Email from a tuk tuk in Phnom Penh

The other day I got an email from Phnom Penh (Cambodia). It was part of irregular correspondence I keep up with my favorite tuk tuk driver, Thet. We exchanged greetings, I sent him a photo of our house in snow and he let me know that his wife was back at work. She works in one of the clothing factories and the workers had been on strike for some time.

Naturally all that made me think of them, and the time in Cambodia. So you get to hear about it.

In this video I posted a while back he was taking us to the Russian Market. The tuk tuk is absolutely the best way to get around Phnom Penh in my book. In the video you'll see that a lot of people prefer the motodops (a ride on the back of a motorcycle) and that can be easier and cheaper, but I find the tuk tuk feels safer and is just as much fun. And still inexpensive.

Here he is on his tuk tuk texting on his cell phone while he waits for us to come out of the guest house, as usual.

It's lovely to stay in touch. We have so little in common, but always enjoyed each other's company. We bought him an ice cream on a stick from Sorya one day and learned he'd never eaten ice cream before. That became clear when he suggested he'd save it for later. The next day at the market I bought him a REAL snack from a vendor squatting on the floor cooking them next to the fish vendor. Those were good too.

The next time I go to Cambodia you can be sure I'll send Thet an email and make sure he's there to meet me at the airport. People like Thet and his wife made our life easy. Whenever we'd go to the city, he'd meet us at the bus station and be on our payroll for the entire time we were in town. In the photo below, we'd bought a screen at this store. Delivery isn't an option at most stores, and the clerks had no idea of how anyone would get anything large to a place outside of the city. We told Thet (on the right) and the same day he put us in touch with a friend (left) who had a van we could rent. They showed up that morning at the store, helped us load the screen (for a piece Dagny was making, of course) and we all drove to Kampot.

New audio book

I'm excited that my short story, Imitating Art, is now out as an audio book on Amazon and Audible for only $3.95. Joe Farinacci did a lovely job with it.

This is a story of the blur between art and life, crime and everything else, for a backpacker in SE Asia. A story of guesthouses, bar girls, and obscure personal histories.

Brought to you by

An Asian story

Friends and fellow travelers have asked when I'd get around to writing a story from the years living in Asia. I did do a story of a sailor in Hong Kong, called Chancy. That one I wrote with John Pocock and it included wonderful photos by my good friend and former colleague in HK, Tom Tsui. It wasn't really about Asia, though, even though it took place there.

Now I've released a short story (99 cents for an introductory period that is as yet indeterminate) called Imitating Art. This one combines my observations of expats in SE Asia with an experience from my time in the Caribbean. (The cover photo is one I took in Thailand). If you look at the description, I billed it as a crime story, as it is, in a way. I am terrible when it comes to fitting into genre, just as I haven't ever fit well in social niches, and this is really a story about a writer, an expat, in Asia. The crimes (and it refers to more than one) are not really the issue. The title suggests the connection between the crimes and the story.

I am quite happy with this story, and would like to do more along this line, combining my interest in mysteries with explorations of Asia. It's only up on Amazon as an ebook now but it interests readers, then I'll be doing more of these.

Hemingway wrote that you need distance from a place you've been before you could write about it honestly, and I'm just beginning to understand what he meant. I am still writing stories of the Caribbean and, in some rather interesting ways, the place and people are clearer to me than it was when I lived there.  That is just starting to happen with Asia.

To help keep my other stories in front of people and hope they find more readers, I've lowered the price on the ebooks for my Venezuelan murder mystere (book one in the Martin Billings stories, as it is turning out) UNDER LOW SKIES to $3.99 and THE LEGEND OF RON ANEJO (the story of the world's best Caribbean boat bum) and FLOAT STREET NOTES to $2.99. The new prices will be reflected at Amazon and Smashwords later today and ripple through to the other outlets over time (I don't control that).

Rain

It seems odd to be wishing for rain in SE Asia. It is the tropics after all, but it has been hot. Even the breeze, when there is any, was hot. And it was humid. The sky hung heavy. It needed to rain. Rain cools things.

Finally it did rain. Several times. We found new holes in the roof and the gutter had backed up so a wall was running water. Who cares? Things cooled down. Life became more energetic. The moo frogs were happy. The tokay gekos were shouting "oh oh!" (that means they are happy).

Now it's hot. The breeze is hot. It is overcast. I hope it will rain.

Colds and construction

The terrible onslaught of colds and flu hit here in Asia just as it has in so many places. It seemed odd at first, that we were sitting in weather that was 90F and snorting away with winter colds, but there it was. I thought it a poor choice of ways to begin the new year, but on the other hand maybe it gets all the being sick out of the way for a good long time. There ought to be some sort of karmic value to it -- short term, I mean. I suppose everything factors in karmically if you look at a long enough span of time.

It doesn't help that Dr. Philippe, our landlord, started putting up a new old house next door. He bought it standing out the jungle or someplace, had it taken down and brought here. It looks like a nice house, but with the crew working it was hard to sit around and take it easy and get over being sick. Below are photos of the ritual blessing on site, and two photos of the first wall going up. Reconstruction, Cambodian style.

Now the house is mostly done, at least that is what we are told. It seems to us like there is a lot left to do.

Cambodian Christmas

Christmas is not a big deal in a Buddhist country like Cambodia, but the merchants know that the tourists enjoy it. As a result, the restaurants tend to have Christmas meals of far too much food and the locals make an attempt to wave the flag, as it were. I took this shot in Kampot at the old/new/somewhat refurbished market just before Christmas.

French Chicken

As the United States is celebrating annual slaughter a turkey day, I thought it appropriate to write a column about the fool things.

Here in Cambodia there isn't a word for turkey, not exactly. The word for chicken is (badly romanized) Moan. A turkey is Barang Moan, or French chicken. However, nowadays any foreigner is call a barang and if you want to say that someone is French you have to say barang barang. So I suppose French chickens are now actually foreign chickens, if anyone wants to get that technical. There is no word for fowl, either. You just say Chicken-duck. I guess turkeys and geese don't count for much.

At any rate, here is one of our landlord's foreign chickens parading around this morning. Although they look like US turkeys (although not like butterball or other factory models), these will still be around next week. They have a longer lifespan here. Must be the weather or something in the water. At any rate, this one does not look stressed out.

Hong Kong Redux

In October we flew to Hong Kong for a week. The trip was to serve several important purposes with seeing old friends among the most important. Tom Tsui and I worked together at Asian Sources, a publishing company, some twenty years back. Dagny and I hadn't seen Tom and his wife Miu Miu since then. They were wonderful hosts and we spent some wonderful time together.

Hong Kong is even more intense than it was when we left. We are so off the pace of that kind of life that it left us exhausted. But it was fun and we even ate ostrich (tenderloin) for the first time. 

So here are some images of us and Tom and Miu Miu and Hong Kong in general.

Getting around

It's important to get around in style. When I was downtown the other day, just across the street from the Kampot Province Economic Affairs Office, I took this photo. You often see these pony carts at the market. Along with motorized transport, these carts, and some pulled by water buffalo are still very much in use.

An ordinary trip downtown can provide a fair amount of inspiration .

Rainy day blogging and publishing

Sunday was a lovely rainy morning. It is easy to get my writing done on a rainy day. It is cool then and there is something about the rain that makes my thoughts seem to go deeper. Perhaps it is just that I am less distracted by things outside the window.

Thanks to those who responded to the story about the creative assistant. Pat confirmed that it was a Tokay gecko. I have to find out if this one is a mongo Tokay or just on the large size of normal. Uncle Steve reminded me that Carlos Castenada was taught divination with lizards and suggested that I not limit the new friend to the duties of an assistant. That merits investigation as well.

My apologies to those who tried to leave comments and found that they couldn't. I didn't realize that this software defaulted to letting only registered users leave comments and that has been fixed now.

Other things going on... My coauthor Jim Beckett is taking his turn on the final draft of our novel THE INVENTION OF CLAY McKENZIE, which we will be publishing in ebook and paperback. The publishing empire grows and FLOAT STEET PRESS now has four paperbacks out through CreateSpace. The first two were THE LEGEND OF RON ANEJO and FLOAT STREET NOTES, then we published an adult crime/suspense story A BURGLAR IN MALAY
by Kurt Dysan, a fellow traveler in these parts, who has been writing for years but need encouragement to publish.

Most recently we republished my friend Javaid Qazi's collection of short stories called

Unlikely Stories: Fatal Fantasies and Delusions

This first published by Penguin Books in 1998 and had gone out of print. The editors returned the rights and now it is available again, as is a single story in ebook format called THE KING OF PATIO WORLD

All of the paperbacks are available in ebook format as well. We are still
working on getting them linked together but all are available through Amazon. The ebooks also find their way into Barnes & Noble, Diesel, Kobo, Sony, iTunes and so on through Smashwords and you can always find the books in almost every ebook format there.

This will build up slowly. It has taken most of a year to get to this point, but there are many good things in the works. And SE Asia is a wonderful place to work, even if now I need to go into town and muster enough Khmer words to get someone to find and fix an intermittent problem in one of the motorbikes.

A New Creative Assistant

Everyone knows that writers need all the help they can get, so I was pleased to find that a local has volunteered to help me with my struggles. It is good to have someone who not only appreciates the struggle of making art but also has an extensive knowledge of the local environment.

I don't know my new assistant's name, or even if he or she has one (yes, the CV was a bit sparse in places but there have been remarkably few applicants and this one seemed of good character and rather fearless -- two admirable qualities). Perhaps some of you could make a suggestion. Now bear in mind that this is a rather large lizard and I doubt some cutesie gecko name would be appropriate or appreciated. Since the pay for this position is paltry, showing the proper respect will prove important in retaining our first staff member here at Float Street Press.

The new assistant has many virtues, not the least of which is being somewhat indifferent to gravitational forces. I can only hope that this provides a certain immunity to depression.

So any names that come to mind would be appreciated. And despite the rather distinct coloration, management here has already discounted "spot" as being too saccharine. But I look forward to your ideas.

Anteaters in Cambodia

You might be familiar with the South American anteater, but Cambodia has some that are quite different. Here is a photo of the female anteater stalking her prey.

She is after large red ants that live in the trees. The trick is to shake the leaves, knocking the ants off the leaves and into that basket at the end of the pole. The bucket is water she will use to get ants off her hands and feet (you didn't think they would sit calmly in the basket did you?)

In this case, after a time, the male anteater (aka Mr. Sau) came along as the relief hunter. Mr. Sau is the gardener here at Dr. Philippe's who is intrigued by Dagny's art and my attempts to speak Khmer without a net.

These trees grow along a stream that feeds into the river, which is a lovely place for insects. You can see the basket in the upper left as he disappears into the tree below. This not only allows him access to the ants at the top, but gives the ants at the bottom access to him, which I take as a fair exchange. Periodically he stops to perform an interesting dance step that probably dates back to the time of Apsara. I wasn't fast enough to get a photo of that. Perhaps another time.




Below is a closeup of the basket. It only has a few ants in it, in fact I saw more on the handle than in the basket, so it was not the best of harvests.

While I know they gather these to eat,(Mr. Sau was very clear on that point) I don't know the recipe yet. Mr. Sau's English and my Khmer are not up to the task of exchanging recipes yet, but perhaps they will invite us over for tea and ants some afternoon. I suspect that, like spiders, they are fried, but that is only speculation at the moment and they will need to catch a lot more ants if they are going to have company.

Weather is only human

I read about the drought that is going on in the US the other day, and that it was the worst in 25 years. That led me to the curious thought about what makes one drought worse than another. I assume they mean less rain over a longer period of time, but this seems to be a government statistic, which makes using common sense a rather foolish thing to do.  Governments seem adept at avoiding sense, of either the common or extraordinary variety. So I wonder. I don't suppose it matters what the criteria are though. It's bone dry.

I heard from a good friend in MO that he hasn't seen any rain since June, and he has been looking for it. That means something. For one thing it means that he has to buy vegetables, since gardening takes water. Instead of a yard full of veggies they have temperatures over 100 F and no rain. Having lived in New Mexico I understand what that means. New Mexico's major tourist attraction is droughts. End-of-the-world apocalypse movies are shot there as they require no extra work to prepare the scene. Practice makes perfect and they have gotten good at droughts. So I understand.

In a rather petty way (by comparison), we need rain here too. Oh we get rain from time to time, but not the good old wash-the-roads-out-of-existence rains that this area is known for. Without those rains it is hot. The rice paddies aren't looking so good. Just hot and humid. The skies tease. looking like they do in the photo below, which I took at sunset a few days ago. Now you'd think a sky like that would produce some rain, but no. Weather is arbitrary and does what it wants. Like people. You have to admire that. Actually it is like people who are contrarians and I like that even better.

So it is hot. That makes it hard to think (old wooden houses do not have and would not benefit from air conditioning). So we swim in the river. The water comes from the mountains and is cold enough to lower the body temperature down something below 451 F so my books don't burn when I touch them.

Meanwhile, there was a deluge in Beijing and a large tropical storm crosses northern Viet Nam that is probably flooding the Mekong. Is that balance?


Sometimes weather can seem more frustrating than governments. Nah! That's unfair. Its just that weather is only human after all. Capricious, yes. Officious and pompous, no.

Moo frog chorus

I suspect that there are many among you who thought I was exaggerating when I wrote about the moo frogs. They seem mythical to me, but they are pretty amazing. Sure, we've all heard frogs in the yard or creek at night. This is, I assure you, different. Last evening, after a rainy day, we were treated to quite a chorus and I captured a bit. I don't have a recorder handy so I used my camera. I can't figure out how to put just audio here so I uploaded the video. The steady black stuff is what the yard looks like at night. The sound in the video is amazingly like it sounded sitting on the porch, with the difference that this is just over 30 seconds and we get to hear it most of the night. Some other soloists joined the orchestra later in the evening for a bit of a jam session, adding a nice glissando as a counterpoint to this, but I had already packed up the camera. Just thought you might enjoy it. Call it a taste of the rainy season.

For those who are into musical arrangements, the baritones are the moo frogs. Then you will hear an alto voice that seems to tie the moos together nicely, or perhaps the moos punctuate the alto lines. The percussion from the gecko and insect groups fits in rather nicely, I think you will agree. Overall, a bit repetitious from a melodic perspective, but the arrangement is excellent. Good sound balance too, so kudos to the sound technicians. Here we go.

Cows and bats

If it seems like I am on a roll talking about interactions with animals, it is because I am. Living in a rural place, even if it is a small community, tends to put you back in contact with the creatures we share this world. I enjoy most of it, even if I would be happier if certain creatures (insects, turkeys...) were left out of the equation.

Recently I noticed that Mr. Sau, who takes care of the grounds, using a new lawn mower. This was  a nice upgrade for him from the weed eater they were using to cut the grass. There is a lot of grass now, and that is a slow way to get the job done. Doctor Philippe, the landlord is quite proud of the new lawnmower, and rightfully so. They are not common here.

Nonetheless, I wasn't surprised to look out the other day and see the supplementary equipment at work.

The animal belongs to one of the neighbors, and I assume that Mr. Sau came to an arrangement with him. So every afternoon, this beast is tethered somewhere on the grounds, filling her stomach while taking over part of the lawn maintenance burden.

The other recent encounter was nocturnal. When we first moved onto our boat in the Caribbean, we had no electricity. So the evenings were spent in the dark. When we got electricity sorted out, we found that we preferred spending evenings in the dark. There were fewer insects and you could see what was going on around you under the moonlight. We were an exception and most people turned on lights at night. When we visited other boats, looking out into the black night seemed odd. We preferred things our way.

In our house here, we like to sit in the dark. Habits die hard, and there is still the issue of insects. They love light. Our neighbors turn on porch lights and we watch the mosquitoes plan their attacks. But we have no reason to be smug. Darkness brings like-minded creatures around. In this case, a bat. The bats fly around in the evening catching bugs. They fly through our porch.

One bat, however, was not content with this routine, and on an evening not long ago, as I sat contemplating the universe, I was assaulted with bat guano. Now this is a rather nice form of that substance, and not caustic like that of the fruit bats in Venezuela, and certainly not as troublesome as the vampire bats we had there either.

But I didn't like it. We used a broom to discourage the little guy; I just poked it near him and he flew off. The next night he came back to the exact same spot under the porch roof--directly over my chair. We turned on the light and he left. The next night, he decided the light was okay, and he would stay, but I turned to chemical warfare and sprayed in his direction with bug spray. Again he left.

  Here he is hanging right above my chair. 

So what are you going to do with a guy like that? We like him to come around and eat bugs. He would even be rather welcome to hang around if he would pick a different spot, but he has not shown a willingness to negotiate. So we close curtains at night now and hope he will find a nicer spot. Maybe he can go hang on a roof beam over the cow and they can talk over the craziness of people.

Turkeys on the porch

I've learned a number of lessons in this current incarnation of living in Asia.

• Asians are not in the least inscrutable (they yell at you when they are pissed just like everyone else.).
• Eating fruit for breakfast every morning makes me feel good.
• I don't like turkeys.

Of course, none of these lessons is in the least profound, and perhaps none are useful, except for the bit about fruit. And the only real surprise is the last one.

So I will explain a bit about how I came to uncover my dislike for turkeys.

At the moment, my writing days are spent in a small cottage a few metres from our house. It looks like this.

This is a wonderful place to work, except for the turkeys. Bear in mind that throughout Asia, poultry are inescapable, even beyond the dinner plate. Chickens and turkeys have the run of the place, despite the risk they run from motorbikes and cows. Mostly it works out.

Chickens are okay. I am not a chicken lover, at least until they are cooked, but we get along. But the turkeys on my porch are vile and nasty and noisy. 

It isn't all their fault. They did not build the coop next to my porch, but in all fairness, neither did I, and we should all have to come to some agreement on how to share space. They run over the entire compound with their shrill chorus (and it is always a chorus... you never hear one turkey) echoing, and I really have less problem with that than with the piles of turkey dung (large) they drop everywhere. 

But I can deal with that. 

The problem is that when I am trying to write, the word gets out and they assemble on my porch and sing to me. Unfortunately I don't care for the song, have heard it before, and actually would prefer a Sousa march as music to work to. I suspect this is all down to my evil neighbor telling them about the US holiday of Thanksgiving, and hanging the responsibility for the role turkeys play in it on me. There doesn't seem to be any other explanation that fits the few paltry facts.

I don't understand their intent (that of the turkey's not that of my evil neighbor) but it has antagonized me and I am in the process of ordering some cook books that focus on turkey dishes to give as presents to the Khmer people who take care of them.

I am sure an equitable situation will evolve over time. Patience is of utmost importance here. After all, I have to send off for the books, and the mail is slow here.

Songs from the Noir

There is a musical group based in Phnom Penh that is doing some interesting music in both English and Khmer. It is minimalist stuff, almost a coffee house vibe from the 60s, but getting in some sense of Velvet Underground. The band is called Krom and they've just released a CD. I don't know the people, but I liked this video they did. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HgmcSZlhE8  There is good footage of life in the city and you can hear how they sound..

Their website is  http://www.themekongsessions.com/

Krom: Songs from the Noir

“Songs from the Noir” is now available for download via CD baby at the following link: http://cdbaby.com/cd/krom12

The rains come, the tourists go

The onset of the rainy season is also the onset of slow season in Cambodia. The rains can make travelling about miserable, so it probably isn't the best time to visit. The rains ease up in October, usually, maybe November and the inrush begins again.

Rainy season doesn't just turn on one morning. We kind of ease into it. Today was a beautiful day, and I took the motorbike into town to get needed supplies (cabbage and Irish whiskey if you must know).

This is one of the normally busy streets at about 0830. The khmer start mornings early, and perhaps the backpackers are all still sleeping in, but I don't think so. Along this street you can buy welding gas, bread, cell phones, some packaged junk food, get your hair done, and a bit further down is the main bank, Acleda.

 Behind the stack of tires is one of the many motorcycle repair shops. This one is just around the corner from the Honda dealer. One lovely thing about riding a motorbike here is that if you have a problem in town, you are never far from someone who thinks he knows motorbikes better than you, and certainly knows them better than me, and has tools and parts.

 This is the Eastern end of our main market (psaa). It was more crowded earlier when I went by. I came back to get a shot of one of the pony carts, but they had finished loading and lumbered off to wherever they lumber to. This is at the intersection with the main road that goes to Phnom Penh and the market really starts down where the umbrellas are and is quite extensive. I bought two cabbages and four nam groaech, which are sweet deep-fried rice flour pancakes.  The shops closer are mostly where you can buy cell phones. My Nokia was less than $20 there.

The shop ('Hang' in khmer) on the right is across the street from where we live. This is where I buy 20 litre jugs of drinking water and Anchor (pronounced "an chore" so as not to confuse it with "Ankor" beer).

Mango Rain

Since I posted that we were waiting for rain, it seems only fair to let you know that we got some. Not the full blown "look at it come down!" kind of rain we will get in the next month or so, but a number of the nice rains that mean good mangos and papaya in the market (psaa, in Khmer).

So after the first rain it looked like this. The soil is a clay that gets very slippery and, well I believe the technical term is "yucky" after a nice rain.

On the other hand, it also is soft, which means Dr. Philippe's minions can pull weeds. They are planting grass in the bare patches and he bought around 100 acacia trees to plant around the property. That is supposed to reduce traffic noise and add privacy. We will see.

A visit to Phnom Penh

The name Phnom Penh literally means "Penh's hill", but the city is rather flat and quite walkable. Our neighbors in Kampot suggested we try a guest house owned by friends of theirs. The name was inauspicious. The Lone Star Saloon does not conjure up images of the pearl of the orient. Still a reference is a reference and these folks are usually pretty good, so we gave it a try. Our regular taxi driver, Mr Mao, took us right to the door in time for lunch.

Our trips to the city are infrequent and usually based around the need for things not available in the provinces. Our favorite way to shop is to hire a tuk tuk for the morning and take advantage of the local knowledge as well as transportation.

Here are some tuk tuks outside the wat that is just at the end of 23rd Street where the Lone Star is located.

They actually seem to do a brisk business ferrying monks back and forth from where ever monks go to when they aren't at the wat.

By the way, The Lone Star was great. Most of the folks working there are Khmer, although the lady who owns it admits to having been to Texas. Her husband is from Texas and the sentiments are his. The rooms were comfortable and quiet and good value. The location is perfect for prowling the city, regardless of what you are prowling for.