Khmer traditions

Around the same time as the Water Festival there was a day where the children told me that they were going to stay up until after midnight.  They were going to let the moon shine on them because it will bring you good luck.  This is another one of those 'would-have-been-huge' parties had the king not died.  Still, they held the tradition...just not the fireworks.

Note:  I didn't go.  It's too late.  It's too dark.  I don't speak the language.  There aren't a bunch of tourists because the holiday was basically 'canceled', so I'd be the only white girl. The family couldn't come with me because Botevy had just barely come home from the hospital.

I saw the moon, it shone on me from the balcony of the town-house, so I got blessings.

The kids go out, there are parties in the street.  Around midnight they eat this stuff:  it's rice chips.  They've been cooked, flattened, and then dried out.  Then they put other spices or fruits with it and eat it by the handful for good luck.
They also make lots of noise to keep the ghosts way.

 More Khmer Traditions:
Ghosts.  They're real.  They can be blamed for everything.   Families keep a cactus or two in their home to keep them away.  It's like a dream-catcher...but a plant.

Bowing.  People bow all the time.  The cashiers at the grocery store when you're done buying food, the people you greet "Bruep seur", when you come, when you go, when you see an old person, when you see someone you know but can't talk to them, when you buy something, when you refuse to buy something, when you give money to the beggar, when you don't, when you go up and bare your testimony in Church you bow to the branch president and then the congregation, when you give a lesson....
all the time.

Haggling.  For everything.  Unless it's a chain store.  Those are fixed.

When someone dies you wear a black ribbon over your heart until the mourning period is over.

 Apsara- these are Cambodian angels.  They were carved on the walls of temples in Angkor.  They're a common subject for any statues or figurines. They were carved to keep the kings company.  The ancient Khmer believed that the kings were gods, so they carved dancing angels to keep them company.

Black ribbons over your heart when you're in morning.  People are still wearing them for the late king.  Not everybody, but still.

They don't mail things.  I asked.  They have an absolutely terrible postage system and I can decide if they don't write letters because the system is bad or if the system is bad because they don't write letters.