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Notes -
Molly Malone?
Not that part of the country, but yeah - certainly in my father's time people went picking shellfish on the beaches and shores, and up to my teen years I used to see them doing so even in the town harbour. It was always sort of "poor people food source" and not highly regarded, and with fears about pollution and big producers selling those kinds of items in supermarkets etc. it went out of style.
But your Cambodian friends doing it are not acting weird, they probably think the Canadians are the weird ones for "what do you mean you can't dig for clams?"
That's my best guess. I had a similar experience with dumbfounded Mexicans arrested for DUIs who seemed genuine in their bafflement "what do you mean you can't drink and drive?"
A huge problem with the new "refugee" populations as well.
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Re: drinking and driving, while that has finally become socially unacceptable here in Ireland - though people continue to do it, and now have added 'driving while high/stoned/under the influence of drugs' to the repertoire since now we're a modern, urbanised country - we'd have some local politicians defending it on the basis that (1) rural people don't have access to buses and taxis like town people and (2) it's often the only means for social outing for those guys to go to the pub once a week. Also, claims that such crackdowns would mean small pubs in rural areas would have to shut down.
Some of those chancer politicians' efforts from 2013 and 2019.
Drink driving impacts rural areas, drug driving impacts town/city areas.
Amazing
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