I arrived by bus from Vietnam, checked into my hotel, and headed to my usual watering hole, Metro. The first time I went there, well over a year ago, I was walking along the riverfront on a typically scorching Cambodian afternoon. Most of the riverfront restaurants are open to the street and thus not air conditioned. I just wanted a place to cool off.
The food is a little pricey by Cambodian standards but excellent. They make a great mojito, my summer cocktail of choice. A few men work there but most of the staff is young, friendly Khmer girls. A lot of tourists go there, of course, but it's also the place where young Cambodians with money to spend go. I go there just about every night I'm in Phnom Penh. They always make me feel welcome.
I knew the place was going to be closed the next day for a Khmer New Year party. The restaurant is owned by an American ex-pat named Paul. His staff absolutely loves him. He pays them well by local standards and treats them incredibly well by any standards.
I've become friends with Raksmey, the manager there. She asked me what I was doing the next day. I told her I was planning to look for an apartment and asked her if she knew of anyone with a place to rent. She said she didn't know of anyone renting an apartment but she did ask me if I wanted to go to the party.
Hmm. Tough choice.
I thought that the restaurant would be closed and the party would be there but, as I said, Paul treats his staff well. The party actually turned out to be an entire day of activities. We met at the restaurant in the morning and walked down to the river. We hopped on a boat where I was promptly offered a beer. 8:30 a.m. is a little too early even for me, so I opted for a Coke.
I had been on one of these boats on my first visit to Phnom Penh. I had taken a sunset cruise, just puttering around the river for two hours, drinking beer with another tourist I had been hanging out with that day. On the other side of the Mekong is a small village of fishermen. Next to the cluster of shacks and houseboats are two mansions.
We wondered who lived there. Now I know! We didn't go to this house. We went to the one next to it, the one I don't have a picture of from the boat. It's actually set further back so you can't see it all that well from the river. Paul rented the house for the day from a doctor friend of his. Dude, this place is schweet....
This is the view looking from the river towards the house.
This is the view in the other direction.
This is the inside.
After lugging all of the gear from the boat from the river to the house the party began. It turns out a Khmer New Year party looks a whole lot like an American summer cookout. Here is Paul overseeing the grill.
The adorable girl in the foreground is my friend Raksmey.
The girl sitting in the white tank top is her sister Aka. The guy next to her is Ponlok, and sitting in back in the blue shirt is So Kim. It's kinda hard to tell because she is sticking her tongue out at me, but So Kim is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen with my own two eyes.Back home I rarely spent time with people I work with because all they ever wanted to do is bitch about work. It didn't matter where I worked, it was always the same. I would try to steer the conversation to movies or the Orioles or anything else but conversation inevitably kept getting sucked back into the black hole of how much everyone hated their jobs and/or boss.
I was struck, then, by how much everyone at the party was enjoying themselves. There was no talk of work but there was a lot of laughing. What is wrong with these people... Bear in mind that a Cambodian work schedule is different than in America. People here work 10 to 12 hours per day and get two or three days off per month. You would think they would get sick of each other, that the last thing they'd want to do on a holiday is hang out with their co-workers. Not so.
It also bears mentioning that even at the good jobs people here make as much in a month as Americans make in a day. I have a friend who works in Sihanoukville. She moved there from Koh Kong, on the Thai border, where she worked at a posh resort for a few years. She speaks English as well as anyone I've met in Cambodia.
She took a job working at a small hotel in Sihanoukville. She works 10 hours per day. She gets three days off per month. She's a pretty young girl, with years of hotel experience and excellent English, working almost every day, and she makes 80 dollars a month. And this is a good job! I'll make more than that in a day as a teacher here.
Back to the party.
I am proud to say I felt a little out of place. Raksmey told me everyone was allowed to bring a guest. As most of the staff are young women, I had a terrible premonition that I would spend the day hanging out with a bunch of sleazy old sexpats. I was shocked to discover I was the only foreigner there!
The guys who carried the gear up from the boat jumped into the pool immediately but it took a while for the girls to get bold enough to get in. Women throughout Asia value light-colored skin. It's a cultural belief that goes back literally thousands of years: People with dark skin work in the sun, and thus are poor. Khmer people have generally darker skin than most Asians. Women here are obsessed with light skin. Because of that, combined with a general cultural modesty, women swim fully clothed.
In the rear you can see Raksmey sitting on the edge of the pool. She was going to wear her bikini but her co-workers told her they didn't think she should. If she were in a pool with mostly foreigners it would have been okay but since she was in a pool with mostly Cambodians it would have been in poor taste. So she wore a tshirt over top.
In the foreground is a girl in a sun hat, a men's long-sleeved shirt and black leggings. It's So Kim. Just my luck: I spend the day in the pool with the most beautiful girl in the world and she's covered up like a mummy...
A few bottles of wine loosened up the crowd. Aside from Paul I was the only foreigner there so I was a bit hesitant to join in the mix. Soon, though, I had everyone playing chicken, where the girls sit on the guys' shoulders and try to wrestle each other into the water. I hadn't played the game in, oh, 20 years.
On the downside, it's a terrible activity for someone who has had two back surgeries. It's been a week since the party and I am still feeling creaky. On the upside, I was in a pool with beautiful Cambodian girls clamped on my shoulders. No pain, no gain.
When I go to the beach I always sit under an umbrella. I didn't realize how much the sun was wearing me out. We took the boat back to the city. But the party wasn't over. There was still dinner and karaoke! We met back at the restaurant a few hours later. I was completely wiped out. I even thought about calling Raksmey and bailing out. I decided it would be rude.
We all hopped on a bus and went to a buffet restaurant. There were more people this time, but there was only one other foreigner, an Australian who sat next to me at dinner and spent half his time playing with his Blackberry. He spent the other half, in typical ex-pat fashion, impressing me with how long he's been in Southeast Asia and how much he knows about the region. I began wishing one of us would have a heart attack.
The conversation at my end of the table wasn't very lively. Normally I would have done what I could to stir the pot but I was just too tired. Plus, I was sitting opposite a television with running updates on the earthquake in China and the volcano in Iceland. It was easy to get distracted.
We took the bus to a big karaoke place in the center of town. I decided to pass on karaoke. I thought it would be bad for me to go and be a wet blanket. I might not get invited out again! Paul, the owner, bailed too, so I didn't feel too bad.
It was quite an auspicious beginning to my life as an expat in Cambodia.
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