khmer sources

Although he is just 25 years old, Long Vannak, believes that his arranged marriage is prosperous and his parents knew what was best for him. He doesn't think he will ever look back with regret. Outsiders sometimes view arranged marriage as a practice of the countryside, or as something bad, but Vannak was educated to 12th grade level. His family is reasonably well off and he chooses to live in the city. Vannak sees himself as a symbol of his culture and is proud of the way he found his wife.

"I used to be a playboy and had many girlfriends, but now I'm married I've changed, and I had no say in who the girl would be-my parents arranged the marriage," he says. Meng Kim Lim, at 28, is seriously preparing for marriage, and he is confident the best way to find a good partner is through the efforts of his parents. "I need to discuss with my parents first about whom to choose to marry with.

If they agree with me, I have no problem," he says. "They are responsible for that." But Srey Thom is also 25, and a graduate of the National Institute of Management in Phnom Penh, and her ideas of marriage reflect the changing ideals of many younger Khmers. "I have a boyfriend at the moment," she says. "He is not the first, and I was devastated when I split up with my first boyfriend.

That taught me one thing-that I don't want to rush into anything. We are engaged to be married as soon as he finds a job, and I am hopeful that he is 'The One', but I believe that knowing and understanding each other before we get married is a very important thing. When an arranged marriage fails, we blame our parents and it creates problems in families, but when the marriage is not arranged, we have to face facts and blame ourselves.

" Khmer tradition demands that parents find a suitable marriage partners for their children, and that their children accept whoever the parents choose. It is a tradition at loggerheads with modern trends, but Vannak, for one, is happy to follow the path his ancestors have always followed and put his faith in his family. "Before parents decide for us to get married to somebody, they think a lot," he says. "No parents want their children to face divorce or unhappiness in the future." But what if they find that they just cannot get along?

"The answer is almost certainly trouble within the family or a divorce," he says. "However, a divorce cannot be a result that comes easily because Khmer society does not accept it well, so the troubled couple needs to try to stay together as long as possible to avoid a divorce that could spoil the family's reputation. Most couples can bear it until the pain disappears."

Khmer children traditionally place great trust in their parents' decisions, particularly that they can provide a happy marriage. In Khmer culture, it is believed that the parents are always right.

One Khmer proverb says that a cake is not bigger than a cup, meaning that parents know more about the world more than their children and, for instance, that the children need to follow their parents' lead in choosing a husband or a wife.

But the world is changing, and young people today are more and more outspoken. Not every child who has watched television, surfed the net and been through university believes the cup and the cake must be different at all. Debate comes from the most unlikely corners.

Yi Soksan, 40, is an official with the human rights group ADHOC and a father of three, but he sees no conflict with arranged marriages. Parents want the best for their children, and good parents do not want anything but happiness for their offspring, he says. "According to tradition, parents arrange and choose the marriage for the children. But according to the law, children can choose somebody they love to marry," he says.

"In this new generation, people choose their marriage by themselves. I believe that in many cases, they do it, not because of real love, but because of love movies, youthful exuberance and the influence of foreign cultures." Miech Ponn, 72, is a consultant at Buddhist Institute's Mores and Custom Commission. He agrees that the new generation is freer than his generation. He also says that people of this generation have higher divorce rates than in the old days. "Before, people needed to spend three days performing a wedding ceremony properly.

Nowadays, the wedding ceremony lasts only a day or two," he says. "Also, in the old days, men could not get married unless they had been ordained or studied at the pagoda, because people believed that being a monk made you more knowledgeable and patient than those who were not ordained. On the other hand, a woman needed to do the Chohl Mlob tradition (rites of passage performed at puberty) in which a girl needed to stay inside the house and refrain from being seen by any man for at least three months. By doing this, it was believed that she learned more about being a perfect girl and a good wife.

" He says that once upon a time, a bride's parents would ask the groom to work for the bride's family for the period of two to three years. After that, the bride's family would be able to judge whether he was hardworking and capable enough to feed their daughter. "The ceremony would only start when the bride's parents liked the groom," he says.

"In the old days, it was the woman who asked for a man's hand in marriage. This happened from the 1950s until the 1970s. This happened when a man was a teacher, a government official and a person who had influence and knowledge." But the outcome of any marriage is always fraught with doubts and dangers, arranged or not. In the end, most people believe, the solution is to marry someone we love, or maybe just someone we can come to love as we spend our lives together.