Cambodia, part 13b – Thanksgiving in Cambodia

In retrospect, Thanksgiving in Cambodia was a two-day event for me…

I had arrived in Cambodia with lots of thoughts about Advent and Thanksgiving swirling in my head. However, Thanksgiving Day turned out to be a low-key event for our family. We had returned from Siem Reap the day before, and we basically spent the day relaxing/resting/recovering around the home of The Guest Complacent.

At some point, one or more of my girls must have picked up my camera…

The most memorable portion of my day may have been getting to tag along when Mr. Guest Complacent took the moto to pick up the meat for Thanksgiving dinner. Who would’ve thought that just riding around Phnom Penh could be so much fun for a foreigner?

Thanksgiving dinner was good, but not too extravagant. At some point, I simply said to myself, “I’m thankful to be here, and I’m thankful for this meal. I’m thankful for my family. I’m thankful that I don’t have to think about Black Friday.” And that was about it. It didn’t need to be all showy in order to be a Thanksgiving dinner.

Thanksgiving dinner

Oh – and we had a corn tapioca for dessert. I was thankful for that, as well…

And we had a friend join the meal…

And that was about it. Given all my pre-Advent/Thanksgiving/Black Friday thoughts, there isn’t a whole lot to be said for the day itself. Perhaps there will be more when I reflect on Thanksgiving, day 2.

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Coming up: A trip to Mesang

Cambodia, part 13a – Thanksgiving, Advent, and Christmas: my pre-Cambodia thoughts

(or “Jesus is coming: What do we expect?“)

I’d like to frame this part of the story of my family’s trip to Cambodia by introducing (belatedly!) Christine Sine’s invitation to other bloggers to join her in some Advent and Christmas reflections. I’ve been following Christine’s blog, Godspace, for a while, and I was intrigued in early November when she proposed a “synchroblog”. There would be two questions for everyone to consider:

1. On November 23rd: Jesus is coming: What do we expect?
2. On December 28th: Jesus came: Did we get what we expected?

I say “I was intrigued”, but as it turns out, I was also too busy getting ready for the trip to participate in the blogging part of the exercise. However, the question of expectations stuck with me all throughout our trip preparations. My thoughts (mostly without actual answers to the questions) went something like this…

What do I expect? I really have no idea. I’m about to immerse my family in a foreign culture at the beginning of Advent. The season will be stripped of all of its cultural baggage that it carries here in the United States. We will see both poverty and riches. There will be many things that my children can’t fathom right now – things that they’ve never been exposed to before. There will be things that I only begin to imagine. How will they respond? How will I respond? I have no idea, but I’m looking forward to the trip…

A few days later, with the question still bouncing around my brain, I read CNN’s story on Wal-Mart’s Black Friday Deals:

They may as well call it Black Thursday. Joining a slew of other national retailers, Wal-Mart said it too will open its doors nationwide on Thanksgiving night.

Not to be one-upped by Target, which recently announced it would open at midnight on Black Friday, Wal-Mart said it will kick off its Black Friday deals at 10 p.m. on Thursday.

“Our customers told us they would rather stay up late to shop than get up early, so we’re going to hold special events on Thanksgiving and Black Friday,” Duncan Mac Naughton, Wal-Mart’s chief merchandising officer, U.S., said in a statement.

You could follow my link to read the rest of the story. You may not want to. My reflections on Christine’s original question continued…

What do I expect? I’m still not sure, but it’s got to be better than this. The Black Friday shopping tradition in the United States has always left a bitter taste in my mouth. For one thing, it glorifies our already out-of-control consumption. For another, we ignore Advent. We skip past the season of preparation. Shucks – we even skip past Christmas. We go right to the part we like: the gift giving of Epiphany. And we conveniently ignore the part that comes afterward: the flight to Egypt and the killing of the young and innocent in order to maintain power.

And now, we’re just going to rush through Thanksgiving as well. Why don’t all these retailers just stay open all day Thanksgiving? Wouldn’t that be so much more convenient for all of us? A four-day shopping weekend to kick-off a whole month of consumption?

I am so glad that I will not be in the country when all of this is happening.

And all of that was in my mind when I had this thought a few days later…

What if it’s satire – this early store opening on Thanksgiving that Wal-Mart is doing? What if they’re actually being prophetic? What if their intent is to so exaggerate this Black Friday thing that it becomes a mirror that we hold up to ourselves to see our own selfish greed – our need to consume more and more and more. And what if we’ve all missed the satire?!

Nah.

Anyway – those were the thoughts that I carried with me to Cambodia.

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Up next: Thanksgiving in Cambodia

Cambodia, part 12 – Beng Mealea

On Wednesday, November 23rd (one week into our trip), we checked out of our hotel in Siem Reap in order to return to Phnom Penh. On the way back, we stopped at Beng Mealea (about 40 km northeast of Siem Reap).

According to The Monuments of the Angkor Group by Maurice Glaize, published first in 1944…

A trip to Beng Mealea, which in itself demands an entire day, can be combined with a hunting party, since the region is rich in both small and large game and wild animals; tigers, panthers and elephants, herds of oxen and wild buffalo inhabit the forest as far as Prah Khan of Kompong Svay in the east.

Happily, we did not encounter tigers, panthers, or any other dangerous wild animals. We did encounter a relatively little-visited treasure of the ancient Angkor empire.

Entrance pass for Beng Mealea

Beng Mealea (meaning ‘lotus pond’) cannot be dated by any known inscriptions on the temple. However, based on its architectural style, which is the same as Angkor Wat, it is assumed that it was built during the reign of Suryavarman II. In fact, the layout of the two temples is sufficiently similar that some scholars believe that Beng Mealea was constructed first as a scaled-down model of how Angkor Wat was supposed to look.

Beng Mealea

Angkor Wat

(Note that the temples face in different directions. Other than that, they are very similar.)

However, there is one significant difference that the layouts above are not able to reveal: Angkor Wat was never abandoned to the whims of nature, while Beng Mealea was overgrown until relatively recently. For whatever reason, I just love the atmosphere at these temples where things are overgrown. My emotional reaction here was very similar to my initial response when I first encountered Ta Prohm. The air is full of secrets and history. It would be easy to believe that the place was haunted.

Really, I don’t have much more to say about this place, but I do have lots of photos to share. I just couldn’t stop taking them…

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After exploring for a couple of hours, we were ready for some lunch, which we enjoyed locally.

If I recall correctly, this is the place where our table top was simply a cross-section from a very large tree – large enough to fit nine chairs with ease.

After lunch was done, it was time to get home to Phnom Penh. We got in after dark…

The sun sets on our excursion to Siem Reap

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Next up: Thanksgiving