First impression of the City

The feeling of being back is really weird.  Things are so familiar but also strange.  Its almost as if I’m watching through someone else’s eyes.  The world is a much bigger place for me today than it was two days ago. 

I never thought I would come back.  We always talked about it, as sometime in the future…maybe when the kids are older…maybe when we get more financially stable.  But here we are.

We were picked up at the airport by our tour guide, Tree.  

He seems tall to me but I’m not sure.  I always see myself as smaller than I am.  But he probably has a couple of inches in height on me, but I have at least eight inches on him in the belly area…sure he can reach things on a higher shelf, but I win in a not eating contest. For that matter probably an eating contest as well.  As proof, my cycling jersey is a 3X Large… Of course these are Cambodian sizes…and I’m going to stick with that until I lose some mass. 

We stood in the heat and fumes of the airport making small talk, I was just trying to take it all in.  Like I said above, I felt at ease.  I’ve always favored more humid weather; my skin seems to come alive.  It feels less like rhino skin and more something else…most of the time anything is better than rhino skin… in fact besides being a rhino I don’t know when skin like a rhino is good. 

There was so much movement with cars and mopeds, so much sound as well.  I thought, “this must be what bee’s feel like. Disorder, but also controlled.  It was a hazy day with some sun but mostly diffused through the clouds, but the colors and textures are so vibrant, a patchwork of classical materials, with modern. The new over the old, and the old waring through the new to see light again.  Interwoven with these contracts are the effects of age.  Nothing seems too new, and nothing seems out of place.  Everything is organic in its placement, displacement and location.  It is the perfect balance mirrored in the natural world.  

We eventually made it into the van. Driving through the city, the ordered chaos was even more apparent.  Mopeds and motorcycles zipped in and out of traffic.  Car, like large lumbering beasts slowing moved, trying not to step on the smaller among them.  It seems, as I’ve seen in other places, the traffic law is… don’t hit someone and don’t get hit.  This produces is a very biological flow of beings.  No one gets to close to anyone else and no one gets too far either.  If everyone operates on these ideas, things move freely and seemingly without incident. 

(I will have video of this as soon as I figure out how to edit it)

Helmets, seats equaling the number of passengers and legal driving age seem to be optional.  As most of the people don’t wear helmets.  Many mopeds carried three and four people and some of the primary operators were young…like my son Liam, probably eight or nine.  I wouldn’t trust him to walk down the street here, much less ride a moped at twenty miles per hour with two smaller kids as passengers.  

As I watched the people zip back and forth between cars and trucks and other mopeds, I wondered what a learning curve for something like this might be.  It occurs to me that learning to function in an environment like this I probably a lot like learning a language.  The kids are on the mopeds with their skilled parents.  The littlest usually sits in the front and has a perfect view of all that is happening.  They are learning the rules of what to do in different situations.  There really are rules they sit down and learn.  I really can’t see any other way a system like this passed on.

As chaotic as this environment seems I feel a sense of peace as well.  For the past 45 years every day of my life I have been a minority…Then bam! I’m not.  There will be some that read this and feel that these things don’t matter… that in a place like the US we see around that…  That is true in many cases but the fact that the default is to look past or see around something means that it is still there for the people being looked around.

I’m actually going to walk back something I said in an earlier post… I have a strong connection with this place.  It feels home and that’s really weird.   The smells the sounds…Even the calls of the frogs and other animals make at night are comforting.  I know its early, and I probably shouldn’t rush into this but I am totally in love with this place and her people.