Guess Who Came To DInner??

It's not my experience when traveling to be invited home to dinner by a native- unless I went to High School with one of them, or am related to one or two of them. But two days ago, the guide who has been taking me around Angkor Wat temples for the last week- Mr Sath [pronounced Sat] invited me to dinner at his house and to meet his wife and children. Needless to say, I was honoured.

Many times-from the back of the Tuk Tuk, I could see many local Cambodian households which range from semi-large [2 story] houses made of brick and wood to one room [I am guessing] "shack-like" buildings on wooden supports with thatch or tin roofs. Mr Sath's house fell in the latter range.

Some typical Cambodian houses-not Mr Sath's though

When the dinner night arrived, I got picked up by our Tuk Tuk driver- Bros [pronounced Bruze] who is an old friend of Mr Sath's and has been driving us around for days. The two of us were very dressed for dinner- you know, proper shirts/blouses with buttons and proper pants-both of us congratulating each other on our appearance. When we arrived at the house we were greeted by Mr Sath, who was adorned in a bath towel, and only a bath towel-and stayed that way for the whole dinner! Mr Sath lives in a neighbourhood kind of like the picture here.

Inside the house, were two rooms- the main one, where we ate, had a large bed- which I suspect sleeps the whole family, a TV set glued to the cartoon channel - playing cartoons I saw when I was a child, a table- which was borrowed from a neighbour so I/we did not have to eat on the floor, and many decorations, which mainly consisted of magazine pictures.

Above the door to the second room-I think it was the kitchen- was an altar to the ancestors- Sath's mother, who passed away a couple of years ago, and Mrs Sath's [who never got introduced] mother and father who were both killed by stepping on a land mine while picking rice. I couldn't take my eyes off either the walls, the television or anything else in the room. And though I brought the camera, I couldn't bring myself to take it out because it seemed too crass.

Mrs Sath who never sat down with us to eat, brought dish after dish to accompany the large plate of plant stems and tree leaves that were on a big platter in the middle of the table. The whole process took about 1/2 hour- and was fascinating. The food was delicious- curries and interesting fish dishes with the required buckets of rice [Bros can eat about 2 litres of rice in one sitting]. The last bit was a dish of fruit that Bros and I brought for the family.

In the middle of the meal, two friends came in, sat down, took a bowl and proceeded to eat. They sell ice-cream from a tuk tuk in the day and are rather poor [as Mr Sath told me later]. We were never introduced, but they seemed to know a little English, because they laughed at my jokes----which were plentiful, because I was a bit nervous and so turned into Party Clown [an act I have perfected over the years, starting  somewhere deep inside my childhood].

Just as we were finishing, the rest of the neighbourhood came trouping in to check out the white chick who came to dinner. They too laughed at my jokes- even though they did not speak or understand a word of English....and I certainly wasn't performing in Cambodian. It was kind of sweet. At the end hugs and handshakes happened all around. It took about 10 minutes to give good-byes. Then Bros drove me back to the hotel.

I was invited again for tonight, but I declined for two reasons: 1. the next day I had the runs and a queasy stomach, and 2.  the other more important reason is that Mr Sath- who seems to feed more than his family doesn't need to spend his hard earned money on food for me to eat. And he like most other Cambodians work hard for very little money. It is a chronic issue here- magnified by recent and older history of war and genocide.

I came away not only feeling very honoured for being invited but incredibly moved by the generosity of people who have so little and are so willing to share what little they do have with others. Reminds me of a number of my friends.

Mr Sath at Beng Mealea temple

Bros - Tuk Tuk driver extraordinaire