One of my favorite opening lines of a story is one by fellow Colombian, Gabriel Garcia Marquez from One Hundred Years of Solitude. “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
I too remember one of the first times I discovered how ice was delivered when traveling for the first time in South East Asia. I was fascinated by the giant blocks of ice as I watched men loading them onto a ferry at a river crossing in southern Laos. They kept the ice cold on the boat by covering it with sawdust and hay. This same ice I have watched over the years being delivered strapped to the backs of rickety old bicycles, held between the legs of a driver on his motorbike, in the back of pickup trucks and on the floors of trains. I once took a long slow train journey from Rangoon to Mandalay and spent most of my time with a fellow traveler in the bar car drinking local whiskey. For me, drinking it straight was painfully strong so I unknowingly asked the barman for some ice. He came back and with his bare hands placed two chunks of oddly shaped ice into my glass. Later, walking back to my seat I saw the block of ice on the floor of the train, bits of sawdust still covering it, and was convinced I would be deathly ill before arriving to my destination.
Despite the often dubious storage conditions of ice in some countries, it continues to fascinate me. This is probably because I am one of those people that enjoy ice in just about everything I drink, even to the horror of one German stewardess of a Lufthansa flight, who retorted with a scolding voice when I asked for some ice for the bottle of Warsteiner, “zee beer is already cold zee don’t need zee iiiice!” The Thai people drink their beer on ice most of the time, I had just been in Thailand enjoying my Chang beers over ice as a sort of beer cocktail, so please just serve me some ice lady! Danke Schon.
Today on my morning bike ride to visit Kampot market, I came across some ice being delivered to a cold drinks shops. Six rectangular blocks were lined up across the back of a pickup truck and a young man carried them one by one to a large cooler in front of the shop. Some would remain inside cooling the soft drinks, energy drinks, bottled water and beers while others would later be shaved down to serve in drinks.
He grabbed each block with a rusty looking iron tool that looked like a fishing hook and lowered the blocks by hand. On a hot day like is was proving to be, I bet this a job that is almost enviable. Just watching the scene made me thirsty.
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