Weddings, sunday rides and rude words

Emily, Kurt and Sobonn - heading out on our Sunday ride

Playing support crew at the Mekong River annual swim

Giving my wee silk selling friend a lift on Silk Island.

Having lunch at the beach, Silk Island Locals enjoying being in and on the water - Mekong River, Silk Island Dr Somuny's sisters wedding

Oxen and cart outside my apartment on Street 242.

Butchering pigs then shaving them also on the street along from my apartment

I love Cambodians! Leaving work yesterday one of the drivers (who never stops smiling and laughing) said to me “Yackie, you look very beautiful today” Isn’t that so nice? Of course, in my flustered state I said back to him in Khmer “It’s hot” instead of “thank you” but I think he got the message. And why Yackie?? there’s no “J” in the Khmer language so I quite often get called Yackie. “Yackie” –Yaklike, a bovine creature of hairy appearance with long horns. I’ll leave that thought right there. We had another trip to Sihanoukville and the beach the other weekend. We managed to get a taxi down there for a Khmer price – almost half of what we paid for the last trip. It’s great having Khmer friends to make the booking for you. Funnily enough it was the same driver and car that took us the first time. We were a few hours later reaching Sihnoukville, however, as the driver had to go to the market and then make deliveries enroute - we paid the Cambodian price it’s only fitting we receive the Cambodian level of service. We stay at “Cloud 9” bungalows this time, it's a great place with bugalows built up the hill behind the sea. They do food and have a bar with a barman that’s all character and pink shirts. He's a good choice of barman cause you want to sit and have a couple while he spins the lines in his Khmer-English with an American accent. Friday night is fairly eventful and not necessarily in a good way. We’re standing waiting for some food to be cooked when someone yells out “cool look, fireworks” we can see sparks flying into the sky across the road but soon realize it’s not fireworks but a fire! A whole guest house, newly built, goes up before our eyes. All that’s left is a shell in what feels like minutes. There’s no fire brigade and we fell sick as we wonder if there was anyone inside. As it turned out a friend of ours met last time we were in S.Ville was the only one staying there and thank god he wasn’t inside at the time. He'd had to race back in to rescue his possessions but wasn't lucky enought to save everything. Worse still the owners saw it as a chance to recoop some of their loses and decided to lay the blame for the fire at Rob's feet. He discoverd this the next day when he went to the Police station to make a report for his insurance. The police let him know that he was being held responsible and accordingly he had to pay a $30,000 fine. Thankfully he works locally and could bring in reinforcements in the form of a priest and the priests very ivfluential friends who happened to also be police – the charges were dropped straight away. Just shows how quickly things can go pear shaped here and just as quickly, if you're lucky, go right again. We spent most of the rest of the weekend lazing around Otres beach on sun loungers and frolicking (so maybe we weren’t frolicking but the word sounded right) in a sea with a very tepid temperature. The young girls that wander the beach trying to entice you into purchasing their wares are not aggressive. They’re just happy to spend time sitting on your sunlounger in the shade chatting and sharing a laugh until you know them enough that you give in and end up buying something that you really didn’t want or need. Well that’s how it is for me anyway. Over two days I ended up; getting a massage, buying a sarong and three bracelets (had to be fair, couldn’t buy off one girl and not another) and agreeing to having my leg hair plucked out individually with some lengths of cotton! Gees, these girls can be convincing! Five minutes into the hair extraction I was regretting my insanity as my calf cramped up and I leapt up off the sunlounger sending both girls (one for each leg) flying off the end of it. Quite an entertaining thing to watch I can imagine as the girls shrieked with surprise and then laughter. The next week saw me attending another Khmer wedding celebration, this time for the sister of our Executive Director. Amazingly, by Khmer standards she’s ancient for getting married, she’s 42! Actually that’s ancient by Western standards – there’s hope for me yet :o) The whole of MEDiCAM leaves from work at 8am and heads south for 40mins to Kampong Speu where the party/ceremony is taking place. As we arrive we are made to feel like VIP’s as we’re led to sit with the bridal party and their family. The Master of Ceremonies (who oddly has a Hitler type mustache drawn on his lip and a wig of dreadlocks on his head) draws attention to our arrival and especially to the two westerners. We’re just in time to see the third of the five ceremonies, the second having taken place at 7am that morning and the first the night before. The bride has her own stylist to assist with costume changes and hair and makeup throughout the day. Mr Hak our communications manager translates the proceedings to me which are like the Khmers themselves, steeped in tradition but also amazingly colorful, relaxed and full of fun. We watch one other ceremony and then head off in different directions until we all come back together at 4pm for the eating of the meal. The girls head off to get their hair and makeup done and the boys head off to the neighbors house to play cards and try and win money off each other. Me and Emily head to the markets for a look see. It’s like all Cambodian markets, tightly packed together stalls selling anything from underwear to offal and full of smells that make your eyes water. We get back to the wedding all dolled up (not to be outdone by our Khmer sisters) but don’t eat until the majority of the guests have eaten and left. I find it quite strange but most of the guests arrive, eat, provide a present in the form of a donation and then leave. It’s only family and close friends that stay around for any length of time and get involved in the drinking and the dancing. Of course MEDiCAM gets really involved in the drinking and dancing – myself and Emily struggle to get any time in our seats as we’re constantly approached for a dance around the table of fruit. The boys are drinking whiskey with soda and getting really quite merry. There’s no issue of getting pulled up for drunk driving however as the local police officer is drinking with them, that is when he’s not up dancing or singing with the band. He’s handedly parked his police motorcycle in amongst the wedding tables – hey there are criminals out there! We return to Phnom Penh the next morning with many a sore head, amazingly for once it’s not the westerners who have been the drunken bums and best of all we don’t have to be back at work until after lunch which means 1.30!

I have another action packed weekend which includes breakfast at Java and a visit to the Russian Market to drop off a skirt to be altered. Then we move onto Khmer massages and a facial – oh what bliss. My body and my face are in second heaven! I’m then running late for dinner which is Indian with a very annoying Indian owner “oh no, you must have two Chappati, you cannot be having only one”. Then it’s off to a show – The Vagina Monologues and a full house. I’d never heard of it before but apparently it’s been on in Australia for a few years. A show created to bring awareness of and support to the abuse of women. The funniest bit would have to be the moaning sequence where when asked what the moan of a single female expat. in Phnom Penh sounds like . . . there was silence. Yep, there sure aren’t much moaning going on here!

Sunday, four of us meet early for lunch and then head off on our cycles across the Japanese Friendship bridge to watch the start of the annual Mekong swim. The fastest swimmer made it across in 7min the slowest in 45 - but hey he was 71. We hitched a ride on a ferry with our bikes and headed across to silk island where I’d been a few weeks earlier with Peta. It was nice cycling along the narrow dirt road surrounded by mango trees, fields and cows although it wasn’t really what you’d call peaceful as a lady on her motorbike decided to ride along beside us chatting. Even Sobonn who’s Khmer thought she could talk a lot. We eventually agreed to buy lunch off her and she left us be. We spent a few hours at the beach again and I gave in and bought a piece of silk and some scarves. The weaving is really exquisite. It was a glorious day in the heat and dust on our bikes, we ended up clocking up about 70km’s and our bodies definitely noticed they’d done some work. Monday sees me and Emily swotting for our Khmer lesson on Tuesday. Last week I asked our tutor if we could move onto the next lesson but she told us not until we'd past the first one - oh the pressure! We did ok though and have moved on although she did say we needed to be careful when we said "hot" as said wrongly could be a bad word. Of course we asked her what bad word but she just giggled and said it was to do with men but was too embarrassed to tell us. That would explain the reason the driver is always smiling and giggling when I talk to him. There's me thinking I've been saying "it's very hot" and instead I've been telling him he's got a very big . . . .