Did our change of location in Sihanoukville, result in an improvement in my feelings towards the place? Yes and no. The Green Gecko was definitely a better place to hang out, do our best to imitate people who can play billiards, and eat omelette rolls disguised as veggie burgers. But the Weather Station Hill area turned out to be a shining beacon for all the sleaze that the West has hoisted upon an otherwise devout Buddhist culture. Many would disagree with this last conjecture, but I suggest that the current degree of iniquity was probably the result of colonialism.
Asia is the land of hope for all old, ugly, fat, bald and all-round untrustworthy looking Westerners. Blokes too ugly to work on radio stroll around with the most glamorous ladies fawning over them. The only consolation for strapping young Adonis’s like Adam and myself, was that they are probably paying for the privilege, and truth be known, ‘she’ was probably packing more bulges downstairs than what most men I know do. Word on the street is the lady-boys are more expensive than their naturally female counterparts as well.
And Weather Station Hill was a magnification of this disturbing phenomenon. Cambodia is still the Wild West in many ways, as the law is lapse enough to permit cheap and easy liaisons with desperate people who pray for better things. We couldn’t walk down the street without having locals of questionable gender trying to pull us into the bars. Bars already full of the same Westerners who spent the day at the beach in twine, having their ‘egos’ stroked and their wallets emptied. Admonitions of the unfathomable wrongness of child sex are everywhere, but no mention is made of such displays of moral corruption. Not being an angel of moral purity myself, I am no position to cast aspersions on this sort of behaviour, but I feel this situation is an obvious example of the exploitation of a largely destitute society. These women would not give a second glance to these old geezers unless they had bank notes poking out of their back pockets. And if you were to take the law into your own hands and give these perverts the beating they deserve, you would disadvantage those with no other income except from Western pigs with small dicks and deep wallets. Like the limbless beggars, how much are you helping and how much are you hindering?
Again, it is not my role to evaluate the impact of these peoples’ actions, merely observe and relate. Who am I to judge the rightness of what’s before me? I am from a different society and I cannot say that the West is any better than the East. I remain confident though that God will smite the sinners with ‘great vengeance and furious anger’!
Now allow me to focus on the less licentious aspects of the place. I spied a sewing machine out the front of the coffee shop opposite our Guesthouse, and soon discovered it was actually an espresso machine. Desperate for a good coffee, we charged over and responded to the American owners’ inquiry to our current state of health, by flatly stating that no fair judgement could be made without having a coffee each. To this, he inexplicably responded with 3 mugs of charred black soot in liquid form. Ok, Americans will drink coffee brewed from Satan’s nuggets, but we my friend, are slightly more disconcerting customers. Adam and I swallowed our bitter medicine out of laziness, but Gemma was having none of it. She ordered a latte, and from doing likewise for the remainder of our stay, I decided there was little difference between his first offering, and what he gave us when we were allowed to order what we wanted. Yes, your observation that I am a coffee snob is indeed correct.
This otherwise friendly American then covered himself in glory by recommending a secret beach that only the locals knew about. What he didn’t tell us was how far we had to trek to find the place. But it turned out to be worth every laboured, whining step as the beach contained only one other Westerner. Some local children played nearby, pretty close to sealing a deal in their ‘show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ negotiations. The waters were warm and clear enough to permit perfect viewing of a used condom floating around, and the sun set over a little off-shore island similar to Ko Ma; near my last destination on Ko Pha-Ngan.
Our last night lived up to the previous hilarity the three of us have enjoyed. With the TV showing such golden programming as ‘I shouldn’t be living’ and some war movie that Gemma said looked like ‘McLeods Daughters’ with helmets, (Reminding me why I don’t own a TV!) we decided to venture further than our room. As we all felt under dressed without our formal pyjamas on, we decided to venture no further than the common room and play pool. I was on a record-winning streak of one, and was eager to add to the tally. Thanks to beer being my response to any question asked of me, no such joy was garnered from the pursuit. Not even Adams balls (?) getting stuck in a rip in the velvet he coined ‘the canyon of deep sorrow’, could help me play through a rapidly destabilizing universe.
Setting my alarm before bed that night, it wasn’t all that surprising that I set it for 430 pm rather than am. Luckily the Guest House owner awoke us with enough time to pack, but not enough time to have one last surprise coffee from the closest Cambodia comes to Starfucks, er.. Starbucks. 12 hours was all that was needed to return to Bangkok via various forms of unroadworthy transport. And who should be there, having brought a ticket back to Thailand 2 weeks after returning home? My German friend Volka. Having seen him off at the end of his trip in Ko Pha-Ngan, it was fitting he saw me off at the end of mine.
Not before shopping up a storm though. Armed with a pocketful of my remaining cash and a reckless desire to accumulate, I quickly discovered that all the bargains I had been salivating over buying, was just worthless crap. Still, enough hunting around was undertaken to ensure Adam and Gemma missed their flight home. Gemma’s obvious displeasure at my miscalculation of the time required to get to the airport (that still left me enough time to catch my flight), somewhat tarnished our parting. But nothing can stand between a life-long friendship that must come from what has been the best experience I have ever had with people outside of an intimate relationship. I am not surprised to find myself crying as I try to express how special those two have become to me. I cannot consider myself to be anything but blessed to have met and spent so much time with such amazing people. Thank you amigos! And thank you Asia.
