It’s Wednesday, we have a flight in about five hours. Next to me are two groups, a tourist couple and three men speaking khmer, so I’m assuming they’re locals. It’s low season, so this cafe is fairly empty. I always get self-conscious about taking up a table while I’m at coffeeshops when they’re full, but hey, its been almost two hours and so far it doesn’t look like they’ll kick me out.
There have been many lessons already here in Cambodia, a beautiful country where children welcome you with enthusiastic hello’s as you ride in the back of a tuk-tuk. Smiles from everyone, even those who try to get you to come in and buy something. They say that they have not sold anything today, that your support helps them. They lower the price from the tourist price to half the tourist price. Maybe the local price will get you to buy.
But I travel with a backpack and it barely closes now. Bursting at the seams as it says “see you later” at the check in counters.
You hear about the struggles through their actions. Resting tuk tuk drivers waking up to ask you if you want a ride anywhere. They say one dollar, they tell you about ten dollars for the whole day, even eight. Once you arrive, they ask if you’ve been to Angkor Wat, or some of the many other attractions. Great prices, near exploitation from where I’m from. But that itself is the idea.
For a country that has seen war and its great kingdom ripped apart from the surrounding countries. Ket, our driver from Battambang, struggled with eating solid food when we stopped for lunch and opted instead for rice and soup, while I enjoyed beef lok lak. I offered to pay. But then he told us about his toothache. A whole $20 to get a tooth pulled out. Not enough money.
Along the ride, I saw him readjust his helmet strap around his jaw. When we stopped, he told us about the lack of work, the conflict with Thailand.
“If I get to be born again, I wish to be born in America or one of your countries,” he said, as I we waited for the millions of bats to come out at the cave. “It’s difficult here.”
We left a generous tip and thanked him for his time when he dropped us off that night. An adventure far deeper than the many places we visited that day.
Another night, we walked up to a restaurant that looked like a thrift store, racks and racks of t-shirts and other clothes at the front. A man and two children were at the front, a cold beer in a glass on the table in front of him.
“Is this the restaurant?”
The man stood up and called someone to come help us. A man came out and asked us to sit, bringing the plastic menu over to us, smiling.
“This is my brother,” he said, “if you don’t mind, my wife will cook for you. My brother just came back from Thailand because of the danger. He will live in Cambodia now. I want to sit with him.”
We then talked with him about the conflict, the what ifs in case the fight reaches Battambang, where his brother will live, the frustrations of a country whose parents still remember the atrocities of the khmer rouge. One story now familiar to us as we had visited the genocide museum and the killing fields of Cambodia.
That Cambodia does not want to fight. There has been to much of that already.
We watched them clink their glasses together as his brother said goodbye and went to his apartment. We stayed for a little while longer until they closed and walked back with a different kind of story now.
Souvenirs you don’t buy. Its the truth of the stories in people, around every corner, resting on a hammock on the back of a tuk tuk, with outstretched hands holding keychains outside the temples, and in the greeting with a menu in hand.
Its these stories that almost rip at the seams of my backpack. Something that weighs just a little bit more every time I pick it up in a new place.