Unquestionably one of the most fascinating encounters on our travels has to have been with the man you see in the picture above. After taking a lesson at the school we were volunteering at in Siem Reap, Jimmy (who runs the school) said he wanted to take us to see the family of some of the kids who lived a little way out of town. With no idea what to expect, all 3 of us hopped on Jimmy's moped and crawled our way to the outskirts of town. When we got there we were met by a veritable motley crew of Cambodian characters but one in particular stood out.
The 2 nights and 1 one day we spent with him and his family was a fair while back now and I feel I wont do his spectacular story justice but let me try and paint a picture of this man from what information my brain still retains. The reason I only call the man him is because I never learnt his name. Its apparently rude to call elders by their name so I just referred to him as Kong or "Grandfather".
The fact that at 81 he was the father to 3 kids aged 7 to 11 and the husband to a 47 year old wife was remarkable enough but when more of his stories were translated through Jimmy it transpired that he had a fair amount of life experience. As he sat on his wooden platform outside the Government Officials house he watched over, chain smoking relentlessly, we learnt that he had fought with the Americans and South Vietnamese in the Vietnam war before returning to the mountains of Cambodia to study Brahmanism and Sanskrit, circling the border of Siem Reap city on his bike in his spare time, defending it against invaders from Thailand, Japan and France.
Now for some reason he took us a shine to us (Jimmy later told us he had never seen him so animated and that he had been surprised at how genuinely attentive and inquisitive we were) and wanted to help us out in some way. He explained that Brahmanism was closely linked to music and in particular with drums so was keen on what I did with music and Natalie did with her art. It was hard trying to explain that these weren't exactly jobs for us in a traditional sense and that we didn't have managers and such like but the concept was lost in translation and he was keen on concocting something for us anyway and who were we to refuse. We agreed to go back the next day but before that he had time to fit in some predictions based on the Animal signs of our time of birth. The end result of his predictions was that we had a strong relationship and that, rather worryingly, we would have kid in the next 2 years.
We arrived nice and early the next day but no-one seemed to be in any rush to get cracking until they had watched a bit of a cock fight that was going on in the back yard. After this bizarre and slightly grim interlude we went inside the Government officials house to get on with proceedings, which entailed Kong writing Sanskrit phrases on our body before rubbing over them with gold leaf and our perfumes. Apparently different phrases relate to different animals and can assist with different things. For instance, the sign of the Sa-Re-Ga or bird written on the throat can give you a beautiful singing voice and so on. He also gave us both a potion to apply on to hair and arms before meeting important people who we feel can enhance our careers. In addition to this I got some Sanskrit engraved metal for myself and members of my old band which, attached to instruments, will attract an audience to you wherever you play. Natalie got a small concoction in what looked like an acorn shell and was told that when it was running out she could top it up by dipping some fabric covered in menstrual by product into it. I thought it best not to ask any questions at this point but he moved on insisting that we send him names and addresses of people we want to influence so he can help us, saying that he wanted to see if his magic worked on foreigners and that he hoped to make us famous one day.
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