‘Shit!’ I am in the departure lounge of Pochengtong Airport; you know that version of Cambodia where everything works. Kind of like a Khmer version of Tokyo. My flight is being called and I have just remembered that I haven’t bought Aunt Flo a present yet.
I owe Aunt Flo. She took on board my canary, my cat and my dog when I packed up sticks and came across to Cambodia on a whim; and now I am returning for a brief holiday in Aotearoa without a gift for my kind aunt. ‘Unthinkable! What to do?’
I’m kharma’d out; don’t believe in hauling stone Buddhas across the ocean and a banana from the café will not make it past New Zealand’s fascist biosecurity ‘police’ or Aunt Flo’s “What the fuck? I took on your entire domestic pet entourage and you bought me a piece of fruit?!” gift-o-meter.
‘Monument Books!’ Yes, the perennial airport gift lifesaver. Thank you! I have 30 bucks and 60 seconds… I am on a mission. ‘Quick! Quick! Out of my way, confused-looking Scandinavian backpacker with hairy kneecaps! Don’t cross my path, French woman with a suspicious similarity to Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour!’
[At least you are going to come out of this review with some new geographic and cultural reference points]
…then again: ‘Come back French woman with a suspicious similarity to Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour! Stop! Concentrate! Aunt Flo, Aunt Flo…’ Right, I’m back on focus, entering the hollow walls of Monument now.
Sure, the cat ate the canary, and then got run over, and then the dog ‘sort of went funny and keeled over’ (Flo’s words). Rural New Zealand is hard on domestic pets. I’m sure that Flo did her best and isn’t some sort of domestic pet psychopath (as we used to say back on the farm: ‘Sometimes you just have to go with the Flo’).
Right! Books, books. I need something that says ‘CAMBODIA, something, something.’ What’s this? ADB report? No. World Bank report. No! IMF treatise. What?
IMF,
Dirty IMF,
Takes away everything it can get,
Always making certain that there’s one thing left,
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt…
Out-of-my-head obscure Bruce Cockburn song from the 1980s. I need a book, not a valid political statement. What I need is…
Big glossy coloured photos of ‘postcard poverty’: smiling faces, blue skies, Zen-looking buffalos, cherub monks; not too many skulls. And not an economic land concession, disaffected garment worker or pro-democracy demonstration in sight.
A little information, but not too much. And only slightly, periodically, incorrect. Flo is more a Woman’s Day than The Economist kind of aunt.
Did I mention temples? I need temples. Lots of them. Flo knows a good temple when she sees one.
Get the landlord to unblock the toilet and do something about the rats in the ceiling. Oops, wrong checklist.
Something that will fit in my carry-on and will look nice on a coffee table, but will, after a time, migrate to the bookshelves until, inevitably, over the passage of time and several epochs of dust, it will find itself somewhere behind several Harry Potters (‘for the grandchildren’); perhaps hiding that guilty pleasure volume of 50 Shades of Grey? ‘Aunt Flo, really, this is a family newspaper!’ Editor: ‘Whose family?!’
Oh god! Perfect!
Presenting Cambodia, Kingdom of Wonder – and it’s only 30 bucks!
SaVeD!
Money.
Book.
Thank you!
‘Hmmm… I wonder if that French woman who looks suspiciously like Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour is on my flight? And do I have any Bruce Cockburn on my iPod?’
Presenting Cambodia, by Mick Shippen, is available now from Monument Books priced $29.95.