eatdixx's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- cambodizzle and small fires back in bangcock. i've returned to the same teak guesthouse, in one week it'll be pulled down to make way for a six storey monstronsity. i just spent this morning talking with Dominik, a lovely hairy German Communist that's staying in my guesthouse. We've been discussing socialism and communism and the changes we would like to see in the world. over the last few months secretly i've been getting more and more interested in socialist ideas, and realised that they fit with a lot of my own. so it's interesting to read and learn things from other people and expand my views, opinions. i'm still very easily swayed from one opinion to another, but now i'm finding more of a basis of my own beliefs that i'll hold to. bad idea to get a new tatt of a fairly large size whilst travelling through tropical climates with no ready access to clean water and a dust free environment. but it's going ok. it's almost completely healed and it's growing on me everyday THANK FUCK. i am considering going back to the tattoo place this evening and asking the boy [Kin] out for a beer. i don't know if i have the guts, i'm such a fucking coward! he's extremely cute. a little thai punk. with a line shaved into the front of his hair, and a subtle kinda mohawk that starts at the crown and goes downwards. he's little. beautiful skin, a really sweet smile, tatts all over his arms. probly HIV positive, like so many here. you can tell by his eyes and mannerisms that he has a big story. we spent the three hours while he was working on my arm swapping info about each other quietly. as he was finishing up, i asked him if i could come back and see him when i get back from cambodia. he asked me really quietly, why? because you're very cute and i'd like to talk to you more, hang out a bit. he smiled and agreed that he would also like to talk more. i asked are you sure, because i'll be nervous to come back, should i? i got a positive reply but i'm still a little nervous. cambodia! rice paddies, skinny brown babies climbing all over me, temple ruins, cruising around on the back of a motorbike, street vendors selling food til 3am, dirt streets, driving on the right hand side of the road, american dollars, everything imported, flickering torchlight in the night - peasants catching insects for food, hammocks, hammocks with little brown babies swinging them to sleepy bliss, a fire in my guesthouse bathroom, angry cambodians yelling at me, eating khmer curry in a coconut, chang beer, smoking cambodian seedy grass, excuse me madame, you have one dollar? i stayed at a place in siem reap near the angkor wat temples for five days. the first day i got up very early and went to the temples on the back of a pre arranged motorbike, with my driver and companion for the next few days - andy. he'd stop outside the temple and i'd stroll in, look around, light some incense and climb up the steep stairs to the top, admire the view and think of indiana jones and times past. the feeling of absolute serenity inside the inner chambers at the top of the temples is insurmountable, but ruined by the beggar women that try to cojole you into praying to their god for a donation, in every chamber. i learnt very quickly how to say very politely 'no thank you', and sometimes 'this is not my god' - in cambodian, to which they had a sort of funny reaction but respected that i told them. we bowed at each other and i went on my way, she sat back down in the dirt and probably thought about buying herself some teeth, i dunno. each time i'd finished looking at the temple, i'd wander back out towards the entrance and start looking for my driver. at least half hour every time i'd end up sitting and waiting for him to get out of his hammock and wander over to me, and i made local buddies each time. at one of the temples i was admiring the way the tree has wrapped itself around the foundations of the temple and is slowly but surely suspending the temple in the air, when a group of cambodian tourists from a school came up to me and asked if i could be in a picture with them. first the adults, then the kids. it's strange that i'm asked to BE in their picture, not TAKE the picture like i assume they're asking when they first come over to me. by the end i had a favourite little girl who held my hand as i walked for about 2 km's, climbed up and sat on my shoulders whilst the other little girls danced around me. so beautiful. they didn't pinch anything, you suspicious cynical bastards. i spent a fair bit of time with the local boys that worked at my guesthouse, motorbike drivers and tuk tuk drivers, they'd take me out with them after they'd finished working, to their favourite local place to eat. on the side of a street. surrounded by many cambodian boys, all speaking a language so foreign to me. i got a bit sulky after half an hour of having no comprehension of the topic let alone input, so i threatened to walk home if they didn't teach me some cambodian. i learnt about ten phrases every day that i wrote down in my diary later. the light in my bathroom didn't work, so i lit a candle while showering. i had a small fire in my bathroom. on this particular occasion, i'd smoked a doobie with marika and gerard the orsum french older couple that live in Goa and gone back to shower, dressed and gone out to get icecream with andy. sat back in the restaurant for an hour afterwards, still wasted, got excited about a book i wanted to show neil the leeds boy, went to my room - opened the door to thick smoke from the roof to my belly thick black sooty smoke with bits flying around in the air, so thick i couldn't see a metre in front of me. the fucking mirror and soap dish was on fire and had completely melted and smashed onto the sink below, after closing the door to my room and standing like a shocked stoner for a good minute in a total panic, i had to beat the fire out with a towel, duck outside and grab andy by the hand saying something bad has happened, can we keep it quiet. showed him the fire damage. asked if we could wake up the owner but please limit the fuss. the owner turned out to be one of the boys i'd told to fuck off earlier, he stood and looked at the damage and got really really angry with me, starting to shout in cambodian while i'm saying calm down, let's work it out, we'll work it out, i'll pay for damages etc. BUT WHAT IF YOU BURN DOWN MY HOUSE, YOU COULD BURN DOWN MY HOUSE!!! but i didn't, the fire is out now, it's only a little fire, can you fucking calm down. in the end i got tired of him shouting at me so i stood up and stood nose to nose with him and shouted at him back YOU WANT ME TO GET ANGRY? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT? WILL THAT GET US ANYWHERE? WE'LL JUST BOTH BE FUCKING ANGRY! IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT, HUH? DO YOU LIKE IT? DO YOU LIKE ME SHOUTING AT YOU IN THE FACE? we both sat on the floor and i properly apologised, showed him my shaking hands and he explained that only one month ago someone had burnt down the entire guest house next door with a mosquito coil. the poor poor bastard, i understood immediately and felt like a real cunt. poor guy. no wonder he was freakin out. i changed rooms to the one opposite, removing all my sooty clothing and trying to clean the soot from my face and skin. both of us kept getting up during the night and checking on the room for fear of the inner walls/fibre catching light and quietly smoldering, burning us down in our sleep. in the morning i got a bucket, rag and scrubbing brush and cleaned the room from top to bottom as much as i could. as i wiped the soot away, a grey smudge would appear worse than the thin layer of soot/burnt plastic. a fucking nightmare. i gave up at midday after chiselling the plastic off the sink and handed the job over to the guesthouse girls who clicked their tongue in disapproval at the damage. it only cost me $10 us to replace the soap dish and mirror. orsum!!! thank FUCK it was only that. if the whole room/house had of burnt down, i wouldn't have been able to pay, they could have easily carted me away to a cambodian prison. they're a bit jumpy. all through the night i just kept wishing i could get on a magic carpet and go home, be in my own bed in my own house. instead i spent the rest of the day laying in a hammock down by the lake about 15-20 km's away from the village, where you can rent a tent space with four hammocks for about a dollar. little brown girls come by to offer you exotic looking sour tasting fruit, peanuts that have been washed in the lake, chicken with the heads still on MY HOTT LICKER FRIEND JENNIFER [americano] ATE A CHICKEN NECK!! GROSS. [i've become vegetarian in body and spirit since i've been away but i doubt it'll last long]. Anyway so back on the bumpy bus for an 11 hour journey back to bangcock, crossing the cambodia/thailand border on foot - has anyone else done that? it's crazy. there was so many beggar children, but this time i was prepared. outside of the town i'd bought some cheap little rock cakes and sweets, so i had them in my pockets in seperate bags ready to hand out [all the money they get begging goes to the person that collects them at the end of the day in the pick up trucks]. the three/four year old children with tiny babies strapped onto them upset me the most, with scabs and open bleeding weeping sores on their legs. i caught a pair of them and picked them up, put them onto a chair and put an antiseptic cream onto their sores with my bare fingers, wrapped a bandage around the tiny girls worst sore, about as big as my knee, she didn't even flinch - i don't think she has any feeling in her leg now. the bandage will fall off i know, i know it wouldn't have done much but i just couldn't bear to do nothing, you know? [my heart has that physical hurt feeling] that's all. sometimes i wonder as i look around at their country and the beautiful simplicity with which they live, just who has the better quality of life. 1:36 p.m. - 2004-07-09 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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