A Village Wedding

The morning after dancing the night away at Vuth and Cina's wedding, we woke relatively early to celebrate Cambodia's 55th Independence Day, a rather communist style parade featuring tens of thousands of civil servants and floats from various ministries and the military. Early on Monday morning, Shanti and I and Shanti's parents piled into a minivan with about ten of my coworkers to set off for the wedding of one of my coworkers in Memot District, Kampong Cham Province. The four-hour ride was quite pleasant; it was nice to get out of Phnom Penh and see the rice fields at their peak.

We arrived at the bride's house, several kilometers outside of Memot town and right on the national road, just in time for a quick lunch. As with most village weddings, a huge tent containing dozens of tables was set up on the dirt in front of the house. There were relatively few people around - the traditional ceremonies that take place in the morning were over - so we had a quiet lunch and took the minivan into town to settle in to our guesthouse.

We relaxed a bit and then a handful of the foreigners in the group decided to go for a walk about town. The six of us were probably the most foreigners Memot had ever seen and the sight of us was cause for significant commotion. The fruit vendors were quite amused that we could speak a bit of Khmer and the moto drivers were certainly perplexed as to why we were in town. We stumbled upon a small, but interesting archaeological museum covering ancient civilizations in the surrounding area before going back to the guesthouse.

After some more relaxation we got suited up for the wedding and took the van back to the bride's house. Although it was not very crowded, there was a line out front of people waiting to get their pictures taken with Sarath, my coworker, and Kimhuch, his bride, under the archway entrance to the wedding tent. Next to the archway was a typically over-edited photograph of the couple in which they were a ghostly pale (pale skin is highly desirable across Cambodia and much of Asia and is seen as of a higher class than darker skin). Rising up from the entrance was a bamboo pole with two huge megaphones attached, one pointing in each direction the road went. The megaphones blasted music from a live band loud enough for neighbors several kilometers away to hear (another symbol of status is apparently letting as many people as possible know that you or your kin are getting married).

As we posed for pictures with Sarath and Kimhuch, a small gathering of local kids surrounded us, curious at the sight of so many barangs. We were seated at a table with discarded napkins, fish bones and other debris in a ring around the chairs, the typical disposal method for weddings. We were served a meal similar to but not quite as fancy as Vuth and Cina's wedding and were greeted with an endless supply of beer. A crew of several dozen local kids scanned the tables for those finishing their drinks and quickly snatched empty cans from the ground, a $0.03 per can gold mine.

The live band was quite loud and apparently caught the attention of the entire area. By the time it was 7:00, about an hour after we arrived, a crowd of several hundred villagers - not guests, merely onlookers - surrounded the wedding tent. The crowd quickly doubled in size once some of the barangs got up to dance and soon all of us were dancing in the best Khmer style we could, much to the amusement of the locals. It was simply amazing how many non-guests had turned out simply for entertainment. Obviously not too much happens in Memot, but I had to wonder if the crowd size was a standard or if the presence of foreigners had a particular drawing power.

At one point, a little before Sarath and Kimhuch were to make their entrance, a lotus flower fight broke out between some of the barangs and the local kids. Though it seemed as if everyone was having a good time with it, the bride's mother did not look amused. With several more beers in our bellies and another hour of dancing under our belts, we were exhausted. And it was only 8:30pm. Such is life in the provinces - it begins as soon as the sun is up and ends shortly after it goes down. Sarath's wedding was incredibly enjoyable, but in an entirely different way than Vuth and Cina's. It was certainly a unique experience that I will not soon forget.