We paced past the tour groups and well-funneled frenzy of Siem Reap International Airport. Our tuk tuk driver found us with a big smile and a welcome to the city.
"Welcome" is one of those performative words like 'promise' or 'explain' that comes to action by speech, by the verb by being spoken. And when our driver said welcome I felt warmed. I felt my unwarranted fears simmer down. Loud locust like sounds just above our heads spreading in every direction. The road to our hostel was mostly black.
When we woke up on that first day we felt somewhat refreshed. Like the night previous of a quick bar stop never happened. Emily mentioned the other tourists all looked miserable, or exhausted or both. She had waited to see Cambodia for longer than Claire and me.
After this first day it looks like time moves horizontally here. Not in mega snake highways like America or gridded jet stream in Korea.
The land is tropical, not exotic. The people are friendly. The people are not exotic. Everything is moving, buzzing with equal parts tourism and unrelated life, that non-situation streaming across that we can't access and wouldn't be wise to ask about anyway. Learn and listen. Fuck the "off the beaten path" discourse so common and so pretentious. The beaten path is as useful as whatever else.
The same knick knacks appear in a lot of the shops. Wikipedia says the country is quasi communist and corrupt. I know the neoliberal invasion of megacorporations and privatizing is in full force as it is anywhere. The cafes and small restaurants are heartwarming.
We walked up to one for breakfast and I asked do you have coffee which was stupid because the shop was named Corner Coffee.
They import and dry and store and stock and rewire and upend and connect and repurpose in ways westerners will never imagine. A construction site has a complex scaffold system made totally of small logs, branches basically. I saw some sanitation workers around 11 am and felt solidarity with them.
More to come soon.
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