Ska-ha

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Today was supposed to be a day of little excitement. We were waiting to hear from the dive company in Borneo to see if there were spaces on the boat for us next week with Nic and Gareth. If so, our itinerary goes out the window and we make an unscheduled ten day detour to Borneo - with 3 days diving on one of the worlds best dive sites, followed by a three day jungle trek. It was too tempting a suggestion to pass up. However, we will only be going if we can get on the dive boat and secure the permits required to go to Sipidan - of which only 120 are issued a day - with only a weeks notice. Once the excitement of deciding to go had given way to the reality that we may have left it too late, we were left with a waiting game, for the nod that means we can book our flights to Kuala Lumpur and on to Sabah, or confirmation that we can’t go - in which case we can continue our journey to Vietnam as planned. Several times we checked our email today, to find nothing.
We decided to have one last check after dinner, and with that in mind headed right out of our guesthouse to where the internet cafes and restaurants are to eat, rather than left towards the beach restaurants.
As we wandered up the strip of shops and restaurants that leads to the main junction into town, we noticed something up ahead. The road was blocked by a truck in front of what looked like a billboard surrounded by lights. By now we could hear live music and noticed there was people milling around. Intrigued, we moved in closer. What greeted us was unexpected to say the least. Moving around the other side of the truck and the banner that formed the backdrop for the stage, we were greeted with a band of US Marines, fuly decked out in their white dress uniforms. The banner behind them explained “The US Embassy Phnom Penh presents the 7th Fleet Band. Sihanoukville 12th October 2008.” It was the marines on tour.
We knew the sailors were going to be in town as one of the restaurants had a banner up welcoming the USS Martin yesterday. We didn’t know they were going to put on a show. Virtually the whole town had come out to see them, locals and visitors alike, up the front dancing to a stream of classics from the Stones, Eagles and Lynard Skynard. “This one’s for all you rednecks out there” the singer said before launching into Sweet Home Alabama. He didn’t have to look far - there was one particularly tough looking Marine, dancing beer aloft, cap on backwards right down the front, who actually had an angry red neck. He was the perfect example of all that is terrifying about the US military. The guys on stage, however, not so much - they were a little more on the sensitive side - the singer even pulled some perfect Freddie Mercury poses for Mal when he spotted him standing to the side of the stage with his camera. I found myself trying to recall whether it was legal to be ‘out’ in the US military, surely on this performance, it must be
It is reassuring that whilst the British Army can barely afford to kit its troops in basic gear to keep them safe, the US can afford to carry a full backline, two lighting rigs and a stage big enough to easily accommodate a band with a brass section aboard it’s ships in order to entertain the locals. And entertain the locals they do - a quick google search later reveals this twenty strong troop of wandering minstrels has been entertaining the locals at ports across the asia-paciific region for years - their annual visit to Japan is an eagerly awaited event.
It’s actually quite a shrewd PR move, if the purpose is to ingratiate themselves to the locals in the port towns they dock in. This is probably not a bad idea in Cambodia, as the last time they saw US service personel round these parts, they were dropping bombs on their villages, just before they did a runner leaving them at the mercy of the Khmer Rouge.
When the singer said that some ska had been requested, I assumed it would be time to leave, bearing in mind how violently Mal hates Ska. What transpired though was no third rate rehashing of some specials tune - but a ska(ish) reworking of A-ha’s 80’s classic ‘take on me.’ Ska-ha, if you will.
Mal’s dislike of a ska beat was overtaken by his desire to take photos of these sexy marines pulling incongruous rock poses, so we stayed a little longer. By the time he had finished, he had taken 300 pictures. Never before have I seen my husband so exciting by a band that were so, so bad.

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