No! It's not part of the SKWID
volunteers' training, it's about eating these delicious quintessential squid on
the beach ....
Happy Khmer New Year to all you! The
Cambodian New Year or 'Chula Chnam Tmey' in Khmer means ‘Enter the New Year’.
This New Year, is particularly special, because it enters 40 years of
liberation for the Kingdom of Cambodia and, ironically, it has also coincided
with a 3 day celebration.
The holiday lasts 3 days, and usually
falls on April 13 or 14, marking an end to the harvest season before the rainy
season begins. Over these three glorious days of celebration, the most
important and significant holiday of the year, families from all over Cambodia,
have resided to their home town to take part in the celebration.
Getting ready for a night out |
At the beach, by day, we watch with
delight the daily goings-on, the colourful threatre of humanity unfold.
Throughout the first part of the
morning, a traffic of rickety fishing boats arrive two by two or in three, to
shore, from their night's catch to deliver to their family-run restaurants. The
same group of fishermen returns to their boats with a packed up breakfast,
before settling to a well-deserved nap.
Soon, beach chairs and colourful
parasols dot the beach for anyone to claim for the day, to enjoy the various
humanitarian scenes, background music, barbecued seafood smells permeating
throughout the day ... It
is interesting how by nature, we tend to be creatures of habit.
Therefore, during our time here, we have claimed the very same seats, sat
beside the very same people on the beach, the Danish girls on one side of us,
and an English couple on the other.
By noon, the beach is packed, I mean jam packed,
even the sea is dotted with a mass of bobbing heads and, amusingly enough, they’re
synchronized with faded rickety green fishing boats who too are bobbing up and down with the waves.
Other lively activities in the water, tubing, numerous tour boats
traveling to and from other islands, sea does who unfortunately are making an
unnecessary racket ...
Added to this enchanting scenery are beautiful Khmer, Vietnamese women-young girls, fully clothed with their colourful hats, who patrol the beach, scanning potential ‘bikini’ or ‘trunk’ customers for a massage, beauty treatments, custom-made bracelets and more. Others, balance, either large plates of fruit on their heads or, lug heavy yokes on their shoulder, balancing their goods, like a pendulum -a yoke is a wooden beam with 4 wires that hang down on both ends of the beam, holding two large containers of produce of some sort. The fairly large bowls can carry a BBQ with squids on one side of the four wires and Styrofoam containers, to balance, on the other for instance.
A beautiful Khmer woman |
Added to this enchanting scenery are beautiful Khmer, Vietnamese women-young girls, fully clothed with their colourful hats, who patrol the beach, scanning potential ‘bikini’ or ‘trunk’ customers for a massage, beauty treatments, custom-made bracelets and more. Others, balance, either large plates of fruit on their heads or, lug heavy yokes on their shoulder, balancing their goods, like a pendulum -a yoke is a wooden beam with 4 wires that hang down on both ends of the beam, holding two large containers of produce of some sort. The fairly large bowls can carry a BBQ with squids on one side of the four wires and Styrofoam containers, to balance, on the other for instance.
Squid anyone? |
Threading |
Wishing lanterns |
By eve, thatch roofed shack style family-run restaurants, take a life of their own, serving delicious grilled BBQ seafood dinners for a phenomenal low price. Of course, we each order a range of fresh grilled seafood fired up on large grills: two squids, two prawns , barracuda or tuna, clams, French fries with a mixed salad. Indeed , a welcoming break from the regular curries in MDK.
The evening ends with an explosion of ‘rainbow’ fireworks bursting into tiny bright stars, followed by paper lanterns slowly released in the air, to give a cheer to the Khmer New Year and, of course to 40 years of freedom.
More later ...
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