Genocide, suicide and enterprise

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the safest place to hide from wild monkeys is in the back of a stationary motorcycle taxi. Thanks to that prior knowledge Mrs K, Charmaine and I avoided serious harm in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Siem Reap is the home of Angkor Wat, one of the few true wonders of the world. The sunrises are spectacular. We woke at five o’clock on three consecutive mornings and managed to miss them all, though. The town itself is small and poky, a raggedy collection of touts and vendors, cripples and glue-sniffing five-year-olds.

Mr. Pros was our driver for three days. He picked us up, dropped us off and waited for us. He took us to the best place for lunch, ferried us around on shopping trips and yet we didn’t share a single word of a common language. He clocked on to the size of the girls’ bladders and stopped every fifteen minutes outside the public toilets without our asking, grinned, laughed and drove off again. I liked Mr. Pros.

It is said that Pol Pot nurtured his distaste for the monarchy and bourgeoisie when his sister was a dancer at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. Having sat through a “cultural evening with buffet dinner” and an hour’s worth of traditional dance I can state with some certainty that I may well have become genocidal had I been forced to watch it more than once a lifetime. To top it off, Mrs K got food poisoning from some dodgy “morning gror-ly” and spent three days contemplating suicide.

Prior to that she had the following exchange with possibly the sweetest and shrewdest seven-year-0ld girl in Cambodia.

-Hello
-Hello
-ooohhh you very very beautiful and he very very handsome. What your name?
-Mrs K
-ooohhh very beautiful name. Where you from?
-Malta
-But where you born?
-Malta
-No, you born in a HOSPITAL.
-And you, where you born in a hospital too?
-No … I born at home. Because I Cambodian.
- …
-(pause, followed by devious smile and sideways glance) You want to buy baby?
-You’re selling a baby?
-Yes, baby over there (points out baby)
-Well, it’s certainly a very sweet baby. How much?
-Ten dollar.
-Well, that’s a bit too much.
-Okay, Mrs K. See you later.