Intercultural Differences.

During our Youth Expedition Project (YEP) to Cambodia last year, our team was told that Cambodia shared many of the same attitudes to dress and social taboos as other Southeast Asian cultures. Cambodians are extremely conservative, and naturally we would gain more respect if we're well turned out and modest in our dress. In general men should wear tops and women should avoid skimpy tops and tight shorts. However under the scorching sun of nearly 38ºC, it seemed that even gulping down a gallon or two of iced water didn’t help much to relieve the heat. It was during one occasion when one of the girls, Jenny, decided to challenge the tabooed.

That morning she emerged from her sleeping tent wearing a T-shirt with jean shorts. Most of us were bewildered; wasn’t the instruction not clear enough to forbid us from wearing any thing revealing in the village? A few friends and I went up to her and advised her to change out of her jean shorts to pants or three-quarters, yet she was adamantly unmoved. Her explanation was wearing long pants will only aggravate the condition of her heat rashes.

As we walked across the village to the pavilion for breakfast, we couldn’t help but notice how the locals were staring and pin-pointing at Jenny. It began to stir up some sort of frenzy, and did not take long before the village chief; a pleasant looking elderly man in his 60’s, arrived at the pavilion and interrupted our breakfast.

Our interpreter, Tim, explained that the jeans short Jenny wore brought grave disapproval from the locals as being offensive and disrespectful. Tim proceeded to apologise to the village chief on behalf of the team and Jenny, and reassured him that it was a mistake made in a moment of folly. We were lucky that the village chief was amicable in resolving this issue, for he didn’t persist in perusing the matter any further after Jenny immediately changed out of her shorts. Jenny certainly was taken aback by the degree of seriousness a pair of shorts could implicate, and it was indeed a lesson learnt for Jenny and the team.

Intercultural difference is something we cannot overlook nor take lightly; a simple show of affection may be ordinary in Singapore yet it is particularly offensive to Cambodians. Any display of public affection between men and women, even seeing foreigners holding hands is a source of acute embarrassment to them. We are just so glad that the incident did not affect our relationship with the villagers. It reinforced the point that to be responsible adults, we have to take particular caution in understanding and adhering to the different cultures’ ideology so as to avoid any unnecessary trouble. There have been instances where slight religious or cultural conflicts lead to fights and even escalating into war. All of these should be avoided, shouldn’t it?