Getting ready to leave

I’m not often described as a decisive person, but I think I might be getting worse. I used to be plagued by fairly minor dilemmas which mostly took place in supermarkets, but this week I’m been repeatedly changing my mind about when to leave Cambodia and I’ve noticed a faint tone of despair whenever the VSO staff answer my phone calls. I decided initially to leave on Sunday 8th April, and just before my flight was booked I thought I might like to stay for Khmer New Year, so changed it to 18th April. Then it occurred to me that I have no house, no job, nothing to do and not very much money, (and also a wedding in England I’d like to go to) so I tried to move it back to the 8th. Before I could change my mind again, though, my flights had already been booked so I will be leaving on 18th April.

This is exactly five weeks after I was forced into having a Phnom Penh leaving party to suit the plans of jet-setters Gilly and Sam, who won’t be in Cambodia in April. It’s always a bit awkward when you have a leaving party and then don’t leave. It was a great weekend, though, and it reminded me how lucky I’d been to arrive with such a nice group. They had organised a special edition of NSJ, the VSO Cambodia magazine which I’d co-edited with Sam – two editions which are already being talked about as the glory days of NSJ. It was a brilliant present and I was very touched by all of the contributions, though less impressed by the insinuations about my relationship with Tak. (I think my reputation never recovered from the ménage a trois gaffe in a previous blog.)

In the last few weeks I’ve had my first illness – nasty hookworms that came in through my feet when I was digging the well. The doctor in Phnom Penh gave me around forty packs of medicine and instructions about what to eat. Luckily she didn’t say anything about drinking, and I’m assuming that getting the little parasites a bit tipsy will help the medicine kill them off. Ingran, who is a doctor and came back to Cambodia last week, confirmed the validity of this tried and tested approach. This is fortunate, as there is a five-day Leo Beer festival this week, and beer is definitely the healthiest of the drinks available here. There was the same festival in Kampong Cham when we first arrived eighteen months ago, with the same promotions, the same presenters, and the same catchy tune which is easily the best song in Cambodia. (There can’t be many countries where advert jingles are better than all of the available pop songs.) So it feels like a fitting way to end my time in Cambodia. Although I fear it’s probably also a fitting symbol of my time in Cambodia.