Back in town we were fairly hard-pressed to find a proper bookstore. Savaht wasn’t familiar with any, which is a true testament to the level of education in the country. We asked a few people and finally found ourselves in a store, which was indeed focused on selling books. The man who ran the store was a French ex-pat who had been in Cambodia for a few years and was incredibly happy with his move, although I suspect there were a few reasons he wasn’t interested in divulging leading up to his decision to hop. The vast majority of the books, in fact, I’d say at least 90% of the books were bootlegs. Much like in Thailand, copyright laws are a figment of the West’s imagination and mean virtually nothing, so you can pick up a 25 dollar copy of Lonely Planet’s Cambodia for a mere four dollars; sure, the pages are photocopied, and the pictures are typically in black and white, but 25 dollars in Cambodia is literally someone’s rent money for a month, so selling a book for that amount is highly unlikely. I browsed the selections, which were mostly a pretty even split between cheesy fiction, and history/politics. They were broken down by the author’s country of origin, a unique and questionable way to separate books, but it turned out to be effective. My favorite title was the photocopied version of Moby Dick. Unable to remember which country Paulo Coelho hails from, I struck up a conversation with the Frenchy that was slinging the books, curly mustache and all, and asked him if he had copies of The Alchemist. I saw a twinkle in his eye, which lead me to believe he was a fan of the author as well, so we talked about several other titles I’d read by him and about The Alchemist itself. I explained my reason for the purchase, was very interested in our encounter with Chin, and told me he thought I was doing a very good thing for him. The predicament that Erick and I had been discussing since leaving Chin was which language we should try to find the book in for him. His native language is Khmer, and while his English is pretty good, we weren’t sure that all of the metaphors would sink in and whether he would be able to extract the message from the book instead of just reading it as a story. We decided to try and find it for him in Khmer, but, were supremely disappointed when Frenchy told us that he was fairly well versed in Coelho’s translations, and while he has been translated to well over 100 languages, he was pretty sure that Khmer didn’t make the list of dialects. He did, however, have the book in English, so I decided to get that for him and hope that he could perhaps use the book to better his understanding of the language; I also figured it better to get it for him in English than to not get it for him at all. With Frenchy’s help I tracked down the poorly bootlegged copy, and handed over the three dollars and change that the book cost. His cash register system was top notch. He had an envelope that had a running total of the books he sold and the amount they went for, which was presumably his inventory, and a pocket in his pants from which he made change for me. Having been to France, I was expecting him to be considerably more arrogant than he turned out to be, perhaps a few years in one of the poorest countries in the world would do all Frenchmen some good. I’m unsure how one could spend any period of time in Cambodia and not be humbled. If seeing this place doesn’t make everyone aware that our liberties, freedoms, and opportunities that we take for granted were given to us simply because we were fortunate enough to be born in the west, and that we, individually, did nothing to earn them or deserve them, then I don’t know what could possibly hammer that in. At home, I wouldn’t walk a mile down the street if someone were going to give me three dollars and change at the other end, it wouldn’t seem worth it, and on the other side of the world, a 21 year old named Chin, got his heart set on a new book he wanted to read, but was unsure if he would ever be able to save enough that same three dollars to purchase it. How is that fair? What makes me so special? Why does my blue passport entitle me to the rest of the world when Chin will never be able to afford to buy a passport to go several hours west to Thailand?

After quick, cold showers, we met Savaht back out in front of The Shadow of Angkor guesthouse and were ready to go to the concert. Erick was wearing a clean, well-pressed shirt, a pair of warm-up style pants, a pair of clean walking shoes, had his hair done, and had just shaved. I, on the other hand, was still wearing the same pair of cut off denim shorts that I hadn’t changed out of nor washed thus far, the same damp-with-sweat v-neck I had worn for the last two days, flip-flops, and a sweat stained military style hat which has a wire brim enabling you to bend it to your specifications that I gave up on caring about several days ago and was now contorted in the most unorthodox shape. I was looking pretty awesome.

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

Like this: Like Loading... Related