Christmas dinners in Phnom Penh

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Lina Goldberg

Looking for the 2015 list? Check out the best 2015 Christmas dinners in Phnom Penh.

It might not look or feel like Christmas in Cambodia, but never fear, there are at least a dozen places to get a Christmas dinner in Phnom Penh this year. All of the major hotels put out a spread including Raffles, the Sofitel, Himawari and Cambodiana.

A photo of Green Vespa's Thanksgiving dinner, which promises to be like Christmas dinner but not as good.

It would almost be rude not to.

Below, I’ve listed some of the less expensive options in town as well as my personal favorites.

Green Vespa

The Green Vespa is having a Christmas spectacular, with lunch and dinner the 24th-26th. If it’s anything like their Thanksgiving feed, it’s going to be delicious–and a lot of food. It’s $25 for a four-course meal that consists of traditional Scottish beef, barley and spring vegetable soup, Norwegian smoked salmon and queen prawns in a Marie-rose sauce, roast turkey & gammon ham with savory stuffing, bacon wrapped chipolata, seasonal vegetables, roast and mashed potatoes, bread sauce and gravy and Christmas pudding with brandy butter or $17.50 for main course. They will be serving from noon until 9PM and will be donating $2.50 from each Christmas meal sold to purchase toys and gifts for the local SFODA Orphanage. Reservations are recommended.

95 Sisowath Quay, Phnom Penh
T:012 887 228
greenvespa.com

Steve’s Steakhouse

This American-owned joint offers a tasty and affordable Christmas dinner from December 14th-30th for $13++. It comes with turkey with all the trimmings, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, broccoli & carrot with cranberry sauce, or roast ham with sweet and spicy glaze, mashed potatoes, carrot & broccoli cheese sauce. Both are served with a choice of soup or mixed salad. Add pumpkin pie for $2. No reservations needed.

8 Street 240, Phnom Penh
T:023 215 415
stevessteakhouse.com.kh

Alley Cat

Alley Cat always produces an excellent holiday meal. At their Christmas dinner, expect to knock back an egg nog to start and then tuck into a feast that consists of fresh tomato and basil soup with green shell mussels, smoked ham, turkey, sage stuffing, giblet gravy, cheesy mashed potatoes, mixed roast vegetables, brandied candied sweet potatoes, red cabbage with apricot and balsamic vinegar, deviled eggs, cranberries and a dinner roll.For dessert, they’ll have Christmas cake, lemon meringue pie or strawberry cheesecake. All for $18.50. Dinner is served at 2PM on the 25th and reservations are advised.

St 19z, near corner of Street 19 and Street 178, Phnom Penh
T: 012 306 845

Tepui at Chinese House

This one is not the cheapest in town, but it promises to be outstanding. Tepui is doing a Christmas dinner on the 24th of December that includes creamy rum punch served with canape, followed by a five-course dinner consisting of Kampot duck breast carpaccio with roquette, parmesan cream and ceps vinaigrette, roast scallops with couscous tomato confiture, eggplant caviar, pan-seared seabass with mussels in a light cream of saffron and white wine with summer veggies, herb-crusted pork tenderloin with honey potatoes panaderas & apple, passion fruit mousse with drunk mango and coconut sorbet, plus a Vallformosa Moscato dessert wine as digestif. $45++ per person. Reservation via email at: info@tepui.asia

Chinese House, 45 Sisowath Quay, in front of Phnom Penh Port, Phnom Penh
T: 023 991 514
www.tepui.asia

Move to Cambodia paperback release and ebook sale!

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Lina Goldberg

Move to Cambodia print edition coverI’m delighted to announce the release of the print edition of Move to Cambodia: A guide to living and working in the Kingdom of Wonder.

Like the digital edition, the paperback covers more than a hundred topics that will help new expats meet the challenges of moving to Cambodia, with background information on Khmer culture and practical advice from how to get a local driving license to where to live, from English teaching jobs to the cost of electricity.

The paperback is currently available on all Amazon properties, including Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

For those already in Cambodia, we’re planning for a release here in January.

To celebrate the release of the paperback, we’re having a sale on the Kindle edition! For a limited time only, the Kindle edition on Amazon is $5.99 (or around that in other currencies on the global Amazon sites).  Check it out on Amazon and Amazon.co.uk.

As with the digital edition, in addition to the plethora of useful information contained within, we’re very proud of the beautiful, functional design of the book. We hope you like it as much as we do.

Review: Rosy Guesthouse, Siem Reap

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Lina Goldberg

Rosy Guesthouse is a family-run guesthouse next to the Siem Reap River offering a variety of lovely rooms and excellent food. After arriving from a long bus trip, I wanted nothing more than a hot shower and a comfy bed. I was rewarded with exactly that — and more.

The outside of Rosy Guesthouse, Siem Reap

Your new home in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

The last time I was in Siem Reap I ate a lot of my meals at Rosy Guesthouse, and appreciated the homey atmosphere and friendly staff and owners. At the time, I had thought it was more of a backpacker joint, so when I was shown to my deluxe room on this visit, I was pleasantly surprised. Featuring free WiFi, cable TV, a DVD player (you can borrow movies from reception), hot water, air-conditioning and nice touches like Khmer shadow puppet photography on the walls, the place was more flashpacker than backpacker. This was on the high end of the $8-$30 room spectrum, so they probably have some not-as-lovely rooms for $8 (with shared rather than private bathrooms).

A common area at Rosy Guesthouse Siem Reap

Relax after a grueling trip to the temples (and they are grueling) in one of Rosy’s common areas.

They also have a couple of nice common areas — downstairs next to the restaurant is a pool table that customers can use and upstairs there’s a breezy lounge area with comfy chairs. Were I traveling and not working, I could imagine coming here to relax after a few gruelling hours tromping around the temples. And if you are looking to visit the temples, the tuk tuk drivers outside Rosy Guesthouse are excellent; I’ve used them many times and have no complaints (which is, frankly, rare).

The restaurant at Rosy Guesthouse serves from 7AM to 11PM — they’ve a full menu of Western and Khmer dishes, but their burgers, salads and sandwiches are where they excel. I’m a fan of their juicy beef burger and their tender chicken burger, both with extra cheese and bacon, of course. Prices in the restaurant are inexplicably reasonable, a chicken ceasar salad costs $2.75. They also have a bar with Anchor on tap and a pool table. This week they are also opening a children’s playroom, making the place more of a community hub than ever.

Deluxe room at Rosy Guesthouse Siem Reap

Time for a snooze at Rosy Guesthouse, Siem Reap.

I’ve no more praises left to sing about Rosy Guesthouse, but would highly recommend it as a relaxed place to stay in Siem Reap. Reservations are a good idea, especially in high season. You can make a booking at Rosy Guesthouse on Agoda.

Rosy Guesthouse
Achar Sva Street, Slor Kam Village (Along the Siem Reap River), Siem Reap
T: 063 965 059
rosyguesthouse.com

Time to get a phone

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Marissa Carruthers

Marissa Carruthers is a freelance journalist who, six weeks ago, left behind life in the UK for the sun and smiles of Cambodia. In her weekly column, she will be sharing the ups and downs of settling into life in Phnom Penh as a new expat.

I’m finally the proud owner of a Cambodian phone.

A selection of phones and phone cards in Cambodia.

Cambodia calling…getting a phone and phone credit in Cambodia

After weeks of getting by on Skype, instant messaging and emails, I caved in and got round to getting a Cambodian number.

It was made much more complicated than it should have been by the fact that one of the security guards at my apartment, who has kindly taken me under his wing despite communication problems, gave me one of a handful of SIM cards he keeps tucked away in the back of one of the five phones he juggles.

He wanted me to use it with the iPhone I’d brought with me from the UK. The SIM card didn’t fit. No problem. Off he went on his moped and returned five minutes later with it cut to size.

Next problem: it didn’t work. I needed to get my phone unlocked so off he took me on the back of his bike to a series of roadside phone shops on Street 380 to sort it out.

I’m not sure what happened after that. After handing my phone from person to person, several SIM cards being inserted and lots of confused faces, we left and my phone still didn’t work.

So yesterday, I decided to brave the big bad mobile phone world alone and returned to Street 380, complete with my passport, which I’d been told I’d need to get a phone, to complete my mission.

A half hour later, and no passport needed, I’d selected a network from the eight or nine that operate here, picked out my number from endless reams of numbers, which start at $6 and rise depending on how “lucky” each number is and bought a new Nokia phone for $17.

I’m still not too sure how to get credit on it but I’m sure by the time you read this, I’ll have figured it out.

[Ed. note: You can get iPhones unlocked in Phnom Penh at Citifone (21 Kampuchea Krom, near Central Market). Phone credit can be purchased at most phone shops or small sidewalk shops selling beverages. You’ll often see phone cards hanging in plastic bags, or a sign with a list of phone numbers — this means they sell credit. If you are using Cellcard, you may have to ask for Mobitel, Cellcard’s old name.]

Read detailed instructions of how to get a phone and SIM card in Move to Cambodia, including advice on how to get the cheapest SIM cards and which carrier to choose.

Tuk Tuk Trials

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Marissa Carruthers

Marissa Carruthers is a freelance journalist who, five weeks ago, left behind life in the UK for the sun and smiles of Cambodia. In her weekly column, she will be sharing the ups and downs of settling into life in Phnom Penh as a new expat.

Phnom Penh’s Wat Langka, as seen from a moving tuk tuk.

Endless hours have been wasted trawling the streets of Phnom Penh in a tuk tuk, the driver aimlessly ambling round hoping to stumble across where I want to be in this sprawling city.

What should be a short, five-minute journey down the road suddenly turns into 10 minutes, then 20, then 30. At night, lost in a city I’m still getting to know, panic starts to bubble and a voice in my head whispers: “you’re never going to get home.”

Of course I do every time, thanks to the many moto men and tuk tuk drivers who are asked for directions along the way. Some will have sent us on a wild goose chase, others one step closer to home and as soon as I see a familiar sight a sense of relief washes over me.

Frustrated and desperate, I started carrying round a map. I’d show the driver where I wanted to be, slowly tracing the route with my finger to make sure he definitely understood.

“Yes, yes,” he’d say each time, nodding his heads with an authority that gave me complete confidence that he knew exactly where they were going. I’d jump in and soon discover he didn’t.

Exasperated, I relayed my frustration to an expat who’s been living in the city for 18 months. “Yeah, most of them don’t know street names,” he said. “But they’ll never let you know that.”

It turns out they go by landmarks – especially wats – and it turns out that luck is on my side because I live pretty close to Wat Langka, one of the city’s oldest temples and a place that every tuk tuk driver I come across is familiar with.

Since then, getting lost has become a thing of the past and I’ve not once had a problem getting home or anywhere else.

Read more about getting around by tuk tuk from Move to Cambodia and never get lost in again.

Expat Q&A: Learn Khmer and on having ‘Cambodia days’

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Lina Goldberg
Robina Hanley

Bina says: Take Khmer lessons!

In this series we talk to Cambodia expats about what they wish they had known when they first moved to Cambodia that they know now.

This week we talk to Robina Hanley, who works as a curator at the McDermott Gallery in Siem Reap as well as being one of the geniuses behind the Giant Puppet Project. Originally from Ireland, Robina came to Cambodia to celebrate her 30th birthday. While traveling around Cambodia for a month she fell in love with the country. Less than a year later, she had chucked everything and moved to Siem Reap. Seven years down the line, she’s still here.

MTC: Robina, what do you know now that you wish you had known before you moved to Cambodia?

RH: “I wish I had known that working alongside Khmer people does not mean they will have time to teach you their language.  Take lessons, you absolutely need them for correct pronunciation.  I wish it had not taken me two years to learn that.  Yes I got by on basic numbers and ‘susaday’ for a while but actually being able to have a real conversation with my gorgeous landlady was impossible and tremendously embarrassing on my part.  Now I adore our regular little chats.

I wish I had known that it was going be almost impossible to convince family and friends to visit me.  No matter how many times I describe how beautiful this country is, and mention the high standards of very affordable accommodation I am still greeted with unconvinced shaking heads.  I am laughed at by these people for things like not owning a washing machine, when in fact it’s wonderful not having one.  I love my laundry lady and I love the fact that by my not owning a washing machine, she has a regular income and I don’t have to deal with washing, hanging out and ironing clothes.  It’s a no brainer, win win.

I wish I had known there would be ‘Cambodia Days‘, the days when everything goes wrong from the moment you leave your house in the morning.  The days that begin with someone blatantly trying rip you off and won’t budge even though you know you are right and they know you are right.  The days when you are constantly told ‘cannot’ when you need something important done urgently.  The days when someone laughs at you and you stare sternly in reply instead of simply accepting this cultural trait for what it is, nothing personal, just a reaction.  These happen about once every two or three months, that’s when you know you need to get away somewhere, anywhere.”

Help! I need a hairdresser to tame my mane

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Marissa Carruthers

Marissa Carruthers is a freelance journalist who, less than a month ago, left behind life in the UK for the sun and smiles of Cambodia. In her weekly column, she will be sharing the ups and downs of settling into life in Phnom Penh as a new expat.

A Cambodian wedding guest gets her hair and makeup done at a Phnom Penh salon.

Katoey or “ladyboy” salons are all the rage in Cambodia, but haven’t taken off with Westerners. Yet.

The one thing that filled me with dread when I left the UK was leaving behind my hairdresser.

My beloved, talented Jo. She knew exactly where to put the highlights and lowlights, how to feather my uncontrollable fringe and she hacked perfectly into my masses upon masses of hair to create those choppy layers that take out all of that excess weight.

It took five years of “my, don’t you have thick hair” (really, I’d never noticed) from various hairdressers, who could never manage to tame the lion’s mane, before I found her, and when I did I vowed never to let her go.

Until now. I did offer to smuggle her over to Cambodia in my suitcase when she squeezed me in for a pre-move session in October but selfishly she laughed off my offer.

So here I am, in desperate need of a haircut and a deep conditioning treatment to put some sort of life back into the bush that has settled on my head; all puffed up by the humidity, and frazzled and fried by the sun and my failed efforts with the straighteners – three minutes after straightening, the frizz and waves return rendering the whole operation utterly pointless.

All hopes that the sun would naturally lighten my roots and hide those pesky grey hairs that are starting to breed on top have also been dashed, meaning I’ll also need to get my hair highlighted pretty soon.

I’ve been frantically trawling the Internet for Western hairdressers in Phnom Penh and have actually been surprised by the number out there. But after the series of hairdressing horrors I’ve experienced back in Blighty, I really want to leave crying in the mirror as soon as I get home a thing of the past.

So I’m on the hunt for advice. In fact, I’ll rephrase that: I’m in desperate need of help and all recommendations will be oh-so-gratefully received.

Cambodia’s fading history of hand-painted signs

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Lina Goldberg

As the country develops more quickly than seems technically possible, Cambodia’s landscape is increasingly filled with glitzy billboards for Korean products and commercial electronics ads. Even so, you’ll still find a dwindling numbers of traditional hand-painted signs all over the country.

A Cambodian hand-painted sign for a hairdresser.

Hand-painted signs still dot the streets of Phnom Penh.

Next month Cambodia Living Arts will open a new gallery and its debut exhibition, Living Cambodia through Signs opens December 4th at 6pm and features photographs by Sam Roberts of hand-painted signs in Kratie as well as some of the original signs. Photographs and original signs will be for sale, with all profits benefiting Cambodia Living Arts’ programs. Roberts has also recently released a book, Hand-Painted Signs of Kratie, which features more than 170 photographs of Cambodia’s hand-painted signs, as well as the stories of some of the men that paint them.

Cambodia Living Arts is a local non-profit organization that seeks to preserve historic Cambodian arts such as traditional performing arts and musical instruments and techniques that have become threatened since the Khmer Rouge era. (Be sure to catch their dance and music performances in front of Phnom Penh’s National Museum at 7pm Monday to Saturday). The hand-painted sign exhibition will run from December 4th through January 5th, 2013.

A hand-painted sign for dentist in Phnom Penh.

In Phnom Penh, a dentist advertises with a hand-painted sign.

Cambodia’s hand-painted signs are part of the country’s fading cultural heritage — many Cambodians seem to think that shiny and generic is preferable to the old-fashioned. In his book, Roberts documents signs replete with flying pigs, retro hairstyles and hand grenades, as well as many other mundanities that offer a window into Khmer life and culture, from ads for skin-whitening cream to intricate paintings of the Khmer language.

Roberts writes, “Cambodia is a country awash with hand-painted signs, but behind their quirky nature is a story entwined with the country’s own troubled history.”

If you’re in Phnom Penh, be sure to check out the show at Cambodia Living Arts, otherwise, have a look at Roberts’ book.

Hand-Painted Signs of Kratie by Sam Roberts is available on Amazon and Amazon UK in both paperback and digital formats for $19.95 and $3.99 respectively.