Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

It won’t do if you’re driving more than 20 MPH and it won’t help much in a driving rain, but this little convertible top might block a little shower or some of the tropical sun.

The BBC this morning said that 73% of the United States was under snow and there were stories of the many electrical outages because of the bitterly cold weather. When so many people are suffering so much, I almost hesitate to post the weather headline here (above). The photo caption warns that some provinces could see temperatures go as low as 61ºF to 64.5ºF.

In this picture, I’m on a motorcycle taxi in the curb lane and you can see how the typical little shop and its workers just take over the sidewalk. They do all their work outside. This man is welding a part for a motorcycle repair.

This is something almost never seen in Cambodia: almost every single vehicle stopped for a red light is behind the crosswalk, the accepted norm in western countries. Normally traffic in Phnom Penh does not halt for a light until the front wheel is intruding into the lane of moving cars, causing them to swerve. Cambodians drivers are like others, though, often creatures of habit and copiers of others, and by some strange circumstance the first one to stop for the light must have stopped behind the crosswalk and the others just followed suit without thinking.

There must be a story behind this mother-and-son(?) duo riding down a main Phnom Penh street. Is that everything they own on that bicycle? Where are they from? Where are they going?