No dressing up, no sitting on the floor, no loud music but one thing I still had to do was eat - and lots of it.
I was invited to go across the road to join Vuth and his family for the new year lunch. The table was set with a variety of dishes; I noticed that many of them involved different kinds of mushrooms which pleased me as I can live on mushrooms of all kinds. There was a chicken, rice, various soups and dried fish. The living room floor had been turned into an altar with offerings of food to the house spirits, gods, ancestors etc. Poor granny looked exhausted and it's no wonder when I heard that she'd cooked twelve chickens. A lot of the meat would be divided up and given to the staff to take home at the end of their working day. I was tucking into the food and enjoying myself but then I was told I'd be out again in the evening so I decided to restrain myself.
I had an interest chat with the grandfather who speaks good English and also French - so far I've never had to practice my French for which grandfather would definitely be eternally grateful. I found out they will have been married 41 years this coming September. That meant they were married during the Pol Pot regime, which always means I can ask more questions. He and the lady he eventually married were near the Vietnam border, escaping from the Khmer Rouge. A soldier said that around 12 couples would get married. Neither of them knew each other but they couldn't refuse. I didn't fully understand what happened but it turned out that only he and his partner were married as the rest of the group, chosen to be married, were all killed. Granny sat with her head down the entire time he was telling the story, and didn't join in - maybe it is still painful for her.
In the evening I went with Vuth and Cina to meet a friend of their's whom I'd never met before. James is an Australian but seems to be one of those people who is happy wherever he is. He's been here for seven years and is fluent in the language. Whenever I'm told this, I get teased by Khmer friends for not learning the language. James came to my rescue and said he's been here seven years and hasn't gone out of the country, which is what I've done - he said it's so easy to forget a language if you do have breaks in the learning process. He's also got the advantage of always working with local people so he has had to learn to speak to them in Khmer. I always forget to mention that he came here in his early 30s while I was 65. He said he came from a very small family and his general idea is to get as far away as possible from his parents. I got the feeling he thought the world of them but they seem to be great travellers and they are constantly following him and staying for months. They've just left Cambodia after being here a couple of months. I said, "I bet you didn't have to cook any meals," and I was right. When he was in Afghanistan they even wanted to go there to visit him but he put a dampener on that idea. Last year he travelled the length of the Americas and bumped into a lady in Mexico who comes from Bolivia. She's now with him here, and trying to get her Spanish tongue around the strange Khmer sounds. We had a lot to talk about so we didn't really mind the slow service which is all due to the fact that at least half the staff had gone home for the new year. He even told us about an Iraqi restaurant he visits which is just two minutes from my place. I pass it every day and I've noticed it's a "Halal" restaurant but I just thought it was another Indian/Pakistani type place. James knows the family well; they came here when the war was on in Iraq but some of their family have returned home. So that's another restaurant on my list. He said their bread and humus is to die for.
We talked a lot about the Chinese presence in this part of the world. Their government has been given a concession to develop 20 percent of Cambodia's coastline so it'll be made into ports and economic zones - this means losing holiday beaches. James said that in the main seaside town, if you wanted to sell your home, you had to put up signs in Chinese because they are the main buyers. There are casinos there and he read of a wealthy Chinese man arriving in his private jet to gamble. An hour later he emerged having lost $50,000. He got on his plane and went back home. It's turning into a very different place and most of us don't like what's happening.
Chinese New year takes place in many countries in this part of the world. It's not a good time to visit as most of the shops and offices are closed and the prices to travel increase. One good thing is that the streets are fairly empty of traffic so it's easier to get around. We had to wait for a while for our rickshaw to arrive. We requested one, using an app on our mobile phone but, when it arrived someone else jumped into it and so we had to call for another one.
