My
wife Davvy used to have a sandwich cart on the corner of Street 26
and Wat Bo Road up until December 2020. The small yellow, orange, red
and blue aluminum box on two wheels with a glass enclosed cooking
counter topped by a cute triangle red roof was parked night and day
at its spot near a French café there. It was securely chained
to the stout trunk of a sidewalk tree. The cart was a joint
investment by the two of us, and in the predawn dark hours I’d
help her carry her sandwich makings on a two-minute motorbike trek
from our apartment to the cart. During its two years of existence at
that location, operating from dawn until noon, sometimes seven days a
week, Davvy’s Chow Wagon probably sold thousands of Khmer style
pork salad sandwiches to natives, expats and tourists. It was also
rammed by a car, twice smashed up by raging drunks on a rampage and
bashed in its front, back and metal sides repeatedly by mad passersby
kicking it or clubbing it with unknown objects.
Yes,
Davvy’s poor little cart suffered quite a lot of abuse in its
off hours as a frequent late night or very early morning magnet for
presumably drunken tantrums and other booze-fueled mayhem by bar
patrons tipsily heading home. Have you ever had a really rotten day,
followed it up with some very aggressive liquor chug-a-lugging and at
night’s end shitfacedly thought, If only there was one of those
little vendor food carts within pummeling range of my feet and fists,
I’d really clobber the thing, smash it to smithereens, and then
I’d feel better! No? Me neither. But I began to wonder if
there was a strange human element about that got some kind of
cathartic release out of inflicting abuse on the thing. Perhaps its
bright, happy rainbowish colors, its adorable snack shack on wheels
appearance violently provoked pissed-off inebriates sort of the way
John Candy's Uncle Buck claimed his furry, flapped Canadian hoser hat
“angers a lot of people, just the sight of it.” I’d
black-humoredly joke along those lines with Davvy about these
bizarre, outrageous outbursts of toxic jerkoid masculinity against
her small, pretty cart but I did feel bad for her. There’re
hours of salad making, seasoning, meat stewing and other preparatory
work that go into making those Khmer sandwiches. This was work in
addition to all the stuff she had to do in running her two other
combination stores and snack stands. It was so much work for a very
small profit margin, and then to have to put up with this costly
hateful nonsense of drunkards so mindlessly, callously venting their
destructive energies on her humble livelihood. Rather discouraging.
Only
weeks after Davvy anchored her newly purchased food cart at that
Street 26 corner in November 2018, we arrived early one morning with
her cooler of bread rolls, pork and papaya salad to discover a gaping
jagged, splintering hole in the cart’s front pane. There were
sharp bloodied blades of glass lying about the ground and on the
countertop interspersed with larger bloodstains. Some drunken idiot
venting his frustrations sexual or otherwise had put his fist or
perhaps his head, considering the bowling ball size of the hole,
through the counter glass of my wife's sandwich cart in the predawn
hours. A neighbor told Davvy she heard an English gibbering ape
angrily bellowing about something, then a shattering sound, a bang of
some sort (maybe he also kicked the cart or a fence busting his foot,
too), followed by yowls of pain and obscenities. We never found the
lout responsible so we could make him pay for his damages but we
comforted ourselves with the karmic vengeance fantasy that there was
an undoubtedly very sourpussed and hangdogged-looking barang
sheepishly wandering about town for days, with a very sore bandaged
hand or noggin and perhaps a painful limp as well. He’d remain
a laughingstock among his fellow drinkers long after his injuries
healed.
Only
a few months later, Davvy herself this time and her cart again got
brutally whacked by the alcoholically shellacked. One early morning,
just minutes after she had opened for business, a drunk driver grazed
the corner of her cart as he suddenly swerved in the direction of the
patio seating of the French café, like he intended to do a
drive-through breakfast order. He weaved up the sidewalk, sideswiping
the café’s rear kitchen yard wall, taking out a bunch of
bricks, and then veered out onto road again. He continued on his
drunken terrifying way, hit a tree several blocks away, stalled, got
out and kind of stumblingly ran away in staggering Frankenstein
monster style never to be seen again. Davvy's cart was left with a
flat tire and twisted axle when the car's impact smushed it against
the sidewalk curb. Davvy herself suffered nasty bruises on one leg
and a hip as the cart with drawers and doors flying open banged into
her. The cart and Davvy both recovered from their damages and
cheerily continued on at that location as if in cool defiance of the
area’s savage, rampaging inebriates.
But
the vicious battering of the cart also continued. Every few mornings,
we’d spot another new, mysterious dent in the cart’s
sheet metal body – made we assumed by a peeved kick or clout
with a heavy stick or rock. Then, in March 2020, the glass panes of
the countertop were once again shattered by an enraged drunk’s
fists and feet of lunatic fury. This time, though, we were able to
find the culprit as he dripped blood all the way back to his
guesthouse, The White Rabbit. A nearby tuktuk driver also remembered
hearing a young man and woman screaming at each other in French,
followed by repeated bangs, shattering glass and then a howl of male
agony and some more high-volume French, perhaps some self- cursing. I
talked to and gave what details I knew of the vandal to a very
courteous, sympathetic woman at the White Rabbit bar who said she was
an assistant manager there. I emphasized the fact that he'd probably
be easy to spot as the very pale-faced from loss of blood guest with
a fist either heavily bandaged or looking like a bloody raw piece of
sandwich beef attached to his wrist. Davvy's cart was so smeared,
stained and blotched with spurted blood that she could have had a
transfusions sale that morning if she had been able to reliquify it
all. Unable to make such use, she had to scrub down her salad and
sandwich cart before opening, as the blood-drenched thing presented a
rather unappetising sight to regular customers and most other
potential ones, except perhaps cannibals or vampires. Anyway, the
White Rabbit lady profusely apologized for the vandalism, promising
to find the one responsible and make restitution for the damage.
A
few hours later, this very shame-faced Mr. Anger Mismanagement showed
up at Davvy's store to pay for the glass repair and express very
sincere contrition in a mix of French, English and newly learned
Khmer for going Hulk on Davvy's little breakfast stand. He clasped
his hands prayerlike and bowed repeatedly in the traditional
Cambodian sampeah. He was bandaged on one hand and a foot as he had
also apparently karate kicked Davvy's cart. Davvy was stunned not by
the words and gesture, but the fact that she knew him. The young man
was a customer whom she had undoubtedly treated not just as a
customer, but as a son or nephew in her motherly auntie fashion. In
classic Srey Khminglish, Davvy sorrowfully asked him, "Why you
do me like this?!" He had no explanation beyond being crazy with
anger and alcohol. Davvy being Davvy forgave him.
Ultimately,
though, Davvy's Khmer sandwich cart fell victim not to an intoxicated
King Kong, but to a major road reconstruction project that began in
Siem Reap in mid-2020. In early December 2020, she was ordered to
relocate her cart because public works was about to dig up the
sidewalk. We dragged it up to her other store and cafe on Wat Bo Road
a half block up from the Paris Bakery. Davvy's
mobile sandwich cart is now temporarily parked at the Davvy Pi Ya
Love VIP Eatery on Wat Bo Road, which is also our residence. It’s
relatively secure from vandalism now because in its shuttered hours
the property is enclosed by tall, metal fences with sharp pointy
barbs along their tops. However, she hopes to someday bring her
sandwich cart business back to the Street 29 site, or maybe a more
lucrative Riverside spot – but I’ve so far balked at
assisting her with the substantially higher rent much to her chagrin.
On
the day we moved the cart, Davvy posted a sign in Khmer script on the
tree the cart had been chained to notifying her customers of the
change in location. Or at least that’s what I thought it
stated. For all I know of Khmer script, it could have also informed
the neighborhood that "My husband Kevin is a big fat Cheap
Charlie poopyhead.”
I
am an American who has been living in Cambodia for about seven years.
This story is based on my wife's experiences selling sandwiches from
a small cart in Siem Reap.
