When you really can’t get away to Saks 5th Avenue or to Marks & Spencer, the clothes wagon can come to you!
Category: Daily Life in Cambodia
A Different Model
It’s not quite Home Depot, but there’s a good chance this shop will have what you want if you’re looking for tools and parts.
Cruising on New Year’s Day
This family has just about reached the limit of how many they can squeeze on to one motorbike. The little boy has a pillow to lean on in the plastic bag but I can’t imagine he enjoys these trips much. The little girl doesn’t get to see much of the world either.
“Cold” Weather 2
This was the longest stretch of cool weather that I have experienced in seventeen years in Cambodia. Each night for four days the temperature dropped another degree or two celsius. Granted here in Phnom Penh it was only down to the low 70ºs F but for Cambodia that’s COLD! And the locals felt it. I felt it, too, taking a shower in the morning with no hot water.
“Cold” Weather
The last two nights the temperature in Phnom Penh has gone down to the low 70ºs F and all the expats are rejoicing. All the locals, however, are complaining that they are freezing. Some are wearing fur-lined coats with hoods. Considering that the normal temperature is in the low to mid 90ºs, they have experienced a considerable variation and they don’t have a closet full of winter clothes. 90% of the population don’t have a closet.
The prime minister offered advice(?) about the cooler conditions:
“Please, do sports activities in the morning for health. For the soldiers stationed at the border, you need to take care of your health and wear coats to protect yourself in order to avoid infectious diseases.”
Motorcycle Loads #240
“We’re going to have the first moto with a periscope!”
Education Conference
This is a conference on inclusive education for children with disabilities sponsored by the NGO Education Program. It brought together this past week a lot of civil society and non-government organizations to look at the situation in Cambodia.
It looks like a normal organization meeting in any hotel in any major city anywhere, but this one had its Cambodian characteristics. Cambodians thrive on noise–loud noise–and they always turn the PA systems up very high–and leave them at that setting. Their technicians do not adjust the volume for each speaker as he or she comes to the podium. The volume stays on high all the time. And then speakers come up and yell into the microphones. If we were in the United States, OSHA would require ear protection for everyone in the room. Here the locals just consider it normal—and it is in this culture. We foreigners consider it painful.
A relaxing ride…at least for him.
Not yet….
Electricity is still not a given in Cambodia. I think now the percentage of the population with access to electricity is about 34% and where it is available, it is quite expensive.
Cambodia is now buying more electricity from Vietnam and the supply is more reliable. Previously because the grid was so weak and the price so high, air conditioning was a luxury and was never part of the original design of a building. Now it is still a luxury but more and more people feel they can afford it so external air con units are appearing in more and more places. Here fifteen of them have been added to the top floor of a residential block. Individual units are now not such a rarity but it will still be a while before architects think of central air conditioning for a building here.
Going down….
This is a scene that wasn’t possible when I first came to Cambodia. In 2000 there was one “tall” building and that was ten stories. Now we have this bank building and others that are 40+ stories tall and others are under construction to surpass that.