Only in Cambodia, Part I

Remember how I said I could write a thousand posts with the theme "Cambodia Does Not Have Lawyer"? Well, I could also write just as many themed "Only in Cambodia".

One day, during one of our morning walks, we walked through the temple grounds. There was a big, beautiful temple (obviously) in the center of the compound, with several smaller buildings including monks' quarters surrounding it, a cemetery, and an outdoor crematorium all set on the banks of the Serei Sophorn river.

We stop and talk to these monks, and one of them, through his broken English, asks us if we'd like to see his monk elder who had recently passed away.

*blink*

*blink blink*

Sure, we said, and followed him into one of the smaller buildings. Now let me back up here and explain something about myself. There is a great battle that goes on in my mind when it comes to death. One half of me has a very strong morbid curiosity. That's the part of me that would be fascinated by watching an autopsy. Then there's the other half, that has an extremely low creep point. That's the part that after watching said autopsy would go home and have nightmares about it for weeks. So as we follow this monk, my mind is screaming- Scary! Don't go! Cool! Interesting! Don't look!! Turn around and run!

We enter this small building as the monk runs ahead and starts turning on all of these switches, illuminating the place with brightly colored Christmas lights, all blinking and twinkling. There were candles and incense, the whole scene kind of had a birthday party feel to it. I half expected to see a mariachi band playing in the corner.

The corpse was in a glass coffin that seemed to me to be like a life sized fish tank. The younger monk was quite proud of this display, you could tell, as he explained that this elder had been on display here for three months, and would stay here for three years (YIKES!) I noticed he had little cotton balls up his nose, which I assumed was to keep the cartilage from collapsing. And since you were wondering...no, I didn't smell anything.

These pictures are from Dave's collection, since I didn't have the guts to take any:





I haven't had any nightmares about this. Guess that means I am growing up.