A Cambodian Wedding

04/11/08

If there is one thing I have learned in Cambodia it is that time has a different meaning to them. When I arranged to get the bus from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville the ticket said that I must be at the travel agents at 12.20pm sharp so that the pickup can take me to the bus station in time for the bus departure of 12.45pm. I was there at 12.10pm; the pickup arrived at 12.50pm and I still wasn’t late for the bus departure. When Chaan Sras and I got a taxi from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh I insisted that the taxi picked us up at noon. The taxi arrived at 7.00am and I had to haul my sorry ass out of bed and climb into the taxi and try to sleep there.

Cambodians are generally early risers and most of them get up at dawn. When Chaan Sras invited me to her sister’s wedding I said I would meet her at noon at the bus station the next day. She said she would like to leave from the bus station at 8.00am. I said that was fine; I would see her when she got back from the wedding. We eventually agreed that noon was the civilised and healthy option. The next morning my phone rang at 7.00am, I turned it to silent mode. Eventually, at 10.00am, I relented and rang her back. By 11.00am myself, Chaan Sras and three of her girlfriends were on a mini coach to the wedding.

The wedding was held at her parent’s house, somewhere half way between S’ville and Phnom Penh. The mini coach left us at the side of the main road and some guys, (brothers, cousins, wedding guests, I don’t know) on motos were waiting to take us on the final leg of the journey. We drove about 2 kms down a red clay dirt track beside a large lake. I expected to see some American choppers flying over the paddy fields close by as we arrived at her parent’s house.
The house is basically a very large shed with two rooms in it. One I think is a bedroom and the other is just a large room. This is where the ceremony was held and where we all slept that night. Outside to the left there is a large open plan area with palettes raised from the ground and a thatch roof overhead. This is where they eat and socialise, there are also two or three hammocks there for sleeping in during the hot midday sun. In front of the house a large marquee had been erected for the day and I helped to set out the tables and chairs.

There were about 100 guests, all Cambodian; I was the only barang present. Small children approached me with gifts of freshly picked flowers and laughed as they made faces and I mimicked them. Just like in Siem Reap they were fascinated with my hairy arms. Even two of the adult Cambodians tugged at my hirsute forearms and smiled warmly at me. At one stage a small girl sat beside me and lay into me, her head on my shoulder. I noticed she was carrying a small bottle of water. Looking closer at the bottle I realised it didn’t contain water but in fact was half full of huge black beetles. They obviously collect them the way we used to collect bumble bees in an empty jam jar. The captive beetles clamoured over each other frantically trying to reach the mouth of the open bottle. My blood turned cold but I kept a level head. I knew then that if I screamed like a little girl I would be plagued by kids bringing me all the creepy crawlies they could find.

Ducks and ducklings waddled about the place looking for scraps on the ground. At one stage I looked down at my feet to see a mangy scruffy looking dog lying on the ground. Three small puppies were suckling while at the same time trying their best not to be trodden upon. After I helped to set up the tables Chaan Sras called me to the main room to see the ceremony take place. The bride and groom sat before many candles and other Buddhist paraphernalia as some man recited the ceremony into a microphone which could be heard a mile away through the speakers set up outside in the marquee. People approached the couple in pairs, one on each side, and tied a piece of red string around the newly weds’ wrists and placed some money before them. Chaan Sras and I had a go too. Of course I fumbled and it took me a while to get the knot right on the string.

It was only after the ceremony and before the meal began that some of the guests started to wash and get changed into fancier clothes. Chaan Sras asked me if I would like to wash before changing clothes, I indicated that I did. She brought me around to the back of the house to a large container filled with water with a plastic pot floating on top of the water. She handed me my fresh clothes, a towel, a bucket and one of those Khmer scarves to protect my modesty. The idea was that I would fill the bucket with water, choose a place to stand in the back garden, take off all my clothes, wrap the scarf around my midriff and wash myself. That is her parents’ bathroom; the great outdoors. After several minutes of feeling uncomfortable and wondering what to do I decided that ‘when in Rome’. I stripped off at the back of the house and had a wash. Two of the flower bearing little girls kept popping their heads around the corner to sneak a peek. They laughed as I threw water at them in a vain attempt to get rid of them. Dotted elsewhere around the garden, men and women performed the same washing actions as me.
Afterwards, fresh clothes, newly scrubbed, I was sweating profusely again. Time for the meal to start. More guests arrived as the food was being served. Cans of beer were left on each table along with a bottle of Fanta or Sprite. I drank warm beer all evening because I couldn’t trust the ice that was being served to each table. As usual, I found the food inedible and supped on my luke-warm lager. A large fish was placed on the table, still with head and tail intact. That fish didn’t last long I can tell you, even the tail was eaten. The head was ripped apart and shared between two of Chaan Sras’ friends, including the eyes.

After the meal the tables were cleared away and it was time for dancing. One round table had been left on the dance floor and everyone danced Apsara style around it. I was coerced into getting up too and waving my hands about with the rest of them. Eventually the lager ran out and some of the guests departed. The music kept playing and a lot of people kept dancing. The rest of us moved back into the shed. I sat in the corner with Chaan Sras, her baby and her friends. One of the men called me over to drink with them. I sat down with about eight of the men and was handed a can of warm Black Panther stout, a really horrible imitation of Guinness. We sat, talked and joked (all in Khmer). Twice I was asked by some of the men to come outside and dance with them. So out we would go and after a few laps of the table I would say I was hot and retire to the shed for more warm stout.

Everywhere I looked there was rubbish on the ground. I have noticed this all around Cambodia. Whenever anyone removes something from its packaging they just throw the paper or wrapping on the ground, no matter where they are. I have seen Chaan Sras while waiting on a bus pour milk from a carton into the baby’s bottle and then simply throw the empty carton on the ground. Nobody bats an eyelid to this littering.

About 1.00am the stout ran out. This wouldn’t happen in Ireland. I realised that the people outside dancing had been doing so for about three hours without the aid of alcohol. This wouldn’t happen in Ireland. People started to lie down on the floor and drop off to sleep. A few mattresses were hauled out but the majority of people lay on the floor without a mattress or even a pillow and travelled to the land of Nod. The music continued to pump out of the speakers outside until 4.00am. I managed to drop off asleep then.

I awoke at 6.30am to find most of the shed had been vacated. People sat outside smoking cigarettes, feeding babies, washing dishes or taking down the marquee. About 8.00am we had gathered all our things together. I thanked and said goodbye to Chaan Sras’ parents and we set off back up to the main road to Sihanoukville. We waited at the main road for an hour and a half hoping an empty mini coach would come by. Eventually a moto driver rang a friend of his and he agreed to drive us back to S’ville. I sat up front with the driver while the four girls and the baby all slept in the back.

Later, Chaan Sras told me that one of the women at the wedding approached Chaan Sras’ mother and asked if I was available. She has a twenty year old daughter that she would like to marry off to a barang. Would I be interested in meeting her? The message was passed back to Chaan Sras and she replied on my behalf that I wouldn’t be interested. I remarked that the bride didn’t look too happy during the evening. Chaan Sras said that was because the wedding cost 2000 dollars and they only made 500 dollars back from the money received from guests.
It was good to see a real aspect of Cambodia rather than just the usual tourist places and bars. These people are living in abject poverty and I was welcomed warmly and made to feel at home even though I was intruding on a special family occasion.

My days at the moment are spent reading and trying to write. You will remember the Irish crowd over to pick up their father’s ashes? Well on the night before they left I bought the guitar from them for 20 dollars. I strum on it every now and again in my room. I am not worried about disturbing the neighbours. The guy next door to me is German; he is in his late sixties or early seventies. His hearing must be going because sometimes his TV is really very loud and I can hear every word being spoken. We had a brief chat the other day on the balcony. He spends every day walking around his room and the balcony in his y-fronts. He was stretched out in a hammock when I spoke to him. He is German as previously stated. He has very little English because he attended school during the time of Hitler but is fluent in French, Spanish and Portuguese. He lived in Brazil for eight years but is now in Cambodia for the past eight months. He describes Sihanoukville as his idea of heaven. Well I don’t know that I would call it heaven but I have certainly enjoyed myself here so far. When my month in this guesthouse has finished I will move on somewhere else, maybe back up north and have a look around there.