Fabienne in Asia

since luang prabang was the place to decide things in life, i ignored the promise i made to myself to always travel by the cheapest means possible (over land), and i walked into a travel agency and bought a plane ticket to phnom penh. perhaps it was the influence of paul and katrina’s decision to fly to chiang mai (yes! i met up with paul and katrina again! it was great, and i think my accent provided endless amusement for paul who loved to mock my desire to go ‘toobing on toosday’.). whatever it was, i had a week to kill before meeting up with my family, and cambodia had captured my heart, so i flew back.
i wonder if i would’ve fallen in love with cambodia regardless of rejean, or if he was the catalyst, or if he is an integral part of why i love the country so much. i didn’t really write about phnom penh the first time i was there. i think it was just too overwhelming, in the most positive sense. it had been the place i most needed to go ever since my mom stepped off the plane with my little brother when i was six, and suddenly i was there, right in the midst of it all, confronted with the mekong, the smiles, the land mine victims, and the history i’d read so much about. i saw rejean everywhere, i spent most of my days walking through and across and up and down the city, just searching and examining and trying to understand (i’m not quite sure what). it was a whirlwind, and i left suddenly because i knew that if i stayed i might never make it to laos. maybe i knew from the start that i’d be back.
i stayed in a guesthouse second time around, right on the top floor/roof, level with the highest of phnom penh’s buildings which don’t exceed 5 storeys. i did the unthinkable and went back to tuol sleng, the genocide museum. i didn’t last much more than about 15 minutes in the buildings, because it was just a bit too much to take, but it was something that i needed to do, whithout a tour guide this time. i just sat there for a while, outside on a bench in the centre of it all, realizing it’s something that probably can’t be understood, no matter how much you read or how many times you return.
canada house – rejean’s orphanage – had been a place i wanted to visit, but it shut down many years ago. i saw a sign in a guest house asking travellers to visit a non-governmental orphanage just outside of town, and to bring donations, if they had a spare afternoon. the kids were mostly from the provinces, and from my understanding, many of them either had parents who were too poor to support them, or were the children of hiv victims. one of the older boys (same age as rejean is now) took my camera for the afternoon and photographed the orphanage. the photos on the yahoo website are all his. he’s the one in the superman shirt.
so, before it begins to slip from my mind, here’s the phnom penh i want to remember and may forget (since we don’t all have the memories of elephants):
1. kramas – a country unified by these endemic checkered scarves – used as towels, head wraps to shield from the heat, waist straps to hold up the baskets of vendors selling books to baguettes to mangos, face masks to protect from the dusty cambodian roads, slings for babies. 2. the charming and incessant ‘hello madame, moto?’ proposition of every moto driver, one finger poised in the air and a quick, broad grin, like it’s all a joke and they already know that you’ll decline.
3. amok fish: fish in coconut milk, served over rice, deliciously, constantly unique.
4. early morning dragon boat practise on the mekong.
5. the owner of boh’r books who i befriended and visited almost daily. he and his family have probably been running the book store for the past decade. a conversation with him can cover ten distinct topics in ten minutes, and somehow flow seamlessly. it seems he has read just about every book in his shop. book stores are the most dangerous places at the worst of times. i never left empty-handed.

sihanoukville
my last days as a solo traveller were spent on the beaches of sihanoukville, a port town on the gulf of thailand. since 2005/age 20 seemed to be the year of reflection (alone in the big open spaces of canadian clear cuts, travelling alone, the space for thought that accompanies big decisions and life changes like taking a year off school and stopping rowing…) it seemed fitting to spend the last few days as a 20 year old alone on the beach with a notebook and ‘the alchemist’, gearing up for 21.
21 is going to be a good year. i think i’d decided this before dad and rejean and i stumbled across a fortune teller at the temple the other day. i’d never been to a fortune teller, dad didn’t want his fortune told, rejean was either disinterested or too superstitiuous, so i went for it. why not indulge this youthful soul-searching, eh? he said that if i go home now i’m going to stay for a while, look around, and leave again. he said that it’s going to be my gypsy year. and since this entry delved was deeper than i originally intended, i’ll just top it off with a quote from the alchemist. “each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.” guess we’ll just see how this whole life thing unfolds. for now, it’s down to the south thailand beaches for a couple of weeks of sand castles, beach soccer, snorkelling, and diving. merry christmas, happy new year! those of you at home: roll in the snow or have a brutal snowball fight or build a giant snowman and take a photo of it for me…please?

Tags: Travel

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