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.