Im held in a kind of pragmatic upright position where i think my spine could just about support me even if i gave into the magnetic urge to sleep here and now at the hotel internet in Phnom Penh.
The tuk-tuk drivers and the hotel guys are outside laughing and chatting in the hot dusty night with their radios, and the extended family of the chinese restaurant next door are tossing comments into the kitchen as they wash up plates on the street outside.
Today is the king's birthday and coronation day, and I found myself drinking gin and tonic in a swish hotel with two gently wise older volunteers and two fellow soggy-eared new ones when the brown high waters of the Mekong and the large sky above it lit up in a burst of fireworks. It was the king's view, he from his privileged position in the palace, ours from the Himalia (or something) hotel, but the sounds blasted on the walls of buildings and made a small child run the other way in fright. Everybody in the city would have heard them and would have toasted the king. "King, Religion, Nation" cried the flag of the country, and although it wouldnt be my motto of choice, it is things like this that give people a chance to feel connected and celebratory together, something distinctly Cambodian that wasnt destroyed by Year Zero social planning and the upheavals afterwards, not emasculated by the relial on NGOs, and a reason to have a lovely time.
Another thing like this is the Water feFestival, when the massive Tonle Sap lake stops filling and starts emptying, signalling the end of the rainy season and the signal of change to all the life and livelihood that lives on it. The waters turn and flow outward, and the whole country races dragon boats, in their villages and provincial capitals and, for the winners, in Phnom Penh.
And with them shall be a boat of strange foreigners, life-jacketed in the same orange as the monks. I am one of these, delighted to be aboard a boat again and dazzled with the unexpectedness of it being a 58 person dragonboat.
The first practices this weekend saw us having an audience of several hundred Khmers, laughing at us as they staggered quite charmingly at the edge of a raucous wedding. On our breaks they invited us in to dance and plied us with palm wine, and their kids swam out to our boat at one point, about twenty of them, little laughing heads like otters all over the water coming to play. And I enjoyed forgetting about bilharzia and jumping in to play with.
Tomorrow morning we're heading in a pick up packed high with other peoples furniture and my scarily grown-up seeming matching crockery (!where are the higgledypiggles of arden st plates and cups?! id agreed to this lovely old lady at the market who went hoe specially to get my friend a teapot, so i felt bound. maybe organised dinnersets will signal a New Organised Me) to Battambang, not for a visit this time but to make a home and a life there.
Lots of feelings relief apprehension nervousness bit-too-tiredness excitement resolve... and lots and lots of curiosity.
whiskers a flutter, tail held tentative and watchful to one side with the occasional sharp swish. but now purringly to bed.
Thinking of home, and all the ways I love it, and breathing at the brink of a new one.
love love love xoxooxoxoxoxo
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