On hols with my Chakras

A couple of weeks ago week was Khmer New Year – hence no school for the children and none for me either! As I mentioned in a previous post, the anti-malarials I have been taking – Mefloquine – temporarily ruined my brain. (Don't take this stuff.) I was feeling quite anxious and  paranoid, and being in a country where you don’t speak much of the language and look so different, just heightens the problem. It’s easy to imagine everyone is talking about you the whole time, when to be fair, they very well might be. They're almost definitely looking at you. For a few, agoraphobic days, it was tempting to stay indoors with just my ceiling fan and Parks and Recreation for company. Which is kind of a travesty when you’re in such a new, and remarkable country. 

Anyway, this is the mental background to me choosing to book into a Buddhist-inspired yoga and meditation retreat in Siem Reap for my holidays.

I arrived, grumpy and tired after an 8-hour bus journey with a strangers' child on my lap, with some reservations. I feared the other people on the retreat would to be couples, or people obsessed with yoga, or the worst possible scenario - couples obsessed with yoga. People who bandied around words like “chakra” and “zen”, described themselves as “spiritual” without a cringe and stayed behind after class to ask serious questions about "deepening their self-practice”. I can’t say these fears were entirely allayed when after our first dinner (lentil stew) , the retreat manager asked us to read aloud the Buddhist-inspired mantras and saying on our placemat, and “share with the group” how this message reflected our own point in our own life journey. Mine was something about tough trials leading to high mountains. I could hear my mother’s snorts all the way from Streatham. 

But it was difficult to remain cynical; the retreat managers – Margo and Steve – an Australian couple in their 50s - were so unflappably upbeat, overwhelmingly positive and seemed so genuinely keen for us to enjoy ourselves, it was contagious. I found myself laughing more than I have done in years, loudly, and for no reason. I got really into "Yogi Tea", whatever that was. I knew I had reached the point of no return when on the second day we were discussing plans for the afternoon and I suggested we could just “be”. It was too late to think of another verb to folow – I had meant "be”, as a verb complete in itself, content to stand (or sit crossed-legged) alone. 

The retreat involved some meditation, sitting half-lotus while the fan ticked and the dogs barked outside and pins and needles climbed up my left calf. I have never very good at meditation. My mind is like a fly at a barbeque, buzzing from one anxious or banal thought to the other, however many times it is swatted away.

I’m not much of a natural at yoga either, I can’t touch my toes and tended to laugh like a loon when the pair stretches got all sexual/child birth like (one involved your partner standing between your open legs and stretching them apart while you told him how hard to go and whether you were ready for another contraction). I really enjoyed the yoga though – and not purely for these intimate moments. The classes were incredibly varied – one teacher used golf and tennis balls which we rolled around our feet and hands, another smashed gongs above our heads in the period usually set aside for quiet reflection – a technique that actually brought me closer to a meditative state than any other.

Like this guy (sleeping Buddha, Siem Reap province)

And most importantly, the people I shared the retreat with were really awesome. I mean, I have admired the passion and debating skills of the French with whom I have worked so far, and the Khmer have been almost without exception, wonderful, warm and engaging people, but it was nice to be with people who I felt an instant, and genuine connection with, and shared a mother tongue. It soon became clear that every one of us had visited the retreat for some personal emotional reason, and also became clear that we were also pretty willing to discuss and analyse these emotional reasons, and listen to each other, in great detail, intimacy and length. And as everyone who I have forced to play 90s board game Therapy will know (SHOUT OUT!) , I am a great fan of all that stuff. By the end, after every single one of us had delayed our departure date to spend more time at the retreat and were referring to each other as a family, I began to be slightly suspicious that our hosts had been slipping something funny into our Yogi Tea, and we'd end up staying there forever, locked in an endless cycle of downward dogs and empahsising with each other's love traumas. Although, even this thought makes me feel kind of whistful...

Anyway, after all that yoga malarky had finished what we really needed was a night of heavy drinking to really relax. Luckily, it was New Year's Eve, or rather day three of the New Year's holiday. (They like holidays here). We left the warm maternal embrace of the retreat and ventured into Pub Street - the hub of Siem Reap. Actually we had paid a brief visit the evening before, but found everything quite calm, albeit for a few very camp pop bands on a stage, but it turned out that the third night was the night everyone turned up to party. The streets were packed with people dancing to the thud of massive speakers, most of whom were armed with a bottle of talcum powder which they spiralled in the air or threw and smeared on everybody's faces. Of course, being three of the only foreigners there we the talcum powder targets of choice, and the some parts of the night felt like we had inadvertantly joined in a game called "How much whiter can we get the Barang". (Although we did eventually though purchase our own bottle of talcum powder and exact some revenge...) 

Here's me, Alison and Hollie with a new Khmer pal 

Somebody told me that talcum powder had some sort of historic or spiritual significance, but I haven't been able to find anything to correborate this. 

Attempting to work the ghost look

In the lead up to Khmer New Year, I'd been warned so many times about crime going up - "Be careful of your bags"; "It's Khmer New Year - everybody's trying to get money to go back home to see their family." I have to say though, despite the obvious annoyance of having talcum powder constantly shoved in my mouth, nose, eyes and all over my clothes (my bag still has traces two weeks later), I never felt in the least bit threatened. In fact, people always grinned in a very friendly way before they shoved a fistful of white powder in my face and wished me "Sur Sdei Chham Thami". Apart from among the Barang, there didn't even seem to be much drinking, everyone just seemed super excited to be out, dancing on the streets, and having an excuse to touch strangers' faces. It was a kind of crazy atmosphere, but also a completely unthreatening one, where not a single person, or Khmer person at least, was abrasive or rude or needed to be avoided or told to fuck off, and no possessions were lost or stolen in the process. I don't want to draw any comparisons with Trafalgar Square on 31st December, but, you know, all I want to say is that we live in a closed and materialistic culture where people just don't share their white powder which such abundant genorosity. 

 

Some revellers

Anyway, the retreat was called Angkor Bodhi Tree and here's the link in case you're ever in that neck of the woods and in need of some spiritual uplift. 

My next blog will be about something very important. Possibly religion or politics.

Namaste! 

Village temple decked out for New Year (I wonder who gets to sit on that chair)