Chapter 26. Lemongrass Stains - Battambang


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Asia » Cambodia » North » Battambang
August 9th 2007
Published: August 16th 2007
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Battambang takes some getting used to. Actually, it takes a lot of getting used to. Cambodia’s second largest city is dusty and grimy. Some patience wouldn’t hurt to ease into the dirt, fumes, and noise pollution. The provincial capital has little going for it. While small enough, there are no street signs or traffic lights. Battambang does not spiral out from any particular center roundabout. Its two markets are about as grungy and distasteful as they come, even for Cambodia. There are no proper sit-down restaurants with indoor dining rooms. The city hasn’t a single reason to be within the urban limits except for one saving ingredient. It is not Sihanoukville, Phnom Penh, or Siem Reap. In other words, its lack of any attraction is reason enough to come. In search of beauty? No city in Cambodia will do the trick, Battambang included. Since I seek a bona fide Cambodia, this stop on my way to Siem Reap is a chance to sample some reality. I can rest assured no ex-pats will get in my way.
Touts just might, however. A small assembly of hungry and desperate sharks bump shoulders and wave pamphlets at the bus windows as we arrive at
Why go to BattambangWhy go to BattambangWhy go to Battambang

For the children...
the muddy depot. In this small a city with a map, I can find my own way. The center is only a few hundred yards away. So what to do with the swarming carnivores? I try to make a game out of it. Five encircle me, much like a street gang would when ready to pounce on a defenseless victim. “You want room. I give you-” The rest of the yelling is an assortment of free this and that. I count the number of times I say the word “No” to them. Usually after the fifth, they get the idea to concentrate their efforts on other fish. But I am only one of three Westerners getting off the bus. The French couple got gobbled up before their feet hit the orange puddles of the depot.
One finicky parasite on a moped has latched onto me. With no other prospects for hours, he follows me at my walking pace on the right side of the road. His very well-spoken and clearly enunciated English carries only one flaw, the failure to understand “No”.
“You want room?”
“No.
“I have nice-”
“No.” This time I deliver the negative stimulus looking right at him.
A record?A record?A record?

Can you beat twenty-seven humans aboard this truck. Some are out of sight...
I pointed him back to the depot. He is undeterred. In addition to his persistence, he is bored, and wants to make a game out of it, an impromptu war of attrition. Good, I think. I win every time.
After the seventh “No”, I started in with the silent treatment. Of course, his berating continues. He dodges other vehicles in the road and even follows me in to a gas station. This one wis tough to ditch. But I am enjoying the challenge.
The shark’s technique with me is three-tier.
First stage: pity.
“You are my only source of money. I do everything for you. If you do not come to my hotel…you know I only get commission. I get no pay, I cannot eat.”
I really take pleasure in the starvation angle.
“I have gone without money for three days, now. Now, you can change this for me, my friend. His tone is superbly infused with faint hopelessness. Each time, I replied, “No”, and show him nine fingers, one for each answer to his disappointment.
Second stage: the helpful Samaritan. “Oh, be careful, the sidewalks are dangerous in Battambang. You need to see city? Then you know the market
Hindu RuinsHindu RuinsHindu Ruins

Got to climb these all alone. Just delightful...
is to the left. Good hotels to the left. No! Not straight. I try to help you. I show you where not to go, all the best. You like to eat? I show you-”
“No, I don’t like to eat. I stopped eating weeks ago. No food.” My healthy waistline belie my words, of course.
He’s getting nowhere. I walk over the bridge and spot buildings that could pass for hotels. Our time together will soon end. With few cards left to play, the shark on the moped slithers into stage three: bitterness.
“Why you so impolite? Why you not like me? What I do to you? You see, people here in Battambang, nice people. They say hello, not like you.”
Did that ass call me impolite? How can “no” twelve times be construed as “Your face looks like a pineapple”? Under most other circumstances, I would throw something at him, a small spiked rock, for example. But in Asia, it is prudent never to lose your cool. Never, EVER lose face. The Banan Hotel’s lobby is right in front of me and a slip in. I turn around, and he was gone.
I happened to stay at the Banan, though the front desk did not know at first why I was so eager to say hello to them in the first place.

Battambang’s saving grace, and Cambodia’s for that matter, is its children. No other image has been more indelible than a Cambodian child. However ragged their attire, many go bottomless in the middle of city streets, they smile. Their smiles are infectious because of their sincerity. Few outsiders are in Battambang nowadays. The streets are choked with pickups, mopeds, and dirty cars all with locals behind the wheels. Mothers point me out to their children and lift their hands to wave at me. I offer the wave as well. It is the only time I have heard the word balang (farang in Thailand and Loas) and do no think it a pejorative. The unwashed youngsters play in packs. They kick sandals or a coconut shells for fun, whatever they can find. Most people are unwilling subjects of photographs. But Cambodian children love to pose, primarily because they the get to see their image on the back screen after I click the shutter. Not a single child in Battambang has asked me for any money, a sharp shift from the constant haggling in Phnom Penh.
One two-year-old girl smiled at me while I squeezed my way through the narrow channels of the market. Her mother is one of the many seamstresses inside. They toil in dark, heavy, and humid air on pedal-operated machines my grandmother used to use. The girl is fine with my intrusion until I acknowledge her. Then she pitter-patters back to her Mom and dives under her blouse. Mom consoles her, but the toddler is too scared of someone whom she thinks must have come from a far off galaxy.

Twenty-seven is the record. That is the highest number of passengers I have seen on and inside a pickup truck while in motion. Smaller teens sit on the roof of the cab. The bed is overstuffed with not only people, but also furniture, bicycles, pails, sacks of rice, and computer monitors. How the driver will manage to advance the truck into third gear is beyond me. The weight of the payload is so great and imbalanced that the bed actually has a visible bend upward in the center.
Ly Leng restaurant has not secured my patronage because of its spotless floors and shiny tables. Patrons spit out the bones and vegetable roughage on the floor. The stray dogs and cats do the rest. It isn’t for the cheery service. The manager greets me by slapping an eleven-item laminated menu on the table in front of me. The other thirty-five or so patrons sedated in front of the television monitor pay me no notice. All are men and obviously unemployed, they are deeply involved in a Chinese martial arts DVD subtitled in Korean. It isn’t that the women aren’t big fans of this cinematic genre, but someone has to do the work around here. Ly Leng’s obscure charm is the rapid arrival of my hearty meal and the attention I get from the ladies who try to bridge the gap between English and Khmer. By my second visit, they know to get me a new glass with ice and pour my soda in it. They know I like chili sauce on my rice dishes. They have learned to say “thank you” in English. This corner eatery is open an hour before my scheduled seven o’clock departure out of town, and packed with the same jobless and listless men in the same seating arrangement as the night before. The only consolation for the men at Ly Leng is they are not drinking alcohol all day.
A table full of policemen point at me to say hello and give me the thumbs up as I sit down for breakfast. I order the pork noodle soup; it is no different from that in Thailand or Laos. One of the wait staff is astute enough to rescue me from my frustrating inability to keep the noodles firmly secured in my chopsticks. She races to me and places down a fork and spoon. I am delighted and smile back at her. The police officers take notice and grab at their soup with their chopsticks. Their technique is so that they are able to stuff lumps of noodles in their mouths. They laugh back at me in a mildly mocking manner. In turn, I put my fork and spoon in the air and spin them around to ensure I have their attention. Two can play at this game. I will teach them how it’s done in my world. The policemen stop ingesting their meal to watch. Fork in the right hand, I insert it into the noodles, grab a bit, and twirl the strands against the large spoon in left hand. I wrapped the noodles into a ball and pop it into my mouth. Either through instinct or with thirty years of practice, I am pretty good at this. James Gandolfini couldn’t do it better on The Sopranos.
The policemen are not so adept. They take my noodle twirling as a friendly dare and all five go for the cutlery and attempt to repeat my actions. One by one, the noodles fall off their forks and back into the soup. Three or four stabs later, they go back to the chopsticks. I laugh back at them and shrug my shoulders as if to say, Well, why can’t you? It’s so easy. All five give me my due and one utters asked, “Where you from?”
“America.” I don’t ever say the United States or the States. Sometimes Asians do not comprehend this. “America”, however, is never misunderstood.
The chunkiest police office shouted back at me with a huge grin, “We eat Cambodian way, you eat like in America. All OK!!!”

After settling on a price and then renegotiating, I hired a tuk-tuk to take me thirteen kilometers out of Battambang to the ruins of Ek Phnom. The road along the still Stung Stangker River quickly devolves from pavement to gravel, to dirt, and finally mud. The thick tentacles of overhead vegetation provide a canopy from the sun and a fine path out of the city and into a picturesque and pastoral Cambodia. The lives of those residing in the timber and straw homes are for public consumption. By early morning, the shades have been lifted from the upper balconies and families go about their long-standing daily routine, unconcerned with whom might be peering into their front door or catching them snoozing on a hammock supported from the lower stilts. As in the city, the children enthrall me in their innocence. Every few hundred yards, boys and girls scream “Hello!” at the sight of me even though our encounter lasts a few seconds. While easy to ignore their cheerful greetings, there are so many, I answer each and every one of them. In one settlement, ten or so children were so excited to see me, they run after the tuk-tuk in pursuit of me. The fastest of the track meet reaches the rear chariot in full sprint and extends to meet my hands, still yelling “Hello!” and smiling simultaneously. I reach back as far as I could, but only once do my fingertips come in contact with another boy’s. He can run no faster to keep. As I fade away down the muddy road, my last sight of them is their hands waving at me. They are still ecstatically jumping up and down.
I shouldn’t dedicate too much effort to Phnom Ek; I know what lies ahead of me in a few days. Few come out this far and move straight head to Siem Reap. Why get on a kiddie ride at a Midwestern country fair when The Magic Kingdom awaits? But there is something alluring about the Hindu ruins behind a functioning wat of the same name. It is a patternless collection of mortarless blocks. They are strewn about much in the same way a child dumps a large toy box of Legos. I am the only visitor; three French teachers were here yesterday. The ten-centuries-old temple’s remains are within a rectangular wall of stone on three sides of which is thick, moist marsh. All of it is accessible and it is fun to climb to the apex through columned portals, inside of which headless bodies in bas-relief and caked in cobwebs decorate the interior. The weight of the unstable structure has titled some of the portals at an uncomfortable angle; in time, these walls will give way and more of the temple will be in blocks on the ground.
Wat Ek Phnom would be forgetful but for the bright paintings on the porch ceilings and interior halls. In most, the revered Buddha and his followers live as one in a natural setting of forest, rivers, and gardens. Apprentice boy monks slide about the tiled surface in pools over water. They are supposed to be washing the floors down. Instead, it has become a game of running and seeing how far each can slide on the slippery surface in their wet underwear. One hundred yards away rises a gigantic, fifty-foot grey sitting Buddha. Its color matches the overcast skies so perfectly, it is hard to tell its contours apart from the low clouds.
Today is the first time I truly like being in Cambodia. It is a tough place to travel. Ek Phnom is a welcome retreat of mooing cows, undulating butterflies, and fields of green shoots being set out to dry on open patches of lawn. Mopeds are few; less disruptive bicycles are more common. The swaying palms and pastoral tranquility are much farther away than the thirteen kilometers would have one believe. However tempting to prolong my stay, I decide to end my visit to reboard the tuk-tuk. Ek Phnom has proven its worthiness and this is the type of place where it is better to leave completely and surprisingly content. The finite visit will ensure that my brief meeting will long be remembered as one of the most satisfying.

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