I walk back inside with my new friend. He leads me to a round table where eight men are seated. Almost none of them speak English. The groom’s brother, an impossible name to remember, introduces me to the others and even gives up his seat for me, insisting that I take it.

There’s an endless amount of glasses and cans scattered among the plates. I feel a bit awkward, but as soon as I realise they’re already well ahead with the alcohol, and since I don’t know anyone anyway, I stop caring about how I look: dirty and smelly like a goat.

It almost feels like a family Christmas dinner, where everyone talks over each other, and your head starts pounding. The only difference is that here they’re speaking Cambodian. It’s the first time I’ve seen people argue just to get the chance to talk to me. They bombard me with questions I can’t answer because I don’t understand a single word, and then they bombard me with food, lots of food: duck, chicken, different kinds of meat, vegetables, unidentifiable stuff, and epic quantities of giant prawns. Everything is delicious.

They pour me some beer. I take a sip and realise it’s warm. Immediately, a guy shows up with a bucket of ice, but I tell him I don’t want any. I imagine he thinks I’m refusing out of politeness, not wanting to take advantage. But the truth is, I just don’t want ice in my beer. He says something like, “Don’t be shy, take all the ice you want,” and throws it into my glass anyway. Apparently, that’s normal here. Oh well. I drink the beer the way they do, without making a big deal out of it.

I eat and drink like there’s no tomorrow, stuffing myself like a pig and tasting all sorts of things I’ll probably never know the name of.

At some point, I notice a few kids walking barefoot between the tables. They’re dressed differently, in worn-out, dirty clothes. They move from table to table, picking things up from the ground, maybe trash. The men at the table explain that these children aren’t guests at the wedding. They’re just poor kids taking advantage of the event to collect empty cans, which they’ll later bring to a recycling centre that pays them one cent per can. They also tell me to be careful where I leave my belongings, because the kids might steal them.

The children, curious about me, look at me and smile. Within minutes, I’m surrounded. Just in case, I grab my phone because I’m afraid they might take it. And I was right to be cautious, because at some point, they actually grab it, but in the end, they give it back.

Still, their innocent, smiling faces make my fear fade away. If anything, I feel like hugging them. They’re so adorable that I want to take pictures of them, so I pick up my phone again. I take a couple of selfies with them and then show them the photos. The moment they see themselves on the screen, they go absolutely crazy with excitement.

I don’t understand why their reaction is so intense, and the men at the table explain that many of these kids have never seen themselves in a photo before, because no one had ever taken one of them. Unbelievable, right?

Maybe it’s the alcohol, but that realisation genuinely moves me.

After eating like a pig and drinking like a camel, I get up to walk around. At that moment, a group of people approaches me, including several beautiful girls, some of them, if I may say so, seriously stunning.

For some strange reason, they surround me.

And then they start touching my face.