Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

Take your pick….

I don’t like to cook–and don’t even have a stove in my house, just a microwave. Cambodia has many of these food stalls–simple shops set up on the street where a woman or a family cooks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or more big pots of what the Cambodians call “food,” i.e., something to be eaten with rice which in Cambodian culture is NOT food.

Once every week or so, I go to a food stall near my house and lift the lids of the six pots there to see what has been prepared. I look for things I might like and also look for the chopped red chilies in a pot. Those pots I REALLY avoid.

I tell the cook I want enough food for four people and give her a plastic box to put it in and then I ask for enough rice for four people and give another plastic box for that. Then I go home and each night of the week I eat the same thing fired up in the microwave. Supper for five nights costs me $6.25.

80 years old and a new experience

I’m not much of a cook. Going to the seminary at age 14 put a real crimp in my culinary skills. For lunch every day I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple. For dinner, once a week I buy four or five servings of some dish at a rice street stall and eat the same thing every night for a week.

Occasionally, though, I might get curious and try something–if it’s simple enough. I love macaroni and cheese and heard that it was simple so I gave it a try this evening. My big problem: I don’t have a stove, just a microwave and a hot water kettle. I just heated some water, dropped the macaroni in for 8 or 9 minutes (not really cooking it like the box calls for), and it all turned out well and added a little fillip to my nightly offering from the rice stall.

First rain

This is Street 53BT in Boeung Tum Pun where I live and this is the flood I stepped out of my house into when we got the first rain of the season a few days ago. April and May are the two hottest months in Cambodia and they were REALLY hot this year. This overnight rain helped to bring the temperature under 100ºF.

Some differences….

Many things in Cambodia are different from what you would find in the United States.

These workmen are finishing up the front of a new housing block. Notice there are four houses side-by-side. Each is one room wide and goes up three floors. Notice also that the workmen have added ramps to three of the houses so the owner can bring his motorcycle into the living room at night.

What? Me, hot?

The last few days have seen the temperature at 100ºF. It is really hot in the deaf offices where we don’t have air conditioning. Heat is a relative entity for people here, though. Notice these two young women dressed in moderately heavy jackets, long pants, even gloves–and never even thinking that it’s hot!