I’ve only been in Cambodia a day, twelve hours actually, and I can already see why so many people claim it as their favorite country. When you arrive in a new place, step off a plane and take stock in your new foreign surroundings – signs in new languages, unreadable traffic, delicious and at times sickening food – it’s shocking. This is a good sort of shock, the kind that people travel for. The catch-your-breath, don’t know which way to turn sort of exhilaration that can only come from being somewhere so – there’s no other word for it – foreign.
I certainly felt it in Vietnam. When I landed in Hanoi I couldn’t sleep for the first two nights; between the noise, the newness of everything and the sheer remoteness of the life I had split from, I turned into a walking set of compulsions. I would stumble around without assertion or plan and just look and listen. Everything was different.
Cambodia is the first country I’ve entered without this sensation. Even in the deepest aspects of homogeneity that cosmopolitan Europe can sometimes bring, when you move from country to country the ideological and societal shifts make their presence felt. Where cultures have been so deeply gouged into the geography for thousands of years, everything in the vicinity reflects a certain atmosphere, whether tangible or not.
Cambodia feels different. It’s a feeling I have yet to put a finger on, somewhere at the intersection of chill and simple, warm and level. If you flash a smile at a Khmer, he or she will hit you back with a beam of glee so profoundly authentic and encompassing – smiling with the eyes in a way I don’t even think I can – that I found myself just walking around the streets of Kampot this evening, just smiling at as many people as I could. It’s contagious!
This country has a brutal and beautiful past, containing both ancient wonders and modern demons, and I’m sure that this rebounding national psyche has something to do with the vibe I feel here. That issue however, is best explored in length at another date. I think more poignant now is my personal movement over the past week or so. I’ve moved overland from Saigon, a gyrating coronary beast driving a country of 86 million, to a country with a seventh the population.
I think the overland part of this is important to this lack of “shock” I feel (or don’t) here. Moving through the Mekong Delta, I watched from a window as skin color darkened, water became stagnant and horizons flattened. It’s easy to forget that even though borders are, for the sake of argument, imaginary lines, and they don’t necessarily reflect the natural borders of either peoples or landscapes, things often look very different on either side of the line.
Today, for instance, at the Xa Xia to Prek Chak crossing, the asphalt road from the much wealthier Vietnamese side ended abruptly in a cloud of red dust and a cratered dirt road that begged for attention. Things were quite literally dirtier, a testament to how easy it is to get accustomed to filthy floors and motorbike exhaust and sweat.
It might just be a euphoric glaze because I’m finally somewhere new, but even though this is one of the most decrepit guesthouses I’ve stayed in this trip, with mosquito nets held together across rips by Band-Aids and a fan that seems to be unscrewing itself with enthusiasm as I stare up at it like a whirling death wheel, I feel just good.
A friend of mine who recently traveled through this country told me that “Cambodia is pretty cool…not really much to ‘do’ but the feel is interesting and the people are really nice.” I think its this not doing anything that strikes at home for me. What I do when I travel is move, from place to place or up and down alleys. In a cynical sort of self-doubting paradox, when you are traveling on a tight budget you find pretty often that you have nothing do to for good chunks of time. Nothing for it but to walk around and look at things. Take in the sunset; try to feel the place.
This is the first place I’ve been where the locals seem to be doing the exact same thing, with a wide smile.
It gives meaning to my movement.
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