And now for something completely different...

I was told I was going to experience beggar fatigue out here. There are beggars everywhere, young, old, limbs, no limbs, every shape, colour, and size. They are the backdrop to decades of poverty and conflict. But no, in fact I don't have beggar fatigue at all. Granted, I don't give them money when they ask, since warlord gangsters control the beggars and collect their proceeds at the end of the day. But I don't avoid them either. The beggars are simply doing their job, like the rest of us.

However, I do have a fatigue of sorts. I have "Old Western man with young Asian girl" fatigue. Every restaurant, every cafe, every street corner here, there is a Western Grandpa getting it on with a Cambodian girl forty or fifty years his junior. I said I would not judge, but I take it back. I judge now. Oh, I can talk about flip-flops and rain storms until the emaciated cows come home to the rice paddy, but the most pervasive image here is the sex tourists. It gets a little draining and after a while, you just don't want to see it anymore. If I am being ageist, by not complaining about the entire age spectrum of people exploiting the women here, well then tough, get over it. Somehow, the cute 23-year old on his gap year trip having a little romp doesn’t seem half as bad as the 70-year old man who should have gotten it out of his system long ago. So in the spirit of Juvenal and Jonathan Swift, I have made a meagre effort to express my further thoughts on this issue in song, to be sung to the tune of "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer".



Grandpa Got Run Over by a Tuk-Tuk


Grandpa got run over by a Tuk-Tuk
Walking home from whorehouse Sunday eve
You can say there’s no such thing as justice
But as for me and Bong Srey* we believe

He’d forgotten his Viagra
And he’d found a Miss Right Now
So he left to find his blue pills
To ensure Cambodian Boom Boom Pow

But Gramps had been super forgetful
In the throes of new romance
He forgot his hearing aid and glasses
So against a speeding tuk-tuk, he stood no chance.


The tuk-tuk driver hadn’t see him
Or so he claimed to the police
Who arrived to fine the white man
Who was lying dazed but aroused in the street


And now Grandpa’s back with Grandma
And he’s got a lot to ‘splain
How he wasn’t at a conference
But was seeking Asia nooky down the lane

[Chorus! All together now! ]

Grandpa got run over by a Tuk-Tuk
Walking home from whorehouse Sunday eve
You can say there’s no such thing as justice
But as for me and Bong Srey* we believe!





*Bong Srey: "Sister" in Khmer, common form of address among Cambodian women