next step and stop

11 Feb, 2026

Last night it was beer out. I always end up at Viva! restaurant off of pub street. There I sit and ponder and the beer costs $0.75 each. I know many of the folks that work there. It’s been this haunt since before the pandemic when I lived in Siem Reap off and on. It gives me time to ponder.

Yeah that’s dangerous. As the usual allotment of draft beer proceeds, the pondering becomes easier. I find hidden half truths to problems I don’t even have. Truth be told I really have no problems living here. I’m spoiled and lazy and my wife takes care of me. It always amazes me when I do ponder how dedicated she is. I’m not the easiest person to be around. I’m kinda selfish and egotistic and not very social. Those could be my good points. She tried for some time to change me but it is impossible. So instead she loves me.

Someone back in America asked once what life was like here. I had written a blog post and shared it with him. Many people end up here as their retirement stop and really don’t experience other places. Some have personal challenges and see coming to Asia as an escape. A place to run to when the life they had became untenable. Some have financial challenges and limits. It’s pretty much impossible to live in America on fixed income. I make more than most and the life I would have there would be depressing and I’d wonder when retirement and enjoying the final acts of my life kicked in. So people go. They change. They want some of life.

The person wanted to know if life here was difficult. If it took some acclimation and “getting used to” things. Yes and no. There’s nothing really hard here. No barrier you have to cross. Instead it’s what you want with life here. There’s some common sense things. If living on $800 a month it’s difficult to sustain a western lifestyle here. People do come here on that amount and find a different life. Simpler, easier, slower. Consider an apartment here is about $150 a month. Could you live on the rest? Not going to bars and eating fancy western food. But eating mostly Khmer food, enjoying coffee, drinking the occasional beer all happens.

So what about the quality of life. How do you measure quality? What is it you think means a good life? For me, it’s the absence of stuff. I don’t want or need cars, homes, nice clothes. Maybe you’re different.

My life is pretty easy. Your life might not be here. Perhaps you do need to acclimate to things. I lived in Southeast Asia before and got used to what it was I needed to do and what I wanted. I found a vast gulf between. I still went as I pleased. For years when I lived in Vietnam I just went. For other years I had no home. Just a gradual change of guest houses or Airbnb. I slept in an airport or two. Found my way to places I could not wait to leave and others I wanted to stay.

I bring all this up because sitting here this morning pondering means looking around. I’m sitting at this little coffee place. V Coffee is down the street from me. It’s a Khmer place. English not really spoken. It’s never mattered. I don’t come here for the enlightened and fascinating conversation. I come for the coffee and to watch the city go by.

Also to write here. To find things on whatever day ending in “Y” this is. My wife is never sure. She loses track of month and day. She will message me on a Tuesday and tell me to have a nice weekend day.

I think this goes along with living here. Gradually we realize time is not real. There’s the moments and the now. They fade into and out of sight. My coffee is slower perhaps.

After the beer out and the sleep and then leaving this morning to go walk, I realized how much I love this wonderful and strange place. I’ve felt sometimes it’s a stop. Like one of the Amtrak whistle stops when I traveled across America. Peering out the window of my sleeper I saw people coming and going but I stayed put.

Now I do the same from this vantage point. I watch Khmer people doing their daily things. Both close and distant to me. I’ve realized I can never be one of them and that’s ok. No one here insists. I also feel this distance from the expats. Like a mongrel hailing from two worlds.

Ponder that.