Friday, September 30, 2005
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Kathmandu to Gonda! Pt.5 - An Interlude
A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India:
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km
The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km
The story so far:
After a ride down through the mountains and the rain out of Kathmandu, Mr Felix is down with the flu, and holed up in a hotel room in Narayanghat.
Part 5: An Interlude in Narayanghat!
On the morning of my fourth day in Narayanghat I mount up and go for a ride. I haven’t left the hotel in 48 hours and you don’t have to be a Rhodes' scholar to know I wouldn’t handle prison very well. I make a mental note to never break the law again.
I pedal slowly across to the bus station and turn left off the main drag.
Narayanghat is a surprisingly laid back town for it’s size. It sprawls out along the Trisuli River, rag-tag and dishevelled, but there’s a predominance of rickshaws over motorised traffic and the people seem friendly enough.
“Nepalis, not Indians!” I note. And thank god for that. When you’re as sick as me, the last thing you want is to be in India.
But India looms, just 'over there', and I'm heading that way and I can smell the fear. It must be a little like being a coalition soldier, waiting, waiting to go into Iraq. Yeah, Operation Mr Felix Freedom and 'we are committed!' Oh, dear.
I stop at a small general store, buy a litre of orange juice, open it up and suck it down on the spot. With luck it’ll have some vitamin C in it, but you can never be certain.
The lady behind the counter is short, sweet and smiley and surprisingly, speaks excellent English. She comes out on to the pavement and asks the usual questions and introduces her two kids, and ‘please wait a minute because they just want to show you the school project they’re working on.’
And wouldn’t you know, it’s about kangaroos. ‘Jackpot!’ for the kids, and it’s not what I had in mind but I won’t have to think too hard, so I guess I can handle it.
“Yep, I’m a genuine Ozzie, and I know ALL about kangaroos, kids!” I say, and suddenly their headlights turn on and I’m bathed in light and it’s the best I’ve felt in days, possibly weeks.
I tell them about great mobs bouncing across the Australian plains and how you can feel the earth go ‘thump! thump! thumpity thump!’ and how wonderful it is to stick your hand in the pouch of a mother kangaroo but you’ve got to be careful lest she rips you into six equal slices with her great hind feet – and I rise up and look ghastly and threatening, and then frightened, and the kids fall back and laugh, and gee, doesn’t it make you homesick.
And suddenly I’m drained. I feel like yesterday’s slice of bread, and I’ve got nothing more to give.
There’s an internet café across the street, and it’s easier to get to than back to the hotel, so I say my goodbyes and wheel the bike slowly across the road, dodge a few rickshaws, and go in.
Maybe some emails will pick me up. God, I hope none of them are abusive. When my emotional buffer is down I can handle my own demons, but external attacks are harder to absorb.
I settle into the small, grubby cubicle and Raja the owner looks pleased and turns the fan on ‘11’ and it’s nearly blowing me off the chair, so we sort that out, and he’s just about to go and get a cup of tea and 'would I like one?', and it could be worse.
Ah, the internet, what a release it is. Explorer’s opening up, and Google is coming online, and I’m floating free.
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km
The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km
The story so far:
After a ride down through the mountains and the rain out of Kathmandu, Mr Felix is down with the flu, and holed up in a hotel room in Narayanghat.
Part 5: An Interlude in Narayanghat!
On the morning of my fourth day in Narayanghat I mount up and go for a ride. I haven’t left the hotel in 48 hours and you don’t have to be a Rhodes' scholar to know I wouldn’t handle prison very well. I make a mental note to never break the law again.
I pedal slowly across to the bus station and turn left off the main drag.
Narayanghat is a surprisingly laid back town for it’s size. It sprawls out along the Trisuli River, rag-tag and dishevelled, but there’s a predominance of rickshaws over motorised traffic and the people seem friendly enough.
“Nepalis, not Indians!” I note. And thank god for that. When you’re as sick as me, the last thing you want is to be in India.
But India looms, just 'over there', and I'm heading that way and I can smell the fear. It must be a little like being a coalition soldier, waiting, waiting to go into Iraq. Yeah, Operation Mr Felix Freedom and 'we are committed!' Oh, dear.
I stop at a small general store, buy a litre of orange juice, open it up and suck it down on the spot. With luck it’ll have some vitamin C in it, but you can never be certain.
The lady behind the counter is short, sweet and smiley and surprisingly, speaks excellent English. She comes out on to the pavement and asks the usual questions and introduces her two kids, and ‘please wait a minute because they just want to show you the school project they’re working on.’
And wouldn’t you know, it’s about kangaroos. ‘Jackpot!’ for the kids, and it’s not what I had in mind but I won’t have to think too hard, so I guess I can handle it.
“Yep, I’m a genuine Ozzie, and I know ALL about kangaroos, kids!” I say, and suddenly their headlights turn on and I’m bathed in light and it’s the best I’ve felt in days, possibly weeks.
I tell them about great mobs bouncing across the Australian plains and how you can feel the earth go ‘thump! thump! thumpity thump!’ and how wonderful it is to stick your hand in the pouch of a mother kangaroo but you’ve got to be careful lest she rips you into six equal slices with her great hind feet – and I rise up and look ghastly and threatening, and then frightened, and the kids fall back and laugh, and gee, doesn’t it make you homesick.
And suddenly I’m drained. I feel like yesterday’s slice of bread, and I’ve got nothing more to give.
There’s an internet café across the street, and it’s easier to get to than back to the hotel, so I say my goodbyes and wheel the bike slowly across the road, dodge a few rickshaws, and go in.
Maybe some emails will pick me up. God, I hope none of them are abusive. When my emotional buffer is down I can handle my own demons, but external attacks are harder to absorb.
I settle into the small, grubby cubicle and Raja the owner looks pleased and turns the fan on ‘11’ and it’s nearly blowing me off the chair, so we sort that out, and he’s just about to go and get a cup of tea and 'would I like one?', and it could be worse.
Ah, the internet, what a release it is. Explorer’s opening up, and Google is coming online, and I’m floating free.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Monday, September 26, 2005
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Kathmandu to Gonda! Pt.4 - On ice in Narayanghat!
A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India!
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km
The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km
The story so far:
After a whizzy ride through the mountains and the rain out of Kathmandu, Mr Felix is down with the flu, and holed up in a hotel room in Narayanghat, alone. And he’s trying like the blazes not to lose the plot (whatever that is, because he’s forgotten.)
Part 4: On ice in Narayanghat!
I loathe Julia Roberts with a deep and abiding passion, and I’m half way into my second day in Narayanghat and three quarters of the way through her fourth totally forgettable film. Do they pay her for this crap?
Christ! Cable TV in Nepal, beaming in from India, is designed to make cyclists go mad, I’m convinced of it.
I switch across to Star Movies, Rupert (a pox upon him!) Murdoch’s approximation of a TV station, and there’s Tom Hanks in another poor excuse for entertainment, but it’s either that or the cricket on Star Sports – India versus Sri Lanka, and who gives a toss, so Tom Hanks it looks like it is.
The weird thing about both of these actors, though, is that you can’t take your eyes off of them. You’re lying naked on the bed and grinding your back molars into powder, out of sheer mind-numbing boredom, but still, you're compelled to watch. Which is why they’re ‘stars’, I guess. There has to be a reason.
I haven’t been out of the hotel in 36 hours and I haven’t left the room for the last 12. I’m feeling so wretched I’d join the Nazi Party if it guaranteed release.
I go into the bathroom again for the umpteenth time, clear the snot out of my nose, take another codeine – crickey! I better start counting them, I might OD! – and look in the mirror.
“I hate this! I hate this! I hate this!” I say, like a mantra, and go back to the teev.
My muscles ache, my bones ache and now my bum’s gone numb from all the Julia Robert’s films, so I rearrange the pillows and lie on my side and hope Tom doesn’t make it back from the dark side of the moon this time, but I know he will, because he’s rich and lucky, and people like to look at him, unlike me.
Are we having fun yet? Fuck, I’m not sure I’m gonna make it.
It's 2 AM and I’m wide awake and Tom’s climbed into the LEM and now I’ve got red-hot pokers sticking into the backside of my eyes from too much TV. I mean, really, fuck me, what now Lord?
When I was young and hopeful at St. Bridget’s Primary in Melbourne, way back before the Beatles broke up and the world still made sense, there was a joke doing the rounds of the playground, and when you’re young, cute and Catholic, it was a killer.
It went like this: A man walks into the church and his leg falls off. He looks up to the alter and says: “Why me, Lord?” He hops a little further down the aisle and his other leg falls off. “Why me, Lord?” he calls out again. He shuffles forward on his belly and then his arms fall off, “Why me, Lord?”, so he wriggles closer and his torso drops off, and finally, in one last desperate lunge for deliverance, he rolls forward, just a head now, and bumps into the alter steps – thunk! - and comes to a stop.
He raises his eyes to the heavens one last time, and calls out, pleading: “Why me, Lord? Why?”
And then there’s a flash of lightening and a crack of thunder and a big voice booms from on high: “Because you give me the shits!”
And I never, in my wildest fucking dreams, thought I'd be in the movie.
But there you go, and now I’ve got David Attenborough on Discovery Channel rabbiting on in his insufferable, wispy, pseudo-intimate animal molesting voice telling me about polar bears.
I’ve watched so much Discovery Channel in Asia I know more about polar bears than I do about cycling, and I’ve never set foot in the Arctic. And I love them, I really do. They’re wild and free and beautiful, and they’ll rip you to bits and eat you, and good luck to ‘em, but I’ve seen enough. Surely there’s something else out there on the frozen wastes we can look at.
How about another angle? How about gay polar bears? Some lesbian action? God, anything but this Disney-esque ‘and now the mother polar bear is teaching her young ones how to fish’ crap.
How about teaching them some real survival skills, like changing a tube, or downloading MP3s for nothing?
I go into the bathroom and blow out some more snot and take another codeine, and now there’s nothing else for it; I know it’s stupid, but I don’t have an internet connection, or an animal porn channel, so ‘drugs’ it looks like it is.
I roll up the biggest, fattest joint this side of the Kathmandu Valley. I literally pour the hash in, and then top it up some more. It’s top quality Nepalese Brown, light and powdery, and I got it for a song after a week of hard-arse bargaining in a dank little café in Freak Street, next to the slaughter house.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, I’m not sure which, seeing as I’m only a few days from the Indian border, I had to buy 60 grams worth, which is a very large fistful (indeed!), and I’ve only managed to get through a quarter of it in a month.
Hell, for a couple of weeks there I was the hashish king of Kathmandu. I sat on the roof of the Tibet Guest House with Todd and Dawn, a couple of American friends, and we played cards and blew the back of our heads off like Cristopher Walken in the Deer Hunter.
Yeah, sunsets over the Kathmandu Valley, pure orange octane.
I lean back on the bed and suck the smoke in, and feel it run down my throat, and I cough and gag, but I keep at it, and I feel better already.
And it’s all making sense now. Julia, Tom and David, they’re all part of god’s big plan, and it’s my mission to kill to them. It’s so simple, why didn’t I think of it before?
The smoke is rising and turning slowly up towards the ceiling, curling around the fan, and the red-hot pokers behind my eyes are withdrawing, gently, saying: “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” as they go, like demure Japanese schoolgirls, and I forgive them.
By the time I get to the end of the joint, I can even forgive god, almost, but he’s tricky, and holds the Death card, so you gotta keep your eyes open, even when you’re flat on your back, stoned immaculate.
Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god
Wandering, wandering in hopeless night
Out here in the perimeter there are no stars
Out here we is stoned
Immaculate.
(The Doors)
I'm with you, Jim, and it’s 5 AM, and Narayanghat is waking up outside my window, and I may never move again.
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km
The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km
The story so far:
After a whizzy ride through the mountains and the rain out of Kathmandu, Mr Felix is down with the flu, and holed up in a hotel room in Narayanghat, alone. And he’s trying like the blazes not to lose the plot (whatever that is, because he’s forgotten.)
Part 4: On ice in Narayanghat!
I loathe Julia Roberts with a deep and abiding passion, and I’m half way into my second day in Narayanghat and three quarters of the way through her fourth totally forgettable film. Do they pay her for this crap?
Christ! Cable TV in Nepal, beaming in from India, is designed to make cyclists go mad, I’m convinced of it.
I switch across to Star Movies, Rupert (a pox upon him!) Murdoch’s approximation of a TV station, and there’s Tom Hanks in another poor excuse for entertainment, but it’s either that or the cricket on Star Sports – India versus Sri Lanka, and who gives a toss, so Tom Hanks it looks like it is.
The weird thing about both of these actors, though, is that you can’t take your eyes off of them. You’re lying naked on the bed and grinding your back molars into powder, out of sheer mind-numbing boredom, but still, you're compelled to watch. Which is why they’re ‘stars’, I guess. There has to be a reason.
I haven’t been out of the hotel in 36 hours and I haven’t left the room for the last 12. I’m feeling so wretched I’d join the Nazi Party if it guaranteed release.
I go into the bathroom again for the umpteenth time, clear the snot out of my nose, take another codeine – crickey! I better start counting them, I might OD! – and look in the mirror.
“I hate this! I hate this! I hate this!” I say, like a mantra, and go back to the teev.
My muscles ache, my bones ache and now my bum’s gone numb from all the Julia Robert’s films, so I rearrange the pillows and lie on my side and hope Tom doesn’t make it back from the dark side of the moon this time, but I know he will, because he’s rich and lucky, and people like to look at him, unlike me.
Are we having fun yet? Fuck, I’m not sure I’m gonna make it.
It's 2 AM and I’m wide awake and Tom’s climbed into the LEM and now I’ve got red-hot pokers sticking into the backside of my eyes from too much TV. I mean, really, fuck me, what now Lord?
When I was young and hopeful at St. Bridget’s Primary in Melbourne, way back before the Beatles broke up and the world still made sense, there was a joke doing the rounds of the playground, and when you’re young, cute and Catholic, it was a killer.
It went like this: A man walks into the church and his leg falls off. He looks up to the alter and says: “Why me, Lord?” He hops a little further down the aisle and his other leg falls off. “Why me, Lord?” he calls out again. He shuffles forward on his belly and then his arms fall off, “Why me, Lord?”, so he wriggles closer and his torso drops off, and finally, in one last desperate lunge for deliverance, he rolls forward, just a head now, and bumps into the alter steps – thunk! - and comes to a stop.
He raises his eyes to the heavens one last time, and calls out, pleading: “Why me, Lord? Why?”
And then there’s a flash of lightening and a crack of thunder and a big voice booms from on high: “Because you give me the shits!”
And I never, in my wildest fucking dreams, thought I'd be in the movie.
But there you go, and now I’ve got David Attenborough on Discovery Channel rabbiting on in his insufferable, wispy, pseudo-intimate animal molesting voice telling me about polar bears.
I’ve watched so much Discovery Channel in Asia I know more about polar bears than I do about cycling, and I’ve never set foot in the Arctic. And I love them, I really do. They’re wild and free and beautiful, and they’ll rip you to bits and eat you, and good luck to ‘em, but I’ve seen enough. Surely there’s something else out there on the frozen wastes we can look at.
How about another angle? How about gay polar bears? Some lesbian action? God, anything but this Disney-esque ‘and now the mother polar bear is teaching her young ones how to fish’ crap.
How about teaching them some real survival skills, like changing a tube, or downloading MP3s for nothing?
I go into the bathroom and blow out some more snot and take another codeine, and now there’s nothing else for it; I know it’s stupid, but I don’t have an internet connection, or an animal porn channel, so ‘drugs’ it looks like it is.
I roll up the biggest, fattest joint this side of the Kathmandu Valley. I literally pour the hash in, and then top it up some more. It’s top quality Nepalese Brown, light and powdery, and I got it for a song after a week of hard-arse bargaining in a dank little café in Freak Street, next to the slaughter house.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, I’m not sure which, seeing as I’m only a few days from the Indian border, I had to buy 60 grams worth, which is a very large fistful (indeed!), and I’ve only managed to get through a quarter of it in a month.
Hell, for a couple of weeks there I was the hashish king of Kathmandu. I sat on the roof of the Tibet Guest House with Todd and Dawn, a couple of American friends, and we played cards and blew the back of our heads off like Cristopher Walken in the Deer Hunter.
Yeah, sunsets over the Kathmandu Valley, pure orange octane.
I lean back on the bed and suck the smoke in, and feel it run down my throat, and I cough and gag, but I keep at it, and I feel better already.
And it’s all making sense now. Julia, Tom and David, they’re all part of god’s big plan, and it’s my mission to kill to them. It’s so simple, why didn’t I think of it before?
The smoke is rising and turning slowly up towards the ceiling, curling around the fan, and the red-hot pokers behind my eyes are withdrawing, gently, saying: “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” as they go, like demure Japanese schoolgirls, and I forgive them.
By the time I get to the end of the joint, I can even forgive god, almost, but he’s tricky, and holds the Death card, so you gotta keep your eyes open, even when you’re flat on your back, stoned immaculate.
Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god
Wandering, wandering in hopeless night
Out here in the perimeter there are no stars
Out here we is stoned
Immaculate.
(The Doors)
I'm with you, Jim, and it’s 5 AM, and Narayanghat is waking up outside my window, and I may never move again.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Kathmandu to Gonda: Pt.3 - Good morning Narayanghat!
A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India.
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km
The ride so far:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km
The story so far:
Mr Felix has ridden out of the Kathmandu Valley, down through the mountains, and is now onto the plains of the Nepali Terrai. Unfortunately, it's been raining, and he arrives in Narayanghat cold and wet, and it's not looking good health-wise.
Part 3: Good morning Narayanghat!
Bang! Bang! Bang! (Pause) Bang! Bang! Bang!
Holy shit, there’s someone bashing the door in! I’m half awake, stumbling out of bed, grabbing for a towel, standing at the foot of the bed. Where’s my glasses?
Bang! Bang! Bang! There goes the door again. It’s gotta be a drug bust! Where’d I put the hash? Where’s my glasses?
Shi-it! Dunno! Jesus, it’s 7 in the morning! Kee-riste! What’s going on?
I open the door an inch and peer out. “Your coffee, Sahib!” says Raja the houseboy, cheerily. I’m dumbfounded.
I fling the door wide open – th-wump! It cracks against the wall and in one grand sweeping motion I lift both my arms to the heavens and say: “Wot the fuck? Wot the fucking, fuck, fuck!” and then finish this grand morning welcoming speech with a breathy and frustrated: “Jeezus! Jeezus!”
My heart is pounding and I’ve got a headache the size of an elephant and my sinuses, oh god! Somebody’s come in during the night and shot spak-filler up both my nostrils and it’s expanded and hardened, and it’s now pushing both my eyes forward from the back, out of their sockets, and it feels like hell in a box.
I take a breath and let my brain settle in my cranium for a second or two.
Oh, boy! I’m down with a very bad flu, and it’s 7 in the morning and now Raja’s standing at my door with a coffee, looking dumbfounded.
“Your coffee, sahib!” he says again, a little less confidently.
“Ah, I didn’t order coffee!” I say.
“You don’t want?” He looks puzzled.
“Well, yeah, I want, but how much is it?” I say.
I’m instinctively suspicious of room service, and even though (now that I’m up and wide awake) I really want a coffee, rule number 1 in Asia is ‘ask the price before you partake’, no matter how you’re feeling, or how good it looks.
“OK!” he says, cheerily, and abruptly turns and walks off down the hall. And I know, even in my half delirious state, I should just let it go, but I’ve now gotten a whiff of the brew, and I really want that coffee.
I take a few steps down the hall, clutching my towel roughly over my private parts. “Hey!” I yell. “HOW MUCH IS THE FUCKING COFFEE?”
He stops and turns. “You want?” he says, and tentatively holds the cup out towards me like I’m deranged, and possibly dangerous, which would be reasonably accurate.
“Yeah, yeah, just give the coffee! Fuck it!” I say, and snatch it away and turn back towards my room.
As I’m going back through the door he’s still standing in the hall, looking at me, expectantly, so I turn and throw my free hand in the air in one final gesture of grand idiocy: “And don’t expect a tip!” I say, and slam the door.
Holy shit! Why is it so hard? Why do I feel so bad?
Alright, just settle down, drink the coffee, hang the cost and think about the oncoming madness.
I’m really ill, and I’m stuck in Narayanghat by myself; in here, with these four walls, and millions of Rajas out there, beyond these four walls.
Fuck.
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km
The ride so far:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km
The story so far:
Mr Felix has ridden out of the Kathmandu Valley, down through the mountains, and is now onto the plains of the Nepali Terrai. Unfortunately, it's been raining, and he arrives in Narayanghat cold and wet, and it's not looking good health-wise.
Part 3: Good morning Narayanghat!
Bang! Bang! Bang! (Pause) Bang! Bang! Bang!
Holy shit, there’s someone bashing the door in! I’m half awake, stumbling out of bed, grabbing for a towel, standing at the foot of the bed. Where’s my glasses?
Bang! Bang! Bang! There goes the door again. It’s gotta be a drug bust! Where’d I put the hash? Where’s my glasses?
Shi-it! Dunno! Jesus, it’s 7 in the morning! Kee-riste! What’s going on?
I open the door an inch and peer out. “Your coffee, Sahib!” says Raja the houseboy, cheerily. I’m dumbfounded.
I fling the door wide open – th-wump! It cracks against the wall and in one grand sweeping motion I lift both my arms to the heavens and say: “Wot the fuck? Wot the fucking, fuck, fuck!” and then finish this grand morning welcoming speech with a breathy and frustrated: “Jeezus! Jeezus!”
My heart is pounding and I’ve got a headache the size of an elephant and my sinuses, oh god! Somebody’s come in during the night and shot spak-filler up both my nostrils and it’s expanded and hardened, and it’s now pushing both my eyes forward from the back, out of their sockets, and it feels like hell in a box.
I take a breath and let my brain settle in my cranium for a second or two.
Oh, boy! I’m down with a very bad flu, and it’s 7 in the morning and now Raja’s standing at my door with a coffee, looking dumbfounded.
“Your coffee, sahib!” he says again, a little less confidently.
“Ah, I didn’t order coffee!” I say.
“You don’t want?” He looks puzzled.
“Well, yeah, I want, but how much is it?” I say.
I’m instinctively suspicious of room service, and even though (now that I’m up and wide awake) I really want a coffee, rule number 1 in Asia is ‘ask the price before you partake’, no matter how you’re feeling, or how good it looks.
“OK!” he says, cheerily, and abruptly turns and walks off down the hall. And I know, even in my half delirious state, I should just let it go, but I’ve now gotten a whiff of the brew, and I really want that coffee.
I take a few steps down the hall, clutching my towel roughly over my private parts. “Hey!” I yell. “HOW MUCH IS THE FUCKING COFFEE?”
He stops and turns. “You want?” he says, and tentatively holds the cup out towards me like I’m deranged, and possibly dangerous, which would be reasonably accurate.
“Yeah, yeah, just give the coffee! Fuck it!” I say, and snatch it away and turn back towards my room.
As I’m going back through the door he’s still standing in the hall, looking at me, expectantly, so I turn and throw my free hand in the air in one final gesture of grand idiocy: “And don’t expect a tip!” I say, and slam the door.
Holy shit! Why is it so hard? Why do I feel so bad?
Alright, just settle down, drink the coffee, hang the cost and think about the oncoming madness.
I’m really ill, and I’m stuck in Narayanghat by myself; in here, with these four walls, and millions of Rajas out there, beyond these four walls.
Fuck.
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Kathmandu to Gonda: Pt.2 - A Raksi Party!
A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India
Part 2: A Raksi Party!
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat - 34 km
KTM to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
KTM to Narayanghat – 144 km
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 635 km
Just beyond Mugling Bazaar the road splits, one leg heading due west to Pokhara, the other turning south through a tight valley, following the Trisuli River and eventually easing out onto the forested plains of the Nepali Terrai at Chitwan National Park, and the Indian border.
I head out of Mugling at 10 in the morning in bright sunshine and take the road to the left towards the Indian border.
I spent half the night coughing up phlegm and I'm full of gunk. Egh! Bronchial problems. Who’s a stupid cyclist?
When your body temperature drops, you stop and take on food. It’s ABC stuff, but I was having so much fun freewheeling through the mountains, who’s got time to eat a chappati and change a wet teeshirt?
I really should know better, but let’s see if I can’t ride it out.
I push on over the bridge out of Mugling and on my left the mountain rises vertically, beautifully, into the mist above and down on my right, a hundred metres below, the Tusuli River, fed by uncountable bursting mountain streams, has grown wide and massive.
It’s a now pounding torrent of white water, powerful as a god, sending giant shoots of cascading water up over boulders and into the air. This is a landscape on a big scale: a great opera, powerful, energising, full of wonder.
The road continues to sweep downwards, but as soon as it turns up and I need to pedal, I start coughing and wheezing, and my legs feel brittle and empty, like rice-cakes. And then the rain steps in, big time. Shi-it! Water is sliding off the mountain onto the road at unexpected spots, and one slip and I’m dead, or worse.
It’s time to pull in.
I sit close to the fire with ten other steaming Nepalis and sip hot milky chai (tea). The teashop is perched on the side of the road overlooking the Trisuli Rover, and is the usual dirt floor, thatched roof affair with no back wall.
The old guy to my left is nodding and patting me on the knee (a sign of filial affection), and the guy on my right is smiling so much he has to be drunk.
“My sister beautiful?” says the drunken man, pointing at a grubby young woman in plaits and traditional dress sitting on the bench at our back. She gives me a shy smile and everybody laughs.
“Sahib, my sister, she like you!” he says, leaning over, putting his arm around my shoulder and breathing alcohol into my face. His sister (?) grins, and for one small moment I’m at one with the mountains, lost to the civilised world, but I make it back.
I raise my arm in the air and let it fall limply at the elbow, and make a joke about not being up to it, what with the cycling and all, and this goes down a treat.
The old guy on my left is laughing so much he breaks into a coughing fit and spills his tea, and somehow, magically, the raksi (rice wine) appears.
“Make you strong!” says the drunken man, and hands me a glass.
I once attended a raksi party in a small village way out in the western Himalayas of Nepal, where I was doing some work.
We sat on the floor drinking out of small clay cups (which miraculously never empty), and we drank, and we drank, and by late evening I was howling at the moon (so they say.)
They also say that the howling – god knows what it sounded like - scared away a band of robbers, so in the morning, despite a crashing headache of Himalayan proportions, I was something of the village hero.
Raksi, dangerous stuff, but maybe it’ll fix up my cold?
I knock back a couple of glasses, and lean easily back, and someone turns on a radio, and the world falls away once again. The booze is soaking into my bones and rushing to my head, and it's too late to turn back now.
I float upstream with another glass and nestle in beside the laughing girl and show her my passport. Life is good! And this smoky, gritty room of dank smells and jostling people is home, and it's about as earthy as it gets without converting.
I wake up a couple of hours later slumped against the wall, and the rain has stopped, and the party is over, which may be a good thing. There’s no sign of the drunken man and his sister, so I drink a tea and go outside in the fresh mountain air and stretch and cough, and try to coax some life into my limbs.
According to the map it’s only about 10 km to Narayanghat, and the teashop owner assures me there’s a hotel, so that might do it for the day: 34 kilometres, a few drinks and some new friends, and that’s an OK day’s work, no matter what anybody says.
A kilometre past the teashop the road flattens out, and I’m suddenly out of the mountains, and so much for rolling downhill all day. From here on in it looks like I'll have to work.
It’s up and down into Naranyaghat, and my legs feel like lead and rice-cakes at the same time, and I’m coughing and wheezing, and nursing a headache, and debating that age old question: is biking hell?
Part 2: A Raksi Party!
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat - 34 km
KTM to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
KTM to Narayanghat – 144 km
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 635 km
Just beyond Mugling Bazaar the road splits, one leg heading due west to Pokhara, the other turning south through a tight valley, following the Trisuli River and eventually easing out onto the forested plains of the Nepali Terrai at Chitwan National Park, and the Indian border.
I head out of Mugling at 10 in the morning in bright sunshine and take the road to the left towards the Indian border.
I spent half the night coughing up phlegm and I'm full of gunk. Egh! Bronchial problems. Who’s a stupid cyclist?
When your body temperature drops, you stop and take on food. It’s ABC stuff, but I was having so much fun freewheeling through the mountains, who’s got time to eat a chappati and change a wet teeshirt?
I really should know better, but let’s see if I can’t ride it out.
I push on over the bridge out of Mugling and on my left the mountain rises vertically, beautifully, into the mist above and down on my right, a hundred metres below, the Tusuli River, fed by uncountable bursting mountain streams, has grown wide and massive.
It’s a now pounding torrent of white water, powerful as a god, sending giant shoots of cascading water up over boulders and into the air. This is a landscape on a big scale: a great opera, powerful, energising, full of wonder.
The road continues to sweep downwards, but as soon as it turns up and I need to pedal, I start coughing and wheezing, and my legs feel brittle and empty, like rice-cakes. And then the rain steps in, big time. Shi-it! Water is sliding off the mountain onto the road at unexpected spots, and one slip and I’m dead, or worse.
It’s time to pull in.
I sit close to the fire with ten other steaming Nepalis and sip hot milky chai (tea). The teashop is perched on the side of the road overlooking the Trisuli Rover, and is the usual dirt floor, thatched roof affair with no back wall.
The old guy to my left is nodding and patting me on the knee (a sign of filial affection), and the guy on my right is smiling so much he has to be drunk.
“My sister beautiful?” says the drunken man, pointing at a grubby young woman in plaits and traditional dress sitting on the bench at our back. She gives me a shy smile and everybody laughs.
“Sahib, my sister, she like you!” he says, leaning over, putting his arm around my shoulder and breathing alcohol into my face. His sister (?) grins, and for one small moment I’m at one with the mountains, lost to the civilised world, but I make it back.
I raise my arm in the air and let it fall limply at the elbow, and make a joke about not being up to it, what with the cycling and all, and this goes down a treat.
The old guy on my left is laughing so much he breaks into a coughing fit and spills his tea, and somehow, magically, the raksi (rice wine) appears.
“Make you strong!” says the drunken man, and hands me a glass.
I once attended a raksi party in a small village way out in the western Himalayas of Nepal, where I was doing some work.
We sat on the floor drinking out of small clay cups (which miraculously never empty), and we drank, and we drank, and by late evening I was howling at the moon (so they say.)
They also say that the howling – god knows what it sounded like - scared away a band of robbers, so in the morning, despite a crashing headache of Himalayan proportions, I was something of the village hero.
Raksi, dangerous stuff, but maybe it’ll fix up my cold?
I knock back a couple of glasses, and lean easily back, and someone turns on a radio, and the world falls away once again. The booze is soaking into my bones and rushing to my head, and it's too late to turn back now.
I float upstream with another glass and nestle in beside the laughing girl and show her my passport. Life is good! And this smoky, gritty room of dank smells and jostling people is home, and it's about as earthy as it gets without converting.
I wake up a couple of hours later slumped against the wall, and the rain has stopped, and the party is over, which may be a good thing. There’s no sign of the drunken man and his sister, so I drink a tea and go outside in the fresh mountain air and stretch and cough, and try to coax some life into my limbs.
According to the map it’s only about 10 km to Narayanghat, and the teashop owner assures me there’s a hotel, so that might do it for the day: 34 kilometres, a few drinks and some new friends, and that’s an OK day’s work, no matter what anybody says.
A kilometre past the teashop the road flattens out, and I’m suddenly out of the mountains, and so much for rolling downhill all day. From here on in it looks like I'll have to work.
It’s up and down into Naranyaghat, and my legs feel like lead and rice-cakes at the same time, and I’m coughing and wheezing, and nursing a headache, and debating that age old question: is biking hell?
Kathmandu to Gonda: Pt.1 - Out of the Valley!
A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India.
Part 1: Out of the Kathmandu Valley!
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 635 km
It’s an easy 7 kilometres up out of the Kathmandu Valley to the small village of Thangkot. I stop for a tea and then work my way another kilometre up the hill to the police checkpoint perched on the top of the mountain, and look down the other side.
Check out the road!
It rolls straight off the mountain and plunges almost vertically down the other side; a contorted, looping ribbon, flipping left and right, going down, down, down until it disappears into the valley mist three thousand feet below.
This should be fun!
I check the brakes, jostle the panniers, pull my cap down hard on my head, and roll forward.
Go down, go down, pick up speed, tighten your hand grip, focus, lean left, lean right, go down, down, down, pick up speed, feel the fear, focus, easy on the brakes, listen to the tyres, shift in the seat, pedal one two, lean left, lean right and down you go again.
Cycling is good.
You go past wooden teashops, across a bridge and straighten out beside a line of trucks parked by the roadside. The guys standing around shout and give you the thumbs up, and the road falls away again to the right, and you follow it down and the cold mountain air cuts at your cheeks.
How long can this go on?
On both sides of the valley the mountains vault straight up into the sky, vertical and deep green. To the left and right, up above, there’s small brown and yellow mud-brick cottages perched on the cliffs, alone and in small groups, with wisps of silver smoke swirling around their thatched roofs.
Keep riding.
Thin white footpaths lead away from the road and wriggle painfully up the mountainside beside snapping, rushing creeks of silver water, and terraced fields sweep impossibly up the slopes, one horizontal cut after the next, and Jesus, I don’t want that job.
A thousand feet below the Trisuli River is thumping white water over boulders the size of two story houses, and I can see the road up ahead, cut into sheer vertical rock, twisting and turning, following the river and disappearing through a tight gap in the mountains some ten kilometres away. Oh, happy day!
I make it into Malekhu (70 km) for lunch, just as the clouds roll in, and with it the rain. This is the monsoon season, and a bad time to be riding, but what to do, and who cares?
This is riding as God intended it, and I am but a humble servant of the Lord, on a bike. However, if you were going the other way, east up the mountain into Kathmandu, you may need to know where you can stop and curse the Lord for his all-knowing perfidy.
There’s a guesthouse at the small village of Baireni, 49 km from Kathmandu, one at Adamghat, 56 km from Kathmandu and four at Malekhu, where I am now, 70 km from Kathmandu.
From Malekhu you’d be cycling pretty much 70 kilometres uphill to Kathmandu, with the last 15 or so kilometres before the start of the valley extremely steep.
Best of luck, but you really are going the wrong way.
I eat some dhal bhat (standard Nepali food, consisting of curry, dhal and a small mountain of rice), chat to the girl and push on.
I ride for an hour through drizzling rain.
Mercifully the road’s paved and in great shape, but it’s greasy and I’m on full alert. Trucks and buses pass in bursts, and I’m forced to the side of the road at times, holding my line, waiting for clear road, praying for deliverance.
Toot! Too-wooot! Another painful air-horn blast to the ear, a wave from the smiling jockey, 'the finger' from me and the truck is past, and I'm going downhill along with my mood.
Mugling Bazaar (110 km from Kathmandu) is a regional sized, non-descript town straddling the highway. By the time I arrive I’m wet and drained and just give me a tea, Raja, and don’t ask questions.
“Hey, you there, in the shorts! Leave the bike alone!”
I check into a hotel (Mugling has numerous hotels), take a cold shower and go in search of food. Dinner will take about forty five minutes if I stretch it out, lean back in my chair and look cool, and then it's a four walls and six (maybe seven) demons for company until morning.
Yeah, cycling, it's a trip.
Part 1: Out of the Kathmandu Valley!
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 635 km
It’s an easy 7 kilometres up out of the Kathmandu Valley to the small village of Thangkot. I stop for a tea and then work my way another kilometre up the hill to the police checkpoint perched on the top of the mountain, and look down the other side.
Check out the road!
It rolls straight off the mountain and plunges almost vertically down the other side; a contorted, looping ribbon, flipping left and right, going down, down, down until it disappears into the valley mist three thousand feet below.
This should be fun!
I check the brakes, jostle the panniers, pull my cap down hard on my head, and roll forward.
Go down, go down, pick up speed, tighten your hand grip, focus, lean left, lean right, go down, down, down, pick up speed, feel the fear, focus, easy on the brakes, listen to the tyres, shift in the seat, pedal one two, lean left, lean right and down you go again.
Cycling is good.
You go past wooden teashops, across a bridge and straighten out beside a line of trucks parked by the roadside. The guys standing around shout and give you the thumbs up, and the road falls away again to the right, and you follow it down and the cold mountain air cuts at your cheeks.
How long can this go on?
On both sides of the valley the mountains vault straight up into the sky, vertical and deep green. To the left and right, up above, there’s small brown and yellow mud-brick cottages perched on the cliffs, alone and in small groups, with wisps of silver smoke swirling around their thatched roofs.
Keep riding.
Thin white footpaths lead away from the road and wriggle painfully up the mountainside beside snapping, rushing creeks of silver water, and terraced fields sweep impossibly up the slopes, one horizontal cut after the next, and Jesus, I don’t want that job.
A thousand feet below the Trisuli River is thumping white water over boulders the size of two story houses, and I can see the road up ahead, cut into sheer vertical rock, twisting and turning, following the river and disappearing through a tight gap in the mountains some ten kilometres away. Oh, happy day!
I make it into Malekhu (70 km) for lunch, just as the clouds roll in, and with it the rain. This is the monsoon season, and a bad time to be riding, but what to do, and who cares?
This is riding as God intended it, and I am but a humble servant of the Lord, on a bike. However, if you were going the other way, east up the mountain into Kathmandu, you may need to know where you can stop and curse the Lord for his all-knowing perfidy.
There’s a guesthouse at the small village of Baireni, 49 km from Kathmandu, one at Adamghat, 56 km from Kathmandu and four at Malekhu, where I am now, 70 km from Kathmandu.
From Malekhu you’d be cycling pretty much 70 kilometres uphill to Kathmandu, with the last 15 or so kilometres before the start of the valley extremely steep.
Best of luck, but you really are going the wrong way.
I eat some dhal bhat (standard Nepali food, consisting of curry, dhal and a small mountain of rice), chat to the girl and push on.
I ride for an hour through drizzling rain.
Mercifully the road’s paved and in great shape, but it’s greasy and I’m on full alert. Trucks and buses pass in bursts, and I’m forced to the side of the road at times, holding my line, waiting for clear road, praying for deliverance.
Toot! Too-wooot! Another painful air-horn blast to the ear, a wave from the smiling jockey, 'the finger' from me and the truck is past, and I'm going downhill along with my mood.
Mugling Bazaar (110 km from Kathmandu) is a regional sized, non-descript town straddling the highway. By the time I arrive I’m wet and drained and just give me a tea, Raja, and don’t ask questions.
“Hey, you there, in the shorts! Leave the bike alone!”
I check into a hotel (Mugling has numerous hotels), take a cold shower and go in search of food. Dinner will take about forty five minutes if I stretch it out, lean back in my chair and look cool, and then it's a four walls and six (maybe seven) demons for company until morning.
Yeah, cycling, it's a trip.
Friday, June 10, 2005
MBA Pt.9: Riding into the light!
My Bung Arm Pt. 9
The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the right elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now undergoing for five day’s outpatient treatment at Aranyaprathet Hospital (with Sister Supachai) on the Thai-Cambodian border.
Aranyaprathet on the Thai-Cambodian border:
Three days of antibiotics, Japanese girls and the magnificent Sister Supachai and my right arm is on the way to full democracy.
The swelling is down, the 5 cm slice (I measured it) that the doctor in Cambodia made along the elbow has magically disappeared (along with the puss), and I’m having clearly defined moments of not feeling sorry for myself.
I’m a Third World success story. Sterling stuff!
But as the late George Harrison (Peace be upon Him) tells us, ‘all things must pass’, and when I return to Aranyaprathet General Sister Supachai is not there. Johnny’s also gone, and the room is hollow.
Where’s my world gone?
“Where is Sister Supachai?” I ask the new nurse behind the desk.
“She not here!” she says, and smiles.
“Yes, but where she go?” I’m a hungry dog.
“She not here!” she says, and smiles.
“Yeah, but is she coming back…?” I’m stepping on my voice to keep the alarm out (which is of paramount importance when dealing with the Thais) but I guess the hungry look in my eyes is giving me away, because the new nurse has got that ‘I’m looking at a crazy farang’ look and is sinking backwards into her cranium, where it’s a lot safer.
“She not here!” More smiles, but now she’s definitely inside the mystery of the brain, and the question on both our minds is ‘am I coming in after the bunny?’
“Yeah, but…”
I used to go rabbit hunting with my grandfather, and when you’re twelve and male, or a dog, death is very exciting.
My grandfather was a farmer, and we’d make our way into the forest that bordered the back paddocks, him holding the gun and me trotting happily behind with the rabbit bag, and the dogs, Dave and Wooty, doing their thing; sniffing, widdling, growling and running about.
Dave was a kelpie, an Australian cattle dog, and smart, but Wooty – I didn’t choose the name – was a black haired miniature poodle, the ‘house dog’, and didn’t have a clue.
The strange thing was that we’d sometimes bale a rabbit up in a hole, and the dogs would be beside themselves, yelping, lathering, dancing in circles, ripping at the dirt around the hole, and we’d pull them off, and dig the rabbit out, and it’d be stiff with fear, like a furry toy.
Crack! there goes it’s neck, and grandpa is stuffing the dead thing into the sack, and we’re taking it home for grandma to skin (she was Austrian) and we’re going to eat it.
And Wooty would hang back, and whimper and crawl on the ground and make squeegie bottle sounds. And when we’d get home he’d cower under the table, and wouldn't come out, and make more squeegie sounds.
Yeah, bunny death, it's freaky, and it hangs around.
I let the interrogation go and submit, and I must be improving.
Two days later I’m back in the saddle cycling west out of Aran on the way to Bangkok.
Status report:
Short term goal: Cycle to Bangkok.
Long term goal: Cycle to the south of France.
Personal goal: Find my Inner Ape.
Arm: Bandaged, prognosis good.
Personal future: Uncertain, prognosis unknown.
Personal past: Forget it.
Faith and hope: Holding on.
Charity: Forget it.
Favourite colour: Blue.
It’s not a fun ride from the Cambodian border; the roads are flat, the scenery boring and the traffic heavy, and it gets heavier the closer you get to Bangkok.
I set off early, put my head down and count the klicks.
Push the pedals, one, two, look up at the road, look down at me feet, check the back panniers, push the pedals, one, two, listen to the tyres go russsh-russsh-russsh! on the asphalt, sweat, breath, push down, move over, let a truck through, push the pedals, one, two.
Jesus it’s hot!
It’s 2 PM and I need lunch, but I can’t find a food stall. The paddies stretch out green on both sides of the road, low and flat, and the sky is big and blue; an open, empty space, with no limits.
Dangerous.
I’m back at the university in Melbourne where I was teaching, twelve months ago, just before I quit.
I have to go and see the new director’s personal assistant. She’s part of the lesbian brigade at the university, and I know she doesn’t like me, but I need a piece of paper.
When I walk in she’s leaning back in the chair stuffing a potato wedge into her mouth; knees up, head back, feet splayed out at ear level on the top of the desk (lurching towards me) and a large dob of mayo that’s slipped off a wedge and fallen in her lap.
I stop short three steps from the door, and no man should have to confront this.
It’s Niagra Falls, and I don’t have a barrel. It’s the Dualagiri Gorge, and I don’t have a rope. It’s the Khumbu Glacier, and if you fall down a hole, boyo, you’ll be deader than road-kill and twice as ugly.
(And 236 years later they’ll dig you up, call you the Ice Cyclist, stuff you, put you back on your bike and posit you in the Melbourne Museum next to Phar Lap.*)
“Wadayawant?” she says, and thank god she’s wearing blue pants.
I get my bit of paper and leave immediately. I walk up the stairs to the café on level 3 and order a scalding hot coffee. I’m hoping it’ll burn my insides out.
Cycling, yeah, it’s something. Newbies take note.
A little further along I spot a dusty food stall and pull off the road without thinking. Anything will do at this point.
There’s a middle aged Thai woman in a yellow sarong waving me in, and her young daughter, who must be about eight, is beaming and wiggling and showing me to my chair, and they don’t sell potato wedges.
I order noodles, and grab a Coke out of the icebox and a small packet of Oreos off the shelf on the way through and the little girl is so intrigued with the hairy half-baked monkey that when I sit down she comes across and rests her chin on the table directly opposite me, eyes ablaze.
Her name’s Noi and she’s a little pixie, and how I love these kids; no fear, no fear. I pop the straw into the Coke and slide it across the table and smile and tell her to ‘drink up!’ and mum smiles so we open up the Oreos and have a little picnic.
And Noi keeps hitting my brain with her eyes; I can feel the light opening doors and I’m coming awake in stops and starts.
I get out on the road an hour later, and set off into a big sky, and ride fast, and every time I slow down I see those eyes, and pick it up.
I’m riding into the light, Lord, out of the darkness and into the light!
* Phar Lap is a Thai phrase meaning 'wink of the skies' or 'lightning', and is also the name of Australia's wonder horse from the Great Depression, considered by Australians as the greatest race horse ever. He conquered the local racing scene—36 wins from his last 41 starts—and then they took him to the USA, where he won North America's richest race, the Agua Caliente Handicap, in 1932. Two weeks later he was found dead in his stall, and for a while there we thought about launching a pre-emptive strike on America. (We would have beaten the Japs to it by 10 years, and just think about the possibilities!) They brought the great beast home, sadly, and stuffed him and put him in the Melbourne Museum, where he stands today; proud, red (his nickname was 'Big Red') and huggable.
The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the right elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now undergoing for five day’s outpatient treatment at Aranyaprathet Hospital (with Sister Supachai) on the Thai-Cambodian border.
Aranyaprathet on the Thai-Cambodian border:
Three days of antibiotics, Japanese girls and the magnificent Sister Supachai and my right arm is on the way to full democracy.
The swelling is down, the 5 cm slice (I measured it) that the doctor in Cambodia made along the elbow has magically disappeared (along with the puss), and I’m having clearly defined moments of not feeling sorry for myself.
I’m a Third World success story. Sterling stuff!
But as the late George Harrison (Peace be upon Him) tells us, ‘all things must pass’, and when I return to Aranyaprathet General Sister Supachai is not there. Johnny’s also gone, and the room is hollow.
Where’s my world gone?
“Where is Sister Supachai?” I ask the new nurse behind the desk.
“She not here!” she says, and smiles.
“Yes, but where she go?” I’m a hungry dog.
“She not here!” she says, and smiles.
“Yeah, but is she coming back…?” I’m stepping on my voice to keep the alarm out (which is of paramount importance when dealing with the Thais) but I guess the hungry look in my eyes is giving me away, because the new nurse has got that ‘I’m looking at a crazy farang’ look and is sinking backwards into her cranium, where it’s a lot safer.
“She not here!” More smiles, but now she’s definitely inside the mystery of the brain, and the question on both our minds is ‘am I coming in after the bunny?’
“Yeah, but…”
I used to go rabbit hunting with my grandfather, and when you’re twelve and male, or a dog, death is very exciting.
My grandfather was a farmer, and we’d make our way into the forest that bordered the back paddocks, him holding the gun and me trotting happily behind with the rabbit bag, and the dogs, Dave and Wooty, doing their thing; sniffing, widdling, growling and running about.
Dave was a kelpie, an Australian cattle dog, and smart, but Wooty – I didn’t choose the name – was a black haired miniature poodle, the ‘house dog’, and didn’t have a clue.
The strange thing was that we’d sometimes bale a rabbit up in a hole, and the dogs would be beside themselves, yelping, lathering, dancing in circles, ripping at the dirt around the hole, and we’d pull them off, and dig the rabbit out, and it’d be stiff with fear, like a furry toy.
Crack! there goes it’s neck, and grandpa is stuffing the dead thing into the sack, and we’re taking it home for grandma to skin (she was Austrian) and we’re going to eat it.
And Wooty would hang back, and whimper and crawl on the ground and make squeegie bottle sounds. And when we’d get home he’d cower under the table, and wouldn't come out, and make more squeegie sounds.
Yeah, bunny death, it's freaky, and it hangs around.
I let the interrogation go and submit, and I must be improving.
Two days later I’m back in the saddle cycling west out of Aran on the way to Bangkok.
Status report:
Short term goal: Cycle to Bangkok.
Long term goal: Cycle to the south of France.
Personal goal: Find my Inner Ape.
Arm: Bandaged, prognosis good.
Personal future: Uncertain, prognosis unknown.
Personal past: Forget it.
Faith and hope: Holding on.
Charity: Forget it.
Favourite colour: Blue.
It’s not a fun ride from the Cambodian border; the roads are flat, the scenery boring and the traffic heavy, and it gets heavier the closer you get to Bangkok.
I set off early, put my head down and count the klicks.
Push the pedals, one, two, look up at the road, look down at me feet, check the back panniers, push the pedals, one, two, listen to the tyres go russsh-russsh-russsh! on the asphalt, sweat, breath, push down, move over, let a truck through, push the pedals, one, two.
Jesus it’s hot!
It’s 2 PM and I need lunch, but I can’t find a food stall. The paddies stretch out green on both sides of the road, low and flat, and the sky is big and blue; an open, empty space, with no limits.
Dangerous.
I’m back at the university in Melbourne where I was teaching, twelve months ago, just before I quit.
I have to go and see the new director’s personal assistant. She’s part of the lesbian brigade at the university, and I know she doesn’t like me, but I need a piece of paper.
When I walk in she’s leaning back in the chair stuffing a potato wedge into her mouth; knees up, head back, feet splayed out at ear level on the top of the desk (lurching towards me) and a large dob of mayo that’s slipped off a wedge and fallen in her lap.
I stop short three steps from the door, and no man should have to confront this.
It’s Niagra Falls, and I don’t have a barrel. It’s the Dualagiri Gorge, and I don’t have a rope. It’s the Khumbu Glacier, and if you fall down a hole, boyo, you’ll be deader than road-kill and twice as ugly.
(And 236 years later they’ll dig you up, call you the Ice Cyclist, stuff you, put you back on your bike and posit you in the Melbourne Museum next to Phar Lap.*)
“Wadayawant?” she says, and thank god she’s wearing blue pants.
I get my bit of paper and leave immediately. I walk up the stairs to the café on level 3 and order a scalding hot coffee. I’m hoping it’ll burn my insides out.
Cycling, yeah, it’s something. Newbies take note.
A little further along I spot a dusty food stall and pull off the road without thinking. Anything will do at this point.
There’s a middle aged Thai woman in a yellow sarong waving me in, and her young daughter, who must be about eight, is beaming and wiggling and showing me to my chair, and they don’t sell potato wedges.
I order noodles, and grab a Coke out of the icebox and a small packet of Oreos off the shelf on the way through and the little girl is so intrigued with the hairy half-baked monkey that when I sit down she comes across and rests her chin on the table directly opposite me, eyes ablaze.
Her name’s Noi and she’s a little pixie, and how I love these kids; no fear, no fear. I pop the straw into the Coke and slide it across the table and smile and tell her to ‘drink up!’ and mum smiles so we open up the Oreos and have a little picnic.
And Noi keeps hitting my brain with her eyes; I can feel the light opening doors and I’m coming awake in stops and starts.
I get out on the road an hour later, and set off into a big sky, and ride fast, and every time I slow down I see those eyes, and pick it up.
I’m riding into the light, Lord, out of the darkness and into the light!
* Phar Lap is a Thai phrase meaning 'wink of the skies' or 'lightning', and is also the name of Australia's wonder horse from the Great Depression, considered by Australians as the greatest race horse ever. He conquered the local racing scene—36 wins from his last 41 starts—and then they took him to the USA, where he won North America's richest race, the Agua Caliente Handicap, in 1932. Two weeks later he was found dead in his stall, and for a while there we thought about launching a pre-emptive strike on America. (We would have beaten the Japs to it by 10 years, and just think about the possibilities!) They brought the great beast home, sadly, and stuffed him and put him in the Melbourne Museum, where he stands today; proud, red (his nickname was 'Big Red') and huggable.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
MBA Pt 8: Great balls of fire!
My Bung Arm Part 8
The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now undergoing for five day’s outpatient treatment (with Sister Supachai) at Aranyaprathet Hospital on the Thai-Cambodian border.
Evening, day 3, at Aranyaprathet
While I’ve been off slaying dragons, Yoko and Kayoko, the two Japanese girls at the guest house, have been out scavenging for Japanese food, or the approximate.
They stumble in to the lounge room laden with ingredients, mostly from the 7-11, going by the plastic bags.
"Can I help?" I say, and no, no, Felix-san, you just sit there and make paper aeroplanes with Lek, the young daughter of the Thai owner, which is super-fine by me. I love paper aeroplanes, and Lek’s an enthusiastic test pilot.
We’ve got aeroplanes stuck in holes and crevices all over the room, including one going around on the overhead fan, which is just killing Lek for some reason, and we are busily trying to land another, unsuccessfully, when mum finally calls her into the house for dinner and I’m left to clean up the mess.
We’re not ‘going sushi’ tonight but what we are getting is apparently (almost) authentic ‘southern Japanese rustic style’, whatever that is.
"Have you had southern style Japanese food before, Felix?" asks Yoko. I tell her I’ve got no idea, but I love ‘Japanese food’ and hold up my fingers and make ‘inverted comma’ signs in the air, as you do when you haven’t got a clue.
It seems ‘southern style’ is going to be a whole new experience, and Yoko looks pleased.
Just then Kayoko comes out of the kitchen with a small vase of purple and white Thai orchids and places them in the middle of the low wooden coffee table, right in front of me.
She sits down and turns the vase a couple of times, and adjusts the stems, back and forth, and Yoko comes across and sits down, and as if on cue, they both say "uh!" and lean back in their chairs and look at the flowers.
And they’re simply gorgeous!
I sit and look and for a few precious seconds all movement stops, and the universe is spinning around a small vase of Thai orchids at the centre of our table.
Yoko says: "Beau-tee-ful!" and turns and smiles, and as if on cue again both girls get up and go back to the kitchen, without another word, and I’m left with the flowers, speechless.
What is it about Japanese and flowers?
The same thing, I guess, as Japanese and animation, and I’ve got ‘just the ticket’.
I slip off and get my Ipod and plug it into the stereo speakers, and ask the girls if they’d like some music and yes, that’d be nice, so I hit the button and the opening bars of the ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ theme song come flooding into the room.
Japanese girls really know how to scream, I tell you, and there’s a certain pleasure in being the cause of it.
‘My Neighbour Totoro’ (Tonari no Totoro) was a hugely popular Japanese feature animation made in 1988 by Hiyao Miyazaki, arguably the world’s greatest living animator. (He gets my vote!)
The theme song is a catchy upbeat tune loosely based on, and I shudder to say it, Cliff Richard’s ‘Summer Holiday’. It goes something phonetically like: Ar-doo-ko, ar-doo-ko, wa-deshi-wa-keng-keee… and it’s a groove! I’m so in love with the animation I have the complete soundtrack on the Ipod.
And so we play it through.
Yoko tells me that when she was at school she and her friends would march home along the road in a long line singing the song, and I wish I had of been there. That song’s a winner!
The food hits the palate and it’s salty, and after months of spicy Southeast Asian food my tongue is doing cartwheels, but I’m into it. Kayoko tells me the names of the different dishes, most of which I’ve never seen before, and I nod and repeat the names (and retain nothing) and eat it all up, and just as well there’s no after-dinner quiz, because I’d get zero.
Who’s the happy idiot?
We sip on green tea and chat, and make the obvious ‘John and Yoko’ connection and ‘do you have any Beatles music, Felix?’ and is Pope Benedict a Catholic?
I’m one of those people who would listen to the Beatles playing chess (over and over) and so we play Abbey Road, but the girls don’t know the early stuff, so gee, what an opportunity; almost virgin Beatle fans!
I lead them back through the heady ‘psychedelic era’ and deep into the early Mersey sound, which they especially like, so we keep going and plunge into the crazy worlds of rock and roll and rhythm and blues, and eventually uncover Fats Domino, who’s up there with Miyazaki in my pantheon of high art popular culture gods and ‘do you know how to rock and roll, Felix?’
It seems Yoko has done a bit of dance, so let’s try a few moves. I turn up ‘The Fat Man’ to 11 and we kick off, and by the third run we’ve found the swing, and it’s turned into a party.
And one of the things you don’t have to worry about in Southeast Asia is noise, and we’re making plenty of it. Luckily also, my good left hand’s doing most of the work.
Jerry Lee Lewis is screaming ‘Great balls of fire!’ while Yoko spins out from centre and I pull her back in, and for the world's most boring border town, Aran is a happening burg.
They can probably hear the music over in Cambodia, some six kilometres away, and I do wonder what they’re thinking.
The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now undergoing for five day’s outpatient treatment (with Sister Supachai) at Aranyaprathet Hospital on the Thai-Cambodian border.
Evening, day 3, at Aranyaprathet
While I’ve been off slaying dragons, Yoko and Kayoko, the two Japanese girls at the guest house, have been out scavenging for Japanese food, or the approximate.
They stumble in to the lounge room laden with ingredients, mostly from the 7-11, going by the plastic bags.
"Can I help?" I say, and no, no, Felix-san, you just sit there and make paper aeroplanes with Lek, the young daughter of the Thai owner, which is super-fine by me. I love paper aeroplanes, and Lek’s an enthusiastic test pilot.
We’ve got aeroplanes stuck in holes and crevices all over the room, including one going around on the overhead fan, which is just killing Lek for some reason, and we are busily trying to land another, unsuccessfully, when mum finally calls her into the house for dinner and I’m left to clean up the mess.
We’re not ‘going sushi’ tonight but what we are getting is apparently (almost) authentic ‘southern Japanese rustic style’, whatever that is.
"Have you had southern style Japanese food before, Felix?" asks Yoko. I tell her I’ve got no idea, but I love ‘Japanese food’ and hold up my fingers and make ‘inverted comma’ signs in the air, as you do when you haven’t got a clue.
It seems ‘southern style’ is going to be a whole new experience, and Yoko looks pleased.
Just then Kayoko comes out of the kitchen with a small vase of purple and white Thai orchids and places them in the middle of the low wooden coffee table, right in front of me.
She sits down and turns the vase a couple of times, and adjusts the stems, back and forth, and Yoko comes across and sits down, and as if on cue, they both say "uh!" and lean back in their chairs and look at the flowers.
And they’re simply gorgeous!
I sit and look and for a few precious seconds all movement stops, and the universe is spinning around a small vase of Thai orchids at the centre of our table.
Yoko says: "Beau-tee-ful!" and turns and smiles, and as if on cue again both girls get up and go back to the kitchen, without another word, and I’m left with the flowers, speechless.
What is it about Japanese and flowers?
The same thing, I guess, as Japanese and animation, and I’ve got ‘just the ticket’.
I slip off and get my Ipod and plug it into the stereo speakers, and ask the girls if they’d like some music and yes, that’d be nice, so I hit the button and the opening bars of the ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ theme song come flooding into the room.
Japanese girls really know how to scream, I tell you, and there’s a certain pleasure in being the cause of it.
‘My Neighbour Totoro’ (Tonari no Totoro) was a hugely popular Japanese feature animation made in 1988 by Hiyao Miyazaki, arguably the world’s greatest living animator. (He gets my vote!)
The theme song is a catchy upbeat tune loosely based on, and I shudder to say it, Cliff Richard’s ‘Summer Holiday’. It goes something phonetically like: Ar-doo-ko, ar-doo-ko, wa-deshi-wa-keng-keee… and it’s a groove! I’m so in love with the animation I have the complete soundtrack on the Ipod.
And so we play it through.
Yoko tells me that when she was at school she and her friends would march home along the road in a long line singing the song, and I wish I had of been there. That song’s a winner!
The food hits the palate and it’s salty, and after months of spicy Southeast Asian food my tongue is doing cartwheels, but I’m into it. Kayoko tells me the names of the different dishes, most of which I’ve never seen before, and I nod and repeat the names (and retain nothing) and eat it all up, and just as well there’s no after-dinner quiz, because I’d get zero.
Who’s the happy idiot?
We sip on green tea and chat, and make the obvious ‘John and Yoko’ connection and ‘do you have any Beatles music, Felix?’ and is Pope Benedict a Catholic?
I’m one of those people who would listen to the Beatles playing chess (over and over) and so we play Abbey Road, but the girls don’t know the early stuff, so gee, what an opportunity; almost virgin Beatle fans!
I lead them back through the heady ‘psychedelic era’ and deep into the early Mersey sound, which they especially like, so we keep going and plunge into the crazy worlds of rock and roll and rhythm and blues, and eventually uncover Fats Domino, who’s up there with Miyazaki in my pantheon of high art popular culture gods and ‘do you know how to rock and roll, Felix?’
It seems Yoko has done a bit of dance, so let’s try a few moves. I turn up ‘The Fat Man’ to 11 and we kick off, and by the third run we’ve found the swing, and it’s turned into a party.
And one of the things you don’t have to worry about in Southeast Asia is noise, and we’re making plenty of it. Luckily also, my good left hand’s doing most of the work.
Jerry Lee Lewis is screaming ‘Great balls of fire!’ while Yoko spins out from centre and I pull her back in, and for the world's most boring border town, Aran is a happening burg.
They can probably hear the music over in Cambodia, some six kilometres away, and I do wonder what they’re thinking.
Monday, May 09, 2005
MBA Pt.7: Bikers 1, Zealots 0
My Bung Arm Part 7: At the Hospital in Aran, Day 3.
The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now booked in for five day’s outpatient treatment at Aranyaprathet Hospital on the Thai-Cambodian border.
Day 3 at Aranyaprathet Hospital, Thailand
The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now booked in for five day’s outpatient treatment at Aranyaprathet Hospital on the Thai-Cambodian border.
Day 3 at Aranyaprathet Hospital, Thailand
It’s pretty obvious I’m rather taken with good Sister Supachai.
She’s the same every time I come in; shiny black hair tied back in the same ponytail, same stylish black shoes, same elegant silver watch around her left wrist, same easy smile, same grave eyes - but she’s new.
And her crisp white uniform gives off the same scent of lemons, and combined with the fresh smell of her skin (when she comes close) it’s a heady mix, and she’s taking me places I haven’t been in years.
I draw her smell into my body and it permeates my flesh, and float on it.
Yeah, she’s sexy all right, and I’m not just talking about sex. She reminds me, in some odd way, of a picture of Saint Rita (the patron saint of impossible causes) I once bought in the little Portuguese ‘Rosary Church’ on the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok.
In the picture Saint Rita is kneeling on a stone floor in her brown habit, eyes cast towards the heavens, and a light, like a laser beam, is exploding out of the clouds and hitting her square in the temple, and by golly, that’s sexy (and I’m moved!)
But yes, people have trouble with this human phenomenon from all sides of the overeducated spectrum.
There’s fire down below all right, and it’s a furnace, feeding the great generator of the heart, and it’s rocketing the mind skywards through the clouds all the way to Vega. Seems logical to me.
Still, we musn’t get carried away, as my mother once said to me when I was a boy and I’d come home from Mass and told her I’d seen a fire around the body of the girl in the pew in front of me, ‘just like in the holy pictures, mum!’
"Yes, but we musn't take these things too literally, darling!" said my mother.
“What, you mean the Church is lying to me?" is what I wanted to say, but I think I ate a sandwich instead. Still, when you're strangely moved, you're strangely moved, and I bet it was a good sandwich.
(The girl was in a class below me at school, by the way, and the torch was burning mutually bright from both ends! Woo!)
So yeah, Sr. Supachai is doing more for me than just fixing my arm, and I’m making the most of it.
And whatever madness is going down it’s better than the ‘shock and awe’ promulgated by the Butcher of Sisophon (and his band of Cambodian heretics.)
That kind of religious experience is a once only sling-shot sub-orbital flight, which is fine on the way up, but hitting terra firma without a parachute is a dog with fleas.
In the middle of my revelry, Sr. Supachai looks down and asks if I’m ok - she’s so observant! - and I smile and say buoyantly: “I’m fine! Never felt better!”
She looks a little concerned but goes back to the scraping and bandaging.
Johnny’s still sitting on the same bed in the same opposite corner but they’ve changed his bandages (and his pants) and even he’s smiling today (and, I guess, picking up on the vibes, ‘cos it sure is vibey in here!)
I nod and say ‘Sawatdee!’ and he gives me a shy ‘wai’ which is a vast improvement on yesterday, and the day before.
I figured our relationship had gone up in a ball of flame just after launch (‘a major malfunction’) but lo! “We’ve re-established contact with Johnny, Huston!”
“Roger that, Aran! Crackle! Crackle!”
“Yeah, he’s over on the next bed in a new pair of pants waving as I speak!”
“Roger that, Aran! Crackle! Crackle!”
“Yeah, he’s over on the next bed in a new pair of pants waving as I speak!”
“Roger that, Aran! Crackle! Crackle!”
But such is the embracing influence of good Sr. Supachai on the hearts of men.
(And as long as Johnny doesn’t get too comradely and float over and try to dock with us, things will remain fine. “There’s only room in this capsule for two, Johnny boy, and me and Sr. Supachai makes ‘two’, so that leaves you over there in another orbit, but we’ll wave back when we sail past if you like!”)
Yep, Aranyaprathet General, it’s a hotbed of humanity, and I’m digging it.
It’s so bright outside when I leave the hospital that I have to squint, and I start perspiring as soon as I climb on the bike and roll down the concrete ramp.
I wave to the guard at the gate and he waves back, and I cycle off down the main street past the clock tower and stop at the little coffee stall I found yesterday by the soi opposite the ATM machine.
The woman who runs it speaks pretty OK English, and her name’s Mon and she’s small, sinewy and intense, and the coffee’s only Nescafe but it’s a good spot, and I get to converse, more or less, and eat sweet rice cakes, rather than just sit alone and unplugged.
Mon tells me that tomorrow she’s off to Bangkok for some big Buddhist get-to-together or other, and there seems to be about thirty going from Aran in a big a/c bus, and would I like to come?
Well, no thanks, that’s very kind but I’m in the middle of anti-amputation treatment and besides, I’ve got my own religious experience on-tap right here at the moment and it’s not wise to mix your drinks.
I sip on my Nescafe and chew on a rice cake and Mon pulls out a brochure on the Wat she’s going to and unfolds it on the laminated table. It’s big and shiny and she flops it open so fast I have to quickly pick up my coffee and rice cake and balance them on my knees, which is a little annoying, but I can see she’s determined.
Yeah, I’ve got nothing better to do, so on with the show, I guess.
At the top of the page is a wide-angle colour photo of the main stupa area and it’s gobsmacking. It’s something out of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’.
I lean forward to get a better look and make ‘oo-wee!’ sounds and Mon says: “You like?” and I say: “Yeah, it’s amazing!”
There has to be about five thousand devotees, dressed in white, lined up in rows at the foot of a run of white stone steps leading up to, what looks like, a giant white flying saucer embedded into the top of an immense, square marble hill.
The temple is the classic saucer shape and there’s a small ramp leading up to the centre of the fuselage, and a curved doorway (leading into the inner chamber) from whence presumably Klaatu emerges at the start of Act II.
Mon’s interpreted my ‘amazing’ as ‘good, good and good’ and is talking excitedly and her English is breaking down under the pressure.
I finally work out she’s talking about Matreya the Buddha, and hence, of course, the fervour, and I think she may think she’s looking at the next convert.
Matreya is the name of the returning Buddha, promised to arrive some 500 years after Gautama Buddha’s death, at around the time of Christ. Despite the slight date discrepancy, there is a belief amongst some neo-Buddhist movements around the world that the ‘second coming’ is imminent.
And if Matreya the Buddha does return, albeit 2,000 years late, and pops out of this hyper-tech time capsule it’ll be an event to behold, and you can bet your bottom dollar the blonde haired woman with the dog face from Fox Asia News will be on hand to cover it.
“How did it fe-e-el to be reborn, Mr Matreya?” she says thrusting the mike in his face.
And someone better warn Him to keep it short and snappy. “No long Dhamma discourses, pleeese, your Grace. It’s all sound bites now!”
Fox Asia News Alert:
Matreya the Buddha returns in a UFO!
Announces:
“Lay down all thought surrender to the Noid!”
Announces:
“Lay down all thought surrender to the Noid!”
Which of course is a misprint, but Fox News, being Fox News, doesn’t know the difference and run it on the scrolling news bar at the bottom of the screen for three hours before somebody from Sri Lanka emails in and tells them that ‘Noid’ should probably read ‘Void’, not that it makes any difference to Fox.
“Why you not come, Felix?” Mon asks again, and I can see she’s all fired up with religious zeal, so I figure I better draw a line in the sand here before it gets out of hand.
“No, really, looks great, Mon,” I say, and hold my hands up and pat the air, “but I’m a Christian, so thanks, maybe next time.”
And now she’s miffed! Jesus, that didn’t take much. But what can you do? So I order another coffee and cake, and make a lame attempt to downgrade the conversation: “Gee, it sure is hot today, Mon!”
She doesn’t answer, but folds up the brochure in swift jerky motions, and grunts. (I’d actually like to souvenir it, but it’d be a gross mistake, so I let it go.)
A couple of minutes later she hands me my second coffee and plonks the rice cake on the table – thunk! Am I sensing an emotional shift here?
She sits down opposite me and says nothing, but I can hear the wheels of her mind going ‘whirrr-whirr!’ and it’s tense and I really can’t be fucked with this, so I sip my coffee and go off to the 7-11 in my mind and buy a packet of barbeque flavoured chips.
“Grandparents, alive, Ostalia?” she asks, which brings me back with a jolt. What’s this about?
“No, grandparents dead…” I say, cautiously, and point to the sky and nod sadly (as you must, in Asia, when talking about deceased family.)
“Mother, father, alive?” she asks, which seems like the logical next-step, but I’m now on alert. She’s got the look of a cocker spaniel closing in on a quarry, read: defenceless duck.
“No,” I say, quietly, “Mother dead. Father dead.”
Mon turns quickly back to the coffee stall and starts rifling through the draw under the Nescafe tin and I’m left hanging with my dead family, waiting for the next move.
She turns back and places an orange envelope on the table in front of me, keeping hold of it with both hands, and looks into my eyes. The envelope has a picture of a dhamma wheel embossed on the top right hand corner and the name of the Wat splashed across the top, and it’s obviously official, and important.
And unfortunately for Mon I know what’s coming: it’s ‘dana’ time! ‘Dana’ is Pali for ‘gift’, and if she can’t get me to join the movement, she’ll do the next best thing and extract a few bucks out of me.
And here’s how it works: Mon gets me to give a monetary donation to the temple, which buys me ‘merit’ (a kind of spiritual bank balance), and I can keep the merit or direct it to whomever I please (my parents, for example), and Mon gets ‘merit’ for getting me to ‘make merit’.
It’s very win-win, and, of course, the temple benefits, and from the look of the temple, they’ve got a mountain of debt, but that’s not my problem.
Mon holds the envelope up and stares and tells me that if I put money in here – she opens the envelope and shows me the hole – then I will ‘make merit’ and buy my parents a better rebirth, and she will take the envelope to the temple and deposit it for me.
“You ‘make merit’ for mother, father, in separate envelope!” she adds, which presumably will double my donation depending on how I feel about mum and dad as separate filial units.
And of course, this whole thing is ‘loaded’ – how can you refuse to give money to help your parents find happiness?
(And I do believe she would actually deposit the money at the temple, rather than steal it. She’s too fired up with genuine religious zeal to risk her own hell and damnation.)
Now that the irresistibly good carrot is dangling a short reach from my nose, Mon sits back in her chair, while I’m now supposed to wrestle with my conscience, weighing up the hope and the doubt (and think of a number, and double it.)
Fucken’ hell! I know I’m getting ‘put upon’, and if I was Thai she wouldn’t have pulled this stunt, but such is the fate of the tourist, and how to handle it?
But some folks just can’t leave well enough alone. “You buy them a better rebirth!” she says pointedly, and unnecessarily, when she sees me wavering.
I came here for a coffee and a cake, and a little conversation (and I’m happy to pay), but now this, and I’d love to tell her she’s a zealot and if she doesn’t back off I’ll punch her in the nose, but no, for the sake of international harmony, I’ll be decent.
“No, really, Mon,” I say, as measured as I can, “my parents are Christian and I am Christian. Really, thank you, but, no, not today.”
“Why you not give them better rebirth!” she shoots back with a look of (mock) horror.
And that’s a ‘red card’.
This situation is, of course, one of the perennial problems tourists face in Asia, or anywhere for that matter.
In the face of alien madness and blatant rip-offs, you’re the polite bunny, the koala on the freeway, the Lee Harvey Oswald in the big parade: “I didn’t shoot nobody, I’m just the patsy!” (Yeah, poor old Lee, may he rest in peace.)
And God knows you want to give the (poor) locals the benefit of the doubt, but if this was happening at home any reasonable person would have told her to go and fuck herself, and threatened non-payment (the only power you have.)
And I suppose I could just cough up a few bucks for the sake of peace and a guilty conscience, like some lame-arsed backpacker, or maybe take the middle path and just walk away, like a good Buddhist (or the romantically minded politically correct) but fuck it, I’m a cyclist.
And I do wonder how many poor farang fucks she’s laid this trip on in the past.
As St. Francis says: “Lord, grant me the serenity to endure the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
I stare at the ground for a few moments and wonder which one this one is, but when in doubt, there’s only one way to find out.
I look up gravely and motion her towards me across the table, real close. We’re about eight inches from eyeball to eyeball sex (and it’s kind of exciting) and look steadily into her eyes.
“Mon,” I say, leaning forward and keeping my voice low so she has to concentrate to catch my confession. “I’m a Christian, and when I die I go straight to heaven!”
While I’m saying this I jerk my index finger straight across my neck, and smile, and Mon jumps back in her seat, startled.
“Mother dead! Father dead!” I continue, and repeat the cutting motion across my neck but do it slowly this time, and smile.
Mon’s looking horrified (which is good) so I point sharply at the sky with a very erect index finger, and explode with happy gusto: “But they now in heaven! With God! They not come back!”
Mon’s eyes have grown as round as flying saucers, and she’s sitting bolt upright in her chair as far away from me as it will allow.
“So you see, Mon,” I say, leaning back comfortably in my seat and taking a sip on my coffee, “making merit for me would just be a waste of money!”
And so everything falls to dust, and I pay my forty Baht and smile and say ‘thanks!’ and wait for something, but she says nothing, and so be it.
Farang Bikers 1, Aran Zealots 0.
And will we pray for each other? I suspect not.
As I cycle off I remember that the Japanese girls at the guest house said they’d be cooking Japanese food tonight, and I’m suddenly famished and could kill for sushi.
Yeah, it’s been another big day in the world’s most boring border town, and food seems like a great idea.
MBA Pt.6: A new man!
My Bung Arm Part 6: At the Hospital in Aran, Day 2.
The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now booked in for five days outpatient treatment at Aranyaprathet Hospital on the Thai-Cambodian border.
Day 2 at Aranyaprathet Hospital, Thailand: A new man!
Sister Supachai is doing more for me than fixing my arm. I sit up on the bed in room 21 while she works away with the long stainless steel spoon scraping out today’s puss, and it hurts like the blazes but I’m resolute under her gaze.
I’m also the cleanest I’ve been in six months; my nails are spotless, my feet are scrubbed, my sandals polished, my pants and shirt washed and aired and I’ve shaved and picked over any stray facial hair that’s popped up in any of the usual odd places above the neck.
I’m a new man!
I’m even smiling, which is awfully disconcerting for Johnny the young Thai boy in the bed opposite with the bandaged head.
After yesterday’s failed stand-up comedy routine he has me solidly pegged as a maniac from beyond the borders of civilisation, and as we all know the only thing worse than a maniac is one that’s smiling.
But so be it. I’m with good Sister Supachai so who cares about popularity? But maybe Johnny’s jealous? I would be, but it’s hard to tell with Thais; after all this time in Southeast Asia I still have trouble reading the emotions, and the Southeast Asians are masters of deception.
Poor old dumb farangs let emotions explode out of the face like volcanoes on Java, or maybe pimples, but the Southeast Asians, no. They’re like the Tonle Sap (the Great Lake) in Cambodia: flat and even on the surface, but in constant motion.
And if you don’t want your little boat to sink you’ll take everything slow and easy, and listen to the currents.
But good Sister Supachai transcends all national barriers and today I’ve taken the hand off the tiller and am floating free. I might even be floating upstream.
The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now booked in for five days outpatient treatment at Aranyaprathet Hospital on the Thai-Cambodian border.
Day 2 at Aranyaprathet Hospital, Thailand: A new man!
Sister Supachai is doing more for me than fixing my arm. I sit up on the bed in room 21 while she works away with the long stainless steel spoon scraping out today’s puss, and it hurts like the blazes but I’m resolute under her gaze.
I’m also the cleanest I’ve been in six months; my nails are spotless, my feet are scrubbed, my sandals polished, my pants and shirt washed and aired and I’ve shaved and picked over any stray facial hair that’s popped up in any of the usual odd places above the neck.
I’m a new man!
I’m even smiling, which is awfully disconcerting for Johnny the young Thai boy in the bed opposite with the bandaged head.
After yesterday’s failed stand-up comedy routine he has me solidly pegged as a maniac from beyond the borders of civilisation, and as we all know the only thing worse than a maniac is one that’s smiling.
But so be it. I’m with good Sister Supachai so who cares about popularity? But maybe Johnny’s jealous? I would be, but it’s hard to tell with Thais; after all this time in Southeast Asia I still have trouble reading the emotions, and the Southeast Asians are masters of deception.
Poor old dumb farangs let emotions explode out of the face like volcanoes on Java, or maybe pimples, but the Southeast Asians, no. They’re like the Tonle Sap (the Great Lake) in Cambodia: flat and even on the surface, but in constant motion.
And if you don’t want your little boat to sink you’ll take everything slow and easy, and listen to the currents.
But good Sister Supachai transcends all national barriers and today I’ve taken the hand off the tiller and am floating free. I might even be floating upstream.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
MBA Pt.5: Zones & forcefields!
The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now leaving Poipet, and Cambodia, on his way to Aranyaprathet to visit the local Thai hospital. His arm is not looking good, and neither is his mind.
Poipet, Cambodia, on the Thai border:
Blessed sleep has eaten the mental terrors of the night, and I wake early for a sunny Cambodian breakfast of dust and eggs in the little wooden stall opposite the guest house.
Everything is bright; the sun, the sky, the road, the table, and I sit upright on a plastic chair, the only guest, and the Cambodian waitress weaves around me in a thin cotton dress and healthy brown legs, and the old woman on the bench in the yellow sarong is peeling vegetables, and the young boy sitting by the door in the shorts and bare chest swings his legs back and forth and I could sit here amongst these bodies until my bike rusts over. Ah, Cambodia, how could I ever doubt you?
Maybe if I get my arm fixed in Thailand I can come back into Cambo and go cycling along the border south out of Poipet? The road runs all the way to the Cardamom Mountains near Koh Kong and Klaus tells me it’s ‘wunderbar’: hard dirt road, forests, Cambodian farmers, not too many land-mines, no tourists and no guest houses. Sounds like heaven!
I sip on my coffee and visualise: the bike, and me, pushing hard on the pedals, and the pedals pushing back, left, right, left, right, and we move in a straight line down the orange road, through the green…
“One step at a time, Feely!” says Mr Pumpy. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Yeah, he’s right, take it one step at a time. Everything is sunny this morning because I’m leaving, and my flat batteries are giving me one last happy surge of Cambodian delight before they conk out completely and I have to lie down and look at the ceiling fan and wonder what it’s all about again.
I hold up my right arm and turn it around, and it really is a mess. Dirty blood-stained bandages, swollen forearm, swollen fingers and a squirt of fear in the belly. It’s bad news, and I wish it would go away.
Ok, stick to the plan: cross the border into Thailand, go to the hospital, spend a few days in Aran (world’s most boring border town), take some time to ‘heal’ (as the Americans say), maybe have a group hug at the hospital for ‘closure’ (another brilliant concept from the world’s most advanced nation) and hold a press conference on the steps of Aranyaprathet General for Fox Asia News.
Poipet, Cambodia, on the Thai border:
Blessed sleep has eaten the mental terrors of the night, and I wake early for a sunny Cambodian breakfast of dust and eggs in the little wooden stall opposite the guest house.
Everything is bright; the sun, the sky, the road, the table, and I sit upright on a plastic chair, the only guest, and the Cambodian waitress weaves around me in a thin cotton dress and healthy brown legs, and the old woman on the bench in the yellow sarong is peeling vegetables, and the young boy sitting by the door in the shorts and bare chest swings his legs back and forth and I could sit here amongst these bodies until my bike rusts over. Ah, Cambodia, how could I ever doubt you?
Maybe if I get my arm fixed in Thailand I can come back into Cambo and go cycling along the border south out of Poipet? The road runs all the way to the Cardamom Mountains near Koh Kong and Klaus tells me it’s ‘wunderbar’: hard dirt road, forests, Cambodian farmers, not too many land-mines, no tourists and no guest houses. Sounds like heaven!
I sip on my coffee and visualise: the bike, and me, pushing hard on the pedals, and the pedals pushing back, left, right, left, right, and we move in a straight line down the orange road, through the green…
“One step at a time, Feely!” says Mr Pumpy. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Yeah, he’s right, take it one step at a time. Everything is sunny this morning because I’m leaving, and my flat batteries are giving me one last happy surge of Cambodian delight before they conk out completely and I have to lie down and look at the ceiling fan and wonder what it’s all about again.
I hold up my right arm and turn it around, and it really is a mess. Dirty blood-stained bandages, swollen forearm, swollen fingers and a squirt of fear in the belly. It’s bad news, and I wish it would go away.
Ok, stick to the plan: cross the border into Thailand, go to the hospital, spend a few days in Aran (world’s most boring border town), take some time to ‘heal’ (as the Americans say), maybe have a group hug at the hospital for ‘closure’ (another brilliant concept from the world’s most advanced nation) and hold a press conference on the steps of Aranyaprathet General for Fox Asia News.
Fox News Alert:
Thai doctors save arm of world famous cyclist!
“How did you fe-e-el, Mr Felix, when they were scraping the puss out of your arm?” asks the Fox reporter with the blonde hair and the worried expression of a barking dog. (Imagine being married to that, Christ!)
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself!’ I say, and in the space of two coffees I’ve gone from ‘Oh, Happy Day!’ to anger management issues but that’s flat batteries for you.
I cross the border and leave Poipet, sadly, and enter Thailand, and ride straight past the duty-free market and turn onto the highway. I’m not looking forward to this at all. Aranyaprathet, and the hospital, and another lonely hotel, but I can’t go home until I’ve found what I’m looking for, and I won’t know what I’m looking for until I’ve found it, and anyway ‘home’; it’s not even on the radar screen anymore. I’m in Hansel and Gretel territory.
I cycle a few kilometres up the highway away from the border and cut left along one of the laneways that leads into the back end of town and stop outside a small grocery store. I’m preparing for a heavy dose of invalidism and figure I’ll stock up on junk food.
I lean the bike against a tree and mount the steps and stop short in front of a young Thai girl standing on the veranda with her hands tied to one of the posts. What’s this all about? She looks about sixteen, and is awfully embarrassed at my approach and blinks at me like a rabbit. I’m so surprised I automatically say ‘Sawatdee krap!’ (Hello!) in a bright and cheery tone and it comes out as ‘Howdee doodee!’ and she goes red and tears well up in her eyes. Christ! What to do? Keep walking into the store.
I buy some chips and a couple of Cokes and on my way out the door the mother (I guess it’s the mother) is outside on the veranda giving the girl a savage tongue-lashing. Boy, that girl must have crossed a few lines, and I suppose there’s nothing like a dose of public humiliation to curb the wayward teenage heart, but it’s unnerving, and I sure would like to take a picture, maybe shoot some vid.
I stop by the opposite post and pretend to fumble with my plastic bag of fun things and listen in (to the sound of angry Thai.) Mum’s leaning nose to nose, almost spitting in the girls face, and the poor girl is choking back tears – Chuk! Chuk! - and I’d really love to shoot some vid, but I eventually slip past (you can only pretend to fumble for so long) and get on my bike and ride away. On the way up the street I have a nagging half-memory of a similar incident in my own dim distant past, and my mother beside herself with anger.
At the corner of the soi (lane) that runs onto the main street I spot a sign in English saying ‘Rooms for Rent’ and stop to take a look. The Aran Garden Hotel, about a block away, is the main cheapo tourist hotel, but I don’t want to stay there if I can help it. The management’s unfriendly and the building is unhappy, so I’m willing to look at alternatives, especially as I’ll be staying for a few days.
I go in and get shown into a spotless room by a friendly Thai woman in a white blouse. It’s quiet and clean, and maybe a little too clean, but there’s a TV and fridge and it’s cheap, so I decide to risk it. You never know with small intimate guest houses, but the woman looks relaxed enough, and honest, and I don’t want to be completely alone, so ok, let’s roll!
I plonk my dusty panniers on the floor and take a shower, and lie on the bed and turn on Fox Asia News. I need to psych myself up for the hospital, and a bag of Ley’s potato chips and the dog-faced woman with the blonde hair should do it.
An hour later at Aranyaprathet Hospital I fill out a bunch of forms and get given a piece of green paper and am directed to an adjacent room and told to sit and wait. There’s a long row of numbered plastic seats along the wall and one young Thai guy sitting alone on the first chair by the door. I sit down a couple of seats along but the orderly points sternly at seat No. 2 beside the Thai guy, so I shift up a couple. The boy and I rub legs and smile nervously at each other, and sit patiently together in the bare room like two gay guys about to get a test.
Ten minutes later I’m ushered into the doctor’s surgery. He’s a squat, middle aged Thai, with glasses, and barely looks up as I sit down opposite him – which is standard MD behaviour throughout the known universe - and I hold up my arm up and smile.
“What is problem?” he asks.
“I think I got bitten by a spider or something in Cambodia and it’s gotten swollen and infected,” I say.
“How long ago?” he asks. (This is an excellent question, and my faith in the Thai medical system is rocketing upwards by the second.)
“About a week or so,” I say. “Then I went to a Cambodian doctor in Sisophon and he cut it open and squeezed out the puss and gave me some anti-inflammatory pills but they don’t seem to be working…”
I trail off because at the mention of ‘Cambodian doctor’ the Thai doctor looks up with such a look of utter disdain on his face that I realise I’ve said the wrong thing and so I start to laugh. “Hey, Cambodian doctors!” I say, and lift my hands in the air and wave them around as if to say ‘what to do, what to do?’
The Thai doctor says nothing but it’s obvious he thinks I’m an idiot, and so what do you do? Why, you do what every spineless, spiritually flaccid middle-class idiot caught in self-serving fear does: you betray those you love and curry favour with those in power.
“Yeah, Cambodia, it’s a mess!” I say, and shake my head sadly. “But it’s so good to be in Thailand!” I continue, which might be laying it on a bit thick, but feeding the ego of those who rule is a timeless and trusted method of getting ahead.
(‘Bearing gifts’ is another, and I wonder whether handing across Angkor Wat would be a fair price to pay for saving my arm. “Hey! No need to transport anything, doc, just move the Thai border 150 kilometres east to Siem Reap and be done with it. Angkor’s wasted on the Cambos anyway! Heh! Heh!”)
He looks up and says: “Show me arm!” so I unwrap it and he has a poke a round, and I wince and moan (just to show I’m a genuine case and worthy of his expert attention), but he takes no notice and writes me an antibiotic script, and tells me to take the paper to room 12 to get the pills, and then go to room 21 to get the arm cleaned.
“You stay five days!” he says. “Come everyday!” and goes back to his paper work. I say thanks and back out of the room and it’s a hollow walk down the long dark corridor to room 12 while I think about Cambodia.
At the metal grill of room 12 there’s a gaggle of Thai women in white uniforms alert at the approach of the wounded farang, and I hand my paper over, and get handed another, and some laughs, and am told to go to room 13 (right next door), and so I do.
There’s another woman behind that grill and I pay a few hundred Baht and get another bit of paper and am directed back to number 12, where I pick up my pills and a few more laughs, and then get directed on to room 21.
I plod down the corridor and walk into room 21 and hand the paper over to the lady at the desk by the door and she directs me to a vacant bed in a corner at the other end of the room.
In the other corner there’s a young Thai boy sitting up in bed with bandages wrapped around his head, and as I turn he sits up straight, alarmed, and his face turns into an empty bowl, and we lock eyes. What’s his problem?
Then it hits me, of course. He thinks I’ve come to look him over. I’m his worst nightmare: a farang doctor!
And I don’t know what it is about fear in other people, but it sometimes brings out the devil in you, and I start walking towards him in an unblinking bee-line and the blood drains from his face and his mouth falls open, and then luckily – because this is meant to be funny (or something), but it’s rolling over into terror - the Thai woman at the desk calls out something in Thai, which means: “Hey, Mr Farang, the other bed you idiot!” so I retreat and climb up on my own defenceless bed opposite, and sit there.
I wish I knew the Thai for: “Hey, Johnny, had you goin’ for a while there, sport!” but of course I don’t, so I just smile at him and nod and point at my arm, and fuck it, what can you do? Johnny relaxes a notch, but he’s still wary and won’t relax completely until I’m out of the building and standing on the steps talking to the other white idiots from Fox News.
Sister Supachai is probably about forty, maybe forty-five but there’s something timeless about her. If she told me she was three hundred I’d believe her, and in fact, I’d believe anything Sr. Supachai told me. Her uniform is starched white and crisp and smells like lemons, and her shoulder length black hair is drawn back in a pony tale, and she’s elegant and good looking, but it’s what she’s giving off that’s mesmerising.
She stands by the bed inspecting the wound, and I’m immediately disarmed. There’s an air of quiet, professional capability about her, and a deep current of, what is it? Compassion? No, no need to grovel and denounce your loved ones around good Sr. Supachai; she rules with love, and demands trust and honour, and I give it willingly. I’m at my best, and a piece of putty.
She says a few things in Thai, which I only half catch, and then pulls out a thin stainless steel rod with a tiny spoon at the end. It’s similar to the colourful plastic spoons that they put in fancy drinks when you’re hanging out with Mick Jagger on Montserrat but this one’s for scraping out the puss. And so she proceeds.
Oh, Jesus, the pain, the pain! I’ve got tears rolling down my cheeks but I keep glancing at her face, and those dark, steady eyes, and remain quiet and composed. And I have to hand it her; whatever she’s throwing out from deep in that soul of hers is cutting straight through me, and out of respect, and my own sense of pride, I will not flinch.
When it’s done she carefully wraps the arm in clean white bandages, gives it a little pat, and says: “You came back tomorrow, same time!” I assure her I’ll be here (I’d stop off on the moon if that’s what she wanted), and make my way out.
It’s bright and sunny outside, and I cycle down the main street looking for a juice. I don’t know whether it’s my arm, or good Sr. Supachai, but I’m feeling heady, like a weaving, spinning top, and I need to rebalance.
I spot a juice stand and dismount and walk up and make my order and there’s a couple of farang girls at a table on my left so I smile and say ‘Hi! How ya’ doin’?’ and they look up and glare and I get hit with a sudden wave of electric fuck-off! Hoo-wee! It’s like a blast of cold air to the chest, and I’m momentarily breathless. Christ, where to run? But there’s only two tables, and I’m not doing takeaways, so we’re going to be sitting next to each other, like it or not.
I point to the table and tell the Thai lady I’ll be back in a jiff, and dart across the street and buy a Bangkok Post, and come back and sit down as far away from the farangettes as the table and chair will allow, and do what every man does when he needs solace; I read the paper. And it’s amazing how interesting the latest bombing in Fallujah can be.
It’s going on 4 PM and I walk in the door of the guest house and there’s two Japanese girls in the lounge area playing cards, and I say ‘Hi!’ and smile and they say ‘Hi!’ and smile – and thank God for that. They’re a couple of Thai language students from Osaka doing a three month placement in Aran, and they’ve been here for two months and I’m the interloper, and male, so I nod and bow, tread softly on the floorboards.
On my way through the daughter of the Thai owner, who’s about ten, comes out from the hallway and stands against the wall and stares at me like I’m a movie about to start. She’s as cute as a button and shiny as a star, so I turn towards her, pull myself up to full height and make an extremely formal ‘Wai’ and bow and say in Thai: ‘Hello, my name’s Felix, what’s yours?’ She does a half laugh-giggle and says ‘Lek!’ so I bow even lower and say even more formally: ‘Lek! That is a very beautiful name and you are a very beautiful girl!’ and that breaks her up, and she does a little dance on the spot, and the Japanese girls laugh, and the big hairy male farang with the bandaged arm has passed the first test it seems.
Christ, what a day! The water in the shower is poring over my head and down my back, and it’s cold and wet and cutting through my skin, and I take a few short breaths. My limbs feel like lead, and I need sleep. I lie on the soft pillow and clean white sheets and I can hear the Japanese girls talking in the next room, and Lek laughing every now and then, and I rest for the first time in weeks.
Friday, February 18, 2005
My Bung Arm, Pt.4: In Poipet!
Poipet, West Cambodia
Klaus parks the truck beside the new Immigration Office, and switches off the motor, which goes clunk-de-clunk! Shudder. Oops!
I can't wait to get out of the truck. Driving is fun - after cycling it's almost wicked! - but give me the wind rushiing down my neck, and my legs occupied in the simple, sweaty activity of cycling.
Ah, cycling! I might be having a crisis of identity, but I can't blame it on the bike.
It's just after 8 PM and we've driven in from Sisophon.
We're going to get some free coffee at the casino, and kick back for a little while. Klaus wants some duty fee chocolate, and I'm heading across the border in to Thailand in the morning to go to the hospital, but right now, let's enjoy the sights.
We hoof it across the street, and walk in to the casino, past the guards, who barely look up, and take a couple of quick turns through the gaming areas.
I'm lost already, but Klaus's been here before and knows the way. "I found out about the free coffee a couple of years back," says Klaus, "and I've been to coming here ever since."
We get to the stall marked: Free Coffee and Tea, and I can see it's only Nescafe and powdered milk, but I'm still impressed.
Free is good.
Free is the promise of a beautiful, slim Eurasian woman with flowing, shiney black hair, wearing a white leotard and lying easily, and yet knowingly, on a cream couch next to a rubber plant. (Which is why they put that picture on the cover of healthy lifestyle magazines, by the way.)
At the coffee stall there's two very cute Khmer girls in tight red dresses. Bonus! They smile when we approach, and start giggling.
We order, and I don't know why, but the coffee seems to be taking an inordinately long time to put together. We stand there, waiting, and I must admit, I feel kinda cheap. Time to reflect can be a dampener sometimes.
The girls get distracted by a shout from across the hall, a disconcerting sound: the sound of pain? Loss? What? Who knows, but I'm losing patience. Come on, for chrissake girls, get it together! I want my coffee.
Eventually they hand 'em over. More giggling as I load two sugar satchels in to mine, and give it a stir. What's the joke?
I look at Klaus for a lead, but he's off dumping his spoon, and peering intently in to the green plastic bin. What's in the bin? Who cares, just give me my coffee.
We clutch our free drinks in the equally free plastic cups, say thanks, and walk off.
We do a loop around the gaming tables, looking at all the money, and go back for a refill. Same routine, same giggles, same laughs at the two sugar satchels. No, no idea.
But this whole thing is mind-bending: outside there are folks wandering about in rags, and here, inside the casino, there are folks, mainly Chinese-Thais it seems, rolling through the dollar bills, spending it like there's no tomorrow.
Klaus and I settle ourselves in an alcove by one of the fish tanks near the roulette table, and sip our coffees and watch. It's fascinating, kind of.
There's about twenty people at the table, all of them sitting hunched over, in groups of two or three, eyes fixed on the little ball darting around the wheel, making pleasant little clicking noises as it jumps daintily from lucky number to lucky number.
They nervously stack and restack the coloured chips, rolling them sensuously around their fingers, caressing them, fondling them, making more pleasant clicking noises.
Click-click-clickity-click! You can hear it throughout the hall. It's the sound of utter, bone-crushing boredom, and oh, how I wish I was rich, and maybe a bit cleaner.
I take a sip of my coffee and notice my fingernails are dirty. My right arm, which is swollen and bandaged, and has blood stains running from the elbow half way down to the wrist, and looks like leprosy. Or maybe the plague.
Still, that's one of the great things about being a Westerner in Asia. You can go anywhere and do pretty much anything, no matter what you look like. Every whitey in Asia is a somebody, even if you're a nobody.
Which is fine, as long as you don't start believing it, like Sid did. (Well, OK, he wasn't in Asia, but the world of pop music must have similarities.)
On the way out Klaus stops at the Ye Old Duty Free Shoppe and buys a dozen blocks of German chocolate.
There's an extremely beautiful Cambodian girl at the cash register, in a super-tight back skirt and breast-hugging white cotton top. She makes the coffee girls look like "5"s.
She's so clean, and utterly gorgeous, I actually miss a breath. I feel goofy all of a sudden, and lose control of my limbs, akimbo. I stand behind Klaus while he makes his purchase, peering over his shoulder to get a better look.
I know I shouldn't; it only hurts more, but such is the nature of desire.
She's friendly, and smiles while Klaus is fumbling with his money and I wonder whether she knows the effect she's having on us. At least I assume Klaus is affected, but being Klaus, he's not showing many ripples.
We walk out of the casino, and I'm glad to be gone.
Out on the street Klaus is clutching his bright yellow Ye Olde Duty Free Shoppe plastic bag, and is looking pleased with his purchase.
Chocolate, it's a wicked thing. And twelve blocks of it! At 4,000 Riel a pop, a dollar each, this represents about a fortnight's wages for the girl at the cash register.
No, the Americans have got it wrong, again: we aint all born equal.
Across from the casino is a small outside eatery, and we dart across and park ourselves at one of the tables. We order a couple of beers and some spicy beef on rice, and hoe in. It's a warm night, and the beer is cold and wet, and a welcome relief.
Around us are a few families, kids and all, middle class, well off, Chinese, but from where? Hard to tell, but they're coming alright, the Chinese. It's the big racial buzz in Asia, along with mobile phones.
Beside the fish tank is a table of very rich Thai men, elderly, and their rather young and exclusive female companions. The men are knocking back the Johhny Walker and laughing loudly, patting each other on the back every now and then, while the girls sit demurely, legs together, filling up the mens' glasses and looking attentive.
Oh, how I wish I was rich and had never read a book.
There's an Indonesian band on the small stage beside the bar playing the usual Santana standards (Wouldn't you know?) but nobody's listening, despite the rather snappy rendition of Black Magic Woman.
Klaus and I agree that they're a good band and turn to face them, smiling, nodding, letting them know we're listening. They nod back and start to play to us. It's nice, cool even.
A couple of minutes later there's a scream of feedback out of one of the speakers, and the song limps to a stop while the band members hustle about the equipment, pulling out a couple of plugs and looking perturbed.
The singer says something unintelligable in to the microphone - what langauge is he speaking? - and they down instruments and move across to the bar in a tight cluster and sit down. So much for that.
Silence reigns, and it's even better.
And then it's time to leave. Klaus's gotta get back to Sisophon and the family, and I've gotta check in to a guest house and get some sleep. I cross over in to Thailand tomorrow to get my arm seen to, so I need to be my chirpy best. You never know what trials lay ahead.
We pay our bill and head back to the truck. I pull the bike out of the back, get my panniers in order, and after a brief handshake, and a quick goodbye, Klaus climbs in to the front seat and hurtles off down the road. I stand there and wave.
Boy, what a gentleman. "Best of luck, mate!" I call out.
Poipet. I stand on the side of the road, alone, and for the first time really breathe it in. It's going on 10 o'clock, and the place is still nervy, frantic.
Across the street is a guest house, non-descript, but as good as any. I wheel the bike across, dodging a couple of motorbikes, and go in. Five bucks a night, with fan, TV and inside bathroom.
Sounds good, looks OK, let's do it.
I lock the bike up to the fish tank in the foyer, drag my panniers up the stairs and walk along the thin corridor.
The hotel's all concrete, and nothing esle, and smells of new white paint. It's part of the boom-town thing that's going on here, despite the bad road.
Outside one of the rooms, by the door, I see a massive bundle of shoes and sandals. I stop and count eighteen pairs. Eighteen! I re-count, amazed. How many Cambodians can you fit in a hotel room, for chrissake? And how do they work out who watches what on the teev? Amazing!
My pad is across the hallway and when I slip the key in to the lock and open the door, I stop. I don't wanna go in.
The room is white and cavenous, and empty. A man could get lost in there. Thoughts will bounce off walls and come back at you. Danger, Will Robinson!
Just then I hear a couple of kids laughing and squealing, obviously enjoying themselves, the voices coming from the Cambodian encampment across the way.
Maybe I could borrow a couple of Cambo kids for the evening? Ease the over-population, spread some good will. Win-win!
We could all get in to our jim-jams, snuggle up on the couch, pop open the very large tub of Strawberry and Honeynut Twirl ice-cream, and watch Finding Nemo on the vid.
Sounds like fun!
But no, I'd get arrested. Man found in Cambodian hotel room with children! Claims they were watching videos! Wouldn't sound too good. You've only gotta slip the word Cambodia in to the headline, and you're a dead-man.
Even my friends wouldn't believe me.
I unpack my panniers, take a quick shower, turn on the teev and lay down on the bed. I flick through the channels, and find HBO, but I can tell immediately it's a bad movie, so I roll my bandaged arm over my eyes, sink back in to the pillow and breathe out. Christ!
Antibiotics. An-tee-biotics. An-tee-bye-ot-iks. I roll the word over in my mind a few times, and it seems comforting, almost magical. An-tee-bye-ot-iks. The power of the Word. I might be losing it.
I wish I had a woman. One I could talk to. How about a game of Diplomacy? I wonder what Mick Jagger's doing right now? I bet he's not short on scintillating company.
I go back to the film. The lead actor has one of those really bad boofed-up 70s style hair-dos that never moves, and an insincere laugh, or is just bad acting?
"I cannot watch this crap!" I say out-loud, and spring up off the bed. I stand there for an instant and shake my head.
I gotta do something.
How about a ride around town? Maybe I can wear myself out, and anyway, I don't know if I'm coming back to dear old Cambo for a while (but I'm having trouble letting go, I admit, which may be part of the problem), so a goodbye tour around Poipet may be a good move.
Anything's a good move when you're at rock bottom, but I have a sneaking feeling I'm a rat in a maze, and every turn will lead to a sharp, electric shock. Who's doing this to me? Who's pulling the strings? Who's the arsehole?
I go downstairs, unlock the bike and let myself out past the sleeping night-guard.
Despite the fact that I accidently run in to the plate glass window on the side wall and it makes a god-awful ba-ung-ung noise that reverberates around the foyer, he doesn't move.
I cycle off down the main drag back towards Sisophon and take a left towards the market.
I figure there'll be a few night cafes open and the ubiquitous massage parlours are dotted around the area, buried amongst the shacks and stalls, and they're always good for some action.
I need something distracting, I need to lose myself so that sleep can sneak up on me, shy and furtive thing she is.
Last time I was here there was a dozen or so massage parlours; small affairs, wedged in together in ones and twos, unobtrusive. But as I cycle along the street I see that's it's now all lit up, gone festive, and there are parlours and girls all the way down on each side of the road for fifty metres, and more down the side lanes. Business must be good.
I cycle further along, actually looking for the nice cafe with the nice, kind lady that I stopped in once before, a couple of years ago. Some kindness would be good.
I spot it, but wouldn't you know, it's now a parlour and as I slow down I get accosted by a couple of girls who spill out on to the street, calling "You! You!" and grabbing at the bike.
For a moment I'm pedalling hard, legs going around, but the bike is standing still, with the back wheel spinning in the dirt. It must look ridiculous, and the girls and punters standing around on both sides of the street break in to an uproar.
It looks like I'm the entertainment for the night. The tourist becomes the attraction.
I dismount, and the girls are quick to surround me; full embraces, arms around my waist and chest, rouged mouths oozing over my shoulders, breath flowing warmly, freely in to my ear. And this has a lightening effect on me. I feel my body respond, go red. Jesus, I must really be lonely.
The working girls in Cambodia are usually very sweet, under the seductive swagger and shitty job description, but these two have got the Devil in them, and won't let go. They can smell the shift.
I stand stiffly, upright, and explain as politely as I can that I am looking for a particular cafe that I know, blah, blah, and it sounds lame, and stupid.
"Seriously, girls!" I switch to English, and take a deep breath, hoping that the drop in octave will save me. "It's not what I want!" I say, and I as I say it I feel the corners of my mouth go down, and for an instant I want to cry.
Boy, this really is getting a little much.
I prise myself loose, firmer now, but I can feel the emotion stirring around inside of me, about to come up. Oh, dear. "I come back later, I come back later!" I say, (Yeah, right...), lower my head, clench my jaw, and forcefully push the bike off down the road.
The crowd's still laughing and shouting. And who can blame them? They're monkeys, I'm a monkey, we're all monkeys. I hoist myself up on the seat and turn the peddles over, and make some distance.
You gotta know when to call uncle sometimes, but of course, I don't.
I find a cafe a bit further along the road that doesn't have blinking lights, so I stop, lean the bike against the wall, lock it and go in.
I figure a coffee might still help, and despite the fact that even the most positive of thinkers couldn't pretend that this is fun, I hang on. I'm more terrified of the hotel room than anything else.
I sit down on a plastic chair, sodden, and sad. I shouldn't have got off the bike, I know, but here I am. It's too hard to move. I make my order.
I drink milky coffee and eat a sickly sweet bun of some description, but I'm tasting nothing.
It's hot and stuffy in here, and I'm overly conscious of myself, the lone barung with the hang-dog face sitting under the too bright flourescent light on the white plastic chair with his elbows resting on the grubby laminated table.
My jaw is going up and down in slow motion, my teeth are grinding the pastry, and small lumps of whatever it is, mixed with saliva, are getting stuck in my throat. I think it's is the sadness coming up in the other direction that's causing the bottle-neck.
I really gotta go.
And when all else fails, there's pure Will.
I sometimes think that this is the missing line out of the Sermon on the Mount.
Blessed are the cheesemakers and all that, but sometimes, against all odds, you just gotta Will yourself through. I do wish Jesus had of said that. I'd feel better about myself.
I take a breath, stand up, pay the bill, say thank you, walk out, unlock the bike, and wheel it out in to the centre of the road.
My bike. My beloved bike. It still moves me whenever I look at it.
I climb on and feel the weight of the seat pressing up in to my body, and as I push forward on the pedal with the right foot, the pedal pushes back.
I roll forward, and for that most fleeting of moments, I'm not in control.
Klaus parks the truck beside the new Immigration Office, and switches off the motor, which goes clunk-de-clunk! Shudder. Oops!
I can't wait to get out of the truck. Driving is fun - after cycling it's almost wicked! - but give me the wind rushiing down my neck, and my legs occupied in the simple, sweaty activity of cycling.
Ah, cycling! I might be having a crisis of identity, but I can't blame it on the bike.
It's just after 8 PM and we've driven in from Sisophon.
We're going to get some free coffee at the casino, and kick back for a little while. Klaus wants some duty fee chocolate, and I'm heading across the border in to Thailand in the morning to go to the hospital, but right now, let's enjoy the sights.
We hoof it across the street, and walk in to the casino, past the guards, who barely look up, and take a couple of quick turns through the gaming areas.
I'm lost already, but Klaus's been here before and knows the way. "I found out about the free coffee a couple of years back," says Klaus, "and I've been to coming here ever since."
We get to the stall marked: Free Coffee and Tea, and I can see it's only Nescafe and powdered milk, but I'm still impressed.
Free is good.
Free is the promise of a beautiful, slim Eurasian woman with flowing, shiney black hair, wearing a white leotard and lying easily, and yet knowingly, on a cream couch next to a rubber plant. (Which is why they put that picture on the cover of healthy lifestyle magazines, by the way.)
At the coffee stall there's two very cute Khmer girls in tight red dresses. Bonus! They smile when we approach, and start giggling.
We order, and I don't know why, but the coffee seems to be taking an inordinately long time to put together. We stand there, waiting, and I must admit, I feel kinda cheap. Time to reflect can be a dampener sometimes.
The girls get distracted by a shout from across the hall, a disconcerting sound: the sound of pain? Loss? What? Who knows, but I'm losing patience. Come on, for chrissake girls, get it together! I want my coffee.
Eventually they hand 'em over. More giggling as I load two sugar satchels in to mine, and give it a stir. What's the joke?
I look at Klaus for a lead, but he's off dumping his spoon, and peering intently in to the green plastic bin. What's in the bin? Who cares, just give me my coffee.
We clutch our free drinks in the equally free plastic cups, say thanks, and walk off.
We do a loop around the gaming tables, looking at all the money, and go back for a refill. Same routine, same giggles, same laughs at the two sugar satchels. No, no idea.
But this whole thing is mind-bending: outside there are folks wandering about in rags, and here, inside the casino, there are folks, mainly Chinese-Thais it seems, rolling through the dollar bills, spending it like there's no tomorrow.
Klaus and I settle ourselves in an alcove by one of the fish tanks near the roulette table, and sip our coffees and watch. It's fascinating, kind of.
There's about twenty people at the table, all of them sitting hunched over, in groups of two or three, eyes fixed on the little ball darting around the wheel, making pleasant little clicking noises as it jumps daintily from lucky number to lucky number.
They nervously stack and restack the coloured chips, rolling them sensuously around their fingers, caressing them, fondling them, making more pleasant clicking noises.
Click-click-clickity-click! You can hear it throughout the hall. It's the sound of utter, bone-crushing boredom, and oh, how I wish I was rich, and maybe a bit cleaner.
I take a sip of my coffee and notice my fingernails are dirty. My right arm, which is swollen and bandaged, and has blood stains running from the elbow half way down to the wrist, and looks like leprosy. Or maybe the plague.
Still, that's one of the great things about being a Westerner in Asia. You can go anywhere and do pretty much anything, no matter what you look like. Every whitey in Asia is a somebody, even if you're a nobody.
Which is fine, as long as you don't start believing it, like Sid did. (Well, OK, he wasn't in Asia, but the world of pop music must have similarities.)
On the way out Klaus stops at the Ye Old Duty Free Shoppe and buys a dozen blocks of German chocolate.
There's an extremely beautiful Cambodian girl at the cash register, in a super-tight back skirt and breast-hugging white cotton top. She makes the coffee girls look like "5"s.
She's so clean, and utterly gorgeous, I actually miss a breath. I feel goofy all of a sudden, and lose control of my limbs, akimbo. I stand behind Klaus while he makes his purchase, peering over his shoulder to get a better look.
I know I shouldn't; it only hurts more, but such is the nature of desire.
She's friendly, and smiles while Klaus is fumbling with his money and I wonder whether she knows the effect she's having on us. At least I assume Klaus is affected, but being Klaus, he's not showing many ripples.
We walk out of the casino, and I'm glad to be gone.
Out on the street Klaus is clutching his bright yellow Ye Olde Duty Free Shoppe plastic bag, and is looking pleased with his purchase.
Chocolate, it's a wicked thing. And twelve blocks of it! At 4,000 Riel a pop, a dollar each, this represents about a fortnight's wages for the girl at the cash register.
No, the Americans have got it wrong, again: we aint all born equal.
Across from the casino is a small outside eatery, and we dart across and park ourselves at one of the tables. We order a couple of beers and some spicy beef on rice, and hoe in. It's a warm night, and the beer is cold and wet, and a welcome relief.
Around us are a few families, kids and all, middle class, well off, Chinese, but from where? Hard to tell, but they're coming alright, the Chinese. It's the big racial buzz in Asia, along with mobile phones.
Beside the fish tank is a table of very rich Thai men, elderly, and their rather young and exclusive female companions. The men are knocking back the Johhny Walker and laughing loudly, patting each other on the back every now and then, while the girls sit demurely, legs together, filling up the mens' glasses and looking attentive.
Oh, how I wish I was rich and had never read a book.
There's an Indonesian band on the small stage beside the bar playing the usual Santana standards (Wouldn't you know?) but nobody's listening, despite the rather snappy rendition of Black Magic Woman.
Klaus and I agree that they're a good band and turn to face them, smiling, nodding, letting them know we're listening. They nod back and start to play to us. It's nice, cool even.
A couple of minutes later there's a scream of feedback out of one of the speakers, and the song limps to a stop while the band members hustle about the equipment, pulling out a couple of plugs and looking perturbed.
The singer says something unintelligable in to the microphone - what langauge is he speaking? - and they down instruments and move across to the bar in a tight cluster and sit down. So much for that.
Silence reigns, and it's even better.
And then it's time to leave. Klaus's gotta get back to Sisophon and the family, and I've gotta check in to a guest house and get some sleep. I cross over in to Thailand tomorrow to get my arm seen to, so I need to be my chirpy best. You never know what trials lay ahead.
We pay our bill and head back to the truck. I pull the bike out of the back, get my panniers in order, and after a brief handshake, and a quick goodbye, Klaus climbs in to the front seat and hurtles off down the road. I stand there and wave.
Boy, what a gentleman. "Best of luck, mate!" I call out.
Poipet. I stand on the side of the road, alone, and for the first time really breathe it in. It's going on 10 o'clock, and the place is still nervy, frantic.
Across the street is a guest house, non-descript, but as good as any. I wheel the bike across, dodging a couple of motorbikes, and go in. Five bucks a night, with fan, TV and inside bathroom.
Sounds good, looks OK, let's do it.
I lock the bike up to the fish tank in the foyer, drag my panniers up the stairs and walk along the thin corridor.
The hotel's all concrete, and nothing esle, and smells of new white paint. It's part of the boom-town thing that's going on here, despite the bad road.
Outside one of the rooms, by the door, I see a massive bundle of shoes and sandals. I stop and count eighteen pairs. Eighteen! I re-count, amazed. How many Cambodians can you fit in a hotel room, for chrissake? And how do they work out who watches what on the teev? Amazing!
My pad is across the hallway and when I slip the key in to the lock and open the door, I stop. I don't wanna go in.
The room is white and cavenous, and empty. A man could get lost in there. Thoughts will bounce off walls and come back at you. Danger, Will Robinson!
Just then I hear a couple of kids laughing and squealing, obviously enjoying themselves, the voices coming from the Cambodian encampment across the way.
Maybe I could borrow a couple of Cambo kids for the evening? Ease the over-population, spread some good will. Win-win!
We could all get in to our jim-jams, snuggle up on the couch, pop open the very large tub of Strawberry and Honeynut Twirl ice-cream, and watch Finding Nemo on the vid.
Sounds like fun!
But no, I'd get arrested. Man found in Cambodian hotel room with children! Claims they were watching videos! Wouldn't sound too good. You've only gotta slip the word Cambodia in to the headline, and you're a dead-man.
Even my friends wouldn't believe me.
I unpack my panniers, take a quick shower, turn on the teev and lay down on the bed. I flick through the channels, and find HBO, but I can tell immediately it's a bad movie, so I roll my bandaged arm over my eyes, sink back in to the pillow and breathe out. Christ!
Antibiotics. An-tee-biotics. An-tee-bye-ot-iks. I roll the word over in my mind a few times, and it seems comforting, almost magical. An-tee-bye-ot-iks. The power of the Word. I might be losing it.
I wish I had a woman. One I could talk to. How about a game of Diplomacy? I wonder what Mick Jagger's doing right now? I bet he's not short on scintillating company.
I go back to the film. The lead actor has one of those really bad boofed-up 70s style hair-dos that never moves, and an insincere laugh, or is just bad acting?
"I cannot watch this crap!" I say out-loud, and spring up off the bed. I stand there for an instant and shake my head.
I gotta do something.
How about a ride around town? Maybe I can wear myself out, and anyway, I don't know if I'm coming back to dear old Cambo for a while (but I'm having trouble letting go, I admit, which may be part of the problem), so a goodbye tour around Poipet may be a good move.
Anything's a good move when you're at rock bottom, but I have a sneaking feeling I'm a rat in a maze, and every turn will lead to a sharp, electric shock. Who's doing this to me? Who's pulling the strings? Who's the arsehole?
I go downstairs, unlock the bike and let myself out past the sleeping night-guard.
Despite the fact that I accidently run in to the plate glass window on the side wall and it makes a god-awful ba-ung-ung noise that reverberates around the foyer, he doesn't move.
I cycle off down the main drag back towards Sisophon and take a left towards the market.
I figure there'll be a few night cafes open and the ubiquitous massage parlours are dotted around the area, buried amongst the shacks and stalls, and they're always good for some action.
I need something distracting, I need to lose myself so that sleep can sneak up on me, shy and furtive thing she is.
Last time I was here there was a dozen or so massage parlours; small affairs, wedged in together in ones and twos, unobtrusive. But as I cycle along the street I see that's it's now all lit up, gone festive, and there are parlours and girls all the way down on each side of the road for fifty metres, and more down the side lanes. Business must be good.
I cycle further along, actually looking for the nice cafe with the nice, kind lady that I stopped in once before, a couple of years ago. Some kindness would be good.
I spot it, but wouldn't you know, it's now a parlour and as I slow down I get accosted by a couple of girls who spill out on to the street, calling "You! You!" and grabbing at the bike.
For a moment I'm pedalling hard, legs going around, but the bike is standing still, with the back wheel spinning in the dirt. It must look ridiculous, and the girls and punters standing around on both sides of the street break in to an uproar.
It looks like I'm the entertainment for the night. The tourist becomes the attraction.
I dismount, and the girls are quick to surround me; full embraces, arms around my waist and chest, rouged mouths oozing over my shoulders, breath flowing warmly, freely in to my ear. And this has a lightening effect on me. I feel my body respond, go red. Jesus, I must really be lonely.
The working girls in Cambodia are usually very sweet, under the seductive swagger and shitty job description, but these two have got the Devil in them, and won't let go. They can smell the shift.
I stand stiffly, upright, and explain as politely as I can that I am looking for a particular cafe that I know, blah, blah, and it sounds lame, and stupid.
"Seriously, girls!" I switch to English, and take a deep breath, hoping that the drop in octave will save me. "It's not what I want!" I say, and I as I say it I feel the corners of my mouth go down, and for an instant I want to cry.
Boy, this really is getting a little much.
I prise myself loose, firmer now, but I can feel the emotion stirring around inside of me, about to come up. Oh, dear. "I come back later, I come back later!" I say, (Yeah, right...), lower my head, clench my jaw, and forcefully push the bike off down the road.
The crowd's still laughing and shouting. And who can blame them? They're monkeys, I'm a monkey, we're all monkeys. I hoist myself up on the seat and turn the peddles over, and make some distance.
You gotta know when to call uncle sometimes, but of course, I don't.
I find a cafe a bit further along the road that doesn't have blinking lights, so I stop, lean the bike against the wall, lock it and go in.
I figure a coffee might still help, and despite the fact that even the most positive of thinkers couldn't pretend that this is fun, I hang on. I'm more terrified of the hotel room than anything else.
I sit down on a plastic chair, sodden, and sad. I shouldn't have got off the bike, I know, but here I am. It's too hard to move. I make my order.
I drink milky coffee and eat a sickly sweet bun of some description, but I'm tasting nothing.
It's hot and stuffy in here, and I'm overly conscious of myself, the lone barung with the hang-dog face sitting under the too bright flourescent light on the white plastic chair with his elbows resting on the grubby laminated table.
My jaw is going up and down in slow motion, my teeth are grinding the pastry, and small lumps of whatever it is, mixed with saliva, are getting stuck in my throat. I think it's is the sadness coming up in the other direction that's causing the bottle-neck.
I really gotta go.
And when all else fails, there's pure Will.
I sometimes think that this is the missing line out of the Sermon on the Mount.
Blessed are the cheesemakers and all that, but sometimes, against all odds, you just gotta Will yourself through. I do wish Jesus had of said that. I'd feel better about myself.
I take a breath, stand up, pay the bill, say thank you, walk out, unlock the bike, and wheel it out in to the centre of the road.
My bike. My beloved bike. It still moves me whenever I look at it.
I climb on and feel the weight of the seat pressing up in to my body, and as I push forward on the pedal with the right foot, the pedal pushes back.
I roll forward, and for that most fleeting of moments, I'm not in control.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
My Bung Arm Pt.3: Driving to Poipet!
The order of the BLOG story so far:
* Cycling Days 1 through 10: See archives August & September.
(Cycling from Phnom Penh north up along the Thai border through Anlong Veng & Preah Vihar and down to Sisophon.)
* My Bung Arm Pt.1
The Butcher of Sisophon & the Great Mother Goddess Kangaroo!
http://mrfelix.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_mrfelix_archive.html
* My Bung Arm Pt.2
Sisophon, West, Cambodia: Our Man in Sisophon!
http://mrfelix.blogspot.com/2004_11_01_mrfelix_archive.html
My Bung Arm Pt.3: Driving to Poipet!
West Cambodia: Sisophon to Poipet by car
Two more days down the line and my right arm is no better.
Swollen, tender and rosy red. And the bandages are starting to smell. It's time to get out of Cambodia, and do the Thai hospital experience, before gange-green sets in and amputation becomes a viable option.
I'd been to a Thai hospital once before for minor mending, and although it's not the West, it's clean, cheap and relatively efficient. I know most Western folks don't skimp on money when it comes to health, but if your as poor as me, you do.
I figure all I need is a good dose of anti-biotics, administered by a fairly good Thai doctor, preferably with a diploma. No need to reach deep in to the back of the wallet and visit a Western clinic. When it comes to spending money, I'm a positive thinker.
And time is still on my side, so I tell myself.
T-i-i-i-me, is on my side,
Yes it is!
Now, you're always sayin',
that you wanna be free....
I can't do any serious riding on this arm, so Klaus kindly offers to give me a lift to the Thai border on Sunday night.
(Klaus is a German friend who works in Cambodia, and lives in Sisophon with his Khmer wife and her mother in a big old colonial mansion, not far from the town centre. He's a sometime cyclist.)
The plan is to drive to Poipet, spend the night, and cross in to Thailand at Aranyaprathet the next day. I can then check in at the out-patient clinic at Aranyaprathet General, and hear the worst.
"Also, Felix," says Klaus, "It makes a good excuse for me to go. I need to be getting some little bit of chocolate at the duty free shop in Poipet."
OK, no worries, some little bit of chocolate and a lift to the border it is. Win-win.
On Sunday I ride over to Klaus's place a little before 5:30, all set for the 6 PM departure.
"We are having a little bit of a problem, Felix," says Klaus, calling out from the upstairs balcony as I ride up the drive and dismount. "But nothing to worry about!" Oh, dear, what now?
I scamper up the steps, pat Klaus on the shoulder and say: "How ya goin', mate, what gives?", as you do.
It seems his Cambodian mother-in-law isn't too keen on Klaus taking me out in the truck and is making a fuss. She blames me.
"Me? Whadiyamean, she blames me?" I ask, alarmed. Last time I was here, mum and I got on like houses-on-fire. I thought she liked me.
Klaus starts patting the air in front of my chest with his open palms. "No, no, nothing to worry about, Felix, do not be angry!" he says.
"I'm not ANGRY, Klaus," I say - why do Germans always use the term angry? It's so unsubtle, even if I am angry - "I'm just a little nervous, on edge!" I say, flapping my hands about in response to Klaus's hands.
My brain throws up a quick image of a duck taking off from a pond, and I calm down. I guess I must look like a duck. And why is it so hard for ducks to get airborn? And then a horrible thought: Is it Duck Season?
"Well," Klaus continues, "she went to the monk yesterday and he apparently told her that I shouldn't be to help people! Big misfortune or something. So she's down inside in the car-port making a good luck puja over the truck and we have to wait a little bit until she's finished."
"The monk told her that YOU shouldn't help people? What is he, some kinda fortune teller or something?" I say.
Klaus ignores my question and says: "Should not be too long! Like a coffee while we waiting?"
"A good luck poo-jar?" I spit the words out. "Isn't she a devout Buddhist, Klaus? Aren't Buddhists meant to HELP people...?", but Klaus has already walked off in to the kitchen and is getting the coffees.
I sit down heavily in one of the wicker chairs and blow out some air. Why am I so on edge? Why do I instinctively fear the worst?
Asia, it's so unstable.
I have an arm in need of a doctor. It's swollen, oozing puss and I've already been to the local butcher, who nearly pushed me through to Level 6 Consciousness, and believe me, you shouldn't go there unless you believe in the Resurrection and have been celibate for the last 18 years, neither of which I qualify for, and thanks to Klaus, there's a little bit of kindness coming in to my sorry life (he's driving me to the hospital - I can't ride!), and now Klaus's mother-in-law is throwing a spanner in the works at the last moment.
Oy-vay!
I hear voices coming from the carport and realise Klaus must have gone down to see how the Mass is proceding and whether we have achieved transubstantiation yet, and can all leave and go home and get on with our daily lives, in peace.
I can hear his faultering Khmer, slow and deliberate, and then a torrent of higher pitched ethnic babble, which I conclude must be mother. A Dhamma discussion? Debating some of the finer points in the Abbhuta discourses?*
(*Descriptions of supernatural powers and their uses. An extremely handy little paperback this one!)
A little after 6:30 we pack the bike in the back of the truck, jam the panniers under the seats, slam the door shut and climb in. Klaus's mother-in-law is hovering around the front of the truck, with her head bowed, and her lips curled inward. She's looking up at me every now and then, and you can see she wants to let a couple go.
Maybe she wants to tell me a Jataka tale? It's sure to have a nice, neat moral ending like the one where the two proud fools in the ox-cart ignore the Buddha's warning and get trampled to death by a rogue elephant.
I lean my arm lazily out of the passenger window and give her a big smile. Fuck it.
Klaus guns up the truck, crunches the gears and we roll forward. Mumsy's standing by the gate, but she's only opened it a few feet and we can't get out. And she's looking at me real hard now: evil-eye stuff. Christ!
Klaus stops the truck, and waits, as though this is perfectly normal, and we're just waiting for dear old mum to get her shit together and open the gate fully; dear, old, lovable thing she is.
In mum's colourful world, this must be Klaus's last chance to not go forth down the road and have a 30 ton gold plated Buddha rupa drop out of the sky right on top of him (and me), or maybe a satellite, whichever is more statistically probable. And it's all my fault!
But I know, and Klaus knows, and God help us, even mumsy knows at some deep, semi-conscious, reptilian level - and don't you worry, under all that Cambodian vulnerability, she's got her reptile-mojo working well and good this afternoon - that this whole damn bullshit thing has more to do with investment portfolios than the Tripitika, or whatever cosmic operating system the monk's on.
And besides, the monk probably said something like: "Be careful when you help people, deary, lest they throw dog poo at you and trample you underfoot!", or some equally compassionate and well thought out piece of advice (maybe a little more erudite but), but I'll bet you London-to-a-brick that mum's come away from the temple and done a bit of creative re-interpretation.
By the time she's run the equation through her very limited processor it's come out as:
Me (good) + Felix (bad) = delete Arm
But perhaps I'm being a little unkind.
Believe it or not, I can be big about these things. The Lord knows I've turned myself in to a pretzel often enough to accommodate some facile and ridiculously convoluted ethnic go-to loop all in the name of cultural sensitivity, but not this time.
It all depends on what's at stake, and how badly you want it. And I want my arm - real bad, portfolio risk or no portfolio risk.
Klaus gives a little toot! of the horn, smiles, and inches the car forward a couple of feet. I'm so jacked off I'd probably run the bitch down, so it's a good thing I aint driving.
She opens the gate just wide enough for us to get past and backs out of the way. As the truck moves through the gate we pass within a couple of inches of each other, and boy, if looks could kill.
There's nothing on the road, so luckily we skip straight out on to the highway, without a wave, and in no time we're in to third gear and picking up speed, heading west, leaving the East behind.
What a relief. I'm sweating, I gotta break the spell.
"How about some music, Klaus?" I say, and he nods, and gives me a wry smile. Christ, this guy's got patience.
I plug the Ipod in to the sound system, crank Moby up to 11, and breathe out. I realise then that I've been holding my breath throughout this whole domestic ordeal.
Here we are now, going to the west-side,
I pick up my friends, and we go for a ride!
Lookin' out for a sunny day....
Highway 5 takes a sharp left, and we go past some bamboo drink stands and cross over a big metal bridge and suddenly we're in the country, free.
We're moving to the beat. We've left Sisophon and mumsy behind, and it feels good. We're a little bubble. A little motorised tin can, a mobile island, a continent unto ourselves. We're in here, and they're out there. Different. Not same-same. No way.
I think of Noddy, and feel almost bouyant, and a little light headed, like I want to laugh but I don't know what I'm laughing at.
Up ahead the sun is a dirty, orange ball about to go down, and we're heading straight for it.
Above it there's a bank of big, puffy clouds, cumulo nimbus, pink and white, and rays of light are shooting out of from behind their billowy bodies, spiraling up in to the centre of the sky. It's quite a show.
The sky is a purple and pink dome, a huge canopy, arching right up in to the heavens: on fire, alive, awesome. It's mighty God and puny man stuff. Excellent perspective. There should be more of it.
It's the wet season in Cambodia, and the paddies, stretching out in all directions are a gorgeous yellow-green, tinged with pink. The wind is skipping across the rice stalks, making waves, shades of changing colour that dip and scoop from one paddy to the next. Quick, sudden eruptions of energy, shimmering, an invisible hand stroking the beloved grain.
Even when it's the dry-season, and the whole country turns brown and grey, with dust clouds blowing across the landscape, it's still beautiful. And it's exhilerating on a bike, as you carve your way down the highway, right through the middle of this grand opera, one pedal after the next, the wheels spinning and your mind singing.
I first rode down highway 5 between Poipet and Sisophon in 1998, and over the years have been back and forth a few times, but the road is still in bad shape, which is surprising.
Most of the main arteries in Cambodia have been tarred and sealed by now.
Nice, big, flat, modern highways, with neat white lines and shiney arrows that make driving easy, but if you biked the highways in the old days, you can't help but feel nostalgic. There was fun to be had when the roads were abominable, and you could pat yourself on the back for simply making it to Phnom Penh.
But now the buses are running, and the transports are crossing in from the Thai and Viet borders, laden with processed food and cheap consumer goods. Cambodia is almost on the move, almost, but highway 5 to Poipet is still a mess.
As we move along I'm turning this way and that, spotting landmarks, trees, shacks, odd places where I'd stopped on the bike for drinks and photo ops at different times.
There's the big Bhodi tree with the Buddha statues that I lent my bike against and took a well earned water-break. There's the irrigation ditch with the rushing, muddy water I dipped my feet in to to cool off. There's the bamboo drink stand with the lop sided roof and the drop-dead-gorgeous waitress who smiled and fussed over me, and stood in the middle of the road waving me off. I wonder what happenned to her?
Back then I was fit and happy, and Cambodia was an alluring mystery, the forbidden fruit of South East Asia. But time brings change.
Now I'm riding in a truck, bandaged, and a bit beaten around in body and spirit, and pondering my next move. And I'm supressing a thought, an heretical idea that I can't quite admit to myself, much less put on the Pumpy site.
"You know, Klaus," I say, "I can't wait to leave this place. It's driving me nuts!"
Klaus smiles and says: "Yeah, it can do that to you...", and goes on driving.
I'd prefer it if he said something a little more meaty, like: "Yeah, this place is the shit-box of the universe!"
Or maybe something big-headed and Teutonic, like: "Ya, zat ist beekos yoo ist eina grosse nin-kom-poop, Feeliks!" and then I could flare up, and we could argue, and swear, and after a few verbal low blows, where we slight each other's cultural inheritance, say how much we love and respect each other, and then proceed towards a more sober debate on the problems of the Westerner in Asia, and then we'd descend in to personal stories, and bad experiences, and we'd get more acid, and more black, and then what?
We'd feel miserable. There's no end to this conversation.
I have a wild and wicked idea: "Let's drive to Kazakstan! In the truck!", but I catch it in time and don't voice it. I'm being ridiculous.
No, Klaus has to live here, and he's committed, and let's face it, I'm blowin' in the wind.
There's an unspoken agreement not too get too heavy about the contradictions, the sheer mind-fuck of the place. We all know it's a bag of shit if you look real hard, and I've probably said too much already. (I think that's a safe bet.)
We slip in to silence.
Moby's up to Why does my heart feel so bad?, and there's some black guy singing the line over and over.
It's sad, strong and melancholic, and I'm at Bell's Beach in southern Victoria (my home state in Australia) on a cold winter's day, watching the waves driving in from the Antarctic, crashing on to the shore; relentless, blue, powerful, one after the other, never ending, and I'm sitting alone, high up on the headland with my arms wrapped around my knees and the wind gusting in to my face; alone, jobless, useless.
He-e-e's lost his Hope! He-e-e's lost his Hope! comes the reply in the song. Some black woman's got it nailed in one. Poor bloke!
Now, I'm starting to worry. I don't mind riding off in to the back-woods of Cambodia alone, and I can even handle someone pointing a gun at me and threatening to blow me in to tomorrow, but Hope, Jesus! You don't wanna lose that.
I look out the window, and wonder.
It's dark now, and the lights from the shacks are slipping by, one by one, and the Cambodians are bustling about, walking in and out of doors, carrying things, drinking beer, watching the tube, laughing.
They're doing all those domestic activities that people do everywhere to keep mind and body together.
All those things that keep us occupied, and stop us screaming out in pain and anger at the utter futility of it all, the sheer gob-smacking insanity of being alive and having to get up each day, to do what? Stay alive so you can do it all again tomorrow.
Cambodia, there it is, passing by my window and out of my life, and I gotta admit, I still love it, and it hurts.
The folks, the Cambos; I instinctively reach out to them.
So much sorrow, so much soul cracking tragedy in every rock and blade of grass. How do they do it? What keeps 'em going?
And they're still taking it up the cosmic arse. Their government's doing them over, and when that's not happenning, they're doing each other over. What a mess.
I'm meant to be cycling, but I really don't know what I'm doing anymore.
How can you love something so much, put so much time and effort in to it, and one day you get up and it's all gone?
It's like you were wearing a pair of pants on Monday, all spivvy, walking down the high street lookin' like a blade, and on Tuesday morning you get up, none-the-wiser, whistling a tune, and you pull 'em on and they don't fit. They're a size too small. What gives?
Have I just grown out of it? Is it that simple? Mr Pumpy, where are you? I need you now.
There's not much traffic at this time of night, so the road mostly belongs to us.
All over Cambodia the parents and the kids are at home, tucking in to the evening meal and watching Muay Thai (Thai boxing) on the tube. The traffic will pick up in an hour or so when the karaoke bars click in to action, and the motor bikes, ridden by whiskey fueled Cambodian blades, start their crazy dance up and down the country.
Klaus looks across and gently pulls me out of my fug. "You know why this road is not made good yet, Felix?" he asks.
"Ah, no," I say, "but I was wondering about it." Well, I had been before I started feeling sorry for myself about 25 kilometres back.
"The story is that the Thai Airways has paid off to the Cambodian government to keep the surface like a bucket-of-shit all the way to the Angkor Wat so that all the tourists will be flying to the Siem Reap, and they will not be riding in the bus!"
Klaus chuckles, and I smile and shake my head.
No point saying anything. No point making cheap comments like: "Yeah, that's another reason why I gotta leave, man, I hate the corruption!"
Corruption. Christ! Not worth thinking about.
The suspension on the truck is making strange squeaking noises, so we slow down. It doesn't seem to be worrying Klaus all that much, but we take care to dodge the pot-holes and drive around any big rifts in the road.
We're down to about 30 km an hour, which is fine by me: I get scared in fast motorised vehicles in Asia.
We continue on.
When the wooden shacks and rest-stops peter out, there's big gaps of nothing, just pitch black holes, punctuated by the occasional scraggy tree. I can here dogs barking in the distance, and the sound of cow bells.
At one point a fruit bat swings low and crosses our path, blinded by the truck lights, flapping its wings, and obviously scared out of it wits. I'd be scared too: "Big tin monster with blazing eyes driven by two barungs nearly catch me. Me fly away. Is there any beer left?"
I get drowsy and start to nod off.
My head lolls back over the seat and my mouth falls open. Normally I'd make an effort to close it, but Klaus is an easy going guy, and male, so why bother? Sleeping in a car is a lot more comfortable when you can leave your mouth open and drool.
Just then I hear someone groaning, and I slowly realise the noise is coming from deep in my own throat, and I come awake, embarrassed. I've just had a dream, a B-grade horror flick. I sit up. How long have I been out? Was I audible?
"You OK, Felix?" asks Klaus, looking across, obviously concerned.
"Yeah, I think so..," I say, still a bit groggy, "but do you know those dumb movies where a ghost appears suddenly in the middle of the road, with the flowing white hair and intense eyes, waving her arms about and mouthing silent words that you can't make out, and you turn the wheel of the car trying to avoid her and run in to a tree?"
"Yeah, kind of..." he says, slowly.
"Well, I just had one!" I say. "And the woman on the road reminded me of your mother-in-law."
Klaus raises an eye-brow, and I realise I need a Coke, badly. We stop at a roadside shack and I buy a couple of cans, and we push on.
I change the music. We need something up. Something old and gold. A no-brainer. Let's try the Stones.
When I'm drivin' in my car
And a man comes on the radio...
I can't get no-o-o, Sat-is-fac-tion!
We roll in to Poipet just before 8 o'clock, and it's bright lights, big city.
There's new concrete buildings sprawling along the main road and more white and pink flourescent lights than Christmas in Bethlehem.
Poipet sure grown in the last few years. But despite the concrete, there's still lots of wooden shacks with slanting tin roofs, and it still seems to have that frantic, shanty town quality which I love.
Poipet served up my first taste of Cambodia, and I fell for it. And you gotta eat what you love, otherwise you'll die a slow, grey death.
I sigh and say something like: "Good old Poipet! What a blast!", and I'm suddenly awake to it, agitated, needing to get out of the confines of the truck.
I'm a monkey in a tin box.
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