Time is free, by Ben

I have a habit that I've kept up since being in Cambodia; I'll almost always guess what the time is before checking (or asking Ruth).  I want to know if I've "spent" the time well, or to see if my balance of time is enough for what I want to accomplish in a day.  Played music, finished the shopping and cleaned the house before 11am on a Saturday?  Awesome, plenty of time left in the day.  Got back from work, rested a bit, cooked dinner, did some marking (Americans - grading) and it's 9pm?  Darn.

Many of you would do similar - we are always aware of time passing and evaluating whether our current use of time is indeed the best.  Events such as getting stuck in traffic or queuing behind a person in the checkout line who appears to be purchasing one of everything in the entire store leave us thinking "what a waste of time", or "I could be doing x, y and z right now!"  Even positive experiences such as being able to go home early from work, or being released from family responsibilities make us aware of how much "free time" we have, which we will undoubtedly regret wasting when it is finished.

I don't know if it comes from our busy lives, or from our awareness of lost earning potential (If I earn $30 an hour and I'm stuck in traffic for 30 minutes, I've essentially lost $15!), but back in Australia, time was a daily resource that was either used or wasted.

This view of time appears to be completely contrary to what we observe in Cambodia.

Be mindful that this is my own opinion and may not be the case for all (or any) Cambodian people, but it is one way to explain the relaxed pace with which many people live their lives, or the relatively high tolerance to interruptions resulting in loss of time (traffic, lateness, break-downs).  Motodups and tuk-tuk drivers will wait on the corner for what may be hours, eating and occasionally resting in their tuk-tuks until a fare comes around.  Shop owners sit in empty stalls waiting for customers, placing down their bowl of noodle-soup or pausing the video on their phones for a few minutes before returning.  But a lot of this is accompanied with the sounds of talking and laughter while they pass the time with those in similar circumstances.

What is it that lets these people, who are not earning anywhere near a good wage (see Ruth's earlier post), have families to feed and their own aspirations/dreams, have such a seemingly positive attitude to the passing of time?  Is it that they are so grateful for the opportunity to earn that they don't mind the hours passing?  Are they so thankful that Cambodia isn't where it was just 40 years ago when the Khmer Rouge began the massacre of 20% of the population?  Or is it that their wage is so low that lost earning potential, or the realistic fulfillment of their dreams doesn't even factor in?

I don't know.

Is this something that we need more of in the West?  Maybe.  Or is our budgeting of time a natural consequence of the wealth and opportunity that presents us with so much potential?

All I know is that it seems to confer resilience to the day to day events which make up life here in Phnom Penh, be it the aforementioned breakdowns and late tuk-tuk drivers, or being stuck on a 5 hour bus ride to cover 170km.  And when that's us on the 5 hour bus ride to Kep, we could do with some of that resilience.

Cost of Living in the Penh

When making dinner tonight I was thinking about the different costs associated with cooking here than with cooking back in Australia, and I decided to give you a little glimpse into the overall costs of living here in Phnom Penh. I'm all about Budget Transparency, particularly when we have a few incredibly generous people back home supporting us to be here.

Ben and I are currently living on his teacher allowance of $840 per month, which covers all expenses from rent and transport to food. For him that equates to $5 an hour! This is just an eighth of what he earned in Australia, but this hourly rate is more than what many poor Khmer here earn in a day. In fact, the average income in Cambodia is only $950 a year! So even in a developing country so 'affordable' as Cambodia, where the following items below may seem incredibly cheap in comparison to the West, with many people only on funds like this it is so easy to understand how poverty can be so crippling, and lead to issues of debt, prostitution, human trafficking, alcoholism and gambling: there is no social security here and no safety nets. Even we who are in a situation far better than the majority of Khmer have little wiggle room and are unable to save much. I have every intention of finding work as soon as possible to help Ben out in supporting our lives here.

So here is a little breakdown of our common expenses. (Although we mostly pay in the local currency of Riel, everything here is in $USD).

Food:

• Small bag of vegetables: $0.75 Vegetables here are bought on a daily basis in small quantities because many Khmer do not have a fridge or means of keeping them fresh. We do have a fridge but I enjoy trips to the market and practicing my Khmer. My usual purchase is a single carrot, potato, bokchoi-like leafy greens tied up with an elastic band, and occasionally some limes, a tomato or a cauliflower. The most i've ever spent on vegetables was probably $1.20, and that included a rare red capcicum. The ladies always throw in a chili or two and a bunch of spring onions to 'round up' the kilo.
• 1 kg of rice: $0.60 There is plenty of rice around here, of numerous varieties. A little man just scoops handfuls of it into a plastic bag and off we go. 
• 350 g of chicken: $1.90 We're not yet sold on buying the whole chickens that hang by their necks from the meat stalls, so when we buy meat (maybe once a week?) we get it from our local supermarket, packaged in a similar way to back home. 
• 1 kg of mangoes: $1.25 That's usually about 3 large ripe hunks of deliciousness, bargain.
• 1 ltr of milk: $2 Yep, milk here is one of those things that is not as cheap as Australia. We buy UHT milk in bulk; 12 cartons for $24. The brand is called "Cow head" which is apparently from Australia? 
• 1 kg of cheese: $35 I don't really know what to say about this. I love my cheese, and this expense is just agonising. We bought 500g of it a few months ago and have been savouring it sliver by sliver since then to make it last, occasionally on a biscuit or atop some pasta. It is beginning to go mouldy but it is so precious I just slice off the mould and it is as good as new! My beloved cheese....
• Sliced bread: $1 It's not bad. It's not great. It has a sweet, coco-nutty sort of flavour that you kind of just get used to, but when heating it on the pan to make toast the sugar crystalises -.- 
• A Khmer meal out: $2-$4 total. This is our favourite option (because it's CHEAP). There are a few places we go out to around our house. Sometimes we bring back some BBQ skewers from the street vendor-man on the corner to eat with rice at home, sometimes we go to a little 'Milk Tea Cafe' that makes some tasty fried noodles for about $1.50 each, and sometimes we even go to the food court at our nearest shopping centre (just a 10min walk away) and enjoy a local curry or fried rice and traditional beef accompanied by a fruit shake or sweet-ice desert. These options are definitely easier than trying to cook meals in the 37 degree heat, so we tend to do this on the weekends or once or twice during the week. 
• A Western meal out: $5-10 total. Although this is still really cheap for good, good food, we very rarely do this, and when we do it is a very special treat. Maybe once or twice a month, when I am having a craving for a pastry, burger, pizza or just anything other than rice. There are sooo many options for food downtown, such as Western, Indian, Mexican, Arabic, Thai, Chinese, Korean etc etc, but it is just too expensive and time consuming for us to go out there. Maybe in the future when I have paid work and we can afford it, we will be able to go out a bit more and experience the culinary delights of what is in reality still very cheap food.  

*We only go to supermarkets once every week or so, and only to buy the items we cannot get at the street markets such as bread, milk, cereal, snacks, good meat etc. Supermarket food, particularly anything imported, is very expensive in comparison. Eg. a small 350g box of basic cereal will put you back $5-7; the cost of 3 Khmer meals out!

Transport:

• Moto-ride to Language School: $3 a day. I've become very fond of my Pu (Khmer Uncle) who takes me to school and back everyday. He speaks zero english (that's a lie, he can now say 'thankyou' haha) so we can only communicate in Khmer. I do quite well, we have little conversations about our families and the weather, and I sometimes give him a phone call if i'd like to go anywhere (yes, I can even hold a basic phone conversation in Khmer, that makes me happy). The trip to school is about 20min each way depending on traffic, is bumpy and dusty and oh so hot as I am exposed to the elements sitting on the back of his moto. But it is never a dull ride as this city is just brimming with activity 24/7!
• Our Motorbike: $300 total. An AMAZING deal from a friend, it is a little red Suzuki Step (125cc) that we adore. Ben will ride it to school a few times a week over his bicycle when he has late meetings and things, but we mostly take it out together on weekends to go into town or to run errands like grocery shopping. It is a bit old and dirty but we keep it that way so that noone wants to steal it!
• 1 ltr of petrol: $1 This is a great price, or at least is for our moto. We only top it up with a dollar once every week or so and it only takes 3 litres so this expense is almost negligible. 
• Tuk tuk ride into Town: $4 one way. This was the main reason we bought our moto in the first place, it was just too much to pay to go anywhere. We don't really have this cost anymore, unless we are going someplace far or at night, or cannot take our moto. 

Housing:

• Rent: $280 per month. We live on the ground floor of a villa rather than a traditional Phteah Lvang (Skinny house) or apartment, and have a lovely little 2 bedroom 2 bathroom place. The rent is very reasonable for us, and is quite low for foreigners in Phnom Penh because we live on the outskirts of town, far from most of the city. We also furnished it ourselves. 
• Electricity Bill: $15 per month. Ok so this is BEFORE air-conditioning which we just started using this month because temperature have begun consistently reaching the high 30s. We're not at all sure how using the air-conditioning will jack up the cost, but we've agreed that for 4 hours at night at least, it is a necessity. 
• Internet: $12 per month. It included installation, a modem, is unlimited downloads, never slow, and Ben think's it is better than what we had in Australia. He's VERY happy. 
• Water Bill: $7 per month.  I think it is actually per 2 months, but we haven't seen one for a while so not sure!
• Garbage collection: $1 per month. This consists of a big stinking truck with men in masks pulling up next to a pile of rubbish on the street, scooping it up by hand with shovels and flattening rats into pancakes in the road. They do a hell-of-a job. 

Extras:

• Language School: $400 per Module. Each Level is approx. 5 weeks long. At this stage I will probably only complete the first 2 Levels. The school was generous enough to give us a 10% discount (was $450 per unit), and they're lenient with us to let me pay it off $50 each week. 
• Weekend trip to Kep: $120. Next week is Khmer New Year, and to celebrate our time in Cambodia and finally explore this country a little with our time off, we're going to a small town by the sea for a few days over the weekend. This is an approximate cost inclusive of transport there and back for 2 people, 3 nights accommodation and food. 
• Health Insurance: $1200 a year. This one's a biggie. Luckily Ben gets his included with his teaching job, but mine we must cover. It's a big bite out of our savings back home, and thank goodness we have amazing families who help us with this. Better safe than sorry though, amen. 

So there you have it, some of the costs for things I can think of for now! I remember how these prices compare to Australia and seem really cheap, but when the average wage around here is just $80 a month, it's all relative....

*If you'd like to support the Devadosses finacially, please send them an email at bendevadoss@hotmail.com or rutha.devadoss@gmail.com, or see their Australian bank details on the side column of their blog.