Nobody likes a tourist.
It’s hot. Don’t want to get out of bed, don’t want to move hot. The sun beats down like a relentless attacker, punishing the breeze for daring to be cool. It stalks through the dusty streets like a plague, sending people scurrying for shade and the buzzing succor of the fans.
The day is long and tempers are short. Khmer men shout at each other in the street, and my own nerves are sorely tested by the atonal lyrical blasting that emanates from the speaker store next to this internet café. I need a cigarette. I need a cold wind. I need to kill that smarmy motherfucker sitting under the giant speaker.
But let us turn to other things. It is an odd thing, encountering Westerners here. Unless they are ex-pats themselves, they will avoid you like the plague. You see, Cambodia (and, I assume, much of the third world) attracts a certain kind of tourist. They feel themselves better than the native people, somehow superior, blind to the giggling that goes on behind their backs, and at the same time, far more interesting than people who holiday in, say, Hawaii.
This fragile illusion is shattered however, when they see a Westerner who lives here. They hate it. They want to be special. They want to be white gods who evoke awe and adoration. They cross the street to avoid me. After only being here a month, I already hate them with a burning passion. They come on their busses and in their Landrovers, seeing the country from behind a wall of steel and glass. They come to Joe’s bar and say in their grating loud voices “Hmm! Ah’ll hayve the Kai-mer style soup!” and beam proudly, as if they had done something special. Eating soup in a western restaurant. I want to stab them with their own poorly held chopsticks.
Fucking tourists.
The day is long and tempers are short. Khmer men shout at each other in the street, and my own nerves are sorely tested by the atonal lyrical blasting that emanates from the speaker store next to this internet café. I need a cigarette. I need a cold wind. I need to kill that smarmy motherfucker sitting under the giant speaker.
But let us turn to other things. It is an odd thing, encountering Westerners here. Unless they are ex-pats themselves, they will avoid you like the plague. You see, Cambodia (and, I assume, much of the third world) attracts a certain kind of tourist. They feel themselves better than the native people, somehow superior, blind to the giggling that goes on behind their backs, and at the same time, far more interesting than people who holiday in, say, Hawaii.
This fragile illusion is shattered however, when they see a Westerner who lives here. They hate it. They want to be special. They want to be white gods who evoke awe and adoration. They cross the street to avoid me. After only being here a month, I already hate them with a burning passion. They come on their busses and in their Landrovers, seeing the country from behind a wall of steel and glass. They come to Joe’s bar and say in their grating loud voices “Hmm! Ah’ll hayve the Kai-mer style soup!” and beam proudly, as if they had done something special. Eating soup in a western restaurant. I want to stab them with their own poorly held chopsticks.
Fucking tourists.