My little weather widget on Chrome tells me it's 33˚C ("Feels like 34˚") outside -- or about 93˚F, so I'm staying seated in the air conditioned office and telling you about shopping on our day off (Monday).
Phnom Penh (well, Asia, in general) is a shoppers paradise or hell, depending on how you feel about shopping and what size you are. If you love shopping and you're small, it's a paradise. If you hate shopping at home, you'll be overwhelmed and want to stab your eyes out at the prospect of endless hunting and haggling. If you're my size, don't worry about spending too much money, you'll never find anything that fits you anyway.
You can hit the upscale mall, the warrens of teeny shops in the trendy malls, or the stands under the hot iron roof at the seemingly endless Central Market. It’s fantastic – again, if you’re of a petite “Asian” size. After a full day of shopping I succeeded in buying only two tops and a pair of trousers, both fairly loose and light. I failed, however, to find a single pair of shoes that fit (usually only sizes up to 39 or 40 are stocked, I wear a 42) or anything resembling trousers I’d actually want to wear outside of temples in Southeast Asia. After the boss's daughter told me that I can get trousers made for $3 plus the cost of material, though, I felt better. I may finally have my dream of an (almost) entirely fitted wardrobe come true.
It’s not just that clothes are too skinny, because I can sometimes even squeeze into the skinniness of a piece, but everything is just proportioned wrong. Shoulders are too narrow, the waist always falls too high... What should be a dress on most is a slightly long shirt on me. And forget about it fitting over my boobs.
In the course of our shopping and eating of lunch and snacks we were discussing the price of things here. Things seem to be either dirt cheap (e.g. street food or awful clothes we don’t want to buy) or kind of expensive (by comparison). My theory (which belongs to me*) is that it’s because there’s no real middle class here, so things either have to be cheap enough for the poorest of folk, or they cater to people like our boss and his family, whose teenage daughter gets an allowance of $300 EVERY WEEK. Seriously. I don’t spend that much in a month living at home in the states. Ok, maybe I do, but still, this is Cambodia and that’s a crazy allowance. So after our $7 all you can eat Shabu Shabu and Sushi Buffet for lunch, we three split two 5,000 riel ($1.25) sandwiches for dinner. It’s sort of weird, treading the line between the bubbles of upper class Cambodians, Ex-pats, and average local life.
*Monty Python reference
I don't know WHAT i would do if I lived there. But the idea of tailor made clothes is genius; I say take full advantage while you are there!!
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