How to celebrate the new year in Cambodia

Cambodian New Year generally occurs in mid-April, about the time the monsoons return. It's a time of water fights, family and games that make people scream with delight — and pain.

If you love the description, you've got a few months to buy your tickets to Phnom Penh. Or, you could just buy "At Home on the Mekong" or "Falling in the Well of Love," which is now also available on Google Play for those who love Cambodia and Android.

IKEA loves Cambodia

The krama is a traditional Khmer garment that is infinitely useful and ubiquitous in Cambodia. It's a hat, a sling, a bag, a towel, a robe ... it's anything really and rural Cambodians always have one.

At IKEA — apparently "krama" is Swedish for "squeeze" or "hug" — it's also a washcloth.

A intercontinental coincidence? Or a trans-cultural mother word that unlocks the beginnings of clothing and hygiene?

Or is it just that Swedish is weirdly similar to a lot of Southeast Asian languages?

Khmer food in Portland

Entrees at Sok Sab Bai food cart in Portland. Photo by Will Koenig

Portland, Ore., has long been known for its food carts and gastronomic zeal. Now several Cambodian-Americans are getting in on the culinary action.



I recently interviewed Saron Khut, who has opened Mekong Bistro in East Portland. He's showcasing Cambodian art and also planning to have a space for Southeast Asian concerts and other events.

Nyno Thol prepares a customer's order. Photo by Will Koenig

Then there's Sok Sab Bai, a food cart run by Nyno Thol. His establishment offers a constantly shifting menu of Cambodian-American dishes that is updated daily on the restaurant's Twitter feed.

Know of any other great Khmer restaurants in Oregon or the Northwest? Tell me in the comments.


View Khmer Restaurants in Portland, Ore. in a larger map

The retired king is dead

Official portrait — Hosted by Wikipedia

Norodom Sihanouk — former king of Cambodia, filmmaker, autocratic despot and all-around renaissance man — has been described as influential, volatile, crafty, charismatic, and above all mercurial.

And, at age 89, he's dead.

This is both shocking and unsurprising as the now-retired king has been in poor health for many years. It's not uncommon to hear he was in France for medical treatment when he was deposed in 1970, though other works describe it as a vacation or a quiet diplomatic round through Europe and the Soviet sphere. But whether he was in country or in exile, firmly in control or a pawn, he was still the "pres moha ksat," the god-king.

I was in Cambodia before Sihanouk abdicated the throne. (He retired in 2004 to bounce between Beijing and Pyongyang, where he apparently felt at home.) His face, and that of Queen Monineath, was inescapable back then. Their portraits were displayed in every schoolroom, government building and in most private businesses.

I saw them during the Water Festival in 2003. I found myself caught in a massive, hot crowd of revelers outside the National Palace. I didn't exactly blend in, but being taller than everyone else did allow me to enjoy the occasional cool breeze — and see the royal couple waving and smiling as they were driven by in a convertible.

The king looked thinner than his portrait, and the queen a bit heavier. But it was the first time I had seen royalty, and they were only a hundred feet away.

Cambodian politics is notoriously messy, but it's something that the king and queen could ride around without worry in front of a huge crowd. His absence will be felt.

What is a phuey sac?

Every culture has perfectly mundane phrases that take on bizarre new meanings when translated literally. In Khmer, a "phuey sac" (the first word rhymes with Roy, and the second with Mike) has some odd connotations when it makes the jump to English.

From an amazing book that just came out:

For Cambodians, your true love — the one who holds you tight on cold nights — is a "phuey sac." Literally a "flesh blanket." This sounds like an accessory from Hannibal Lecter's line of horrific home furnishings, something to curl up under and enjoy a nice Chianti, but it's considered a powerful term of endearment by Cambodians. Everyone wants to find a phuey sac to keep them warm at night.

Cambodia may be a poor country, but it's rich in odd phrases.

Denying genocide

This started out as a comment on Alex Tabarrok's post on Marginal Revolution, where he expressed shock about an article in Counterpunch headlined "Cambodian Genocide Denialism in Counterpunch."

I've not read the Counterpunch article, and I probably won't because I agree with Tabarrok's assessment — and anyway he's far smarter than I am. However, I did live in Cambodia for several years, know many Cambodian-Americans and like to think I can provide some context.

There is a strain of denialism in Cambodian society. About half the population was born after 1980 — so half the population has no direct knowledge of the events. A great many Cambodians who survived the experience don't like to talk about it. There's a cultural aspect: It's considered bad luck to talk about bad things.

And some people — young and old — simply don't want to accept that Cambodians would massacre other Cambodians. It doesn't help that the current regime, which is not considered a paragon of democracy and liberty, uses the genocide and the Vietnamese-backed invasion that ended it as a significant source of legitimacy. There is a sense of "if the dear leader says the sky is blue, maybe it isn't."

It's not uncommon to hear people — even educated, worldly Cambodians who have studied and lived abroad for decades — muse that the Vietnamese orchestrated and planned the genocide to erode Cambodian power. At least some former Khmer Rouge soldiers (especially the holdouts on the Thai border) have expressed no remorse at what happened because they say they were defending the homeland against foreign threats.

On the issue of genocide versus class-based killing, everything I've read and heard indicate that the killing originally targeted the "urban" class (a class broad enough to include anyone who had lived in a city, spoke a foreign language, or had even passing contact with a foreigner) and rapidly spread to anyone who could be considered a threat to the regime. Toward the end, the regime was demanding almost a quota of traitors, leading to random people being rounded up and killed (at least in some areas — enforcement seems to have been uneven). Of course, there are many scholarly works on this subject and reasonable people disagree on the details.

In short, it's not surprising that someone could travel to Cambodia and find a few deniers. I would like to think the U.N. tribunal is helping to change that, but maybe not.

Anyway, if you prefer a first-person account instead of watching an academic grind an ideological ax, check out this reddit question-and-answer session with a Khmer Rouge survivor and her daughter.

That's something worth reading.

For children: Judging the rabbit

This children's book — Judge Rabbit and the Tree Spirit: A Folktale from Cambodia — occupies a narrow slice of cultural relevance. It's a traditional Cambodian folk tale that has text in both English and Khmer.

This bilingual story is, to echo the theme in the story, about as rare as a magic rabbit solving all your problems. Very few children's books are available in Khmer and English. While most families won't be mesmerized by the story, it will be treasured by any multiracial family that is trying to bridge the cultural gap between Cambodia and the English-speaking world. It's also valuable if you want to expose young children to Khmer, both written and spoken.

Beyond the language benefits, the story emphasizes family ties and relying on clever thinking to solve problems. The Judge Rabbit of the title solves the central conflict by outsmarting the antagonist, something that the human characters are unable to do. It is a gentle story with a happy ending.

It is written for a younger audience, perhaps primary school or younger. My son has enjoyed it since he was 3 years old.

That said, it is a faithful translation of a well-known folk tale and older scholars may be interested as well. If you want to deeply analyze it, there are themes of abandonment, a wife's submissive role in Cambodian society, a tenuous legal system, animism and a clear depiction of traditional beliefs about forest spirits. But you don't have to analyze to it enjoy it.