Not a Baltimore address

I recently moved into a new apartment. For reasons I won't bore you with, I only plan on staying there for three months. It's a nice enough place, but a bit out of the way by Phnom Penh standards. One day traffic was particularly bad and it took me almost fifteen minutes to get to work!

One my American colleagues who lives in the same building pointed out the irony in our address. Most of the streets here have a number and a name. The street number is 245. The street name is Mao Tse-Toung.

I am living on a street named after Chairman Mao.

You know, the guy who starved 60 million of his own people to death during the Great Leap Forward? I know we're all big fans. It was another one of those moments when I took a mental step back and realized how things that are so different from home have become normal.

It could be worse. I could be living on Kim Il-Sung (Street 289). I don't think there is a Stalin Street.

The street names are vestiges of Cambodia's fairly recent communist past. My street is one of the biggest thoroughfares in the city. (For the folks back home, think of Charles Street or Pratt Street.) This makes sense since you can make a convincing argument that, due to the amount of development and financial aid, China owns Cambodia.

The city is almost completely flat. It tickles me to no end that the highest point in town, Wat Phnom, is a 30-meter high hill. And it's man-made. When they paved the streets here they give exactly zero thought to grading. Maybe they don't worry about it because they assume it's not a problem given the flat terrain. What's more likely is they just don't think about it at all.

A friend of mine told me about how when he first moved here he got what he thought was a great deal on a house. He signed the lease in the dry season. When the rainy season rolled around the street was always under a foot of water. It was a great house. He just couldn't get in or out. I had been warned, then, that one thing to ask about when renting a new place was flooding. Surely this wouldn't be a problem on one of the city's main streets...

Last night I had plans for my usual Saturday night out. A big storm rolled through, so I had to wait out the rain. I also had to wait for the floods to subside. I'm living on one of the biggest streets in the city and there was over a foot of water.

Here's the kicker: It was just my block! From the balcony I could see in both directions. I could see the street past the traffic lights on each corner. Past the traffic lights? No water. In front of my apartment? The Amazon. It would have taken just a few truckloads of dirt to bring the block up to grade, had anyone bothered to think about it.

I had to roll up my pants, ride my moto in flip-flops and then change into grown-up shoes when I got to the night club, all just to drive through one flooded block. Ah, life in Southeast Asia...

I certainly don't mean to imply that this is a catastrophe or major hardship. You know if you live in Southeast Asia that you will have to deal with rain and flooding. Cambodia doesn't have to deal with earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, or tornadoes. Every once in a while I'm mildly inconvenienced when I want to go out. I can live with that. On Mao Tse Toung Street.