A Conversation Gone Wrong in Cambodia

I was drinking a 50 cent beer and finishing up a late lunch at Temple Restaurant in Siem Reap, when a grizzled older man sat down at the table next to me. He looked to be about 60, with buzzed gray hair, arms covered in blurry sailor tattoos, and two hearing aids the size of cell phones. He was quickly joined by a pleasant Cambodian woman in her forties whose name, I would soon learn, was Po.

He introduced himself as John (although, to be precise, I should spell it JOHN! since he shouted constantly). He was from Australia, traveling through SE Asia for a couple of months, and was hammered drunk at 2pm. He had a habit of squinting and sticking out his lower jaw after he spoke, like a demented Mr. Magoo.

I tried to keep up my end of the conversation, but no matter how loud I spoke, his reply was always “What? What?” He’d lost his hearing in the Vietnam War and told me he hadn’t used a telephone since 1974. “Isn’t that some shit?!”

After he worked out where I was from, he said that he’d like to visit the States but couldn’t. “Too many felonies. While everyone was getting rich selling coke in the 90′s, I was stuck in prison for dealing smack. I coulda made millions.”

Po, I could tell, was quickly tiring of his drunken rambling — she would look at him, then look at me and roll her eyes. At least she had the advantage of only understanding a small percentage of his tirade. Thinking it might be time to move on, I motioned to the waiter for the bill but he served me another beer instead. Great.

John decided to enlighten me on the differences between Cambodia and Thailand. “The whores are cheaper here and a lot less hassle. I’ve been dating Po for nearly two weeks now and haven’t paid her a penny. And I’ve been giving it to her good every night, don’t you know! She’s crazy in the sack!”

Po pretended to not understand and focused on her curry. I squirmed about uneasily in my chair. John was a real charmer.

He did have his softer side, admitting he was crazy about Po and wished he could take her home with him. “You understand ‘marry’?” This prompted more eye-rolling on her part. About this time, she leaned towards me and said “Maybe you help me? I want him go home and me go to my home. You tell him?”

Oh sure, I thought. I’ll tell your drunken, ex-con, ‘Nam Vet boyfriend that he should go home alone tonight and forget about any boom boom. That sounds like a fabulous idea. I took the coward’s way out, pretended not to understand, and simply shrugged. The waiter passed by and I asked for the check, making sure he understood this time.

As I paid the bill, she had apparently broached the subject because he was shouting “What?! What?! I don’t understand!” The wide-eyed staff were worriedly gathering around the table and I decided that this was definitely the right moment to move on.

A few blocks away, I found a cafe with free wi-fi and settled in to do some writing. Twenty minutes later, I saw John walking by on the street. I ducked my head and thought he’d missed me, but he appeared at my table and sat down, ordering a beer.

“Can you believe what she just did? I got up to use the toilet and she walked out on me! I can’t believe it. I just bought her a $900 dress today. That bitch! I just can’t figure out why she left.”

I tried to be sympathetic, but he couldn’t hear me and didn’t want to listen anyway. He wanted his $900 dress back, but most of all, he wanted to know “Why?”

“I think I scared her off with my serious talk. That marriage stuff must have spooked her. Every time I visit Asia, I leave with a broken heart. Why?”

He stared into his beer for a bit, while I chugged mine and prepared for my second escape of the evening. After a few minutes, he looked up and slurred “You know, maybe it was because she saw me shooting all that heroin this morning…”

“Yeah, John,” I said. “That might have done it.”

Tagged as: backpacking, blogging, Cambodia, siem reap, travel