A visit from Jim and Sarah

The big news this week is that Mars bars have arrived, with which we are well pleased. They came accompanied by Jim and Sarah who are spending three weeks in Cambodia. They were in Mondulkiri for most of last week, which was lots of fun although a bit of a setback for my attempts to stave off alcoholism. In between drinking, we visited waterfalls, went for walks, tried to expand Tak’s music collection (he mostly listens to things that Ken Bruce would be ashamed to play), and also had a lovely evening at a place called the Sea Forest, so-called because the forest is so expansive it looks a bit like the sea.

While they were here Jim and Sarah grew fond of our cat Tony Blair. (Tony was christened by Tak about six months ago for unknown reasons, although I sanctioned the name as I felt a similar mixture of affection and hatred as I used to feel for our former PM). Jim and Sarah are not the only friends Tony has been making, though – we were quite excited last week to meet Sarah Brown, his girlfriend who is quite a lot older than him. Closer examination, however, has revealed that Sarah has testicles. Tak was a bit shocked, but I think he loves him just the same. I might hide all the sharp implements though just in case he attempts surgery.

We’ve also been learning new skills. Jen has been learning to ride a motorbike and is doing very well, and I’ve been learning how to chop trees with an axe, and am doing less well, with lots of nasty blisters. The trees are coming down though. I’ve been drafted in as cheap foreign labour to clear the land where Tak and Eng are going to build their house, which is a beautiful area a few kilometres out of Sen Monorom.

As for work, the schools have reopened so we’re trying to do as much as we can before the following set of public holidays next week, which coincide with a visit from Mum, Dad and Lucy (not here as imported labour but coming for a holiday). There are just a few more months before the end of the school year, and we’re going to try to support the Grade 6 students as they move up to secondary school, to ensure that as many as possible stay on. We’ll also try to help schools organise end-of-year celebration days to try to make children and their parents enthusiastic about education and the achievements it can bring. Finally, some good news from Pu Trom Chah school which has finally built their library – in the end it took just a few hours and we hope to give them their books as soon as they’ve built and painted bookshelves. 

Holiday season

Early April was party season in Cambodia in the run-up to Khmer New Year, which was on the 14-16th April. It was the third of the new years that are celebrated here (Chinese and international being the other festivals borrowed as an excuse for a public holiday), and is the biggest, with most people taking a week or two off and going back to their home villages.

In the weeks before, work starting to wind down as most of the schools closed, and there was a string of parties and weddings – the rainy season is on its way so couples are under pressure to get married soon or have to wait until November. Jen is staying in Mondulkiri for a few weeks so she also went to some of them, including a New Year’s party at the bank and the wedding of one of the teachers we work with.

If you look closely, you can make out the empty tables around us - this month we perfected the arrive first, drink lots, leave last technique. It's all about value for money. 

We also visited a few waterfalls, including Kball Preah which is probably my favourite – quite dramatic, but not as impressive as Bousra and therefore attracting fewer crowds. It also requires a half-hour walk which helps, too, to put people off – I forgot to mention this when I suggested Kball Preah and I think when this photo was taken everybody was a bit pissed off with me.

It was worth it though.

For the holiday itself, we went to Kampong Som on the south-west coast. There were five of us: Tak, Eng, me, Jen and Rachel, who was travelling in Thailand and met us for a week or so in Cambodia. It was a really nice few days of swimming, eating fresh crab and squid, and drinking. (Gone are the days when I assumed holidays were about doing things; now it’s all about sitting around and drinking.)

Eating fresh crab on the beach.

Evening at the beach.

I was hoping that by the end of the weekend I would have cafe au lait coloured skin (admittedly with extra lait) to complete my Cambodian conversion, but Jen said Strawberry Nesquik was the best I could hope for. The following photo is of the two pinkest men on the beach.

On Saturday Ingran and some of his friends from London arrived, and the following morning Dave and Helen turned up too, so it was nice to see them although we had to leave a few hours later. We had a night in Phnom Penh on the way back, taking Jen and Rachel to DJ Club which was good fun as always.

Coming soon on DVD...

Since my last blog entry, I’ve become something of a TV star. The DVD of Tak and Eng’s wedding has been released and, having confused the camera with the video camera during most of the official photos, I think I stole the show. Furthermore, I recently starred in Come Dine With Me Cambodia, filmed on location in the VSO Programme Office, Phnom Penh. As you can see, I’m becoming something of a cult figure among the Cambodian youth:

A young boy meets his hero

Please overlook the terror in the boy’s eyes, and Tak’s firm grip preventing attempts at escape; I think he was just overwhelmed by the experience.

Come Dine With Me was Ingran’s idea as the group we had arrived with in September were back in Phnom Penh for a week of language training. We cooked in pairs over four nights, although Ingran made the mistake of putting myself and him first – on the Monday we set the bar fairly high and were subsequently overtaken by everybody else. It was devastating to feel the prize money of 1000 riel (approximately 15p) slipping away, but at least we got good food. The filming was lots of fun and everybody was extremely rude and offensive, so I’m looking forward to the DVD.

It was a busy week in the end as Sam and I were also editing the volunteer magazine. It’s basically modelled on the Weekend section from Saturday’s Guardian, and so the three spelling mistakes I’ve noticed since it was printed were obviously deliberate, included to add authenticity. I was particularly galled by the typo in the recipe section – where Hannah’s Spanish meatballs recipe for albóndigas was misspelled as albóndingas – as Spanish is a language I have a degree in! Overall, though, I think we’re happy with how it turned out.

Since then Tim and Jen have visited which was great. They were the first visitors I’ve had and it made me feel very Cambodian to be thinking things like, ‘I must buy toilet paper – the foreigners are coming!’ (Cambodians use a water hose.) It also made me realise that many aspects of my daily routine, which now feel perfectly normal, are very different from my life before. Breakfast, for example, is a bowl of super noodles and a cup of Yorkshire tea; lunch is at 11am; drinking – sorry, I mean dinner – starts any time after 5pm, which it hasn’t done since we were children and our family mealtimes were scheduled to avoid clashing with Neighbours.

Anyway, they came to Mondulkiri for a few days and had a barbecue, a bit of waterfall visiting and general hanging out, before the three of us went to Siem Reap for the weekend. This is the home of Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious building and Cambodia’s national symbol, and it was very impressive, in its scale as much as anything else. We arrived at 5.30am to watch the sunrise, and then visited Angkor Wat and some of the other temples. 

I was a bit worried about food as Siem Reap is a tourist hotspot and I thought we were going to get ripped off, but it really helps to be able to speak Khmer – people immediately realise you’ve spent some time in Cambodia and know the price of everything. We also found a great all you can eat barbecue on the first night, so we ate until we felt sick, then had a break and carried on. 

They went to the beach after that and I began the long two-day journey back to Mondulkiri, where work has been very quiet as all of the schools are closed. Khmer New Year is next week and schools are likely to stay closed for about three weeks. Our plan for the new year is to go to the beach where we should hopefully meet up with Rachel, who I think is in Thailand, so that will be good.

 

It is also the last month or so of the dry season, and so there’s been a flurry of weddings and other parties. Last night we went to a house warming party in Bousra, about an hour from Sen Monorom, which was as grand as a wedding. We didn’t see the person who had invited us, and barely knew anybody else: when we noticed that other guests had red invitations while ours were white, we wondered whether we’d stumbled across the wrong party. We never really cleared that up, but as long as you pay your $10 I don’t think it really matters. The party was lots of fun, whatever it was.

February and March

It’s been a busy few weeks since my last entry. I’ve entered my 27th year, attended two funerals, had lots of VSO meetings, supported two school open days and hit a cow (on my motorbike, not with my fists). I’ve also found out that ménage à trois means more than just living together, so to clear up any confusion caused by my last blog, I’d like to clarify that, while Tak and I share almost everything, we don’t share his wife.

When we came back from Phnom Penh after the wedding, our landlady’s mother had died. She was old and had been sick for a long time, and perhaps because of this, or perhaps because of Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation, the funeral didn’t seem to be a sad affair. It took place seven days after her death and was an occasion to wish her well as she left this world, with another funeral after a hundred days to bless her new life. Everybody wore white and when we arrived we went to give our offering to one of the monks – rice, sugar, incense, candles, condensed milk and tea. These are considered the essentials for her on her journey out of this world, although after the funeral they go to the monks, who have no income and survive on donations from people. We then ate some food and left about half an hour later.

Much worse was the death of Tak’s older sister, which happened two weeks ago, as she was only 40 and died in pretty awful circumstances. This isn’t really the place to write about it.

Work has been very busy as VSO needs to finish all of its funded activities by the end of the financial year on 31st March. Tak, Jeltje and I worked together to help two schools – Pu Trom Tmei and Sreiee – organise community open days to celebrate the new libraries that they’ve recently set up. 

The new library at Sreiee

They both followed a similar format: a welcome from the school director, activities from students such as talking about their favourite books, plays and songs and reading aloud, speeches from community leaders and staff from the Provincial Office of Education, a ceremony to bless the new buildings, and a communal meal. Both communities are predominantly Punong (Mondulkiri’s largest indigenous group) and so the ceremonies were traditional Punong ceremonies, involving lots of jar wine which was delicious. 

As for the food, VSO provided a pig but community members donated everything else and organised the cooking, as we wanted the school to feel that they could organise similar events in the future without help from VSO or any other NGO. Both events were successful and well-attended, and we were pleased that staff from our office came too to show their support for the school and also to see the work that we’ve been doing. Finally, while I’m aware that almost every paragraph of my blog ends in this way, we finished by drinking a lot of jar wine. 

The following day was my birthday. Having mentioned it to Tak the day before (before the jar wine), I thought he might at least have remembered to wish me well. He didn’t, and even Jeltje only produced a cupcake instead of the birthday cake she’d promised. As the day went on I did wonder whether they were planning something, but it seemed not. I became a bit suspicious when Tak wasn’t in the office in the afternoon and Jeltje didn’t seem to know where he was (she doesn’t normally let him out without a good excuse!), but then she said something about helping his father, which was very plausible as it was the week of his sister’s funeral. Finally, at 5pm, I nearly asked Jeltje if she was going for a drink later but felt too pathetic to be fishing for an invite on my own birthday, so I went home alone. All day it had felt like a soap opera (a shit one, like Hollyoaks) and I still wasn’t sure what the ending would be.

Later, Eng said we were all eating out, and I assumed it was at Tak’s father’s to help with the funeral arrangements, and it was only when Tak came back to pick us up and, crucially, get the bottle opener (a sure sign of red wine, not Tak’s dad’s tipple of choice) that I thought they were up to something. It was a surprise party at Jeltje’s house, and it was lovely to see so many people there. I’ve never had a surprise party before and it is really nice, but organisers should be aware that it makes people feel very sorry for themselves for most of the day!

Since then a new volunteer has arrived from Belfast. He’s very nice and is living two doors away (all six of us – me, Tak, Neil, Daniel, Jeltje and To – now live within a few hundred metres of each other on the same street). We also had a visit from VSO in Phnom Penh to see how we’re doing, and that seemed to go well. It was lucky that this happened just after the open days, so the people from the POE who attended the meeting had a better idea of the work we’ve done.

I’m now in Phnom Penh about to start the second bout of language training which I’m looking forward to, although I’m annoyed that I’ve slipped down the rankings a bit as other people have improved their Khmer at a much faster rate than me. I am, however, learning the alphabet with the help of a first words book designed for Cambodian children, and I can write fork, spoon, shampoo, mother, tree, cat etc. Tak is here too although he has chicken pox (‘ot swai’ in Khmer, which sounds a lot like ‘not a mango’) and is feeling very sorry for himself. I’ve been playing chief nurse – I’m not sure why as he’s staying with his mum who is an actual nurse – but Eng is coming today so my duties are over.

Finally, my pigeon hole is overflowing with parcels which I’m going to open right now - thank you!

The wedding

Reader, he married her.

 

That’s the gist of what happened last week. However, Cambodian weddings are extravagant and colourful affairs (very colourful, in fact), so for those who are interested, here’s the full account of Tak and Eng’s wedding.

To begin at the beginning, or rather, with me, about two months ago Tak announced that on the wedding day I would be the groom. I was a bit taken aback by this because I didn’t know his girlfriend very well, but it turned out he’d got mixed up and meant the best man. In Cambodia there are three best men and traditionally they should be unmarried and have both parents still alive. Many of Tak’s close friends are married already so he had a pretty empty barrel to scrape from. Still, I felt very honoured to be asked along with two of his cousins, Sinny and Lucky.

Incidentally, the Khmer word for best men is neak komdor, which sounds dangerously close to kdor, the word for penis, so I didn’t tell anybody who I was in case I accidentally told them I was Tak’s penis man. Fortunately, my bright orange and pink silk clothes were a bit of a giveaway.     

We left Phnom Penh on Sunday morning and arrived at Eng’s family’s house in rural Kampong Cham province, where the wedding would take place on the Tuesday. The family and their neighbours were busy with preparations – decorating the house, beginning the cooking, shopping, setting up the marquis and stage – and it was interesting to see everything from behind the scenes. We also had a lovely swim in the nearby Mekong. 

 

The wedding began at around 5pm on the Monday evening, with a ceremony in which four monks blessed the couple. 

Only the bride and groom were dressed up for this; the rest of us were wearing ordinary clothes, and after about half an hour of chanting it was over. Monday evening was a quiet affair as we all had to wake up early the next day, so after a few beers with Tak’s family (most of whom came on Monday as they were coming from far away), we went to bed about 9pm. 

Tak and his penis men on the night before the wedding.

Tak waltzed into the house saying he would be sleeping with Eng, and about three minutes later was frogmarched out by Eng's mother, sheepishly joining me, Lucky and Sinny outside on the veranda. Long after we went to sleep, Eng and her family were still preparing the hundreds of plates of fruit and presents which would be used for the procession the following morning.

The bride and bridesmaids (including Jeltje, who stepped in when one of Eng’s friends dropped out) were awake from about 3.30 to begin the hair, make-up and dress preparations and at 5am we were woken up too. I also had a bit of a disastrous hair styling, but it faded into insignificance when our costumes appeared. 

At around 7am we went downstairs, Tak first, then Sinny and Lucky carrying a gold umbrella each and me carrying a bouquet of flowers. When everyone started laughing I assumed it was because of the bright pink clothes, but it turned out the bouquet is supposed to be carried by the groom, as the three of them knew only too well. I wasn’t amused. Anyway, we walked about a hundred metres from the house, and all of the wedding guests who weren’t part of Eng’s family came and lined up behind us, each carrying a plate of fruit. Accompanied by music, we processed towards the house where we offered our gifts, in a ceremony that serves to underline the economic nature of traditional Cambodian weddings. (The groom pays the $3000 cost of the wedding, and although guests pay around $10 each, this money goes to the girl’s family, so they end up making a handsome profit from the sale of their daughter.)

Following this we all ate breakfast and then there were further ceremonies involving the bride and groom’s families offering each other gifts. We were also changed into orange clothes ready for the hair-cutting ceremony which took place at about 11am. 

 

This was downstairs and, after listening to some monks chanting again, the wedding party (the couple, best men and bridesmaids) sat on chairs in a line while two people began enacting a comic play. I found it difficult to understand and soon switched off, and so I was horrified when the microphone began working its way towards me and I was made to get up on stage with them. I had no real idea what was going on, but I think the gist of it was that the man was trying to pay me to marry the woman, and my role was to say no, which I think I managed to do. Anyway, everyone laughed a lot and I was soon allowed to sit down again. After this there were photos of family members pretending to cut the bride and groom’s hair, symbolising a shared future that begins growing from the same point.

Before lunch, we also went down towards the village to pay respects to someone’s ancestors (not sure whose). This took place just outside a school, so lots of the children came out to watch. While Tak was happily boasting about all the attention he was getting, it was pretty obvious that none of them were looking at him but were all staring at me – more than anywhere I’ve been in Cambodia so far, this is the place where people seem totally unaccustomed to seeing foreigners.

Lunchtime offered an opportunity to change clothes and go the toilet (I hadn’t been able to do that in the apsara trousers), and we had one more ceremony to attend before we could have a break – the washing of the feet ceremony. Tak put on a suit that made him look like a king, and Sinny and I stood behind him while Eng bent down and sprayed liquid soap on his feet, presumably to symbolise wifely obedience. No comment on that one.

We had an hour or so to rest (although Tak and Eng continued non-stop with various photos and ceremonies) before putting on a bright blue suit to go downstairs and greet the guests as they arrived. 

This was good fun for about an hour, then really hot and tiring for the following two hours as we could see everyone else eating and drinking. Interestingly, many of the villagers were leaving by 4 or 5pm, despite going to huge amounts of effort with their wedding costumes and hair. All in all, there were over 600 people, although not all at the same time as they came and left at different times.

At about 6.30 we were finished and could start on the beer, which flowed very fast as lots of people wanted to drink with the foreigners. I thought the ceremonies were over but there was one more to go – a Western-influenced cutting of the cake ceremony. We wore white suits (I felt like I was in a boyband) and I took a few photos as we were waiting for it to start.

 

Downstairs, we walked behind the bride and groom as they were covered in confetti. Because by this stage people were a bit drunk, this ceremony was more relaxed and good fun. 

 

Less fun was the whisky which followed and which meant I got very drunk very quickly. 

 

I still managed to do some Khmer dancing which always impresses people (Cambodians don’t seem to realize that their traditional dance is the easiest in the world – you just walk around a table and move your wrists a bit). And then I did a little bit of being sick, which doesn’t impress anyone.

All in all it was a great experience to be so closely involved in and I felt very honoured that Tak had asked me. The next chapter will involve the ménage à trois that is awaiting us when we go back to Mondulkiri tomorrow as, until Tak and Eng manage to build their house, it’ll be just the three of us...