Moving forward, in transit
Life happens at a cafe stop
I have to hand it to myself, I can always find an air-conditioned cafe in a pinch anywhere in the world. I'm pretty sure this place is a lounge bar though (there's a burrata salad special advertised on the chalk board wall, right next to a drawing of a cartoon-y Buddhist icon) but no matter, because I'm sipping a sweet iced latte and I can plug my laptop in as I type this. And now I'm wondering if this burrata with Buddhist branding tastes any different than your typical burrata. I also notice Carlsberg on tap across the bar, nestled in between two taps of Angkor and nothing much else, so I'm gonna guess it's your basic burrata.
I'm also pretty sure they're actually closed and only let me in because I looked so sweaty and pathetic. The staff here is cleaning up from the night before/preparing for the Sunday evening rush. That Sunday afternoon sweet spot. They didn't even give me a menu – they just asked what I would like to order, I assume because they just don't have any food yet to offer. I might be charged $7 for this latte and if that happens I'll have no one to blame but myself. I also know I won't be charged such an obscene amount for these parts of the world, because if I've developed anything other than my proficiency in cafe-finding over my years of travel, it's the knowledge that it's not common for people to take advantage of another, just because they can. I know, it REALLY might not seem that way at this particular moment in time, but that's only because we give them more air time. The four Khmer women running this place (aka doing the hard labor while a man owns it) are just doing their jobs.
That's one of the things I love about slow afternoons out in the world – most people are just doing their thing. Most people just want to live in peace. I see it on a very micro scale everywhere. If someone has to pee, the driver will stop somewhere along the side of the road and laugh it off. And whatever the arrival time for your long distance bus doesn't matter – if the dawn is breaking and you're somewhere in the middle of Malaysia, then everyone on board will get off to pray. If you are lost and can't find your accommodation, the lady who runs the cafe will let you just sit there until you figure it out.
Where's Jenny, you ask? I'm in transit in Phnom Penh and have just over two hours until my bus to Kampot, which is a city in southern Cambodia. I spent all morning in a minivan from Siem Reap and I should be in Kampot by sundown, just in time for dinner and a late check-in at my hostel. This is my second time in Cambodia and I'm here during the hottest time of the year. Less than an hour in this big city and I already feel like a country mouse totally awe-stricken by the big city bustle, my senses awakened after having spent two weeks in small-town Siem Reap.
Just an hour or so ago, we rolled into Phnom Penh after six hours crossing the Cambodian countryside. As we approached the city, everyone suddenly woke up from their bus slumber and looked out the window, as we crossed the bridge over the Mekong River (the Mekong! Oh how I've missed you these past two and a half months). We looked at the city all big-eyed, gazing out at the shiny skyscrapers dotted along this magical river. It was just me and a bunch of Cambodians, but at that moment we all felt the same thing.
I got out of the bus, grabbed my bags that had been gently thrown to the curb and checked with the bus company about my onward ticket to Kampot. It was 1:30 pm Indochina time, and the bus was scheduled to leave at 4. When I saw that they had baggage storage, I asked to leave my bags there and took my tote bag with my essentials (laptop, chargers, wallet, phone, lip balm) and headed out to the Phnom Penh streets.
I walked a couple of blocks and thought I could really rough it at a corner lunch stall. I could eat some spicy papaya salad and devour some iced lemon tea, but I knew my typing device would probably overheat, so a few more blocks walking in the sweltering heat proved to be worthwhile. Somewhere along the horizon, I noticed a little patio setting, a menu board, and a door (which implies air-conditioning) so I crossed the road, dodging some tuktuks and here I am.
Moments like these remind me of my old days traveling China. Over my months circling that ever-confounding country, I found some nice places to write – from the depths of Shangri-La to cozy bookstores in the Sanlitun district of Beijing. During that trip I traveled with something called a netbook. I don't even know if they sell those things anymore, or if anyone who doesn't identify as an elder millenial would know what I'm talking about. But it was small, cheap, and durable and it lasted all of my 7-month trip and then some. It sat with me by the harbour in Hong Kong, on a bullet train to Shanghai, in cute cafes in this little water town called Suzhou. I used it for comfort watching Friends in the evenings while spending two days at a national park in Jiangxi province where I was the only foreigner for miles.
During my time there, I had to stay in a handful or two of cheap hotels because I was so off the backpacker grid (that didn't really exist in China) that there was no hostel in sight for a few ten million people over. With only news channels on the hotel TV (CCTV 1-23, or so) my netbook filled with every season of Friends and Parks & Recreation kept me relaxed when I wasn't traveling or writing. Some nights I'd arrive at a hostel that had a cute little bar, so I would type away about my adventures before tucking myself into my bunk. I remember this one time in a seaside city called Xiamen in the south of China. I arrived on a late Thursday night and decided to treat myself to a margarita at the bar while I updated my blog. The hostel was in an old colonial mansion, surrounded by palm trees.
By that point I'd spent the better part of three years in Asia, and this city was the most south I'd ever been. I don't think I'd seen a palm tree since a trip to California I'd taken with friends five years back. I ended up staying ten days in that city so I could soak up the views and balmy air, but somewhere along the way, as I wandered through an old Portuguese islet across from Xiamen, it hit stronger than ever that maybe so much solo travel wasn't exactly what I needed.
Two Sundays ago, I was crossing the border between Thailand and Cambodia. I was on a bus from Bangkok after having spent a week there, bouncing between two different neighborhoods, taking an improv class, using my hostel's common area for all-day writing sessions and some late-night calls with clients. It was a week of melancholy that I leaned into so hard that it turned into a sort of reassurance. I was saying goodbye to Thailand yet again, this Kingdom that I call my second home. I have to write a full post about that week, about how I got to meet the amateur comedy scene in the attics of Irish pubs and how after about a dozen times in Bangkok, I'm still discovering new and beautiful neighborhoods.
My bus leaves in 15 minutes, so it’s time to pay for my latte and set off to Kampot. I've been pretty excited about returning there because if I haven't already told you, it's a town with the best pepper in the world. Not the chili kind, the peppercorn kind. You can find green to pink to red to smokey in shops all around town. When you grow up with ground black pepper and table salt as the spice offerings at the dinner table, discovering that this spice can be so much more was revolutionary for me. In between finding cute cafes in town and getting more deadlines, I'll tour a plantation and I'll pop peppercorns from its chosen motherland and it will be wondrous.
And if I didn't have this self-imposed Substack deadline (and sincerely do not want to disappoint the handful of you who've been so gracious and curious about this little newsletter of mine) then I would have just been a grumpy solo traveler scanning the aisles of the convenience store next to the bus station, before inevitably scanning through social media anxiously waiting for my bus.
I get to be here, in the city, rather than sitting still in transit.
Kampot pepper is the best!! Thanks for sharing, reminded me of the time I went a few years back now! Amazing place !