My Big Fat Cambodian Family Trip

In honor of Pchum Ben festival this weekend, my host family decided to go on a trip. I’ve always been a fan of family trips because it meant that my parents would let my brother and I do whatever we wanted just so they could relax (e.g. the two cruises we went on where my brother and I ran free on the ship chucking pineapples off the top deck and driving golf balls into the ocean…my parents’ rationale was that we were confined on a cruise ship; how much trouble could we get into?), so I felt ripples of excitement tingling in my extremities when my family announced to me to keep Saturday open, we were going to “daa laing” in Kampong Saom (or Sihanoukville, the preferred name amongst westerners), a well known beach town and a popular getaway spot amongst PCVs because of its western beaches. In Khmer, “to take a trip” or “to go on a visit” is expressed by “daa laing”, which I’ve always found rather amusing, because literally translated it means “walk play”. For Cambodian English speakers, they’ve taken to translating that into “take a walk”. I recently met a guy at the wat where I like to read who told me he wants to take a walk through the waterfalls of Teuk Chhu, and then take a walk through Kampot town, and that I should take a walk with him, and eventually take a walk in his house. This was before I realized what exactly he was referring to so I hastily declined his offer, somewhat appalled at the amount of walking I was asked to do (this girl likes to stay stationary when possible).

The morning of the trip started with an especially promising air: at 5:30am, the whole family was awoken by sounds of retching on the front porch, followed by the sound of projectile vomit hitting the pavement. It was my father, not-so-smoothly recovering from a night of heavy drinking with his friends (it is Pchum Ben, after all, one of the biggest holidays of the Cambodian culture. And by holiday I also mean “reason to drink with reckless abandon”). Kampong Saom is about a two and a half hour drive from my site, and my father was going to be the driver of the day. I sincerely doubted his ability to recover by the time it came time to go, but when I went downstairs at around 7am, he was sitting on the floor eating breakfast and looking absolutely peachy. Everyone else was in a frenzied haste, getting ready. My host mother and sister were cooking enough to survive a nuclear meltdown, my brother was loading the cooler onto the car and stuffing it with drinks and ice, and my youngest sister was making sure everyone had their bags packed and loading them into the car as well. Before I could step in and help, my mother pushed a plateful of noodles into my hands and told me to eat, it would be a long drive and she doesn’t want me getting hungry. Looking around, I thought quietly to myself that it was a LOT of food they were getting ready. They even had a separate cooler, filled completely to the brim with rice. Just rice! Who was going to eat all of it?

Before the question had even fully formed in my mind, though, it was answered by a horde of cousins storming through the front door. Of course. You can’t just go on a family trip without inviting the whole clan. They, too, loaded their bags into the car (my host father drives a van that can, in America, legally seat 13 people including the driver). At this point I’m starting to doubt whether or not there will be enough to space to seat everyone comfortably. I should have just quit while I was ahead, though, because this is Cambodia. There is no such thing as “comfortable” and “too many people”. By the time the van pulled out of the driveway, we had 16 people in it, along with coolers, pots, mats, towels, and various eating utensils. I was reasonably comfortable, though, because truthfully, 1.5 Khmer people equal an American person in size, and thought to myself, “This isn’t too bad”, as we headed down national highway 3 towards Kampong Saom. Passing through Kampot town, however, the van slows. And then it stops, in front of someone’s house. Inside the house contain more cousins, who are laughing and yelling and come running towards the van. There is a mad shuffle for space as four more people and a 5 month old baby get into the van. I end up squished in the second row against a window with my youngest sister sitting on my lap and the head of the 5 month old baby resting on my shoulder. At this point there are twenty people and a baby in the van. I look at my phone. Only two hours and fifteen minutes to go.

After what seems like an eternity, we finally get there. My back is aching and my legs have long lost their feeling underneath my 40-pound sister. As we hobble out of the van, I first thing I notice is that the ocean is 5 meters in front of me. The ocean! What up, Gulf of Thailand! The second thing I notice is that the people in the ocean are all fully clothed. Odd. There is not a swimsuit for miles. Where are the western beaches I had heard so much about? I consciously think about the Nike one-piece competition suit that I brought. Probably not appropriate in this crowd. The third thing I notice is that amongst the people swimming are other people riding obnoxiously on their jetskis. They’re going mind-numbingly fast and doing all sorts of sudden turns and skips, mere meters away from where the common folk are swimming. And what’s more, no one swimming seemed to have minded—everyone would stop what they were doing and look up whenever a jetski skidded by, its rider grinning cockily and sporting 50-cent knockoff Ray Bans.

After lunch (where lo and behold, the entire cooler of rice gets eaten. It was a LOT of rice, and that is coming from a Chinese person), my sisters tell me to put on my clothes and go swimming. Clothes to go swimming with? What? I’m already wearing clothes. I did plan for this, however, and had brought a pair of shorts and a tshirt to wear with my swimsuit, so I reluctantly put everything on over my Nike suit. It felt weird. I step into the water, aware that everyone in my family is looking at me. The water is warm. Really, really warm—for someone who grew up with the Pacific, this, too, felt weird. It also seemed saltier than the Pacific, but that could just be me. It felt amazing to be in the water again, and I knew that I didn’t want to have these clothes restricting my freedom of movement anymore, so I swam out far enough so that my non-swimmer siblings could not follow and stripped down, tucking the shirt and shorts into the back of my suit. It was so liberating, and I spent enough time out there floating and swimming to get my fill, eventually swimming back to play with the siblings and cousins.

I was greeted with, “Why aren’t you wearing a shirt, sister?”

Oh, shit. I forgot to put everything back on. There goes my modesty (not that I ever had any delusions about being able to keep it intact for long anyway).

We spent about a total of four hours at the beach, and then everyone piled back into the van to go home. For some reason, space seemed to have decreased, but maybe that was because everyone was wet and tired. It could also be because the adults bought souvenir noisemakers for the kids, so it was two and a half hours of being cramped accompanied by lovely ambient noise the entire way home. My family has a heart of gold and was so kind to take me on this trip, but I think the next time I travel will be with some fellow PCVs instead. I don’t think I have the chutzpah enough in order to handle this kind of big fat Cambodian family outing again.