From Cambodia, With Love: Chinese New Year

So Chinese New Year was last week. Most of it was uneventful but there were a few moments of interesting-ness. On Sunday my host brother slaughtered 2 chickens in the morning to make soup with later, and then they prepared a lot of food and left it out to the ancestors or something. All I know is that a ton of food was on the floor for a long time while the incense burned. And I almost died. The incense was so strong and they burned about 20-30 sticks of it at the same time. I feel like they were trying to smoke me out of the house. I woke up and my eyes were watering and something smelled funny and the longer I stayed in my room, the more pain I was in. I finally left my room and saw the food on the floor and the incense so I decided to stay away from it for a while. The house finally aired out and then it was time to eat all the food that had just been sitting on the floor getting cold for an hour. And this was food that should be eaten hot....room temperature chicken...not good. and probably not healthy either. Oh well, I eat a lot of questionable things in this country. If I was picky about the health standards of everything I eat, I'd never have anything to eat. So we ate and we started drinking beer. I had about 3 or 4 at home....it was 11am. Don't judge, everyone else was doing it too. Then they all got tired and went for their afternoon nap and I wasn't tired so I went to go get internet. On my way, I walked by a restaurant that I eat at sometimes. There were tons of people there and they all called me over to come sit with them. I politely said no but one woman grabbed my arm and pulled me down to sit with them so I felt like i had to. Then they gave me a beer. Then they gave me three more. So I was on my 7th beer at this point and I think I got a Khmer boyfriend during this whole thing. They would just talk to me in Khmer, laugh, blabber on some more, and then sometimes someone would translate a little for me but not usually. My Khmer boyfriend spoke a lot of English and he convinced himself by the end of me being there that I was going to be his girlfriend. Crazy Khmer boys. So I eventually left and when I came back later they were all drunk and had passed out. The next day, I saw them again, and they called me this time. They kept asking when I was coming back. I told them i didn't know and they kept saying that they were going to sing and dance. At this point I really wanted to go sing and dance with them. I was thinking we'd go to a bar or a Khmer club and do these things and I would be around some women that I trusted so it would be ok for me to go and I really wanted to integrate more. This was my chance. I finally went back and they said they were going to Karaoke. I was a little worried but I decided I needed to integrate and do this with them and I'd probably have a good time. Boy was I wrong. I was miserable the whole time. We went to this place and you rent a room and you and all the people you come with go in and pick songs to sing. They are all soooooooooo slow and boring and khmer. And they kept pressuring me to dance but I can't dance to something that slow. The music was just awful. And there was a creepy old guy sitting next to me that would keep making me carry his lap top bag around and he would just say things to me that made me think he was just an ass. He actually said "You have a beautiful face, too bad you're so fat" and then started talking to me about genetically modified organisms and the green revolution. I have no idea why. And he made me read the letter he got about getting a Japanese visa. Like I cared about any of this. He was probably just thinking he was impressing me by all of this but it just made me extremely ticked off. And then he sang a terrible song to me in English and that was my cue to make up an excuse to leave. So i told them that i had to go talk to my mom in America and I got the heck out of there. I walked home and I've never felt so relieved to be out of a place. Note to self: Never NEVER go to a karaoke bar. Oh, and all the Khmer people kept calling me hot dog because they thought that's what my name sounded like and they can't pronounce my real name so they decided this would be funny. I was not amused. Here are some pictures of me and the people I went with. Also a note: Khmer men should not touch women, at all, but they do it to me because they think they can get away with it. I won't be letting it happen anymore.

This is the woman I went with. She's very nice and she definitely likes to drink.

This is the creepy guy who kept making me carry his bags and talked about the Green Revolution. So creepy. During this picture he tried to sniff kiss my cheek. So odd. He should not be touching me. I should have given him a good smack.