Wariness wilts in Cambodia's warmth
We stood in the middle of a dusty street in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, as the sun and humidity competed to knock us senseless. Backpacks with a month's worth of clothes and travel gear weighed heavy on us as the neon sun lowered in the blue-white sky. Dusty white cars with tinted windows and ornamented tissue boxes in their rear window decks bumped by over the deeply potholed street, as a few young men standing on the corner by some motorcycles screamed for our attention: "You need a guesthouse! Where are you going!"
Sunset had been a long time coming. We'd started the day in southern Vietnam, where rickety wooden boats had transported us via the Mekong River toward Cambodia. After border checks in open-air huts, a 14-year-old boy took eight of us Americans, Australians, Dutch, and Germans in a six-seat boat toward the dock nearest to Phnom Penh.
"You need a guesthouse! Where are you going!" a thin young man shouted again.
Aaron, Christina, and I, fellow English teachers vacationing from our work in Japan, exchanged questioning looks.
"I don't know, what do you think?" Christina asked us. "Should we just ask one of these guys to take us to a guesthouse?"
A round-faced 20-something man, wearing baggy jeans and a well-fitted black shirt, observed us deliberating and emerged from a group of friends to approach us. He looked a lot like Drew, a kid I sat behind in my high school social studies class.
"Hey, let me take you to my guesthouse. It's five minutes from here and if you don't like it, the ride is free, and I'll take you to a different place. My name is Nop."
Nop showed us where we were on his map, and explained where he would take us. We soon realized that we had no way of discerning the truth of the simple statement, "You are here," but we agreed to accompany Nop to the guesthouse.
Nop led us to his large white sedan. Its windows were tinted black, its interior was velvety red, and a gold-framed Cambodian flag hung from the rear-view mirror. I sat in the front seat, inhaling pine air freshener and trying to figure out if what we were doing was normal and safe.
As Nop maneuvered around the gaping holes of the city's muddy streets, I noticed he was wearing a huge gold pinky ring with a black stone. That set my mind running along the paths of paranoia. Maybe it's the Cambodian mafia's membership ring, and Nop is sent into the streets to recruit ignorant foreigners. Where are we going? Who would know where to find us? Why did we get in this car? My New York-bred lack of trust was on full throttle.
In between these thoughts, I heard Nop explaining the layout of the city and advising us on some good nightspots. "We're going out for dinner later, if you guys want to come," he said. We were noncommittal and skeptical.
It took about five minutes, just as Nop had said it would, to arrive at the front door of an immaculate guesthouse. Nop's friend and co-owner Dara greeted us in the white-tiled lobby, showed us a white-tiled room for three, and told us it would be US$6 for the night.
An hour later, we walked down the stairs just as Nop and Dara were getting into the car to go to the restaurant.
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