06 - Life in Siem Reap
09.12.2008 (Siem Reap)
Quite obviously, life in a country like Cambodia is quite different from Central Europe. Actually, the closer you look, the more difficult is becomes to find similarities. Let me give you some impressions from here:
If you ride your motorbike during the day with the light on, you risk getting fined by the police. The same happens, if you park the bike on the street, you are supposed to place it on the walkway. So simply act in a way that feels completely wrong, and you are doing fine.
Read a Cambodian newspaper and you will certainly not find any nude persons respectively girls. But you wont have any problems seeing dead people, lying in their own blood after being hit in an accident. Or the photo of a baby that has been deserted some days before the picture was taken. Every culture seems to look for its own kind of thrill.
Sometimes it quite fun to hear about the units of measurement in stores. E.g., if you buy plastic bags for garbage, you buy a kilo of bags, and not 20 or 50 pieces. But occasionally the reported content is also highly entertaining. Lately I was at a party and people subsequently asked me, if I wanted to drink beer or wine (non-alcoholic alternatives are usually not taken into consideration under male visitors of a Cambodian party). I looked around and could not see one single bottle of wine. A couple of beers later I came across the solution: Many people actually don't know what wine is. If they open a bottle and the (alcoholic) content sparkles, then it is beer, otherwise it is wine. So we had an enjoyable evening with Johnnie Walker wine.
However, drinking can also be associated with another problem: Many households get their water from pumps in the garden. One cannot drink the water without boiling it before, but even then it seems to contain chemicals of whatever kind. Tourists usually try to use bottled water as much as possible, even for brushing teeth etc. Perhaps this could also be an interesting topic for the Garden Shuttle one day.
Talking about contamination leads to another problem: In SR there is no really functional waste disposal system (with the exception of downtown SR, there they recently installed one). People throw their garbage somewhere on the side of the street and once in a while it starts burning there and the garbage is gone. This picture has been taken in my street (shortly after disposing the black bag myself). People are not really happy with this situation but they don’t know what else to do.
Have a look at T’s younger brother B. He is 22 and recently built this house for himself in the garden. The rent for a house like the one in the background is 60 USD per month and thus much too expensive for B. So he rented some space in the garden for 5 USD per month, where he constructed his house. Yesterday he was out for singing competition. We all hope, one day he will become famous and rich.
Quite obviously, life in a country like Cambodia is quite different from Central Europe. Actually, the closer you look, the more difficult is becomes to find similarities. Let me give you some impressions from here:
If you ride your motorbike during the day with the light on, you risk getting fined by the police. The same happens, if you park the bike on the street, you are supposed to place it on the walkway. So simply act in a way that feels completely wrong, and you are doing fine.
Read a Cambodian newspaper and you will certainly not find any nude persons respectively girls. But you wont have any problems seeing dead people, lying in their own blood after being hit in an accident. Or the photo of a baby that has been deserted some days before the picture was taken. Every culture seems to look for its own kind of thrill.
Sometimes it quite fun to hear about the units of measurement in stores. E.g., if you buy plastic bags for garbage, you buy a kilo of bags, and not 20 or 50 pieces. But occasionally the reported content is also highly entertaining. Lately I was at a party and people subsequently asked me, if I wanted to drink beer or wine (non-alcoholic alternatives are usually not taken into consideration under male visitors of a Cambodian party). I looked around and could not see one single bottle of wine. A couple of beers later I came across the solution: Many people actually don't know what wine is. If they open a bottle and the (alcoholic) content sparkles, then it is beer, otherwise it is wine. So we had an enjoyable evening with Johnnie Walker wine.
However, drinking can also be associated with another problem: Many households get their water from pumps in the garden. One cannot drink the water without boiling it before, but even then it seems to contain chemicals of whatever kind. Tourists usually try to use bottled water as much as possible, even for brushing teeth etc. Perhaps this could also be an interesting topic for the Garden Shuttle one day.
Talking about contamination leads to another problem: In SR there is no really functional waste disposal system (with the exception of downtown SR, there they recently installed one). People throw their garbage somewhere on the side of the street and once in a while it starts burning there and the garbage is gone. This picture has been taken in my street (shortly after disposing the black bag myself). People are not really happy with this situation but they don’t know what else to do.
Have a look at T’s younger brother B. He is 22 and recently built this house for himself in the garden. The rent for a house like the one in the background is 60 USD per month and thus much too expensive for B. So he rented some space in the garden for 5 USD per month, where he constructed his house. Yesterday he was out for singing competition. We all hope, one day he will become famous and rich.
posted by Nihilissimus at 10:20 AM
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