July 08, 2007
Look Both Ways
I’m never quite sure what wakes me up. Sometimes it’s the traffic, other times it’s the welder across the street. There are even times where going to bed at 10 pm has paid off, and I wake up naturally. However, days only officially start when my alarm buzzes at 7 am. I slip out from under the warm covers and turn off the air-conditioner, open up the sliding doors to my balcony and survey the street below. It still amazes me how early Phnom Penh wakes up – there have been times where I’ve had to leave the house at 5 am for a site visit, and the streets are simply filled with people. Some are shopping, but most are simply going on their morning walks or playing badminton on a patch of grass. Brushing my teeth on the balcony, I have a perfect view of my friend across the road. In her 70’s or 80’s, she exercises in front of her living room window every morning. She flaps her arms like people do in the movies who have lost their balance – it almost looks exaggerated and fake. However, she looks pretty healthy, so maybe I should try it before I knock it. I walk inside – my bedroom is still cool – and put on BBC News while I scrounge around for some cornflakes and milk. I shower. The only small window in the bathroom is about 3 feet away from someone’s house, and so I constantly hear what’s happening. While I don’t speak enough Khmer to fully understand a full conversion, I get if it’s happy banter (dinner time, usually) or brief, anxious orders (around 7.50 am, right when the kids have to go to school). I rarely see my neighbors – I’ll smile to them through my kitchen window while I’m cooking, but that’s about it. I feel as if I know so much and so little about them, and I kind of like it that way.
I leave the apartment just before eight. Sometimes I’ll drive, depending if the driver is there or if I feel like walking. Walking is an adventure, to say the least. I take a right out of the apartment building and find myself in a maze of traffic. I live a block away from a school, so there are constantly kids jumping out of cars with backpacks and kisses from their mothers. I walk by the “karaoke bar” 100 meters down the road. The girls are known as “entertainment workers”, meaning that while they may try to sing (they can rarely carry a tune), it’s just a façade for sex work. While brother-based sex workers almost always use condoms, these girls do not necessarily see themselves as sex workers, and therefore do not insist on 100% condom use.
The cars I can somewhat predict, it’s the motorbikes that come out of nowhere. I cross the street, looking left and right continuously. Pollution can be suffocating – now that the rainy season has come though, things are a bit better. I walk down Street 63 until it meets Sihanouk and take a left. Shops are clustered in Phnom Penh: 63 and Sihanouk boasts4 opticians, all next to one another. I went in last week to get my glasses tweaked and was presented with the same situation you see all over Cambodia: 3 girls greet me at the door and they (all) call over a girl from the back who speaks the best English. She comes out and takes my glasses and gives them to the assistant manager. He takes them to the manager, who gives them to the guy in the back who fixes them. After that, the manager brings my glasses to a different girl behind a desk, who cleans them for me. After 10 minutes, and what it feels like 20 people having fixed my glasses, I finally get them back. They fit perfectly, but the shop is empty, and they refuse to take my money (“Complimentary, sir”). How do these places survive?
I’m still on Sihanouk when I pass the Lucky Empire. While I shop at Lucky Supermarket every day, and while I’ve even had my haircut at the Lucky Salon, I still haven’t made it to Lucky Burger. The only international chain in Cambodia is Dairy Queen – that’s it. It’s only a matter of time before Starbucks, McDonald’s and Burger King migrate from Thailand into Cambodia.
On the final stretch of the walk to the office I pass the chicken ladies. No matter what time of day it is, there are always a dozen or so chickens being cooked, rotisserie style. Their scents mixed with the traffic fumes are enough to make anyone feel dizzy. I buy the local English speaking newspaper from a street girl and walk into the office – sweating – and seek refuge under the air-conditioner. My colleagues are opening laptops and sipping iced coffee. It's 8 am. “Good Morning”.
Posted by Guy Bloembergen at 09:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
