Creative In Battle

A few days later “Ya” had located a manufacturer of the game board and pieces, a woman, Hang Yan, living in a village not far from the capital Phnom Pehn. Unfortunately this maker was about to retire permanently to the country and would hang up her tools for good. I had to make a dash for it and reach her home that weekend before they packed to leave the following week. My translator was late, I was none too pleased, since I’d just driven 300km to reach this appointment and my “translator” just 7km without so much as an apology. He didn’t know much English either, which didn’t help the process along, but after some complaining I got over it and down to business. Hang gave me some insights into how the board and pieces were made, but I had no idea how the interview was going.

In these situations, it’s a bit like film photography, not knowing for sure what the images are going to look like until they’ve been developed. In this case I would have to wait until transcription and translation were done before I could attest to the success or failure of the interview. Still, at least I had now had a new board and pieces to use for later shoots. I strapped the set to the back of my bike and headed to the capital.

p.s. The pieces are not arranged in their correct position in the photo above.

I’d learnt by this time that the current champion of Ouk, Bora Chheav, lived and managed a café devoted to playing Ouk in Phnom Pehn. So having driven this far it seemed like it was worth the visit. I teamed up with Choulay Mech, a seasoned journalist, who could help me with translation during the interview. Choulay’s professional approach made a big difference, but somehow, we couldn’t get Bora to relax in front of the camera.

It wasn’t until we had finished the interview that his smiles and laughter began to light up the room as Choulay continued to chat with him off camera. Bora is more than a champion, he provides online Ouk tuition to players across the country and abroad. He has also published several playbooks on the finer strategies of the game, of which he gave me one as a gift.

Back in Siem Reap I got the transcripts and translations for Hang and Bora, but the dialogue turned out to be rather dull and their screen presence was lacking.

Never mind, I still had Samoeurn the intriguing ex-Buddhist monk turned Angkor Wat tuk-tuk driver to fall back on. Now with Phalla Yai on board as a fixer, I had a much greater chance of squeezing a good interview out of my subjects. Whilst Phalla is not a journalist, she has a disarming personality that helps everyone to relax in front of the camera and enjoy themselves, and proven herslf in a number of productions. Phalla is also excellent at the logistical side of the shoot, for transport, catering and anything else that crops up on route.
Samoeurn invited a favoured tuk-tuk driving Ouk player, Saroun Min, to join the cast, and my longstanding overlanding friend, Roman Giger, agreed to bring additional cameras and his drone flying skills to complement the crew. Having 2 tuk-tuks in the mix meant we had no trouble transporting everything with plenty of space to spare.

After an initial establishing shoot outside Samoeurn’s house, we headed towards Ta Nei temple in the Angkor Wat complex. Ta Nei is usually a peaceful and quiet place without too many security guards. On arrival, there were just a few cyclists passing by, but then we seemed to have the place to ourselves. We positioned ourselves outside the temple so as not to bring undue attention to ourselves.

We managed to film arrival and gameplay before a couple of security guards were on our case. After some back and forth via walky-talkies they came back with a resounding

“no you can’t film with the temples in the background”

It’s so disheartening, we are not making this video for commerce, just for fun really, but the authorities don’t like it if you have a microphone on your camera as it you could be making thousands of bucks on the back of their temples.

Never mind, we already had quite a lot of the temple behind the players already, so doing the interviews with a forest background would make for a nice change. We managed to finish the interviews just as I was running out of battery on my camera, and just before Roman was about to keel over from heat exhaustion.

Phalla took us to a nice spot for lunch before we continued, reinvigorated, with drone shots of Samoeurn driving his tuk-tuk through the countryside. That’s one thing you just have to love about living in Siem Reap, it’s only 5 minutes to get out of town and be surrounded by open landscape.

With all that in the bag, we set off home and got started on the editing process straight away. Once Phalla had completed the transcription and translation, I could at last get a feel for the whole story. There were many points of interest, but realized I didn’t have sufficient material to cover much of it. We requested photos from Samoeurn and Saroun to help pad it out a bit, but overall there just wasn’t enough time to get everything I wanted.

I did have just enough time to do one more short shoot with Samoeurn explaining the pieces and their moves. I don't usually bother with this mundane sort of information, but so many geeks get annoyed with me if I don't explain something to do with the rules.

"The rules are the game dude, rules are the game"

they cry.

At least it gave me the opportunity to say goodbye and give Samoeurn the Ouk set I bought from Hang Yan and the playbook given to me by Bora Chheav.

Now that the covid 19 pandemic was over, the borders had just opened, and I had to make a move before anything else might hinder my path. So as ever, I would just have to edit the video whilst on the move.

Unfortunately it has taken pretty much a whole year to finalise this video, and after that period of time a lot of the initial enthusiasm has worn off. Nevertheless, it’s done and good to finally watch Samoeurn’s and Saroun’s story about playing Ouk Chaktrang.

Featuring

Samoeurn Sin - Tuk Tuk Driver - Ex Buddhist Monk

Saroun Min - Tuk Tuk Driver - Ex Military Soldier

Producer

Tim Jules Hull

Fixer & Translation

Phalla Yai

Fixer

Math "Ya" Kiya

Droneography & Camera 2

Roman Giger

Music

I Still Wish - Sin Sisamouth

Light Rain In The Night - Ros Serey Sothea

Remix - 808 Numpum - Dbom - Hou Beats - Aesthetic Channels

Playbook

Right High Knight Elephant Strategies - Bora Chheav

Special Thanks

Choulay Mech