That most humdrum of discussions had among expats the world over: what do you miss about home?
Perhaps fair enough if you’re posted in beer-scarce Faisalabad, but participating in this sentimental circle-jerk can be particularly tedious in the rapidly burgeoning ‘burg of Phnom Penh, where, really, anything anyone could ever possibly need or want, from spa-and-pool cleaning supplies to spare pulmonary arteries, is nowadays within ready reach. Thusly, we’re subjected to staid stock answers such as family, fresh air or some mundane human-rights hogwash.
And for those long-time exiles living in Cambodia who can no longer function in the West without the threat of inadvertent arrest, the more pertinent question is: what do you miss about your adopted home in the Kingdom when forced to attend a family funeral or some other inconvenience back in your birth land?
It just so happens that I currently have some authority on the subject, being that I’ve been walkabout in Oz this past week to attend the annual Woolamoogoo Kangaroo-Rodeo out woop-woop (where home-town hero Dazza ‘Dicko’ Dickson will be out to defend his four-time world pouch-stuffing crown). From two-bit columnist to foreign correspondent in a few short weeks and so, naturally, in line with this esteemed profession, those things I’ve missed most about Cambodia to date relate directly to smoking, drinking and whoring.
I’m an unabashed smoker and eternally grateful – as you all should be – that I have at least the one addiction that doesn’t drive me to take off my pants in public. I also steadfastly believe that giving up smoking for better health is inherently narcissistic, in that the overarching motivation is to continue hogging all the carbon and tack a few extra hunch-backed years onto the end of one’s increasingly pointless existence. Besides, I look super-hip with a ciggie in hand.
Indeed, smoking has become so uncool in the West it’s almost defiantly cool again. A rebel yell followed by an anarchistic hack, wheeze and cough. But where a pack of Ara golds go for 25c at your friendly Cambodian cornerstore, a 50g pouch of tobacco now fetches a crippling A$136.19 on the Australian stock exchange. Still, if I were to quit, I wouldn’t know what to do with my lungs.
So I continue to sheepishly slink off to the special segregated smokers’ cage out the back of the pubs here to puff away with the other emphysemic social pariahs. The Khmers are far more accommodating toward their fellow nicotine-addicted citz, happy enough to send the baby out to the balcony so as not to inconvenience your indoor smoking. Or should you sadly run dry of ciggies, one of the young neighbourhood tykes will be promptly told to totter off to the shop for a fresh pack and perhaps a sixer of tinnies while they’re at it. And as with most things in life, that leads me nicely to the matter of beer.
Drinking to excess is socially unacceptable in Australia, or so the TV tells me. Certainly, it’s frowned upon in the workplace. But a lack of sobriety in the ‘Bodge amidst the bevy of brain-fried drop-outs is barely noticeable. Cambodian beer, however, sucks. Yet it’s cheap and plentiful and people pour it for you. Those same people also contribute ice under their own initiative. And while the sacrilegious act of adding melt-water to your schooner in Australia would see you drawn and quartered and strung from the Sydney Harbour Bridge as a lesson to the city’s swelling metrosexual sect, in Cambodia it encourages the sort of sustained drinking that allows for continued semi-conscious control of a vehicle.