This month started with the Pchum Ben holiday, this is one of the longest and most important holidays in Cambodia. Technically, it’s a 15 day long series of ceremonies honoring deceased ancestors but the core is an official week long holiday when Cambodians travel back to their ancestral homelands and pay tribute to their ancestors…
Category: Cambodia in the News
COVID-19 Sniffing Dogs
I missed this news when it was first announced but the Cambodian Mine Action Center has successfully trained three of its mine clearing dogs to sniff out COVID-19. They have seven more dogs currently in training. The Cambodian Ministry of Tourism is hoping to resume issuing Tourist Visas in October or November. However, it’s unlikely…
Voltra Matrix Test Drive
Last week Doungchann, our administrative assistant, and I went to test drive the Voltra Matrix. This is the first ‘made in Cambodia’ electric moto. If you’ve been to Phnom Penh, you know that the air and noise pollution are major problems. Cambodia is also consistently ranked as one of the top ten countries in the…
COVID-19: Second Dose
I’d been holding out for our vaccination cards but as they’ve been delayed I thought I’d go ahead and share the good news. The day before Catherine’s 4th birthday we went for our second dose of COVID-19 vaccine at a local primary school. It was a much faster process than the first dose, which involved…
COVID-19: First Dose
As of last Friday, all of MCC Phnom Penh’s personnel have at least received their first vaccine dose. More than half of national staff have received their second dose. We have two staff in the countryside who are not yet vaccinated but that’s due to preexisting medical conditions. Crystal and I were in the last…
COVID-19: Lockdown Zones
As I mentioned last time, this has been by far the most serious outbreak of COVID-19 that Cambodia has experienced. The country went into full lockdown for several weeks and then, slowly, transitioned to a zone based lockdown. Red Zones: Areas with high rates of community transmission. Complete lockdown. Families are allowed to leave homes…
COVID-19: Full Lockdown
By many metrics, Cambodia is still doing well during the pandemic but the situation is much worse than it was just two months ago. On Friday, we saw our highest increase of cases with almost 700 people diagnosed followed by almost 500 people on Saturday and another 300 people yesterday. These are not high numbers…
COVID-19 Update: The February 20th Incident
Three weeks ago Cambodia had the third lowest cases per million of COVID-19 in the world (after Laos and Vietnam). On February 20th, it was discovered that four Chinese people had bribed their guard to break quarantine earlier in the month and new cases began to be discovered at an alarming rate. From January 2020…
The flood car
In October we helped pull a car out of the flood zone. We were worried that the car wouldn’t run again but, two weeks later, we got to see it in action! It was worse for wear but able to be driven! The waters had not entirely receded by this point so it was rewarding…
Coronavirus
Given our proximity to China, the single confirmed case in Cambodia and the cruise ship situation, I thought it would be worth updating people on our response to the new novel coronavirus which is spreading across the world. First, you should know that we are not worried. Healthcare in Cambodia has improved dramatically in the…