Swimming To Cambodia

In 1983, lanky New England actor Spalding Gray arrived in Cambodia to play the role of the US ambassador’s aide in Roland Joffé’s film The Killing Fields. Over the course of the following two years, Gray perfected a monologue about his experiences in Southeast Asia and in 1986 Jonathan Demme, who found fame directing Silence Of The Lambs, filmed it at New York City’s Performing Garage. The set of Swimming To Cambodia consists of little more than a table, a pair of maps and a background painting of sea and clouds, but Gray’s ramblings encompass everything from journalistic egos to a curious row with his New York neighbour. Interspersed with harrowing details of Cambodia’s history are tales of marijuana binges, sex shows in the bordellos of Bangkok and Gray’s own neurotic fear of sharks, remembered only when he finds himself swimming in an uncharted sea.

WHO: Spalding Gray
WHAT: Swimming To Cambodia screening
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 4pm July 12
WHY: “Who needs metaphors for hell or poetry about hell? This really happened, here on this earth.” – Spalding Gray

Joe Wrigley: Urban cowboy

Stetsons and spurs are hardly common sights in the British midlands, yet the post-industrial landscape of Stoke-on-Trent – more commonly associated with football hooligans – has somehow spawned this thoughtful, softly spoken country singer clad in jeans, plaid shirt and, yes, a slightly battered cowboy hat. Joe Wrigley, the 33-year-old former bass player from “now moderately successful indie band” Fists, was once told by his aunt that he couldn’t sing. So much for all that. “To be fair, I couldn’t sing – in a normal, classical sense. Over time I managed to evoke some kind of voice which ended up being quite different. The songs I like and can sing happen to be country songs, because they lend themselves to a thin, nasally voice: Hank Williams, Jimmy Rogers, Johnny Cash. I wrote a song about Johnny Cash, that simplicity and rawness; that’s what I always wanted to sound like. I knew I could do simple, direct songs, stuff from the heart, but not flowery songs; definitely Hank Williams. I’m starting to learn more about where I am, so I’ve started to write about that a little bit… I wrote a song called Shiva recently, which is trying to get at some of the darkness of this place. My writing’s quite figurative; a little abstract. There is a lot of love songs, a couple of funny songs and a couple of songs that are so vague I don’t even know what they’re about yet, to be honest.”

WHO: Joe Wrigley
WHAT: Country originals and covers
WHERE: The Village, #1 Street 360
WHEN: 7:30pm July 11
WHY: British bloke in a cowboy hat!

Sleepwalking Through The Mekong

The Kinks’ Ray Davies hailed them “a cross between Led Zeppelin and Blondie”; Matt Dillon asked them to record a Cambodian version of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now for his directorial debut, City Of Ghosts, and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett picked One Thousand Tears Of A Tarantula for the number two slot on his Rolling Stone Best Music Of The Decade ballot. Dengue Fever, the Los Angeles-based sextet who take ’60s Cambodian psyche rock and stuff it through a blender, are at risk of becoming accustomed to such high praise. The LA Weekly declared the band Best New Artist; Mojo counts them among its Top 10 World Music Releases; their songs have featured on everything from CSI: Las Vegas to True Blood. The band’s beginnings on a dusty road en route from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh in the late 1990s have long been the stuff of legend. And today, this extraordinary ensemble is chiefly responsible for introducing global audiences to a lesser-known Cambodia; the Cambodia long obscured from international eyes by the pall of murderous Maoists. As Mark Jenkins writes in The Washington Post: “Imagine relaxing in a dive in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, circa 1965, brushing elbows with off-duty soldiers, local gangsters and Western diplomats as a hip band plays a mix of rock, soul, jazz, surf music, traditional Cambodian tunes and Henry Mancini and John Barry spy-movie motifs.” Powerful stuff, not just on the global stage but where it all began – as evidenced in the documentary Sleepwalking Through The Mekong, which charts Dengue Fever’s first visit to Cambodia as a band back in 2005. During one sequence, filmed in The White Building where the band jammed with residents, a music teacher turns to the camera and says in Khmer: “When I saw them performing with my students I was just in awe. Nothing could compare to it. I knew they were foreigners, but when they played all these Khmer songs there was no class difference. We were all equal.”

WHO: Dengue Fever
WHAT: Sleepwalking Through The Mekong screening
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 4pm July 11
WHY: “Underground people are getting hip to world music, and the world music side is getting hip to how you don’t have to have a dreadlock wig and Guatemalan pants to be cool” – Senon Williams (bass), Dengue Fever

Paper offerings

Max Quinlan is a PI on the trail of a shady Australian businessman who’s gone to ground in Southeast Asia. Quinlan, a half-Vietnamese, half-Australian ex-cop, has only recently taken up the detective mantle but he quickly becomes embroiled in post-war shenanigans in a 1996 Phnom Penh that is populated by shady characters, both foreign and local. He teams up with a Cambodian journalist and trawls back in time, through the Untac years, the long civil war, the genocide and the Killing Fields, the Vietnamese liberation and the ensuing civil war.

Quinlan is a contradictory guy, an ex-copper who blushes when spoken to by an Asian woman but can’t get his clothes off quick enough with a girl from Central America. He is in almost-denial of his Asian heritage and he absorbs Cambodia’s tragic history from a number of sources like a sponge without ever falling into the cynicism one might expect from his kind.

There is plenty of action in Ghost Money (the title refers to the sheets of paper or paper crafts burnt as ancestral offerings in Chinese tradition), especially in the second half of the book, as Quinlan edges closer to Cambodia’s heart of darkness, the nexus between a beleaguered Khmer Rouge and shameless foreign businessmen – the last game in town, in this instance Pailin, a last Khmer Rouge hold-out near the Thai border, at the time an independent economic zone that financed itself by selling gem stones and offering every vice known to man, precisely the kind of thing the Cambodian revolution had tried to eradicate only a couple of decades earlier.

Writing a crime novel set in this sad and violent Cambodia without delving into the country’s extreme history seems impossible. Nette knows his shit when it comes to the bloody convolutions of the Southeast Asian kingdom and spins a gripping yarn of greed and madness in the late 20th century. While feeding the reader with the horrors of our time, he also finds the space to skillfully reward us with the conventions of the genre – memorable femmes fatale, effective bad guys (not just one), fast action and lively dialogue. Quinlan, our man in Cambodia, beaten and pushed, cornered and outgunned, takes it all in his stride, ready for a sequel to Ghost Money, apparently.

Ghost Money, by Andrew Nette, is available now from Amazon.com as an eBook for $1.15.

Ancient wisdom, modern world

“The natural world is our home. It is not necessarily sacred or holy. It is simply where we live. It is therefore in our interest to look after it. This is common sense. But only recently have the size of our population and the power of science and technology grown to the point that they have a direct impact on nature. To put it another way, until now, Mother Earth has been able to tolerate our sloppy house habits. However, the stage has now been reached where she can no longer accept our behaviour in silence. The problems caused by environmental disasters can be seen as her response to our irresponsible behaviour. She is warning us that there are limits even to her tolerance.” – His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics For The New Millennium

…..

At precisely 14:46 Japan Standard Time on March 11 2011, roughly 70km east of the Oshika Peninsula of Tohoku, Mother Earth finally ran out of patience with us, her human inhabitants. Furiously shaking the floor of the Pacific Ocean in a fit of vexation, she let loose the fifth-largest earthquake in modern history. Towering tsunamis more than 40 metres high tore through the 6,852 islands of the Japanese archipelago, leaving in their sodden wake level 7 meltdowns at three nuclear reactors and nearly 16,000 people dead or dying.

So powerful was the seismic shift triggered by her rage that it bumped the planet an estimated 10cm to 25cm on its axis, moving Honshu – Japan’s main island – a full 2.4 metres east. But that seismic shift extended beyond the purely physical. Aghast at the horrors unfolding before his eyes, one of Japan’s most distinguished choreographers felt his very understanding of humanity begin to topple. Having produced 55 performances in 35 countries over a period of 30 years, Hiroshi Koike – a quiet, thoughtful man who pauses to consider each response before articulating it – promptly dissolved his Pappa Tarahuma dance company. The time had come to contemplate higher things: namely, the pursuit of a better world.

Sitting cross-legged in the lotus position, perched atop a red plastic chair, Hiroshi moves barely a muscle for a full 75 minutes: a hardly noticeable nod here; a fleeting hand gesture there. Before him, on a floor coated in black rubber dance mats, seven performing artists duck, weave, tumble and spin with balletic grace as a large speaker blares out everything from white noise to punk rock and back. Slightly behind him and to the left, a young Khmer musician sits amid a tangle of traditional Cambodian instruments, his haunting melodies occasionally interrupting the recorded cacophony.

Here, in the shadow of a huge circus tent opposite the National Assembly, an Indian epic is being played out. Only this performance is no relic, rather an attempt to build a bridge between ancient Asian wisdom and the idiosyncrasies of the modern world in which we live. The keystone in this existential viaduct almost defies comprehension: an ancient Sanskrit poem made up of almost 100,000 couplets, the Mahabharata (‘Great epic of the Bharata dynasty’) is roughly seven times the length of ancient Greek poet Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey combined and is considered as significant as the complete works of Shakespeare and/or the Bible.

For generations, this particular epic – chiselled onto the walls of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, and companion to the Ramayana – served as the foundation for religion, philosophy, politics and law in Asian cultures. Decipher the meaning of this monumental text and you can break free from all evil, legend has it. It’s with such promise in mind that Hiroshi, a former TV director, is repurposing the story for a 21st century audience to pose one rather pivotal question: What does it mean to be human and alive?

“I was so shocked by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant problems,” says the choreographer during a rare quiet moment post-rehearsal. “We have to change our ideas, the structure of our societies, our philosophy. I dissolved my company and tried to make a new bridge project – there are many kinds of bridge I want to build up, for example between ancient times and modern times. We need these bridges between the ancient world, this world and future times. We need to go beyond what has come before, to open our minds. After March 2011, I reconsidered the relationship between humans and nature; traditional culture and modern culture; this world and other worlds. We have to think about what it means to be human. We need to change our philosophy, so we have to talk with ourselves: what is our philosophy? What are humans? What are animals? What is this world? How do all these things work together?”

On the surface, the Mahabharata might seem an unusual vessel for such rigorous self-examination: its mass of mythological and didactic material swirls around a central heroic narrative detailing the battle for sovereignty between warring factions of cousins, the Kauravas (the ‘bad’ side) and the Pandavas (the ‘good’ side). Set sometime before 500BC, this long-winded tale of Hindu war is believed to have been primarily authored by the sage Vyasa (with a little help from his friends, of course).

The story begins when the blindness of Dhritarashtra, the elder of two princes, causes him to be passed over in favour of his brother Pandu as king on their father’s death. But a curse prevents Pandu from fathering children and his wife asks the gods – Dharma, the wind, Indra and the Ashvins – to father children in Pandu’s name.

The bitterness that develops between the cousins as a result forces the Pandavas to leave the kingdom when their father dies. During their exile the five jointly marry Draupadi – born out of a sacrificial fire, who Arjuna wins by shooting an arrow through a row of targets – and meet their cousin Krishna, friend and companion. The Pandavas return to the kingdom but are again exiled to the forest, this time for 12 years, when Yudhishthira loses everything in a game of dice with the eldest of the Kauravas.

The feud culminates in a series of great battles on the field of Kurukshetra (north of Delhi, in Haryana state). The Kauravas are annihilated and, on the victorious side, only the five Pandava brothers and Krishna survive. Krishna dies when a hunter, who mistakes him for a deer, shoots him in his one vulnerable spot – his foot – and the brothers set out for Indra’s heaven. One by one they fall along the way, Yudhishthira alone reaching the gates of heaven. After further tests of his faith, he is finally reunited with his brothers and Draupadi, as well as his enemies, the Kauravas, to bask in perpetual bliss.

But this text is about more than myths and legends: equally, it’s an examination of dharma, or Hindu moral law. These much revered codes of conduct – including the proper conduct of a king, of a warrior, of an individual living in times of calamity and of a person seeking to obtain freedom from rebirth – are exposed as so subtly conflicting that at times the hero cannot help but violate them, no matter what choice he makes.

And therein lies its relevance to all of humanity, a relevance director Peter Brook emphasised by using an international cast in his nine-hour-long 1985 stage play – an overtly ambitious endeavour that raised more than a few thespian eyebrows at the time. Hiroshi’s cast, by contrast, is proudly pan-Asian: four Cambodians, two Japanese, one Malaysian. Between them, the seven performing artists play a plethora of roles – up to five per dancer – an effect achieved on stage through the rather cunning use of lightning-quick costume changes; the ingenious deployment of masks and subtle alterations in movement and mood.

Glistening with sweat in the humid afternoon air, the female lead squats at the edge of one of the mats and offers up a cheery ‘Hello!’ Chumvan Sodhachivy, better known as Belle, plays the parts of Draupadi, Bakasura following, Ganga and Kuru. “We play many roles, so we have to change very quickly: the feeling and also the action,” says this graceful Cambodian dancer. “It’s quite a challenge – and we’ve only been rehearsing for one month and one week. This performance has many layers: many different kinds of things are mixed together. The challenge for me personally is in the last scene, when I have to scream. Koyano Tetsuro taught me the technique because I’m really bad with screaming, but he wanted it. Normally the girl is always sweet and when something happens to her she is quiet and crestfallen, but for this performance he wanted to completely change that: you have to open your heart and scream.”

Koyano, a rubber-faced, Japanese-born specialist in Balinese masked dancing who plays four separate roles in the performance, beams at her side – apparently enjoying having his facial expressions clearly visible for once (“His eyes are so big!” exclaims Hiroshi). “We Asians have wisdom from the old ways about how we can best live with nature,” he says. “In Japan, we value this. Now we have to redefine it and recreate it for this modern world. It’s not only about performing arts. I studied a lot of philosophy as well in Balinese culture. We chose the Mahabharata because it is the greatest story in Asia. The story is a source of art, a source of philosophy, a source of society – everything. For example, in Bali they use this Mahabharata story in the famous shadow puppet shows. Before, they didn’t have any schools in which to educate their children so people would go to shadow puppet shows. In the Mahabharata story, it talks about many important philosophies, wisdom and how people can live together in society and co-exist with nature. This is a form of education as well.”

WHO: Amrita Performing Arts
WHAT: Mahabharata dance performance
WHERE: National Theatre, #173 Sangkat Toul Svay Prey I (behind Spark Club, off Mao Tse Tung Blvd.)
WHEN: 6:30pm July 12 & 13
WHY: We are all custodians of an increasingly beleaguered Mother Earth

The new Jedi?

Every great civilisation has its lore and legend and if history has anything to say about it, Japan is no different. Legend has it that the archipelago was created by a cold steel blade (seriously). So it’s no surprise that swords became a trademark of nobility – or at the very least badassery – in Japanese culture.

These elite sword-carrying feudal lords eventually became the highest ranking social class; so steeped in spirituality, discipline and the aforementioned badassery that they remained so for 700 years. Nevertheless, time passed and things changed. Warring states have been replaced by mainstream media and feudal lords by auto-tuned pop stars. We need a new type of samurai these days. Plus, being able to lop heads off at will isn’t a skill most folks need anyway.

Enter DJ Samurai.

The enemy of anything conventional, ordinary or remotely mainstream, this young Japanese-born and Vietnamese-bred musical Jedi packs an arsenal not of two katanas but a laundry list of artistic talents. A self-proclaimed DJ/rapper/poet/novelista/dramatist, DJ Samurai is an enigma at best. To get a better idea of the man behind the beats, I set out to find him.

Musically, DJS is a mash-up of influences. Sifting through his list of recent compilations, you can hear traces of the modal styles of Nujabes; the roughneck in-your-face attitude of smiff-n-wessun; dashes of drum ‘n’ bass and even the chant-down-Babylon undertones of Marley and Tosh. Run his lyrics through a translator and you will notice the presence of haiku-like floweriness lumped together with statements about modern day socialism and global togetherness. Watch his videos and you’ll see a fun-loving guy who enjoys the company of b-boys and pretty Vietnamese women. Type his name into YouTube and you’re liable to see a Wu-Tang style of delivery from a short Asian fellow in a full-sized Pikachu suit… in Vietnamese (I cannot make this stuff up).

Nevertheless, Samurai is more than just a talker: he uses his music as a vehicle for youngsters in Saigon, namely the young up-and-coming hip-hoppers who don’t quite fit in with the social mould of the post-war Vietnamese economy, and this social consciousness is both reflected in his music and reinforced by a deep connection to the country itself.

Will this new brand of Japanese headband-wearing Samurai DJism be accepted or understood? Your guess is as good as mine. This is not your meiji era swordsmanship, but this cat definitely has something to say. Just don’t expect to immediately understand what it is on the first try. Bring on the Pikachu suit.

WHO: DJ Samurai
WHAT: DJ/rapper/poet/novelista/dramatist
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 9pm July 13
WHY: Japanese badassery at its best

From on high

The name Dusk Til Dawn conjures apparitions of dead Texas cowboys and haunted brothels in the Mexican desert, but the movie by Robert Rodriguez had no influence on the sixth-floor sunrise bar of the same name on Street 172, where Bob Marley and Gambian art embellish the walls, panoramic views surround the open-air rooftop lounge and the sounds of reggae play as free and easy as the sky-high breeze. The crowds are sometimes thin at dusk, when during rainy season the clouds are thick and the sunsets muted. But morning skies are clear and brilliant, and the crowds from across the way amble over at the end of the night to begin a new day.

Dusk Til Dawn, #46 Street 172; 017 839546.

A fine line

“Every time I catch cockroaches on the street, people stop to watch me and ask what I’m doing. I tell them that I sell them for $10 a kilo – and that there is one special restaurant in Phnom Penh that buys them,” says Phok Dorn, a 27-year-old fisherman who recently started a fishing tour business here.

Dorn is joking, as he adds with a mischievous smile: “And they believe me! They want to know where this restaurant is!”

Luckily, he doesn’t sell the sewer-dwelling insects to local eateries, but uses them as bait for fishing. Armed with a flashlight and an empty Coca-Cola bottle (with holes cut into it so that the roaches don’t suffocate until the next day’s fishing trip) in his left hand and a plastic glove on his right, it doesn’t take him more than a half hour to gather 20 or 30 critters on the dark street outside his house.

That’s enough cockroaches to supply the 15 expats Dorn brings on his weekend fishing trips. The idea for the trip started with a blog. The more Dorn wrote about his fish-related experiences online – such as the times when he found a secret message in a bottle and saved a homeless turtle from someone’s dinner plate – the more he heard from friends who wanted to come along on his fishing adventures. So why not start a fishing tour business? When the first customer called, Dorn was so excited he couldn’t eat his lunch.

From a family of 10 children in one of the poorest parts of Cambodia, Dorn taught himself to fish when he was seven years old – after making his own fishing rods from bamboo – because he didn’t like eating plain rice with salt for dinner. Nowadays he is busy learning other things – like how to say ‘piranha’ in English and memorising interesting facts from the Phnom Penh Wikipedia page, which he has printed out for reference.

Dorn’s fishing tour starts with a brief introduction to the Mekong River, with stories about the city’s recent history and a photo stop near the house that looks like it’s about to fall into the river. The tour concludes at sunset with a Cambodian meal of grilled fish (purchased the night before at the local market) with green mango salad and pepper sauce – all of which Dorn makes himself.

When he isn’t catching cockroaches, watching fishing shows on the Discovery Channel or blogging, he might be busy hunting frogs and crab or digging for earthworms. Or he might be travelling around Cambodia, with a single purpose in mind – to find that secret river containing the most fish.

The tour, which includes dinner and drinks, costs $14 for adults and $7 for children. The optional cockroach hunt, the night before the fishing trip, is $1 per person. Find out more at fishinginphnompenh.wordpress.com and facebook.com/fishingboattours or contact Dorn at fishingboattrip@nullyahoo.com.

WHO: Aspiring anglers
WHAT: Fishing tours
WHERE: The Tonle Sap
WHEN: 3:30pm – 6:30pm every Saturday and Sunday
WHY: ‘The gods do not deduct from man’s allotted span the hours spent in fishing.’ – Babylonian proverb

History and tragedy

Bringing peace to Cambodia was never going to be easy. The country had suffered massive US bombing during the Vietnam War; a right-wing coup by General Lon Nol in 1970 which unseated Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and a civil war in which the radical Khmer Rouge had triumphed – resulting in the deaths of more than one million Cambodians from starvation, persecution and murder in the Killing Fields. In 1978 another invasion followed, this time by the Vietnamese. Then, in 1991, came nearly 16,000 soldiers under the command of Lieutenant-General John Sanderson of Australia, plus 3,359 police officers from 45 developed and developing countries ranging from Austria and Bulgaria to Morocco, Kenya, Argentina, Malaysia and Canada. The United Nations Transitional Authority on Cambodia (Untac) “was a peacekeeping mission, not a peacemaking mission,” says Maurits van Pelt, an attorney who ran Medecins sans Frontieres in Cambodia from 1989 to 2000. “The mandate of Untac was not to forcibly disarm; it was to organise disarmament: voluntary disarmament, as had been agreed. But then if one faction did not disarm then the other did not disarm either and the process was stuck.” And stuck it was. Untac failed to disarm the factions. It also failed to make the Cambodian People’s Party relinquish power when it lost the 1993 elections. As historian David Chandler writes in his 1996 book Facing The Cambodian Past: “What had happened was very strange and very moving: for the first time in Cambodian history, millions of Khmer had voted freely and fairly and a majority had opposed an armed, incumbent regime. In a sense, the vote was a massive statement rejecting politics as usual—the tragedy of Cambodian history—and proposing something different: peace and quiet, for example.” This month, which marks 20 years since Untac oversaw the 1993 assembly, the Australian Embassy is presenting an exhibition of stills from the era, including a collection by acclaimed conflict photographer Tim Page.

(Photos: Tim Page)

Kep: In a pince

I love food. I really do. Not in the ‘It’s cool to be a foodie’ way, but from the inner depths of my soul. Sounds a little too dramatic? It sure is because food, and the experiences that go with it, are the sole reason for my existence.

So, you can imagine my delight (read quivering knees) when I was invited on a road trip to Kep and was reliably informed that the famous Kep crab markets were a mere 200m from our bungalows. I could practically roll downhill into the loving claws of a crab. Almost.

Only a few hours south of Phnom Penh, Kep is a small, relaxed coastal town where you can literally do nothing, or do plenty while still doing nothing. Delights include the local beaches, Rabbit island, gorgeous sunsets, mountain (hill) trekking and the gutted French ‘ghost villas’ on the sides of Kep National Park (where the mythical rhino roams), all of which deserve a few columns in their own right.

However, should anyone ask me about Kep, my only true memory is the sublime, fresh seafood of Kep crab markets.

Small squid, long squid, fat squid, all squid expertly skewered and grilled on charcoal. Whole fish trapped between wooden chopsticks char grilled to perfection, all the while being basted with lemon grass and herbs. Sides of steamed rice, chilli sauce and mango salad are washed down with sugar cane juice. Oh, okay: sugar cane juice = an ice-cold can of Angkor.

Lining the coast, the market and neighbouring restaurants are in part built on stilts erected in the shallows, allowing for an easy swim to the crab pots from underneath each building. A hive of activity early in the morning, the shore is lined with moored wooden boats as their catch is brought in. A brave soul ventures through chest-high waves to bring the fishermen breakfast before they cast off again for the day.

All this and no mention of crab, you say? Well, there is crab. There is crab everywhere.

The friendly giant crab that welcomes you to Kep beach; crab-filled pots on the pier surrounded by buyers who haggle price and size while filling their bags; crab pots bobbing in the sea; crab in holding tanks; crab steamed and sold in bags by the kilo; crab on the menu in every dining establishment, and, most importantly, crab right in front of me.

Glorious fresh crab. Sweet, juicy crab. Eat it steamed or grilled or fried, or as they do very well in Kep with stalks of Kampot peppercorn. Be prepared to smile and get messy. So much of eating crab is about getting dirty, having crab all over your face and clothes, trying to keep your hair at bay in the sea breeze, licking your fingers and that magical moment you find those sweet morsels of crab meat.

Be still, my beating heart!

Go gorge and be a glutton. The crab in Kep is seriously good.