A Day In the Life of a Cambodian Family

Our friend Salt took us to visit his inlaws in a small village outside of Battambang. We spent the day with the family enjoying being part of their daily life. The family of 3 adult children and the parents, make the wrappers you use to make spring rolls. Hundreds and hundreds of them each and everyday. They take an everage of three days a month off but I think there is a small bit of flexibility to fill in for each other. They stop completely for the day if Moom, who is Salt's new wife, gets ill.
The family has a house for sleeping but acutally live and work in the open air area under the house as the house is built in the air. All of their neighbours do the same thing but their set up was the most organized and clean.
They start at four thirty in the morning making a fire using rice husks as fuel. It's fed into the fire through a hopper made from a wooden crate. I estimated that in full production they refill the hopper at least once an hour. The stove is a mud affair with two holes in the top and open on the floor so you can drag out the ashes. There are two pots of boiling water sunk into the holes and they're nearly full covered with a taut piece of heavy cloth. Just enough opening is left to let out steam.
There is a platform beside the stove which the person cooking squats on. They have their feet covered with rags to protect them from the heat and a bowl of rice gruel in front of them.The only machine is a grinder to make the rice into flour which later becomes the gruel. To the left of the platform is a revolving bamboo rack to lay the wet, cooked wrappers on.
When the fire is hot enough the day really begins. Moom and her mom do the cooking . They put a small bowl full of the gruel on the hot cloth on top of the pot and quickly smooth it out and cover it with a lid ( which also get very hot but I didn't see them use a pot holder). They then so the same on the second pot and by then the lid can be moved onto the second pot and the first wrapper is scraped off the cloth and hung on the revlovling rack. It must all be done at a certain rythmn and everything must be kept at the perfect level of wetness for it all to work.
Behind the person cooking a large woven bamboo drying rack is waiting. the second person takes the wet wrappers off the relvolving rack and spreads them on the drying rack. The drying rack holds about 60 wrappers and when it is filled it is taken outside to be placed in the sun on a frame to dry. When they are nearly dry they are taken into the shade and the rack is placed nearly upright . When they are satisfied that the wrappers are correctly dried they peel them off the rack and put them in a large basket.
This process goes on without interruption until about 4 in the afternoon. At that point everyone takes a break until there is a light dew on the grass, about 5:30. You see while those wrappers were drying they were puffing up. Now they must be placed on the grass to get slightly damp so that they flatten and then they can be stored.
I asked how much they are sold for and I was told that for roughly 100 wrappers they bring in 50 cents. That does not include any expenses like the rice, machine to grind the rice, fuel and implements.
None of this was easily done as we found out by trying. The atove is hot and steam is rising inyour face and you have to be quick. The heat must be kept at exactly the right level. It's not easy to spead the wet, cooked wrappers out on the rack. they are also easily broken whentheyare dry so taking them off the racks is more difficult.
I asked how long they have been doing this and they said their grandmother's grandmother's grandmother did it too and so on down the generations.
These wonderful people let us into their lives with big smiles. They fed us and gave us hammocks to lay in for the afternoon while they continued to work and the only one that could speak English was our friend Salt. There wasn't a lot of talking between us and the family but there was a whole lot of communing going on!

As a footnote to this, the older members of the family lived through the Pol Pot regime and genocide. How, I really don't know. There were many battles in their area with the Khmer Rouge. I don't think there is a man, woman or child in Cambodia that hasn't been affected in some way.

Lady Boys

We took our friends sight seeing to a temple on top of a mountain outside Battambang, Cambodia. They had never been to the temple because while they were engaged it was considered bad luck ot go there as an unmarried couple! When we started at the bottom two litttle kids started walking with us. At most of the temples kids accompany you and show you things and then you tip them. These kids were a fountain of information. The most interesting thing they told us was about the stairs up. It was a set of two side by side stairways and they told us that one was for women and one for men and if you walked on the wrong one in your next life you would be born a Lady Boy ( also known as boygirls)!
The view from the top was amazing. In the picture of the little girl she was standing on a wall with a drop of hundreds of feet behind her which freaked me out.It was really fun to take Salt and Moom on a little trip. Moom is quite shy and speaks no English but she warmed up to us after she was around us for awhile. It was sad for them though because this temple was the site of a ferocious battle withthe Khmer Rouge.

A Cambodian Wedding

While in Siem Reap, Cambodia, we made friends with a young tuk tuk driver Salt ( pronounced Saul) and he invited us to visit with his new inlaws and his wife Moom. They have been married about 5-6 weeks and have only spent about 8 days together so far. The first picture is one we took of them at the family home and the rest are pictures we took of their wedding album.
A traditional Cambodian wedding usually lasts two days and includes feasting and a huge procession around the town. The bride usually wears up to 10 costumes and the groom about 7.
You can see what an attractive couple they are in everyday life and you can also see that you can hardly recognize them in the wedding pictures. Imagine the stress of all those hairdo's and makeup.
This wedding had over 300 guests and that is considered small by their standards. It cost $2100 which is unbelievabe considering Salt makes an average income of $50 a month. He was saving to get married and was halfway there after more than a year of saving when an Australian friend offered to help him pay for it. It was very important to have this kind of start in the marriage because Salt comes from a very poor farming family and by comparison Moom comes from a comfortably off family.
Both families were against the marriage because they are both year of the tiger and were also getting married in the year of the tiger and this is considered to be a bad omen. Cambodians are very superstitious. Moom was heart broken by this and eventually the families relented.
I am a little worried about Moom because she has a recurring illness that invloves high fevers, huge headaches and stomach pain. The Australian friend is coming to visit soon and will take them to Vietnam for medical help.
It's wonderful here because on an individual level travelers are helping where they can. We found out that Salt's family lives on about $25 per month for a large family. We gave him some money and asked him to buy some special foods for them at their new years in April. He said he woud rather give the money to his mom so she can decide what to do with it and alsoo s that she will have something to fall back on.

A Little Family

First of all I'm sorry, I've been getting a little sloppy and not editing posts before I post them and the last one had a boo boo in the title. I can't figure out how to edit them once they are posted!
One of things we really like to do when traveling is to stay place long enough to start relating to some locals and we also like eating on the street at little restaurants that are set up at night on the sidewalks and disappear the next day till evening when they set up again. These pictures were taken in Siem Reip at one of these restaurants.
Folks who have these restaurants kind of call you in, trying to get you before their neighbour does. We couldn't resist eating at this one because the little girl was the one trying to get people in and she was too adorable to ignore! The food was good and cheap, a meal was about $1.50, so we went there each night. We quickly realized that it was a family running it, mom, dad, the two little girls and a brand new baby. The restaurant was set up on the sidewalk that had about a five foot fence along it. It turns out the cooking area was on the other side of the fence and there was a wooden ladder on each side to get up and down. They spoke a few words of English and we spoke no Cambodian but each night we communicated. The ice breaker was talking about, or gesturing about kids. When they find out we have one it gives us something in common. People here are always puzzled about why we only have one and always politely ask about it if they can speak enough english. The last night we ate at this family restaurant the father asked me to take a picture he and Philip and then invited me to go up the ladder to the other side to see the new baby. What a treat! He was sleeping in a hammock while the rest of the family worked. The little girls got sleepier as the evening went on and then they went in the back to go to sleep too.
I have a slightly different perspective on child labour than I did before. In poorer countries like this families often work together or parents have their kids with them while they work and it seems like a good thing when people are together as a unit. I guess this isn't the kind of child labour we talk about so distastefully at home is it?

Which of These Things is Not LIke the Other?

Oops! I nearly forgot this one...too bad I wasn't dressed a little smarter looking!

Mannequins

We apent some time in the colonial city of Battambang, Cambodia. It's about 2 hours from the Thai border. It was the typical story in that we didn't like it there at first but grew to like it more each day. My friend Cindy always says if you don't lke a place it's usually because you didn't stay long enough and I have really found that to be true.
This city was a bit spooky at night because there were no street lights and most of the businesses closed before dark. We had to walk quite away to the area where the restaurants were in the dark. I guess I haven't talked much yet about the sidewalks in asia have I? It's downright a health risk! The sidewalks are uneven, the curbs can be over a foot high, smooth and at a 45 degree angle. If you step on one you can slide and fall. The sidewalks can be smooth tile like cement or rough tarmac. They can be great for a block and on the next block non-existent, or change in the middle of a block. Then there's the garbage everywhere which makes walking in the dark freaky! The other thing is that makes them a hazzard is that they are almost always obstructed! Light poles in the middle of them, cement structures that you don't have a clue what they are and lots of stores and restaurants use the sidewalks. I usually am really careful but right now I have a huge bruise above my knee because I walked straight into the bolt that comes off a firehydrant. youch! It hurt so much my eyes started pouring tears. the weird thing was it happened in a very busy touristed sidewalk in Phnom Penh and the hydrant was in the middle of the sidewalk.
Back to Battambang....while walking to eat one evening we found this street that sold clothing and there were all these cool mannequins which we couldn't resist taking pictures of. I knew our friends Brandon and Jo would love them!

Enticing Sign

We were in the colonial city of Battambang in Cambodia. While taking pictures of the architecture we came upon a small, somewhat decrepid store front that was a dentists office. Imagine if our dentists had signage like this? It's an entirely different approach!

A Burmese Feast

While in Mai Sot we 'adopted' a family. one of the family members, Ngwe, was in my English class and the classes were held at her home. The entire family of 5 lived on a$200 per month and half of that was rent. You can imagine that after you buy toiletries and laundry soap and pay your power bill there is not much to live on. When they first fled Burma seven years ago Ngwe, who I call little monkey, was 13 years old. She had to leave her family and go to work in a factory in which she also had to live. It's really slave labour. The rich factory owners pay for permits for the Burmese to stay and work and they must live at the factory and work long hours for low low wages. She was one of the lucky ones as she had a nice man as her boss or as she called him her 'teacher'. You can imagine how vulernabe a young girl would be in that situation. She got through working there for many years with her mind and body intact.
We walked through this market everyday on the way to her house and it's where we bought the food for the feast. We were a bit reticent to take close up pictures of the food or people so the pictures don't really convey what it was like. It was probably one of the most exotic markets I've ever been in. These were some of the things for sale: 8 knids of insects, live frogs, mice and rabbits, many kinds of fish including live baby eels and what looked like tadpoles, fruit and veggies galore, nuts, seeds, grains and many many things I couldn't identify. There was an array of prepared foods or people cooking right there. The smells and the racket were overwhelming in intensity.
Then there were the people. There were many kinds of ethnic groups in the market and just as many ways of dressing. Men in sarongs, women with all different kinds of traditional dress and western style clothing too. If you look closely you'll see in the front of one of the pictures, women with a cream colored paste on their faces. This is the bark of a tree ground and made into a paste. It is used as a sunscreen and can be rubbed in like makeup. What was really interesting is how it was worn. Some women wore it in big circles on their cheeks and sometimes their foreheads. Sometimes it was patterned and looked like a primitive tattoo. It looked really cool on some of the women with browner skin.
When we bought the groceries for the family we didn't mean for them to cook for us but on retrospect of course they would. You can see all the dishes they prepared. The Burmese curries are fantastic and the only disappointment was that they toned down the spices for our western pallete so we didn't get to taste the way they usually spice it. Almost everyone over here thinks westerners don't like hot spices so they adapt many things to what they think our tastes are.
When we got to the house we didn't get to take a picture of everyone because they were ushering us to our seats. I think they had been waiting for us and were excited to share the food they had made. All of the guests that weren't family were seated first. The table could hold seven of us. They told us they had already eaten but we knew they were just being polite so we tried to limit how much we ate. This did't really work because every step of the way they were urging us to eat more. We were so full we had to go home and take a nap!

A Fancy Hairdo

Philip and I visited Mai Sot about 8 days after getting to Thailand. It's on the border with Burma about halfway up the country and high in the mountains. We met some Burmese migrants and I helped teach them English. I am going to do a whole blog about this because it was so amazing. We bought the family some groceries and they invited us for a middle of the day meal. When we arrived they had prepared a feast and we were the guests of honor. They had invited their whole extended family and they were all done up in their finest traditional clothes. All the women had these hair sticks in their hair and after some fussing they managed to get one in mine. These are some of the poorest, disinfranchised people in the world and they gave me this pick and they gave Philip a sarong.

A Beautiful Girl

When we walked up the 718 stairs to the temple we came upon this beautiful little girl and her mom selling stuff. In the picture with her is a Thai nurse we were talking with. She and her partner wanted to have their pictures taken with us a few minutes earlier. The nurse bought a bracelet from the little girl and gave it to me for good luck in the new year so I bought one and gave it to her. The little girl was quite shy and wouldn't stay still long enough for us to get a picture of her with her mom. In her tribe there are different hats for different stages of life. Isn't she cute?

Aka Women

You see ladies dressed like this in the bigger cities and towns in Thailand from the north down to Bangkok but you have a hard time believing they really wear this gear! Then we walked to villages in Mai Salong and there they were in all their glory....
The headgear used to be a lot heavier when it was made from real silver. You see the black hair on the forehead, that's really thread. I watched a lady making skeins of thread using her big toe for tension and then sewing them on one of these. They have black hair so I'm not really sure why they do this. The leggings are just from below the knee to the ankle.
While we were in Mae Salong the town was preparing for a tea festival between Christmas and New Years. This was serious business going on! They were marking out spaces for selling goods and there was a huge crowd all with opinions about how it should be done. There was much measuring and pacing and then tearing out of stakes and remeasuring etc etc. I don't know how they ever got it done.....

Seven Hundred and Eighteen Steps

This temple was at the top of a mountain in Mai Salong. Although there were 718 stairs there was also a walk straight up the mountain before you got to the steps! It is almost always worth the walk. This temple was exquisite and the only one I've seen with stained glass. Inside it was an architectural dream and the views were unbeleivable. I just love Buddism. Outside the temple sitting on a bench right in front of a no smoking sign was a little old monk sitting with his legs crossed and enjoying a smoke! He was also preoccupied with chasing a little puppy around........

A Nutty Thing To Do

We took this picture in Mai Salong. She has been chewing the nut her whole adult life I'm sure. See what it does to the teeth and lips?

We have a relatively good point and shoot camera with a good zoom. Neither of us take closeups of people without their permission unless we are really far away and they can't tell we are focused on them. We often ask permission and show the picture to the person afterwards. One exception was the curious baby. We couldn't ask or it would have changed the moment so we showed the picture to the mom afterward and she was so proud she wanted us to take another one!

I had a big argument with a guy who was taking pictures of the tea pickers. We were far away and took only a few. He stood next to the truck with the biggest honking camera you can imagine and just kept shooting for a long long time. It was like they were fish in a fishbowl and couldn't get away. I hated it and told him I though it was awful because I noticed they were uncomfortable with it. Maybe I should keep my big mouth shut sometimes........ I've seen so many rude photographers it drives me crazy! The other night we were in a restaurant and a monk was eating at the next table. A tourist came in and held out her arm pointing at him at close range and then took his picture. He was eating his supper for heaven sakes! Ok I won't rant anymore........

Christmas Gifts in Mai Salong

These kids are on their way to school on Christmas day. The shop owners had mystery presents of all sizes wrapped up and all at a set price. Kind of like a grab bag at home. The kids were painstakingly shaking and rattling and considering the wrapping before picking one out. I never did figure out if they were for the teacher or a gift exchange but the scene was really lovely. Funny thing is many of these kids are Buddist!

Tea Pickers

This is a truckload of tea pickers in Mai Salong, Thailand. Planta- tion owners pick them up from the local market early in the morning. It seems to be a loose arrangement whereby they take as many as can squeeze in the truck. There is a lot of good natured jostling as they get in but seemingly no disputes over who gets to go. Sometimes there are babies along too.

A Curious Baby

This little fellow noticed us sitting behind his mother ( he was on her back) and he twisted around further and further until he could get a good look at us! Isn't he a beauty?! Babies in rural areas don't wear diapers. Their mothers have them close most of the time and they are in sync with when they have to go. I guess its a cycle of eat, poop. pee...eat poop pee...etc etc. They hold them out away from their bodies and they go on schedule. Imagine all the water and or disposable diapers this saves! Having said this I haven't seen a newborn but I suspect they have some kind of diaper for them.........

A Traveling Man

This delightful man walked about 15 kms up and down the road everyday in Mai Salong clanging his cymbals and trying to get tourists, of which there were few, to pay for a ride on his pony. When we asked him if we could take his picture he quickly took off his black rimmed glasses that covered the entire top half of his face! I was kind of sorry he did because they made him even more charming....