Phnom Penh, initial thoughts…
June 11, 2009
Almost two full weeks in Phnom Penh.
Gosh, SO MUCH has happened since I arrived, and I barely found time to capture it all. I’m going to be much more vigilant about posting from now on.
Hokay, so I arrived into this city, and it was such a bizarre feeling – in some ways it reminds me so much of Delhi, and so I feel a vague sense of familiarity. I’m alwasy intrigued by the pavements of a city – and this city’s pavements really reminded me of India – those same concrete black and yellow painted blocks – but it is much cleaner, much less congested, much much less crowded than my memories of back home, so overall, I have been incredibly impressed. This familiarity to my motherland was both good and bad, because ultimately it was quite disappointing to realize that I actually it wasn’t living in India, and consequently, I didn’t know the place, I didn’t speak the language, and I had to get to my flat by myself, in a “Tuk Tuk” (more on this later), alone – rather than having 20 people greet me at the airport 
Actually, I recently read a really interesting piece from my hero, Pico Iyer, about finding happiness in displacement, even when one’s home isn’t routed. He has a quote I love, where he says
“I am not rooted in a place, I think, so much as in certain values and affiliations and friendships that I carry everywhere I go; my home is both invisible and portable”
But my flatmates and I discussed this intensely last night, and we decided that it’s totally fine travel the world without a home, but it’s truly enjoyable if you have someone to do it with. Pico Iyer has his “sweetheart”, his wife. Steinbeck had his poodle Charley, and if I do this, then I have to have someone too. I absolutely have to have a companion, in whom I place this sense of rootedness.
Anyhow, that first night I had to stay in a guesthouse – since I didn’t officially move in till the next day, and the out-going roommate was still staying in the apt – so I had arranged to meet my flatmate outside my guesthouse at 9:00 am. I woke up in the morning, got showered and dressed, and “approximated” the time difference, and decided that it must be 8:45 and would be meeting my flatmate any moment then. So I go downstairs, check out, and then ask what the time is. 7:30 in the morning. Sigh. So in an effort to kill 1.5 hours of the early morning in a city I did not know, I attempted to find tea. I walked up and down this extremely strange main street, thinking everyone was looking at me, and it was just totally aweful. I felt out of place, lost, hot, and totally disappointed.
Eventually though, I did find some tea (in front of the guesthouse…) where I was told I would not be sold one piece of toast, that I had to buy at least two, but three would be better ☺ Oh Cambodia. I sat and wrote in my journal, sketched my scared impression of myself…and waited for Jo-jo.
