Phnom Penh: Tonle Bassac Neighborhood

This is the first time I've lived in a real city. I don't count my university years spent in Raleigh, for it was rather spread out and seemed to have no character at all. While Phnom Penh is far from the most beautiful city I've seen, it has oodles of character--it's not just a place where people reside, but a breathing, pulsing organism.

I am constantly surprised how the posh and the poor exist so close together, quite literally in each others' backyard. I live on a narrow street in a quiet (sometimes) little neighborhood of two and three story French villas, inhabited by foreigners and wealthy Khmers. Spilling over the walls of these homes are the lush limbs of mango trees, stalks of bamboo, and other flowering branches, all shading the littered street below and entangling the knotted electrical lines. Within a 2-minute walk of my front door are a shanty-town, a long row of dilapidated apartments that look to collapse at any moment, a small community of tin-and-brick homes surrounding the pagoda, and a local market of covered wooden stalls cramped together, also looking rather unstable. The market is putrid and rather filthy, and yet curiously wonderful to explore, with tiny salons/nailshops, alongside stalls selling meat on hooks and covered in flies, alongside stalls selling only belts, alongside produce stalls with such treats as dragonfruit and rambutans and miniature bananas.

In the alley just outside our front gate, a group of moto and tuk-tuk drivers and layabouts spend the weekdays hanging out in the shade, hoping for a $1 fare from one of us foreigners. When not lounging on their vehicles, they are gathered in a circle, kneeling or sitting on the street, playing cards and gambling their riel. They are always quick to offer their services ("tuk-tuk suh?"), but are content to exchange a bit of Khmer when I refuse (usually I'm biking/walking). Our short conversations usually don't extend past "How's it going?" and "I'm hungry", but recently they've taken to looking inside my shopping bags when I return from the market, and trying to tell me the Khmer names of everything inside.

This post about living in PP was originally going to be quite long, but I think I'll continue it as a series of vignettes...