Huh?
There are all sorts of t-shirts available in the markets of Phnom Penh. Some make less sense than others. This one was silly enough that I took a photo -- he is a Korean 9th grader in my math class.
The Golden Rule?
Cambodians have a different take on this one. Their version is closer to, "I do not say anything when you bother me so you should not say anything when I bother you."
Cambodians have a different take on this one. Their version is closer to, "I do not say anything when you bother me so you should not say anything when I bother you."
Drunk Moto Driver For Hire
A while back I needed to hire a moto (think "moped taxi") to take me to a famous place in Cambodia called Toul Sleng Prison. I thought, "This is a great chance to give some business to that guy I see everyday on my way to school." So, I walked down the street to where he normally loitered (these guys just wait in one spot all day long hoping to catch a fish; not too ambitious). Anyway, I got there just in time to see him finishing peeing on a nearby wall (normal practice). When he came back to his normal fishing hole, I asked him "Toul Sleng?". "Baat (Yes), Baat (Yes), Toul Sleng."
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So far all is going according to plan. We begin traveling at roughly 10 mph. The very low speed and impressively strong smell of alcohol conspire to inform me that this gentleman is drunk. The peeing on the wall might have been a clue were it not so normal. Or, maybe everyone doing that is drunk. Hmm. Anyway, this story is getting too long.
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I decided that at 10 mph it would be hard to get killed (a hypothesis, as you might surmise from the authorship of this story, that was experimentally verified). But, at 10 mph it also takes a very, very long time to find a place that you pretended to know the location of when, in reality, you only have a faint notion -- i.e. I'm pretty sure it is in Phnom Penh. And, it is even more time consuming when your brain is loaded with the active ingredients of fermented products. So, you stop every so often and ask the guy sitting behind you (that is me, in case you are having trouble following), "Toul Sleng?".
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After about 15-20 minutes of riding around slowly having twice dismounted the moto to personally go ask someone less inebriated for directions, and holding up traffic in a stupor-induced indecisiveness ("Toul Sleng?"), I bailed. I paid the guy enough money to stay drunk a while longer and caught a ride with another guy who actually DID know where it was (we were only 1 km) from it at that point.
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Feel free to come up with your own moral to the story.
Music Is Magic
Question: Why don't we hear more Cambodian pop music in the states?
Answer: We did. In the 1980's thanks to Richard Marx and others.
Question: What is worse than Cambodian pop music?
Question: Why don't we hear more Cambodian pop music in the states?
Answer: We did. In the 1980's thanks to Richard Marx and others.
Question: What is worse than Cambodian pop music?
Short Answer: Cambodian traditional music, which to my ears has no discernible melody. This is not to say it is obnoxious; just imagine gentle sounds that run all over the place and make things feel somewhat hectic.
Long Answer:
If you said Mexican pop music, you are correct. Polkas are musical torture to begin with and when you feature the accordian and sing about an aching corazon, it only adds insult to injury. Modern Cambodian music, on the other hand, sounds like a crooning 1980s vintage ballad with gratuitous guitar solos played way up on the neck, and, thus, is clearly superior, but still impressively bad. Granted, I cannot confirm what they are singing about since I can only speak 20 words of Khmer (12 of which are numbers), but my strong hunch is that it involves "un corazon roto". Ok, back to the original question. Though "Mexican pop music" is a correct answer, there is actually a better answer: KARAOKE of modern Cambodian music. I was forced to listen to this one night a few months ago, as it emanated from a nearby house, and it was painfully bad. The singing woman clearly suffered from chronic tone deafness, but had unfortunately robust lungs and vocal chords and an unfortunate lack of performance anxiety - a perfect storm of sorts.
If you said Mexican pop music, you are correct. Polkas are musical torture to begin with and when you feature the accordian and sing about an aching corazon, it only adds insult to injury. Modern Cambodian music, on the other hand, sounds like a crooning 1980s vintage ballad with gratuitous guitar solos played way up on the neck, and, thus, is clearly superior, but still impressively bad. Granted, I cannot confirm what they are singing about since I can only speak 20 words of Khmer (12 of which are numbers), but my strong hunch is that it involves "un corazon roto". Ok, back to the original question. Though "Mexican pop music" is a correct answer, there is actually a better answer: KARAOKE of modern Cambodian music. I was forced to listen to this one night a few months ago, as it emanated from a nearby house, and it was painfully bad. The singing woman clearly suffered from chronic tone deafness, but had unfortunately robust lungs and vocal chords and an unfortunate lack of performance anxiety - a perfect storm of sorts.
