Category: Culture

What’s in a name…

One of the interesting parts of living in another country, another culture is seeing how English words are used in a different way and with different meanings. Notice that this building is a medical clinic and MATERNITY. In US English, maternity is the condition of being pregnant, being a mother. Here the word designates a specific type of medical facility, a building.

Right-to-Left???

Writing in Cambodia is distinctive in several ways. For one, just writing anything in an alphabet that has 77 letters can be rather daunting.

But written Khmer is written left to right, like English. So it’s a curiosity why so many businesses and establishments number the sections of their security fences from right to left. It’s not a one-off phenomenon. Most places with fences with numbering do that. (The fence sections are put up every evening to protect the building and then taken down and put away in the morning; but that’s a whole other story.)

Khmer New Year–Day 3

Most of the people leave the city for the rural provinces during the new year festival but before they go many groups and business set up a traditional display that showcases Cambodia’s rural roots and parts of the culture that still exist, like fish traps, straw hats, woven baskets, etc. They mark the holiday while all the people are gone!

Khmer New Year–Day 2

One of the sure signs that the Khmer New Year is approaching is the appearance of water guns in store displays. Throwing, shooting water is an integral and traditional part of the new year festivities.
Enterprising individuals even display water guns in impromptu sales along the city streets.
Groups of kids gather to ambush passing vehicles, here on Monivong Blvd, a major thoroughfare.
On a smaller street near the deaf office, the group sprays a family passing by on a motorcycle. I had to pass them several times but did not become a target, probably because of my age and being a foreigner and their not knowing how a foreigner would react.

Khmer New Year–Day 1

Everyone going to the provinces for the new year tries to stay there as long as possible but not everyone can get away early. Here are some stragglers packing up and leaving on New Year’s Day itself.
This SUV has a real load, even the family motorcycle to get around with when they arrive in the family’s rural homeland.

Khmer New Year 3

Dances and games are a big part of Khmer culture, especially at the Khmer New Year. In days not completely gone by, the games at the new year were the main occasions and venues for young men and women to meet and interact in a conservative society.

Spring Equinox

Thursday, March 20, was the vernal equinox, the day when the day and night are equal in length, and the first day of spring. Angkor Wat was built in the 1100s, long before modern developments of science, but it was constructed so that the sun on the vernal equinox rises directly above the main tower of Angkor Wat. This is a stunning achievement with the limited knowledge of astronomy and cosmology and architecture available at that time, and a dramatic expression of the curiosity and creativity and intelligence of the human species. This year more than 85,000 visitors were at Angkor Wat to observe this phenomenon.

Recreating what he grew up with

Most of Phnom Penh’s population has been transplanted from the rural provinces to the capital city. The saying goes: “You can take the person out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the person.” There are many illustrations of that adage around Phnom Penh where the now city dwellers try to recreate the fields, the plants, the flowers the way it was “back then.”

Why do they do it?

This is a shot driving in a tuk-tuk to St. Joseph Church this morning. Notice the two cars in front of us. One has his wheels on the left lane line and other has his wheels on the right lane line. They refuse to drive in the middle of the lane unless forced to by traffic. Why do they do that? My tuk-tuk driver is trying get his wheels on the left lane marker.