You Can’t Come Home Again

Three weeks isn’t a very long time, yet it is this very brevity which misleads. It makes you assume you are only stepping out for a short jaunt – something of a cross between a vacation and a residence – and naturally, to expect to find things mostly unchanged upon your return. And the truth is, for the most part, things don’t change. One simply forgets.

One simply forgets. I didn’t know how simple it was, certainly didn’t see it coming, either. Touchdown: it’s easy enough, we’ve done this a million times. Enough to know the procedure – when the plane lands, no point frantically reaching for your bags if the doors aren’t going to be open yet, let the packaged tour crowd and/or older set do that. Reach for your SIM card, load it up, the missed messages from the past weeks stream in. In the aerobridge seconds before entering the terminal, the tropical heat intervenes when you leave the sterile aircraft, but before long the terminal, kept at 16.000 degrees celsius at all times of day, reminds you home is where the aircon is.

One simply forgets the ease with which immigration lines are cleared, after weeks of fending off touts at the Hatlek/Cham Yeam border, and again by way of Aranyaprathet/Poipet – when standing in line with a massive backpack, a camera bag, and a daypack, while denying beggars and evading theft, is something of an art form. One simply forgets.

Lines are still long, but by no means snaking – the barriers tame us into obedience. The taxis arrive at their respective spots, and a man dictates which one will bring you home: number five, number six, number three. A Chinese tourist tries to skip the queue by jumping in and is promptly beaten back in line by my very Singaporean mother, who hates injustice and likes things to work the way they should. And I think about chaos when our bus pulled into the Siem Reap bus station, and how similar business was conducted there (i.e. dissimilarly).

One simply forgets. In the toilet, washing up is tricky business. I stand before the mirror looking at the tan on my body, and that twinkle in my eye. Something has changed. I stand there for some time, meaning to brush my teeth – but I realize I cannot, because I have forgotten what colour my toothbrush is. I must have stood there for five minutes, just thinking very hard about it. Seconds later I find out my contact lens solution is not where it usually is, my glasses are hidden inches into the depths of my backpack, and I still don’t know which toothbrush once belonged to me.

It is simple to forget these things, but not others. I may have forgotten the day of the week, how the internet works, how to blog, the locations of everything I have owned in this lifetime; but that waking up is usually a solitary act, is something I’d much rather forget.