Phnom Penh

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The first two weeks of training with LanguageCorps were to take place in Cambodia, at the capitol Phnom Penh. All participants from the Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam programs travel to meet up for joint training on what I am guessing are the non-country-specific aspects of teaching English in a classroom. On Friday I had met six of the seven people currently finishing up the Vietnam program and they all had many good things to say about both the training and the city.

I caught the Mekong Express Limousine Bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh and within minutes I could tell that I had made a deft choice in sitting up front when the TV monitor snapped awake to Cambodian Karaoke. Although it really wasn’t quite because while the words scrolled along the bottom of the screen, the singing on each track was, regretfully, not dubbed out and left clearly audible, a kind gesture one would think to help out-of-towners such as myself indulge in the full experience. The songs all had a similar feel; so much in fact that I grew skeptical as to whether the DVD actually contained more than one track and wasn’t merely rotating different cheesy videos over a five-minute audio loop. I will say this: it takes a certain level of skill to produce so many songs that, incredibly, all sound exactly the same. Here’s to you, Cambodian Karaoke and Nickelback.

The karaoke kit also included a microphone that was used by the bus attendee to give informational tidbits about our destination and instructions for the mind-numbing process of getting passports stamped at the border crossing. Each time he spoke, the message was first in Cambodian and then repeated in choppy but fluent English. I could not tell if this was standard protocol or if the English was added only when tourists were aboard but regardless, each time the attendee spoke in English he did so while staring directly at me for the entire duration of the message. As you might imagine, being a). the only foreigner on the bus and b). situated in the front seat, directly next to the mic, it made for a very uncomfortable couple of minutes filled with squirming and avoided eye contact.

I did find some luck in my seating however, as I shared the journey with a very nice Cambodian man, Sovann, who had spent the past couple of days in Saigon. For what purpose exactly I could not say because although Sovann could speak English very well, I’m not entirely convinced that he understood a single word of what I said. I spent the better half of the journey asking him the generalities that two strangers typically ask upon meeting and he responded to my questions with clarity and a matter-of-fact. The only problem was that the answers he gave were oftentimes in no way related to the question I had asked but instead corresponded to a different one that he had made up in his head. Here is an excerpt:

ME: So what brought you to Saigon for the past couple days?
SOVANN: Because the doctors in Cambodia are very bad and do not know how to fix a knee.
ME: Oh, so you came down here to get your knee looked at? Did you hurt it recently?
SOVANN: Okay, you must be careful though because there are lots of pickpockets around.
ME: In Vietnam or Cambodia? Both?
SOVANN: Yes, yes, the prostitutes in Cambodia are much cheaper, my friend. Very cheap!
ME: Gotcha. So the knee’s fine, is it?

Needless to say, the six hours flew by.

It was dark by the time our bus arrived in Phnom Penh and the driver who was sent to pick me up led me to a motorbike with a seated trailer attached, a sort of rickshaw that I hadn’t yet seen in Saigon. Although the traffic seemed a little sparser in this city (but still much more hectic than anything I’ve seen in the States), the driver managed to turn my knuckles an almost translucent white clinging on to the side of the trailer with the all the vigor of Helen Hunt hanging onto the drainpipe in the eye of the twister. At times we were so close to contact that the side mirror of the passing vehicle would drift inside the trailer and the driver would look back and flash me his biggest, “Pee your pants yet?” smile. (NOTE: I think it is a safe bet that each country in the world has its own methods of trying to get a little back at the United States for all its bullying and hypocrisy. It seems Southeast Asia has really taken the art of traffic-induced urination to the next level.) After what seemed like hours of hurtling past bikes and dodging trucks, we made the transition from hyperspace and gradually came to a halt in a narrow, overgrown street.
“My friend, we are here. Okay!”
I looked up. A dimly lit sign read Okay Guest House.

The first night in the city a couple of the guys in the guesthouse and I decided to go out on the town and so we asked our taxi driver where we could find a place with fun people and cheap drinks. “Ah” he smiled and then leaned in, as if to tell us something that would surely get him in trouble if anyone found out we knew. “You want Sharky’s!”

Sharky’s Bar is located outside the city central, far away from the Royal Palace and ornate temples, and upon entering it is not hard to see why. Into a doorway, up a staircase, through some curtains, and the smell of gloom hits you like an episode of A&E Investigates. Essentially, two demographics exist in Sharky’s: 1.) old, white males and 2.) young, Asian girls. Amazingly (or perhaps not), the two tend to get along very well, like a merlot with a bit of brie. All the girls, or “Pool Sharks” as they are known spend their evening doing just that, hawking the pool tables while wearing revealing clothing and handling their pool cue like a sort of sexual wizard’s staff. And it’s not all a show; the Sharks are very, very good at pool. It’s uncanny to watch. The usual story goes as follows; an older white male will play pool against one of the Sharks, lose in five minutes, and then bask for the rest of the night in the emotional connection now shared by him and the girl who most recently throttled him. He will buy her drinks for the next two hours, hold her hand, and care for her like one would babysitting their granddaughter. All over Sharky’s, couples of old, white males and young, Asian girls sit nestled up at the bar, divulging in each other’s secrets, hopes, fears, and wildest dreams. It’s a pairing off reminiscent of the centaurs during springtime in Fantasia. Some will go home together for some memories and a paycheck; others will see their duet conclude that night at Sharky’s front door. That said, it was beautiful to see true love in the air that night and I found myself periodically dabbing at moistened cheeks.

After a sound sleep and a heaping breakfast, I met up with the rest of the LanguageCorps group for our tour of the city and the Royal Palace. They seem like a nice bunch, hailing from all corners of the world (Australia, Japan, Italy, Czech…) and it did not take long for them to dub me the moniker, “Vietnam Guy” as I was the only one in the group venturing there in two weeks. The majority of the group will be finishing their training in Pattaya, Thailand, which I remember was high on my list until a Thai food vender in Portland told me the city has become heavily catered towards horny senior-citizen tourists trying to re-live their glory days. If I am to teach local people the English language, I think “Love you long time” is less than sufficient. The rest of the group will stay here in Phnom Penh, which, upon exploring, I found to be a fascinating city.

The architecture in Phnom Penh is breathtaking. In every direction, brilliant gold, ornate temples rise up amidst modern business buildings and houses. The guesthouse is right in the vein of the city and just across from the city park, where hundreds show up every evening for hoards of mini-soccer games that last until dark. At night, on weekends, an extravagant light/water show, choreographed of course to thumping Eurotrance beats, takes place at the park fountain and reels in spectators from all over the city (see pictures below).

The Royal Palace is, literally, fit for a king. Walking around, there is a palpable majesty and sacredness about the structures and the gardens that suggest that this may well be the first thing one sees upon entering heaven. I sat in on an instrumental session in one of the servant’s quarters and was given a semicircle of pots to play with xylophone mallets; Photos indicate that I have been banging on pots since I could crawl and so I was grateful for the opportunity to display this deep-rooted talent of mine.

Our driver Ang also doubled as our tour guide although, as a Phnom Penh native, his wonderment of the palace was considerably less than ours. When walking from place to place around the palace yard, he would slip in his headphones that were connected to his cellphone and start nodding his head a little to the beat. I imagined he had some mp3s of Cambodian music but when I asked him what he was listening to, he gave me one of the earphones and I was surprised to hear Corinne Bailey Rae on the other end. I asked him if he knew the singer and he shook his head. “American Radio” he said with a grin. Ang must have listened to that station frequently and often wondered if this music was actually popular in the states because it pleased him to no end that I had heard of the song and liked it myself. After that, every time a new song came on he would give me an earphone and ask, “This is also popular in America?” and as much as it pained me to tell him that yes, Good Charlotte and the Pussycat Dolls are indeed rich and famous where I come from, I like to think hearing that from me made his day.

At the point of posting this entry (finally), it is Wednesday evening and the training course has been in session for three days now. But that, my friends, is a different story for a different day.

Love to all, write back and let me know how life is going in the land of the free! (Don't take it for granted, nothing is free in this part of the world, even toilet paper in hotels!)

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Comments

[Chris McKee]

EPIC.
Thom. These travels and the two sets of tales I have read already are epic. LanguageCorps sounds like it would be right up your alley. Make sure Ole Sharky is teaching those girls a thing or two about the rights and wrongs of prostitution. I'll definitely keep reading. Best of luck on the journey.

[Noelle Ronco]

Convos with bus dude!
The conversation with the bus guy totally reminded me of the quote book!!! Lot's of content, not really contected through with the thoughts!