The sounds of Phnom Penh

As I sat on the balcony this evening, it occurred to me that every city has a distinctive soundscape. One of the things I love about artful radio broadcasts is the background noises the producers include -- even if it's only traffic noise, the types of engines and horns evoke an image of the city. In retrospect, I wish I'd recorded various sounds from the places I've lived. Without decent audio equipment, though, I'd probably catch only a muddle of static.

The courtyard in front of my house contains two dense, mature mango trees, the branches of which I can reach out and touch from my balcony. These branches are also where birds gather for their pre-dawn kaffee-klatsch. There is one especially loquacious bird, whose gossipy, burbly chatter stands out. "And then I told the dog down on the corner...oh, you haven't heard the latest... her nephew is gay, did you know?" The other birds twitter or chirp, but this one babbles.

I've gone native in that I'm up with the birds, cleaning my house before the sun comes up and the temperatures rise. All my neighbours are up at this hour, too, all doing the same thing. I hear brooms working in all directions as we sweep floors, balconies, courtyards, staircases.  Soft brooms, stiff brooms, sweeping, sweeping. It strikes me as ironic that I moved to Cambodia and turned into an obsessive-compulsive clean freak.

There are Cambodians who comb the curbs for whatever they can use, recycle or sell from the rubbish. They're typically among Phnom Penh's poorest citizens, pulling carts stacked to dizzying heights with cardboard, crushed plastic bottles, scrap metal, bags of aluminium cans. Invariably their carts are outfitted with little plastic squeeze-horns, so you can track their progress as they go up and down the streets looking at what we've set out. My landlady, Yee, occasionally sets some mangos out for them.

Then there is the official rubbish collection company, Cintri. In 2002, the city of Phnom Penh inked a 47-year contract with Cintri.  Yes, you read that right:  47 years. I wonder, when you've got an exclusive contract for that time period, what's the incentive to do a good job?  Evidently the folks at Cintri wondered the same thing. Complaints about infrequent or altogether absent rubbish collection started pouring into City Hall. The city threatened to revoke the contract, and then officials decided to fit the rubbish trucks (or at least some of them) with GPS, so they could monitor the trucks' movements and be sure they were doing their rounds. So far, the Cintri fellows have been serving my street at least every couple of days (except over long public holidays, of course, when we won't see them for a week). They don't come at any regular time, though, so if I have rubbish to go out, I listen for their horn.  The Cintri trucks do not use the pleasant little hand-squeezed squeaky-toy horn. They blast a high-pitched air-horn that can be heard from five blocks away.

We'll take your rubbish and leave you deaf.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are very few intersections in Phnom Penh controlled by traffic lights. As drivers reach a junction that doesn't look too busy, they'll beep the horn to announce their approach. If it's moderately busy, they'll beep the horn to signal, "I'm going now. Make way!" If it's gridlocked, they'll beep the horn as a sign of wishful thinking. Or frustration. Anyway, the nearer your house to an intersection, the more car and moto horns you can expect to hear. I hadn't really given that any thought beforehand; I was simply lucky to have rented in the middle of my block.

In another earlier post, I mentioned all the peddlars who sell various goods from carts: Household cleaning supplies, cockles, breads, coconuts, sugar cane juice, flip-flops, coffee, bananas...  The more successful vendors have motorised carts with recorded calls, but the rest pull or push their carts and go hoarse by the end of a day.

I firmly believe that when a government decides upon a national anthem, there is a subcommittee sitting down with its composer in a back room somewhere saying, "Now, can you write a few bars for the country's ice cream vendors while you're at it?"  It never seems to matter what types or brands of ice cream you sell, or in which part of any country you sell it, or from what type of vehicle. There is always that tinny little signature tune which every Turk, Jordanian, Argentinian, Malaysian or Cambodian hears and thinks, "Ice cream!"

I hear the Cambodian ice-cream jingle several times each day, and as with all the other ice cream anthems, this one drives me nuts. Come to find out, though, I can't hold a Cambodian composer responsible for it. No sir, it's the Walt Disney Company that's to blame.  Damned globalisation.

One expat blogger sadly noted as she was  preparing to leave Phnom Penh that she expected to miss the way in which Cambodian life is lived on the streets. There are small shops on ground floors, the shop-keepers snoozing, a baby swinging in a hammock. Tuktuk drivers gather at intersections, and it's common to see four or more of them crammed into one tuktuk playing cards. It's not unusual to turn onto a street and find it blocked by a rented tent filled with tables, chairs, catered food, flowers and audio equipment. If the people inside are wearing mostly white, it's a funeral; otherwise, it's a wedding.  My neighbours two doors down hosted a wedding last week, so we had a day of music and monks chanting in our street. Drivers just seem to accept this as a normal part of life in Phnom Penh, and they patiently wait until they can back out into the busy intersections to go another way.

The residential parts of Phnom Penh get much more quiet after dark. I've heard repeatedly that many Cambodians do not like to be out at night. I asked if this was a legacy of the Khmer Rouge days, but it seems to go back much further than that -- there is a deep-seated fear of ghosts or evil spirits that lurk in the dark. Of course the riverside area, with its bars and restaurants catering mostly to tourists, and BKK1, home to mostly expats, are busy late into the night. My part of town, however, pretty much rolls up the sidewalks after sunset.

If I sit on the balcony, chattering cicaks (little geckos) and fluttering bats keep me company.  At some point in the evening, I begin to hear a rhythmic creaking, as regular as the ticking of a grandfather clock. When I first heard it, I couldn't quite figure out what the sound was. One night I came home well after dark, and as I was locking the gate behind me, I heard Yee's disembodied voice greeting me. I could barely see them, but she and Srey, her severely handicapped, 37 year-old daughter, were swinging gently in the dark. They do that for an hour or two every night. I find it almost as comforting as they do, I expect.

Moi, après le déluge

Having lived in Phenomenal Penguin for just over two months, I've hardly earned a holiday from it, but the opportunity popped up, and it seemed... well, opportune.

I normally travel alone, so a chance to go somewhere with a companionable pal is good incentive to leave home. Deanne is a CPA from Michigan; she's volunteering two months of her time and expertise with an NGO here in Phnom Penh. She and I have made several trips to The Flicks and one to the Choeung Ek Memorial.  When she proposed a trip to a Cambodian island, I figured that's the sort of junket that's better in good company.

7.30am Friday:  We make our separate ways to the Olympic Bus Company terminus, both of our tuktuk drivers going to the address printed in Khmer on the ticket, only to learn that it's incorrect. You would think that after countless phone calls from vexed tuktuk drivers, the company would reprint tickets with the correct address, but never mind. The drivers who habitually loiter at that corner are clearly used to the routine, and they directed both our drivers to the actual bus station. Well, I mean, the place from which the bus leaves. It's not a station, per se.

Sponge-Bob Square-Pants on the outside;
Khmer karaoke videos on the inside. No extra charge.

1:00pm: the bus driver drops Deanne and me at the Cafe Srei Sok, which is 6 km. past the Andoueng Tuk bridge, in the middle of nowhere. The cafe proprietor gestures to us to sit down, and he phones the driver of the minibus who will take us on the next leg of our journey. Another of the cafe patrons sits at the table opposite us, sipping a beer and gently stroking the chicken on his lap. He draws his shirt around the hen as if to keep her warm.

1.30pm: The minibus arrives, and we scramble into the back of it, looking mightily incongruous, as every other passenger is young, Khmer and male. The minibus takes a winding route down the Koh Sdach peninsula, which the Chinese have bought. One by one, the young Khmer men get down at various factories and warehouses -- all new, all strangely vacant-looking. There is evidently a luxury hotel-spa-casino on the other side of the peninsula, all for mainland Chinese tourists. 

2.30pm:  The minibus comes to a stop at the end of a muddy, rutted road in the fishing village of Poi Yopon. Our host, Karim, has called my mobile phone to say that the sea is too rough for the usual mode of transport. We should take the small boat to [signal breaks up], and he'll send a [what sounds like sailboat] to fetch us there. As we step out of the minibus, it begins to pour.  We board the small power boat, wading out into knee-deep waves to climb over the gunwales. The young boatman is demonic. He heads directly into the waves and opens up the throttle. After cresting each wave, the fibreglass hull crashes down with a spine-breaking smack. He pulls up next to a tall jetty on the nearest island, and we scramble out of the pitching boat and up a makeshift bamboo ladder.  We stand there in the rain with all local eyes fixed upon us as I phone Karim again.  He is sending not a sailboat, but a long-tail boat to fetch us. We smile stupidly at the locals on the jetty. They appear to wonder if the mother ship will descend and take us back to our home planet.

3.00pm:  The long-tail boat putters up next to the jetty, pitching and rolling, the boatman trying desperately to catch hold of one of the pilings. I notice that both his feet are crippled, and he struggles to keep his balance in the very narrow boat, which has taken on 6" of water.  He looks up at us expectantly. One of the men on the jetty points down to the boat, as if to tell us our ride has arrived.  The problem? It's a 6-foot drop from the jetty to the boat -- he's nowhere near the bamboo ladder. I honestly believe the men on the jetty would simply make the jump, but neither Deanne nor I is game to try it. "Yang mech?" I ask the fellow who's nudging me toward the edge of the jetty. "How?"  They all think that's hilarious, and they tell the poor boatman to drag his boat over to the ladder, which proves no easy task in that chop. We drop the bags into the boat and creep down the ladder. As we motor away, the men on the jetty are waving. And guffawing.

3.45pm: We arrive at Koh Totang, the boatman once again struggling to pull near the jetty which towers above our heads. There is a certain amount of hoisting and hand-holding to get us out of the rolling boat and up onto the jetty via a ladder missing a few rungs. Et voila! We have arrived at Nomads Land.

Welcome to Koh Totang (pop. 10)

Let me be clear about this:  Nomads Land is glorious. The electricity comes solely from solar power; fresh water comes from filtered rain. Composting toilets are "flushed" with ground coconut husk, and the shower is a scoop hanging next to the pottery water jar. Karim and Ariane serve three bountiful, delicious meals a day using fresh ingredients locally grown or caught. Because the bungalow we'd reserved had sprung a leak, we stayed in their largest bungalow, its two cushioned rattan lounge chairs looking out at this.

There are much worse places to read. And doze.

The hot rainy season officially began in late May, but Phnom Penh hasn't seen so much rain yet. I was very dismayed to learn that the monsoon arrived right on schedule in Koh Kong province. Ariane had written me that Koh Totang has some of the best snorkelling in Cambodia, but she neglected to mention that you're lucky to see your own feet during monsoon.  They have a kayak, but it's a glorified surfboard type of boat -- hardly suitable for heavy chop. I did swim a few times, and Deanne and I managed a very short outing on the kayak, but otherwise, it was to be a landlubbers' holiday.

We went for a walk on the path that cuts through the jungle to the opposite side. In the middle of the island, the locals have cleared the jungle and planted a grove of cashew trees. They are very slow-growing, so this orchard represents decades of growth and care.

The dish of cashews that appeared next to
the margarita seemed precious, having come from a few hundred
metres away.

Nomads Land -- a temporary refuge for nomads, right? Wrong. This is Nomad.  And make no mistake about it, it's his land.

Do. Not. Disturb. 

Deanne and I are both dog-lovers, so when Nomad trotted out onto the jetty to check us out, we both greeted him. "That's Nomad," Karim told us. "He's mad. Totally mad."  There is a sign in the dining bungalow, "Leave the dogs alone."  Nomad was Karim and Ariane's first dog; they took him in as a pup, and for the first six or seven years of his life, they didn't neuter him. So he fought like a gladiator every time one of the neighbours' bitches came into heat, coming home bloody every day. Only a year or two ago, they decided to bring Nomad to Phnom Penh for neutering. The fighting has stopped for the most part now, but he still dreams of it, thus the sign -- he's snapped at guests who startle him when he's sleeping.  This old man warrior dog is still wildly devoted to his humans, though, and he takes his job as the property security officer seriously.

Nomad has two lady friends, both spayed -- Pepette and K'mao (black).  Pepette is very gentle and dignified around people, standing and waiting patiently for ear- or butt-skritches. 

You can't see them in this photo, but Pepette has tan
eyebrows, which she raises to great effect when she wants something.

I spoke briefly with Karim about the idea of putting solar panels on my own rooftop in Phnom Penh. "What do you want to run?" he asked.  Well, a light or two at night, ceiling fan in one room at a time, the computer... oh, and the fridge. The refrigerator, it turns out, is the power hog. Trying to run that on solar would require a $3,000 investment.  (They run a gas-powered freezer/fridge at Nomads Land, and the locals have no refrigeration whatever.)  I've long been very conscious of the resources I use and enjoy, water especially, but this trip led me to think more about electricity. In Cambodia, the power on the grid comes from petroleum-fired plants. I came home more keenly aware of the power needed to run my fans and refrigerator, realising that many Cambodians have neither. I try to imagine the implications of no refrigeration in Cambodia:  Buy fresh, cook, eat.  Repeat for every meal.  The thought of living without a fan makes me want to lie down and die.

On Monday, the sea was acting up again, so our trip back to the mainland was another sodden adventure. A fishing boat pulled up at the end of the jetty where there was no ladder. Karim and Ariane pointed to the tires that hung suspended alongside one of the pilings, acting as bumpers.  "Oh, you just scramble down the tires!" Ariane said breezily. The boat was tossing about, a good ten feet below us, and the tires were blowing about in the wind.  "You go first," said Deanne.  Things seemed a bit dicey when I was hanging by my arms from the second tire, the third having blown around to the other side of the piling, but it came back within reach with the next gust.  We were within sight of Poi Yopon when the squall hit. One of the fishing crew dropped the anchor too soon, and the boat reached the end of the anchor line several metres from the shore. Karim smiled and shrugged apologetically.  "You first," said Deanne.  I jumped over the side of the boat into chest-deep waves. The fisherman handed my day-pack to me; I lifted it above my head and started walking. Darren, an Englishman who had come with a large wheeled suitcase, stripped down and made the trek to the shore in his boxer shorts, his big, grey Samsonite held above his head. The three of us had agreed to share a taxi back to Phnom Penh, so as we dried off and changed into dry clothes for the trip, we watched Karim and one of the crew make their way back out to the boat.

Bon voyage.

Would I go back to Nomads Land? Yes, in a heartbeat, but not during monsoon. Koh Totang is about 4.5km in circumference with great snorkelling spots all round. I'd love to snorkel my way around the whole island when the sea is calm, then sit down to Karim and Ariane's lavish dinner feeling that I'd earned it.

Painting the house, going green

Studying the Khmer script has a few benefits.

1. It's good mental exercise. Struggling to draw, recognise and remember all those squiggles is working areas of my brain that have sat idly in my head for years.
2. It will improve my spoken Khmer, because learning to write the 60+ vowel sounds helps me to distinguish them. In many cases, they sound nearly identical to my ear, and only when I see them written do I grasp that they're different phonemes.  The Khmer words for doing laundry and breast-feeding are distressingly close in sound. I imagine beginning Chinese speakers have the same experience: they can't distinguish the tones but can see that two words which sound alike (to them) are represented by different characters.
3. The tiled walls on my balcony have a whole new artsy look.

By the time we get through all
33 consonants, I'll have the whole house painted.

I spend an hour or two every day on the balcony with erasable markers. Can I remember the words for sting-ray and negotiate? And then can I write them?  

Around the corner from my scribbles, another of my efforts is tucked under the stairway to the roof:  My makeshift compost bin.  A few people have told me that the concept of biodegradability is simply unknown to most Cambodians. For centuries they wrapped their foods in banana leaves and other natural fibres. When they were finished, they simply tossed the wrappers onto the ground, and nature did the clean-up. Now they simply toss plastic and styrofoam with the same abandon, having no clue that it won't just disappear in the same way. You'd think they would have observed this phenomenon by now -- that plastic bags are hanging around, and around, and around -- but it doesn't seem to have clicked. Consequently, my landlady sweeps up all the fallen leaves and other garden waste and puts it out for the rubbish collectors in plastic bags.  Nearly all of my waste is biodegradable, and it was just killing me to take it out in plastic. It would make sense to build a small compost bin in the back of the garden and encourage Yee to use it, as well, but I suspect she would recoil in horror at the thought of "garbage" building up, rotting and stinking, in her garden, and my Khmer is not yet up to the task of explaining that a healthy compost heap neither rots nor stinks. 

So I'll do my own composting on my balcony and will offer her some of the 'black gold' results, assuming I can manage to produce them. I bought a couple of plastic laundry baskets, thinking I can just pour the composting material from one to the other when it needs turning.

We're going green up here.

I'm using paper waste (what little I have) and leaf litter for brown matter to balance the acidity of all my kitchen waste. With no worms, composting is going to be a slow process (if it works at all), but at least there's no odour, so it's not rotting. Fingers crossed.

Speaking of green stuff, my friends Ellen and Tom lugged 2 kgs of wheat grass seed to Phnom Penh from Kuala Lumpur when they came to visit last month. The cats are thrilled. They'll be nibbling on wheat grass for years to come, and I'll be dutifully cleaning up all the puddles of green vomit.

There is a large nursery just around the corner from the house, and they're a great source of pots and soil, but unfortunately they sell only decorative plants. Seeds for my balcony's container garden will have to come from elsewhere. I'd really like a big pot of mint and another of parsley. 

Finally, speaking of natural materials, I sent the photos of my new bike to my friend Markku in Helsinki. After acknowledging the excellent qualities of the bamboo frame -- light weight, durability, excellent shock absorption -- he felt obliged to note the perils.  

 "... just beware of giant pandas."

Wheeeeeels!

It's here! I got an email yesterday from the folks at Mekong Designs on Street 240. One of their staff, Channy, had gone to their office in Ho Chi Minh City for a meeting, and she brought my bike back with her on the bus.

It's slightly different than the demo model I tested a few months ago -- my bike's mud-guards are made from single strips of bamboo, bent and shellacked.  It's a stronger design than the jointed ones on their earlier model. They've also added a chain-guard, which is most welcome.

I tried on one of their new bamboo bike helmets and would happily have bought one, but Mekong Designs is in the process of having them certified by some overseas agency, and they won't sell them until the certification is set. This is unfortunate, because I'd rather have an uncertified bamboo helmet than the rubbish they're selling in the local bike shops. I was afraid to drop the plastic helmet on the floor for fear it would shatter; it wasn't worth the $12 they're asking for it. As I pressed on the sides and felt it starting to give way, the saleswoman was directing me to a mirror and telling me she had many different colours. That's the sort of thing you say, I suppose, when you're selling a helmet that only works as a fashion statement. I asked an Aussie cycling friend where he'd got his helmet: Melbourne. All right, then. Solution to the helmet problem is yet to be determined.

Phnom Penh has very few traffic lights, so every intersection has to be negotiated with a judicious mixture of eye contact, cunning, politeness, courage, and prayer.  One doesn't speed through this city's streets in any kind of vehicle, but wheels are definitely faster than feet. Tuktuk fares add up fast, so I postponed a lot of errands until the bike arrived. One of the things on my list has been a return trip to Beautiful Shoes to order a second pair of sandals.  As I approached their shop, I pedalled past this cafe. Is this a tribute to the wonders of a bamboo bicycle, or does it suggest that its only value is as part of a cafe sign?  

I will say this:  the bamboo bike is drawing a lot of attention from Cambodians.  The owner of Beautiful Shoes came out and complimented it, and a few parked tuktuk drivers gave me thumbs up.  Some folks on motos slowed down and rode along next to me, pointing to the bike.  They all seemed to admire it, if their expressions were anything to go by. These bikes aren't exorbitant, and the frame is stronger than most metal ones, and light-weight, too. I don't know why we don't see them all over the city.  

Mekong Designs has two primary lines of business:  bamboo bicycles and hand-made quilts. I imagine some would find the queen-sized snake design a little disconcerting, but I think the beauty outweighs the creepiness factor. Do you suppose it would deter the cats from sleeping on it?  

It's an academic question. The bicycle is a necessity, the quilt a luxury. 

Post script:  An internet search turned up a bicycle shop across town which sells Cannondale. Feeling that the helmet is also more of a necessity than a luxury, I pedalled over there this morning. Most of their helmets were more costly than my bamboo bike, but I found one for $40. It's a fortune here in Cambodia, but then again, I do value my head. 

I asked Crumpet if she would like to model it.  She declined.