Chum Ben - Souls Day - Day 1

---

So, early on Sunday morning, or at least early after my standards (remember it was a Sunday, and I had holiday), about 8am, I get a call from Damay, asking me to come to meet her for breakfast straight away and then try to leave to Kampong Cham earlier. Well, being to tired and confused to come up with any reasonable excuse for why it was too early I ran around like a lost cow to try and pack and figure out where the hell her guesthouse was. But, all went well. Found it, and after several cigarettes and espressos started to function.

Then it was off to find a minibus, and that was an adventure in itself. The trick here is that you have a minibus, which has 12 seats. Then you decide where you want that minibus to go. Then you wait until the minibus is full. And trust me, that does not mean 11 passengers and a driver. That means about-ish 20-25 passengers and a driver. Thus, the exact time a bus leaves is never really set. But, we got on the road after just having waited for 1 hour, which is not too bad. And after a rather sweaty and cramped trip (where Damay and me entertained ourselves with talking rather dirty about boys and girls and what boys and girls sometimes do - safe in the knowledge that the rest of the bus had no idea what we were talking about (don’t worry, we coded the worst and most recognizable words), we arrived at her house at about 1:30pm. Not too bad of a trip.

Her mum had of course prepared lunch for us, so after a very pleasurable shower, lunch was served, and of course the entire house hold was so impressed that I could eat all the Khmer food. Which didn’t really make sense, seeing that it was rice, fried pork, and some minced pork fried with some sauce and beans - not weird at all?

Then it was naptime, which was rather short. Nap here is more like the three minutes type of kind than the half an hour type of kind.

After my three minutes nap, we borrowed Damay aunt’s motorbike and went for a drive. It was so beautiful. Normally Kampong Cham is very dry, or so I was told. But lucky me, only lush green rice field after rice field and a palm tree or eighty. It was so beautiful. I really missed my camera, but seeing that it got stolen it isn’t much I can do about that.

A bit later we met up with Damay’s friend and then went for BBQ. It was really nice. The deal is that you get a grill on your table (which of course doubles as seating area as well), you get raw marinated beef, and lots of vegetables and sauces. And then it is up to you to grill your own beef. After about two enormous plates of beef and seven or so beers between us, it all added up to about US$7. Not too bad.

At that time Damay’s parents had called her several times for her and me to come back home. Apparently there were to be a party at the local Pagoda, and we were to go. So, home we went, and after freshing up went over to the Pagoda. A Pagoda is a temple, so it was a bit odd for me that they made a party there, but just to make things clear, no alcohol were served on the premises (although that didn’t stop several of the younger men to have consumed plenty before showing up). A traditional party like this basically includes a big tree in the middle which everyone are dancing around. Mostly there will be traditional Khmer dances, but every now or again something a bit more funky will appear on the music front which allows the Khmer youth to show off how very badly dancers they are (and this is not to be nasty, they really are).

Of course me being the only foreigner there, I attracted a lot of attention. At one point when Damay was showing me how to do a Khmer dance, everyone left the dance floor, and the entire village gathered around us to have a look at the foreigner dancing Khmer dances. A bit akward, but hey, I guess they have something to talk about for weeks now… Then, at 11pm, the batteries shut down, and Damay’s family decided it was time to go home - which suited me fine, as I was so tired I was dangerously close to falling over. Of course, at home Damay and I had to eat again (they fed me like a pig - I thought they were supposed to have less food at the country side, not more), and then it was off to bed. Really good day, and I slept like a baby on a mat on the floor with a mosquito net hanging over me and Damay.

---