Below are a couple photos of my flat/apartment in Phnom Penh. It is on Sihanounk Boulevard which is quite an impressive address (for Cambodia). It is about 100m from the Independence Monument and on the way to the Royal Palace. In the middle of the street is a long narrow park which the locals use in the early morning and late afternoon for exercise and hanging out. It gets quite busy and is the place of choice for local teenagers to practice their favorite hobby: driving their motorbike around in circles for hours on end.
I'm on the third floor and the 1st photo looks down on the alleyway leading onto the street. The house is owned by a Khmer family (there seems to about 50 of them living in the same size flat I’m in on the ground floor). Many years ago during the Pol Pot days, the population of Phnom Penh were all made to leave the city and forced into labour camps in the countryside. When "Brother Number One" was defeated and the people returned their was a mad scramble by the locals to reclaim the abandoned houses. As a result, many revenge killings and blood feuds have occurred between neighbors over disputed property. Needless to say, I ALWAYS pay the landlord on time.
You can't quite see it in the 2nd picture, of the park, but over the road is the North Korean embassy. Cambodia is one of the few countries in the world that are on good relations with the nutters from the North. The Prime Minister of North Korea visited a couple of weeks ago and almost all of the city was closed off to allow him to travel via motorcade around the city. Thousands of North Korean flags flew around the city and kids were made to line the streets to wave and welcome the mad-nuclear-scientist-loving politician. You can rest assured that most nights I keep a close eye on the embassy in case they start anything.
My flat is a one bedroom, fairly open place. It has a big L-shaped balcony which is good on humid nights and high enough so that the mosquitoes don’t invade. The furniture is provided by the landlord, so while it is not luxurious, it is comfortable. I have A/C in the bedroom but am learning to sleep without it. In fact, late November was quite cool at night (students at school were complaining about the cold and would wear jumpers and coats to class). The bathroom is a bit rough, but I do have hot water and a toilet that guarantees to flush at least 75% of the time. My cooking at home is about on a par with what I used to cook in Australia (0). The TV has cable, but of the 80 or so channels, 70 of them are either Cambodian, Thai, Chinese or another South East Asian country. I do get Channel Australia which is a mix of the ABC and commercial channels back home, so as long as I can watch Home'n'Away and the football I don't feel like I'm living in a cultural waste land.
Below me live a couple of other teachers from the same school, an American guy and the other is an English girl. Both have spent about the same other of time here as me, so there is always someone to go eating or drinking with (not so much talking as they both have weird accents that I'm sure the students have no idea what they are talking about).
