It is going to be a long night!

I just took a walk down my alley and street to find out where all of the noise is coming from. When I got out to the street its quiet, there is a party at the apartment next to mine, its balcony and mine meet, there is a wall but that is not stopping the noise.

Down the alley there's another party. This one has very loud music. Between the two, there's no point in trying to get any sleep just yet (even with ear plugs). I sure wish I had a couch I could sleep on, it is a little quieter (only a bit) in the living room.

Smells of Cambodia

Some of the smells in Cambodia are very nice, for example the jasmine flower, and then there are those that are OK, roasting pork wafting into my bedroom in the morning. The remaining are not so nice. To cope with the later I have developed a unique ability to stop breathing once an offensive odor is detected.

This action came about automatically, one day I noticed I was in a market but I did not smell the dead rotting meat and the fishy water on the floor. I thought that is great. It took some time to realize what I was or should I say was not doing.

I have checked it out in many cases. I get a faint whiff of an offensive odor I just stop breathing. If after some time I take a slight sniff and it is still there, I breath very lightly though my mouth. This has really made walking in certain area much more pleasant.

Lunch

The other day I went to lunch late, about 1:00, at the normal spot. This restaurant is frequented by a lot of the permanent staff at DDD. When I arrived there were two colleagues finishing their lunch.

The front of the building is completely open during business hours, the metal doors swing back which give a very airy feel. As I walked in I noticed the owner chasing something with a mop handle. I saw that he was chasing and beating on a very large rat. The rat was running along the wall trying to make it to the front, in his case, exit.

About a meter from the front, the owner delivered the fatal blow. The poor rat had been quite beat up. After the owner checked to make sure it was dead, he picked it up by the tail and headed toward the kitchen.

I thought, I hope my meal is already cooked. I have never eaten rat and did not want to that day. Lunch came about five minutes later and tastes like always. I assume the rate was not in today's meal.

Electronic bills payment Cambodian style

Last evening I could not connect to the internet, this happens from time to time but usually it is only down for at most two hours. Last evening, it never came up, this morning it was still down. Hummmm. What could have caused this?

I receive my bill from the ISP as an e-mail and this month I paid the bill with on-line banking from my ANZ Royal Cambodian bank account. I put two and two together and guessed that my payment had not gone through and the ISP had blocked my account for not paying.

I went to the ISP and asked about my account. Yes, they had not received the payment, off to the bank, luckily they are only ½ kilometer apart. At the ATM I got a mini statement that showed that no money had been deducted for the internet payment. I asked at information if they could check and see what had gone wrong. The young woman showed me the statement on-line but could not tell me why the payment did not work. I had withdrawn enough cash to pay the bill. I went back to the ISP and paid the bill in cash.

Problem solved, I can now post more blog entries.

Cooked pork in the market

In a previous post I explained why I am now eating pork rather than beef. Pork is available in all markets; you can purchase it two ways, fresh (just barely without the squeal) and cooked.

Today I will show you a few photos of how cooked pork is sold near my house in the Oruseey market. 

 There are just a few ducks hiding in amongst the pork

 

The young man in the photo speaks English the woman to the left is his sister. I asked if his family raises the pigs. He said no they purchase them, kill them, cook the pigs and bring them to the market.

Finding a photo

I have taken over 10,000 photos in Cambodia, finding one or even 50 photos on a particular subject can be a little tricky. I use a tool called Lightroom which allows me to place key words on photos so they are hopefully easily to find later.

I was just starting a post on ICE and wanted to look at the photos I have of ice. In Lightroom I brought up the search panel and entered ice and clicked. What did I do wrong, there a huge number of photos and these are of rICE. OK, I know what happened so I start sorting down through the photos and come across photos from the Water Festival boat race practICE, further I found photos of polICE. I never knew there were so many words that ICE in them.

As I started writing this post I realized there were three other ways I could have gotten directly to the ICE photos. In the end I found 77 photos that will have to be narrowed down to two or three for the ICE post.

Ice

In Cambodia most people do not have refrigerators, they use ice for refrigeration. Ice comes from the factory in meter long blocks, to use it or carry it home or use it in the market it must be made into something smaller. Ice vendors do a brisk business sawing large pieces into small ones. Vendors saw the ice about 1/4 of the way through the block and then either hit the cut with a hatchet or put the hatchet in the crack and then pound on the hatchet with the saw.

Then tying it up so it can be carried home.

If it is not carried home, it can go by moto.

Around the Orussey market vendors use ice to keep seafood cool. Fish are not put on ice, they are frequently left live until they are sold. 

You notice that I have not discusses sanitation of the ice. When I get something cold, I try to forget what I've seen.

Flowers

I remember driving in the Netherlands seeing flowers for sale everywhere, they were displayed in front of gas stations, all over markets, and it was nice. In Cambodia flowers are not everywhere but they are definitely easy to find. Some of the varieties are not anything I have ever seen before.

In North America and Europe you purchase flowers from a store. Flowers may be displayed in front of the store but there is a store there somewhere. In Cambodia that's not the case. Vendors set up on the street under an umbrella. I don't know what they do with the flowers at night but during the day they are under umbrellas on the street. There are several flower vendors along the street next the Oruseey market.

Labor is cheap in Cambodia, I have watched women carefully turning back each individual pedals of flowers to make a very interesting design.

Note the elegant blue plastic display stand. 

I admit it: I’m a REAL Wimp

I road my moto across the Mekong to a little bar where there was a going away party for a friend from work. On the way home I knew I would go close to the Szechwan restaurant so I decided to stop in for dinner.

As usual I ordered from the picture book, I chose a deep-fried whole fish. The waitress brought the setup, this time instead of a bowl of chilies and a bowl of garlic I got one bowl with half and half. I guess they know I am a wimp when it comes to chili. The setup included a small bowl of Kimchi. This one was not quite as hot as the last one but you could almost see the flames leaping from it. As I ate, I picked off as many of the chilies as I could. The small bowl with the chopsticks resting on it is what I picked out.

When my fish arrived, it was covered in a sweet and sour sauce which had small pieces of carrot and green pepper. I know from my last experience, the green peppers are just slightly less HOT than the red ones (these are not green bell pepper, in fact they make a jalapeño seem mild).

The fish was very good. They had sliced some of the meat off of the bones to help it cook quickly which made getting at the meat very easy. After eating the large pieces I worked to clean the little bits off of the skeleton. In doing this the little bits ended up in the sweet and sour sauce. The sauce had a very nice flavor but was very oily. Last time I was at the restaurant the family carried in six 20 liter cans of cooking oil. I guess the oil should have not been a surprise.

The little bowl in the foreground is an attestation to my WIMPNESS, it contains the peppers from the Kimchi and from the fish.

There, I've admitted it.

I’m a Wimp

In Cambodia there is one faucet in the sinks and usually one in the shower. Mine is high class, there is a standard faucet that gives cold water in the winter and hot water in the summer.

I caught a cold just after Christmas and went to the doctor. He suggested I take a warm shower. My answer was I can only do that in the summer. I continued taking cold showers for three days. I decided to give in and try a warm shower. Standing in the bath tub, I flipped to circuit breaker for the water heater on. So far so good. I was not exactly sure how to operate it but with only three controls it was not hard to figure out.

It took the water heater about 30 seconds to put out a very nice warm shower. It really felt good. I did fell like a WIMP taking a warm shower. I justified it by telling myself "I am sick and should take care of myself".

It felt so good in fact that for the last week I have been taking a warm shower. I know that this will have to stop fairly soon, I am just about over my cold. I am not really looking forward to going back to the cold showers.

Szechuan restaurant

I went back to the Szechuan restaurant not too far from my house. The menu comes in two parts; the one on the left is an old wooden photo album that contains photos of the different dishes with a little English and a price hand written on each photo. The other menu is written in Chinese, Khmer and a few words of English.

I chose from the photo menu, selecting sweet and sour chicken. The waitress brought a setup of a small bowls of chopped garlic and red hot peppers, a rice bowl, spoon and chopsticks, this was followed by a mug of tea. 

You can see by the photo how large the bowls are, in the next photo you can see how many chili peppers I use.

There was also a saucer of kimchi with a large number of hot peppers chopped in it. The kimchi was very tasty and very hot. The first two bites turned me red hot.

My sweet and sour was served. It was temperature hot, right off the skillet. The sauce was thick and sweet. The chicken didn't have any bones, a very nice change over most Cambodian meals. The green peppers with the chicken were also very hot. 

Over the course of the meal, I used up several napkins wiping sway the sweat from the heat.I loved every bite.

Stop lights Cambodian style

Stop lights in Cambodia are a decoration; about 3/4of the people stop at them, of the other quarter some slow down but most just ignore them. There is a very nice feature that I would like to see in other countries countdown timers that show how much time is left before the light changes.

In Phnom Penh sitting at a stop light, most of the motos turn off the engine if there is more than 30 seconds to wait. When the light counts down to 5 it is like a Le Mans start, engines start and motos start heading for the intersection.

The photos in this post are from the intersection near home. The lights in the photo are color coded correctly. There is another light that no matter if the main signal light is red or green the countdown number is green. That has caught me more than once, looking up and thinking the light is green and then seeing traffic going across the intersection.

Chicken soup

I caught a cold just after Christmas, Anita suggested chicken soup. I know she was right; there is something to the healing power of chicken soup. I couldn't bring myself to purchase a chicken in the market and cooking it. I don't know if it's looking at the naked chickens hanging there upside down or if it is their heads laying in a pile with their eyes looking at me. 

I just couldn't buy one. I know how to cut it up Cambodian style, you put it on the cutting board and whack away at it with a cleaver in random directions until there is not a piece larger than the thumb you cut off trying to hold the chicken on the small block.

It may have been the watching the vendors waving a fly wand at the chickens to try and keep the flies at bay. A fly wand is a stick about ½ meter long with a pompom made of plastic strips on the end.

I don't think it could have been that the chickens are frequently lying on the ground with only an old rice bag between them and the ground. I have eaten enough dirt so I think I am not really adversely affected by that.

I don't think it is that chickens in Cambodia are all skin and bone, no, that could not have anything to do with it.

I guess I just was not sick enough to really need chicken soup.

Taking a well deserved break

Some jobs have disadvantages and others have advantages. Cyclo drivers have to put up with poor pay and horrible Phnom Penh traffic, but they do have a perk. There is always somewhere to take a break when business is slow.

In the following photos look at the Cambodian braks used to keep the cyclos from moving.