នំពំ | Coconut Waffles

One of the girls’ favorite street foods are Khmer coconut waffles or ‘Noum Pom’. These sweet waffles are moist and dense, not airy and light. They do have that delightful waffle crunch on the surface but shredded coconut lurks beneath the surface. They are typically eaten plain, traditionally served in a banana leaf and more…

Fishbones and the heart of the Mekong

I developed a dairy allergy in my teenage years. Since then, I’ve often been asked “how do you get your calcium without milk?” Well, calcium is available in many foods with dark leafy greens being of special note. One of my favorite sources of calcium is blackstrap molasses which is a fantastic sugar substitute for…

Best Mosquito Spray Brand Name

Between Dengue and Chikungunya, we’ve developed a healthy interest in keeping mosquitos away. There are few things more satisfying than frying the little bloodsuckers with a mosquito racket but we also use mosquito spray quite a lot. Since COVID-19 disrupted international trade, the brands of mosquito spray available here have been in constant flux and…

Online School is back in session

Last week, Charlotte started second grade… It’s hard to believe that’s true but it is. My little baby is growing up so fast. …and, yesterday, Catherine started Pre-Kindergarten. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, both girls are currently studying online and it will probably be months in the best case scenario before they’re able to study…

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…

Activate Windows

Microsoft recently announced that they’re ending support for Windows 10 in 2025. Way back when Microsoft introduced Windows 10, they said it would be a shift from Windows as a product to Windows as a service and that it would be the last, final, and forever version of Windows. But they changed their minds. This…

Heart of Crown & the COVID game

I think it’s probably clear by now that we love playing games as a family. During our staycation, we got into a card game called Heart of Crown that I had brought with us when we moved here in 2019. It is very similar to Dominion, for those who have played that, but with the…

Brazilian Cuisine (the Restaurant)

Brazilian Cuisine is a restaurant in Phnom Penh run by Tida En and his family. By day, Tida is an IT professional who runs his own IT business, runs IT for an anti-trafficking NGO, and runs IT for an international Christian school. But, since that’s not enough running, several evenings a week Tida also runs…

សាឡាក់ | Snake Fruit

Snake Fruit, or Salak, is a species of palm tree native to the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It’s a seasonal fruit that can be found at local markets here in Cambodia but isn’t as common as other seasonal fruits like Mangosteen, Rambutan, or Longan. The outer skin of the fruit is where…

Update from Charlotte

Hello everyone. I’ve been living in Cambodia for a long time now. Three of my favorite things about living in Cambodia are… 1.the food 2.the trees 3. the Apsara dancing and outfits. I really like to go to Kep because that is where the beach is!!!!! The hardest part of living in Cambodia is COVID!!!!…