BootsnAll Travel Network



Cambodia Quiz

by one who can’t help but teach
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

You want to buy bread rolls. You look for:

  • a) a bakery
  • b) a lady with a large basket on her head
  • c) a man with a metal tin on the back of his motorbike
  • d) a lady squatting at the side of the road beside a huge plastic bucket covered with a cloth

You want to cross the road. Which way do you look?

  • a) left right left
  • b) right left right
  • c) right to make sure nothing is coming up the wrong side of the street, left until there’s a gap big enough to step into, right again as you get to the middle of the road, and left before you get completely across in case there’s another motorbike or tuktuk zipping the wrong way up the road.
  • d) you don’t: you just close your eyes tightly and run!

You need to count to ten…..

  • a) ning song sahm see ha hok chep bat kau seep
  • b) eins zwei drei vier fuenf sechs sieben acht neun zehn
  • c) one two three four five six seven eight nine ten
  • d) 1 2 3 4 5 (5-1) (5-2) (5-3) (5-4) 10

You want chicken for dinner. What are your options?

  • a) KFC
  • b) BBQ-ed on the side of the road
  • c) cook your own: buy one from the market first (alive or dead, plucked or unplucked, whole or cut into pieces)
  • d) keep wishing! It’s not worth dicing with Bird Flu.

You need to walk past a dog. What do you do?

  • a) just tiptoe quietly and hope he doesn’t notice you
  • b) when a) doesn’t work, stomp your foot
  • c) raise your fist as if to throw a stone
  • d) shout and hope someone will call the beast away

If you don’t like dogs, Cambodia is not the place for you. There are mangy, evil-looking creatures with loud barks, open sores, a hungry look in the eye and they are especially drawn to foreigners. Daily we’re thankful for the rabies jabs we had!

If you want chicken, you’d best not be in Cambodia, Vietnam, China or Hong Kong – there’s another bird flu outbreak. We’re not willing to take the risk and so there’ll be no chook on the menu for us for the next few months, coz guess where we’re going after Cambodia…..Vietnam, China and Hong Kong! However, if disease doesn’t bother you, options a) b) and c) are all available here. You should see the KFC – it’s part of a hotel and has two welcomers at the door. There is no rubbish on the floor and it looks positively posh. But it’s still KFC and it would take more than the promise of fresh chicken to convince us to eat there (although Rob is swaying)!

English will take you a long way when counting to ten….and fingers will do the rest. Two fingers will mean either two hundred or two thousand – it’s up to you to work out how many zeros to add. Two fingers followed by five fingers means two thousand five hundred. Quite easy when you know how! And counting in Khmer is a piece of cake too – you only need to be able to get to five and then you start again with a five added in front (option d).

If you really want to cross the road…..keep your wits about you – in two lanes of traffic there will be motorbikes travelling in four directions. And don’t rely on the traffic lights. A red light means “you’ve got enough time to get through this intersection if you weave around the oncoming traffic carefully”. I think the reason traffic lights are largely ignored is that the flow of traffic expects to keep moving and not to have a complete stop, in which no vehicle enters an intersection. And to be fair, although the roads can be scary at first, once you’ve watched and negotiated for a few days, you realise there’s a predictable pattern. An empty space does not remain so – there’s always someone to move into it – that can be someone else or it can be you. If you want to get there first, just make sure you do it confidently and do not think twice. Stay committed to your path and the traffic will move around you. The way it weaves together is like a well-conducted orchestra. Usually. (We saw another two accidents yesterday.)
If it makes you feel better, there are occasional pedestrian crossings. These are actually invitations to be mown down more quickly, so don’t be fooled. The pedestrian cross signal is a man, who looks like he’s running…..really fast. Take his advice and copy his example – but look first, as per option c) above, because I can guarantee the road will NOT be clear. Most pedestrian crossings are located on corners, probably the unsafest place they could be…..the shortest distance between two points being the preferred route for vehicles to take, even if it means going around the corner on the wrong side of the road and frightening unsuspecting tourists.

You still want bread? (if you’re not too scared to leave your guesthouse, that is, what between the dogs and the motorbikes….) Don’t look for bread. Don’t look for a bakery (at least, not in our neck of the woods – although we came across a really cool one in Kampot). Just look for someone with a closed-up container of some sort that you think might contain bread. Get eye contact and the container will be opened for inspection. Options b) c) and d) have all proved successful for us! If you find bread, you can then try to find out the price as well, as per the counting question.



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6 responses to “Cambodia Quiz”

  1. Mumbai says:

    Ha ha. That was a really good quiz.

  2. grandpabear says:

    of course, you could pay US$300-600 per day and let someone else do the worrying for you!

  3. Bali Villas says:

    Yes it’s true Cambodia, Vietnam, China or Hong Kong – there’s another bird flu outbreak

  4. Karen Hamer says:

    Good on Grandpa for his practical wisdom!!!

    Love you guys, love reading your blog.

    Have you got time to find Todd and Fleur Smith over in PP?

    xx

  5. rayres says:

    We have time. What we don’t have is contact details. Any ideas? Karen? Katie?

  6. babe check your gmail email –
    ha! i’m a poet!!!!!!!! X

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