Ramshackledom

Sihanoukville’s bright lights, cheap cocktails and deckchairs of eternal sloth have been left behind, as, alas, has the fair Monica, and I find myself here in sleepy, faded Kampot, sitting under a mozzie net in the Blissful Guesthouse, such a nice place that I can forgive it the sappy name.


Bougainvillea and frangipani blooms in abundance, hammocks and hanging orchids on the verandahs, a gazebo in the garden, friendly geckos and plenty of books to read.

The sea-breezes which made Sihanoukville darn hot rather than damn hot are absent here and the middle of the day does not really invite any activity. I’ve been strolling along the promenade of the snoozy Kampong River in the early mornings and pink evenings, admiring the Elephant Mountains and imagining myself as the daughter of some colonial official, strolling with broad-brimmed hat and parasol on her pauses from the study of pre-Angkorian temples or somesuch. I’m aware of the improprieties of the colonial fantasy and the decrepit condition in which most of the remaining French buildings stand is a good figure for the outcome of such imperial imagining. The town is famous for its pepper and apparently until the beginning of WWII, Kampot pepper was the only acceptable pepper to French gourmets, the Maldon salt of its day, I suppose. Kampot was Cambodia’s southern port town until tarty Sihanoukville was built in the late 1950s and seems to have been winding down since then, a process considerably aided by Cambodia’s independence struggles and civil war. The area was overrun by Free Khmer and Vietnamese troops fighting each other and the French from the 1940s onwards and then by the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese until not so long ago. The hills and limestone caves behind Kampot concealed Khmer Rouge units until the mid-1990s. Now it’s agriculture and tourism which keep the town ticking along. I’ve just finished Midnight’s Children again and Rushdie’s phrase, ‘handcuffed to history,’ seems apt for Kampot. As I walk by the river and through the town, I’m hailed, ‘hello, laaaady’ by other folks alongside the river who seem to find my presence hilarious (and that is without hat and parasol). The youngsters are keen to practice their English but become rapidly concerned about my marital status. Oh well. There are wedding dresses on the street should the situation become critical.

So captivated am I with the slow pace of life in downtown Kampot that I’ve decided to take a reading pause for a day or two before heading up to Bokor Hill Station, the Official Attraction of the area. In doing so, I’m bucking the trend of hordes of enthusiastic Scandinavian types who march off smiling into the wet morning sun to see caves and ride motorbikes and take river cruises and visit temples. The evidence that that clean Baltic air has invigorating effects is before me, but I am nonetheless baffled that people from such a climate should find apparently inexhaustible reserves of energy in this dense heat. Anyway, I’m not going to put my feeble physiognomy under too much pressure at this stage. I’m swallowing books whole – some are re-reads, some are should-have-reads, others are randoms – and I’m in no mood to start hurrying.