About

Travels of an Australian writer once in Siem Reap Cambodia. Now in Sydney.

I am the author of Eighth Habitation, a poetic study of living Australia/Asia, in particular my own take on Cambodia.

One begins to write about a country before one gets there. Isn't that the way it has always been?

For critical reviews: Poetry International.org / Jacket Magazine // bibliography: April // publishers: Giramondo Publishing / Brandl & Schlesinger //

Showing newest posts with label Cambodian Silk. Show older posts
Showing newest posts with label Cambodian Silk. Show older posts

Tuesday, 4 September 2007

Silk




Monday 3 September: On the road to Thailand.

These days it is passable, half dirt half asphalt in places, the worst holes having devoured cars as recently as two months ago, the beginning of the wet season. A cartel of local airlines prefer to see the road to Sisophon, and hence to Poiphet and the border with Thailand, in a pitiful state, otherwise they'll lose customers to the Camry taxis and the tour buses. The view is rural and it is difficult to understand how such a lush scene has not produced more evidence of wealth; it has a beauty, sugar palms and rice paddies and the occasional houses on stilts. Some irrigation canals in evidence. A large concrete weir built with aid money and already undergoing major repairs. Groups of men and women clearly undergrowth, trucks and carts loaded with country folk (I try to find a suitable word). A man on a motorbike carrying two ducks by the necks. An enormous back legs and backside of a pig upended on the back seat of another. A pickup truck loaded with people in white head-coverings, who could be Muslims – "Chams". Quite frequent Camrys and Lexus 4-wheel drives with no numberplates beeping horns and nosing and bullying a path through everything and everyone.

It begins to drizzle. Our tuk tuk driver, Mr Sok, stops and cheerfully zips up the transparent plastic. Conveniently he has stopped right outside a local eatery, one his mother likes to go to. Earlier he had suggested, as part of his tour service for the day, to drop us off at the expensive Bopha restaurant in Siem Reap. Cambodian food I said, we'll eat anything. It's lunchtime. With Mr Sok Neela and I get a lesson in reading a Khmer menu penned on a whiteboard, though we learn Mr Sok has already put in the order for almost everything they have in the kitchen. We have quite a feast, which includes an aromatic and medicinally tasty soup of herbs, rhizome, pig's offal, liver and intestine, a dish of stir fried beef, and another of bony chicken and farm fresh veg. for about 6 US dollars, which includes the driver's commission no doubt. Their dog naps at my feet. Mr Sok has had quite a few years education, after which he had to stop to take up Tuk Tuk driving to support his family. He usually waits outside a local "gallery" called "Angkor Wat in Miniature", a diorama of the famous temple complex, housed in someone's front yard.

Back in the restaurant, I assume our lunch bill will feed a family consisting of three young children and two young women, grandpa and grandma, two of the rare elderly people you see in Cambodia.

On the large TV a Cambodian music video, on the smaller TV a foreigner, maybe a diplomat, speaking on a current affairs program in fluent Khmer. Everyone takes notice (except the infants). Perhaps she's talking about the genocide trials, it occurred to me later, for at the time I could not guess what interest locals would find in a Barang talking on TV, and Mr Sok's English was not up to explaining.

Other programs of interest are episodes the Cambodian Ramayana, the Ramakear, and the daily read-out of a list of state-regulated food prices, which must be a little disheartening as everything is going up quickly due to fuel costs.

Even the youthful squatters and their three children living on three quare metres in plastic lean-to at the end of our street have a TV, and somehow earn their living selling coconuts and pumping up people's tires with an air compressor.



Silk Farm

Mr Sok had taken us to a silk manufacturing factory sixteen kilometres out of town. It was run as a kind of foreign aid initiative by a French organisation dedicated to preserving traditional arts and crafts. The only out of the ordinary incident was the discussion between the local "guide" and Neela. The guide, a man in his early thirties learned she was a volunteer for an NGO that helped women in need, so the guide launched into a tirade against the injustice men experienced trying to get jobs. He'd applied for numerous hotels jobs and claimed he was rejected because he was not a pretty female. Women get jobs easily – massage, hotels... Later, Neela asked him if he had tried weaving silk and yes he had. A few minutes later the tirade began again, Neela then asked if he liked weaving. No, he said, too many hours sitting. The guide was not only contemptuous of Neela and perhaps of NGOs in general, he was terribly bored and defeat was written all over his rather handsome but still proud face. His one outstanding ability in life was to explain in English the life cycle of the silkworm, and the process of making silk. In his mind he deserved to be a manager of a hotel.

He had looked at me in expectation of some moral affirmation, which I refused to give. No doubt there was little financial gain becoming a weaver, but there was one young male working that afternoon. In theory men are supposed to understand that women are more needy of foreign aid, at least in the initial stages of "capacity building", but try explaining that to a Cambodian male. Would he have preferred to have been born a woman in Cambodia? We didn't dare ask. One of the great weaknesses in foreign aid is issues to do with gender inequality and what to do about it. There was something menacing in his attitude, and I would not have liked to have argued with him drunk. Who knows what all those years of frustrated ambition would turn him into? It is moments like these I am glad I can't speak Khmer.

In the "gallery" there are marvellous silk wall hangings and great picture of a fisherman holding fish on each hand and as the caption says, wearing a silk sarong.