Culture – Page 25 – Welcome to Cambodia, and…..

Topics: Wood #13

Cambodia’s luxury woods end up not only in more common (although unwieldy) furniture such as tables and chairs, but even the odd-shaped stumps and remnants of tree trunks have great value as they are fashioned into all sorts of art objects. Click here to see some and then scroll down to #11. (I think this is enough about wood for a while so I’ll move on to other topics.)

Topics: Wood #12

Some of the heavy, culturally-important wooden furniture is sold in shops. A great deal is also sold on the streets of the big cities. Probably produced in rural workshops, it is brought to the city for sale. Click here to see some of the wares on the street, and then scroll down to #9.

Topics: Wood #11

Another type of establishment that invests heavily in massive wooden furniture are the restaurants, especially those on the road. Take a break from driving to have lunch and you’ll likely find yourself sitting on a heavy wooden stool. Click here and scroll down to #5. Restaurants.

Topics: Wood #10

In a home, a hotel lobby, a fancy office, the heavy wooden furniture might fit. In a gas station? An auto body shop? No….. Click here and scroll down to #4.

Topics: Wood #9

You’ve seen pictures of the way the heavy furniture, especially the stools, is found in commercial shops. Click here to see how the furniture appears in offices.

Topics: Wood #7

Another distinctive feature of Cambodian wooden furniture is the large wooden vase-shaped object, a purely decorative adjunct to any home or business setting. They are all sizes but the really large and massive ones are the ones that catch your attention as you walk into a business or someone’s house. Click here to see more of them.

Topics: Wood #6

Almost as surprising as the great desire for wood furniture is the number of shops selling wood furniture; but then maybe the great number derives from the great desire. Click here to go to the table of contents and then click on #8.

DDP Staff Wedding

DDP has a young staff and we are always having weddings of the staff, here in Phnom Penh and in the provinces. The latest one was Mr. Heng Ravy, our Job Training Project assistant, who married Ms. Roeun Srey March.

Before the wedding: A Cambodian wedding, even a Catholic wedding, is quite different from a Catholic wedding in the United States. Here is the sanctuary prepared for the ceremony.

Before the wedding: No organ for these weddings. They usually do have an electronic keyboard and guitar but this one also had these traditional percussion instruments to accompany a blessing dance that was part of the event.

The ceremony lasted nearly two hours with various cultural additions. Finally when it was over many of the congregation gathered for a group photo with the newly married couple.

Ravy the groom is our staff member and afterwards the DDP staff who were present posed with Ravy and Srey March. The two women on the right are the only Catholic members of the DDP staff.

“Take an IV and call me in the morning….”

Just like aspirin used to be the one-size-fits-all medicine for the United States so an intravenous injection is the cure-all in Cambodia. If a person goes to a doctor or a clinic and doesn’t get an IV, he/she feels like he’s wasted his money. Need it or not, you’re SUPPOSED to get an IV! People will go to a pharmacy and get an IV and administer it to themselves at home. Here a family returns from a doctor visit for a (not visible) infant the mother is holding and like good parents they make sure the baby gets his IV on the way home!

“You want a straw with that?”

Here’s a truck loaded with about a gazillion straws. It’s part of the culture here—probably because of an assumption that nothing you drink from is hygienic–that every drink is served with a straw. You buy a Coke in a bottle, you get a straw. You get an iced tea in a restaurant, you get a straw. You order a glass of milk, a straw comes with it. You buy a canned soft drink, a straw. You buy a fresh coconut on the street, you get a straw. This same truck loads up at the same shop 3, 4, 5 times a week. They would put more on the truck but notice they are just now under the mass of wires above the load.