I am moving tomorrow in my new palace. Two bed appartment, to confuse insomnia. Two bathrooms, well prepared for the next food-posioning session. A kitchen, table is set! Fool food-poisoning with like home made cooked pasta. A balcony, not to break the rules, smoking on the room is strictly forbidden. A washing machine, waste some water. Two fans to face, sweaty and tropical, the last striking rebellion of the dry season.
Dear World, if you are up to, you are warmly welcome. – Ah, did I mention the pool downstairs?
As I write this, I am sitting in a vegetarian restaurant located in one of the shopping and food alleys nearby the old market, center of Siem Reap. Kids come by asking for milk, money, buy ten postcards, braceletes, only two dollars for ten.
Feeling annoyed.
Next group is approaching, can´t spot their scam yet.
Poverty is annoying. More to watch. Being poor just sucks.
Why it has to be like this. Well quite obvious, because I am here, can be, here.
“I don´t need your money, I need milk.” I already spent all my one-dollar-bills to “I don´t need postcards, no braceletes, no books”. This time it is a bunch of kids, four and a baby, a gang of children, the Peanuts, cambodian style, dusty, sticky and smart. The baby right in my face. “I need milk.” Whining. Desperated. I am eating a delicious appetizer. I am on hangover again, so still half drunken and I thought I grant myself a celebratory lunch, to thank my stomach surviving the first night-time drunkenness after 5 days, treating him smooth with booze. So as I was dipping my piece of cambodian baguette into this yummy coconut-peanut stodge, I had to surrender, surrounded by the Peanuts, starring at me and my appetizer, dramatically crestfallen. They have fun, they do. After I will have given them the dollar, they will run away like kids do all over the world, if the got some coins for ice cream. Here it is more to appease the leader or the baby, in fact. I offer them bread. “No, I don´t need your money, I need milk.” – “But I don´t have milk, I am not a women you see, only bread.” For a second they laugh, than slip back into their roles, The Dusty Peanuts. Siem Reap is still laid-back in comparison to Pnom Penh, but more and more criminal structures cracking daily life. Robberies are reported frequently. Tourists and violent poverty – expectedly. People vanishing. Just like that, a fart blown in the heat. Some rules you have to follow, all around the world or you surprisingly wake up in the dirt. It´s paradise, but it is a bloody poor one – and all you flower children out there, no it is not a paradise, because people have to share, stick together. No. There are thousand of reasons keep the vicious circle spinning – burning dreamcatchers.
I felt ashamed, eating in front of them, an appetizer I already knew at the moment I ordered, this will be too much, never gonna eat all of this, just try, for the taste. How does dust taste?
They left my table, chasing they boy with the baby and the money, laughing.
Tomorrow I move in my new palace.
Feeling excited. Start hand-poking. Drawing. My shooting-projects. Relaxed evenings on the balcony, watching sunset. Writing. Reading. On!
