NOTES FROM THE ROAD
straight from the tattered pages of my notebook to the web
It’s afternoon and we’re back where we started, cloudy skies. Ryan hikes off towards the beach to have a poo, comes back – you gotta see this – grab binoculars – there is a luxury motorboat coming in across the bay, heading for the village – who could that be? Ryan wants to flag it down, but they aren’t sticking around – turns back and heads back out again. Investors onboard perhaps? Long-tails anchored just offshore, fishermen cooking up dinner, wafts of smoke from the charcoal fires, it starts to drizzle, light drizzle, water calm, us jealous of their hot food.
Back to the house, but chased back once by the dog, find some heavy dog-beating sticks and return, Mr. Franklin is there, we show him where we left money yesterday (under the teacups) and ask with gestures – OK to sleep here? “Yes, No problem” – he had said the same yesterday, he wanders back through the coconuts toward the village. We move our bags upstairs, try to build a fire on the cooking platform with coconut husks and scraps of dry wood – raining steadily now, not having very much luck getting the fire going – Ryan hacked open a coconut, takes half to use as a bowl, fills it with instant vermicelli noodles and water but stove is all smoke and no fire – this is when Grandma arrives.
Try to get her perspective right here – this 50 year old Cambodian peasant woman in a red krama, hard working, diligent, two wide-eyed little kids in tow – clearly Mr. Franklin has told her about us and she, shocked to discover that two foreigners are camped in the abandoned fisherman’s house – arrives to find us trying to cook dinner with a smoky fire and half a coconut shell – imagine how my mom would react to find two disheveled yet distinguished Asian gentlemen squatting in her garage and trying to cook a can of beans with a lighter and a ball of string.
So nice, so concerned, embarrassing for us, and maybe for her, because she wants to be hospitable, grabs the old broom and sets to sweeping the place vigorously, sending up clouds and clouds of dust, us protesting, you don’t have to, really, it’s ok, she’s wearing a plastic covered Vietnamese style hat to protect against the rain – what did she think of us! No fire, no bedding, no wok – a mother must take care of these poor lost boys!
She pointed for us to come back to her house, but we decline – no, no, thank you, we’re fine – broken Khmer, gestures, silly hands in front of face, little bows – the look on her face when she sees our pitiful little fire – now just a few smoldering sparks and tendrils of smoke – when she looked into the cold noodles in the coconut shell! No pot? No pot! We thank her, say that we’re fine (although clearly we are incapable of providing for ourselves) and she leaves, looking like she’s on a mission.
We get the fire going a bit, warm up the noodles in the coconut shell, rain now a downpour, coming through the cracks in the roof, filling the water buckets. The bats begin their fly over. 20 minutes later – oh no, we’re so sorry….here comes Grandma, marching through the rain, same two kids in tow, Mr. Coconut too, they're hauling a black stained wok, bowls, spoons, a bundle of sugar cane stalks and a can of mackerel in tomato sauce (same as we ate in Port Japan and would eat a few days later back in Koh Rong Village 1)
Mr. Coconut tries Thai with Ryan - “Sleep my house tonight? Eat chicken! Here no good.” Clearly, he and Mr. Franklin have been scolded for their lack of hospitality – imagine – putting those two poor foreigners in that house! No one’s slept their since Grandpa died! Meanwhile Grandma is bustling about more, blowing on our fire, clearing the sleeping bunks, pouring our sad little meal into the wok and adding the mackerel. Again, we decline their kind offers as politely as we can – cherishing our privacy and well used to roughing it - thank them profusely, and Grandma, though clearly not satisfied, becomes resigned, and they head back down the trail into the bush.
We eat the food at dusk, watching the bats fly over. It’s delicious. Set up tent on the floor as protection against rats and mosquitoes and sleep.
