"Hong Kong for Chinese New Year?"

asked R. a few weeks ago.
"Of course!" was the only possible answer. Not quite ready to pack any bags - still had work to finish for the website - I packed them anyway.

After a smooth bus ride to Phnom Penh then a choppy flight to Bangkok the following morning and having to check into and out of Thailand because Air Asia is too cheap to have a transit desk in Don Muang airport, then a flight into Macau, and a ferry over to Hong Kong, envisioning throwing my arms around R again gave a wonderful frisson to this tired traveller. After going through through two countries and two territories, it was time to collapse into a ferry and see his new home on Lamma Island.

"Meet me at the China Ferry Terminal," he'd written. How romantic that sounded, even though I knew better than to expect romance from anything with "China" in its title.
But, after two subway lines and a few hundred meters stroll in the chill evening, I walked up to the terminal. Not a single light in the place. He wasn't there.

Instead, I was overwhelmed by the smells of China that emanated from the surrounding un-aired, underwashed polyfilled synthetic black coats that swarmed around me. Stale cigarette smoke and grease, fried pork and dried fish all combined noxiously into a sensory wave of sameness when compared to SE Asia's clashing colors and patterns.

A very kind security guard let me use his telephone.
"Where are you?" I asked R, trying not to sound as tired as I felt.
"They told me the last ferry had come from Macau," he said, probably trying not to sound as harried as he felt. "I'm at the other ferry terminal, waiting for you!"

Turns out we'd just missed one another on the train between ferry terminals. I waited outside, shivering in sandals, and spotted his handsome silhouette a half-hour later.

Tomorrow begins the New Year's celebrations. Firecrackers on the streets, red and gold and grinning puppies everywhere. Happy year of the Dog, everyone!



With R. at Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia

Tsunami Memorial Garden, Ko Phi Phi

Sunflower Bar: wrecked longtail prow converted into bench

Sunset. Streams of fading light skid over the empty sea that caresses Ao Lo Dalam, like an apology after a particularly brutal slap. It's impossible for a traveller to imagine what happened underfoot one year ago, and impossible for those who survived it to forget.

A strikingly beautiful Australian woman walks in to the Sunflower Bar from the garden next door, laughing quietly with her companion. They order a beer with the ease of a pair who've collected a pleasant series of habits that structure their days. Hands freshly scrubbed of dirt and flowers, work is on hold till tomorrow. She's a plumper version of Julianne Moore, with impossibly red hair and delicate features.

"That's Carol," says the bartender, sotto voce. "She lost a child in the tsunami and began the memorial garden. Her Thai boyfriend and their other child have moved away from Phi Phi to Krabi town."



Later on I walk across the sand-strewn bar to congratulate her on her work. She thanks me with practiced courtesy and says, "It's all thanks to my husband here," as she pats his back wearily. I do a double-take as he smiles appreciatively at her. Then she asks me why I've come to Phi Phi.

"I'm here to photograph and write about guesthouses and restaurants for a website," I say, and wonder why anyone would need a reason to come to such a beautiful island. But of course I've forgotten: I've come here as a professional tourist. For those who live here, it's a completely different world. That's true of anywhere from the Quartier Latin in Paris to the French Quarter in Siem Reap, but in post-tsunami places, the contrast is extreme.

"Why couldn't you have been sent somewhere for a holiday?!" she asks bitterly. "Like Chiang Mai or Ko Samui? Why did they send you to this place?" and she waves her hand across the beach emptied of lives and bungalows one year before. All the tsunami left was unwanted rocks and wreckage strewn on the sand.

"Why?" she asks again, looking away from her new husband, and out to an unfathomable place. Unsure of what else to say, I thank her again for the garden, the hope it gives to others, and wave goodbye.

Swimming in Cambodia

It's not the most flattering photo ever, showing my thinning hair and all, but R looks great, doesn't he?



This was our Boxing Day dinner at Champa Lodge in Koh Kong, Cambodia. A veritable seafood feast was poured atop a modified Korean grill and R, Roger, and I dug in our chopsticks. Delectable marinated prawns and squid with plenty of vegetables, garlic and ginger, and soup too. All for only 200Baht/person (US$5) - yep, Thai currency is preferred in this Khmer border town.

After several beers, R decided to do what he'd promised that afternoon: take a dip in the river, amidst fishing trawlers and god knows what kind of sewage. Here he is slipping in, and...well, there's my reaction.

R. looked phosphorescent in the water as fellow tourists looked on, a ghostly pale thing swimming around in the blackish, truly brackish river water. "We're both crazy," I said to laughing onlookers, "but it's hard to tell who's certifiable. That's one of the reasons I married him." I looked over the water, couldn't see him any longer, and continued on with the chopsticks.

R. eventually crawled out of the water, appearing out of apparently nowhere, shocking all of us yet again. He ordered another quick beer, and was cleaning and bandaging the scrapes from his swim for the next week.

Shopping from a bicycle-basket

is usually a pretty simple part of my day: throw in some vegetables from the Psah Chas (Old Market) or Psah Leu (Upper Market), get a couple of baguettes from a streetside vendor while dodging pedestrian/tuk-tuk/wandering beggars imported from the countryside by gang leaders/motorbike/toyota camry/landrover traffic, and voila: I'll eat 2-3 times that day for around $1.


Ream National Park, Cambodia

Things can get complicated with additional purchases, though it's easy enough to forget when making up an idealistic shopping list.

Today, for example, I'd written: "get broom", as it's about time I got one: the geckos had a field day in my apartment while I was gone these past 6 weeks, and have left droppings all over the floor. This afternoon while a young boy was "fixing" my bicycle (turns out he didn't replace the wheel as I'd asked, just replaced the innertube and in the process screwed up my brakes and dismantled the light that he'd installed the day before) I found the perfect broom: its soft straw is the perfect consistency to sweep up the dust that floats through windows in the dry season, and íts sturdy bamboo handle should last at least three months. With an unusual aesthetic touch for contemporary Cambodian household wares, the bamboo's been burnt in swirling patterns up and around its intricate striations.

As I picked up the bike, the first dilemma became clear - how the hell to get the broom home? There was no way to fit it in the basket. After a minute of attempting to tie the broom to the bike with a hairband, I did what everyone does, every time we set out into Cambodian traffic: trusted in fate and performed a careful balancing act. The broom handle fit under the seat so off I rode like the travel-witch I seem to be these days.

All was well till I stopped to buy a baguette near the Psah Chas. The street's being torn up to make way for a new drainage system, so traffic was even more chaotic than usual. Motorbikes darted around concrete cylinders, rubble, and the string barriers expressly designed to keep them out. I'd ordered two baguettes from the baguette-lady, when suddenly she jumped up, a look of surprise wrinkling her forehead. There was a crash behind us. I whirled around: my bicycle had crashed to the ground, and looked to be a twisted wreck. It wasn't, but I had to perform excruciating contortions to get it off the ground, my pants about to fall off at any minute as one of the pedals got stuck in my crotch and I couldn't dislodge it without twisting over backwards.


Ural with sidecar, Sihanoukville

Baguette-lady's husband smiled at me for the first time ever. Usually he just glares at her as she gives me the fair price of 500riel (13cents) per baguette, not the tourist price. Today he laughed, but it wasn't one of those "Oh I'm embarassed because you're making an a** of yourself so I'm laughing" because that's what Asians do when they're uncomfortable. No, it was a rare "I can't stand what your well-fed white self reminds me of [could be french colonists, american soldiers, sex tourists, but probably just the relative affuence of western tourists compared to Cambodians] and I think you're absolutely hysterical."

He sat on his plastic stool under the shade as he does all day long, cackled quietly, and watched me gather everything up, replace the broom under the seat, nearly topple again on the dry dusty sidewalk, and finally pedal in the direction of home, ready to chop chilis and garlic for flavored oil with sharp knives rather than take it out on his greedy grasping fingers that aimlessly fondle the bread we buy all day long.

Recently a very kind overseas Khmer in the US wrote a wonderful note, saying that I have "much compassion". Sometimes I wish that were true. Instead, I've got selective compassion, which is the only way I've found to keep sanity here when there's so much need staring you in the face, from every street, every day.

5 a.m., New Year's Day

The perfect time to slip into sleep next to your partner.

But what were R. and I doing in Phnom Penh at 5a.m.? Rubbing our eyes as our ears were assaulted by tinny music from across the street. Blinking in the darkness. Peering outside at a decrepit French colonial building through the ornamental bars on our hotel windows. Why the racket? we wondered. Then I noticed the polyester satin banners tied on cheap aluminium poles outside a restaurant.

"Roy, there's an effing wedding party outside!" I moaned.

Khmer wedding parties often go on for three days, and the revelries last from before the morning to late at night. This time of year, the cool, dry season, is the most popular time for celebrations. Yesterday in Sihanoukville, we'd been woken at the slightly more civil hour of 6am by traditional Khmer music pouring from a nearby wat (temple).

"Is that a wedding or a funeral?" the Swedish guesthouse owner asked his staff. "A wedding," they assured him, but we could hardly tell the difference. The music tinkled out of the wat's concrete courtyard, over the trees, and into our room. It was unobtrusive enough, even pleasant, in a mournful, plaintive kind of way.

This morning's music, though, was chosen by a nouveau-riche couple somewhere in their early twenties, or perhaps their indulgent parents. Consisting of Khmer karaoke hits of the past few years, they seemed designed to best show off the powerful speakers blaring high-pitched screeches into the entire neighborhood. It seemed a strange blend of polka and Bollywood, with occasional covers of western hits, transformed into ballad-happy Khmer music.

"There aren't even any tables there yet!" I fumed to R. when I pulled back the curtain. "It's just the staff setting up for the all-day-long party, so why do they have the music turned on?!" It would've been easier to take had we not gone to bed at 3am.

R. rolls over, mumbles something appropriately sympathetic, and begins to snore quietly. I plug in headphones which somehow manage to amplify the Khmer music even further, rather than drown it out.

6a.m., New Year's Day

Morning sunlight seeps into the room, and aluminium chairs and tables clatter into and out of place at the wedding party. I'm ready to cry or smash the window.

R. pats my shoulder in commiseration, and falls back asleep.

7a.m., New Year's Day

Traffic noises begin to fill the city with motorbike hums and horns, so drown out some of the offending music.

Then someone bangs a brass gong from the street below. The sound rattles our thin windowpanes. A minute later, another rings, then another.

"What the…?!" R. finally wakes up. We open the drapes again. Sunlight glazes the broken stucco outside, and we look down into the street.

A wedding procession winds around the corner, led by a pair of graceful older men holding heavy gongs. They’re followed by four younger men in stiffly starched tuxedoes holding, of all things, red lace umbrellas, and then the usual assortment of lovely Khmer women following behind. They’re dressed in typically tight synthetic/silk tops with thick, expensive skirts from their favorite rental store swaying beneath them.

It’s hard to stay unhappy with a wedding party, so we rolled over and listened to Phnom Penh’s street sounds instead.

Happy New Year to all, and hopefully you got more sleep than we did.