At many coffee spots in Siem Reap the shops offer wonderful soft chairs. I wait sometimes for the wonderful moment when I can change. The waitress comes over and helps. I don’t really need help but she’s kind to an old retired guy.

Now I’m at Ur Coffee. .

This other thing accomplished changing chairs is I often get a fresh tea from the same waitress. She is a kind and happy person and both the barista and waitress greet me with good morning in English and hello in Khmer.

When I do change I realize just how different coffee culture can be. The Khmer places I visit like this one often start as a small coffee shack. I think this place has grown in size as the local businesses and even the occasional barang stops in. There’s a “no rush” mentality to it all so I take advantage. I sit and write. Feel this thing in Southeast Asia. This slow edge feeling. I wrote before about The Edge. This place where things just go on. Slowly. With an unfinished and random nature. But I still find the wonderful connections. Now it’s coffee shops. I remember in Taipei visiting a wonderful chain for their bagels toasted with cheese and sausage. A wonderful place close to my Airbnb. Then I found more of them. Delightfully the food was different. The bagels were not sourdough but wheat. No sausage. Bacon instead. And they had chairs. Wonderful soft creations. I would sit in much like now. Focus on nothing in particular besides words that started and stopped in a journal or some blog I wrote back then.

then there’s now…

And then I have now. This wonderful continuation of a soft chair and moments to find my tense. My present imperfect tense. I can hear cars going by. The occasional word in Khmer. Here though it feels almost subdued. Like here a coffee shop is cherished. A place with it all for a Thursday morning. I find a place and a pace for writing. The fan softly warps the air. I feel lost. Lost between a place in Taipei and here. A memory that bounces the two of them. These are these small webs. These little gardens where synapses grow. Found on some edge of life where I can be this itinerant ethnographer. This non participant observer.

My wife messages me. She’s getting her nails done. Sends photos. I just sit and watch how the simple act of changing a chair brings so much.

This edge and that one. Others that crowd in like they want their chance. But that’s another chair. In a coffee shop that is to come. I do think we all rush through it all way too much for too long. We have no edge. No place where the fan whirs and thoughts blend. Maybe that’s what Cambodia offers me today.

Moments. I’ll take them.