A Giant Ibis to Phnom Penh
Early one morning, we waited at the Siem Reap bus station, watching a woman sweep up leaves and trash from the gravel and dirt parking lot. Baffling, quixotic–and beautiful as the sun silhouetted her in a cloud of pink, glowing dust.
Our Giant Ibis bus ride to Phnom Penh would be six hours, including a few breaks. We had a driver, a back-up driver, and an attendant who announced “comfort breaks” and handed out a bottle of water and a smashed croissant to every passenger. Once out of Siem Reap’s morning traffic, the drivers drove like the road was a racetrack. They jabbered on their phones while driving, and one drove single-handed as he peeled and sucked on a piece of fruit so enthusiastically I could hear it from row five.
I concentrated on the Cambodian countryside: fairytale haystacks—tall and egg shaped, small houses sitting very high on stilts (how much monsoon-season rain necessitates that height?!), curled roof lines, red dirt paths heading off into fields and neighborhoods, an open warehouse of spirit houses for sale, a white ox with a neck hump wallowing in a pond, a rabbit-eared cow waiting in front of a golden gate, a front yard filled completely with a three-foot layer of empty plastic bottles, cooking oil (or gasoline?) in glass coke bottles for sale, a wooden house with a single red potted flower hanging by the door, an ornate white throne-like sofa with garish gold trim for sale on the roadside, colorful coffins at a coffin maker’s shop, a roadside market with attendants hanging in hammocks above tables of unwrapped meat, and always—that red, red Cambodian dirt.
Phnom Penh
Six hours later, we arrived into a hot, sticky Phnom Penh and checked into the Monsoon Boutique Hotel. The hotel was near some questionable establishments but it was clean and cheap, and just a five-minute walk from the river, restaurants, and bus station. Our concealed balcony overlooked any bawdiness on our late-night street.
On Chinese New Year, about twenty ladies dressed in red from the bar next door spilled into the street to celebrate. Despite the mid-day heat, the Chinese dragons and lions danced for more than an hour to bring good fortune to the bar and the community.
At a shrine by the Mekong River, pink and white lotus flowers were arranged with incense sticks in coconut vases, waiting to be purchased as offerings. Not 25 feet away, dumpsters overflowed with yesterday’s discarded—but still fresh—offerings. In the middle of the shrine crowd, a small cage teeming with twittering finches sat on the sidewalk. I later learned these were “merit birds”. Tiny wild finches are captured and caged. Worshippers buy a merit bird to release during prayers—signaling forgiveness and a return to good. Many birds will be captured again, sold again—repeating the cycle like reincarnation, or sin and forgiveness—again and again and again. All those tiny souls, waiting to be bought, waiting to fly free, all at the whim of guilty and guilt laden humans.
When we passed back through Phnom Penh later in the month, we stayed at the Foreign Correspondents Club on the banks of the Mekong River. This place was popular with foreign journalists and aid workers during civil wars and unrest. Our room was a delightful step back in time with squeaky, shiny wood floors and french doors opening on to a balcony with an old-school tile floor, overhead fan, and wooden chairs overlooking the Mekong River. I sat transfixed out there—freshly showered, with a steaming cup of coffee, journal, and camera, staring at the mighty Mekong as the water went pink in the coming light of dawn and orange draped the skies at dusk when the neon lit up.
The Mekong River
The river called to us as we sat watching the world go by from our FCC balcony. One evening we took a sunset cruise on the Tonle Sap and Mekong. As we waited on the quay for our boat, a child of no more than five years old was begging near the street. His fist was tightly clenched around his Cambodian Riel folding money—maybe it was safer in his fist than in this pocket judging by all the kids around him hustling for money and food. I asked one of the boys where he lived—and he pointed out to the river.
As we would soon see, there are villages so very poor on the banks of the river. Dogs barked, and lush green rice fields passed by. And in the shadows of a 5-star, high-rise hotel and just across the river from the neon lights of Phnom Penh, sit hundreds of crooked tin shacks on stilts, and tents housing entire families on small fishing boats. The fishing boats were preparing to go out at dusk. Men hopped along the boats, moving things and we saw a woman untangling nets while nursing a baby.
The boat’s motor denied the river current’s attempt to sweep us downstream to Vietnam. Waiters brought us drinks and told us precisely when the Tonle Sap merged into the Mekong. Musicians played sad and delicate string instruments. Cambodian hosts asked us three times if we were enjoying their country, this city, this boat. “Yes, we are”, we smiled. They beamed. The Cambodians on the boat worked so hard to make the cruise nice for us. And when I learned the boat was owned by a Texan, only then was I disappointed—I wish I’d looked for a Cambodian-owned river cruise.
Later, I sat on the FCC balcony watching the Mekong and all the mopeds’ bouncing headlights go by. I wondered what it’d been like here before all the outside influences, before wars, before motorcycles. A large man in a suit was walking with his dog along the river—he stopped to pick up the Bulldog’s poop and the dog wandered into the busy street. I held my breath, wishing that dog to be safe—and the motorcycles flowed around him like water running around a rock. The dog jumped back onto the sidewalk and caught up with his person. Does it maybe work like that sometimes? Does a wish thrown into the universe sometimes work like a Harry Potter Patronus charm? Can we wish good on people, on the environment, on animals, and it come true? A Golden Retriever went past, ears flapping and smiling up at me from a remork’s side car…maybe that’s a “yes”.
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