Over the Water Festival I had three days off plus the weekend and as I really wanted to see the dolphins in Kratie (a little town next to the waterside), I just took a bus there. It’s five hours from Phnom Penh (I went to the waterside of the Mekong in the morning to see the colorful boats racing down the river to celebrate) and 6 Dollar for a bus ticket in the sharing van. The road that leads up to the north of Cambodia is called the “Death Highway” and that’s exactly how it felt when I was sitting in the bus. Sometimes the street is so bad, it seems like there was an earthquake some days ago as the ground is ripped open. There are more holes in the street than there is even ground, the dust is taking away your sight and the up and down in the landscape is making you feel like you were sitting in a rolercoaster. Of course we have a puncture, of course the roof has a hole through that it’s raining inside and of course there is a women next to me with a crying baby on her lap. There are these things that happen to you every time you drive with a bus in Cambodia. But there is another part that is characteristic for every bus ride: the offering of food (sounds a little bit like a religious ceremony and maybe it is). Everyone is opening his or her lunch and the sharing beginns. It’s as if we had a secret bound that says: “As long as we are driving in this bus together, we stick together.” Yes, maybe it’s even more than that. You become part of a family, the shared food is only the first step. After that the getting-to-know-you-part begins. Everyone tells where they are from, if they are married and how many children they have. That’s the most important thing that needs to be found out. What’s also typical, are questions about the weight, the loan and the boyfriend (when you say you don’t have your own family yet). I am then answering that I don’t get loan, don’t have a boyfriend and don’t know anything about my current weight. After that I get some more banana chips. The women with the baby next to me that I mentioned, that was sitting next to me, was moaning for about an hour, that I didn’t wear appropriate clothes. This means, my shoulders were not covered. In the village this woudn’t have happened to me, but as a tourist I thought that it really doesn’t matter, as hotpants and tanktops are everywhere to be seen. Now that I am part of the bus family though and even speak a little bit Khmer, my clothes are suddenly everyones business. There is the worry, that I don’t look Cambodian enough. A cardigan has to be found. I take one out of my backpack and a wide grin emerges on the face of the women. “Lo-o-na!” (Very good). Nothing prevents her from falling asleep and snoring comfortably against my covered shoulder now.
The first day in Kratie, I was chatting a little bit in Khmer with the receptionist of my hostel, and she was completely amazed about the fact that I could talk with her. From that moment on, she refused to speak in English with me again and I only ever understood half the things she wanted to tell me. I don’t know if it is better to travel without letting your tourist image fall. It can be very comforting and easy to pretend you know nothing at all. The first day I decided to do a bicycle tour on the island before Kratie. You can go there by boat for 1000 riel and take your bike with you. The island is very beautiful. The people that are living there are very simple farmers. A lot of horses can be found there too, what is very rare for Cambodia. They are walking over the sandy beaches that are circling the island. This is also the best place to watch the sunset of the Mekong. On the boat I met a group of elderly German tourists that asked me about my work and seemed to be fairly nice. When one of the men invited me to join their bicyle tour around the island. I said yes, because I wanted to take the same route anyway. After we biked for about 10 minutes my chain sprang out and I couldn’t drive anymore. Two of the German women that were riding behind me just drove past, without stopping. I was standing there, pretty shocked and confused, as I had already forgotten this horrible German friendliness. One second later I was surrounded by a Khmer family that started to repair the bike while smiling widely at me. After I asked them how much it would be, they just shook their head to show me, that they didn’t want money. I felt like I was just at the right place in that moment and belonged to the right nation of people.
The next day I went to Sambok mountain with my bike. On this mountain should be one of the most beautiful pagodas in the country, so I didn’t care much about the long and dusty bike ride. When I was walking up the stairs, I could see statues of monks that seemed to be walking down the hill while I was walking up. There were surely over 100 of them, it was both impressive and a little bit scary as they seemed so human. On the foot of the hill was a statue of Buddha himself. I always loved the sculptures in Cambodian pagodas. They tell the story of Buddhas life and every pagoda has elephant guards in front of the gates that have skillfull patterns on their skin. When I finally reached the top, sweat pouring down, I could enjoy the beautiful view on the Mekong and the rice paddies. I set down on a bench next to some oversized statues. Before I knew what was happening, I fell safe and sound asleep. When I woke up again I saw a smiling face above me. “This place can lead your heart to inner peace you know?”. What? I was just about to figure out what this face above me was doing there, I was not in the state to think. “It is so far away from the troubles of daily life, you can find calmth and harmony here. This place can give you strength before you walk back down the stairs.” What was happening here? Orange, a lot of orange. I sat up and realized that the face belonged to a monk that was standing a few inches away from my bench, hands folded infront of his robe. He was looking at me with a gentle and open smile and then opened his hand to point to the area around us. “Everything you see is build by nature. There is nothing that gives us a hint about the outside world. This is a rare paradise place and we can chose to stay here and find balance before we move on to the next destination.” I just nodded. It sounded reasonable.
– “So you live here?”, I asked.
– “I do.”, the monk answered. “But only until my soul tells me to move on.”
– “Is it not sometimes lonely here?”, I asked hesitatingly. “What about your family and your friends?”.
– “There are two reasons for loneliness in the world. The first is, that we have nobody who understands us. The second reason is, that we don’t understand who we are, what we want, where we want to go. How can we expect from others to understand us, when we don’t know ourselves?”
– “You think this is the source of humans loneliness?”
– “I know so. It is our task to find ourselves, before giving this exercise on to other people.”
– “Are you the head of the monks or something like that?”.
– “I am a teacher like you. And sometimes it is not easy.” (I had no clue how he knew that I was a teacher)
– “I always remind myself that I don’t force the students to study. I teach them what they need to know and how to receive this information, but nothing else. If they don’t want to learn it is their decision. Sometimes it makes me sad to see someone leave the right path, but I can’t force anyone to do something they don’t want to do.” The monk looked in the far distance, as if to find more answers there.
– “I admire this form of giving knowledge to others. Working without getting money needs a pure, unpoisened heart, a gentle mind and curious eyes. I believe that it is one of the most respectable works human can do on this earth.” Was he talking about me being a volunteer? I never said a word about this to him. Probably he just talked about teaching in general and his own experiences with unpaid work for poor children? As I now had the chance, I decided to find out some things that I was curious about.
– “I have some questions that I would like to ask. At what age can boys become monks?”
– “They can become monks when they are brave enough to scare the crow. Before they reach this maturity, the crow won’t fly away, but when she does when one is approaching, it means that you are ready. Around 10 years of age.”
– “And why are you eating meat when you have such huge respect for the life around you?”
– “We don’t kill and we would never allow anyone else for us to kill. You see, when a women is buying meat at the market and cooking for her family, she brings us the leftovers as a donation. But the meat was bought in the intention to feed the family, not to feed us.”
– “How do you find these words without having a difficulty? You never seem to struggle to find answers.”
– “I always see people fight. Fight in the family, at work, in the politics. All these fights begin because people don’t think before they speak. They don’t think about if they hurt someone with their words. For me, I always talk carefully, weighing every word and trying to find out, if I don’t break the balance of the things around me. It comes naturally.”
– “Thank you.” I said, still pretty confused.
– “Take this with you.” the monk said. He gave me a little paper with a statue of Buddha on it. The Buddha was holding up his right hand, locking eyes with the beholder of the card.
– “Normally, how do you feel when you look at someone who is much higher than you? Your boss, the prime minister, anyone who is beholding an important position? Most people are frightened, shy, insecure. What Buddha wants is taking this feeling away from us with this gesture. It shows, that we are welcomed and beloved by him. Take this with you, it shall remind you that you are blessed and never alone as you walk in this country.”
– “Thank you.” I stammered again.
– “I am thanking you.” the monk smiled and as fast as he had been there, he was gone again. I walked down to the first platform and suddenly there was a crowd of tourists there, taking pictures of the stupas, the preah vihear and the sculptures. I felt like I had just woken up from a dream, and in fact, I had.
When I was walking through Kratie the other day, I passed by a little café that had a sign in front of the doors where there was written: “Peanut butter and jam bread, self-made.” I stopped because this sounded just too tempting and I did not yet eat something for breakfast. Behind the counter was a young women with short brown hair. Her name was Suzanne. She told me she was 25 years old and American, but fell in love with Cambodia after her first trip there as a tourist when she was 20. Since then she had wanted to come back. Her idea was to open up a kayak business with tours on the Mekong river, as kayaking was her hobby. In addition she is running a café where she is selling her self made bread. I was really amazed by this spirit and said yes, when she asked me to come along on a kayak tour. At one o’clock the next day I was at her shop again, but we couldn’t start, because the truck had a puncture (what else?). As we finally headed off down the dusty roads, I remembered when I was kayaking last time on the Ardèche where everything had been quite a bit different. Most significant is, that nobody is kayaking on the Mekong, and the whole French river was filled with tiny boats. When we arrived we first paddled to the middle of the Mekong what is hard work as the riverbed is so wide. Finally we arrived and around us were loads of tiny, green, sandy islands. The current was not as strong anymore and we slowly drove through the hidden nature. Never would I have seen this from the bank, I was surrounded by a whole different landscape. Suzanne told me, that we would drive through a flooded forest and I was thinking about the one in Siem Reap. But this was different. The trees that were suddenly in front of us were gigantic, standing in the wide open, not covered by anything, just massive and impressive when the flood water was rushing against the trunk. I could feel the power that was living in them and began to rush into us, as we dipped our paddles right and left in the surface. And then we left the tree giants behind us and were again on the wide open riverbed of the Mekong. “This is the place where the dolphins live.”, Suzanne said and I immediately made a 360 degree turn to see one of them. Nothing. We kept searching the horizon for one of the water animals, trying to catch a glance. The Irrawaddy dolphins are an endangered species, only living in liberty on three places in the world. Then I saw something, diving up in front of us. “Here!” Suzanne said and pointed to the other side. There were three more. Suddenly I could see them everywhere. I didn’t know in which direction to look. They dived up and down again, playing with each other. I saw dolphins once before when I was sailing with my father in Croatia, but this time I had not only five seconds to look at them, but half an hour. When the sun was about to sink, we finally went back to the land, saying goodbye to the black shadows of the dolphins shapes on the river.
It was once again a totally different side of Cambodia, and once again I loved it very much. This might not seem very significant, but I also tried an avocado shake for the first time. They are incredibly delicious and super healthy. In the morning of my departure, a phone was ringing in my room. I didn’t even know I had a phone! I was falling out of bed to search it. For an eternity I was crawling on the floor in the dark, until I found it in a shelf in the corner. A Khmer voice was there, talking excitedly in the loudspeaker. “What?”, I asked. “I am sorry, I don’t understand.” I went back to sleep and decided to pack my stuff and go down about an hour later. I felt like I deserved it after the rough wake up call. When I was arriving at the receptionist desk, the women from the first day was sitting there. “Your bus just left!”, she said. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”, I asked confused. “I called you and told you about it”, she said defensively, “But you just wouldn’t listen”. Oh, she still thought I was fluent in Khmer. “All right”, I said “Is there another bus?”. “Chaa, knyom nong suer alojini.” Well, then. When I was finally sitting in my bus on the way back, I was sandwiched in the car between two people, all in all we shared two seats but were four persons. The guy next to me was definitely western, but I didn’t know where he was from. It became evident that he was Italian after he said some words in English with a very strong accent. He told me he was a ski instructor from Northern Italy, could barely speak English but was nearly fluent in French. For the next five hours I was trying to hold a conversation in the language that I had layn down in the graveyard of my memory. It was frightening, but surprisingly possible. That’s why I love traveling, you never ever know what will happen to you. It’s the opposite of daily life and I can understand why words like wanderlust and fernweh were created.
captivatingcambodia 