Author:

Guilty Pleasures: Pets

Rottweilers don’t give two fucks about fashion, which is lucky because at the pet shop on 163 they sell about 20 different styles of dog shoes and it’s all underarm-teacup-type sizes. It’s so hard to find stuff for the fuller figure in CharmingVille. But suck it up, Kaiser. That’s the Bodes all over when you’re a creature of size. Along with nanoscopic footwear for doglets you can get a weeny outfit and a matching clutch to put little Shitster in when you tire of him peeing down your kaftan at the next Meta House thing.

Apart from the canine clothes and accessories there’s little else for the rest of god’s creatures. Not a cat hat, lizard legging or beak warmer to be had for love or money. Snake belts are like hens’ teeth. I swung by there last weekend to purchase a tasteful merkin for my obscenely testicled rescue rabbit. He’s about 19 in human years with balls about the size of a 19-year-old human. Seriously. Those massive danglers are so completely out of proportion to the rest of his sorry physique that when they dropped I thought they were tumours and panic-Googled for an hour. Apparently it’s quite normal. But still. And he’s only got three working legs so his knackers just flap around in the atmosphere where a fourth leg would normally hide ‘em. I don’t judge him but it’s embarrassing when guests come over and Bunny’s just lying around, nuts out. They’re mesmerising and not in an attractive way. Plus he’s no oil painting – kind of a splotchy orange with hairless veiny ears and a mouth like a cat’s arse. So not the most attractive lagomorph on the block, then. It’s why we decided against a Facebook page.

He sniffs at any sun-warmed local market greens but devours crisper-fresh Bayon herbs. Coriander and dill are favourites. God help us if they’re out of season in Latvia or wherever they come from. On the weekend the crinkle of homecoming shopping bags has him skittering to meet us, trying his best at those vertical joy jumps that rabbit-nerds call ‘binkies’. On three legs he’s not Nadia Comaneci. He only drinks Evian.

Despite the massive gobbets, the ginger-no-mates pelt and the champagne tastes, he’s quieter than kids and watches American Idol tucked up in my armpit, nibbling imported gluten-free muesli and Arnott’s water crackers. He grooms our furniture, which saves me half an hour dusting. He likes to host the occasional rice knees-up on the balcony for his chittering sparrow mates. He’s a literal party animal.

Most entertainingly he grimly and regularly fucks anything that doesn’t move. This could be a chair leg or an actual leg. Rabbits do have sex faces. They are eerily familiar. On frenzied completion he’ll swoon dramatically and wake up seconds later as if nothing had happened. Pff. No surprise since 94% of our genes rabbits also have.

And if the arsehole neighbour comes to our door muttering and unlocking his service revolver, Bunster bravely thumps the bejesus out of his solitary hindquarter to let us know shit’s going down. I don’t know how he knows it’s him and not the man with the water bill. Bunny is an actual pet detective with x-ray vision and supernatural powers. He may be a libidinous, unattractive three-legged Paul the Octopus, but I wuvs him.

Committing to a companion animal other than your other half is as strangely liberating and transformative as it is comforting. I stopped worrying about life being so much better somewhere I wasn’t. A little furry mate turns a transient stop in an alien land into a feel-good place to call forever home. I’m heartwarmed to see more and more foreign pet lovers here in CharmingVille. And not just the good folk who liberate bestringed kittens dancing for the tourist dollar at Wat Ounalom, or rescue wormy street puppies from a terminal game of chicken with the oncoming traffic (bless you everyone, by the way).

When I’m wondering what the fuck I’m doing here, I see some hot new bloke taking his beagle to the shops in a tuk tuk, or a French chick gamely dragging up and down Riverside on the end of a standard poodle. I’m not alone in my choice of one-horse hometown. CharmingVille is the cat’s pyjamas after all.

 

Penh-Dacity: Bag man (Feb 20)

Desmond, in his role as a bag-carrying, beer-toting boat passenger, appears to be having a good time despite the weight on his shoulders. He may even get lucky: he was just asked by Clarissa, a Seattle redhead, what he’s doing later. Now read on in part seven of our exclusive fiction series by Guillermo Wheremount.

Desmond played it ultra cool, as if he was a man used to being asked what he’s doing later, and almost always knows what to say. To buy some time he reached for the packet of snacks gifted to him earlier in the day by the Scandinavian backpackers and opened it. There were some salty looking brown twisted squishy things inside.

“What is it?” “Swedish I think. Or Norwegian.” “No, what is it? Is it meat? Or fish?” “I don’t think so,” he said, taking one and smelling it with a bit more suspicion than was probably necessary, then biting it with a little less caution than was probably appropriate. “Tastes OK,” he said, swallowing bravely, leaning a little on the railing. “Salty. Want one?” Clarissa shook her head politely. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Suit yourself,” and Desmond recklessly tossed a few into his mouth, started to chew, felt his face turn white and suddenly was vomiting forcefully into the Tonle Sap. So forcefully that the weight of the backpack almost tipped him over the flimsy guard rail. And if Clarissa hadn’t wrenched the bag off him, he may have followed the Swedish delicacies into the river himself. “Careful, sailor, there’s no lifebelts.”

Humiliated, Desmond crumpled and sat at her feet, spitting dejectedly into the water. “Damn Swedes.” “Would you like another beer?” “Ja tack.” It was several nauseated river-staring minutes before he realised she’d taken the bag with her. In fact, she was already walking back towards him carrying it when it occurred to him that he didn’t have it any more. “The bag!” “It’s certainly heavy,” she commented nonchalantly. “What’s in it?” She handed him a new beer and opened her own, taking a long drink that showed how little interested she actually was in his answer.

Hell, the woman probably just saved my life, I’d better widen the cone of silence. “A large amount of money,” he whispered, making sure he was out of everybody else’s earshot. This raised her eyebrows indeed: “Drugs?” “A favour for a friend of mine. He wanted me to look after it.” “How much again?” “He said a heartstoppingly large amount. I didn’t inquire further.” “Are you being followed?” “No,” he said, then reflected and admitted: “Not that I’m aware of.”

“How do we open it?” she asked casually, and he looked around to see her trying zips and finding the padlock. “No! It might… he… it would…” “Kill you, yeah. I guess.” On that thought, Desmond and Clarissa dropped their discussion to gaze on the sky, all spectacular reds and greys. The boat was puttering southwards along the riverside, pretty lights flashing from the quay. Other boats passed, some people waved. A fishing scull powered by a miniature outboard motor running on the smell of fish oil cut across the current, a small family huddled in the rear under the encroaching dark. The slashing sound of dance music from the quayside aerobics was fading into the encroaching night.

“So who is this friend?” “His name is Hank.” “Not Hank Vaughn?” Desmond had to admit, “I don’t know his full name.” “You don’t know the full name of the guy and you’re carrying…” Her sentence trailed off in mystification. “It never came up.” “Short guy, always wearing a Barcelona shirt?” “Nope. Tall and burned-out aristocratic-looking.” “Oh, so like a classic con artist?” Desmond had to admit that was a fair description. “What does he do?” “He strolls around looking busy.” “Sounds like a lawyer. Or a con artist.” “Looks a bit like Ralph Fiennes, actually, but taller.” “Capable of extreme violence?” “Not really, but I’m sure he’d know people who are. He could fly one in quite rapidly I expect.” “Or he could be as flimsy as a cardboard cop.” “Also true.”

“So this con artist called Hank who looks busy, who you’ve known for how long?” “A few months.” “A few months, has asked you to look after a bag full of money… why?” “He had to go to Bangkok for the weekend.” She drilled him with crazy eyes. “He left town?” “I guess.” She dropped her crazy eyes and shook her head. “Phnom Penh, huh? Your guardian angels are going to work overtime, my friend.” “I pay well.”

She seemed satisfied with that answer. So she tried for another one: “So, what are you doing later?”

Continues next week  

 

 

 

Kickarse okonomiyaki

It’s 7:30pm on a mild Thursday at Ninja, a Japanese restaurant on Street 278. Seated are myself, The Scribe, The Libyan, The Ed. and the Man of Few Words. Three of the party, myself included, are in the midst of a severe okonomiyaki ‘coma’. In a textbook case of overreach we have OD’ed on the dish and are now unwilling and unable to move. But The Ed. is having nothing of it.

“Come on! Get up! Let’s move! The night is young and so are at least two of us.” “Nothing doing,” I reply. “We have been Ninja’ed.” The Ed., bless her, knows to give up this fight and seats herself back down. “Bar person, another soda and lime, please.” The rest of us can just sit contented. We know we’re going nowhere in a hurry.

Open since June, Ninja is one of a growing number of value-priced Japanese eateries that have sprung up, like the proverbial mushrooms, over the last year. Deeper geopolitical processes are at work here. A re-pivoting of Japanese capital out of the Sino region, following nationalist riots in 2012, has inspired an increase in Nipponese investment and migration to the Kingdom.

With Phnom Penh’s burgeoning Japanese expat population has come a bunch of young (at heart, if not always in age) entrepreneurs, eager to fill the culinary needs of their compatriots, as well as a whole bunch of Phnom Penh disciplines and converts. Part of a national chain of 70 restaurants back in Japan, Ninja’s Phnom Penh branch is its first move into the Southeast Asian market and judging by the busy tables around us it’s going down a storm.

Ninja follows the style of a Japanese izakaya, a term that loosely translates as ‘pub eatery’. In its native country the izakaya has evolved to cater for the salary man (and woman) seeking simple home-style foods to complement their alcohol consumption and conversation. A place to leave your briefcase, shed your suit jacket and progressively ‘let go’, izakayas are not about style; their focus is substance.

Beer, sake, soda cocktails and whiskey are the usual drinks of choice at an izakaya, supplemented by a range of foods that read like a catch-all of popular Japanese domestic cooking, or what you would eat at home if it didn’t take three hours on the Tokyo subway. Our table’s trawl through the menu included a corn bowl (‘Tasty!’), karaage (bite-sized fried chicken), teriyaki (‘Bring me more!’), crumbed smelt (‘Delicious’), as well as a neat miso/rice bowl set (at $1.70, a bargain). Sushi, noodles and other fish dishes also fill Ninja’s extensive menu.

But it was the okonomiyaki that foiled our efforts to navigate further, although the three to four pints of Angkor each probably didn’t help. For the uninitiated, okonomiyaki can sound decidedly weird; often described as ‘Japanese Pizza’, in truth it resembles more a large pancake with everything thrown into the mix. And the breakdown of the word – okonomoi (‘what you like’) and yaki (‘grilled’ or ‘cooked’) – suggests that this gaijin interpretation is pretty close to the mark.

Cooked on a hot plate, the heart of the dish is shredded cabbage on a base of pork-belly strips or noodles. To this are added a mixture featuring butter and flour, grated nagaimo (a type of yam), eggs, green onion and, at different times, shrimp, vegetables and even cheese. Capping this delectable concoction, literally, are measured strips of mayonnaise and otafaku (a thick dark sauce, resembling the oyster variety but sweeter) and a scattering of seaweed flakes and pickled ginger.

In Japan the dish is associated with the city of Hiroshima and the lower-central area of Honshu, Japan’s largest island. From here it is thought to have originated from a crepe-like recipe that steadily evolved, from the early 1900s, to include the savoury elements of today’s dish. Meanwhile, depending on where you are in Japan, okonomiyaki can take on some interesting regional variations – the Tokyo variety, for example, is typically smaller than its provincial cousins.

Tasty, undoubtedly, although my Khmer friend Tevee might require more convincing: “I don’t like it; it smells funny.” (What?! Have you smelt prahok lately?!) Personally, okonomiyaki is a Japanese fave and the Ninja version is up there with the best I have tried. Just don’t expect to go anywhere quickly if you overindulge!

Ninja, #14b Street 278; 088 8617623.

 

Double dose

The candy bar at Conekla serves as an unblushing reminder that sometimes caffeine alone is inadequate and sugar makes for a deliciously double-fisted companion. Conekla – a self-styled candy bar, coffee shop and game room – peddles all three and more with colourful, quirky abandon. Stuffed animals and giant lollipops guard the candy corner, a miniature Golden Gate bridge occupies a V-shaped support column at the centre of the dining area and water flows over the sun room, giving the space the placid feeling of perpetual rain. The food menu offers sandwiches, pastas and the like and nothing costs more than $6. There’s a couple of semi-private movie rooms to rent upstairs with supersized TVs and video game consoles. Downstairs the eatery sells candy (Gummy Bears!), $1.99 for 100 grams, sweet baked goods and caffeine. Try the mango-passion crumble ($3) or the strawberry smoothie ($2.90); they’re both worth every single calorie.

Konekla, #168 Street 51.

Colour of music

SATURDAY 22 | Chhan Dina and Warren Daly are daring to tread in some of history’s most well-heeled footsteps. The duo – one a Cambodian artist; the other an Irish DJ – are redefining the complex relationship between sound and vision. Dina and Daly merge electronic dance music with live instruments and artists and audience participation to create a multisensory experience – a trip without a trip. Led by Daly, who in 2000 co-founded online record label Invisible Agent, they’re building on the work of 1960s San Francisco arts collectives that used disco balls and light projections on smoke to produce trip-like sensations (The Brotherhood of Light, who toured with The Grateful Dead, were inspired by the Beat generation and Ken Kesey’s ‘expansion of consciousness’ Acid Tests). In Swagger, Daly fuses pop culture, high culture and low culture by hooking painters, musicians, graffiti artists, digital artists and DJs into one psychedelic show.

WHO: The sonically and visually open-minded
WHAT: Swagger party
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd
WHEN: 10pm February 22
WHY: A trip without a trip

 

Beat dis

SATURDAY 22 | Formed in 1964 and regrouping exactly 20 years later, Jamaican ska band The Skatalites, of Guns Of Navarone fame, laid the foundations for modern reggae. Mixing their danceable rhythms with popular jazz tonight are Sebastien Adnot (bass), Greg Lavender (drums), Euan Gray (saxophone) and Alexandre Scarpati (trombone). Known collectively as Jahzad, they promise an evening of ‘infectious beats and tasty horn lines’.

WHO: Jahzad
WHAT: Jamaican ska meets jazz
WHERE: Equinox, #3a Street 278
WHEN: 9pm February 22
WHY: Infectious beats and tasty horn lines

 

la vie en punk

FRIDAY 21 | The seeds of punk’s anarchic politics, far from being American or British, in fact sprouted from mid-20th century French philosophy – philosophy that continues to shape punk to this day. The theory is most famously laid out by Greil Marcus in Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, in which the author examines punk in the context of everything from Dadaism to Guy Debord. For as Andrew Hussey, head of French and Comparative Studies at the University of London Institute in Paris, once told the BBC: “…without the French, without their big ideas and their politics and fanaticism, punk rock in the UK would’ve been nothing more than growly old rockers with shorter hair”. This is not lost on Didier Wampas, lead singer with French punk band Les Wampas. He’s rare among his brethren, refusing for three decades to resign from his job as a public transport electrician despite having produced 11 albums and a top 20 hit. Where the Sex Pistols were famous for spitting at fans, Didier – more famous for singing off-key and in a high-pitched squeak – prefers to climb into their midst and kiss as many cheeks as possible. But just how long can he keep it up, after a punishing 30+ years as a punk frontman? “If you don’t want to stop, you don’t stop. I eat peanut butter sandwiches, like Elvis! Yes, yes, yes. It’s the secret of rock ‘n’ roll…”

WHO: Didier Wampas
WHAT: French ‘Ye Ye Punk’
WHERE: Sharky Bar, #126 St. 130
WHEN: 9pm February 22
WHY: French philosophy inspired punk rock. No, really.

 

Temple of dub

FRIDAY 21 | The reggae train rolls on with the arrival of New Delhi’s Reggae Rajahs, India’s first sound system of its kind, fresh from opening for Snoop Doggy Dogg. Representing Cambodia tonight are Dub Addiction, voted best band in the capital in our 2013 Advisor awards, and the crew from Wat A Gwaan, the Phnom Penh-based collective which debuted last month. The action starts at Slur and moves to Pontoon, where the Rajahs take the decks at 1am.

WHO: Reggae Rajahs, Dub Addiction and Wat A Gwaan
WHAT: Dub Temple I
WHERE: Slur, #28 Street 172, and Pontoon, Street 172
WHEN: 9pm February 21
WHY: Big ting a gwaan!

 

Guilty Pleasures

A giant flesh-crazed centipede viciously assaulted my mother-in-law. Hubster rang in a panic. “An animal like a snake but with plenty of feet” had crawled up her leg while she was gardening. Wielding her trusty machete she’d tried to flick the thing off, but the angry brute sunk its fat fangs gum deep.

I was born in that antipodean vipers’ nest otherwise known as Australia – a pitiless bastion of murderous fauna, where super-smart, venomous, heat-seeking arthropods and plagues of ill-conceived animalia are Hell-bent on relieving you of life and/or limb, or at the very least giving you a nasty bite. Having koalas and baby wombats comes nowhere near to making up for all the hideous shitty creatures we have to put up with. There are people far more qualified than me to give you the lowdown on our creeping pantheon of death. Some people even like them. Steve Irwin could tell you all about it. Oh, wait. He was stabbed in the heart by an ungrateful stingray.

Despite their deadly reputation, Australia’s bugs are generally elegantly built and usually reclusive. They look nice in a Perspex paperweight or the gear knob of a Monaro HT. If you poke ‘em or forget to check your shoes, of course they’ll get you. But with few exceptions they seldom attack unprovoked.

So I’m no fan of insects and shit but if I’m feeling righteous I do save errant bees, earthworms and skinks from the gym pool of a balmy Bodes morning. I’ve hooked a massive rhino beetle out with a stick. I’ve even given an overinflated toad miniature CPR, with my finger wrapped in a leaf. But have you seen those ghastly vinegaroons? Gothic matte-black whip scorpions with stingers like toothpicks and pincers that could drag a baby right out of a tent. I draw the line at these freaks. They can fucken well drown. Oh shit. They can swim.

There are those big black bumbling bees that love the smell of Elnett in the morning. If you’ve seen how high I like my hair you’ll know why I’ve got my own swarm. They have massive stingers but aren’t that smart. You can trick them by waving your arms around and running away.

Here, cockroaches suck the biggest of all. They are the worst. They chase you, or – help me, Jesus – fly at you. Sure they don’t bite, but their scuttling filthiness makes me squeal like a little girl and phone for help from atop the nearest chair. One can of Mortien is never enough for those disgusting bastards.

Although related to lobsters, Cambodian centipedes are not delicious flame-grilled with a lime aioli on the side. I don’t know if you’ve seen one but they’re scary as fuck. Eight inches of red pointy aggression heading straight for you at speed. For once, this is not a good thing. According to Wikipedia, once they’ve stabbed you they ‘cut away at their prey’ with their ‘forcipules’. Fucken hell. This mother was hanging off mum’s leg. She must have been terrified.

She eventually kicked that devil’s spawn to the kerb and made it to the village healer who put a poultice on it. Three hours later she was prostrate in pain and I got the call from my lifemate. This wasn’t at all funny, or even a bit interesting like when they put a tarantula and a scorpion together in an episode of Japanese Bugfight. Mum’s leg had swollen and by the time we got her to a foreign clinic in CharmingVille she was barely conscious in agony.

Don’t you just hate it when you’re at the doctors and they keep you waiting for three hours even though you feel like shit or you’ve broke something and just 10 minutes of their care and some basic medication would fix everything and totally justify their fucking obscene bill at the end of it?

But never mind. I sat trawling the internet and seething loudly while Ma lay shivering in shock. Dr Google prescribed a codeine tablet and an icepack. Which is exactly what the lip-smacking-post-5pm-snack-returnee-cum-intern prescribed for her, two hours and 57 minutes later.

Like everyone, I’ve given crickets a try and sucked the hair off a spider leg for a YouTube video. Sometimes I guess it’s just payback time in bugland. Watch where you put your feet.

 

Only when I laugh

TUESDAY 18 | He’s been declared “the new Dave Allen” by Britain’s Ricky Gervais and tonight Johnny Candon, one of Ireland’s most wanted stand-ups, takes the stage alongside Dave Johns (UK, pictured), a Geordie expert in being ‘in-yer-face’ funny, for the latest instalment of the Comedy Club Cambodia (tickets: $10). Rocking the mic between sets will be the legendarily long-limbed Sam Thomas, of the PP Punchliners.

WHO: Johnny Candon and Dave Johns
WHAT: Comedy Club Cambodia
WHERE: Code Red, opposite Naga World, next to Koh Pich Bridge
WHEN: 8:30pm February 18
WHY: It’s the best medicine