Before the Festival

On Friday last week, the day before the Water Festival started, my friends and I drove around downtown Phnom Penh to see the preparations for the festival.

We went to Independence Monument, Hun Sen Park, then up to the Royal Palace, and then along Sisowath Quay by the riverfront and stopped at Happy Herb Pizza and had something to eat.

Every place we went and everywhere we looked was crowded. There were balloon sellers, people selling baby duck eggs, meatball sellers, people selling handmade wooden bangles, and more.

At Hun Sen Park I saw lots of signs from different companies advertising their products. I also saw the rehearsal for the concert for following day. I saw about five dancers on the stage and one man telling them things like: “stand here” … “stand there” … “move like this” … “put your arm like that.”

All of my friends and I walked around that night until two o’clock. Now we were ready for the first day of the Water Festival.

10:07 AM ICT Permalink |

Birthday Dream

It was my birthday on October 14. That is also the day I sold my Yamaha Mio 115cc and bought a new motorbike: a Honda Dream 125cc.

I sold my old motorbike for $700 and bought the new for $1,100. This meant I still needed to pay $400, but I only had $200 in cash. I couldn’t find money immediately, so I had to borrow it from my friends. Some of the money I borrowed from a friend of mine named Chan Fou. He said he doesn’t mind when I can give him back the money.

The main reason I wanted to get this Honda Dream is because my old motorbike is too broken down. Also I think this motorbike is bigger than my old one and I can do much more with it. For example, I can do the job as Moto Taxi Driver.

I had my first customer three days after I got the motorbike. The customer was a foreign lady. I took her from the Riverfront to her hotel. She was very friendly. She gave me 2000 Riel for the ride. I asked her some questions like: “How long have you been in Phnom Penh?” and “Have you visited around downtown?” She said she came here to Cambodia for the fourth time, but she didn’t want to go around downtown because she came for missions work. She also said she has to go back to Thailand tomorrow. She said if she has time later she’ll contact me to take her around, but she hasn’t contacted me yet.

Anyway, it was busy for my birthday. I was so happy that I can get the motorbike that I like, and also happy that I can make some money from my new motorbike even if it’s not much.

02:41 PM ICT Permalink |

Cooking Fried Rice

Last week, on Saturday, I got some rice and some soup from Kandal Market for my dinner. But just the rice and soup seemed not really tasty, so I decided to change the plain rice to fried rice.

Here is my recipe for making fried rice: First, I put some cooking oil into a frying pan, than I chopped some garlic and put that into the frying pan. Next, I added some chopped ham from the refrigerator. We got this ham over a week ago and we have to use it before it goes bad, which maybe is tomorrow!

When all the things in the frying pan are hot enough, I put the rice that I got from Kandal Market and mixed it up together. And then I added some different herbs. I would like to tell you what the herbs are but I don't know the names either! I just smell them and which one has a good smell I would put it in. I also stirred in some Chinese oyster sauce. After the rice is cooked I put it on a plate. I also fried an egg and put it on the top of the rice to make it good looking.

So I had some fried rice with the soup that I got from the market. It was very good and I shared some with a friend of mine. He said it was good too.

03:34 PM ICT Permalink |

Motorbike Headaches

My motorbike is a blue Yamaha Mio 115cc. It’s small and has no gears, but it's nice and I like it so much because it's comfortable. It’s also strong and fast, too.

But it gives me a lot of problems. For example: I went to get a registration card for it, but I was confused about the license plate number. It’s because somebody else has my license plate and I had his. It took me three months to find out what the problem was! Then I had to redo it and it cost me another five dollars on the top of the fifteen dollars that I already paid for the license plate. It also gave me a headache on the way to Takeo province when it stopped working. That time I got my friend who went with me to bring it back here to Phnom Penh.

I bought this motorbike secondhand. It always breaks down if I want to use it to go somewhere far. So I would like to sell it and get a better one. But it will be secondhand, too. I tried to find someone to buy my motorbike last month. I went to the Orussey Market because that’s the best place to sell and buy secondhand motorbikes. The motorbike I have now was from there too. There were a lot of buyers that wanted to get my bike at a cheap price. They offered me $500, but it was not enough for me, so I kept the motorbike.

I think I'll sell this motorbike whenever I have enough money to buy a new one. I would like to buy a Honda Dream, which costs $1,100. But I still don't have that money yet. I would like to sell my Yamaha for $650 but the buyers said it's not that good. I like the Yamaha, but it's getting old and the Honda Dream seems like it’s more useful and stronger.

05:13 PM ICT Permalink |

My School

Today was my first day of the new term at my Khmer school. I started grade 11. Grade 11 is really for kids about 17, but I’m 19 and older than most of my class, but there also some younger students who study this grade. The reason I’m 19 and study 11th grade is because when I was young I could not study properly. I had to work for my family.

I go to school every day at one o’clock. It’s Wat Koh high school, and it’s near Sorya Supermarket and Central Market in downtown Phnom Penh. There are ten classes in grade 11. Most of the other teenagers in my grade who are older than me they are richer than me. I think the reason those teenagers are still in grade 11 is because their family is rich so they don’t care about studying!

Today, there were about 20 students in my class. The total is normally about 30 to 40, but it could be 50. The number of students that come to class depends on if there are beautiful girls in the class, or if the teacher is nice, or if there are friends they know. My friend Riya wanted to be in the same class with his girlfriend, so he paid eight dollars to the teacher to change his class. Me, I don’t mind, so I stayed in the same class.

I don’t know my teacher’s name yet. He says things like: You have to put this away, move this away, clean here, help take this rubbish. We just cleaned the classroom today. After cleaning I had lunch with my girlfriend and came back to class about 3 pm. The teacher had to leave, and me and my friends sat around and talked about where we had gone and done during the vacation. Then I came back home and everyone went home too.

There is a lot of rain here in Phnom Penh this week, and sometimes strong winds, too!

09:58 AM ICT Permalink |

Drunk Drivers at Oudong Mountain

Last Saturday many friends of mine and I went out to Oudoung Mountain, about 30km from Phnom Penh. We went there because we wanted to have a good time and also to pray to the temple. It was the Pchtum Ben holiday, a time when Cambodian people pray for their ancestors. The temple in Oudoung has the footprint of the Buddha and we believe if we go there our prayers will be effective.

We left Phnom Penh at about 9am with our motorbikes. We had seven motorbikes. I had one friend with me on my motorbike but most of my friends had three people on their bikes. We arrived at Oudoung Mountain about 11am and found somewhere to buy something to eat. After eating we relaxed about one hour and then we climbed the stairs up to the top of the mountain. There must be more than 600 stairs, I think. And there are more than 100 beggars along the stairs. I gave more than 20,000 riel to them.

Up there at the top they have stupas and there are than 3000 Buddha statues. There is a very nice view and fresh air. Me and my friends prayed andd walked around and I took some photos. We stayed up there for about one and half hours. We came back down around 3pm and started back to Phnom Penh.

On the way back my home one of my friends, his name is Pearom, had an accident with a drunk driver. The car was driving all over the road. My motorbike was in front of all my friends. Pearom had the car was in front of him driving very slow, so Pearom tried to get past, but the car hit him and forced him out of the road. Because he was driving very slowly they didn't get hurt, but the car's paint was scratched. There were men in the car and they were all drunk. They got out of the car and said it was Pearom fault so Pearom has to pay them $300. The rest of us stopped and came back to find Pearom. One guy had a gun and came and shouted at us: "You have to pay for our door!" We all were scared and quiet. They said if we don't pay them they would take Pearom's bike to their place. But we didn't even have $100 between us, we had only $40. They took the money and left. We really don't what they wanted.

First we thought this was a happy day and a nice time for going out to the countryside, but it ended a bad day. Pearom and all of us were angry but we couldn't do anything.

12:32 PM ICT Permalink |

Soccer Video Games

There are a lot of teenagers in Phnom Penh who like to play Soccer Video Games. Students especially, after they’re free from school, they would like to find something to make fun, so they go to a place which has video games. The video arcades not have only soccer games they also have other different games. But most of the people that go there they like soccer, because it’s the most interesting and fun.

One token costs 100 riel (there are about 4000 riel in 1 US dollar). For one token you can play for 8 minutes. Usually I spend between 1000 to 1500 riel for each time I play. A lot of kids like to gamble when they play video soccer. They play multiplayer games against each other to get the money to buy the tokens. Usually I play with my friends to have fun and to gamble a little bit. For me, I’m very good at the free kick and penalty. But for most of my friends, they’re good at the whole game.

For this video game, it’s not really very useful or important, but it can help me and my friends to forget some of our problems. Is that a good reason?

04:45 PM ICT Permalink |

Homelessness

Phnom Penh is so big and has so many people, but the city has a problem about homelessness. There are so many people who have no place to stay so they can only stay and sleep on the street, in front of someone's house, or in the park. Most of those people are Motordop drivers, Cyclo drivers, Newspaper sellers, shoeshine kids and other homeless people.

Ratanak is my brother. He used to stay on the street about three years ago. He was 13 then. The reason that he stayed on the street was because our house is too far from the riverside where we were doing business (selling newspapers), and also we don't have any relatives here in Phnom Penh. From the riverside to our house is about 15 kilometers, close to Phnom Penh Airport.

Ratanak came to the riverside because he wanted to earn and save some money for our family, and also to buy his own things for school. He was a homeless kid for two months and he used to sleep in front of the Riverstreet Bar (which is on the corner of Preah Sisowath Boulevard) with about five other kids, ones that are shoeshine kids, newspaper sellers, bookseller kids, etc. They are all between the ages of about 12 to 17. The kids slept together because they all are friends and they think they can protect each other.

06:39 PM ICT Permalink |

Newspaper Kids

My brother's name is Ratanak, and he's 17. Two months ago I brought him from my family’s home in the countryside to live with me in Phnom Penh so that he can go to school. He sells newspapers to make money to pay for his school and support himself. The reason he does this is because my family is poor.

In Phnom Penh there are more then a dozen kids selling newspapers along the riverfront. They do their business before and after class. They collect the newspapers in the morning, around 9am to 10am, from the Monument Books store, which is somewhere around Independence Monument. The newspapers that they sell are the Bangkok Post, Economist and International Herald Tribune. They also sell Cambodia Daily and sometimes the Phnom Penh Post.

Yesterday Ratanak sold only two newspapers. He made sales of four dollars, but had to give two dollars to Monument Books. The rest of money is profit for him. It's good and easy for those kids to do this, but they have try and work hard to improve their life. Kids should be paid to go to school by their parents, but these kids are too poor so they have to make money for their own education and to support their family.

06:25 PM ICT Permalink |

Cyclo Drivers in Phnom Penh

There are many jobs that Cambodian people can choose to make money. But lots of people don't have a choice and do not have enough money to do a big business for their job.

A lot of farmers come from the countryside to the city to find the good job to support their family. But the problem for most of them is it’s very hard to find a good job here in Phnom Penh, because here a person needs to have a high ability from school. So they can't find good jobs because most of them finish school very low. Also there are some students that would like to carry on their education and they also come to Phnom Penh. But at first they don't have any job to get money so the only job they can do is rent a cyclo for 2000 Riel per day (about a half dollar) to work and make money by taking passengers some place.

I usually see the cyclo drivers more around the market. For most of the cyclo drivers, they usually wait for their customers at the market, and also they do drive around looking for customers. They don't need to speak much English, but it depends on where they do their business. Because if they work somewhere around a foreigner’s place, they need to speak English well so they can make good money. But they usually have Cambodian customers. They know how much to charge the customers by where the customer has to go (far or close), but the customers still can ask for discount if they think it is too expensive.

There is a teenager I know that came from the province to continue school in Phnom Penh. His job now is cyclo driver. He said he can make between 5,000 to 10,000 Riel for a day (which is about $2-3). At night he has his cyclo to use as a bed to sleep on. For many cyclo drivers here they say they really would like to find a better job but they can't, so they have to do this.

05:59 PM ICT Permalink |

Soccer in Cambodia

Soccer is a sport that many people like to play in the world. There are many kinds of sports for people to play, but soccer is the most popular for many Cambodians. They choose to play it for their exercise.

Kids, teenagers and almost everyone plays it whenever they finish from school or their occupation. Sometimes they just play it for friendship. Also they do play it and bet money. Many people say they would play harder if they are betting money. But it's not really a kind of gambling, because they usually use the money that they win to buy some soft drinks. Most of the students when they have their day off from school, they usually invite or make appointment with other groups to have a competition.

Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world, but for the soccer ball it's not that expensive for them to buy. Also we do have many places with big soccer fields to play so it should not be any problem for Cambodians to play soccer.

02:04 PM ICT Permalink |

Introducing Sochiet

Ok! Here is the information about me:
My surname is Ly and my given name is Sochiet. I am 19 years old. I am the third kid of my family. I stay in Phnom Penh with my younger brother, but my family stays in the countryside close to Phnom Penh Airport. I am a student in grade 11.

I am an ex-newspaper seller and shoes cleaner. But now I just started a new business as motorbike driver. For the job I do now it's not make much money but it could help to support me. Some of my problem, I not really want to do this work but I have no choice.

Anyway, now I have to do it, but for my future I would like to be a real businessman (for example: own a restaurant or a bar!), because it's what I would like to do.

02:53 PM ICT Permalink |