There seem to be a multitude of cultural namesakes for everyone’s favourite rubber slip-on shoe. New Zealanders call them ‘jandals’ which connotes some kind of holy Jesus-sandal. Americans, of course, call them Flip Flops. Aussies even call them ‘thongs’ (Ed’s note: items I do not want wedged in my tush would include a thick chunk of rubber that has been on the ground). Cultural namesakes, even within the English language can lead to all sorts of confusion and misunderstandings. However, be it thongs, jandals or flip flops – one thing certainly does strike across the cultural divide in Phnom Penh: and that is the Flippy Floppie.
Melinda had met Grant at everybody’s favourite backpacker pick-up venue, Top Banana. Melinda had been in Phnom Penh just long enough for the sexual pulse of this city to heat her. Grant was travelling from the US with his best mate in crime, and their travel plans through Cambodia vaguely aligned with some of Melinda’s public holidays.
As is often the way, a cocktail after work quickly evolved into a night of debaucherous drinking and at three in the morning on a school night, Melinda found herself dragging Grant back to her place. This moment had been brewing in no uncertain dance moves all night, and as they kissed in her hall, Melinda could feel Grant’s very own sexual pulse. Clothes unravelled, breath quickened, Melinda reached for her top drawer and as Melinda arched her back, Grant kneeled away to glove the love and then –
Nothing.
Grant is as firm as Grandma’s butter tea cake, as hard as not-yet-set jelly, as erect as – well, you get the idea. Melinda has been struck by the curse of the Phnom Penh Flippy Floppie.
Never one to despair, the resourceful lass knows she can wait until the next night to try again. So, she (with great difficulty) curbs her frustration, arranges to meet Grant the following night for dinner and tucks herself into bed for a wee nap before work.
Dinner involves more than a couple of bottles of red wine, and, like a bad case of déjà vu, later that night Melinda finds her arched back slumping, completely unsatisfied, again.
Upon a quick survey of every other Phnom Penh woman she sees that week, Melinda discovers this problem is far from an unusual one and, alarmingly, appears to be an exceptionally more prominent occurrence in the Pulsing Penh.
The drinking culture here is heavy; and six to seven cocktails are prerequisite consumption foreplay. The city is hot. It pulses. And then flippy floppies strike like wild cards. Or kind of like Jacks of Death.
In one last vain attempt to cure her now ravenous sexual desire, the next night, Melinda accosts Grant at Top Banana straight after she has finished work. No alcohol fuel to fight. And yet – !
Melinda stops. She sits up and crosses her arms. “You! U Care. Go!” She snaps, directing Grant to the nearest Western pharmacy, U Care, with some very specific instructions for some little blue pills. Grant hesitates, uncertain whether to laugh, but after Melinda picks up her book and begins reading, he gets the hint.
One hour later, satisfied and smug, Melinda meets her older girlfriend for a Sling and recounts her MacGyver-like tale of resourcefulness.
“Oh honey!” says her friend. “Hasn’t anyone told you yet?” The woman opens up her purse and right there in a permanent place between the separated riel notes and US dollar bills is two packets of little blue pills.
“Never leave home without it.” She winks, gazes across to three Frenchmen playing pool, and sips her Sling.
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