Yous-sa, the Cockney Cambodian Tour Guide by Susan Miles
Featured Hotel in Cambodia
Raffles Grand Hotel d'Angkor
See all hotels in Cambodia >
Siem Reap, Cambodia; “Ladies and the gentleman, welcome to Angkor Wat,”. Hang on a minute, did I hear correctly?. Here I am, sweltering in the Cambodian heat, camera posed, water bottle at the ready, looking up in awe at the amazing ruins of Angkor Wat when I am transported back to the alleys and markets of London by the pure cockney accent of our official Cambodian guide!
Yous-sa, our 30-something tour guide with a fondness for legionnaires style caps and wrap around sun-glasses, proceeded to introduce us to Khmer history and described the stories behind the intricate Hindu relief’s on the temple walls with the opening phrase “Aw righ then”. His signal for us to head to the next amazing temple was a combination of two traditional Cambodian phases, “Ockey, dockey,” and “Let's rock and roll!”.
A kind and generous man, Yous-sa was anxious that we learnt as much as possible about Angkor Wat’s during few short days in his company in Siem Reap. His devotion to detail was evidence in his consistent but rather fruitless attempts to explain the difference between “ The Hundu” and “The Boddhust” temples that make up the Angkor Wat complex.
His jokes, while we guess were highly amusing from his laughter, were hard for our groups’ mix of Australian, English and Canadian ears to understand with the layered affect of a Cambodian speaking English with a cockney accent. Fellow English-speaking visitors did double-takes as they wondered past our group and heard Yous-sa lecturing to us on “The centa of the Uni-vase”. The temples of Angkor Wat appear to have more “Centers of the Universe” than I have had hot dinners!
But, we could not fault Yous-sa’s infectious enthusiasm for his first love, Cambodian history and his very close second, Miss Angelina Jolie. While the guide books only give you the history of the beautiful temple of To Prohm and other tour guides may wax on about the symbiotic relationship that exits between the crumbling soft sandstone walls of the temple and the intertwined spong trees that hold each other up, Yous-sa taught us so much more. Not only did he share with us every spot where “Miss Angeline” was filmed for the classic movie “Tomb Raider” in and around To Prohm (which played incidentally played the title role of the Tomb!), we were also briefed by Yous-sa on where and how many camera’s were placed for each memorable shot.
Khmer history lessons were compelling presented by Yous-sa with the opening phrase “Come back with me now…” before he went on to paint a picture of Cambodia 900 years in the past to the reign of King Jayavarman VII. In the best time travel element of bringing history alive, he brought to life the frenzied four decades of building that produced the nearly 50 stunning temples of Angkor Thom. Dr Beckett himself could not have done any better.
Over three days, we became very attached to our unique tour guide. His smile, his jokes, his enthusiastic spring in his step as we swung from temple to temple, became all the more remarkable as we learnt more about his personal history. A former child soldier during the horror reign of the Khmer Rouge, he undertook the dangerous task of mine clearing before putting himself through school to learn english and later train as an official tour guide. Having never left Cambodia, let alone visited cockney London, his accent comes from his own curious nature. During the 1980’s when the United Nations were in Cambodia tackling the issue of Land Mines in the same pathways that now are trodden by international tourists to World Heritage listed Angkor Wat, Yous-sa first heard the cockney accent spoken by some of the visiting delegates. Intrigued by this unique version of english, he approached them to hear more, liked what he heard and decided to adopt the accent as his own.
His parting gift to us, after we dismally failed his pop quiz on Angkor Wat, was as unique as the dear man himself. A song, self-composed, adapted from a traditional Chinese tune, written in Cambodian and translated into English. A strangely beautiful love song that fitted our guide perfectly. It didn’t quite make sense but had a sentimental impact on us all the same.