The truth about human life is that most of the time there is nothing to do, and therefore the wise man cultivates the art of doing nothing. John Burdett, Bangkok 8
Wise? Me? Yeah, sure.
Substitute bored and more aptly you have my life's story.
A lot of folks tell me living and travelling solo as I do would freak them out: they couldn't handle the loneliness. Me, I have no trouble with lonely. How could I possibly with all those voices yakking in my head.
But bored? Oh boy. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that I don't really do anything. I know, I know -- at 68, I am officially listed as "retired". Don't kid yourself. I haven't "done" anything, not in any conventional sense, since I was sacked from my last job. That was March 16, 1965. How have I made a living? Yo, that's a whole other story.
Still, no matter where I am or whatever I may be doing (or, more likely, not doing), growing intolerably bored is as certain as rates, and I seem to get billed for both with the same frequency. What do I do to combat this terrible dis-ease? I run.
Used to be, I was fairly spontaneous. Upon first whiff of stagnation, I began eyeing the battered old backpack. And when the stink had me firmly by the throat, shaking me to my foundations, did I finally make my escape. Destination? Immaterial. Avoiding the plague sat foremost.
Years back, I discovered the Asian continent, and fell in love with all those old cultures bunched so closely together. After a while I developed a sort of routine: each year I would hit two countries, one where I'd been before, the second a place that was completely new.
This eventually developed into a process called planning. See, I knew I would eventually grow bored, so I'd begin devising a strategy of avoidance well ahead. Problem is, I'm the world's worst planner.
Take the year 2006. I planned on India. The Big I is so huge and diverse, I reasoned, I could do both there, familiar and fresh. I booked tickets in April, when the cheap fares come out, to hit India in October, when the monsoons have dried up. But then…
"You may not remember me," began the letter, "but we met at the Nan Lin Hotel in Suzhou back in --"
The voices inside my head experienced a rare moment of silence. Then, in chorus: "Who-o-o??"
I read the letter through a second time. A Chinese name. Telling me we had met in 1987. How on earth was I expected to --. Wait. Wait. Ye-es!
Her name was Ho and she was 24 and a Singapore teacher making her first visit to the Mainland. I, too, was on my maiden journey to China, only I'd already been living at the Nan Lin two months by this time. Doing what? Well, you know. But as an artiste, doing it ever so well. There was not a street, an alley, a canal, an ancient garden in that small (for China) delightful city I hadn't spent time and more time doing nothing.
Ho and I quickly became chummy and, knowing the city so well, I volunteered my services as her tour guide. There was just this one small hitch. China had just opened up to unrestricted travel and hardly any place off the tourist track had signs in English. Didn't faze me in the least. I'd simply meander around town, spot something of interest and make up what it should be. "Returned Chi Gung Warriors Association". Or: "Benevolent Order of Left-Handed Goldfish Painters".
Ho, however, being Chinese, read Chinese. So when I'd point out a familiar building as the League of Bi-Polar Trapeze Tumblers and Tightrope Dancers Social Club, Ho would squint with creased brow at the sign painted in those silly squiggles and curlicues and cry, "But-but it says Street Sweepers and Toilet Cleaners Collective Hall!"
Now, 19 years later, comes a letter telling me she's been living in Siem Reap, Cambodia the past 11 years, and if ever I'm in the neighborhood --. And there went a whole bunch of superannuation funds spent on a ticket to India. Because the most important rule in the doing nothing trade is this: always, always, go with the flow.
Situated between much larger Thailand on the left and Vietnam to the right, Cambodia has suffered as perhaps few other countries in history. Once a proud, advanced and intelligent people, the Khmer were ripped apart for some 15 years, first by Pol Pot and the Rouge, then by a devastating civil war (helped along by those ever-altruistic folks, the Yanks). We know about the notorious killing fields. But how many of the country's elite wisely bailed out and are now living in places like California and Boston? Those left behind certainly haven't been helped by a do-nothing government and corrupt military and police. In its favor, however, the pols have no problem (as do the thugs running Myanmar) with outsiders coming in to help. Thus the presence of vast numbers of NGOs and volunteer individuals from the West and wealthier Asian countries.
Siem Reap's claim to fame, or perhaps its future infamy, is the Angkor Wat, a very nice temple built a zillion years ago. People come - a million turistas were expected the winter of '06-07 - to pay US$20 a day for the privilege of climbing all over, and having pictures taken of themselves climbing all over, a very nice temple built a zillion years ago. Me, I've been in Siem Reap three weeks as I write, and the closest I've come was a glimpse from my bicycle after sneaking past the ever-present road guards.
So if I haven't visited Angkor in all this time, which is what 99.9% of the tourists come here for, what is it I have - or haven't - done each day? So many fascinating things. My very first hour of awakedness here, even before I contacted my friend Ho, in fact, I'd already made two important scores: I landed a home, and I found my office.
The office actually came first. Staggering out of the guest house where my tired and aching body had been deposited at 2am following a perilous 18 hour overland jaunt from Bangkok, I registered immediate shock at the early morning rush hour traffic which seemed to have no rules, make no sense, to my Western-trained mind. Mayhem, Cambodia-style. Motorbikes, the majority vehicle, often packed with three or four people (all of them talking on cell phones), were whizzing along on the right side of the street, which they should, but as well the left side, which they, um, shouldn't. And all vehicles, bikes, cars, trucks, buses, cut 45 degree corners, sometimes 50 metres before the intersection, whenever a turn came up. A right angle just did not exist in this country.
A hundred metres along I spotted a convenience store attached to a petrol station. One of the sundry bigmouths in my head ordered me in, whereupon I discovered the best coffee in all of Siem Reap. Plus great chocolate chip cookies. Plus a place to sit in air-con pleasure, sip and munch, read the International Herald and view the stream of multi-racial humanity coming in to play the ATM. My "office" in Siem Reap.
Within minutes, I was having dialogue with a Hungarian woman who was here as part of an NGO. She introduced me to a Khmer man, who was the local director of this NGO. He then bundled me into his car and drove me to his recently constructed luxury home, where he just happened to have available this huge air-con room with bath and TV. And, just as significantly, as I was to learn, he also had a bit of a cash flow situation as result of said recently constructed luxury home. Not a rarity on the mobily-upward treadmill of Southeast Asia.
For sure I prefer a family residence to staying at a hotel or guest house. The only drawback here is the familiarity of the family. These people can't do enough for me, which, though warm and wonderful, can get a bit much. How do I deal with this? Keep a smile on my face and say thank you a lot while slowly backing away. Occasionally it works.
So I haul my host's ancient wobbly bicycle through the makes-no-sense early morning traffic/mayhem to the office, where I've taught the giggling young women behind the coffee counter precisely how to make a double-espresso-with-hot-milk-and-a-touch-of-water for the funny old barang. An hour or two of office work (ha-ha), and I'm ready for the day.
It doesn't matter which way I pedal, I will pass women with bandannas over their faces sweeping street dirt into huge clouds of dust which, after it blankets me, settles back to become…street dirt. Then pushcart food vendors, coconut sellers on bicycles (I've counted 40 on a single bike), the local 'gas stations', tiny stalls with petrol stored in litre bottles of Johnny Walker, the Central Market, jam-packed with diverse product and humanity…
I say gidday to smiling kids, to oldies who stare at me in nonplussed stupefaction, to the tuk-tuk drivers sitting or lounging in their stationary vehicles. (Unlike Thailand, Cambodian tuk-tuks are standard motorbikes attached to a sort of horseless buggy.) Towards evening, I make sure to cycle down to the river and take in the uncanny hackeysack kickers.
Once I hired a motorbike and spent the morning tooling around the countryside. The scenery was spectacular, but the roads so brutal I needed a lumbar transplant after. Another day I cycled to the lake south of the city and cruised for several relaxing hours on an old passenger boat.
People in Siem Reap, I find, basically are friendly and gentle. Now and again a hard look, but to date only the slightest evidence of the marauding nighttime motorbike thieves who work the streets of Phnom Penh. The intense building of huge hotels and a proliferation of modern shops and posh restaurants, however, can only lead to an even greater rich-poor split, always signature for advanced crime and violence.
I have met a multitude of interesting people, many through my friend Ho. Yes, we connected after 19 years. She, her handsome Khmer husband and three gorgeous kids have been a treat. I don't see them all that often, frankly, because their lives are busy and home always full of visitors, and despite her sincere implorings to drop in I don't want to be a nuisance.
A few days back, she invited me to the opening of a children's art exhibit. The kids and their parents, over a hundred strong, represented a range of races, languages, professions and avocational preferences that staggered the imagination. Siem Reap, with a population of just 80,000, is a full-on international city.
Prime focus in the world of doing nothing while on the road is the splendid pastime of eating. A typical day, in fact, seems to be filling in those spaces between visits to food establishments. I have found in Siem Reap, a truly fine eating town, several such, from family-run street stalls to upscale joints where a three course vegetarian meal might set me back all of five dollars. My personal menu:
Huge two-dollar salad at the Red Piano, where a few years back, in town filming a very bad movie, Angelina Jolie sat her elegant bottom on perhaps the very chair I favor. Tofu red curry with vegetables for a buck and a half at an always-crowded family-run street cafe. Rice-noodles and veg with egg stir-fry for 75 cents at yet another. Fried vegetarian dumplings set me back $1.50 at the Wood House, a Chinese eatery. And on and on. Following the mandatory afternoon nap I drop by my second office, a very modern oasis where I'll sip a drink while reclining on long, sheet-covered lounges, reading or writing in my 1B5 while around me younger folk tap away on laptops.
It is Sunday afternoon at the Singing Tree, a gathering place started in their home and peaceful garden by an Australian man and his Khmer wife. Sundays are set aside for people to drop in and mingle, and there must be 25 or more here this day.
I'm sitting with two older American males, whose talk of beekeeping grows a mite excessive, so I move to a table where a young English mother is recounting to an older Swiss woman teacher the details of raising two boys in places like Dubai and Sri Lanka, where she and her hospitality trade Parisian husband have previously been stationed.
A woman enters the garden on her own. A mop of frizzy hair. Dressed in colorful, loose Indian garments. She sits by herself, but not for long, as automatically I switch places and sit down beside her. We talk music, movies, travel. She has been places I've barely heard of, whereas I've written about things she says she's always wanted to, but.
As it does in the tropics, day becomes night without seeming to pass through dusk, and then, magically, the full moon appears over the treetops.
We go for a walk by the river. The annual Water Festival is happening, and there are crowds of people, brightly colored lights, miniature plastic boats bearing candles bobbing along the dark water.
I suggest dinner and she agrees. Restaurant or street? I ask. Either, she says. Then: but I do prefer street.
So it's the tofu red curry place (she orders green), where we start off with delicious 50-cent fruit shakes. The curries are, as always, remarkable. After, we stroll to her guest house, where we talk and talk.
Following morning we sit outside her room waiting for the bus to take her to Bangkok, from where she will fly to India.
Why not come with me to Vietnam and then home to New Zealand? I offer.
How about coming with me to Calcutta? she counters.
We smile, a little sadly. And shrug.
The bus appears. She straps on her backpack. We hug and kiss. I watch as she boards the bus. I see her settling into a seat and hope she will look out and wave. But she is still fumbling with her things as the bus slowly pulls away with a roar and the smell of cheap diesel.