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.

Expat Q&A: Fall in love with Cambodia

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Lina Goldberg

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

This week we talk to Lauren Crothers, an Irish reporter and photojournalist with the Cambodia Daily. Lauren grew up in Hong Kong and has been happily living in Phnom Penh for a little over two years.

Lauren Crothers at her photograph exhibition

Lauren Crothers with some of her fantastic photographs of Cambodia.

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

LC: “I wish I had not listened to certain people whose reactions to the news I would be moving to Cambodia looked like this:


…and who relished in telling me that the one day they spent backpacking through Phnom Penh filled them with despair and revulsion. “Ugh, there are rats, and rubbish, and it’s such a shithole,” one said. Dear expat-to-be — ignore these people. They are utterly useless and, in the grand scheme of things, have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

I wish I had known I wasn’t moving to the edge of the world, fun as that may have been. In the lead up to my arrival more than two years ago, most of the information I found online gave me the impression that Phnom Penh was populated exclusively by a jaded older set who didn’t want to share their patch with newcomers and as a result, were unwilling to be helpful. I was wrong.

Cambodia is home to some fascinating characters, many of whom have some incredible stories to tell over a (very cheap) drink. Come here with an open mind and try not to let the little things get to you. You will soon realise that Cambodia will slap you around the face with an important sense of perspective. Hang on to it, even if you get sucked in to a bubble of lazy days by the pool and sunset cocktails. There is so much more to this country than that.

Once I got beyond the initial wide-eyed assimilation period, I could not wipe the smile from my face. I don’t have a false sense of security at all, but I’ve managed to avoid getting malaria, dengue and having a bag snatched. I did once mysteriously get an epic staph infection in my face, which was efficiently treated and now makes for a good story. My tummy had an adjustment period. Yours probably will too. Just accept it.

In many ways, though, it was the not knowing that has made my life here so enriching. Not knowing how hard I’d fall in love with Cambodia, with the work I do, the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met only served to heighten my experiences. I’ve gone from feeling like Cambodia would be the final frontier to realising that for me, at least, it’s the centre of the universe.”

You can view Lauren Crothers’ amazing photos of Cambodia here, or follow her on Twitter at @laurencro. Lauren also has an exhibition of her photographs from her time in Cambodia running through December 31st at the Flicks in Phnom Penh.

Escaping the city

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Marissa Carruthers

Marissa Carruthers is a freelance journalist who, less than three 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.

Sunset at the more relaxed Otres Beach

Sat on stretching white sands that overlook gently rippling, crystal clear waters, with a beer in one hand and a book in the other, I discovered another one of the many reasons Cambodia is great this weekend.

Phnom Penh’s city smog and at times oppressive heat was closing in fast and with my husband heading back to the UK on Sunday, we decided to escape the city and hit the coast for a couple of relaxing days.

Just five hours away – and a meagre $6 – by bus sits Sihanoukville, a seedy town that has sold its soul to tourism and is somewhat lacklustre in personality, as we very quickly discovered. However, just a few days there and a stint in a sea kayak gave us the perfect chance to discover some of the more isolated beaches away from the hedonistic Serendipity strip we were staying at.

As the gateway to Cambodia’s idyllic islands, a few more days would have given us the chance to explore the cluster of islands that litter the southern coast. Said to rival neighbouring Thailand’s tourist-trampled shores, the allure of these tropical paradises is too much and I will be returning to Sihanoukville, but only in passing.

With Cambodia being a fairly small country with easy access to Vietnam, Thailand and Laos, weekends away are something I’ve vowed to do more of and my list of places to visit is growing by the day.

I want to discover lazy life in Kampot and Kep, rural Battambang, the rich history of Angkor Wat and surrounding Siem Reap, the supposedly even busier streets of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City, Chiang Mai in the North of Thailand. The list goes on.

And with travel and accommodation being so cheap, turning my dreams into reality really shouldn’t be too hard.

Thanksgiving in Phnom Penh

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Lina Goldberg

For all of the Americans in Phnom Penh, there are a few delicious Thanksgiving options. Last year many tears were shed in the expat community when there wasn’t enough turkey to go around, so reservations are advised!

An expat in Cambodia enjoys Thanksgiving dinner

Gobble gobble! It’s almost time for Thanksgiving in Cambodia!

Alley Cat

The Thanksgiving menu at Alley Cat is even better than last year, with the addition of turkey. They are offering smoked ham and turkey, served with mashed potatoes, sausage gravy, green bean casserole, cheesy cauliflower, sage stuffing, cranberry sauce and dinner rolls plus pumpkin pie for dessert.

Price is $12 and includes a free bottle of Becks, glass of wine, or a canned beer if reserved by Wednesday 21st.  Served from 6pm, Thurs 22nd. Reservations advised.

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

Green Vespa

Expect a gourmet offering at Green Vespa this Thanksgiving. The menu consists of creamy pumpkin soup with a hint of nutmeg, roast American butter-basted turkey, butcher’s ham, corn on the cob, savory stuffing, cranberry sauce, roast and mashed potatoes with turkey gravy and cinnamon sugared apple crumble for dessert with vanilla ice cream.

Price is $19.75 per person and reservations recommended.

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

Hagar Restaurant

Hagar is putting on a buffet-style Thanksgiving lunch from noon to 6PM on Thursday. They will be serving:

Starters: prawn & avocado salad, artichoke and jalapeno spread, mushroom soup with cumin
Main courses: cajun-rubbed rotisserie turkey, traditional sausage & herb bread stuffing, vegetarian stew, cheesy mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, honey-glazed baby carrots
Desserts: turtle pumpkin pie, oreo turkey, chocolate cake

Price is $16 for adults and $7 for kids and home delivery is available.

44 Street 310, BKK1, Phnom Penh
T: 010 333 095; 010 333 014
hagarcatering.com

Review: Kanji Japanese Restaurant in Phnom Penh

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Lina Goldberg

One of the very few areas in which Phnom Penh has not lived up to my outlandish expectations has been in its sushi and sashimi offerings. While there are many excellent homestyle Japanese restaurants, few of Phnom Penh’s sushi restaurants have as much to offer as what you’re probably gotten used to at home (as long as home isn’t a landlocked developing country). And while Kanji, the latest addition to to Phnom Penh’s Japanese food scene, probably isn’t going to give London or New York a run for their money anytime soon, it outshines the other sushi offerings in Phnom Penh.

Kanji Phnom Penh menu

Kanji: the newest chi chi Japanese restaurant in Phnom Penh.

Kanji Japanese Restaurant is Cambodian celebrity chef Luu Meng’s latest venture. Like his other restaurants (Malis, Topaz and Yi-Sang) the culinary delights at Topaz don’t come cheap. The restaurant is definitely on the upscale side, perfect for impressing a business associate or romantic partner. In a bid to draw the town’s elite, they have three VIP dining rooms, accessible by private lift so that the important types don’t have to rub elbows with the hoi polloi in the main dining room.

Not being in possession of a bodyguard or a gun or a bodyguard with a gun, I had to content myself with eating at a regular table. Allegedly there are also special rooms for teppanyaki as well as a tempura counter, but I didn’t notice, and the staff didn’t mention anything about it when we sat down.

The sushi bar in Kanji Japanese Restaurant, Phnom Penh

Take a seat at Kanji’s sushi bar, one one the tables available to mere mortals (as opposed to VIPs)

Kanji’s menu is quite extensive, covering the gamut from sashimi to soup and teriyaki to teppanyaki. Prices were expensive by Cambodia standards, but not ridiculous when comparing the menu to similar ones elsewhere in the world. Prices ranged from $9 for tempura or $11 for salmon teriyaki to $28 for makunouchi bento or $14, $22 or $30 for a sushi moriawase combination.

Having heard that they were having fish flown in once per week from Japan, I was pretty skeptical. I’m fairly sure that raw fish cannot last a full week, so I wouldn’t want to belly up to the sushi bar on day six. That said, the dish I ordered, chirashi — a sushi bowl filled with vinegared rice and raw fish– was delicious and great value. Perhaps because they don’t have to bother wrestling the ingredients into nigiri or maki, chirashi is almost always the best way to stretch your sushi dollar at Japanese restaurants. The Kanji chirashi was no exception, being both (relatively) inexpensive at $15 and filled with six or seven types of (relatively) fresh fish.

A bowl of chirashi at Kanji, Phnom Penh

Chirashi — the best bang for your sushi buck.

Relatively, of course, being the operative word here, but for those who have spent as much time trolling the Phnom Penh sushi scene as I have, I will say that the fish on offer at Kanji was better value and more fresh than the other sushi joints in town. They’ve only been open a few months so unsurprisingly, the waitstaff haven’t quite figured out what they are doing, but I’ve no doubt they will get there eventually.

Compared to other places in town, Kanji offers a similar experience to Origami but with larger portions and a more stylish atmosphere. Expect to spend $20-30 per person, which is slightly offset by a free amuse bouche and a nibble of ice cream for dessert (they also have deep-fried ice cream on the menu if that’s not enough to satisfy your sweet tooth).

Kanji Japanese Restaurant

128F Sothearos Blvd (next to the Almond Hotel), Phnom Penh
T: 023 220 822
kanjirestaurant.cloudsewing.com

Welcome to Casa Carruthers

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Marissa Carruthers

Marissa Carruthers is a freelance journalist who, less than two 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.

The view on Street 278, also know as the 'Golden Mile,' Phnom Penh

The view on Street 278, also know as the ‘Golden Mile,’ Phnom Penh

Renting a house back in the UK is a huge hassle, and that’s putting it mildly.

The cumbersome process usually starts with trawling through hundreds of houses on estate agents’ websites, followed by phone calls and visits to organise suitable times to view your prospective new home.

Then there’s the trudging round the properties – usually spread over several weekends because of time clashes and last-minute cancellations – the mountains of paperwork to fill in, the guarantors to find, the bond, the deposit. The list goes on.

This is probably why I was met with a faint gasp of horror whenever I told friends who asked me where I’d be living when I landed in Cambodia that I didn’t know.

“It’ll be fine,” I told them with an over-confidence tinged with a hint of desperation before explaining I’d been advised by several expats that finding somewhere to live is as easy as jumping into a tuk tuk and driving about.

But just like my friends, I was secretly unsure. I mean, there’s no way back home you can just call in on a house with a For Rent sale outside.

Then again, this is Cambodia, and sure enough on our first day we hit the road to go house-hunting. With the help of our tuk tuk driver, we drove around BKK1, the Russian Market and the Olympic Stadium areas, stopping off at the abundance of For Rent signs or street corners where there was always someone who knew of somewhere to let.

By day two, we’d stumbled across our perfect apartment: a cosy one-bedroom affair near bustling Street 278, where everything I could possibly ever need is right on my doorstep.

By day three, we were lugging our luggage across the city ready to seal the deal. And after photocopying our passports, negotiating the rent, paying up front, and signing a contract, we were moved in.

So it really was as easy as that.

If you’re looking for more tips on where to live in Phnom Penh or how to find an place, please check out the Homes and apartments section of Move to Cambodia.

Pilates in Phnom Penh

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Lina Goldberg

Update: Kate is no longer teaching pilates in Cambodia. We’ll let you know if she comes back!

“When you move to Cambodia, you’re going to experience a lot of stress. It’s really important to keep balanced.” So says Kate Liana, Phnom Penh’s only certified pilates teacher.

Phnom Penh pilates teacher demonstrates a pilates move at The Place.

Phnom Penh pilates teacher Kate Liana teaches several pilates classes each week.

And she’s right, in that Phnom Penh offers a lot of possible stressors, both physical (far too much nightlife, the heat) and emotional (the traffic, sick water buffalo). In the face of all of these things “it’s important to stay balanced by including some healthy things in your life that are fun and social.”

She’s talking about pilates, of course, that physical conditioning workout that focuses on the body’s core, and strengthening the abdominals, legs, arms, hips and back. Many of us know it as “hard yoga.”

Kate has been studying pilates for 12 years and was certified seven years ago in New York City. She now teaches in several places around Phnom Penh. “People think of pilates as hard work and yoga as de-stressing. But pilates is, too. It’s a lot of hard work but we do a lot of breath work so it’s also good for stress reduction.”

You can join one of Kate’s pilates classes in Phnom Penh, listed below, or sign up for private instruction.

The Place

Tuesdays and Thursdays at lunchtime 12:15 to 1:15PM and Fridays 6:00 to 6:45PM at The Place. The Place is a private gym (and one of the nicest in Phnom Penh) but non-members can use the gym for one day for $15. All classes are free for members.

90 Sihanouk Blvd at Street 51 (across from Wat Langka), Phnom Penh
T: 023 999 799
theplace-gym.com

NataRaj Yoga

Tuesdays and Thursdays evenings 6:30 to 7:30PM at NataRaj. Classes at NataRaj are open to the public and cost cost $9 each for non-Khmers, or you can pre-purchase 10 classes for $80. They will be opening a new air-conditioned studio next month.

#52 St 302, Phnom Penh
T: 012 250 817; 090 311 341
yogacambodia.com

InterContinental Hotel Fitness Center

Wednesday evening 5:30 to 6:30PM and Saturday mornings 11:00 to noon at the InterContinental Hotel Fitness Center. Classes are free for members. Non-members can buy a daily pass for $10 that allows them to take classes that day and use the facilities, or $15 on weekdays and holidays. They also offer a pre-paid card good for 10 group classes (including yoga and aerobics) for $50.

296 Mao Tse Tung Blvd, Phnom Penh
T: 023 424 888 ext. 4721

You can also set up private individual or group pilates classes with Kate by appointment. T: 017 236 025

Expat Q&A: The water buffalo edition

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Lina Goldberg

In this series we talk to Cambodia expats about what they wish they had known as a new Cambodia expat that they know now. This week we talk to Faine Greenwood, a freelance journalist who hails from New Orleans. After living in Phnom Penh for more than a year, she left for greener pastures, but soon returned once she realized just how much she loved the place.

A boy walks a water buffalo along the beach in Cambodia

Expat advice: Be very wary of sick water buffalo.

MTC: Faine, what do you know now that you wish you had known when you were a new Cambodia expat?

FG: “I wish I had known that contrary to what your neighbor, that college friend who went backpacking through Asia once, and the Internet tell you, muggers do not in fact wait behind every corner in Phnom Penh.

I wish I had known that I would end up spending much of my free time in bars, and that it’s really easier to just budget accordingly than to fight it.

I wish I had known that attempting to commute by push bicycle in Phnom Penh is an activity best saved for the mildly suicidal. Well, at least buy a half-decent push bicycle if you’re going to make the attempt.

I wish I had known that it is really best to avoid drinking things out of buckets, especially if the liquid said bucket contains is blue, smells funny, and has a title involving the word ‘napalm.’

I wish I had known that you can quite easily avoid traffic fines by cops if you just drive by really quickly. They are lazy. Very, very lazy.

I wish I had known that it is really best to just resign yourself to your fate if someone decide to hold an extremely noisy wedding right outside your window, starting at the sociable hour of 7:00 AM sharp. Either that, or retaliate by blasting Iron Maiden back.

I wish I had known that learning as much Khmer as possible, as soon as possible, is really a very good idea indeed. You will get cheaper prices, make more friends, and will not look like a dick.

I wish I had known that absolutely nothing good happens at karaoke bars after 4:00 AM. I didn’t say that absolutely nothing interesting happens at karaoke bars after 4:00 AM.

I wish I had known that leaving town on weekends as often as possible is a great way to avoid stress, persistent irritation, and maybe even violent psychosis. Drink something out of a coconut. Do not take anyone’s phone calls.

I wish I had known that you should probably just give that tuk tuk guy that extra 2,000 riel; it’s like 6:00 PM, you’re tired, you smell funny and the guy probably just wants to buy an Angkor. Just make the world an easier place.

I wish I had known that Mekong Whiskey becomes about 80 percent more drinkable when consumed with simple sugar, lime, and a hint of quiet desperation.

I wish I had known that if your significant other attempts to finagle you into paying for veterinary treatment for the family water buffalo, you should do everything in your power to wiggle out of the obligation. (Well, a friend of mine wished he’d known that. But relevant advice).”

You can read more of Faine’s work, including her thoughts on Cambodia, Asia and what’s for dinner at fainegreenwood.com.