Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
The past couple days I noticed there was more haze in the sky and distant buildings were harder to see but I didn’t notice any difference in breathing. But now the paper says two days ago Phnom Penh (arrow) was the second most air-polluted city in the world, behind only Dhaka, Bangladesh. Today the visibility is much greater and the air quality number is 84, much lower than the previous 190+. Air pollution is not something Phnom Penh is noted for.
A really essential part of the lunar new year is the chrysanthemums. Here a neighborhood group of ladies went together to buys some flowers and set up shop in an empty lot near the deaf office.
Today when I was on my bicycle going to the Deaf Development Programme office, I got squeezed between two vehicles at an intersection and got a good abrasion on my left arm. When I got to the office several staff pitched in to clean up and bandage the wound with our first aid kit.
I will never be able to understand Cambodian drivers’ fixation with driving with one wheel over the dividing line on streets. Here my tuk-tuk driver has his left wheel hooked over the line. Notice two vehicles ahead, the car driver has his right wheel over the same line.
The Lunar New Year is January 29th, still a week and half away, but the preparations are in full swing even though it is not a holiday here. Many, many Cambodians claim some bit of Chinese ancestry, deservedly or not, and the Year of the Rat will be widely celebrated here.
Look at this mass of overhead wires on a Phnom Penh street. This is rather unreal even by Cambodian standards!
In a land where there are no building codes–or if there are codes, they are ignored, it can’t be too surprising to find an umbrella seemingly affixed to the front of a building ten or twelve feet above ground. Did it blow up there and get stuck? Did someone secure it in that position? Is so, why? Who knows!
