She excitedly ran out from behind the counter and led me around the corner. As it turns out her extended family owns the entire street. Her aunt had an apartment for rent. It was the first place I looked at. I took it. I spent about three minutes apartment hunting. It was tiny and a little pricey, so I figured I'd stay there for a month or two until I could find something better.
However, it's also one block from the river. It's within walking distance to ... everything. I could walk to work in 15 minutes, although I didn't, because it was April and the temperature hot enough to melt lead. The biggest problem, of course, was inertia. What I'm trying to say is that I'm lazy... I knew I needed to find a new place but I just never got around to it.
My trip home for the holidays gave me the perfect chance and excuse to get out. A colleague offered to let me store my stuff at his apartment. Adam is a 30-year-old Englishman who started working at my school last term. His place has two bedrooms, so he asked me if I wanted to rent the room for January. It's a lean time for teachers here. We have a one-month break. We only get paid when we are in the classroom. One month with no work is one month with no pay... Hopefully we'll get along and I'll stay. It's been a long, long time since I had a roommate. So far, so good.
The location is good in that it's close to work. My school is just on the other side of the big building in the center.
There's one big intersection on the way with a 90-second stoplight. If the light is red it nearly doubles the commute, from two minutes to almost four.
Incidentally, notice all the construction going on. One of the reasons I wanted to live here is that things are chainging quickly. It seems like an exciting time to be here. There were no tall buildings in the city until last year, when the Canadia Tower was built. you can't see it because it's in the distance behind the big building on the left. After the grand opening the fire department said, "Oh, by the way, if there's a fire up there, we have no way of putting it out." Such are the growing pains of a developing country.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
The location is good or bad, depending on how you look at it, because it is next to the most notorious bar in Phnom Penh, Martini. If I'm talking to a girl I tell her I live by Del Gusto (a charming and perfectly respectable restaurant) and Flicks (the small private movie house). If I tell a girl I live by Martini she'll roll her eyes, laugh and maybe continue talking to me. Martini deserves its own post. You really have to see it to believe it.
When I say I live next to the bar this is what I mean.
In the foreground you can see the railing of our balcony. The roofs below are Martini. The trees are in the bar's open courtyard. Our house shares a wall with the bar! At night we can hear the billiard balls clacking below. The noise isn't bad though, at least not from the bar. It's the new place across the street that's the problem.
It was a restaurant, but apparently sales weren't good, so they ripped off the roof and now it's -- gasp!! -- a karaoke bar. Or a bar with a really bad house band. Either way, every night we suffer through would-be idols mangling treacly Cambodian pop songs and the worst slow Western pop songs from the 1980s. I'd rather live next door to a slaughterhouse and listen to the sounds of dying animals than hear one more person wailing "Eternal Flame".
If the caterwauling continues I might have to move. I don't think I want to get used to it. It would be a shame, because the family that owns the house (and lives on the ground floor) is as sweet as they can be.
They speak little English. I speak less Khmer. Our encounters consist mostly of smiling and nodding. We have a washing machine, which is a bit of a luxury. I was paying to have my laundry done at my old place.
There is a washer but no dryer. I wonder how many clothes dryers there are in Cambodia, since the temperature never drops below 70 degrees! Unfortunately the buttons are in Japanese so it's not exactly user-friendly. I am fairly computer literate but I have looked online for a manual in English and it is beyond my meager powers with a search engine to find one.If we open up the front and back doors we get a surprisingly strong breeze in the hallway.
The weather is really pleasant now. Just beautiful. Warm (not hot) during the day, cool and breezy at night. Like May or September back home. We'll see what kind of breeze we get when the suffocating heat of April sets in...
The kitchen here is almost as big as my last apartment, which was basically a hotel room.
Before Adam left England for Cambodia his friends threw him a big party and pitched in to buy him an iPad so he could keep in touch. His departure was a little different than mine...
We're on the top floor. I park my motorbike inside the gate for free, which is another upgrade over my last apartment. There there was no parking, so I had to pay $10 per month to leave it in a parking area with a security guard.
As you can see, aside from the end of the street, where the two bars are, it's a quiet residential street. This is BB, the family dog, who basically comes and goes as she pleases.
People who know me know that I love dogs. They generally love me. BB might be the only dog in the world that doesn't. This has led to some awkward encounters when I arrive home late at night and she barks at me. And barks. And barks. And wakes the family. Nod and smile, nod and smile...The best part of the place is the balcony.
Adam spruced it up with a bunch of plants and a hammock. The place has one TV, which we wheel from room to room to balcony as needed. I think they bought the furniture from Guantanamo Bay. My roommate bought some pillows but the sofa and chairs are still pretty much instruments of torture. Again, we'll see how much we enjoy the balcony when it gets really hot...
Directly below is a brand-spanking new apartment building next to a traditional Cambodian home. I love the juxtaposition of the two. The old-style houses are built stilts because of flooding during the rainy season. They're mostly open, because of the oppressive summer heat. Air-conditioning? Hah! The fence and barbed wire weren't there when the house was built but are necessary now.
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