Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

What’s their story?

There are always so many stories around me in Cambodia, stories that I will never hear. I see a family(?) like this sitting on the street with all kinds of carved wooden objects which are very popular in Cambodian culture. Did they make them? Are they traditional craftsmen and women? Or are they just uneducated people who sit all day with the objects made by others and just get paid a commission? Where are they from? Is this a craft from another province? How much money do they make? Do they make a living at this?

The Riverfront

Phnom Penh could be a city known for its watercourses, lakes, flood plains, and its relationship to water. Unfortunately the near-sighted government sees the lakes and flood plains mainly as prime real estate when they’re filled in, and of course guess who will benefit from selling public lands to private developers. Hint: not the people of Phnom Penh.

One asset the public still has access to is the waterfront along the Tonle Sap River in front of the royal palace. Recently when I was on the way to the Ash Wednesday service I passed the waterfront at sunset (a time when I normally am not near there) and was pleased to see the activities taking place.

The open area between the palace in the river is attractive
to all sorts of people in the evening.
The pigeons love it, too.
Families with children come to enjoy the openness and the grass.
The more well-to-do who can afford pets–and leashes!—
make a walk in the park part of their evening activity.
And not fully appreciated until you see them in action are these men enjoying a game in which they kick a ball or shuttlecock–but only with their feet when the ball is behind them!

Impulse Eating

In the US, supermarkets put tabloids, chewing gum, and other items along the check out lanes so people might be tempted to buy these things on impulse while they’re waiting to check out. Here in Cambodia they have impulse food, like this cart full of small mussels from the Mekong River. You can be riding by on your motorcycle, see the cart, pull over, and without even getting off, you’ve got a bag full of shellfish to munch on.

Making do….

Sometimes we have leftovers when Russ Brine and I eat dinner together and then I try to take them to DDP for lunch the next day. I dump some rice in a plastic ice cream tub and dump the leftovers over it and put it in the refrigerator at DDP when I arrive. Then about 10:30 or 11:00 AM, I take it out of the fridge and put it out in the sun to warm up a bit. We don’t have a microwave at the office so this is the best I can do and it usually gets a bit above room temperature.

Lights Out

This is an all too common scenario on Phnom Penh streets–approaching an intersection and seeing the traffic lights not working. There’s always a question: Is it just the one light facing me that’s out? Are the lights out in all four directions? Are the lights out in the whole neighborhood? That’s not as big a question as it would be in the United States because a good portion of the driving public in Cambodia doesn’t pay much attention to the lights anyway. Stop lights are basically optional: if you want to stop, you do. If you don’t want to stop or wait the full time, you don’t. So this scenario with the light out isn’t much different from the scenario with the lights functioning.

Fruit to Go

This woman is taking home a load of sugar cane. The stalks get scraped clean with a machete, taking the thin bark off, and then the stalks are run through a wringer-like machine that squeezes out the sweet sugar juice that is a staple drink for Cambodians.
Right down the street this woman is paring pineapples, scoring them and removing the little dots or eyes. She also removes the cores and then offers them as an oh-so-fresh treat on the street!

Street Scenes

Street scenes from the Tuol Tum Poung area. (Clockwise from upper left:) 1. Two identically dressed women selling small clams from the Mekong River. 2. Maybe the smallest market in the world, a three-foot strip of land outside a wat. 3. A little girl being reassured at the appearance of a monk on his daily begging rounds. 4. A motordupe (motorcycle taxi) driver waiting for a hire at a fruit stall.