cambodia :: day three :: monks taxi, too
“are you going to kampot?”
“yes.”
“me too.”
and that’s how i learned i would be sharing a three-hour taxi ride with a buddhist monk. well, a buddhist monk and five other people. in cambodia, that taxi stays parked until it’s packed.
in all, there were seven people squeezed inside an old toyota camry — and that’s only because i paid two times so i could have two seats, which in this case meant one seat.
let me explain: normally, two people sit in the passenger seat. for $5 i had it all to myself. four more passengers piled in the back, including the monk, around 20 years old, who sported the traditional shaved head and saffron-colored robe … and traveled the whole time with a computer monitor on his lap. (not sure if it was his or not, but i wouldn’t be surprised if it was. more on that later.)
so, that leaves us with one more passenger. he sat squeezed between the door and the driver, who was so far to his left that he nearly straddled the shifter. yes, i said “to his left.” in cambodia, cars drive on the right side of the road — and steering wheels are often found on the right side of the car. i found that this means oncoming cars come unusually close to sideswiping one another as they pass on a two-lane road, which is about as wide as they get down here.
let me pause one moment to tell you that the gecko on the wall above my computer just caught a fly and swallowed it whole. go gecko, go!
so there i was, knees bumping the dash and right shoulder bumping shoulders with the driver. i was wondering just how all this would have worked had i not opted for that “two-seat special.” but, most of all, i was wondering what the hell dr. charles stanley, senior pastor of the first baptist church in atlanta, was doing preaching through the car radio of my share-taxi bound for the small coastal town of kampot in cambodia, a country that is 95 percent theravada buddhist.
“god will supply all your needs if you trust and obey him,” preached the preacher man.
i turned to the monk with the computer monitor on his lap and asked, “do you hear what’s on the radio?”
he chuckled. “yes,” he said. “i think he is your cousin.”
i chuckled, too. i love a monk with a sense of humor. soon the sermon was over, however. next up on 89.5-FM was a song with the phrase “holy jesus christ” repeated in the chorus. the driver popped in a tape of khmer music and started honking his horn. peace at last.
we picked up speed as soon as we put phnom penh behind us. how much speed, i will never know. i have yet to see a speedometer that works in cambodia. i went to buckle my seat belt but couldn’t find the buckle. so i leaned back on the american flag neck pillow — something the car did come equipped with — and looked out the window.
i began to feel guilty about having a whole seat to myself … and a roof over my head … and a door that kept me from falling out of the car. the further we traveled, the worse the roads got. we passed several flatbed trucks piled high with people and other assorted items. i was waiting for something — people or other assorted items — to fall. but passengers clung tightly to whatever was beneath them. sometimes it was a big bag of rice. sometimes it was another person. at least one time it was a truckload of dead pigs. they were packed on their backs, legs pointing straight up. with each bump, the little oinkers would wave to me.
no, the road wasn’t flat. but the land beyond it was. it was hard to tell where one rice paddy ended and the other began. one after the other. the only things that entered the horizon were shacks on stilts and palm trees. oh, and the ubiquitous “cambodian people’s party” placards.
we stopped to let some of the passengers get a drink and, more importantly i would assume, stretch their limbs. the monk with the computer monitor on his lap and i started talking again. earlier he told me that he was studying and that when he finished studying he thought he might move to phnom penh. i must admit that i’m not exactly familiar with the whole becoming-a-monk process. i knew my next question was likely a stupid one, but i asked it anyway. never stopped me before.
“so what are you studying? are you studying to, um, become a monk? or are you already a monk?”
“no, i’m a monk,” he said politely and then explained that he was studying some languages, the names of which i had never heard before. “but after study, i’m not sure what i want to do.”
the monk was keeping his options open. nice.
he wanted to keep in touch. so i wrote my mailing address on the back of a business card. i thought about directing him to my web address and e-mail on the front of the card, but figured that would surely be another sign of my utter unawareness of all things monk. that computer monitor on his lap had to be someone else’s. monks don’t surf the web. they don’t send instant messages or e-mail. right?
wrong. the monk then gave me his card. it was in english and khmer and included his pagoda name and address and his e-mail address. “send me a message,” he said with a smile. i told him that i would.
it was just getting dark when we arrived at the mealy chenda guesthouse in kampot, a sleepy town of around 30,000. i couldn’t see much. but i knew the road i was standing on was dirt. i said goodbye to the monk and took his photo — yes, the computer monitor is pictured, too. i checked in, arranged my plans for the next day and found an internet shop so i could do some writing. no, i didn’t run into the monk there.
there are no streetlights in kampot, and the town shuts down early (except for the internet guy, who speaks a little french and a little english and will stay open as long as you need him to). it was a dark and spooky walk back to the guesthouse. i couldn’t see anything, but i heard plenty: dogs barking, other unidentifiable animals making strange sounds and scurrying about. i quickend my pace and did my best to avoid the many piles of trash — and whatever inhabited them — dotting the road.
back in my room, i was welcomed by a cockroach, the largest one i have ever seen. i watched as it crawled high up the wall. then i looked at my bed and realized it wouldn’t take much for it to crawl up there and join me in the middle of the night. and then i watched him fly … and realized that the crawling and the climbing didn’t matter anymore.
i stopped thinking and squashed the cockroach with a flip-flop.
and then i went to bed — but only after checking the room for the cockroach’s cousins … and covering my body with bug spray.
11.26.2003, 7:27 PM · Cambodia
1 Comments
Interesting story! It’s a fast-developing society even among monks. I dont like to kill cockroach though.
My web is www.livelogcity.com/users/amandama and drop by sometime.