07:30 Friday the 9th of April 2004
ooo, I feel rough this morning. Plus I am the only one in the office so far !
Last night was the big Ministry of Fish ‘Welcome Darren Party’
They said that they would send a driver for me at 5pm as the meal at the restaurant was booked for 5:30. so at 6pm I wandered out onto my balcony to wait for them – I know what 5pm really means in Cambodia – at 6:15 I got a phone call saying that they could not find the street I lived on – the Khmer seem to have an aversion to maps – so for the 6th time that day I gave them directions to my house. 6:45 they turn up and 7 of us squeeze into one small Toyota Camrey.
When we get to the restaurant, about half an hour to drive 3 miles, there are only about 20 people there so far, but the top brass are here so I am guided over to sit with them. Then the drinking begins. I am poured a large glass of beer – with the compulsory iceberg floating in it – along with a shot of whiskey. Every time someone arrives, we have a shot of whiskey, every time someone makes a speech, we have a shot of whiskey, every time another plate of food arrives, we have a shot of whiskey. Now there were about 45 people at this meal, a dozen speeches and about 15 courses of food – so we were drinking an awful lot of Scotch ! Well, at least it was scotch, not the local ‘Mekong Whiskey’ which costs about US$ 1 a bottle – urrrk
If I remember correctly, about 12 of those 15 courses were fish of some kind. Here we are, working for the Ministry of Fish trying to figure out ways to conserve fish stocks and supplies in the Country….. I have an idea, why don’t we try NOT consuming our own bodyweight in fish everyday, that might help !?!
Mind you, they waste nothing here. I was sat next to the Vice-Minister for something or another and he merrily tucked into the entrails from the large baked Snakehead fish. Once he had polished them off he set about plucking the eyeballs out of the head and ate those as well, while on my other side the Office Chief of wherever was ripping the gills off to dip in his pickled mango sauce.
Actually the picked mango stuff is lovely, you julienne unripe mangos, mix in some red chillies, add some salt and sugar and leave in white vinegar for a few hours, it’s great, it totally kills the taste buds, very useful if you have a greasy bowl of fish head soup in front of you at breakfast.
So all of these festivities carry on, I get up and have to give the closing speech, thanking my hosts, my colleagues, the government of Cambodia, the dog barking outside the restaurant – all the usual stuff. Being very careful with the pronunciation of the 3 sentences I am going to say in K’mai as the word for help is ‘cheweee’ but, the word ‘chewe’ means fuck - I am here to HELP my colleagues in the Ministry……
After the speeches comes the Khmer dancing, now Khmer dancing is a strange thing at best, everyone walks very slowly anticlockwise around a table moving their hands around – one step forward, left palm up, right palm down, another step forward left palm down, right palm up – well, you get the idea, its all in the wrists I am told ?!?!
The dancing carries on for about an hour and then, very swiftly they party is over.
The project team I know best, the ones I spent a week with in Kompot Province, come over to me and Buntha the team leader asks if I want to go with them somewhere else, to carry on the party.
So, purely in the interests of international relations and team bonding I agree to carry on at another venue.
As we all pile back into the one car and pull out of the car-park Buntha asks me ‘’do I want to go to a karaoke bar, or do I want to go to ‘the house where the beautiful ladies are’ - What a choice, do I want to sing in public, or do I want to go to a Khmer brothel ?!?! Choosing the [slightly] lesser of these evils, I opt for the karaoke.
We drive around the city for what seems like hours looking for a special karaoke bar, which turns out to be down a shitty back street, just of a shitty back street which is near a shitty back street. About 50 years ago this building must have been an upmarket hotel, but now it has this wonderful post-apocalyptic look that reminds me of the city in Mad Max 3 - if that city was populated with Ewoks.
Each of the suites in this former hotel have been turned into small karaoke lounges; sofas all the way round 3 walls, large low coffee table in the middle, the 4th wall with a massive TV screen and speakers loud enough to use at a Def Leopard concert.
The 6 of us sit around the coffee table and in come our waitresses, because you do need 6 waitresses for 6 guests.
The waitresses pour us glasses of Tiger beer and Buntha launches into a full throated rendition of some Khmer chart topper, the videos for these songs all look the same, some lonely looking woman wandering through a rice field searching for her one true love who will whisk her away to a rock by the river ?!?
One of the other guys, Cheaa, apologises to me, he has just checked with his waitress and apparently they do not have any karaoke discs here with English songs, I try my hardest to look disappointed and tell him that it does not matter. The next thing I know, Buntha has sprinted out of the room and vanished, 5 minutes later he reappears clutching a CD, my heart drops. Yes, it just so happened that he has a collection of karaoke CD’s in the car – I reach for my beer quickly !
5 minutes later I am doing a duet with Buntha, ‘Hotel California’ has never been murdered as badly as it was that night. Me, tone deaf and drunk, him broken English and drunk.
This was a scene that was to be repeated with ‘Yesterday’ ‘American Pie’ and several songs that I had never even heard of ?!
More and more Tiger beer was being consumed at this point, as the waitresses were sat down next to each of us topping our glasses up after each sip of beer and popping ice cubes into it whenever they could – fridges are very rare out here!
Sometime around 1 in the morning we all pile back in on top of each other in the car and we weave our way through the backstreets of Phnom Penh – now it is not so much that Cambodia does not have any drink driving laws, it is more the fact that Cambodia has no driving laws whatsoever that worries me about journeys like this.
Still we somehow manage to get everyone home in one piece and I just collapse into bed.
Getting into work for 07:30 this morning was one hell of a challenge! Not that it seems I should have tried so hard, out of 40 members of staff, only about 8 are here !
Plus we have no electricity this morning, so nobody can do any work anyway – I am typing this up on my laptop!
Well, I guess I had better start thinking about my two and a half lunch break soon, shall I go home for a small snooze, or shall I pop round the corner to the local Khmer greasy spoon street vendor for some prawn fried rice with ‘prahok’ that is, fermented fish paste – they smother everything in it here.
More tales of daring and adventures from the third world next week kiddies and remember, do not try these things at home, all stunts are carried out here by trained professionals under expert supervision.
Ciao for now
D
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