Someone once said that the difference between Phnom Penh and a Capital city in the west is that over there you sacrifice your freedom for your safety but Here we risk our safety for our freedom .
In the west we are suffocated by rules, seat belts and crash helmets are compulsory, pub closing times are positively kindergarten, smokers are persecuted and tormented, pot, all drugs in fact, despite their universal popularity, remain an offence, licenses and registrations are required for everything, records, and IDs allow the state to permeate every aspect of our personal lives, taxes, fees and fines are levelled for the most minor transgression.. We in the West have in effect handed our freedom to others who live our lives for us, in our interests, for our own good, as defined by themselves. And the result is we live spiritually castrated lives never even daring to consider our real wants. We never even come close to confronted by our own desires, like so many other aspects of our lives they too are tied up in red tape.
But here, we live with none of that, no-one is going to tell, you to wear a crash helmet , put on a seat belt or not to smoke, or to stop drinking at 11 o clock. No one is going to assume responsibility for our lives except ourselves.
Here you are presented with a radical choice unlike anything you have ever experienced before. You can do anything you want, really, anything! Now what is it that you want? What do you REALLY want. And in the answer to that question you learn something about yourself. And that is the true burden of freedom, living with the choices you make and being held solely responsible for the consequence of those choices.
And here comes the warning for it Is a heavy burden and there is a price. The Anarchic licentiousness that we prize so much has it’s own cost and the longer the road the higher the toll. I’ve attended the funerals of enough friends to know the truth of this. Phnom Penh is a tough town, an uncaring cruel town in so many ways. To live here is to choose radical freedom, a life lived in the understanding that you take care of yourself and those you love, but you expect nothing unearned from anyone, the people of this city have too many problems of their own, and none of us suffer losers or fools gladly , and yes there are enough of those too.
There’s a lake north of Phnom Penh, Boeung Kak, ringed by wooden guest houses. A pretty sunset spot, lots of the backpackers line up every evening, cameras and stands on the decks of the wooden guest houses unoriginally trying to capture it’s picture postcard view, blissfully ignorant that the pretty wooden houses are squats, home for thousands of poor people, prostitutes, robbers, gangsters, an enormous criminal underclass of people with no stake in society, brothers pimping for sisters, sons dealing amphetamines, daughters putting on makeup and going out to sell their bodies at the side of the road.
I always thought Boeung Kak lake was symbolic of this city, beautiful on the surface but underneath, utterly poisonous if you slip beneath the surface, and in this town that’s easy to do.
