..The internet has been outta commission here for more than a week now… ( at least for me, as i tend to take all their customers - at the internet place - whenever i come to post- not exactly rocket science: ahh, atta cool dog!- elvis that is. me :his name is elvis. Costello, not pressly. The future guests: ooh coooool.
Next- them-: you live here? Yes i do. Attaya do. Have a restaurant. You mean you serve food? Yes i do.-(that place don’t) the rest is history. And they come back and back, and they are happy and so am i. then yet, what else is new. Quite a bit as it seems: that this town is more ‘small checkered than a kRama or Payton place for that matter, must be obvious by now: the acerbic so called political correctness of the ngo’s is more than jarring.( claiming one’s political correctness is like claiming that one is a lady- or a gentleman- for that matter: the nouveau riche of the mind, we call them: ian and me that is: fortunately, ian and i can make fun of that, as we do share the same irreverence towards anybody who assumes any pompous airs. Does not make us any more loved in certain circles, but at least it keeps us laughing. And then yet, pickings in the laugh department have been rather lean this week, as Ian is in pp to get some cello lessons from florian- who seems to be the only person in cambo who even knows how to play a cello.. (Chris bought Ian a cello in Malaysia to keep him busy: Ian says if i Can only play ‘Mary had a little lamb’ on that ding, I’ll be happy- hell no! Chris says: I did not spend all that money for’Mary had a little lamb!’
Or have the picking been that bad? Not really: on the ‘typical cambo’ side. the elephant: the one that i still seem to have a’ time share in’ was due yesterday at jack’s project. Predictably so; it did not arrive. leaving me settled with an older American couple, absolutely sweet nice and lovely people, but as jack was doing construction on his guesthouse, i did have to do all the trekking work, and being rusty after the rainy season and all that, fortunately they were old, so i was forced to go very slow, and did, and that was even more tiring than going at my own speed, plus the bullies came with me and elvis has a cold and snotted over everybody -including the poor couple inna truck—and jack got very annoyed indeed- and then the bullies scared a whole phnong village half to death, where we had to go because jack found somebody cutting half the forest illegally and he took away this guy’s chain saw and turned it over to the village elder in that village and now there was the whole powwow as to who and what and so on. Well they will not cut any more jungle anywhere near jack’s project anymore any time soon! Good.
Today, jack called me: the mahout got ‘lost in the jungle’- i.e. drunk with his friend and parked our elephant in somebody’s vegetable patch- presumably- while doing so. Nothing new or unexpected there. But then; it is not our elephant that arrived….!!~ !~it is another… what???? Yeah, there stands not our elephant but another. Ours seems to have been ‘misplaced- how can one misplace an elephant? - beats us-a rather small issue, indeed… it is beyond us- i.e. ours has ‘been bitten by a snake’ and is presumably alive but has a hard time walking’-? - Possible, of course, possible. Anyways on the bright side: we do have an elephant, but actually, we would prefer to have ‘our own…’
We’ll see what will happen there
.. And i did think sheer stupidity was a snookyville thing? Did i? Come again: aww what is it with French people/ what: dim- who is French is doing this big big deal with bhp. I mean we are talking big money. Too much work for him alone or anybody else that is for sure, just to be fair. He will and must and shall get that contract with bhp... ok, so fair enough, he takes on this other Frenchman. This Conradian figure. But then”? He … rents another guesthouse, as if he did not have enough work feeding just about 80 people a day, six days a week. So” after he got his so called friend” to help him, things started to get, well, a bit different- so to speak…so the food is not quite what the bhp was used to. They still did have signed da contract with the man anyways. So… as The contract is signed: bhp buys an espresso machine- one of those expensive ones for Dim’s place to give their people ‘good coffee’... And of course, their people ask for coffee, but: oh no, the machine is broken. After a few days somebody says: did i not see that machine- quite in working order- and there is only one and only one espresso machine in this out post-- at the new guesthouse. And yes, there it was and quite in working order….. so bhp moved the machine Back to Dim’s old place, and the next day, abovementioned coffee machine had moved back to the guesthouse, and bhp gets told it is broken- yet again-etc..) the (no it is not broken etc, and bhp took it back yet again .and that is where things stand as off now. Them playing musical coffee machine so to speak. What can dim be thinking of? Is he mad? Gone Snooky? What? i do wonder/
- Meanwhile, i get that lovely and amusing and amiable bunch every Sunday – and have a blast! we all have a lot of fun and I make quite a bit of money. –- and lay as low as possible when it comes to dim and his venture- until now that I write about it, that is, but as I write in English, they won’t be any the wiser anytime soon, them being French and all that- or so I do sincerely do hope1- bhp to me: you are so cheap- me? Moi? I will not up me prices just because you are bhp, my prices be my prices, okay???- Actually my food is not cheap at all! There will be some showdown or other sooner than later? Possibly…
…. meanwhile the espresso machine wanders and wanders. Why oh why…? –never mind that they- dim and his friend- rented jack’s bar; and in the name of improvement they trashed the place, and then when all was trashed, coldly informed jack- their so called friend that; they did not rent the place anymore from him and gave jack 200 dollars- which even here is surely not enough to rebuild bar, but they happily absconded anyways…to their newly rented guesthouse next door. Ouch, the French, nothing like the French! - If that are friends, it’s better to have them rather as enemies. At least one knows what to expect…
..Just the other day Ian – that was before he went for his cello lessons in pp- came over for a few cold beers. How is cmac doing – Cambodian mine action center- the de miners, I asked. Two detonations last week he said- because Chris- his husband is a medic there he would know of course,; the first: - now that’s a classic- the village chief of one little outpost or another, called them over when they were driving through. Could they help, because he was sick and tired of having that stuff in his house. whaaa? Yes, indeed, he had – still the mines that were given to him by the Khmer rouge- Chinese made thus- in his house; because he did not want to put them down anywhere. (..Nice guy...). So for more than thirty years this poor man had been living with a rather big box of landmines- in his house, the mines were still in their original packages. So cmac detonated those.
…next a call. …. -what do i so have: a guardian angel? - As Shap might say-or- a guardian Buddha? a sixth sense, or just plain dumb luck? A nest of cluster bombs had been found. Now, cluster bombs are just the nastiest meanest, most dangerous unexploded ding one can find hereabouts. Those little fake rockettes have a little propeller inna back. When dropped, the propeller starts to turn. Presumably starting the trigger mechanism. They turn and turn and when the mechanism is not fully turned when they land, they rest. And deteriorate and lay there. So one never knows how far the trigger is gone towards explosion. Whereas one has to step on a mine to get one self killed or maimed-, cluster bombs happily explode, whenever- even when one steps only near to them, and just juggles da ground enough to give that little propeller that single extra partial twist. And yes, cmac exploded them and nobody got hurt. But guess where they were? remember, that big piece of land that i did not buy, when i was looking for my land? the piece of land that was so big and cheap and overgrown and i might even have mentioned that i was too worried about some ordinance or other…:to buy it ..And yes, and sure enough; that was where the cluster bombs were found. Detonated now, and nobody hurt, but still. Not a close shave, but close enough for my taste fo’ sure.-to top it off; they were right under the main power linefor town, making detonating them without pluynging the city into darknesseve- quite hard. They managed, that one, but power outagesare the order of the dayanyways,, even without dretonations…
Meanwhile, as the rains are moving off to wherever rains go after the rainy season, it is getting quite cold: storms are moving over, blowing clouds and if you ask me those ill winds are coming from where: Manchuria, or even Siberia? Everybody goes to the market to buy- second hand-oxfaM? –warm clothes. Many of those come from Russia; the results can be quite funny: imagine a phnong inna Russian fur hat…next to a banana plant…
Anyways, we all start to bundle up. And have colds and so on. When the sun comes out, we all shed our winter clothes…
And then, now that it gets drier, the snakes come out, having been prone while it was cold. The other day there was a big one, right in front of my restaurant... What kind a snake? Yeah, I’d like to know that too’; what is it with those field guides??? So by the looks of it is eighter: a.) a rat snake; perfectly harmless, even useful/. Or: b.) a cobra. As field guides only photograph cobras when they are angry- and their hoods are up, aww. By that time it will be too late, and when cobras rest, they- or some do at least, just look like rat snakes, I for one can not tell the difference. So I decided to scare the snake off. Threw my flip flop at it. And yes, the snake moved: crawled right under my house. The last place where i do want to have it. No I will not crawl underneath just to kill it or maybe get killed me in the process. Sooooo: snakes can't hear... But they hate vibrations, so rather than doing heroics of any kind I do put on a ‘gun’s and roses’ record that somehow made it from Billies’ collection of records into mine when I moved here. Then I call the bullies, and we all dance and jump up and down on the wood floor and make quite a racket and by now it should be gone after half an hour of rather serious vibrations…. and we never did see that particular snake back again… so maybe it worked.
So, it seems like i will be able to finaly post regularly again! Do not ask, please.
But yes, I will.
..now that the rains are abating- in theory that is, as some cyclone or other seems to have hit the Philippines and dumps yet more ‘ second hand rainfall ‘ on us- the bus service has resumed and tourists are- not really flooding the town, but yes, they are around and quite a few of them. And yes some even do find my place, quite a few actually. as i am not on the main road, nor known, I did make a map that looks like a little children’s albeit a quite sarcastic -drawing on the back of my flier, motos colliding, an elephant on the runway a stupid cartoon cow the city’s monument etc- and yes the signs that we had painted work too. So there is a bit of a buzz going….That does not go over quite too well in certain quarters, see a place called nature lodge partly western owned- he Khmer, she Israeli, and in some Khmer quarters not too well either. Still tourists come, and most of them ate extremely nice and a lot of fun. Ever so often, nature lodge does send ‘spies’ easily recognized. Most of their customers are not my cup of tea anyways. Then yet today a delightful English couple arrived, they came for drinks and dinner, being bored with the pseudo ecological stuff of nature lodge. ohh yes, they had met that new Zealand couple, the bored the wits outta me yesterday for quite some time,- two tomato soup, one coke, three hours- they said i was gonna be competition for nature lodge. Nature lodge should be so lucky them/ they can keep their cheap customers- most of them that is. The nice ones show up here anyways, and then a few not so nice ones too.
As it is getting busier by the day, i will need more staff. My cleaning girl is quite okay, - not the sharpest machete in the jungle, but- so be it, but has taken to not showing up. – now that the young lady has mobile and a motorbike... her attendance has gone down and she does try to get away with less and less work. – never mind she earns the fortune that made the bike and phone possible in the first place sp I made perfectly clear that no work no money.. and she seems to get the gist of that one…maybe….and I will need an assistant, but as I quite enjoy cooking myself and if somebody assists he or she will have to adhere to my stile and be willing to learn, I’d say it ain’t gonna happen-not anytime soon.
..Then after quite busy week end, today I did decide to take it quite easy indeed. Things here are moving at an amazing speed for such a backwater. But let’s not move ahead of the developments.
Today the Russian dirt bikers arrived- yet again: a Russian tour. Operator organizes dirt bike trips through cambo. 10-14 bikes at a time; good drivers, great gear, like ‘red’ hell’s angels they drive into town: all the local flowers of young womanhood come out of the woodwork. The bikers stop. Off comes the gear and visible become: sagging bellies, balding heads buckteeth, and ‘four eye glasses.
The Leningrad nerds? The Vladivostok geeks? Some such. Whatever… and the flowers or young mondul Khmer woman hood, merged back into da woodwork- with remarkable speed, at least for hereabouts-, just as fast as they crawled out. Not that the Russians are particularly interested either way: they prefer elvis, who obligingly jumps on their bikes to be photographed, and the end is obvious: loads of vodkas downed in my place.
Fine by me.
Ps: As I was having a beer in the coffee shop this afternoon, being a bit bored, I finaly did get around to reading the coffee e shop’s sign correctly. It said: ‘we frie THE French!!’...
(Fine by me, too. Go right ahead!).