khmer sources

She is drawn over the lawn, taking great gulps of salted air. The dust of Phnom Penh is one hundred and eighty kilometers behind her and she is all alone at the mysteriously-named Knai Bang Chatt. According to the brochure the woman read, the name refers to the rainbow aureole surrounding the sun, and that in Buddhism this halo is said to provide divine protection, depicted by the rope tightening the bun in the hair of deities.
The woman wishes she had a bag of money so she could buy Knai Bang Chatt and a piece of the divine protection.

There was the ocean, and facing that ocean was a blue villa, a red villa, and a new villa: the blue was to be her’s for an evening. The buildings are straight lines, Le Corbusier-spartan (she reads that the blue villa was designed by a Khmer disciple of Monsieur Jeanneret, Van Molivann, in 1962) and open with mezzanines and views from every angle. They sit lightly in soft hues amidst a garden of spider lilies, birds of paradise and sea almond trees, all swaying in rhythm to the predominant westerly, which sweeps off the Gulf of Thailand between the menacing cloud-swathed Bokor Mountain and the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc. The woman—who writes the odd story and invites herself to exclusive places such as this—is now seated beneath thatched palm waiting for the manager of the resort in comfortable art-deco arm-chairs. There is a Khmer wooden sugar cane press in front of the bar. The manager, Johan, later discusses the press and supposes "a stick would go through this hole here and the oxen would turn this part, which would then move this round, hence flattening the cane for the juice which would come out here."

Johan appears. He is a tall, gliding figure with noticeable hands, dressed in shorts and striped t-shirt. Originally from Belgium, Johan was once a telecommunications consultant in London. The woman and Johan discuss tai-chi, which he would like to teach, and the bus journey she made from the capital to Kep earlier that day.
He proposes lunch at one o’clock and a massage at half-past five. She takes off her shoes and walks back over the grass to the blue villa.

Up a white winding staircase to the first level and her room, one of four, the woman is conveyed. It is a corner room with open windows and white walls. The bed is a mattress on a giant, sturdy trestle, small purple flowers are placed in rows on the linen and the garden’s spidery lilies droop from a vase. There is no television. The sea breathes noise at the door.
As guests do, the woman inspects the room: she opens this, picks up that, smells the soap, tests the water pressure and then stands at the glass doors which open on to a balcony, and just stares for a while. The clouds are gathering, the westerly is getting excited and it’s raining on Bokor.
The woman hangs her clothes on cane hangers and rummages for a notebook in her bag. Back in the thatched pavilion, she and Johan, sit side by side at a heavy table made from one long piece of trunk. There is no 4 menu and her "dietary restrictions" have been discussed previously: there will be a restriction on shellfish, which seems ironic, when she knows the best crabs come from the region.

Chanthy is the chef and another Chanthy works behind the bar. The chef, whose husband is a gardener, lives with the other staff members beyond the walls in another red building. Johan says she has been a cook since she was fourteen.

Johan and the woman each sip on a Chilean white and politely and quietly put French fries on to their forks. Johan explains that French fries ought to be re-named Belgian fries for they were in fact the inventors. The woman says that it is peculiar to be thrown together as strangers and then eat together. She decides eating becomes more intimate
when you’re eating with a stranger. The one asks a question, the other answers and so forth through the pork and bell pepper, through the roast chicken and onto the soup. She smokes, but Tai-Chi is all about breath so Johan doesn’t.

The owners are a Belgian couple, Johan tells her, Boris Vervoordt, 32 and Jef Moons, 43. The former has a background in art and antiques, the latter, in agriculture. Johan has shown the woman photographs of the pair: bare-chested and happy in front of the dilapidated beginnings, elated for their jungle find. A glossy magazine, on show in the reading room, called Travel + Leisure titles their story: "My Blue Heaven". According to the leisure gurus, the woman reads: "Guests spend days conked out on a four-poster bed directly facing the beach, walking through the neighboring rice fields, and wandering the resort’s tropical garden, a lush sanctuary of orchids, ferns, palms, and bamboos." She doesn’t like the word ‘conked’.

She swims in the pool and watches the horizon blackening. The coconut trees are becoming agitated. She takes pictures of them in sepia and one of the blue villa in cyanotype. And then suddenly, staff are running around gathering cushions and closing umbrellas for the rain is about to begin. The woman is pleased for the timing, in bikini on balcony the sky blesses her with water, and she thinks about the sheer perfection of standing alone in the rain. Then she thinks about Ravuth—a blind masseur from the nearby town of Kampot, while he plays muscular arpeggios down her back—and she cannot believe how perfect touch feels. You see, the woman is relaxing now; the knots have been undone.

Over dinner, this time Johan and the woman sit opposite one another, he tells her how one man hired the entire complex for five weeks; he tells her how a French film company stayed for a month and he tells her how he asked the staff to "discreetly" remove a python from the property: the snake was scooped up on a stick, then suddenly, was flying over Johan’s head and somewhat indiscreetly into view of those staying. "The guests took it well."

After dinner, the woman discovers a large toad in the blue villa’s lower bathroom and he sits there while she does, before hopping out the door and behind a rubbish bin. She laughs about this out loud and then looks about the ground-floor lounge.
The visitor’s book is in languages the woman cannot really read: French, German, and Flemish she assumes, because she doesn’t know what Flemish looks like. There are a good many exclamation marks, so she also assumes people have paid compliments.
Again, at midnight, she swims.

The next day is blue, the storm has swept the air and the halo is apparent; grass and hibiscus breathe divine protection and the woman stretches in the sunlight.
After breakfast she explores the villas. In the reading room, after she’s perused an Umberto Eco illustrated novel, she discovers a song framed on the wall called Beauty of Kep.*

Nestled
In the curving bay
Where gentle palm trees sway
Lying
By the sapphire tree
Where joyous swallows
Fly so wild and free
My sweet, do you remember distant years
When on this shore
We built a Kingdom for love’s hopes and fears
Oh! Kep
Let your restful seas
Remain a haven
For my love and me

The woman adjusts the rope in her hair, opens the wooden door and walks into the outside.

*Composed by former Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk and published in Kambuja magazine on 15 January 1967, the English translation is by Elizabeth Broatch.
Nb: Any resemblances to characters living or dead, places and events are absolutely true.