(originally posted elsewhere Jan. 03, 2008)

Last night we were awakened by Papa at 2am. “Phsah Leu mien pleung!” he told me in simple Cambodian I could understand: the local market was burning. We could see the orange glow easily from our new balcony at the back of the house. It was a sickening sight even for me, whose connection with it is more tenuous than it is for others. Everyone does their shopping at Phsar Leu. Its 1800 stalls have sold everything from meat, fish and produce to dry goods, clothing and jewelry for decades. Now it’s gone

As we watched the glow Sopheak called a couple of her friends who have stalls there. One, a vegetable dealer, just burst into tears and couldn’t speak. Another, the proprietor of a jewelry stall, managed a few distraught sentences before she too became overcome with tears. Later we heard that another aquaintance walked to work as usual this morning and simply fainted when she saw the devastation.

Of course it was arson. The New Market is set to open in 2008 but has had trouble attracting stallholders. I’m not saying the owners are responsible for the fire. There are many other interested parties as well. They (whoever ‘they’ are) want to make the Phsah Leu site into the new bus station, while another ‘they’ want to build a multi-storey umarket shopping centre where the bus station currently stands. Any, all or none of them could be responsible. It’s pointless to speculate. I do know that the price of a stall in the New Market was $4000 a week ago. Today they’re asking $5500. I know this because we’ve been thinking about buying one. We’re not thinking about it anymore.

Besides buildings, there has been a population explosion and it has become a favorite weekend destination for middle class Cambodians from Phnom Penh. This has resulted in an exponential increase in traffic. We now have 5 sets of traffic lights vs none 1 year ago. In an effort to get people to actually stop at the lights, the police regularly patrol random areas. They have become very clever about this. At first, anybody who didn’t want to stop when they were flagged down just speeded up and went on their way. Now they can’t get away with this, since the police are on both sides of the lights: if someone races past the police on one side, they just block their progress on the other.

Personally, I’m in favor of stopping at lights, having to wear helmets, etc., but when the govt. imposed a very expensive registration fee amounting to several months pay for most motodops and laborers, they protested. I wish I had photos of that. At least 500 motorbikes convened at the municipal court and staged a peaceful protest. The riot police came, but to their credit did nothing because nothing needed to be done. The protesters made their point and then departed.

I’ll let the photos speak for themselves, except for these last couple. Luna and I had a great time riding around town on our motorbike taking pictures. I was having trouble finding a good view of the new bungalows at Sokha resort, so we stopped and went exploring and found this wonderful, tranquil spot. We spent some time there exploring until we went home via the now big road that leads to what will be possibly Sihanoukville’s biggest development – Pearl City. Back in Feb. I was still riding my bike down the narrow track that was my shortcut to the beach and was wondering why they were making a solitary building on the nearby land. Well, only six months later, what looked like it was going to be a home is the showroom for the development and work on the shopping center is flying along. This last picture is the billboard for the project.

The Khmer Gourmet

24 April 2008: I had one of the weirdest experiences of my life yesterday. I ate at the Khmer Gourmet for the first time since its original owners sold their business almost a year ago. That in itself isn’t weird, but what happened was.

The Khmer Gourmet was neither Khmer nor gourmet. It was the brainchild of two young Americans, Thane and Sam. They had little in common except the fact that they were in love with Cambodian sisters. That, I believe, is how they met. Starry-eyed with love, they briefly went back to America to sell their cars and whatever else they had of value. When they returned to Cambodia in about September, 2006, they pooled their resources and opened KG, a small cafe on Sihanoukville’s Victory Hill. When I arrived in October, they had just opened for business.

I was staying at Dada’s Guesthouse, just up the street. I generally wake up at six or six thirty and welcomed the one cafe on the hill that opened as early as I did. Thane handled the morning shift and so Thane was the first of the pair that I met and he and some of his early morning customers were my first sources of information in Sihanoukville.

In the early weeks of our relationship, I listened to everything Thane and his clietele had to say. I learned that corruption was the name of the game in Cambodia, that most Cambodian girls were manipulative bitches and that Cambodians would steal anything and everything they could after beating or murdering its rightful owner. Amongst the words of wisdom I picked up at KG were the following:

1) All the expensive cars in Cambodia had been stolen in Japan and sold to well-connected buyers in Cambodia (if you had the right connections you could buy a nearly new Lexus for $1000. I wondered how any money was made, since the shipping cost alone would be more than that)

2) You could buy a five-star general for $30,000 (if their friendship came so cheap, then how could they afford the mansions they owned?)

3) That most of the big Russian money in Sihanoukville was made running guns to Sri Lanka and Africa, in child trafficking or the drug trade (wouldn’t, I wondered, anyone divulging such sensitive inside information be killed?)

4) That the reason for the periodic crack-downs on unlicensed motorbike drivers was because the police commissioner owned a fleet of tuk-tuk’s and was pissed off because they weren’t making any money (it had nothing to do with crappy driving?)

There were many more such stories, but the one thing they all had in common was that they were false, or at least distorted. This slowly sank in as I began to question those who told me the stories – all of whom related them with an unquestionable air of authority. Many of them originated from one source, a young man who had spent the past six or seven years down at Occheuteal Beach smoking weed and impressing newcomers with his expertise in all things Cambodian. Other stories just made the rounds from one “seasoned traveler” to another. Like the one about the guy who had been knifed for his motorbike.

It’s true. It happens. People get beaten and killed for less in Cambodia – but not that often. In this case, a man had been knocked off his motorbike. The bike was stolen and he broke his collarbone in the fall, but he wasn’t knifed. This was the first version I heard and I heard it from him. But within a couple of days I was being told about a knifing and then a murder. Strangely, they all happened “last night.” For about a week I thought that the streets of Sihanoukville were a virtual slaughterhouse until I realized I was being told the same story over and over again – re-arranged and distorted like a game of Chinese whispers.

And that was the Khmer Gourmet: a virtual cornucopia of myths and fear-fuelled half-truths. Fun for awhile, but it became tedious. By the time I came back in January I was feeling rebellious. When Thane told me not to buy a new Suzuki Smash Revo motorbike because they were the most-coveted by murdering thieves, I determined that the Suzuki was the bike for me. It’s been well over a year and 20,000kms and I’m still alive and riding my moto.

Sadly, the Khmer Gourmet never really prospered. Hyper-active Thane and laid-back Sam got on each others nerves and got sick of working long hours for small money. After too-lengthy negotiations with their only prospective buyer they sold out cheaply and moved on. And now I can return to my story . . .

I’ve had enough of “the hill” and rarely go there anymore except to have a meal and a beer at Papagayo’s a couple of times a month. Other than that, except when we go to visit Dada or my best friend Joe, I generally avoid the place. It seems to be a magnet for beer-bellied, tattooed pseudo tough guys and Made-in-Thailand dreadlocked “dudes” on their rented dirt bikes. “I survived in Cambodia” and “Cambodia: Danger! Land-mines” are the tee shirts of choice amongst this crowd. Ten years ago they might have had something to brag about. Twenty years ago, definitely. But not today. Go down the road to Serendipity Beach or the Sokha Resort and you’ll find legions of middle-aged couples, children in tow, happily strolling through the “mean streets” of Sihanoukville. To date, I haven’t heard of anyone being blown up by a land mine. As for murders, the last one I remember was up on the hill about a year ago, when a French bartender stabbed a customer he didn’t like.

But the hill is on the way to my friend Joe’s house and I hadn’t eaten breakfast when I hopped on my mountain bike to pay him a visit, so I thought I’d given the new Khmer Gourmet a try. I’ve met Tom, the new owner, before, so he recognized me when I rolled in and after asking me again for my name, he introduced me to his one and only customer, whose name I’ve forgotten. I’ll call him Gary because I’m sure it wasn’t that.

Gary and I got to talking and as it turned out, we have a lot in common. He is from Santa Cruz, a city I know well since I went to college there for awhile. He had also lived on Maui at about the same time I did (late sixties, early seventies). And we had both spent time in India in the early seventies. It took Tom three tries to get my order right, so we had plenty of time to talk. With only two dishes (quesadillas and burritoes) on his menu and a choice between coffee, green tea and black tea for beverages, that was quite a feat. But I was in no hurry, so I happily let it slide.

An hour and a half passed in swapping sixties’ stories and by the time I excused myself I was so immersed in the past that I was thinking of myself as “Bob,” the name I used until it was replaced by “Rob” when I moved to Australia in ’85. Gary and I reminisced about hitchhiking up the California coast, back when it was “cool” to be a hitchhiker and about when hitchhiking was outlawed on Maui, which just made things easier – we’d just walk along the road until someone picked us up. Didn’t even have to make the effort to stick out a thumb! I told him about the day my teenage surfing idol, Paul Gebauer, walked into the Lahaina bookshop I worked in, so stoned on LSD he was praying to Jesus, Buddha and Krishna to “help me get it together in Lahaina-town” because his astral body had split off from his physical body and gone somewhere else. We talked about Hari Krishnas and Jesus Freaks and when Tom mentioned Bhagavan Das, originator of the classic hippy slogan “BE HERE NOW” (popularized by Ram Das in the book by the same name), I almost wept as I recalled the amazing time I spent with Neem Karoli Baba (Ram Das’ guru) in India. I must have told the story well, because Gary and Tom almost did, too. One of these days I’ll tell it to you, too, whoever you are.

As the conversation wound down we talked about the most mysterious part of the era: why something so magical and positive came to an end. Tom chimed in that he blamed Charlie Manson and I mentioned Altamont. I also mentioned Bronte Baxter’s wonderful blog entry, Where Have All the Flower Children Gone, which asks the same question (she blames the Maharishi). But the question remained: why weren’t the good vibes enought to cancel out the bad? We didn’t have an answer for that one.

Anyway, by the time we were finished discussing these weighty matters I was so detached from “the present” that I had stepped back in time and erased everything that’s happened in my life since the early seventies. I was a hippy backpacker exploring the world for the first time. Everything looked exotic and exciting – I was a “stranger in a strange land,” seeing it all for the first time. It was not “as if” I was seeing it all anew – I was seeing it all anew. Very hard to articulate, but that’s how it was. I got up from my table with a wide-eyed grin and assured Gary that we’d get together again soon. I paid Tom, got on my bike and waved goodbye.

“How’s your baby girl?” Tom called out as I gazed down the totally unfamiliar street – and it all came rushing back. Thirty-five years had passed. I had two kids and an ex-wife in Australia and a brand new family in Cambodia. Everything had changed. But then again, maybe not. For a brief moment in time I’d been, like my friend Paul Gebauer, in two times and places at the same time – my body in Sihanoukville, Cambodia in 2008 and my spirit in India in 1971. But in that instant when my consciousness shifted from “there” to “here” and “then” to “now”, one thing remained constant – my existence, my Being, if you like.

As I reflect on that strange occurrence, I think that it’s probably healthier, and definitely more comfortable, to be here and now, wherever they may be. But the important thing is to BE.