Hearts and Flowers and Troubling Traditions: Valentine’s Day in Cambodia Young men expect women to have sex with them on Valentine’s Day.

February 12, 2021 by Catherine Lanser

When my husband and I planned a vacation to Laos and Cambodia for the first couple weeks of February, we weren’t thinking about Valentine’s Day. We barely celebrate it when we’re at home and weren’t expecting to think much about it while traveling. Vacation is special enough, who needs to plan a special night?

But as we spent our last days in Laos, in advance of moving on to Cambodia, the holiday crept into my inbox. I received a special invitation to a Valentine’s Dinner at our hotel in Siem Reap. I was sure they were catering to us as tourists and that it would be the only place I’d see any mention of the holiday while we were there.

I was wrong. As we walked down Pub Street, Siem Reap’s bar and restaurant hub, we came upon an explosion of hearts. At the bar we stopped for a drink, they offered my husband a rose to present to me.

Another rose was waiting on our bed with a glass cookie jar full of heart-shaped cookies. And yet another rose perched in the towel trunks of the elephants tied on our bed the next day. A few days later if we wanted we could have posed in front of frosted pink Valentine’s backdrop at the Siem Reap airport.

A Recent Phenomenon

As I perused the web after returning home, I learned that Valentine’s Day is relatively new in Cambodia, taking hold sometime around 2008. One researcher, Tong Soprach, has been studying Valentine’s Day in Cambodia since 2009. He has been conducting education campaigns and research with young people there every five years since 2009.

His research is troubling in that it shows young men expect women to have sex with them on Valentine’s Day. In 2009, he found that 17 out of 25 young men, aged 15 to 24, were willing to force their partners to have sex on Valentine’s Day. After his research schools began giving out yearly warnings to young people at school telling them that Valentine’s Day is not a recognized holiday and that they should not participate in activities that go against Khmer traditions or shame their families.
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Educational efforts have been made to put the focus on platonic love for families, friends, teachers, and others instead of romance. In 2019, Soprach found that fewer men, but still 12 out of 40, said they would be willing to force their partners to have sex on Valentine’s Day. Those expecting to have sex on Valentine’s Day has also decreased more than half since 2009.
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-con ... -cambodia/

I haven't noticed any flower sellers around today, the coincidence with CNY might have fucked it for the horny young folk.

Youth asked to make Feb 14 a day of service, not romance
Nov Sivutha | Publication date 11 February 2021 | 21:50 ICT

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport has issued a letter to all schools – both public and private – instructing them to curb any irregular activities on their campuses related to the February 14 Valentine’s Day holiday in order to maintain compliance with all precautionary measures and safety guidelines for the prevention of Covid-19.

In a letter dated February 8, education minister Hang Chuon Naron said teachers and administrators must ensure their students’ strict obedience to the existing Covid-19-related rules in addition to preventing any immoral activity by students inspired by the nature of the holiday.

He also urged that the councils for children and youth in schools initiate information sessions for students using “peer educators” who can talk to them about the importance of maintaining safety measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 while studying.

The letter advised the school boards to closely liaise with parents and communities in order to prevent any improper or immoral activities by students and to educate them about the risks involved with inappropriate behaviour.

Education ministry spokesman Ros Soveacha told The Post that the ministry always issues instructions similar to these to stop students’ involvement with inappropriate activities on or around Valentine’s Day each year.
https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/ ... ot-romance

AndyKK wrote: ↑Sun Feb 14, 2021 5:18 pm What are the reasons for such, I understand the link that there are many Chinese-Khmer, but for St Valentine's Day and Christmas, again, I suppose that there's the Cambodian-Christian, or is it the Cambodian people just like to celebrate and the trades just like price hiking.

Although it has some sort of Christian connection, it's not celebrated by many of their faithful. The roots are more likely in the Roman holiday of Lupercalia.

Valentine's Day is a time to celebrate romance and love and kissy-face fealty. But the origins of this festival of candy and cupids are actually dark, bloody — and a bit muddled.

From Feb. 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.

The Roman romantics "were drunk. They were naked," says Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile.

The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the festival — or longer, if the match was right.

The ancient Romans may also be responsible for the name of our modern day of love. Emperor Claudius II executed two men — both named Valentine — on Feb. 14 of different years in the 3rd century A.D. Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine's Day.

https://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/13369315 ... ntines-day