The cost of a crab

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It’s been some busy days here after I arrived. Today I have the day off, and I have spent the most of the day catching up on my sleep - which has been brilliant. Went to the market today in order to buy shoes and some clothes, but the shoes were not so good, and apparently I am too big to buy clothes here. It can really do harm to one’s self-image to try to buy clothes in a country where everyone is the size of a ten year old back home. I have been invited to a wedding in a couple of days, which have caused me a bit of a headache. I didn’t bring any nice clothes with me, or at least not in the “attending-a-wedding-party” category, and since I am too big to buy clothes, and it is too late to have anything made, I am a bit at a loss of what to do. Kyoko, the Japanese instructor, suggested that I bought some nice silk and made something my self, to which I could only laugh. Due to a certain fascination with sewing at a tender age I could probably be able to make a decent pillowcase with a sewing machine, or maybe a poncho at a stretch, but silk and a needle and some thread is a tad outside my league. Even though I am of course brilliant in everything else… But, dress-problems aside, I do really look forward to go the wedding. I have seen a couple of weddings around already, and they seem like big, very noisy, and quite funny events. Maybe I would even end up with a khmer husband. Isn’t that what they (who are they by the way?) say, that after the age of 25 or something, you are more likely to find your future husband in a wedding. Although I wouldn’t bet good money on it, due to before-mentioned sizes. I don’t think I am too fuzzy with the guy having to tower above me in order for me to feel small and petite and feminine, but I would like not to have to worry about rolling over in my sleep and crush the poor bugger.

Anyway, the sea has been very calm lately, although it seems to roughen up a bit now. Hopefully it’s just a tiny hiccup, and we will soon be back to our normal mirror-like glass ocean that we like the most. Every now and then there are dolphins coming to pay us a visit on our way out to the dive-sites. It will be a very sad day indeed, and I will have become a very blasé woman, the day dolphins stop being a “made-my-day” event. Sitting on a small boat in the middle of a swimming pool-like ocean, seeing other fisher-boat putting by, and then, something breaks the surface, and a smooth sleek dolphin is winking at you. Well, maybe not winking as such, but you know how it is. One gets a bit caught up in the moment.

The other day we had a private charter going out, with only Japanese customers on the boat. I don’t know why, whether it was because it was a private charter, or the customers being Japanese, or the boss being in Vietnam on holiday, but beers were brought on board. Of course, being responsible as we are, no beers were consumed after the second dive on our way back to shore again. But, after waiving off the customers after a long and sunny day, me and Vibol discovered to our delight that there still were a few beers left. Of course they couldn’t go to waste, so we sat dutifully down to make sure that none were wasted. A bit later Kyoko turned up, and seeing how good employees we were, she joined happily in.

A bit later a fisher boat turned up to sell fish to the restaurant next door. The hull of the boat had lots of holes made in it, which allowed seawater to enter, and down there lots of fish were swimming not so happily around. I was quite busy looking at the fsih and pondering about why the boat didn’t sink, but Vibol were down on the boat chatting and laughing and inspecting everything. Of course, being in a Southeast Asian country, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that everyone knows everyone even if they don’t. And, hidden behind some ropes and stuff (most things on the fishing boats here are for me defined as “stuff”, since I have no idea what they are used for or what they are, but I am quite sure they are not safe though) a very ugly looking crab was lying comatose. It has a relatively small body and long legs and quite big claws. It was not a swimming crab of any sorts, since it did not have any kind of swimming legs. And, the shell, which we would later discover, was hard as stone. Anyway, fresh crab from the boat did now seem like such a bad idea, so we asked to buy the crab. Maybe it was because we gave them a couple of beers, or maybe it was because we were so cute, anyway, for whatever reason we got the crab for free. Since we have a cooking plate on the boat, it was time for fresh crab and beers. Although the crab looked like somebody’s ugly mother-in-law, it tasted absolutely divine. Wanting more, we yelled at another fisher boat, and managed to get three more crabs from them. Fresh crabs and cold beers after a hard day work makes so many things worthwhile.

But, putting aside the free stuff, things are so cheap here. I am staying at a guesthouse for US$80 a month. As a backpacker you can get a basic room for US$4 a night with private bathroom and fan. US$10 will give you air-con, and a TV. US$1-3 will buy you a very nice meal either at a western-style restaurant or the upper class khmer restaurants. Beers are about US$0.5-1, and the local restaurants will feed you for US$0.5. Of course one do get very used to everything being so cheap, so at the end of the day one do hassle over US$0.25, but it is all part of the fun. If backpacking is not your style accommodation wise, the five-star resort here (which really is five star) offers twin and double rooms for US$78.

However, there is a dark side to all this being so cheap, and it is that the locals here are also desperately poor. A lot of the locals get hurt by motorcycle accident, AIDS is a big problem here and growing, and there are still landmines in the countryside. Since Cambodia are affected by the UN-economy, which basically means that the prices for everything are artificially high because there are a lot of UN-workers around with too much money to burn, it means that for most locals even earning enough money to buy the essentials are a struggle every day, and that is if everyone in the family are healthy and able to work. I talked to a girl at a charity organization here, and she told me that on the countryside a days pay would be something around US$0.5. Since they are so poor, a lot of people, if they get disabled because of accidents, are left to die by their family, because the family cannot support a member that does not provide income. A lot of kids do not go to school because their parents need them to earn money. It is heartbreaking to realize that sometimes what stands between someone who has gotten hurt by an accident getting fully recovered or becoming disabled for life are medicine worth a couple of dollars, and they cannot afford it.

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