What I miss about living in KL

I've made a very conscious effort to be optimistic about living in the Phenomenal Penguin -- focusing on the positives without being a total Pollyanna about it.  Although it's only a two-hour flight from KL, Cambodia is a very different world, and, as I had expected, there are some marked advantages to living here, and there are some Malaysian things that I sorely miss.

Public transit:  Most Malaysians complain bitterly about the public transit in KL. I pine for it. Phnom Penh has no public transit whatever; we have tuktuks and motos. I won't hire a moto driver to take me anywhere, because most of them drive like madmen, and it's simply too risky, especially without a helmet. There is an unspoken three-tier price structure for the tuktuks:  local, expat, and tourist.  By speaking some Khmer, by using familiar drivers when possible and by negotiating aggressively with others, I can at least get a ride for less than a tourist would pay, but there's no such thing as a fixed fare -- the best I can hope for is a mutually acceptable price based upon time and distance.

Last week, Seiha, a friendly tuktuk driver who often parks on my street, drove me to Lucky Supermarket and back. It took about an hour in all -- 15 minutes each way in transit, and a half hour of shopping. He charged me $4 (RM13).  I think that's reasonable, but I can't help but contrast it with the RM2 return fare on a RapidKL bus from Brickfields to MidValley, paid with my nifty little Touch'n'Go card.

Cambodia imports all its petroleum products, and there is certainly no government subsidy for fuel. The average price for a litre of petrol is $1.30 (RM4.30)/litre, so of course it's going to cost more to get around by motor.

O, how I loved RapidKL.

Shopping:  One of the things I adored about living in KL was shopping at the pasar pagi (morning market). The ladies at the tables where I routinely bought my produce charged me the same prices as they charged my Malaysian neighbours, and they threw in free cooking tips in the bargain. In the Cambodian markets, whether I'm shopping for food, housewares, clothing, bicycle lock, or towels, I find that the sellers will most often try to charge me far more than I would pay in a supermarket or fixed-price store, sometimes doubling the price. The few times I've gone back later and tried to negotiate, saying that mint or chicken livers are half that price in the supermarket, they either shrug and turn away or drop their price just a wee bit.  This morning I thought I'd buy some fruit from an older lady who's selling mangos and bananas in her doorway on a street I walk daily. I ended up buying a kilo of mangos from her at nearly double the supermarket price, and no -- despite her assurances to the contrary, they are not better.  My preference is always to buy from individual merchants and small businesses, but I'm not willing to pay a 100% surcharge to support the little guy.  

"Hey, sister! Got tau geh today! Very good. You want?"

The social mix:  This one is too complex to be tidily summed up, but in brief,  KL is a social hodge-podge, with both Malaysians and non-Malaysians crossing all manner of racial and cultural lines. There is a broad socio-economic spectrum. I was blessed to form deep friendships with some Anglophone Malaysians. I would never claim that this group of friends was truly representative of Malaysians as a whole, because the majority doesn't speak English, and I speak no Indian languages or Chinese dialects and only functional Malay. Most of my friends in KL had studied or travelled outside of Malaysia, and we found common ground in many areas.

It's still to early to know for sure, but my visceral sense is that there are only few delineations in Cambodian society, and that they are much harder to breach.  First, the line between Khmers and foreigners -- all foreigners:  Yes, some Cambodians speak some English, and with time, some foreigners learn Khmer (and damn, I'm trying hard!), but in addition to the linguistic divide, there is a cultural gulf. Few Cambodians have left the Kingdom, and many have never been outside their home provinces. Poverty is rife, except where there is staggering wealth. There is a middle class -- I think my landlady and her family are part of it -- but it's a small piece of the economic pie. I'm certainly not ruling out the possibility that I will form friendships with Cambodians, and I ardently want to, but I believe it's going to take more time than it did in KL.

Culture-blind :-)

Food:  Ok, Malaysians, you win. It's really, really hard to find better food anywhere else in southeast Asia. I miss KL's hawker stalls and streetside food. I miss going over to Lavanya in the Brickfields alley and eating a heaping plate of rice and vegetables for under RM5.  I miss the variety of Malaysian food.

There are of course street stalls here in Phnom Penh, but the sellers almost never speak any English, and I don't yet have enough Khmer vocabulary to ask what they're selling.  An adventurous omnivore would just order something and make the best of it, but being vegetarian, I really want to know if there's some part of a dead animal on my plate. It's going to be a while till I can plop down on a bench with the locals for a bowl of noodle and [????] soup, and even then, I wonder if they'll charge me the sort of price I'd pay to sit in an air-conditioned restaurant with a menu in English.

The real catastrophe, however, is the durian. Cambodians sell the same big, odourless and flavourless durians as the Thais do. They open them long before they're ripe, when the flesh is still crunchy. You know it's a lost cause when they let the durian sellers sit in the middle of the phsar with everyone else. I've never seen a No Durian sign in a Phnom Penh hotel. It's a travesty.

If you can't smell it from at least 500m,
it's not a good durian. 

P. S.  I hope it goes without saying that I miss my KL friends more than all the above.