Airport Ghost

Last month my mother came back to Cambodia from America. She told us to be at the airport in Phnom Penh at 10 o'clock. We waited but the plane arrived at about 11.40 a.m. But while we were waiting for my Mum we saw a crowd looking at something. My family and I went to have a look and we saw one family doing a coining, a custom that we call ''kous kchaul'' in Khmer language, for one man.

Airport security came and asked them what was happening, and that man's wife told the security that he was kchaul (feverish). And the security asked, "Do you need us to call the airport doctor or an ambulance?" The man was unconscious, and his family were carrying him and rubbing Tiger Balm all over his body and tried to wake him up.

So the security called for the ambulance. Before the ambulance came, the man regained consciousness and started talking. And he was talking so strange that it really scared me. He talked to the ghosts. First he talked to his body. He said, "Mum, get off my body, I can't breathe!" Then he said, "That's right, that's right!" Then he looked through the crowd, and he talked to his mother. He said, "Mum, help me! Get away from my body! Get away from my legs because I can't move my legs! Don't take me with you, because I have to look after my wife and my children!' He also said, "I know it's my mistake, but I will go to the pagoda and pray for you! I'm sorry for when you alive I didn't look after you properly."

I looked around, but there was nobody talking to him. And his aunt said that his mother is gone (she meant that she's dead), and she talked to the ghost and she said, "Please don't come back to disturb him, I will tell him to go to the pagoda to make prayers for you!" But she couldn't see the ghost like him.

Then that man talked to the ghost very quietly, for almost one hour. I was just watching, because I was still waiting for my mum to arrive. And even when my mum arrived, the man was still talking; sometimes quiet, sometimes loud. When he talked loudly I could hear and understand him, but what he said was scaring me a lot. The ambulance came and went away again because his family said it wasn't needed. The man was just talking to the ghost while his family rubbed him with coins and with Tiger Balm, for more than an hour.

Then at last my Mum came and we took her back home. I hope that guy was okay. I think so, because he was looking stronger than what he was when I first saw him.

11:46 AM ICT Permalink |

Sopeap’s New House

Last Sunday I all the friends went to Sopeap's house, close to Wat Phnom, to have a party for his new house. His new house looks very nice. It has a pink and white color, like a small villa, with two floors. His parents bought it for 60,000 dollars. It’s in a good area, and really safe. It has two bedrooms and three bathrooms for eight people; Sopeap and his mother and father, four brothers and one sister. And it has a big living room on each floor.

He told us to go to his house at 7 o'clock in the evening, because by then the guests are less and he will have more space for us. But we got there at 5 o'clock. So he just put us on the roof and told the waiter to bring food for us.

It was a big party, much food and plenty to drink (coke and beer). He told us not to worry and to drink as much as we like, 'cause his brother had more than 50 cases of beer for us and for his friends. I think 50 cases of beer is a lot, that's 5 cases each for the 10 of us, but all of us together can drink only 2 cases of beer. And also that's not including me, because I wasn't feeling very well and I didn't drink any beer, only coke. But I was very good for eating food.

While Sopeap was being a host downstairs the waiter from the restaurant (they rented a cook and waiter from a restaurant) brought the food for us. One of our friends named Por, he took as much food as he could as soon as the waiter brought it. So we all were doing like him, and the food finished very quickly. And when Sopeap came upstairs he looked really surprised when he saw we had finished all the food, but he said he didn't mind. He said: "Have some more!"

At 7:30 a lot of guests had gone home, and Sopeap came upstairs and had some beer with us. He told us "Drink to be drunk. If you're not drunk, don't go home." That's what we say in Khmer language.

12:10 PM ICT Permalink |

Football Ants

Every evening my friends come to my house and we go to play football at Olympic Stadium. Lots of people go to Olympic Stadium in the evenings nowadays because exercise right now is very popular in Phnom Penh. Some of the people like dancing, some run, some walk, some play badminton, and some just flirt --- though that's not really exercise! But the most popular activity is football.

Usually we don't have any teams to play against when we arrive, but there there's always someone who asks us to play against them. Some of them look really like professionals, so sometimes we say no because we are not good players. Instead, we go around and look for some team that doesn't look like they have professional players. Sometimes we play for money, but mostly just for bottles of water. That means if our team wins you buy water for us. But some teams don't like that, because they see we aren't good players and they want to bet money as much as they can. But we don't always lose, sometimes we win their money.

We started to play at the Stadium about three weeks ago and now all of us are getting better, so we are not scared like the first time. For example, yesterday evening we played with one team that looked very tall and they run very fast. It was like ants playing with giants, but we tried our best so it was not bad. The first game they said; “Okay, if you get two goals you get 500 riel for each player." And we won. They could run faster but we were better at passing the ball and so we tired them out. Then they said, "Okay, one goal gets 500 riel for each player," and this time I was the one that made the goal and we won again: 1,000 riel each. So they changed the rules again and said; "Okay, one goal 1,000 riel." And this time they won. So it was a draw; nobody won, and nobody lost. But the real result was 4 goals for the ants, and only 1 goal for the giants.

So my friends and I were very happy with the game even though we didn't keep the money, because this was the first time we won against a good team.

09:48 AM ICT Permalink |

Grade 12 Results

On Friday 31 August my friends got their Grade 12 results. Me I'm in Grade 11, but next month when school goes back I'll be Grade 12. So I'll get Grade 12 results this time next year.

On that day three of my friends called all the rest of us to make celebrations and congratulations at Sisowath High School, even though at that time they still don't know then if they had passed or not. They were optimistic.

When we all went to Sisowath there were many students there just the same as us, waiting for the results. At 3 pm the teacher talked on the microphone and said, "This is the result for Grade 12." So all of us come together, about ten friends, with arms together and around each other, very happy. Then they started to give the results by rooms, starting at Room 1. My friends are in Room 15, 27 and 29. My friends names are Hua, Bros (which means “Boy” in Khmer), and Peah. When the teacher comes close to Room 15, we're starting to worry about him; he was very quiet and paid attention to the teacher. Then the teacher said, "Room 15 …. ALL PASS!" Then we all shouted, “YEAH YEAH YEAH!”

So we still had two more results; Bros and Peah. So Bros comes first: "Room 27 … two failed!" And Bros was very quiet and we don't know what to do, we just wait, and the teacher called the number for these two students who failed. The number is the ID number for when you do the exam, because they give each one number instead of a name, so we don't get told the name just the number. Bros was very quiet. And the teacher said the number of the first one who failed: not Bros. And the teacher said the second number: not Bros again! So we were happy again for the second time, and we all shouted, “YEAH YEAH YEAH!”

Then we felt really sorry for Peah because we had waited so long now and he still didn't get his result yet. And then the teacher called Room 29 results. He said, "In Room 29, 25 students passed…" which means ALL PASSED! So, “YEAH YEAH YEAH” again!

Then after we finished being happy Bros said, "I'll pay for two cases of beer for the party!", and Peah said, "I'll pay for the meat to have with the beer!" and Hua only said, “Yeah!” because he doesn't have much money. And we all said, “Yeah Yeah Yeah!”

So we were happy. But on that day I really felt pity for the students who failed. They looked so sad, they cried, and they felt so bad. So not all students were happy on that day. But I hope next year I will be like Hua and Bros and Peah.

02:20 PM ICT Permalink |

Going to the Pagoda

On Monday afternoon some friends called to ask me to go to the pagoda with them. I asked them where it was, and they said it was close to Pasit Mountain. First, I told them I didn't want to go. But I didn't want to be stressed and lonely in Phnom Penh so I went with them.

There were three girls and five boys in total, including me. We arrived there at about three o'clock, but we didn't go into the temple yet, we just had a rest outside and bought some incense and some candles to give to the monks. We shared the money to pay for the monks and total was about 20,000 riel, which is about five dollars.

Then we went to see the monk and he prayed. My friend Riya gave the money and the incense and the candles, and the monk gave us back the money because he said he would not take money from students. But we said to the monk; please keep it, because it's our heart that wants to give it to you. But that monk still would not take the money. He told us to take this money back before he gave it to someone else. So we took it and laughed, and I said; “That is a very good monk!” And he looked at me and he smiled. Then the monk prayed for us, and while he’s praying Riya asked him; “Please give me a lot of girls!” And my friends and people around us all laughed.

After praying the monk told us to change our clothes to get ready for him to give us the blessing to take away bad luck by water. This is the reason we go there. We had old clothes with us, the girls had some clothes they can wear and the boys had some shorts. The boys got ready first and we kneeled and prayed in front of the monk and the monk took water from a big jar and poured water over us like a shower. That's to wash away bad luck. Then it was the girls turn but they were shy and they don't want to do it. They asked us to do it again together with them. But we didn't want to do it two times, so the girls they just hang out there till other people come and they do the blessing with the other people.

On the way back home we tried to find some beef barbeque and rest there until five o'clock and then we drove back home. It was a very nice day; not stressed and not lonely.

03:46 PM ICT Permalink |

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 |