Category: PHNOM PENH

Coffee Contemplations:

I’m starting to get into a rhythm here.
The days are settling into a pattern: wake up, walk to a café, order my straight black iced coffee with no sugar, and sit in a chair with a book. Then another café, another coffee, more reading. It’s a good way to get to know a city.

Getting acclimated to a new place always takes a little while, and I’ve done it enough times now to know the stages. First comes the sensory overload: the traffic, the heat, the noise, the smells. Then I start to figure out the basics, like how to cross the street and where to buy my water and coconuts and what a fair price for a tuk-tuk ride looks like. That’s when it starts to feel like home, or at least a temporary version of it.

Today, I’m sitting at a café on a street corner, and I’m reading “The History of Cambodia.” It’s surreal.

Here I am, reading about the history of this country while sitting in the middle of it. I’ll read a passage about the country’s past, then look up, and there’s the city in front of me: the motorbikes, the vendors, the people walking by on an ordinary day. The past is on the page, and the present is going by at the intersection. The book and the street keep talking to each other. With me in the middle.
It changes how I see things. A building is no longer just a building. A street name means something. I catch myself wondering about the people who’ve walked this same sidewalk and what they lived through. Reading history in a place is completely different from reading it somewhere far away.

That’s the part I love about traveling this way. I’m not rushing through and ticking off sights. I’m sitting still long enough to let a place seep in, one coffee and one chapter at a time.

I don’t know exactly where this life takes me next. But for now, I have a good book, a good coffee, and a chair on any corner in Phnom Penh.

September 2026

Straight black, no sugar, that’s my order everywhere I go. Most of the time. Here in Phnom Penh, it’s been perfect every single time. No bitterness, usually two shots of espresso in there for a real caffeine hit, and every café I’ve tried so far has nailed it. Not one miss yet.

Saigon was a different story. The black coffee there was hit or miss depending on the place, and you always had to remember to specify no sugar, because if you didn’t, it would somehow find its way into the cup anyway. Here in Phnom Penh, they actually ask you about your sugar preference every time. No guessing, no fine print, they just check. I appreciate that.

Now, when it comes to specialty drinks, that’s where Saigon wins, no contest. But I understand why now. It’s the sugar. All of it. That’s the secret ingredient behind those elaborate Vietnamese coffee drinks that make them so good.

Even here in Phnom Penh, when I ordered a salt cream coffee, they still asked if I wanted sugar in it, so I could say no. And honestly, it was still tasty without it. Cambodia is clearly building something good with its coffee scene.
But overall, Saigon’s specialty coffee culture is still unmatched. Phnom Penh is getting there, and it’s got the fundamentals locked down, but it hasn’t caught up to Saigon’s game yet.

September 2026