Cinnamoncat wrote: ↑Tue Feb 12, 2019 10:45 am Just out of curiosity, do people over there still hire maids?

When I lived there, we had a maid to do our shopping, cooking, cleaning. There weren't washing machines or driers, and we didn't want to go to the Asian markets every day and then deal with food prep and cooking. But enough about me.

Do you all still have maids over there?

What do you pay, and what does she (he?) do for the money you pay?

Deb

Lol, CC, is this what you were expecting when you asked your question ?

Things have changed a lot since your time I think. In town, there are laundries with machines everywhere, and take-away food, or condos with cleaners, so I think that most people might have a cleaner coming in daily or weekly or monthly, but if you haven't got kids you probably won't have a live-in maid or housekeeper.
That's my experience, but there will be others - like Jamie's for example. Jamie house-cleaning.

Captain Bonez wrote: ↑Tue Feb 12, 2019 9:07 pm there's no fucking way I'm doing any mopping or cleaning toilets, fuck all that noise.

sends her tasty friend instead, great days.

Nice, I'm sure she salivates at the thought of her regular visits to that hideous squat.

I bet she heads straight for the bathroom and swoons at the sight of that beer-shit / diarrhea speckled bowl and the caked yellow streaks down the sides that puddle into the caulking from those Saturday morning, wobbly 3am pisses.

Not to mention the accumulation of infested pubes, swirled together into a tumbleweed mass in the corner behind the door.

Here's an idea, in your Beltie Kindergarten class you could do a paper mache head of Fidel Castro and use the pubes as a beard.

This girl is going to be scarred for life. If the bathroom wasn't enough, she's going to have nightmares from the dozen Cannibal Corpse and Slayer posters lining every possible inch of wall space.

What do you do with all the contraband when they're over? And whilst were bullshitting, what ever became of the 'wench' anyway?

Toodles

Man you really put some effort into that, shows ya care x

Captain Bonez wrote: ↑Tue Feb 12, 2019 9:51 pm Man you really put some effort into that, shows ya care x

I do, man.

Captain Bonez wrote: ↑Tue Feb 12, 2019 9:51 pm Man you really put some effort into that, shows ya care x

It really does reflect a disturbing amount of attention to detail, doesn't it.

Often my landlords offered some variation of housekeeping services. I found someone coming in and cleaning the floors and bathrooms twice a week was sufficient for my needs. I had variations of the same at home in the west. Actually, I had someone come twice a week and clean and do laundry and change bedding. She would fetch groceries if I wished, feed me lunch in my home office, and also cook a meal before she left. She would also do festive things like decorating for the seasons and even set up for birthday parties etc. This was while I was quite busy as a single parent and also running my own business.

RickyBobby wrote: ↑Tue Feb 12, 2019 11:02 pm Often my landlords offered some variation of housekeeping services. I found someone coming in and cleaning the floors and bathrooms twice a week was sufficient for my needs. I had variations of the same at home in the west. Actually, I had someone come twice a week and clean and do laundry and change bedding. She would fetch groceries if I wished, feed me lunch in my home office, and also cook a meal before she left. She would also do festive things like decorating for the seasons and even set up for birthday parties etc. This was while I was quite busy as a single parent and also running my own business.

The cost to have someone come 2x a week here is like $20/month though. Back home it was $20 an hour.

RickyBobby wrote: ↑Tue Feb 12, 2019 11:07 pm

RickyBobby wrote: ↑Tue Feb 12, 2019 11:02 pm Often my landlords offered some variation of housekeeping services. I found someone coming in and cleaning the floors and bathrooms twice a week was sufficient for my needs. I had variations of the same at home in the west. Actually, I had someone come twice a week and clean and do laundry and change bedding. She would fetch groceries if I wished, feed me lunch in my home office, and also cook a meal before she left. She would also do festive things like decorating for the seasons and even set up for birthday parties etc. This was while I was quite busy as a single parent and also running my own business.

The cost to have someone come 2x a week here is like $20/month though. Back home it was $20 an hour.

Of course. Thanks.

In our day, we had a maid who had previously worked for a Dutch guy during the UNTAC years. She was an amazing cook. I wrote about her quite a bit in my memoir, as we got close. She was maybe seven or eight years younger than me. She was an amazing friend and confidante, and her husband had left her for a younger woman. Ken and I sent her daughter to a host of various schools, and she lived with us too. You all know the woman who got savagely beaten by the Lok Thom in P Penh? The one who fled and then came back to face the music? All over the news?

That's the girl that we raised. She lived with us for eight years, and was a delightful girl. Her English isn't perfect, and I know there have been some gaffes with her car, etc. but we still communicate frequently

* * *

Our maid did all the cleaning, hand washed everything and hung it outside (I'd see my shirts occasionally blowing away), and shop and cook. We paid her 100 dollars a month.

We also had a guard who lay in the hammock outside and opened and closed our gate. He'd lost an eye (infection) while we were back in the states. He got bogus medicine, and the eye just went bad. He could have lost both. We felt so shitty about it we decided we needed a guard.

Then, we hired a driver, a guy with a Toyota Camry (of course). Neither of us wanted to drive a car in P Penh. I was all over the city selling ads for our guides.

In time, a journalist came to town. She was quite the liar, although we were friends at first. She wanted to interview me to find out what I did around town for leisure. I told her I was boring---worked constantly, but ran the steps at Stad Olympique every day. It was great! She didn't want to go there with me when I told her I had to dodge piles of shit leading there.

She ended up running a story that was very uncomplimentary, focusing on the maid and staff. I was a lady of great leisure.

I was so pissed off that the publisher withdrew the article from the website, thank God. It was very hurtful.

Anyway, a lot of people don't understand that maids in Cambodia are often poor women with nothing other to do. Back in the day, the sweat shops and clothing factories were abysmal, with people locked inside for hours and hours a day, then searched on the way out. Hiring women as maids helped us, and I know we helped her. We bought her a little piece of property after some time. Retirement for her someday.

When we first arrived I was having a conversation with a restaurateur about the relative merits of a particular model of slide-through dish-washing machine as I was also once in the restaurant game. He schooled me very politely and cautiously on whether you'd buy that dish-washing machine, or create employment for two years for two people for the same amount of money. It was a lesson I've never forgotten, and (as Deb/CC cites their sudden need for a security guard) we've occasionally suddenly discovered the need for new positions around the enterprise that are based on the person in front of you needing a job rather than the business needing more workers. I'm never sure where the extra wage is going to come from, but it seems to come in as we need it.

I was the admin for Phnom Penh Jobs Alert up to the 20,000 members mark and then packed it in. One of the most annoying and frequent events on that group was dealing with comments from people who do not live in Cambodia and have never worked or employed anyone in a developing country, going on a rant and attacking employers for offering such low wages ($150-200). No doubt these Muppets all think they're changing the world one social media ad hominem attack at a time, but all they're doing is showing their ignorance. There's a huge difference between being a "social justice warrior" and working in justice - one is scraped from the bottom of your shoe and the other makes a positive difference in people's lives.