A lease and a dream

“Everything is shifting here and so many expat businesses are just a lease and a dream, all smoke and mirrors…”

Josh Page is essentially the “type specimen” for all Kiwi expats as near as I can tell. A true exemplar of that whimsical cast of characters who, taken as a group together, give the distinct impression that theirs is a nation made up entirely of misfits, so that perhaps everyone belongs there because no one belongs there.

A Kiwi, yes, indeed. For the past three years, Josh has often ambled barefoot – yes, sans shoes of any sort – while traversing the city’s less-than-sparkling thoroughfares. Kiwi oddball to the core, he was a constant fixture in Phnom Penh’s nightlife scene, known in part for his work behind the bar at Show Box, but even more so for the very visible, very audible, and often thriving business that he founded and operated: Tipsy Tuk Tuks, Phnom Penh’s very first bar crawl.

Tipsy Tuk Tuks typically traversed the town on Friday nights as a traveling tumult of tourists, a bacchanal of backpackers, accompanied oftentimes by an envoy of expats with eyebrows raised and ready for an evening’s entertainment passively observing the fun…only to find themselves participating in it fully, their worldly been-there-drunk-that jaded facade banished for a few carefree hours.

This past Friday marked Josh’s final run in the oversized Tuk Tuk that was his company’s primary material asset and hallmark, seating ten or more people in the elongated trailer. Josh has sold the business to a friend of a friend who plans on continuing on in the same tradition and even has ambitious plans for expansion within the coming year. The changeover in ownership was prompted by big changes in Josh’s personal life. He and his girlfriend who he met here in the Kingdom are engaged to be married and are (for now) relocating back to Claire’s native Britain.

Josh feels that Phnom Penh has changed a great deal in just his few short years here, perhaps becoming a less than ideal place for him to put down permanent roots. ‘”Everything is shifting here and so many expat businesses in Cambodia are just a lease and a dream, all smoke and mirrors without any real equity or stability involved. I feel like for the plans that I want to pursue next I need a little bit less excitement and a little bit more certainty.”

Still, even with Josh’s misgivings regarding the sort of chaos that goes hand in hand with the frantic growth that Phnom Penh is experiencing, it’s apparent that there’s still a market for the business Tipsy Tuk Tuks is in: showing people who are often either too transient or too new to the scene where the good times can best be had. A typical evening has Tipsy Tuk Tuks shepherding or chaperoning anywhere from a dozen to perhaps 25 or 30 revelers on average (their record so far is 56 attendees) from location to location where they enjoy happy hour style drink specials or freebies from the bars, such as shots, as a way to welcome them to town and welcome their return business.

Josh’s journey as an expat in Cambodia seems to have both started and ended well, even if there were some rocky bumps in the road along the way. Will Josh ever return to Cambodia to grace us again with his free-spirited and good-natured Kiwi debauchery? “Yeah, for sure man, I’ll be around to visit. It’s always going to be a great place to visit. I’ll always have the friends I made here and I can’t ever see that changing, or at least I hope it never does.”

Digital soothsayers: A new breed of entrepreneur pushes fortune telling into the electronic age

Laptops. Smartphones. A crowded air-conditioned office. Young men gather around to look at a Cambodian game that one of them probably created: cows vs. tigers. Then their interest switches to a 3D image of a witch that pops out of a photograph when they take a picture using a new app. This is the office of the JC IT Company in Phnom Penh, a Japan-Cambodia enterprise that focuses mostly on developing apps for clients in Japan. No one here seems to take fortunetelling seriously.

“No, I don’t believe [in daily horoscopes],” admits web developer Loch Khemarin. “I just believe that every day is a good day.”

But it was here that Cambodian programmers created the Daily Fortune app, which makes predictions about each day of a person’s life based on his or her Chinese year sign. Just two weeks after it was released for iPhone on December 31 2014, the app has been downloaded more than 4,000 times, according to data from the company. More than 2,000 android users also installed Daily Fortune on their phones.

“It’s a hit because it’s growing very fast. Four thousand in two weeks is not normal,” Khemarin says. “Some people believe [in it], or maybe [they want] some encouragement from good fortune [to] feel better, but sometimes they just want to play.”

There are now at least eight Cambodian fortunetelling and horoscope apps in Apple’s store. All the apps are free, and some, such as Khmer Horoscope and Fortune Teller Khmer, appear in the list of the top local apps.

The app that the JC IT Company developed features bright colors, stars and large pictures of animals from the Chinese zodiac. Today, for instance, if you happen to have been born in the year of the rooster, the app advises that you need to work harder and avoid conflicts with others.

Khemarin says that the predictions are authentic because his company purchases them daily from a real fortuneteller. He does not reveal the name of the fortuneteller, however, explaining that only his boss, not currently in the office, knows his name.

Khemarin admits his parents believe in fortunetelling more than he does. For instance, his father has told him about a handwritten book in his village in Kampong Cham Province. He says the magic book, which has been copied from 19th Century manuscripts, can make predictions about a person’s life based on his or her name and date of birth.

If someone could photocopy this book, maybe they could use it to make another fortunetelling app, helping ancient fortunes to skip right over the printing press into the digital age.

In any case, the JC IT company is currently planning to make another fortunetelling game that will include lucky colours, lucky items, love and career advice, and will be available in Japanese and English in addition to Khmer.

The lucky SIM card app

Not all Cambodian fortunetelling apps were created by companies. Sok Ratha, a self-taught 34-year-old programmer, made some on his own.

“In 2012 I saw that there is a market for apps because at that time people started using smartphones, but there were not many apps for Cambodian people,” he says. “Then I started learning [how to make apps] by myself.”

The first app he made is called SIM FengShui. It tells you if a new telephone number will be a lucky number for you. Just plug a potential phone number into the app and read the prediction.

“For businessmen, they believe the number is very important for them,” Ratha says. “In the phone shops, they also have a way to calculate if your number is good or bad, so I turned it into an app.”

As for himself, the developer says he believes in fortunetelling 50/50: “You can’t depend on faith. You have to depend on yourself. Just like if you want something, you cannot just sit at home and wait for it to come to you,” he says. “But sometimes, even if you try, you cannot get that thing. It’s 50/50.”

The Palm Tree Leaves app

palm tree leave captureAnother app Ratha made is based on the custom of Khmer palm leaf reading. The way it works traditionally, he explains, is as follows: when you go to a pagoda, there is a stack of palm leaves with stories from the Buddha’s life and the lives of Khmer kings written on them. You place a stack of palm leaves on your head and put a stick into the middle. Then you read the palm leaf that the stick touched and the monks interpret its meaning for you.

To make this app, Ratha copied the text from the palm leaves at the Banon Pagoda in Battambang province. He didn’t explain to the middle-aged monk, who didn’t even own a smartphone, why he needed the palm leaves.

“I just told him I need it for my own work,” Ratha says.

The ChakKumPy (“Ancient Khmer Palm Leaves Reading”) app works by generating a random number and then the text from a palm leaf that corresponds to it. On a recent test run, for example, the app read, “The ship of Preah Chonok was smashed in the sea and was saved by an angel. Later on, his father gave him the throne. Prediction: This is very good indeed. You will get the support from others if you meet any difficulties.”

More than 150,000 people downloaded the app, according to Ratha’s data. One of these users is 22-year-old Yem Rathana, a university graduate and mother of a nine-month-old baby. Rathana has already heard some memorable predictions from human fortunetellers. When she was getting married, she says, she was told that her marriage would be unlucky unless it took place on a Friday (she followed the advice). And, the fortuneteller warned, either she or her husband would die if her first baby was female (luckily, she had a baby boy).

Unlike a human fortuneteller, however, the app costs nothing and is easy to use. She usually checks it when she wakes up from a dream about a ghost or a car accident, she says.

“I was just looking in the App Store and I found it,” she says. “I don’t use it every day, just when I feel horrible or I feel sad or unhappy, then I go and see. It makes me feel better.”

The luckiest wedding day

One tool that no one in Cambodia has made so far is an app to consult couples on the best day to get married. To find this special date, Cambodians must still seek the advice of a monk.

“I want to make it, but we don’t have the source. I don’t know how they [the monks] learn to calculate it,” Ratha says. “We have to have a reliable source. Otherwise, people will complain that we just make a random prediction. You can’t just cheat people like that. Trust is very important in this kind of business.”

Human fortunetellers vs. free apps

So do human fortunetellers worry about losing their business to the free apps? So far, no.

Chanthou, a fortuneteller on Riverside who charges about $1.50 for her services, says the app can’t be true because it can’t connect with the spirit. On a recent evening, she accurately told a girl that she had had an abortion and advised her to make more offerings to the ancestors if she wanted to keep a happy marriage.

Nearby, a 77-year-old fortuneteller, Sor Phean, also expresses doubts about the apps. He says seeing a person’s face helps him to make accurate predictions. Sor Phean, who has 30 years of experience looking into other people’s futures, says he wants to buy a mobile phone but can’t afford one. So rather than talking about the apps, with which he isn’t familiar, he prefers to tell a journalist about her future.

“You will get married next year,” he says. “If someone asks you to get married after Khmer New Year, you should say yes.”

While most Cambodian fortunetelling apps are only in Khmer, some have been translated to English. Search the Apple App Store for Fortune Teller EN, Chak Kum Py, and Lucky Number to check them out.

Rough-cut sophistication

Asasax, the painter and sculptor, was among the first artists on Art Street to create and sell original works. His gallery opened nearly 20 years ago at the junction of Streets 178 and 13. Former King Norodom Sihanouk was a fan of his work and he has shown internationally.  The new restaurant that now occupies his former gallery feels a bit like a throwback to those earlier days. The cement stools and rough-cut wooden bar give the place a do-it-yourself art studio feel, the colourful painted apsaras and sky blue benches an understated sophistication. Just opposite the National Museum, the low-slung eatery’s streetside tables offer a laidback vantage point from which to sip cheap draft, nibble away at tapas-sized pizzas and watch the tourists amble by. Le Museum, #19 Street 178.

Osaka vs. Hiroshima in Phnom Penh

A silent war is raging on the streets of Phnom Penh. No, it’s not moto vs. tuk tuk, Cambodia Beer vs. Angkor or anyone vs. the state. In this war there are no UN watchdogs, volunteer do-gooders or viral cyber campaigns. This “war” has a much different, yet still serious question, especially if you are of a Japanese persuasion. Namely, who produces the best okonomiyaki: Osaka or Hiroshima?

I have mentioned this dish in a past review so here are the briefest of details. Okonomiyaki is commonly referred to as Japanese pizza, although it resembles pizza in the same way that I resemble Johnny Depp: not very much. Closer to the mark is its other Western description, “savoury pancake.” All okonomiyaki share the same ingredients – flour, grated yam, dashi, eggs, shredded cabbage, and other variants that can include thin slices of squid, octopus, mochi and cheese. In both forms, these ingredients are cooked on a hot grill to produce a meal that is at odds with the traditional notion of Japanese food as carbo light, healthy and rice-centred. Okonomiyaki, most definitely, will never make any Weight Watchers “best dish” list. Yet, with two provincial variations, Osaka and the Hiroshima, chances are, there is an okonomiyaki that will satisfy your taste.

Ninja (St. 278) is the place to go if you wish to order okonomiyaki “Osaka style.” Prepared like a pancake, flour batter and the other ingredients are mixed and fried together to produce this version of the dish, which is then topped with mayonnaise and okonomiyaki sauce. This okonomiyaki is the stuff of food comas and carbo-overload: the perfect “night before” dish if running a marathon but not, I would suggest, an extended yoga session. In this way, it falls short of what we anticipate of Japanese food, but then this should be of no surprise, as Osaka has always bucked the trend of what one expects of Japan. Japanologist Alex Kerr sums up the city’s qualities well: “Few major cities of the developed world could match Osaka for the overall unattractiveness of its cityscape… yet Osaka is my favourite city in Japan. Osaka is where the fun is [while] Osaka people are impatient and love to disobey rules.” In brief, Osaka is like its okonomiyaki: they are the most un-Japanese of people and places.

So now, what about the Hiroshima version? For a few months I have been hearing about Hibari on St. 350. a whole in the wall style establishment near Toul Sleng, whose okonomiyaki numerous Japanese acquaintances have raved about. With my food guide “Ms. Morimoto” I ventured out to discover for myself. On the night we visited, Hibari was packed and, while we ate, the Phnom Penh version of the “Japanese Salary Man” continually trooped in: this place was popular! Better yet, with the okonomiyaki cooked on a hot grill at the open rear of the restaurant, it was possible to see the clear differences in preparation between the Hiroshima and Osaka styles of the dish. With the Hibari/Hiroshima style okonomiyaki – also known as Hiroshima-yaki – the ingredients are layered rather than mixed, and the tiers include the same constituents as the Osaka form, though the amount of cabbage used is much higher. The other key variation is the laying of soba or udon noodles as a topping, together with a fried egg, finished off with okonomiyaki sauce. Mayonnaise, however, is notably absent in the Hiroshima version.

The Hiroshima-yaki served at Hibari ($3-$4.50) was less filling than the Osaka version offered at Ninja ($4.50): definitely the okonomiyaki for the gal or guy watching his or her weight. Either way, both versions were delicious and with the two varieties now available in Phnom Penh there is no excuse for not giving this meal a try. Restaurant-wise, Ninja’s menu certainly outshines Hibari’s in terms of additional options, but as the line of constant Japanese business at Hibari suggests, this place carries a brand of authenticity and quality. In short, what it does, it does well.

Hibari, #18a St. 350, BKK3
Ninja, #14a St. 278, BKK

My trash, your treasure

SUN 8 | Sundays are theoretically the perfect day for shopping. Realistically speaking, those of us who’ve thoroughly enjoyed our night before aren’t stepping foot inside a crowded, overly lit and somehow intimidating shopping mall.  The crew at Show Box probably know this feeling better than any of us, and henceforth have provided the goods with their inaugural Flea Market this Sunday. Browse a wide range of stalls selling very reasonably priced, locally-made and pre-loved items, including clothes, arts, crafts, jewelry, DVDs, skin products, food, teas and way more. Get amongst it and support ya locals!

WHO: Buyers and sellers
WHAT: Flea market
WHERE: Show Box, #11 St. 330
WHEN: 2pm Sunday 8
WHY: One guy’s trash might be your treasure

Mr. Woodford, Maxine’s man

WED 11 | Ian Woodford was perhaps best known for the iconic bar he ran on the Chruy Changvar peninsula. Snow, as Woodford was known to all, opened Maxine’s Bar in a large, blue wooden house on the east side of the Tonle Sap River. It was as casual and quirky as he was. A table made from decommissioned AK-47s occupied centre room for a while. A thousand bells hung from the ceiling and when the wind blew they made beautiful music. More than one person thought it the best bar in Southeast Asia, maybe even the world. Woodford came to Cambodia in the early ‘90s. He was a throwback to the country’s bygone Untac era, a tall, wiry character whose colourful Australian language and endless Cambodian anecdotes were a cherished and longstanding part of Phnom Penh expatriate lore. Snow passed away in May 2014, age 56. Tim Corrigan’s film Snow is a vivid “account of expatriate life but one tempered by the political violence and instability” that surrounded Woodford. Corrigan will be on hand for a Q&A session after the screening.

WHO: Ian “Snow” Woodford
WHAT: Film screening and Q&A session
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 8pm Wednesday 11
WHY: See “WHO”

Dancing in the street

FRI 13 | 2014 saw the first ever Sok San Festival transform Sok San Road in Siem Reap from your average thoroughfare to a vibrant, all-inclusive cultural and creative epicentre. This year, the festival will run over three days and nights and will feature a range of live musical performances by Cambodian-based musicians (and likely some impromptu shows by talented participants), interactive wall painting, DJ workshops with DJs Sakura Boom, Mute Speaker and David Scott, skating demos and some pretty amazing costumes. Yes, it’s a long trip up, but once you’re covered in face paint and dancing with randoms, you’ll thank yourself for making the effort.

WHO: Artists and musicians of Cambodia
WHAT: Street festival
WHERE: Sok San Road, Siem Reap
WHEN: Fri 13-Sun 15
WHY: When was the last time you went to a street festival?

Guilty Pleasures: Romance

Love is in the air. Everywhere I look around there’s canoodling sparrers a-chitter and love-struck man-buns holding hands with doe-eyed elephant pants. Flirty girlfriends nuzzle their boy racer dandies: the wind in their ombres and bubble tea-for-two on their minds. If I listen carefully I can almost hear my newly besotted American bud doing lumbersex with her latest beardy Euro-squeeze all up in her Wat Langka loft. Normally glued to her gadgets, she hasn’t updated her status for days, so I’m assuming they’re at it like a couple of Yukon Hares.

All traffic jams lead to swags of silver sprayed coconuts dangling from rose-coloured wedding erections, and for once nobody seems to mind. My pearly invites have yet to hit the doormat but that’s not a bad thing. I won’t have to feel guilty about not going and not wearing a polyester lime satin prom gown, heels and six inches of makeup, or resentful that I have to give a complete stranger $50 to do so. If that’s what folks here are into fine, but where I come from they’d normally be paying me for that kind of thing.

Though it’s not springtime in Paris, Charmingville’s delightful winter weather means everyone’s feeling their oats, and most likely somebody else’s too. The Bunster’s hormones are off the charts since his spay date was postponed thanks to an 11th hour reprieve – his vet eloped with the anaesthetist after a late-night rummage ‘round her groaning medicine chest. No one likes to reach for the remote during an Idol ad break and instead make contact with a suspiciously and emphatically moist patch twixt the Conran couch cushions. So we’ve had to cover every cleft of his deeply studded paramour – the ever-faithful Chesterfield – in prophylactic PVC while he’s hot to trot. This may actually have the opposite, undesirable effect of making the little tinker even randier. I can’t blame him. God knows a few metres of wet plastic and a hefty inanimate object are hard to resist even for those most jaded libertines among us.

Yes indeedy, how pleasantly loved up this weather makes us, and how purty our balmy hamlet is to do it in, especially with those twinkle-dripping trees up ‘round the Monument, like City Hall went all Avatar and blew their 2015 budget on fairy lights. For once, I love what they’ve done with the place. Not even their wastrel offspring disturbing the peace in their gull-winged, tiny-winky-wagons, T-boning parked cars and setting all the dogs off can coitus interrupt us in our quest for les liaisons romantiques in Cupid’s soft tropic gloam.

Which brings me to the usually taciturn Hubster. His idea of a nice evening together is Skyping me from the petanque club and propping his phone up with a can of ABC so I can watch him play with his cabal of, nota bene darling, divorcé teammates.

But perhaps it was the seductive perfume of the flowering romdoul, or the call of the open car park, that prompted his change of heart. This past Monday we mounted his moto and took a ride in the breezy neon evening over the dragon bridge to the concrete boulevards of Koh Pich.

You don’t want to blink. It’s been six months since I was last there, at a wedding as it happens. It’s still the bastard sandpit born of dirty money and breathtakingly poor taste, but it’s not the limbo wasteland it once was, at least, not in the dark. The tumbleweeds have rolled over and out and the place is bustling with Chinese constructors and floodlit pile drivers banging on into the night. And they’re not the only ones. In an effort to find private nookie-nooks away from prying parents wherein to mingle and spoon, middle class singles seeking likeminded fun lovers are tailgating en masse in the vast concrete lots next to those cod-classical wedding sheds. They come prepared with folding chairs and playlists of angsty Khmer pop and Selena Gomez power ballads, coolers and cards, their trunk-mounted woofers booming from car to car in ambitious hopes they’ll clinch a late-night booty call, or at least a funny Valentine.

My  Life Partner and I zoom by aboard our modest Dream, free from traffic to roam and weave round the black streets like wannabe hellions on the tear. Our soundtrack is always the same – two wonky songs belted out at the top of our lungs – You Are My Sunshine (just the chorus, since who knows how the rest of it goes?) and Wimoway, which is perfect for two howling parts and increasingly hysterical falsetto. It ain’t pretty, but it’s fun. If one of these electric nights you’re out on the prowl, prick up your ears. The lion might be sleeping, but nobody else is.

Rockefeller Report

The feel-good story of the year so far is the recent surge in Kampot pepper prices. The little Kampot that could is now well and truly on the global map, seasoning the world’s finest dishes – and Anthony Bourdain’s ego – with its unique spice. It wasn’t that long ago – okay, a few centuries, but they’re still burning sorcerers in the provinces so it’s all relative – that black pepper was called “black gold” for its value as a tradable commodity; a currency that powerful nations used to their barter advantage.

Italy controlled the pepper trade in the Middle Ages – eventually changing to pizza because you didn’t need boats to do home deliveries, and hours could be extended to 3am. The Dutch have an old expression they like to use: “pepper expensive” or peperduur (great with a plate of fries, by the way) for anything that’s overpriced. We shouldn’t be surprised then that peperduur spawned “Dutch treat” – or, as the Italians like to call it, a really shitty reason to divide the bill.

Culinary aficionados might know that a famous 3rd Century Roman cookbook cites pepper as a popular seasoning used almost exclusively by the wealthy. Eighteen centuries later, pepper competes with marijuana as the best thing to perk up a potluck. Those who doubt pepper’s rich party past need only look to Ramesses II, aka Ramesses the Great, the Egyptian Empire’s most powerful pharaoh. According to archaeologists, Ramesses II was found in his tomb with black peppercorns stuffed into his nostrils – mummification rituals, they say, for his death in 1213 BCE (no explanation was given regarding either the turntable spinning early Top 40 next to empty bottles of Cristal or the guy who kept saying “I love you, man”). According to Wikipedia, “not much else is known about the use of pepper in ancient Egypt and how it reached the Nile from Southeast Asia.” Several I-prefer-to-not-be-named historians surmise that Asian donkeys were made to swallow packets of pepper to get the popular product through Egyptian customs. And so the term “mule” was born.

Little Kampot is proudly taking its place among the leaders in today’s competitive world pepper market. But the province needn’t look very far to see who dominates the global trade. Well over 30% is produced by their neighbours in Vietnam, much of that for export. Any NGO worth their weight in, well, pepper needs to start getting behind Kampot’s producers to take the momentum that’s been created in her cash crop (aka Egyptian marching powder, the pharaoh’s favour, the Sphinx’s sphincter) to help Kampot put a noticeable dent in Vietnam’s dominance of the trade. According to Nguon Lay, president of the Kampot Pepper Promotion Association, the street price of black pepper rose from $11 per kilogram in 2013 to $15 this year, while red and white pepper went well above that. Demand is so high for the Kampot product, users from Miami to Marseilles are asking their dealers for it by name. And it’s about time too! To quote Tony Montana: “First you get the Kampot pepper then you get the power” – words that are inspiring powerful Asian businessmen to pick up a pirated copy of Scarface in search of other motivational messages.

If you’re not feeling the Kampot pepper love, Rockefeller Without Borders suggests you make better use of your grinder, because not only is pepper a great spice, it’s also long been used – well before tiger penis and even bear paw – as a traditional medicine that can cure almost any illness. Liberal sprinkles on your morning eggs will instantly cure your malaise – not to mention your diarrhea, dementia and boring sex life. And while you’re at it, spare a thought for Ramesses II, who died for our pepper sins. All aboard for the Kampot Black Gold Express!

Oh, the salad

Oh, the salad! The proverbial healthy, low-calorie food, and an essential part of my New Year’s resolution to eliminate that lumpiness under my T-shirt that appeared after December’s excesses. In fact, I have been eating salad for the whole of January. The results, however, are unimpressive, to say the least. Perhaps I have fallen victim to a common delusion: the belief that you can add sizzling bacon, blue cheese and ranch dressing to your lettuce, and still have a low fat meal.

However, I haven’t lost faith in the body-shaping power of salads, and today, as part of my quest to shed those extra pounds, I turn to Gerbies, a new salad and sandwich bar that just opened in BKK1.

You can sit outside on the terrace, protected by a sunshade, and enjoy the strident honking, obnoxious engine roars and fetid exhaust smoke coming from the never-ending traffic. Or you can go inside and relax in a cool, well-lit room with dark grey walls and minimalist décor that makes you want to sit down and spend the afternoon working on your new book. Today, I enter Gerbies with Pascalle, a 27-year-old Dutch woman with a master’s degree in psychology and a compulsive (at times exasperating) tendency to psychoanalyse everyone.

The selection of warm salads is creative, with entrées like brouillée ($5.90), a salad made out of scrambled eggs and lardons. You can also choose from a considerable assortment of paninis and baguettes in the $4 – $7 price range. There are smoothies, Italian sodas and fresh juices.

I order a crispy squid salad ($5.90) and a young coconut ($1.50). The salad is ginormous: I don’t even think I finished it. For the record, that means a lot coming from a full-grown Spaniard. It comes with vinaigrette and some slices of bread. The waitress also places a small plate on the side with garlic mayonnaise, or aioli, as we call it back home. Just as I am about to dig in, the owner hurries to me and, in a motherly tone, instructs me on the proper way of eating salad: first, pour the vinaigrette, then add a few drops of Tabasco and, finally, mix it up. It is delicious. The fat pieces of tender, perfectly fried squid never end, and they go great with the stir-fried tomato and zucchini. The contrast of cold and hot ingredients makes it a delectable experience. Dip some squid in the garlic mayonnaise and prepare to be amazed.

Pascalle orders a tuna sweetcorn baguette ($4). The bread is alright, but not particularly crispy. I even dare say it is a bit chewy. What surprises me the most is that they have taken off the top of the baguette, leaving only about three-quarters of the original loaf. This is not fair – the four dollars you pay should get you the whole thing.

Gerbies is a wonderful salad place. Their salads are not cheap, but they are worth every penny. I wouldn’t recommend coming here for the sandwiches though, as they are pricey, and the bread is not particularly good. The service, including the very attentive and helpful French-Cambodian owner, is amazing.

As we wolf down the salad and baguette, Pascalle and I begin one of our usual therapy sessions. One has to let off steam sooner or later, and for me, the meetings with Pascalle are the time. She asks me what’s bothering me, why I have been so absent-minded. I tell her about my latest conversation with Lucio and the last, foreboding words that came out of his mouth: “I will get in the way every time, just like you did. You shall never know love again!”

To be continued…

Gerbies Salad and Sandwich
#78 Street 51 at Sihanouk Blvd