To Live and Die In Paradise
I always imagined saving a life would be a clean, heroic act. A trying moment after which one could, exhausted, bask in the praise of a job well done.
In practice, covered in my own vomit, and filled with unexpected guilt, I found myself unable to meet the hollow gaze of the young man I had just pulled from the sea.
I would find out his name later in a handwritten note accompanying a gift box of red ginseng tea – Rae Hyun.
Portly and bespectacled, his family had traveled to Cambodia on a vacation with a South Korean church group. At maybe sixteen years old, he may have never left home before. He may have never swam in the ocean before. He may have never swam at all, for all I know.
Our lives would collide unexpectedly, and terribly in the middle of a roiling ocean. With all such collisions we are now bonded, my life to his, and his to mine. I’ll probably never see him again, and my mental image of him is not a pleasant one – that of a smiling young man on the edge of a full life, it is instead a memory of a terrified boy having what little life he clung to beaten from his tiny body – reaching a hand out plaintively before being swallowed whole by the sea.
The Gulf of Thailand is generally a peaceful place. In the high season small sailboats and catamarans ply their trade up and down the beach, rarely at risk of so much as spilling ones cocktail. But in the late months of Summer the monsoon rolls in from the north. The dry rice paddys that cover this country burst to life in a vibrant green and the beaches of the southern coast are pummeled repeatedly by squalls.
It was into such a squall that I threw myself on the afternoon of August 15th, a day I won’t soon forget.
I’d awoken with little direction. I had no pressing appointments until the evening, in which I was due to handle a small Poker tournament for a local guesthouse. The thought at the forefront of my mind, as it had been for each of the 45 days we had been back in Cambodia, was to find a job. Some direction. Some sign as to where I should devote my energies. Something.
In the absence of a sign I had been exercising religiously. To stave off a return to my former state of morbid obesity I had taken daily to a vigorous swim in the sea near my home. With the monsoon waves rolling in fast and tight, one on top of another, the ocean often looked like a boiling pot – it’s currents strong beneath the white foam peaks.
An hour a day of fighting the waves to absolute exhaustion had shaved off the pounds I had brought back from Nepal, and by the 15th, I could just hold my own against the sea. I didn’t know it yet, but this unplanned practice, this plan of action brought about by innaction and indecision not only saved my life, but that of a perfect stranger.
Cambodia is the Wild West. Horses and Indians notwithstanding, it simply is. Life is cheap, government and law are practically non-existent, and an innate sense of self-preservation is necessary to survive. Locals know it, long term expats know it, and I know it – No one is coming to help.
Fires are handled with buckets and garden hoses. No Chinese-gifted fire engines are going to make it down the rutted muddy roads. A thief, or jiao as they are called, if caught, will inevitably suffer mob justice. A public beating lacking only a set of stocks. Police can be called, but that call can be ignored, or more likely ring idly in an empty office after 5pm.
The friction comes from outside. First world visitors to the third world are like children with their training wheels taken off for the first time. They are confident in their abilities, but have never been left to fall, and as such sometimes don’t realize the true sting of the asphalt until it’s being cleaned from a wound with a wire brush.
In my three years in Cambodia more than a handful of happy-go-lucky tourists have met an abrupt end along the beaches of Sihanoukville. Most are motorbike accidents. Helmetless, drunk, and unaccustomed to non-traditional Khmer driving styles (read: bumper cars on meth), many fall this way, the lucky few have insurance to helicopter themselves to out. The rest are fodder for passerby cell phone snaps.
Only the day before a 49yr old Russian man had drowned just off the veranda of one of the most popular and upscale restaurants on Otres Beach. On hearing the news from Cassie just before setting off for my own swim I had to pause – struck by a memory of a drowning one year previous. The gray bloated body of a Lithuanian man being cradled lovingly at the waters edge by his weeping wife. Still at his side hours later, with no ambulance to retrieve the corpse, she had simply cried herself to sleep in his arms as the sun set.
Diving into the waves that day I knew, no matter what might happen, that I would never, and could never put her through that.
Read Part 2 here…
Excellent writing, Nicky! I can’t wait to read the conclusion so I will be following you. How wonderful to read a real adventure story set in a totally foreign location, with no idea what will turn up. Wishing you safe and lush travels.
Your godmother Nell