Last time in Phnom Penh, I described meeting an aspiring tour guide who was teaching himself Spanish. His pronunciation of even basic words was so bad, however, he would likely be assaulted by his first batch of customers. When aliens speak your language, it always sounds like they’re pissing on your grandma’s grave. This isn’t just the strongest argument against immigration, but the existence of all foreigners!
If this sounds preposterous, it convincingly explains American foreign policies. To compensate, Uncle Sam opens wide his borders. It’s nation wrecking in both directions!
In 2018, I also met a 64-year-old Vietnamese who had survived for 35 years in Phnom Penh by cupping and massaging at Orussey Market. With no overhead, she survived.
An even weirder case was a Vietnamese who had been hit by Toyota Camry as he was contemplating suicide. Jumping out, the driver didn’t just yell at this ragged alien but beat him up, to the indifference if not amusement of passersby. Miraculously, he was then saved by a Cambodian army general who turned out to be Vietnamese. This man became his patron. After the immigrant became rich, he bought a Toyota Camry.
I tried to meet a Cambodian-American who had been deported. Like me, he had spent decades in Philadelphia.
Taking the ferry to Akreiy Ksatr, I visited a destitute Vietnamese village. With no plumbing or toilets, it stank all right, but the children there were all sweet and well-mannered. This community boasted a gorgeous Catholic church where two statues of the Virgin Mary were worshipped. These had been tossed into the Mekong by Pol Pot’s goons. Over and over again, Jewish thinking destroys churches and temples.
At the end of 2022 in Phnom Penh, I bring you nothing but trivia.
Walking just now through a darkened alley, I noticed a man sitting on a hard bed, strumming his guitar, but just one chord, mind you. Shit, man, even I can do that! Maybe he was rehearsing for a ten-minute variation of “Stairway to Heaven,” Van Halen’s “Eruption” or Django Reinhardt’s “Night and Day.” Rushing to a cafe to write this, I missed this performance of a lifetime! See what you’ve done to me?
In an alien environment, just finding a congenial joint for your morning coffee is a challenge, but I’ve ferreted out mine. It wasn’t just its wide altar that attracted me, but a fierce old man in a sarong in the adjacent building. When not sipping tea, he swept the gutter with authority. Within sight, people ate noodle soups in alleys, one darkened.
Its one buck coffee is excellent, so I’m already looking forward to my next blessing. Sitting there so calm this morning, I thought, Angkor Wat can wait for my next trip or reincarnation. Who says it isn’t some hoax dreamt up by the pope and George Soros? It’s just a recycled stage set slapped together in Springfield, Illinois, I’m certain. I’m glued to this corner.
Though fogged up with early senility and fatigue, I may have picked up my first Khmer phrase, “Muoy tiet!” One more! The young lady prepared each cup with movements so unharried and loving, I was reminded of an Amish girl in Harrisburg, PA. They’re both angelic.
Bathed in a peace not quite eternal, I was suddenly startled by the iceman! The iceman cameth all right. Too thin, he hoisted heavy bags of ice cubes and blocks of ice. What made him immortal, though, was his red T-shirt, “I’M HIS QUEEN,” with a crown over the Q.
On Street 136, there’s a red sign, “I VERY VERY LOVE CARA MEL BAR.” When it’s that bad, it has to be a joke, right? Billions worldwide still believe in the Covid circus, however, not to mention the endless War on Terror. Even “smart” people don’t doubt the Great Reset, and openly corrupt clown Zelensky is a global hero. I’m tempted to say we’re living through peak stupidity, but if there’s a resource we can’t run out of, it’s idiocy. As led by our “intellectuals,” this species will keep deforming itself.
By the Tonle Sap just after dawn, an old man with a probing cane moseyed by two women exercising with swords, each with a cutesy red tassel dangling from its pommel. Though these martial broads moved very slowly, there’s no saying when they might twist and turn and, with hell raising screams, start hacking. If so, it’s grandpa’s fault for inching so close. Didn’t his mom teach him anything? Respectfully, the fool’s head could be flung into the Tonle Sap, so cool and tranquil at that hour.
My short stay hasn’t entirely been free of adventures. Inside Central Market yesterday, I stepped on a screw. How it stayed vertical on its tiny head awaiting me, I don’t know, but at least it wasn’t a rusty nail. Hobbling 2 ½ blocks back to my room, I fully expected to find a puddle of blood inside my cheap sandal, bought just last month in Bangkok, but there was only a red blossom, as if painted in watercolor, inside my callous heel. After a night’s sleep, even this disappeared!
Like everybody else, and of course this planet, we roll through heavens and near hells until something definitive happens.
Typing this, I hear crisp American accent from the next table. The speaker is a beefy Cambodian with tatts on his arms and legs. He’s wearing a Jordan basketball jersey, with its colors correct. If there’s a film about a Cambo gangsta or ex-convict, this motherfucker should definitely be cast. Speaking to his sister in Long Beach, perhaps, he says he’s down to $40, so must move to a cheaper room.
A much more famous American gangster is in town, of course. After his wheeling and dealings, he can relax in one of Phnom Penh’s many classy bars, Elephant, Bouchon, Le Boutier or Le Moon Rooftop, etc., and I’ve only heard about these chichi places, by the way. I tend to drink on plastic stools in moldy alleys.
Bypassing these fine choices, Joe and Hunter, traveling incognito, will self-quarantine for at least a week inside Small Girls Bar by the colonial post office. Father and son should always bond, even when there are several strangers on the same bed. You can bet your shrunken paycheck on it! I mean, how can these upright Americans resist such a wholesome name?
Yesterday, a girl of about seven wandered into Hotel Zing's cafe. Stopping at a table, she simply stared at a white woman, eating breakfast. Not sure what to make of this, the woman smiled back, but uncomfortably, then the laughing doorman rushed in to usher the girl out.
Just outside the plateglass, kids laugh and play.
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