KEP and a handsome but sad man called Bush.

Kep Crab Market

Kep, a small city situated south of Cambodia close to the Vietnamese border. A place offering scarcely nothing more then a not so interesting ”beach” and a roundabout including a row of Guesthouses, the most popular being Brise de Kep 

(a few kilometers outside Kep you have Kukuluku Gueshouse as well, which looked all right, having live music every now and then so I’ve heard) ). If Brise de Kep Guesthouse is booked up, you might find yourself staying at the guesthouse next to Brise de Kep, like I did, and my new friend Sara from France did.

And at that other Guesthouse you’ll find two very charming, handsome, in their late twenties, beer drinking Cambodian employees. It seems, as there is not much else to do in Kep, but to drink beer. So why don’t you join the guys for some beer drinking.

One of these charming guy’s called Bush (!). Bush wore a cap sayin’ something like ”music is always true to your emotions”, which makes me ask him if he likes music whereupon they tell me a heartbreaking story bout Bush growing up lovin’ to play that guitar and used to go to the much bigger city Kampot, 30 mins away to spread his infatuation for guitarplayin’ and entertain the tourists. For unknown reasons he was though later forced too move to Kep.  In Kep he continued playing the guitar for some time, ‘he used to play at that place over there, his friend says pointing in the direction of a little house with a guitar attached over the front door, but now he doesn’t play the guitar anymore. He can’t play the guitar anymore, he continues in a melancholy way.  And this breaks my heart and I ask why, but Bush just looks at me with sad, big brown drunken eyes. And I turn to his friends to seek an answer, but they all avoid my glance, staring obstinately down at the ground, ‘I just can’t play the guitar no more”, I hear Bush says with his sad, quiet voice.

And that makes me very sad. Until he, one hour or so later, reveal to me ‘aaaw don’t be sad for me, we just made that story up, I don’t play no guitar’. That was a great story!  How fun aren’t these two guys too hang out with!

So when Bush later wants to take Sarah and me to the famous crab market (where the crabs are taken straight from their little cage in the ocean) (almost as fresh as the shrimpies we fried alive in Vietnam I suppose) we agree. We drink more beer and by now Bush is getting drunk slur on his words ‘Oh no fun without beer tsss thats sad, every day I drink beer’. And then tells us the story of his love life; the cap was actually a gift from his Japanese girlfriend. The Japanese girl really loved him, but Bush didn’t love her ‘so then when I fell in love with a girl from Russia, she didn’t love me. Cause I didn’t love the Japanese girl that loved me’. (seemed as he did some thinking about that one) And Bush tells us that he might look soft on the outside, but on the inside, he is very hard. Getting real drunk by now, Bush. Looks very sad. Looks very hard on the inside. So I show him my happy tattoo. He seems to like it.

He gets us a few more beers to go, and takes us (on his motorbike), to sit in the night and just look and listen to the ocean. ‘This is where I go every night to sit by myself and contemplate’, he says. It is nice. He thinks Sarah is a Russian. It seems by now he is hammered.

In Kep, there are no streetlights. The small city is covered in dark. Making the motorbike ride, with three people on the motorbike and a hammered driver, quite a ride back to the Guesthouse.

Later when I have my last cigarette for the night, I can see him walkin’ round without his shirt slur something bout ‘fuckin fuck everyone goes away, sooo hard on the inside, everyone goes waay, fuckin.’

And the next day we leave the small city Kep, going to Kampot. Bush arranges a cheap bus for us and waves goodbye. What a character this Bush, what a nice man. And later a new bus with tourists arrive to Kep, perhaps some of them will spend one night in Kep.