Sunrise on the Mekong: Jogging with Elephants

By Bill Clark


Having fended off jet-lag andslept pretty well on our first night in Phnom Penh, I wentout of the hotel at 5:30 AM in search of exercise inthe relative cool (after all, as Noel Coward once wrote, wisely, in the tropics only "mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun").

Also, I hoped to find a baguette to take back to share with Jessica for breakfast. I had seen lots (a reminder of the more benign side of French colonlialism?) for sale the day before on the roads to the airport.
It was still quite dark when I set out, and other than a skinny scrounging cat and a snoring moto-man (scooter taxi), no signs of life. The nearby Eiro Cakfe and the World Fantasy Comicand Book Store, and the Amok vegetarian restaurant were all still closed.
The people at the roadside cafe at the corner were just putting out table sand throwing buckets of water on the unpaved street infront, to hold down the dust that the throngs of motos and cars would lagter kick up.

Around the corner, on Sihanouk Boulevard, leading to the towering Indepencdence Monument,there was more activity -- people with twiggy witches' brooms rearranging the litter in the gutters, a steady stream of motos and,as I went farther toward the river, more and more joggers. There were single men and women, couple and some family groups, some grannies and grampas shufflng along with toddlers eve, a few with strollers, some with tethers, one with kid and dog on the same leash.
Many were there with there dogs and one man was actally there jogging with his elephant (untethered!). I didn't know an elephant could move so fast.
Near the monument there were two lines of perhpas 30 people doing calisthenics to the voice of a drill sergeant issuing from a boombox. Near the river's edge (confluence of the Mekong and Tonle Sap)was a horde of maybe 300 people dancing about and waving their arms --doing Jazzercise of the tune of "It Never Rains in California."
By now roadside stands were opening and people were sitting at little tables for breakfast -- but still no sign of baguettes.
A few businesses were open -- including the"Mittaheap Driving
School" which obviously tries to capitalize onthe fact that in the earlier hours of the day the maelstrom that we had seen the day before -- cars and trucks, bikes and motos,tuk-tuks and buses (some with people riding on tops) --has not yet mounted to the crescendo it reaches later in the day, when a neophyte driver wouldn't have as chance of navigating the swirling, honking stream -- the world's greatest Dodgem Car operation.
Finally -- it's the Boulevard Deau Cent Soixante-dix Quatre after all --the "european Boulangerie Bakery" Baguettes (and several thousand Cambodian riels change ) in hand, I turn at the corner of Boulevard Mao Tse-dung and head forthe Golden Bridge Hotel (across the street from the GoldenGate Hotel) and Jessica and breakfast.
-Posted By Bill Clark