Home life - Cambodia style

After my first full day in Cambodia, two VSO volunteers not based in Phnom Penh told me that I was doing VSO-light.

Phnom Penh is a city like most in the developed world – restaurants, shops, cars, electricity, modern housing and sanitation etc. But outside of Phnom Penh, life is a bit different and 80% of Cambodians live rurally.

Houses are traditional wooden houses on stilts, underneath which and around, any cow(s), pig(s) and chickens are kept for subsistence. Electricity is uncommon; squat French style toilets are a step up from the forest; and showers are taken using a bucket.

The life Claire and I will witness in Phnom Penh is not life for most Cambodians. So to introduce us to this life, VSO arranged for us to stay with a family in a village for a day and night. 

We ended up staying with the chief of the village so their house was rather nicer, larger and more modern than others in the village. The big challenge was that they spoke no English.

Our home for a day and night

On arrival, I was kept upstairs for serious talk with the man of the house, whilst Claire was taken away to meet his wife and various kids. The game for Claire was to work out what relation all the kids were to the adults and each other.

Sherlock Wilcock discovered that one boy and girl were grandkids looked after by grandparents because their parents were working in Phnom Penh. The parents could not afford for their kids to be in Phnom Penh meaning the kids see them very rarely in the year. It seems that there were other similar situations like this in the village. 

Can you guess which one isn't from Cambodia?

The problem for us came when Grandpa started to ask about our wedding, including how much it cost. Saying we weren’t married wasn’t an option.

So I explained to him that 120 of you lot were there and were very expensive to feed - £50 p/p no less!  Claire’s dress was a whopping £1000 and actually looked quite like the dress the granddaughter was making for her 18^th birthday, which was actually really pretty. 

However, there were two saving graces to keep the conversation flowing. Firstly, I had taken balloons which seemed to go down a hit with the kids. This has been a hit with some of the kids of the staff at our hotel in Kompong Cham so I'm taking them with me wherever I go now.

Lots of debate about how to write our names - they usually think I'm saying Golden or Garden

The second saving grace was that the Gran, who was a school teacher, and granddaughter decided to teach Claire how to write Khmai. Somehow, I was spared this.

However, I was not spared the agony of eating whilst sitting on the floor cross-legged. It was the ultimate torture for me because I was literally torn between sitting there longer to eat more of the wonderful food (I had 12 fish in 24 hours) or saying I was full so that I could stand up. 

In the end I kept eating but couldn't get up until Claire was up and the family were out of sight allowing me to struggle up like a bow-legged 90-year-old needing both hips replaced. Agony. Plus, Gran wouldn't allow either of us to uncross our legs while eating - despite her sitting with only one leg crossed. It was like a test of our willpower to survive in Cambodia (melodramatic?). 

Princess Claire in her mosquito net. We slept upstairs on the wooden floor.

At night we spend a bit of time watching kickboxing with Grandpa. The Khmai guy got beaten by the Thai guy in quite an explosive 5 rounder. I kept on wanting the guy to do 'The Crane' but evidently that's a different martial art...

Then it was up early, 6am, a bucket shower to wash away the cobwebs (or scorpions which we awoke next to outside our net), and a massive breakfast. As well as the fish there was rice, a kind of tamarind sauce and egg and pork mixed up which was also put into a packed lunch for us to take away together with five mangoes and some lamot fruit from their garden (see Claire's post about fruit, aka golden kiwi). Obviously a different breakfast to your average cereal but I guess encountering "strange" things was the point - I would love to read their blog about us!

Strangely yours

Gordon