A Long Time Coming

Day 1 - Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Seven years later and Southeast Asia is still a land of gold, barely scratched on my wall map of the world. Two weeks stewing in Bangkok was no great second act to my South American odyssey. Part of me ever longs for those days though, when time was so elastic and impeded nothing. It was a trick of the mind to think time was waiting. It wasn't but its steady progression has brought some wondrous things, experiences and experience, friends and love. The future is more real now than it was then, in some bad ways but in good ways too. It isn't so much the sights that I saw that make me miss those travels, those natural wonders, the charming towns and bustling cities but rather the in-between places. Those hours spent looking out of bus windows or out of train windows or simply outwards, just thinking and feeling as I cut straight through life and its innumerable hues.
The long journey to Phnom Penh began, as is custom, with pre-flight beers. They were brought to us by man whose loathing for his job, his colleagues and for his customers he intimated at every opportunity. The flight was also preceded by, as is becoming custom, a mad dash through the airport. A lazy glance upwards from our beers at the departures board revealed that the gate was closing. At least we avoided the queues. China Eastern Airlines got us to Guangzhou for our stopover in a serviceable fashion. Brief though it was there was enough time to realise that our lackadaisical planning of this trip (the flights and accommodation in Phnom Penh and flight out of Rangoon were about it) meant we hadn't really thought how we'd pay for things in countries. We didn't have yuan or a riel to our name. There was a bureau de change in the airport but they only took cash. We had seen fit to each bring a crisp five pound note with us which was comfortably below the bureau's minimum exchange amount. The ATMs on the terminal map were mirages and it looked as though we'd have to pass the next few hours unfed and, more distressingly, not drinking. For this situation I blame Norway. We'd been to Oslo a couple of months back and it was the first foreign trip i've ever been on where I didn't pay cash for a single thing. I didn't handle a note or a coin for 3 days. Electronic payments were so seamless, so pervasive that it never even crossed my mind to use an ATM. It was as easy as being in London and I'd quite forgotten that not all places work this way. Typical bloody Londoner.
Ah the heat! To step onto a plane shivering in the autumnal night and step off into a wall of heat is still an experience that confounds body and mind. A short hop from China and we'd landed in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital. A bank of ATMs (when did I start using that americanism?) dispensed plenty of riels and a lucky taxi was chosen and off we went into the sweltering night. I felt apathetic though rather than excited, has the wonder of travel gone? I won't recapture the thrill of the first time, the intoxication of being plunged into an experience to which nothing prior could be compared. These trips are inevitably to be referenced against those gone before. We got to the Top Banana Guesthouse around 1AM with the party in full swing in the rooftop bar that also functioned as reception but a celebratory beer would have to wait as our weary bones crumbled into bed.
I have a knack over the years of never being in a place during the time of a local festival. This was set to change as the Bon Om Touk water festival was being celebrated while we were in the capital. After a late, jet-lagged start to the day we strolled along the waterfront. The Tonle Sap River meets the Mekong in Phnom Penh and the festival celebrates the end of the rainy season when the Tonle Sap reverses its flow and drains once again towards the sea. People from all around the country converge on the capital and it seemed every police officer had followed. The streets were heaving and life seethed around us, noisy, pungent, wonderful. These places can make home seem so sterile, excessively ordered, made inert by a thousand petty strictures. As we walked we came upon barges moored to the riverbank. On top of their flat-topped hulls were a spiders web of scaffolding maybe 10 metres high and to this was attached hundreds of light bulbs formed into faint shapes. The hulls themselves were rusted and ancient and did not look river-worthy, let alone seaworthy. Yet as afternoon turned to evening and the sun dropped somehow each one made its way out into the steady flow of the river. At 6PM on the dot their light displays fired up and they began a stately progression along the waterfront as fireworks starting exploding overhead. Stalls appeared on the promenade selling grilled meats and flip-flops and light-up toys that drew children like moths. The apathy that I had felt began to dissolve into the vividness of it all, I had begun to disentangle myself from the snare of modern life.