We made a pact early in our trip that we would buy something small from each country that we felt represented the spirit of that place for us, and scatter these mementoes around our flat when we got home. We also agreed that we would buy one gift in each country, to be assigned afterwards to family members, but there was one condition. The gift had to have a story.
Since then, it has become clear that the item is itself is far less important than the story behind it - and that we are not collecting things, but stories.
When we turn up to what is the best cookery class we have had so far, teaching us not just Khmer dishes, but chef skills, (the best way to chop vegetables, for example), we are actually a little resigned to not finding a gift with a story in Cambodia. Whilst Cambodia itself is fascinating, finding something unique is not easy in the tourist areas, and in the more local areas, things are for practical use only - or are edible. Also, while there are a variety of good causes, most of them are an experience rather than a gift and the few Fair Trade stalls we have seen just haven't contained anything which took our fancy. Only that morning I have commented to M that we may need to buy a gift in Cambodia, without a story.
Until I glance at a small display cabinet in the corner of the restaurant where we are supposed to be concentrating on pounding lemongrass.
"I like those," I say to the Chef, indicating them, while M pounds and sweats away diligently next to me. "Are they for sale?"
'They' are small half coconut shells which have been painted and varnished so that they make attractive, shallow little bowls and some colourful and chunky jewellery. We have seen some similar ideas but nothing quite like these. They have a charming irregularity and they catch my eye note than anything I have seen on the markets. I have an idea that I might buy one as our Cambodia gift. Given that I can't find one with a story...
"Oh, you like them?" says the chef excitedly, piling some more turmeric into my bowl and recalling me back to my pounding, "They are made by a lady who is HIV positive. She lives at the Pagoda. She makes them by hand and I sell them for her."
It turns out the lady has been making these bowls, jewellery and painted eggs for some time, but the chef has only sold four in four months. But he's only been open four months - and given the quality of his food and cooking class, he'll be inundated with customers as time goes on - and maybe the lady will sell more than one item per month.
We buy two. And we make sure, when we give the chef a well deserved glowing review on TripAdvisor, that we mention the unassuming cabinet in the corner...
We research the organisation who work with nuns and monks to establish a community for HIV positive women and teach them his to make painted eggs and other crafts. The organisation us called Face to Face Aids and has a website at www.facetofaceaids.com. It gives them some money but most importantly it goes some way to turning their status as stigmatised individuals into a status as respected and admired skilled craftswomen. Dignity, respect and hope. All for five dollars per item. A bargain at the price.
And lo. We have our story.
It's not the only one, however. We have been privileged enough to talk to countless people, each of whom have amazing stories of their own.
We meet a chef who, having graduated from school, had no more money to continue his studies or follow his ambition to be a chef. His family had run out of funds to support him after secondary school. 'I knew', he says, 'that I would have to do it on my own.'
He moved away from his home town to seek work chopping vegetables for two years, saving money painstakingly, until he had enough to put him through the coveted one year course at a well respected chef school.
When he graduated from chef school he moved again and worked in a kitchen with another head chef. He worked so tirelessly he ended up collapsed on the kitchen floor where the chef found him and took him to hospital.
'In my two days in hospital', he says, 'I just lay there and thought. And I knew that I couldn't keep on doing this.' He missed his family and his home - and his health was suffering.
Days later he packed and undertook the long journey back yo his home twin, to be reunited with his family.
What he found was dismaying. Hus father, a healthy man when he had left, was now blind. His earning power diminished, the family had very little money.
With an education behind him, and a lot of courage and determination, the chef was able to finally pay his parents back for their support in his early years. He bought a property in town and opened it as a restaurant. He brought his parents to live with him above it, and with his mother as sous chef and his father now able to feel his way around enough to help with the washing up and cleaning, he established a family run business.
Now he runs a successful new restaurant with cooking classes and a burgeoning reputation as a brilliant chef.
We meet a lady who grew up in a house a little smaller than the average one person flat in Britain. She shared it with twelve other family and extended family members. Her father made space by constructing levels within the flat, creating mezzanine type spaces out of necessity, imagination - and wood.
We hear the tragic love story of one young girl who fell hopelessly in love with a boy who had been her best friend since childhood. He loved her back but, being an ambitious, modern young girl with a career of her own she fell shirt of the cultural expectations of her, should she become his wife. Unable to escape the strictures of familial and generational requirements of women, she pulled away from him and they reluctantly parted until, in a series of cruel twists of fate she is now alone and he married. She has never met another man like him.
Life is stranger and sadder than fiction. And infinitely more beautiful.
People say there is a novel in everybody.
Perhaps there is a novel in each of us purely because we have lived one.
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