a street 51 christmas

From Christmas in Cambodia

A Street 51 Christmas. Street 51 is one of the bar streets in Phnom Penh, and features the infamous Heart of Darkness night club, Zeppelin, a bunch of girlie bars (the Black Cat, Shanghai), and Howie's, the place where I spend most of my non-working hours. I went there on Christmas night to get a Christmas kebab for Christmas dinner since I Christmas didn't-feel-like-eating until then.

From Christmas in Cambodia

There are 3 24 hour dining kiosks along this strip and they are all delightful once it get pasts 11:00 PM. The chicken shwarma kebab had french fries in it. And garlic sauce. And stuff kept on falling out of it, delicious stuff. There are also what I term "weird Cambodian burgers" on offer. They may not be weird, but the only time I ate one was at 4:00 AM on a particularly interesting Friday, and I don't really remember anything about it other then a single, truncated frame of me eating it with lots of ketchup and thinking, "Well, this is odd spicing."

From Christmas in Cambodia

Something about Santa Claus hats is a cultural universality. It's like Mickey Mouse and Michael Jackson. There are probably people in the backwaters of Papua New Guinea who own Santa Claus hats. Here, they're all the rage among the hip young things out for a night of larceny on Street 51. I mean, I own one.

From Christmas in Cambodia

The Heart of Darkness wishes you a Happy Holiday's. This is the club where they had that shooting a while back, but you know about that if you've read anything about Phnom Penh nightlife. Hailing from New Orleans, nightclub shootings are nothing particularly exotic in my eyes, and the Heart is a pretty standard nightclub with thumpy-thumpy music, overpriced cocktails, and lots of people making out with each other. I like going there to dance poorly on occasion, but the creeper-to-me ratio is occasionally rather high and sometimes I run right back outside again. The female security guard is lovely: last time I walked outside to wait for friends, she let me sit on her chair, did my hair into braids, instructed me on how to do a Khmer "wai," and had a discussion with me about boys.

From Christmas in Cambodia

They had an absolute winner of a tree in the mall opposite the Heart. I find myself becoming a bit of a connesuir of Cambodian Christmas trees. Sort of like a wine snob, only a thousand times more esoteric. The Ultimate Hipster, in a way. Maybe I'll produce a guide no one will read.

Oh, wait. Already doing that.

	From Christmas in Cambodia

Happy Merry Christmas, everyone.

fcc christmas dinner

From Christmas in Cambodia

Fruity cocktails. Necessary for Christmas.

A big group of us had Christmas lunch at the Foreign Correspondent's Club. Every tourist in Phnom Penh goes to the FCC in the hope of catching a glimpse of a sexy and danger-loving "journalist." They will almost always be disappointed because 1. journalists are poor and 2. the FCC is expensive and 3. you get the picture. Journalists prefer dive bars where a gin and tonic can be obtained for two bucks and there's a laptop in the back with music and preferably, a pool table. That's what journalists like.

The FCC is all jewel toned and classy and has a menu with an emphasis on tapas and wood-fired pizzas. It's basically like being in Northern California if you make an effort to avoid looking out the windows. It's usually full of diplomat and senior NGO types who can actually afford to eat here, and middle aged tourists doing the "where's the journalists at?" glance-around with little actual success. The food is good. And expensive. But good. They did have a set menu for Christmas, and the food was quite good. A rundown.....

From Christmas in Cambodia

Croquettes with brie. These were high end cheese sticks involving lots of mashed potato. A worthy effort in a country with a low cheese-to-expat ratio. Still, a cheese stick, dressed up as it may be, is a cheese stick and reminds me mostly of being 18 years old and incredibly drunk in the Berkshires of Massachusetts at 4:00 in the morning. And truckstops. Less so fine dining. But, hey, there's Brie in it.

From Christmas in Cambodia

A very nice salmon salad 'ala mode' though I couldn't quite work out that what meant. Salmon is a bit hard to come by in Cambodia, and this salad with avocado, dill, celery, and a bit of sour-cream was lovely when eaten on crunchy toast points. Fresh and crispy is good news on an 85 degree Christmas day.

From Christmas in Cambodia

The main attraction was a choice of suckling pig or turkey with stuffing, mashed potato, roast potato (so much potato), gravy, and vegetables. I think the suckling pig was the way to go. Nice and crispy skin, still flavorful inside. A little bit too much fat, if there's such a thing as too much pork fat. The herb stuffing was pretty good, as were the potatoes. They forgot a friend of mine's stuffing and he was about to go back in the kitchen and wage war upon them, but they brought it out and crisis was just alleviated, in the nick of time. You don't come between Americans and stuffing on Christmas day, friends. You just don't.

From Christmas in Cambodia

This fruit crumble dessert was truly good. Apple and pear with a nice light crust, a bit of vanilla ice cream, and a delicate raspberry sauce. Not too heavy, fresh and hot, a good buttery crust. Not so heavy as to knock you on your ass post-suckling pig. The FCC may have a way with desserts. I will investigate further.

A good Christmas effort that put us all in incredible food comas by around 3:30 PM. I had these plans of taking photos around town and instead came straight home, passed out on my bed, and woke up around two hours later with heartburn and a headache and a sense of love for mankind. Now if that isn't what Christmas is all about, I don't know what it is.

Happy Merry Christmas.

happy christmas

From Christmas in Cambodia

Merry Christmas, everyone. Well, it's no longer Christmas here (as of an hour) but the sentiment counts. I thought my first ex-pat Christmas might be a morose experience but it certainly wasn't. Maybe I was supposed to go drink alone and have dark and sad thoughts about the direction of my life and the movements of the planets and what my family was doing (being asleep, mostly) but I couldn't summon up the energy for ennui. I had a good time despite myself.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Christmas Eve involved: six different bars, an expansive and meat centered buffet, the Cambodian Space Project, and an inordinate amount of passion fruit cocktails mixed with vodka. It ended with 3 AM swimming in the pool at Elsewhere with a bunch of Australians. I had a 5000 calorie bolster and thus was totally incapable of getting drunk. This actually got a bit expensive.

From Christmas in Cambodia

There may have been a lady-boy involved. (Hooker bars are incredibly festive around the holiday-time. Everyone's dressed up in red and white and dancing to WHAM which they love around here and all the sexpats are in a real good mood themselves. Just fascinating). One of the ladies had an enormous Viking helmet on but the photo didn't come out. I'm sad, too.

awesome christmas eve dinner at cantina

From Christmas in Cambodia

Courtesy of Cantina on Sisowath, I got to have an absolutely fantastic home-made (well, bar made, but here, that IS home) Christmas dinner. Don't cry for me, Argentina. I ate four plates of this amazing stuff. Where did they find real cranberries? The rolls are home-made. There was brie, people. Brie. Four turkeys. Ham. Sweet potatoes. Dressing. Real actual pumpkin pie. And the best part? On-call Jim Beam with my meal.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Here's Jet showing the turkey who's boss.

From Christmas in Cambodia

That turkey died a hero's death.

From Christmas in Cambodia

The entire spread in yellow hues. The decor in this bar is sort of Pancho Villa movie chic. I like it.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Not just ham. But sexy ham.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Seasons greetings from sweet potatoes with marshmallow. Yes.

happy christmas from the raffles

From Christmas in Cambodia

The Raffles Hotel was decked out extremely tastefully for Christmas. I walked inside and felt sort of like I was in a San Francisco luxury hotel for a second and got very nostalgic. They were remarkably nice about me taking photos of their Christmas decorations like a big freak. I want to go to the Elephant Bar soon. The Le Royal is a big part of Cambodian history and was The hotel in town until the Khmer Rouge took over- it was a very happening place during the French era. During the KR invasion, many people holed up here, including a profusion of journalists, which you'll know all about if you've seen The Killing Fields or read any of the books on the era. It's a helluva beautiful hotel.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Daniel Southerland, the photographer who covered the 1970 KR invasion of Christmas and stayed at the Le Royal while doing it, wishes you a Merry Christmas. (I don't actually know if he does or doesn't, but his photo has been appropriately festived. If you're reading this Dan for some bizarre reason, I apologize in advance and hope you have had a wonderful day).

nagaworld's christmas wonderland

From Christmas in Cambodia

I liked watching families knock out their holiday photos at Nagaworld. Teenage girls doing faux-sexy poses in front of the gingerbread house. Little kids going into spasms of joy at the sight of SO. MUCH. GLITTER. in one place.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Even grandmother is getting in on the action. I feel a bit odd about taking people's family photos from unintended angles but such is my lot.

From Christmas in Cambodia

I was never that cool when I was 15.

From Christmas in Cambodia

This lovely lady was maintaining the Christmas Pastry Wonderland inside the ginger-bread house. She posed for me. No one seemed to be buying the Christmas Pastries-force of exoticism, people who have no idea what in God's name a "stollen" is - but they looked lovely.

From Christmas in Cambodia

I like the Minimalist Artsy Gold Reindeer motif, actually.

From Christmas in Cambodia

I have no idea why this nice looking businessman is here but he posed so delightfully for me. Here he is. He looks so jolly.

the house christmas band

From Christmas in Cambodia

The band at Nagaworld appeared to be about my age and profoundly uncomfortable with the Christmas carol concept, being more used to belting out Khmer ballads and Lady GaGa covers at 3 AM. But they managed to memorize and execute a number of the staples, albeit with entirely too many Rs. Bless them. I wonder what they were thinking about.

From Christmas in Cambodia

It's really quite an impressive stage. They trotted out small cute children earlier to work their way through Jingle Bells. There's some sort of Christmas MEGABUCKS type raffle going on as well, I believe.

From Christmas in Cambodia

The milling crowd as seen from above. Tons of people are coming into Nagaworld just to check this impressive tableaux out. I can hardly blame them. It would be reasonably impressive in a major American mall, and here we are in Cambodia. My.

From Christmas in Cambodia

I would like to add that the keyboardist is in heavy contention for Raddest Mofo in Cambodia status. Just sayin'.

nagaworld and christmas

From Christmas in Cambodia

Nagaworld. It's the huge casino built at the far end of Sisowath. It's a real live casino hotel aspiring to Vegas, though I'm afraid to say that it's more in that slightly-off-the-strip-category. But for Cambodia, it's an edifice, a beast, and all the amenities are inside. There's a cigar bar with imported Cuban and Dominican varieties, which I've availed myself of more then once. There's five or six restaurants of the high end white tablecloth variety, featuring Western, Korean, Chinese, Thai, and good ol' Khmer cuisine. There are hundreds of luxury rooms with things like LCD televisions and rain showers, and there are lots of perky girls in tight outfits to serve you freeish beer while you're losing all your money on Blackjack.

From Christmas in Cambodia

It's a huge investment project by one of the enormous firms that are just beginning to enter Cambodia. The clientele are mostly Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese. Khmers are theoretically not allowed to gamble, but there seems to be a lot of looking-the-other-way going on with that one. The company that owns it is incorporated in the Cayman Islands. You know, how one does.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Nagaworld reminds me of home in a big way. I'm from Northern California and grew up in the West. My parents are not gamblers but we still spend a lot of time in casinos for one reason or another. I like the sound of them, the people watching, the completely ridiculous decor. And being from California, our casinos are also 89% Vietnamese and Chinese, with the corresponding shockingly good restaurants. I go into Nagaworld some times, walk around the gaming floor around the aggressively un-real painted blue sky, and think, "Ah, Lake Tahoe! Ah, Las Vegas, but slightly off the strip! Ah, Reno!" Then I remember where I am when I go back outside. It's almost poignant.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Nagaworld completely went all-out for Christmas this year: I've never seen a gingerbread house of such sheer enormity. They have a stage with near constant live-christmas caroling going on, they have a "Christmas Pastry Wonderland," they have gigantic shiny gold deer bigger then a man, they have at least 200 Christmas trees, they have everything. I'm surprised no one slapped a Christmas hat on an apsara but I may not have been looking hard enough.

atm christmas

From Christmas in Cambodia

I'm not entirely sure why, but all the banks here are absolutely exploding with Christmas cheer. Maybe they want us to be filled with the generosity of the season as we grudgingly take out our ever-dwindling funds.

I am happy, by the way, that Phnom Penh has a bunch of functioning and reasonably safe ATMS. I will always remember with a jaundiced eye that Indian ATM that shocked the snot out of me on a rainy day. I grabbed the front desk guy, took him over, and pointed to the ATM with a damning finger: he touched it, also got BZZAAPPEED, and stared at it for a moment. Then he shrugged. "Oh well, madame," he said. Oh well.

santa of indignation

From Christmas in Cambodia

The same inflatable Santa is making the rounds this Christmas. I was at the Central Market the other day to buy shoes, since my last pair of shoes has finally given up the ghost-I mean, we're talking about flapping soles, rendering me sad-hobo like and tragic in the streets of Phnom Penh- and I went down there and noticed a few stalls selling Christmas decor, to Khmer customers. Little Charlie-Brown like faux trees and lots of sparkly stuff. Faux snow. (IT'S EVERYWHERE). And that same inflatable Santa.

There's an enormous, apartment building sized Santa Claus on Monivong. This pleases me inordinately. (If I was 15, I would be plotting its destruction in the name of capitalist insurrection, but thankfully for everyone, I'm not anymore).

festivus clothing

From Christmas in Cambodia

Christmas clothes for kids on sale along Sisowath. I asked a Khmer lady I know what she thought about Christmas. She said she hadn't really considered it until she started working with Westerners. "It's mostly for the teenagers, the kids," she said. "Me...I'm old." (She isn't).

This may be case-in-point. Give this 5 or 10 more years and Christmas will be thoroughly entrenched in the hearts and souls of Cambodia's youth.

Either that, or there are going to be more then a few kids in Cambodia forced into these outfits for humiliating photo ops this year.

From Christmas in Cambodia

I would like to add that, for the record, I own the Santa hat on top. And verily, did I go out drinking in it, and more verily, did every moto guy I walked by scream MERRY CHRISTMAS at me, and verily, did a British guy almost steal it but (in the sight and knowledge of the Lord), I did get it back. And it smells sort of like whiskey now.

the star that rose in the east (great deals on soy drink)

From Christmas in Cambodia

She's a pretty girl.

From Christmas in Cambodia

The 24 Hour Shop employees are all wearing staff-issue Santa hats. They're playing Christmas carols at really high RPM in the shop too. A group of Cambodian schoolboys were in there today, drumming off-beat on the counter top along to what sounded like a Vietnamese (in English) cover of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Some people have said that this is the most Christmas they've ever seen in Phnom Penh. Guess they'll know all the words next year, too.

man with tree

From Christmas in Cambodia

He looked up at me a second later. He gave me a, "Why the hell are you taking a photo of me why I am eating?" sort of look, an inquiring sort of look.

The only logical response was, "Well, I'm this weird girl who takes pictures of random European men eating dinner in front of a particularly sparkly Christmas tree in Phnom Penh and I'm not judging your lifestyle at all, and I mean, you made the tableux just about perfect, so thanks, you're a mensch, and..."

I in fact just made a weird face and scurried away. But the thought was there.

christmas in the girlie bars

From Christmas in Cambodia

Street 104. It's one of Phnom Penh's girly-bar streets. You've got the Pickled Parrot, Zanzi-bar, and a bunch of places with cutely euphemistic names. The girlie bars around here cater to a lot of forigners, and they really kick ass when it comes to Christmas decorations. Buckets of tinsel and ribbon? You name it, they've got it. Shiny ornaments and tinsel and Santa hats with your gin and tonic? Bring it on, baby.

They're all about the same inside. There's a bar, a television playing pop videos, and a whole lot of girls. You don't necessarily have to be on "a mission" to hang out at these places - I'm a heterosexual female and have had more then a few drinks in these environs. In an odd way, I like girly bars. I don't get that many chances to interact with young Khmer women my age. They are most definitely here. They're often pretty interested in me. Where I'm from, what I do, why I'm in Phnom Penh. They're usually nice girls who speak good English. And the people watching at these establishments: choice. (One Russian guy! 20 Khmer girls!)

From Christmas in Cambodia

I'd be the last person to judge what they do for a living. If I was 22 years old, poor, and living in Phnom Penh, I don't doubt that I'd be doing the same. They're good people in a very difficult situation, or at least a healthy number of them.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Phnom Penh has a permanent population of what are usually termed "sexpats" for reasons that should be really, really obvious. Many of them seem to spend most of their waking hours at these bars, moving from one to another in a circuit known only to themselves. I've talked to a few of these guys before - they're often pretty amiable - and they're usually some sort of IT or business type from the US or Britain who decided to chuck the rat race, cash out, and move to Phnom Penh. And spend all their waking hours in girlie bars of one sort or another. A lot of these guys end up opening restaurants or bars to make some cash on the side. They often seem to end up with one (sometimes two) steady girlfriends. Some say the life expectancy of a sexpat is pretty low. I haven't been here long enough to be able to tell. Some of them look lost as hell. 100 mile stares. Somehow I'm not surprised.

This is supposed to be Christmassy, so I'm just going to say "Mary Magdalene" and stroke my beard thoughtfully for a second.

Ok? Done.

santa in orange

From Christmas in Cambodia

Santa as viewed through the orange hue of urban devastation. Santa expresses the hope-and neuroses-that commercialism and the Western "Christmas" concept can bring, a wry commentary on the day to day lives that Phnom Penh's overwhelmingly Buddhist-and overwhelmingly poor-population lives. What ironic urban artist erected this little monument? What mirth lies beneath the dark, whispering heart of this growing Asian metropolis, this nightmare-within-a-dream of a city?

Or, you know, someone put a cardboard cut out of Santa on their door under an orange light.

Sometimes I think I should become a modern artist so I could write shit like that all day.

KFC and Christmas

From Christmas in Cambodia

KFC is the Mothership of Fast Food Chains, the Big Mama, the all-encompassing entity. This isn't usually apparent to Americans, but leaps out at those who have taken up residence elsewhere. They are absolutely everywhere - I saw one in the Western Chinese city of Urumqi, for God's sake—and they are also incredibly popular. KFC (or rather, its owner, Yum Brands) has an incredible genius for tweaking its menu into whatever the locals *really* want it to be.

Thailand features green curry and sundaes that are made to look like tropical oceans. (Ew). India has paneer and various masala-preparations on the menu. The USA, has, you know, those X-treme Biscuit Bowl things with enough calories to fee an Indian family.

Cambodia has only had KFC since 2008, and I believe it was the first major fast-food chain to open in the country. Cambodians have quickly caught up to the rest of the world and have throughly embraced KFC. Cambodia's KFC variant mostly features fried chicken with rice and the addition of hot sauce if you so desire, and Khmers just plain love it. The KFC at the Pencil Supermarket on Norodom is packed to the brim at all hours with Khmers, many of them students availing themselves of the free wi-fi and families picking the kids up from school.

KFC adorns itself in Christmas plumage with a vengeance around here, and they're also offering Christmas specials to lure in the festive-feeling Khmer population. I haven't been quite desperate enough to eat at KFC while I've been here, but the allure of popcorn chicken and incredibly yellow corn will probably lure me in at some point. You won't be hearing about it.

You know what's really tragic? They don't sell the biscuits here in Cambodia.

the tiger beer tree

From Christmas in Cambodia

The Tiger Beer Tree phenom is here, and my brethern, it is real. Nothing gets more real then a lit-up tree made up of drained beer-cans. (Actually, not sure if they are drained or not, though that's a travesty against all alcoholic-kind if they still contain the demon beverage). There must be some sort of template for these magical edifices circulating around town since I have seen more then one of them. I desperately want to build my own.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Another Beer Tree at Mao's. I can't believe anyone would find these glorious beer-trees offensive. It's just a combination of the ancient holiday of Saturnalia and bacchanalia, right? Come on, isn't Christmas once you hit age 17 or so largely an excuse to get wasted with people you like (if you're lucky) after getting some new stuff? I think the Beer Tree symbolizes the secular, fun-loving, and glorious heart of the season. The Beer Tree should fill us all with seasonal wishes and hope for a bountiful future.

Also, whoo, note that creepy-ass eye from a Moby video.