Four Cambodian Weddings and My Funeral – Part 1
My advice to you is this: if you decide to get married in Cambodia, first undertake an intense six-month regime involving military training for stamina, monkhood to learn superhuman patience, and a crammer for fluent Khmer. Even then, make sure you only marry once. Like weddings in any culture, when it’s over one can look back and appreciate what a wonderful experience it was, but at the time it’s a heck of an ordeal. I’m afraid for one moment I lost it and upset the parents. My real problem was that the night before events began, due to nervous energy, I didn’t sleep a wink – I spurned any thoughts of a stag night and turned in very early but even so when I rose at 6 a.m. I was already exhausted. In that state I then faced 36 hours with absolutely no respite. It started off well enough with Saturday being the religious ceremony at the parents’ house with the monks.
Now, I’m no control freak, and I was quite happy for Cambodians to do things the Cambodian way – indeed, I specifically requested that; however, I made just two requests. The first was this: I know it’s the culture to go totally over the top with the bride’s makeup, but I’ve seen plenty of evidence of being over the top yet not in bad taste. Now I really don’t have anything against mincing queers at all, but those ones were completely out of order – they don’t do make-up, they do whitewash. I’d feared as much and I urged my bride to instruct them, but they simply ignored her. I therefore had to make a bit of a scene – we got there, as I hope you’ll see from the photos when I send them, but it meant I instigated a moment of friction. Although she looked great in the end, the photos don’t show the physical pain she had to endure with the brass jewellery making deep gashes in her wrists, arms and ankles, and the earrings badly tearing her lobes.
In the west the groom and best man will probably spend a fortune on fitted suits; here the costume dresser provides the outfit for the men too – however not only did these ‘guys’ not take any measurements, but they brought only one jacket which was four sizes too big. Lest you think it was just me having issues with these poofs, despite the fact that five dresser/makeup artists (three gay guys and two women) were fannying about, they insisted it wasn’t their job to make up anyone else which was pretty mean, especially as the first thing they did was nick all the toiletries from the bathroom. I didn’t enquire of anyone else but it meant that at my own wedding I wasn’t able to wash my hair or bathe (i.e. chuck scoops of water over me) with soap. Attempting to shave without running water or a mirror caused me to gash my chin deeply too. The Cambodian family are typically so damn nice that they wouldn’t say anything to the thieves and just went without. In the video and photos I look very rough indeed.
The thieving benders apart, here are a couple of telling details: into this community where no one owns a car, 520 guests arrived. As far as I could see, the ‘car park’ comprised one minibus (my orphanage), two cars and rows of motorbikes. We had no wealthy guests. Owing to the costume changes I lost track of my own trousers as they were moved from place to place and building to building. I’d left a couple of hundred dollars in my pockets – not one cent went missing.
My other request was to please not have supersonic disco music blasting out all Saturday night. Again, my heart sank when I saw a stack of speakers that would not be out of place at the Glastonbury festival in a lane just wide enough for two cars (I’m painting you a picture here – as I mentioned, in the whole community there is not one car). It’s not like anyone was dancing; they were just sitting and drinking (conversation being impossible) – no westerners can fathom the point of this ancient Cambodian custom, and no Cambodian can give a straight answer when requested. I really really REALLY needed to sleep – I couldn’t make anyone understand until I caused a scene that caused loss of face for the parents.
Sralang Apsara
(to be continued)
