The Pink Pants

For all those who've heard about the pink pants, but not seen the pink pants, here are the pink pants as photographed at some ungodly early hour in the morning, probably near 6 am. I think Richard (centre, with the yellow flower) is grinning not because of his impending union with the light of his life, Nek, but because his best mate and best man, Shannon, has been joking about the pink pants for the better part of an hour. The old guy, our holy celebrant at left, was chuckling too. The guy holding the umbrella behind Simone... he laughed at the pink pants too. The cute little kids? They were too polite to laugh out loud. So they made big eyes and ran off to convulse in giggles behind the coconut tree. Nek's sisters, Hua and Boa (sorry if that's misspelt, I don't have a Khmer typeface on this computer) laughed very daintily... at the pink pants.

They'd have been just fine, but I think the orange (!) jacket really sets off the whole ensemble. So did Richard, Simone, Nek, Hua, Boa, the old guy.... It was a riot.

I forgot to mention that Simone had a couple of good chuckles at the pink pants too.

Enough about the pants. I had it on the highest authority (Nek's uncle, plus the tyrannical tailor women who bade me drop my trousers... in the courtyard...) and proceeded to swathe me in the pink silk you see radiant before you. Not the matching orangey silk that I had too. The pink silk. Shiny side out.

So what's really going on in that picture? I'm wearing pink pants. Just kidding. Richard, the guy in the middle, is getting married. His mother and father would normally be where Simone and I are, but they couldn't make the trip from Sydney to Cambodia, so we were subbed in. We're at a guest house down the road from Nek's uncle's guest house, where the wedding will take place. We are (all of us above) going to recreate the traditional procession from the groom's village to the bride's village, bearing all sorts of yummy presents to show her parents what a great guy the groom is. Traditionally we'd have walked a couple of kilometres; for the purposes of symbolism we trudged maybe 300 metres. Soon after this photo was taken, traditional (so I'm told, and I'll have to believe it, 'cos I don't know) Khmer wedding music started playing REALLY LOUDLY. EVEN LOUDER THAN WHEN WE ALL WOKE UP AROUND 4 AM. We therefore had many groggy looking spectators along the walk.

And so, the pink pants proceeded forth... peals of laughter issuing in their wake. And it's not like I could melt into the 5 foot tall crowd, either. Weddings are, indeed, a joyous affair.