Temples and Tuk Tuks by Lydia Laube

Author:Lydia Laube
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BG
ISBN: 9781862549036
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Published: 2010-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

6 Doctor Evil and

the Wild West

My room at the Royal had a TV and Sky Channel, whatever that is. Fiddling with it, I came across the ‘explicit’ station. And it certainly was. But I was soon bored with that. It was like watching someone else eat a meal – not a lot of fun.

It was another great morning on the cool, breezy roof and during breakfast I talked to the French couple, Emile and Sophie, I had met on the bamboo train. They told me that they had not been feeling too flash yesterday. The day before that, in Siem Reap, they had met a retired French Foreign Legionnaire who ran a restaurant with his Cambodian wife. They had imported lots of French beer from Corsica, but no one would buy it, so he had invited my friends to help drink it. They had apparently done their utmost to oblige.

Up until now I had believed that the French Foreign Legion was extinct, but Emile told me that it is alive and well and living in Corsica, which is, along with French Guiana – the former home of Papillion – their headquarters.

After breakfast I walked around to the Chary Hotel. It is the Royal’s competition, but it is not as good. It had long, narrow, rabbit-warren corridors that were stacked high with the morning’s exodus of rubbish. The rooms were furnished in much the same way as the Royal’s, but they were smaller. On the rooftop restaurant, a terrific gust of wind blew the sugar container, a screw-top plastic jar, off the table and its contents spilled all over the concrete floor. The waiter scraped up the sugar with a spoon and scooped it, along with ample dirt, back into the jar. Then he put it back on my table and gave me a lovely smile. I swore off sugar, possibly for life. I know this happens, but do they have to do it before my face?

Having decided that this would be a rest day for me, I spent the remainder of the morning strolling around the town and investigating the old French colonial shop houses along the river. To my relief no one badgered me to buy. A large sign advertised a lottery, called ‘Sheepstakes’. I supposed the prize would be a merino or two. Soon it became too hot for promenading, so I holed up in the Royal.

In the evening the hotel manager hijacked his sister-in-law, Any, and her baby girl, Nana, to escort me to the market. We visited a friend of Any’s jewellery stall. Fantastic sapphire and ruby jewellery abounded and, although the stalls that sold it were primitive, it was probably genuine, given Battembang’s proximity to Pailin, the home of the gem mines. Two beggars approached me in the market, but I had already given my quota for the day, so I didn’t oblige. But turning around I saw Any give them each a thousand rials. Later I asked her, ‘Do you always give to beggars?’ and she said, simply, ‘Yes.

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