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Published: April 4th 2008
Whoever designed my wonderful lightweight shorts with the multitude of zippered pockets must not have considered that those pockets, zippers and all, are exactly at eye level of curious 5-year-old children who are quick to determine that you probably have paper money wadded into afore-mentioned pockets. I made a number of young friends today, and we had a grand time together, but they never gave up on their gentle pursuit of my money!
The ship pulled up to the riverbank this morning and a long gangplank was laid to the shore. Because this is the end of the dry season and the water level is very low, the bank was quite steep and required a 30-40 foot climb to the top. As soon as the crew could get on shore, they set to work with hoes and shovels, cutting steps into the bank so everyone could climb safely up the bank, and every 8-10 feet along the path, a crew member stood to haul up the older folks who really had their work cut out for them in reaching the top.
At the top, we crossed a road and climbed a winding concrete path (there was
Girls with pencils
(They would have preferred dollars)a bus for those who needed it) up through a cemetery to the top of the “mountain,” where we visited
Wat Hanchey, a cluster of pre-Angkorian ruins and more recently-built temples and a monastery. There were both Hindu and Buddhist elements to many of the temples and buildings, and it was quite colorful and interesting. There were a number of young monks, some working on putting together some kind of gate and trellis from odd bits of wood, and many just sitting and watching people stroll by. Today is the third day of the Chinese grave celebration, so at the graves dotting the hillside, families of Chinese descent gathered, cooking and offering food to the ancestors, decorating graves with strips of brightly colored paper, and occasionally setting off firecrackers.
As we walked among the buildings, dogs and cows wandered and lounged under trees, local people and monks rode through on motorcycles, and a few young girls, probably about 5-6 years old, followed us and approached with their hands out, asking sweetly, “Some
riel? Some dollar?” That seemed to be the extent of their English, which is far more extensive than my Khmer, but it didn’t take long
to find a common language of smiles and gestures, especially once they discovered Bongo sticking out of my shoulder bag. They chattered amongst themselves and giggled as they handed Bongo around and posed for some photos. They weren’t the least bit shy, and took our hands or leaned against our legs, all the while gently patting my pockets and fiddling with my zippers. They were persistent, but not really aggressive, and would give up their efforts when I said no, only to begin again a minute or two later. When I squatted down, they fondled the pockets on the front of my shirt with no hesitation. They did manage to sneak Bongo back out of my bag once, which I was totally unaware of until they offered him back to me.
At one point, three of them were trailing along behind my mom and me, and I realized that they were giggling and copying any gestures we made to each other. I made a game of it and started making silly gestures and sounds, all of which they mimicked with great delight and laughter. I began to skip, and they skipped behind, so we made a small parade
around part of the temple complex. I skipped, they skipped. I marched, they marched. I spun in circles, they spun in circles. I sang a little “la-la-la, ta-da-dah” song and they echoed me. When I tired of skipping, I led a game of Ring Around the Rosie, which they seemed to think was hilarious. I contemplated trying the Hokey Pokey, but decided instead to rejoin our group so I could listen to Phali’s explanation of some of the buildings we were looking at.
Early on as they gathered around us, I offered each of the little girls a brightly colored pencil from a stash in my bag, which they seemed quite pleased with. They examined them and then stashed them in the waistband of their skirts. As we came across a few other kids here and there, they whipped out their pencils and chattered to their friends, then approached me again, making writing motions on the palm of their hands and pointing to their friends. I worried for a minute that it might get out of hand if it turned out there were more children than pencils, but luckily I had enough for everyone who wanted one. Near
the end of the visit, one of the first little girls, who had been the most persistent at getting into my pockets, but also the most enthusiastic at our game of Follow the Leader, approached me with a sad face and showed me that she no longer had her pencil - her skirt was empty and she patted the pocket of my bag asking for another. I assumed she had lost her pencil, so I gave her another. This time, I watched as she ran to a stilted house nearby, calling out to another child inside, and she flung it up into the house like a missile, and then came back for another! I drew the line there, laughing at her clever efforts, and she seemed to know that I was on to her pencil redistribution scheme.
The girls’ last effort to extract some of our money involved climbing over a little stone wall to a flowering bush, where they snapped off some flowers and offered them to us. I took the flowers, saying “thank you” which they echoed back to me, then they patted my pockets again and held out their hands with a smile. “No money”
I repeated, smiling back at them, and they skipped away, looking back to make sure I would follow.
We also met our first gibbon today. She was sitting in the rafters of a small shelter where people could gather for some shade, and I didn’t even see her just above our heads until someone pointed her out. Phali explained that there used to be two gibbons who lived here, but “the husband died.” Phali gave us bits of oranges to feed her, which she took gracefully with her long fingers.
On the way back to the ship, as we stood along the roadside waiting for some others in our group to catch up, I tried to take photos of some of the passing minibuses, though they sped by too quickly to get anything more than a blur. They were packed to the roof with people, and the luggage racks on top were piled high with boxes and cloth sacks and plastic bags, atop which were perched
more passengers. On one bus, in addition to all the other rooftop cargo, a man sat astride his motorcycle.
We were back on the boat by 11:30 or
so, at which point I jumped straight into the shower and turned the water all the way to cold, which turned out not to be very cold at all, but still a great relief. The temperature today is no hotter than every other, but the humidity seems worse. All of my clothes were soaked, and I wished that our cabin had an ice bucket so I could pour the ice straight down my shirt. Instead, I went up to the sundeck and had my usual mid-day cocktail: I asked for a glass of ice at the bar, which I filled with bottled water, some sugar-free lemonade mix and a nice shot of Absolut Citron vodka that I had bought at the JFK duty-free shop. The ice melts quickly, but it always hits the spot!
The afternoon activities included a short bus ride to another temple complex and then a small village supported by a French NGO. The people in the village make their living growing rice, but Cambodians can only grow one crop of rice per year (versus two or three crops in Vietnam.) During the dry season, many people used to leave the village to find work
in Phnom Penh, but now the NGO supports a project for the villagers to weave and make palm sugar and simple handicrafts, allowing people to stay home and continue their traditional way of life without separating families for much of the year. We had a nice walk through the village, with some guidance from a young Frenchman who has been living nearby for the past 16 months, teaching English and helping the village develop a safe water supply for each home. The highlight of this visit was, once again, the children. They were curious about us and happily posed for photos so then they could rush over and see their images in the playback mode of our digital cameras. They seemed never to tire of this activity, but when we finally did, they happily ran off to have all kinds of fun with a piece of rope. In the meantime, their mothers worked looms or chased cows back to the fields, and men sat in the shade playing cards.
Our other stop in the afternoon was at an orphanage that is partially supported by the Pandaw company that runs this cruise. In a complex of buildings, 90 children
age 5-18 live together in “family” groups (13-17 children with one “mother”), go to school, and learn to sew and to paint. A group of boys played soccer, and other kids gathered to gawk and wave at us, or to make change for those of us who wanted to buy some of their small watercolor paintings.
The daily schedule had mentioned a “surprise cocktail” at 5:30, but never in a million years could I have imagined what this meant, and I never in a million years will forget how we spent two hours of our evening:
The boat had pulled away from the village of
Kampong Cham but very soon began approaching the shore again, headed straight for an an enormous sand bar. Curious, we watched from the deck while the boat pulled alongside the sand and the crew began to lay down the gangplank and assemble the handrails. Only fifty feet away from our landing spot was a slap-dash wooden shack with a family of 6-8 people cooking dinner over an open fire and small naked children toddling around on the sand. I think they were as mystified as we were about what
exactly was going on.
As we watched, the crew began a bucket brigade along the gangplank and onto the sand, passing deck chairs, tables, a stereo system, a barbecue, coolers and stemware and plates and hors d’oeuvres onto the sand bar. The chairs were arranged in an enormous semi-circle, a fire was started in the barbecue, tables were set with dishes and glassware. Within 15 minutes from hitting land, they had set up an entire cocktail party. Mom and I decided that there might be an opportunity to swim, so we dashed off to our cabin to put on bathing suits under our clothes. We were all invited ashore, handed cold fruity cocktails, and found ourselves standing dumbfounded on the sand, gaping at the party that had been assembled for us in no time at all.
It didn’t take long for mom and me and an Australian man to strip down to our bathing suits and wade into the river. It was bathtub-warm with a soft sandy bottom, and sloped gently down to 3 or 4 feet deep. Others on shore watched us curiously, though eventually another 5 or 6 people joined us after some coaxing.
One of our faithful and most helpful crew members, a slender little man probably about my age, stood guard at the edge of the water dutifully holding a large orange life-ring, warning us all to be careful though the water was never more than chest-deep and then became even shallower again as we waded further from shore.
We swam and floated and splashed, giggling like kids, taking photos of each other, and exclaiming at the wonder of the fact that we were swimming in the Mekong River. I went ashore to have a sip of my drink, and a crew member noticed that my glass was almost empty, so he sprinted off to get me another drink. At some point, just when I was wishing that we had brought towels with us, someone appeared with a stack of clean bath towels and laid them on the sand. Off in the distance, the sun was setting, and miles away, heat lightening illuminated the sky. On shore, the stereo crackled to life and the music of Bob Marley floated through the air. We danced in the water, sipped our drinks, and agreed that this was indeed a “surprise cocktail!”
This was the family living on the sandbar
We must have been the oddest thing they ever saw Eventually, it got dark enough that we reluctantly came out of the water. Most of the remaining passengers were relaxing on the chairs arranged on the sand, sipping drinks and snacking on hors d’oeuvres being served by staff and crew. Our purser, Neville, greeted me with another drink and an ear of corn on the cob (corn on the cob????) and as Bob Marley crooned on, we all swayed to the music and grinned at each other like complete idiots.
After a bit, staff and crew began to join in the dancing. By this time, it was completely dark out, the party lit only by some lights from the ship, the fire in the barbecue, and the stars above us. It was so utterly delightful to see the hard-working men and women from the ship’s crew dancing with us in the sand, sharing huge smiles as we all danced with each other and sang along with Bob Marley. At one point, my mom and I found ourselves dancing with the ship’s captain, his uniform as crisp and tidy as ever, grooving to a reggae beat and all grinning ear to ear. At this point, Neville took my camera and began taking photos, and I don’t yet know what they look like, but the moment will be etched in my memory forever.
Some of the Burmese crew pulled out a guitar and sang a couple of Burmese songs for us, then Pahli sang a beautiful
a capella Khmer song. Then the reggae resumed and all the passengers were eventually persuaded to join in for some dancing before the party had to come to a close. The whole evening was so surreal: we swam in the Mekong, had cocktails on a sand bar, and danced to Bob Marley with the captain and crew, all under the stars of an April evening.
I can only imagine that it was even more surreal to this family of fishermen who had set up their temporary home on the sand bar. Their house was really nothing more than some scraps of wood, their kitchen was nothing more than an open fire and a bucket of water on the sand, and the children wore nothing at all. They had a tiny fishing boat tied up just off the shore, and I’m reasonably sure they had
not expected a boatload of tourists and their wicker furniture and reggae-blaring stereo to set up a cocktail party 50 feet from their front door. By the end of the evening, I noticed they had all gathered to sit at the edge of our circle, and the crew had served them drinks, but I can only imagine the conversations they might have in the days to come as they tell their version of this bizarre tale. I asked Phali what they might think of our antics, and she kindly told me, “I think they are very happy to have this happen here and see this. I think they like this very much.” I would never suggest that Pahli would lie to me, but I also know it’s her job to make us feel welcome and relaxed in her country, so I have no idea what the actual answer to my question might be.
As efficiently as the party sprang up on the sand, the crew began to dismantle it again. I couldn’t resist the urge to help and I carried wicker chairs up the gangplank. It felt truly wonderful to be useful and to get the exercise, but it obviously made the crew somewhat uncomfortable, no matter how much I assured them that it was making me happy. After a while, in deference to their comfort level, I slipped back into my often awkward-feeling role as the passive and helpless tourist, and I think they all breathed a sigh of relief.
A surreal as this whole trip has been to one extent or another, this evening was the pinnacle of surreality. We are not likely to ever swim in the Mekong again. We are not likely to dance to Bob Marley with a Cambodian ship captain under the night sky on a sand bar. We are not likely to ever forget this - and just to make sure, Mom swears she’s never washing the water of the Mekong river off her body.
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Judith Janone
non-member comment
Mekong
Your night on the Mekong brings tears to my eyes.