Saturday 25th February 2012. Halfway house

I have been in Cambodia for 31 days now and plan to leave in another 32 days. That’s near enough to halfway for me.

So four and a half weeks have now passed since I landed at Phnom Penh International Airport with a blank canvas to be filled with the colours and textures of all these new experiences. It is only today that I have really thought about how many days I have left in this first stint. I suppose I am thinking more about home today, mainly because of a rugby match. My wife and son are going to Twickenham to watch England play Wales in the Six Nations rugby, and I plan to go and watch the match at a sports bar later today. Much later, actually; the game kicks off at 11pm local time.  I will be watching the match from 7,000 miles away while two of my family will be sat in the stadium itself. If I happen to spot them in the crowd I reserve the right to go ape-shit.

I am slightly worried about their journey to the match. They have to travel down to London then get down to Twickers itself, which is not a simple journey for anyone not accustomed to negotiating the underground and suburban train systems in the capital. Before I came to Cambodia I wrote extensive instructions on how to get from King’s Cross to Twickenham and back. If they follow the crowds, they should be fine, but I hope they don’t follow the red shirts on the way out or they could end up going to Paddington and heading west towards Wales...I’m sure they’ll be fine. I think my wife is actually more worried about finding somewhere to leave the car in York than anything else.

It has been nearly 2 weeks since I updated this blog. After my trip to Sihanoukville I was hoping for a week or two of peace and quiet, and the chance to catch up on sleep as the severe sunburn on my back healed and I was more able to lie in bed without discomfort. It took more than a week to heal and become pain-free, which is quite astonishing given that the burns were from less than 2 hours of exposure during my snorkelling trip. Fortunately I was able to find help in the form of the site doctor who plastered cream on my burns twice a day for a couple of days and helped the healing process. I also used almost a whole tube of aloe vera after sun gel in the first few days, keeping it in the fridge and doing the best I could to get it all over my back, enjoying the coolness it gave to my red, raw skin.

The peace and quiet wasn’t to last too long, if it ever actually started. I was persuaded to go out last Friday night, despite the fact I had to go to work on the Saturday morning. I realise that “going out” in itself isn’t such a bad thing, as long as it is only for an hour or two and “sensible” amounts of alcohol are consumed. I guess I wasn’t in the mood to be sensible.

The first downfall was starting the night at 4pm. One who is weak-willed will inevitably be even more so at 8pm when one is well on the way to inebriation, and won’t be inclined to call it a night when one really should. I was asked to attend a “meeting” by some of the chaps in the client office along with my Korean colleague Arthur, and around six of us made our way along to the Riverside in a couple of tuk-tuks to kick off the proceedings. We had our first drink at a corner bar with a narrow balcony overlooking the river. The balcony’s layout was such that we were strung along in a curved line, making interaction and conversation somewhat difficult. The beer was expensive as well, so we decided to move on swiftly. We visited a few more bars on the Riverside front itself before heading down one of the perpendicular streets towards the less tourist-orientated venues. We sat out a rainstorm and watched the impressive lightning in the distant sky from another corner bar which had a larger and more conducive balcony. Some of the group played a game of pool. We moved across the junction to another bar – a dark, neon-festooned venue with low tables and grotty toilets (most places here seem to have reasonable toilet facilities, which has been a pleasant surprise). In said facilities, I spied a circular sticker on the cistern, bearing the words “HAPPY ASSHOLE” in bold capital letters. The lack of punctuation made me wonder what the context of this statement was. It seemed to be telling, rather than asking.

At that point, at around 8.30pm (if my hazy memory of the night is correct) some of us went on to the Rock venue, which is a huge complex containing spas, massage rooms and K-TV party rooms. I took the chance to slow down the drinking. It’s quite easy to do in these settings, as the beer isn’t ordered in rounds and you can drink as slowly or as quickly as you like. I was there for the singing, anyway, and never miss the opportunity to give my vocal chords a workout. Thankfully, everyone else was in the (booze-enhanced) mood to join in with it and there were several rowdy group renditions of classic songs featuring everyone in the room.

We must have spent almost three hours in the K-TV venue before running out of steam. We paid the bills, tipped the hostesses and the group splintered once more. Arthur said he had to get up early to play golf so was going to head home. The rest of us headed to the big sports bar that acts as a “local” to a couple of the chaps from the developer. It was heading on for midnight when we got there, and there weren’t many people around, but we met the affable French-Canadian owner of the bar (he owns around six other bars and restaurants in PP) who decided we were in desperate need of Jagerbombs and promptly lined them up on the bar in front of us. I drank the Jagermeister but left the Red Bull. However drunk I was by then, I was still sensible enough to steer clear of the stuff that could bring back the dreaded AF.

Pizzas were ordered in from one of the owner’s other venues just around the corner and then it was time for bed, at least for me. I had to get into work for 8am, so had to try and get at least six hours of sleep. I also wanted to chuck a few pints of water down my neck in the vain hope that it would mitigate the worst effects of the hangover I was sure to be suffering. I counted over eight hours of drinking in eight different locations. I found myself thinking, “what are you doing?” more than once.

Saturday was not good, and I didn’t really expect it to be. I was whisked away for a breakfast mid-morning at the superb Green Vespa, and that helped. The lunchtime nap is even more of a bonus on days like this, and I struggled manfully on until 6pm and then had a bowl of noodles in the canteen. I arranged to meet one of the guys from the client at the sports bar later on and watch a bit of the FA Cup football being showed, and managed a few G&Ts before we were both feeling absolutely done in and ready for bed before it had even reached 11pm.  We arranged to meet for breakfast at the Vespa in the morning and then maybe take in some retail therapy at the biggest shopping mall in PP.

So I made what I could of Sunday morning, failing to get a very good lie-in thanks to noises from the water pump / tank above my head, and then made my way to the Vespa for breakfast. I bumped into another chap from Friday night and he said he was going to go for a few drinks later on. So after breakfast we took a tuk-tuk to the shopping mall. I had no great expectations, but was surprised as what could be bought there, with plenty of options for clothing and electronics and a supermarket on the ground floor. It’s a compact mall; nowhere near the size of the palatial, spacious meccas they have in the Middle East, but it has around 5 or 6 floors, and even has some fast food restaurants to get fatter in.

 After the retail therapy it was once again time to drink. There could be no harm in having a couple of ciders, thought I, and off we went to Paddy Rice’s Irish Sports bar. Hours later, at 6pm, I once again asked myself what the hell I was doing, made my excuses and extracted myself from what was becoming a bit of a mess. My next move was not a wise one, but hunger got the better of me. I took a tuk-tuk to the Riverside, climbed five flights of stairs to a rooftop restaurant and ordered a pizza for my dinner. I sat there sweating from the early evening humidity and the excess alcohol and wondered what the bloody hell I was thinking. Not only is this lifestyle extremely bad for my health, it isn’t really very good for the bank balance either. Cheap as it is, in general, living it large like this every weekend will soon lead to me spending more than I can afford and justify. The only redeeming factor I can see is that it is keeping me from missing my family too much. For me, boredom and loneliness is a precarious position to find myself in. An unoccupied mind takes an inevitable path to gloomy recesses where the bad feelings take seed and grow like weeds, choking the enthusiasm out of life and ultimately bringing about irrational decisions that I later regret.

The simple answer I hear repeated by friends and in fortune cookies and in my own mind is that balance is required. For someone born under the sign of the scales, I struggle to strike a sensible balance.  Astrology is a load of shite, anyway. I’m just clinging to the positives here, in that I am not dwelling on my separation from my family this time. In fact I sometimes feel a little guilty because I feel like I should be missing them more than I do. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Monday morning came and I slithered from my bed, still sweating and aching. An early night hadn’t helped a great deal. My stomach was cramping badly and I felt sick. Was it the drink? Was it something I’d eaten? The rest of the pizza was in the fridge, waiting to be consumed that evening, but my suspicion was that it was this item of food that had upset my sensitive digestive system once again.

I took the morning off and rested as much as I could, which proved to be an impossible task with all the noise from the malfunctioning water pump over my head and the noise of wardrobe doors closing next door. I surmised that they’d probably left the windows open and the wind was blowing the doors. Either that or some demonic child was playing a game of annoy the neighbour. I gave up trying to sleep any more at about 10am, deciding that I should get to a pharmacy and get something to help my guts. There is a pharmacy nearby, but across a very busy main road, and wasn’t in the mood to dodge the traffic this morning, so I hailed a tuk-tuk outside my apartment block and was despatched to the Pharmacy de la Gare, barely registering the still-present French influence or the fact that it was across the road from the railway station.

Inside, there were dozens of people just standing around. I wasn’t sure if they were staff or not, but they didn’t seem to offer help, so I shuffled up to the counter and croaked the required words to the man stood behind it. He disappeared to the back of the room and returned in a moment with two boxes of pills, one of which contained a broad-spectrum antibiotic; the other a familiar brand of over-the-counter diarrhoea medication that stops the worst of the problem. I asked for some rehydration sachets as well, and was given ten little orange packets costing a dollar in total. The whole bill was around 7 dollars.

I returned to my apartment, took the medicines and rested up for a bit more. By the end of the scheduled lunch hour, I was feeling relatively normal again, so decided I would go to work. I knew that DJ was flying back in from Hanoi to help out with preparing for the big meetings later this week, so felt that I should show some willingness and fight through the discomfort.

The medicine stopped the worst problems that day, but that night we were taken for dinner at another North Korean restuarant. I tried to explain that I wasn’t well and couldn’t eat or drink much, but that was laughed off and I was plied with more beer and soju. I managed to avoid over-indulging at least, and got to bed at a reasonable hour.

Tuesday confirmed that there was indeed something nasty in my intestines. I went most of the day feeling OK, but after eating some spicy fish in the works canteen for dinner I felt nauseous and couldn’t stop belching. I worked until 9pm then returned to my digs feeling utterly dreadful. I decided there was nothing for it: the nasty stuff had to come out. I hate vomiting, and I rarely do it, even when unwell, but it had to come out. I forced myself to be sick and instantly felt better for it.

Next morning, the diarrhoea continued, and I decided not to try stopping it with the over-the-counter medication, concluding that I would be better to let the bug purge itself from my body with the help of the antibiotics. I ate lightly, drinking a good couple of litres of water and just getting on with it. Work had to be done. There were now several big cheeses in from Korea expecting information for their big meetings, so I toiled away. Even Arthur mentioned that I looked pretty sick when I turned up that morning. What a hero, eh?

By Wednesday afternoon I was feeling better.  A bit of rice and some watery soup at lunchtime didn’t cause any bad reactions. We were taken for dinner once again with the men from Seoul to a restaurant called Le Seoul, where we ate barbecued beef and bowls of rice soup – a bland concoction made from boiling rice cakes in water. I was assured it would help my stomach to get better. After dinner we returned to the office to work for a few hours more. I succumbed to tiredness at 9pm, leaving Arthur and DJ to work on for a bit longer. Yes, I felt guilty.

On Thursday, the big meetings were held. I didn’t attend, as they wanted to keep numbers down, and probably feared I would eat all the biscuits. I took lunch at the Vespa with the newest member of the client team who had also not been invited to the meetings, and then returned to work, waiting like an expectant father for news from the meetings. Is it a boy, a girl, a move to arbitration or is everyone in love again?

The answer came mid-afternoon. DJ and Arthur returned, telling us that it had gone OK, but there were more meetings to be had and there was still a lot of potential for disputes and conflict – the kind of things that are keeping me in employment.

The senior people had another meeting later in the afternoon and the rest of the team were invited to go to yet another Korean restaurant. This one was further away than the other, and featured  marked little differences to other places I’d been to, such as the requirement to remove shoes on entry to the restaurant and slip on little raffia slippers which were far too small for my feet. The whole team of department manager turned up for this one.  We were told to wait until the senior managers had finished and came to the restaurant, but when it became apparent that their meeting was overrunning, we were told we could start eating and drinking. It was barbecue beef once again, but this time the beef was top quality stuff which really melted in the mouth. Maybe I was just enjoying it more now that I had apparently vanquished the stomach bug. I certainly enjoyed being able to drink some beer and soju again, and my colleagues didn’t hesitate in topping my glass up.

The senior men turned up and seemed to be in a good frame of mind. There was much back-slapping and hand-shaking. DJ and I were toasted and thanked for our efforts, with the big man from Korea telling me that he hoped I would stay forever. I was very flattered by it all. Then matters took an unexpected turn with the arrival of two bottles of premium whisky at the table. Shot glasses were brought by the waitresses and more toasts were made and more booze downed. Here we go again.

I was invited to sit down by a group of managers sitting at a smaller side table and they proceeded to pour soju bombs in a strange drinking game from their national service days where more bizarre ingredients are added every time, usually from the little pots of kimchi and other side dishes in the middle of the table. I got away with a sprig of lettuce in mine, but felt compelled to down a glass of beer and soju in one go, giving rise to a round of applause from my hosts. The beer and soju “bomb” is a potent weapon; with the sweet liqueur taking away the bitterness of the beer and making it taste like a soft drink.

After a couple of speeches by one or two manages (mostly in Korean, but that doesn’t stop them looking at me in the eye now and again as if I will understand what they’re saying), the meal was over and we worked our way out of the restaurant with more smiles and handshakes and little bows. The senior chaps had flights to catch back to Korea, and everyone else seemed ready to go home. It was 10.30pm and I was ready for bed, in all honesty.

It soon transpired that our Arthur had other ideas. We dropped DJ at his hotel before a phone call or two were made and we were once again on our way to a K-TV bar. I reminded Arthur that it was a Thursday night, which he genuinely seemed to have forgotten. Such had been the week we’d had, it felt like it was Friday. Unfortunately not.

I managed to avert too much in the way of alcoholic excess...well, on top of that already indulged in, of course. I ended up being photographed with fruit on my face, but got to bed by 1am and wasn’t unduly hungover on Friday. I am hoping for a relatively quiet weekend. Watch the rugby tonight, have a few beers...nothing too heavy.

I’m glad this week is over now. I have been at work today, but it’s never a stressful day on Saturday. People seem to do very little actual work as such. In fact, a few are out at the golf course. I’m starting to think that maybe I should take the game up again. I tried about 10 years ago, but was put off after trying a full round at my father’s club and not really doing very well. Now I’ve got my new hip, it might be worth a go. It is exercise, after all, and seems to be another aspect (other than drinking) of working life in this part of the world.

Roll on my next 2-day weekend. I plan to go up and have a look at Siem Reap and the temples at Angkor Wat.

Update: My body is warning me to behave, so tonight I am having an early night having had only a couple of drinks.