Drunk Guy in the Village

On Sunday my friends and I went to my home again, but this time there were only four of us. I bought two roast chickens from Lucky Market, one for us and one for my family. One chicken looked like enough for me and my four friends but in the end it wasn't. And my friends shared some money to buy some beer to have with the chicken.

At about three o'clock we got ready to have a football competition with other friends from my village. There was a big crowd gathered at the football field in the middle of the village; almost the whole village was there. But there was one guy there who was drunk. He is a new guy who just moved into the village, and he started a fight with one motorbike driver. Everyone tried to stop him from fighting but he wanted to fight with everybody. He was throwing the glass and the bottle at the motorbikes going past and hitting anyone who tried to stop him.

One of the village men was a police officer, but even though he had a gun this drunk guy tried to hit him in the face. Then the policeman called his friend and four more policemen came and told the guy to stop, but for almost half an hour nobody could stop this guy from hitting everyone. He even hit the headman of the village. So the headman was very angry and told the police to arrest the guy and take him to the district, but everyone someone tried to come near him he would hit them. Finally after half an hour his mother came. She was crying and said "Stop hitting my son!" She told her son "to cool down" Then she put her arms around him just to protect her son and he laid down on the ground and let the police arrest him. He looked very pitiful. His mother was holding him very tight and crying, but no one will pity him. After all this we played our football game and my friends and I lost.

When my friends were talking afterward we said this guy was very lucky the police did not shoot him because they come with guns. But I think anyway the police were not allowed to do that, because this guy had no gun. And this guy's sister and aunt said almost 20 people were hitting this guy and he's not a robber or a thief, so the people should not do this and should just take him to the police. But I don't know how this guy can live in my village now.

10:59 AM ICT Permalink |

Football or Toes-ball?

On Sunday last week I went to my family home, which is close to Phnom Penh airport. I went with nine friends and we took five motorbikes. My friends and I went there at about 11:00 am; all of us wanted to go there just to get out of the polluted air in Phnom Penh and to have a small party. On the way to my home there are some places selling stuff like beer and food, but almost all of us have very little money so we didn’t have to buy much.

The food that we had was a duck, and little frogs, and some beer. My sister-in-law was the cook. She cooked the duck Char Kdaou, (Char Kdaou is spicy fried style with chili and herbs), and she cooked the frogs in oil deep-fried, which was good to have with beer.

We had a football competition with the friends in my village who live along the road. There is a very big field in the middle of the village so we played there. While I playing I kicked the ball very strong and the nail on my toe came off. It was really hurting and also there was a lot blood. But I bought a band-aid and put it on my toe and kept playing.

When I got back to Phnom Penh I took my shoe off and my foot hurt very badly. It looked very bad after I lost my toe nail, but now a new toe nail is starting to grow, and my foot is feeling a lot better.

10:13 AM ICT Permalink |

Guitar Friends

On Monday morning while I was sleeping, some of my friends came to my home to wake me up. They do this every morning and we go out to have coffee. But this time there were only two friends; Neo and Hor.

While the two of them playing with my computer they saw an old guitar in the room that I have had for long time. Neo asked me if I could play it, and I told him that I can’t. I used to practice playing it before, but I didn’t have much time and stopped. So now I can’t play. Neo and Hor asked me, “Would you like to learn to play it again with us?” I think that’s a good question for me because I would like to start to learn it again too. Their offer really made me happy because I used to think I wanted to learn how to play guitar well, but it doesn’t mean I want to become a professional player. I would just like to know how to play. So right now I do have a friend who has the same mind as me.

Neo told me that if we know how to play guitar it’s a good way to attract girls. And it’s really romantic if we go with the girls out to the countryside, or especially to the beach. And I think I agree with Neo too.

06:53 PM ICT Permalink |

Morning Coffee

Last month I bought a computer from my friend Riya. He works in a computer shop and his boss wanted to sell some computers very cheap, especially to him. But Riya didn't have enough money and he asked me to buy one. So I bought a very good very cheap computer and now I keep it beside my bed at home for playing games and videos and stuff.

Every morning now my friends come to my house and wake me up and play with my computer, and then we go to a coffee place on Monivong Boulevard close to Central Market. It also has some pretty Vietnamese girls. We go at 8 o’clock in the morning and we stay for around two or three hours, just talking and sitting and smoking. The Vietnamese coffee is very good so I don't mind having my friends wake me up early every morning.

One of my friends, Soony, is half-Vietnamese and he can speak Vietnamese very well. He's the one that can talk to the Vietnamese girls, so we always have him with us when we go to this coffee shop. This morning Soony talked to the girls like always and then he said to us, "One of these girls, her name is Yang, she says she loves Hua." Hua is half Chinese and he's very handsome. We usually don't believe Soony because he's always giving us the wrong translation. But Hua said, "I don't like the Vietnamese girls because they swear too much" He said Vietnamese girls always swear and also he cannot understand Vietnamese. We all think the same, so I told Hua not to love this girl.

But we still like to flirt with them. Hua he always smiles and says, "An teung am," which means "I love you" in Vietnamese. But when the girls say something to him he just turns away. He says he doesn't want to get a headache thinking about this Vietnamese language.

10:08 AM ICT Permalink |

Sina’s Life

Yesterday I went to the riverside and I hung around there for almost two hours. I was doing my job (as Motorbike Driver) but there weren’t so many customers there. It does seem quiet for a few days this week because of the rain.

But something that surprised me was I saw a friend of mine who I had not seen for almost three years. His name is Sina and he is an ex-newspaper-seller. This guy had grown up with me on the riverside. I heard that he had joined a gang and he used to have big fights with other gangs, and he hurt a guy in another gang very badly. The police arrested him and put him into the jail, but I didn’t know for how long.

While talking with him, I asked him, “Are you doing anything now?” He told me, “I am going to be a motorbike driver too, but my problem now is I don’t have a bike.” I know that he had many foreign friends that used to help him before, so I told him to ask them for help. But he said he could not do that now because he didn’t know where they are.

It seems very pitiful for him, but this is his fault because he was very carefree about himself before. I’ve never seen him try to do anything for his life so I think the only thing he can do now is take time and wait for his luck to change. I hope while this happens he’ll do something good like selling newspapers and try to study. And especially do something legal to make money.

I had been talking with him about a half hour and then his gang friend came. So I just left him because I think it’s not a good idea to hang around with those people.

02:12 PM ICT Permalink |

Pitiful Thief

Yesterday evening I was walking with my friend Riya near Sarawan Pagoda, trying to find somewhere to fix my motorbike because it had a flat tire. It was about 7 o’clock, and that’s a bit late to find a place. So we keep walking and we saw many people blocking the road near the pagoda. Some police were there and we could hear an ambulance coming. I asked one guy what had happened, and he told me, “A thief jumped off a roof opposite the pagoda because he had nowhere else to run.” The thief was on a motorbike with a friend and he grabbed a necklace off a woman who was riding on another motorbike, and then the thief fell off his motorbike.

Then the thief ran into a back street and up the stairs to the roof. The police shouted at him to take it easy and come down, but he didn’t. He tried to jump from that roof to another roof, but he fell three floors onto the road. Some people said that he fell head-first, and some said feet-first. But the people said he was still alive. I tried to see the thief but I couldn’t get through the crowd and the police wouldn’t allow us to get in.

When a thief grabs a lady’s necklace like that it can cut the lady’s neck and maybe even kill her if the necklace doesn’t break. Almost all the people there on the street, they really wanted to kill that thief but the police wouldn’t allow it. Some people said the police just wanted to keep the thief alive so they could get money from his family.

Riya and I left and kept on looking for a place to fix my motorbike. I don’t know what happened to that thief after the ambulance was gone.

10:32 AM ICT Permalink |

Phoning or Driving?

Last night I went to the Riverside again with two of my friends, Riya and Bros, just for talking and to sit around and get some cool air. At about 8 p.m. we were ready to go back home because that is a bit late, but suddenly when we were going to start our bikes we heard a very loud sound. We looked around and we saw a car smashed into another car. Then we ran very fast to see what happened. It was not only the three of us that would like to know, a lot of other people came to see it too.

At the place that the accident happened I saw a black Toyota Corolla crashed into the back of a Toyota Camry that had just stopped, and the Toyota Camry crashed another car that stopped next to it, but not so bad as the other two cars.

The driver of the black Toyota Corolla was a woman and she didn't try to escape. She wanted to take responsibility for everything, and she tried to explain to the owners of the other two cars. But I didn't hear what they were talking about because there were a lot of people in the crowd. Then one guy came out of that crowd and said, "She was talking on the phone while she was driving. It's really lucky that there weren’t any people there, because they could get killed very easy by this lady."

Anyway I think that it's really lucky for her too because she was okay after the big crash, and her face looked really pitiful and she seemed very sorry. And the car that this woman had was very nice and new. It's the kind of car in my dream that I like, so I really regretted it so much because that car was really damaged in the front part.

This weekend I have seen two accidents. They seemed to be very bad at first but it was really not. But now I feel scared about traffic in my country because those accidents were not the only two that I have seen.

06:47 PM ICT Permalink |

Riverside Accident

Last night at about half past seven I went to the riverside, like I do every day. But yesterday there were a lot of people, and almost everywhere people were stopping and looking, some on the sidewalk, some on the street and, especially in front of the Pon Pok restaurant.

I saw a girl who I knew, she is a flower seller around the riverside, and asked her, "What happened?" And she told me, "There was a car driving along and hit a bike but not too bad. But the bad thing was the car tried to escape and he drove very fast and made a couple of motorbikes in front of the restaurant crash and almost killed two people. Those two people were very lucky because they only got injured."

My friend Riya and I drove around and looked. I saw there were a few injured, but it was not at the same place. There were some cyclo drivers and motordops talking about the accident. One of them said, "I saw the driver in the car, he looked really young, about 15 or 16 years old. It's really dangerous for young teenagers like this to drive a car on the street." And one of them asked, "What kind of car was it?" (This is question I would like to ask too!) But these people didn't know what kind of car that boy drove. I think it could be hard for the motordops and cyclo drivers to know the model of that car because not one of them might never touch or see it, because the driver might be from a wealthy family and driving a very expensive car.

I think about myself that I was very lucky because I arrived late. If I'd been there at the same time as the accident happened I don't know what might have happened. I'm glad that this bad accident didn't kill even one person, so everyone there was very lucky. They might not think like me, though, because they were hurt.

01:24 PM ICT Permalink |

Jing’s Birthday

Yesterday afternoon I went to Takhmao which is about 5 kilometers outside Phnom Penh. I went with four friends to my friend Jing's birthday party.

We didn't know where her house is because we never went there before. So we rang her on the mobile to ask the way. She told us, "So, ok, turn right and then you will see a bridge," and we turned right and we saw the bridge, and she said, "Cross the bridge and turn right again and then go straight and on the left you'll see a corner and turn that corner and you will see me."

And so we crossed the bridge and turned right and turned left and we saw the corner but we didn't see Jing. So we phoned her again and she said, "Where did you turn?" And we told her we turned at Wat Projumpti and she said, "No you went the wrong way, it's not Wat Projumpti but another pagoda which is, um, I don't know, it's on the right, not on the left, and you'll see a road where you turn right, not left." By then it was already dark and we were scared to go back and we had already come a long way from the main road.

And so we told Jing to let us talk to her friend instead and we talked to her friend, and we finally found her big house. Jing is my friend Fu's ex-girlfriend. They broke up one year ago. The party was really big, and there were five or six tables. When we arrived everyone said hi, even some people that we don't know, and when Jing and Fu saw each other they were shy. Fu is my friend and Jing is my girlfriend's friend. Jing introduced us to her parents and her grandparents and her relatives, and we said “cheum riep sueh” with two hands together and Jing found us a place to sit.

First, we gave her the presents and Jing was very happy. And then some of Jing's friends came and sat with us and we got a big surprise because one of these guys was a good friend of ours that we play football with. His name is Vatana and he really likes joking, he's a very cheeky boy. With Vatana there were five of us, so we had a good table with lots of friends. We said Happy Birthday to Jing, and Jing said to us, "My party is not really happy," and I knew what she meant because she broke up with Fu, but she still misses Fu, and she hasn’t had a boyfriend for more than two months since then. And Fu never got a new girlfriend since Jing, though he's a really handsome guy.

After the meal Jing's parents brought out the birthday cake. The cake looked really nice and I asked where she got this cake. Her friend told me it came from the Cambodiana Hotel, so I think it was very expensive. It was chocolate and I ate all of what she gave me. And then my girlfriend gave me some of her cake too. I had just started to eat it when the party finished and everyone started to say goodbye. So I had to go with them. I still had my cake but I didn't get to eat it all.

05:43 PM ICT Permalink |

The Coining

Last Wednesday I felt terrible. I felt so dizzy and I had a high fever. I couldn't even sleep at night. So I went to my family’s home at Pochentong, out near Phnom Penh airport, about 12 km from Phnom Penh. I had to ask my father to look after me because I want someone to “coin” me.

My father went to buy the medicine. The medicine works faster when we use the coin as well. He told my little sister to do the coin. She knows how to do it although she's only fifteen. The coin can be a coin from any country, like Thai baht. Most of the coins we have at my home are Chinese coins, and we keep them just to do the coining. When I was a little kid my mother (she's in America now) used to give me a coining every time I was sick. When I was a kid I didn't like coining, even though I was so sick, because it hurts. But I always felt better after the coin and after sleeping.

This is how you do the coining: To do it you need to rub Tiger Balm on the skin first. You can use kerosene but Tiger Balm is better. Tiger Balm is hot and makes the red marks come off easier, and it stops the coin from hurting so much. Then you just get the coin and you scrape the coin on the skin. You don't have to scrape too hard, except if the person is very sick then you need to rub harder. Me, I don't cry when my sister does the coining on me, but my brother Sokhun, even though he's bigger than me, used to cry when he was coined as a kid. And even now he still cries. So Sokhun doesn't like to have the coining. I used to cry when my mother did it when I was a kid, but I don't cry when my sister does it now.

Anyway, the idea is to scrape the coin on the skin to make a red mark. I was dizzy and had a headache, so my sister rubbed the coin on my back and on my chest. If you have stomach ache, the coin is on the side, just above the hip-bone. If you have a cough, you get the coin on the throat, but not too hard, and for a sore neck, on the back of the neck, and so on, each one a different place.

After the coining I felt so relaxed and tired, and I slept for two hours. Then I woke up and had some food to eat, and watched TV for a while and went back to bed. Then when I got up the next morning I feel ok, not sick any more. This is my family's traditional Cambodian treatment for when we are sick.

06:39 PM ICT Permalink |

A Night at Orange Club

Two nights ago my friend Bros called me to go out with him because he just came back from a wedding with his sister. At first I thought I didn't want to go, but I decided to go because I didn't have anything to do. When I met him I saw another girl who was his sister's friend. Then we had four people. I didn't have money, and Bros didn't have money too, so his sister said she would pay for everyone. But we still didn't have much money so we didn't want to go to anywhere expensive.

First we went to the Spark disco and we saw too many cars parked out in the front. We still got in, but inside there is no place to sit or stand, even dance. So we left Spark and drove around thinking where to go. Bros's sister wanted to go to the U2 disco, but I thought U2 was too far away. And Bros's sister and her friend are very beautiful so I thought it might cause problems. So I just told her to go to Orange Club. It's cheaper and smaller, and not so far away. And she says: “Ooooo-Kaaaay.”

When we arrived we saw many cars and bikes, but they still have a couple of tables free, so we decided to party at Orange Club. Bros's sister asked me what I would like to drink. I just looked at Bros, and Bros looked at me, because both of us didn't have any money. And we just said, "Up to you!" But she said, "We don't know what you like!" So I ordered two cocktails, one each for me and Bros. The girls had Coca-Cola. The cocktails costs two dollars, and the Coke costs one dollar. We thought those cocktails might be enough to make us merry.

Then the girls wanted to dance. We said "Later," but they still wanted to dance, so the two girls just danced together while me and Bros watched. Bros told me this was the first time that he saw his sister dance. Then we go up and danced with them, but I couldn't dance a lot because I was tired, it was already twelve o'clock.

There was a group of boys looking at the girls, looking like they wanted to flirt with Bros's sister and her friend. They looked like they come from the countryside. They asked the two girls, "What is your phone number” and “Where do you come from?" While we were sitting I asked some questions to Bros's sister, like "Does she like this place?" And she said, "So-so. It's new, and I’ve never seen it before. It looks foreigner style." And she says that it's too bad it don't have a live band like at Spark or U2, which are the big clubs in Phnom Penh.

Then we finished the cocktails and she ordered us draft beer, and I danced with Bros and his sister and his sister's friend. The two girls were very good dancers, and everyone looked at us because we were two ugly guys dancing with two beautiful girls.

02:26 PM ICT Permalink |

Visit to the Waterfall

On the second day of Khmer New Year my friends and I (and my friends' friends) went to the waterfall called Jabok (though I'm not sure how to write the name in English). To get there you have to go the same way as Kirirom, on the road to Sihanoukville. But Jabok is about two kilometers further than Kirirom.

We took two cars, one small and one big, to Jabok. Then some of us walked and some hired bikes because the way to the waterfall is not good for cars. Sometimes even the bicycle cannot go because the stones in the path are too big. There is a very nice view at Jabok because they have a high waterfall, even though in this weather there's not much water, but it still looked good. We could not swim because there was not much water, but we went under the little waterfall. The water was very cold and we were very happy.

All of us got in the water and splashed and had fun. Then we rested for a while for lunch. And the lunch was very good because we were very tired. There was some fish, some chicken, and my friend's niece brought some prohok. She's the same age like me, but I don't know her name and I didn't ask. In Cambodia if a boy asks for a girl's name it might mean he loves her, and I didn’t want anyone to think I loved her.

Anyway, we had some nice prohok but I didn't feel full because I didn't eat much. All my friends ate too fast and there wasn’t much left for me! But I wasn't upset or angry, because it's just fun, and I know my friends are always like that when we go to the countryside. Like my friend Riya; when we went to the Bati River one time, the way he tried to get more chicken than anyone else is to get a chicken and put into his underwear and run away, and even though we caught him we couldn't eat the chicken after he did that. That time he got almost one whole chicken. And now we always say to him; “Riya, don't do like Bati River!”

After lunch we just walked around the place because it was our first time at Jabok. It's a nice waterfall and a good place to go with family and friends, because it's not too far from Phnom Penh, just the same as Kirirom.

05:18 PM ICT Permalink |

Khmer New Year

On the first day of the Khmer New Year holiday my friends and I went to Bakhaing. It is on the other bank of the river from Phnom Penh, so we had to go over the Japanese Bridge. And on the way I saw an accident. It was very bad.

I’ll tell you what happened. One white car drove on the right side, but a black car came from the other side and was driving very fast, (that fast car was a Lexus), and there was one red motorbike with three people riding on it. The white car tried to get away from the fast black Lexus car, and the red motorbike fell off the road because the white car hit him and he lost control. I felt very sorry for them because the white car didn't try to stop and look after them, it just drove on.

But the problem is; the black Lexus car was gone and the white Corolla tried to escape. I tried to follow that white car, along with my friends on two other motorbikes. We didn't plan to stop them, we just wanted to see what will happen. And also the white car drove in the same direction as we did. And I saw a guy wearing a guard uniform. He had a gun, and he rode his motorbike in front of that car and wanted that car to stop. But that car just kept driving. And that guard guy, he followed for almost five minutes, riding alongside that car and slapping his gun and saying something. Then the car opened a window and somebody gave him some money, and that guard guy just rode away. And then that white car just turned around and went back to Phnom Penh, but not to look after those three people on the red motorbike.

Me, I think this accident was too much about corruption. Because, when we saw that guard follow that car, we thought; it's okay, this story will have a good ending. But then we saw it just ended with money, I think it's very bad. One of my friends, Por, was afraid to drive back home, because he saw this with his own eyes.

After we arrived at Bakhaing we ordered some food and some beer. There were so many people at Bakhaing, because it was the Khmer New Year holiday. While we were waiting for the food to come we played cards. Some of my friends pitied the three guys on the red motorbike, and some of them were just joking like they don't care. Then I got a call from my friend Reya. He was going to come back from Kompong Cham on the same road as Bakhaing, and he just needed to find out where we were. Then we told him, we are here, making a party, and he was very happy because he don't have to go to Phnom Penh to find us.

04:17 PM ICT Permalink |

My Brother-in-Law’s New House

One afternoon last week my brother-in-law called me to go to a party at his house. I didn't know about this at all because no one told me about this. He said, "This is my party that I make up for our whole family so you have to come as soon as you can." So I had to go. But I took some friends so I could have someone for sure to talk with.

The party was to celebrate the new house my brother-in-law has built in a village on the edge of Phnom Penh. It was a big party. There were about 40 people - and a baby cow. The people were my family and my brother-in-law's family. The baby cow was barbequed.

In my family there was my father, my three brothers, my sister, and my brother-in-law. And there was also my brother-in-law's family; his mother, his brother, and his mother's step-husband, who is the guy that my brother-in-law doesn't like. I don't know why he doesn't like his step-father. Also there were three Nigerian guys, who rent a house from my sister and my brother-in-law.

I talked with one of the Nigerians. His job is teaching English in Vietnam, and he comes here to get his visa. His English is the best of the three. My friends said he looked like Tierry Henry, the French football player for Arsenal. I told him he looked like Tierry Henry and he laughed. The other two told me they came to Cambodia to find a Cambodian team to play football with.

My friend Bros liked the beer that my brother-in-law bought for the party. The beer is called Oktinger or something like that and it's German. My friends said, "When we have a party we'd like to have this beer!" My friends talked to some of the people from my village. One of the guys from my village is a champion drinker, and my friend Bros wanted to make a competition with him, but that guy never minded him because Bros was a bit drunk.

My brother-in-law made this house for his mother. It has one bedroom, one living room, two bathrooms (one outside and one inside), and a big yard. Land in this village costs about $4,500, and I guess it cost about $10,000 to build the house. My brother-in-law has three houses; the one he lives in, the one he rents to the Nigerians, and now this one for his mother. He's a policeman, and also works as a bodyguard, and as an agent for people who want to buy and sell property.

We drove back home about six o'clock. My friends said they really liked this party.

03:44 PM ICT Permalink |

Srey Nou’s Wedding

On Sunday last week I went to Srey Nou's wedding. She's a friend from my English school. She told me about the wedding almost one month ago, but I thought she was just kidding. Then she brought me the wedding invitation three days before, so it was really surprising.

She invited almost everyone in my English class, even my teacher. The wedding was at Mondia Center, at around five in the afternoon. I got there at 5:30. I had a nice shirt and nice trousers, but no nice shoes, just flip-flops. So I felt a bit embarrassed, because everyone else had shoes. When I got there I didn't know anyone, so I waited downstairs and telephoned Srey Nou's younger sister, Srey Ta, and asked for someone to come and bring me. So, Srey Ta came down and got me. When I saw her I almost didn't recognize her because of her makeup and her dress; she looked so beautiful. Not just beautiful, but very beautiful.

The party was very big and looked very expensive. There were maybe more than a thousand guests, and a band playing live music (they looked very professional), and lots of food for every table, and things to drink like Black Label whiskey, Tiger beer, Coke, and water.

At seven o'clock we had the cake cutting. Srey Nou and her husband walked round the room and everyone stood up and we all made a long line and threw flowers over them to show how much they love one another. Srey Nou looked kind of shy, because she's so young, maybe only 17 or 18. Her husband is about 30. He's a teacher at the University. This is the first time getting married for both of them. At the end of the party we had singing and traditional Khmer dancing. Many people came to join the dancing and there was a very pretty singer. And then I came back home. I haven't seen Srey Nou at school since then.

12:38 PM ICT Permalink |