Khmer New Year Party, originally uploaded by Subcontinental Drift.
Turns out the Khmers throw down when the new year rolls around. The gentleman on the right is a tuk-tuk driver (three-wheeled contraptions fashioned out of a motorbike, scrap metal, and naugahide). The bottle in front of him was some sort of homemade hooch that he was passing around in a “two for me, one for you” fashion. Hence the beatific look on his face. He followed up this act of generosity with even more. Not only did he give us in-the-shell shellfish and mystery soup, but also did he give us three days of cramps, diarrhoea, vomiting, and fever. Thanks!
But the depravity didn’t stop there. This picture was taken not far from our “hotel” room, which was part of a string of rooms jutting out over Phnom Penh’s “lake.” The toilet drained directly into the lake, and if that wasn’t enough, a rat constantly nibbled at our bar of soap. That is, of course, until he stole it altogether. Just disappeared, maybe squirreled away on the shores of shit lake. Who knows.
Oh yeah, remember those shellfish? Well, on our last day there, early in the morning, Emily spotted someone wading in the lake, apparently clamming. Mystery solved.
One more thing: we met with our second case of official corruption. We rented a motorbike and drove all around the city, visiting musems of torture and genocide, among other attaractions. As we wheeled through an intersection we were flagged down by men in blue uniforms lolling about in hammocks.
“Is there a problem, officer?”
We had gone the wrong way down a one-way street. Never mind that hundreds of people were streaming down the same road in the same direction that we just had. But these men were impervious to logic.
So we stalled. We gesticulated. We cajoled. We pleaded. Then they, too, started to bargain with us. It went from ten dollars to five, then to two, and finally to “how much you pay?” By this point we were ignoring them, and they seemed content not to push the issue. Finally they pulled over an SUV and one of the cops waved us away.
For being so corrupt, they sure are lazy about it.
1 Comment
April 22, 2007 at 1:40 pm
My!
E-coli, extortion, torture museums, rats stealing the only bar of soap……WHERE DO I SIGN UP TO VISIT THIS COUNTRY???
I’m waiting for the next story, but let me know before you post it and I’ll take some Xanax first.