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“Clearly, the great mystery of life is that it is lived in an always flowing stream of change. We are one person with one set of ideas at one age, and then, when we look back years later, discover that we became another person at another age. The only certainty about it is the fact Sister Joan Chittister |
Following up on yesterday’s view of Phnom Penh’s skyline, here is a little more detail. The red arrow on the left points out the Intercontinental Hotel that was the tallest building in Phnom Penh, at ten stories, when I arrived here in 2000. The blue arrow on the right shows the Vattanac Capital Tower which is 39 stories tall and currently the city’s tallest although other taller buildings are under construction.
When I came to Phnom Penh in the year 2000, there was one building above five stories and it was the only building to have an elevator. Now the Phnom Penh skyline has blossomed and 40+ floor buildings have sprung up and the prime minister has started ground work on two twin towers, the largest in Asia (the LAST thing we need in Cambodia, with all its problems!)
Cambodians are versatile, creative people, partly because they don’t have a lot of technical and other resources to fall back on. They just do it themselves. This shop could be an illustration of that. Notice the sign says that it is a phone shop and the silver counter on the right is for phones. But the silver counter on the left is a money changer’s counter. And then if you’ll notice inside (the big teeth are the giveaway), the owner has a little dentist shop set up, too. How can you go wrong here?
No Egg McMuffins….just a plain baguette to go!
An obvious part of daily life in Cambodia are the orange plastic coolers used throughout the country to keep things cool where there is no electricity and refrigeration. Click here to see the first part of series about Cambodia’s coolers!
How many containers to you think he ended up with on his motorcycle?
Last Sunday, before the Pchum Ben holiday began, these people were waiting under the Japanese bridge for vans and trucks to take them to their home provinces. Today is the last day of the official holiday. Do you think all these people will be back at work tomorrow, Friday? Nooooooo….not by a long shot. This year Pchum Ben had the makings of a perfect holiday, with the official celebration on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Well….NO ONE could expect someone to work on Monday before the holiday, could they? And certainly not on Friday after the holiday. So everyone was off Saturday and Sunday before the holidays, the full work week of the holidays, and the Saturday and Sunday after the holidays–nine days off work for a three-day holiday! Not bad, huh?
Last Sunday it was double parking, lots of vendors, and hundreds of people crowding the big wats in Phnom Penh in anticipation of the Pchum Ben rituals.
Now, in the middle of the three-day holiday for Pchum Ben, the wats in Phnom Penh are devoid of people. The locals are, for these days, in their homes and in the wats in the provinces where they grew up. Phnom Penh is largely deserted.