Rainy season’s come early to Cambodia this year. On the plus side, the searing heat all but dissipates. On the minus: the city is a lake. How can a place that faces the same flood-like rains every single year still have streets that fill like a bathtub in 10 minutes? Very easily, it turns out.
On Friday it rained two hours and St. 51 was knee-high and Norodom calf-high and 178, apparently, thigh-high. Bikes and people can wade through, but motos are stuck unless there’s a clear strip of sidewalk. Brackish water creeps closer and closer to exhaust pipes and everyone’s moto seems a spare moment away from stalling. But it’s fairly worth it to skip an excruciating month of heat. Anyone who’s been here for more than a year is dumbfounded by the rains and happy: “It’s awful,” one guy said. “You can’t imagine how people just get angrier and angrier as the heat rises.” Until it’s well into May and everyone’s got murder in their eyes.
Stuff has been up and down of late, but Friday was one of those endless rambling days that happily veered from the norm. I had to go to the doctor, which otherwise terrifies me, but he was supremely warm and spent a full half-hour drawing the stomach and appendix and gleefully outlining what various critters one can pick up here, including some rare river-based, brain-destroying bacteria. When the rain started, I was leaving the office and I just sat there and finished a story I’d been working on all day until it let up enough to leave. Downed sangria during happy hour on the FCC’s roof overlooking the river and the flood-augmented rush hour traffic; and then bumped into acquaintances on the way out who knew of dinner plans and party plans.
So we wound up at a Khmer barbecue/karaoke place where they throw the most delicious meats on a big grill out front and the beer never stops coming and everything is fresh-tasting and flavorful.
And we ate bee larvae, which tasted like hot honey and flan and not anything disgusting.
At the party, the birthday boys each got a cake which they promptly threw at the other and whipped cream got everywhere and the dance floor became a sliding chocolate mess and everyone was happy. I fell off my moto on the way home and had to get bandaged up the next day. But even that was okay, all things considered. In related news, I own a helmet now…
