Byline: Ronnie Boogaard

Time to get your fun-pants laundered, as the latest international comedy extravaganza from the smash-hit producers of the Pacific Solution gets set to touch down in wee Cambodia. Fresh from a sold-out tour of guano-groovy Nauru, the Australian Asylum Seeker Policy theatre company this season (or at some vague time soon) is proud to present: ?!

This splendid development might ordinarily provide me with the perfect opportunity to once again repackage the tired and ubiquitous ‘Peculiarities of Phnom Penh’ article from a fizzy fresh angle: a Westerner’s perspective of a Middle Eastern refugee’s perception of the city. What about all those crazy tuk tuk, huh? Allaahul Musta’aan!

But the oppo-pollies here have been leaking like a schooner en route to Oz, and the early word from the world’s richest woman was that the refugees will rather be resettled on some serious WTF island off the coast of Snooky. So without further ado, please allow me to cue the fish-out-of-water reinforcement of cultural stereotypes for comedy kicks rehash instead. Survivor Koh Rong, anyone? With Jeff Probst probing, those voted out of paradise will be forced to go back and live in Adelaide.

Although, ordinary reality television challenges like eating octopus intestines or negotiating a wacky obstacle course won’t really cut it with folk that have in actual reality-reality already voluntarily gobbled goat’s eyeballs and scaled landmine-strewn mountains to score their fifteen minutes. No, the clichéd plate of stomach-clutching worms will be of the hook variety, via those deep-fried Cambodian mystery meat balls served up at the local markets.

And the temporary immunity idol in the form of a single packet of penicillin will have to be earned by downing two-for-one all-day happy-hour Long Island Iced Teas made from backyard bootleg liquor and blindly determining through the veil of burkas who is the last to go legally blind. In the meantime, we’ll all keep schtum on the local Shisha ban.

It seems the Cambodian and Austrayn governments may be a tad confused regarding the variety of barang-asylum required for the Sihanoukville region, political for mental in this case, although it’s an admittedly easy mistake to make. Though on a brief political note, of the asylum-seekers that arrive in Australia by boat, the number found to be genuine refugees is routinely pushing above 90%. The other four people simply got lost on the way to their Agoda-booked chalet retreats in Austria.

And if anyone radicalised did happen to slip through the crab-nets, we can all be well rest-assured that Phnom Penh has absolutely no reasonable high-rise targets for suicide bombing that aren’t already empty shells dotted along Monivong. That is, other than the Japanese Bridge, of which two have been strategically provided just to confuse those crazy martyrs sent on assignment. Otherwise, we have a cheap solution on hand for the slated demolition of Sorya.

Indeed, it’s been alleged that some idealistic rascals have already previously attempted to stir up some local support, but that the Cham really couldn’t be arsed skipping nap-time for a relatively small amount of virgins to cover an entire eternity. And a good thing: could you imagine the amount of explosive ordinance one could pack in a taxi-van with the aid of the
average Khmer?

At this point a brief disclaimer may be due to avoid any conflict of interests, although I’m a nihilistic grump and therefore technically not interested in anything. I’ve just taken on a role as the letter-writing programme coordinator for an asylum-seeker support network. That is all. No punchline. It sometime sucks being stereotyped as a satirist.
But if you want to write a letter to a detainee potentially coming to Cambodia, pre-book
a taxi perhaps, be sure to get in touch. I’ll send it on to Christmas Island, where I hear they serve egg-nog for breakfast every day
of the year.

My kid brother spat on me the other day. While I briefly contemplated the curious legalities of thwacking a six-year-old sibling, whether it might be considered actual quote ‘child abuse’ or simply my Flying Spaghetti Monster-given right to fraternal roughhousing, the grubby little germ-merchant pleaded his innocence. He was practicing his beatboxing. Really, where do kids learn this shit?

According to my Cambodian counterfeit Britannica, beats were discovered shortly after early hominids invented the stick and combined it with a primitive impulse to hit stuff. Several billion years later, advanced civilisation finally heralded an end to the cruel exploitation of innocent surfaces with the advent of the digitised box – before almost immediately realising we could do that crazy thang with our own gobs all along.

And while ol’ Chomsky would unlikely be impressed with our innate ability to push nonsensical noises past our lips, beatboxing is undoubtedly cool. Just check cadet Larvelle Jones catching crooks with robot-clicks in the Police Academy heptalogy if you have any doubts. Or maybe you caught Khmer beatboxers Chan and Khy bustin’ out the bleeps and boops at the Lightbox in Kampot recently? Yes, Kampot.

Kampot’s a-happenin’. And for those in the know who really want to get noticed getting down with the cool kids in town, the Kampot & Kep Notice Board for Expats and Locals Facebook page is where it’s at. Like those beats that came before it, the forum mimics the rhythms of real life; here, the quaint, binary coded simulacrum of paradisiacal small-town existence where someone has kindly airbrushed out the inconvenient interaction with backpackers.

It’s the perfect tool for keeping in touch with the community during the siesta hours between pub crawls. And with more than 3,000 members, the board has already attracted the attention of digital blow-ins from afar. Don from elsewhere says: ‘When I get on Facebook I rush to the Kampot & Kep Notice Board like people used to flip to the funny pages as soon as the daily paper arrived. Are all you people as mad as this forum suggests?’ Yes, Don. We are.

Mysterious empty Tabasco-bottle call-outs, edifying intercultural discussions on weed-whackers and whipper-snippers, lost hula-hoop reunions and presumably unrelated anti-paedophile petitions, the bewildering distribution of backgammon-porn, and enough tantalising restaurant food-snaps to make an amateur Jamie Oliver cream his cannoli. I let the latter guide my nutritional intake. Fifibraten mit spätzle on special? Sure, my triglyceride-count could probably do with a kaempferol boost.

But it’s not all sunshine and königsberger-klopse on the KAKNFEAL. There was the one heady thread discussing the merits of Vietnamese visa-waivers and Mick Jagger’s post-70 output that got a tad tetchy. And while it mightn’t be the South-Central of Khmer 440, boy-o, beware of a grumpy riposte from our expert rib-peddling unofficial expat-mayor if you plan on sneaking an advertisement flogging ‘business solutions’ past the administrative censors.

If there is the occasional pause in pleasantries, however, I suspect it’s simply a case of mango madness meeting doolally tap, with any notable spikes in communal keyboard angst attributable to the monsoonal wet-season weather lessening the small-town options of already fuck-all to do besides sit around in a pub and talk about the weather. If I cared enough, I could probably cross-reference the data with Stan, the board’s resident meteorologist who posts the daily rainfall stats and saves me from ever having to open the curtains.

And as with any solid close-knit community when things start to go a little awry, we eventually all lovingly band together again by blaming outsiders like Don. That was until I roughly reached this point of the article, ready to wrap it up with some lyrical waxing on why it all works, when the notice board went into complete meltdown and bickered itself out of existence over the course of a couple days. We now talk to each other in person. Turns out we didn’t need a box to do it all along.

So I’ve been thinking about moving to Mondulkiri. One of those humble, cottage-type set-ups in the forest with a pet goat and freshly planted beer garden. But now I’m wondering if being overwhelmed by mould would be considered a quietly noble death. Not from, like, internal yeast or anything. No, no. Wall mould.

Can you pre-medicate against the threat of fungification? It’s too hot here to be hammock-bound in an ebola-chic hazchem suit, and attempting to scrub at it would be like headbutting a hornets’ nest – all those angry, activated air-borne spores buzzing about, looking for a landing site in my lungs. Safer to just pop down to the friendly Chinese pill emporium and purchase some chemical prophylactics.

The problem is my Mandarin is a little rusty. And the last English-labelled imports I bought had ‘Only to be sold in Cambodia and Bangladesh’ written on the back, which is rather counterproductive for a packet of anti-anxiety drugs. I suppose I could just blind-select a pick ‘n’ mix goodie bag and one of the random meds might keep me mould-safe, while my mouth fills with foamy blood-bubbles from an imploding liver. Surely can’t do any greater hepatic harm than whatever I do to it myself most days of the week.

And while I’m there I can pick up some extra mystery packs to empty into a lucky dip bowl for the guests at my cottage-warming party. The Cialis Dude might fortuitously hit it off with the Rohypnol Chick. Though I can picture it now: the boring guy next to me complaining that his expectorant hasn’t come on, just before Immunosuppressant Girl dampens the vibe by dying on the spot from my unattended black-rot.

It’s easy to forget the pharmaceutical luxuries of life in Cambodia. Australian Customs recently fined me for some un-prescribed sleeping pills stowed away in my luggage. I considered swallowing the evidence, but if those bullied-kid officials are willing to stick a finger up your arse while you’re conscious, image what they might get up to if you were knocked out on a bucketful of benzos. Cambodia, on the other hand, cleverly offers up prescription-free candy shops to counter its incompetent medical care.

But the pharma free-for-all can become a bit of a problem when coupled with an expat paranoia over the exotic third-world pathogens lurking alongside the country’s first-world internet access. Since residing in the Kingdom I’ve been self-diagnosed and do-it-yourself treated for an embarrassing case of restless-leg syndrome, encephalitic West Nile Virus, an anaplastic astrocytoma or two, and a suspected clump of ingrown oesophagus-cilia which was really a soggy grain of basmati that had spelunked its way to that mysterious cavern at the back of the tonsil-flaps before being finally hacked to safety.

I also once symptom-clicked myself to a positive gout verdict after my full-blooded Khmer doctor helpfully diagnosed a steadily ballooning leg as muscle cramp. That imperialistic cankle, however, turned out to be a genuinely life-threatening potential thromboembolism that required urgent staring down with a series of blood-thinning beer towers and a special pair of stockings. My own mini-Oktoberfest.

It also earned me an ultrasound. And naturally, when the sonographer’s back was turned for a sec to fetch me a lollipop, I of course rubbed my belly in lube to take a peek at my inner pulp-mass of post-masticated Mr Potato Chips. That’s when I met Patrick, the Postcolonial Tape-worm. The internet suggests Patrick’s ammonia-laced effluent may be causing my paranoia, while in the very same breath stating that he’s almost certainly been laying little egg sacs in my neo-cortex.

But the biggest issue with self-diagnostic websites is that I always fit the profile, no matter what I type in; smoking contributes to absolutely every conceivable ailment, while irritability and irregular bowel movements are almost universal symptoms. One second I’m annoyed that I can’t take a shit, and a few key-strokes later, all signs point to sudden infant death syndrome.

Stress is another all-too-common factor. Smoking and stress. Causes everything. But one can’t help getting worked up reading such scaremongering and so you light up to deal with the tension and sure enough you’re soon coughing away in confirmation of that suspected tuberculosis contraction. You just can’t escape the self-fulfilling psychosomatic suggestiveness of it all. Are you suffering from uterus pain? Gee, digital doc, now that you mention it…

According to the Victims of Mould Support Group on Facebook, exposure can lead to suicidal thoughts. But it’s not like my musings on succumbing to wall-scum mean I plan on feeding myself to the stuff for the sake of some aesthetically fatalistic Shakespearian departure. Then I wonder if such a death has ever been recorded among the many trillions to date. I could invent a new death. They would have to pick ‘other’ on the computer at the morgue until IT came by. Sacrificing my life in the name of invention sounds quietly noble.

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.

RESOLUTION 404: UN HQ, New York; 2014.

The prince formerly known as Obama turns to his trusted aide. “Sambo, what’s that cat’s name again?” “Which one, bong?” “The one from Uzbekgasland or something like that.” “Prime minister name is Shavkat Mirziyoyev,” says Sambo, before belting out the Uzbeki state anthem and working the room with a plastic basket full of secret NSA dossiers strung around his neck. Two for six dollar, bargain for you. He’s not having much luck on the hustle. Everyone’s read the selection already.

Three years earlier: Prince Obama is addressing the UN Security Council on the grave and pressing matter of punters buying bracelets off street kids in Cambodia. A consensus is reached despite delays for French demands the resolution be issued in la langue français. The general idea: it has to stop. The kids will be encouraged to skip school. And besides, it’s past their bedtimes. Sacré bleu!

Cut to Pasteur Street, Phnom Penh. I breathe a huge sigh of relief. What an anal-nuisance it once was when those unkempt urchins rolled by, forcing me to blindly fish in my pants pockets for a 500 riel note because I know there’s a stack of US fiddies floating about in there as well and I don’t want to look like a knob pulling out the entire wad and handing over a whole 12.5 cents of it. Cheers, UN; now I can guzzle my beer tower sans guilt and conduct my philandering in peace.

And of course I’ll be sure to conveniently blur the lines of the UN edict and extend the do-not-engage advice to anyone employed in the panhandling sector. So to the wandering widows wielding scales, thanks anyway, but I really didn’t want to know my weight after downing six Anchor jugs and mauling a Katie Perry with Chuck Norris chaser in the first place.

Ignore the poor and solve institutionalised poverty. So, so simple. But surely the global community can come together in a cuddly group-hug and do better still? UN Proposition 404: Why not send disadvantaged Khmer folk with their certain intrinsic skills around the world to solve those pesky problems the rest of us can’t? It should also free up some street space for those beardy asylum peeps Abbott’s about to pitch this way. A win-win for all concerned.

The Khmer certainly know how to work a hammock. Think Lehmann Bros, circa ‘07. String five dozing, unemployed hammock-bound bongs up side-by-side in the office and super-stressed Wall Street execs can pull one end of the chain back à la those ‘80s clackety balls and let go to calmly watch as they hypnotically cascade off one other and back again with a brain-soothing ka-chung. GFC averted.

Social unrest kicking off in Kiev? Disgruntled mobs refusing to budge from city squares? No problem. Send in the idle wet-season Khmer wedding DJs and see those lazy ne’er-do-wells disperse in no time. Your Bangladeshi garment factory is attracting unfortunate scrutiny for shoddy construction? Some Jenga-domme bar girls on hand will have that engineering up to scratch in a flash. Bothersome Guantanamo detainees won’t break, despite endless hours of forced listening to Lars Ulrich whine about illegal downloads? Time to introduce your crack team of interrogative Khmer tuk tuk drivers. What’s your name? Where you come from? Where you going? You’ll have full confessions as to the Afghani conspiracy to kill both JFK and JR in minutes.

Stereotypes may carry a kernel of truth, but they don’t necessarily speak the whole cob or caboodle. Some Khmer are lazy. I would be too if I was obliged to serve drunken buffoons like me 16 hours a day for $80 a month. Those nosey locals do tend to ask where you’re coming from and going a lot. But so does every conversationally mind-numbing backpacker I encounter when they mistake me for one of their own simply because my flip-flops are constructed from cardboard Angkor-carton cut-outs. Bar girls are good at Jenga. Fuck knows why.

The point is, now I can be a do-nothing do-gooder and righteously tsk-tsk over my gin and tonic at those ignorant tourists buying books from bludging amputees. It’ll just encourage them to forgo cellular regeneration. But perhaps instead of lecturing on the evils of offering bananas to orphans, the world would be better served if the UN focused on the more insidious specifics of the problem: i.e. idiotic people buying Paulo Coelho books.

So next time you see a street kid selling newspapers, don’t be afraid to pick up your complimentary copy of Advisor and keep those Mr Potato Chips coming.

Icat-sat recently. Was kitten-sitting, actually. This can be problematic if you’re under the inf’ well before lunch. It wasn’t so much the responsible care thingo (you don’t need great heights of neural ingenuity to pour a few Whiskas on the floor), but more so that I kept terminologically tripping up and telling everyone I was ‘kid-napping’ for the evening and had to go prepare a special bed from some old underpants and an empty beer-carton. Cat-nap, kit-sit, kid-nap – what’s in a name, huh?

The kitten in question came into my care before she’d been dubbed, and was delivered with a loose suggestion I could assign a designation. When it comes to kitty nomenclature I’ve recently kept to a dictator theme, ‘cause, well, you know, cats can be kind of demanding-like.

For the last puss me and a miss picked up in the Penh, I floated the puntastically funny names ‘Colonel Garfieldi’, ‘Fidel Catstro’ and ‘Chairman Meow’. It was made quite silently clear that a compromise would be required. We settled on ‘Lenin’ (secretly ‘Cat-imir Lenin’) – which misguided, dyslexic hippy types think is a nod to John of the give-peace-a-chance brigade rather than a reference to the Russian Marxist of massacre fame.

Lenny came into puberty at a very young age. This is known as ‘queening’ in the cat-person community, and quite unfortunately so for those mild-mannered amateur felinologists with old-lady glasses Googling away on the net. After conducting my own research, I firmly believe Len’s precocious early onset puberty to be an epigenetic result of the Khmer Rouge regime and not the cheese-and-Mr-Potato-chips diet I fed her as a child.

As the Catholic Church would do well to learn, sequestering young pussy ain’t smart. Firstly, there’s the cat-shat-on-the-couch issue – which, for those of you playing at home, one would commonsensibly scoop up with a napkin first before going the remains with a hose, right? Then it’s just plain awkward when she starts backing in with arched haunches just as your Cambodian landlady pops ‘round for a cuppa. Those crazy barang, hey? But the endless brain-rape yowling? I’d sincerely prefer a Khmer wedding party permanently camped in my kitchen.

Anyone who’s ever endured the twisted mindfuckery of being holed-up with a cat on heat must surely appreciate that the thought of strangling a couple of kittens might suddenly seem like a sweet cuddle-date with a koala. So, as it was, the decision was simple when several days of severe sleep-deprivation climaxed in an ugly moment of late-night madness involving a pair of oven mitts. Swing open the shutters and leave her to the depraved whims of the village bong toms.

Thus Lenny did beget Idi, Chavez and Fidel. The latter was renamed by her adoptive mama after a non-dictatorial pagan god-pet because ‘Fiddy’ was deemed ‘not feminine enough’ for a she-cat. And that’s the rub: how to brand this new girl-kitty according to my cat n’ autocrat schemata when there’s a distinct global dearth of qualified chick-tators about?

Imelda (Meow-cos?) came to mind. But it’s a shame on the whole of society when we’re forced to widen the net to include the Wives-And-Girlfriends of despots due to a lack of equal opportunities for genocidally minded lasses. ‘Maggie’ was the obvious answer: The Iron Tabby. Obvious until Maggie’s real parents returned from their trip and provisionally named her ‘Frida’ instead. So I cattily continue to campaign and confuse the poor miss by calling her Mags whenever I’m around. She’s since been renamed Yoko in what may be a compromise. Oh-no and Lenin together again. I’m reasonably satisfied with the dictator undertones of the tag, but this fuzzy munschkin will always be Maggie to me.

Strangely, I haven’t been asked to cat-sit since. For those considering it, I’ve previously killed an innocent turtle and turned a white prize-poodle an irreversible shade of brown. But, seriously, I’ve never kidnapped anyone unwilling.

If an emu shat on your head, you wouldn’t wipe it off with a sheet of A4, right? When it comes to dealing with those expats championing ad nauseum the local squirtatious methods of post-latrine hygiene, we’ve all heard analogies featuring an unfortunate fauna-faeces-human union followed by spiel on the lunacy of processed tree-pulp for the overprivileged. Am I also expected to dry my eyes with a water pistol when being bored to tears?

So, the great bum-gun debate of the ‘Bodge: wadded serviettes versus water streams. Trodden your custom Beaut’ Shoes in BKK poodle-doo? Where’s my copy of last week’s Advisor? Only joking. But then rinsing a spot of dog shite off your boot with a splash from the tap shouldn’t leave you nursing a nasty case of bacterial vaginosis or ballanital chancroids.

And there’s the sweaty crux: the admixing of communal hose-water with moist privates in a sticky-as-shit climate is predictably going to cause some unpleasant issues downstairs. Except for perhaps some of the patrons of Street 104, who among us would genuinely consider converting their crotch into a walking Petri-dish if it were put to them like that?

So, while male-misleading wet spots on couch cushions and chance encounters with water pressure enough to blast the clit off a moo-cow are certainly concerns, there are genuine issues that itchy trips to the corner store for counterfeit antibiotics aren’t going to fix.

There are also some words that I can barely bring myself to utter: ‘yeast’ and ‘discharge’ springing vividly to mind. But I have it on good authority from a super happy midget mate o’ mine that local expat lady folk are remedially abandoning knickers altogether (say ‘Hey!’ for me if you see him hanging around the Sorya escalators). On a personal note, I’d imagined it would be a permanent deal when my pimply arse finally buggered off with my pubescence.

Toilet paper is our friend, especially the variety with dolphins and sea shells inexplicably printed on it. Only clowns choose to ride unicycles when there’s a Honda on offer. Yet this all said, I’m actually a proponent of the bum gun. You see, I’m of a convoluted East-meets-West routine that employs both water and roll. Fancy that. I just don’t feel the need to tell everyone about it. Well, didn’t until the Advisor offered me a can of Mr Potato chips to do precisely that.

The thing is I can’t help but notice a recent rapid-fire righteousness strafing the country’s restrooms, and suddenly it seems as though, in Cambodian expat circles, Kleenex is the Idi Amin of anal cleanliness. Graffiti addendum to a polite sign at one well-known expat haunt: ‘Just take away the paper and the idiots won’t block the toilet.’

OK, but note to publicans: I want to drink beer and you want to sell it to me. You also don’t want your dunny blocked. Fair enough.

But while some may think me prudish when it comes to my orificial effluence, how can you ever be sure if you’re upwind or downwind of a grizzly bear when leaving your scat-scent in an uncovered wastebasket? Bins with lids, please. And then maybe idiots won’t block your toilets. But, really, why such hostile latrinalia from punters not facing the plumbing bill?

The desire to be more local loiters in the shady netherworld of psychology, but that we expats all newly arrived in Cambodia at some point is a metaphysical fact. Ask Stephen Hawking. Bum-gun snobbery and dodgy street-food dining seem to be the favourite domains of the desperate-to-be-more-local crowd – subjects that tend to go hand in hand in the end. But I expect some of this fascism by arse-blasting enthusiasts is coming from those who may have once waded in with their own trepidation.

I’m comfortable enough to admit I still haven’t mastered the provincial pork-and-rice bus-stop squat with mosquito-breeding scoop bucket. Do you take off your pants entirely? And then what, bust out a downward-dog to outmanoeuvre Newton?

I plan my trips accordingly. Staying in Phnom Penh? Sure, brave the plea-sakou and pretend to be super local. But on the bus to Monduls tomorrow? Mac ‘n’ cheese tonight, please…