Many expats seem to forget that they choose to be here

Home is close to the work of these Cambodians, who pick from garbage anything they can recycle.

You hear the gripes, complaints and sparks of indignation all the time.

Expats regularly find fault with Cambodia in general and Phnom Penh in particular, and I hardly am blameless (as this post arguably demonstrates).

Whether it is about the vast majority of sidewalks that either are nonexistent or made impassable by parked vehicles and vendors’ carts or it is about intractable corruption, we continually voice our various displeasures to each other over restaurant tables and online.

We moan about

Mango season arrives, but it doesn’t end soon enough

Several trees on my block are sprouting mangos.

Months go by before mango season arrives in Phnom Penh.  Growing larger and slowly changing from bright green to glowing yellow, the ripening mangos now suspend themselves from the limbs of mature trees like so many Christmas ornaments.

Those trees actually thrive

16-year-old gym buddy launches me on new adventure

Happy Khmer New Year! See you again after next week.

View of Koh Tang, an island more than four hours from Cambodia’s Sihanoukville in Gulf of Thailand.

It all started with a conversation about the Great Barrier Reef.

I mentioned to Mike, 16, who works out at my gym, that I had put the reef on my bucket list. He said that the only way to view the natural wonder was by scuba diving.

Quixotically following the teenager’s advice, I immediately deposited $200 with Scuba Nation, a first-rate diving concern that offers PADI certification with half of the underwater instruction at a Phnom Penh swimming pool.  The second half

Many items that rich countries discard are used again

The man in photo above is engaged in a task that is routine in buildings large and small: He is pounding metal rods that have been used previously in construction so they can be used again.

Nails are commonly straightened for re-use, and I posted a photo recently of a mother doing just that with a toddler at her back.

Have you ever seen