Siem Reap: My Recalibration In Indo-China

We’re weaving like we’re drunk, but I’m not...not tonight. I don’t think my driver is either; he likely wishes he was, but that takes riel, dollars, or baht, and he’s already told me today’s been slow.

We’re floating over what’s passing for Pokambor Avenue, dodging potholes the size of bomb craters, sliding all over in the viscous red mud, the rains mocking our earnestness. My starts at a sudden tack wrench me from our flank, tear my eyes away from the seamless alleys of life that frame the way onwards. I think we’re about halfway there, but have no way of knowing.

Dense, wet earth licks at my shins, finds ways to kiss me. Dusk is falling and it’s strange not to be immersed in a happy hour somewhere, leafing through a book, on a lookout for a connection of sorts. I’ve been in Cambodia for three days now and what was once known as Democratic Kampuchea’s been making inroads since the first minute, talking to parts of me I’ve never spoken with or maybe even heard, and maybe the reason I’m headed out to Wat Thmey tonight is because it’s found some part of me to complete, or perhaps wake up.

My flight into Siem Reap cost half the country’s average yearly income. The rest survive on less than 45 cents a day. I suppose I assuaged this guilt by opting for a moto instead of a taxi for the ride into town, despite the rain and ankle injury that led me to fly in the first place. The next 20 minutes was math, some part of me attempting a framework for what I was seeing, maybe because arithmetic isn’t my strong suit, maybe because all the language in me was at a loss for words. But things were different.