We left Chau Doc early, around 7:30 in the morning, and reached the border with Cambodia around 11:30, meandering up the Mekong River for several hours before bursting into an artery where the Mekong more than triples in width. Our border crossing was uneventful, unlike the crossings of others we had heard from, and once again we boarded the boat to continue our journey up the Mekong River towards Phnom Penh. Birds flew overhead, calling to each other although I imagined that they were welcoming us to their country. On the river, life moved slowly, as if the slow moving brown-red river itself kept time for the people and animals and plants that made their homes on her shores. Fishermen on their long narrow boats squatted in the midday sun, sometimes alone, sometimes with their sons; gently pulling in the nets they had tossed to the river hours earlier to inspect their catch. Sometimes the river was generous, and they pulled their catch into the boats; other times she was less so, and the fishermen recast their nets once again.
Trees lined the shores of the great river, their trunks high up on the river banks to protect them from being swept away when the river floods, but their roots grew deep to drink of the river and anchor them firmly into the burnt red-orange of the soil. Here, as in Vietnam, the contrast between the green foliage of the lush land and the deep copper of the soil was amazing, and when complimented by the perfect blue of the sky was enough to take my breath away. Children played in the river, escaping the heat of the day while their parents tended to their small fisheries or the water buffalo they had brought to drink there. A complete stillness settled, broken only by the sound of the motor of the boat that carried us, and I wondered what, if any, effect our intrusion would have on the lives of the people who lived there, or if we were just another part of the river, like the birds that flew overhead and called to each other.
We left the river at Lek Luang, a small city on the river’s edge where we transferred to a bus that would take us to our final destination. As cities go, this one was small, and the buildings consisted mainly of the stilted and raised houses made of wood and sheet metal that is home to many of the Cambodian population. Through the spaces between the houses, the green of the countryside peeked through, a landscape of rice paddies and marsh grasses that came into full view once we left the city behind. Here, as on the river, time seemed to slow down, and water buffalo sedately walked through the water and marsh grasses, sometimes led by handlers, other times seemingly left alone to their own devices. As opposed to the beauty of the landscape of Vietnam, which seemed to exude a stark beauty, the beauty here was different, lush, more enveloping. While the beauty of Vietnam invited me to stride onto its hills and mountains and walk the land in order to know it, this country invited me to sit and absorb its beauty, to know it by contemplation instead of conquest.
One and a half hours later, we were in Phnom Penh, a huge frenetic city that exuded a sense of unorganized chaos, as if the city itself was overwhelmed with the sheer numbers of people living within it. We moved from the outskirts of the city, where the poverty of the country was abundantly clear, towards the center, with each passing block becoming more and more “modern”. We passed international schools, universities, centers for culture and finance, supermarkets, banks, all the trappings of a modern city, but in the alleys people without limbs sat against walls, some of them relatively young, and on the streets children begged for money. We continued on, eventually ending up being dropped off at a hotel that was miles from where we had expected, as the bus driver received a commission from the hotel for anyone who decided to stay there, which is a somewhat common practice here. When this happens, you have two choices; you can either get upset, which doesn’t get you anywhere in this culture where causing someone to lose face in front of others is an egregious offence that can at times require physical violence to rectify, or you can take a deep breath, accept what is, and find a tuk-tuk with whom you can negotiate a fair price to get you where you want to go. We chose the latter. |
