Veni Vidi Visa

I came, I saw, I went shopping.

It is time to talk of my shopping experiences here in Phnom Penh. Miranda and I have had the main task of “kitting out” the house. In the process of doing so, we have had to enter our local market “Psaa Orussey” which is located 500 meters down our street. This market is absolutely huge, perhaps the same floor space as Carindale, but on three levels with over a thousand pokey little stalls packed to the brim with merchandise. We have been lost countless times on our forays, but luckily starvation has never been a great fear… provided we would be willing to subsist on whole dried squid and raw lentils.

Never-the-less, Miranda and I face this same journey several times per week – risking being crushed to death for the sake of establishing a functional household. Certainly, there is nothing you can’t buy at the market… with the exception of a few items such as blu-tak and flat sheets. We push our way through the tiny walkways which separate stalls, so narrow that we virtually have to climb into the stalls when we hear the “ep..ep.. epepep” of the “trolley boys” coming through carting goods from one place to another on trolleys that are almost the width of the corridors themselves.

The next hurdle in the whole shopping experience is negotiating the price. It seems that although some shopkeepers are happy to hike the price for “stupid westerners”, others are happy to keep the price standard for all customers. The problem is that it is hard to know who is offering you what. We have found that the best way around this is to go to a variety of shops (they all sell pretty much the same thing) and ask the price of the exact same item. Then you can decide where you want to buy and if it’s worth haggling for. For instance, we wanted to buy a good heavy based saucepan. We found one we liked, and the shopkeeper told us it was worth $34. We thought that sounded a bit iffy.. and the lady looked as if that was her standard asking price for everything in her shop including the soup ladle - so we moved on. Three shops down we found the same item – that poor lady probably wondered why we laughed when she told us “$15”. We didn’t even bother haggling.

One of the most frustrating experiences I have had has been shopping for clothes. Well, T-shirts to be more precise. Following Michael’s advice, I only brought 3 with me, because “Things are so cheap here in Cambodia – it’s not worth weighing your luggage down with too much clothing”. The other week, I decided that I really could do with more shirts… “There are plenty of clothes shops at Orussey” I said to myself. 3 hours later, I return home despondently clutching one miserable t-shirt. Now, although I have been blessed with an ample amount of padding (due largely to the love of good food and a healthy dose of “store-up-for-the-winter survival genes”), in Australia as a size 12 I am by no means considered obese. Can you imagine how disheartening it is to wander from shop to shop only to have the retailers take one look at you and shake their heads when you ask if they have any “bigger sizes”?. Or when they do have a shirt to fit you, it falls into the XL category? “For goodness sake”, you think, “these people are meant to make clothes for the overseas market”. On the other hand, it’s not so surprising when you look at all the tiny, waif-like Khmer girls wandering around the city. I was then told, by one of our lovely contacts, that I would have better success looking in the Russian Market. She even took me there…on the back of her pushbike. I tell you, that was a lot more nerve-racking than any moto ride I’ve taken to date. That aside, apparently this market (named after the fact that it was used as a black market by the Russians in a bygone era), caters more for tourists, selling Cambodian made items designed for export. After just 30 minutes in this market, I had found all that I required and more. So the lesson goes… ask first, then go shopping!

I’ll take my camera to the markets next time I go and post them up. You can’t miss out on seeing the mountains of dried squid!

Take care everyone.

Love Miriam

Engrish of the week:

Advertised on the back of an English-Khmer dictionary: “Help with irrigular spelling”