Hung Up and Hanging Out

I met up with my friend alt. country loving buddy Kevin (also known as Doctor Pool) here in Siem Reap and found out that he's gone somewhat troppo, but in a good way. He's acquired near native-like expertise at hanging out.

Part of his evening, afterwork beer ritual begins by going to THE supermarket in town--the Angkor Market--buying a bottle of the good brew, and taking it outside the market to sit on a bench and hang out. He goes to people watch the tourists or to hang out long enough to meet and greet friends, other ex-pats who each night always seem to have a need to swing by THE supermarket on their way home. Could be they need quart of milk, a dozen eggs, a bottle of wine, a fresh loaf of bread, maybe some cat litter and/or other house hold staples that they've run low on and that need to be topped up mid-week.

I do what I do each day, read, forage for lunch, practice a few riffs, maybe chill in my room watching TV (and I literally mean "chill" because my hotel room's a/c has two settings--morgue or off), then evengingish I go to THE supermarket and hook up with Kevin and we hang-out.

Forget about Apsara hand dancing, hanging out is an art form the Khmers are masters of.

Hanging out is one of the main things about his countrymen that chapped Pol Pot's ass to the extent that the country is still up to its ass and elbows in skulls with back of the head bullet holes. If you've seen the Killing Fields or if you've seen Spalding Gray's one man show, you know the story--the Khmer Rouge blasted their way into every town and the first order of the day was to make hanging out a bullet-in-the-brain capital offense. Year Zero began when all non-Cambodians were deported and with all Cambodians being given the choice to either develop a German work ethic overnight or. . .well, one day (though they didn't know it at the time) have their back-of-the-head bullet holed skulls wind up in a glass enclosed mountainous skull pile in a museum. A tourist who does not pay five bucks to see the skulls before leaving Cambodia would be the same sort of smart ass who would visit Amsterdam and refuse to be hustled through the Anne Frank House. I've not seen the skulls up close,but I have been hustled through the Anne Frank house. I'm only a half-assed smart ass.

It would be a dim banality to make the assumption that Cambodians are genetically pre-dispositioned to indolence. (Guilty!) But this is what they do, it is their way, their reason for being and they do it so well--hang out. 

Lookit. I live in a Gulf Arab country--and I used to think nobody could hang-out better than a Gulf Arab, but they can afford cars, gas is cheap and so they are these days in motion most of the day. Oh. They still do a lot of hanging out, but it's never in one place for too long because they have to drive somewhere and meet someone else to hang-out with.  Or they have decided that the car is the new tent and that driving is the new hanging-out.

Cambodians are still hang-out in stationary posture most of the time. While they do have transportation--motor-scooters built to seat two but can seat a family of five and at the same time carry a couple of pig carcasses and a half dozen squawking chickens, but a bottle of Johnny Walker Red full of petrol (empty whiskey bottles are reborn and recycled as gasoline containers) ain't cheap. Not when you are trying to get by on a buck fifty a day hoping that if you ask ten thousand barangs with back-packs if they need a ride on a motor scooter, that at least three will take you up on the offer. That's a good day's work. So if you have a good hang-out spot, settle in mid-morning, make yourself comfortable and stay put, hang, wait till ten or eleven o'clock at night, call it a day, hop on your scooter and scootch home; come back tomorrow to do it all over again. Day after too hot too humid day, this is a living, this is a life.

I've done what I've come to Siem Reap to do, that is, hook up with Kevin, play our blend of alt. country tunes and 60s songs that we just can't let go of in some touristy pubs for free drinks. Time to move on, head south to Phnom Penh and do whatever it is I have to do there (what "it" is hasn't been revealed to me yet).

I'd be in P.P. now, but I've got a laptop in a shop and it won't be ready until 2 today (I've been told this for four days now--come back tomorrow at 2).

If today is the day, and my machine is good to go, or, at this point, I'll settle for good-enough to go, then I will immediately use it to book my room in PP near the river, go buy a bus ticket and a bottle of fortified cough syrup because getting on a bus around here is like getting to an airport in Prague and finding out your connecting flight is on a Tupolev--you're not just gonna a need a drink, you're gonna need a lot of drinks, or, if you can get the good stuff, a bottle of killer cough syrup. It's best to pre-board a Russian airliner or a Southeast Asian bus pre-anesthetized.

So, now I'm watching the clock, waiting for 2, then I'll go back to the computer guy and try my best to gently turn up the heat and to not go American on him, i.e. "let me see the manager". This would only sound the death knell for my laptop.If I'm at the very least able to plug and pray with my Dell Latitude, I'm hitting the road tomorrow.

But tonight, for the last time this year, around whenever : thirty, I'll head for THE super market, buy a bottle of the good very brown brew and sit outside with Kevin on a bench, and, oh, I don't know. Maybe we'll just hang.