Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

In the United States, strip malls are not uncommon–a long line of individual businesses set side-by-side along a block of busy street or highway, with room for parking left between the street and the stores.

Cambodia doesn’t have strip malls, but we have strip markets. Here is one section of street along the wall of a Buddhist wat (pagoda). It’s a narrow street and there is no sidewalk, but fruit and vegetable sellers managed to squeeze in boxes of their wares.

In the first officially recorded community transmission of the COVID-19 virus in Cambodia, 40 infected persons have been identified by contact tracing. Two or three new infections are discovered every day during the past two weeks, and that has frightened Phnom Penh-ers. More people are wearing masks now and more shops have blocked access to their establishments.

Expiration dates on products are not unusual. Note this one for April, 2023.

But now notice the product the expiration date is on. In case you can’t read Thai, it’s soap–a bar of soap! How the heck does soap expire?

“Did I get the radishes???”

Cambodia doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas so there’s no pre-Christmas buying spree starting the day after Thanksgiving. But we have Black Friday! Local merchants will latch on to anything that gives them reason to offer their specials