Slow Noodles

Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon, Algonquin Books, 2024. 

Khmer Rouge

The author,  the daughter of a Khmer mother and a Vietnamese auto mechanic father, had a comfortable, middle-class childhood in Cambodia. That is, until the Khmer Rouge came to power. The Khmer Rouge persecuted non-Khmer ethnicities, such as Vietnamese and Chinese. Interestingly, the preceding ruler, Lon Nol, had also persecuted these ethnicities. But the Khmer Rouge additionally persecuted Westernized Cambodians, who were called the New People. The non-Westernized peasants were called the Old People. They were seen as non-corrupted by Western culture and morally superior to the New People. An additional level of hierarchy, the top level, was occupied by the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge. 

Fleeing to Vietnam

The family fled to Vietnam when the author was 14 years old. She passes through [Cho Lon, Saigon’s Chinatown]. Her father tried to find work there, but the ethnic Chinese would only hire their own. Her mother worked in Cambodian refugee settlements in Long Khánh Province of South Vietnam. The author experienced the takeover of South Vietnam by the Viet Minh. She met her future husband, Dara Chan Kim, in Saigon. :He was half-Chinese, half Vietnamese. 

First Return to Cambodia

After a long time in Vietnam, the author returned to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. From there she and Chan went to Battambang. Battambang province in the West, on the border with Thailand. They went to Koh Kong. She worked as a cook for a brothel owner and as a cleaner and midwife assistant at a medical clinic.

Fleeing to Thailand

They crossed by boat to Thailand, where they were taken to a police station. They spent a short time at an UNHCR holding camp. Later on, she was takee to Phanat Nikhom refugee camp in Chonburi Province in Thailand. Here she and Chan studied English.  She and Chan waited for several years before they were screened by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for being a genuine refugee. Failing that screening, she was moved to  to Sikhiu Vietnamese Refugee Camp in Nakhon Ratchasima Province, in northeastern Thailand. Here they experienced a cholera epidemic. 

Second Return to Cambodia

After ten years in this camp, they returned to Cambodia. First they went to Phnom Penh. Then they went to Ratanakiri Province in northeast Cambodia. Laos is to its north and Vietnam to its East. Here they worked with some ethnic minorities: Jarai, Tampuan, Khmer Loeeu. Then they moved to Bamlung, the capital of Ratanakiri Province. From there they moved to Stung Treng Province. Stung Treng Province is immediately to the west of Ratanakiri Province. In Stung Treng Province she earned money by working as a cook for Médecins Sans Frontières, which was fighting the AIDS epidemic.

AIDS Hospice

David Wright helped the author and her husband create a hospice in Stung Treng City for women suffering from AIDS. She worked at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) while her husband volunteered at the hospice. Upstairs from the hospice, she built a women’s literacy project. And the women supported themselves by learning how to weave. After working at UNICEF, the author worked at Volunteer Service Overseas (VSO).

Women's Development Center

With a grant from the Allen Foundation, Chantha Nguon (the author) and her husband, Dara Chan Kim, created a women’s literacy project called the Women’s Development Center in Stung Treng City (https://mekongblue.com/) in Cambodia in 2002. 

Throughout the book, she gives various noodle recipes.