S OS with S Sorrensen - Aug 19

Kratie, Cambodia.
Sunday, 5.30pm:

Why am I travelling? Am I going somewhere? Well, where then?

These questions buzz around my head today. I swat at them but they return. Persistent buggers.

Maybe it’s the humidity (even the fan rattling above me can’t impede the sweat that soaks my shirt); maybe it’s the smell of the nearby street market with its butchered bits of cow, pig, chicken, and even frog, swinging on hooks or laid out on the wooden benches where the Khmer women squat, shoo-ing flies with a bamboo stick that has a plastic bag tied to it.

Maybe it’s because I have spent three months travelling and... here I am.

In Kratie.

Is this where I’ve been headed all this time?

I think maybe it is.

The Khmer girl is having trouble understanding my order. She understands soda, no problem. And when I say lime, she says lemon. I say lime again, she smiles and says lemon. Close enough. But when I say vodka, she doesn’t understand.

I repeat the word a few times: “Vodka. Vod-ka.” As if repetition might make her suddenly remember – “Ah, vodka, of course: An alcoholic spirit of Russian origin made by distillation of rye, wheat or potatoes.” Anyway, she giggles at my repetitious stupidity. I like her.

I’m having an affair. And it’s not a one-nighter. Oh no, this has been going on for days. And no, it’s not the Khmer girl – it’s this town. It happened out of the blue. So there I was just cruising along, following a river upstream...

Kratie crouches on the east bank of the Mekong in northern Cambodia. It exudes a faded colonial charm with its run-down French buildings which feature that appealing amalgamation of French and Khmer styles that is almost Art Deco. The concrete facades, rounded at every street corner, have survived intense American bombing to become blemished with mould and pocked with careless Khmer renovation.

I point to the bottle of vodka I’d spied earlier on a shelf behind the bar. The bottle wears a not-so-fine layer of dust. Probably hasn’t been touched since the French decided that the heat, the humidity, and the fierce local resistance to foreign domination, all took the fun out of lording it over the Khmer. They left their architecture and booze behind.

“Ah, vodka,” she smiles, nodding.

Yes, vodka.

Kratie’s a bit shabby – like me I guess – but it’s comfortable with what it is. It’s very attractive though, with its sunsets over the river, its nearby traditional villages and lush forests dimpled with bomb craters.

The Khmer have their town back and they live in it happily. There are no beggars or touts peddling tuk-tuks, sunglasses, books and bracelets like in the southern cities of Cambodia. The daily market, sprawled under tarps and umbrellas at the dirty feet of the old buildings, supplies everything that the outlying farms and villages need, and they in turn bring their goods to market. No supermarket here.

My drink arrives. The girl waits as I lift the glass and let the spirit fill me.

“Perfect,” I say.

I have come a long way to be here. Kratie and I, we’re at the same bend in the river. We’re just enjoying the moment. And each other. We’re free.

But across the street are ominous signs. Our happiness is fragile and temporary. Another invasion is imminent. Change is blowing through its streets like the drifts of plastic rubbish. A new building is being erected on the crushed bones of an older French one. A huge upmarket hotel. And at the end of the street, another.

Last drinks.