Something New…

The main reason for this website is to help people get a sense of what Cambodia and mission is like. You will never get that full sense until you’ve been here a while but seeing pictures–and especially videos–can give a good feel for daily life in the Kingdom of Wonder.

I’ve also been experimenting with videos for church work in this time of pandemic and thought maybe I could combine these two interests in some short videos that I might make occasionally.

Here is a first test video, just showing the front part of our house which is the Maryknoll office and home for Fr. Kevin Conroy and me.

Well…. After trying to upload the video I found out this may not work as well as I had hoped. The maximum length is about one minute and here in Phnom Penh it plays in a jerky fashion. Maybe you will have better Internet connections where you are. This project needs more work!

Scenes at the market: 6

These are scenes from a small vegetable and fruit market near the Maryknoll house. It’s a wet market (as opposed to a dry market with clothing, motorcycle parts, jewelry, etc.) and I always find the wet markets more picture worthy. I’ll post some pictures from the market here this week.

There are several little alleyways leading off the market. On one of them, this man spreads out a few vegetables and fruits for sale, probably cheaper than 50 feet away inside the market because he doesn’t pay any fee for his piece of the pavement.

Scenes at the market: 5

These are scenes from a small vegetable and fruit market near the Maryknoll house. It’s a wet market (as opposed to a dry market with clothing, motorcycle parts, jewelry, etc.) and I always find the wet markets more picture worthy. I’ll post some pictures from the market here this week.

No fruits or vegetables, but this woman has a bag of slippers and flipflops. She doesn’t have a stall or counter but maybe she slipped the market manager some “tea money” to allow her to set up show, as it were, on an empty space inside the market.

Scenes at the market: 4

These are scenes from a small vegetable and fruit market near the Maryknoll house. It’s a wet market (as opposed to a dry market with clothing, motorcycle parts, jewelry, etc.) and I always find the wet markets more picture worthy. I’ll post some pictures from the market here this week.

The market is so neat and orderly you wouldn’t expect motorcycles to be going up and down the aisles, but, hey… There he goes!
It’s two-way traffic….

Scenes at the market: 3

These are scenes from a small vegetable and fruit market near the Maryknoll house. It’s a wet market (as opposed to a dry market with clothing, motorcycle parts, jewelry, etc.) and I always find the wet markets more picture worthy. I’ll post some pictures from the market here this week.

In the U.S., stores are full of different flavors of potato chips, pretzels, nachos, and a zillion different crispy treats. Cambodia has its version of those here, but they are less sweet and all the different snacks you see are made in someone’s little kitchen, maybe on a charcoal fire set on the floor.

Scenes at the market: 2

These are scenes from a small vegetable and fruit market near the Maryknoll house. It’s a wet market (as opposed to a dry market with clothing, motorcycle parts, jewelry, etc.) and I always find the wet markets more picture worthy. I’ll post some pictures from the market here this week.

Markets like this get going at 4:30 or 5:00 AM in the morning and then do less business in the afternoon because people go early to get a good selection and to get going on preparing the family meal for the day. This picture is in the afternoon when some of the stalls have already closed down for the day.

What is it?

Today I was walking over to a nearby vegetable market to get some bananas and apples and passed this on the way home along a small alley. Probably even the children here could tell you what are the red and white chips or flakes but I have no idea what they are. Just that they need to be dried in the sun before whatever happens next.

What the….?

This is one of those scenes that are rather inscrutable to us foreigners. This is a man in the parking lot of St. Joseph Church—connected with the church, I don’t know–doing something with 70 to 80 gallons of gasoline in plastic jerry cans. To a Cambodian, there’s probably a logical explanation, e.g., he’s buying cheaper (smuggled?) gasoline in Phnom Penh and carrying it to one of the provinces where his brother-in-law sells it in two-liter Coke bottles from a stand on the highway in front of the family home. Not something familiar to most of the foreigners here but it–or a similar scenario–makes perfect sense to the locals.