Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

Multi-tasking

The shophouse–a building one-room wide and four stories tall–is the norm in Phnom Penh. the ground floor opens on to the street and is the locus for the business, whatever it is. The family live behind and above the shop. Here a woman minds her housewares shop while chopping vegetables for dinner.

Turn on the lights

Four or five days ago, a couple or three young men started digging a trench
along the south side of Street 320, the location of the Maryknoll office.
They have been digging ever since and today they finally started pulling
three large electrical cables through some PVC pipe they laid in the trench.

6-pack?

There are hundreds of garment factories in Cambodia, taking advantage of the vast pool of cheap (because unskilled) labor. Most of the garments go into containers at the factory and head straight for a cargo ship. But then there are the rejects, the overruns, the canceled orders, and all the other pieces that stay in Cambodia. Many of them get sold on the streets. You don’t buy a six-pack but rather a six hundred-pack of whatever it is!

Maybe it gets better

The tall building in the background is still under construction but it’s mostly finishing work, painting interiors, installing carpets and lights, etc. A couple nights ago they started turning on some outside decorative lights on parts of the building. At this point, they are of various colors, don’t seem to have a coherent pattern, and just aren’t at all attractive. But the workmen are still working on it so we can hope the finished product looks better.

June 7th?

I prepared a photo yesterday and was getting ready to post it when I got a call from the United States that caused me to return to the DDP office at night. Then when I got back home, I had to call the U.S. again and I forgot to post the photo.

And now I forgot what the photo was and what category it is in, so I can’t find it! One of these days I will get back to that category and find it and be able post it then!

Not looking so good….

Two days ago the government imposed another round of business closures. It’s not a general lockdown but all non-essential businesses are to shut their doors for two weeks. The graph above, from VODenglish.news, shows why. We have had restrictions since 15 April–including three weeks of lockdown–but the graph seems to get worse, not better.

What is it?

You may go your whole life in the US and never see something like this. Palm trees you may encounter in parts of the southern US, but the big wire thing? It’s a coconut catcher. They aren’t too common even here in Cambodia, but in some places with a lot people walking around and with a lot of palm trees with a lot of coconuts, they can be literally life-saving devices. Coconuts are heavy–maybe 3 to 5 lbs–with thick, heavy husks. One falling on a person’s head from 50 feet can be fatal.