From a balcony in Bangkok.

Tum was a monk, and a singer, as holy men used to be, and one of the best. Because of his skill at making songs, he traveled often from his monastery.

One day coming into town on such a request, he saw Teau – a girl as beautiful as he was skilled. He walked back to the monastery without his heart and with heavy feet.

Tum found excuses to visit again and again, but Teau had entered the sacred period at the end of girlhood, in which women-to-be spend three months in solitude, out of the eye of the sun and the world. Still Teau sent her handkerchief as a sign.

Tum went back once more to his monastery, to beg the head of his order for permission to leave. But he could not win leave to go.

And now Teau came out of her solitary time, and her mother arranged for her a marriage to the town’s richest man.

The custom then was for the girl to go to the king to win his blessing. Because of her beauty, the king too loved Teau, and for many days he kept her there. But he saw that she was sad and only wept. When he heard the reason, he sent for Tum.

In a fury, Teau’s mother called her home and the wedding moved forward. Tum, at the king’s urging, arrived at the town just in time – to find the rich husband-to-be waiting for him. He was taken to a deserted field and slaughtered.

Teau followed him, using a knife in her own hand, within a day.

This story is told by Cambodian parents to their teenagers, with the moral “the cake cannot be bigger the scale” – or, “don’t get too big for your britches."