Sunday, January 29, 2012

Chinese New Year - Karaoke Bar

 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. 
One of the feet of the chicken in my Chinese New Year soup.  Looks delicious right?   
This was the karaoke room.
Karaoke room

Khmers, Russians, and Policeman, OH MY!

I have a lot of updates and stories for you but I won't write them all one at a time so you won't be stuck reading an obnoxiously long blog post.  This one will be long enough as it is. This first story happened yesterday.  It is a testament to how ineffectual and corrupt the police are in this country.   This is the story as I have come to understand it. I was getting bits and pieces from people while it was going on and obviously I'm never going to know exactly what happened from start to finish but I did witness some of it myself so I'll tell you the story as it has been relayed to me and you can decide for yourself.


So a Russian guy walks into a moto shop.  He already rented a moto from these people but it trying to exchange it for another one.  The owner says that there were 2 liters of gas in the tank and now they were asking for money for it (I originally heard the story that the Russian brought the bike back and it was damaged or broken in some way and he refused to pay for it or take responsibility but it was later revised to the gas story).  Apparently the Russian guy refused to pay and the Khmer man who owns the shop said they wouldn't give him his passport back if he didn't pay.  Things started getting heated I assume because soon punches were being thrown (I don't know who threw the first punch though) and the Khmer people closed the door of the shop and locked him in and took out an iron wrench and began beating the Russian.  This is when I started watching and a huge crowd formed around this shop.  I mean HUGE.


So after this point I pretty much know what happens for sure, the starts of this fight were just speculation from other people but at the point when he was locked in the shop and getting beat with an iron wrench is when I started witnessing the event. His girlfriend was outside the shop going trying to do something because her boyfriend was getting the shit beat out of him.  Finally, about 5-10 minutes went by and the cops finally came and made the Khmer people open the door of the shop.  When they opened the door, the wife of the owner tried holding the Russian back from running and the Russian out of instinct or because he was still scared he was being beaten or out of anger, hit the wife in the arm pretty hard.  So then the police came and were probably trying to sort things out.  The moto that the Russian initially brought back was smashed to pieces in the shop, I don't know if it was the Khmer people that did that while they were beating the Russian or if the Russian did it or a combination of the two things.  And the Khmer people started telling the police the Russian was trying to steal the moto and that the Russian threatened to come into their house and break everything in it but I'm not sure about the truth in this because this man is known to not be a good person.  So the police where there but then the owner's son drove up on his moto and apparently this guy is a psycho.  So he comes in and starts to get fired up and then about 8 Khmer men start beating on the Russian guy again, in front of everyone, with the police standing right there, in front of a huge crowd of onlookers. The police couldn't do anything to stop it.  It lasted about 2 minutes or so before the police finally stopped it.  The Russian guy pretty much ran away and went to a doctor's office because he now had a huge gash over his eyebrow and welts and bruises and scratches all over his body from the iron wrench.


He was in the doctor's office for about 2 minutes and went next door to the police station.  He was is the police station for hours.  We heard from someone there that the Russian guy now had to pay 500 dollars to the owner of the shop.  By the way, the owner and all the people that beat the guy weren't arrested or even taken to the police station.   So this Russian guy gets beat, for whatever reason, by multiple people who have a weapon and have locked him in their shop and then beat him again out on the street where no less than 100 people saw and the police were standing right there, and the Russian has to pay 500 dollars to the Khmer people who beat him and the Khmer people are unaffected but 500 dollars richer. This doesn't seem right to me.


Most of this story is just guesses of what happened and gossip around the incident so I wouldn't believe everything but I did see this guy get jumped in front of the police by 8 Khmer men, I saw his bruises and wounds when he left, and I saw him go into the police station and then finally leave hours and hours later. I also saw the smashed moto and I saw the situation outside when he was locked inside the building getting beaten.  So those are the things I know for sure.


 Also, a lot of other Russians showed up at the scene after the first Russian guy left.  They looked around and hopped on their moto and left.  Apparently, according to some of the people that I hang out with, the Russian mafia is a big thing here.  You don't mess with the Russians here. They have tons of money and are scary mafia people that will kill and do anything to protect their own.  I don't know how much of that is truth either.  There do seem to be a lot of Russians and they seem to have money but I don't know about the whole mafia underground cartel thing.  And they said the police here were scared of the Russians and won't get in their way. So according to the people I hang out with, this isn't over.  The Russians will do something to retaliate.  But I'm not so convinced.  Oh well.  We'll see. I'm putting some pictures on here of the scene yesterday.  It amazed me how BIG the crowd got.  It was huge!  
This was the crowd right before the Khmer men beat up the Russian the second time.  They blocked off almost 6 lanes of traffic.  And the 2 police officers did nothing to break up the crowd.  They stayed there for a good 45 minutes total.  Insanity.


Well that's my story.  I'll be posting more shortly so stay tuned!  This was the most interesting thing to happen to me in months.