Traffic and Rain

I was driving through Phnom Penh at 5:15 in the evening, and suddenly it was as if I was looking at the city for the first time.

It was that dim moment just before dark, when the sun had long since disappeared behind the new cement buildings of the city's outskirts, and the sky wasn't a dark blue - or a dim light blue - it was the color that came in between. It was the typical rush hour time - after 5:00 and before 6:00, and the whole city was on its way home from work. The air was thick with smog and engine fumes, and, just like on every day in the rainy season - there were soft raindrops falling from the darkening sky, pattering down onto the car rooftops, splashing off like little explosions of water. The wind was tugging at my hair, stray raindrops dampening it pleasantly, and despite the 25-degree weather, I felt the gentle chill of the wind in my clothes.

Everything was in this grey hue: the bright colors of the city made less intense by the darkening evening sky. The irritating red brake lights of the vehicles pierced through the colorless shades of the evening, making my my eyes ache, their bright luminescence slightly blurred by the rain.

The Cambodians around me were staring, just as usual, right at me. They didn't care whether or not I felt uncomfortable, or about the fact that they looked like complete idiots looking at me like that. Their curious looks seemed to cover me in a blanket of self-consciousness, and I tried to ignore them. Nevertheless, their questioning eyes never left me, or my body, my hair, my purse, my everything. I knew it all too well. I could practically hear the whispering, judgmental prejudice blitzing through their minds. To them, I was a rich Western woman, going to meet my rich Western husband at home, where I was perfectly content and always happy because nobody ever cheated me or lied to me or was cruel to me. To them, I was all that, and nothing less.

My eyes shifted to the traffic ahead, to the people who weren't staring at me. Rather, they were caught in up in their own daydreams, alone on their way home from work. They were completely oblivious to the world around them. To them, it was an ordinary day, an ordinary evening; just another few minutes in an endless life of trying to "get by".

You can hear all kinds of things on this simplistic adventure: the whining distant sounds of karaoke bars in the city, the drumming vibrations of the vehicles around you, and the all too constant blaring or car horns. I've lived here my whole life, and so I have learned to shut out these all-too-familiar sounds. So all I heard was noise - blended together in a messy, unorganized pile, something that I never learned to love and will forever find I hate. It was a messy, endless maze of traffic: thousands of motos, cars and tuktuks; pushy, rude and intense.

And in the middle of it all: me.