12 am, Friday: Pontoon nightclub. Pontoon is a wooden boat anchored to a dock off Diamond Island, a small, newly developed island strewn with new conference centers and manicured parks set amidst dirt land plots and lonely construction equipment. It's accessed via a bridge from central Phnom Penh, a well-paved stretch over which motodups drive too fast.
The boat, on which guests can sit at cushy booths that look out over the dark river, bounces with the dancers wiggling and jumping to a techno mashup of American and Khmer music on the dance floor. A tourist from the Netherlands mentions to me the disconcerting motion of the boat. I reply that the boat once sunk under the strain of an unusually vigorous group of drunken dancers. It's true, but I’m not sure that he believes me.
Two bartenders from Elsewhere club meet me and the other intern when they get off work. Pontoon has a vague Americana vibe, but the dance floor leaves no doubt that this is a Cambodian club. None of the dancers – neither Cambodian nor American – touch each other. There are no hands around waists or on hips or anywhere else that enterprising hands find themselves in dimly lit American nightclubs.
Neither of us have been to Pontoon before, but when we leave, sticky with sweat, the moto drivers waiting outside the club call after us, "Cambodia Daily, staff house, yes?". They already know where we live. I have no idea why.
9 am, Saturday: Sorya Mall. I buy a bottle of sweetened milk for 40 cents from Lucky supermarket and ride the escalators to the top floor of Sorya mall. Escalators are new enough to Cambodia that at each one of its ten is stationed a sad-looking security guard staring at the floor. The 5th floor houses several trendy cafes, a cinema advertizing grotesque Khmer horror movies that appear to feature every grisly American horror figure, several arcades, photobooths, an overlook to the whole city below, and shops selling cheap, glittery jewelry and Hello Kitty change purses.
But its biggest attraction is its large rollerbladding rink in which the high school and college-aged set can be found pulling rollerblade tricks off ramps and slopes. To the beat of Asian pop music, girls in tight, black shorts and guys in black t-shirts and distressed jeans whiz down the slopes and leap over the jumps, occasionally pausing to proudly watch the onlookers watching them from behind a floor-to-ceiling netted fence. A group of Muslim women in long dresses and dark headscarves, their hands clasped behind their backs, quietly watch the skaters.
11 am: Walk. I walk a lot in Phnom Penh, and I often do so aimlessly: exploring random universities or luxury hotels in which I pretend to belong and wandering tiny alleyways lined with folding tables where Cambodians slurp noodles. In these alleyways, bustling with vendors selling juicy fruit gum, puppies yapping, naked, giggly toddlers chasing each other, and barbers carefully coiffing their male customers at outdoor stands, the larger city just around the corner seems to fall away.
I know the traffic cops at the intersection near Sorya mall and every time they see me one will hurry across the street, smile, raise his hand to stop traffic, and guide me through paused traffic. I feel fairly ridiculous, albeit mildly pleased that nearly once a day I literally stop traffic. If I don’t cross the street at their intersection, the young cops, in stiff, dark blue uniforms and caps, yell hello and wave.
2 pm: Java Café. I meet up with the other intern and another college-aged girl who lives in the staff house for Khmer iced coffee – iced coffee with sweet, syrupy, condensed milk. Java café feels like an American transplant and sells sandwiches, soups, drinks and baked desserts to a crowd of mostly expats and tourists. We sit near a cool-looking teenaged couple cruising Facebook on a laptop. On the table in front of them is an untouched, giant, heart-shaped chocolate cake iced with “happy anniversary."
3:30 pm: Pink Bubble Tea. Enticed by the windowless shop’s sparkly, pink façade (how can we resist?), we shuffle through its circular door into a bright prink space in which young men in black pants and shirts and big, pink, floppy hats serve us sickly sweet, candy-colored milk tea.
4:30 pm: Cine Luxe. The cinema, one of only a few in Phnom Penh, has one screen and shows a different movie every week or so, rolling out a giant banner advertising the new film each time it changes. For the past seven weeks it has been a horror movie, as the Khmer film industry appears to only consist of bloody films in which attractive teenagers are attacked by every tried-and-true trope of the horror genre: hanged, vengeful women, murderous children with heads that swivel, and walking corpses carrying axes.
This week, the theater shows what seems to be a Malaysian film of ambiguous genre, dubbed in Khmer. Tickets to the movie are 6,000 riel (1.50) and are purchased at an outdoor booth next to a cart selling mentos, chips, and sour mango slices. We’re directed into an enormous auditorium-looking theater with a curtain that is drawn back to reveal a movie screen on which we can see the controller scrolling through a DVD menu. The movie is preceded by three Bollywood music videos, followed by previews for the aforementioned Khmer horror movies, all of which are narrated by the same booming, megaphonish male voice that also insists that cell phones be turned off.
I have no understanding of the plot of the feature film, which has a strange affinity for odd and unnecessary camera angles. It begins by introducing a flamboyant, skinny, male character whom I assume is supposed to be gay, but who is later inexplicably married to the film’s leading lady – some kind of gangster girl – and is obviously perturbed when his new bride refuses his sexual advances, meowing coyly in his purple, silk robe as he tries to tempt her into bed. Eventually, he gets what he wants. There is also a very tense scene in which rival gangs wield durian fruit as a weapon.
11 pm: Riverhouse nightclub. In a packed second-floor space, ultra-cool expats and Cambodians dance to American hip hop, and Western men gleefully flirt with pretty Khmer women.
9 am, Sunday: Orussey market. One the way to the market, I see a moto driver with perhaps thirty ducks somehow strapped together so that they hang in one giant, feathery clump around his bike. At first I assume they must already have been slaughtered, but then notice their long necks moving as if trying to get a bit more comfortable. They look unconcerned.
Approaching the market, I can see rows and rows of glazed, headless pigs strung up from stalls, big, grey fish nestled in pans of ice, and naked, dead ducks lined up on tables, and feel sorry for the quiet, oblivious animals strapped to the moto next to me.
Orussey market looks like a converted warehouse or parking garage. The lower floor is crammed with hundreds of noisy sellers selling practical items - like car parts, irons, fans, and shampoo - as well as meat, produce, breads, and packaged snacks. The second floor is stuffed with stalls full of notebooks, posters, books, and pens, and on the third floor sellers hawk their shoes – advertized on dismembered-looking plastic feet – fabrics, and clothes. One stall is selling framed photographs- mostly of Asian politicians - except for one of Osama Bin Laden looking wistfully into the distance.
I buy a Thai boy band poster for 50 cents, and, as usual, try to stealthily snap pictures of tailors stitching sparkly fabric into Khmer formalwear and schoolchildren thumbing through English lesson books. When I check the monitor, not only are the vendors and buyers looking at my camera, they’re smiling and waving. As I leave, the power flicks out, and the warehouse-like market goes unnervingly dark. The vendors, unperturbed, switch on little backup lights.
12 pm: One of the guys who works at the staff house unrolls my boy band poster and is obviously amused. He repeatedly bests me at khmer tic tac toe (“cross”) until an explosion stops us pencils in midair and we look at each other in curious surprise. A moment of recognition that something has just blown up suddenly registers on his face, and he, after politely but hurriedly pausing to apologize and gesture “be right back,” leaps up and bounds up the stairs two at a time. My friend’s air conditioner had exploded. She’s fine.
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