The ashtray is nearly full and the bottle of whiskey almost empty....)
Exactly seven years ago I crossed the Lao border into Cambodia.
The first day I spend smoking dope in a sleepy border town.
On the second day I followed the Mekong river all the way to Phnom Penh.
I didn’t know a single soul in this city. All I had was a dirty piece of paper where someone had scribbled a few words on. Top Banana Guesthouse; that was what it said.
That’s where I went...
A moto-taxi dropped me in a dusty street and I climbed the stairs to the Top. Within minutes of arriving at the Banana rooftop terrace everything was all right. My kind of place, my kind of people. Everybody easy-going and relax. Passing around huge spliffs, having beers and chatting with fellow guests and other cool dudes.
Phnom Penh’s answer to heaven on earth, they called it.
Good times, getting high and hanging out with the guys.
But in the far corner of the terrace were two Khmer girls talking to each other. One was a good looking girl, the other one... The other one was something else... Truly the most beautiful girl in the world. I could swear there was a glow surrounding here. She was magical... like an angel, a goddess... So out of place in this crowd of stoners, travellers and crazy people. I couldn’t even look at her, she was just too beautiful. So I focused on getting really high.
The next day I wanted to visit Tuol Sleng, a Khmer Rouge prison turned into a genocide museum. When I left the guesthouse Magical Girl was suddenly standing right in front of me. She asked me where I was going. I was speechless. Nevertheless, she came along.
Tuol Sleng is a nasty place. In the late seventies, the Khmer Rouge regime imprisoned and tortured about 17.000 people here. Only twelve of them survived.
Here we walked around ... At one point, she grabbed my hand and hold it firmly. Maybe it was by chance, maybe it was planned, maybe this place was just too much for her... But for me, it changed my life. I fell in love right there and then, within the walls of the Khmer Rouge prison.
Afterwards, I had the time of my life Cambodia. We got married that summer.
About a year after our visit to the Khmer Rouge prison, we settled as husband and wife in Brussels. For seven years she would be the centre of my universe.
Happily ever after etc.
Then it turned out that she had a different view on the universe.
So we started out in the most unlikely of places
but in the end it didn't matter.
The Khmer Rouge genocide took over one million lives.
That is a devastating, undisputed fact.
While true love is,
to the best of my knowledge,
nothing but a fairy tale.
So I traded my dreams for the love of a girl
but ended up with nothing,
just like a vagabond
in the distance...
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