Sri

Still not reached Australia on my Round The World In Drag journey but the exotic adventures continue. This report (with added Mormons) to Jo back home in chilly Britain,- Sri Bangkok at the moment, but on our way out soon. OK, Jo, are you sitting comfortably? Or save this for a quiet moment. Mandy in Cambodia. It all started with us sitting in the courtyard of the Freedom Hotel in Siem Reap. I really don’t know what to say to you about Cambodia. It was the moodiest place on earth when we arrived and we saw the places where they massacred all the people so you end up spooked if you’ve got anything about you at all. And yet the people are really nice and friendly, the food is good and we’ve been buzzing about in minibuses and on the back of bikes seeing big old temples and buying things really cheap in the market. I haven’t got it all sorted out in my head but I knew it was time for a night out, and applying the old Mandy charms to Siem Reap. (Phnom Penh was far too heavy, or so Roger reckoned). We’re with a party. A travelling party, and Jesse has gone off to put on his Hawaiian shorts because it’s ten at night and we’re going out to the Martini’s Club. It’s February but the air is thick with… whatever air gets thick with - heat. The boys who ride the bikes are sitting round a table talking and smoking. Jesse is my alibi, by the way, in case the Cambodians have a restless attitude to lady-men like the Thais. He’s a Seattle gay who sells telephone subscriptions and seems to do well out of it – and a bit of a party animal (he nearly missed the early plane from Phnom Penh after an all-nighter) – anyway he can keep unwanted men off me and I can keep the girls off him. He’s still a bit concerned about Martini’s – is the place “family”? I think it may not be, but I don’t say so. But now everybody seems to want to go with us – Melissa has put on jeans for the occasion, and Fran, big Fran, is coming, RajPaul, Jesse’s travelling partner,is coming, very suave and cultured, Dominic has got shaved (he got up this morning with a “feeling” – scratch that itch, Dom!), Brad, our leader, Damien and Greg. The last two are a bit confused about me doing “the whole chick thing” (they’re Australian like most of the group) – and I sit demure in my full party-drag – green sandals, blonde, Indian jewellery, pink nails, big eyes. And then there are the Mormons. Fifty students from Brigham Young University have moved into the Freedom tonight and are having dinner in the function room. Cambodia has suffered enough without another idealogy, and we think about crashing their dinner but they come out as we’re plotting and stand staring down from the balcony. Anyway our minibus has come. Greg kicks a frog and hints that he doesn’t want to sit next to me. Off we go. Route Six into town, then down by the River, and the Martini is strings of lights and a crowd of moto-riders ahead of us. In the beer-garden they’re performing sentimental Cambodian cabaret-songs, but we’re headed for the hard-core, - the night-club, through the glass doors. Instant sensation, Jo! I’ve never known anything like it. All the Cambodian girls go wide-eyed, the boys stare, the waiters and the manager smile, and the girls are so overcome by me they – well, they reach for every part of me and give it a good feeling over! hands. nails, arms, fingers, face, cheeks, chin. nose, hair, all of it pinched, plucked, arranged, re-arranged – it seems like forever. I pose for a photo with some of them and then they follow me. God, Jo, adoration can be exhausting. I can’t sit down because they are feeling my legs, calve, ankles, hips, and they are after sneaking a peek at my tits – No! I sit down and it starts again, every inch, except between the legs, pinched and felt, and the face again – and I hear the word “sri” over and over again. It means “beautiful”, “honoured, beautiful lady” Well, now! While all this has been going on everybody else has been getting drinks and the dancing has been going on. The dance-floor is round and the DJ Box is a VW car – the kids are moving slowly in a circle, in lines swaying, back-stepping, slowly rolling the hips, boys in one line, girls in another, to Cambodian music, and they gradually progress around the circle. When the music gets faster it’s the same only the boys get a sort of slow skank going, arms raised. The boys come and start at me too, and I feel a pair of hands re-arrange my hair. Then the music stops, everybody claps, the floor clears, and the bar-girls start handing out bottles. Our gang is negotiating and a lot of people in the dark are talking and drinking. Then it’s disco-time – techno, Cambodian-style. The kids are young-looking but early-twenties a lot of them, streetwear and sarongs. It’s disco-skank mixed up a bit. One of the girls who made such a fuss of me earlier invites me onto the dance-floor with her friend. We dance for along time and I get a bit extreme which makes them laugh. After another break the place is a bit fuller and we get more traditional dances. I get invited up again and learn the step pattern from one of the boys, it’s beautiful when I get the hang of it. At the end everybody claps. One of the ex-pats in the crowd tries to tweak my tits as he passes. Twat! More disco and our lot on the floor. My girl calls me in, fixes me with her brown eyes, sways while I dance, fixed on me. It’s a bit hard to handle. I slip my shades on and they like that. There’s a podium in front of the VW and a girl with shades dances on it in front of the crowd. And more dance and less breaks, two invites, from a cheeky young boy, then a taller boy in a denim baseball cap. Lots of excitement. I need to use the toilet. The big test – boys or girls? I ask my friend, she takes me to the Girls, out at the back. It’s a little grey low room and a cubicle. Two girls are in there and stare when I go in. When I’m in the cubicle standing over a hole in the ground there are shrieks of laughter outside. Everybody seems to have disappeared, and it’s a little bit out of control. Damien and Greg on the the dancefloor at last, Brad too, but they’re soon gone back to the Freedom, RajPaul too, and where are Jesse and Dominic? Jesse’s left his whisky bottle on the table. And suddenly there’s a kick-off, a Chinese-looking boy heads for a table and grabs a bottle, the crowd swamp the incident and there are no bouncers! I’m fading in to the back-ground very quickly. But some beer-girls and men sort it out. But spooky dancing with lights down, lots of strobe-lights, and the Cambodian skank is in stop-go motion. Sex is in the air, like anywhere. Fran and Melissa have gone. Should I stay or should I go? This may not be Phnom Penh but it is still Heart of Darkness country. I head out into the forecourt where the motos are lined up. I could have a ride to anywhere. Jesse and Dom have gone on a long ride back to Freedom, to score some draw, accidentally via a whore-house – but this I don’t know. I walk over to the Zanzy Bar where a handfull of ex-pats are getting stoned while their Cambodian girlfriends snuggle up to them (or play pool). One girl takes a couple of puffs on her man’s cartoon spliff, chokes and coughs – it’s quiet with a lot of finger-talk, and the tape playing “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?”, - an English voice from somewhere says – “Well, read any good books lately?” Time to go home. Definitely. A moto-rider. I spread my legs for the boys and ride home in style, with warm breeze racing past my shades, up by the riverside, swerving to avoid holes in the road, right into Route 6, Freedom Hotel….. A bit of an anti-climax, Jo? Maybe not. But still, “sri”…! Back in Bangkok now, and then on to Bali. Sorry, girl. Don’t let the winter get you down. Hugs Mandy