Province Party
On the night of the 6th I received a call from Meggy seeing if I wanted to join her to a Khmer party out in the countryside the next day. It turned out that January the 7th is Victory From Genocide Day and almost all of Cambodia is off except for CSC. It celebrates liberation from the Pol Pot regime. Needless to say, I texted Samath saying I wasn’t coming in to work and that he shouldn’t either.
At 7am on the 7th I met Meggy outside of her apartment as we were supposed to be picked up there by some of the people going to the party. By 7:20 no one had yet arrived, so we decided to go buy some helmets for the ride. The selection was rather poor, but I purchased a Zeus full face helmet that fit the best and seemed to be significantly better manufactured than the Lucky, Index, or Space Crown brands available.
This turned out to be a good decision as we finally meet up with the rest of the partygoers near a local university. There were about thirty of them, all fourth year English Literature students attending this university. I was assigned to a guy on a 70cc Honda who had entirely too much testosterone. He consistently zoomed ahead of everyone and one of the others finally asked him if he knew where the party house was. He said no. The other fellow then asked him why the hell he was going so fast ahead of everyone if he didn’t know where the place was.
About fifty kilometers away and well ahead of everyone we stop and wait. After awhile my driver calls in and finds out we’ve passed the place. Backtracking a few kilometers we come to the house, the last people in the convoy to arrive. He later asked for my phone number to which I declined. Meggy on the other hand arrived safely without incident even though her friend and driver, Mony, has only one arm. We had joked about who would get to ride with him earlier, but he was quite proficient even with two adult passengers as it turned out later in the day.
The place was on a major and paved two lane road and consisted of a few wooden houses, a small storefront, a pig pen, and a covered and elevated sitting area next to the creek. Our first event was to go fishing on the river. I bet that there would be zero fish over three inches, Meggy voted for eight, and another fellow named Laady voted for over ten.
The fishing consisted of five or six guys dragging a long net into the muddy, chest deep creek. Then the ends of the net were pulled together and debris was tossed out. Then it was just a matter of slowly closing up the space in the middle and grabbing the fish. We ended up with a basketful of fish up to eight inches long, but no matter how small it was, none were thrown back. Though I lost the bet I was actually happy that there were actually fish around as I had imagined the areas to be completely depleted with the local attitude of keeping even the smallest of fish.
Next up were some singing and little games of which I wasn’t all that excited about. Meggy and I then decided to go see how many fish were actually caught and wandered into the outside cooking area. Here we witnessed blood soup being made of which I warned Meggy about. She promised verbally to herself to not eat any, but rather to eat just enough to be polite. We also saw chicken being baked in a tin with rice plants being piled over it and burned. I’m told this only takes about fifteen minutes to cook, solving the mystery of the consistently tough chicken I’ve encountered. And our fish of course, was deep fried.
We then gathered onto the sitting hut, divided by sex in two ellipses. So Meggy was on her own behind me. I ate my little bowl of rice, a piece of chicken, and two fried fish. It wasn’t bad, but the lack of proper utensils and that guy in front of me who kept picking up and then rejecting different pieces of food kept me from eating much. I wanted badly to turn around and see how Meggy was handling things, but refrained.
After it was all over with Meggy tells me her tale of being forced to eat all sorts of things, including the blood soup which turned out to have fried ants in it also. Every time she tried to tell them she didn’t want any more they would ask if she didn’t like Khmer food. I had to laugh on the inside as this is what I have to go through every time I’m eating with local family. But I never would have eaten the blood soup no matter.
We then go to Tonle Bati, a popular lakeside “resort” several kilometers away. I got in for free of course and Meggy paid $3 for the pleasure. It was blazingly hot and humid as it was around 3pm by this time and Meggy and I make plans on ditching everyone and getting back to Phnom Penh. The problem being that we were fifty odd kilometers out with no transport of our own. We make an excuse of me having to go eat with my relatives, though I say nothing about it as I don’t like to lie. But I do tell them that they said we would be back by 3pm and yet here we are.
So after about an hour there everyone packs up to leave even though Meggy and I insist that they stay and then go to the zoo as planned. But they all refuse and we go home which was just as well as it was getting late. Of course we had to stop and walk around the ancient, crumbling ruins of temple on the way out. We didn’t get back to Phnom Penh until almost 6pm.
The moral of the story is to go on your own moto, eat a good breakfast beforehand, and never trust a native Khmer with time lines. Meggy swore to never eat Khmer food again.
January 16th, 2008 at 1:35 am
I must be too Americanize b/c I don’t think I can do blood soup w/ fried ants and fried crickets.
January 17th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
the celebration of liberation was at someone’s house eating blood and ants? how come no street parades and fireworks?
January 17th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
As noted in my previous post, the current government is guilty of many of those crimes.