Tuesday night. I’m drinking beer at a steady rate at a bar just off Pub Street, but oddly seems busier than the main event. and the music is marginally better, if too mainstream for my tastes (…and they were all yellow). A party of Western Australians are at a table next to mine, and their voices are both making me homesick and disgusted. The pair in front of me is either a May/September couple or dad and daughter. Not knowing is bugging me greatly. In any case she drips sexuality, from her languishing pose to her bared shoulders with Sak Yant tattoos, which he seems entirely immune to.
I was feeling The Fear. A non-specific anxiety clouding my every action and thought. Maybe it’s the last two days of argument and miscommunication with someone I love. Maybe it’s my constant budget concerns. Maybe it’s my infected foot that I really should be seeing a doctor about, and if I don’t find one here, my chances of finding one in Laos is even worse. Or it could be homesickness, something that no backpacker should ever admit to, like genital herpes or going to Mcdonald’s. This is the longest I have ever been away from Australia, and part of me just wants to book the first flight back home. Perhaps I am too old for this, I am now closer in age to the retiree organised tour crowd than most of the backpackers in the hostels. It’s getting hard to relate to people who never experienced travel without smartphones. I want to keep drinking here until it starts making sense.
What I end up doing is paying my bill and walking back to my hostel, stopping at a pharmacy on the way. Five minutes later and four US dollars later I am walking out with a five-day supply of Cloxacillin and some anti-inflammatories. Technically, antibiotics are illegal for sale without a prescription, but the line between legality and practice is vague at best in Cambodia, especially if you are a tourist. Out of sheer bloody-mindedness, I buy a beer from the store opposite my hostel to wash down the pills.
Things are looking up.
If you liked this post, please check out the rest of the posts from this trip here!
Adrian's Got The Moose 