Cambodia Not So Happy Pizza

I put Happy Pizza on my list ever since I knew there is a “Happy” Pizza. I first read it in Sally’s e-book, Best of Unbrave Girl, where she mentioned “space pizza” while travelling to Laos. Whatever Sally does I want to do it also, because I have a tiny crush on how she lives her life, travelling around and living with a cat. Basically, Sally is my spirit animal and.. um, wait, pizza, yes. I was determined to try it, more so because I have had enough of getting the disappointed looks from friends who found out that I didn’t do ‘the deed’ while visiting Amsterdam. No, nothing to do with male prostitution, but you know, the herb. Gee, it’s so hard to write by its name here. I am worried they will shut down my little blog if I mention the M-word. But it happened. I finally tried it. And this is how it started.

On our second night in Cambodia, we, the two unknowingly naive people who embarked on our journey to find happiness, lay on a Pizza. The journey was apparently a very short one. A left turn from Pub Street, where we spent our night watching the young tourists behaving like barbarians and getting a $1 massage that came with free wifi and a bottle of water. There were three choices. Happy Special Pizza, Ecstatic Pizza, and Happy Herb Pizza, side by side, competing for our attention. We chose happy Special Pizza because we just want to be “happy” not ecstatic per se.

It’s a very normal looking restaurant with a simple seating arrangement (I was expecting something closer to Eric Forman’s basement from The 70’s Show) and a few customers. I guess people don’t have Happy Pizza for dinner. It’s just us, the naive. A grumpy* lady came to hand out the menu. I looked through it, trying to find the Happy marks, but nothing. Just normal pizzas with so many choices that come in three sizes, sold at normal prices.

I let Fafa order. I told him I didn’t care what pizza we eat as long as it has IT in it. Is that how addiction starts? My eyes were twitching even before I ate the pizza, but it might have to do with the combination of yellow light with orange interior, which was covered with poster-size pictures of people eating Pizza and looking lost. No-one famous.

Fafa placed the order with a grumpy* man and he whispered the word herb. The happy pizza came and I took a bite. It was bitter. Bitter pizza = cooked with herb = happiness in my head, so I polished off three-quarters of it. We have asked the tuk-tuk guy to be the designated driver for the night.

I was ready to be taken down and get high by happiness. I was so ready, but nothing.. Not. a. Thing. I tried to loosen up more, which was quite impossible after being so loosened already by a massage before. We walked around. I began to suspect herb from the happy pizza was not the keyword and started interrogating Fafa did he said it properly. Maybe we missed a secret wink. We waited for some more time until we decided maybe liqueurs would help to open a happy gate. Desperate moments you guys. We gulped down two each, waited, concluded nothing happened and went back to the hotel. Disappointed.

I was reading when it hit. Not on me, but on Fafa, lucky b******. He said he feels happy, light-headed, and light. He started flapping his hands like a bird and smile widely like a doofus. I WANTED TO FEEL IT TOO. Not long after he went to bed while I waited. I waited for my happiness to kick in. At 1 AM I felt a pinch of deliriousness.

“Is this it?”, my heart cried. “No, you are sleepy”, my brain answered.

The end — or so I thought.

I woke up the next day feeling extra sleepy, extra lazy, extra slow and with a headache thanks to happy pizza. This was not what I wanted. This was the opposite of what I wanted since we had a full day itinerary. Thankfully, the slow feeling went away after a bowl of Khmer porridge (served with prawns, dried fish, and beans — Oh, so delicious).

My suggestion is, for merely $8, go for it! Maybe take up a notch and choose Ecstatic and tell me how it was for you. Have you ever tried “the herb” before? How was it? What did you feel? Come on guys share your happiness with me!

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