Hello! This is Lynsey writing. I decided to write a domestic post to give everyone an idea of our daily life here. Hold on to your hats
Keith and I have a corner room on the third floor of our guesthouse. One window looks out onto the roof of a very nice, very expensive hotel next door. The other looks over the courtyard downstairs. The little roofed area is where we eat meals, usually two a day. The other we have in town. A meal is roughly $3. It's only more if you eat somewhere they have you trapped - a nice hotel or something. We feel completely ripped off if a restaurant charges $5-6 for a dish, it seems ridiculous here. Apparently we've adjusted to the price scale in Cambodia.
So, a typical day. We wake up around 6:30 am, and for whatever reason, we're always starving here, so we head downstairs to the little restaurant. The food is great - eggs, bread, fruit, yogurt, pancakes - anything you want. They also make delicious shakes. We asked what's in the shakes, because I suspected I was drinking ice cream for breakfast. The answer: fruit, ice, and fresh milk. That made me feel better. That's a watermelon shake in the picture. Also, fresh milk is what we have to ask for here. Most Khmer people drink sweet (condensed) milk in their coffee. I made that mistake the first day, it was tooth-achey.
This first week, we haven't been very busy with work, so we usually plan an excursion for the morning, a temple or museum, and then get back to the guesthouse for lunch. By that time it's much too hot to be outside anyway. After lunch (a sandwich, curry, or stir fry) we head upstairs and turn on the air conditioning.
We avoid the heat with emails, books or a movie (we have HBO and Cinemax in English, I told you we aren't exactly roughing it). The only rule: NO NAPPING. Jetlag has been tenacious. Once it's cooled down, we head back out for a walk and dinner in town.
The national dish in Cambodia (besides rice) is amok - pieces of fish or meat baked in coconut milk with spices. When you look at it, you can't really tell what is it, but it's completely delicious. At least one of us eats it each day. I also eat a lot of vegetable curries. Anything with vegetables. The other options are usually Western and add up to a lot of white bread.
Then to bed. We're struggling by 9:00 om and by 9:30 pm, we're out. Hence the 6:30 am wake up every morning.
That's it! Pretty standard, but I had a request for daily life details. As projects pick up, we'll fill in more information. I also promise more food pictures soon!
