“Uh….you think you could leave me a place to sit?”
Category: Daily Life in Cambodia
The King’s Birthday
King Sihomani gets a three-day holiday for is birthday. It seems a bit much but Cambodia is known for its excessive number of public holidays (24 vs 11 in the United States). Today is the second day of this holiday with one more to go, and then it’s back to work on Wednesday.
Topics: Sidewalks (Parking Lots)
Sidewalks are an interesting phenomenon in Phnom Penh. This series of Topics takes a look at how they are used. Click here to see one of problems connected with sidewalks.
A long walk
Breakfast to Go
No Egg McMuffins but plenty of other goodies for breakfast on the run. Note the cooking with a wood fire in the middle of the city where gas is available. The majority of the population uses wood for cooking. Imagine the toll on the forests when 10± million people use wood to cook meals three times a day.
Still Killing
Today the Phnom Penh Post published this photograph and a short article about a bulldozer which was destroyed by an anti-tank mine in Phnom Penh on the weekend. It turned out the mine was in a truckload of dirt hauled from one of the provinces to be used in a construction project near this Buddhist wat. The driver was thrown over the wall and suffered serious injuries but survived.
The last mines were put down forty years ago but they’re still killing and maiming. We average a casualty every four or five days–after four decades.
Topics: Sun #2
An earlier posting looked at how Cambodian people avoid the sun on their heads. This post today looks at how they avoid the sun on their arms. Click here to see some of their techniques.
Motorcycle Loads #245
It’s a good thing potato chips and prawn crackers don’t weigh very much or he would be cruising for a wheelie!
Topics: The Sun
This is another in my Topics section where I can present several perspectives on some topic or characteristic of life in Cambodia. Today this is about the Sun and how people react to it. Click here to see some pictures.
School Trip
Yesterday when I went to Tuol Kork for a mass at 6:15 AM, the second-year students were waiting outside for buses to take them to Kampong Som down on the coast. The girls at the technical school, run by the Salesian Sisters, come from poor rural backgrounds and many of them have never seen the sea or other attractions like Angkor Wat so the school builds trips like this into the curriculum.