Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

Maryknoll Dining Room

I figured I might as well give you the tour of the rest of our present Maryknoll office–and residence for Fr. Kevin Conroy and me. Last week I showed you the kitchen. Now here is the dining room.

This dining room used to be the kitchen and beyond the door was outside, the back of the house. That is why there is such a heavy external-type door there. Through that door is the kitchen I showed you last week (17 July). When we first moved in, we kept the windows open (behind the microwave) but immediately the rats started coming into the kitchen and into the rest of the house so now we keep those windows and the heavy door closed.
This shows the other end of that wall that used to be in the kitchen but is now the dining room. Keep in mind that this room is the whole width of the house–one room wide and four stories high. You can see a row of white tiles on the wall. That used to be a concrete counter with sink that was moved outside to what is now the kitchen beyond the door. Next to the microwave you see a black dot on the wall. That is where the old water pipe came through the wall with water for the kitchen sink. The blue rubbish bin is what I use to drown the rats and mice when I catch them on glue traps. They are alive but stuck to the trap, and I just fill the bin with water and drop trap and all into it.
This is turning toward the opposite wall of the dining room. The passageway leads to the front of the house. Notice the AC outlet high on the wall next to the passageway, with an extension cord running under the dish cabinet for the fan. AC plugs in Cambodia are generally at eye level. It may be because so much of the country floods so often.
This picture continues the turn to the right and shows the stairs leading up to the second, third, and fourth floors. Notice how steep the stairs are. That is because the house is just one-room wide and they don’t want to waste any space. Also saving space is putting the downstairs bathroom under the stairs, a common feature in houses here. A downside of that is that the bathroom ceiling has the slant of the stairs and you hit your head if you stand too close to the toilet. The filing cabinets belong to the office which is quite small.

Hey, I paid for it!

It’s common practice for friends of the ruling political party to donate $300,000 (the minimum) or more to the party and then be named as an okhna (aka rich-person-sucking-up-to-the-government). You can prefix the title whenever you write your name so everyone will know you’re rich.

Mr. KONG SOM OL went a bit further (probably gave more money) and got Blvd 2004 named after himself. After paying all that money, you don’t want to waste any of the glory so he had his whole title prefixed to his name. It makes for a useless street sign in English but this whole thing isn’t about being useful.

Mice in the House

Almost a month ago, after spotting a rat in our kitchen I put out some poison and eliminated one rat that took the bait. Then last week two times I saw two different mice on the kitchen counter. This time I tried the glue trap which will hold a smaller and weaker mouse but maybe not a rat. I put the trap on the kitchen floor last night and this morning I found FIVE mice in the trap! I’m going to wait a day and then put another trap out. There’s never just one mouse and even after catching five, there is probably still a large nest full of them.

Morning Offering


This woman is one of the staff from a local dentist’s office. One of her early morning tasks after she opens the doors in the morning is to make an offering of incense in the little shrine high up on the door frame. This is to keep all the spirits happy.

Thumb Prints

Probably most contracts and agreements in Cambodia are signed with thumbprints rather than written signatures although the latter are becoming more popular. Today I had to “sign” a rental agreement and our director had this handy little pocket ink pad for making thumb prints.