If you’re an office potato who spends all day looking for weird shit on Google Maps or setting up a Facebook page for your loris, you know you need to get out more. Sooner or later you probably won’t be living in tropical CharmingVille. You’ll be shacked up in some freezing cul de sac in a first-world conurbation with a two-hour commute wishing you could chuck on shorts and flip flops, tuk tuk out for an espresso martini, an afternoon of deep-tissue massage, a three-dollar haircut or a pub quiz with a gaggle of crop-topped Scandinavians.
Don’t let that gypsy heart of yours put down its castanets. You made it to the KOW after all – it’s not exactly on the beaten track. At one point you had ants in your pants and they hurt so good. It’s time to give those little buggers a poke, non? Pull a sickie next Friday and/or Monday and take them on a sneaky road trip. I implore, nay, command you.
Go on the bus, by all means. Ride a bike if you’re French. Company Car? Kudos! But for about 60 smackers a day plus petrol you can get a decent SUV that comfortably holds you and three narrow or two plumpster mates, luggage, pillows, esky and a shitload of beers, an English-speaking driver and a ticket to Spider town. Or Crabtastic Kep. You keep saying you want to go to the Kiris. Well, go on then, while there’s still some left.
I admit that our roads, the rain, the bovine contrarians and the many breasted pot-ready dogs loafing out front can turn you into a palpitating Catholic. Just tell yourself it’s good cardio. Sure, a 12-hour drive to cover just 400km is fucking ridiculous. And sometimes boring. But don’t let that dull your youthful sense of adventure. Just plan ahead.
If you’re a multi-tasker and you need more action on the drive than fruitlessly tuning the radio or Instagramming the back of chicken-jammed Korean mini-vans, there are plenty of rewarding things to keep you occupied. Drinking, for starters. Or why not chuck a couple of lamb shanks in tinfoil, sit them on the engine at the Caltex Calmette, and by the time you’ve pulled into Kratie you’ve got yourself a decent feed? Which is a good thing. Kratie has a lot going for it: I love those penis-head dolphins. There’s some spooky architecture and the river is mesmerising even without a big fat spliff. But having supped on squid jerky all the way up, a bamboo stick filled with rice and brown things doesn’t always hit the spot.
I know this because I took my own advice and went to DolphinBurg via Kampong Cham this past weekend. If you’re heading that way you’ll see a lot of drunk guys staggering about. Maybe there was some kind of convention on. Kampong Cham was hammered. Relaxing riverside with an icy cold beer on my first evening I watched a wobbly copper in a wife-beater and uniform pants drive his pink Scoopy inexorably into the back of a stationary minibus. After a few seconds he turned off his bike, parked it in the middle of the road, put on his helmet with POLICE writ large across the back and had a shout with the driver. Dozens of bemused promenaders stopped to see the show. You won’t get that kind of action in downtown Milton Keynes, boy. Pure Cambo comedy gold.
What a top town the KC is. You should go there. There’s an underrated Angkorian temple next to a buffalo wading pool and a big wat with a lot of gambolling monklets. When it’s not rainy season there’s a bamboo bridge across to the island, or a ferry when the bridge is washed away. There’s a French tower thing. You don’t see one of those every day. You can stay at a hotel by the other bridge, the fuck-off spanking Japanese one.
“You have a nice view of our bridge,” said the receptionist proudly when I asked to look at the room. “It’s a new bridge. Enjoy!” As fascinating as 200,000 tonnes of cast concrete can be, I chose a place overlooking the Mekong that had the frisson of mental asylum about it. There was a bunch of born-again Koreans wearing matching T-shirts and praying loudly in reception, which was also disconcerting.
Up on the second floor and along a strangely wide corridor, I found my $18 en suite room. The TV was the size of a cat, but there was cable. Elvis was on, so after a massive dinner on main street I sat on my balmy balcony, drank beer and, in between ethereal Ramadan prayers, hummed along to the King’s most obscure and derivative croons. Clams have never been so happy.