Byline: Cassandra Naji

Caught in the cross currents

As dawn broke in Japan on July 25 1999, the shores of Lake Biwa revealed an unusual sight. Lining the edge of the water were 350 people, who together faced the lake and intoned a kotodama, or traditional Japanese mantra. Containing the catchy little phrase ‘the eternal power of the universe has gathered itself to create a world with true and grand harmony’, the kotodama floated across Lake Biwa ten times before silence fell once more.

This was not, contrary to appearances, the opening of a scientology convention or an early morning rehearsal for an intimate Moonie wedding. A form of incantation traditional in Japan, kotodama refers to an ancient belief that a mystical power dwells in words and names, and that invocation of this power through language can and does affect change.

The belief may have been ancient, but the change willed was thoroughly modern. Japan’s largest freshwater lake, Biwa holds a central place in the country’s mythology, cultural history and national identity. But thanks to its location in Japan’s urban heartland, the lake is also pivotal to industry and development. Years of factory run-off had caused high levels of water pollution, depletion of natural fish stocks, destruction of traditional lakeside livelihoods and the creeping growth of putrefied algae which choked the lake’s surface and released a foul-smelling gas. The residents of Biwa were not amused.

[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]In an attempt to reassert the lake’s natural balance in the face of apparently overwhelming ecological degradation, the Biwa community decided to respond with local wisdom rather than outsider interference; with shamanism rather than science[/quote]

In an attempt to reassert the lake’s natural balance in the face of apparently overwhelming ecological degradation, the Biwa community decided to respond with local wisdom rather than outsider interference; with shamanism rather than science. A month later the Kyoto Shinbun newspaper reported that the waters of Lake Biwa were clear and the putrid algae had vanished.

For three years between 2008 and 2001, award-winning Filippino filmmaker Nick Deocampo trailed five communities across Asia, including Biwa, who attempted to find local responses to ecological challenges. The resulting documentary, Cross Currents, brings together the residents of Biwa-ko, Batanes (Philippines), Kali Code (Indonesia), Khiriwong (Thailand) and Tasik Chini (Malaysia), intertwining stories of ordinary people finding out-of-the ordinary solutions to desperate situations.

“Instead of scientists, I met shamans and activists, survivors and healers,” Deocampo said of the documentary-making experience. “In the course of these meetings, I came to see the significance of unseen spirits, the counting of waves and the reading of clouds, the divination of animal sacrifices, the potency of activism, and the importance of human mediation in the face of social apathy and natural calamities. In short, I met courageous, although very ordinary, people. I was energised by community leaders who, despite the scarcity of resources and lack of funds, bravely provided for their community’s needs in times of natural and man-made calamities.”

Using water as Cross Currents’ main thematic and stylistic motif, Deocampo focuses on two main indigenous responses to ecological degradation: spirituality and communal action. It was spirituality, Deocampo says, which struck him the most. “All across Asia, I witnessed how spirituality has marked our relation with nature- although this may come in varying degrees of intensity. But the strongest affinity with nature comes from communities that have their local traditions intact.”

Batanes, the Philippines, is one such community. Deocampo found that through the experience and knowledge of the local shaman, marine resources were being preserved. Similarly in Indonesia and Thailand he filmed indigenous celebrations intended to honour water’s place as the lifeblood of the community.

To obviate the possibility of anyone accusing these communities of lack of direct action in the face of ecological disaster, Deocampo’s film also shows communal activities such as ‘river cleaning’ in Yogyakarta, and the establishment of a forest management collective near the once-festering Lake Bawa. Spirituality may be pervasive across Asia, but local people certainly aren’t too busy counting waves or reading clouds to get their hands dirty.

WHO: Award-winning filmmaker Nick Deocampo
WHAT: Cross Currents documentary screening
WHERE: Meta House, Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm June 23
WHY: I had you at “shamanism”, didn’t I?

Breaking the law

Rules, as we all know, were made to be broken. Especially rules that are outdated, outmoded and outrageous. Surely no one ever truly intended men and women to live under the yoke of such despotism as the Indonesian decree that anyone caught masturbating can be decapitated? Or the law that in France one cannot name a pet pig Napoleon? Or the one where, in the UK, a pregnant woman can relieve herself in a place of her choosing, even in a policeman’s helmet? Actually sir, let that particular law of the land remain!

But the point is that there comes a time in every nation’s evolution when its rules and laws should be reassessed. Picked apart and re-made, if not broken. This is essentially the task that author, Fulbright scholar and grumpy feminist punk Anne Elizabeth Moore set a group of young Cambodian women when she asked them to rewrite the Chbap Srey (‘Women’s Law’). The result of this complicated, complex and at times completely hilarious exercise is New Girl Law, published in March: Moore’s docu-memoir of how 32 Cambodian girls imagined a better world and a better set of rules for generations of women to come.

For those not versed in its teachings, the Chbap Srey is quite simply Cambodia’s codification of idealised femininity. Literally translated as ‘Women’s Law’, the Chbap lays out an age-old set of behavioural principles by which good girls should live: obedience, inferiority, pliability, passivity. Sound familiar? Moore is quick to point out that these “virtues” are hardly unknown to women worldwide; all Cambodia did was inscribe them into an actual factual rulebook instead of inculcating ladies by even more sinister means. Taylor Swift’s lyrics, for example.

So why, I hear you right-on sisters wail, why bother to rewrite the Chbap Srey at all if it’s as bad as Taylor Swift? Why not just chuck the old law out wholesale and start the feminist revolution? Why would a riot grrrl like Moore fanny around writing a book about making sexism a little bit more palatable?

The answer in fact lies in one of Moore’s greatest strengths: her refusal to bring a moralistic sense of rectitude to bear on Cambodia. Hailing from a punk-feminist background, she does not adopt the stance that the West is some sort of idyll when it comes to women’s rights. New Girl Law is structured as a series of collaborative debates between Moore and her young female charges on how best to strengthen women socially and legislatively in the real world, Cambodia today. The author is fully aware of her home nation’s shortcomings, historical and contemporaneous, which enables her to steer clear of the NGO saviour narrative. Nicholas Kristof and Somaly Mam, take a lesson.

Of course, this refusal to moralise to the 32 women whom she challenged to rewrite the Chbap Srey means that Moore had to compromise. The 20 resultant ‘Girl Laws’ contain some edicts which read a trifle oddly to Western feminists: the seemingly androcentric “Girls should be brave enough to make eye contact with and speak to boys,” or the passive-sounding “Be patient.”

Musing on patience, Moore told the Phnom Penh Post: “I actually think that my body of work and history of being in the world presents a pretty clear view that patience is always bad and so when it was sort of presented to me as not only the most important thing but as the foundational thing from which we will build this project together, I was sort of like: ‘Oh, okay.’”

These may not sound like the words of a woman in the throes of making big compromises, but bear in mind that for Moore they are probably a big deal. She is after all an author capable of writing “men greeted each other loudly in congratulations, probably just for being men, I didn’t know”. Now, the ladies of The Advisor are not averse to a spot of feminist bovver ourselves from time to time, but that stuff smacks of the First Wave rather hard.

These are tiny little niggles, though. New Girl Law is, get ready for it, an important book. It’s important not just because it’s funny and warm and thought-provoking, but because through it you hear the voices of young women in the developing world. Advocating for themselves, asking for their rights, breaking the rules. These are voices that are normally silenced. The scope of New Girl Law’s success can be gleaned by the fact that it ran up against four years worth of publication and distribution problems in the US: “modes of censorship”, in Moore’s terms. If The Man tried to censor it, you punks know it must be good.

WHO: Anne Elizabeth Moore and 32 future women leaders
WHAT: New Girl Law: Drafting a Future for Cambodia
WHERE: Bookshops across Cambodia
WHEN: Now
WHY: Rules were made for breaking. Especially sexist ones (this is not a joke)

& into the fire

You know you’re onto a winner when the road is clogged up by a maze of bikes belonging to the crowd of diners inside. That pretty much sums up the scenario outside Sovanna’s every night as both Khmers and expats pack into the bustling and restaurant to tuck into the mountain of dishes on offer on the extensive menu.

And if the obvious signs of its popularity – let’s not forget Sovanna II is just down the street – aren’t enough to lure you in, then the smell of the Khmer restaurant’s legendary grilled meats wafting from the sizzling barbecue at the entrance is sure to get you through the gates, salivating as you go.

Inside, it’s alive with the clatter of plates and chatter from large groups of diners huddled around the many tables. Outside is a tropical garden with giant trees separating tables, vines creeping up the walls and plants scattered about. Despite the constant stream of people, there always seems to be an abundance of friendly waiters poised to show you to a table that is swiftly cleaned before you’re seated and handed a menu. And what a menu it is.

It could easily take hours to decide what to eat. In fact, this beast is the dining equivalent of War And Peace, with a healthy smattering of the weird and wonderful thrown in for good measure. Some of the more unusual dishes I’m too scared to try are grilled heart beef (20,000 riel; $4:80), bull stomach (25,000 riel; $6), fried stomach with red tamarind (23,000 riel; $5:50) and roti frog (23,000 riel; $5:50).

Promising to be more adventurous next time, we skipped these and went straight for large helpings of the restaurant’s renowned grilled pork (large: 16,000 riel; $3:80) and roasted beef (large: 20,000 riel; $4:80), fried mixed vegetables with oyster sauce (large: 15,500 riel; $3:60) and the grilled whole fish (25,000 riel; $6). As soon as we’d placed our order, the Cambodia beer girls appeared at our table armed with as many bottles of ice cold beer as they could carry and a bucket of ice.

First out was a complementary tray of lettuce, cucumber, tomato and carrot covered in ice to keep it fresh. Next was the pork and, yes, it lived up to its reputation. Delicately thin slices were cooked to perfection, the barbecue giving them a delicious smoky flavour, and there wasn’t a scrap of fat to be found. The beef was also cut into thin slices and was surprisingly tender, but not quite melt-in-your-mouth, and the full fish was a fancy feast and came sizzling on a hot plate with lemon, garlic and vegetables adding to the flavour.

Even though there were three mouths to feed and the food was exceptionally good, we struggled to demolish the plates and ordered the bill. Including too many beers to count and far too much rice, the total came in at the bargain price of 98,500 riel – the equivalent of about $23:50. And it’s that kind of value that keeps me coming back to Sovanna time and time again.

Sovanna, #4 Street 21; 012 398 281

 

Myanmar’s forgotten people

In the Western media, nowadays at least, the word ‘Myanmar’ rarely appears far from the cosy little phrase ‘former military dictatorship’, and barely a day goes by but we aren’t privy to a picture of President Thein Sein, peace prize nomination in back pocket, glad-handing with Washington big-wigs and signing Chinese free-trade agreements with a flourish. It’s as if the ’88 revolution, the imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi and 60 years of military dictatorship were generally things which, for the incumbent Burmese leader, were unpleasant little hiccups which happened to other people.

Some of those unfortunate other people are the Rohingya. Members of Muslim minority resident in Myanmar for almost two centuries, the Rohingya are nonetheless denied Burmese statehood and are subject to a campaign of government-sanctioned hostility so intense it has been described by Human Rights Watch as ‘ethnic cleansing’. Accepted as citizens by neither Myanmar nor their originary homeland of Bangladesh, the Rohingya have become increasingly isolated in the desolated hinterland between the two countries, living day to day in refugee camps yet denied refugee status.

For seven years, US photojournalist Greg Constantine has travelled between the countless camps on the mountainous Burma-Bangladesh border, documenting the plight of the stateless Rohingya. And he’s coming to Phnom Penh soon to present a slideshow of selected photographs from his new book Exiled To Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya.

Shot in bone white and black, Constantine’s photographs recount the stories of the tens of thousands who have fled to the border region to escape violence only to find themselves adrift and alone, corralled in no-man’s land. Myanmar’s forgotten minority, they are, as the book title suggests, exiles to nowhere.

Constantine returned to the Burma-Bangladesh border area eight times between 2006 and 2012, capturing life in various camps with an unswerving gaze. They are not easy to look at, these images. There are close-up portraits of grandfathers, confusion and distress cross-hatched into the grey skin on their temples. There are men more skin than bones staring resignedly, or children carrying heavy burdens. Mud is the over-riding landscape feature. Weirdly, as with much conflict photography, Constantine’s lens somehow renders the Rohingya’s misery uncannily beautiful.

Accusations of photo voyeurism or, worse, conflict pornography sometimes haunt photojournalists. The best shots are the most likely to raise eyebrows the highest: a Vietcong being executed at point-blank range, eyes screwed shut; a Somali stoning. There’s something taboo about looking at someone else’s suffering and then walking away. But Constantine raises the experience above that of mere viewer or voyeur by interspersing the images in his book with interviews with the Rohingya of the photographs, contextualising their experiences as exiled and abandoned people. His Meta House presentation will achieve the same effect through the photographer’s retelling of their stories and his own, giving a voice to Myanmar’s forgotten minority.

Exiled To Nowhere is part of Nowhere People, a larger project in which Constantine documents stateless peoples from countries around the world, including Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Nepal, Bangladesh and Ukraine.

WHO: Greg Constantine
WHAT: Exiled To Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya slideshow and presentation
WHERE: Meta House, Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: To be confirmed (Watch This Space!)
WHY: The Rohingya may be exiled, but they’re not forgotten

 

All above board

Some things shouldn’t go together, but they just do. Peanut butter and jelly is a prime example; Rihanna and Chris Brown is another, albeit a slightly less tasty one. The world is full of impossibly felicitous juxtapositions, and skateboarding and art is up there with the best of them.

Admittedly, when you think of urban extreme sports the last thing you probably think about is fine art. You might instead picture teenagers in ill-fitting trousers falling over at various different angles down the local park. But skateboarding and artistic self-expression have been interwoven ever since some imaginative surfers affixed wheels to their boards and began surfing the streets. Right back in the salad days of skate culture, the 1970s and ’80s, skaters were decorating their boards with individual artwork and homemade designs; urban culture prizes individualism and freedom of expression across the board, from rap to graffiti to, well, your board. As gallery curator Nataly Lee puts it: “With skating, it’s not just about the sport. There’s a whole culture behind it: fashion, design, music. It’s all interconnected and that’s why it’s such a great medium.”

A slice of that culture comes to Phnom Penh in the form of Off The Wall, an exhibition of 27 specially designed skateboards that tread the fine line between aesthete and urbanite. Opening at Teo+Namfah Gallery on March 21, the exhibition contains artworks from both national and international artists, all of whom were given a blank board and asked to interpret the theme of childhood memory.

“I was inspired by getting more young people into the arts, so childhood memory just made the most sense to me as a key theme behind the exhibition,” explains Lee. “We’re trying to promote this to young people who are into skating and into street culture, who want to explore their creativity. Our youngest artist is 13 and our oldest artist is in her 50s, so art is accessible to everyone.”

Many of the boards in Off The Wall show literal images of childhood: children’s faces in silhouette or shadow, bright blocks of colour catching the primary essence of youth. But American artist Tim Robertson’s board stands apart: it shows an old man sitting sadly, contemplating his memories as they fly away from him like coloured kites on strings. Inspired by his wife’s experiences working with people with Alzheimer’s, Robertson became curious about the potency of childhood memories and their significance to the ageing mind. Senility and skateboards: another of life’s surprisingly felicitous juxtapositions.

Exhibition goers can bid for a skateboard-shaped childhood memory to call their own in a silent auction, held to raise funds for CANVAS, the gallery’s artist-in-residence programme. And Lee assures us the boards skate as good as they look, so you can ride your new piece of art all the way home.

WHO: 27 artists, 27 boards
WHAT: Off The Wall exhibition
WHERE: Teo+Namfah Gallery, #21 St. 214
WHEN: From 6pm March 21
WHY: Skate culture comes off the wall and hits the streets

 

To infinity & beyond

Infinity. By definition it’s a rather large subject for an artist to take on. The unfurling of the unbound cosmos, the illimitable arcs of space and time, the endless hours you wasted going to see Les Miserables; none of these are concepts easily captured on canvas.

Em Riem, however, is an artist unafraid of tackling subjects of epic scope. Trained in Cambodia and France, Em’s artworks have shown around the world from Cartagena to Darjeeling. In 2011 here in Phnom Penh he exhibited Eternity, a series of abstract works addressing the enduring shadows of the Khmer Rouge era; on March 13 at The Insider Gallery, InterContinental, he will show Infinity, a series which pushes beyond simplistic representation and represents nothing less than infinity itself.

The idea of conjuring the infinite within the definite confines of 160cm squared canvas hanging in a hotel foyer may sound a bit farfetched. But as Em explains, “the freedom of abstraction is that of colour,” and so he uses this to transcend the limitations of boring old physicality. The paintings of Infinity display slabs of drenched pigment which refuse a representative function: peony pinks and oceanic blues have an almost three-dimensional sensuality to them, creating an indefinable interchange of form and tone. Is it a shape? Is it a colour? Neither. It’s the infinite, depicted in glorious Technicolor.

Infinity stands in contrast to some of Em’s previous work. In Tenderness (2012) he gave us portraits of couples and families painted to resemble black and white photographs from the pre-Khmer Rouge era. A meditation on the moribundity of traditional Khmer cultural mores, the series was time-bound both in its aesthetic and its idea-old-timey look, nostalgia for old-timey values. Nothing could be further from infinite space and time.

Nothing except fashion, of course. The fashion industry, predicated upon time-limited trends and styles which will make you cringe roughly five minutes from now, would surely be anathema to an artist producing work like Infinity? Not Em Riem.  A man of protean abilities – visual artist, sculptor, designer, gallerist – you’re as likely to find Em designing sculptural gold and leather breastplates as you are to see him making pictorial observations on the space-time continuum.

Em explains this apparent contradiction by invoking Picasso, who described two categories of artist: those who transform the sun into a yellow spot and those who transform a yellow spot into the sun. Em describes himself as belonging to both categories at once, able to slip between representative and metaphorical at the drop of a hat: “My eclecticism often expresses in the reversibility of those two functions because, despite a long-time commitment to figurative art, I always comes back to abstract painting.”

It’s abstract art to which he returns with Infinity, hoping, as he explained in an interview with art4d.asia, to capture something beyond the infinite: “With art, imagination expresses a transcendent and indefinable truth… art projects us beyond time and makes us a present unconditionally.” Transcendent truth and the immortality of the moment? Not a bad way to spend infinity.
WHO: Em Riem
WHAT: Infinity exhibition
WHERE: The Insider Gallery, InterContinental Phnom Penh, Mao Tse Tung Blvd.
WHEN: March 13 – 31
WHY: You don’t have to be Buzz Lightyear to experience Infinity

 

A criminal novel

Come with us now on a journey through time and space to the nethers of the crime-fiction cosmos. Suspend your disbelief and enter a world in which men are men, women are available and moustaches are the ultimate phallic symbol. Crack open a copy of The Cambodian Book of the Dead.

Tom Vater’s second crime novel, scheduled to be republished in June, has more layers than an onion and might leave you feeling similarly lachrymose. The year is 2001 and German Maier – ex-war reporter, current private investigator, life-long ladies man – is in Cambodia to convince the heir to a coffee empire to return home to Hamburg. Things get complicated when Maier gets involved with gangsters; ex-girlfriends; teenage girl assassins, Khmer Rouge generals and finally the Waffen SS, as our hard-boiled hero finds himself in a post-Apocalypse Now nightmare writing a Nazi war criminal’s biography while off his chops on amphetamines. And there you were thinking all disgraced Nazis ended up sunning themselves in Argentina (nota bene: factually, you’d be correct).

If it sounds like there’s a lot going on, you’re right: there is. But what’s sadly absent is a narrative arc on which to hang all these marvellous events and characters. The main plot sags as characters are swallowed up in the historical layers called into play by Vater; it could be a nice conceit to use shadows of conflicts past to augment the horror of Cambodia’s recent history, but it would have to be done with teleology rather than a trowel. Characters and storylines about which we want to know more are left frustratingly underdeveloped, and we’re left more knowledgeable about Maier’s boozing habits than we are about the case.

Which brings us to the case. “A strange case,” muses Maier in a moment of meta-textual angst. “A case without a crime.” Well, call me old-fashioned but I like my crime fiction to contain at least a modicum of crime. The fact that Maier’s PI assignment amounts to little more than babysitting a dull German through a protracted gap year does little to help the book’s lack of narrative propulsion. Crime fiction lore dictates that there must be two narrative lines: one leads the reader forward, as we wonder will our detective hero solve this dastardly murder; the other leads us backwards, as we wrack our brains for the killer’s motivation at the time the fatal blow was struck. Vater does not give us a good murder, man-eating sharks and all, until almost halfway through his novel and by that point both Maier and Dear Reader may be too drunk to care.

All this is a shame because Vater is excellent at capturing snapshots of the seedier side of Cambodia, creating a perfect backdrop for a noir-ish novel. The Kingdom is perfectly, utterly made for the crime-fiction genre: noir, hard-boiled, scandi noir all demand certain elements which Cambodia has in spades. Promise of violence? Check. Organised crime? Check. Institutionalised corruption? Check. Sex and death around every street corner? Well, possibly not the corners in BKK, but you never know.

The Cambodian Book of the Dead revels in this murky under-gusset, containing depictions of Heart of Darkness and Riverside realistic enough to make your toes curl. Rendering the seamy underbelly of the city, and human nature in general, seems right up Vater’s alleys and his sketches are hugely enjoyable for anyone familiar with Phnom Penh’s urban dystopia (hey, we’ve all been there, Reaksmey Burger).

There is potential for a great crime-fiction novel to be written about Cambodia; it could even be written by Tom Vater, an experienced Asia hand with numerous publications to his name. But you don’t have to be a super-sleuth to work out that The Cambodian Book of the Dead isn’t it.

WHO: Writer Tom Vater and a load of stiffs
WHAT: The Cambodian Book of the Dead
WHERE: Cambodia and Thailand with Exhibit A Publishers
WHEN: June
WHY: You need something to read in Snooky

 

Mr Out Of The Ordinay

Scott Bywater is nothing out of the ordinary. Ordinary height, ordinary blue eyes, ordinary greying hair. Just your average espresso-drinking kind of guy. At least, that’s what the self-effacing Tasmanian would have you believe. 

The fat biography of Muhammad peeping from under one arm tells a different story. So do the two volumes of Bywater’s own poetry crammed under the other, the latest of which, one sky/many skies, launched last week. As does his position in Phnom Penh rock ‘n’ roll history as one of the original line-up of the Cambodian Space Project, soloist in his own right and newly recruited frontman of the Lazy Drunks. “Poet of the bar-room”, thoughtful musician and ceaselessly rolling stone, it’s safe to say Bywater is probably one of the most extraordinary ordinary guys around.

That’s not what he tells people, of course; ‘(kind of a music guy)(writes a bit)’ his card advertises apologetically. “I got sick of reading on everyone’s cards ‘CEO this, Master of the Universe that,’” he says in explanation. “That’s what I am, and it doesn’t get anyone’s hopes up too much.” He laughs quietly.

So did he always want to be a music guy who writes a bit? “The first thing I ever wanted to be was a writer, when I was so high,” (indicating something not very high at all). “In my family, that’s what you aspire to. We’re not taught to be engineers or doctors or lawyers; the high ideals are the arts.”

However, the siren song of convention proved irresistible and for the earlier part of his life Bywater eschewed Art, labouring instead on the treadmill of domesticity in his home town of Hobart. But something wasn’t right. “I don’t know, sometimes I talk very negatively about Tasmania and I don’t want to do that… I had to get out of that regular kind of life. I thought I could get more from it, and it turned out I just… I just couldn’t.”

Wary of openly criticising domestic bliss, he need not be so cautious; his poems do so for him. Both volumes (available from under Scott’s arm at $5 a piece) are paeans to adventure, to the open road and its freedoms. Little mention is made of home or hearth, as Bywater’s poetic world is that of the outdoors, of a boundless sea and sky through which the narrator roams ‘in pursuit of the unlimit’.

Bywater readily admits to a fascination with the unlimit as both an artist and as a man. “It appeals to me, to be always moving. At this stage I’m down to a suitcase and a guitar or two. It’s the idea that the journey is more important than the destination. Arrival is always the same but the journey is always different.”

His creative process is similarly spontaneous; akin to the improvisation of a jazz tune, with big ideas bubbling away below the surface of his consciousness before bursting forth almost fully formed. Bywater just has to “improvise on a theme I’ve had in there for a while. That’s when spectacular things happen.”

Realising that the description of his work as ‘spectacular’ is rather uncharacteristic for someone normally so self-effacing, he politely back-peddles. “But I’m never sure about my stuff. It’s not academic poetry,” he says, layering ‘academic’ with fake import. “I think that my writing appeals to people who don’t like poetry; I’m not so much a poet for the poetry society as for the bar. A poet for people who don’t read poetry.”

Whatever kind of poet he is, Bywater’s fascination with being on the road has led him to adopt the kind of peripatetic lifestyle that would leave a younger man (he was born in 1967) begging for a break. “Because I don’t have other routines, I have to listen to my underlying rhythms. Without getting too hippy trippy about it I think, ‘What shall I do next?’ and something comes up.”

Since 2011 those rhythms have taken him to Phnom Penh, France and then back again, sometimes writing a bit, touring Europe with the Space Project, sometimes going solo. Then there was the Krash Project, a two-man endeavour on French island La Reunion, which saw Bywater and his Space Project companion Alex playing to “fresh audiences in tiny bars overlooking the Indian Ocean”.

His musical style is multifaceted enough to encompass such different gigs, audiences and locations, redolent of chansonniers like Jacques Brel as well as Anglophonic troubadours Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Bywater of course sidesteps such laudatory comparisons: “It’s not like I see any link at all between what I do musically and Dylan. People see the harmonica rack and the guitar and assume my stuff is like Dylan, but I don’t think it’s anything like him.”

That isn’t to say Dylan hasn’t been a huge influence on Bywater. Bywater acknowledges he “fell pretty hard for Dylan” in his mid-teens, working his way through the classics onto Dylan’s obscurities and albums of the last decade, which Bywater considers among his best works. And like Dylan he delights in not playing by the rules, experimenting with electronica and dub, then going back to his acoustic roots before jumping off into spoken word poetry. “I’ll give everything a shot; there aren’t any rules. I’m just as comfortable playing solo at Riverside Bistro as I am playing rhythm with the Space Project.”

Bywater was there at the very beginning of the now legendary Cambodian Space Project. A compatriot of co-founder Julien Poulson, Bywater found himself sitting in behind Poulson and Srey Thy on their first gig more than three years ago. Since then he’s played regularly with the band, finding himself at the helm for a while at the close of 2010 (which he describes as “an interesting time”) and touring with them in 2012.

Since returning to Cambodia from the Krash Project, Bywater says he’s “rarely been so active, without having to hustle or anything!” The astonishment in his voice is audible. Taking advantage of this good fortune he’s accepted the gauntlet thrown down to him by The Lazy Drunks, the first band he ever played with in Phnom Penh, to become a bona fide frontman. “Their lead singer suddenly went back to England, and I already knew all the songs. I thought about it and I thought, ‘Here’s a real challenge, to be a real lead singer’. To connect with the audience on that level, I’ve never been very good at it. I always feel very self-conscious, but this is a chance to bring out the Steve-Tyler-Mick-Jagger thing inside.” And how is he working on bringing it out? For a moment Bywater looks nonplussed, then brightens. “Well, I’m going to wear a pink shirt…”

Scott Bywater: musician, poet, and definitely one of the least ordinary guys you’re likely to meet this year.

WHO: Scott Bywater
WHAT: Kind of a music guy. Writes a bit.
WHERE: Riverside Bistro, Sisowath Quay, and Rubies, St. 19 and 240
WHEN: Thursdays from 8pm (Riverside Birsto) and Sundays from 6pm (Rubies)
WHY: He’s extraordinary

 

 

Dish: Doggie style

A quick online search (keeping it investigative here at The Advisor HQ) makes shocking reading for dog-loving Phnom Penhites; there are, putatively, no dog-friendly eating establishments in the city. Apart from PyongYang North Korean Restaurant, of course, but that’s a whole different food review right there.

“Sorry!” gushes bringfido.com, with the kind of pseudo-chagrin in which the North American service industry specialises. “There are no pet-friendly restaurants in Phnom Penh. If you happen to know of a dog-friendly restaurant in Phnom Penh, use the form below to tell us about it and you could win a $25 restaurant.com gift certificate good at nearly 10,000 restaurants nationwide!” Unless you eat that $25 gift certificate, it looks like you and Fido might starve in this town.

But as Henry, Charles and Claude breakfasted at Brown Coffee and Bakery this week, things looked very different. Henry is a Brown regular, accompanying his human Laura Joy Kiddle almost daily for a cappuccino and a dandyish flirtation with fellow canines. Brown staff draw the line at letting animals inside their hallowed AC-ed halls, but they do smile kindly at your caffeine-crazed canines and exclaim ‘So cuuuuute!’ just enough to ensure you leave feeling like some sort of blushing bride from the censored pages of the Bestiary.

The Shop on Street 240 is Claude and Charles’ regular breakfast haunt, where they’re often joined by Subi, a matronly spaniel. Once again, the dogs are technically restricted to the outdoor area, although it’s not unknown for Claude to be found in dangerous propinquity to the patisserie counter. Staff are dog lovers and will tell you tales of their own much loved pooches; recklessly pretty Rithy has five dogs of his own and lavishes so much attention on the doggie diners that he has been known to leave Claude and Charles’ owner wishing momentarily she were less human and more canine.

Java is a terrific lunch option for you and your dog, because you can sit upstairs on the balcony and therefore cease to feel as though you’re spending your life in some sort of patio-ed purgatory. It’s the unending patience of the staff which makes your doggie dining experience here so charming: waiters run and chase your manic poodle progeny, remembering their names from visit to visit, solicitously enquiring after their health if you appear without the fluffy ones in tow, and assiduously providing drinking water and shady places for puppies to nod off.

If you feel like a more solitary lunch (let us not beat around the proverbial shrubbery: if you lunch at Java you may – nay will – have to converse with every single person you know and have ill-advisedly snogged at some point) then Nature And Sea on Street 278 welcomes dogs and people equally. Dogs more so in fact because the waitress is mad about them, and slightly less mad about having to schlep up and down in the tropical heat carrying cheese crepes all day. Doggies love to torment the resident cats up here overlooking Wat Langka, and since the kitchen is on a different level all those Health and Safety bores can rest assured there will be no ‘dog germs’ (which are in fact mythical) near your food.

Should you be lucky enough to score a date with a human in this town and would like to take your dog along to emphasise your fun and frolicsome nature (or just for protection; one never knows, after all) there are plenty of options. Local legend Yumi provides romance, Japanese izakaya-inspired delicacies and lashings of banoffie pie. Chef/manager/owner/all-round good-egg Caspar Von Hofmannsthal says: “As Yumi is a casual dining restaurant, we have many customers who bring their dogs with them. We do ask them to be on a lead so as not to disturb other guests and only dine in the garden for hygiene purposes. We are, however, happy to provide cool water for the dogs to wash down their meals with.” Charles disregarded the water rule entirely, but luckily the photographic evidence of his whisky sour rampage has been destroyed by his judicious mother.

Le Jardin, recent winner of The Advisor’s first annual poll of Best Place To Take Your Kids, is in fact also the best place to take your dog. That baby gate and sand pit were in fact (probably) put in place to keep your doggies safe and sabay while you quaff French wines, pretend to read Le Figaro and pretend, for some precious time at least, that you are not responsible for dogs.

If you’re in the mood for something a little more formal, Deco on Street 352 fits the bill of fare. Its large outdoor area and coo-coo-ca-choo ambience make it an equally good option for dogs and dating. Charles and Claude poodled their way inelegantly through succulent lamb burgers, sticky toffee puddings and negronis decadently, before falling off their bicycle in a totally unrelated incident on their wobbly way home. Deco was charming to the canine reprobates from start to finish and, once they’ve recovered from the Campari, Charles and Claude will certainly be returning for more.

So, we expect you shall at this moment be frantically taking up your pens and writing to bringfido.com to correct their errors. After all, folks, those $25 gift vouchers may be limited.

 

Dish: Dealing with the day after

Here at The Advisor we are, believe it or not, writers. And if there’s one thing writers know about, it’s drinking. Writing too, of course. But mainly drinking. From the beaded can of Angkor and the overpriced bottle of shiraz or rioja to the tequila, fags, vodka shots, hard drugs and frenetic sex with strangers, we know all about it.

But that, dear reader, is another story for another column. For today we wish to speak of drinking. Or more specifically the ramifications of drinking: the hangover. And who better to go to for advice on curing hangovers (For yes! They can be cured!) than that blushing doyenne of the brandy bottle, young Kingsley Amis?

An inveterate pisshead, Amis identified two facets to the hangover: the physical and the metaphysical. The perfect morning-after panacea, if it indeed exists, will attack both angles of your hangover. Ever at your service, we have scoured Phnom Penh to ensure you never again have to endure “that ineffable compound of depression… anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear of the future”.

Hangover food 1: Marmite

One reason many of us feel so bad the morning after a heavy drinking session is because alcohol depletes your system of essential nutrients, including B vitamins. A lack of B vitamins can cause anxiety and depression, so try munching on Marmite – a rich source of the vitamin B complex – to lift your mood. As an added benefit, Marmite has high sodium content which can help replace the salts lost through drinking alcohol. Try the savoury spread on toast for an added fix of carbs.

Hangover food 2: Watermelon

Not only does alcohol deplete your body of nutrients, it can also lead to low blood sugar levels, which may leave you feeling weak and shaky. To counteract this, try snacking on watermelon which is not just high in fructose but is also water-rich to boost hydration. On top of this, watermelon is high in many essential nutrients, including vitamin C, B-vitamins and magnesium.

Hangover food 3: Ginger

If too much boozing has left you feeling queasy, ginger is the perfect food to help settle your stomach and relieve nausea. While you may not feel much like chewing on the food in its original form, you could try adding some grated ginger to hot water for a ginger tea, blending it into a fresh fruit or vegetable juice, or snacking on ginger biscuits for a tummy soothing treat.

Hangover food 4: Eggs

Scrambled, fried or boiled, eggs are a popular hangover breakfast, and the good news is they are a great choice for beating the nastiest of hangovers. Firstly, eggs are extremely rich in protein, which helps raise mood-boosting serotonin levels, as well as reducing nausea. Furthermore, eggs are rich in an amino acid called cystine, which helps fight the alcohol-induced toxins contributing to your hangover.

Hangover food 5: Bananas 

Bananas are packed with potassium and magnesium, two of the minerals often depleted in our bodies when alcohol is consumed. A lack of potassium in the body can lead to nausea, weakness and tiredness, so stocking up on bananas can help reduce these classic hangover symptoms. As an added bonus bananas are natural antacids, so great for reducing stomach acid, and are good for providing a boost of energy if you have a busy day ahead.

Hangover food 6: Coconut juice

That thundering morning-after headache that feels like the publican used your brain as a trampoline is largely the result of dehydration, and few things are better than the juice of a young coconut to quell the thumping. Coconut water contains five electrolytes – three more than Gatorade – and the juice is similar enough to human blood that it can safely be used intravenously as a rehydration fluid. Furthermore, coconut water is low in sugar and calories and high in potassium, vitamin C and anti-oxidants, which boozing causes your body to shed.

What not to have: Hair of the dog

Unless you’re a committed aficionado of benders and blackouts, drinking more alcohol the morning after the night before is unlikely to genuinely improve your condition. Sure, a few pints might make you think you feel better, but only because you’re drunk again. And in such an inebriated state, you’re in no position to diagnose what condition you’re condition is in.

And, finally, any conversation about drinking, hangovers, cures and false remedies would be incomplete without a mention of Mongolia’s ancient hangover secret: pickled sheep eyes in tomato juice.
You definitely don’t want any of that.