More things to do with sidewalks

Things to do with sidewalks

Set up a restaurant.

Dye your hair.

Eviscerate a fish.

Sleep.

Open a parkade.

Rope it off to preserve it (for future generations).

Start a neighbourhood landfill.

Create a beautiful garden.

Establish a beachside resort.

Run a gas station.

Weld parts for motos.

Pee (boys only) (no pictures).

Install two diesel gennies.

Display truck tires.

Re-sell snacks.

SUVs

The story goes like this. At one time, a few years ago, the government bought a fleet of SUVs for officials. These were the only SUVs on the streets of Cambodia. The mafia (and apparently, there are a lot of them) got the idea that cops wouldn’t stop SUVs , thinking them government vehicles, so started driving them themselves. They are now everywhere. Anna-Marie commented she has seen more Hummers here than at home. The bigger and blacker the better the vehicle. Never mind that the streets are tiny and congested with motos, tuk tuks, and bicycles. I think the government should replace its fleet of SUVs with one of Smartcars or Priuses.

As an aside, our dog is part retriever, and loves to carry a stick around when out for a walk. Her gate and whole bearing change. She shifts into a trot, holding her head high, and seems to say, “Move aside, important stick coming through!” I can't help but think, as SUVs drive past, of the IQ of my dog, and the importance of the stick behind the wheel.

Traffic

It’s simple. The only traffic rules apply to foreigners, and they are well advised to ignore them. On a long march down to the Russian Market (really, overrated now that you can no long buy AK-47s and marijuana by the kilo) we must cross Mao Tse Doang Boulevard. At a busy intersection, going forward is as risky as turning, so we opt to cross. But the traffic lights are out. What convinces us that this is the place to venture into traffic on wide Mao is a pair of cops directing traffic. They hold sawed-off light sabres, the wands used to direct jets on the tarmac outside airport terminals. Stranded in the middle of Mao’s great girth, we realize the cops have not ventured out into the street with us. They remain standing safely at the curb, leaning into the traffic, invisibly waving their magic-less wands (and blowing their whistles, silently below the din of Doang).

Ostensibly there are two lanes, just like at home. But motos (motorcycles) and tuk tuks very often drive upstream in a virtual curb lane. Remember that tuk tuks are over a metre wide. As elsewhere, when the family vehicle is a moto, you will see them with whole families on board, plus a few chickens or a pig. Things I have seen on motos

• a 12 foot ladder,
• a desk,
• a bundle of bamboo poles each about 16’ long,
• four generations of a family,
• a guy talking on his cell phone while his toddler steers,
• a toddler sleeping across the handle bars while driving in traffic,
• four on a moto all picking their noses (an acceptable social practice here—both the picking and doing it on a moto).

To make matters worse Phnom Penh has given up on sidewalks. They exist, and sometimes are quite wide (as much as four metres). But they are not for pedestrians. Each building is in charge of its own sidewalk, which means the owners or tenants often block off the sides of “their” sidewalk with temporary or quite permanent barriers. My favourite is a wall of tall cacti in huge clay pots, the whole trimmed like a hedge.

The streets then are home to motos, tuk tuks, pedestrians, cars and SUVs, all going every which way. Crossing the street mid-block is safest. At intersections you must look six ways, at all times. You cannot assume that traffic is not coming from anywhere. Even one way streets (I’ve encountered only a few of these) do not apply to motos and tuk tuks.

It is important to know that, unlike in Canada, when a vehicle flashes its brights at you, this means get out of the way!

What saves the whole from being a disaster is that everyone is actually driving very slowly. It is safe, and really the only way, to cross streets by just marching out, weaving in and out of the motos (by far the most numerous vehicles on the roads), calculating where they will be, and knowing they will swerve to avoid you. The only traffic I pause for are the SUVs. This can safely be done anytime during the crossing.

The house cats

As near as I can tell, the cats have no names. I call the one with the severely curled tail "Stumpy" and the other one "Nubs", because it has a little kink just at the end of its tail. Many of the cats I've seen have the Siamese kinked tail, and none of them weigh over six or seven pounds.

Dogs lovers don't despair. I have pictures of puppies to upload soon.

More home pics

At home

Home is a gated property with two buildings in the nicest neighbourhood in Phnom Penh. We live in ex-pat central, district Beung Keng Kong 1. This is a neighbourhood of large, mostly French colonial houses, which provide office space for many NGOs. And serving the ex-pat population are dozens of restaurants, cafés, gift shops, and massage parlours. We think of the neighbourhood as like Queen Street west of Bathurst (in Toronto) with its mix of trendy and old establishments. In one block I find a guest house with spa on the main floor, an iron fabricator (making mostly gates), a travel agency, an internet café, an Indian food restaurant, a Khmer and Italian food restaurant, a massage parlour, another travel agency, another internet café, and on the corner (on the sidewalk) a restaurant catering to Cambodians, serving breakfast only (the whole restaurant disappearing by 9:00am).

Inside our gate are two buildings. The main house has an office, living room (which doubles as a yoga studio if it is raining on the tin roofed terrace), and an unused kitchen. Actually, we have two cats who use the kitchen. Their Whiskas is kept in a cupboard and they eat on the counter. Above this are three bedrooms and two baths. We have the bedroom with the en suite bath and a terrace. Dara (pronounced like que sara sara) is the only other house mate. She is the de facto second in command of the studio, though while Isabelle, the director, is in Canada and Anna-Marie is in charge, Dara is the go to girl for everything. She is also a real sweetie and we’ve taken a shine to her, and her to Anna-Marie especially. We are in the midst of fifteen days of Buddhist holidays, the final three of which are work holidays. We have planned an excursion to her home province to spend the holidays with her aunt and uncle in the country. 

The roof of the main house is a covered terrace and secondary yoga studio. The main studio is on the roof of the other building. Both buildings are of concrete construction, with HARD tiled floors. I’ve already learned the trick of practicing on two yoga mats, in an attempt to save my old bony knees. Below the yoga studio is a garage (used as utility and storage), a bath room and change rooms, and our kitchen (described in a previous entry).

Beer!

This one’s for the boys back home. Each of the four pictured brews can be had for 60 cents. The set of three sells for as low as 45 cents, most for 55 cents (but really aren’t worth buying twice). The Chinese beer is made by Tsing Tao. Stella sells in the bars for $1.50, and Guinness and Heineken are less than a buck for a can in the supermarket. You can get Bud, but I haven’t even bothered to look at the price. Available also is a nice local stout, ABC Stout, with 8% alcohol. And Chinese and Japanese beer that we can get in Canada is also available. So far no sign of the Speckled Hen.

I haven’t made it there yet, but there is a brewpub, run by a guy who trained at the Tsing Tao brewery in China. He has four categories of beer, designated by a colour code system; the lightest is made with kelp (seaweed, for you landlubbers) and the strongest is described as not a bad approximation of Guinness. Will give you a full update after I’ve been. This may be soon. While Anna-Marie has no interest in exploring a brewpub, she met a Canadian on the street the other day, with a PhD is philosophy and a passion for hockey. I get as excited by hockey as Anna-Marie does by beer, but a group of ex-pats play street hockey once a week in the evening; and they must go somewhere for suds after. I hope to hook up with them—near the end of a game—and champion the brewpub. The concept of playing anything on the streets here is dumbfounding (see my posting on Traffic).

And on the topic of intoxicants, we have yet to encounter the (perhaps, semi-mythical) Happy Pizza, which has a layer of marijuana under the cheese. I’m going to the Canadian Embassy this afternoon on other business, and will ask after it.

In Phnom Penh

I love the city. It is a sensual treat; sight, sound, smell, taste, touch.

Peeking at the city on Google Earth was, as I suspected, not to ruin the sense of discovery and surprise. I am as oriented as if I had studied a street map, but no more familiar with Phnom Penh. We arrived late evening on Thursday and hired a tuk tuk to take us into town, to our new home. “The Tuk Tuk is your friend,” I read on another traveller’s blog, when back in Canada. It is a version of the auto-rickshaw. A motorcycle is harnessed to a two-wheeled wagon, with two benches facing each other and a canopy over top that cantilevers out over the driver. This will be important, we discover a few days later, when we ride through the streets in a downpour with water so deep the motorbike stalls. Our driver, wrapped in a plastic raincoat—the plastic as thin as a vegetable bag at a grocery store—struggles to keep the tuk tuk afloat and on the road. When the bike stalls, he dashes to a group of onlookers sitting on their porch to borrow a rag to dry the carburetor.

The ride in from the airport is a barrage of sights and smells. Not our high speed float through Seoul, we weave in and out of traffic, swimming with a school of motorbikes and other tuk tuks. These are the dominant vehicles of the road, though, there are way too many SUVs and sport trucks in the city. This is especially the case in our neighbourhood, which is ground zero for NGOs and international corporations (real estate, construction, logistics). We pass shacks, mountains of garbage, billboards, crumbling, unpainted concrete apartment blocks, glass towers, neon advertising bars, casinos, massage, dental and eye care, happy hour, happy garden, happy restaurant, Chinese, Korean, Italian, Russian, Mexican dining. Throngs of people mill about the streets, buying food from small kiosks or from a person with simply a burner on the ground and a few bowls to serve up something. On an early morning stroll about the neighbourhood we see people with a pole slung over a shoulder carrying two squat open baskets. One has the stove, fuel, and food to be cooked, the other bowls and spoons and more food—each component carefully separated by banana leaves: on their way to work; to their corner of the city, and presumably, new and regular customers.

As I type it pours and the city has become one sound: a gamalon of water drops on tile, dirt, leaves, roof tops, and increasingly, water on water, as the courtyard below fills up. The night of the wet tuk tuk ride the courtyard had 10-15 centimeters in it. Now I hear a child screaming with delight (at the rain, such a common occurrence, or at some dry, indoor activity?). Our first night a dog next door barks frequently, awakening and keeping us awake. Given what we’ve read about Cambodian diet I can’t but wonder if it’s barking about its last night. But it is with us still, a pet, though one who keeps vigil through the nights. Our household has two diminuative and nearly voiceless cats. They seem quite typical of the area. All the cats I have seen are small, maybe 6 pounders. The polyphonic drone of cycles is the root sound of Phnom Penh, though. Underlying all the other commonplace and exceptional sounds (of construction, laughter, birds, dogs, roosters, car horns, kitchen cutlery from the surrounding houses) there is the traffic. We are lucky. Ours is a quiet street. Everyone says this and we agree. The streets around us bustle with shops, traffic, restaurants, construction, but ours is a quiet affair of stately walled homes, many the headquarters of development agencies. At one end are two stores selling gigantic truck tires, piled high on the sidewalks; at the other a featureless Chinese restaurant with a French name and AIR CONDITIONING. This makes it especially popular, the sidewalk and street a parking lot of SUVs. As the rain eases, I hear the staff below me bailing water from the courtyard.

Comparisons with Cuba are inevitable; and the night air as we drive into town is thick with heady smells. We travel through waves of scent: flowers, ginger, smoke, chili, garbage, barbeque, diesel, humidity. Does humidity have a smell? I think so. It is a combination of all the day’s smells, stuck, hovering, a veil that lines the walls of your nose. In Holguin, I always seem to arrive at night (though I doubt this is true), arrive from the thin, scentless winter of Canada. The air is rich with gardenias. Arrival in Cuba is a greeting of gardenia and diesel. Phnom Penh is a greeting of chili oil and sweat (probably my own).

Because we have not yet had a good introduction to the local food stalls, we have shopped at the Lucky Supermarket. Obviously Western items (imported for the expat community) are expensive. But it is a good source of local staples at, what seem to us, cheap prices: limes, lemon grass, young ginger (the skin is edible), a vast array of mushrooms (familiar and new—fresh straw mushrooms, seen outside the can for the first time), nappa, and a host of greens. Until I enroll in cooking school and we get to a local market this will do. It is also the source of beer, at sixty to ninety cents a can. We have been cooking in our mock Asian style, and eating well, but hope to take this up a notch soon. The first morning we awoke hungry and locked in. Keys to the gate were not passed on for several days, so we had to coordinate our comings and goings. Dara, one keeper of keys and a resident with us, attends school from 7am to 11am. When finally we are released it was Western scrambled eggs, fresh orange juice, toast, coffee and hash browns. Everything but the hash browns beating out our regular greasy spoon, the Checkerboard. But Sunday we go to the Amok restaurant and have Tofu Amok, served in a coconut shell (for $2). A complex mix of chewy tofu, chili, lime, edible lime leaves (not at all like the dried inedible ones we purchase in Asian stores at home), coconut milk, and I’ve no idea what else, this will become a regular for me.

The tuk tuk may be your friend, but the ceiling fan is your lover. Naked at night, not always under the single sheet, the fan caresses, its cooling breeze rippling the sheers beside the bed, and at its low speed alternating waves of air that evaporate the heat, the smells, the day. Otherwise, while the heat is not unbearable, it is tactile. Our skin, slightly adhesive, altered by a thin layer of sweat. The morning following the big rainfall, with the stalled tuk tuk, there was a dead rat in the kitchen. Not a large one, and out of the way. (Ah, to have staff—it later disappeared.) The kitchen is in the other of our two buildings, a short covered walk connecting it with our house. It has both a solid door and a screened door, but neither seems to be closed at any time. Two walls have a very low (mid-thigh) tiled counter, open below. At one end is the sink, at the other, 4-5 meters away, is the cook top. Under the counter, near the cook top, the rat was in repose. I am sure that four months of bending over the counter will perpetually stoop my back. The locals are generally not tall, and I suppose the counter height is more adequate for the buildings intended and original occupants. This morning Anna-Marie entered the kitchen early to make coffee. We seem to be waking around five. Though this is exceedingly early, we are not yet upset, as this is a beautiful time of day, cooler, the sun just coming up. In the gloom in the kitchen, in her bare feet, Anna-Marie steps on fur just inside the doorway. Anna-Marie leaps back in disgust, a cat leaps back in surprise.

Anna-Marie adds some Back Story

I read Carl’s first blog entry before we left Canada and thought he did a great job of explaining everything except what we’re doing here. I’m teaching yoga in a studio – Nataraj – that will also be our home for the next four months. In addition, I’m going to do some volunteer work for the Cambodian Acid Survivors Charity. Carl’s plans are more open and involve some well-deserved rest after a hectic year of teaching at the university and helping a friend with some home renovations. But we both look forward (perhaps perversely!) to the discomforts of adapting to a new culture and climate. Our experience of international travel in the past ten years has primarily been frequent trips to Cuba for both work and pleasure, and Asia is a new adventure. The few hours that we have been here invite comparisons between the two countries – smells are similar, there’s always a dog barking somewhere, and there are some, um, “irrationalities” (I’m trying for tact) about traffic. I want to ask someone why I see women on the street in daytime wearing elbow length gloves, why the expats I’ve already seen make no eye contact or show any interest in us while the Cambodians have smiles galore, and – please – could someone explain how I can cross the road without loss of life or limb?

We both feel surprisingly free of jet lag and I suspect that if we get some solid hours of sleep this evening we’ll be fine. I woke early and hungry but couldn’t find anyone to open the gate to let us out until Cat, the yoga teacher visiting from Bali, appeared after 8. She gave us our first piece of practical advice – how to use the Hindi shrine in the garden as a foothold if you need to get over the wall. Jeez, I love it when there’s a practical aspect to religion!

And, closing by returning for a moment to the dog, I read a news story while at breakfast that reported officials are calling on dog owners to be extra vigilant about their pooches. It seems recent inflation is responsible for a 4-fold increase in the cost of meat and the rate of dog-napping has risen along with it as Cambodians search for affordable alternatives. For sure, Chai wears a fine and tempting set of rump roasts on her back end.

Seoul pictures 2

Seoul pictures

Seoul

Many thanks to Glen, our Seoul tour guide. Glen lived in Seoul for several years before I met him, and suggested, given our limited time in the city, the neighbourhood of Insadong. Our room is furnished in that ghastly french provincial style (to capitalize french is to do France a disservice) but is located in the midst of shops, art galleries, restaurants, mostly packed onto tiny meandering alley ways. Surprisingly, we wake at 8am local time. We arrange to leave our bags at the hotel and for a cab to take us to the airport at 4 pm. And we set off.

Our morning coffee is at the Lime Tree, a tiny café, mostly for take-out, with only three tables. On one wall is a tack board covered with kudos, in Korean and English. One English note extols the virtues of the coffee, staff, and service, then cheers on the Ottawa Senators.

Though this is only day one of about 120, we both buy T-shirts, a mug by a local potter we meet, and an oil painting. We laugh at our extravagant shopping, though I insist we probably won’t keep up this pace for the four months. We will, after all, only spend two days in Seoul, today and one on the way home. The T-shirt I buy is handy. Our luggage has gone on to Phnom Penh I hope (my friend Bruce has told me there are only two kinds of luggage—carry on and lost) and I am sweating up the one shirt I have. Later, at the airport I will bird bath and change shirts. The mug is well made and will add to our collection of hand-made mugs back home. It will also be used while in Phnom Penh, so seems a good investment. The painting is original modern Chinese factory painting, small, of a pig offering its throat up to a young girl with a knife.

Lunch is fabulous, at a vegetarian restaurant run by a woman who lived in Canada while her sons went to university there. Her sister serves and we ask her to choose for us. Sixteen dishes arrive, plus soup and rice. They run from the slightly familiar to the exotic.

Later in the day we head off to find the Rice Cake and Kitchen Utensil Museum (mostly in hopes of finding kitsch & humor but the museum is impressive and part of a large culinary institute devoted to traditional Korean food). A large group of very young children are there at the same time as us, and we feel sympathy for the hard-working tour guide who has to work extra hard to keep this gang focused on the tour when they seem much more interested in watching us. En route we encounter a protest outside a court house, complete with riot police and 27 buses to transport them, and perhaps those who may be arrested. Everything seems quite peaceful, though, and the cops, who look like bored teenagers, sit balanced on benches made of helmets and shields.