Siam Chronicles 11 - When to Say When to Phnom Penh

Cambodian Pajama Party
It was the middle of the day and all the women in sight were wearing pajamas. Pink bunnies, teddy bears bursting with the will to live, explosions of hearts and bows - these bromides blurred by as the women jounced through the muck on their motorcycles to buy a slab of catfish and a twist of leek at the huts arrogating the gutters. The foul smelling intestines and rapidly browning vegetables poised on poles and cardboard boxes over the sluice of open sewer weltered together into an odor of enormity. One illustrious diva bicycled off sporting a pink button down number replete with puffy sheep, topped with a towel twining loosely round her head.
I wish this style would pendulum into vogue in the west – just think of swinging into work secure in the emotional armor of well-worn PJs and a towel over your head.

The Lubricious Old Codger’s Club
On the bad side, The Last Home Hostel had roaches, loads of them. On the good side, it had a wall-sized oil of what appeared to be Asian Vikings in thongs battling a dragon, which was unremittingly hilarious. On the bad side, the bathroom for the extended family unit was separated from our quarters by half a plywood partition. On the good side, the food was unexpectedly excellent. On the bad side, and even worse than the roaches or the caroming cacophony of bodily functions, was that The Last Home Hostel was the designated meeting place for a singular type of old boys club.
Every day as the light presages dusk these withered vampires shamble up from the depths, to debouch catarrhal baritones from a crumple of lipless mouth, framed in white hair tufting from ears, nose, chin, around the shiny pate, as they camber across the table to catalogue their conquests.
“She SAID she was sixteen, and that’s good enough for me… (laughter follows)”
“The girl I keep in Vietnam is real young too, she’s got a good heart but she brought over this other girl the other day and the little slut stole my credit cards… (rest of story omitted as sickening)”
The conversations are always the same, every night they drill and drone about divorcing their Californian wives and moving to Asia to keep harems of juvenile girls in each country with impunity. The youngest of these men couldn’t be less than sixty five and looks like a hirsute albino toad – and he’s obviously the looker of the group. Later we learn from a young British couple starting up a bar that Phnom Penh is lousy with these lechers, to whom they’ve bestowed the appellation “sexpats.”
Across the street a bizarre street festival is blasting through the half-light, a group of youths in white jumpsuits caterwaul eighties tunes off-key in front of huge pink hearts. There are fireworks. Meanwhile, the conversation has lurched into the appanage of love, and the leers sift to smiles as the raconteurs speak of the girls’ immense ardor for them, so touching. At The Last Home in the watered down twilight these rheumy men drown in phlegm and the delusion that they could actually be loved by anyone.