Katie en Laurent bij de Khmer: Voici La Ville

With the king's birthday tomorrow it has been a short week. There are a few highlights apart from the return of Jules and Marjan from their seperate little holidays. On wednesday after work I went to have dinner with a few of the surgical assistants and I was slightly taken aback when the waitress served up a big pile of dry thready flakes of something. They warned me not to smell but just eat it. I popped one in my mouth to discover that it was just dried and salted fish. Delicious, but indeed very malodorous. Next came another dish with unrecognizable fried content. Curly and oddly shaped, my guess was fried squids. I was only partly wrong; fried duck's tongues. The sensation of eating one is quite odd. It starts with the feeling of french-kissing a fowl and ends with nibbling off the little meat there is off of the tongue cartilage (I don't think I'll ever forget ducks have a bone in their tongue!).

Yesterday we went to have lunch in the central market area. And on returning we had to cross the Monivong Boulevard. This means crossing a busy road, lifting your bike over 30cm of concrete (in the middle of the traffic) and then crossing again. Katie was not up for this and suggested we cycled down a 100m until the next crossroads where we could cross safely. In this country cars have the steering wheel on the left or the right, depending on whether they were imported from Thailand or from Vietnam. Anyway driving on the right (as in the correct) side of the road is more of a general philosophy than a general rule. You will understand that I was surprised to be pulled over by 4 police officers by the side of the road. We had of course read all the stories about the corrupt policemen fining foreigners for random violations of the traffic laws. But usually they stop motorcycle drivers and ask for a cambodian license or fine you for not having mirrors or something like that. The problem was that we were caught in flagrante delicto, there was no denying... So one policeman gestures us to park our bikes by the side of the road. We do so and I am ushered towards the higher ranking officer.

"Le capitaine, le capitaine!"

So I make my way until I'm next to him in the shade.

"Speak french?"

"Yes mister officer" I replied, "and also a little Khmer."

So then he explains to me in Khmer that this is a one-way road.

I agree completely and ask him what the consequences are.

"You pay fine"

"Of course, what is the amount?"

"Two bicycles, wrong way, .."

So by now we are almost haggling about the price of the fine.

"You pay fine now please"

"Well, gladly mister officer, but you'll have to show me some kind of official document that firstly states that it is illegal to use the roads in both ways and secondly you will have to procure for me a document that states how much we will have to pay for the infraction and we will need a receipt"

"You pay fine now"

"Show me the book with the rules"

"At the police station"

"Let's go there then"

"No we can not"

"Okay, take me to prison then" (I'm holding out my hands, wrists together"

He laughs.

"Pay fine!"

"Mr officer, you can choose, or we go to the police station together and I pay, or we leave now and pretend this never happened."

He turns his back on me and gestures that we had better just slip away without to much fuzz.

Phwew, lucky escape.

Well, apart from that I took one morning off to go and take pictures in the city. To make them a little arty I put them in black and white. Please enjoy!