Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Lori's Cambodian Birthday

Just a short tale regarding a recent Birthday in Siem Reap. No hotels or restaurants (especially Samot) are mentioned.

---------
Here in upside down land, they have an interesting take on all American traditions. The grand-daddy of all cross cultural faux pas is "The Happy Merry Christmas Time" but I find the birthday to be a close second.

First they make these origami fish and birds out of colored paper and hang them in a mobile over the birthday person. Traditional birthday hats are put on the head of the birthday person and any little children in attendance.

They chant a prayer to ask the birds to fly away with all your bad luck and the fish to swim in with the good luck. I had 40 fish and 9 birds (for 49 years old) so I'm taking that as a good sign. 40 fish full of good luck for this year....what could possibly go wrong? Ha.

To complement all this chanting, at the end I bless myself by making the sign of the cross, which makes them look at me funny, but why can't I? If they can pray to the Lord Buddha while I'm wearing a birthday hat, I can make the sign of the cross. I like to cover all the bases.

They got a cake. It's a lime green affair with WAY too much frosting, FAR too many flowers and everything WAY too sweet. On it is written the date and my first and last name. Perhaps this in case there is more than one barang named Lori getting a cake that day?

They turn out the lights, light the candles, then spray this stuff that's a cross between silly string and shaving cream all over everything. They must scream loudly in that pitch that usually only a 3 year old has, while they do this. They spray it all over you, each other, the cake, the plates, the soup spoons we use for eating everything, (even if it's something that needs a fork, like cake for instance). Interesting things happen when this pseudo silly string hits the flames on the candles.

Sparklers are lit to create even more of a fire hazard while the Happy Birthday Song is "sung"; their rendition is this high pitched screaming, in unison, "Happy Birthday to You" about 15 times. By now, the candles have dripped all over the cake because the fan is on and it's blowing everything around. I blow the stubs out and make a wish that I can have more cambodian birthdays.

I cut the cake, giving everyone a piece. Then comes the frosting smearing ritual, which is done in a very diplomatic way; by playing paper rock scissors to see who's gonna get it next. Soon everyone has some highly decorative frosting art on their face and some other body parts.

I'm sure they thought I was quite drunk. I was laughing my butt off the whole time.

The birthday celebration was not quite "right" but nothing here is. Still, the intention was there and a good time was had by all.

Alas, I feared eating any cake. Had one bite just to be polite but bit into something crunchy (hmm, wonder what that is?) so I just used the rest as paint.

Easy to stay skinny over here.

Lori