Destination Cambodia: Adventures in the Kingdom
by Walter Mason
by Walter Mason
Walter Mason’s Destination Cambodia: Adventures in the Kingdom is a gentle, intimate look at Cambodia today.
Mason eschews writing both the usual political treatise and typical cliched travelogue you might otherwise typically find on the shelves about Cambodia, in favour of the highly personal memoir. He paints a detailed portrait of the kingdom through a series of quietly thoughtful vignettes of his relationships with her people.
As in Mason’s earlier Destination Saigon, nothing particularly extraordinary happens (though being left to deliver an impromptu speech on Buddhism and human rights in front of a crowd of prominent Cambodians and screened live on TV comes close) – and this is precisely what makes this 2014-published book such a delightfully engaging read.
Mason, who has been visiting Cambodia since the 1990s and stayed there for several months with a view to writing this book, bursts out of the usual Cambodian historian/journalist/NGO worker pigeonhole to write of his experiences as a large, gay Westerner with more than a passing interest in Buddhism. He seeks friendships with ordinary Cambodians and his nuanced accounts of his relationships with them speak volumes. While some of the usual tourist sights get a mention — Angkor of course, Tuol Sleng, and even Pyongyang Restaurant — Mason’s writing consistently comes from a fresh angle and will leave even those who think they know the country with a new way of looking at things.
Self-deprecating Mason is acutely self-aware of himself as a traveller, and a chronicler, as frustrating as this can be for him at times. In one scene he asks a friend what the nightclub name “Love Orange” refers to:
“My friend studied the sign carefully and said, ‘It means “Love Orange”.’ ‘Yes, but what on earth does “Love Orange” mean?’ I asked. My friend looked at me in confusion. ‘It means what it says, “to love oranges”, you know, the fruit.’... ‘But why on earth would someone call a nightclub “Love Orange”?’ I asked. ‘Probably the owner really loves oranges,’ said my friend as we walked on.” Ask a silly question, as they say…
Mason immerses himself in life in Phnom Penh, though he also travels to various spots around the country including Siem Reap and Battambang (and even Thailand's Khorat), drawing back a curtain on everyday life. There’s a consideration of poverty, for instance: “I was struck by the fact that one of the measures of poverty is the preoccupation with small circumstances. In my privileged life, everyone, even the most decorously struggling, was concerned with a much wider-spanning arc of existence. Futures, careers, relationships, home — these were all the serious concerns of the day. In Cambodia, people fretted about buying meals items of clothing, visits to the doctor, buying petrol. These immediate concerns were actual and acute problems that always needed solving.”
Read this if you’re heading to Cambodia and would like an introduction, or if you’ve travelled there and would like another, entertaining, perspective. You’ll be sad when you have to turn the final page on Mason and his eclectic cast of ordinary but rather special Cambodians.
Buy online: Amazon | Book Depository
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