Enjoying the fresh air and the walking paths down under, even if 17°/63° is a little chilly for us after 2 years in Cambodia 🥶
Pre-school Date Lunch
I stopped by pre-school today to eat lunch with Melissa who is currently teaching that class. I was a couple of minutes early so I sat down on one of the tiny chairs at a 2-seater table and waited for her to join me. One of her students arrived first, let’s call him Jonah, and shyly said “I’m going to sit with you Mr Matt” 🤦♂️😁
When Mrs Melissa arrived she sat at the next table (actually closer to me than Jonah was so it worked out well) and we started chatting. Every so often Jonah would politely request my attention to tell me about his day or some other random thought that popped into his head. Two highlights included:
Jonah: “Excuse me Mr Matt, why isn’t your beard connected to your hair?” Me, laughing: “It’s called a goatee and a moustache, that’s just the way I cut it” Jonah: “It would be funny if it grew down to your knees and covered your mouth so you couldn’t eat”
Then a few minutes later: Jonah: “Excuse me Mr Matt, why do you want to eat lunch with my teacher?” Me: “Because we’re married. Mrs Melissa is my wife” Jonah’s jaw dropped as he processed that information for 4 or 5 seconds before continuing… Jonah: “But you’re not my dad!!!” Me, laughing again: “And Mrs Melissa isn’t your mum, so that’s okay”
Our Christmas tree is a little different in Cambodia but Mel has made the day special for everyone as always…
Pancakes for breakfast, Christmas decorations and some little treats in stockings (boots)
Community Christmas Carols in the common area on our street.
It had a very Pacific vibe with Aussies, Kiwis, Fijians, Filipinos and Koreans all singing (and some dancing)
Ben found some live snakes (eels?) at the local markets…
And Melissa found a new way to get to and from the markets, now that Naomi’s bike legs are a bit stronger
Cosy Christmas carols in Cambodia
Enjoying the heat of the fire as we listen to carols on a lazy Saturday afternoon
Another public holiday today so we went to the Country Club to swim in the pool. 25m salt water pool that was only being used by one other person at the time.
Yesterday we went out for a buffet brunch with Matt’s IT co-workers. They were farewelling one member of their team who is moving on to new things.
Yesterday was Ben’s 11th birthday. He had to go to school but we enjoyed his choice dinner and then chocolate brownie cake for dessert.
Today is a public holiday. After homemade pancakes we went to the battery change place to change some US Dollars into Riel.
Later we walked/rode down an old road to a new borey. We stopped at the Book Cafe for some delicious drinks and picture books.
Yesterday Ming also brought me a gift-Cambodian tapioca pudding. A dessert here with banana, tapioca and coconut milk served warm. Naomi and I liked little bits of it, Ben not so much.
Naomi had a ride home from school with Ming yesterday-she wasn’t particularly keen to do it again ☺️
After much effort on her part, we were excited to get a care package from Mama today. It contained some food stuffs including a lovely large jar of Nutella and some board games that Matt and Ben proceeded to play straight away!
Kids rode their bikes too and from school for the first time today. A positive experience! Weather permitting we hope they are able to do this quite often.
Ben, Naomi and Matt wondered out to a bike repair “tent” on the side of the road to have Ben’s bike tyre fixed. The poor man had a hard time fixing it once the rain started pouring down!
We’ll (hopefully) post more about our new house soon but for now here are two teasers:
• A pleasing photo of our cupboard after Mel got rid of the unicorn vomit coat hangers
• Ben enjoying our new couch that arrived on our first afternoon (1 couch still to come)
With work, school and moving house, the past 2 weeks have been busy (hence the lack of blog posts).
Today we decided to travel Khmer style and squeeze into a 3 person tuk tuk (we’ve seen 6 in one). It was all smiles at the start but we probably won’t try that again 😝
Stairway to heaven 🤔
5 storey escalator while visiting Olympia Mall in the city and playing tourists
We’re still getting used to the currencies (plural). Cambodia uses both US Dollars and Cambodian Riel.
The rule of thumb is 4,000 riel equals $1 although the actual exchange rate is closer to 4,100.
The government has made some recent moves to discourage the smaller US notes ($1, $2 and $5) so it’s hit or miss whether they’ll be accepted (and therefore whether we should accept them as change). So far they seem to be mostly acceptable.
The smallest note we’ve seen is 100 riel (approximately 2¢). Apparently 50 riel notes also exist.
The most common notes we see are 100, 500, 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000. We have seen 2,000 and 20,000 notes too (the latter being the rough equivalent of $5). We are yet to see a 50,000 riel note.
The conversion is not difficult, but it is tiring and sometimes confusing figuring out prices, conversions and change. Today I paid $25 for $23.28 worth of groceries and received 7,000 riel change (the correct amount, but I would have needed a calculator if I’d wanted to check it at the time).
Below is a very thick stack of bills totalling 67,100 riel (according to Banker Ben). That’s a little under US$17 or AU$23. It can be a nuisance to carry it all around and make sure you have a variety of notes for small purchases.
The bigger challenge though is perspective. That thick stack of bills is a nuisance to us… but for a textiles worker (for example) that’s almost 1 week’s wages for a physically demanding job.
Another example is tuk tuk drivers. A 32 minute journey to a bank in the city cost us 6,300 riel ($1.60) the other day. It’s a low paying job and sometimes I have to catch myself getting frustrated when a tuk tuk driver doesn’t have 2,000 riel change on hand for a 10,000 note.
We’re having an arty morning while listening to music on our first of three days off school.
Ben and Mel are plastering a mask for school art, Naomi is drawnting (drawing/painting) with her brush pens and I’m, you guessed it, taking photos 🙂
Yesterday we had a LOT of rain, enough to turn our street into a canal
For perspective, here’s a well-and-truly-submerged speed hump:
Here’s some “front/back” photos that show 180° opposite views…
- In the tuk tuk, girls facing forwards, boys facing backwards
- Sunday Lunch (hot chips sandwiches) at the shopping centre
- Enjoying the afternoon rain in our front courtyard
