hermit crabs, which started to populate the beach around the time of sunset.

 

Where do they go, those little, determined creatures? We watched them criss-crossing the beach, frightened into hide-and-freeze by any and every ever-so-tiny movement, only to carefully re-emerge some time later and to bravely continue their laborious path. In case two of them 'ran' into each other, there was a brief encounter, followed by both of them hurridly carrying on in opposite directions. Bumper cars came to mind. The next morning every surface of the beach was covered by tiny trails. One day, we decided, we gonna put little LED lamps on the crabs' shells and watch them roam in the dark. "Like Bangkok at night from above", Kristina mused.

On beautiful, sleepy, densely wooded Koh Muk, we also were lucky to discover the soulful sound of a steeldrum. While we were watching the hermit crabs doing their thing and the world turn pink, a bearded traveller accompanied the sun's journey downwards with some rather spherical music. I asked him about his instrument and later looked it up (and now I want one, too!), so this music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR0fNRL0f9w) and that view is pretty much what it was like on Koh Muk.

  

There's only so many sunsets on the beach one can take without turning into a squishy, sweet, pink, foolishly grinning marshmellow, so we decided to leave the coast and head to Khao Sok nationalpark, which turned out to be one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. Goosebump-awe-inspiring kind of beautiful, albeit with a twist: the fantastic lake we spent two days on, the Cheow Larn Lake, is the product of a dam built in the early 1980s, resulting in the uprooting and relocation of entire villages. A Thai lady whose family also had had to move told us about life before the dam, about trips to the next grocery store that took two days because her village had been so remote, and - smilingly - about how, as a child, she had to 'shower' each day before hiking through the jungle to get to school: "Clothes off, into the cold river, count to 10 before we were allowed to get out again, and then race back to the house to get dressed and warm". These days there are schools, hospitals and lots of jobs in the tourism sector, but, she said, her grandfather had found it very hard to give up the family's house, space and history. 
She also said that venturing out onto the lake would make us feel like in a mixture of 'Jurassic Park' and 'Avatar', and she was right.   

We teamed up with a cheerful, giggly group of Thai ladies, all of them colleagues on a weekend trip. A few minutes on the longtail boat later and we were already enthralled by the nature around us. 

 

Rows and rows of mountains covered by dense jungle, countless little islands, and, in shallow regions, the remnants of submerged and long since dead trees. At first we came across other boats, but after about two hours we found ourselves in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by steep hills and with no one around except a few people who shared our accommodation for the night: a row of little floating bamboo huts.

We immediately hopped into the deep and surprisingly warm water, decently dressed with T-shirt-over-bikini because we seemed to be the only western tourists. Drying off in the late afternoon sun, we felt the warmth of the wooden planks, watched silvery fish emerge and idly disappear below our doorstep and let our eyes and minds wander over the jungle around us, up to the horizon and beyond. Our minds at least must have gotten lost there for a while because for quite some time we actually found it hard to have any kind of conversation other than "Wow". "So beautiful." "Amazing." "Look, a fish." "Wow."

Finally, we were friendly but resolutely ushered back onto the boat, in the hope of seeing some animals in the dusk. There are buffalos, wild boars, tapirs, elephants, even tigers living in this area, and indeed, gliding soundlessly into narrow sidearms of the lake, we occasionally caught pungent whiffs of animal droppings.

Maybe we were not all that soundless after all, possibly due to our fellow travellers in high spirits, the giggling getaway girls who re-interpreted the term photo safari by gleefully taking pictures of themselves. What we did get to see, though, was this little fellow, playing 'Where's Wally?'. Found him? 

Back at our little huts, we found ourselves in the middle of peaceful preparations for either dinner or bed. Sleepy little kids were given a wash with a handful of lake water and then tugged in under their mosquito nets, while the rest of us got ready for an amazing dinner of grilled fish, curry, rice and fresh fruit.    

Lazily rubbing our bellies after a huge meal, we watched in disbelief as the holidaying girls were sneaking out of the 'dining hut' only to settle down on the neighbouring raft where they prepared a second, even bigger barbecue, complete with shrimps and calamari. "Full moon party!", they happily announced and asked us to join them. When I asked if they had brought that huge fish with them they laughed and said, no, that one had been alive about five minutes ago. 

So, a full moon party it was. Kitchen crew, boat operators, tourists and everyone else gathered on the biggest raft, under a huge moon and countless stars. The getaway girls were hoping for Karaoke and, as it turned out, had even brought some speakers and a microphone, but (luckily) the generator did not deliver enough electricity, so someone produced a guitar and the men started singing, yearning, beautiful Thai songs, and one by one we all stretched out on the warm wooden planks, arms crossed behind our heads, and watched the moon on its path across the night sky. 

It was not a night to go to bed, but eventually we succumbed to sleepiness, taking comfort in the prospect of being one step away from a bath in the lake tomorrow morning. - 

We woke up very early to a misty, cool morning and to the strange and beautiful calls of Gibbons somewhere in the jungle around us. Thankfully someone, not me, has recorded those amazing sounds at Khao Sok, so this is what we heard (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbCLiCqZD7s), and once again there was not much left to say for quite some time, for what could have been of any relevance.

A couple of hours later we were back in the village where it took us some time to re-adjust to traffic and noise. But I was very happy to meet this little chipmunk which lives in the gum trees surrounding the guesthouse.

Finally, we decided to move on and to spend the last few days of our trip on Koh Phayam, a great island which was recommended to me by the local expert Jane (thanks, Jane!), whom I had the pleasure to meet at Panya in January. Koh Phayam was all we wanted; a tranquil place with an amazing beach, plenty of trees and hammocks so that we could read our books in the shade, and a nice bar where we danced away the night to tacky trance music. Kristina found it slightly disturbing to spot a huge spider sitting on the beer cans in the fridge, cheerfully ignored by the busy barkeeper who apparently just worked around it. But other than that nothing shook us out of our blissful idleness, reflected by the fact that in four days I managed to take a single picture only, a boring one, too, and purely out of a sense of duty and about two minutes before we left.