Shopping

What about shops in Cambodia? Well there's absolutely every kind of shopping opportunity you can imagine here. There are top of the range designer shops within the old French-built arcades, there are modern mobile phone and internet shops (I brought my ipad here knowing that it has a worldwide guarantee and price) and there are good well priced supermarkets where you can buy almost everything you could wish. The thing you can't find is good face cream without whiteners - a pale skin being considered highly desireable. There are book shops, social enterprises like training restaurants, ice cream parlours and French cafés.

In Siem Reap town area there are a number of markets - the Old Market open from very early in the morning for food ingredients and for clothes and shoes etc alongside tourist items. We are all walking round in cool cheap tops and flip flops from the market. My top was $5 and my flip flops $5 for two pairs ie £1.30 a pair. There is a huge local market a little out of town. We also have a number of Night Markets again for tourist items but the Art Market has some lovely things in it - beautiful silks, shadow puppets made of leather, pottery etc.

 

This was a 'drive by' purchase in Phnom Penh - she didn't get off the motorbike! There are numerous operations on the streets - you can have a shave or your hair cut, get your feet massaged or eat in the many roadside restaurants of all types. They range from sit down mum and dad eateries to the roving food vendor with two baskets slung on a pole. This is a sit down restaurant under the wall of the big Wat in Phnom Penh.

 

 

There are sellers of winkles and other shellfish on a flat wooden cart which has been treated with spices. They stand out in the sun so look lethal to me! The food is otherwise very clean, well presented and tasty. I think that, given this is a tourist area, it has been identified that you wash vegetables etc in boiled water to prevent nasties. We have many varied restaurants locally at all sorts of prices. Jane and I had a nice meal of chicken teriyaki, mixed vegetable tempura, sticky rice and two glasses of wine in a Japanese restaurant on very low tables. However, there was a foot well so you got the experience without the pain. This cost $15 each ie £9.35. Locally this was considered very expensive - you can go to the Khmer Kitchen, one of the numerous open air restaurants in the Pub Street area and get a Fish Amok for $4 (£2.49) plus they keep coming round with more rice!

 

This vendor near the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh not only sells warm coke but also fresh squeezed sugar cane juice.

A dress shop making clothes to order.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy