A New Experience of Phnom Penh

On Sunday I went to Phnom Penh with Ohn to visit some of her relatives there, including her mom who's been staying with them for a while since she's been sick, and her daughter, Liya, who was returning from a trip to Mondolkiri, a province in the east famous for its waterfalls and coffee plantations, and Sihanoukville, a beach town in the south. They live in a huge house—basically a mansion by Khmer standards— and, as it’s been explained to me many times, “gkay mein” (“they have”). In other words, they are the "haves” as opposed to the “have nots” of Khmer society.

Ohn informed me I’d be going with her while we were making sandwiches at her house on Saturday. I was lathering peanut butter onto slices of bread as usual when she said, “Tomorrow, you’re coming with me to Phnom Penh.” I froze with the knife midway to the bread. “Um…” I stalled for time. When Ohn says something is going to happen, there's pretty much no alternative.

“Tomorrow I’m running really far… I don’t know if I’ll have the energy…” I attempted, desperate for an excuse of any kind. “Ok! So you’ll go with me to PP tomorrow! We’re leaving at 11.” “Uh... I’m really not sure.” “Alright! So I’ll see you at 11, then.” I sighed, resigned to my fate, and agreed to go.

At 7:30 the next morning Ohn called me: “The touri (van) is coming to get you at 10. Ok?” Being well aware at this point that I needed to just go with the flow I said, “Ok.” The touri came and picked me up at 10, and after circling around to different houses to fill up the van, we stopped at Ohn’s and picked her and a friend up too. Ohn was wearing a giant floppy hat, mismatched clothes, and heels, as usual. She presented me with a yellow fruit: “Crow ohp,” she said (“good smelling”), and encouraged me to put it up to my nose to see for myself. The fruit was a plai jan, a yellow pulpy fruit with a smooth exterior. The three of us kept hold of our plai jan on the way to Phnom Penh, periodically putting them up to our noses to smell and against our cheeks for their coolness.

After getting to Phnom Penh, we grabbed a tuk tuk to head over to Ohn’s bong pu’ohns’ (relatives’) house. They were in an area I’d never been to before, which isn’t surprising since I typically occupy about a ten block radius of Phnom Penh when I’m hanging out with other volunteers. Ohn’s relatives' house was huge… I mean really: massive. I’ve never seen a house so big in Cambodia before. The house was very tall and very narrow. There were four floors, each with more than one room but not more than three. The kids all have their own rooms with big beds and air conditioning units. There's an exercise room with an elliptical and a treadmill, and the main feature of the downstairs living room is an expansive flat-screen TV. The kitchen has a stainless steel refrigerator (I was aghast), and the front room was full of very intricately carved, very expensive wooden figurines of frogs with golden coins in their mouths for luck, and ornate reliefs of Angkor Wat.

We ate in the kitchen sitting at a tiny table—Ohn, her friend, and me. The others had already eaten so they just stood around and watched us haha. (I’m used to it by now so it was fine). We had rice (of course), boiled and syrupy sweet eggs, a fish soup with wilted greens, and, (this is my favorite and I know they prepared it because Ohn told them it was) fried eggs with onions. It sounds boring and simple but I promise it is the most delicious thing in the world.

After lunch, S’rey Pit (pronounced "bpate"), the youngest of Ohn’s relatives, brought out her English book for school. We sat around, flipping through the pages, me pointing out various things and quizzing them. I was impressed with how much she knew for being only six! She definitely has my younger students beat (however, she’s also getting a lot better schooling in Phnom Penh than they have access to in my village). Ohn’s mom made me coffee from Mondolkiri, making it extra sweet with condensed milk and lots of sugar. I will definitely miss these sugary coffees when I leave, no matter how many pounds they’ve added to my frame or how bad they are for my teeth.

Ohn brought a bunch of mangoes with from our village, since her relatives don’t have the space for mango trees in their small yard, so we sliced those open and ate the meat with chili salt, making appreciative noises when we'd get pieces that were sweet, and sucking in our cheeks when we got one that was too sour.

S’rey Pit’s shiny black blue hair was calling to me at this point, so I gave her a French braid, which I was happy to discover I still know how to do.

Ohn’s relatives brought out a big loaf of sliced bread, just purchased at a nearby bakery for my benefit, and two jars of jam: strawberry and apricot, which everyone called “peach.” Since I was thought to be the most seasoned jam spreader, I was given the duty of spreading jam onto slices of bread, taking orders from various relatives for which kind. I gave Liya, Ohn’s daughter, a little extra jam so she’d know she's still my favorite, even in the midst of all these new kids. Despite my going over to her house to make sandwiches for almost two years, Liya has taken a long time to fully warm up to me, so I didn’t want to compromise our newfound closeness. The kids topped their pieces of jammed bread with a layer of sweetened condensed milk and devoured them in seconds.

At around 3:00 it was time to go. Ohn, her friend, Liya and I all loaded our things onto a tuk tuk and set off for p’saa towit (the small market)- the meeting spot for vans going to different provinces. First though, I insisted we make a stop at Sorya, the mall in Phnom Penh, for ice cream, since Ohn’s friend had never been there before. We walked into the brightly lit and air conditioned mall, our senses immediately assaulted by fluorescent lights, multi-colored store signs, music from different directions, etc. I steered us to the left and into Swenson’s for ca-rem (ice cream). We picked our flavors: strawberry for Liya and Ohn, chocolate brownie for Ohn’s friend, and my usual: mocha almond fudge. We wandered around the mall with our cones, drifting into “Lucky,” the supermarket. We circled the store—meandering through the frozen meats, the draft from the freezers raising the hair on our arms, the raw smells entering our nostrils and souring the sweetness of our snack.

Ohn pointed out various things that got her attention: “Look how big that watermelon is!” “Look at all the ice cream!” I followed her and the others around the store like a little kid, anxious about how quickly my ice cream was melting, distracted by the activity of the store. Liya picked out two expensive yogurt drinks—a blue and a red one—each costing more than a dollar. I knew it was no small purchase for Ohn. As we eyed various items in the store, trying to fit into this unfamiliar place with our unfamiliar snack, I looked at other foreigners from a displaced perspective, feeling more different from them than similar as Ohn spoke Khmer to me at a rapid fire. We finished our cones and stepped back outside into the afternoon heat, loading ourselves onto the tuk tuk and continuing our journey. I noticed a plumeria tree on the way and asked how to say it in Khmer: "picka jopie," Ohn said.

In the touri, on our way back to Pearaing, I drifted in and out of consciousness, exhausted from the day. The van reeled and jerked as we navigated the dusty road, pockmarked with potholes from construction. Liya and I shared the front seat, the breeze from the drive giving way to a persistent heat as we lurched and weaved. Liya rested her head on my shoulder and I held my breath, not wanting to let the moment go before I had to. A headache that had been threatening all day manifested in full force and I rested my head in my hand against the base of the window, feeling weary and content as Ohn’s boisterous laugh came in and out of the backdrop of my experience.

As I so often do when I’m leaving for or coming back from a journey, I found myself thinking about how I’m going to say “goodbye” to my host mom and dad, and all the other people close to me here in less than five months, and a knot formed in my throat. Not today, I thought to myself and felt comforted. I don’t need to think about that just yet. And I drifted back into a restless sleep, the lights of the oncoming cars passing over my eyes and intensifying the pain behind them.

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Eating rice at Ohn’s relatives' house

Liya

The kids

In the touri

Ohn