The Old New Year

The Lunar (Chinese) New Year was February 12th but there are still plenty of remnants of the holiday decorations still around Phnom Penh. Many stores and other establishments still have their doorway decorations.

The colorful new year flower arrangements are the most perishable of the decorations and many have found their way to the trash, but a surprising number still grace the fronts of stores and homes.


Dog Bites

Two weeks ago, I was visiting a Chinese family celebrating the Lunar New Year and while I was taking their picture, their four little dogs like this one went crazy and three of them bit me. It all happened in 10 to 15 seconds.

The family assured me the dogs had their shots but when I got the papers, they just said the dogs were “registered” and mentioned nothing about being vaccinated. I went to a hospital where I knew they would speak English and the doctor left no doubt that I would need five rabies shots and a tetanus booster. I’ve had three of the five rabies shots so far.

In the hospital I was aware of only the two bites shown in the picture farther up but when I got home I found a third one, higher up on my thigh. You can see the bandage under the bottom of my short pants while I was burning palms for Ash Wednesday.

The whole episode was more an inconvenience than a big problem. And an unnecessary expense–$245–although that is probably much cheaper than the six shots and wound treatment would have cost in the United States.

It’s relative…

The BBC this morning said that 73% of the United States was under snow and there were stories of the many electrical outages because of the bitterly cold weather. When so many people are suffering so much, I almost hesitate to post the weather headline here (above). The photo caption warns that some provinces could see temperatures go as low as 61ºF to 64.5ºF.

Almost Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is tomorrow and in preparation I spent part of Sunday afternoon burning old palm to make plenty of ashes. I’m thinking we may need more than usual because this year we are to sprinkle them on a person’s head rather than mark a cross on the forehead. We have plenty of palm trees on the grounds of the deaf office and I found a lot of fallen fronds so that wasn’t a problem. [The three white bandages on my right leg are from three dog bites I received on Thursday. More on that later.]

Not your average day….

This is something almost never seen in Cambodia: almost every single vehicle stopped for a red light is behind the crosswalk, the accepted norm in western countries. Normally traffic in Phnom Penh does not halt for a light until the front wheel is intruding into the lane of moving cars, causing them to swerve. Cambodians drivers are like others, though, often creatures of habit and copiers of others, and by some strange circumstance the first one to stop for the light must have stopped behind the crosswalk and the others just followed suit without thinking.