Whilst the Christian world gets ready to celebrate Xmas, Ban Lung in Buddhist Cambodia doesn’t. Even in Phnom Penh there will be some shops, particularly major businesses that may have some sort of Xmas display. In fact it took the sound of a truck reversing to the tune of Silent Night the other day to jolt me awaken to the fact that Xmas is almost here.
The closest thing to Xmas in Cambodia would probably be the Pchum Ben festival. Held in October, Pchum Ben is a time when Cambodians return to their home village, gather the family together much like Europeans might do on Xmas day, and go to the pagoda to pay respects to departed relatives, much like the Vietnamese who celebrate dead relatives’ birthdays.
During Pchum Ben 2004 I was invited to my friend’s village in a place called Koh Satin (Satin Island), in Kompang Cham province. The village is a picturesque palm treed lined place on the banks of a tributary of the Mekong river. You get there by a dinghy with an outboard motor from Kompang Cham to Chi He. My friend, who is about 26 years old, had brought his girlfriend along. He hadn’t yet introduced her to the family, and had no plans to even mention her to his parents at this stage, so she stayed in her friend’s house elsewhere in the village. He is the sort of guy who relishes life and likes to create enjoyable situations for himself and the people he is with. So although his girlfriend was staying only a short distance down the road that followed the river, instead of walking he rented a boat from a child and we went over at night by candle light to pick her up and we all went further down the river for dinner. These clandestine rendezvous with his girlfriend reminded me of similar such activities I may or may not have engaged in when I was younger.
On the second day of our stay the family put on their best clothes and went down to the local pagoda. I went along too, although I made the social faux pas of using the wrong type of tissue paper. There are basically only two types of tissue paper in Cambodia. The toilet roll, or the little packages that contain a handful of tissues. I opted for the cheaper toilet roll to attend to my sniffling nose, but my host pointed out it was not the cool thing to do in these parts. I should have bought the tissue package instead.
