Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

Occasionally in traversing the narrow streets and byways of Phnom Penh, one can see bags of garbage hung on the wall. What would prompt this behavior? Is it a low-tech type of modern art, faster, cheaper, and easier than painting a mural? Is it a gift to the garbage crews, preventing them from bending over and scooping up the trash on the ground?

Probably, it’s just matter of trying to keep things a bit neater. Notice the narrow street runs within ten inches of the wall. Trash bags on the ground would get run over, kicked, and slashed by dogs. Keeping the trash on the wall prevents more of the mess seen here where one bag has been slit open, dumping its contents in the street.

Thailand is just about the 7-11 capitol of the world. It has 12,000+ 7-11s in a country about equal in size to Oregon and Wyoming together. The whole United States doesn’t have that many although 7-11 is headquartered in Texas!

Now 7-11s are coming to Cambodia, brought in by the same company that operates the franchises in Thailand. Woohoo! Are we big-time or what? There are already articles in the paper asking that a good portion of the products be of Cambodia origin.

I mentioned a couple days ago (May 12) that the microphone for my desktop wasn’t working, so today, on the way back from examining St. Joseph Church to see how many people we can put in church with physical distancing, I stopped at an audio systems shop to have them check the mic. Determining that the mic is good, I asked them to make a cable with a better connector, and in true Cambodian fashion two guys sat on the floor and each attached a connector to a five-meter cable. ….Then I found out the mic will only work with a battery supply in the setup I wanted to utilize. Bummer.

There are about a million different sizes, shapes, and colors for bananas—just not in the United States where Those Who Know have decided that U.S. consumers should be limited mostly to the one type that lives in our supermarkets. One other variation of banana that I had not encountered before establishing domicile outside the U.S. is the twin banana. They probably occur in all varieties all over the world, but probably Those Who Know don’t think they should be allowed to disturb U.S. banana eaters. Twin bananas like the ones above are relatively common here. They taste the same as single bananas but do present a logistical problem because I have to plan to have the second half at the next meal or else have someone with me to eat the twin.

With all the schools closed because of the pandemic, what’s to do except hang around mom’s stall in the market?

This building on Monivong Boulevard, a major thoroughfare in Phnom Penh, shows a varied history. Probably a respectable colonial era building before the Khmer Rouge, it subsequently had a utilitarian top floor added. Now it is being renovated again—or maybe will be replaced. Will any of its colonial beauty be preserved? We’ll have to wait and see.