Afternoon Adventures

Yada has just asked me if I would mind stopping near his house as he needs to change his shirt. Alarm bells chime in my head. I’d felt safe with my tuk tuk driver during our last three days of temple touring but perhaps he had spontaneously decided to kidnap me.
Abruptly we stop beside a small stall offering refreshments. Behind this a group of men sit lazily about on a raised bamboo platform, bowls of some fishy broth and cans of Angkor beer strewn about them.
Yada offers me a drink and explains we will wait here while his friend brings the shirt. I relax and decide beer is a great idea, I follow the motion of his hand to join the men on the bamboo platform.
Yada’s high cheekbones swell up in a cheeky grin as he laughs at something said in Khmer. The men joke and banter easily, giving the impression they are good friends. Curious eyes keep darting over to me, timidly sipping at my beer. Then Yada makes introductions. Their names all seem to start with ‘Sa’. Sampa, Sampow and Sanchong. They raise their beer cans in welcome.
“Choy moy!” I repeat after them, to which they erupt in fits of laughter.
“What?” I ask, “what is it?”
They keep laughing and look to Yada to explain.
“It’s cha-ul moy” he says slowly, “you have to say like this, otherwise it means-” he bursts into schoolboy giggles and shakes his head, the others are still cackling through chipped and yellowing teeth.
It became apparent they took the concept of ‘cheers-ing’ to the extreme. Beers clunked for every joke, every new arrival and every lull in conversation. I began to suspect it was just a tactic for increasing the rate that beer cans were being flung empty to the dirt and popped open afresh.
I discovered through slurred, broken English that my new friends worked for Hotels in the town and this was a day off.
“We do this everyday!” Yada shouts across to me. He has to shout as we are now in a throng of twelve chattering Khmer men. I wonder if there are usually this many of them, getting steadily drunk at midday or if they have just stopped in to see the spectacle of a flame-haired female laughing with the locals.
As we rise to leave Sampa stops us, waggling a finger at Yada, who then turns to me.
“Before we go I must play volleyball to decide who pays for the beer.”
Within moments he has removed the fresh shirt and is running over to the sanded volleyball court next to the stall.
As the game begins I dance along the sideline and wonder how did I end up here?