The Khmer Funeral: Mekong Whisky, Tantric Sex Magic, and Severed Dog’s Heads

Khmer funerals are a thing to behold.

Just one week after I moved into my sprawling new villa, an old man who lived in the area croaked and his family began arranging the necessary ceremonies. I would have had some sympathy for the family, and the loss they’d just suffered, except that they pitched their funeral tent right next to my villa.

The owner came to warn me the day before the ceremony started. She apologised for the inconvenience, but said that I wouldn?t sleep well that weekend. I knew what was in store. I’d rented a flat before, and when the owner’s mother died, I awoke a few days later with the throbbing headache of a hangover to the sound of circus music just before dawn.

That time, the ceremony had lasted for just one day – and I simply decamped to the office, making a fuss and brusquely elbowing people out of the way, before sleeping on the couch all morning. This time, the funeral was to last for four days – so I steeled myself for the torment that lay ahead.

I was determined to handle things in the Khmer way – with patience. Someone had just died, and the least I could do was indulge the family, no matter how absurd I thought the tradition of blasting out chants at five o’clock in the morning. I would make the best of it – going into work a few hours early and having a productive day. What really worried me was the weekend. I’d be in no mood for chanting as I arrived home at dawn after a hard night’s drinking. Thus, on Friday night, after a year of avoiding the temptation of my old demon, Cambodian Mekong Whisky, I returned to the bottle for this great challenge – to sufficiently zombify myself, without the use of pharmaceuticals, to sleep through a day of droning dirges.

I cracked the bottle that evening, while waiting for the rain to subside, and sat down to a show about Tantric sex magic. Within two hours, I was in a warm, fuzzy world and very excited about the night out – Mekong makes you impressionable, I think, and after just half a bottle I was well on my way to becoming a sex wizard in my own mind.

The plan worked. I arrived home the next morning, staggered up the stairs, threw my clothes on the floor, collapsed on the bed – and didn’t wake up until three o’clock in the afternoon. From there, it was easy – with a hangover, not even deranged circus music could stop me from crawling up on the couch and dozing all afternoon.

The weekend passed normally, and then it came to Sunday. Knowing I?d have to get up before dawn, I went home after dinner at a Khmer restaurant and a few beers at the Peace Pub. The villa’s owner had told me the funeral would go on for four days, so the next morning would mark the end of the ceremony and then I could sleep well again.

As expected, the sound of the loudspeakers woke me at five o’clock, and I dragged myself into work in stoical silence. I returned home that evening utterly exhausted – but at least the ceremony was finally over. I hadn’t the slightest intention of going out for a drink. I would sit in my living room, with my laptop on the table, and tap out a few thoughts for the readers of 440 before having a well-deserved good night’s sleep.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. I awoke the next morning to the sound a monk tapping on and blowing into a microphone. This went on for some time, and in my deliriously drowsy state, I almost expected him to say, ‘Testing. Testing. One, two, three’ before breaking into a piercing wail.

This wasn’t good. I was still exhausted – which was partly my own fault, after choosing to go out every night and transform myself into a sex wizard. But I hadn’t slept that night, either, and that was their fault – as the tent pitched against my villa was full of drunken locals who had sat up all night chatting, and clinking glasses, and bumping into tables as they staggered into the alleyway to piss against the wall.

Knowing that Khmers lose respect for you when you show your emotions, I tried to hold back the surge of anger that had taken hold of me. But sometimes, when still drowsy after waking to a shock, you just can’t check your rage. I opened the window directly overlooking their ceremony and shouted,”Shut up! Shut the fuck up! Shut up or I’ll burn your fucking tent down!”

I slammed the window shut. Then the strangest thing happened: they actually turned the volume on the loudspeakers down. This in itself surprised me so much that I didn’t go storming down the stairs with the antique Samurai sword that I acquired on my last trip to Tokyo and that once belonged to Yukio Mishima and started chopping off heads.

Instead, I flopped back down on the bed, put a pillow over my head, and tried to sleep through the racket. Tossing and turning for an hour, I got up and went into work early again – but not before walking around the corner to the funeral and standing there in full view of everyone with a lingering gaze that said, ”You will all die.”

That day at work was not a good one. Most people who know me would describe me as morose. Followed by angry. Followed by arrogant. That day, I sat in the office, with purple bags under my eyes, resting my head on my hand, brooding about what to do about the situation. And did not look happy.

I sent off a message to my contact with the landlord. I wanted to know if there was going to be yet another day of screeching lamentations. I’d been patient for five days, but I had patience no longer. I would not wake up to the sound of that monk’s howling without being very, very angry.

My contact replied presently. There would be one more day of chanting. They apologised, but I would be woken up once more. The tone struck me as arrogant. Perhaps it was just because my contact was not a native speaker, but it sounded bluntly like, ”We will wake you up tomorrow. And we’re sorry. But that’s the way it is.”

This incensed me. They’d said four days. It’d already been five. This was my villa. I had a right to sleep there. Noise like this on a regular basis would be enough for someone in my country to summon the police. The Khmers tolerate it – they’re sheepish, some would say spineless, when enduring these infringements on their personal space. But my sympathy had run out. I didn’t know the old git. I didn’t care that he was dead. For fucks sake, I just wanted to sleep.

I began to get nasty. I asked if the villa’s owner had sanctioned their use of the alleyway. If she had, I would have to decapitate her for taking my money and then allowing this outrage right outside my window. I got the stock Khmer answer, that the funeral was on the street, and therefore it was on public property – though my bedroom bloody well wasn’t, and that?s where all their circus music ended up.

I asked why, if they knew they’d be at the side of my villa for a week, they hadn’t offered to set me up in a nice hotel as compensation. I got back the reply, ”They will give you ten dollars to stay in a guesthouse tonight.” That was it. I’d had enough. After a week without sleep, that was offensive. They could keep their ten dollars. They were calling off the funeral tonight. Or else.

Now this ‘Or else’ is vague. Therein lies its power. Some people would reply, ‘Or else what?’ I knew that ‘- and had been thinking about it all day. My first plan was to just march into their midst at the sound of the speakers and slash all the cables or the throats of anyone who tried to stop me. But I realised it would be best not to do something that would later see me delivering brown envelopes containing large amounts of cash to policemen and judges – though with my slightly volatile personality, I would not be accountable for my actions at five o’clock in the morning.

If I’d had large speakers or a car with an alarm, I would have just drowned them out for revenge. But their speakers were concert sized, and as everyone knows I’m a boring big bike guy. I thought of dumping rotten eggs on their heads, of collecting a pot of urine and faeces to fling on them, of sending a Molotov cocktail onto the tent above their heads. I even thought of just freaking them out – getting up at the sound of the music, painting my face like a sex wizard, and biting off a bird’s head and spitting it on one of the tables whilst howling like a shirtless maniac.

I grew more frustrated as I found a flaw in each plan – most related to the fact that this all had to be arranged between the time I got off work and the time I was going to go to bed an hour later. What I really wanted to know was where the chief of this little show lived himself so that I could bring upon him some of the torment I’d suffered. Like leaving a severed dog’s head on his doorstep every day for a week. Or kidnapping his kids and nailing them upside down by the feet to a tree directly across from his house so that he could awake to the sound of their screams. Sleep deprivation can do strange things to a person.

The situation was tense. But all this could be avoided by my ‘Or else’ and one more lucky concept – the crazy barang. The Khmers were sheep – but I was a foreigner, an unknown variable, an unstable substance, something dangerous. Take my threats seriously – I might do something crazy.

I believe I was aided in this plan by the fact that I have a tendency to sleepwalk and do weird things at night. I’d experienced several very unsettled nights after moving from my familiar lodgings at the Khmer short-time hotel and had vividly horrifying dreams which drove me to walk naked but for a T-shirt into she street and scream at my security guard before growling like a ferocious dog with barred teeth and then slamming my gate and going back to bed.

I sent back a stark message to my contact. If I wake up to the sound of that music, there will be a problem. I hope they don’t want any problems at their funeral.

That night I went home in grim silence. The owner was waiting outside with the news. They wouldn’t turn on the speakers until seven o’clock.

So, you see, being a crazy barang does have its advantages.

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