Places

Cambodia – day 00

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I got up at 4am with surprising ease. It’s really easy to get out of bed to go on holiday. On a work day I’ll be damned if I wake up before 8am. Anyway. Taxi, flight from Brussels to London, the memories are blurry, it feels like another life already. British Airways, the flight attendants kept calling me “my love”, I’ve never felt so validated and cared for in my entire life.

Heathrow. So British. Polite, posh, busy. Impractical and cold. Santa Claus is strolling through Chanel and Dior, the queue at Starbucks is… well, like any queue at any Starbucks anywhere in the world, really. I read a book on my tablet but I have trouble keeping my eyes open.

It’s Christmas: I watch Frozen. I mouth along with the songs and giggle at Olaf. Dudes who did the concept art on that guy were clearly high.

Finally, it’s time. The flight is… okay, since we didn’t crash. I still hate it, hate flying. My right knee hurts. I try and try and try and try to fall asleep. I watch a horrid HORRID movie: Me before you. You can tell the actors are trying, but the book it is based on really fucking sucks. Anyway. Still 8 hours to go. An hour later, still 7 hours and 59 minutes to go. Time is frozen still and I might explode.

We’re here. Bangkok. I like Suvarnabhumi, I know it well, better than any other airport. I had some memorable times at this airport. They were mostly spent between the library and the Burger King counter. As soon as we get off the plane… it’s a whole, really, an atmosphere. The heat, the humidity, like the air is this liquid thing you have to wade through. It smells like dust and stale aircon and cooked sticky rice. It feels like home.

Usually I stop and change here, get my bearings back, but this time I race to catch the free shuttle to the other airport, Don Mueng. My flight is at 2pm, I have time, theoretically, but. I mean, this is Thailand. Better safe than sorry. The shuttle is this old bus full of tourists where the aircon works only when the bus is still. We race along the freeway. Bangkok is right there, skyscrapers of all shapes, giant pictures of the dead king blown up on buildings, the river full and bustling. Small houses left to roast under the sun. This city is a civil engineer’s nightmare.

Halfway in, the shuttle stops at a paystop. Never starts again. The smiling, nervous driver keeps trying the ignition, says “ten minit ten minit!” to anyone who asks. The employees of the freeway take it in stride, they must be used to this kind of thing. Taxis pass us by, mocking us. “Twenty kilometar to airpor’!” Ah ah yeah, fuck you dude. I hang around the side door, enjoying the slight breeze and the smell of exhaust gas. It’s so hot. I can’t help my smile. I am home.

After about 30 minutes, another bus rescues us. Half the tourists left and took taxis already. Quitters. We get there on time, and I didn’t even have to murder anybody. Don Mueng airport is a nightmare of endless queues. At the end of it, I spot a Starbucks. Time to enjoy the typical Thai meal of a spinach danish and a tall latte.

Who cares? It’s Christmas. Derek Hale’s birthday. I made it to the airport, in a few hours I’ll be where I was always meant to be. Hot and sweaty and tired and frustrated and scared and emotional. Home.

Give me

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Give me back the unbearable heat of weekday mornings, when my bike wouldn’t start at first kick and I’d have to kick it to life over and over again until I was sweaty and breathless and thoroughly annoyed. Give me the locals gaping at me as they drove by. Give me the red dust of the dirt and the acrid smell of the burning waste on the side of the road.

Give me kids without helmets driving way too fast in their school uniforms, give me orange-decked monks smoking cigarettes and laughing at the back of ancient Korean moto-taxis. Give me an eardrum-piercingly loud wedding that blocks up an entire road for two days, give me a traffic jam in front of the market at noon on a Friday and the smell of fish and steam-cooked corn mingling sweetly.

Give me nosy gas vendors who only sell tiny cans of Coke and banana fritters for breakfast. Driving one-handed while eating breakfast with only one eye open and missing a flip-flop when it is just too early to go to work. Driving through flooded streets, unable to avoid potholes and falling on my ass in muddy waters.

Give me late night rides by the river when the moon is just too beautiful to let go. Give me tingling arms after driving for hours in the afternoon sun. Give me itching knees and drying pants while driving home from swimming at the dam. Give me back all my shitty bikes: Rocco, Alejandro, Baby and Scott. Give me one more afternoon with a bike under the Cambodian sky. But then, give me something to come home to.

Phnom Penh

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Sur la route, juste avant Phnom Penh et les usines de textile dont se déverse toute la population du monde à 5h du soir. Il y a des maisons de pêcheurs au bord du lac. En saison sèche il n’y a pas de lac, seulement des rizières d’un vert profond en contre-bas des étangs d’élevage, et des maisons très très haut perchées sur leur pilotis.

Il y a les grandes villas en béton qui dominent les cabanes en bois et en tôle ondulée, des perches de bois si fines qu’on se dit que le Grand Méchant Loup n’aurait qu’à pêter un coup pour les faire s’envoler.

Ils construisent une autoroute à la lisière des maisons. La route à été remplacée par… rien. Les baraques sont isolées dans de grands monceaux de terre, recouvertes de poussière rouge. Certaines ont déjà été abandonnées et se tiennent à moitié éventrées, solitaires et misérables comme l’antre d’un ogre.

Les grands pans de route dammée sont bourrés d’enfants qui jouent au foot. Ils dévalent les pentes de terre à toute vitesse sur des vélos précaires. Les familles se rassemblent autour d’un feu sur un amas boueux plus ou moins plat pour le dîner. Il faut traverser la rizière et escalader 4 à 5 mètres de pilotis pour rentrer dormir chez soi. Parfois il est plus simple de vivre dehors.

On passe une mosquée ensevelie sous les caillous de la route. Le soleil couchant se reflète rouge sur les rizières grises. Tout est étrangement ralenti, presque figé, alors que nous frôlons les motos à toute allure.

Plus loin le gros ventre grouillant de la ville nous attend.

Romanticizing Brussels in the spring

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There’s something in the air, in the late afternoon of my sweet countryside town, something that brings me back to walks in the early spring of secluded Belgian parks. Something about the softness of the sun, a certain crisp chill in the air, the smell of trees breathing in and out.

Brussels is amazing in the spring. When the sun is up before you and keeps you company all the way to work. When trees seem to come out of hibernation and suddenly the grey streets burgeon with bright spots of green and soft blue. People everywhere on lawns and monument steps. Cafes sprout terraces benevolently lit up by a stray ray of sunlight.

Street musicians dust their accordions and get off the subway to play in the cramped shopping streets or the deserted square in front of the Opera. There’s probably not a lot of money to make there, but the acoustics are amazing.

If you’re really quiet and the tram isn’t passing by, sometimes you can even hear birds. Or run and chase pigeons off the Grand Place if it pleases you. It’s still a bit cold so you go and get a waffle from the ice cream truck and you eat it at a bus stop, lulled to satisfaction by the sun reflecting off the plastic ads.

Soon it will be time to trade jackets and scarves for… lighter jackets and scarves. Soon it will be May and the streets around the Square Jourdan market will smell like lilies.

There’s something in the air, maybe you’re in love, a little bit.

Maybe you’re in love with the city.

Rainy morning

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I’m perched on this high stool, computer on the wooden bar. I’m waiting for lunch break to come and lead me to a heavenly, greasy burger. My friends are sprawled out on wicker chairs behind me, in various states of hungover disarray. They’re watching Seven Years in Tibet on a computer.

A window’s cut in the wooden wall, from where I’m sitting I can see the main lawn of Phare, the music school and the entrance of the circus school. I see Cambodian life, kids splashing around in huge puddles on the lawn, which now looks like a dirty swimming pool. It’s still raining, but it’s not the monsoon type downpour, more like this evergoing, annoyingly thin, icy prickle you have to endure. Closer to Belgian rain. I does not make me homesick.

A yeiy protects the baby she’s holding from the rain with her krama. A passing tuk tuk’s stuck in the mud, half a dozen strong guys from the circus school watching from their perch as bong Xavi and a fifteen year old kid push it off the muddy lawn. Bunthet, ever the cool guy, rolls up his jeans and discards his shoes before jumping into a puddle to annoy passing school girls in their pristine black and white uniform.

Sometimes I have my doubts, but I know that deep down I want to be here, I want to be the witness of this simple, beautiful life playing out in front of me. I know now that I can’t really be part of it. But I still love to see it happen.