One morning this week Charlotte and Catherine were downstairs on the second floor playing when an unexpected visitor appeared on our balcony. It was a rather large monkey which knocked over our mango picker and then fled the scene of the crime. While monkeys are certainly common in Cambodia it’s rare to see them wandering…
Category: Daily life in Cambodia
Cellar Door and Morality
During a 1955 lecture noted linguist J. R. R. Tolkien, better known today as the author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, claimed that ‘cellar door’ was more beautiful sounding than ‘sky’ or ‘beautiful’. In this he joined a long tradition of colleagues who held that ‘cellar door’ is among the most beautiful…
មៀន | Longan
មាន is the Khmer word for ‘have’. The Khmer phrase for rich person is អ្នកមាន, literally អ្នក ‘person’ មាន ‘have’. This is along the lines of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in English. Longan fruit is មៀន, literally ‘fruit have’. This is the source of endless wordplay in Khmer. For instance តើអ្នកមានមានមៀនទេ, which is something like…
នំពំ | Coconut Waffles
One of the girls’ favorite street foods are Khmer coconut waffles or ‘Noum Pom’. These sweet waffles are moist and dense, not airy and light. They do have that delightful waffle crunch on the surface but shredded coconut lurks beneath the surface. They are typically eaten plain, traditionally served in a banana leaf and more…
Fishbones and the heart of the Mekong
I developed a dairy allergy in my teenage years. Since then, I’ve often been asked “how do you get your calcium without milk?” Well, calcium is available in many foods with dark leafy greens being of special note. One of my favorite sources of calcium is blackstrap molasses which is a fantastic sugar substitute for…
Best Mosquito Spray Brand Name
Between Dengue and Chikungunya, we’ve developed a healthy interest in keeping mosquitos away. There are few things more satisfying than frying the little bloodsuckers with a mosquito racket but we also use mosquito spray quite a lot. Since COVID-19 disrupted international trade, the brands of mosquito spray available here have been in constant flux and…
Online School is back in session
Last week, Charlotte started second grade… It’s hard to believe that’s true but it is. My little baby is growing up so fast. …and, yesterday, Catherine started Pre-Kindergarten. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, both girls are currently studying online and it will probably be months in the best case scenario before they’re able to study…
Voltra Matrix Test Drive
Last week Doungchann, our administrative assistant, and I went to test drive the Voltra Matrix. This is the first ‘made in Cambodia’ electric moto. If you’ve been to Phnom Penh, you know that the air and noise pollution are major problems. Cambodia is also consistently ranked as one of the top ten countries in the…
Activate Windows
Microsoft recently announced that they’re ending support for Windows 10 in 2025. Way back when Microsoft introduced Windows 10, they said it would be a shift from Windows as a product to Windows as a service and that it would be the last, final, and forever version of Windows. But they changed their minds. This…
Heart of Crown & the COVID game
I think it’s probably clear by now that we love playing games as a family. During our staycation, we got into a card game called Heart of Crown that I had brought with us when we moved here in 2019. It is very similar to Dominion, for those who have played that, but with the…