Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

These two young women are wearing backpacks and doing it right. Too many people, especially women, are injured when thieves on other motorcycles drive up next to them and grab the strap of a bag or backpack. If it doesn’t break, they pull the person off the moto and still get away with the bag. The woman above on the right has the best protection–covering the backpack with her jacket. Wearing a backpack behind you, like the woman on the left, can be dangerous because it’s reachable, but this woman’s back is shielded by her companion.

Here where the weather is always basically the same, especially temperature-wise, the indication of the season of the year is often the appearance of a fruit. We don’t have baseball, basketball, football, etc., seasons. We don’t even have sports leagues like that. And the trees are always green and something is always flowering so you can check the roadside markets to see what they’re selling and you know what season it is.

When we drove the 175 miles to Battambang for the anniversary of the Daughters of Charity, it took six hours on the road. That made me take notice when I saw the headline in the Khmer Times about high-speed trains being successfully tested in Cambodia.

Alas, the article said that successful test will mean the introduction of “high-speed” trains going 18 to 30 MPH on the one line going south from Phnom Penh, and going 30-50 MPH on the northbound line. It’s still faster to drive than to take a high-speed train.

Most Cambodians do not work in offices or factories. The large majority work in the rice paddies and fields. And most of the rest work in shops and businesses set up in their homes, in the informal economy. In the informal economy, there is a lot of down time–sitting and waiting for customers. Above, the man on the left is a crossing guard, helping customers for a store get across the street. The man on the right is a motorcycle taxi drive–a vanishing breed–waiting for a fare.

“I’d like that small one on the bottom of the pile…”

Those who remember the old days in Phnom Penh–basically the pre-Covid era–will remember Friends, the NGO that cared for children at risk, kids who were deaf or blind, street children, children of fishing families living on boats.

One of Friends’trademark initiatives was the Friends Restaurant, staffed by ex-street children, the only place in Phnom Penh where you could get deep-friend tarantula.

The restaurant didn’t survive the Covid shutdowns but now a welcome sign gives notice that a newly renamed “Friends Kitchen” will soon open on Street 13.