The Weddin’ – Pt.2
We meet bleary eyed at sunrise to board the convoy of rented minibuses that will ferry us through the bush to the wedding.
Anticipation is high, but first some of the worst roads in the world must be covered by our slightly tweaked bus driver.
The Kingdom ticks by one buffalo and rice paddy at a time. Everyone with a view out the front window is clenched, head to toe – sphincter to jaw, as tight as a bow-string, somehow warding off a trouble through their very tautness.
They say that drunks, the elderly, and newborn babies tend to survive wrecks more often than anyone else because they don’t have the wherewithal to tense up at the moment of impact.
Whether aware of this or not the other occupants of our bus have long since devolved into a state of drunken, senile toddlers in order to compensate, safe in their elasticity with a couple of warm beers.
We ride on. One flat tire, one wrong turn, one stop for an awkward pee under the lazy doe-eyes of a water-buffalo and we are here.
In this case ‘here’ is a very relative thing, and one with a little more gray area than I imagined possible.
We are indeed where we need to be, the distant wail of Khmer music confirms it, yet the one person with phone signal places us soundly across the border – inside Vietnam.
The area we have unknowingly entered into is called ‘Kampuchea Krom‘ by the locals, the ‘Cambodia Underfoot’.
Annexed into Vietnam minutes after the U.S. withdrawal, the original Khmer living in these areas either gave up their familial homesteads or were assimilated culturally, forced to renounce Cambodian language, customs, and religion – often on pain of death.
Many younger Khmer I have met came from, or had family in, these contested regions. The stories they tell are a stark reminder of how effectively a people can be imprisoned in their own land.
But this is a day of celebration, a day of love and hope for the future, and despite having wandered into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam it will held in fine Cambodian style, damn the consequences.
Being a foreigner in these situations is unique. It’s as close to celebrity as most of us will get. Kind of like being on the B-list – people will stop and stare but no one knows your name.
As with real celebrity it can be tricky as well. A trip to pee in the bushes will inevitably turn into a Pied Piper kind of situation with a group of kids clinging to you like sticky rice, but more often than not they will simply stare and giggle.
My go-to icebreaker is the High-Five. I know, I know, it’s the lowest form of communication amongst bro’s (Didn’t the Nazi’s invent it? The Sieg-heil-five.) but when breaking down cultural barriers with a group of kids nothing works better.
The family home is quite large for the area, a testament to the relative wealth of those Khmer tied to the tourist trade, but it is still traditionally built, with a mixture of thatch, wood, and corrugated iron sheeting.
The whole structure is raised on stilts, a simple protection against the monsoon, now simply a shaded sitting area for extended family, cooks, and washerwomen. Children hang from every perch, staring down in small giggling groups – fascinated no end by the strange bearded barang that have wandered into their home.
The rest of the area has been covered by a large tent and seemingly miles of colorful bunting. The wedding kit is cookie-cutter, with each varying little in decor.
The morning of the event a truck will arrive bearing equipment and 5-8 men swinging from hammocks in the back. Within an hour the tent will be raised, the tables laid out, and massive cauldrons of rice and curry will be lit afire.
The drinking happens hard and fast. The Khmer style of boozing is similar to many Asian countries in it’s intensity – small glasses, strong beer, and nothing is too insignificant to toast.
The beer is Klang, meaning simply ‘strong’ and costing only $7 a 24-pack it is served generously, usually with ice. After four years I’ve taken to drinking these watery lagers with ice naturally. With refrigeration spotty, it is simply best to do as the Romans do, sometimes with a lime, or lemon as they are confusingly called here.
The rum is Mangosteens, a rotgut French rum that looks far fancier than it tastes and is knocked back in tiny belts from the metal cap. The burn will sometimes be neutralized with a snack – in this case a fertilized duck egg complete with beak and feathers.
Topped with salt, local Kampot pepper, and chili, it is a mindfuck.
All things being equal to the omnivore – the taste of it is not that bad, like an egg drop soup with chicken bits, but the crunch of the beak and the texture of the embryonic feathers is far too much for the Western palette, and after my third one I politely decline.
This one goes to Dop-Muoi.
Buttered up with baby ducks and caps of rum we are beginning to tip headlong into full party mode. The wall of speakers, stacked like Tetris blocks in the heat of the day is now kicking up dust all around, blasting a cover of House of the Rising Sun by Cambodia’s Elvis – Sin Sisamuth.
But before the dancing and before the food (before too many caps of rum make it difficult) each guest will ascend a rickety set of stairs into the main sitting room of the great house for the donation to the bridal purse.
Entering in pairs, each guest is greeted by a contingent of monks and a wall of burning incense which stings the eyes, chokes the lungs, and makes the entire ceremony quite dizzying.
After being greeted, and incanted at, the band beings to play and Cassie and I are arranged opposite the bride and groom. They are expressionless, as is the custom, though the loud popping of my knees and pained smile gets a laugh out of Poul.
The donation envelope is produced and presented on a silver platter surrounded by arranged offerings of fruit and cigarettes. In his hands, Poul holds a short golden sword in a jeweled sheath.
Legend has it that a famous Knight in the King’s guard had promised to wed a princess when he returned from battle with the Thai. After three years she had given him up for dead and arranged to be married again. On the day of the wedding, the Knight returned. He drew his sword and slew the groom at the altar, marrying the princess then and there. This ceremonial sword symbolizes the protection of the engagement vows, and is to be carried until the wedding is complete.
The monks again begin their chanting as the bride and groom each take a long poppy flower, and, holding it by the stem, dip the flower into a silver cup of fragrant water. The pair then dab the holy water onto the envelope, blessing the transaction and snapping a mirthless photo to remember it all by. The money will be counted, tallied, and recorded in a large ledger by name – cheapskates noted and remembered.
Exiting the stuffy room the air is clean and sweet, with just the faintest hint of chili. Plates, bowls, burners, and chopsticks are being meticulously laid down at the long tables. It is time to pig out.
Cambodian food is rough.
I’ve traveled as far and wide as I can, as dick in the dirt as possible, and I’ve left nothing uneaten. From beehive with larvae to buffalo dong topped with ants, Cambodian cuisine is by far the least accessible I’ve known.
It takes far more than a few minutes on Yelp to secure a good meal. In my case it took quitting my job, moving to the other side of the world, and working side by side with these kind and welcoming people long enough that they invited me into their homes for days like this.
Weddings are the one day when a food-insecure people like the Khmer really splash out. Crab, beef, Coca-Cola, these things are beyond the day-to-day reach of most Cambodians making $5-$10 per diem, so when given cultural cause to eat and drink with wild abandon they take full advantage. Shamelessly we follow suit.
Wave after wave of colorful dishes, prepared camp-style only feet away, begin to rain down on us.
Fresh caught crab from the beach provinces of Kep fried up with Kampot pepper and sweet chili. Slow cooked pork in five-spice and mirin. Roasted duck with pineapple and soy glaze. Coconut curry so spicy it takes three Klangs to soothe the burn, but not enough to stop one going back for seconds. And rice. Always rice. Except this rice is from the very field we are eating it in – some Vegan farm-to-table wetdream straight out of Portlandia.
Each dish is piled high onto the plate by grandmotherly old ladies smiling gap-toothed smiles, seemingly tickled that their food is being appreciated by these assembled weirdos.
Fried Piranha?
Every minute is punctuated with a loud yell of Chol-Moi (Drink one!). Plates and bowls hit the table with a clatter and every able-bodied arm is raised. This alternating between rice-bowl and beer-can continues for what feels like hours. Dish after dish, the empty cans begin to cover the floor until a wave of scavenging children scurry through underfoot to collect the bounty.
When there are no more bones to pick over, belts will be loosened and cheap, Chinese cigarettes will be lit on both sides. Then, as if on cue, the music picks back up, rising to a deafening pitch meant to explode the part of your brain that differentiates between good and bad sounds.
Khmer music is about as rough as the food, and it’s shrill use of the Tro, a 3-stringed fiddle, means that every song has a distinctive high-pitched whine to it. It is ancient and mysterious at first, heard from a distance across a paddy field, but to be pressed right up against the speaker wall for any length of time is a test of cultural patience.
Nevertheless, with enough beer and snake-whiskey anything can be made bearable and soon the dancing has begun in earnest.
Apsara, the traditional Cambodian dancing style is similar in some ways to southern line-dancing. There is an orderly procession, in this case around the cake, two steps forward, one step back, shake it like a Polaroid picture, and you’re done. Simple.
No, in reality Apsara dancing is a stunning display of movement and grace. What we pull off is something closer to a honkey-tonk, but we get some laughs.
There is no grand ceremony to see as you would normally find. I was witness to no vows or rings, simply a joining of hands and a solo dance around the table. I’m told that other rituals and rites have been performed in the cramped upper room, but that in the eyes of the Buddha they are already married.
Poul’s massively over-sized rented jacket billows around his small frame as he cuts the cake. Smashing a slice into Neang’s made-up face, the cutesy messy photos could be of any young couple in love anywhere, but the green, coconut flavored fruit cake is decidedly Khmer.
Exhausted, the newlyweds give it a time or two more around the table then retire. The rest of the crowd is holding strong, however, full of food and propped up by the local Red Bull – Carabao (Water Buffalo) they soldier on.
Not being a dancer of any sort I entertain myself by simply wandering the grounds, meeting people, and having stilted conversations in broken sentences.
Most say nothing but ‘Chol-Moi’, others whisper their life story into my ear but I am regrettably deaf to much it.
As the night turns to morning the crowd begins to thin. The dust kicked up by hundreds of dancing feet has coated everything that was once wedding-white, and most partiers are muddied up to the knee from trips to the fields.
Yet the go-hards continue to dance like the sun will not rise on another day. For many this will be the party of the year, their chance to wear their nice shirt, speak to pretty girls, and drink without judgement from their elders. Tomorrow may be one of toil and difficulty, making the most of what they can from this rough country, but as long as the music plays it is still a celebration of the moment.
The patriarch of the family, Mr.Deng, himself a practicing polygamist, watches the proceedings with his usual thousand-yard stare. It would seem he had invested much of his efforts over the last decade to get to this point.
Financially sound and diversified, he had overseen the building of nearly all the wood and thatch businesses along the now booming coastal village of O’tres, the rest of the family now operate them.
It is through his work that most people I know have a home and a livelihood, and through his protection we are not harmed or harassed while guests here. In a society that still relies on internal governance he is the Chief, il Padrino – the Don.
The DJ calls last call and all those with a beating pulse return to the dance-floor for one final dust-up.
The massive wall of speakers, dozens of tables, hundreds of chairs, and circus tent will be gone in an hour. Carted away like ants moving a cookie it will fall to crumbs with one pull of a pin, bunting and all.
There will inevitably be another wedding today, maybe near, maybe not, so the workmen wait patiently on the sidelines, ready to spring into action the moment the fun is over.
The plug is finally pulled and the distortion left to whine for a full minute before powering down. In it’s absence, the ribbit of frogs and the chirp of a million cicadas fills the void.
Those still trampling the dance-floor are left looking stunned, like they have just been woken from a trance, but after a moment the crowd has filtered off in search of someplace soft to lie down.
No one wants the party to end, but with beer running low, and no music with which to honk nor tonk, the reality is stark – it’s over.
Drunk, sweaty, and covered in dirt we are quite a sight when the lights finally come up. But with no running water with which to wash everyone is at least equal in their foulness.
For those left standing there is nothing left to do except excavate a pair of shoes from the pile, hit the outhouse, and flag down the last ride home.
Chol Moi!
– Nick
Well..now that is quite the wedding! It definitely appears a great time had by all!