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The Cambodian Carnival

Cambodia Carnival 2

Pedro tries and fails to enjoy all the fun of the provincial Khmer fair

Provincial Cambodians have a different understanding of the Western concept of leisure time. A lack of disposable income and strong family ties mean that only the wealthier portion of the populous is able to enjoy daytrips to the beach or that homage to the ideals of health and safety regulations – Dreamland amusement park.

Apart from the required once-for-every-family pilgrimage to Angkor Wat,and possibly the holiday of the decade to the seaside at Kampong Som , Khmer families rarely travel far from the village/local town market. A small contingent of representatives may be packed off to a faraway wedding on occasion, but this is a rare adventure, with a kind of Russian roulette to see who will be sick on the bus to Takeo.

There are more public ‘holidays’ in Cambodia than one could shake a pooptastically tipped stick at, ranging from the international standard (1st January), national (Victory over Genocide Day), various king ‘s coronation/ birthdays/death days, sacred Buddhist festivals, bizarre traditions (Royal Ploughing Day) to the somewhat ironic (Human Rights Day, International Children’s Day, Woman’s Day-LOL,LOL,LOL).

Only public sector, teachers and bank workers get to celebrate most of these days whilst
market traders may take a couple of days break at Khmer New Year and should one of their lot decide to get married. Farmers either plant/cut rice or just have to feed the animals, leaving a lot of the day to laze about in a hammock with the under-employed. Leisure time, also known as free time, means doing as little as possible. Those with family working in the city will put on an extra pot of soup n’ rice and wait for kids and grandkids who make the journey back to ‘Go visit homeland’.

There is, however, an event for all the family to enjoy. Around the dates of holidays, strips of waste ground close to provincial backwaters are transformed into an alluring mixture of gaudy sounds and garish neon lighting – a something-for-everyone mix of trade exhibition, singing contest, potentially lethal funfair and unidentified mystery meat fried food fiesta.

The first stop of the Cambodian carnival is the exhibition marquee, where visitors can buy ABC learning toys from young members of the Scout movement, see stalls where mushrooms grow out of bags, gawk at oversized papaya and gather essential information on such important items as fertilizer and 100% genuine Dutch pig sperm.

Looking at stuff is free, as are flyers and A3 Smart Mobile 2014 calendars, which get snapped sharpish up by the ‘owt for nowt’ crowd. One stall offers gratis samples of what purports to be Cambodia’s only wild grape wine – a sickly sweet tipple with a bouquet of sour grapes – similar to a poor quality sherry. Handouts were drunk, but as it cost the equivalent of a half decent imported plonk, a crate of beer, or a couple of day’s wages for the average Bong Blogs, the bottles weren’t flying off the shelves.

With the looking at stuff for free over, it’s time to go out to the party. With this night being New Year’s Eve (the real one, not an Asian knock-off), all the stops had been pulled out. A miniature train sped round and round in a hundred metre circle at breakneck speed while fencing secured the area to prevent an accident ä la Stephenson’s Rocket.

Cambodia Carnival 1Kids could ride on a rusting carousel which looked like it had been salvaged from a ghost town in a former republic of the USSR, somewhere in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The flagship ride had to be the Ferris wheel, seemingly welded together out of shopping trollies and festooned with fairy lights. More than one child was seen being removed from each attraction, due to sheer terror and/or motion sickness.

Resisting the urge to be maimed by metal, I instead got danger kicks through cheap fireworks. All the kids were playing with handheld tubes which shot out explosive charges. How nobody was blinded by armed and dangerous 5 year olds is a mystery. Mine exploded in my hands after firing off a few shots. This batch would never make a BSI Kitemark stamp , should any end up in old England where anything similar would be sold by gypsies from the back of a van and would provoke an atricle in the Daily Mail.

As their offspring raced around in sugar induced frenzies, families took up at plastic tables and did what Cambodia does best when celebrating something: eating and drinking. Somehow there is always enough spare cash to buy a crate of extra strength Black Panther and bucket loads of glutinous, unhealthy shapes on sticks, some even bearing a passing resemblance to food. The bag of bugs tasted better as a bar snack. A few rounds of “Get the whitey drunk by downing cans in one until he vomits” game is always a popular sideshow.

No party is complete in SE Asia without sets of speakers competing to play at the highest, most distorted volume and a funfair is no exception. However, for the other non-drinking half of Cambodia there is another loud distraction – and at the far end of the field was the singing contest. Row upon row of plastic chairs, filled with old folk, mothers holding kids who are coming down off sugar highs and the ‘good’ teenagers- the ones not generally allowed out after 6pm.

There they will sit, for hours, transfixed by a semi-professional troupe of performers and clapping politely when the amateurs had their 5 minutes of fame. The crooning and caterwauling went on into the night as provincial singers battled for such auspicious prizes as hampers of fruit and standing fans (the blowing, spinny kind as standing ovations aren’t really the done thing).

The mix of beer, prohok, greasy chicken, fried bugs and sensory overload, combined with the sheer excitement of the evening sent me to my bed well before midnight – my first New Year ’s Eve in two decades not spent counting down.

Who needs nightclubs or Times Squares when one can have a rickety fairground, bad food, explosives, lashings of beer and the finest pig jizz the Low Countries can offer? Maybe next year will be different- I might push the boat out and take a spin on that Ferris wheel.

Pedro Milladino

2 thoughts on “The Cambodian Carnival

  • Count dracula

    I like your posts for sure.

    Please do more of them.

    Reply
  • Christiano

    Another fine piece Pedro, but don’t be such a pussy next time and get on the rides!

    Reply

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