Cambodia - Border Town Boyfriend

Laurie Weed's Portfolio Travel Writing Asia Blog Index

Asia Update 13: Cambodia – Border Town Boyfriend

October 2004

With three weeks to wander until my flight from Bangkok to Nepal, I decided to travel overland to the white sand beaches of Ko Chang, Thailand, and then on to Cambodia. Several tour companies offer inexpensive packages to Sihanoukville or Phnom Penh, but, still suffering post-traumatic stress from the hateful Open Tour experience in Vietnam, I resolved to go it alone. The route is not complicated. I followed the babbling brook of taxi drivers' voices, "Hat Lek, Hat Lek? CambOOOdia?" until I found myself crammed into a minivan with a dozen Thai merchants, heading for the border.

The van dropped me off near the visa office, where I stamped out of Thailand and walked alone across a few meters of brick-colored dirt into Cambodia. I don't think I've ever just walked into a new country before. Without the buffer zone of airport-to-airport limbo, a long train journey, or at least a rattling bus ride, it was an abruptly naked experience.

In Hat Lek, the relatively prosperous Thais dozed in the shade behind their cold drink stands, or lolled next to the fan in open restaurants, watching the dust blow through town and waiting for business that will also blow through, eventually. They took no notice of me. On the other side of the fence, there was no town in sight, just a couple of tired buildings and a dirt road leading off into the wilderness. But when I stepped through the gate, transport drivers and beggar children swarmed out of nowhere, Gold Rush-style. Anxious Cambodians jostled me all the way up to the wooden box that serves as the immigration office, where I paid $7 over the official rate for my tourist visa. I'd been forewarned about this extra "fee", which is completely illegal. However, arguing with armed men over the price of lunch strikes me as radically cavalier.

While filling out paperwork, I had to simultaneously rebuff and haggle with transport drivers. One guy was so eager to help that he snatched my passport from my hand in order to point out the exact number I should copy to the form. He meant well, but my heart stopped for the five seconds he held my identity captive in his grimy fingers. Because this fellow and I had now exchanged a few words (the last few being "GIVE ME THAT!!"), a negotiation had officially begun. The other drivers hung back, respecting his first-kill rights.

My wannabe chauffeur was bright-eyed, ingratiating, and offering to haul my bags and me into town on his 100cc motorbike for "only 50 baht!" (about $1.25). However, when I learned the town was still 30 minutes away, I insisted on taking a car. His bright enthusiasm popped like a beach ball. He had no car, he admitted, "only moto". I was afraid he was going to cry. Sensing a chink, the other drivers surged forward. I quickly made a deal and the winning bidder led me away. A sympathetic friend led the anguished moto driver in the opposite direction. He looked so sad that I considered giving him 50 baht anyway, but realized that would provoke warfare between him and the other twenty or thirty drivers who were also walking away empty-handed.

Both my taxi driver and Masang, the friendly "student" who rode along with us to translate, were in high spirits, obviously elated at capturing me. With a beatific smile, 24-year-old Masang informed me that it was "not possible" to continue on to Sihanoukville that day as I'd planned; I would have to spend a night in Ko Khong. This was a tiresome and dubious prospect, but as we pulled into a scruffy shantytown and stopped at the obligatory kickback guesthouse, it became obvious that my choices were limited. Wearily, I handed over three dollars and change for a squalid, cell-like room, and another $15 to leave in the morning via minibus. This is a standard scam: the guesthouse/travel companies control the minibus services, which are the only way out of town other than local speedboats--the notorious "vomit rockets". And no matter what time you arrive in Ko Khong, the next bus is always departing tomorrow.

I checked into the Dismal Guesthouse (the details of which I won't horrify you with), secured my bags and went for a walk. Poipet, the border crossing to the north, is Cambodia's Wild West--overrun with brothels, casinos, and Thai Mafioso. Ko Khong is like Poipet's small-time, money-grubbing country cousin. Ramshackle gambling parlors, desolate bars, cheap guesthouses and even cheaper cathouses pimple the single main street. Thai pop music screeches from the bare storefronts. All action centers on the market, where every available crevice spills over with vending stalls, motorbikes, and trash.

Lacking official presence of any sort, Ko Khong is the kind of place that attracts only shady Thai "businessmen", visa-runners from Pattaya, impoverished Khmer people from the countryside, and of course, a few hostage tourists. It reeks of burning garbage and cow dung. It is, in short, not a pleasant place to dally. Happily, Ko Khong ends where the pavement does. Within five minutes, I'm strolling along nearly empty clay roads that weave through miles of fluorescent green rice fields. The weathered stilt houses are trimmed with Easter egg blue, and surrounded by accidental lotus ponds. I'm clearly a rare curiosity here. A naked baby peeks out from a plywood hut and shrieks; a young girl towing her siblings down the path on a rusted bed frame stops to gawk at me. School-aged children run or pedal past me; some leading buffalo or dragging goats along behind them. This is my first glimpse of Cambodia's real face, and I'm relieved that Ko Khong appears to be no more than a blemish on an otherwise stunning landscape.

When I return to the moldering Dismal at sundown, Masang is haunting the doorway. "Now I show you Ko Khong!" he announces. I have already seen Ko Khong in its entirety and there is something slippery about him, but since I'm in for a boring evening otherwise, I agree to a short tour on the back of his motorbike. First, we circle the market at the usual rural speed of 15 mph. As a special consideration to me, he turns on the headlight. (Many Cambodians drive at night without lights, believing this practice conserves gas). Next, he shows me the riverfront, where locals gather on the muddy banks for their usual evening fun of drinking into oblivion. Tired and getting hungry, I ask him to take me where we can get good Cambodian food--my treat.

Keen to please, Masang drives me to the one "fancy" barang (foreigner) restaurant in town, which serves only imitation Thai and Western dishes. The cavernous outdoor platform is vacant, except for a mangy black dog and us. I let Masang order. After the waitress departs, conversation plods. Masang's English is limited and his table manners alarming. Barely five minutes pass before he professes that he "loving" me and wants to be my boyfriend. I try discouraging him kindly, explaining that I don't want a boyfriend and I'd just like to be friends, OK?

Changing the subject, I quiz him about his family: does he have brothers and sisters? How old are they? And what are their names? And where do they go to school.? This monotonous distraction works temporarily, as he struggles to answer in English. But, before we've finished our fancy meal of fried rice and beer (which I suspect he ordered because he couldn't read the menu in English or Khmer), he's batting his eyelashes dramatically and delivering a breathy, broken sales pitch. He wants to sleep with me, he whines--"just one night, OK?" He's even willing to "go home after one or two hour"; he offers gallantly, "no problem, OK?"

No longer inclined to kindness, I firmly refuse. Not possible; not happening. NO. To my dismay, he persists. "We have good time", he asserts, puffing out his scrawny chest as though to persuade me with his build. He's roughly the size of an average American ten-year-old and has all the dimension of a Loony Toon character--Pepe Le Peu, perhaps. I could toss him into the road with little effort, and the temptation is growing. My flagging patience ruptures when he hits upon the coup de grace of his little mating dance and tries to show me the goods right there at the table.

"Chek BEEM!" I bellow at the waitress, momentarily forgetting I'm no longer in Thailand. She catches my drift and appears promptly with the bill, politely ignoring Masang's ludicrous posturing. When the change arrives, I stuff it into my bag and start walking back to Dismal alone. Masang trails after me on his motorbike, looking chastised.

"Get on, Miss, OK?" he begs, "I drive you hotel, OK? No problem!"

Since I bought his meal, I reason, he owes me a ride back at least. Scowling him into silence, I hop on one more time and then dismiss him at the gate with a curt, "Good bye -- good luck." I meant it sincerely. As repellant (and comical) as the whole situation was, I had to pity him.

Safely inside my cell, I decide to dust off my frequent travel companion, the Imaginary Boyfriend. He's a rather generic-looking "tall, blond man" who always seems to be checking email, at the bank, or otherwise conveniently stashed away somewhere from whence he could appear, menacing, at any moment. He's led a spectacularly varied life, but just to keep the fiction amusingly surreal, he's going to take up a military career this time, perhaps in the Marine Corps. And he'll be a former boxing champ...yep, that should sell it. Oh, and please congratulate me--we're engaged! Gifts appreciated.