Travel Day: Phnom Penh - Khmer Music Videos

Because of Southeast Asia(and probably the rest of continent)’s undying fixation on all things karaoke (pronounced “gah-lah-oh-kay” for authenticity’s sake), the five foreigners and (approximately) forty Cambodians on today’s bus to Phnom Penh were all treated to two and a half solid hours of Khmer music videos.

Language and production values aside, Khmer videos are a complete departure from their Western counterparts in their absence of egos, scantily clad dancing girls, bling bling and everything else in between. They come off sort of innocent, really.

Three plotlines of note (my Khmer’s no good so I’m basing this on the assumption that the videos are directly correlated to the lyrics):

1. Boy meets girl, boy brings girl home to meet mom, boy brings girl to Buddhist shrine to make an offering, boy gives dowry to girl’s parents. They live happily ever after (shown walking hand in hand along a beach).
2. Same as above, except the girl’s mother rejects his dowry. Boy pines for lost love.
3. Boy, a landmine victim, grows up with girl, love blooms, mother forbids daughter from seeing boy (I fell asleep somewhere here, sorry).