Author: Charles Dittmeier

This is Thai Huot supermarket, one of the large grocery stores or supermarkets that cater to the foreigners in Phnom Penh.  Lucky Market is the original such market and Thai Huot previously was a much smaller second.  In the last couple years, though, they have expanded greatly and even have this purpose-built store as their newest site.  It still is quite different from a US-style supermarket: it has parking for only five or six cars on the righthand side and it’s two stories, a definite inconvenience if you are purchasing things on both floors and have to carry them up and down stairs or wait for a small elevator.  Still, though, you can get some of the touches of home here and some of the comfort foods you’re used to, to help you deal with some of the quirks and frustrations of Cambodia.

That solves the problem of where to put the live chickens for the ride back to the provinces.  It creates another problem, though, because they drool a lot when hung upside down.

Now THIS is what you call a convenience store–at least as long as you only want bread and don’t mind the layer of dust and the poor hygiene and the smell of exhaust fumes.

Cambodia is a country of subsistence farmers, each family eking out a simple living on a small plot of land–and utilizing every opportunity to add a little more to the family income.  Sometimes that is by selling homegrown vegetables in the market, or selling fruit from the trees around the home from a table on the side of the road.  For this family, it means drying some sort of bean or nut or spice on the expanse of pavement in front of their shop selling pumps, compressors, and ice crushing machines.  This is in Phnom Penh city, not a rural province.