Rememberance

The sound of distorted music and chants in arabic, echoed across the quiet village at sunrise, from the nearby Cham Mosque. I actually didn't mind the early wake up call, as it gave me the opportunity to catch up on writing my journal entry for the previous day. Also to get some sunrise photo's in front of my grandparents house.

At 9:00am, Vichheka and myself headed towards Wat Thmei, located about 5-10 minutes out of town. My Great Aunt and Uncle organised a bonn (celebration) event to remember relatives who have passed away, specifically my great grandparents. The remains of my great grandma are housed in a stupa or chedi around the back of the temple grounds.

Luckily we chose to leave home at 9:00 otherwise we would of had to wait an extra hour for everyone to arrive. While waiting till about 10:00am till everyone arrived, I walked around the temple compound and admired the main temple structure as it has recently been renovated and repainted. On my previous trip this same temple lacked any colour or character.

Once everyone arrived and settled down, 4 monks walked towards our great grandparents stupa and sat down and started chanting prayers and blessings. Whilst the monks were praying and chanting, everyone started providing offerings of food, drinks and money to the monks to thank them for the time and wisdom.

As the bonn drew to an end, we left for lunch at Yeay Chun-Lee's house, which was a massive beautiful villa. Vichheka and myself quickly ate and left as we were the only young people there and felt out of place.

Tomorrow will finalize the offering and rememberance bonn, which will be held at my dad's cousins house near the markets. As we left Yeay Chun-Lee's house, I quickly took another browse of Psar Kampong Cham and bought myself a few tops and formal black trousers. All up costing me $26US, I managed to bargain it down from $40, so it wasn't a bad effort.

For the rest of the day, I took it easy as it was getting a little bit warm. Will be able to go where I initially planned to go in the next few days, as soon as I get these bonn's out of the way.

-allan-