Time tested.
Combine these ingredients with free wifi, a good book, and wonderful conversation with your spouse, and you have yourself a most perfect respite from the heat offered by the Cambodian outdoors. As much as we like painting outdoors on hot Cambodia afternoons, sometimes we welcome an indoor setting as a change :)
We found ourselves there this past Saturday after getting our car washed (and for anyone who wonders what a Cambodian car wash looks like, I offer the picture below. The scary part is always making sure you are aligned properly when driving onto the actual car wash area..).
Josh had picked up a copy of “Asia Life” Magazine and read part of an article to me entitled “Khmer New Year Games.” Often, when we are driving at night, we will see circles of teenagers gathered playing a game that works somewhat like “Duck Duck Goose,” except that everyone is standing, and you play in pairs, holding hands with another person while another pair of two chases you.
The perk of such a game is that, in a culture where even my husband and I don’t get to hold hands (we are so brave), kids of the opposite sex get to giggle and laugh and flirt in a very culturally acceptable fashion. :)
The article from Asia Life speaks to this exact scenario, and provides quotes from college age students participating in similar games for Khmer New Year, who say that games such as these provide a potential avenue for meeting a boyfriend or girlfriend. One of the games they play is a courting ritual of sorts that involves chasing and trying to hit someone with a cloth ball. If the chaser's aim is working for them that day, they get to ask the person they've tagged to dance with them or sing a song.
There is such a part of me, after reading this article and seeing these games firsthand, that hopes Cambodia is able to somehow maintain these aspects, despite the evidence we see here already revealing a Western influence. And I know that no culture is perfect, but there is something refreshing about these social activities that is largely lacking in our Western culture.
We lure in the opposite gender in very different ways (to put it mildly), and would more likely be prone to consider such cultural games as a throwback to what life was like before we discovered the joys of online interaction (and I say this as someone who is a regular Facebook user), and the advancements we are privy to which allow us both new opportunities and new distractions. I don't claim to have an answer or a bridge between the cultures, but I would like to be better at finding a balance between what appeals to me simply because it is "new and improved" and those things that might be worth holding onto.
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