Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

It’s different here….

In cold-climate countries, you would never see the type of white vent blocks in the picture above. They indicate the presence of a toilet and are open to allow air to circulate. In countries with a real winter, a building is always “tight,” to prevent heat from escaping. That isn’t a problem here as is further indicated by the pipes on the outside of the wall–instead of inside the wall–because there is no danger of their freezing.

Wat’s in a name?

I remember one time, almost twenty years ago, that one of my staff told me that a wat (Buddhist pagoda) was asking us to put our DDP name on the wall. I had no idea what that meant and couldn’t get a good explanation so I said we’d pass. Later I found that it is the custom for the monks in wats to solicit donations from people, and those who contribute get their names carved in stone in recognition of their generosity. The brown marble plaques above immortalize some such donors on a Phnom Penh wat wall.

Times are a-changing….

Something new and something different. NEW: in a country where a large part of the population doesn’t have electricity, we’re starting to see solar-powered traffic lights in Phnom Penh. DIFFERENT: note the directional arrow pointing downwards, meaning that drivers are not supposed to run into the barrier but should go to the right. Commonwealth countries have arrows pointing down. In North America, those arrows would point upwards.

Turn me on!

Today I happened to look up at a second-floor flat while waiting for a light and saw these two chandeliers hanging on someone’s porch. Given that no one sits on their porch at night and most porches don’t even have a small fluorescent lamp, I suspect someone came to possess these two probably old chandeliers and wanted to keep them but didn’t know where to put them so they ended up on the porch.

Minding the store

Running a shop is part of the DNA of Cambodian people and that characteristic is developed by growing up in what are called shophouses, buildings one room wide and three or four stories tall, with the bottom floor open to the street as a shop and the family living behind and above the shop. This young boy takes his turn minding the store during this pandemic time when the schools are closed and he’s home all day.