and How I Fell In Love
with Phnom Penh

When people ask why I chose to live in Cambodia, I usually struggle to answer. Not because I don’t know, but because none of the obvious reasons really explain it. Yes, life is affordable. The weather is warm. The visa is straightforward. But those are just facts. They don’t explain why someone arrives intending to stay a few months and, years later, still calls the place home.

The real answer is harder to put into words. It’s the feeling of living somewhere that still surprises you. A place where no two days are quite the same, where life happens out in the open, and where even after all these years I still catch myself thinking, “Only in Cambodia.”

Phnom Penh isn’t polished. It doesn’t try to impress you with spotless streets or gleaming skylines. Instead it wins you over slowly. The city is noisy, dusty, colourful and wonderfully unpredictable. Somehow the constant hum of motorbikes, street vendors, markets and cafés never becomes overwhelming. It simply becomes the soundtrack to everyday life.

By six in the morning the noodle stalls are already steaming, monks in saffron robes are collecting alms, and somewhere nearby a bread seller is honking a horn that sounds remarkably like a wounded goose. Nobody organised any of it. It just happens. Every day. After a while you realise you’d actually miss it if it stopped.

Living here means waking up most mornings to a sky flooded with hot sunlight, a kind of perpetual summer that lifts your spirits and feeds your soul with free Vitamin D. Sure, April brings a suffocating heat, and monsoon storms crash through the afternoons with dramatic flair and may completely flood the streets for a few hours, but notice this: even the weather here feels alive, full of personality and drama.

One of my favourite moments is watching a storm roll in. The sky suddenly darkens, the wind picks up, and within minutes everyone is sheltering beneath shop awnings together, laughing as the rain hammers down. Twenty minutes later the sun is back, the roads are steaming, and children are jumping into puddles as if nothing happened. It’s difficult to stay in a bad mood for long.

Life here rarely becomes boring.

Ask almost anyone who has spent time in Cambodia what stood out most, and chances are they’ll mention the people. It’s hard not to. Cambodians have a warmth that’s difficult to describe until you’ve experienced it yourself. Conversations start easily. Smiles come naturally. Hospitality isn’t something reserved for special occasions.

It’s not unusual to be invited into someone’s home, handed a plate of food, or treated like an old friend by people you’ve only just met. I’ve lost count of the number of small acts of kindness I’ve experienced here. None of them were expected, and that’s exactly what made them memorable.

Life’s daily woes soften under the kindness of strangers who seem to carry hope and resilience like second skins.

Break down with your motorbike on a random street and someone will usually stop to help. If they can’t fix it themselves, they’ll know someone who can. Get invited to a Khmer wedding and prepare to eat far more than you intended, raise your glass more times than you planned, and end up dancing because one of the aunties has decided “no” isn’t an acceptable answer.

That generosity isn’t unusual here. It’s simply part of everyday life. Spend enough time in Cambodia and you find yourself becoming a little more open because everyone around you already is.

Life also feels… easier. Not always more efficient, but definitely less bureaucratic. Things have a habit of getting done without endless paperwork, waiting periods or someone telling you which form you forgot to fill in.

I’ve watched friends open cafés, bars, tour companies and small shops with little more than determination, some savings and a rented shophouse. Some businesses lasted. Others quietly disappeared again. But almost everyone got the chance to find out whether their idea worked. That’s one of the things I admire most about Cambodia. It encourages people to try.

It’s a country that rewards people who simply get on with it.

Then there’s the cost of living. Phnom Penh isn’t as cheap as it was when I first arrived, but compared with much of Europe or North America it’s still remarkably affordable. You can enjoy a cold beer for a dollar, eat a good local meal for just a few dollars, or treat yourself to a proper Sunday roast without wondering whether you’ve just blown this week’s budget (“All that for $8, including a drink?!”).

Haircuts come with a head massage. A tuk tuk ride across town often costs less than the coffee you’d buy back home. Even rent, especially by Western standards, leaves room in your budget for something far more valuable than luxury: time. Time to write, start a business, learn something new, or simply enjoy life instead of constantly chasing the next paycheck.

Then there’s the culture — layered, textured, impossibly rich. From the ancient majesty of Angkor Wat temples in the north to the everyday rituals of Buddhist monks collecting alms at sunrise in the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia wears its history proudly. But it also wears its scars. The shadows of the Khmer Rouge linger in the museums, the memorials, and sometimes just in the solemn glance of an older generation. Living here means confronting the depths of human suffering — and witnessing the astonishing strength of those who survived it.

You feel that history most sharply at Tuol Sleng (Genocide Museum) and Choeung Ek (The Killing Fields of Phnom Penh), places every visitor should see once and no one forgets. But you also feel the answer to it in the streets: in the water fights of Khmer New Year, in families gathering for Pchum Ben to honour their ancestors, in the sheer volume of a neighbourhood wedding that starts at five in the morning whether you like it or not. A country that endured what Cambodia endured has every right to be bitter. Instead it celebrates, loudly and often, and that tells you something profound about the people who live here.

It’s humbling. Living in Cambodia makes you think differently about your own life, your own good fortune, your own responsibility.

One of the things I enjoy most is that Cambodia still feels unfinished. Entire neighbourhoods change in the space of a few years. A favourite café disappears. A new bakery opens around the corner. A dusty street suddenly has trees, pavements and three coffee shops. Living here means accepting that the city will never stay the same for long.

The skyline I looked at when I first arrived no longer exists.

Towers have gone up, whole neighbourhoods have reinvented themselves, and the city I thought I knew keeps surprising me with a new gallery here, a rooftop bar there, a specialty coffee roaster where last year there was a car wash. Some old charm gets lost along the way, and I mourn a few of those losses. But there is something addictive about living in a place that is visibly becoming, rather than one that finished becoming decades ago and now merely maintains itself.

And when you need to escape the city’s wild heartbeat for a moment, Cambodia makes it easy. Kampot is a few hours south, Kep isn’t much further, Mondulkiri in the east offers forests and cooler air, and the islands are close enough for a spontaneous getaway. Cambodia isn’t a huge country, which means you can decide on Friday afternoon and be somewhere completely different before dinner. Long weekends are frequent, with public holidays galore, giving you time to roam or simply recharge.

Still, even after all this, the real answer to why I love living in Phnom Penh and chose Cambodia as my home is simpler, more elusive: it feels alive.

It’s a place that makes you laugh out loud at the absurdity of life, whether you’re watching a family of five and a stack of mattresses cruise by on a single motorbike, or spotting a hilariously misspelled sign that somehow still makes perfect sense. In Cambodia, nothing stays predictable for long. And that’s part of its magic — its wonder.

After all these years I still catch myself grinning at things I have seen a hundred times before. A monk on the back of a scooter checking his phone. An entire furniture showroom balanced on a cyclo. A power cut in the middle of a football match, and the whole street groaning in unison before someone fires up a generator and the cheering resumes. You never fully get used to it, and that is precisely the point.

A lot of people come here thinking they’ll stay for a few months. Many stay for years.

I arrived in 2008 carrying a backpack and the vague idea that I’d stay for a year. I never imagined I’d still be here all these years later. Somewhere along the way Phnom Penh stopped feeling like the place I lived and quietly became home.

What I found was a home, messy and magnificent, where life feels at once incredibly challenging and profoundly beautiful.

Cambodia isn’t perfect. But it’s special. And if you let it, it’ll capture a piece of your heart, too.

Ramon

PS:

I wrote this article in January 2020. A few weeks later, the world shut down. I didn’t leave Cambodia before the pandemic and only returned four years later. Now, in 2026, I’m finally publishing it with only a few small edits. I’m living in Cambodia once again and, damn… the love is still there.