| …I wake up the next morning with the g/f still sleeping with her head buried in my chest. I give her a kiss on the forehead and she wakes up. No makeup, hair a bit frazzled, she rubs her eyes like a kid and gives me a weak smile. So is this the sabai sabai thing Thais like to rattle on about?
Of course, it doesn’t last long. We’ll be taking two motos to visit Wat Banan and Wat Ek Phnom. Both require traveling on dirt roads and then a long hike up a mountain. A pair of blue jeans, a t-shirt, and a bandana to cover your mouth from the dust on the roads is appropriate attire for this excursion. Of course, she has to put on make up, wear a red blouse that dips below her shoulders, and a pair of white pants. I tell her to change and another argument ensues. I give up, but at least she is wearing flip flops. When her makeup starts to run and her white pants are covered in dust, I know whose fault it will be. Mine of course. I’ve accepted this. Trying to understand women is hard enough. Adding the Thai factor increases the level of difficulty by ten. Imagine being forced to run a marathon. Now imagine being forced to run a marathon backwards while spinning plates on your head. You stumble across the finish line and your Thai g/f says, “Why is there no food on the plates? You give to your mia. You joa chuu.” And this will be the most logical conversation you will ever have with your g/f.
The moto drivers are waiting for us in the hotel lobby and we are off. Exiting the town, we pass through some villages. Unfortunately, since we arrived during the dry season, most of the rice fields were barren. The scenery here must be fantastic right after the rainy season. The moto driver occasionally swerves to avoid a pothole, but the ride through the village is very smooth overall. This idyllic ride ends when we reach the main road leading to Wat Banan.
Living in Thailand, people tend to exaggerate the primitive conditions there. But can you recall the last time you rode through a dirt road in Thailand? How about a dirt road that is the main highway to the provinces? That’s exactly the type of road I was on now. Every time a large truck passed us, we were engulfed in a huge dust storm. I would pull my shirt up over my nose and crouch behind the moto driver. The g/f was doing the same. The longer we stayed on the road, the angrier I became. This road leads to the main tourist attraction in Battambang. Why isn’t the road paved? Why are there so many potholes? So I ask my moto driver, not expecting an answer but just wanting to vent. What followed was a small discourse on the debilitating effects of corruption on a society.
Channo, my moto driver, lived in the refugee camps near the Thai border for most of his childhood. At the camps, he learned to speak French and English. And not the “phut phasaa angrit keng” you say to Thais when you want to be nice. He possessed actual fluency with the ability to talk about academic subjects. If I told him he spoke English well, I would feel like a patronizing [at][at][at][at]. He wanted to become a doctor, but due to circumstances he didn’t explain, his studies were cut short. He heard vague rumors of a relative who survived the Khmer Rouge and lived in Battambang. So he decided to look up his relative and try to find employment here. Ever conversation I had with him, I felt like I was talking to an equal. How many times can you say that about the typical Thai moto driver? Most of them are Carbou listening, lao koa drinking morons. A bright, educated fellow like him should have no trouble finding work. Being Cambodia, nothing can be so simple.
In Thailand, party affiliation is straightforward. The south is solidly Democrat, the rest is Thai Rak Thai. In Cambodia, there are three main players. FUNCINPEC, CPP, and Sam Rainsy’s Party. Due to displacement caused by the Khmer Rouge era, the party strongholds are scattered throughout the country in a haphazard manner. It was even more chaotic at the refugee camps. One camp would be FUNCINPEC and another CPP. Some camps were even part of the Khmer Rouge. To complicate matters further, those that left the Khmer Rouge gulags for the border camps are looked down on by those survivors who never left the gulags. So even though Channo had skills that were in demand, he would never crack the patronage system. He was a returnee from a refugee camp and probably affiliated with the wrong party. So instead, he is forced to be a moto driver for tourists like myself. Even that probably cost him a hefty bribe. Take Channo’s situation and extend it the town we were in. Due to the Byzantine politics of Cambodia, the road would never be fixed. Only CPP provinces have a chance at public works. Unless, of course, there is a large company willing to pay huge bribes. But the only people that would benefit are the average worker. No big bribes, no road maintenance. The end result, I am crouching behind an over-educated moto driver to avoid the dust storms.
I feel bad for Channo. My moto driver should be a Carabou listening, lao koa drinking moron. I shouldn’t be discussing an article my moto driver read in the Economist about India’s tech sector. If he was Thai, he would probably be finishing up his residency and getting ready to start his own practice. When I asked him how he bought his motorcycle, he explained he had actually worked in Thailand. As a construction worker at one of the large sites in Bangkok. And his Isaan co-workers naturally looked down on him. He was just another dark skinned Khmer... |