Snippets from Abroad 008

Off the beaten path:

This is what it must be like to be mute and illiterate, which I effectively am in this place. I am sitting on an overland-bus, the aircon soothing the heat of the tropical day, as it goes along a brand-new road I would later find out has been part of a 2000-km-roads developmental-aid-gift by the Peoples Republic of China. A guy sitting next to me speaks roughly fifteen words of English and I have a sheet of paper where my Tuk Tuk driver wrote down the place that I have picked as my final destination, the elusive town of Sra Em, Sro Em, Sraem, Sa Em or however you want to transcribe the place that isn't on any map, in Khmer so people know what to make out of my bad pronunciation of the word. These are the two assets I have. The guy at the office of the travel agency who sold me this bus ticket spoke some more English and said that the bus wouldn't go all the way to Sra Em, that I would have to get a taxi for the last 15 to 20 k. The guy next to me disagrees, says that I should go all the way to the end. Now all I can do is wait and watch the landscape go by, while the old TV mounted in the front of the center aisle shows the trips entertainment program to the crowd of Cambodians traveling between towns: First a movie about a young Jet Li defending a young woman from hordes of assassins, which really opens up some questions on the logistics of triads killing an unaware civilian with like thirty people spread out all over a shopping-mall, then a movie where Chow Yun Fat plays a professional killer - what else? The Khmer dubbing is horrible, especially when it comes to children, but I've heard worse. Having no idea when the bus arrives, I lean back and enjoy the show...