Life in the House

Vann Molyvann's house from across Mao Tse Tung (?) Blvd

I've been so busy catching up on the Angkor excursion that I haven't had time to write about the past few days. We've been really busy at work surveying Vann Molyvann's house for the past four days because he and his family are leaving PP for Siem Reap this weekend. Today was our last day to survey the house and I mainly worked on the south elevation, north east elevation and site plan. Vann Molyvann (the architect whose works we're working to preserve) built his house with a hyperbolic roof inspired by vernacular Brazilian roofs. It's built on a square grid with the second and third levels pivoted 45 degrees so as to take advantage of the view outside from all four facades. His style of brickwork and exposed corners with horizontal lines reminds me of Frank Llyod Wright with a bit of Corbusier thrown in with the brise soleil that surround all four sides. Vann Molyvann still lives there with his wife, Trudy, and an army of Khmer helpers (a driver, cook, door man, and maybe more). We sat down and listened to Bill read an article about the house and VM's life. It's really amazing how he managed to escape from Cambodia with his whole family at the beginning of the Khmer Rouge.


The southern facade of VM's house

Life in the house at Street 228 has been fairly quiet. We got two new housemates after Yasemin left on Saturday: Kyle Brooks, a photographer from the states, and Stephen Chen, a Princeton-graduated film maker. Stephen is now my room mate and he has a lot of serious looking camera equipment. For the past two weeks we've also had a cook in the house named Rett. She comes on an irregular schedule that I haven't quite figured out yet and cooks meals that are consistently good, but tonight's was particularly exceptional. It consisted of sauteed green veggies, fried fish, some kind of chicken curry, and watermelon for dessert. All for the low price of $4/person/meal! As a side note, the fish I've had here has been pretty fresh and delicious because it mainly comes from the Tonle Sap lake or from the Mekong river. I'm not sure exactly what it looks like, but it tastes pretty good.



Rett at the stove!


Our delicious meal