Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

Another fruit of the season

Mangoes are definitely in season now but they are just the predominant fruit available now in the markets. There are lots of others. One is this fruit for which I have now forgotten the name! It is a big fruit with a large hull, almost like a coconut, but there is just a small amount of soft creamy colored fruit inside (in the upper plastic bags in the picture). I’ll have to ask the name….

Change of Season

It’s May in Cambodia and hotter than he** and we’re getting near to the rainy season with a few sporadic rains to indicate what’s on the way. Also in May the mangoes become ripe and this man has a load with some really big ones.

Not what you expect

Asian people generally don’t bake. Most of their land is in rice and they don’t have wheat. As times and tastes change, though, many bakeries like this one are springing up in Phnom Penh. I come from a family where Mom baked a pie or cake or cookies almost every day but that’s not what you find here. Go into one of these bakeries looking for doughnuts or rolls or kuchen (or even an eclair, as the name of this place suggests) and you will be disappointed. These places are usually an initiative of a stay-at-home-mother who wants to start a small business like everyone else. She bakes a few cakes, seen in the display case, and creates other cakes to order, but it’s not a business driven by volume—and the cakes are certainly not like mother used to make!

Moving Stuff

Here are three examples of people moving people or stuff on a Sunday morning as I was motorduping across town to the 10:00 AM mass.

Moving the kids around on motorcycles.

Moving six bags of crushed ice.

Moving a whole lot of some kind of fried bread.

Welcome Rain

Yesterday we got the first real rain of 2019, probably the beginning of the wet season. It was very welcome. It made the green leaves brighter and washed the dust off the metal roofs and lowered the temperature 5 or 6 degrees
The rain brought welcome relief to many people and also to this cat. In the first photo above, she’s sitting in the second-floor window of the house across the street, waiting for the rain to stop so she can get back to her mousing.

Exam Time

Usually when I arrive at the Salesian Sisters school at 6:00 AM for mass, there are few of the students around and about. Today, though, these two were up-and-at’em, up early to cram for the second day of exams at the end of the second semester. They weren’t alone as you can see in the view into the cafeteria window where most of the student body was gathered to study before breakfast.