Honey: Selected Journals from the Years Away
Book VI: Love on the Mountain
8.4.17 to 11.4.17: Battambang, Cambodia
The next morning I had a coffee at Pop’s restaurant, and then hauled my belongings to the pharmacy. The taxi drivers were waiting at the curb, wearing orange safety vests with their licenses on the back. They said it would be 30B to the station. I said fine, and was taken out of town on mirage-engulfed roads.
The plan was to go from Trat to Chanthaburi, then to the border town of Pong Nam Ron; then across to Pailin, then on to Battambang. This was a composite of stuff I’d read in Lonely Planet and on TripAdvisor. It was much easier to head south and cross near Koh Kong, but apparently they charged $30 USD there for a visa as opposed to $20 USD at more remote crossings. So I figured if I took the long way and saved $10 USD it’d be worth it. A ticket to Chanthaburi was 60B. I purchased one and waited.
It was an hour to Chanthaburi, at which point we arrived at the station. LP said that vans departed for Pong Nam Ron across from River Guest House; I asked at the information desk and was drawn a map. It was 2km away. So now I’m walking through Chanthaburi with all my shit, in the excruciating heat, towards what may or may not be a minivan to the border. Chanthaburi seemed to mostly be a town where one could purchase gems – every shop was advertising them. Either that, or I was walking through the Gem District. By the time I reached River Guest House I was drenched and pissed, especially when it became clear that RGH had no information about vans to the border. But the hostel next door did: a chunky guy behind a sliding glass window said I didn’t really want Pong Nam Ron – I wanted Baan Pak Kad. He took my map and pointed to a blank spot on the border: “Right there.” They had a van leaving at noon if I wanted a ride. He said I could wait in their air-conditioned common area, which really sealed the deal. I said sure, and he made the call.
The van pulled up at 12:05PM. It had left from the station, which pissed me off even more. Inside were four middle-aged ladies, made up with mascara and rouge, on their way to a casino across the border. They were all positively giddy to have a white boy joining their van: they giggled, sidled up beside me, yelled to each other in Thai. Thirty minutes out of town, we stopped at a decaying farmhouse where an old man was waving. He squeezed in beside me, a cardboard box in his lap; a woman got in the passenger seat. We continued on. The old man asked where I was from, so I told him. He called to the woman in front and said he’d found her an American husband. She turned and swatted at him. She was made-up as well, and her left eyelid was involuntarily twitching. Everyone laughed, including the driver. I was wondering if she got tired from all that twitching, or if she just had a super-strong eyelid muscle now. One of the gambling ladies fell asleep on my shoulder.
In an hour-and-a-half we reached the border: a pavilion of parking lots and turnstiles and armed men. The rest of my van was ushered along, disappearing into the foliage; I went up to the desk and was stamped out of Thailand. Then I passed through a gate and walked beneath an archway, down the road towards Cambodia. There’s a brief moment here when you’re literally in no country – you’re nowhere. Presumably there’s an invisible line, a line you stand on one side of – but you’ve been deported from one place and not admitted into another. It’s a bizarre feeling. So I walked across and up to the Cambodian Immigration Offices. I went to the visa window and presented my passport. The guard was like: Where are you going? I said: Cambodia. He looked at my passport photo – me at 16. He held it up. “Little boy,” he said. There were ants crawling all over the window’s ledge.
So I filled out some paperwork, and then the guard said I had to pay 1400B. That was way more than $20 USD. It was $42 USD, actually. TripAdvisor said there’d be a sign confirming it was $20 USD, but I didn’t see any sign. The only sign I saw said that I was in a place called Prum. I’d never heard of Prum. So I said: I thought it was $20 USD. The guard said: New fee. I couldn’t really argue. LP always said: Know your fees! Don’t pay extra! But what were you supposed to do? Go back? These guys could do whatever they wanted. So I paid him. I was mostly mad because I’d gone this way to save $10 USD and ended up wasting $20 USD. The guard gave me the visa. I went to the next window to get officially stamped in. The new guard held up my passport. “Little boy,” he said. “Yeah,” I said.
The countryside was desolate: dust and rocks, dilapidated shops, heat blaring down; and then a few gleaming casinos rising from the ash. The looked like monoliths on the barren landscape. I bypassed the hawking taxi drivers and started walking. I had 400B after being suckered at the border. After some time I came upon a place called CK Burger, standing in the shadow of a casino. I figured a burger, no matter the cost, was worth it right now. So I went inside and tried to figure out what to do. According to LP it’d cost 100B to reach Pailin – but that was if I was even near Pailin, which I didn’t know. So I said to the burger people: “Pailin.” They went to the door and hollered outside; an orange-vested driver entered. I said: “How much?” He said: 200B. I said: That’s too much. He walked out. The burger people stared. I said: “That’s too much, right?” They just stared.
It might not have been too much. Because Pailin was actually 18km away, and LP was written in 2011. But after being screwed at the border I needed to save face. So I went to the driver and said: “160B.” I pulled the money out and showed him. We stared at each other for a long time. Then he took my satchel and army surplus bag, tied them in a knot, and placed it between his legs. I climbed on.
And so we were speeding along the shoulder, deeper into Cambodia. All around were long dry fields, manned by fully clothed farmers; and then distant rock formations, sitting like sleeping creatures on the horizon. The driver’s vest was flapping in the wind, so I held it down with my elbows. There were no clouds. I felt as if, although I’d crossed the border, I was still nowhere. The longer the journey, the more the feeling compounded and swelled – as if one day I would be permanently gone.
When we reached Pailin I told the driver I was trying to get to Battambang. He pulled over at a hardware shop where a guy in a white short-sleeve shirt was waving. “Battambang,” he was saying, “Battambang.” He was pointing to a car. I was like: No, no private taxi – take me to the bus stand. But the new driver was checking his watch, saying: “No more buses today.” I said: I don’t believe you. He shrugged. Then he pointed to two ladies on the stoop. “Them too,” he said. This I liked more – a shared taxi. I asked how much. He said: 300B. I’d read that Pailin to Battambang was $5 USD; I was willing to pay $7 USD. I was also pretty sure I had no money left. So I said: I’ll pay you 240B, but you’ll have to take me to an ATM. He agreed, and called over the ladies. For some reason all three of us sat in back.
The driver was funny. He kept calling me sir and asking questions about my day, as if there was nothing bizarre about the situation. I wasn’t even sure he was a real taxi driver, because he wasn’t wearing an orange vest. He may very well have just been a guy with a car heading to Battambang. The ladies, I thought, were mother and daughter; the older one was muttering in Khmer and laughing. We arrived at an ATM and the driver gestured inside. I had no idea how much to take out. Here the currency was riel; 4000r equaled $1 USD. So I typed in 1,000,000. The machine read: Transaction failed. So I typed in 100 and heard bills flipping inside. The ATM produced a single $100 USD note. I was like: “What the fuck is this?” I hadn’t seen American money in nine months. I took it to the driver. I was like: “What the fuck is this?” The bill was crisp, new. The driver didn’t say anything. I climbed back in and held it up to the old lady. She said: “Oooh.” I said: What’s the currency here? She laughed. Then the driver laughed, and the daughter did too. So I laughed as well. Then we fell into silence and drove on.
Shortly thereafter I fell asleep. I was conscious of the fact that falling asleep in a stranger’s car, with all my shit and $100 USD in my pocket, in the middle of Cambodia, wasn’t a good idea. But I was too tired for anything else. When I awoke it was raining and a police officer was tapping on the window. We were at a roadblock. I was thinking: Here we go. I was certain we were doing something illegal, even if I couldn’t say what. But the driver rolled down the window, said something to the policeman, and we were waved on. As we pulled away I said: “I thought we were done for.” Everyone laughed.
We reached Battambang at 4:30PM. I’d found 240B rattling around in my pocket, and thus didn’t have to break the hundred. I told the driver I was staying at Ganesha Guesthouse; he knew it. We arrived outside, and he got my bags and I paid him. Then the three of them drove off. I wasn’t entirely certain what had happened – how much I’d been ripped off, if I’d gone the way I’d intended, if Prum was real – but I’d at least made it. The heat was bearing down.
~~~
Once I’d arrived at Ganesha Family Guesthouse I was informed that I could only stay one night. The owners were going out of town for the Cambodian New Year. The following morning at 8AM everyone had to vacate the premises. So I was none-too-pleased, especially because now I had to book a new place and couldn’t even take a moment to enjoy the respite of reaching my destination. The woman at the bar called up this hostel, Here Be Dragons, located across the river; they said I could come by tomorrow.
Ganesha cost $4 USD/night – an actual $4 USD. It turned out that the hundred-dollar note hadn’t been a fluke: Cambodia primarily used dollars, with riel serving as something akin to change. So if the price was $2.50, you’d pay two dollars and 2000 riel. The system allowed for easy bamboozling, which was perhaps the point. I’d studied nothing remotely close to economics, but one could assume that this was doing something to the American market; it couldn’t be sanctioned, and thus a hefty amount of US-printed bills was in circulation here. But it was unclear what effect this had on either country.
Ganesh’s interior was a thin room with a pool table and a bar, where two old white guys now sat with a Cambodian lady serving them. The woman had a large bandage on her forehead. She was presumably married to one of the guys, and this was their place; and then the girl wandering around was their daughter. She was predominately white: pale and freckled, wearing a red-and-white striped shirt and black overalls with the straps hanging from her waist. She had a loose ponytail. She stood halfway up the stairs and yelled down to her mother in harsh, piercing Khmer. It was a weird thing to witness. Then she gestured for me to follow. We went to the second floor, into a room with four twin-sized four-poster beds. Each bed was draped with a mosquito net and had a small fan twirling above, hung from a pole attached to the high ceiling. The room had a balcony, framed by Venetian doors, overlooking a lane of colonial-era buildings. After I’d dropped off my things I took a beer on the guesthouse’s patio, where a guy from Barcelona was lying on a loveseat fanning himself. He was a computer programmer who’d quit his job. I said I didn’t know anything about computer programming. He said he didn’t either.
Two girls came down the lane and sat at the table beside me. They were discussing the 8AM checkout but said it didn’t bother them because their bus left at 7:30AM. So we got to talking. The brunette was Nynke: 24, from Holland, about to start graduate school for accounting; the blond was Hannah: 19, from Germany, on a gap year before attending university for osteopathy. They were headed to the circus and asked if I wanted to join. I was thinking that the day had already been so goddamn weird that I might as well go to the circus. So I said: Sure. Soon we were in a tuk-tuk, riding through the darkening streets. The tuk-tuk was basically a motorbike with a carriage attached, multi-colored and shining with cheap metal. I was sitting backwards, facing the girls as we buzzed forward. I asked Nynke how she spelled her name, then traced it out on my hand so I wouldn’t forget.
The circus was called Phare Ponleu Selpak and was apparently world-renowned. To the best of my understanding, the circus used its profits to fund a school for underprivileged children, training them in music and visual arts. It was held at a compound outside of Battambang, in a tent-like structure with bleachers gazing down at the stage. The three of us filed in with the rest of the audience, mostly foreigners; the atrium was like a sweat lodge, the crowd packed as the lights dimmed.
The performance was hard to follow. There were nine guys and one girl. The guys were built like mounds of dense clay; the girl kind of was too. The show seemingly had a narrative, but it was difficult to understand. In the beginning each performer was beneath a tatami mat, rolling around until they eventually compounded into one big tatami mat monster. Then the scene shifted to them fighting over this crown, until one guy placed it on his head and became their leader; but then these creatures draped in black with coconuts for faces came out and began miming as though the king was their puppet; then the scene shifted once more to everyone juggling and smiling, until a guy wearing a white fedora entered, balancing on a ladder; then the fedora man chooses a deputy, putting him in a black vest and teaching him how to use this spinning top; then the deputy kills everyone, and then the fedora man kills his deputy – so now everyone’s dead except the fedora man, who laughs manically and leaves. That was the end. My thought was that it had something to do with consumerism and false gods, but I wasn’t sure. I did think, though, that the reason the circus was world-renowned wasn’t because of its underlying themes but because these guys were completing elaborate jumps and flips, sans nets, in the sweltering Cambodian heat; their skin was glistening with sweat, their chests heaving, their bodies pure muscle and strength. It made me feel fat. When they were through everyone stood and clapped for a very long time.
We found our rickshaw driver waiting at the exit. We were paying him $2 USD/person for transportation. We left for the Night Market, which sat on the promenade beside the river; each evening the tents and lights were erected, broken back down by dawn. The improvised restaurants were arranged in a grid, indistinguishable from one another – you didn’t know which you were eating at until someone brought over a menu. Nynke and I ordered noodle soup with chicken; Hannah got hers without because she was vegetarian. They came with a bisected sweet potato floating in the broth.
So the girls asked where I’d been; and I got to talking about my months in Goa, waiting through the rain at the Beach Nest – days that melted together into one ominous drawl of horizon. Nynke said: “So you fell in love with India then?” People asked this a lot, and I always shied away from the idea – partly because of the connotations, but also because love tended to narrow things. I couldn’t reduce India to love because I also hated it. It challenged me in ways I was still unpacking; it frustrated me, exhilarated me, opened me up, and ultimately enriched me. Like a pivotal person, it could never be the summation of such a statement. That, in itself, was perhaps the reason I was always drawn back – just as we are always drawn back to the people who are able to do the same.
Nynke also asked if I thought about going home; I said I did, and wanted to. And I do. I think about my friends and family, my hometown, the familiar streets and weather patterns, my childhood bed; but most of all there are the glimmering sensations: smells, sounds, feelings, memories. Drawn from some past I desperately want to crawl back towards. I know that; I always have. But I also know that it isn’t time – my dreams confirm it. So I told them: Of course I want to go home. But I won’t. It was as though I had to vocalize such a thing – to exorcise what I’d felt growing beneath the surface.
Then I asked Nynke: What are you doing here? Because everybody had a reason. You didn’t come out here unless you wanted something, or needed something, or were trying to escape something, or trying to reclaim something. Even the partiers had a reason buried inside. And Nynke did: she’d been on a five-month trip with her then-boyfriend to Australia when he said he didn’t love her anymore and ended it. So she’d been heartbroken, trapped abroad, and said: Fuck this, I’m going home. But once she was back in Holland she felt that despair all the same – completely depressed and rudderless – and so she came back out to Southeast Asia. She described it as: “I made the best out of a bad situation.” Which was true, but it seemed more complicated. It was like: a terrible thing has happened, but I’m bigger than it. And to show how big I am I’m going back out there, into the wilderness, to do something even harder. I’m going to do the hardest thing possible. I’m going to beat myself, and beat this terrible thing.
After dinner we walked back to the guesthouse. We had a beer, and discussed the differences between SpongeBob SquarePants in our respective countries: in Holland the theme song compared him to a cheese soufflé; in Germany his name literally translated to SpongeBob SpongePants. Soon cockroaches overtook the patio, crawling out of cracks in the building’s foundation, dozens of them; we retired to the dorm. Upstairs, the room’s temperature was a new horror. The heat felt weighted, as if gravity itself had increased. The Spanish guy was sprawled out in bed, wearing just his underwear. I went onto the balcony; a black cat crawled across the railing, then jumped to the next building. When I turned around Hannah was taking off her shirt. She was wearing a black bra. She had that strong body that Germans have. So I got naked and lay down. Nynke came out of the bathroom wearing a sleeveless grey tee and lace maroon panties. She was packing her things, leaving for somewhere. I had half a mind to follow her. But instead I lay there and said: “How long were you and your boyfriend together?” She said four years. “Must be something about that four-year mark,” she said. I said yeah. She said: “Well, his loss.” I said something to the effect of: You have no idea how right you are. She smiled.
I awoke at 7:45AM. The room was empty, the beds stripped. I figured I’d missed her – maybe it was better that way. I didn’t want to fall in love with everyone I met. But when I got downstairs there she was, along with Hannah and the old white men and the Cambodian woman and the daughter. Nynke and I stood by the pool table; I rolled the cue ball back and forth. She asked my plans and I told her. The power went out, and I could feel myself starting to sweat. I couldn’t think of anything to say – we’d exhausted the SpongeBob conversation. So we just stood there staring at each other. Then I said: I guess I’ll be going. I put on my pack and left quickly, her calling after: “Nice to meet you.” I was a half-block away when I realized I should’ve given her my email. I could picture myself going back, writing it down, placing it on the pool table, smiling, leaving. But I didn’t go back. I walked the empty streets, moving in ambivalent rectangles, with no idea where to go or what to do.
~~~
Here Be Dragons sat on the other side of the river, tucked back from its banks in a blocky compound, soaked through with sweat and alcohol. In April, the draught rendered the river nearly dry – in some places you could walk across. I’d wanted to take a boat to Siem Reap, but with the level so low it was impassible. Consequently, the greenery surrounding HBD had shriveled, depleted; it felt as though the hostel itself was wilting, the balmy interior suffering under the weight of the temperature’s rise.
Hence the alcohol: HBD’s lobby was primarily a bar, cold beer served by this deep-throated raspy Brit named Jen. She was older – fiery red hair, slits for eyes, severely fucked-up teeth. She split duties with this bony guy in a Che Guevara shirt; they bickered like an old married couple, but perhaps it was just the heat. They maintained a tab for each guest, which all but guaranteed you’d end up spending more than intended. Paintings of menacing-looking dragons swirled around the bar, which somehow made everything even hotter. The real allure – which made up for the $7 USD/night and sneaky tab system – was the AC dorm. It was like a panic room in the building’s center: no windows, dark, full blast. In the hall, the Cambodian cleaning staff sat on the marble floor staring at their phones, practically expiring.
Battambang had once been a French outpost, thus the colonial-era buildings that flanked the river: four thin lanes populated by terracotta roofs and cream-colored façades. The area was home to chic restaurants and cafes, art galleries, and boutique souvenir shops. Beside the lanes was the market for locals: an atrium of stalls selling clothes, appliances, beauty products, electronics; and then display cases of jewelry with jerry-rigged fans hanging overhead. In the late afternoon, when the sun was on its decline and the heat dissipated somewhat, people flocked to the riverside: a concourse of playgrounds, exercise equipment, and walking paths – the town grew lively. Kids sold Cokes out of Styrofoam coolers; men played soccer on the concrete; infants stumbled through the grass. A group of women followed a boy with a microphone leading an aerobics class. Some company called Oppo had set up a booth and brought their mascots: plush robots with massive white heads who were dancing through the park. The scene tumbled on as the sun set, us praying the temperature would fall to meet it.
The next day I planned to ride out to Phnom Sampeau, which boasted a nice overlook of Northern Cambodia and had these famous killing caves; and then apparently at 6:00PM every night a great colony of bats flew from within the mountain in a mass migration. So I went over to this place Gecko Moto in the French Quarter to rent a bike; they only had semi-automatics, but since I was planning on buying a manual in Vietnam I figured it’d be good practice. It was $6 USD to rent the bike for 24 hours. The first thing I told the guy was: I’ve never ridden a semi-automatic before. Any upstanding establishment would decline business right there; but with $6 USD on the line he was willing to give me a general overview. The basic principle of manual transmission is that the machine starts in 1st gear, then works up to 4th as you increase speed. You know it’s time to change gears when the engine makes a horrible groaning noise, which means: I want to go faster. Really the only way to master the technique is through trial and error; which I think the guy knew, because he gave me a helmet and was like: Go for it.
When I got back to HBD, Jen said I ought not to leave until 4PM – it’d be far too hot before then. This may have been a tactic to get me to buy a beer, but it worked. So I was sitting there when these three girls entered. I’d seen them the night before while writing; they’d been eating pizza and watching their friends’ Snapchat stories, bemoaning the wild nights they were missing back in England. Now they sat down and ordered beers themselves. There was Georgia, with acne scars and thick curly brown hair pushed back by a headband; Romy, who had this cartoonish, piercing face and wore a fringy neon-pink top that was more of a bra than a shirt; and Mary, who was tall and freckled – the previous night she’d been in only a bikini and Jen had told her to put on something more appropriate. So now she was wearing a white smock over the bikini.
Georgia said: “I saw you writing last night.” I said: Yeah, I write a lot. She said: I try to journal, but it never comes out well. Romy’s, though, she said, were quite brilliant: funny and witty – you could hop in anywhere and enjoy yourself. I said: That’s nice. Georgia said: “She’s also a nationally-ranked ping pong player.” I said: That’s nice. Romy beamed her pointy face. I said: Have you been to Phnom Sampeau? They hadn’t, but wanted to see the bats. Jen said: Don’t go until later – it’s far too hot now. It was starting to seem like maybe Jen had had some near-death experience in the Cambodian heat and was now trying to warn anybody who’d listen. She was giving Mary the stink eye on account of her still-revealing smock. But also that might’ve just been Jen’s face.
I got lost almost immediately on my way to Phnom Sampeau. I knew that it was along NH57, but didn’t know where that was. I also had no gas. So I pulled over at a petrol station. The place looked abandoned, save for a table of Cambodians having lunch. Everyone had at least one piece of clothing removed. There were maybe thirty Angkor beer cans littered at their feet. A woman in pink pajamas filled my tank and said it was $2 USD. I pulled out my riel, and she was like: No, no. I otherwise only had a twenty, and knew they didn’t have change. So I said: What do you wanna do? No one spoke English. Eventually it was communicated that the pajamas lady would get change, and I was to wait. So they pulled up a chair and I sat down. They were like: Beer? I said: Yes. They gave me a mug, reached into a bag of ice, dropped a block in my cup, took a can, and poured it in. We clinked our mugs together. In Cambodia, it was customary to toast before every drink and down the entire glass. So I did that. They poured me two more and we kept toasting. They wanted to give more, but I was like: I’m driving. I mimicked biking. Then I mimicked crashing. They nodded. The pajamas lady came back and gave me $18 USD. I tried to give them a dollar for the beer, but they said: “Free, free.” So I clasped my hands together in thanks. They taught me how to say thank you in Khmer, but I forgot immediately.
I found NH57, then Phnom Sampeau by chance. It was a small road of wooden restaurants in the shadow of the monstrous rock formation. A security guard was posted at the gate; he said I had to pay $2 USD. So I did, and asked if I could ride to the peak. He said: Sure, but make sure you’re in first gear. A kid drove up and said: “Motorbike to go up? Three dollars?” It was a pretty rough sales pitch, considering I was already on a bike. I rode on, and wound around the steep cliffs until I reached the Killing Caves. During the Cambodian Genocide, the Khmer Rouge used to the caves to execute their subjects, beating them and then throwing the bodies into the mountain’s depths. Now the location served as a memorial. I’d only just parked when a kid approached, offering information and ushering me forward. I said: I don’t want a guide, and walked ahead. He yelled: “Pay me!” and then circled back through the lot.
The path led to a garden, where plaster sculptures recreated the brutal killings. There was a grimacing man pouring liquid down a cowering man’s throat; a man bludgeoning another man; a naked woman climbing a spiky tree; two men submerged in a pool; a naked couple praying while a monster suckled at the woman’s breast; two men with the heads of chickens engaged in fisticuffs. Further along, down a flight of stairs, was the actual cave – which, compared to the preceding sculptures, was relatively peaceful. There was a reclining Buddha, and a glass case holding the bones of the deceased, and a staircase into the darkness below. Above was the wide, cavernous skylight: a halo of white shining upon the jagged rocks below. It was – as is often the case at locations such as these – impossible to fathom the terrors that had taken place in that swarming chasm: some moment between life and death, and the absurd events that had led to such infinity. Now the bones were simply bones.
Further up the road was the mountaintop, where a series of crumbling temples oversaw the plains of Cambodia. The landscape was flat, punctuated by trees, dust rising from the dry earth. When I arrived, kids were already circling: asking my name, where I was from; I said: “No tour.” There was a guy with a Nikon offering solo shots. There was an old man with a notebook: people had signed, listed their country and the amount given. I gave him back the book.
I climbed the stairs and navigated the temples, finding a small one on the outer rim where three kids played. They were lighting firecrackers, sticking them in a pot of sand, and running off as they exploded. Down below was the great expanse of lush wildlife, the uniform trees concealing the caves beyond. One of the kids approached, lit a firecracker, and tossed it off into the green abyss. He smiled, held out a hand; I gave him a high-five. He shook his head, and pointed to my wallet. He couldn’t have been older than five or six. I walked away. And as I descended that age-old, war-torn complex I thought: What did it do to a kid, to be so young and already asking for money? To have it hardwired in there before you could even understand what you were doing? Then I thought about myself at that age, back when I’d run a lemonade stand during our yearly garage sale. That was the extent of my moneymaking, and Dad had bought most of the product anyway. And then I thought: it didn’t take a genius to see that what had happened to this country – mass execution at the hands of its own, some two million murdered – was still affecting it today; that the atrocities of that genocide had taken root, and the tendrils of its legacy was responsible for this stifling poverty; that the lasting consequences of such a thing could possibly be worse than the horrors themselves, if only because they were now embedded in the country’s fabric.
Back on the road, everyone was preparing for the bats: the street was lined with tables, waiters serving cold drinks as the tourists gazed upon the mountain. I joined them. At 6:00PM, almost exactly, there was the rustling of wings; and then the bats were pouring from their dark home, sweeping out as a great mass, off into the deepening sky. The crowd fell silent, mesmerized by the display. The grand arc of bats swarmed towards the sunset, their trail widening and narrowing, moving as an amorphous liquid; it was a phenomenon of naturalism, one untamed by cameras. We tried anyway: phones rose to the event, trying to capture it on a small screen. Nynke had said: Put down the camera and watch. So I did. I rode off with them, and gazed upon their departure from the shoulder of NH57. They moved in a pitch-black ribbon, off towards somewhere – 17 million of them – only to return under the cover of night. I was trying to record the thing in my mind, to find words. It was impossible. They were far too elusive.
~~~
I have this reoccurring memory, one that flits into my mind every so often. I’m 17, and it’s early winter. I’m with Lily, Patricia, and Lisa on some bullshit Saturday night out. High school was full of these: aimless wanderings through the dark, landing everywhere and nowhere, no desire to do much of anything except something. On this particular night we ended up at some ubiquitous suburban home; Lisa was hooking up with one of its occupants. The night was steely, and full of fog. The guys were drinking beer in the attic above the garage, accessible via this steep wooden staircase. No sooner had we arrived than Lisa and her guy-friend disappeared, off into the mist; and so we were left standing before the drinking boys in this half-constructed alcove above the family cars. They were all wearing grey sweatpants and basketball jerseys and backwards baseball hats. They were a year older than us. We weren’t offered beer, and we didn’t ask. It would’ve been awkward if not for the sheer quantity of interactions like these: always in an attic or basement, never invited.
I don’t recall how long we stood there before Lisa called up and said we could go. So Lily turned and started down these stairs, with Patricia second. I looked at the drinking boys and they looked at me. Then I turned to the stairs and Lily fell, from top to bottom, down into the garage.
She couldn’t have made it past the second step before she went down. She tumbled, literally rolling over herself in a cartoonish way, until she connected with the floor, crumpling into a ball. I remember thinking she could be dead; and then that she could have died. I could picture it: her head cracked open, her beautiful flowing red hair marked redder by blood spilling out onto that smooth concrete, down at the bottom of the stairs. I’d loved her for so long. But she didn’t crack her head open. She just lay there, until Patricia went down and got her up. I can hear the boys howling with laughter, even if they didn’t. Miraculously, Lily was fine. She wasn’t injured at all. I wondered, then, if she knew how close she’d been to death; or if she was just embarrassed, hating Lisa for dragging us there, hating me for being so lonely and so in love but with no real person. We got in the car and left.
Sometimes I wonder if this happened at all. I have no proof – don’t talk to Lily, couldn’t find the house if I wanted to. I only have that image: Lily at the bottom of the stairs, curled up in slumber, as if headed back into the womb – or perhaps into some new womb, one beyond this plane – and then me, staring down at her, watching her go.
And so as I pulled down the lane, the bats still soaring in exodus from that cave, I saw the girls standing beside the road: Georgia, Romy, Mary, and this girl Tara who also stayed at HBD. I pulled over and was like: Hey. They’d arrived via tuk-tuk, driven by this guy Pete who’d been hanging around the hostel looking for business. They were on their way out, headed to the circus. So I said: Come by when you’re through and we can go for dinner. They agreed, and climbed into Pete’s tuk-tuk. Tara handed me her beer, mostly full; I downed it and drove into the oncoming sunset.
By the time the girls returned it’d grown dark. It was clear they were all in various stages of drunkenness. I’d say the ascending order was: Tara, Georgia, Romy, Mary. Mary’s face was doing that thing where it seemed to be sliding all over the place. Tara, I think, couldn’t get drunk even if she wanted to. She was 31, and had this aura about her that she’d seen and done shit without having to tell you about it. She kept herself covered in shawls and long pants, muted colors, out of respect for the local customs; around her chest were massive looping tattoos that were either chains or snakes. Her hair was red, and dreaded. She had a weed business going back in California. It seemed like every American I met had a weed business going back in California. I liked Tara, though: it felt like she was my cool older sister, patiently waiting through my immaturity. She was currently telling the other three how Pete had whispered in her ear: “Call me later,” before driving off; they had a good laugh, said he’d been fresh all night but was generally an alright guy.
These four had spoken with one of the circus performers and asked what the troupe was doing that night; and he’d said Buffalo Alley, in the French Quarter. So Georgia found the place on her phone and we all walked off into the heat. On our way out a motorbike pulled up: this guy Hugh and this girl Melode. I’d seen them around. Melode was half-Jamaican/half-British, often less-than-fully-clothed and aggressively flirting with Hugh. Hugh was the Aussie who owned the bike, currently bumming his way around Cambodia; he had a bushy beard, curly hair held back by a bandana, usually in a tank top and billowing patterned pants. He was always shoeless, and stood a foot shorter than me. Hugh wasn’t actually staying at Here Be Dragons: he had a hammock he was always asking if he could tie up on the patio. So he’d show up most mornings looking for something to do, which usually involved flirting back with Melode. Word on the street was that he was ex-army, and you got the sense that whatever he was doing now was an attempt to get as far away from that life as possible. So Melode hopped off to join us and Hugh said he’d catch up later; and the five girls and I wandered towards the boiling city, heading across the bridge that reached over the dried-out river.
I’d pictured Buffalo Alley being this Wild West/corral-type bar with like sawdust on the floor and guys in cowboy hats serving cheap beer. I guess the name elicited that image. In reality it was a storefront on a deserted lane, with a singular long table running its length and a string of glittering lights hanging overhead. Ganesha Guesthouse was directly next-door, now locked and dark; and it made me sad, thinking about where I’d sat so recently with Ngnke, now gone forever. The town was silent, abandoned, dead. Buffalo Alley was empty except for one Cambodian: the circus guy they’d talked to.
Immediately I had the sensation that this was going to be a long, hot, expensive, impenetrable night. The heat was the most of it: it was oppressive, unchanging; it was making everybody crazy, breaking into their brains. I also knew that we were all about to get very drunk – the kind of drunk that made whatever mania we were entering even more dangerous. The place had two teenage waitresses, looking positively perplexed at our entrance; they began bringing us sweaty glasses of piss-colored beer. I ordered pork skewers, and chips and salsa. At the end of the table were three discolored jars, each containing a creature suspended in liquid: snakes, spiders, scorpions. And then Jenga and Mini Scrabble, which Hugh played by himself upon arrival. I was certain that none of the other performers were coming – that this was an elaborate ruse to get the girls here. The guy immediately sidled up to Tara. I asked if he was really in the circus, so he got up and did a twenty-second handstand and a couple of flips in the street.
Things devolved rather quickly. Soon we had commandeered the stereo and were playing songs off YouTube; Georgia chose something called Kisstory, a channel playing hits from my middle school days. The circus guy, whose name was Chet, began juggling chips and trying to toss them into Hugh’s mouth; then he got up and breakdanced, slithering his body around the table’s perimeter. He was clearly enthralled with Tara, who was nice enough to work through hours of broken conversation with him: he was 21; he lived with his parents; he’d had a girlfriend a year back; his name wasn’t actually Chet. He had concocted some sort of homemade red liquor, held in plastic bags, that he was now feeding to Tara at an alarming rate; we speculated that he might be drugging her, but the absurdity of the situation rendered that unimportant. Mary had climbed on the table and was now dancing, her head smacking against the tinkering bulbs. Melode was FaceTiming her boyfriend, which really threw into question the whole Melode/Hugh dynamic; Hugh wasn’t drinking at all, which kind of terrified me. Chet lifted his shirt and revealed a thin rope around his waist; it was somehow communicated that it was a chastity belt, and this immediately became a topic of endless fascination. One of the waitresses was trying desperately to get Mary off the table, but she kept dancing away from her. I had the bizarre epiphany that something was indeed very off: that these people weren’t like us, didn’t understand this – that there was something inherently wrong about such debauchery at the expense of those powerless to stop it. As in we had money, and couldn’t be turned away. I suppose I was delusional enough to think I was powerless as well.
Buffalo Alley closed at 11PM; it was now 11:30PM. So in some moment of clarity I declared that we had to get the fuck out of here because these people wanted to go home and we’d been dicks for long enough. The bill came to $46 USD. There was an incredibly long and aggressive conversation between Romy and one of the waitresses, in which Romy claimed to have paid $20 USD and thus needed change; and the waitress claimed Romy had paid $10 USD and thus did not need change; and you could see the fire in Romy’s eyes, this primal rage that only a drunk white girl can possess; and so the waitress let it go and gave her change, and I apologized as if my words meant anything as we stumbled onto the street.
Outside, the discussion began of where to go next – if anything was open in this discarded city. Chet said yes: Sky, on the other side of the river. Melode said she’d heard of it. I was currently thinking that when Chet was born Tara had been 10, and therefore already somewhat jaded. The main question was how to transport everybody; it turned out Chet’s tiny friend had been there all along, standing in the shadows while his boy hit on this older American chick. So there were nine of us, fit on three bikes; I climbed on with Hugh and Melode, speeding off into the night that was positively dark and silent.
I’d pictured Sky being like the John Hancock Observatory, overlooking Battambang from some silvery watchtower, air-conditioned and omnipresent. I had nothing to support this. In reality it was Sky Disco, a Cambodian nightclub. The entryway looked like an old movie theater: red vinyl couches and murals of jungle tigers on the walls. There were two vestibules: an entry door on the right and an exit door on the left. You’d think that Battambang would cool down at night, but it didn’t: the mugginess had me sweating through my button-down. Out front were guys in black suits. I had no idea how they did it. Beside them were security guards. They patted me down and I banged through the door, into the club.
Inside, Sky Disco felt like a seizure. Everything was dark and mirrored and shiny and flashing. They were making heavy use of the strobe. At the far end of the room was the DJ, standing on a raised platform with two MacBooks open. I’d describe the music as being like three techno songs played over each other. Occasionally he’d mute the music and yell two fast words into a blown-out microphone, then return to the song. Below was the floor, mirrors lining the booth; so you had to watch yourself dance, sometimes making eye contact in a truly discomforting way. The dance floor was emptier than Sky Disco presumably would’ve liked: there were a few Cambodians jumping around, but it was otherwise scarce. We bounced out with them. Georgia reeled me in like a fish, which I enjoyed. Mary started slapping my ass, which I enjoyed less. Hugh was mimicking a pulsing heart, his hands linked across his chest. Chet had ordered four pitchers of beer; I felt bad, because there was no way his circus salary could afford this – but then again, I’d bought more than four pitchers of beer trying to get with a woman. He was shouting into Tara’s ear, his tiny wingman standing a few meters behind with arms crossed. I was downing beer but could feel the drunkenness wearing off; we were growing hot and tired and sick of dancing. So we went outside, leaving Chet and Hugh on the floor, and retired to the outdoor bar, back in this scorching heat. I bummed a cigarette off Melode, muttering: “You have no idea how crucial this cigarette is.”
So there we were, sitting on the loungers fanning ourselves, discussing how bad the music was and whether or not Tara was going to sleep with Chet. Romy and Mary said she ought not to take his chastity belt, which was sort of obvious. Tara said we needed to buy them pitchers, and we all agreed – but it was difficult to coordinate, especially with the language barrier and the fact that we had multiple pitchers still sitting in the club. At which point Romy said: Look, no one has to come with me, but I’m getting a taxi home. You could tell the altercation at Buffalo Alley wasn’t sitting well with her – that fire was still burning. So this threw everything into disarray, with people saying we’d all leave but only after we got the pitchers; and Romy said that was fine, but she wanted to leave now. Mary ordered her a beer and said: Sit the fuck down while we figure this out.
I turned to Tara and said: What do you wanna do? She was like: I don’t want to be disrespectful, so I’m gonna stay. She said: Don’t worry about me – I can handle myself. I said: I am 100% confident you can handle yourself, and have no problem leaving you here. Because I honestly believed that Tara could handle that situation – and probably any situation – better than anyone, including myself. It was part of the reason I liked her so much. So she said goodbye and went into the club, sending Hugh out. He stumbled, shoeless, past the security guards and suited men.
The taxis were waiting on the street. I knew that the hostel was nearby and we could walk, but Romy said: Walk if you want – I’m taking a taxi. I told the driver: Here Be Dragons. Romy said: “How much?” He said: $5 USD. Romy said: “No way! $3 USD.” The driver shrugged. I surveyed the empty parking lot, and saw Melode running at Hugh; and then he was hosting her up, above his head, a la Dirty Dancing, in the sulfur streetlights. We left them behind.
We arrived at the hostel a few minutes later, to which Romy said: “$3 USD for this? Are you fucking kidding me?” and Georgia said: “You’re the one who said $3 USD!” and I said: “I fucking told you it was nearby,” and Romy paid him because the rest of us only had twenties.
It was 2:30AM, and the gate to Here Be Dragons was locked. We rang the doorbell but there was no answer. At which point Romy said: Fuck it, I’m hopping. Which wasn’t a particularly good idea, because the top of the gate was spiked and the surrounding wall was topped with glass shards. But Romy went over all the same, Mary coaching her through it; and as she straddled the gate, the spikes holding up her dress at odd angles, a security guard appeared and unlocked it. We followed him towards the building. He was a small man. Georgia sat on the wicker coach outside and said: “Is it okay to have a cigarette real quick?” But Mary and I were already heading upstairs, and we didn’t hear his answer. We entered back into that icy oasis – completely black, swallowed in cool darkness.
I was taking off my pants, preparing for bed, sorting through my things. I was using my iPod’s flashlight. I looked up, and Mary had taken off her smock and was undoing her bikini, revealing her breasts. I thought: Oh my God. She put on a sleeveless black tee and climbed the ladder to her bed. I was still rustling around when I heard her. I said: What? She said: “Do you have a cover or something? I’m cold.” I thought about it. “No,” I said. “Well then come up here,” she said. I said: I’m sweaty. It was a weird thing to say. But I could feel that stickiness on my back, my shirt drenched. She said: “I don’t care.” So I climbed the ladder and turned off my flashlight, and we wrapped our arms around each other.
It was only later, after everything, that it really came down and opened up. It was the void. I was lying there with Mary, her head on my chest; and it was washing over me, whatever it was. I hadn’t seen it since I was 18, back during those college nights of anonymous faces and places – it was afterwards, when I’d wedge myself between the bed and the furnace, praying she’d leave, that it’d expand before me: the void. I could see it. I can tell you what it looks like. It’s a cave, not unlike the Caves of Phnom Sampeau – but darker, deeper, warmer. It goes on into infinity. And here it was – the same. I hadn’t forgotten it; I just hadn’t realized it’d be back. It was real. An inverse of the Other World; an opposition to the plane I’d been searching for. A void so perfect that it didn’t need you, but it’d have you all the same. Mary was snoring. The bed across from us had stirred, now using some device that projected on orb of light on the ceiling. I realized that whatever I conjured would be irrelevant in the face of what I’d seen. It was its realness – the same, that image, after all these years – that was the scariest of all.
~~~
I awoke the next morning at 8:00AM. I’d hardly slept. I went downstairs and ordered an overpriced breakfast of coffee and baguette and butter and jam, and soon Tara came down and joined me. It was safe to say she’d slept even less. At which point she began filling me in on what had happened with Chet, whose name wasn’t really Chet.
Chet had gotten fresh. They’d left on his motorbike not long after us, and Chet had pulled up outside a hotel. Tara had been like: No. And instead of being like: “Okay, cool,” or: “Well, think about it for a minute,” Chet had started whining: “Whyyyy…” and: “Pleaseeee…” in a wholly comical fashion; and then he’d said: “Thirty minutes,” to which Tara had said: “No,” to which Chet had said: “Ten minutes,” to which Tara had said: “No,” to which Chet had said: “Two minutes,” to which Tara had said: “What am I going to do with two minutes?” So Chet had tried a new tactic, saying: “Teach meeee…” and placing Tara’s hand on his crotch, none of which was as erotic as he’d intended. I was floored by Tara’s sheer courage: after-hours and alone in Cambodia, fending off Chet with a smug smile, having the confidence to presume she could handle such a situation. In the end, Chet had taken her back to HBD and driven off into the morning; and now here we sat laughing about it. At which point I figured I’d tell Tara what had happened with Mary, whose name I wasn’t entirely certain was Mary.
After Mary began snoring, a form of panic set it. It was hot. I was coming down off some drunkenness. I remember thinking how docile and loving Mary looked, her head against my chest, curled into me, like we were two people who cared about each other and not strangers. But we weren’t two people who cared about each other, and we never would be – we’d always be strangers. And thus the panic. My mind was racing through a vast sea. So I got up, slid down the ladder, and climbed back into my own bed. It was then that I realized somewhere in Mary’s bed was my iPod. I’d used it to light my way up. I knew there was no way I’d be able to sleep without it. I also knew that losing one iPod in an Indian river and another in a one-night-stand wasn’t an option. So I climbed back up and searched around Mary. She was naked, sprawled out, snoring heavily. The iPod had to be directly under her. So I slid my hands beneath her and lifted the body, spotting the iPod; I dragged it out, and plopped her back down. Then I took her sleeveless tee and tried to cover her, but didn’t know whether to cover the top or bottom. I settled on the bottom. Then I went back down to my own bed and lay awake for a very long time.
I told Tara all of this. It was like I was vomiting it up even before I’d even made the decision to do so. And it felt good, like we could laugh about it in the morning sun. Because the night before it hadn’t felt good. It’d felt weird and crazy, and maybe a little hot; and then heartbreaking and isolating. I knew what it’d been: physicality, rudimentary desire, etc. There was nothing there; we didn’t owe each other anything. But still, it wasn’t that way for me. It was holding another person, feeling connected beyond oneself, staving off the lonesomeness that crept through the night. I didn’t expect Mary to understand that. I expected that she’d brought her own shit to the table. That somehow made it even more tragic.
Mary spent the day in the dorm. When I returned from lunch she was sitting cross-legged on the bottom bunk, journaling. She was back in her bikini. She didn’t look up. So I said: “Are you writing about me?” She said she was writing about Bali. I said I didn’t know where Bali was. Then I said: “Well, when you do write about me, just remember my rugged good looks.” She gave a non-committal laugh, and said: Will do. When their bus arrived that afternoon, she said goodbye and shuffled off into the heat. I’d exchanged info with none of them. And so I watched her wander out of my life, and I knew I’d never see her again. In a way it depressed me, but in that moment I was simply relieved.
I still had the bike, so I asked Tara if she wanted to go watch the bats again; she said that sounded nice. So at sunset we left Here Be Dragons, past Hugh and Melode curled up listening to sea shanties on his portable speaker, past the gate that’d practically impaled Romy, and back onto NH57; and on that highway Tara leaned forward and whispered a story in my ear. Before she’d left for Southeast Asia, she’d parted ways with her boyfriend of eight years, and her partner in the marijuana industry; she’d broken up with her one source of stability since 22, back when she and her mom had fallen out. Tara’s mom had had her when she was 16. They hadn’t spoken in eight years. Now Tara was out here cultivating some sense of independence, floating untethered through the ether towards what she hoped was her true self. It made the events of the previous night seem less like actions of confidence, and more like actions of someone who didn’t know – because we don’t know. We’ll never know.
I felt as though I had so many more questions, but the sun was setting and I knew our time was coming to a close. I knew I’d miss her – miss whatever the fuck all this had been in Battambang. I could see myself, eight years ahead, still searching as she was, sifting through past and future memories. No new answers to those old questions, but still searching all the same; and perhaps circling closer to some fleeting acceptance.
We watched the bats until dark, then set off for home beneath the large pink moon.
Peter M. Raffel 