What the hell is that smell?

I find myself asking myself this, rhetorically or aloud to my wife, on a regular basis in Cambodia.

Before coming to Cambodia I have been relatively well-traveled, including a semester abroad in Beijing.  So I assumed that I knew what I was in for with regard to the onslaught to my olfactory system.  I may have underestimated Cambodia's might in this department.

A few examples...

The markets are probably the first stop for anyone coming to Cambodia and wanting an authentic experience buying groceries, haggling on the price of a shirt or see how life here continually carries on in the smaller towns and villages.

In most markets, there are certain sections for certain kinds of sellers to sell their wares - clothes, electronics, fruits, vegetables, home goods, etc.  Be warned, the "fish" and "meat" sections of the market can be one of the more jolting places you will find on this Earth.  In them I have seen children freely peeing near uncovered piles of pork and beef, a pig being slaughtered and bleed while customers haggle over the price of the blood and have been nearly smacked in the face by various raw pieces of meat as enthusiastic sellers show me or package up their goods.

The smell is, as my father would have delicately put it, "enough to knock a buzzard off a shit wagon." Cambodians don't have access to refrigeration and moreover, don't fully understand the benefits of keeping cooked and uncooked food cold to prevent the formation of bacteria.  On the plus side, Cambodia consumes a great deal of fresh meat, fruits and vegetables daily.  The downside is the smell of meat in a very hot and humid climate several hours after the animal has been butchered.

My house, and I'm sure, many others in this country have their own set of unique and ponderous smells.  About a week ago Kate and I were having one of our bi-weekly language tutoring lessons when I stood straight up and started evacuating Kate and my teacher from the house because I thought we had a gas leak.  False alarm...my host sister was preparing "prahok" a beloved dish in Cambodia made from dried and fermented fish paste.  This batch did not turn out as well as one might have hoped (though its hard to tell by smell alone when prahok is "edible"), and smelled rank of methane.

In the same week, we had an alarming evening as two cats made their way into our roof and began fighting.  Three holes in our roof later, our family had chased away the cats (the entire time we were consoling our host nephew that no, they were no ghosts in our house).  Apparently, the cats must have chased something else up their and made the kill, because today and for the past three days, a horrific rotting smell is emanating from our wall and ceiling.  I am sure it will go away soon though...

The people in Cambodia confuse me sometimes.  Occasionally I will be walking behind a group of men or women and be overpowered by their ability to wear extreme amounts of cologne or perfume without passing out from their own fumes.  Other days, I seems as though they are entirely unaware of the existence of BO in the world.  Either way, I find that I usually have a 100% chance of "over-smelling" K'mai people, but only a 50-50% chance of that smell being a positive one.

I don't want to be biased in this post, so let me leave you with some smells in Cambodia that I really do love.

Cooking garlic - riding my bike home in the evenings, usually I pass several houses and restaurants frying up something good with massive amounts of garlic.  No smell makes me hungrier...

Fruit stalls - especially at night, the dozen or so different kinds of fruit they sell on any given day just makes this perfect cacophony of scent by night.

Rain - you know that smell right at the beginning of a big rain storm?  Somehow the heat and humidity here make that smell all the more welcome during the rainy season.  I know I complain about the weather in Cambodia, but the big rains are something I will never get tired of.

Do you have a favorite smell, or better yet, a least favorite smell?  One of the things I miss most here is the smell of honeysuckle in the summer, nothing better than that smell when you are driving at night.