Category: Monsoon Solitaire

Erwann Eleouet

But?! But?! Who stole my book ?!

I wander in the  large house in search of my precious, passing meticulously from room to room.

Not in the bedrooms, not upstairs, maybe in the living or dining room.

But that’s not true, I’m sure I put it on the bar last night, unless it was on one of the beds!

I methodically lift all the objects wich could hide this book, but nothing …

Calm down, don’t let the silliness and the hot and humid atmosphere disturb you.

There is only you here, no woman, no children or visitors. You. Excepting pranksters spirits, no one has been in here for a while. So think … and find!

Oh yes! 

Near the throne of the master of the house awaits me my profound poems.

“Here all is order and beauty, luxury, calm and voluptuousness.”

After having masterfully opened a delicious Kokaé coconut, I finally settle down in my comfortable hammock, suspended between a prolific mango tree and the above-mentioned coconut tree.

In the calm of the darkness, I savor the silence of the Cambodian night. At this time, nothing human is moving around me. The wind passing from the frangipani flowers to the bamboo trunks does not only carry the scent of my immense garden, but all the sounds of the surrounding nocturnal fauna : the crickets punctuate the rubbing beetles, sometimes interspersed with the witch’s laughter of the little geckos or of the blessing of the Tokkays. 

The cosmological background noise of the garden, the silence of nature in constant bubbling which swarms.

In fact I think I will not read … Rather take advantage of this sweet indolent solitude in this magnificent country which is not mine.

The sun will soon rise …

I wake up with a start, suffocating, facing the hilarious face of my adorable little girl who pinches my nose and mouth.

“Noum banh chok! Noum banh chok!” she whispers to not wake up her older brothers who are still sleeping.

I emerge, my eyes still clouded with sleep, and my brain trying to reconnect with current reality. But what is she telling me?

“Noum banh chok! Noum banh chok !”, she whisper in my ear, “mom wants you to go buy us some noum banh chok traï for breakfast. Mum said daddy will buy! Go, go, go, noum banh chok!”.

I protest for the form: “But, mom does not prepare baï sack chroupk? Wich day is it?”.

“Mum said noum banh chok traï for us, and the skewers for the people, and we noum banh chok!”.

Her whisper of departure has partially dissipated, she begins to jump in place, almost falling on the carpet where her brothers sleep.

It is the beginning of the end of the silence, the two wake up and say in quinquark their first morning sentence: “Eat rice! Eat rice!”.

I step over the two bellies formerly motionless between my carpet and our door to access the terrace shared by all our neighbors. I am not the first, the mother in charge of the district is already ready to go to the pagoda and some noises begin to animate the three other accommodations adjoining us.

While I wash myself near the jar of rainwater, I observe the surrounding rice fields which are not yet full. Hey, the barrang next door is awake, quietly installed in its hammock at the end of its garden. The first pan of fresh water invigorates me and I soap myself over my krama while my daughter hops while singing “Noum banh chok! Noum banh chok!”.

After a quick round trip in my tuktuk, hands loaded with the best noum banh chok traï in the village and iced coffees, I see that life has resumed its usual course. Neighboring families are divided into groups of women / men / children. My wife has sold several baï sak chroupk before and the rice bites dipped in the tangy fish sauce clump together in hungry mouths. Bowl in hand, I follow my daughter who walks from group to group, patiently trying to slip a spoon into her mouth between each discussion and bite of rice that she is offered.

More and more people are passing by to buy my wife’s delicious bai sak chroupk. The children sing, the adults call to each other from one end of the rice fields to the other, the monks chant blessings in exchange of offerings : a joyful and roaring cacophony sets in, based on choumreapsuor, sok sabaï and loï ponman .

I leave in my tuktuk, it is time to go earn money, and quietly move away from this jovial and morning hubbub.

###

I wake up in my bed, calm and relaxed.

What time could it be? No matter. When you are in my position few things matter, is it daytime, is it night, is it time to eat or to get to work, do you need to look after your appearance, do you even have to do Something?

I feel the time passing all around me. 

I am on a boat whose hull is like water.

I leave my krama and cover myself with more contemporary clothes, get on my motorbike, almost slip into the pond that forms a moat all around my home, and get ready to leave my rental property.

All is very quiet.

A small group of women play cards very seriously while one of the husbands looks at his phone, comfortably installed in his tuktuk about ten meters from the house. Another man, isolated farther on, smokes his cigarette crouching on the edge of the red dirt road. The children wade through the middle of the paddy field, looking for small fishes and crabs.

My neighbor calls out to me:

“- Hello big brother, would you like to join us a little later to eat rice and drink a few beers?”

We shake our hands while he places his other hand at his shoulder.

“- Uh … Hello little brother, I … uh … not know many language Khmer, sorry, please speak another time?

– Would you like to join us to eat rice and drink a few beers, some friends will join me a little later and your coming would make me happy.

– Drink a little cans? A little later? Uh … Ok, I go town, market. I come after. Thank you many.”, I jabber, respectfully nodding my head.

Passing by the old man who smokes greets me with his hand, I answer him a “Hello old man!” and some stammerings about cans to buy.

– “Big brother, big brother, join us, have you ever eaten rice?”

I explain that this Barrang is the neighbor and make some signs. My friends first hand a plate of rice, then other dishes like fried fishes, raw rice crabs marinated in chili fish sauce, duck heads and beef tendons with prahok sauce.

“- Thank you many, he replies to each dish, I eat a little, mmmmh good, good many, eat rice Cambodia good many!!”.

With each sip we collectively toast Tchol Moï!! Tchol Moï!!! Little by little, those closest talk with the barrang. It’s quite funny, he answers a lot of times in the wrong way, but no one is laughing.

The tone is well set up, especially since I pulled out my state-of-the-art double-bass surround bluetooth baffle and we turn the microphone to sing Khmer songs with our karaoke phones.

The concert invaded the district, the heated spirits understand each others better despite the language barrier. Empty cans are piling up on the floor. The children dance all around us and come to nibble on the dishes.

The barrang speaks louder to cover the baffle which screams its songs about love and money :

“- I  COME CAMBODIA. I WANT STAY CAMBODIA. I NO EAT PEOPLE, I NO WANT PEOPLE EAT ME. DO BEAUTIFUL.

I WANT DO … uh … PARTNERSHIP? UNDERSTAND? ASSOCIATION? UNDERSTAND? uh … raaaah not know language … Uh … Ok … I WANT DO BUSINESS HELP / HELP, UNDERSTAND? ROSSI TCHOUI / TCHOUI!”

I understand. I like this barrang. We shake hands, saying it’s okay to try.

Little brother turns off the speaker and beckons us to listen. We hear like drums in the distance. Not a whole bunch of boumboumboum, more like drums in front of an infantry charge. The wind begins to blow, everyone is busy.

The sound grows louder, a horde of wild horses seems to be approaching us, or rather a horde of elephants, their paws pounding the ground with heavy and resigned power.

And suddenly they are upon us, waves, torrents, cascades of rain fall on us. Indifferent to the tiny ones that we are, the monsoon takes part in the great cycle of life, filling the rice fields here, reversing the course of the rivers there, watering Cambodia for a following cycle.

It’s time to go home. I greet everyone and get ready to run when my new Khmer partner holds me back :

“- Big brother, don’t forget your bag …”

Image: Ted McGrath, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Arthur Graham

There we were, dry as dust, baking in April, the hottest month of Cambodia’s dry season. Those with the time and money drank. Drank for relief from soul-exhausting heat, drank from desperation, against darkness, depression, or disappeared dreams. 

In the distance, low-slung stratus clouds slowly turned salmon pink from the sinking sun. Azure sky slabs above the streaky pink provided an exquisite color contrast. I stretched out beside a roof-top swimming pool to watch the shifting light show.

For days, clouds scudded across the sky serving as scenery rather than leaking swimming pools that fly. In a land where “to eat,” yam bai, literally means “to eat rice,” ¹ and about two-thirds of the population are farmers, ² a “dry” wet season means disaster. 

Noticing my interest in the sky, Champei, the barmaid, said, “We need some pee from paradise.” Expectations aren’t always met. If you don’t believe me, ask a cloud.

Deepening darkness revealed flickering lightning. Swathes of the sky lit up as nature showed its stuff. Electrical charges danced between clouds, lighting up the horizon. Blinding lightning branched, flashed, flared, flickered, networked, played, pulsed, seared, stabbed, struck, and zigzagged. 

While essential to life, storms also bring death and disaster. In the first half of this year, 2021, “natural disasters, rainstorms and thunderstorms killed or injured nearly 200 people and damaged thousands of homes.” ³ Being outside at the wrong time can be fatal.

In the Diamond Sutra, life is described as: “A flash of lightning in a summer cloud.” ⁴ Conversely, being cooked in the interminable heat turned time into torture: a baking eternity.  

Rain would bring relief. After a fire-bolt flash, start counting. Thunder booming on five shows the storm is a mile (1.6km) away. ⁵ This time there weren’t any booms: it was a storm without a soundtrack. Sound disappears over distance. Light arrived, but sound didn’t make it. 

Some Buddhists believe our senses trick us into “cloud dreams”: a world of illusion. ⁶ Splitting sound from lightning confused the senses: like separating heat from fire. Watchers felt cheated: they were only getting half the show. 

But even getting the thunder isn’t enough. As the Khmer proverb puts it: “When you hear the thunder, don’t hurry to throw away the old water.” ⁷ Don’t trust your senses or the sky. Sound doesn’t always trigger rain, bringing relief to the parched earth. 

Those hot April days featured lots of trailers before the “main event.” If everything works well, the desultory first rains will come after the Khmer New Year, which is around the middle of the month. 

Cambodian monsoons have Indian connections, starting with the April rains, called “mango showers.” Both countries consider mangoes as iconic, the symbol of the season. Both consider May to be the normal monsoon beginning. Rainfall is expected until October in Cambodia, in India it ends a month earlier. 

‘The Indian Ocean has been described as “only half an ocean”; it is not half the size of the Pacific; and the great mass of it is wholly within the tropics and flanked by tropical plateau. It is, therefore, both the most enclosed and warmest ocean in the world, under a double land influence. These are conditions which would always favour the conversion of permanent planetary phenomena into periodic regional phenomena.’ ⁸ In other words, the Indian Ocean is a monsoon machine. Winds make monsoons. When cool moisture-laden sea air fills space left by rising hot land air, rain is the result. ⁹

Separating southern Cambodia from the Indian Ocean is the narrow Thai peninsular, only 25–30 miles (40–48 km) wide at its narrowest point, ¹⁰ from there winds enter the Gulf of Thailand before rushing into the Cambodian landmass. Thus, Cambodia’s most powerful monsoon is known as the Southwest Monsoon. 

“The wind speed increases slowly from June to August as the summer monsoon intensifies. In this period, the wind speed in the mountainous area in the southwest is approximately 5-6 m/s. The mountains in the southwest area help to enhance the wind speed.” ¹¹ 

According to a five-year Japanese study from 2010-2015, between 50 to 78% of Cambodia’s rain falls during the monsoon season. ¹² Another major Cambodian water source is the swollen Mekong, one of Tibet’s ten major rivers pouring out of “Asia’s water tower.” ¹³ The Mekong snakes across the nation, entering from Laos and leaving through Vietnam. 

But Cambodia’s ‘liquid lung’ is Tonle Sap, the largest lake in Southeast Asia. Monsoonal influenced expansions and contractions of this monster ‘aquatic lung,’ along with its immense fish riches may have enabled the rise and fall of earlier civilizations, centuries before Angkor. “It is entirely possible that more than 1600 years ago, farmers in Angkor Borei developed a farming system, dry-season flood-recession rice, that became the basis of future civilizations in the lower Mekong basin, including Angkor and the Tonle Sap.” ¹⁴ French researchers Groslier and Dumarcay described Angkor Wat as a ‘hydraulic city’ because of the complicated construction and engineering methods employed to move water in and around it. Cultural aspects also played a crucial role in the role of water, so they should be considered. 

“Clearly deep within religious practice of the Khmer is reverence of water as a special benefit bestowed on humans by the gods, as riverbed fertility symbols indicate. Water from this river source, thus blessed with passage over fertility symbols, increased the potential for a bountiful growing season.” ¹⁵

Snakes mimic the sinuous flow of water: it is not accidental that the nāga, a multi-headed cobra, is ubiquitous in Cambodia. Nāga can be seen on staircase railings leading to the temple sanctuary (vihar), symbolizing the bridge between earth and heaven. Nāga symbolize rain, so they can be considered a conduit between heaven and earth. ¹⁶

Frozen in combat on an Angkor Wat frieze; figures fight a tug of war. With a giant nāga as their rope, groups of gods and demons churn the Ocean of Milk for the ambrosia of immortality. Churned foam also produced apsaras, heavenly spirits, or divine dancers. ¹⁶

If Angkor Wat is a stone symphony, a carved cosmos, apsaras are moving sculptures; their sinuous movements prayers for fertility and rain. They came to be considered the core of Khmer culture. ¹⁷

“…Kambu Sayambhuva, an Indian prince, married to Mer, an apsara, from whom the first Khmer kings descended, making the mother of all Khmers a celestial dancer. This legend appears in inscriptions dating from 947 AD.” ¹⁸

Despite depredations, like deforestation and upstream damming, and despite some desperate years, the water keeps coming and Cambodian life continues. More needs to be done. Efficient fish pass systems to get through dams, as well as equitable water distribution, are essential for the more than 65 million people living in the Mekong River basin.

“It is clearly crucial to consider the geographies of the social and environmental impacts of dam development in the Mekong River Basin and to seriously evaluate the winners and losers of such projects, including beyond national borders, as those who are losing out have much less influence and wealth than those who are benefiting from hydropower dam development.” ¹⁹

Because trees act as ‘ground clouds,’ because they also serve as reservoirs, reforestation is another form of water insurance. For example, a reforestation project on Cambodia’s Kulen mountain “brought the rain back.” ²⁰

With its more than 300 fish species, Tonle Sap supplies “about three-quarters of the nation’s protein intake.” ²¹ Such profuseness is not limited to the lake. Consider the ceaseless sound curtain created by cicadas when they occupy trees for a few days after the rain comes.  Last year Siem Reap had a grasshopper plague. They leaped into restaurants, unwittingly suiciding into customers’ drinks. Frogs gorge on mosquitos. Squadrons of dragonflies patrol the air after a downpour. Beetles drop from trees; geckos fall from suddenly opened doors. 

However, the animal that inspired this essay is a fish, known as a ksan, sometimes it is stranded when the waters of the Tonle Sap recede. It waits out the dry season inside a pool in a round plant attached to a tree. ²² When the floodwaters return it can free itself. Many of us are waiting like the ksan for our little pool to be enlarged so that travel restrictions are lifted, freedom of movement is restored and life returns to something approximating what we had before we were “trapped.”  Whatever happens, change will continue. The word cloud derives from the word stone, and worm used to mean dragon. It should not be a surprise that the words, “astonish, astound, and stun all contain the idea of ‘thunder-striking,’ deriving from the Latin extonare meaning “to thunder out.” ²³ (1451 words, incl. title).

Footnotes:                                                                                                                          ¹ https://longreads.com/2015/04/21/in-the-khmer-language-the-verb-to-eat-literally-translates-as-eat-rice/

² https://ricepedia.org/cambodia

³ https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/lightning-top-cause-storm-related-deaths-so-far-year

⁴ https://www.learnreligions.com/a-bubble-in-a-stream-450098

⁵Alexander Frater, Chasing the Monsoon, (London: Penguin, 1991), 2

⁶ Introduction to Kim Man-Jung, The Nine Cloud Dream, (New York: Penguin, 2019), 14

⁷ Alain Fressanges (Compiler), Khmer Sayings, (Phnom Penh: Khmer Community Development NGO Publishing, 2019), 129

⁸ Lionel W. Lyde, The Continent of Asia, (London: Macmillan & Co.,1933), 105

⁹ https://kids.britannica.com/kids/article/monsoon/399549

¹⁰ https://www.britannica.com/place/Isthmus-of-Kra

¹¹ Serm  Janjai*, Worrapass  Promsen,  Itsara  Masiri, and  Jarungsaeng  Laksanaboonsong, “Wind  Resource  Maps  for Cambodia” Journal of  Sustainable  Energy  &  Environment  4  (2013): 161

¹² https://progearthplanetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40645-018-0192-7

¹³ https://thediplomat.com/2019/11/tibets-rivers-will-determine-asias-future/

¹⁴ Jeff Fox and Judy Ledgerwood, “Dry-Season Flood-Recession Rice in the Mekong Delta: Two Thousand Years of Sustainable Agriculture?” Asian Perspectives 38, no. 1 (1999): 37–50. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42928445.

¹⁵ Charles R. Ortloff, Water Engineering in the Ancient World, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 376

¹⁶ “Look & Listen: Cambodian Art and Dance of the Divine Serpent – Youtube.” Accessed November 18, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWZ3CPYZBs4.

¹⁷ Denise Heywood, Cambodian Dance: Celebration of the Gods, (Bangkok: River Books, 2008), 10

¹⁸ Denise Heywood, Cambodian Dance: Celebration of the Gods, (Bangkok: River Books, 2008), 20

¹⁹ Soukhaphon, A.; Baird, I.G.; Hogan, Z.S. “The Impacts of Hydropower Dams in the Mekong River Basin: A Review.” Water 2021, 13, 265. https://doi.org/10.3390/ w13030265

²⁰ https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/im-proud-have-brought-rain-back-reforestation-revives-cambodian-mountains

²¹ Michael Freeman, Cambodia, (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), 26

²² Bree Lafreniere, Music through the Dark, (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2003), 65

²³ Ernest Weekley, The Romance of Words (4th ed.) (Kindle Location 1942).

Alasdair McLeod

A dark squall rolled in across the valley, and the jungle canopy rippled above the swollen river. Among the wind-battered trees a winding road led to a crooked wedge of houses that overlooked the river.

The sound of Reva’s laughter on a video-call was muffled by the hammering rain.

“Honestly it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in a staff meeting. Des had logged in to the call way too early, and while he was waiting he nodded off!”

“What? How is that even possible?!” asked Talia.

“He was slumped on his chair while more and more people signed in and saw him. He was still asleep when the meeting started. His volume must’ve been turned low as we couldn’t get his attention.”

“Some people can sleep through anything, I guess. I wish I could do it. Perhaps not in a meeting, though. It’s been a pandemic – apparently nothing is off limits now!”

“When we were on the third agenda point, he finally woke up. He quickly realized what had happened and apologized but then he muted himself and called a mate. He was laughing a lot, and I’m no lip-reader but I could see he was telling his friend the story of how he’d fallen asleep before a work conference call. The Head of Department kept going with the meeting, but everyone was watching the screen tile of Des grinning and talking. I can’t begin to imagine why he didn’t switch to his avatar and kill the camera.”

“He ought to be careful. With all the shutdowns, so many businesses have closed and workers are returning to their villages. We’re lucky to have jobs, so Des should tread carefully.”

Reva brought the camera close and ate a strip of fresh mango. She then took a sip from a large glass of red wine. Looking up and to the left she said, “Look at our terrible lives.”

“Poor us,” replied Talia. They both laughed.

“But Des probably doesn’t care. The shutdowns are changing us all in myriad ways. It seems to me that everyone is acting a bit unpredictably as they’ve started forgetting how to be with other people socially.”

“Everyone is waiting for things to go back to the way they were before, but those days are gone. With no-one to talk to, it’s making narcissists of us all!”

“There’s a scary thought, talk to you later.”

Branches were scraping back and forth along the gutters and Reva was unsettled by the noises as the wind blew some loose fabric around in the roof-space. She turned on the news to drown out the sounds.

The newscaster had just asked a question and the guest said, “In our homes, all around the world, we’re at a tipping point of loneliness in our locked down lives. The absence of meaningful community is the real story here.”

Reva’s attention drifted to a gecko that was creeping intermittently along the skirting board towards the kitchen trash can, ignoring the line of ants that had been plundering it all afternoon. She looked across at the window and the mantis eggs crusted on the outside of the glass in the upper right corner. A coppery millipede was disentangling itself from the fluffy edge of the doormat, and she shivered. There had been a small brown scorpion on her back patio the other day, and a snake on the gate. 

“Loneliness is the least of my problems!” she muttered to herself in reply to the last thing she had listened to on the television. Maybe it was because of all the time she was spending at home, she thought, that these days she noticed the invasive creepy crawlies more than ever before. She checked all the windows and doors to make sure the mosquito net frames were closed tightly and that the rain wasn’t being blown in.

She sneered at the unwashed dishes that filled the sink and curled up on the sofa with her smartphone. She scrolled through the names and dialled one.

“Hey Altan, are you busy tonight?”

“Nah, not really, why?”

“Wanna hook up? I’m bored.”

“Woah, not likely. Have you seen the weather? It’s crazy out there. I think the road to your place is closed anyway, there are fallen trees blocking the way.”  

Her face pinched with anger and she raked her fingernails along the arm of the sofa. “I was just thinking about that party three months ago where we first met, in between shutdowns when things opened up for a bit.”

“That was a weird party, people going off with strangers for a bit of action in the dark corners…”

“And up on the roof garden too! Everyone’s standards were lower than they used to be before all this so they got it on with anyone they could find. I don’t mean you and me, I mean everyone else that was there.”

“It was like, after so much time alone nobody knew how to talk to each other anymore, so they just went at it in the darkness!”

“So, I was thinking about us up there in the bushes that time… I wanna take care of you again, what do you say?”

She flung a cushion angrily across the room and it knocked over a lamp which promptly went out. If Altan wasn’t willing to bend the rules a bit or even make the effort to see her, he could go and screw himself. She wouldn’t be giving him any more chances.

She was miserable from the lack of direct human contact, and she was tired of the grinding personal erosion that came from sublimating her social life through video-calls and social media. Day by day the monsoon wave kept intruding into her house and her world, nature’s tendrils worming their way relentlessly into her food supplies and her bedroom. Bloody geckos!

Reva sensed her moods were becoming more aggressive. Remote work had not been kind to her – it had been a hero’s journey battling self-loathing and depression. But she had endured and unexpectedly discovered a stranger within her. Something stirring in her was fighting to shed the rudderless narcissism that had become her routine. She was tuning in to the ruthless predatory focus of the natural world that had been pushing in on her with the monsoon driving it. Soon enough she would be part of the inevitable wave of hedonism that would sweep through cities and towns when they opened up again. With the traditions of normal interaction forgotten, Reva and everyone she knew would abandon themselves to impulsive acts and reimagine human contact. The debris of their former communities would be renegotiated and bargained for. There would be chaos. Reva saw all this in her mind’s eye as she wept in quiet resentment from her rejection at one end of the sofa.

“I will find my tribe,” she said to herself in the darkness. “They are out there, and I will find them.”

Les Cook

Acclimatizing to a Monsoon

Under – a Cambodian National Park. 

Over – looking Kep Bay. 

At the first drizzle of rain… I kinda stopped drinking and I’d started to gamble, specifically on sports betting because I didn’t drink when I gambled. 

This was it, the missing puzzle . . . sports betting could be my alternative to drinking – super.

This is going to be great. Not only will I not be drinking as much. I can also make the money that I would have drunk.

So it began 

And it was working. I was drinking very little. 

Betting was expensive – though worth it compared to the cost of my wellbeing, or lack of it from drinking. 

Soon though . . .

I’d drink when I lost – and then I’d drink when I won – and finally I drank while I gambled – experiment over.

It’s funny, Charles Bukowski the poet, a notorious alcoholic had to stop drinking, Doctors orders and he’s like, “What will I do now?” – and his I think girlfriend said, “Go to the horse track. You can bet on them.” 

Dumbstruck, he was like, “They bet on horses to see who will win?” 

And she gives him details.

So he went to the track, gambled, and that was it – he was hooked – loved it – and experienced a surge in his Poetry when he returned from the track. 

If he didn’t go to the track he couldn’t write. 

He never did stop drinking.

So I sit, no drinking, no gambling. 

Now what?

Pouring rain. 

Write

Cambodia

Birds chirping, you know the routine.

A perfect sunny day. Finally, after the cloudy, muggy, near rain. 

Wait! UV radiation warning to sun exposure for three days. Stay in the shade.

My mind is clicking.

I’m writing down quickly. 

Let me see one hundred words of untidy verse.

Read it… erase it. Undelete half. 

You want to read what I wrote? August 21st

Listen up:  I ate four of those homemade coconut popsicles they sell on the street, while I plotted my theme.  

Not part of the verse, just setting the scene 

The Verse:

You can throw away evolution for humans.

Look at a picture from a hundred years ago. 

Read a story from a thousand years ago. 

We have changed rapidly.

A dog is the same in a film shot a hundred years ago. 

A frog is the same in a story written a thousand years ago.

All is almost the same, except us, the human, we have changed most.

A time ago

An intelligent alien ingredient must have been captured from another world and ingrained in us, the human, to advance first. 

Or maybe not. 

I stop writing the verse.

People ask me what’s it like in Cambodia

One person asked me if there is a lot of mud. 

Some ask the past.

Many ask if Cambodia is beautiful. 

I don’t know. 

I know, but I don’t know. I can’t explain, do you have all day to listen… and days, and days after that? 

Why Hindu why Buddha why Natural Spirits and ghosts?

I don’t know. 

Esoteric. 

In Cambodia you float on a plane. Some kind of humble romantic. Some kind of risk everything. Some kind of … you can’t describe. 

You are exposed comfortable… Down-to-Earth. 

Khmer Elder’s say – No need to go somewhere, everything is provided for you here. 

The deeper you stay in Cambodia the worse you understand it. 

Don’t fight it. 

Naïve wide eyed in love is best, easy on the mind. Smiling at the chaotic astonishing surprise.

It’s not the boisterous orchestra of tropical forest. Not dogs chasing frogs. 

It is the missing piece of a puzzle, you can’t find, and can’t leave behind. 

So… you try to fix it. 

A Prevalent Seasonal Wind. 

Leave it alone.

Win win. 

By Les Cook 

Kep, Cambodia

British Columbia, Canada

[email protected]

Mark Symons

The year 2020 was a particularly bad one for me, the woman I’d assumed would be mine forever turned out to be fickle. After putting all of my emotional reserves (and most of the financial) into what I had stupidly assumed to be my partner for life, I was adrift. Without a home I lived in a camper surviving on a diet of alcohol and self-pity; with the occasional meal. 

We all know that dark clouds have silver linings and mine was that now that I was alone I was spending surprisingly little. My ex-wife might have implied in the past that each week I was drinking the equivalent of the Haitian National Debt but this wasn’t the case at all. I was actually saving money and my war chest was swelling! After getting through a bleak winter and suffering yet another bloody awful skin operation I decided that enough was enough and I made a phone call to DialAFlight. In seemingly no time I was on a Singapore Airlines flight to Phuket. There was a transfer in Singapore where I ended up sitting next to a lovely lady from the US who was going to become a ‘digital nomad’ teaching maths. Dear reader I am so naive that she had to explain the term. Also, in the same vein, I explained that I had stupidly forgotten to pack my socks. She simply smiled and said ‘you won’t be needing socks darling’. How right she was. On approach to Phuket she became rather tearful; I suspect that the reality of her venture was hitting home. After all, she’d sold her home. Her new found English fool was simply drifting and blissfully ignorant (of almost everything).

The quality of the Sandbox program had to be experienced to be believed. As we new arrivals approached the desks we were faced by a huge television which was screening our approach. Around each of our faces was a wobbling square which captured our facial temperature; green square good. I was so fascinated that I stopped to stare for a moment. The equipment was made by FLIR, I used to be involved in combustion and I know for a fact that they are industry leaders in the field of temperature measurement; I was both fascinated by the complexity of the Thai operation and also saddened by the fact that I hadn’t seen anything remotely like it in the UK. 

We were all sat in pre-arranged lines of chairs and then passed through immigration with impressive efficiency. As for the ladies in uniform, wow! When it comes to a job involving general bossiness we in the UK tend to choose ladies of the larger boned variety; the type with rather short hair, tattoos and a tendency to show more interest in the wife than in the husband if you follow my drift. The lady customs officials in Thailand are recruited from a different line all together; the Chanel line. I wondered for a moment if it was worth all the effort of going to the bars in Patong, I could easily meet the love of my life without even leaving the airport. 

Out of immigration I had my first nasal swab. This might be a good time for another first versus third world comparison. Before leaving UK I paid handsomely for a swab that guaranteed a result by email within 24 hours. At the chemist I was given an envelope, quite simply the rest was down to me ‘bring it back before two luv’. The simple truth is this, if I had booked a flight and felt slightly feverish I could easily have asked a friend to take the swab for me. I’m sorry but I struggled with this rather slapdash attitude to a test which was allegedly a major tool to reduce the spread of a rather horrible virus. Switch to the third world and things are somewhat different. A nurse cocooned in a sterile cabin held out a vial upon which is a sticker with all my details. She took the swab and bagged the whole lot up ready for the lab. No mistakes, no cheating; absolute security. Then to a pre-arranged taxi with a separate passenger area. The whole set up was unbelievably well organised.

After an overnight quarantine in the hotel my result came through as negative and I was free to explore Patong, and explore I did. 

My first impression was a rather sad one. The pox has hit this town like a sledgehammer, huge venues are wired up with cage fencing, gathering dust. I took the time to count the tables in just one. I reckon it could seat two-hundred and fifty, and that’s just the seats! There are many such venues which must have been previously packed with revellers and busy staff. Walking street, Bangla Road, was deserted, almost eerie. Shades of Pripyat, the abandoned town close to Chernobyl. I supposed that the ones fortunate enough to have a home and family in the provinces (whom they had previously supported financially) had an escape route. For others who were utterly dependent on the Patong tourist industry this must have been a shocking two years. 

I met a girl, a masseur, or am I allowed to say masseuse without the gender police battering my door down? May knew everyone including a fella that ran one of the deck chair businesses on Patong beach. When times were really hard and he slept on the beach she and her friends used to buy him food at least once a day. There’s no safety net here, if you don’t work, you don’t eat. He was incredibly happy and upbeat; a joy to be with. He had a simple job, the best office window in the world and a zest for life. As I sat there, sipping cold beer and covertly observing him, I pondered how a windfall might affect his life and outlook. Probably in a negative way I thought, after all, everything for him was just about perfect. How many of us can say that? How many of us with our sodding manicured lawns, our gnomes, our ‘No Turning’ signs. The new car every three years, the holiday villa, not forgetting bridge club, green fees, parish meetings and the Daily Mail dropping onto the doormat every day (who needs low blood pressure?). No, this fella, stood on his beach with his hands on his hips had it all, he was master of these sands, the barefoot lord of all he surveyed.

Without wanting to sound like some kind of ghastly virtue monster, whilst I was in Patong I did try to ‘spread it about a bit’. I would make a point of buying something from the beach vendors and always tip well at bars and restaurants. Compared to these people we westerners are comfortable and in my view we ought to spread a little of that comfort. Despite the very real possibility that these people could be in debt up to their eyeballs they still gave excellent, smiling service; they deserved a good tip.

Eventually I tired of the place. There are those that thrive there, those that know the bars and staff. Those that find the allure of the silicon enhanced beauties irresistible. Those that drink into the wee small hours then surface just before midday to start all over again. These individuals are the perfect prey for what I termed the ‘Marys’. These are the super smart, rather young and often surgically enhanced  darlings that prey upon elderly wobbly western men. The name comes from Mary Anning the renowned Dorset based fossil hunter.

You see, I had to go. I didn’t fit in, I don’t own a singlet and if I was given one I’d use it to wash the car. I detest football and as such most bar conversation left me in a catatonic state. Someone might have given me a lecture on the defensive strengths of Tottenham Arsenal and days later I would still be rooted to the seat staring unblinkingly out of the window, such was the boredom. 

Sometimes you just have to move on, so I did. First to Phatthalung and then Songkhla where I bought a Honda Wave (almost everyone in Thailand rides a Honda, the others ride a Honda) and rode it non stop back to Phuket. My backside and I are still not on talking terms. I met a girl on-line and travelled to Surat Thani. We rented a bungalow and embarked on what is known as a relationship. That is to say, fighting and loving in equal measure. So far so good.

My son sent me a WhatsApp message saying that in Manchester he had just turned the heating on. My reply might have seemed a little smug, provocative even. I said ‘what’s heating?’

a fiction

waiting 

stickily waiting

rinse and repeat 

all is forgiven at the roar of the tumbling 

and we rejoice in the thrilling generosity 

of the brand new boundless downpour 

and then again 

we wait

it will be back but 

on which tomorrow?  

here I am picking over my haunting

the haunting of a time when 

a endless lonesome dry 

was broken by a long slow cooling magic

I thought I had slid off the human cycle

of want and not want and then want again 

that old rinse and repeat

she begged my differ 

she filled my want 

she climbed my tree 

and shook my branches

through the dry as we wait for the rainshowers

bathroomshowers must suffice 

three times a day sometimes 

bless the skin 

at first the new season arrives intermittently

teasing and testing and

we rehearse our monsoon lines and steps

and flirt with the operatic clouds that come a-billowing 

and yet may not deliver 

then the delight to be woken in the wee hours

by the sound of rain 

and to rise up to start the day with 

petrichor swirled into the balcony coffee

trapped in a small room

making talk small and long

making sweat and blending it 

making love as it pours 

we rejoice in the thrilling generosity 

and are glad to be under cover 

we are at the place where 

there is nowhere else to be

the rain allows us our buildings and our cars

is amused by our raincoats 

and challenges our umbrellas 

sometimes it takes the form of a gaoler

locking us in where we are

fierce and unforgiving 

like you’re on the wrong side of the Old Testament  

and then those beautiful 

sprinkles of pinprick-tiny raindrops for hours and hours

one long pointillist mist 

that draws out the song in us  

the songs surely should tell us the parts that they don’t specifically mention

but then the songs have the same half life as our good (bad?) selves

lyrics metaphorificate crying and loneliness 

and frequently add walking 

because the rain also symbolises 

that which we cannot but must accept 

so if it’s inevitable

blue eyes

let’s go out and get 

drenched

and in steady falling rain 

relive our greatest tragedies 

dial up old radio songs 

strap on the headphones and howl  

the tease of whipping winds 

and the suddenness of the dark

our optimism and pessimism run on rails

that the rain ignores and just rides over 

with an insistence of moisture 

subdivided into unsharp bullets 

the deliberate

 (intentional?  painstaking? methodical?) 

disintegration of 

yet another misguided erotic dialogue 

at least it presents as a dialogue

it tastes and smells like a dialogue 

we can crowbar it into the shape of a dialogue

and we can squint at it to make it look like a dialogue 

but it becomes increasingly clear that there are two 

or more

or even more 

misinterpreted and poorly grasped monologues 

stagnating in puddles in the two spots 

where we forget that we should 

fix 

those leaks

and the painfully slow end 

as later 

we wander through 

air like soup 

and the smell of damp to go with the dust 

because day after day 

the corridors are dirty with mud

the stairs are made dangerous by constant trickles

the resentments grow at each incident 

and we are ready for the dry again 

this narrator is unreliable

this narrator is unworthy

this narrator is undaunted 

this narrator tries so hard each time 

this narrator is part of the problem 

this narrator is not dissolving into solution 

this narrator is feeling damp and soggy

and here we are

in the middle of the day

talking to ourselves

this narrator is still waiting 

and will still beg for the rain 

rinse and repeat 

and then again 

we wait

it will be back but 

on which tomorrow?  

By Steven W. Palmer 

Samnang gazed to the southwest, dark and roiling clouds rushing towards him, heavy and intimidating yet bringing a welcome release from the oppressive heat of the last month. 

There was no way he would make it back to his family’s hut in the small village near Angkor before the monsoon unleashed its watery load and its winds blew hard across the land. 

He had lingered too long by the river, lulled into sleep by the fragrant rumduol flowers that surrounded his favourite fishing spot. His dreams had been impossible dreams that had seen him elevated to the royal court. He had been a kumara under Mahaparamasaugata and had spent his days hunting or learning combat skills and bokator and his nights sipping rice wine and surrounded by nubile dancing girls. Ah, the soft embraces of those girls, though not as soft as the embrace of impossible dreams. 

Samnang was wise for his thirteen summers, or at least so he believed. He knew his dreams were nothing more than wishes that would never be granted. He had accepted that the reality was to spend his days working the land or fishing and that nights were for nothing more than sleeping to prepare for more of the same days ahead.

At least the rice wine was real and that although he would never experience those dancing girls, he was promised to the fair Arunny, a true morning sun in his life. It was, of course, an arranged marriage. Arunny’s family owned several cattle while Samnang’s family owned a larger piece of land but had fewer cattle. The marriage would bring the two families, and the two farms, together. Samnang would then inherit all, though of course Arunny would be the real power in the family. She was an only child while Samnang’s only brother was a monk in Mahendraparvata. 

But now was not the time for dreams or for thinking of his future bride. Those dark clouds were closer now, encroaching on his position like the horde of savage Tais under Pho Khun Bang Klang Hao his father had fought 10 years before. 

Samnang knew this area well. It was his playground, his battleground, his hunting ground, his very own little empire. The nearest rest house on the highway was too far to run before the storm struck. But there was a possible haven closer to him, a pile of ancient rocks that he had used as a fort many times. While not covered, it would offer shelter to this young warrior prince. 

He gathered his fishing gear and that morning’s catch and nimbly sprinted for the safety of his fort. As he ran, he could feel the monsoon’s vanguard wind begin to rise in strength, though he thought of it as Buddha’s breath urging him forward to escape the advancing storm.

He reached his special place, noting that the small copse of Troyak trees next to one of the larger boulders had grown since his last visit and would provide more shelter from the rain. He found a corner between two large rocks with a tree growing in front of them and hunkered down to await what the storm would unleash.

When it came, it was as ferocious as any warrior, drops the size of pebbles given added anger by the driving wind. He had chosen his spot well, with only a little of the storm’s onslaught reaching his refuge among the rocks. 

The storm was unrelenting, though the dry and parched earth welcomed the life-bringing rain, the first true monsoon of the season. There had only been a little rain in this last month, two days of teasing of the deluge to come. 

Samnang knew his father would be angry, not so much at him being out in a storm, more for not being home to get the livestock into shelter. They had lost two of their cattle in a thunderstorm the previous year, the charred feast the family enjoyed still leaving a slight bitter aftertaste because of the loss. 

Although it was still early afternoon, the menacing clouds made it as dark as early evening, and the wind brought a chill to Samnang’s bones. Why had he lingered so long by the river? Why had he fallen asleep?

A noise startled him, was that a laugh he heard? And how could he hear anything above the volume of the wind and the rain? He peered out into the driving rain and was shocked to see a figure strolling nonchalantly between the boulders. He was huge, well over six feet tall, but what shocked Samnang was more that the man, if it was a man, had four arms. One hand held what looked like crackling lightning, another an axe, a third held a discus, and the last carried what looked like an elephant goad.

The reason for that last item became clear as a white elephant appeared and walked up to the man who fondly stroked the animal’s trunk.

This was no man, this had to be a God. 

The God laughed again and turned to the elephant saying, 

“Ah, Airāvata, is this not glorious? Is it not fitting that we who came from the Churning of the Ocean of Milk oversee the churning of the sky?” 

Samnang gasped, it really was a God. 

To his horror, the God heard his gasp over the storm and turned to peer into the boy’s hiding place.

“You! Boy! Come here now.” The gods voice contained all the sound and power of the thunder in the skies above and Samnang felt compelled to obey.

He walked up to the God, keeping his head bowed to show respect. 

“Why are you hiding here, boy, and what is your name?” 

“I got caught in the storm, sir.” Stammered Samnang. “My name is Samnang.”

“Do you know who I am, boy?”

“Yes sir, you are Pah En, mighty God of the sky.”

“It is good that you know one of my names, boy. It shows that men still respect the Gods and have not forgotten us. I am also called Indra or Sakra, but my Khmer children know me by that name of Pah En.”

“Of course, sir, we honour you in the family shrine and leave offerings for you every day.”

“I am impressed, boy. I sometimes forget that the children of earth still do such things. But tell me, why are you not cowering in fear before me? Look at the wildness of this monsoon, the chaos my actions bring to the country. People and animals shall die, homes will be destroyed, does this not make you angry with me?”

“No sir. Of course I am afraid of you, you are a God after all. But why should I be angry? Life is an ever revolving circle. My father once brought home an old coin from the ancient kingdom of Funan. The coin had a picture on each side though they were faded with time. Your actions in bringing storms and monsoons to the country are like those coins. On one side is the chaos and destruction. But the other side is the more important. Your monsoons bring life back to the fields that have been long starved of rain. Your monsoons fill the rivers and lakes and the fish begin to breed again. So while there may be some death and loss, it is the life that we focus on and thank you for.”

“How old are you, boy?”

“This is my thirteenth year, sir.”

“So young? Yet you show a wisdom beyond that of many adults. Yes, I bring life as well as death. My Khmer children must continue to grow, to become wiser, and to flourish. Tell me, what are your plans in life?”

“Sir, next year I shall marry the girl promised to me, Arunny. Our families will join together as will our farms. I will continue to work hard and to learn from both my father and Arunny’s father so that I can make our farm profitable. And then…” Samnang giggled, “we shall make many babies together.”

“I have not spoken to a mortal in many centuries but I like you, Samnang. Promise me that you will remember the old ways and the old gods and that you will continue to honour me.”

“Yes sir, of course.” 

“Then I give you my blessing, Samnang. Your farm will flourish and all your babies will be born healthy and grow up to be great men and women. Now I must leave you. I have more storms to sow to bring this land back to life.”

With those parting words, Pah En mounted Airāvata and with a final wave, rode off into the storm.

When Samnang got home, he told his family about his encounter with the spirit of the storm. At first, nobody believed him, but when each successive harvest was better than the last, they finally believed the boy had been blessed.

T.W. Bell

The ramshackle bar, one of a few along the Phnom Penh riverfront, is open to the sky and to the tall weeping trees that surround it. Parts of it are sheltered by low, dull-brown thatch and overhangs of corrugated iron. The rough, grey wooden floorboards and tables, and low partitions dividing it from the street are all held up, ten metres above the river, by thick tree trunks sunk into the riverbank. The slow sweet smell of stale tobacco and malt from the counter and the beer-soaked floor hangs over everything. It is strongest in the sun the morning after the barang clientele have let their hair down, some few left slumped dozing in their chairs. 

Mosquitoes poach in this humid, stale air above the Khmer barman. Their drone mixes with the Khmer pop music in the background. The barman sleeps, half standing, half draped over the waist-height counter. His breath is softly rhythmic except when, in his dream, he is laughing with cousins he has joined for a day of kindnesses, singing under the soft light of a waterfall hanging from a blue sky. 

This bar is the sort where in monsoon season the afternoon downpour pounds big flat drops that thock rapid-fire on the tin roofing above the bar counter, drowning the quickened murmur of the barang as they huddle close to the bar and grow excited by the cool, sweet breath of this passionate beast on their cheeks.  They watch it lash the rough tables half a metre from their barstools, and hold their hands out to it. Puddles form from the thick streams runnelling down the corrugations in the tin roof. 

For some of them it suggests the obscure fury that has been raging elsewhere in the country, the conflicts that have again encroached on the city, spilling over the line of coloured sand laid around Phnom Penh by the government to give it magical protection. It has again boiled into the city streets of shop houses outside of which the owners once hung portraits of Sihanouk that carried a picture of Pol Pot on the back, to turn over, depending. 

The monsoon obliquely justifies the expensive security threaded so exactly around the foreigners by the aid outfit or company or government that sent them. For some it is just another deprivation in the third world, another triumph of their sacrifice.

This bar is where the crisis of a drink wrongly poured or dropped on the slippery floorboards by the Khmer staff develops into shouts and sometimes blows rained upon them by the owner or his patrons. And where Thero, the blind throur player, was asked about his eyes.

As he lies on his mat nested behind the cardboard and plastic of his shanty, Thero is remembering the barang’s question outside that barang bar. No. I cannot speak of it. I cannot think of it. 

Above Thero the river’s evening breeze feathers the lined trees’ fronds that are sheathed in their boles like an upturned shuttlecocks. It snuffles at Thero’s skin, harbinger of early monsoon rain.

Thanks to the barang, he has eaten good food for the first time in three days. His stomach aches with the bulk of the rice and prahoc, fermented fish-paste from the market. They could eat like this for a long time with the barang’smoney. 

In the dark Thero smooths the mat with his fingers, then raises his hand to his brow to massage his temple. An absolute weariness. His hand falls back to his side. Till dawn, “When the sun returns to the world, born again and breaking free from between the black panther’s groin.” He can hear his father ending the recital that Thero knew by heart, and can see him smiling behind the small ovals of his bifocals. “And we begin again.” Thero is back, back then. Two decades before Pol Pot time. A light in his mind swings lazily across the memory.

He is six years old. They are in the Sneng village classroom by the pagoda. This is where his father teaches. It is dusk, the hour of the black panther, when the big cats come scavenging; when they suddenly leap out of the close swollen shapes of jungle, seizing screeching fowl, a goat, or a child. 

Because of this, his father has been cautioning him for being out late. In fact Thero has been down on the red banks of the river, alone, playing the throur. He had watched the water cede its shattered colour, moment by moment, to a low, brilliantly burning red moon, as he tried to think the diffusion of the light into the sound through his arms and hands to the instrument, the way his father had told him. 

Thero remembers the dusty schoolyard that was also the pagoda courtyard and the village square. It formed a causeway from the ancient, moss-covered stone tower in the east, to the entrance of the pagoda. 

The lotus bud tower had four faces of the Healing Buddha, You climbed a narrow cut staircase to a landing set in the centre behind the faces. Hanging there was a bronze gong with a wooden beam that swung against it to sound all over the village and out over the fields. 

The Buddhas had eyes that were closed, heavy-lidded with slender slanted brows. They had broad noses, full jaws, mouths closed with thick benevolent lips like swollen fruit. They were smilingly slightly, ironically, at some inner dreamt amusement, smoothly voluptuous, crumbling, shrouded by the thick vines of lilac bougainvillea creepers and rambling orchids bright against the dull grey-brown stone. The monkeys and the jungle prowled and grasped at the Buddhas, who had been asleep forever. 

In the evening, most of Sneng, met in the courtyard, to tow leiying; to drink, to sing and play, and listen to the stories of Buddha told by the monks, and have fortunes told by traveling guess-men. They watched mask and shadow plays, danced circle dances around flowers. 

The river was a black jewel, lisping vowels and sibilants to its banks thirty metres away. In the light of the glowing candles and the wood-fire braziers that spat sparks into the night, they gathered to eat boiled eggs and fried beetles and snake, and sometimes grilled tortoises from the river, and the mothers cooked rice snacks wrapped in banana leaves. The flames threw violet shadows into the cavities of the school buildings and the temple. 

The courtyard was canopied by tall green coconut palms, big fronds like the enormous drowned pale eyes of the river dolphins that were sometimes brought up in the nets. 

In the daytime the shadows of the palms’ spiky fronds would hypnotise Thero as they slid across each other in the breeze. Their cross-weave strobed the sunlight from where he sat, cutting tiny fractal wedges whose shapes altered as their shadows moved over the red ground and the benches beside the giant dark-green pads of elephant-ear plants, where the children gathered, talking. When he closed his eyes the fronds left moving cut out rows of negatives, moving checkerboards of bright and dark.

Thero remembers his father’s history lessons in the courtyard, lessons that would always relate back to his visit to Sarnath when a youth. “The first turns of the wheel of Buddha’s law were in Sarnath. We show like this,” his father said, and put his thumb and forefinger together, touching to make a circle, with the other fingers straight out. The tip of this circle touched the middle of his other palm; the palm was open and twisted back towards himself so his fingertips touched his heart. He held his hands up for the class to see, and the children copied. “You see the Buddha statue with his hands like this.”

And in the courtyard the tight pink bundles of oleander blooms bright against the dusty khaki leaves, like the shape his mother’s mouth became when she put French lipstick on; and she would wriggle away, laughing when his father tried to kiss it off, telling her she was too pretty, that she was his mas prah ling, jewel spirit.

The colours and the confluent essences of all kinds of flowers were there, in the courtyard. He remembered. A garland from a girl. Sovanara, and a sniff-kiss on the cheek.

Lying on the mat he remembers his house upriver at Kum Jai: bamboo frame and woven bamboo mat walls, and dried palm leaf thatch roof, perched on stilts, with hammocks underneath in which they lay at the height of the sun, surrounded by the panting yard dogs and the chickens and other beasts, which crowded in beside them. 

Next to the house there was a waterwheel with revolving bamboo buckets that turned into the water of the irrigation ditch from the trawpeang, house-pond. The pond was covered with dark green moss and brilliant pink lotus and lilac-blue hyacinth flowers. There were giant red hovering dragonflies. Rows of ducks glided through the moss and fat pigs wallowed. Here and there one of the wide round lily and lotus pads were raised like, his father joked, sun parasols for the carp.

The family washed here when the water-jars were empty, his mother pushing through the lotus pads and pond slick as she waded in, edging up her krama as she kneeled, till the water covered her breasts. 

The matted bamboo walls felt laughter, silence, songs, tears, children’s voices. No-one knew of time, of hours, or age then. Not until they fell out of the wheel of years.

Tom Vater

The town was covered in reddish dust. A nickel mine operated near-by and everyone worked there. Thanks to the rain, the dust clung to everything. Sam and I had been travelling south from the Palawan capital Puerto Princesa for several days, on a series of Jeepneys, the Philippines’ all-purpose pubic transport vehicles. Sometimes we got seats and ate driving rain through the open slats of the passenger section. When the sun was out, we clung to the roof, along with bound chicken and pigs and ate dust. At a stop half-way down the island, a piglet in a rough rice sack made a valiant break for freedom and hurled itself along the hot tarmac down the road we’d just traveled, panicking, leaving a trail of shit and laughter from its owners behind. They caught the poor creature soon enough. There was no escape. There was no freedom. Not for pigs anyway. 

We’d been sitting in front of the town’s all-purpose kiosk for three days. Every now and then I bought a smoke, stood under the kiosk’s awning to make sure it wouldn’t soak and inhaled furiously. The cigarettes were called Hope. A piece of rope smoldered by the kiosk’s counter all day. That’s where I got a light. And a dirty look from the old crone who ran the place. Behind the kiosk, the town stretched away into red mud. A couple of disintegrating wooden warehouses populated by armies of rats sold the basics – rice, noodles, alcohol, and bullets leant into the daily deluge. Beyond these exhausted malls, a couple of hundred shacks and a handful of ugly concrete buildings made up the rest of the town. We slept in one of the concrete buildings which rented four rooms, mostly by the hour, above a karaoke bar. The nickel mine lay beyond a barbwire gate just outside of town, guarded by men wearing Carrera sunglasses and carrying pump action shotguns. 

No one was happy here, and no one was ever going to leave. Except for us. That’s why we were so popular. 

Once in a while I ambled down to what passed for the jetty, a long line of loose planks stretching across the placid water of the small bay that the town lay in. Vultures perched on the rotting posts that held the jetty together, plumage dripping. A couple of catamarans, their wings skeletal and fragile on the dark green water, lay tied to the posts. There was no one on board. Beyond, black clouds rumbled silently across the angry gun metal sky. The coconut trees on a couple of small isles a mile or so out to sea bent in the rain, threatening to fly off into the churning sea beyond.

The boat to Balabac, the one we wanted to be on, should have left a couple of days earlier, but the rain had been too strong. There was a storm out there lashing the ocean like a devil. This is what Mr. Gabunilas was telling me. Mr. Gabunilas lived on Balabac, the the Philippines’ most remote, most southern island, a nest of outlaws allegedly, that young, entitled adventurers with too much time on their hands needed to visit. He was about sixty, a skinny man with fading Christian tattoos on his arms, a legacy of his years fighting with the Americans against the Japanese in WWII. Mr. Gabunilas was partial to a bit of hope himself, and so we periodically stood next to each other under the kiosk’s awning, smoking, while he would give me an update on the lack of updates. 

It was that time of day and I strolled from our room to the kiosk through light drizzle and purchased the day’s first increment of Hope. The old woman scowled when I pulled the rope to my smoke. Mr. Gabunilas was next to me before I could take a drag. I nodded to the woman for another Hope, but he waved me off, his eyes on fire. 

“You’re happy to leave, no, Boss?”

I nodded carefully. Everyone called foreigners Boss around here, apparently in reference to Bruce Springsteen. Male foreigners. 

“Sure, happy to leave, we’ve enjoyed all the sights in town.”

Mr. Gabunilas grabbed the cigarette off the old crone, lit up and left, waving at me emphatically. I hadn’t seen anyone here with this much energy. 

“Today, we go. The boat will go. We will leave,” he shouted and disappeared behind the malls. 

An hour later, the boat captain and his crew showed up. They wore grim expressions as they passed us and began to load one of the catamarans with petrol, ice boxes and plastic sacks of instant noodles. A small crowd gathered by the jetty, half hidden under garish umbrellas. The vultures were nervous, their pink necks quivering like something that was about to die. The sky looked the same as it had for days, wet and angry. 

Mr. Gabunilas arrived, a tattered rucksack slung across a shoulder, eyes alight as if he’d experienced a religious epiphany. He guided us down the rickety jetty with a great show deference and even helped load our bags onto the boat. The small crowd, who turned out to be, like Mr. Gabunilas, from Balabac, followed us with visible trepidation. Fifteen minutes later, we set off towards a darkening sky, southwards, the catamaran almost loaded to capacity.

We skirted the bay and headed off the Palawan coast into the South China Sea. The town and with it, its torpor, quickly faded into the moist afternoon gloom. Soon the waves rose and there was nothing but water around us. A couple of sea gulls that accompanied us turned and headed back the way we’d come. The boat’s engine roared. We harked on across ever larger troughs, ravines and summits of water. The night came quickly and we sat in almost complete darkness, under a single bulb fastened to a leaky stretch of tarpaulin above our heads. It rained hard enough to knock out flying fish. Black water rushed at us from all directions. The catamaran heaved. It creaked. The passengers began to pray. 

I turned to Mr. Gabunilas. 

“Do you often travel like this?”

His face was drawn and pale. He shook his head emphatically.

“So why did the boat head out tonight, if the weather was still bad?” Sam shouted at the old man to make herself heard. 

The roar of a full-blown storm lashed the catamaran and everyone onboard with fury. A couple of children behind us started crying. The captain switched off the engine. We were adrift. 

Mr. Gabunilas shook his head sadly.

“You said you wanted to go, right, Boss? I told the captain the foreigners want to go. He looked at the sky, but he also needs to make money. You know the storm will pass, don’t you? It will pass, if a foreigner decides to travel on this boat, right? We all trust you, that you make the right decision, right?”

His concern gave way to hope then and he smiled at us beatifically, wiping rivulets of water and spray from his face, “With foreigners on board, we will reach our destination, God willing.”

***

©Tom Vater – Asia based writer, publisher & editor.

www.clippings.me/tomvater

www.tomvater.com

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