Boar skin, it's what's for dinner

I just got in from a long weekend at Mondulkiri Province, the largest province in Cambodia and also the least populated. Most of Cambodia celebrates International Women’s Day (March 8) by taking the day off of work, and Sovannaphumi School was no exception. For further celebration, my school took a staff retreat to get out of the city and into the mountains. I was able to bring Susan along as my guest and I was grateful to have a friend with whom I could experience some outrageous and ridiculous moments. Throughout the trip we would make faces to one another or have short conversations about what the heck was going on, which might make our blog entries pretty close so if you follow both then I apologize for the duplicity.

Before I left, I knew this information: Mondulkiri is a province, it is known for its green forests, landscapes, and tribal community. I knew there was a plan, seeing as about 200 teachers and staff were making the 7-hour drive, but I didn’t know what was happening or when. I knew it cost $25 to go. I also had a feeling that Susan and I would be two of very few Westerners along for the ride. Needless to say, I was excited.

There were so many absurd moments that I feel like a list format would be best. For the 7-8 hour bus ride, 3 hours were taken up by long rest stops that included full meals and a leisurely stroll through a market. The other 4-5 hours were spent listening to passengers on the bus singing karaoke, telling jokes, sharing funny stories, or playing games over the loudspeaker system of the bus—all in Khmer, of course. There was some respite from the joke-telling and song-singing when they played movies, TV shows, and music videos all quite loudly and all very Khmer.

The rooming situation was Susan and I with two other staff ladies who were very nice and shared some food with us. They also happened to be early risers and insisted that we wake up at 5:30am, even though we didn’t have to be ready until 7. I tried to ignore the, “Valerie…wake up now. Hurry you get ready” every five or ten minutes following 5:30 and it seemed that they too ignored my response of, “not yet, I have an alarm set..I take a short time to get ready…” So up we got.

We saw two areas with gorgeous waterfalls and drove through many mountainous (hilly) landscapes. The dust was thick through these parts, and I finally understood why people would wear a facemask. Later in the day I blew my nose and realized exactly how pervasive this reddish brown dust actually was. It was great fun to be a part of a stereotypical Asian tour bus. We really did get stop alongside many sights, file out of the bus, snap numerous and repetitive photos, and file back on the bus. Susan and I were hailed into many pictures, being a part of the sights ourselves.

Finally I’ll get to the food. Since this was a Khmer vacation that I just happened to be on, I did what the Khmers did and ate what they ate. I bought some wine that has a cobra and scorpion in it, with the scorpion’s tail nestled nicely between the cobra’s jaws. One of my co-workers, Arun, gave Susan and me some guidance as to what to buy, what we were eating and what people were talking about etc. He picked out food for the table and we shared boar-skin soup and deer meat for the table. On Saturday there was a big party that included: dancing, drinking, roasting an entire cow, and drawing a raffle. I indulged my hosts by eating some cow liver, but declined on the stomach, lung, and intestine. The actual meat of the cow was very tasty. The Khmer dancing was very similar to my experience at the wedding. The raffle had a lot of small winners and a grand prize of a big standing fan. I won a small prize: a tube of toothpaste. Having been up since 5:30 thanks to the roommates, I was pretty beat by the time the party ended at midnight.

The ride back was almost identical to the ride going, except this time on the rest stops Susan and I became more adventurous with our food choice. For lunch we had a bamboo shoot that was filled with sticky rice and beans and was really filling and tasty, followed by some mango and sugar cane, and all topped off with a tarantula and cricket! I was content just to look and take pictures of this, but a co-worker was telling me of the medicinal properties that the people in the provinces believe tarantulas to have. Apparently if you have a cough and you eat the butt, then it will make you feel better. I settled on a few legs and shoulder regions. You only live once, right?

Anyways, it’s good to be back in my apartment and it felt great to get back to my students. Plus walking around school I see more familiar faces in my fellow staff. I don’t think I’ll be having boar skin or cow innards again any time soon, though.