Susdei Chnam Thmey! (Happy Khmer New Year!)

     Going to stay in the Cambodian countryside is an adventure. Going there during the week of Khmer New Year is exponentially more interesting.

     Staying in the village is like camping, only louder and with fewer modern facilities. It’s loud because Khmer New Year is the holiday of all holidays here, and it goes on for days, and celebrations here always call for LOUD MUSIC at least 15 hours per day. Normally quiet pagodas and their grounds are turned into county fairs/nightclubs/boxing rings/food festivals. It would appear that the whole village attends, and if it’s a particularly big affair like the one in Rung Chrey village, people come from villages miles around.  Svay Duonkeo village had a slightly smaller affair, and we were lucky enough to attend both.

     Imagine an area about the size of a football field, with a Buddhist wat in the middle. Set up all around the wat are makeshift palm leaf and bamboo food stalls selling every kind of rice, noodles, meat, fish, and fruit that you can imagine – and many that you cannot. Christmas lights and fluorescent bulbs are strung somewhat haphazardly in every direction and are surrounded by clouds of bugs.  The ground is littered with plastic bags and empty beer cans and greasy napkins. (Keep in mind that even on restaurant tables, the most commonly found “napkin” here is a roll of pink toilet paper.) There are games  – especially the classic Khmer carnival game where for 25 cents you can throw a dart at a wall of balloons in the hope of winning anything from the plethora of prizes being displayed: bottles of Khmer whiskey or dish detergent, boxes of crackers, metal bowls, and plastic ware in all shapes and sizes. There are carnival rides – a ferris wheel that looks like it may have been beamed here from 1947, and for the littler ones there's a spinning contraption with plastic cars and animals hanging in metal cages. There is a boxing ring, curtained off from free viewing by an assortment of tarps. And there is a place to dance: an area marked by a wall of ancient Peavey speakers that stretches 25 feet long by 6 feet high, with a pole planted in the middle of the open ground nearby  – for in this country, one must always dance around in a circle, and the pole marks the center. The noise is deafening and distorted and is a mixed playlist of traditional Khmer music and pounding Khmer hip-hop. The air is thick with the smoke from the food stalls and cigarettes. It’s 87 degrees – which is a welcome change from the heat of the day - and you can feel a trickle of sweat running down your spine, and then lower still.

We had a run of good luck!

     And you must dance. It is completely unthinkable not to dance, especially if you are the only foreign guests within who knows how many square miles. The village chief insists on dancing with you, and when you try to take a break and catch your breath, strange men drag you back onto the dance floor. Children thread their way through the dancing crowd to sidle up and grin at you. Sometimes someone hands you a beer while you’re dancing, which goes down fast and easy to replenish the copious amounts of sweat that you’re producing. Sometimes people run up with a handful of baby powder and spread it all over your face. (It’s a Khmer New Year thing, and you learn quickly to close your eyes and hold your breath when you see it coming.) And those with cell phone cameras aim them at you, sometimes following you around the circle to get the best close-up shots or low-res video footage they can manage. As you dance, you look out into the crowd gathered around and see people of all ages who seem most interested in watching you, smiling at you, nudging their friends and pointing at you. You also see an occasional policeman, with a machine gun, and you’re told it’s make sure the “gangsters” don’t cause any trouble.

The village chief takes his dancing pretty seriously.

During the day, we ran into these "dancers" at the market,
accompanied by traditional Khmer musicians. 

      And all of this happens in the evening, after you’ve spent the day sitting around with all the men while the women bring you food and drinks and all the neighbors come by to look at the foreigners. You will be served chicken and duck and dog, and when you recognize that the morsel in your hands is a paw, you will politely pass it to someone who will appreciate it more than you will. You smile a lot, and offer traditional greetings, and quickly exhaust your seven-word Khmer vocabulary. Someone is kind enough to translate some of the questions people would like to ask you, and the answers always trigger laughter and general amusement. As the big plastic beer cooler is emptied and replenished, you must raise your glass and toast “Chul Muoy!” again and again, provoking more laughter and delight. Later, when you rise from your much-needed afternoon nap, you will hear that “many more people came to see the foreigners, but we told them you were sleeping” and you will feel bad for disappointing them. (And you will wonder if perhaps they peeked in at you while you slept.)

The women cook...

...while the men (and I) eat and drink.

The food never seems to stop coming.

One of many delicious meals with Sovann's family

The kitchen. No electricity or running water, chickens underfoot.
The food is great.

     Somewhere between the nap and the dancing at the pagoda, you will be offered a ride on an “ox-cart” which turns out to be a wagon pulled by the ubiquitous Khmer tractor, which oddly resembles an oversized rototiller. You will bump along admiring the rice fields and fruit trees, and then you will be paraded down the main road of the village so everyone can have a chance to notice you. People will smile, stare, do double-takes, and wave. You will hear people exclaiming in Khmer, and you hear the word “barang” over and over and over, which means foreigner. As you pass one house where some people are drinking and dancing, they chase after the wagon until it stops. Then they pull you off and drag you to their house, where they will squeal in drunken delight, cover you with powder, and stuff bananas in your mouth and dance you around and around their yard.

     At the end of the night, when you can’t dance for another minute, you can go back to the home of your generous hosts to sleep, but first you will want to wash off all the sweat and dust and smoke and grime. This will require bathing outside, scooping water from an enormous urn and pouring it all over yourself while trying to make sure your sarong doesn’t fall off and leave your large white body glowing in the moonlight in front of your hosts. You will be thankful for the darkness, because performing this feat in broad daylight while a dozen or so family members wander by (and sometimes try to engage you in conversation) is still quite a challenge, despite a few days of practice. You will daydream about the shower in your bathroom back in Siem Reap and vow never to take it for granted again. Then you will crawl up the stairs to your room, where a bright pink mosquito net has been carefully hung over a straw mat on the wooden floor, and the oppressive heat that accumulated all day through the tin roof still lingers. As you attempt to arrange yourself on the floor under the net, the music from the pagoda will sound as though it’s coming from the front yard, but the noise, the hard floor, and the heat will not stop you from falling into an exhausted sleep - until 4:00 am, when the music resumes and the monks begin to make announcements over their loudspeakers. Then you’ll wake up and do it all over again, because this holiday goes on and on and on.

If you're in the mood for some fresh coconut,
someone will happily climb a tree for you.

I was happy to read that almost 2000 land mines and 37 UXO
had been removed well before we arrived in Svay Duonkeo.

Jaz spent the whole week in the village. She read a lot of books.

Sovann's family getting their New Year blessing from mom.

The markets are busy this time of year.

Sovann's family cow

Artwork in process on the outside of a pagoda being built.

     I have no idea why I wrote this in the second person. Maybe just because during those three days, I repeatedly thought to myself, “I can never fully explain this experience to anyone who hasn’t been here. No one will really be able to imagine what this is like.” I guess I wanted to try anyway.

     I also feel compelled to say that the story told here is factual, but it's a blend of experiences from the two villages where we stayed. Not that I think that 60 Minutes will show up to expose the inaccuracies in my blog entry, but I like to admit my use of artistic license when I’ve made use of it.


Edited to add: Sorry for all the typos. Steve is now pointing them out to me. Feel free to point out those that remain so I can fix them!