We seem to have slept off our namby pampy attitude of yesterday and wake up wondering what the problem was.
As planned, we head out to the massive locals market on our doorstep. This is an exciting event because it's one of the things we had imagined ourselves doing when we first planned this trip. When I thought about it as I travelled home from work, did the washing up, packed umpteen boxes (basically every waking moment), I had a glowing image of us marching, cheerful and intrepid, into colourful markets, exchanging greetings with the market holders and expertly weighing limes and oranges, contemplatively on our hands to determine the best ones.
And unlike many such images, (never trust an image you makeup on your head - especially if it glows) it actually happens. We (by which I mean M, being head chef and far superior in matters gastronomic) have already sussed out key flavours and Khmer recipes and have a mental list of what we need. We have a stroll first though, to satisfy our curiosity and because we are both rather in our element and we want to draw the experience out as long as possible. The colourful fruit and vegetable stores are true to my imagination, and as you venture inside the market becomes a maze of every possible genre of retail. We round a corner and are faced with store after store selling shampoo and body lotion, wind our way out of that and find ourselves ducking and leaning around hanging pots, pans and precariously stacked Tupperware. At some point, inevitably, we tackle the meat and fish section. Of course our vegetarian sensibilities render us delicate - and we are soft at the best of times, but it's certainly a bit of a shock to the senses. The smell is intense and indescribable. There are puddles on the floor which could be brains, blood or guts. All around is a sea of pink and red, slabs of meat, small skulls of what looked like chickens, live ducks sitting on bamboo tables next to their dead comrades, things hanging, things dangling off tables, things being chopped. Oddly it's not the meat that bothers me, because with the exception of the few live ducks, everything is quite clearly, already dead. And, in true doublethink style, it doesn't seem like an animal, because it no longer looks like one.
The fish are a different matter. They flip frantically in basins, bleeding where the hook was, kept barely alive by the infrequent dousing with water. Which does make sense. It keeps them fresh. My problem is what the look of panic in their eyes does to my heart strings. And that's a fish. They're not that cuddly. Even so, when I see one on the floor, dragging itself grimy to freedom by its fins in the dust I almost buy it specifically to let it go in the river. To reward it for its brave tenacity. I don't though. And I don't know how far it got.
Later I will walk past the remains of another, smaller market in the evening, and encounter a tiny grey crab, scuttling through the sand at the side of the road. I will recognise it from the vast buckets of them I'd seen in the day. Mentally, I salute it. I think it'll probably get further than the fish.
Back in the market, we decide we've seen enough and start to buy things in earnest. It's really good fun. The store holders are smiley and I think a little surprised to see us. If we use any, however halting, Cambodian language they laugh at us, but it's friendly and I think the attempt is appreciated. Where our lack of Cambodian and their lack of English becomes a little terminal, and we all find ourselves mouths open and flapping like the fish a few rows down, someone else always steps in readily to translate. And in many cases this service is rather more than translation, but also involves some advice and some rather more expert fruit squeezing (we have no idea what a 'milk fruit' should feel like).
Finally, well stocked and happy, we wend our way home. It's taken us several hours and we've spent around thirty dollars. We have enough to feed three horses for three months.
We settle into the afternoon in what is clearly a leafy Paradise (why did we ever doubt it) at home. Neville the novel and I get on famously and M tries to catch up on blog entries. At some point in the late afternoon, A, the lady with the little cat who lives next door to us, pops out, ostensibly to find said cat, who is hiding mischeviously in the bushes, and we get chatting. A is from a mixed parentage and has lived in the UK, Switzerland and the Midle East but is here now because it's cheap and she has some 'projects' she wants to finish.
"Oh me too" I say enthusiastically, gesturing to my open laptop on the table "I am trying to write a novel".
And lo. It turns out A is writing a novel too. This excites me beyond description and there follows a happy little conversation about the importance of enjoying and taking pride in your own work over feverishly compromising in the hopes of publication. We have artistic integrity. We write what we want to. I am convinced we must both be undiscovered geniuses.
As I skip back indoors later, I reflect once again on the dangers of believing the grass to be greener. How much less likely we might have been to get chatting to A if we had been spending our time sitting disconsolately and moaning. A down turned mouth breeds more of the same. The good natured laughter of the market traders could seem to be derision. We might forget how much better it is that they laugh at us, than that they shake their fists at us. The palmy paradise we worked in this afternoon could be a mosquito ridden distraction. A's presence could go unsmiled at, and therefore uninvited. And we might never have known about A being a writer, that the cat's name is Vanilla and that she was rescued as a kitten from wild dogs, or that A went to school in England and loved it. Without talking to A we might never have known that England can really be somewhere that people actually want to visit, despite the weather, and that it is possible, though complicated, to bring a cat across the border from Thailand.
We fall asleep, refreshed and full of food which M has worked his usual magic on. It's beautiful. The food.
And life in general.
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