The election

We threw out our garbage.

How come you didn't throw out the rest?

(We're not coming home until you do.)

Kompong Cham Temples

Monday is the culmination of Chhum Ben and we have plans to visit more temples. In practice we should visit seven (you never know where the evil spirits are lurking). We make it to six (though we don’t pray at all) so we will have to cross our fingers and touch wood for good measure.

The first is just on the edge of Kompong Cham. It is a typical functioning temple, but build amid the 14th century ruins of a Wat. (Wat just means temple, but I will reserve it for ancient ones.) If I had a choice, of all the temples I’ve visited so far this is the one I would worship in. I don’t have to climb 280 steps up a mountain (that comes later in the day, when the sun is hotter) or block out the smell and noise of the big city. For sheer beauty this temple wins. But it also has the power of the lost history of its Wat and hundreds of years of amassed prayer. It also has a small population of macaques, greyish-brown furry monkeys with expressive faces; our first personal encounter. We have seen them from a tuk tuk in Phnom Penh, boinking of course.

Anna-Marie usually makes fun of my penchance for photography rocks, but the temple ruins are unexpectedly colourful. We often see them photographed in black and white (and I intend to do this myself) but the stone is steel blue with vertical streaks of bright yellow-orange moss staining them.

As we are nearing the end of our walk about the temple a tourist police office approaches and requests $3/person admission fee (for the two foreigners). I pay this, but Anna-Marie becomes suspicious of the amount (having read that $1-2 is typical). She sets off in pursuit of the officer with Dara to translate. He stonewalls for fifteen minutes, first saying he cannot provide a receipt (Anna-Marie must have one to submit to her NGO). After persisting, he produces a receipt book, records the data, but refuses to hand it over (for internal use only). This still fails to provide us (and our imaginary NGO) with a receipt. He then agrees to a hand written one on a page in her notebook, writing the date and producing a small rubber stamp to officially seal it. But he refuses to include the amount, his name, or badge number. Anna-Marie persists; if it really is three dollars it would be normal to include that on a receipt. Finally, he wheels about and heads off, the three of us in pursuit. We get to his motorcycle where he produces an official receipt, which clearly states the amount is $2/person, and a refund of his personal service charge. Anna-Marie is my hero.

Phnom Pros and Phnom Srei (man hill and woman hill) lie west of Kompong Cham. The two hills mythologize a classic battle of the sexes, where the women trick the men into building a smaller hill. As compensation, today Phnom Pros has more on top of it; but as Phnom Srei offers the better view we climb it. The citadel consists of a very small temple hardly more than an alter, a fountain, a few covered rest areas, and food and drink vendors (who have toted their coolers, tables and chairs, and supplies up the 280 steps). The view is grand; to the east both Kompong Cham and the Mekong glisten.

Below, on a much smaller hill, between Phnom Pros and Phnom Srei, is a modern temple, the activities of the final day of Chhum Ben in full swing. It is a cross between Easter and a fall fair. Loud pop music and monks chanting blare out of competing speakers; musicians accompany dancing actors (dressed as monkeys and clowns); kiosks sell food, candy, and toys; and games of chance amuse. My favourite is a child’s game: three darts for 500 riel, pop three balloons and win I prize. I play twice (and lose) in the hopes of winning a can of beer, passing over the stuffed animals, candy, and pop.

Below the temple are several ornate buildings, and two giant buddhas, one standing in a diorama, the other reclining. One small building houses a giant concrete lotus blossom, filled with human skulls. During the reign of the Khmer Rouge, there was a local massacre of villagers. Some of them, from starvation, had eaten food reserved for the Khmer Rouge. The response was to kill hundreds and bury them in a mass grave. Later, more villagers dug up the remains and brought them to the temple.

Kompong Cham

The van drops us off a short walk to the new bridge over the Mekong river. Three of us now, and we are in Dara’s home town. Oddly, for having lived on the banks of the river in Phnom Penh for a month, this is our first look at it. Phnom Penh is situated at the joining of three rivers, the Mekong, Tonle Sap (which will be celebrated in November when it reverses its direction of flow), and Tonle Bassic. They form a compressed chromosomal X, the city bordering on the Tonles Sap and Bassic. Only in front of the Royal Palace can a view of the Mekong be had, and we simply haven’t made it to the right location yet.

The Mekong is wide and opaque like rivers back home on the prairies. The power of it is startling. I imagined a wide river to be slow and stately, but muddy, it boils beneath the bridge. Because the Mekong forms such an insurmountable natural barrier and the bridge is new, Kompong Cham is located entirely on one side of the river. Along with the new bridge, our guidebook describes a “sexy new esplanade” positioning the city to develop “cosmopolitan cool”. Already the esplanade is dowdy looking, and very inactive. But there is some new development a block or two north of us and we are here in the off-season.

We book into a seedy guesthouse just north of the bridge and facing onto the esplanade. Doors are secured with a padlock when out, which afford those in the hall a glimpse into the room between door and jamb. The bed is made of dense tropical wood, and I hoist it up so Anna-Marie can slide our pack under it. It’s out of sight and should anyone get into the room hardly worth the effort of repeating my action. The bathroom has a non-flushing toilet, a shower hose which functions as shower and sink, and a bucket to flush the loo. But we are on the top floor with a hallway-come-terrace in front of our room. If there is a sunrise we will see it over the river. (In the morning it will be overcast and we rethink the wisdom of choosing the room at the top of the stairs that everyone must pass to and from the other rooms on that floor.) Beside us is an ex-pat hangout, that we never make it into, a bar-restaurant translated as Lazy Mekong Daze.

Behind us the city charms. A large market sprawls out from a covered city block to encompass one or two streets in all directions. There is the vestige of French colonial architecture, the streets meet at odd angles and around the market are narrowed by covered stalls selling the usual fare. Plus a real delight, vanilla cupcakes, cooked in cast iron circular cookie sheets over and under a wood fire. We try some and then buy more as Dara tours us around, thinking we have a supply of quick breakfast before our morning visit to temples. But within minutes we have eaten them all, warm from the bag. Later, after Dara goes to visit her family, the two of us buy more and this time manage to squirrel a few away for the morning; though they are their best fresh out of the fire.

In the river south of the bridge is a huge island. We take a ferry over (a rickety wooden venture, overloaded with people and motos) and start walking toward a temple. There seems to be one (dirt) road on the island, busy with bicycles, pedestrians, motos, and children playing. But we pass by all the houses and from many a cheery “hello” rings out. Every Cambodian, it seems, knows at least this greeting. We blame it on a telephone add campaign with posters everywhere proclaiming “It all begins with hello” or just “hello.” After a while it is as annoying as going into your umpteenth store at a mall. If one more greeter asks me how I am…

After twenty minutes of walking we get out our map and realize we will cover only about one sixth of the length of the island. From the shore we see one thin end of it, and it looks quite modest. But there are hundreds of houses, swampy fields of cattle, fishing boats, make-shift gas stations, stores, schools, and a large temple complex. The complex has a greater than usual collection of statues depicting everything from standard tales of the life of the buddha to specific Khmer additions. A young monk agrees to be photographed and immediately begins jazzing for the camera.

On the return we are the first on the ferry. Waiting, we watch the sky darken over Kompong Cham. We first hear then see the rain over the city. Then we listen and watch as it crosses the 2-3 kilometres from shore to island—then dash for cover back on land. The downpour lasts for fifteen minutes, hopeful passengers huddled under trees, awnings, umbrellas and thin rain coats. It rains again mid-crossing, and we invite as many as possible under our two umbrellas. At the river bank, in the rain, a young lad, naked but with a plastic bag on his head, ties the boat to the dock.

For dinner we choose a grand Chinese restaurant (though the colonial shine has left it). Here we encounter a common upscale phenomenon, a waitress (they’re all women) to customer ratio of one to one. Our two waitresses alternate sitting at the next table watching us. This is disconcerting, but after a few meals under the watchful eye of staff we decide this is a class power relationship we are just not familiar with. They must dutifully watch us for the slightest indication that we have needs, and we must demonstrate our absolute superiority over them by ignoring their presence until we have needs. Anna-Marie in particular delights in violating this relationship, chatting up staff wherever we dine.

Despite the shortcomings of our guesthouse we discover CABLE TV! There are many channels in Khmer and Cantonese, but we gravitate to the Fashion and Discovery channels. Did you know that watching a whole runway show is actually boring? Or that repairs to the telecommunications tower atop the Empire State Building must be conducted in the cold and dark between 1 and 3 am?