Jo’s Birthday April 7th Day 62

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you

 

 I cant say a cake was easy to find on the island which was strange as everybody got the concept.  It was easy fun to mime what  I was looking for - cake, singing,  blowing out candles - and novel to be understood at last. Perhaps they have picked  up the idea of a white person’s birthday from Western Media.  Or maybe I am just a poor shopper.  The T Shirt and Hat were more straightforward and Taran was his usual inventive self, crafting a lovingly wrapped gift from Banana leaves and shells.  And painting a rather excellent Turtle diving card. There was a lot of fun pantomime at our little hotel around keeping all the arrangements secret and I actually think, although surely aware that something was afoot, Jo was pretty surprised by the completeness of our arrangements.

We had a real birthday breakfast.

Then we went for a goodbye swim. In our private seaworlds as is our custom.  Jo drifting over the coral gardens, me striking out to circle the yacht moored offshore and Taran scuttling about chasing fish and investigating marine life and topography.

All very sweet and sad to be going.  Of course.

But we must press on...

 

The Thai roads are excellent.  Thailand is so clean.  We are whisked frictionlessly from Island to border post with little effort or engagement.

The Cambodia side of things is not like that. With touching familiarity we were back where things just don’t work that way – endless forms filled in redundant triplicate, expensive visas issued slowly, car an hour late.  But an intriguing hour as I went in to one of the many casinos sited just within Cambodia’s laxer jurisdiction  and serving a voracious Thai appetite for gambling.  I should have taken a picture – it was brightly lit enough. A warehouse.  Air con reeking of tobacco, bright formica surfaces and tiled floors and acres of gaming.  Some familiar setups - roulette, poker but automated and  ranks of exotic arrangements of inscrutable calligraphy, tables, dice, cards and an army of uniformed croupiers.  And a great and various array of punters!  I stop where a seated circle of  twenty elderly ladies are clutching triggered joysticks, they surround a giant table screen featuring a fantastical  and very animated underwater seascape populated with drifting dragons that explode in a virtual shower of coins collected by the lucky granny who fired the last shot. I think. Sort of pay as you go Space Invaders.  “ Its gambling Jim but not as we know it”.  I am a novelty and some of the table smile to me and comment but not for long.  The siren calls and the rapid fire of  trigger clicks resumes.

We arrive in Battambang.  Guess what it is hot and Jo’s birthday restaurant pick is closed.  Nice to go to bed early with our family book read and the AC on.  School tomorrow.