This week, The Etched City is on the Book of the Month slab, courtesy of Joe Mallozzi, writer and executive producer for Stargate SG-1 and Stargate:Atlantis.

Discussion here, and more here. I’ll be answering some of the questions tomorrow-ish. I’m agog at the detailed responses. If I’d ever imagined that the book would earn this much thought from readers, I would have spent an extra year making it better.

My thanks to Joe and his book club. Since I rarely make it to conventions, I feel privileged to be able to have an online discussion with readers.

The bus to Siem Reap (the tourist town near Angkor Wat) is nearly full. I have an ebullient person in the seat next to me - a young Englishman of partly Greek background (my guess, which I later learn is right). His name is Freddy, let’s say, and he is very talkative. Luckily his talk is interesting and often funny. He tells me he used to be a hippy and gives a rundown of all the drugs he’s done. He says magic mushrooms are disgusting to eat. He describes a holiday in Morocco where the Bedouin tour guide who took their group out into the Sahara on camels demanded extra money to take them back to the oasis town from which they had set out. He says the blokes in the group were ready to give in but the women refused to pay for quite a long time. He complains a little about feminists travelling in packs.

I suggest that women are sick of being pissed upon in general and are accustomed to standing up for ourselves against unreasonable men, and that perhaps the women were annoyed that the men of their own tribe did not show a bit more of the old school spirit. Anyway, after my one brief and awful trip to Morocco, I would not be going with any Bedouin to any desert at any price. I agree with Freddy that in the end they were probably sensible to pay up - it only came to a few pounds for each person in the group.

After the Morocco story, Freddy gives a fascinating rundown on the state of football hooliganism on the Continent. In Poland, he says, the fights are highly organised and take place in forests, sometimes with paramedics on hand. There are videos on Youtube - search Polish forest fights - like this one - though some nanny person has rated it 18+, so that you’ll have to be registered to watch it. I can’t find any that aren’t 18-locked. If you’re like me and you refuse to register, simply imagine a horde of Polish thugs bashing each other up in a lovely pine wood on the thin pretext of football. Some guys just love to fight, says Freddy. I daresay he is right. But where are they when you need a strong bloke to beat some honesty into a camel driver?

He tells me how he and some mates wheeled an abandoned piano into their shared house at university. Then it’s time for lunch, at a corner hotel somewhere. There’s a choice of caramelised potato and banana, or fried insects. I am craving salt. I try one of the smaller grasshoppers(?). The waitress shows me how to pull off the sharp lower rear legs. The other trick is not to look at the grasshopper(?) as you put it in your mouth. It’s warm, salty and crunchy with a faint meaty flavour. I’ve eaten yuckier snack foods. I buy a bag. Freddy samples one. He says it’s all right, but he isn’t too enamoured. Besides, he’s a vegetarian. Three American girls are disgusted.

Eating bugs (1) - the antici…pation, a.k.a about to suck cockroach:

Eating bugs (2) - the delicate crunch:

Eating bugs (3) - the salty zing:

I doze off after lunch, not really sleeping since the volume of the Thai martial arts movie on the TV forbids it, wake up in time to talk some more with Freddy, and finally arrive at Siem Reap. A friend of Sam’s is waiting with a tuk-tuk. He doesn’t know the way to the hotel and doesn’t want to call for directions. Maybe he doesn’t have a phone. We make it eventually. My reservation hasn’t been recorded, but there’s a room, so all’s well.

The following two days are taken up with the secret mission. I eat cold bugs and leftover happy herb pizza the next day, and the day after I wake up with a nasty stomach. A gin and tonic at the bar before I go settles it down, and I head back to Phnom Penh in a bus cold enough to be a morgue. This time a silent Cambodian man is next to me and the movie involves Chinese vampires smoking opium, and ghosts, and zombies. I mean, what’s a junkie vampire film without zombies?

Next up: History lessons

I could have sworn Air Asia used to serve proper meals, even on their short flights. Now they have stale cruddy sandwiches that you have to pay for, just like Austrian Airlines, and they’re charging for checked in baggage. These little stinginesses seem to be harbingers of inevitable fare hikes as the oil price rises. Anyway, I only have a cabin bag on this trip.

Phnom Penh international airport is small and hassle free. Phnom Penh is at the confluence of the Mekong, Tonle Sap and Bassac rivers. The city is named after an old woman in the late 14th century who, legend has it, found five Buddha statues in a nook within a tree and had a hill (phnom) built to house them, so that the city’s name means “Penh’s Hill”. I take a tuk-tuk into town. The road is good but dusty. There are plenty of signs of development along the way and the road swarms with motorbikes. Phnom Penh is a city - a sprawling town, really, at the moment - getting onto its feet. May it have better town planners than Bangkok.

Learning that I caome from Australia, my cheerful driver, Sam, does the usual “G’day mate”. His accent is unusually good. He says he used to work with Australians. I have a morning to fill in before I have to catch the bus to Siem Reap. Sam suggests a short tour. While I prefer exploring on my own, I decide I’d rather have a driver than foot it around in the heat and dust. In any case, by the number of tuk-tuks and motorbike taxis hanging around hoping for customers, I realise that if I get out and wander I won’t get a moment’s peace.

I decide to leave the royal palace and national museum for when I get back. The present king, Norodom Sihamoni, was a classical dance instructor, choreographer and cultural ambassador in Paris before he was called back to be king. As we drive past the palace, Sam explains that the king is unmarried and might be “a bit different”. But it doesn’t matter if he has no heirs, since a council chooses the monarch. I ask Sam about getting an express boat to or from Siem Reap. He says the Mekong is too low and there are no boats at the moment, so bang goes that idea.

I want to have a bite at Happy Herb’s Pizza on the Tonle Sap waterfront. Ganja is a traditional ingredient in Khmer cooking. It isn’t legal in Cambodia, but it must be somewhat tolerated. The guy who takes my order asks discreetly if I’d like to smoke a joint. I say no, the pizza will be fine. The pizza tastes good, but I can’t feel any effect. I guess they only waved the ganja jar over it, which was pretty much what I expected. (Later, however, a friend tells me that sometimes they smear the pizza with hash paste. This happened to him and he ended up missing a flight because he couldn’t get out of bed. Maybe the kitchen made the call to not give the lone, patently clueless female traveller a knockout dose. If so, I’m grateful.)

Next stop is the Russian Market, which has a section for locals and a section selling silk, handcrafts and fake antiques for tourists. In the local meat section the vendors, mostly women, squat inside wooden booths and chop the meat on wooden boards. The tourist section is a pain because - par for the course in tourists markets - no sooner does your eye light on something you might vaguely be interested in before a chorus of “Madame, madame, you look, you buy,” starts up, and many things that you don’t want at all are thrust in front of your glazing eyes. I end up buying a fake antique tobacco pipe (white china with two blue dragons) for a few dollars from a pleasant lady who gives me time to look at her wares. I ask her if it’s actually usable, but she doesn’t know. Probably not. You can get these pipes in Bangkok, too, but the asking price is several dollars cheaper here.

Sam drives me up to Wat Phnom, where I see –

a drum:

a shrine to the genie or spirit Preah Chau, popular with Chinese and Vietnamese worshippers:

a monkey:

…searching for the jewel in the heart of the bucket:

some kids playing with a motorbike:

Down the bottom of the temple are a few beggars and trinket sellers. As I wait to cross the road, two or three guys on motorbikes ask if I needed a ride. Unlike in Bangkok, the motorbike taxis don’t wear safety/identifying vests, so that there’s no way of telling whether the guy is actually a taxi driver. Sam brings the tuk-tuk back and drives me to the bus. All in all, my impression of Phnom Penh from this first half day is that it’s far from Mos Eisley vileness, but still a bit of a wild west town — a place to go if you like frontiers. (Later this will be amended to “a place to go if you like frontiers with great, cheap restaurants.”)

The 300k ride to Siem Reap in an airconditioned bus was $10. The bus almost had all mod cons — just not quite:

Next up: an extrovert, and a culinary rubicon crossed.