Visa Run - Pattaya to Sihanoukville (22 page)

Besides the ‘swimming girls’ in the Snake Pit, and the three young ladies dancing on the counter above where I was sitting, there were also several pretty hostesses in the bar. Every time a customer arrived the poor girls who weren’t dancing had to fling themselves into the chilly pool and try in vain to get the newcomers to come in with them. It was a very cool night and I felt rather sorry for the cold girls, but the boss had advertised ‘swimming girls’ and he was going to make damn sure that’s what the punters saw when they arrived.

The smallest of the ‘swimming girls’ looked as though she was freezing, so I called her over and bought her a drink. She sat on my lap and put her arms around me and gratefully warmed herself up with a hot coffee.

Every one of the girls in the Snake Pit was young and attractive and none of them had that indefinable look of appearing to be not quite right which I had seen in the faces of some of the girls at Phum Thmei. Obviously not one to beat around the bush, the friendly young Cambodian barman told me how if a girl agreed to go with a customer it was ten dollars for the bar-fine and another twenty-five for the girl. I would normally have been tempted, but I had only just had an extremely hectic night with May, the light-fingered Vietnamese taxi-girl.

Nowadays, it takes poor old Joe Bucket somewhat longer to recover than it used to and I knew I couldn’t have done either myself, the girl and the thirty-five bucks justice.

When I judged it was the right time to produce Ron’s photograph I removed it from my pocket for the final time. The young barman took one quick look at it and shouted over to two of the ‘swimming girls’ in excitement. Wrapped in fluffy towels and still dripping, they both came over immediately and spoke animatedly to each other in Khmer as they looked at the snap. My heart quickened. Was it possible I made finally made contact with Psorng-Preng at the last place on the old man’s list? I hardly dared to hope so.

“Lon! Lon!” The barman shouted excitedly, showing the two reluctant aquanauts the picture, which by now had been in and out of my pocket so many times it was dog-eared and bent.

“Lon! Lon!” the ‘swimming girls’ echoed, and they giggled and nudged each other and when one of them blushed deeply, I had the feeling she knew the old sailor pretty damn well.

“And the girl?” I asked them hopefully. “Do you know her?”

The barman considered for a moment and spoke to the water babies for a minute, then handed me back the photograph, smiling broadly.

“No, we never see her before,” he told me. “Only Lon. He very special old man!” he said, and gave the still blushing ‘swimming girl’ a friendly dig in the ribs.

I had arranged for Narith to pick me up outside the Snake Pit and as usual he arrived right on time. As we sped along the deserted, unlit road back to the Crazy Monkey, I felt very sad that my search was finally over and I had achieved so little. The Snake Pit was the last place on Ron’s list and it seemed that despite my best efforts, the quest for Psorng-Preng had finally ended in defeat.

Although I had enjoyed every moment of the adventure Ron had sent me on, I was embarrassed that I was no nearer to finding Psorng-Preng than I had been when I had first arrived in Cambodia one month ago.

I hoped the old man wouldn’t be too disappointed.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

I had been in Sihanoukville nearly a month now and the visa I had obtained on arrival was due to expire in two days’ time. I knew it was no problem to extend a visa in Cambodia, but what was the point? With every venue on Ron’s list crossed out by now, the game was over, and I had met defeat.

Despite my failure to find Psorng-Preng, I knew I would be able to look the old man in the eye when I saw him. I had given it my best shot and there was nothing else I could do. With the hunt for Psorng-Preng at an end, I concentrated on enjoying my last two free days in Sihanoukville.

The Professor had gone out on his beloved rusty steed and I was taking advantage of the situation to watch a bit of TV in his absence. He had told me he was going to the Sihanoukville Referral Hospital near the Golden Lions Roundabout for a check up because he was feeling a bit dodgy. He said this was really worrying him because normally he never felt ill, and he considered he had the constitution of an Ox.

“I’m usually as fit as a butcher’s pig,” he assured me, as he climbed onto the cracked leather seat of his pride and joy. “I think I need to get a check-up to make sure everything is OK.”

The Professor also told me he intended visiting the market whilst he was in town to buy some bits and pieces for his aquarium. I didn’t envy him. It was a particularly hot day and the crowded, stifling beggar-infested market place was bad enough at the best of times, let alone on a scorcher like today.

I spent the morning watching a load of ancient re-runs on the TV. It is amazing how interesting and funny ten-year-old repeats of ‘Cheers’ and ‘Baywatch’ can appear when you haven’t watched anything but the National Geographic channel for the past four weeks. I bought a bag of fun-size Mars bars from the little store in town and thoroughly enjoyed myself smoking ganga, pigging out and watching crap.

Presently however, the peace of the morning was shattered when the side door flew open and The Professor rushed into the room looking extremely agitated. He stood in front of me, completely blocking my view of Pamela Anderson’s bikini-clad breasts, and the words tumbled from his mouth excitedly.

“Something terrible has happened!” he said, his eyes big behind his thick-lensed spectacles, and his hands quivering in near-panic. As I knew he had just come from the hospital I was suddenly very worried for him. I wondered if the doctors and their tests had found that The Professor had some horrible, incurable disease.

“What’s up, mate?” I asked him, trying hard to appear concerned. “Bad news at the hospital?”

“No, No! No! It’s nothing like that!” The Professor assured me, shaking his head so hard his spectacles flew off his nose. “In fact, the doctor said I have the body of a man half my size!”

I tried hard not to grin at the incredible mental image this sentence produced and nodded my head in what I considered to be an understanding manner.

“No!” The Professor continued, stammering and mixing up his words even more than usual in his excitement, “I was in the market and I’ve had my picket pocked!”

Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it, but some opportunities are just too good to miss.

“Well, there are a lot of pock pickets around the market,” I told him seriously, then disgraced myself by following my undeniably childish retort with an even more infantile splutter of laughter. I did consider asking The Professor exactly what the pocks had picketed, but I could see he was genuinely distressed about what had happened and I knew I had already gone too far.

After I had apologised to The Professor for my puerile sense of humour and established that all he had lost was a wallet containing twenty-five bucks, I saw that the robbery had really upset him and I felt a little guilty at my mirth. To make him feel better, I devised a cunning plan to enable The Professor to exact his revenge. In fact, I never intended that the scheme should be anything other than a fantasy to cheer The Professor up, but to my surprise he seized upon the idea with apparent joy and told me he was going to put the plot into action the very next day. It was plain The Professor wanted his vengeance.

The Professor knew exactly where he had been dipped. He had foolishly put his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans and leaned over a stall to choose some shells with which to decorate his aquarium. He felt the merest of touches, and when he straightened up—of course—his wallet was gone. I wasn’t really surprised and thought that if you go bending over in a crowded market place in front of some of the poorest people in Asia with your money wedge poking out of your backside there is an extremely good chance someone is going to nick it, but I didn’t say anything.

The plan that had started out as a joke and that The Professor liked so much was as follows. The Professor was to revisit the market at the same time and the same place the very next day with an enticing looking brown envelope protruding temptingly from the very same pocket he had lost his wallet from. The idea was simple. Seeing the inviting envelope, the pickpocket would once again rob his victim. Only this time, instead of twenty-five bucks, he would blag only a couple of used, spermy condoms I would kindly provide from my trash bin.

The Professor was delighted and seemed to think this was a great idea. He would teach the robbers a lesson and get his payback. I never thought he would really go through with it, but the thieves must have really pissed him off, because there was just no stopping him.

The next day at around ten in the morning The Professor set off for the market on the rusty steed, chuckling to himself. True to my promise, I had rummaged through the trash, and a brown envelope containing two used contraceptives was jutting alluringly out of his pocket. The Professor asked me if I would like to accompany him to witness the fun as it had all been my idea but I declined, thinking I would do better by staying well out of this one.

Three hours later The Professor returned. He was acting even more manic than the day before, and for a second I thought he might be going to punch me. He didn’t said a word, but simply stood there in front of me, hyper-ventilating. Then he emitted a strange, strangled cry and stalked to his room and slammed the door behind him.

“I would be grateful if in the future,” I heard him yell from behind the closed door, sounding just like Apoo—the Indian who runs the corner shop in the Simpsons—“you would keep your bloody great ideas in your cake-hole!”

When The Professor had finally forgiven me enough to tell me what had happened it was truly a miracle of the Gods that I managed to keep a straight face. The trap that I had devised had in fact, worked perfectly. Bending over to scrutinize the same shells on the same stall in the same market, it wasn’t long before The Professor felt the same sneaky hand steal the envelope containing the nasty surprise from his back pocket.

Smiling happily to himself, The Professor then walked around the market for a while, imagining every unhappy looking Cambodian to be the victim of his malevolent revenge. Eventually, he returned to where he had left his treasured motorcycle.

Unfortunately, some wandering thief had taken advantage of The Professor’s absence to steal the rusty steed.

After The Professor had told me his story I thought it best to get out of his way for a while because every time I looked at him, I could feel the corners of my mouth turning up into a smile. I thought the best idea would be to take a stroll down to the pier for an hour or so and see if there was anybody fishing. On the way, I bumped into Narith, who was walking down the hill that ran down to the beach. He said he was going to see a friend of his who lived in one of the small wooden houses on the left hand side of the track. Every day I passed by I had noticed a very old woman who always sat on the wooden steps of one of the small shacks, and it turned out that the friend Narith was going to see was a relative of the old lady.

As there were so few old people around Sihanoukville I thought it might be interesting to talk to the old girl, with Narith acting as translator, of course. The motodop driver and I sat on the steps with the old lady and Narith put the questions I wanted to ask her into Khmer and then told me what her answers were.

The old lady was stooped and slight and she wore a tattered purple krama and a faded green shirt. Her hair was shot through with streaks of grey which accentuated the dark brown of a face that had wrinkles upon wrinkles. Her arms were thin and bony and the skin on them was so scaly it looked like that of a reptile. She looked at me as I sat down and I immediately perceived a depth of suffering in her dark eyes that I knew I had never seen before in Thailand. Every time she smiled—which wasn’t often—she showed a set of teeth and gums that were stained bright crimson by years of chewing betel nut.

Despite her archaic appearance, the old lady turned out to be a mine of information about the Sihanoukville of the past.

“My name is Mrs. Krom and I am eighty-two years old. I was born in Kep but I first came to live in Sihanoukville in 1956 when I was thirty because my husband was a clever and important government draughtsman who was working with the French engineers who designed and built the port in the late nineteen fifties. In those days, we Cambodian people called Sihanoukville Kompong Son
—
and did so until the name of the town was changed to honour King Sihanouk in 1960. The port was built because the country could no longer use the Mekong Delta which came under the control of the Vietnamese after the termination of French Indochina in 1954.

My husband was very well paid for his highly-skilled work and we always had more than enough money. He was also a very generous man and he bought his youngest sister and her husband a very small house along this road when he was working on the port. And that little house is where you are sitting today.

A few years after the development of the port was finished my husband was offered a very well paid job helping to design a series of large reservoirs that were being planned in up-country Cambodia. I had just given birth to a beautiful baby daughter who we named Arunny, because she was my morning sun. Although my husband’s new work would take us away from Kep to Phnom Penh we wanted to give Arunny the very best things in life, so we decided that my husband should take the job and we made the move away from our home to the capital city. For a while my life was perfect. I had a clever, important husband who loved me, a beautiful child and the great deal of money my husband earned meant that we lived extremely well.

Then came that terrible day; the seventeenth of April, in 1975. Everyone in Phnom Penh was driven out of the city by the Khmer Rouge. Boys not yet in their teens were carrying machine guns around and telling us we were all going to be farmers now. We loaded our possessions into our car but soon realized this was a mistake because there was no gasoline available and after a day we abandoned the vehicle by the side of the road with all the other cars and motorcycles that had been left there. We had no idea where we were going, and were driven along by mere children who were looking for trouble every step of the way. It soon became plain that the Khmer Rouge were also taking many people away from their families, and when they did, none of them returned. They were especially looking for doctors, teachers, lawyers and other professional people. So we threw away all our good things and when anyone asked us we pretended my husband had been a block-layer on construction sites around the city.

We arrived at our destination and we were made to grow rice and dig irrigation canals there. We all had to work very hard for twelve hours in the heat of the sun every day. There was very little food but we were told once the rice was harvested there would be more than enough for everyone. By this time, food was so short and the work was so hard people were already beginning to die around us, but the Khmer Rouge didn’t seem to care. We watched hungrily as the rice shoots we had planted finally began to come up, but when the crop was nearly ready the Khmer Rouge moved us all on and marched us away to start all over again in a new place.

One day when he was working in the fields, my husband found a nest of rice-rats in a hole in a bank. They are very good to eat so he hid them in his pocket intending to bring them back for Arunny and myself because we were almost starving. This was strictly against the rules and he was spotted slipping them into his jacket by a fourteen year old soldier. As he cooked the rats over a fire that night more soldiers turned up and they beat him with rifle butts and forced his head into a bucket of water until he nearly drowned. They told him he should have been working, not hunting for rats. Then, they tied him to a tree and left him there for two days with no food and water and during the torture he broke down and told them he used to be a draughtsman. After that they took him away and I never saw him again. One of the young Khmer Rouge soldiers told me later how they had cut out his liver and eaten it. I don’t believe the young boy was lying.

Arunny missed her father dreadfully and a month later she became very ill with a fever and stopped eating. With no medicines and nobody to help her she died within a few days. The night before the day she passed away an owl shrieked all night long so I knew she was going to die. I buried my beautiful little daughter in a shallow hole next to a frangipani tree and cried myself to sleep for a week afterwards. I knew my morning sun would never rise again.

Before we left Phnom Penh my husband had slipped me a plastic tube containing several small items of gold jewelry and two small diamonds which I secreted in my vagina. My husband had saved my life. With these hidden treasures inside my body I managed to buy enough food to keep myself alive. I dirtied my face and clothes and didn’t wash so I would smell very badly. I also acted like I was crazy and chewed betel nut whenever I could get it so none of the soldiers would want to rape me like they did so many of the other women.