Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

This is a Phnom Penh city bus on a regular route. It’s rush hour and notice that the bus is basically empty, just one or two passengers (not visible). Japan and China have both given over 100 buses in the last two years and the number of routes was increased from three to thirteen, but mostly the buses run almost empty. When the first route was started about three years ago, people were interested in the idea–and attracted by the free rides for the first couple months, but since then nothing successful has been done to increase ridership. Donors have given the vehicles; now they need to teach the government how to market and run an effective bus system.

This is the old-style license plate for Cambodian vehicles.  A new style of plate was introduced about eight or nine years ago but there was no requirement to replace existing plates and some like this one are still around.  Their numbers are diminishing, though.

There are no enforced traffic or safety rules in Cambodia, either for drivers or for passengers.  Anything goes.  Today we were driving to Kampot Province and saw this little girl standing in the back of a truck on the highway.  At least she’s holding on–and has something to hold on to!

We are in the rice harvesting season now.  Click here for some photos of farmers drying their rice crop.

When Maryknoll first moved to its office on Street 320 in Phnom Penh, down below my second-floor window was a little village of ten one-room units, two strips of five units each facing each other on one house-sized lot.  Access to this little community was through a narrow alley leading out to the street.

Shortly after we occupied the house, the owner of the little village moved everyone out, tore down the two strips of one-room apartments and put up a three-story metal shed in which he set up a metal fabrication company.  They made steel gates, doors, and railings and such–with a lot of banging and grinding.

Now that little plot of land is being subjected to more change.  The four-story building facing the street (behind which is the lot) is being extended back over the lot to make the building longer.  The sheet metal walls of the fabrication shop have been removed and it seems walls of brick and concrete are being extended from the existing house to make new walls around the lot below my window.  Here is a picture of a young man using a torch to cut away some of the scaffolding that held the metal walls before.

“It’s kinda like one of those fully-flat First Class seats on Singapore Airlines….”

Musica Felice (Happy Music) is a choral group organized and directed by Ms. Miwako Fujiwara, a professional keyboard player and music teacher.  Many members of the choirs at our two English churches are musicians and singers with Miwako.  Last Sunday they presented a first-ever outdoor concert at a five-star hotel, along with the 9th Harmonics, a male filipino choral group, and a jazz group.