Mikes Thoughts

channeling my inner Kampot

It’s been over a year now of us not going to Kampot. It’s not a favored place of mine particularly. I do like the river and river walk there. My wife has family that owns a restaurant we will go to. Really good pasta there.

To go there from here we do the day bus or van to Phnom Penh and then the van to Kampot city. It takes about 9 hours give or take an unscheduled stop which the bus service we sometimes use will do. There is an evening bus too. A sleeper thing we will never do again. It takes just as long to take the day service and we get there early evening. To me, that’s better. We’ve done the tourist stuff there a few times. We don’t really go for that stuff any more. I guess we go there to not be here awhile. At least that’s what I want.

The night before we go we will go to a Khmer wedding party. Consider it as all the free beer and food for hours. Must dress up too. I don’t have any clothes that fit any more that are dress up things. When I lost the weight all those clothes are like tents on me now. So I guess I must get a new shirt and pants. Not a big fan of fancy clothes. The typical barang clothing for me here is a cheap t shirt and shorts. I hardly vary from that. Most other expats do about the same. So to go to wedding must have a clothing upgrade. Blah.

coffee and hotels in Kampot

That’s my task for today. Find hotel with pool in central Kampot. We stayed before at Hotel 5.s. It’s a nice place. Last time we stayed it was full of French tourists which my wife liked since she speaks French. The coffee now is at a favored spot. Your Cafe is a nice walk from the house and they have comfy seats for my old butt. I also kinda peruse booking.com for hotels. Find one. Price is okay. Location is not. Another seems to be in a nice spot. No pool. On and on in Kampot. Find this. Look at that. I get genius discounts with stays and often will get free breakfasts for us plus a discount.

On the writing... again

Like usual been thinking on my writing here. Right now it costs nothing. I love the static site stuff. I can create and update and when I feel good or done I can send it off using git to GitHub. Then netlify picks it up and all done. This seems pretty simple. I don’t find apps like Working Copy to be difficult or hard to use. Git on the command line is easy too. It just work until I make an error and not pull changes after committing. Then things get out of sync. I must go back and do a thing. I think,

What would be easier or with less steps or apps involved?

Because I’m lazy. I want to just write in markdown and then it’s on the blog. I don’t want intermediate web editors and databases and things that get in the way. Or are crafted for what someone else thinks is an easy way to do a thing. It’s likely not for me. Writing should be simple. I don’t do drafts or schedules and I don’t write ideas down. The blog post is an idea. It is an organic thing. Has little starts and stops and places to do whatever. If I want to add something else completely unrelated, who is to say it’s wrong. Or right. It’s just how I feel writing works for me. When I write I want to just write and not have to worry about what links to what or where some idea came from or I have so many draft posts with wonderful ideas all lined up. What I want?

I want to just write. Want to not feel there is something or other that needs done to do the words. That’s not writing to me. It’s planning and second braining and all the things I don’t do any more. Once all those things are gone, I can just write whatever.

Now back to hotels in Kampot.

final choices and places

Eating and traveling and staying for us. Living with how we both are. A running commentary on where we live and how my wife feels there versus me. She needs the same social life of the mix of Khmer people that I need less of. Strange right? But we are two people. Two cultures colliding in the streets of Siem Reap. Both stubborn in some ways and flexible in others. I have found over the course of living in the house it’s easier to just give in on some things and be more determined on others. When she starts crying about leaving the house, it takes things to other places and I defer.

I’m not a social animal. I don’t particularly like or dislike people. I guess I wish to do the Greta Garbo thing and be left alone. My wife is 180 degrees different. I think when she does not have the social ties she becomes ill. She simply needs the unmetered talk time. I try to avoid it. With barang people here there is no upside for me to find anything approaching friendship. With the Khmer people I know I just maintain a friendly distance. While this works for many things sometimes like I wrote that steel must bend. So it does and somehow we meet on things. Find the common things we want.

Like also going places. Most places we do go are things we decide are worthwhile to do to get away. I lived almost a decade just going. When I tired of a place I left. When I wanted a place back I went.

Finales and hotels

I guess I will decide soon which place we will stay in around Kampot. So I just send different places to her in WhatsApp. She can look and tell me her issues. Her needs and wants. And sometimes we meet at a place somewhere we both like. In Phnom Penh the vRest hotel is like that. It’s a nice place to go in the city. Good western food for breakfast like potatoes and not overcooked eggs.

So I could write on and say more. There’s always tomorrow. More crap to say. Will I change my writing? My blog? Could be. I never know. I happen to really like 11ty now. I know only a little about how it works and I don’t need to know more. It just does what I want and I really want little interaction besides adding some css or making a little change in things I want.

So that’s it. My coffee awaits. Your Cafe is very patient. And I will sit here until I’m done and maybe past that. Like my wife says,

It’s your job honey. Go walk and have coffee somewhere

So I do. I do think about Vietnam. Here’s a little thing from some time ago. They hold me closer even now. Friends there. Places gone. Things seen.

hanoi 2020

Anyways I finished channeling. Coffee waits patiently. The walk is right out there. Steps to take. Finding my Greta Garbo moments. And a little Kampot.