Salt workers are accustomed to braving the burning rays of the sun. While it is their job that makes them slaves to the heat, it is the job's locale that offers relief. Toasty toes may be dipped in the salt fields' cool water whenever the sun becomes too hot to bear.
So, you're thinking of becoming a pet owner in one of the world's fastest developing countries. Have you considered adopting?
In many ways it's a far better option than buying. Your pet comes already house-trained, used to being handled, knows how to socialize with other animals and is probably even vaccinated. There are no risks about its personality clashing with yours as the previous owner will be able to let you know all about the animal's history, likes, dislike and habits. It's a fool-proof way of finding the perfect pet.
Perhaps you've already noticed the pre-holiday excitement building as Khmer New Year steadily approaches.
Looking down any street, you may see two or three vong or circles of people dancing, playing games, or simply enjoying the cooled night air. Khmer New Year is the largest holiday in the country, during which public schools take off at least two weeks, international schools one week, and businesses about three to five days.
Typically, Khmer games help maintain one's mental and physical dexterity. The body's blood pressure, muscle system and brain all are challenged and strengthened in the name of fun...
1. "Tres"
A game played by throwing and catching a ball with one hand while trying to catch an increasing number of sticks with the other hand. Usually, pens or chopsticks are used as the sticks to be caught.
2. "Chol Chhoung"
Usually as a westerner when you look into the future to envision your wedding, you see a lot of predictable ingredients. Church ceremonies, dinner suits, white silk dresses, stretch Mercedes, roses, lots of champagne and canapés and speeches that vary between truly fantastic and simply embarrassing. Afterwards, you hope to jet off somewhere exotic and romantic for a honeymoon and then return to a life in the suburbs with a white picket fence, a Volvo in the driveway and a Labrador tearing up your Azaleas.
For farmers in the West, castrating cattle is a necessary chore. In Cambodia, where steers are worth up to $1000 a head and many people earn less than a dollar a day it is a celebrated profession which ranks besides traditional healers in importance.
Peach Thun thinks his talent, which he believes is due to a magical spirit that guides his hand, helped him survive the Khmer Rouge regime.
The 1975 to 1979 ultra-Maoist regime based its ideology on taking Cambodia back to an agrarian utopia free of social classes, markets and even money. It rode, quite literally, on the cow's back.
When the Khmer Rouge marched into the capital victorious in 1975, emptied the cities and sent almost the entire population the fields in a disastrous attempt to create an agrarian utopia, the ultra-Maoists virtually sealed the country off from the outside world. That meant the people had to use what they could find to fashion their everyday needs.