Katie en Laurent bij de Khmer: The Chinese Connection

Khmer are very fond of word play. They tend to find that inversing syllables is great fun: "Sooas-sday" becomes "sai-sadoo" and "sok-sabai" becomes "sai-sobok" and so on. This is terribly confusing when for half a day you think that "gay-doo" is Khmer for "hello" until someone tells you that it's "good-day" but inversed. The same goes for wordplay; nothing they relish more than the subtle difference between "sray sa-at" (beautiful girl) and" sray sra-at" (naked girl). Same goes for the russian "Zdravstvuj" which becomes "sra-atsvuj" or "naked is ok?". The big winner was using the word "good" which in Khmer means "bottom". So Good day, good drink, good temple, good massage, good friend... the joke is endless. "Comment ca va?" is also "lady who has alot of lovers" in Khmer... this language is a landmine.

As announced we were whisked away at 6.00AM by our surgeon and friend dr Limsokong (formerly known as Lemsokong". He and his family are all of chinese descent and this weekend they celebrated the yearly Quinming or all soul's day. A live cd of Absynthe Minded was to become the soundtrack to the entire weekend. Dr limsokong had insisted on listening to belgian music so I burned a couple of cd's in advance. But a Live album of the famous Ghent band was his favourite and we must have listened to it 11 times. Kampong Thom is about 150km west of Siem Reab. It was in this rural area that the Chinese family was deported in the Pol Pot era and it is where amongst many others that dr Limsokong's grandfather perished. He himself described the place in a lighter tone "I was born in the jungle, everyday I ate the Kuy fruit, but the monkey also eat the fuit, so we fight everyday" and "my birthplace is also the birthplace of the monkey, the monkey were my neighbours". On the subject of the kuy fruit he had to say "kuy fruit grow on a tree, like a wire around another tree, kuy fruit very high in the tree, so to get the fuit is very difficult ... so we cut the tree". And thus we followed this chinese family to the rural graves of their grandparents and we joined in the celebrations. We observed the curious customs and we were their guests for the weekend. Thank you dr Limsokong!