The river (Tonle Sap) struggled to reverse course this year, it went back and forth for a few weeks (and sometimes it looked like a big pond) before finally managing a reverse flow for a couple of weeks and then a sudden and strong move back to normal direction.

There are many empty shop units now. The closures include restaurants, travel shops, massage parlors etc. Even Riverside Bistro has now closed. Two empty units further north have shoe sellers outside. Just piles of new and second hand shoes scattered on the ground and small boomboxes playing a short loop of Khmer sales pitch.

Opposite the old Bistro, sellers rent out three wheel toy motos and roller skates with lighted up wheels. The kids look great flying around on the skates. As darkness falls, it gets quite crowded on Riverside. It’s all really relaxed, good natured and happy.

Groups of guys (and a woman) play volley football. They are incredibly good at it. Opposite the night market, a group play the same but with a shuttlecock thing. They are really superb. And some seriously fit guys (and girl) work the parallel bars by the machines.

Some days the cops roll along in a pick up with a PA system, telling people not to park. They even sometimes lift the odd moto onto the back of the pickup. As they progress up the road, people are already parking up a few yards behind them.

In the evening the lights come on, the authorities are good at replacing lamps that fail so it all looks great with the roller skates, the lights, the boats passing by with multi-coloured lights as well. The reflections in the water look superb.

There is a popular exercise/dance class that operates from 6 to 8pm opposite Metro. That teacher is much more professional than the other one who works opposite st 144. For some reason he likes to yell every time he changes move. I reckon you could hear him in Psar Thmei. His boombox is loud but he has a lot of customers.

After about 9pm it gets fairly quiet. If you walk by the river, you may get some hellos from women sitting there. Sometimes one walking towards you will drift so that she is on a collision course with you. I feel safe walking there until about 11pm, after which it gets spooky.

The day starts early with people exercising on the free machines and the other exercise class starting at 5am. You don’t want to live within earshot of that man’s boombox btw, he sets up opposite the junction with street 144 , 50 metres either side of that I would consider unliveable. He belts out his bizarre choice of songs at top volume just the same as he does in his evening session that starts around 5.30pm, this despite the fact that he has few customers and his “exercise” consists of waving his arms a bit. Opposite Metro, a Tai Chai group, all neatly dressed in white, also do the early shift. They have Asian old-style music but that wouldn’t bother you much while you sleep.

The Police are patrolling much more now, at least in daylight hours. They stop people riding motos and lately they have chased away the tourist trip boats. Some of them had been getting noisy with party music (whether they had customers or not) and they belch out clouds of black smoke when they move.

As the day goes on, you only see small groups of Khmers sitting under the trees. And the odd barang using the exercise machines in the burning sun.

Then the cycle slowly starts to repeat.

The 'shuttlecock thing' in Khmer is called saay (or say, or sey). It might be spelt/spelled សី

Thank you for your generous likes and comments. What a lovely forum this is!

More random Riverside observations, especially for Stern and other friends now over the seas.

Sand cargo boats, high in the water, flying down river (now that it has changed direction).

Sand cargo boats, almost underwater, chugging upstream at a pace that would shame a snail.

A loud Cham long boat spears upriver.

Large clumps of green vegetation floating downstream.

Cham long boats drifting into shore by street 148. Minutes later, two Cham women appear at the top of the steps with large metal bowls on their heads, going to Psar Kandal to sell.

Two Chinese men, in black T-shirts and black shorts, with military haircuts and masks, plod along determedly.

Two Khmer men decked out in top of the range cycling ear and helmets, fly by on their new expensive machines.

Boys doing wheelies on their bikes. Sometimes they pull up too far and they slide back off the saddle and, still holding the handlebars, they walk the bike in upright mode, never falling down.

Boys on rollerskates zigzag through the evening strollers, who, unafraid of collisions, maintain their relaxed gait.

Open trucks crammed full of building workers, still with their protective headgear on, going home after work.

Sellers pushing their carts.

Children chasing pigeons.


Sey (shuttlecock) players carefully watching the looping sey come over their shoulder and with a deft backward bend of the knee, slap it back with the sole of their foot in the same arcing loop. Those less confident protect their heads as they do so, just in case the sey takes the wrong line.

A woman walks into the low bushes that surround the palm trees and squats down.

A rat scurries across the grass between the same circles of bushes.

Groups of young women in the early evening, dressed up and made up, their bodies slanting forward as they glance across at each other and laugh.

In rainy season, the wind gusts, then it quickly switches direction and the air becomes cool. After ten minutes the skies open and people scurry across the road or seek the inadequate shelter of the overhanging eaves of the drainage building.

After dark, the rains having stopped, the sky lights up with silent lightning flashes from some distant place.

A barang, walking in the evening shadiness, doing a rugby fly half shimmy to evade a woman trying to tackle him.