Having settled on the fact that I’m not leaving tomorrow and will wait an extra day before starting on my travels over the King’s Birthday, my body instantly relaxed. At the suggestion of my mom, I headed to the riverfront and up the stairs to the Foreign Correspondents Club’s balcony.
I have a love-hate relationship with the riverfront. In one sense, it’s still the heart of the city, if no longer economically or geographically. The city sprawls outwards in semicircular levels of development from an imaginary center located somewhere along the banks of the Tonle Sap. The strip of palm trees and stubby grass along the water draws people every night, and the restaurants and bars along Sisowath Quay overflow. But it’s also a place of beggars, child booksellers, harassing tuk-tuk drivers, and the annoying Cambodian guy trying to sell “marijuana, marijuana, marijuana” as he creepily whispers it in your ear just as you’re almost past him. The sidewalk is virtually impassable, the road is a mess of vehicles trying to get by, and with the Japanese-funded drainage project underway, the river itself is gone in all but a few places where the skinny strips of land along the bank are exposed from behind the blue barrier fencing.
I went up to the FCC, which sits directly across from one of the strips of park that has remained in its previous state, unmolested by the construction. I don’t go very often. It’s not a love-hate relationship like the riverfront in general is. It’s more of a love-overpriced relationship. Yet because of this mental block that prevents me from going there regularly, even though I occasionally end up spending the same amount elsewhere, the infrequency of my visits make it one of the more special places for me in town.
I sat at the counter that runs along the railing overlooking the point where the Tonle Sap runs into the Mekong. The open space of the second and third floor of the colonial shop houses that make up the FCC is softly lit. Around me, groups of people were chatting casually in the deep leather chairs. In front of me, it was dark, but the darkness of the river itself stood out in its absence of light against the benches and palm trees along the edge that were reflecting the light of the nearby restaurants.
I brought a book but didn’t even end up opening it. After a tiring day and with the chaos of motorbikes, cars, pushcarts, and people directly below, I allowed myself to be hypnotized by the scene in front of me. Suddenly, I realized that the feeling of belonging and comfort that comes when I see the Tonle Sap and the Mekong happens every time I’m near them. It’s like the feeling of seeing the ocean when you’ve been away for too long.
I hadn’t really planned on gaining an attachment with these rivers here in Phnom Penh. Having a special feeling for the Mekong, to me, seemed a bit trite, and I’ve always considered and always will consider the coastal waters of New York and New England to be the places that I feel most connected to. Somewhat embarrassingly, I probably have one of the strongest attachments to the Long Island Sound, a body of water that I still refuse to even swim in until the heat gets absolutely unbearable. Yet, it’s the water that I’ve always lived near, have grown up on, and have spent numerous days floating on. I’ve seen it in the stillness of the early morning and during the storms at the end of the summer.
I don’t really feel much attachment to lakes. Too boring, still, and small. My food came, and I realized that the two rivers in front of me had become close enough to oceans in my mind to garner my respect. I’ve learned that these rivers can be as strong as many oceans, and as I’ve followed the news in Burma, I’ve realized how much river regions of Southeast Asia have become familiar organisms that I feel a connection to. I can, unfortunately, imagine what the Irrawaddy Delta must look like as well.
As I sat at the edge of the FCC, surrounded by the drinking, eating, reading, and chatting and overlooking the chaos below and then out to the pure darkness of the river, I had one of those wonderfully alone in a crowd moments. There’s a special feeling that doesn’t come when you’re interacting with and, therefore, distracted by other people, and it rarely even happens when you’re completely alone either. It’s a feeling heightened by the fact of being completely at ease with everyone else circling around in the periphery. It was one of those, whoa, I can’t believe that I actually live in Cambodia moments. I could smile at that and not even be self-conscious that someone else would notice. It’s something so obvious, but like repeating a word over and over again, it sometimes still takes me by surprise and awe many months in. It was the feeling of realizing that a year in Phnom Penh will always be a part of my life from now on, something that would probably intrigue me if I heard it from someone else but which never sounds as strange when you’re simply living in the reality of it.