Photo of the whole family- just. I have the greatest respect for wildlife photographers; trying to take a picture of this family wasn’t easy! We also have a group of three female Mallard ducks who wait for us each morning and hang out near the boat most of the time. A moorhen has appeared recently although they are very shy and spend most of the time hidden away on the opposite bank. Also we have had one visit from a pair of Canada geese and their almost-grown family.
We’ve been painting the outside of the boat, starting with the roof. The weather needs to be dry, but not too hot or the paint dries too fast on the metal. So we’ve been getting up early and doing an hour or two in between the overnight dew drying and it getting too hot. Green is the top coat (coat one of two or three), the red is the red oxide undercoat (two coats) and the white is the original.
It was so hot yesterday it was like being back in Cambodia! In the end we drove to London, only an hour and a half away from our place, enjoying the breeze/AC in the car and going to eat at the wonderful Indian Veg (92-93 Chapel Market, The Angel, London N1 9EX) an all-you-can-eat Indian vegetarian food buffet for less than £10 per person. The walls are covered with quotes and facts, you can bring your own alcohol with no extra charge, and they give takeaway food to homeless people. It’s a wonderful place.
Writing
I’ve almost finished Cambodia then onto Vietnam, the last part of the trip. Then of course it will be editing and polishing. I’m also working on two things I have been asked to do; a magazine article and a book review. Unsurprisingly, the blog has felt a little neglected lately. While out for a walk today I came up with an idea for a series of posts, easy to produce, inspiring to write and hopefully interesting to read, for whilst I am occupied with other writing and haven’t got a chapter extract ready to post.
Work
I start work a week on Monday, a one week full time 9-5 induction, then after that a few shifts a week depending on what’s available. I’m half looking forward to engaging with the outside world and doing something valuable (care work with people with brain injuries) but the getting up early will probably take a bit of getting used to…
About the author
Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
From January 2018. Extricating ourselves from our previous life, and preparations and planning for the trip: ‘Firstly, go straight to India as soon as we can.’ Love that plan!
So, dismantling your home is stressful. Selling a house is stressful, with last minute things such as electrical safety tests, extra expenses, and we won’t even know it’s really happening until contracts are exchanged, which could be weeks away. But the buyer has been round, she brought her kids, they ate Foxes Party Rings (vegan) and picked out their bedrooms, and their mum and I vowed not to pull out.
I’m working out my notice and in true me style trying to cram as much in as possible. I’ve even got a student right up until I leave, but luckily she is awesome. I want to enjoy it as it’s my last hurrah, but I don’t want to enjoy it…
Yesterday evening we went by Tuk Tuk to Connaught Place. Going by Tuk Tuk from Main Bazaar to Connaught Place is a good metaphor for the need to just let go while being in India. The Tuk Tuk ride felt at times like a seriously grown up version of the dodgems and felt risky at times.
But whatever it looks like to Western eyes the traffic seems to work here. Lanes merge all the time, horns are used all the time but to say, I’m coming, rather than in anger. We’ve seen near misses and slight bumps but not seen anyone getting angry, and every moment there are the types of driving interactions that would lead to serious road rage in the UK.
Later we went back to ‘our’ restaurant for a drink. We chatted a lot with the staff and I practised my few phrases I have learned from…
Extracts from draft chapter about our time in Cambodia in January
We got the boat to the mainland. Again, it was touristy and busy. There was the occasional pretty sight; a navy umbrella with silver edges, a burgundy shirt with sequins, the sun catching and making them sparkle. We went to get a tuk tuk to Otres Village where we were staying, straight away.
I had read about the development in Sihanoukeville, largely Chinese led, in an expats magazine in Phnom Penh. Khmer owned small shops and restaurants were being sold to Chinese developers and the land redeveloped for hotels and casinos. Westerners were selling up and moving out, fed up with living beside constant building work, and bemoaning the loss of familiar restaurants, bars and shops, and that the disappearance of the old shop fronts was changing the character.
Sihanoukville was as ‘bad’ as we had feared; one large building site, but fascinating; huge hotels half built, and so many, some covered in green netting. Others almost done and we could see through the windows to big dormitories of beds; we passed developments of small huts with little space in between, a different standard of personal space to that of Westerners.
In the tuk tuk, the road long and dusty, building work all around, my main concern was dust after so much pollution on the trip. Luckily, where we were staying was something of an oasis, down a side street and down a path off that. It had changed names and hands, and was in between style wise. The huts were wooden and the shower room walls were decorated with wildlife murals. The toilets must have previously been compost ones, the instructions still painted on the wall although they were now ordinary ones. There were signs for an alternative pharmacy, now closed. In contrast the restaurant area looked recently done up, with new metal furniture and cushions, glass topped tables, and a smart looking cream printed menu.
Our wooden hut with beams was open in places, with slight gaps in the ceiling and walls but with a reassuring mosquito net. On a beam above the door was a bag of weed, some papers and a lighter, left by the previous occupants for the next ones, probably they were taking a flight.
The huts had balconies with chairs, with little bushes in front and dotted around the garden. Staff looked like they were working on the garden which was half scrubby half beds of bushes. Everything was in the process of changing. We saw Khmer people, at our place and in the street, carrying so much, thick bamboo, firewood, poles, long pieces of wood, balanced on one shoulder.
One day I hung my bag on the hook on the back of the shower door, when I took it off I saw that there was a little frog perched right on the end of the hook, luckily I hadn’t touched it with my bag. I called Anthony to come and look. ‘We should move it, in case it gets hurt,’ Anthony said. I moved a bin underneath so it wouldn’t have so far if it jumped down to the floor. As soon as we went near, it jumped, not down but across and stuck to the door, legs outstretched, feet sticking to the wood. It was like something out of a David Attenborough programme.
There were three kittens around the restaurant who would play, sit on laps, eat noodles and curl up to sleep beside you. Not all the guests liked them around them while they were eating though, and sometimes they would be shut in a box at meal times.
There was a tree just beside the restaurant that the kittens used to play in, it had a hole at the bottom. One kitten was braver and would jump from the restaurant wall into the tree; the others watched but didn’t jump. The three kittens were very similar size but that one was more well muscled, so it could do more, or was it because it did more? One day I was sitting on my own in the restaurant having breakfast, coffee, huge chunks of French bread and jam. One of the kittens was on a nearby table playing with an arrangement of fake flowers, those ones where the heads will pull off the stems, the kitten seemed to know this and managed to pull one of the heads off… so fun.
On the main road were shops, travel agencies and small supermarkets. Also wooden buildings, bars and restaurants, many owned by Westerners, and almost all with for sale or to let signs up. We saw a Western woman, blonde, skinny, with dreadlocks, be dropped off by a man on a motorbike. She had a bloodied face, and her expression and walk made her look like a zombie; we wondered whether she was on Ketamine, which was freely available to buy in the pharmacies. We watched her for a while, saw that she went into a pharmacy, hopefully for some first aid… We saw a vegan street stall selling, unbelievably, homemade Vegan Snickers. Vegan Snickers! He was a young Westerner. We asked him what he was going to do. He said he was thinking about going to the Anderman Islands…
Sitting outside on our balcony I saw a woman walk past our hut a couple of times. ‘Friend’ I said to myself, and resolved to speak to her next time she passed. It was the same for her, she said she’d wanted to speak to us too. Of course at first it’s the outside things: our kind of age, kind of hippyish in a natural way, no makeup, loose natural hair, a printed cotton smock.
R was Spanish. As a young woman she had left home and gone off to Osho’s ashram in Pune, India, which explained why my husband ‘recognised’ her; he has known several sannyasins. She runs workshops in Italy and Spain on family relationships and consciousness raising. She created a life totally her own that was nothing like her parents’ lives or their expectations for her. When her mother became ill she returned home to care for her. She decided to just be herself, ‘Here I am, I run these workshops, I am a teacher,’ rather than try to ‘fit in’ by being inauthentic. She said it was very hard, going back. Back, ‘In the collective,’ she called it, the fear comes; security, pensions, savings, all those things she had happily not worried about for years.
We all spoke about our times in more tourist/holiday maker areas. ‘You can have your own experience even in a party place,’ R said.
I liked watching how R made decisions. She was going somewhere, then the flight was cancelled, so she thought about it and decided to get a bus instead, break up the journey and go and visit somewhere else halfway. Travelling alone, living alone, making her own work, collaborating with others, using what she had learned at Osho’s and all learning since, always reading and learning new things too. People in different venues invite her and if something is put on, people will come, she is known. ‘I should really work out money,’ she said, describing that she just kind of spends it, treats it with a light touch, it comes and goes.
We often had dinner or lunch together, sometimes at the onsite restaurant but mainly we ate on the main road at a cheaper place, and with lovely staff. ‘You are an angel,’ R said to our regular waiter on the last day. ‘You have come down from heaven, an angel.’ She expressed herself so easily, like Renate in Varkala, India who when we said goodbye had said to me, ‘If I’d had a daughter like you, we’d have had such fun,’ whereas I sometimes find my English reserve gets the better of me.
R had a light, a treatment light, like sungazing. After multiple reassurances that it was safe to do so, I went and had a go. ‘Don’t rush back, take your time and rest afterwards,’ she said. I did it in the hut and sat still there afterwards for a while. The light caused visuals, both behind and in front of my eyes, and afterwards, ideas, a burst of energy, I even felt inspired to do a job search of potential employers near the boat. A little while later I went for a walk to the beach. On the road leading to the beach was an insane mini funfair with small rides, stalls of garish plastic toys and brightly coloured balloons. At a canned drink stall a woman in a pretty dress was semi asleep, she woke and we caught eyes and smiled. I’d not brought any money so I couldn’t buy anything. At the beach the vegan man was there but I went past him, I didn’t feel like speaking to anyone.
It was unusual for me to go out alone, and unusual for me to go off and not say anything, the appeal of a bit of interstitial time, unknown, unexplained. I stood on the beach facing the sea. There was a big hotel block almost like a skyscraper to the right of me, lit up. The beach was busy with people. It was the end of the day, lights coming on, the sea looked pretty. I was in the moment then.
About the author
Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
We haven’t seen this family for a few weeks so I was very happy to see them this morning.
They do not want to share feeding time with the ducks though…
Life on the boat
It’s wet wet wet here (in the middle of England in ‘the summer’) and so being on a boat feels like the place to be. No leaks, and we are warm and cosy indoors.
Life outside the boat
We have both got jobs, my husband will probably start in July and me in August. Both as Bank Health Care Workers, the ‘Bank’ bit means as and when to give flexibilty.
Writing
So I’m still on Step One of ‘How to get an agent and get published’ which is ‘Write a wonderful book.’ I am, however, getting there. I hope to have the draft finished in around a month and the corrections finished a couple of months after that, around the end of September.
India
I have my tickets to go back!!! Jan-Feb 2020, a five week solo trip. Let’s see how I am alone… I’m planning a fairly straightforward trip, fly to Delhi, night bus to Pushkar same day if I can/want to, if not stay a night in Main Bazar. Book a week in Pushkar, base myself there for the duration but go off for trips of a few days to Jaipur and Udaipur by train. That will all probably seem plenty adventurous enough. I may end up just spending the whole month in Pushkar, if I do, that’s fine too. But if I spend the whole time holed up in Main Bazar not daring to go out then I will need a telling off.
Thank you very much for reading
About the author
Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony
I just got lost for a while: Koh Rong, Cambodia, Draft chapter for book
Even in paradise you can still be sad…
I’m not friends with my son on social media, it is Anthony (my husband) who monitors things. Sometimes things seem terrible on social media, but when we call things are fine. Or they’ve been fine on the phone then a day or two later seem awful on social media. Or on social media some kind of terrible disaster is reported and then when we call or even if we don’t, within a day or two it’s actually resolved. A, a blogger and millennial, said millennials use a lot of hyperbole, maybe that’s a part of it?
So it was my husband who saw a news interview my son had done, and who gently, piece by piece, told me what it contained. My son is an upcoming artist, being interviewed about his backstory, and one of the things he said, was that he was kicked out of home as a teenager. It’s true, I kicked him out as a teenager.
When he was a child, I would never have thought that would have happened. In a ‘secret’ drawer of my grandmother’s card table, was a leaflet I’d picked up and saved from when I was on a work placement at a child and family place, when my son was eleven. Me still so smug, a confident and loving parent, providing a childhood with friends, fun, parties, dogs, pets. My social work friend saying she’d driven past us on her way home from a horror filled day at work and seen us playing with the dog on the grassy walk, and said we’d made her feel that there was good in the world.
The leaflet said, ‘Parents of teenagers often feel that they have failed.’ Much later, when things had gone wrong, I over related to two mothers from an autism organisation who said, ‘As a mother you feel like you’ve got ‘Guilty’ stamped on one side of you and ‘Failure’ on the other.’ Oh yes, yes, yes. I was on a training day at work, so I couldn’t say anything. Those words weren’t meant for me, I just borrowed them.
Like I’d do a depression questionnaire on myself at work; I never hit the criteria, I ate, I got up for work, I liked to have sex, but did I feel like a failure, did I feel hopeless, did I feel like I wanted to die, yes yes and yes again.
When my son was sixteen I phoned up the housing department of the council. A woman answered, ‘You would have to ask him to leave, he would come here with his bag and we go from there.’ ‘I can’t do that,’ I said. ‘Well, then you haven’t reached the end of your tether yet.’ She added, ‘I did it to mine, and it was the best thing that ever happened to us.’
It took another two years until I reached the end of my tether, screaming on the stairs, wanting to hurt myself, my boyfriend at the time locking away paracetamol and knives in a suitcase. My son was eighteen, spent all his time in his room, threatened to throw the tv out of the bedroom when I tried to make him do anything. Mental health services advised to separate out what was ‘behavioural.’ ‘What would you do if someone else threw the tv out of the window?’ In the long years prior, trashing the house, getting in trouble with the police, truanting, refusing to go to school, social work threatening me with prosecution re the not going to school, school saying I needed to take more responsibility. During my son’s teenage years my confidence as a parent evaporated. Of course, when I look back maybe there were loads of other things I could have done, if I had been a different person. I took his things to my mum’s, he stayed round a girlfriend’s, sofa surfed, and several years later we are all still alive, I am available to help and we get on fine…
…It’s not like I’ve ever forgotten any of that, but to be dragged back there so completely, publicly, more than a decade later, was almost more than I could bear. It was a hilarious contrast that we were on a paradise beach in Cambodia at the time. Oh, the shame, I could barely move, and yet of course I did. In the water, in the heat, over dinner, terrible shame that I couldn’t get away from and the guilt, the guilt. Imagine the worst thing you’ve ever done, something you did years ago when you couldn’t do any better, not only brought right back, but now it’s public. I didn’t hear anything from anyone. Anthony reminded me that those who knew me would know there was more to it than that.
Northamptonshire, April 2019
From Cambodia, Anthony messaged my son, ‘Maybe try not to be quite so hard on your mum,’ and he has toned it down since. Back in the UK, my son invited us to an event where everyone would know about his the backstory- people are interested, his agent emphasises it. It’s his story he’s entitled to it, he has every right to say whatever he wants, and I support his right to say it. Anthony told my son this, from me. Anthony also said, you have a right to say what you like, but it has an effect. Anthony explained, it brings up a lot of emotion for your mum, and the emotion it brings up is shame. My son was unaware that I might find it difficult to go to the event, and my husband explained why I couldn’t go.
Anyway, we went to see the work at his place first, newly produced and framed before being shipped to New York for an exhibition after the show. His agent, his girlfriend, her mum and dad, all her family were going. We left, aside from my young nephew, none of his family would be there, not us, no Dad, no Grandmother, she’s annoyed and upset about the airing-dirty-laundry backstory.
‘I feel bad about us not going.’ It took Anthony to say this. As my friend later said, you’re so lucky you have Anthony. Like the cliché, Do the next right thing. You can’t do anything about the past. All you can do is do the next right thing. If your son has a show, you go. So we went. Yes her family said, ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’ Yes the councillor who had put the event on didn’t shake my hand. In my mind I thought, she thinks I’m scum, some kind of horrible person. But maybe she just doesn’t shake hands. And it doesn’t matter anyway, I’m never going to see her again. And what does it matter what a politician, of all people, thinks of me. It’s more important to show support for your family than to worry about what other people think. I don’t know why I’m still so upset about all this, but I am.
Northamptonshire, June 2019
I went to see a friend, we spoke about Cambodia. In the past she had experienced similar events and feelings and fears, and understood completely. The next day I saw another friend. Her adult child is severely mentally ill and violent. My friend has been pushed beyond the normal limits many times, and many people in her position might consider cutting all contact. ‘She’s my only child,’ she said. She spoke about her sadness over not experiencing the happy milestones that other parents experience.
But all we can do is feel and grieve and eventually, if we can, accept. Stop pushing it away and just allow it. Allow that it happened. Allow that what is, is. Allow that you are sad. Allow that the past can never be altered or undone. And allow that you’re going to go on and be here anyway.
Thank you very much for reading
About the author
Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
For photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony
Extracts from draft chapter about our time in Koh Rong, Cambodia in January
We were taken to our beach by a long wooden boat with benches down each side, plenty of room but only us on it. The wooden boat, painted red, the island, and the sea so blue; it was all so totally Instagrammable that I didn’t want to.
Again I felt as if I was supposed to feel something that I didn’t. Sometimes too much beauty doesn’t resonate, it’s impossible for me to feel. Like the big temple we went to see near Pondicherry, with not one but several huge facades of colourful mouldings, too much to absorb, so that in the end I stepped away to look at a gold minaret, a white cow statue, and I was able to connect. Give me an orange cat on a dusty wall, or raindrops glittering on shutters in the dark, those things are more likely to get me there.
Or sometimes it’s because my mood is incongruent, like in Nepal, we’d got up early to go and see the sun rise over the mountains, one of which was Everest, but the day before I had had a totally unexpected row with our travelling companion and stood trying not to cry, the surreal once-in-a life-time view doing nothing to alter my mood. When Anthony asked me to be in a picture with him I refused. I felt ugly, a consequence of the low mood, but I was also glad to avoid contributing to another social media lie, a dreamy photo of us with the sun rising over Everest, with the fact that I felt so low not mentioned, of course.
The sea was a little wavy and it was a little scary, in the open water, the waves tipping the boat, but I reminded myself that the man does this all the time. The journey took about forty minutes. He dropped the anchor a little way from the shore, hooked a ladder over the side and we stepped down from the boat with our bags, into the water above the knee, past the bow which was beautifully decorated with flowers, and onto a paradise beach. Again, laughably nice, with well off looking tourists on sunbeds, and little beach front restaurants, ‘Are we in the wrong place?’ we asked ourselves.
We were in a tent, it was luxurious camping though, with a deep thick mattress, one of the best we’d experienced in South East Asia, electricity with two sockets and a fan.
An English woman helped out with online bookings and English speaking queries at our place. We asked how she’d ended up here, she said she’d come on holiday and fallen in love with the place and come back to live, and had been on the island seven years, she had a Cambodian partner and a little boy. ‘He understands everything, but he’s a little late in talking, which is normal, as he’s learning two languages at once.’
In a way it was a bit boring, being stuck on a small beach with nothing to do; it was good for me and writing though. I had set myself a rule of work first before anything, sometimes I went on the internet first and felt guilty, but sometimes I did two hours of work only no internet. As long as you do something, I said to myself. You need to be in condition, like for work- sleep, stretch, food, and sometimes, if totally stuck, to just do nothing. Which is this, choice or procrastination? Only experience tells- or time- does the book get written?
One of the nicest things was that even in a sloppy type up of old notes I saw patterns that matched other sections or the present, and made new notes. The balance between experience, writing about it, absorbing, reflecting, peace and quiet, and being right in the moment, ‘paying attention. I used to think I needed quiet time to see patterns, but actually, fully immersed in writing, I saw more. Being in the zone, connecting with other bloggers, who echoed my own words back to me. Living right, for me, All I have to do is write. Moments alone with no writing but not many, writing is so important- party later.
Walking to the village in search of culture and authenticity, up a steep hill, two paths there, two paths back. The harbour area was beautiful, with wooden pier and buildings. We stopped at the first little shop, with red plastic chairs outside, and sat and drank Sprite.
When I went there alone that was all I did, walked to the shop, sat and had a drink, Sprite, Red Bull, or a soya drink in can, watching the chickens and chicks on the other side of the path by a small rubbish pile. The chickens ate a big sheet of polystyrene, it got smaller each time I went, the little fragments like rough beads.
On my walk to and fro the village I paid a lot of attention, making a mental note of all the markers; a building with a blue roof, a cafe that was never open, sacks of building materials, a truck that was usually there. Scrubby plants that led to a sandy path. Broken planters. Tiny bright bluish purplish shells in a messy semi circle. With Anthony we went another way. Me momentarily confused, looking for the shells. ‘All roads lead there,’ he said.
Shells on the beach in tiny arrangements like art, and tiny holes with lots of tiny piles of sand, made by crabs. Like a work of art, each one different, some like comets some like asymmetric snowflakes so delicate and pretty.
We used to float in the sea and talk about enlightenment, then get dry and go and eat dinner.
Anthony’s hypothesis: Is this all there is? If you gave up the search, put all focus on this life- like being in the moment, richer, if you like. Think of it like a game, if that helps you take the gas bill less seriously, but don’t have half your mind on the otherness- the brain in the tank, the Green Mist theory, the after, the what’s next- that’s like the what’s next in life- stops you being in the present, is ill advised. If there’s nothing, then you’ve wasted that time- just be present. People realised they were in a mortal life- found that scary and so invented the possibility of otherness as a comfort. Just live, enjoy, make up/imbue meaning- or not. Forget about spirituality, it’s a cu-de-sac. Waking up= enjoying life. Sadness prevents us seeing beauty.
People say the ‘first step’ is seeing beauty. What if the ‘first step’ is the only step?
Like R from Switzerland, if you want to reinvent yourself maybe it is much easier to do with no contact with your family. This is what I’m meant to be doing, what I intended to do, therefore I am successful (not a bum with no job to family). Like me- No, this is what I always intended, to live on a boat, and WRITE, as I did as a child, as I’ve always done.I just got lost for a while, that’s all.
In the sea the day after the enlightenment conversation I felt pinpricks, as if something had stung me on the outside of my thigh, then at my wrist, as if a tiny spiky thing like a prickle was caught in my bracelet. Then I felt it again, stronger, stinging, on my right breast. Anthony said, ‘Are you getting stung?’ We couldn’t see anything. We got out after a little while; whatever it was had caused tiny bumps like little TB markers which disappeared quickly. That evening we saw a shooting star, orange like a firework, with a tail like a comet, I had never seen one like that.
We met a woman from Italy and went out for dinner. She had left her job, been travelling for two months, wanted to go home, work, then go out again. Not all her friends understand. ‘Everyone just wants things.’ Before she left she gave me a four leaf clover.
Digging a hole on the beach then leaving it is anti social, I realised. I had fallen in several especially at night in Thailand- one foot not my whole body. As a child I fell headfirst into a muddy water filled hole straight after my mum’s boyfriend said, ‘Don’t you ever stop talking Rachel?’ And on the beach in Koh Rong, also holes. ‘Even my chair fell into a hole.’ ‘Perhaps it’s a metaphor,’ Anthony said. (I always say that) ‘What, I’m in a hole?!’ ‘No, you’re going down the rabbit hole.’ Oh yes, I like that, a reminder every now and again, my own personal mindfulness bell. Remember to remember: you followed the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, you took the RED pill.
Thank you very much for reading
About the author
Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony
Draft chapter for book about our time in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in January
‘No Drugs, No Prostitutes, No Weapons:’ Phnom Penh, Cambodia
I got my laundry ready the first day, but forgot to take it out with us, and after dinner it was closed. Even getting it ready was enough. Likewise with shopping, I had tried to do it all on the first day. I bought a few things, they didn’t have everything, at a friendly shop on our road near the laundries, but didn’t make it to the 7/11 style supermarket until the next day. We flew with low weight and needed to buy shampoo etc on arrival. The first day and night was enough stimulation- I was over stimulated, walking through the bar street I felt tired. Noticing my tendency to overdo and crash. Don’t have to do everything all at once.
The next day we found a real stationers, an entire shop selling stationery, I bought a really nice notebook, and gel pens!!! I had brought enough for the trip, given away some in thanks for my monkey tablet rescue in Hampi, and so had just run out. And at the ‘7/11’ there was soya milk, face cream, body moisturiser, Vaseline, Nivea, makes, luxury four blade razors, and all kinds of biscuits! Almost all cream was whitening again like in Thailand. and Japan and sunblock went up to Factor 100. I bought big thick sunscreen; I had slacked in India and let my skin go chicken skin-ish. Never mind, they are the tiger stripes or stretch marks of the experience. Simple pleasures; stocking up on necessary items such as soap etc, and also nuts, and getting our laundry back, done in washing machines, with little tickets when you took it in, felt so good.
Mobile rickshaw or motorbike stalls often had a phrase on a loop coming out of a speaker; we’d hear a vehicle going past with a repetitive, monotonous announcement, it sounded so serious to us. In India it would have been politics trucks, here it was someone selling snacks or corn on the cob or coconuts; the coconuts in Cambodia were the biggest I’d ever seen. There were handcarts with bells, and noisy kids’ toys like in Thailand. Again, I noticed the difference in noise tolerance between South East Asian countries and the UK. One day a bicycle with a loudspeaker blaring out a repeated an announcement just parked in the street near our guesthouse selling filled baguettes. It would have driven me insane but the stall person and the passersby seemed unperturbed.
We mostly ate at a pavement cafe on the front, there was free iced tea, we risked it the first time; later we looked up about ice. If it is big chunks with a hole in, which this was- chunky cylinders with a hole through the middle like very large beads- that’s good, that’s for drinks. Otherwise it could just be from packing- we saw great slabs of ice on trolleys, beautiful like glaciers with air bubbles and fractures and the light shining through it. We might have been more nervous about eating there but we saw a Westerner there who looked like a regular. Normal sized plastic tables and chairs that spilled onto the pavement, the cooking was mainly done out the back, with some barbecue meat inside and out the front. Inside the restaurant was a glass fronted wooden cabinet full of nail polishes, as if someone had a sideline doing nails.
On the way to the restaurants, we passed a glorious gold and red temple, so shiny as if it had just been built. We saw a rickshaw with Astroturf over the roof and down to the top of the window, and at the front over the wheel. There were lots of barbers set up on the street who kept asking Anthony to come and have his hair cut. Before we left he did go to them and was given a typical Khmer haircut, a little too short at the sides for him. But except for the barbers and a man outside a restaurant who asked us a couple of times if we wanted to eat there, that was it. Compared to Varkala Cliff, Kerala, India where there was a strip of ten or so restaurants and twenty or so stalls, with everyone practically begging us to eat or shop at their place every time we walked past. In India tourists can feel permanently pulled and guilty and buy to support not because they need or want anything. At Bangkok airport we met a man who was just returning to the UK after a holiday in Goa, India. ‘I’ve bought so many shorts and t shirts and I didn’t even want them!’
We went to the night market and saw Marilyn Monroe style silver lurex and red velvet plunging neckline dresses. There were lots of bright colour designs printed on t shirts and shirts. I saw a woman wearing a shirt, so bright and with two big faces on the front, one on each side. In the evenings women often wore pyjamas in the street, usually button through shirts and three quarter length trousers; one evening a woman walked towards us wearing pink shiny pyjamas which were luminous in the dark.
But… it soon didn’t seem enough, after India it seemed too tame, too touristy, not authentic enough and no engagement. It wasn’t like India in Pushkar or Chennai. No cosmic recognition, we didn’t meet any of the young tourists, families or ex pats around us. And after all our complaining towards the end of India about selfie takers, I missed the attention. Not because I liked feeling like a celebrity (okay maybe a little…) but because it was positive interaction with the people of the country.
We missed India. All the things we had been annoyed about, we missed. Really like a love affair, you may be annoyed by your wife doing xxx or your husband doing xxx but when they’re gone, oh you miss those things.
I drank coffee French press good strong coffee and wrote downstairs in the restaurant. Sometimes it was hard to concentrate, with families and other guests talking and playing guitar. The coffee was great for writing, not so good for sleep; I caught myself out a couple of times having coffee too late in the afternoon and then wondering why I couldn’t sleep at night.
It was whirring around my head so I wrote it down, the What’s Next, and then the word document disappeared. I had emailed it to myself as back up so I could’ve found it in my emails, but would that really be best? Is it beneficial to live in the future? No. Was losing my What’s Next? ideas a ‘coincidence?’ There’s no such thing as coincidences. What’s another word then, synchronicity? Serendipity? Signs you are on the right track? Assistance for staying on track?
Rather than trying to plan for or worrying about The Future, it came to me that a useful self support system could be to make spiritual enlightenment or awareness the goal or guiding aim or principle of one’s life rather than anything else. That way you’ll always be okay because you can do that whatever, wherever, and anything can help.
Thank you very much for reading
About the author
Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony