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In Phnom Penh, I was lucky enough this year to be able to get in on the fun at the Royal Plowing Ceremony. I enjoy this particular ceremony. It is full of royal pomp, Brahmanist practice (harkening back to pre-Buddhist Khmerness) and of course, is focused on agriculture (plus, who can’t love fertility rituals?). In a nutshell (there’s much more to it than this): the King, or in this case his desigante (as the King himself is unmarried, and so cannot perform the ceremony), opens the planting season by plowing several furrows running around the field next to the royal palace. This year, the King’s designate was Prince Norodom Singharath, pictured above. Following this procession, one of the ox teams is offered a range of foods, in a row of golden bowls– sesame seeds, rice, beans, wine, grass, water and corn. Their behavior, what they choose and how much of it, is then interpreted by the royal Brahman priests in order to forcast the coming year (the Brahmans are on the left wearing white in the image below). This year, neither animal was particularly hungry. One ate 45% of the bowel of corn. The other refused to eat altogether. As I understand it, this suggests that corn yields will be fair. However, rice producers should be worred, as the team avoided eating any rice at all, which predicts a poor rice harvest. Likewise, neither drank any water. This predicts a dry year. So, the outlook is pretty negative, since the majority of Cambodia’s agriculture is based on rice. And much of that depends upon the rain.

Another thing that I find interesting about the Royal Plowing Cermony is that I keep getting my pocket picked there. In 2005, a girl tried to sneak my camera out of my pocket, but I interrupted her mid-sneak. This time, my ziploc bag of toilet paper was removed from my back pocket, despite it being securely buttoned in. I caught on quickly after it was gone, and recovered it from the ground next to me (beneath the feet of the guy who I think stole, then discarded, it). Then, not 10 minutes later, someone else tried the same thing. This time I was onto him before he got my pocket open. Interestingly, I had to nearly turn my entire body around to face him before he let go of my pocket flap (reminding me of a friend of mine, who caught someone picking his pocket, grabbed him by the shirt with both hands, and while he was administering the pre-beating cuss words, the slickster stole the watch right off of his wrist and then wriggled free). I am not surprised to have been targeted in that situation (a foreigner in a crowd of people, all craning their necks to see what the oxen are doing = easy pickins), and am not all that bent out of shape about it. I’d probably be more annoyed if they had actually found something valuable.

I think that over the course of my life, I have been the target of pickpockets 5 times– twice at bus stands in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and three times here at the Royal Plowing ceremony (almost 10 years living in New York City, and nothing has happened there, yet). I try to plan for such events, and I have been lucky. So no one has ever gotten anything more valuable than my stash of toilet paper (which they always seem to discard immediately, for some reason). And, I sort of appreciate the chance to analyze their tactics.

In retrospect, it is always pretty clear how they did it– what distractions they used, whether they were working in a group of not, and stuff like that. Sometimes it is pretty ingenious (in a slight of hand sense), like the one guy that was part of the chaos of a pre-dawn bus loading who pointed up at the top of the bus with one hand, yelling to his friends (seemingly involved in lashing down cargo), while at the same time discretely reaching with his other hand beneath his pointing arm (his hand concealed by his armpit) to get into my breast pocket as we passed each other shoulder to shoulder. I, of course, was distracted– looking up to see what he was yelling about. Others are not that ingenious, like the first guy today. He took advantage of people moving from the front of the crowd to the rear, to push me forward. I just thought he was a big jerk trying to get closer to the front. And that is what I was supposed to think, as all his pushing on my upper back distracted me from my behind, which was signalling an intrusion attempt which ultimately went unheeded.

I was not the only one targeted at the event. One young woman was taken away by the police when a middle-aged Khmer man caught her stealing his cell phone. He seemed more amused about it than anything, though she certainly was not. I believe that she was part of the team who made the second attempt on my toilet paper. So I must confess to having some satisfaction in her capture. However, I have never confronted anyone or called in the police when this sort of thing happens. I am never 100% confindent in my assessment of exactly who did it. The sneaky nature of the crime, and the anonymity of the crowd, makes it difficult to be certain enough to get all serious about things. Things certainly could have been worse– some of the government employees I know who came in from the countryside to work at the event that had their hotel rooms broken into. They lost money, cell phones, keys. That really stinks. One vowed never to return to the city again. I can’t say I blame him for feeling that way. But I’ll still probably turn out for the Royal Plowing Ceremony next time I am in town for it. Maybe I’ll even jump on the chance to gather more data, and put toilet paper in both my back pockets.

Above: packing up after the ceremony, the mobile traditional percussion unit is returned to the palace.