Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
They may seem redundant in age in which almost everyone has a smartphone with a camera, but Phnom Penh has street photographers around some tourist attractions who can give a printed picture fast enough for tourists who need to get back on the tour bus. Click here to see some of the operators.
This is the scene every Sunday morning when I cross town to go to St. Joseph Church for the 10:00 AM mass. The police wait at certain intersections and grab people for mostly imagined offenses. The policeman at the SUV is waiting for his payoff and the woman and her child are pulling over so she can come up with some money.
In the old days a case full of soft drinks in bottles was heavy. Then we got a case of soft drinks in aluminum cans. In Cambodia, coconuts don’t come in cases–rather in wagon loads–but you can believe they are heavy. A big coconut like some of these could easily weight five or six pounds. The driver cruises around until someone hails him, and then he uses a chopper (meat cleaver to Americans) to cut off enough of the top to insert a straw.
There’s a whole lot of vegetables leaving the Doeum Kor market early every morning.
Sidewalks in Cambodia are basically used for anything and everything except walking. Click here to see the sidewalk as showroom.
Sometimes a guy just needs to sit and think…
Things are different in the Kingdom of Wonder. This used car lot doesn’t look much like used car lots in the U.S. And probably in the U.S. the whole family wouldn’t come to buy what is most likely their first four-wheel vehicle. This family may have come on the motorcycle in the foreground. Now they’re negotiating a price for an SUV.
The foreign population of Phnom Penh is constantly turning over. We see that in our parish community where we need to recruit new ministers every four or five months because so many are rotated out or reassigned. And it’s the same with the buildings here. Places that I pass often have been family homes, a restaurant, a crocodile farm, a bar and brothel in quick succession. One group moves out and the other moves in with the least bit of disruption.
An illustration is the house in these pictures. Just a year and a half ago, it was a residence for high-ranking US Embassy personnel. I was often there for meetings, dinners, birthdays, etc., with the family with four children who lived there. Yesterday it opened as some sort of high-end coffee shop!
Heavy rains–it’s the rainy season–plus extra water from a collapsed dam in Laos have raised the river levels quite high in Phnom Penh. Bishop Olivier experienced a bit more difficulty than usual in making visits to the parishes along the river. Click here for more.
She must have as much stuff in front of her as behind her, judging from the angle of her legs! Not fun!