Cambodian Factoids

We knew nothing about Cambodia when we came here. We almost didn’t come, because the little bit we did know wasn’t especially good, leftover from dim memories of newscasts over the Vietnam War.

What we learned is that there are dozens and dozens of brand new, western style hotels here. About 10 years ago, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt made the movie Tomb Raider at Angkor Wat and adopted a child from here, which suddenly put Cambodia on the map as a tourist hotspot. As a result, their tourism has increased from 1.7 million visitors in 2000 to over 2.32 million visitors in 2009. There are signs of construction everywhere, and we learned that over 62% of the visitors to Cambodia come to Siam Reap.

Their alphabet is similar to the Thai alphabet except some of the letters are upside down from each other. We couldn’t tell which was which. In the pronounciation of the words, Thai language uses intonation up or down at the end, whereas Cambodian tends to be flat.

Again, you couldn’t really prove it by us.

Cambodians eat lots of freshwater fish, because there’s a large lake here. During the rainy season, the fish get out of the lake and migrate across the rice paddies to other fields and ponds, so they are the primary source of protein since it’s readily available. The lake here is the 5th largest and the 4th most biodiverse in the world.

Rice production is still the number one industry here. Tourism is next.

Their big holiday is New Years, which happens April 14--15–16. It apparently means lots of drinking and eating, followed by lots more of it.

A typical evening, or weekend evening, anyhow, is spent “cruising” on one’s motorbike. You make the circuit, run through the Sonic, stop at Wal Mart and then start it all over again.

Well, not exactly, but you get the idea. Again, some things are universal.