A visit to the countryside

We were due for a visit with some customers out in the countryside for THE COMPANY. Our boss was gone to Laos for some high-roller wheeling 'n' dealing. I was having my Gin-and-Tonic breakfast, when our faithful driver Pingpong was honking in the pickup truck outside our house. Without closing my bathrobe I went to the railing and hollered: "Ahhhh, Pingpong, my little froggy friend, you're early again, I ain't even showered yet. Hold yer horses, little buddy!"
He shouted back in his cute little Mickey Mouse voice: "My name not Pingpong! You late, Mr.Winter! You drinking again! You close robe, you disgusting!". I laughed at him and said: "Ahhh, Pingpong, so many complicated word for a little frogman such as yourself. Don't get so angry or your little frog-eyes will pop out!"
He shouted back: "You racist! You come now, we go to Takeo today!". I drank up, threw the glass down and laughed at him: "Ahhhh, Pingpong, do you know how cute you are when you get all upset? And the word you're probably looking for isn't racist but racing..."
15 minutes later we were on the road, with me standing bare-chested on the truck-bed and singing "Holiday in Cambodia" by the Dead Kennedys at the top of my lungs. Here's the lyrics:

"Holiday In Cambodia"

So you been to school
For a year or two
And you know you've seen it all
In daddy's car
Thinkin' you'll go far
Back east your type don't crawl

Play ethnicky jazz
To parade your snazz
On your five grand stereo
Braggin' that you know
How the niggers feel cold
And the slums got so much soul

It's time to taste what you most fear
Right Guard will not help you here
Brace yourself, my dear:

It's a holiday in Cambodia
It's tough, kid, but it's life
It's a holiday in Cambodia
Don't forget to pack a wife

You're a star-belly sneech
You suck like a leach
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch
So you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you

Well you'll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
Till you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake

Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son:.

Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll kiss ass or crack

Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, [etc]

And it's a holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll do what you're told
A holiday in Cambodia
Where the slums got so much soul


By the time we arrived I was pretty hoarse from all that yelling and really needed a drink. But we were really way out in the sticks, with primitive wooden huts and water-buffaloes, and there weren't any shops, let alone bars.
The talk to the locals was about selling off old weapons left from the war and I got bored pretty soon. Annette speaks some Khmer but for me that language is too much of a mouthful, so I didn't really have anything to contribute. I had just slunk off discretely to sneak a drink from my hip-flask, when I noticed an old lady with red teeth sitting behind the hut with an open tin filled with rolled-up leafs in her lap. Red teeth? Little green bundles? Jackpot! Those were the famous so-called betel-nuts, a soft drug that you chewed on and that colored your teeth red and made your mind all comfy and mushy. I greeted her and went over to sit down opposite of her. She immediately stashed the tin away and glared at me without a smile. I kept on smiling and offered my flask to her. She sniffed it suspiciously, then handed it back to me and motioned me to drink first. I shrugged my shoulders and took a long swig, then handed it back to her and said: "Bombay Sapphire, baby, the best there is!". She raised an eyebrow, took one cautious swig, then smiled and took another long one. She handed the flask back and offered me the tin. I thanked her and took one of the little rolled up leafs. We then sat in the shade, chewing the betel, spitting red saliva and passing the flask back and forth. She kept on telling me stuff I didn't understand but I always laughed when she stopped talking and she would cackle like mad and slap my knee and take another swig from the flask. Finally when the flask was dry she motioned me to follow her to a little shed. From a pile of old discarded boxes of ammunition she procured a traditional opium pipe and a grayish lump of the legendary Cambodian opium. Yeehaw, I thought and sat down on the floor, while she lit a petroleum lamp and prepared a pipe for us. I had done opium before, and I knew it wasn't a very good idea to combine it with alcohol, but what the hell, I thought, this is the chance of a lifetime. She finally heated the end of the closed pipe over the lamp, puffed for a while, blew out long tendrils of grayish smoke, handed me the pipe and lay down on the floor. I took the pipe, held it over the flame and puffed on it until it slipped from my fingers and I slowly sunk into the floor.When I came back there was a big commotion going on. I slowly managed to get up, but everything was swimming in front of my eyes. I could make out Annette way out in the back in the now-familiar pose with one hand on her hip and the other covering her eyes, looking at the ground and slowly shaking her head. Pingpong was yelling something about putting me in jail for good this time and I felt it was time to make a move. I pushed Pingpong aside and stumbled out into the clear light. Boy, it really hurt my eyes. I felt the urgent need to hit the old dusty trail and skedaddle, but how? It was then that I saw the water-buffalo. The magnificent beast seemed to glow from within and when it turned its massive head towards me I swear I saw it wink at me and smile. I stumbled over to it and scrambled on  top, holding on to its neck. "You come down there, crazy long nose! You in trouble! I tell boss! I tell you mama! You hear me?" screamed Pingpong who had followed me. I yelled "Go, silver!" and "Hi-yo, away!" but the stubborn animal didn't even budge. Finally, when Pingpong and the men had almost reached me I grabbed the bulls ear and bit down on it hard. Boy, I never knew these animals had it in them, but that thing went off like a rocket! I held on as good as I could and after the initial shock had passed it was simply overwhelming. The opium, the betel and the gin sang a tune of pure intoxication in my veins, the sun was beating down on us and the water of the rice-field was splashing away left and right while the buffalo ploughed on. I screamed and yelled incomprehensibly with mad delight, while the hysterical shouting of Pingpong slowly faded away like a bad dream. Like all good things this trip had to end though, and the buffalo finally managed to shake me off. As I slowly sunk down into the muddy waters I smiled and felt a warmth in my heart for I had seen wonderful things and felt safe in the warm embrace of the rice-field. I don't really recall being dragged out of that water and put into the back of that truck, but it must have happened somehow, because that's where I woke up in the middle of the night in front of Pingpong' s sad excuse for a house, all caked in dried mud and with one hell of a headache. When I checked my belt-pouch my money was still there. I figured that it was a bad idea to ask Pingpong for a ride home, so I shook off the dry mud as well as possible and slowly made my way to the nearby Molinas hotel. The night clerk didn't want to open the door at first, but when I waved a 50 $ bill in his face he changed his mind. He was obviously quite tipsy and I could smell the cheap booze on his breath. He never noticed that I showed him my Value card instead of a passport and he didn't catch on when I signed with M. Mouse. I went into my room on the 3rd floor, undressed, showered, got a few beers from the mini bar and finally fell asleep watching a Charles Bronson movie on TV. I got up the next morning, took a long bath and stuffed my dirty clothes in a laundry bag, checked the box marked "2 hr Express" and had it picked up by room service when they brought me my coffee. I watched some more HBO and drank the rest of the beer until my clothes came back from the cleaners, then got dressed and casually went downstairs. When I dropped off my key the day clerk just said "Good morning, Mr.Mouse." and I smiled at him, gave him a thumbs-up and left the hotel. I got into a tuc-tuc and had him take me to the City-mall to go to the Guru-Wha! internet-cafe to write down these events. This is where I currently am, too. I don't dare to go home yet. Maybe I never will. I'm definitely going to have to find out about the possible legal consequences of yesterday's endeavour before I do anything rash. But let's not kid ourselves, it was once more definitely worth it.
I'll be back. I promise.