Darren Conquest Cambodia

Pixie TrEats!: LTO Cambodia: How many people can fit into a Cambo...

2010-09-23T13:17:00.000+07:00

Pixie TrEats!: LTO Cambodia: How many people can fit into a Cambo...: "LTO Cambodia: How many people can fit into a Cambodian taxi?: 'One more.'"

Pixie TrEats!: Pixie's Couscous

2010-09-03T13:15:00.000+07:00

Pixie TrEats!: Pixie's Couscous: "It's been way too long since I last posted a recipe on my blog. It doesn't meant that I haven't been cooking. It is just that I was too bus..."

Pixie TrEats!: Pixie's Tender Barbecued Pork Ribs

2010-07-23T08:50:00.001+07:00

Pixie TrEats!: Pixie's Tender Barbecued Pork Ribs: "These ribs are so tender they fall off the bone. And best of all, they are so easy to make. 450g pork ribs (fat trimmed off) freshly ground..."

Pixie TrEats!: Pixie's Tender Chicken Boobie Nuggets

2010-07-23T08:50:00.000+07:00

Pixie TrEats!: Pixie's Tender Chicken Boobie Nuggets: "This is my very own creation! These nuggets remain moist and tender. You probably have all the ingredients in your kitchen to make this. Se..."

Pixie TrEats!: Pixie's Marinated Shrimp

2010-07-17T10:45:00.000+07:00

Pixie TrEats!: Pixie's Marinated Shrimp: "A simple yet elegant appetizer of lime, shallot and garlic infused shrimp. Ideal for a cocktail buffet. Serve with tooth picks. Servings:..."

Cambodia 1300

2008-06-13T10:18:00.001+07:00

In Cambodia it is the women who take charge of the trade.

For this reason a foreigner, arriving in the country, loses no time in getting himself a mate, for he will find her commercial instincts a great asset.

Foreign sailors coming to the country note with pleasure that it is not necessary to wear clothes, and, since rice is easily had, women easily persuaded, houses easily run, furniture easily come by, and trade easily carried on, a great many sailors desert to take up permanent residence.

-Chou Ta-Kuan 1297 AD

New Job

2008-05-22T16:28:00.001+07:00

118, Street 136

2007-12-03T17:31:00.000+07:00

KH Hair Cut

2007-08-24T11:09:00.000+07:00

Dealing with Foreigners

2006-12-28T14:28:00.000+07:00

Yes foreigners, they are every-bloody-where here in the sweaty rice bowl that is Cambodia, you can not turn around without banging into some strange alien looking freak.

But worry no more; Lord Playboy has compiled a few hints and tips for Cambodians who come across those strange white folk who seem to be overrunning Phnom Penh.

After all this time, it looks like these foreigners are here to stay. Not necessarily the same foreigners, as some of them seem to just come here and work here for just a few months until they have finished writing some very important report and then they leave so that some more can come and write another very important report about the previous very important report.

So what can Cambodians do to make things easier for these visitors to the country?

Transport

A lot of Foreign Countries do not have motodops, instead they have to congregate at ‘certain places’ and wait for a big car (known as a bus) to come to them. This car will not take them where they want to go, but will just follow a road and only stops in other ‘certain places’. From where they can walk to where they want to go.

This causes foreigners to become confused when they come across such a marvellous transport system as 50 motodops standing out side Raffles as they do not understand. So when they wander off looking for a ‘certain place’ to wait for a bus you should just follow them slowly repeating ‘sir, moto, moto, moto, sir’ every two or three seconds. They might not understand the first few times, so patience and perseverance might be needed.

Smile

It must be a little unnerving for all these pale skinned people being in such a different, exciting, cosmopolitan city as Phnom Penh, so remember to show them how friendly everybody is. When you see one on the street, just go right up to them and grin at that. Show them how observant and interested you are by touching them and poking any bits of them that look different – big stomachs are especially good to poke, prod or even rub.

If you speak a little bit of English, remember to ask them ‘Hello, what your name, where you go, where you come from, sir’

If your English is especially good you will already know that the above should be spoken very fast, almost as one word ‘Hellowhatyournamewhereyougowhereyoucomefromsir’

Remember that saying ‘sir’ is a polite thing to do, especially with the ladies.

Food

After close study it has been determined that most of these foreigners fall into two groups.

A strange breed of sickly looking thin people who never, ever, eat any type of meat – yes, it is true, they not eat meat, I was told that some never even eat fish, but that must have been my friend from California joking with me.

The other group seem able to eat anything, provided that it is cooked in something called ‘Lard’

Both groups do not seem to understand that green unripe mango is much tastier than yellow ripe mango; some do not even eat it with chilli and salt!

Another thing that we have to teach them is that shards of bone in food is very, very, good.

Why one of them even seemed confused about the crushed eggshell sprinkled on the top of his fried rice – how strange they are!

Prahok is not very well known outside of Cambodia, so if you have a whitey dining with you, remember to make sure that he tries it, preferably the strong, raw, version of it; make sure that he dips his barbequed beef deep into the semi-fermented, semi-rotted fishy paste before tasting.

But most of all, remember that as all people with white skin are actually millionaires they will be more than happy to pay for everything and give you money just because they can.

2006-12-18T10:10:00.000+07:00

One for the folks

2006-12-18T10:07:00.000+07:00

Map where you have been - or want to go!

2006-12-07T08:12:00.000+07:00

create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

Battambang: The Days After the Vietnamese Left

2006-11-16T13:13:00.000+07:00

"Vietnamese soldiers had been slowly trickling back home for years but it wasn’t until the 9th of September in 1989 that the final three divisions left Battambang. To mark this auspicious occasion a leaving ceremony was performed around Battambang’s famous Dambang Statue (at that time looking very worse for wear) and the locals schools were duly emptied to provide an appropriately large and impressive audience."

*** ** *

I always look forward to a new Chhay Vet article, his simple, matter of fact, anecdotes about the darkest period of Khmer history.

Doubly interesting to me because they are based on Battambang, this is where Heng and her family are from.

Follow the link to read the full article.

http://www.khmer440.com/?p=763#more-763

Retarded Chimpanzees on Crack™

2006-11-15T11:11:00.000+07:00

Retarded Chimpanzees on Crack™

You know that you are having a bad day when before 07:00 in the morning you are chasing a car down on foot with the intention of strangling the driver.

…rewind…

Anyone that has been in Cambodia for longer than thirty seconds is aware of the fact that your average driver here, regardless of age, race, religion or shoe-size, has less motoring skills than a Retarded Chimpanzee on Crack™.

This fact was, quite literally, rammed home yet again this morning.

While sat in my usual Rice-Shack having breakfast a loud *>BANG<* distracted me from the Cambodia (rarely) Daily (almost) looking up I was surprised to see a new Toyota Camry parked in the spot where my bike and two others had previously been parked. This defiance of the Laws of Physics was, of course, achieved by reversing without looking straight into the three bikes parked on the pavement outside the restaurant.

Leaping to my feet, I rushed over just in time to see the teenage girl driving the car accelerate away as fast as she could onto Sisowath Boulevard. I gave up the unequal race after about 50 yards and returned, seething, to the pile of crushed motorbikes.

The two plasticy Suzuki Vivas had suffered quite badly, ping, ping, ping. The Playboy Mean-Machine had not fared a lot better; twisted handlebars, cracked brake-fluid reservoir, dented tank, cracked side-panel, et cetera.

What added to the infuriation was the fact that next door but one to the restaurant, the entire road had been blocked off by a wedding, which of course meant that there were half a dozen police officers milling around parking cars and earning some more ‘tea money’.

However, while all the Camry crash-bang-wallop-flee was going on, they just stood there watching and laughing, like it was an entertaining television program.

Honestly, the police in this country are far worse than the criminals. Hell, if we just put fucking monkeys in blue clothes they could do a better job.

For You Incoming People...

2006-11-09T08:20:00.000+07:00

Hi, for the 20 or so of you who are coming out to visit me later this month, here are some nice photos !

Click on the link to John's website for more.

Cambodia: Real men use wing mirrors

2006-10-24T08:24:00.000+07:00

Phnom Penh (dpa) - Cambodian authorities in the capital have issued a decree warning the city's half million-plus motorcyclists that they must use lights and wing mirrors in an effort to curb Phnom Penh's growing road toll.

In a copy of the proclamation obtained from Phnom Penh City Hall Monday, authorities have told the city's infamously anarchic motorists that they have until the end of the month to comply of face unspecified means of "correction."

Cambodia has virtually no manufacturing base, meaning all vehicles are imported, and mirrors were long since abandoned by most motorcyclists as they are difficult to transport from overseas and once fitted make squeezing through small spaces in traffic more difficult.

Mirrors are sold separately as accessories, and traffic police monitoring roads around the capital's bustling Daem Kor Market Monday said the concept may be difficult to reintroduce without hefty fines to back it up, because mirrors are often seen as something that real men don't use.

"Most drivers with mirrors are women. Women use them to touch up make-up," one skeptical officer, whose own private bike does not sport mirrors, said.

Working lights at the front and back of the motorbike as well as indicators would also be enforced as part of the new initiative, according to the City Hall proclamation.

Lights are often the first things pawned by cash-strapped drivers of newer-model motorbikes, feeding the capital's thriving spare parts market.

As the city's roads have improved allowing Phnom Penh residents to drive at greater speeds, there are more vehicles driven by the growing middle class and road safety precautions have not kept pace.

As of Monday afternoon, the price of the hitherto unwanted wing mirrors began to skyrocket from less than two dollars apiece to as high as five dollars, as vendors prepared for a rush buying spree by compliant drivers, according to one motorist.

However on the roads, there was little sign that the decree was yet being taken seriously as almost no mirrors were in evidence on the motorbikes weaving through Phnom Penh's chaotic traffic.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breakingnews.php?id=113741

New Cambodian Move - Coming Soon...

2006-10-12T14:05:00.000+07:00

Lord Playboy Int. proudly presents a ‘Keeping the Khmer-in-Law Happy’ production.

The second movie funded by the Lord Playboy International Trust for ‘poverty reduction through commercial enterprise’ will be on screens in Siam Reap and Phnom Penh within the month.

“Vishna strai kr’mao” is a feel good movie, rags to riches tale of good luck, good sense and good looking girls. A romantic comedy Khmer story that seems to have a bit of a Cinderella theme.

Screening Dates will be posted as soon as they are confirmed.

The trailer can be viewed here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52V0_hHCa3A

Some more quick snaps from the movie set

2006-10-10T13:39:00.000+07:00

It is a non stop day shooting a scene from Heng and Heng's mums new movie in my house.

Lights, Camera, Action !

Some of the cast relaxing beteen takes
(That is my coffee table by the way!)

more Random Movie shoot shots

2006-10-10T08:56:00.000+07:00

Some Girlie Wrestling

Peace out from the kids

Random Photos from new movie shoot

2006-10-10T08:39:00.000+07:00

moy, pii, bai, ACTION !

The boss is out, so the staff are dancing on the .. err, sofa ?

Why your Movable Type blog must die

2006-09-14T09:49:00.000+07:00

Why your Movable Type blog must die
By James A C Joyce in Internet
Tue Feb 03, 2004 at 02:22:25 AM EST

In the past, blogging was an interesting pastime. Now, with the advent of the ridiculously popular weblog packages, the Web is in risk of drowning under a tidal wave of morons who throttle search engines with writing that has no purpose and such PageRank-destroying features as "TrackBack".

You are all pretentious twats

Every last one of you. You're all latte-sipping, iMac-using, suburban-living tertiary-industry-working WASPs or cartoonists who offer absolutely no new insights on anything whatsoever apart from maybe one specialist field if we're lucky. Most of you think that you're writing original content and that you're making a contribution by licensing your spewings under Creative Commons "Some Rights Reserved" licences, just because it's the hip thing to do. You think you know all there is to say about blogging because you understand the concept of HTML and CSS, but the horrible truth is that 40% of you are all using the same shitty default layout. Then you take pictures of yourselves looking pensive or making vague allusions to mythology.

You make up irritating jargon for the sake of it

The word 'weblog' is acceptable. 'Blog' is just about tolerable. The following are simply galling:

Blogosphere

Travelblog

Cambodian Election...

2006-09-06T15:13:00.000+07:00

With special thanks to Hanky

Steve Goodman – attention whore

2006-09-04T15:40:00.000+07:00

Follow Up plug for Steve - new links to his websites on the right ---->>

But really it is just an excuse to post the funny picture...

(yes, I am that shallow)

Original Khmer Rouge Trial 1978

2006-09-04T15:19:00.000+07:00

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Shortly after Vietnamese tanks rumbled across Cambodia's border in late 1978 the Khmer Rouge elite fled the capital and a new regime first attempted what the United Nations is poised to try again more than a quarter of a century later -- account for the grisly deaths of up to two million people.

Pol Pot and perhaps his closest friend from their university days in France, Ieng Sary, were long ago sentenced to death in absentia for genocide, in a trial widely regarded as a legal farce. It was so badly handled and wrapped-up in Cold War politics that it escaped the attention of the outside world and for only a handful of people it remains a distant and inconvenient memory.

In the wake of the Vietnam War, the West and Washington in particular preferred to recognize Pol Pot as head of state, and despite the atrocities committed by the hard line cadre that surrounded Brother Number One, Hanoi's occupation of Cambodia was deemed illegal and their Soviet-backed effort to deliver justice for the dead was damned as a rigged show trial.

Twenty-seven years later, however, that two-day tribunal is on the verge of re-emerging onto the final stage of the Khmer Rouge era with legal ramifications that prosecutors would like the defense to forget, but with evidence so compelling and gut-wrenching that lawyers and the West can no longer ignore it.

The original trial began on Aug.15, 1979, with testimonies from 54 people.

Hundreds in the audience wept openly as Sim Phia told the court: "Hidden from behind a coconut tree, I saw the soldiers take nine children from 10 to 13 years of age out of trucks.

"The children's arms were tied. The soldiers pulled them up to the bridge over the pool. No matter how much they cried or shouted for help, they were thrown in as prey for the crocodiles."

Vang Pheap, a guard at the notorious S-21 torture and execution camp delivered unfettered insights into how 16,000 people would meet their ultimate fate. Pits were dug ahead of time and the prisoners were struck with an iron bar: "After that, Pol Pot's men cut the victims' throats or ripped their bellies to pluck the liver."

Denise Alfonso, a former secretary at the French embassy, witnessed cannibalism.

"The condemned man was tied to a tree, his chest bare and a blindfold over his eyes. Ta Sok the executioner, using a large knife, made a long cut in the stomach of the poor man."

Ms Alfonoso then testified the man screamed like a wild beast: "His insides were all laid bare, and Ta Sok cut out the liver and cooked it on a little stove. . . . They divided the liver among them and ate it hungrily."

Mass killings were well documented and Bun Sath, a political officer, told the court of the steady precision required to carry out the leadership's commands. Evenings were preferred because the streets were deserted. The prisoners were bound in pairs and bashed on the napes of their necks.

Up to 300 were killed in a session: "We began at 6pm and continued until 9pm or 10pm," the court heard.

Evidence of genocide committed against ethnic Muslim Chams, Vietnamese, Chinese and intellectuals was overwhelming, and on Aug. 19 Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were sentenced to death in absentia while they were holed-up in the jungles of the remote countryside.

While the testimony was honest, the tribunal was not.

Hope Stevens, an African American, landed the job of defending Pol Pot and Ieng Sarry. Because of her own background, she described herself as an expert on "genocide, murder, rape, torture, mutilation, lynching and deprivation of human rights."

She then labeled her own clients as "criminally insane monsters."

Few would take the verdict seriously, including the Khmer Rouge, which would continue to wage its wars for another two decades. But that changed in 1996 when serious efforts were finally made to end the conflict and Ieng Sary, along with the troops he personally commanded, defected.

His defection was assured only after negotiating a pardon of the verdict from then-king Norodom Sihanouk. Thus from a legal standpoint the 1979 tribunal was legitimized, posing serious questions for the current trial, which is expected to get underway in earnest by early next year, and whether or not Ieng Sary can be tried for genocide.

In his own mind, Ieng Sary believed he had immunity from any future prosecution. However, advisors to the trial will argue that while a royal pardon may exempt Ieng Sary from being put in the dock again on charges of genocide, the ageing former foreign minister and Khmer Rouge power broker could still be charged with murder or crimes against humanity.

Pol Pot, like many others in his circle who may have faced justice, has since died. Of those who remain, Ieng Sary's wife Ieng Tirith, Brother Number Two Nuon Chea and former prime minister Khieu Samphan are chief candidates for prosecution at the tribunal.

If justice is to be delivered, a fair trial of Ieng Sary is crucial, but this will only become possible once the legalities of the long forgotten 1979 tribunal have been dealt with.

And this time around it will be those same original detractors -- the United States, Australia, France and Japan -- who as chief backers of the current tribunal will be forced to pay attention.

Luke Hunt is a Hong Kong-based journalist who has covered Cambodia for many years. He was the Phnom Penh bureau chief for Agence France-Presse from 2001 to 2004

Cambodia passes adultery law

2006-09-04T10:15:00.000+07:00

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodia's parliament passed a law Friday which could send adulterers to jail for up to a year.

The vote prompted a walkout by opposition lawmakers who said the law carried echoes of the Khmer Rouge and the Taliban in a country which should be tackling poverty and corruption instead of legislating about morality.

But the government argued the law would help reduce pervasive corruption by removing the temptation for officials to steal from state coffers to maintain mistresses as well as halting what it called a decline in morality.

"This law is also aimed at reducing corruption, because when government officials have more women, they seek more financial sources to support their girls," National Assembly Chairman Heng Samrin said.

Sam Rainsy, chief of his eponymous opposition party, was not impressed.

"The government wants to distract the public from the important issues of poverty and the culture of impunity," he said of a country where 35 percent of the 14 million population live on less than $1 a day and the powerful rarely face justice.

Many married Cambodian men keep mistresses if they can afford them and the government argued that making adultery a criminal offence would help shore up the family.

Some wives resent the unfaithfulness of their husbands to the point of violence.

In the last 7 years, at least 108 cases were reported of women being attacked by acid, some left horrendously scarred, usually by an outraged wife, the Licadho human rights group says

Few such cases made it to court, most being settled by compensation.

The opposition argued that a law on adultery smacked too much of rigidly authoritarian regimes like the Khmer Rouge and the Taliban for a country still recovering from the Pol Pot years in which 1.7 million people were killed or died of overwork and starvation.

"There are only a couple of countries in the world which prosecuted personal immorality based on their sacred texts such as the ousted Taliban regime," opposition MP Eng Chhay Eang said in the debate.

"They forced people to follow their tradition which cannot be accepted. So did Pol Pot's regime. They murdered people who had love affairs," he added.

Plug for Steve's Blogs

2006-09-01T14:33:00.000+07:00

New Cambodia links on the right, just for Mythical Steve – as is the photo below

Yes, he is nearly as shameless an attention whore as I am !

Will Sihanouk testify in Khmer Rouge trial?

2006-08-31T11:58:00.000+07:00

Ta Mok, a name so familiar to a generation of Cambodians, died in Phnom Penh in the early hours of Friday, July 21, 2006. In detention since his capture in 1999, the much feared, one-legged Khmer Rouge military commander died in a military hospital of complications resulting from a long history of high blood pressure, respiratory illness, cardio-vascular problems and tuberculosis.

While there were those who mourned his death, there were arguably legions who were both truly disappointed and deeply frustrated that Ta Mok had taken along with him, to the hereafter, many dark secrets of the 3 years, 8 months and 20 days of the dreaded Khmer Rouge (KR) regime.

His untimely but not unexpected death is without doubt a great loss to the forthcoming Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT). He could surely have shed at least some light as to why the KR did what they did to their own people and what unfortunate alignment of the planets motivated their frenzied attempt to reinvent Cambodia and why that dreaded exercise went so dreadfully wrong.

Ta Mok is not the only one to have cheated the KRT of its very limited number of primary sources. The man accused of being most responsible for the crimes, Pol Pot, Brother No 1, died unceremoniously in suspicious circumstances on 15 April 1998 - at a time when Ta Mok had wrested control of the KR from him.

The loss now of such a critical witness like Ta Mok should sound the clarion call to both the UN and the Cambodian Government that the KRT should not be delayed any longer and that every resource ought to be marshalled to accelerate the tribunal process.

Apart from possible deaths of the remaining ageing KR leaders, there is also residual fear in certain circles that some, if not most of them, who live and move freely in Cambodia, may quietly disappear from the country before the trial proper begins early next year. This is not an unlikely event.

Media reports last month, for example, that former head of state Khieu Samphan "had packed up his pickup truck in the middle of the night and left town", quickly gained currency and raised anxiety among those who continue to harbour doubts about the KRT.

A subsequent explanation that Khieu Samphan was merely transporting a bed to his son's house killed further international media interest of the incident but failed to assuage the doubts of the cynics.

Viewed in this context of diminishing primary witnesses, the July 15 offer of former King Norodom Sihanouk, now referred to as Father King, to testify at the KRT tribunal, makes fascinating reading and is truly intriguing.

He declared on his website that he did not lack the courage to appear before the KRT and again pointedly reminded everyone, "My family, my wife's family and many people who supported Norodom Sihanouk were tortured and killed by Khmer Rouge Pol Pot."

Will Sihanouk testify? It would be difficult for Sihanouk not to steal the limelight should he appear at the KRT. Even his worst detractors will grudgingly admit that Sihanouk is an extremely astute politician who has been intimately involved with developments in his country for the last half a century. He is both enigmatic and extraordinary. He also knows how to capture attention.

An important point to note here is the firm belief in some quarters that Sihanouk is very serious and that his was not a frivolous offer. Sihanouk is a man of history and as he looks back at his colourful and eventful life, he may perhaps pause to admit that one of the most universally misunderstood and most trying periods of his life was the period of the KR when he, Queen Mother Norodom Monineath and present King Norodom Sihamoni ended up as virtual prisoners in the palace.

It is entirely possible, or so the belief goes, that Sihanouk, in his sunset years, will view the KRT, despite his previous criticism of it, as possibly one of the very few remaining vehicles to put across his side of the story of the period for future generations of Cambodians and for the international community.

There is a view that as he is no more King and since constraints are fewer, he will be more forthright at the KRT. This is not being fair to Sihanouk. His track record here is clear. Even when he was King and there were numerous constraints, he never lacked in forthrightness.

On the contrary, what has always been uppermost in the minds of those who knew him, both friends and detractors alike, was that no one was ever too sure what Sihanouk would say. Even some of those who genuinely admire him admit that Sihanouk is indeed unpredictable and fearless - undoubtedly a potent combination.

Others have described him differently. The highly respected political commentator Milton Osborne titled his book on Sihanouk, Prince of Darkness, Prince of Light.

In a review of the book, the equally respected Martin Stuart-Fox disagreed with that reference. He gently chided, "The title is an extravagant one. Sihanouk is neither a Prince of Darkness nor a Prince of Light. Such cosmological/eschatological overtones as these titles convey should not cloud our judgment. What Milton Osborne actually presents us with in this thoughtful and revealing book is a leader whose flaws of character contributed in no small measure to his country's tragic history."

There will be those who will disagree with that observation about Sihanouk but will wholeheartedly accept that the real tragedy of Cambodia was the Khmer Rouge.

Given this, although Sihanouk is not required to appear before the KRT, and ultimately may not, there is no denying that should he do so, his contributions would be invaluable.

There is equally no denying that should he appear, there could well be understandable anxiety among some individuals and within some capitals.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4831

Ah Ha !

2006-08-31T08:20:00.000+07:00

Words of Poverty

2006-08-29T11:57:00.000+07:00

Those of us who live and work outside the increasing nanny state safety net that are the western countries do so at our own risk, life can be rough and tough out here in the third world.

In the where ? The where, what did you say ?? Stage-cue: much foaming and frothing at the mouth from those 4x4 driving ladies whot lunch…

Oops, there I go again, thoughtlessly and cruelly, choosing my own words; a crime that will one day bring the sandal-wearing NGO thought police crashing through my mosquito screen door for that 6AM visit; armed to the teeth with vegan sausages and lentil-breath.

The expression third world country usually means an underdeveloped one. What would first world and second world countries be, and how did the designations come about?

These expressions were born in the Cold War era. Because of their numbering, it would be reasonable to assume that they were coined in that order, or at least all at once.

However, third world came first, and the other two phrases, designators, were actually created later.

Third world was coined in French (le tiers monde) by the population expert Alfred Sauvy, to refer to those poorer countries, especially in Latin America, Africa and Asia, which were aligned with neither the communist nor the capitalist blocs.

It originally appeared in an article in L’Observateur on 14 August 1952: “Ce Tiers-Monde, ignoré, exploité, méprisé comme le Tiers-État” (“That Third World, ignored, exploited, scorned, like the Third Estate).

He created it with reference to a famous pamphlet by the Abbé Sieyès in January 1789 about the Third Estate, le Tiers-État, one of the classes in the Estates-General, a pamphlet that was influential in the lead-up to the French Revolution later that year. The Third Estate was the commons or the ordinary people, the First Estate being the clergy and the Second Estate the nobility (the English term Fourth Estate, the press, came from this classification by analogy some decades later).

Third world was taken up in translation by economists and politicians in Britain and the United States in the early 1960s. By analogy, first world and second world were later coined from it in English, being recorded respectively in print in 1967 and 1974.

The former was a collective term for the developed countries that were based on a capitalist model of high-income market economies, of which the UK, Europe and even the USA are principal examples. This was contrasted with the second world, the relatively high-income Communist countries or those with centrally planned economies in which the government owned the means of production; here obviously the USSR was the prime example.

Neither term was as widely used as third world; both have lost popularity since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 except in historical contexts, though the phrase first world countries for the industrialised nations is still in fairly common usage.

As most third-world countries were poor or relatively undeveloped, the term has since shifted in sense somewhat to refer especially to countries with those characteristics, though the formal term for them has progressively became euphemised by the terminally politically correct to developing countries and later on to less economically developed countries.

More recently however, the Über politically correct inform me that they have changed the terminology again, we are supposed to now refer to such countries collectively as ‘The South’ the south? The south of what?? The Southern hemisphere??? Bet that will impress Japan, Australia and New Zealand…

Honestly, it is enough to make a gecko laugh.

Nice to see the millions of dollars of tax funded foreign aid are being well spent on rewording words and are not being squandered on such trivial items as feeding the hungry. Nice to see the root causes of poverty being examined and understood; with action being taken to combat them. Nice to see those that drive 4x4 Toyota Landcruisers are earning their nice fat salaries.

bogol: daamn cops!

2006-07-28T11:46:00.000+07:00

bogol: daamn cops!

This guy thinks that he has problems, he should try dealing with the Cambodian Traffic Police ?!?!

Ta Mok 'The Butcher' is Dead

2006-07-21T11:00:00.000+07:00

Khmer Rouge 'butcher' dies at 80

A former army chief of the Khmer Rouge who was accused of genocide has died at the age of 80 in Cambodia.

Ta Mok, nicknamed "The Butcher", was linked to atrocities dating to the leadership of Pol Pot in the 1970s.

Some 2 million people died under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime - of starvation, disease or execution.

Ta Mok was expected to be one of the first people tried for genocide and crimes against humanity at UN-backed hearings due to start next year.

"Ta Mok passed away this morning," military doctor Tuoth Nara told Reuters news agency.

"He was an old man and died of natural causes, given his poor health and respiratory problems."

One of only two surviving Khmer Rouge commanders in detention, Ta Mok had been unwell since last month and slipped into a coma last week.

Evading trial

Of all the Khmer Rouge leaders Ta Mok was regarded by many as the most brutal, the BBC's Guy Delauney reports from Phnom Penh.

He played a key role in a series of massacres and purges, which started even before the Khmer Rouge took power.

Ta Mok was in charge of the forces which destroyed the former royal capital Oudong in 1974, expelling civilians and killing officials and government soldiers.

Later he instigated purges as the Khmer Rouge went to war with itself.

He eventually became the overall leader of the organisation in 1997 but he was captured two years later and spent the rest of his life in jail.

Ta Mok's death leaves a Khmer Rouge prison boss, Kaing Khek Iev, more commonly known as Duch, as the group's only surviving leader in detention.

Pol Pot died in his jungle hide-out in April 1998 from an apparent heart attack.

Many Cambodians fear they will never get a chance to see justice, because ageing Khmer Rouge defendants are dying before they face trial.

Khmer Rouge cadre trial will not be fair, says lawyer

2006-07-10T09:09:00.000+07:00

I am still in two minds about all this. I mean, justice is good, but US$56 Million to bring 3 or 4 people to justice just seems absurd / bizarre / ludicrous …

*** ** *

Reuters

PHNOM PENH — A lawyer defending one of Pol Pot’s surviving henchman said yesterday his client could not get a fair trial because nearly all Cambodian judges on the Khmer Rouge tribunal had lost relatives in the genocide.

Kar Savuth, lawyer for the notorious prison commander Duch, said he would boycott the trials of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders accused of responsibility for the deaths of 1,7-million people.

“How do you expect Cambodian judges, whose relatives died under the Khmer Rouge, to pass fair judgment on my client?” he said.

“Of course they will give my client severe punishment, so I will boycott the trial.”

Almost every Cambodian family lost relatives under the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime and none of its top leaders, some of whom are still alive, has faced trial.

Pol Pot, “Brother Number One”, died in 1998, nearly a decade after a Vietnamese invasion ousted the regime.

“Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, former head of state Khieu Samphan, and former foreign minister Ieng Sary are living in the northwest near the Thai border.

On Monday, 17 Cambodian and 10 foreign legal experts were appointed to the tribunal and they promised to be impartial. Tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said the Cambodian judges “will use the law to judge the Khmer Rouge, not their emotions”.

The trials could begin early next year. Only two top cadres are in custody, accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

Duch ran the Tuol Sleng interrogation centre where few prisoners survived after the Khmer Rouge took power following a civil war. The other detained cadre is Khmer Rouge military chief Ta Mok.

Ta Mok’s lawyer, Benson Samay, said he was more worried about getting the trials under way than the potential bias against his client.

“Don’t wait for the Khmer Rouge to die before they get the chance to tell the court what happened,” he said.

Hobbies of my new Khmer neighbours

2006-06-08T15:31:00.000+07:00

Hobbies of my new Khmer neighbours

- according to my ears in the early hours…

o Khmer language Karaoke

o Strangling chickens

o Khmer language Karaoke

o Shouting at their children

o Khmer language Karaoke

o Picking up motos, and then dropping them

o Khmer language Karaoke

o Spitting from the back of the throat

o Khmer language Karaoke

o Holding a different wedding / funeral every weekend

o Khmer language Karaoke

o Cackling like drunken crones

o Khmer language Karaoke

o Beating their children

o Khmer language Karaoke

o Sharpening a thousand dull knives on a house brick

o Khmer language Karaoke

o Et cetera

Orthophoto of Phnom Penh

2006-06-08T10:36:00.000+07:00

This is an orthophoto image of Phnom Penh, (an older image, but also free)

The best orthophoto of Phnom Penh we have here at work, very expensive to produce (ours is colour as well) but am thinking about making sections of it into posters for tourests to buy. mmm

Am off to Singapore on Friday for a week, a conference on satellite imagery.

Satellite Imagery of Cambodia

2006-06-08T09:57:00.000+07:00

This is a satellite image of Phnom Penh, not the clearest one around, not by a long way, but this is the only free one that I could find !

Am off to Singapore on Friday for a week, a conference on satellite imagery.

Cambodian Bar Etiquette

2006-05-31T11:43:00.000+07:00

Cambodian Bar Etiquette

Go into your chosen establishment and sit at your preferred table, sofa, bar, whatever.

Within 3 seconds between 1 and 3 highly attractive barmaids/waitresses will appear at your side carrying drinks lists, menus, cocktail lists, whatever. The usual ration is one barmaid per male customer.

They wait at your side while you peruse said list.

You place your order - ‘som beer lao kompong moie’ - a can of Beer Lao please’

Less than 10 seconds later your barmaid/waitress reappears with a near frozen can of Beer Lao and a frozen glass (roughly a half pint glass with a handle)

She will think pick a tissue out of the wooden tissue box on the table in front of you, wipe the condensation from the top of the can, open the can, then pour the contents into the glass for you.

Options vary at this point in the proceedings.

Option 1 – if you are with your girlfriend/wife/significant other – the barmaid/waitress will return to her post

Option 2 – if you are alone, or in solely male company, then the barmaid/waitress will sit at your table/bar/sofa and make polite conversation and small talk with you ‘hello, what your name, where you come from, what you do, you have wife/girlfriend, you have children, your parents dead or alive, ???’

During this she will sit there and top up your glass after each and every sip that you take from it, top up the free bowl of peanuts, clean up condensation and spillage from the table, et cetera.

When you reach the last inch or so of beer in your glass she will ask ‘you like one more?’ at which point the above ritual is then repeated, and repeated, and repeated… well you get the idea.

Ko Ko Ro Japanese Restaurant

2006-05-23T13:42:00.000+07:00

Ko Ko Ro Japanese Restaurant
Sushi, Sashimi, Teriyaki, Sake, all the usual eats and treats Japan.

18 Sihanouk Boulevard, Phnom Penh.
(Southside of the road, East of Norodom Boulevard, West of Sothearos Boulevard)
11:00 to 14:00; 17:30 to 21:00
Ph: 012 601 095 E: yano_toshiyuki@hotmail.com

After rather too many beers at DV8, followed by a fair number of happy hour ‘buy-one-get-one-free’ Bombay Sapphires and tonic at Bar 104, the intrepid group of Khmer440 gastronomes decided that the only food that would slake our rising hunger was raw fish – possibly a craving for mercury was the root cause of our desire?

After a brief conversation it became apparent that none of us knew much about the Japanese restaurants in Phnom Penh, or even Japanese cuisine in general, other than the facts it often involves raw fish and is usually expensive.
When one member of our group suggested a cheaper, not so flashy, Japanese restaurant that we had not been to before, the decision was made for us, hence our arrival at Ko Ko Ro on an otherwise ordinary Thursday evening.

Kokoro in Japanese means feelings, or heart, or the heart of things. It is also the title of Natsume Soseki’s 1914, three part novel about guilt, ego and isolation, with a hint of betrayal and love served on the side, like wasabi to sashimi, only the novel ends with suicide not the bill and a tip. The book deals with the ending of Japans traditional ways and its modernisation, it does this by exploring a friendship between a young man and an older friend – referred to as sensei, or teacher.

I am not sure if an English language version of the book is available in Cambodia, I think I will see if I can find one, it has been a long time since I read it and I recall enjoying it.

Arriving at the Ko Ko Ro restaurant we found parking easy on Sihanouk Boulevard, once inside the décor reminded me of a small English transport café. Photos of the dishes on the walls, piles of magazines and papers scattered around, cheap tables and chairs, peeling paint work, in short, a place past its prime but just about holding itself together.

The owner and chef Toshi (heeeey, just call me Tony!) is quite a character, with his quick, chatty, English and bright red hair. After the meal he sat himself down at the table and regaled us merrily with the tale of his drunken driving charge while living in America – which resulted in a 6 month driving ban.

As well as him saying how much happier he was in Cambodia where everything was much more relaxed. In fact, the only point during the evening when he did not seem totally relaxed was when he started talking about the other Japanese restaurants in town that serve sushi, ‘they know nothing, they have never studied sushi, they do not import fish from Japan, most of them have Khmer sushi chefs who were trained by other Khmers who might have learnt from someone else, who learnt from a Japanese chef. He claims that he is the only Itamae, skilled sushi chef, in Cambodia. grr, grr, grr.

- okay, the growl I added at the end of that, but you get the picture.

He added that he does not spend lots of money on decorating the restaurant, or fancy tables and chairs, or even advertising, so that he can keep his prices low. While the prices might still seem high when compared to a $1 plate of fried rice in a Khmer pavement café, they are considerably cheaper than the other Japanese restaurants in Phnom Penh.

Mixed sushi plate US$7
A beginners (or slightly drunk lazy git) easy choice.
A collection of assorted rolls, maki, and several hand formed clumps of rice topped with different raw fish, nigiri, as well as a single egg nigirizushi. A small bowl of miso soup was served as well.

Mixed sashimi plate US$7
Another beginners (or slightly drunk lazy git) easy delight.
Tuna, salmon and prawn in this mixed set along with the rice and miso soup. A small dish of pickled cucumber and radish slices,

Tuna maki-zushi US$3 - two plates, the first was so good
Little barrel rolls rice containing raw tuna at the centre, all tied together with a seaweed, nori, bow. A tiny dip in the soy sauce – laced with wasabi – and mmm, down they go.

Deep Fried Tofu in barbeque sauce US$2:50
I know, I know, all I can say is that I did not order this, our token vegetarian did. Apparently it tasted very nice. Even if it did look like a pile of gooey custard in a brown slop, euk, where was the flesh of dead animals.

Teriyaki chicken US$3 or US$5
I was slightly disappointed to see that we were in fact served tempura chicken not teriyaki chicken, although I am not sure if the mix up was; a problem with the menu, the Khmer waitress not understanding, or the fact that I was probably slurring the mixture of English, Khmer and Japanese I was using with the menu…

The tempura chicken however was remarkably good, bite size pieces of chicken breast coating in this traditional light and fluffy batter. It also came with a small dipping bowl of what seemed to be barbeque sauce (not teriyaki sauce as I first suspected that it might be). It was also the only dish that Heng would even taste, she point blank refused to even taste ‘fish that not yet has been cooked’. Her considered opinion of the tempura chicken? ‘okay, but I cook it better’ was her verdict; and who am I to disagree with a chef with such an international range as her.

Cans of Asahi US$1:25
>hic<
just while we were perusing the menu, and then it was on to the sake. Thankfully all the changes at the brewery this year have not impacted on the flavour of Asahi; it is always cause for concern when a business gets a new CEO and a new COO in the same month, who knows what changes they could come up with to make the product cheaper.

Several bottle of hot sake US$7
Served correctly in a tokkuri flask with shallow choko cups, this was a very, very, pleasant change from our day to day routine of cold beer and gins with tonic. The only thing that was incorrect was our ordering it in the first place, as traditionally sake is not drunk with sushi – although it may be drunk with sashimi. The belief being that one should not drink rice while eating rice, or some such inscrutable stuff.
This was only futsuu-shu – or normal sake – not tokutei meishoshu – designated special sake. But after a long abstinence of any sake it was welcome all the same.

Accoutrements
Shoyu, dark Japanese soy sauce, a healthy amount of wasabi, small dishes of pickled vegetable, et cetera.

In fact, I think it was the thought of wasabi that swung me in the decision to dine Japanese this particular evening. That pungent and spicy green spice seemed to be calling me after a long week of mild Khmer dishes.

As is the norm for the majority of Japanese restaurants around the world, it was not true Wasabia japonicat, a member of the cabbage family which is grown in the shady mountainsides along the river valleys of Japan, such as the Izu peninsula, the cost of which is prohibitively high for all but the most expensive of restaurants to use, this wasabi was the usual imitation wasabi made from European horseradish, mustard and spirulina.

Besides the expense of real wasabi, it also loses it flavour as the fresh root dries out, which makes it difficult to serve properly.

Still, regardless of weather it was; real wasabi grated fresh from the root using an oroshigane, cultivated wasabi served from a toothpaste style tube, or imitation powdered wasabi, it was good. It was spicy and cleansing, stimulating the sinus cavity with its vapours – as opposed to chilli peppers which stimulate the tongues taste buds.

Even if we did commit another sushi faux par by adding it to our soy sauce, rather than to the fish direct, this is the usual custom in Japan.

Azuki US$2
For dessert we had this popular Japanese dish, made from the adzuki bean, that has been boiled with sugar to create a red bean paste, served on top of a portion of vanilla ice cream; the fruity paste had a dry, almost tannic, after taste which was complimented very well by the sweet and slippery vanilla ice cream

After all this Toshi called for a round of complementary Japanese vodka, on the rocks – amusingly called Vodka Number One

Now I have to admit, the cost of it all is a little hazy to be honest, the sake was $7 a bottle, the Asahi $1:25, the total bill was around US$50, but I am not sure how much of that was booze and how much the food was.

Regardless, the food, not too mention the experience, was very enjoyable and I shall be returning soon, especially as Toshi has just taken delivery of some ‘oily tuna’ from Japan, which according to him is the very best cut of tuna that there is, although at US$60 a kilo I might only be ordering a small portion of it!

The next challenge for our intrepid team of raw fish eaters is to find a restaurant in Phnom Penh that serves either, Ceviche – a Peruvian raw fish dish, or Hoe – a Korean version of sashimi.

Domo arigato gozaimasta Toshi san. Gochisou-sama deshita.

Aruna Press Release

2006-05-10T16:56:00.000+07:00

Aruna Technology Ltd Appoints new Business Director

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, May 2006 — Aruna Technology Ltd, South East Asia’s leading GPS, GIS and Remote Sensing business, announced today that Darren Conquest had been appointed as it Cambodia Business Director.

Mr Conquest has extensive experience in senior management and the private sector, with more than 15 years experience in such companies as Sotheby’s Auction House (Europe and Asia).

Since moving to Cambodia Mr Conquest spent several years working as a Management Advisor to the Department of Fisheries (Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries) as well as consulting with various Khmer private sector businesses; such as, Cambodian Information Technology Ltd (CIT) where he advised on the creation of the Cambodian Parliamentary IT Master Plan 2006.

"The appointment of Darren Conquest will allow Aruna to best serve the needs of existing customers and partners and to develop the potential of the Cambodian market for GPS, GIS and Remote Sensing hardware and software," said Jeffrey Himel, Managing Director of Aruna Technology.

About Aruna
Aruna's senior partners and associates have been active professionals in engineering, environment and natural resources management in Cambodia since 1993, working in close collaboration with government agencies and local groups. The company maintains an extensive network of contacts among Cambodian technical personnel capable of delivering services in all aspects of development work, including GIS/RS, engineering, natural resources management, surveying, training programs, institutional strengthening, and project management and monitoring. Aruna Technology Ltd can field such personnel for short and long-term assignments, in the framework of donor-funded and private-sector projects and within turnkey projects.

For additional information on this, or any other GPS, GIS or Remote Sensing subject, please feel free to contact Aruna Technology or visit www.arunatechnology.com

# # #

April 2006 in Cambodia

2006-05-09T09:42:00.000+07:00

April 2006 in Cambodia

Saturday the 1st
April Fool - and a happy birthday to Paul.

There are several parties being held and organised in Phnom Penh for this evening. I am going to none of them.
By coincidence my Khmer colleagues at the Ministry of Fish have arranged a farewell party for me (despite me still having 2 weeks to go at this point) but they realise that as we approach Khmer New Year, people will start drifting off earlier and earlier; in fact this new year seems to be set to last about 2 weeks

The smoked fish and mango salad – with dried baby prawns, was as good as ever. Unfortunately the boiled pig intestines in semi-fermented fish sauce required only one mouthful for me, before realising that I would be leaving the rest of that dish for my Khmer colleagues to finish off! The whole fried cat-fish was good, the nice thing about fish from the genus panagasius (sp?) is their large bone structure, which means that you can get the flesh off a whole fish quite easily and you are not spitting out bones for the next 10 minutes after taking a mouthful! - okay, no more fish talk, promise! - apart from to mention that the fish, squid, prawn and mushroom soup served at the end of the meal was very, very, good.

Monday the 3rd
Damn Visa !
I received an Email this morning from the VSO office boy reminding me that my Cambodian visa was about to expire, I tried to see if I could get VSO to just renew it for me as they have done over the past couple of years, but as I will no longer be employed through them they are unwilling to do so (fair enough I suppose, grumble, grumble) so this means that I have to get one sorted out myself. Not that it is a complex process, you just hand your passport and a photo over to the proper authorities (or a Visa agent) and pay the fee. How much is the fee? A one year visa is US$250, ouch, guess it will be a lean month after all !

Saturday the 8th
Bye bye Darren
The gang from the Ministry of Fish threw a farewell party for me this evening (see photo above)

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday the 14th 15th 16th
The ‘official’ dates for Khmer New Year…
Also, the official end of my VSO volunteer placement - thank god!

Friday the 14th
Messin’ about on the river
The good ship ‘Hock Sambo’ was hired out for an evening excursion up and down the river by my colleague John, mostly as his sister and her husband are here on holiday.
At 6PM about a dozen of us armed with pizza, spring rolls and cold boxes full of beer set sail round the pointy bit of land which separates the Tonle Sap from the Tonle Mekong and headed north up the mighty Mekong river.
A most enjoyable evening out I must say.

Afterwards we all headed down to the Black and White Bar for a refreshing libation or two and a game of pool – and more of Heng’s homemade spring rolls with sweet chilli dip.

Sunday the 16th Easter Sunday
What do I do with that?
Heng’s mother turned up this evening with a Khmer New Year present for us from Granny up in the provinces. A chicken, not a roast chicken, or a chicken curry or even a ready to bake butterball, but a real live, flapping and squawking chicken – what the hell am I going to do with that ??? Although the cat is eyeing it up in a very funny manner…

Monday the 17th
Chicken Killer?
So after 24 hours I finally asked Heng ‘what the hell are we going to do with that chicken?’

“Eat it” was the obvious reply.

“How?” was my next question.

“You kill it and I will roast it”

I looked at her sideways for a second to see if she was smiling, joking with me.

No, she just had a quizzical look on her face, as if to say ‘why are you even asking such an obvious question?’

Needless to say, the chicken is still roaming free and alive around the place.

The cat now seems scared of it, which leads me to suspect that she tried to take a bite out of it the other night and that the chicken won the fight.

Crazy Khmer kitty.

Wednesday the 19th
Chicken Killer
I get home late from work this evening to the tantalising aroma of roasting chicken.

Peering through the oven door I see a whole chicken roasting in there.

Looking around the kitchen I see no chicken strutting and squawking it stuff, although the cat seems to be hiding under the table as if slightly traumatised?!?

As I wander through to the lounge, I ask
“so where is the chicken?”

“in the oven” comes the answer (in Khmer but I can manage that much)

It seems that Heng’s mum did the deed

Tasty dinner!

Sovann - RIP

2006-05-02T13:10:00.000+07:00

This is a photo of me and Sovann (Heng’s Uncle) he is a year older than me, 38.

The reason that I am posting this picture is that he died at 07:00 this morning in Pursat province.

Yesterday evening he just collapsed, unconscious and having trouble breathing, some of his neighbours spotted him laying on the floor and went to help, after trying to wake him up they took him to a clinic in Pursat (laughingly called a clinic if you had seen the rundown shacks that they call health centres and hospitals in rural Cambodia)

The ‘doctors’ were unable to revive him, I was going to pay for a transfer down to Phnom Penh today, where at least you can get access to trained and qualified doctors (provided you pay of course)

Unfortunately, first thing this morning he just stopped breathing.

Nobody seems to have a clue what was wrong with him. All the family headed up North West to Palin this morning, including his wife who was staying with us here in Phnom Penh for a few days seeing the family.

Skype - free 'phone' calls

2006-04-26T10:35:00.000+07:00

Have signed myself up with a (free) Skype account

http://www.skype.com/helloagain.html

Username darrenconquest

Will probably buy a headset next week so that I can make free and dirt cheap international calls as well as chat online

Sign up, download and look me up people !

D

New style Khmer art

2006-04-21T11:28:00.000+07:00

Follow the link for more examples

Japanese smart cookie finds niche in Cambodia

2006-04-20T08:33:00.000+07:00

SIEM REAP, Cambodia--Two years ago, a savvy Japanese tour guide saw her chance to fill a business niche here.

Sachiko Kojima opened a cookie factory. She was soon supplying foreign tourists from Japan and around the globe with souvenir confections from this northern Cambodia city, the gateway to the Angkor Wat Khmer ruins.

Her "Madam Sachiko" cookies, shaped like the ancient ruins, are now the must-buy souvenir for tourists visiting the city.

Kojima, 33, who grew up in Gunma Prefecture, runs her business with Japanese management finesse. But her company, Khmer Angkor Foods Co., procures all its ingredients from Cambodian suppliers. The factory includes a bakery, sales shop and head office.

She uses locally grown cashew nuts and lotus tea to create unusual cookie flavors. The shop also sells attractively packaged coffee beans and peppers.

When the shop first opened with two employees in April 2004, sales were slow. Today, the shop sells in one day what it used to sell in an entire month. Kojima now employs 24 people.

Kojima first came to Siem Reap in 1999 after answering a want ad for Japanese language teachers. She also began working part-time as a tour guide.

Japanese tourists often asked her where to buy the best souvenirs.

It soon struck her that she could make a tidy profit by producing the kind of tasty souvenirs that tourists love to buy.

In 2003, she came back for a visit to the cookware center in the Kappabashi district of Tokyo's Taito Ward, where she ordered custom-made molds to make cookies shape like the famous Angkor Wat temple.

She buys ingredients at markets in Phnom Penh and other cities. She once traveled by motorbike to the Cambodian countryside to find nut suppliers on plantations.

In the shop and bakery, Kojima follows a Japanese business style. The shop's interior is attractive and inviting. The factory is clean and sanitary. Her employees follow rules similar to workers in Japan: No sitting down and no eating or drinking while on duty in the shop.

Foreigners in Cambodia rarely start businesses outside of travel agencies and restaurants.

Kojima had the choice of starting up as a non-governmental organization (NGO), which would have received tax breaks and other advantages.

However, she was determined to form a privately owned, for-profit company.

"I think the people here need to see examples of basic business ideas, such as how to make a profit and how to pay taxes," she said.

Goodbye my Fishy Friends

2006-04-12T10:26:00.000+07:00

It has been emotional. Today is my last day of working at the Ministry of Fish.

I am going to miss a lot of my crazy Khmer colleagues.

Job Ad for Cambodia.

2006-04-04T10:21:00.000+07:00

I am half tempted to apply just for a laugh!

Mind you, if they were stupid enough to hire me, and I was insane enough to take it, there would be tears before bedtime as my mum always used to say....

The money would be nice though...

****

ASSISTANT COUNTRY DIRECTOR - CAMBODIA
Voluntary Service Overseas

£21,326 P.A. Tax free (dependent on individual circumstances) + attractive benefits package

Based in Phnom Penh, CambodiaVSO is an international development organisation that works through volunteers to fight poverty and injustice.

As ACD Cambodia, you will join the senior management of one of VSO's largest programmes.

You will be a committed and experienced development professional with an understanding of VSO's unique contribution to development and the energy and creativity to maximise this contribution.

You will be an empowering manager with a broad skill set, including proven ability in participatory planning and enthusiasm for working in a diverse, complex environment.

Closing date: 28 April 2006 (midday)

Interview date: w/c 22 May 2006VSO values a diverse workforce and welcomes applications from all sections of the community.

Salary / benefits:£21,326 P.A.

Type of work: ?

Location:Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Languages required:

Closing date:28.04.2006

To apply:For further details, please visitwww.vso.org.uk/vacancies

Urgent update from VSO-Cambodia to all volunteers

2006-04-03T09:59:00.000+07:00

Just got an urgent Email from the mothership.

Will try and translate it later ????

*** **
From: Ngin
Subject: Mosbar run out of stock

Dear All,

I'd like to let you know that we only have a few mosbar in stock at VSO Programme Office. we ordered from our supplier in Cambodia but they have run out stock as well because of there is no raw material to produce it they have to order from oversea and they said that it is difficult to clear raw material at the Phnom Penh airport it is charged expensive. Anyway our supplier will let us know when they have it and I also let you know.

Best Regards

Pisit

oops, the right random picture !

2006-03-31T09:41:00.000+07:00

Random Picture of me in Kompong Cham Province!?!

2006-03-30T15:42:00.000+07:00

March 2005 in Cam

2006-03-30T15:01:00.000+07:00

Wednesday the 15th
So So News
Finally had a job offer today, with this small company of Khmer consultants who provide IT advice, planning, training and project implementation.
They are imaginatively named Cambodia Information Technology, or CIT for short….

www.citcambodia.com

They seem to be very well connected in government circles, they wrote the 2003 IT Master Plan for the whole of the government IT upgrade ($10m) but it got axed by donors after the last election fiasco, but it looks like it might be back on the table again now thanks to the CG meeting last month and the new US$601m budget for the Cambodian government in 2006.

The job is a bit of a patchwork quilt, Marketing, Writing, Project Management, et cetera plus the money only just enough to live on to start with, not really any different to what I get now as a volunteer, but as of April my salary will be $0 a month, so at least I keep a roof over my head while I keep looking for a better paid job.

Poncy job title though - Head of Project Management

Which I started this week to get things rolling, alongside doing my normal job – the next 4 weeks are going to be very, very, busy!

Also have a part-time writing job coming up for a new Asian travel website (not yet online so no link yet) half the money up front, rest on completion of articles in December, better than a poke in the eye, two to four hours a week I reckon, starting next week, should be enough to meet the dead line, about 10,000 words…

Yes, going to be very busy.

Thursday the 16th to Wednesday the 22nd
I need more sleep
Work, work and more work for the last week, 15 and 18 hour days, aggghhh, roll on Khmer New Year, can not afford to go anywhere, but at least I should be able to sleep some more, sorry for the lack of updates in this month!

Had lunch today (Wednesday) with some NGO I contacted months ago about work, they have some for me, but it is only for 6 months, but the money is fairly nice, not sure what to do now, whether to take a better paying job that will only last up to 6 months, or stick with my lower paying, but permanent, job at CIT ???

Friday the 24th
Damn bike lets me down when I need it most!
Major problem with the bike today, possibly a blown head gasket. Decided to bite the bullet and take it to the one and only bike shop here not owned by a Khmer. ‘The Bike Shop’ as it is imaginatively called is owned and run by Bernard the Frenchman. He charges US$10 an hour for labour – rather than the Khmer US$3 and hour – but at least he speaks very good English and can understand what is wrong with the bike - my Khmer linguistic skills do not extend to cover words like pistons, rings, plugs, points, etc

Sunday the 26th
A half day off at last !
Not going into the office today (either old office or new office!) but need to do 3 or 4 hours research for the new Asian travellers’ website job – still, this month that almost counts as a day off!
Roll on Khmer New Year (14th April) when I finally finish my VSO contract and my old job and I only have one and two half jobs to worry about :-)
Still, all this work might mean I have a bit of extra cash for Heng’s Birthday in a couple of weeks!

Monday the 27th
Stick with the perm job
I have decided that even though the 6 month contract job would give a much needed boost to funds, I am going to give it a miss in favour or steady long term employment.

Picked the bike up from Bernard. New rings and gaskets, new fuel filter, new brake and clutch cables, replaced coolant, oil, brake fluid. Stripped, cleaned, rebuilt and balanced all 4 carburettors. Adjusted the timing, cleaned and checked plugs and points and even threw in a new key ring. All for nearly US$200 ! But now the bike is running so smoothly, so quietly, so evenly, that I have fallen in love with it all over again.

Thursday the 30th
Too much work
Too much work
Too much work
Too much work
.
.
.
.

Hun Sen 1 UN Whiners 0

2006-03-30T09:56:00.000+07:00

I am with the Iron Man Hun Sen on this one, all these people do is whine, whine, whine. Let us see how well they would do.

Cambodian PM waves "iron fist" back at U.N. envoyBy Ek Madra

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Wednesday the United Nations should sack a human rights envoy who suggested he was running the impoverished southeast Asian nation with an iron fist.
Hun Sen, the former Khmer Rouge soldier who has been in charge of Cambodia for the past two decades, also described the U.N human rights body and its special representative, Yash Ghai, as "long-term tourists".

"Mr. Ghai has accused me of using an iron fist to violate the independence of the courts. What he said is wrong. He should not give me advice," he told a agriculture meeting in the capital, Phnom Penh.

U.N. Secretary-General "Kofi Annan should fire him", he said.

Kenyan-born Ghai, who is on a regular human rights fact-finding trip, said on Tuesday one person continued to control all the levers of power in Cambodia despite its gradual recovery from the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s.

"I have been quite struck by the enormous centralisation of power, not in the government but in one individual," Ghai told reporters.

"I have talked to judges, so many people, politicians, and every one is so scared. It seems that everything depends on one individual. That is not really a precondition under which human right can flourish," he said.

He did not name the individual, but Hun Sen took it personally and said he would never agree to a meeting with Ghai, who became U.N. rights envoy to Cambodia last November.

"You don't even know about your own poor country, Kenya, in which over 50 percent of people live in poverty," he said. "You are lucky that this time a deputy prime minister met you. That won't happen next time."

Ghai also called on international donors, whose annual $600 million aid accounts for 60 percent of Phnom Penh's revenue, to push harder for reform in a country devastated by 30 years of civil war.

"I do believe the donors have a moral obligation to intervene in one way or another," Ghai said.
Although Cambodia ranks alongside many African nations with many of its 13 million people living on less than a dollar a day, Hun Sen hit back: "Don't come and lecture me. You should go back home and learn more. Your knowledge cannot work in Cambodia."

Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge ran Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, the era of the "Killing Fields" genocide in which an estimated 1.7 million people were executed or died of torture, starvation, disease or forced labour.

A frontline Khmer Rouge commander, Hun Sen lost an eye in the final assault on Phnom Penh in April 1975, but later defected and fled to neighbouring Vietnam. There is no evidence linking him to atrocities under Pol Pot.

Khmer Politics Soap Opera III

2006-03-28T09:06:00.000+07:00

This weeks update from Khmer440

***

- FUNCINPEC nibbled to death by ducks

Wow, what a week: hiring’s, firings, surprise votes a few new names cropping up, old names moving out, and a potential new love interest has moved into the Soap Opera for a possible sex scandal.

Still, as Valery so famously noted “power without abuse loses its charm”

The week opened ordinarily enough with the King Father declining a request to get involved again. This time it was to help Prince Ranariddh regain his position as President of the National Assembly, claiming that he was retired and no longer had the power, or right, to intervene, the King Father’s refusal to bend the process to his will was issued from North Korea where the King Father is presumably studying new democratic models of government. The request did not come from Prince Ranariddh himself, but rather came from ‘a compatriot among the elite’ a phrase that the King Father has used before on his website, and has always amused me.

Another thing that amused me was the Cambodia (rarely) Daily (almost) article earlier in the week when a pair of their intrepid reporters did some ‘man on the street’ interviews about the thoughts of ordinary citizens on the political manoeuvrings; a select group of political observers and pundits were questioned, comprising of; a student, a tuk-tuk driver and a motodop.

Meanwhile, the nibbling to death by ducks of FUNCINPEC continued when the CPP Secretary of State for the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport raising questions about funds for Federation Internationale de Football Association, which prompted a surprisingly swift and strong response from Khek Ravy the President of the football federation, who threaten defamation lawsuits against anyone who accused him of corruption – I wonder where he got that little tactic from? He also followed up his defence by writing a rather good letter to the editor of the Cambodia (rarely) Daily (almost) about the achievements of the football federation and its various sources of funding. Although most of this left me in the cold as I am a Rugger fan myself. The Phnom Penh Post skipped over this though, contenting itself to a few tired quotes from The Rainman and a few others.

But this week it was not just the CPP doing all the nibbling and sniping, my second favourite Princess, HRH Norodom Vacheara, rallied the royalist troops several times by speaking out in defence of FUNCINPEC members as well as going as far as to ask of CPP ‘who does not have mistresses?’ – although I am fairly sure that she was talking about CPP parliamentarians and not herself.
She also alluded to the fact that she considered these attacks against royals to be the first steps in trying to abolish the royal family. – a clear case of Royalism in this day and age of equality, inclusion and sensitivity.

Over at the Big House, CPP President Chea Sim was easily re-elected to his position as President of the Senate. It must have been a gay old time up at the Big House as even King Norodom Sihamoni attended to preside over the swearing in ceremony, oh what larks.

Elsewhere at the kiddies table, the Rainman Party had a whip round to hold a ceremony to mark the ninth anniversary of the infamous 1997 live grenade juggling competition. Victims and victims’ families would receive between US$50 and US$100. Although some in that group were not happy about the Rainman’s recent political game of musical chairs.

As these events and nibbles unfolded, the Little House on Norodom Boulevard turned up for its scheduled vote on Prince Sirivudh and H.E. Nhiek Bun Chhay removal from the Ministries of the Interior and Defence, only to find that an extra sacking had been added to the list, Prince Sirivudh was also getting canned from his role as Deputy Prime Minister – oops, what did I say last week, I really should be more careful!

After that small kafuffle CPP’s boy Heng Sam was elected to Prince Ranariddh’s former position as President of the National Assembly.

All of which lead to Prince Sirivudh resigning from the position of action President of FUNCINPEC – maybe he has a teaching job in France too?

The resignations did not stop there though, the Don Juan Sammoun, Secretary of State for Rural Development called it a day as well, but not without taking a final swipe at the Minister for Rural Development, H.E. Lulu Laysreng, it just makes you want to kick your heels up and shout, come on everybody now shout…

So with the Royalist Party busy snapping at each other heels like nervous chinchilla’s on a drunken night in Tijuana, the CPP and the Iron Man even had a couple of days off nibbling them like ducks. Although they did start the grouse shooting season early by picking off some of the lower ranks, a swift removal of a few FUNCINPEC Governors and Vice Governors; Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Kandal, Banteay Meanchey. The CPP network of senior staff has never been so solid, or so indebted to the Big Man. People living in Phnom Penh often overlook just how powerful provincial governors are, within their fiefdoms, they have extraordinary powers and are perfectly placed to interact with commune and village chiefs – thus the electorate.

Yet again, throughout the week everyone’s favourite Princess Vacheara, was the only one talking about Party unity, unfortunately, nobody was listening. This might be just as well, since she switched songs halfway through the week to start singing about hidden republican conspiracies within FUNCINPEC. Ah, well, I had high hopes for her, however, like Queen Boudicca’s rebellion against Governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus and the Roman occupation of England; beautiful, brave, imaginative, yet ultimately flawed.

All of which has me begging the question, where is the leadership? While Prince Ranariddh is kicking back in the French countryside, his Party is infighting, squabbling and losing ground almost by the hour. Political parties, like any large organisation, need strong and decisive leadership; decisions need to be made, strategies envisioned then enacted, not too mention the fact that loyalty is often a lot stronger face to face. Surely all these French speaking, French educated, Royals know the phrase coup d’tat? Or they learnt a little French history about, say, Louis the XVI?

Finally, in just about every article written this week, various spokesmen from the Neutral and Impartial Committee for Free Elections in Cambodia have given quotes; I doubt that they have ever been so popular over at NaICfFEiC outside of an election year. I bet those boys really know how to party on a Friday night.

Lord Playboy
Monster Raving Fish Party Party

Post Script: I was joking at the beginning about a sex scandal
Post Post Script: Spot the deliberate mistake in the above article and win a free beer.

Khmer Politics the Soap Opera: Week Two

2006-03-21T07:41:00.000+07:00

This week in Khmer Politics the soap opera, we have seen some swift and fancy foot work, a hydra-headed assault and some back-peddling, all happening at a breakneck pace.

The field was mudded initially by Prince Ranariddh himself, after first nominating one successor, his half brother Prince Ping Pong, then the next day suggesting his Aunt Princess Norodom Vacheara, could do it instead, then the following day announcing it was going to be Prince Norodom Sirivudh, before Prince Ranariddh finally started packing his bags and catching a flight to France. But not before he had to lay off over 100 ‘advisors’ that he had working for the office of the President of the National Assembly. Well, I am sure that the Prince is sadden by so much sudden unemployment, it will probably weigh heavily on his mind as he spends the next two weeks in Aix-en-Provence, I am also almost certain that former Princely advisor Pok Thareth will be working it into his Ken Dodd style stand-up routine.

Anyway, I guess that Prince Sirivudh has some spare time since the Iron Man fired him from his former position as co-Minister of the Interior. His other job as Deputy Prime Minister can not take up to much of his time

All the while the Iron Man is asking public questions about the Olympic Panel and its accounting during the 2005 South-East Asian games, followed by the Iron Man’s pre-emptive body blow, the cancelling of Cambodia to host the 2011 South-East Asian games.

Then came the questions about the location of hundreds of tractors and water pumps and machinery for some NGO project.

As a further slap on the wrist the Iron Man also cut off FUNCINPEC’s supply of free Government diesel – next week it will be the immediate cessation of chocolate biscuits during their tea breaks.

Then another front is revealed, the Ministry of Finance ups its attempts to get Prince Chakrapong to pay up US$1.4 million worth of back taxes from the last 5 years for the Princes failed vanity business that was Royal Phnom Penh Airways.

Hot on the heels of that press release came Prince Chakrapong’s announcement that he was withdrawing his appointment as Secretary-General of FUNCINPEC.

Now the party is bickering amongst itself as to whether it should elect a new Secretary-General or whether one should be appointed – claiming that an election would divide the party, unlike the argument about Appointment Vs Election which I am sure is creating nothing but party unity.

Watching last week’s machinations reminded me of the 1984 Chess World Championship, Kasparov’s deadlocked with Karpov, external forces halting the championship, it restarting in 1985 when Kasparov finally beat Karpov with some highly spectacular variations on the Sicilian Defence.

But if truth be told, Prince Ranariddh is no Karpov, he is not even a Viswanathan Anand; in the uneven chess match of Khmer Politics it is more akin to Kasparov beating Bob the Builder
The Iron Man is the Super Grandmaster of Khmer Politic: the Soap Opera™, I wonder if he would have had the support of Tsar Nicholas II for such a title?

During most of last week the words that crept into my mind were the ones from the Roman poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, “There will be no common faith between those who share power, and each man will be jealous of his associate”, now he may well have written that under the patronage of Nero, with regard to his Senate, but it holds just as accurate now in 2006 Cambodia as it did in 60AD Rome.

All of which kind of makes me wonder if that Sum Sitha, the Khmer American (Khmerican?) really knows what he is letting himself in for now that he started pushing his Khmer National Party more into the spotlight, does he really think that he can make any changes in Khmer Politics from his home in Long Beach, California? Surely as a former FUNCINPEC member, former Khmer National Party Member, former Sam Rainsy supporter and former Khmer Citizens Party (Mk1) member you would have thought that he had learnt some lessons about Khmer Politics? Is his new role a supporting one on this Soap Opera, or is it just a character appearance that will stay on air for a season and then vanish into a subplot somewhere? Is there a Khmer version of Josh Lyman lurking somewhere out there in the wings?

And when will we see some press releases from the Khmer Front Party translated into English, I thought that we all had to be super Inclusive and Sensitive to the needs of others these days ?

Cambodia's Favourate Car

2006-03-13T11:18:00.000+07:00

Quick Cambodia Conquest Q&A

2006-03-13T10:41:00.000+07:00

http://www.quizyourfriends.com/yourquiz.php?quizname=060309210506-510029&

Just for a laugh, I cobbled together a quick quiz (10 questions) on ‘My Life in Cambodia’

This should tell me who reads my monthly updates and who just hits delete !

Khmer Politics Soap Opera

2006-03-07T10:39:00.000+07:00

Those of us who are keen observers of the great Asian soap-opera that is Khmer politics have had an interesting month or so to say the least.
A chain reaction of events, some moving so swiftly and fluidly that it was almost difficult to keep up with them.
Specific events to include would be :
• Sam Rainsy returns to Phnom Penh and says ‘oh so sorry’ to the Iron Man.

• The Sam Rainsy Party then tables a motion that election rules should be changed to 50% plus one; rather than the existing two-thirds threshold required to establish a ruling party – which in real terms is now just 62 seats out of the 123 in parliament. Under the old rules, the Iron Man’s 73 seats from the 2003 general election was not enough to rule without forming a coalition government to bring him up to the requisite 82 seats

• The Iron Man then had a period of making public attacks and comments on nameless politicians and nameless mistresses of politicians (plus power-broking and political favour) - now, you just know that a whole bunch of Khmer politicians from all parties went home after those speeches to get the third degree from their wives!

• Parliamentary Immunity is restored to Sam Rainsy

• The new 50% plus one rule is passed into effect in record time.

• Senior FUNCINPEC co-Ministers of the Interior and of Defence are fired by the Iron Man, although interestingly enough retain their roles as Deputy Prime Ministers.

• Prince Ranariddh resigns as Chairman of the National Assembly.
Of course, the back drop to all of the above events was the 2006 meeting of the Consultative Group, who in the last few days has pledged US$601 Million in direct aid to Cambodia for 2006; up US$97 Million from 2005’s US$504 Million.

Elsewhere, in a distant despot background, the King Father Sihanouk claims he is homesick for Cambodia, but afraid to return to his homeland for fear of ‘something bad’ happening to him or his Country, in his words “ Currently, if I dare return back to our country, there will be bad problems [for me] that will force me to leave our country again.”
* * *

So what does all this mean?

To my mind, it means that there is now every chance that the 2008 elections will result in the CPP party having a full control of the government without any form of coalition being necessary.
Or, in the unlikely event that they only just fall short of the 62 seats needed, they are no longer restricted to just forming a coalition with FUNCINPEC, it is possible that the Sam Rainsy party might pick up enough votes to be used to form a quorum with CPP – thus allowing the Iron Man to play the Sam Rainsy Party off against FUNCINPEC.

Although it is more likely that the CPP will win an outright majority under the new system.
With Prince Ranariddh out of the Chair at the National Assembly, FUNCINPEC loses some of its current political power in the short term, however, if he is going to devote all of his time now to strengthening FUNCINPEC prior to the 2008 elections – as some news reports have quoted him as saying – then there is a good chance that he might regain some of the former strong following that FUNCINPEC enjoyed back in the early 1990’s.

Exciting times as I said, and the general election is still over a year away.

P.S.
The political house spring-cleaning continues today;

Ranariddh loses his co-chairmanship of the Council for the Development of Cambodia, Sao Rany, the FUNCINPEC deputy police commissioner is out of a job and all is quiet today at the National Assembly – hardly a person here.

Movie Star Gossip

2006-03-03T15:35:00.000+07:00

Poor country, rich country; Hollywood or Hollyoaks… Same Same but different...

*** *** ***

Duch Sophea, 20, one of Cambodia’s most popular young actress of movie and karaoke video, is under fire from common people for two events occuring last two weeks. On February 16, she drove her luxury white car, Lexus, persuading hight-school girls at Watt Koh high school, and then she went off her car to slap school girl student. She claimed that the girl always threaten her niece.

A few days later, there was other incident happening to her after she did not stop her car when traffic police flagged her dow to check on February 20, 2006. Later, it took her 4 hours to be questioned at police station at Daun Penh district about allegations that she slapped a fellow high school student and was suspected of refusing to stop for a traffic police officer. She told police that she did not drive car, the car driver was her older sister. Her cases were finished.

Recently, grossip about her is that she has been romatically involved with Senior government official. After the speech of prime minister, he warned government officials not to lavish money on their mistress. If they do, they will be investigated and punished.

Duch Sophea’s comments came one day after Prime minister accused the mistress of a senior government officials. Meanwhile, she also said that there are many people being jealous of her career, so they spreaded false rumors that she have romatice relationship with hight-range official in an attempt to damage her reputation and life.

“I swear to Buddha to be struck by lightning” if the rumors are true, she added. She said Hun Sen may have comfused her with her older sister, Duch Chan Samphors, who she said was guilty of not stoping when flagged down by traffic police. Cambodia Daily reported.

On behaft of her sister, she said, “The problem is solved, it is finished. I apologize to the prime minister. I apologize to the traffic police.” Cambodia Daily reported.

Look on the bright side...

2006-03-02T14:47:00.000+07:00

Okay, after last months upsetting news, I decided to make a list of good things about living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia …

1. where you earn a salary of US$1,000 a month, and can afford a cook, housekeeper and a big motorbike easily

2. where the longest possible commute to work is a leisurely 15 minute ride

3. where a beer costs US$1

4. where a main course in your average Khmer restaurant costs US$1 (chicken fried rice, pork and veg stir-fry with rice, tom yam soup and rice, et cetera

5. where the latest movies on DVD cost less than US$2

6. where the beach is a 3 hour drive away

7. where you have 26 bank holidays a year

8. where the weather is; a) bloody hot b) very bloody hot c) very bloody hot and raining

9. where everyday legal problems (traffic) can be solved for US$1 or less

10. where you can have cases of beer delivered to your home by just leaning out the window and shouting your order to the guy sat on his mopo opposite (not just beer, anything and I mean anything; phone cards, bottles of water, ice, cigarettes, potatoes, iced coffee…)

11. where a new, two-bedroom, air-conditioned house with off street parking can be rented for US$200 a month

12. where you have over 100 restaurants from a dozen different countries, from Chinese to Russian to French to British pub grub to vegetarian to deep fried cockroaches…

13. where a bottle of Bombay Sapphire costs less than US$10

14. but most of all, because it is where I live

February 2006 in Cambodia

2006-02-27T09:36:00.000+07:00

Hi all,

As February closes I can only say that this has been a busy, stressful and sad month

Darren

February 2006 in Cambodia

Thursday the 2nd
Off to Kratie
After a long absence of field trips, I seem to have been roped into several this month.

This afternoon I am heading off to Kratie with Kimchhea; he is the vice chief of the office that I work in and I get on very well with, so I am looking forwards to a few days in the provinces and the provincial fishing villages with him.

Kratie is a province (County, State, or whatever) in the North-East of Cambodia

2:00 PM – Kimchhea is still not back from his trip to Siam Reap, this could be cutting it fine for getting to Kratie before sunset.
2:30 PM – Kimchhea finally arrives, slightly flustered and rushed

3:00 PM and we finally get on the road, I am slightly concerned that we will now not reach Kratie before nightfall; and driving along barely marked dirt roads, miles from anywhere, with lights is a slow and painful process.

5:00 PM - Out past Kompong Cham (about halfway) the driver takes a ‘short cut’ the ‘new road’ it is only a short cut in distance, not time, as the road has not yet been built, it is just a semi rough, bulldozed, red dirt track, dusty, bumpy, full of potholes, ridges, lumps and drops; it cuts 100Km off the over all journey, but reduces the speed to an average of 10-20KPH. Personally I would have preferred the extra 100Km on a faster, tarmac, road, but the amount of petrol used on the extra distance is the deciding factor for the driver who is being paid a flat fee to get us there.

6:00 PM – sunsets and we are still on the red dust equivalent of a roller-coaster at 5KPH

7:45 PM – and we crawl into Kratie town at last, tired, hot, dusty and battered from the bouncing. We check into our usual Kratie hotel, the Heng Heng 2 Hotel. It is not much different to the dozens of other places to stay here, apart from one thing; there is a large balcony up on the second floor which over looks the wide Mekong River, from which you get an absolutely beautiful view of the sun setting behind the river and the trees on the other side, the sky filled with purples and reds, the clouds black silhouettes amongst these colours, wide a vista dozens of miles wide to either side.

Of course, because we were late, we had missed it.

Friday the 3rd
In Kratie
Breakfast at 06:30 in the Heng Heng Hotel restaurant and then on the way to our meeting at 07:00

While I was stuck in a room with several dozen fishermen and provincial government lackeys. Yawn, yawn.

The main attraction for Kratie province is the dolphins in the town of Kampie. These are some of the last remaining ones in South East Asia. Unfortunately on this trip I did not have time to get out and see them as I was working.

Irrawaddy Dolphins
Or freshwater dolphins
Latin: orcaella brevirostris. Khmer: Trey Pisaut

Are an endangered species, especially so in Cambodia where there is now less than 80 of them left. Five died (or were killed) in 2004 and no calves were born in 2005. In January 2006 8 more died or were killed by illegal fishing or by becoming entangled in fishing nets.
The WWF and the MRC both have projects here assisting in trying to protect and save them, but they seem to be fighting a losing battle.

At the end of the day, we all meet back at the hotel and I finally got to watch my sunset :-)

After which, I was happy and the Khmers were slightly perplexed, but we all went out for dinner – yes, fish and rice… The Mekong Restaurant; Tom Yam Trey (fish soup), fried fish, minced beef in gravy (?sort of?) and a stir-fry of pork and mixed vegetables (my choice!)

Saturday the 4th
Off to Kompong Cham
05:30 and there is a knocking on my hotel room door?! What is going on, what time is it, aghh. It is my colleague Bo who cheerfully informs me that the taxi is now coming for us at 06:30; I think that I nearly flattened his nose when I slammed the door shut!
0615 and I am standing on the pavement outside the hotel loading my rucksack into the boot, uggh. Far, far too early.

10:30 and the taxi is filled with red dust from the ‘new’ road, I am blind, thirsty and more than a little irritable when I am dropped off at the crossroads outside Kompong Cham town. The boys are heading back to Phnom Penh for the weekend, I am stopping off for a night in the provinces to visit a colleague.

Before embarking on the next stage of transportation

A bowl of chicken noodle soup and 4 iced coffees helped take a couple of layers of dust off the inside of my mouth and throat, only a couple more left…

11:00 and I climb into a minibus (22 people plus luggage in a 12 seater) for the 18 kilometre trip to Oraing Au village. Once at the village market I phone Rena’s brother for specific directions to their house, Surprisingly he is in the market waiting for us and he turns up on his moto a few minutes later, the house is actually further out into the province, about another 20 kilometres away, so I get on the back of his Honda Cub 90 (with luggage) and set off down yet another dusty red dirt road. Blind again after 10 more seconds!

Arriving at the house I find a medium sized marquee being set up at the front of it, a dozen small round tables with chairs being carried in and lots of old Khmer women at the side peeling vegetables and scraping the flesh out of coconuts. After a round of hellos and introductions I am shown into the house and where I will be staying.

It was a fairly lazy afternoon, sat around drinking tea and most pointedly, yet politely, turning down repeated offers for a glass of homemade snake wine. A large plastic jar, similar to an old sweet shop jar, filled with neat homemade alcohol, in which has been marinating for several months the corpses of three medium sized snakes, half a dozen scorpions and god knows how many poisonous centipedes and millipedes. No way on earth am I touching that !

Early in the evening, an hour or two before sunset, several of us head off to be shown some local ruins – a place of ‘great magic’. After we hike through the hard and dry rice paddies for about 30 minutes we come to a small group of rather large, old, trees. Inside this ring of trees there are several large mounds, 6 to 8 feet high, 12 to 15 feet in diameter. The largest and most central of these mounds has a small offerings shrine at the base, where the Khmers light incense and mutter some Khmer prayers for ‘health, wealth and happiness’ as is the custom. They explain to me that the Bo tree turns into a giant snake during certain magical nights or festivals and that it will then hunt down and kill any tomb raiders or looters that have disturbed this sacred place, the look of wonder and certainty on his face prevents me from smirking or questioning this local belief.

Offerings made and local myths explained we then head back to the village, where people stop and chat and it starts to feel slightly like a royal procession; all of the local family’s friends have to be introduced and they all want to shake the hand of the white man.

Arriving back at the house we discover that even more distant relatives have turned up for what ever party / festival / ceremony this is.

Dinner is being served and the drinks are starting to flow – brandy and beer … mixed together…
Dinner is a curious mixture of dishes: barbequed spareribs (good) chicken heads soup (bad) beef mince soaked in gravy (okay) fried chicken stomach, intestines and offal (very bad)

Sunday the 5th
Back to Phnom Penh
Feeling somewhat groggy after all that beer and brandy; not too mention the early wake up call this morning, courtesy chanting monks and multiple guests arriving at 05:00
So it is off to the local market for breakfast, and more importantly, coffee.
A 15 minute moto ride there with two of Rena’s brothers

Having had some rice and coffee we head back to the house to discover that the ceremonial eating has begun. I am sat down at a table with the old woman whose house and ceremony it is and we are all fed beef and sugar palm root curry…

All too soon it is midday and time for us to head back to the main road to try and flag down a minibus that is heading to Phnom Penh. The family ask us all to stay another night – ‘tonight we have Khmer dancing and karaoke!’ as appealing as that sounds though (ha right) we have to be back in the office on Monday.

Monday the 6th
Back in the Office
My provincial wanderings on hold for a couple of days, it is back to the office and the work – and of course, the power cuts… three or four hours every day in the office and a couple of hours three or four nights a week at home

Tuesday the 7th
Another semi-interview today
This one with a business here that offers management training to other businesses, NGO’s and Government Departments. No current job opening but more of the usual ‘ifs and maybes’
Nice Thai meal in the restaurant next door though, ran by the boss’s wife !

Also, just been told this afternoon that we are going on another field trip tomorrow to Prey Veng province – yes, another dry, dust bowl, of a province. At least this one is only a couple of hours away from Phnom Penh and only involves an overnight stay. Think I will have an early night.

Wednesday the 8th
Off to Prey Veng
Taxi to Neak Loeurn town in Prey Veng province: beggars, hawkers, gawpers’ ratty hotel, dusty roads, oppressive heat, rice and fish three times a day. I have to say, Neak Loeurn town is not my favourite place in Cambodia. The only reason for the town’s existence is that it is the only point at which you can cross the river if you are heading East, South-East or travelling overland to Viet Nam. While you are queuing to buy your ticket, buying your ticket, waiting for the ferry, on the ferry and shuffling off the ferry at the other side you undergo a constant barrage of people trying to sell you things, pressing tings in your face, grabbing your arm, begging and generally trying to part you with money (which is your only reason for existing in there eyes)

The one saving grace of field trips to Prey Veng province is that the fishing communities are quite remote from this horrible little ferry town, which means that we get to spend most of the day travelling up and down the river on boats, picnicking for lunch on an island under coconut trees and enjoying the peace and quiet - if only the picnic had not consisted of rice and fish…

Thursday the 9th
Back to Phnom Penh
Early start off to Prey Veng town, the provincial capital. The deputy chief of fish for Prey Veng province stayed at the hotel with us last night – I suspect that he and Chhea were out singing karaoke until the small hours while I was in bed early suffering with a cold and headache - not sure which would have been more suffering, the cold or the karaoke?

However, they are up early, if not bright, and we take his car for the 85K trip; a journey that takes us nearly 2 hours thanks to bad roads and his amazingly slow driving. The afternoon saw a meeting with the local chief of fish and some paperwork, bit and pieces.

Afternoon - Over crowded taxi back, 5 people in the front – including one between the driver and the drivers’ door, 5 of us on the back seat, the boot full of plastic bottles containing cheap petrol smuggled in from Viet Nam – close my eyes and just pray …

19:00 and back in Phnom Penh. A quiet night in for me, after a very long shower washing off all the dry, red, dust that had welded itself to me over the last 48 hours.

Saturday the 11th
Hello, Goodbye
Had leaving drinks for Lorna, with Margaret and Pete. We all arrived in Cambodia at the same time, on the same flight, to start roles as volunteers here. Nicky, the other member of our arrival team has already left, Lorna leaves on the 14th and Peter and Margaret leave in March, leaving just me out of our Feb 2004 group.

Quite sad really.

Thursday the 16th
Off to Kompong Thom
A slightly better quality field trip this one, Dr Ito the head of JICA, the Japanese organisation that funds this particular project, is going with us; so rather than a small, overloaded, shared taxi we are travelling up in his huge Toyota Prado, with only 4 people in it !

Taking a midmorning coffee break at the town of Skun we get out of the car and are beset, as always, buy vendors of deep fried tarantula. Their round plastic trays piled high dozens of the provinces best known snack. A couple of years back, full of bravado and beer at the time, I tried to eat one. All I managed was a single bite. That fleshy body lump was cold, greasy and so unpleasant tasting that I could only chew it a couple of times before spitting it out and claiming defeat, much to the amusement of my Khmer travelling companions who were happily munching their way through half a dozen of them.

Poor Dr Ito, a relative new comer to Cambodia had to look at their trays for a couple of seconds before he realised what they were, when he did he backed away very slowly and very perplexed. It seems that they had killed his appetite as well.

Arriving in Kompong Thom we meet the local chief of fish, outline the plans for the next stage of the project and generally get his okay for the work that is going to be done is his jurisdiction. He ups the ante a little by requesting various other things to be done, then suggests that he can arrange for the work to be carried out if we just give him the cash and go back to Phnom Penh…

Thankfully Chhea is fairly senior back at the Ministry and he is able to deal with this non too subtle attempt at bribery in a Khmer fashion – he ignores it and then says that we are leaving the meeting to go and do the work ourselves !

Wednesday the 22nd
During the afternoon I got some news that really shook me.

The Ginger Monkey Bar in Phnom Penh opened a couple of years ago, about the time that I arrived in Phnom Penh. We used to go there quite regularly at one point. The owner, a guy from Birmingham called David Mitchell, was funny and friendly, the bar was the most decorative and interesting in Phnom Penh; the owner of the building was a sculptor, making copies of the bas relief’s at Angkor Wat for tourist and the local market and when he left, he left the walls of the bar covered in huge recreations of ancient battles depicted in stone carvings.

Dave the owner seemed to give away more free beers than he sold, was always happy and joking and we had many good times there.

Well, it seems that late Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning a homeless drug addict broke into the flat at the back of the bar, where Dave and his girlfriend Jane live. The actual sequence of events is a bit blurry and has been reported slightly differently by different agencies, but the upshot of whatever happened is that Jane was slashed very badly about the face and throat and Dave was stabbed to death trying to save her.

The police caught the assailant not 15 minutes later; the criminal mastermind being 25 yards away from the bar washing blood off of his clothes and knife.

He claims that he was looking for food and got scared.

Pointless, stupid, pathetic, shocking and utterly meaningless.

Jane is in Bangkok getting treated for her wounds; nobody is quite sure yet what funeral arrangements are for Dave

News:
http://www.channel4.com/news/content/news-storypage.jsp?id=926042

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10369787

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3582472a10,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1717376,00.html

Friday the 24th
Update

Was watching Khmer TV last night, well it was on in the background as I was reading, when the Khmer equivalent of Crimewatch came on. This program usually consists of the local police in the local police station showing which criminals they have caught that day, parading them around before the TV camera, along with the evidence. There is a large Ghanaian guy standing handcuffed next to the police chief’s desk, the police chief opens up a FedEx box in which half a dozen bags of heroin are spilled out onto the table. The police chief for the district points at the accused, points at the heroin and is talking about something I can not be bothered to try and follow in Khmer. The only reason I looked up from my book is that it is very unusual to have a Westerner arrested.

I should also point out that this show is on every evening, usually before the accused is even charged in the courts the following morning.

Then ‘he’ comes on screen; 18 year old Tong Chen. Homeless street urchin and drug addict. Charged that very morning with the premeditated murder of Dave Mitchell.

The handcuffed Chen holding the long bowed knife he used on Dave and Jane, held is instructed to hold it up further for the cameras. I feel somewhat light-headed.

Next the police show crime scene photos on their digital camera, Dave laying on the floor, eyes closed and covered in blood, I fight down the urge to vomit. Transfixed by the unimaginable horror of this image before me I can say nothing, do nothing, just stare unbelieving and numb at the screen for the next 30 seconds until the next criminal is presented to the viewing public.

RIP Dave Ginger Monkey

2006-02-23T07:44:00.000+07:00

A British bar owner was stabbed to death by an 18-year-old youth during an apparent botched robbery in the Cambodian capital, police and neighbours said on Wednesday.

The youth, a street kid called Tong Chen, was arrested in a park as he cleaned blood off his knife after stabbing David Mitchell, from Walsall, five times in the chest, police investigator Neang Sopheap said.

New Zealand journalist Jane Nye, who worked as managing editor of Cambodian Scene magazine and who had been staying in the same house, sustained injuries to her neck, hands and head and was evacuated to Thailand for medical treatment.

"The boy could have climbed up the wall to steal their property but woke them up," Neang Sopheap said after a preliminary investigation of the scene, which still had pools of blood on the floor.

Chhum Sara, who lived next door to Mitchell's Ginger Monkey bar -- a favourite hang-out for Phnom Penh expatriates and tourists -- said she heard Nye screaming "Help me! Help me!", adding that she feared her friend might die of blood loss.

Under Cambodian law, Tong Chen could face life imprisonment if found guilty of murdering Mitchell, who had been running the Ginger Monkey for several years.

Sher – E - Punjab: Phnom Penh curry house

2006-02-15T14:42:00.000+07:00

As we entered the restaurant, at 6PM on a Sunday evening, we were surprised to see that there was only one table left free. For a restaurant that has only been open for three weeks, and has done no advertising yet, that is quite a feat. Even more so in a city likes Phnom Penh where the restaurant and bar markets are already oversaturated.

Taking the last free table we are handed menus by a smiling Khmer girl, whom then returns to fill up our glasses with iced water; swiftly dispensing with that nonsense we order up some large, 1 litre, bottles of Beer Lao, US$2. No sooner had we returned to the menus, when our smiling, yet nervous, waitress returned bearing complimentary poppadom and pickles.

After we had placed our order, with a very well spoken young Indian lad, we started discussing the various merits of the other existing curry houses in Phnom Penh, we had got no further than saying a few harsh things about one certain establishment when the charming young lad had reappeared with three complementary glass of Johnny Walker Black; the reason he gave was ‘because it is Sunday’, well, never let it be said that I did not like Sundays’ – chin chin.

As the discussion led further into Phnom Penh’s culinary past – Peace Man “there was this curry house on Monivong Boulevard about 7 years ago…” - I scanned the room, taking in our fellow diners and picking up hints of their conversation. There was a trio of young ladies fresh of the boat and on holiday in Cambodia; a youngish expatriate guy with his Khmer wife and her brother (who seemed somewhat suspicious of the food), an older Singaporean gentleman was dining alone in one corner, content to pick at his meal slowly over a long time. On one of the tables out side sat a very elderly gentleman, that I believe may have been American – the Red Sox tee-shirt and baseball cap gave me this clue. As well as two middle aged Sikhs, complete with turbans; all in all quite the cultural mixture.

Before long our food started to turn up.

The Governor’s meal turn up first, a Chicken Tikka Masala, US$3:50 served in a miniature copy of a balti dish. He pronounced it rich and spicy – much like his good self.

My Chicken Rogan Josh US$3:50 was equally excellent, a medium to hot in spiciness. The surprise came when I flaked one of the lumps of chicken apart to discover that the rich brown colour of the sauce carried all the way through the meat, obviously this dish had been well marinated and cooked slowly.

The Peace Man was a little miffed that his Gosht Mutton Masala, US$3:50 did not come in a balti style dish, but rather on an ordinary plate, but that soon passed as he tasted his curry. The mutton was soft and tender, again speaking of proper preparation and cooking; rather than just fry up some meat and toss in a jar of sauce.

Only the Governor had bothered to order basmati rice US$0:50, Peace Man and myself are both Midlanders from the UK and as such had grown up with large Indian and Pakistani populations – in short, we eat our curries with bread, not rice. And what a selection we had ordered; Butter Naan US$1:20, Tandoori Roti US$0:70, Garlic Naan US$1:30, chapatti’s US$0:50 – okay, we may have gone a little overboard on the bread, but it was well worth it.

At this point, the Peace Man went over to the owner and started requesting some obscure Indian singers CD to be played, he returned happy, and slightly surprised that they had it and were happy to play it for him.

As we had finished eating, the nervous, grinning (near gurning) waitress reappeared with three small bowls of complimentary banana slices. Only a small finger banana worth each, but a pleasant enough nibble after a warming curry.

A few more beers followed, the restaurant started to thin out a little and we felt thoroughly satiated.

Along with the bill came three little pots of the traditional, liquorish flavoured sweets that are served as a digestif in India. All things considered, we deemed the US$26 bill quite reasonable, once we had taken into consideration the US$12 worth of beer.

The one small downside I suppose was the inexperience of the staff, the girls’ grins hiding just how nervous they really were; but that should improve with time, or with hiring experienced staff.

A couple of days later, I had just been stood up for Brunch on the riverfront by a ‘busy’ Khmer colleague. Rather than endure an hour on the front being pestered to buy postcards, books and my shoes polished every couple of minutes I slipped a couple of blocks up the road for a spot of Indian Luncheon at the Sher-E-Punjab.

Again, upon being seated I received complementary poppadoms and pickles. However, this time I opted for a Gosht Mutton Masala US$3.50 supported by a Butter Naan bread US$1:30
I also noted that on the menu they carried 42 different vegetarian main courses, with 15 vegetarian starters; that should keep those pussies among you who are a squeamish about red meat and bloody steaks quiet for a while, or then again, maybe not.

The meal appeared so swiftly that I thought that they must have brought me somebody else’s, but no, it was mine. I had not even had enough time to read through all the job advertisements in the Cambodia (rarely) Daily (almost).

The mutton, again, had obviously been well marinated and cooked slowly, it was tender, it was juicy and had none of the usual, tough, characteristics of the meat. The sauce was onion, tomatoes, lentils and coriander and had just enough spices to make it a comfortable ‘medium’ for a lunchtime – no beer – curry.

Afterwards, I again received a complementary banana and the bill came with the little liquorish flavoured titbits.

As I left the restaurant for the second time in as many days feeling as replete as before and seriously considering taking the afternoon off work to lay in front of the telly, on the sofa, stroking my increasingly large restaurant reviewers belly.

Hint Hint...

2006-02-08T09:14:00.000+07:00

Budget flights arrive in South-East Asia

Cut-price air travel has arrived in South-East Asia - and it is making the same kind of impact as it did in Europe and the United States.

Low-cost airlines have outperfomed higher-priced rivals in recent years

Well-established national carriers that have enjoyed near-monopolies are finally being challenged.

The newcomers use a similar business model to internet-based operations in Europe and the US.

Because of the limited access to computers in some countries in the region, tickets are also available through travel agents.

But the same principle applies: the earlier you book, the cheaper the ticket.

One of the main players is the Kuala Lumpur-based Air Asia, a company that has grown rapidly since it started four years ago.

It recently made a canny decision to buy advertising at English Premiership football matches - ensuring massive exposure to potential customers around the world.

New destinations
Air Asia's chief executive, Tony Fernandes, feels he has thrown down a challenge to the established carriers in the region - although an inability to obtain landing rights in Singapore clearly rankles.

"It is a country that is supposed to welcome open competition, but they are scared of us," he said.

Not all Cambodia's airlines have been commercially successful

"We will open up new destinations. People can go to Bali and Bangkok to shop. It is going to be a loss for Singapore."

Another of those new destinations is Cambodia. In October, Air Asia started flying from Phnom Penh and Siem Reap to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.

With no major carriers of its own, Cambodia operates an "open skies" policy - and the low-cost carrier has been given a warm welcome.

There were already two airlines offering direct flights to Bangkok. But the effect on the cost of flying to Malaysia, previously only possible with Malaysia Airlines, has been dramatic.

It is now possible to book a return from Phnom Penh for as little as $41, including taxes.

Even though it has been struggling financially, Malaysia Airlines was forced to respond with price cuts of its own.

Welcome change
Jet Star Asia, backed by the Australian carrier Qantas, has made a similar impact by starting flights between Singapore and Cambodia.
Singapore Airlines' regional carrier, SilkAir, used to charge $400 for a round trip from Phnom Penh.

More and more people will now be able to afford to come to Cambodia

Cambodian Tourism Minister Lay Prohas

The arrival of Jet Star Asia's service has prompted SilkAir to cut its prices in half.

It is a welcome change for people in Cambodia to have a choice over which airline to fly.

The country's own carriers have an unhappy recent history, and Phnom Penh is littered with the offices of companies that have ceased to operate.

Those still flying have to battle an image problem.

Local airlines have a reputation for cancelling flights at short notice, and there are also safety concerns.

PMT Air flies elderly Antonovs to domestic destinations, but its reputation was tarnished by an accident on landing in Ratanakkiri last month. Nobody was seriously hurt, but the United Nations subsequently barred its staff from flying with the airline.

Royal Khmer is trying to rebuild its business after more than a year out of action. It offers flights to several destinations in South East Asia as well as Cambodia's tourist centre, Siem Reap.

Abandoned planes
The outlying parts of Phnom Penh Airport are a testament to the fate of most Cambodian airlines.

Idle Antonovs and Chinese Y7 passenger planes in several different liveries line up next to about 20 abandoned MiG fighter jets in various stages of decay on the weed-strewn concrete strip.

A clearly decommissioned President Airlines jet sits behind a fence in the middle of a well-kept garden.

The arrival of Air Asia and Jet Star Asia suggests that the remaining local carriers will have to improve quickly if they are not to go the same way. Cambodia's Tourism Minister, Lay Prohas, takes a pragmatic view.

Phnom Penh airport has its fair share of decaying planes

"More and more people will now be able to afford to come to Cambodia," he said.

"To have Jet Star Asia and Air Asia is a wonderful thing for tourism. People will have more money to spend on other things, like accommodation, entertainment and souvenirs."

As tourism is the number two industry in Cambodia - and growing rapidly - the increased competition among South-East Asian airlines has come at exactly the right time.

Across the region, eyebrow-raising deals are on offer.

Air Asia's current promotion is for two million free tickets; or you could fly to Darwin in Northern Australia for one Singapore dollar with Tiger Airways, partly-owned by Singapore Airlines.

Passengers still have to pay the usual charges and taxes, but travel bargain-hunters will be hoping this golden era lasts rather longer than some of Cambodia's airlines

Phnom Penh, Street 278: a thriving little back road.

2006-01-30T12:40:00.000+07:00

Part One: The Western Stop Offs, East of Monivong

Street 278 is part of my daily rat-run to the office and back. Four times a day I drive up and down its length from Wat Mohomontrei all the way to its conclusion at Street 51. It is less crowded and congested than the same stretch of Sihanouk Boulevard that it runs parallel to.

However, over the last few months there has been a noticeable increase in traffic on it and businesses along it, specifically along the stretch between Street 63 and Street 51, where several new cafés and restaurants have opened, plus it is that time of year again, when the $5 and $10 guest houses along it are beginning to fill up, most of them oddly enough being called golden something. So as I traverse its length, I occasionally stop off for a coffee, or small snack.

Near and Far; Bar and Restaurant
As I enter the restaurant for the first time, I warm to the waiter immediately, rather than the usual singsong greeting of ‘hello, hello sir, how are you’ the first thing that the waiter says to me as I stroll into the café is ‘wow, good bike; big and strong!”

As I sit down I order a strong Vietnamese coffee $1, and continue to peruse the menu while that is being dealt with. There is not anything on the menu that I would consider breakfast food – although some people might consider ‘black wheat pancakes’ breakfast material although these would probably be the same people that consider ‘granola’ edible by humans and claim that that is a breakfast food as well.

I did momentarily consider the pancakes (I assume that they meant buckwheat) as I read through the various fillings; ham $4, seafood $5, Veg $2:75, chocolate $2, honey and lemon $2 – but nothing really leapt out at me.

As my coffee arrived, with cup-top dripper, I scanned through the rest of the dishes on offer out of curiosity; spaghetti carbonara $3:50, Seafood Tom Yam $4

The restaurant itself is pretty enough, especially when compared with the others in this street. Terracotta floor tiles, a sea of colour coordinated greens tinting everything; ashtrays, cups, saucers, walls, cloth lampshades, light green mosquito nets tied back as drapes, even the thick, heavy, cushions on the wide hardwood stools had a green check to them. Giving the whole place a warm, organic sort of feel. I would guess that somebody had put a bit of thought into designing the interior.

While I had not found anything I fancied breaking my fast on I would have to conclude that it was a pleasant little stop for coffee and a scan through the newspaper – perhaps one to remember on a lazy Sunday morning.

EU Food Restaurant No. 11. Tel: 023 993 220Open at 07:00AM
Having failed the day before to find a substantial, non~rice, breakfast I thought that I would try again with this place. The sign outside proclaimed ‘American Breakfast US$2’ so I figured that this could be worth a try, having placed my order I mulled over the rest of the food on the menu, ever keeping an eye out for an interesting venue. London Fish and Chips for US$3:50, although why London was beyond the menus explaining. A set ‘Asian Lunch’ for US$3:50 looked like it might be worth a try, consisting of; vegetable soup, fish in palm wine, boiled rice and fresh fruit.

Further breakfast options were also on the menu, borrowing a little from everywhere; Cheese and Tomato Omelette $1:50, Toasted Ham Sandwich $1:50, Rice Porridge (chicken, pork or beef) $1:50, assorted sweet pancakes $1 (no savoury options)

The restaurant is just a typical hole-in-the-wall affair, but for some reason, possibly the rattan walls with fake tendrils of ivy, you get the feeling after a while that you are sat in a tunnel of some sort. The chairs were comfy though and at least they had proper cloth napkins, rather than loo roll in a box.

After a rather short wait my breakfast turned up; consisting of; two fried eggs, one small rasher of bacon, two hard chipolata sized German style sausages, two slices of tomato, two slices of toast and a quarter of a slice of a processed cheese square(?) Part of which had been used to arranged a smiley face on the plate with the eggs as eyes. Humm.

Still what can one expect for $2. Leaving at around 07:30 (late for work!) I passed the only other customer that had came in while I was there, a backpacker type from the cheap hotel next-door, drinking a fruit shake and perusing the establishments copy of the Cambodia (almost) Daily.

Khmer Angkor RestaurantOpen 06:30AM until 10:30PM
A few days later, having skipped breakfast that day, and then having been driven out of the office by a power-cut, I decided to have a spot of brunch somewhere.

The Khmer Angkor is a double width hole in the wall just along from the EU Restaurant and Bar.

As I entered I started to wonder if I had made a mistake in trying here, the place looked somewhat down at heel, to say the least, as I strolled past an antique looking Chinese motorbike – a Sym, since you ask – I parked myself down at a tin table and pulled up a plastic chair.

Over wanders an ancient and venerable looking Khmer gentleman who greets me with a smooth sounding ‘bonjour messier’ and a toothless grin.

Ordering a mug of coffee $0:80, I started scrutinizing the menu, it seemed to offer a little bit of everything; fried eggs and bacon $2, barbequed pork ribs $2, burger and fries $2:50, Thai green chicken curry $2:70, chicken porridge $1-$1:70-$2:50 S/M/L.

Feeling reckless, I order myself a Spanish Omelette and further contemplate the Anchor cans at $0:80.

The cloth napkins and table clothes, seemed somewhat superfluous, rather like putting a racing faring on a Daelim.

My meal turned up in good time, while it was not exactly a Spanish omelette, it was a pretty good folded ham, mushroom and cheese omelette.

New Bird Bar and Restaurant: No 4 Tel:012 42 95 42
Being set slightly back from the road front, gives the New Bird just a little more peace and quiet, not to mention parking space for the larger motorbike, I had almost overlooked its recent opening. Strolling into the salmon coloured walls and dark rattan bamboo furniture was a welcome relief form the warm sun and a fan was quickly switched on by the waitress. I ordered a coffee $1, and set about reviewing the menu, not quite sure what it was that I fancied. The reason for that may have been the fact that it was 10:30AM, I had neglected to eat the evening before, being far to busy consuming gins and tonic and had consequently arrived to late in the office for breakfast, so by this point of the morning my head had stopped throbbing, but my stomach had started rumbling.

The menu offered English / American breakfast $3, it also had a host of more luncheon orientated foods; cheese burger and fries $3, bacon cheese burger $3, Philly cheese steak sandwich $4, as well as more locally sourced dishes such as; Thai green chicken curry $3 and Tom Yam (chicken, beef or shrimp) $3:50. There was also a surprisingly large selection of Mexican dishes; enchiladas, fajitas, nachos $4. But I was intrigued by the breakfast burrito $3. Now I greatly enjoy Mexican food, except when I have had it in Tijuana, but the idea of a ‘breakfast burrito’ always seemed to me to be an Americanised version of something, although some of the best Mexican food I have ever had has been in San Diego, CA, where we often washed it down with large glasses of 15 year old, oak aged, tequila. Anyhow, having never had one, I cast caution to the wind, order one up and then settle back down with the newspaper.

I am halfway through reading about Chea Sovanna getting a slap on the wrist from the Iron Man for being ‘too sexy for her song’ when the little darling of a waitress reappears with my cutlery, place mat and napkin; I briefly wonder what One-Eyed Jack would think of her miniskirt and Lycra crop-top before she is gone again and I move on to an amusing article about journalists in Cambodia being reprimanded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for ‘dressing like tourists’ in flowery shirts or tee-shirts when covering the Prime Ministers events – and quite rightly so, sloppy attire is a social plague; I mean, what is to be next, low slung jeans and builders bum cleavage to cover the Khmer Rouge Trials ?

In the middle of all this digression, my meal arrives; two fried burrito parcels on a bed of lettuce, topped of with homemade salsa and sour cream. Cutting into the package, I find them filled with ground beef and refried beans, the tortilla flaky, yet firm, and quite delicious; although personally I could have handled some fresh chillies in the mix. The ground beef was particularly tasty, being tender, juicy and of infinitely better quality than I would have expected.

Cambodian Electricity – aka Bloody EdC

2006-01-20T11:07:00.000+07:00

Power-cuts at the office are killing productivity; not to mention my motivation.

After half an hour of blackout the Ministry fires up its small generator which provide enough juice for a few PC’s but no lights and defiantly no air-con. At home, I do not even have any candles left!

Monday the 16th
AM No electricity in the office for 4 hours
Eve No electricity at home for 2 hour

Tuesday the 17th
PM No electricity in the office for 5 hours, go home

Wednesday the 18th
AM No electricity in the office for 3 hours
PM No electricity in the office for 2 hours
Eve No electricity at home for 3 hours

Thursday the 19th
AM No electricity in the office for 4 hours
Eve No electricity at home for 3 hours

Friday the 20th
AM No electricity in the office for 4 hours
Then the generator runs out of diesel and the Ministry has no more money to refill it

THIS IS GETTING SILLY !

Just for John... (apologies to the photographer)

2006-01-18T10:15:00.000+07:00

Cambodia's film industry rebounds; Schlock vs Art

2006-01-05T09:30:00.000+07:00

When Cambodia recently staged a national film festival, serious drama was in gruesomely short supply: almost half the entries were low-budget horror flicks.

It wasn't always thus.

In the 1960s, now-retired King Norodom Sihanouk was not only the patron of a Cambodian film industry; he was one of its most active practitioners. He wrote, directed and even acted in his own high-minded if formulaic romances and tragedies.

More than 300 Cambodian films were made during that vibrant era, some well-received in other Asian countries.

But when the communist, puritanical Khmer Rouge regime came to power in the mid-1970s it banned all kinds of entertainment and smashed cameras and film-making equipment.

As the country's spirit began to recover from the Khmer Rouge era, and economic revival took hold in the early 1990s, the industry began to rebound. More than 100 production houses sprang up, mostly using video equipment to churn out movies on a shoestring.

But most of them collapsed because of their amateurism, and the industry is still struggling to recover its former glory.

These days, about five movie making companies have the expertise and strong finances to succeed, said Chheng Sovanna, head of the Culture Ministry's movie production office.

"Most of them are accidental producers, who just spent US$3,000 on a camera, bought some tapes, turned on the light and started shooting," said Chheng Sovanna, himself a director who graduated from Russia's State Institute of Cinematography.

"We don't understand the way they make movies."
And the filmmakers lean more toward anarchy than artistry on screen.

At the recent festival, a typical movie featured a female vampire baring her canine teeth in a grin as she looked for prey. In "Nieng Arp," or "Lady Vampire," a flying female head with internal organs dangling beneath it chased a terrified couple in the dark.

Nine of the festival's 22 entries were in a similar vein.

"We make movies to suit the domestic market and the demand of our youths," said Korm Chanthy, the manager of FCI Productions, which made "Nieng Arp."

"They like to watch horror movies because they make them feel excited, thrilled and terrified," he said.

The government wasn't impressed. The filmmakers "injected too much hallucination and superstition" into their work, complained Culture Minister Prince Sisowath Panara Sirivuth.

"Their understanding of moviemaking is that it's just business," he said. "And they have this misperception that, without training, they can still make movies."

The government has touted the idea of establishing a film school, but in a country so poor and reliant on foreign aid as Cambodia the idea is unlikely to get off the ground anytime soon.

Korm Chanthy, 42, used to import medicine for the Health Ministry until five years ago, when he began writing scripts and directing movies on video after receiving some training in neighboring Thailand.

His small studio on the second floor of his Phnom Penh home _ accessible by climbing a steep and narrow metal staircase from a beauty parlor on the ground floor _ uses a mix of computer equipment for editing chores.

Another producer, 29-year-old Heng Tola, was looking to diversify his computer business when he founded Campro three years ago with several friends.

Making a movie takes Campro about three months and costs an average of US$30,000 (£á25,600), including about US$1,000 (£á853) for the lead actor, he said.

Despite the current taste for horror movies, Heng Tola believes a more serious trend is emerging, prompted in part by the resentment many Cambodians feel about its colonial past and toward domineering neighbors such as Thailand and Vietnam.

One of the festival entries was a nationalistic epic about a peasant protest against high tax imposed by Cambodia's colonial rulers, the French.

"The Cambodian movie is being reborn after a long absence. Its existence has been up and down, and the question now is how we can make it really stand," Heng Tola said.

The best movie trophy went to "The Crocodile" a tale of the heroism of a man who killed the beast responsible for the deaths of several people in his village.

It starred Cambodian pop singer Preap Sovath and cost more than US$100,000, making it perhaps the most expensive Cambodian production ever, said Eng Chhay Ngoun, whose Hang Meas Video Co. made it.

More than 100,000 people flocked to theaters in Phnom Pehn for its one month season in October.

PRESS RELEASE OF SPOKESMAN OF MINISTRY OF INTERIOR

2006-01-04T13:19:00.000+07:00

The last few days the media and other sources, in their own views, have disseminated and interpreted on information regarding the selection of village chief, deputy village chief, and village members.

To ensure that the public are aware of the basic principles of the selection of village chief, deputy village chief, and village members, spokesman of the Ministry of Interior would like to highlight once again that village is not the administrative level stipulated in the 1993 Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia. Article 30 of the Law on Sangkat-Commune Administration states that in the aim of enhancing the effective Sangkat-Commune administration, council of each Sangkat-Cornmune shall select a village chief for each village within their Sangkat-Comrnune
Village chief shall appoint a deputy village chief and a village members who will be her/his assistants,

Minister of the Ministry of Interior shall issue instruction on procedures to select village chief, assumption of [he position, replacement and the appointment of village chief’s assistants."

Therefore, the Constitution and law do not require direct vote from the people to select village chief, deputy village chief~ and village members.

On 22 December 2005, Excellency and Samdech Deputy Prime Ministers and Co-Minister of Interior convened a meeting which discussed and agreed that instruction of the Ministry of Interior on the selection of village chief, deputy village chief and village members must be based on the basic principles stipulated in the Constitution and law on Sangkat-Commune Administration, especially Article 30, and other relevant documents to implement these laws in order to strengthen local governance in democratic and decentralized processes.

In the same token, Excellency and Sanidech Deputy Prime Ministers, Co-Minister of Interior also have tasked technical staff to draft instruction on the selection of village chief, deputy village chief, and village members, which will be submitted for consideration by the Ministry of Interior in the forthcoming meeting in January 2006.

ADB $US15M Grant for Sustaining Livelihoods on Cambodia's Tonle Sap

2006-01-04T13:06:00.000+07:00

A US$15 million Asia Development Bank grant will help improve livelihoods and reduce poverty in the five provinces that adjoin the Tonle Sap in Cambodia.Despite the richness of its natural resources, the Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, provides an inadequate living for most people living on or near it. Many communities own no land and depend entirely on fishing and foraging.

"Tackling poverty in Cambodia means working with the rural poor, initially where livelihood assets are being fundamentally affected by unfavorable trends," says Rajat M. Nag, Director General, Mekong Department.

"Such trends are obvious in the Tonle Sap region; its indicators of poverty are even more negative than for the country as a whole."The project will help increase access to assets by establishing a livelihood fund to finance small-scale community-driven activities relating to social infrastructure, income-generation, and community fisheries.It will help form special interest groups, assist organizations in formulating proposals for funding, and familiarize government institutions at the central, provincial, and commune levels with the livelihood fund.

The project covers 37 communes surrounding the lake, in which there are 316 villages with a population of 287,430."The asset base of the rural poor must be enhanced and developed.

Without improvements, investments in the Tonle Sap region will become progressively less productive," adds Olivier Serrat, an ADB Senior Project Economist.

At the same time, the project will ensure that the Tonle Sap's core areas are protected by establishing a management system that is compatible with biodiversity conservation.

Core areas are securely protected sites for conserving biodiversity, monitoring disturbed ecosystems, and undertaking research and other low-impact uses such as education.

High population growth in Cambodia is increasing the number of people who depend on the natural resources of the Tonle Sap. Pressing threats to the great lake include overexploitation of fisheries and wildlife resources, conversion of the flooded forest to agriculture, collection of fuel wood from the flooded forest, and widespread deforestation in the watersheds.

The project is part of ADB's Tonle Sap Initiative, a partnership of organizations and people working to meet the poverty and environment challenges of the Tonle Sap. This involves a suite of highly integrated loan, grant, and technical assistance projects to promote pro-poor and sustainable economic growth, access to assets, and management of natural resources and the environment.

ADB's grant, which covers 74% of the project's total estimated cost of $20.3 million, comes from its Asian Development Fund. The Government of Finland will provide a $4.7 million grant, and the Government of Cambodia will shoulder the balance of $600,000.

The Ministry of Interior is the executing agency for the project, which is due for completion in December 2009.

How donors feel when funds are 'diverted'

2006-01-04T13:03:00.000+07:00

IT is all about being transparent from the start when diverting money from one cause to another.

That's what some donors and charity officials told The New Paper.

Said Ms Josephine Lee, 56, a civil servant: 'The article stated specifically that the money would go to setting up libraries, buying reading materials and improving classroom conditions.

'Not funding the trip of three RJC teachers to go there and do some training on creative sciences.

'I'm not discounting the work of the volunteers, but it's just not right to tell donors one thing, and then use the money in another way.'

Another donor, Madam Lee Yew Huang, 59, an administrative assistant, said seeing the pictures of the poor children in Laos or Cambodia made her want to donate, and help improve their school.

Said Madam Lee, who donated $10 to the Metro Fund in 2003: 'But now, I find that out of the $158,000 raised in 2002, only $6,100 went to this charity that was featured, and it wasn't even to buy books or build libraries as published.'

Mr Ho Ka Wei, 31, a civil servant, said: 'Unless I know my money will go to the people I read about, and not for air tickets for volunteers to visit these people, I will not donate.'
Said Mr David Ong, president of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (Singapore): 'At the time of appeal for donations, it is important to let donors know how you will disburse your funds. Does the money go directly to beneficiaries?

'But donors must also ask the right questions - on how exactly the funds will be used, and if the project... can be sustained.'

Such information was made available in this case.

Last year's Metro for Children fundraising campaign had stated on the SIF website that it hoped to raise $140,000 for Singapore volunteers to carry out projects in Cambodia.

The SIF website also explained that donations to the fund would allow Singapore volunteers to work with three charities in Cambodia.

Should money be always put in the hands of the beneficiaries?

CORRUPT?
Some donors feel giving the money raised directly to the charities involved may not be the best way to disburse funds.

Said Mr Chris Wan, 29, an engineer: 'As donated funds sometimes go unaccounted for, or into the wrong or corrupt hands, especially in Third World countries, funding volunteers may be the best way to ensure the funds are used primarily for charitable purposes.'

The head of a voluntary welfare organisation here, who declined to be named, agreed.
Of the Padetc-SIF case, he said: 'This may simply be an issue of poor communication between the funding agency, and the beneficiary, not so much a matter of ethics. As long as the Singaporean volunteers go out there and do good work, the money has been well-spent.'

TOUCHY ISSUE
A spokesman from the National Council of Social Service said it has not received any complaints about SIF's fundraising practices.

The use of charity dollars has become a touchy issue after the NKF scandal.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer gave the National Kidney Foundation a grant of $75,000 so doctors could be trained to improve their management of patients on dialysis.

Instead, NKF used part of the funds to print Christmas cards for an event organised by the Kids and Teens Marketing department.

A Pfizer spokesman said, in an e-mail reply to TNP's questions: 'The disbursement of the fund was left to the recipient to manage for the purpose intended.

'We feel it is best to leave the matter in the hands of the experts and the authorities who are looking into the matter.'

2005 in News Quotes

2006-01-02T10:39:00.001+07:00

January
"As a new exploration area for ChevronTexaco, Cambodia could offer the potential to build on our already very strong position in the Gulf of Thailand."
-John Watson, president, ChevronTexaco Overseas Petroleum.

"This is a flagrant violation of not only the Refugee Convention but the Convention Against Torture."
-Brad Adams, Asia Director, Human Rights Watch, on the arrest and feared deportation of Vietnamese Montagnards.

"If he [Hun Sen] still has enough energy to maintain the position of prime minister, he remains to continue his position, which it is up to the party to give to him."
-Heng Samrin, speaking before the CPP party congress on who would be the party's candidate for PM in 2008 elections.

"[We have to] stop saying to the communities we are going to demine their land - this is not true and not even honest."
-Christian Provoost, coordinator of mine action and injury prevention, Handicap International Belgium.

"This is not strange to me. Always there is no justice - if there was justice maybe this would be strange to me. If the trial is fair, I will praise the judge and write him a letter, but it is not."
-Sok Sam Oeun, director, the Cambodian Defenders Project, commenting on irregularities in the trial for three Muslim men convicted of plotting to bomb the US and British embassies.

"Among the 80 women, there are many who it seems [were] taken away and illegally confined by this NGO."
-Foreign Minister Hor Nam Hong, speaking in Paris on Jan 10 about the NGO Afesip.

"We call on the interministerial committee once again to conduct a neutral, fair, unbiased investigation into all aspects of the case, especially the initial police investigation and the process that led to the order of the release of the eight suspects."
-Afesip lawyer Aarti Kapoor, responding to Hor Nam Hong's comments on Jan 12.

"Men might have a wife and children, but they want to have sex for fun. Men hear information from gay, transgender that if sex with wife is not so fun, sex with man more fun. Then they try it and like it."
-Meas Chanthan, program assistant, Urban Sector Group.

"If we come here and no one helps, we will not be able to afford to come again. We'll just wait and die."
-Koy Horn, 52, one of 80 farmers from Takeo who came to the National Assembly on January 24 to protest lack of food.

"It's still ongoing. There hasn't been any substantial progress yet."
-Ramarat Sarabanamuttu of the World Food Programme, speaking on January 25 about negotiations with the government on the theft of up to $2 million worth of rice.

"When my fortuneteller says that I have good luck, the other members of the government have to be happy with their positions."
-PM Hun Sen speaking on January 25, days before the CPP party congress.

"I think that he [Hun Sen] is a politician and he can make an announcement as a prime-ministerial candidate. I am the partner in the coalition government [with the Cambodian People's party], I have no choice but to support him."
-Prince Norodom Ranariddh speaking on January 27 before the CPP party congress.

February
"Freshie boy is just a bridge to catch another career. If we want to catch the cub, we have to get into the tiger cave."
-Cheat Vibol, commenting Feb 4 on the Hello Freshie Boy and Girl 2005 contest.

"When they're weak or tired, or just have a headache, they think they need an IV. And most doctors make good money charging them to have it."
-Dr Sim Piseth, Surya Medical Services, commenting on the overuse of IV treatment.

"I strongly advise all international financial institutions - particularly the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank - to add their voice to the chorus of concern and to consider a suspension of operations in Cambodia until the corrupt leaders get the message that tyranny will not be tolerated."
-US Senator Mitch McConnell, responding on Feb 3 to the withdrawal of Parliamentary immunity of three SRP members.

"I think [Prime Minister] Hun Sen has learned he can do pretty much anything he wants, and after a few days everyone stops talking about it."
-A Western diplomat in Phnom Penh, commenting on the same issue.

"People see the Chinese are good in business, so they want to do like them."
-Li Seng Heng coffin shop owner Im Sreng, commenting on the increase in demand for Chinese-style burials by Cambodians.

"Even if the commission examines a report and finds a lack of transparency or irregularities [the National Assembly] will not punish the individual responsible."
-Cheam Yeap, Chairman of the Assembly's Finance Commission.

"The justice system is a joke. There is no sense of justice or democracy. We have to start over."
-Stacie Loucks, International Republican Institute, on the American-funded NGO's decision to halt programs.

"I would like to thank you for telling me about this. If you tell me, you are my good partner." -General Un Sokunthea, head of the Department of Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection, when told on Feb 17 that police were involved in bribery.

"I'm positive the AIDS rate is going to rapidly increase if there isn't immediate intervention. But it may be too late."
-Graham Shaw, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, on the increasing use of amphetamines in Cambodia.

"I think it will be impossible for the government to think seriously about demobilizing because the army is the backbone of totalitarianism. It's the tool used to control the population, not to serve the people."
-SRP MP Son Chhay, commenting on the RCAF appointment of 214 new stars for generals.

"I will play hide and seek with the authorities and if they can find me they can arrest me." -Chhouk Rin, Feb 22, on the Supreme Court's ruling to uphold his life sentence.

March
"The attack was Vorn's duty, he was a region commander and Paet ordered [it]. There are many attackers still alive and living in Phnom Vour. Ninety percent of attackers are still here, you can ask them."
-Chhouk Rin, convicted of involvement in the deaths of three Western backpackers, denies he did it.

"They seem to get government contracts very easily. But it's better than having all the employees stealing the money."
-An industry source commenting on Sokimex's efforts to secure ticket rights for more temples.

"At the beginning I was afraid, but now I'm used to it. I can catch more than a hundred a day."
-Em Sem, who makes a living catching scorpions, netting him more than 30,000 riel daily.

"Donor countries which give recommendations are kind, but they don't know what the Khmers need."
-PM Hun Sen, on Mar 14, explaining his decision to no longer honor his promise to halt land concessions.

"The eviction was carried out with excessive use of force in violation of the law and provisions of the International Covenants on Human Rights by which Cambodia is bound."
-Margo Picken, director, UN Cambodian Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights on Mar 22, referring to use of force by police to evict villagers from land near Poipet.

"Every day Ruom Ritt is writing criticism about the government, if he does not criticize this one, then he criticizes the other one. Cambodia has only this kind of people, that's why it's like that. He is old, why doesn't he go to the pagoda?"
-Hun Sen speaking on Mar 28, responding to King Norodom Sihanouk's pen pal Ruom Ritt.

April
"In the States, for joyriding, we'd be out the same day. I got the feeling that the guy [prosecutor] had some real anguish towards Americans. They see us like we had our big chance to go to America and we fucked it up. We got in trouble and got sent back, so now they see us as garbage."
-Yuthea 'Chu' Chhoeuth, a Cambodian-American deported back to Cambodia for crimes committed in the US, sentenced by a Phnom Penh court on Apr 1 to five years in prisonfor robbery.

"They are trying to make a cake with no flour. We have made no such agreement."
-Te Duong Dara, director general, the Cambodian National Petroleum Authority, on claims by an American company that they had been given offshore exploration rights.

"I believe that the destruction that occurred between 1975 and 1979 cannot be forgotten. I think that the Khmer Rouge trial has to be fair and independent to provide justice to the victims who suffered from this cruel regime. It is a step toward peace and national reconciliation and will help Cambodia to adhere to the rule of law."
-National Police Chief Hok Lundy, reflecting on the 30-year anniversary of the April 17, 1975 fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge.

"I think that within the next 15 years there will be no water to use, and the temples will also be affected when there is no forest to protect them."
-Vann Sophanna, author of a report of rampant land grabbing in Siem Reap.

"Impunity is a gangrene that undermines the fabric of Cambodian society. Although this phenomenon is well-documented, the Prime Minister and his government persist, in an ostrich-like way, to deny it and to say it does not exist."
-Peter Leuprecht, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Human Rights in Cambodia, in an Apr 19 statement in Geneva.

"The report of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General does not reflect the real situation in Cambodia. This report does not consider Cambodia within the context of its historic tragedy which explains the complexity of the situation and the difficulties with which Cambodia has had to face in order to resolve following the years of troubles and total destruction."
-Chheang Vun, Cambodian ambassador to the UN, responds to Leuprecht's commentson Apr 19.

"Come and continue the proceedings. If [Rainsy] loses, he will just pay for the compensation, but if he has made no mistake, then his parliamentary immunity will be restored."
-PM Hun Sen speaking at a Apr 29 Council of Ministers meeting.

May
"The bank has clung to the notion that the mafia-style logging syndicates which have ravaged Cambodia's forests can be reformed."
-A Global Witness statement released on May 4.

June
"The US is leading the fight against terrorism, and they worked with us to arrest Yasith. I think that this [arrest] is not only from the demands of the Cambodian government, but from also the world."
-Prum Sokha, Secretary of State, Ministry of Interior.

"My body feels very hot when I get drunk [and] I always hurt myself. Sometimes I walk and hit myself with a wall or tree and sometimes I fall down on the ground unconscious."
-RCAF soldier Chhoun Saveoun describes his moderate drinking habits at the launch of a campaign to get soldiers to drink less on June 13.

"It's not true that the villagers were forced into an agreement. But later NGOs were [in the village] and they encouraged the people to be angry."
-Kham Khoeun, Ratanakkiri provincial governor, explaining why villagers in O'Yadav district were upset with being forced to sell their land.

"Progress on the land issue has been very disappointing. We continue to see land grabbing and weak implementation of the land concession framework. The indicators, which we all agreed upon during the last CG-meeting in December, so far have been largely missed."
-German Ambassador Pius Fischer commenting after a June 14 government-donor meeting to review 32 performance indicators.

"Samdech Hun Sen... does not allow me any power, and I am happy that he takes all the responsibility for this issue."
-King Father Norodom Sihanouk on June 22, referring to the Supreme National Council for Border Affairs.

July
"Their bosses put yama in the water and offer them [the fishermen] to drink. It affects the peoples' health and security in the village. It causes a lot of robberies, and people are killing each other."
-Hou Thy, village chief of Phum Pe in Pack Khlang district, Kok Kong province on the rise in drug use.

"Eleven years ago when I first came to Phnom Penh there were no lawyers, no bar association - there were just legal defenders. Today there is a Bar Association, 350 lawyers. There are problems, there are challenges, but there has been progress."
-Francis James, co-founder of Legal Aid of Cambodia, speaking at their 10th anniversary on July 14.

"We acknowledge that we were wrong because we did not implement our immigration law and those Montagnards should have been put in jail for between three and six months before we sent them away. Sending them away without [jail time] was the government's policy of humanity."
-Ministry of Interior spokesman Khieu Sopheak defending the deportation of asylum seekers.

"A lot of these middle-class kids, bong thom gangsters, are using it and pushing it on the streets. They have a lifestyle with impunity, so they spend a lot off time on the street earning money from street crime and the money they get from parents, they are loaded."
-David Harding, director of the NGO Friends, describing the use of "ice," the purest form of methamphetamine hydrochloride.

August
"With this verdict, the level of political repression has reached new heights."
-An Asian Human Rights Commission statement released on Aug 10 regarding the conviction of Cheam Channy.

"[I] confirm to the nation and our Cambodian people that our country has no political crisis. The trial of this or that guy is just a matter between personal and the legal procedures."
-PM Hun Sen commenting on Aug 11 on the Cheam Channy trial.

"In a messy country like Cambodia, they call an 'illegal army' anything that looks a little bit organized and works with some efficiency. They would crack down on the Salvation Army if there were such an organization."
-Sam Rainsy, commenting by email Aug 11 on the Cheam Channy trial, from self-imposed exile in France.

"Our brief is not to go out and find illegal logging, but to monitor the situation and then make the appropriate recommendations to the local authorities."
-Robert Tennent, SGS.

"...We are well aware that corruption in different levels - small, medium or large-scale - always has a negative impact on society. Corruption affects efficiency in production as well as implementing law... With the above mentioned reasons, it is not difficult for us to see the importance to combat against corruption which leads to the success of economic development of our country..."
-PM Hun Sen, Aug 17.

September
"So I think there are lots of irregularities which I think have now added up to so many cases that I would say it's a national crisis. The land crisis in Cambodia is probably, I would say, the national crisis, because it affects people every day of their lives."
-Miloon Kothari, Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing for the UN, speaking at the end of his 13-day tour of Cambodia.

"Mixing red dye with water looks like the blood of a virgin girl. Any household that does not hang bottles or plastic bags of red dye in front of their houses risks having evil spirits come into their homes and sucking blood of their daughters or family member."
-Chheang Lay, resident of Thbong Khmum village in Kampong Cham province on how people are preventing vampire attacks.

October
"If there were any number of people who believed [that the government sold land to Vietnam], there would be chaos or armed force against the government. I will follow up to sue them in a French court and put them in jail and get compensation."
-PM Hun Sen on Oct 6.

"We cannot accept this kind of business. We regret that he [the owner] does not understand the pain of the Cambodian people. He wants to get benefit from the victims' souls. This should end now."
-Tourism Minister Lay Prohas explaining on Oct 6 why he closed the Khmer Rouge Experience Café.

"Some days, when my 23-year-old [daughter] gets sick [and can't work as a beer promoter], the entire family has nothing to eat and we don't have even the money to take [her granddaughter] Marady to hospital."
-Sochenda, whose husband died from AIDS and whose two daughters are also HIV positive.

"If this time around it is difficult to sign it, we should consider whether we should keep the monarchy or change to a republic with a president instead."
-PM Hun Sen speaking on Oct 17 in reference to the Supplemental Border Treaty.

"I am not Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk. Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk let others stage a coup. Hun Sen will not. Do not gamble on trying this. You do it, you die."
-PM Hun Sen, Oct 17, warning critics of the new border treaty.

"The arrests and detention of Mam Sonando and Rong Chhun in Prey Sar prison are highly irregular, and illustrate a deeply worrying trend... procedurally the arrests were illegal."
-Peter Leuprecht, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Oct 20.

"...the most severe assault on dissent in Cambodia since the aftermath of Hun Sen's coup in 1997. Hun Sen needs to accept that in a democracy leaders will be criticized when they make controversial decisions."
-Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch.

November
"When Cheam Channy, Mam Sonando and Rong Chhun are released from prison and parliamentary immunity is restored for Chea Poch, Cheam Channy and me."
-Sam Rainsy, on when he would return to Cambodia.

"Just now Samdech Krom Preah Norodom Ranariddh, President of Funcinpec, on its behalf, declares me - Hun Sen - for the post of Prime Minister in case the Cambodian People's Party wins. I declare the CPP's support for Samdech Krom Preah for the post of Prime Minister in case Funcinpec wins the election."
-PM Hun Sen speaking at the Funcinpec party congress on Nov 14.

"Having achieved stable growth for a number of years successively and successfully, Cambodia has gained confidence and is now poised on an important threshold in its journey into the future. Cambodians have reached a crucial platform and look to their future with optimism and hope."
-PM Hen Sen, speaking to an investors conference on Nov 30.

December
"I warn that if [you] continue to grab land there will be a farmers' revolution, and I hope you will understand my difficulty. It is time for you to stop before the people lose their patience."
- PM Hun Sen, speaking on Dec 6 about the problem of land grabbing.

"This week has gone very well; I'm satisfied. I understand that people are disappointed by the many years of delay, but believe it or not-we're here now and we're here to stay."
- UN Khmer Rouge Trial Deputy Director Michelle Lee speaking on Dec 14.

For once, I agree with Utah!

2006-01-02T10:25:00.000+07:00

For once, I agree with Utah!

The state of Utah in the US of A has voted a Khmer American as Miss Utah 2006

I wonder how far she will go in the National competition?

December 2005 in Cambodia

2006-01-02T09:15:00.000+07:00

Thursday the 1st
Dark, Hot and Tired
It is now 11:30 in the morning and we have had no electricity in the office all morning.
According to local wisdom, this should have stopped by now. As December and January are the ‘cold months’ when the temperature drop to a ‘freezing’ 25C.
Thus their should be much less demand for air-conditioners and fans, thus reducing the city’s electricity consumption, thus meaning we should have enough to go around.
Seems that is not the case this year, ho hum.

Friday the 2nd
A half day for me.
I have some external reports that I really need to finish for a meeting on Monday, if I am in the office for the afternoon I will probably not get them done – interruptions, power cuts, et cetera. So I decide to work from home for the afternoon, thus freeing up my weekend for weekend things rather than work J

Arrive home at lunch and am happy to see that somehow Heng has scrounged up enough cash to buy a new Calor gas bottle for the oven, we can cook again !
Now all I need to do is buy a fridge (and some food to put in it)

Oh, and a television, and a wardrobe, and something to sit and watch TV on…

Damn I need a REAL job REAL soon !?!?!!

Saturday the 3rd
First weekend in my new flat!
Decided to try and get to know my new neighbourhood a little better. Strolled around the streets nearby, stopped at one café for an iced coffee, stopped at another for breakfast.
Eventually arrived at P’sar Olympic (the Olympic market) which is now my nearest Khmer market, it is one of the larger ones, selling not only food but clothes and assorted household stuff. Might come in handy.

The local motodop’s that have been ferrying me around all week to work and back seemed most surprised that I was strolling around and kept asking where I was going and obviously were confused by my walking around

Tuesday the 6th
Locksmith to the rescue
Somewhere between taking my bike into the shop, moving out of my old flat, moving into my new flat and picking my bike up from the shop I managed to lose my keys.
Now, initially this was not a problem, the bike shop had the ignition key to the bike, my office keys were replaced the following morning I found them missing, but the problem remained about the key to the petrol tank on the bike.
In the UK this would have been easy enough to deal with – if somewhat costly. Here I was starting to worry a little about what I was going to do (especially as I was getting low on petrol!

So after Heng and I had turned the flat upside-down for the fourth time she said that she would take me to a key shop (which was news to me that Cambodia even had such a thing)

So it turns out that ‘shop’ was not quite the right word in this case. Just after lunch today we were sitting at the side of the road on the junction of streets 360 and 63 with a one-eyed Khmer guy who had a set of lock-picks, a selection of key blanks and a diesel powered hand-grinder. It took him around 20 minutes to pick the lock on the tank, dismantle the insides and then he started to eye up the tumblers with his one good eye and start grinding notches in a blank key. A further 10 minutes later he has furnished a working key, and had also cut me a spare ignition key and charged me the princely sum of 5,000 riel (US$1.25, or just under £1)

As they say, necessity is the mother of innovation !

Sunday the 11th
Movie Premier and Heng’s Screen Debut
The day started very early, about 06:30. For some reason the invite-only grand opening was taking place at 08:30 on a Sunday morning. Of course, the fact that I had been out the night before handing out free VIP invitations to the opening to various friends of mine in various bars did not help the fact that my head felt like there was Khmer wedding marquee being erected within it.

Arriving around 8 we hung around outside the cinema waiting for the red ribbon cutting ceremony for nearly an hour – yes, we were on Khmer time.

All the while the TV cameras were rolling and the young freshie girl presenter from TVK was interviewing people in the crowd, as well as the actors and actresses, who were just hanging around in the crowd with us. Somewhat more relaxed than their Hollywood counterparts would be at an LA opening of their new movie.

Eventually we had the ribbon cutting and we all filtered into the cinema, as we started to enter the auditorium we were handed fruit and water by the ushers.

Thankfully inside was well air-conditioned and a blessed relief from the sun that we had been standing in for so long.

As the last few people were taking their seats an announcer gets up on stage and introduces:

The stuntmen and martial arts crew; who after taking a bow launch into a quick enactment of a fight. After this the actresses get up on stage and take a bow and a round of applause. Then the director, producers, technical crew and assorted odds and ends get up to take theirs.

Finally with curtain up around 09:30 we were besieged with adverts for beer, phones and makeup taking us up to about 10:00 for the grand premier of…

The Divided Heart
A teenage love story and rights of passage movie set mostly in Phnom Penh. It tells the story of a beautiful girl who goes off to school and has two boys fall in love with her. One a nice guy from a rich urban family, the other an equally nice, but poor, kid from the provinces with his oddball sidekick acting as a scaramouch. Neither of them is really the villain of the piece, that role falls to the rich kids highly jealous, psycho, ex-girlfriend; who between causing a scene in a burger bar, trying to bribe Miss Beautiful to leave town and arranging for her to be kidnapped (along with telling the kidnappers to rape her) fulfils the obligatory ‘baddie’ position quite enough for a Sunday morning family movie.

Although the movie is all in Khmer, I could easily manage to follow it with my modest language skills and the fact that such a narrative is almost universal in storytelling around the world gives the viewer a sense of ease with the plot.

At this point I would like to give a special thanks to my western, non-Khmer speaking friends who turned up, slight warily, to support us all, they also found it reasonably easy to follow and enjoyed the morning greatly.

One of the refreshing things about this Khmer movie was the fact that it was just a simple love story, or love triangle, set against life in modern Phnom Penh, with pretty much only the obstacles that you face in everyday life. The fact that it did not contain; men with snakes for hair, or giant super snakes, or bouncing zombie vampire monsters with white squares of paper on their foreheads was also very much a bonus for us non Khmers and does, I feel, give a sense of hope that the industry here is not just going to keep churning out schlock horror gore laden B movies forever.

I will not give away too much of the ending, but it will suffice to say that, as one would suspect, all turns out well in the end, the guys survive, the girl escapes with her honour and virtue intact and the wicked get ‘a right royal arse kicking’, to quote a friend of mine. Having watched them film various scenes from the movie over the last six months and seeing the finished project, I would have to say that the stuntmen and martial arts crew certainly earned their money in the final showdown, especially as I know that they used no protective clothing and were working for peanuts, when they filmed that ‘right royal arse kicking’.

At some point I the New Year VCD’s will be available for sale; I will post a few back to the UK !

Week of the 12th to the 16th
My New Khmer Street; Same as the Old Khmer Street ?
Snapshots from my new window

Having recently moved into my new home, I have spent several early evenings sat on my new, large, L-shaped balcony. Just watching the world go by and musing on my new location and new neighbours. (I really, really, have to buy a television soon!)

Diagonally opposite is a small building site where a small office with flats above is being built, a bright, shiny, new blue building of seriously geometric design. Last weekend a surly looking Frenchman turned up to survey his new office building and flat, his Khmer wife was decked head to toe in western clothing and was glinting even in the distance with expensive looking gold and jewellery.

To the left is a small wooden house with a lean-to wooden shop at the front, which sells the usual assortment of shampoo, toilet roll, cigarettes, soft drinks, mangos and blocks of ice. At any given time there are usually half a dozen people milling around outside or pulling up on moto’s to buy things.

To the right is another large house which seems to have a constant stream of expensive looking cars and 4x4’s coming and going, some with NGO license plates, some with military police license plates. Yesterday lunchtime I came home to find a shiny new Jaguar S-Type parked outside my side door and one very smug looking Khmer guy leaning against it grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

At the end of my short road, on the corner is a small wooden shack restaurant serving plates of rice and noodles, outside which one usually finds several motodop’s hanging around should one need transport anywhere.

Opposite my door is a small Khmer concrete town house, in the evening around a dozen small children, 8 to 12 years of age, usually gather in the front room to learn English, from my balcony I can hear them reciting:

A is for apple; apple ply_pomm;
B is for book; book seal_pow
C is for car; car laan
D is for door; door t’weaa

And so on…

Underneath on the ground floor, with a completely separate set of entrances and stairwells is my paranoid, highly security conscious, landlord and his family. They have a shop a few road up in P’sar Olympic selling gold and jewellery

During the course of the day, up until the early evening a stead procession of street vendors’ cycle along touting their wares buy shouting out the name of the goods or service they offer; fresh bread, shoe repairs, key cutting and knife sharpening. Early in the morning there is often an old woman who pushes a large wooden barrow along the street full of vegetables and salad for sale.

As well as these cycling vendors there are the usual assortment of people selling food from wooden or steel handcarts that they push around; Chinese dumplings, papaya salad bok la’hong, rice pork bai suh_ch’rook, or whatever the current seasons fruits are.

Towards the end of the day, as traffic grows light, but before daylight totally abandons us, it is quite common to see several kids playing badminton, without a net, in the middle of the road, just batting the shuttlecock back and forth for fun. Elsewhere, street children are sifting through the rubbish outside peoples houses looking for empty cans or bottles that can be sold for recycling – two empty drinks cans (coke, beer, et cetera) sell for 100r, that is 2.5cents or just over 1 shiny new British penny.

These are scenes that anyone living in Cambodia, especially Phnom Penh, will be familiar with. After all the stress and hassle of moving house, I find that they are strangely reassuring.

Friday the 16th
Emerging Markets Consultants
At 11:00 this morning I have a semi-interview with a group of management consultants based here in Phnom Penh. They do not need extra staff just yet, but if they get all of the big contracts that they have been chasing this year – that are scheduled to start work next year, then they might have a position available for me…

The hour may or may not have been a waste of time, the partner I was meeting spent more time playing with his new PDA than talking to me… hmm
We are going to meet again mid January when they know more about next years work position.

Monday the 19th
A Proper Interview
This afternoon I have an actual interview for an actual job. Strangely enough I did not apply for the job, I just happened to send a speculative CV into this company at the right time !
I know that they are interviewing quite a few people so I guess we will just have to see…
Interview went okay, in fact, I have been invited back for a second one tomorrow ?!

Tuesday the 20th
Round 2
Second interview/test went okay, but they still have 3 or 4 more people to see so it is going to be a few more weeks before a decision is made…
Ho hum, I know patience is a virtue, but …

Friday the 23rd
Christmas build up
Spent the morning running around; going up to the VSO Office, going to the bank – damned expensive this Christmas lark.

Also managed to pick up my bike from the shop at long last, where it has had a new battery fitted and some wiring replaced. The new battery was difficult to find apparently, so the whole thing ended up costing me US$30 – ouch, there goes Christmas lunch!

Saturday the 24th
‘twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a gecko
Dave at the Peace Café is having an ‘open mike’ cabaret night, might be a laugh, plus he was talking about having some free beer !

Unfortunately, on the ride up there I met with a small accident. As I was just pulling out on to the Independence Monument roundabout, a huge, dark green, Landcruiser Prado 4x4 decided that it did not need to slowdown for the roundabout, or indeed change lanes or even look; fortunately I managed to swerve the bike out of the way of the two tons of metal screaming along at around 120kph, but in doing so I clipped the kerb (8 inches high here) which sent me and the bike spinning off onto the pavement. Thankfully, although god knows how, Heng came away without a scratch, hardly even a hair out of place(?!?!?) whereas I on the other hand have cuts and bruises all down my right arm and leg and also have a couple of painfully cracked ribs.

As I lay on the pavement with the (heavy 750) bike on me, wondering what the *&<£ had happened, Heng immediately started rounding up a couple of nearby security guards to help lift the bike and pick me up. After I had rested for a few moments, and checked again that she was actually unscathed, she managed to convince one of the guards to load my bike up into his pickup and take it home.

The Landcruiser Prado that caused all this? He did not even slow down, let alone stopped to see if anyone was hurt – B*&$>/& !

Have had the bike back from the shop about 6 hours, huhmph.

Sunday the 25th
So here it is Merry Christmas, everybody’s having fun
Arranged to have Christmas lunch at the Tell Restaurant with Chris and Ayat.
Due to last nights little mishap I was not feeling all that Christmassy, but I was feeling hungry so I limped out of the house complaining – closing my eyes and muttering a few unprintable words as I saw the mess down the right-hand side of the bike – big dent in the tank, front and back indicators snapped off, block and side panels all scratched up, rectangular headlight now without a right angle on it… oh well, worry about getting it repaired in the New Year when I get paid.

Arriving at the restaurant about 11:30AM we were only the second table in there, but we were all so hungry it did not matter that it was so quiet.

Splurging totally recklessly [financially] Chris and I both opt for the full 9 course Christmas banquet – with an all you can eat buffet as the main course US$22:50 a head
(actually, if truth be told my lunch was funded by mum and dads’ Christmas money – thanks!)

The food was fantastic. The roast smoked turkey, the honey glazed ham, the beef béarnaise, mmm, I feel hungry again just looking at the menu and typing that !

We finally admitted dining defeat at around 3 o’clock. After which we all went back to Chris and Ayat’s new house to slump in front of the TV with a couple of new DVD’s.

After about an hour Chris vanished off into a back room somewhere and reappeared 5 minutes later with a cheese plate (Camembert, Danish Blue, Mature Cheddar) , crackers and several bags of Walkers crisps – along with yet another bottle of red wine… aggghh.

Got home around 10 and was ready for an early night.

Monday the 26th
Boxing Day
Stayed at home all morning unable to move due to the huge excess of Christmas foods :-)

Only went out for 5 minutes in the afternoon because I had run out of painkillers for my ribs (thirty second walk –waddle- round the corner)

In the evening, we went up to the Peace Café for a couple of hours as Dave was showing the new King Kong movie on his big screen. However, due to technical difficulties we ended up watching it in black and white!?!

Tuesday the 27th
For some strange reason (nagging pain in the ribs maybe) I was awake about 6. So I figured that I would pop into work for a couple of hours, check my Email and then return home. Halfway driving into the office I happened to spot a friend of mine having breakfast at a new restaurant down a side street I cut through on my way to work. So I stopped and had some excellent Vietnamese coffee with him for an hour !

I like the fact that Phnom Penh is such a small Capital City you can so easily run into people like that – plus with it being so relaxed, you can just turn up an hour late for work because you stopped for coffee!?!?

Friday the 30th
Another big dinner !
The Ministry of Fish, never one to miss an opportunity, is having an ‘International New Years’ Dinner this evening. Kicking off at 6:30PM at a Chinese hotel / restaurant, I have no doubt that it will all be over and done with by 8:00PM

It was held at the same place as we went last year; although I remember the food being better last year – (the chicken was rubbery: ah fank you velly much)

By 8:00PM half of the people had left already and they were starting to warm up the karaoke, time for me to make a swift exit! As my friend Pete is down from Battambang town for the weekend we headed up to a newish bar called the Red Fox to meet up with him and catch up for an bit. He had had an awful ride down on his new bike – a 250cc dirt bike TTR – halfway down in the middle of nowhere the clutch cable had snapped, so he had to limp along in second gear for a couple of hours before he got to a town and was able to find a bike shop to get it replaced, he was then worried about making it to Phnom Penh before it got dark – you do not want to be stuck out on a provincial road late at night in the dark, where there are no lights and cattle, pigs, chickens and people just stroll across, or sleep on, the road !

Saturday the 31st
New Years Eve
Due to having no transport, no cash and a painful set of ribs; New Years Eve is cancelled.

Will have to see how things are in a couple of months when we have Chinese New Year, or the month after that when we have Khmer New Year…

Ho Hum said Pooh.

Cheers everyone and all the best, hope that you all had a merry Christmas and a happy new year – ‘health, wealth and happiness’ (as my Khmer friends say)

Darren

Yuletide Log: slips from fire and burns house down...

2005-12-30T12:52:00.000+07:00

Anyone out there wondering where their Christmas Cards are, should take a look at the Email I got from VSO Cambodia today:

***

-----Original Message-----
From: Ngin Pisit
Sent: 30 December 2005 12:11

Dear All,

Just to announce that those who sent mail by VSO courrier from 12th - 23rd Dec 05 was burned down because of fire caused by electric explosion on 24th night at the room keeping mail of the Courrier Company in Phnom Penh.

If you would like claim from the company what you lost please list it and send it to me.

Thanks

Pisit
**********************************************************************
VSO is an international development charity that works through volunteers.
http://www.vso.org.uk

Cambodia Using Courts to Restrict Free Speech, blah, blah, blah

2005-12-29T10:31:00.000+07:00

As recently as 1997 opponents to Sam Rainsy and the SRP tried to stifle political debate by throwing hand grenades at him during a rally; this year all that is landing in his lap are court summons.

Personally, I would call that progress.

Ho Hum.

Still, here is the recent Bloomberg Article:

***
Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Cambodia is using its law courts to stifle free speech and political activity, United Nations envoy Yash Ghai said, citing last week's jail sentence imposed on opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who lives in exile.

Criminal prosecutions, such as the defamation case against Sam Rainsy, are being brought under laws introduced in 1992 when the UN was overseeing the peace process in Cambodia, Ghai, the special representative for human rights, said in a statement yesterday, according to the UN's Web site. The laws are out of date and should be repealed, Ghai said.

``Space for political discourse and public debate is being increasingly challenged, including through the courts,'' Ghai said. ``This deeply worrying trend is a serious threat to freedom of expression and political pluralism in Cambodia.''

Sam Rainsy fled to France in February and another opposition lawmaker, Cheam Channy, was sentenced to seven years in jail in August for organized crime and fraud. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused the Cambodian government of trying to silence the opposition, including the Sam Rainsy Party, by last year accusing members of forming an illegal armed force.

Cambodia's government isn't using the courts to dismantle the opposition such as the case against Sam Rainsy, Agence France-Presse cited Khieu Kanharith, a government spokesman, as saying two days ago in the capital, Phnom Penh.

``The issue is that his accusations affect the reputation of others,'' Khieu Kanharith said. ``Politicians should be careful when speaking.''

Human Rights
Cambodia's transitional legislation, known as the UNTAC laws, were introduced before the country adopted its new constitution and signed international human rights treaties, Ghai said.

``The UNTAC law was enacted as a temporary measure and under very particular circumstances, which no longer reflect the situation in today's Cambodia,'' he said.

Cambodia's new criminal code, currently being prepared, is an opportunity to make laws compliant with the constitution and human rights obligations, Ghai said.

The U.S. State Department last week condemned the 18-month prison sentence imposed on Sam Rainsy, saying it reflected ``the continuing deterioration of democratic principles such as free speech and expression in Cambodia.''

Sam Rainsy, 56, was sentenced in absentia for defaming Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen and National Assembly President Prince Norodom Ranariddh, AFP reported last week.

The defamation suit involved alleged comments by Sam Rainsy accusing Hun Sen of involvement in a 1997 grenade attack on an anti-government rally that killed at least 19 people and Prince Ranariddh of taking bribes for joining a coalition government led by Hun Sen, AFP said.

Coalition Government
Cambodia was without a government for more than a year after political parties failed to agree on forming a coalition after elections in June 2003.

Hun Sen formed a government in July 2004 with the royalist Funcinpec party led by Prince Ranariddh. Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party won 73 of the 123 National Assembly seats in the 2003 election, short of a two-thirds majority needed to form a government on its own. Funcinpec won 26 seats and the Sam Rainsy Party took 24 seats.

Sam Rainsy won't appeal the jail sentence, AFP reported two days ago, citing his lawyer Som Chandya. Sam Rainsy flew to France and another deputy, Chea Poch, went to the U.S. after their parliamentary immunity was lifted, AFP reported in February.

Just for Sonia...

2005-12-28T08:16:00.000+07:00

Khmer Hot Dog...

2005-12-27T13:54:00.000+07:00

A rare splurge, over two weeks groceries money on one meal, but what the hell, it was Christmas lunch!

Postcard from Battambang

2005-12-23T11:28:00.000+07:00

This is Mr Kim Long or Kum Mien as he is known to his friends in the small and peaceful village of Kompong Ambril which nestles on the bank of the River Sangker not so far away from Battambang in Cambodia’s north east.

Mr Kim Long is an unusual man for a number of reasons. Firstly, in a country where the average life expectancy is 52 he has managed stay in robust, rude health to the grand old age of 77 and still does a full time job of work.

What, however, makes Mr Kim Long more remarkable is the fact that he is one of a tiny number of Khmer survivors from the French colonial army of Indochina. Having joined the French military in 1947 he was posted to Hanoi and then spent the subsequent seven years soldiering and seeing action fighting against Ho Chi Minh’s Communist troops in Northern Vietnam until the demoralised, tired and beaten French eventually pulled out of the region in 1954 and Mr Kim Long was discharged and left to his own devices.

By the early 1970’s when the Maoist Khmer Rouge began to threaten his village Mr Kim Long was already too old for active military service in Lon Nol’s army. Nevertheless, he knew a thing or two about killing communists and so picked up his rifle again to serve in Kompong Ambril’s village militia. He modestly admits that his best friend who is also still alive at the age of 78 and lives in the next village along the river was always the better shot.

Mr Kim Long kept his past history very much to himself during the Marxist Khmer Rouge years between 1975 and 1979 for to have served in the French Army would have made his immediate execution a certainty had the fact been discovered. Nevertheless and sadly his wife and children did not survive the Pol Pot period and this has left him alone with no family.

He is grateful though that, having been used as storage space by the KR, his village pagoda was spared from destruction and is therefore one of the very few wats in the province not to have been rebuilt since 1979.

It’s a lovely low squat building in the older Battambang style and quite unlike the newer more gaudy pagodas that have been built in recent years. The Buddha life scenes within the Wat also escaped intact and are less stereotypical than newer images of the Buddha’s life to be found elsewhere.

These days Mr Kim Long, whose military bearing remains intact, lives next to his beloved pagoda and serves as its diligent guardian and caretaker.

Sometimes he wonders if the French, for whom he risked his life, might owe him some sort of a military pension.

Maybe it has been assumed that nobody of his generation survived to ask for one.

Is it Christmas ???

2005-12-15T08:46:00.000+07:00

You would not even know that it is almost Christmas here in Happy Buddhist Cambodia…

No lights (other than the miles of multicoloured fairy lights on every Khmer beer garden)
No Christmas trees, except the sad looking plastic one just inside the ex-pat supermarket (i.e. slightly enlarged corner shop with grossly inflated prices for tins of baked beans)
No 24/7 bombardment and besieging of our ears by that git Phil Spectre and his Christmas album
Oh, no Slade either
No snow, just the sunny but low 30C of the Khmer winter.
No houses turned into a mini Disneyland of plastic Santa’s, sponge foam snowmen, or wall mounted reindeer.

However will I survive…

Seasons Whatnots and like Yuletide Thingies

Ho, Ho, Ho

My New Khmer Street; Same as the Old Khmer Street ?

2005-12-13T15:08:00.000+07:00

Snapshots from my window

Having recently moved into my new home, I have spent several early evenings sat on my new, large, L-shaped balcony. Just watching the world go by and musing on my new location and new neighbours. (I really must buy a television soon)

Diagonally opposite is a small building site where a small office with flats above is being built, a bright, shiny, new blue building of seriously geometric design. Last weekend a surly looking Frenchman turned up to survey his new office building and flat, his Khmer girlfriend was decked head to toe in western clothing and was glinting even in the distance with expensive looking gold and jewellery.

To the left is a small wooden house with a lean-to wooden shop at the front, which sells the usual assortment of shampoo, toilet roll, cigarettes, soft drinks and blocks of ice. At any given time there are usually half a dozen people milling around outside or pulling up on moto’s to buy things.

To the right is another large house which seems to have a constant stream of expensive looking 4x4’s coming and going, some with NGO license plates, some with military police license plates. Yesterday lunchtime I came home to find a shiny new Jaguar S-Type parked outside my side door and one very smug looking Khmer guy leaning against it grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

At the end of my short road, on the corner is a small wooden shack restaurant serving plates of rice and noodles, outside which one usually finds several motodop’s hanging around should one need transport anywhere.

Opposite my door is a small Khmer concrete town house, in the evening around a dozen small children, 8 to 12 years of age, usually gather in the front room to learn English, from my balcony I can hear them reciting:

A is for apple; apple ply_pomm;
B is for book; book seal_pow
C is for car; car laan

And so on…

Underneath on the ground floor, with a completely separate set of entrances and stairwells is my paranoid, highly security conscious, landlord and his family. They have a shop a few road up in P’sar Olympic selling gold and jewellery

During the course of the day, up until the early evening a stead procession of street vendors’ cycle along touting their wares buy shouting out the name of the goods or service they offer; fresh bread, shoe repairs, key cutting and knife sharpening.

As well as these cycling vendors there are the usual assortment of people selling food from wooden or steel handcarts that they push around; Chinese dumplings, papaya salad bok la’hong, rice pork bai suh_ch’rook, or whatever the current seasons fruits are.

Towards the end of the day, as traffic grows light, but before daylight totally abandons us, it is quite common to see several kids playing badminton, without a net, in the middle of the road, just bating the shuttlecock back and forth for fun, elsewhere, street children are sifting through the rubbish outside peoples houses looking for empty cans or bottles that can be resold for recycling – two empty drinks cans (coke, beer, et cetera) sell for 100riel - that is 2.5cents or just over 1 shiny new British penny.

These are scenes that anyone living in Cambodia, especially Phnom Penh, will be familiar with. After all the stress and hassle of moving house, they are strangely reassuring.

The Divided Heart - Movie Premier

2005-12-12T09:59:00.000+07:00

Sunday the 11th
Movie Premier and Heng’s Screen Debut
The day started very early, about 06:30. For some reason the invite-only grand opening was taking place at 08:30 on a Sunday morning. Of course, the fact that I had been out the night before handing out free VIP invitations to the opening to various friends of mine in various bars did not help the fact that my head felt like there was Khmer wedding marquee being erected within it.

Arriving around 8 we hung around outside the cinema waiting for the red ribbon cutting ceremony for nearly an hour – yes, we were on Khmer time.

All the while the TV cameras were rolling and the young freshie girl presenter from TVK was interviewing people in the crowd, as well as the actors and actresses, who were just hanging around in the crowd with us. Somewhat more relaxed than their Hollywood counterparts would be at an LA opening of their new movie.

Eventually we had the ribbon cutting and we all filtered into the cinema, as we started to enter the auditorium we were handed fruit and water by the ushers.

Thankfully inside was well air-conditioned and a blessed relief from the sun that we had been standing in for so long.

As the last few people were taking their seats an announcer gets up on stage and introduces:

The stuntmen and martial arts crew; who after taking a bow launch into a quick enactment of a fight. After this the actresses get up on stage and take a bow and a round of applause. Then the director, producers, technical crew and assorted odds and ends get up to take theirs.

Finally with curtain up around 09:30 we were besieged with adverts for beer, phones and makeup taking us up to about 10:00 for the grand premier of…

The Divided Heart
A teenage love story and rights of passage movie set mostly in Phnom Penh. It tells the story of a beautiful girl who goes off to school and has two boys fall in love with her. One a nice guy from a rich urban family, the other an equally nice, but poor, kid from the provinces with his oddball sidekick acting as a scaramouch. Neither of them is really the villain of the piece, that role falls to the rich kids highly jealous, psycho, ex-girlfriend; who between causing a scene in a burger bar, trying to bribe Miss Beautiful to leave town and arranging for her to be kidnapped (along with telling the kidnappers to rape her) fulfils the obligatory ‘baddie’ position quite enough for a Sunday morning family movie.

Although the movie is all in Khmer, I could easily manage to follow it with my modest language skills and the fact that such a narrative is almost universal in storytelling around the world gives the viewer a sense of ease with the plot.

At this point I would like to give a special thanks to my western, non-Khmer speaking friends who turned up, slight warily, to support us all, they also found it reasonably easy to follow and enjoyed the morning greatly.

One of the refreshing things about this Khmer movie was the fact that it was just a simple love story, or love triangle, set against life in modern Phnom Penh, with pretty much only the obstacles that you face in everyday life. The fact that it did not contain; men with snakes for hair, or giant super snakes, or bouncing zombie vampire monsters with white squares of paper on their foreheads was also very much a bonus for us non Khmers and does, I feel, give a sense of hope that the industry here is not just going to keep churning out schlock horror gore laden B movies forever.

I will not give away too much of the ending, but it will suffice to say that, as one would suspect, all turns out well in the end, the guys survive, the girl escapes with her honour and virtue intact and the wicked get ‘a right royal arse kicking’, to quote a friend of mine. Having watched them film various scenes from the movie over the last six months and seeing the finished project, I would have to say that the stuntmen and martial arts crew certainly earned their money in the final showdown, especially as I know that they used no protective clothing and were working for peanuts, when they filmed that ‘right royal arse kicking’.

Cambodian border town bets on vice

2005-12-08T10:28:00.000+07:00

With no gambling regulations, Poipet is crowned casino capital of Southeast AsiaBy Benjamin PaukerSpecial to the TribunePublished December 7, 2005

POIPET, Cambodia -- The noonday sun does not discriminate. It scorches old men wheeling ragged, homemade carts stacked high with sandals and baskets to market across a bridge at the Thai border.

Korean tourists sweat while waiting in line for Cambodian visas. Young beggars take shelter in the shade, or retreat to the creek beneath the bridge, which runs gray and frothy amid mountains of trash.Yet, as the sun sets and neon signs flicker to life, Poipet comes alive.

This dusty border town, not far from where the remnants of the Khmer Rouge holed up before finally surrendering in 1999, is the new gambling capital of Southeast Asia.It is home to nine glitzy casinos and sprawling high-rise hotels that beckon thousands of Thai and East Asian travelers willing to try their luck at baccarat, blackjack and fighting-cock-themed slot machines.

The casinos, with such names as Tropicana and Golden Crown, are in a roughly quarter-mile-wide special administrative zone between the Thai border and the official entry point to Cambodia.

Star Vegas, the most luxurious of the properties, boasts elegant VIP rooms, a nightclub and an 18-hole golf course. Greens fees are less than $8.

"And no more land mines," assures Adoon Sradindam, a front office manager.

Owned by publicity-shy Thai, Sino-Cambodian, Malaysian and Indonesian investors, the casinos have sprouted like rice in the rainy season, unburdened by national gaming laws or registration.

The oldest, Holiday Poipet, is just six years old. Already, their existence is threatened by the planned $3 billion construction of two mega-casinos in Singapore, which recently repealed its 40-year ban on gambling. Thailand's prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, also has floated the idea of building casinos to bring tourism back to the tsunami-ravaged resorts in the south.

Anti-gambling religious beliefs among Thailand's Buddhists and Singapore's Muslims have long prevented state-sanctioned casinos, but the tide is turning.Gamblers, but on the sly"Thais gamble like everyone else," says Mam, who would not give his full name and once worked in an illegal casino in Bangkok's On Nut neighborhood.

"They just don't like to be seen doing it." Temporarily unemployed, he has come to Cambodia.

At Holiday Poipet, an understated Chinese-themed casino, he plays fantan, a popular table game.People slurp from bowls of noodles as the bored teenage dealer cups dozens of yellow plastic beads in a ceramic rice bowl, then puts the pile on the table. A second dealer divides the beads into groups of four.

Before the parsing, bets are placed on the number that can't be divided into groups of four.
Mam, like the other 20 people at the table, is keeping count of the results, as if a winning pattern might be divined. "I have a system," he said. "In one hour, I won 100,000 baht [about $2,400] at roulette.
"It is a fortune in Poipet, where casino employees regularly earn 4,000 baht (about $95) a month.Though technically within Cambodia, the casinos deal solely in Thai currency. Bets, salaries, winnings and losses are paid in baht, not the Cambodian riel.

Poipet is a notorious border town: dirty, dangerous, and until six years ago, not a good place for an overnight stay. It is on the road from Bangkok to Phnom Penh and Siem Riep, where the jungle temple complex of Angkor Wat draws tens of thousands of visitors annually.

Most Westerners passing through Poipet come from Bangkok to renew tourist visas or are budget backpackers who make the overland journey to Angkor, a cheap but back-wrenching trip. Small Toyota pickups offer transit for $6, an 8-hour ride between Bangkok and Angkor Wat along one of the worst major roads in Asia. The potholes are monstrous.`Armpit' of Cambodia

The border itself is notorious. Numerous Internet discussion boards for travelers warn of beggars, touts and pickpockets who roam the dusty streets. Brothels line the main road out of town toward Cambodia's central plains. The Lonely Planet guidebook, a bible for independent travelers, writes, "If Cambodia were a body, Poipet would be the armpit."

The glitzy gambling palaces are the town's sole economic engines. When the Thai government closed the border in 2003 to protest the attack of its embassy in Phnom Penh by angry Cambodian mobs, daily revenue losses were estimated at roughly $7-10 million

Asian governments are taking note of the flourishing casino industry in Macau, a former Portuguese colony now under Chinese control, where gambling revenues reached $5.1 billion in 2004. According to the American Gaming Association, Las Vegas recorded $5.33 billion in revenue last year.

Regional governments are relaxing similar restrictions on gaming, prompting analysts at Merrill Lynch to predict this October that there will be at least 50 new casinos in East Asia by 2012, and that gaming revenues will triple to $44.8 billion.

Singapore, a city-state off the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula known for its strict ordinances on public speech and moral rectitude, is positioning itself to be on the vanguard of this boom.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has promoted the creation of two massive "integrated resorts," with hotels, shopping, restaurants, theme parks, museums and casinos.

"We cannot stand still," he told parliament in April. "We are at serious risk of being left behind by other cities." Singapore intends to tax those who go to casinos $60 to ensure that the youth and impoverished will not be corrupted. Officials hope to attract a high class of clientele.

If Thailand moves to keep pace with the casino market, Poipet's glory days will soon be gone.

But for now, gambling in Thailand is still illegal, except at racetracks and the state lottery. It is a short day trip from Bangkok to the Cambodian border. And because the casinos are in a no-man's land between the Thai border and the official Cambodian entry point, Thais don't need a visa. Express buses leave just after dawn from downtown Bangkok's Lumpini Park.

"Today, I am supposed to go to church, but I go to casino," says Dala Paleebut as the bus leaves Bangkok. The journey is three hours in air-conditioned comfort. Overdubbed American movies, gory Thai martial arts flicks and bubble-gum pop videos play on the video screens."

I am addicted to gambling," she says with a wide smile, "like drugs, like a man loves a woman." As the bus stops at Aranyaprathet, on the Thai side of the border, she jumps out, dodging the gathering beggars, touts and motorcycles to be first in the long queue of Thais waiting to test their luck.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0512070207dec07,1,6120070.story?page=1&ctrack=1&cset=true&coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

Cambodian PM warns land seizures could spark 'revolution'

2005-12-08T08:18:00.000+07:00

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen says land seizures involving government officials, business people and the military are destabilising the country.

He says there will be no tolerating cases of land grabbing.Land seizures in Cambodia have left thousands of poor families destitute and sparked recent unrest.

Hun Sen has warned a revolution could erupt among rural Cambodians if the practice does not cease.

"...it is time to stop before the people lose their patience," he said. "I warn you, a revolution will take place".

At least six villagers were killed in March when they fought their eviction by security forces following a court order handing the land to a village chief in northwest Banteay Meanchey province.

In August, a court dropped charges against more than 120 police, soldiers and others accused of involvement in the eviction.

The Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-79 destroyed land registries as part of its drive for an agrarian utopia.

http://www.abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/s1526365.htm

UN officials due in Cambodia to discuss preparations for Khmer Rouge trials

2005-12-07T09:45:00.000+07:00

A team of U.N. officials was set to arrive in Cambodia Tuesday to look into preparations for a tribunal to prosecute surviving leaders of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, a spokeswoman said.

The seven-member U.N. delegation will meet with the government's Khmer Rouge trial team, diplomats and representatives of civil society to discuss logistics and staffing, and look at the condition of the tribunal site, said Anne-Marie Ibanez, the spokeswoman for the team.

The Khmer Rouge was responsible for the death of some 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution during its four-year dictatorial reign over Cambodia in late 1970s. Its leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998, but several of his top deputies, aging and infirm, still live freely in Cambodia.

The trials _ for genocide and crimes against humanity _ will be carried out under the jurisdiction of the Cambodian court system with help from the international community.

Attempts to open the trials before the remaining leaders die of old age have been hampered by Cambodia's inability to find donors to help finance its US$13.3 million (£á11.4 million) share of the US$43 million (£á36.4 million) tribunal costs.

The U.N. was expected to select foreign judges for the tribunal this week. Cambodia has not yet announced its selection of judges, but once that is done, "we will move along" with the trials, Ibanez said.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/i_latestdetail.asp?id=33267

A Life in the Day: Somaly MamInterview

2005-12-06T09:14:00.000+07:00

The 34-year-old Cambodian leads the AFESIP association, which rescues girls and young women from brothels in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. She is separated from her husband and lives near Phnom Penh with her children: Melissa, 14, Adana, 9, and Nicolai, 3

"I wake with the sound of birds at 5. As soon as I open my eyes I think of the things I have to sort out. I have a shower, no breakfast. I get lunch for my children, then spend time on e-mails before setting out at 7. My house isn't far from Phnom Penh, but the drive can last five minutes or half an hour, depending on the rain and the state of the road.

I go first to our shelter where the girls we've rescued live. They can be hard to manage — they want to break everything — but I take them in my arms and we understand each other. In Cambodia, parents sell their children when they're five or six for as little as £60. Girls prostitute themselves for less than £1.

It's what I've been through that gives me the strength to fight back. I don't know who my parents are. As a child I remember being cold all the time. I was abandoned and raped when I was 12. Two years later I was sold off and forced to marry. My husband would get drunk, he beat me and raped me, he'd fire bullets which passed just by my head or my feet. I took the gun and shot him in the foot. I was 15. I didn't want to kill him, just hurt him as he had hurt me. I'm more of a Buddhist now, and I try to be reasonable. But when I see rapists I see red. I'm not perfect.

My husband sold me to a brothel. I had to accept five or six clients a day. Once a client called me and another girl; he said he was with just one other man. In fact, there were 20 of them; they treated us so badly I wanted revenge. I wanted to kill the man who called us. Then I thought his family would suffer, so I left him alone.

People laugh about prostitution being the oldest job in the world, but I've seen so many awful things. Girls are chained up and beaten with electric cables; one had a nail driven into her skull for trying to escape. Another, Thomdi, was sold to a brothel when she was nine. When I saw her in the street she was 17 and sick with Aids and TB. She had lots of abscesses and the people at the hospital insulted her and refused to take her in. So I took her home and washed her.

She started to get better. Then I had to go abroad. She told me she would die without me, but I had to go. I was buying presents for her when I got the call that she had died. I still feel guilty about her death.

Around mid-morning I go to the offices. I'm back on the computer and I check on the girls' health, and how they are doing at their jobs. The association has a staff of 134, including doctors, psychologists and teachers. Since we set it up eight years ago, we've saved over 3,000 girls and found them normal work.

Our job is dangerous. Once this man who ran a brothel put a gun to my temple; he was angry that I'd talked to his girls. He told me I was a bitch, that he was going to kill me. I talked to him — I knew he wouldn't kill me. People with a gun kill you or they don't — they don't pretend.

After, I got him arrested. I don't have bodyguards — I want to be free.

For me, meeting a politician or a donor is much worse than having a gun pointed at me. I didn't go to school, I don't find it easy to talk and behave properly with a bureaucrat. I have to say the truth, which hurts, but if you don't tell the truth, nothing changes.

I'm usually too busy to have lunch, but if I eat something it'll be boiled white rice and fried vegetables. Around 2pm, we hold meetings, we talk about the girls who are ill or have difficulty finding a place in society. And there are always e-mails — I get 200 to 300 a day.

The hardest thing for me to cope with is corruption. I filmed a police raid on a brothel — there was cocaine there. But then in the courts the judge said it wasn't cocaine, it was flour. We once caught a German paedophile on camera, but the courts let him off with a £4,000 fine. He went back to his country. Is that fair?

Last December we rescued 89 women and children in a police raid on a big hotel. But the pimps went to our shelter and grabbed them back. The next day they threatened to come back with grenades. I phoned everyone I could for help, but I was told I'd gone too far — I had bothered powerful people. I make a point of going to see the criminals who threaten me. I have to show them I'm not afraid by talking to them.

I get desperate at times; I tried to commit suicide two or three times. When things are overwhelming, I try to be alone somewhere dark and quiet. I can be bad company; everything makes me angry. I'm separated from my husband and I don't think I'll have another relationship. I'm not young any more; I don't want to make a man unhappy.

One or two nights a week I meet girls in brothels or on the streets. I talk to them and tell them what we could do for them. But usually I go home at 7 to cook for my children. They are in bed by 10, then it's quiet and I go back to my e-mails.

I can be at the computer until 2am.

I don't sleep well. Especially when I have to meet journalists and they ask me about my past.

When I close my eyes I feel raped and dirty. I'm very weak. At night when I don't sleep, I think that right at that moment many children are being raped. The pills I used to take don't work any more. But I can get by with two or three hours' sleep. I don't know what being happy means. But I like seeing the girls smile. That makes me feel good."

The Road to Innocence, by Somaly Mam, will be published by Virago next year.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-1891955,00.html

Documenting Cambodia's Genocide, Survivor Finds Peace

2005-12-05T13:27:00.000+07:00

As the director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, Youk Chhang has spent the last ten years cataloguing the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge regime three decades ago.

A survivor of the "killing fields," Chhang lost scores of family members in the genocide. He says he came to his work "to get revenge."

What he found was salvation.

"They say that time heals all wounds," he said. "But time alone can do nothing. You will always have time. To me, research heals. Knowing and understanding what happened has set me free."

An affable man whose eyes stir with emotion, Chhang speaks with precise purpose. He has no problem sharing his own history, which he does because it is part of Cambodia's collective memory.

"I'm no different from everyone else," he said. "Most people here lost a family member in the genocide, and everywhere you look there is a story."

Frayed Documents
Led by dictator Pol Pot, the communist Khmer Rouge regime undertook a radical experiment to create an agrarian utopia in Cambodia. The regime reigned from 1975 to 1979, and its policies were responsible for the deaths of up to two million people from starvation, disease, overwork, and execution.

Yet little has been done to heal the trauma. Only a couple of the old regime leaders have been arrested. A war crimes tribunal is still in the planning stage. On the busy streets of Phnom Penh, not a whisper is heard about the country's darkest days.

But the sordid details can be found inside an anonymous colonial building near Independence Square. This is the home of the documentation center, which this year marks its tenth anniversary since it was founded by Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program.

The filing cabinets in here contain more than a million pages of frayed documents detailing executions, tortures, incarceration orders, forced confessions, and memorandums to and from top Khmer Rouge officials.

"The Khmer Rouge [officials] were meticulous record keepers," said Chhang, sitting in his office on the center's third floor. "They didn't realize that writing everything down would come back to haunt them."

One of the center's goals is to compile and organize the information so that it can serve as potential evidence in court. Its other objective is to simply record and preserve the brutal history of the regime.

"We don't make judgments," Chhang said. "We are only recording who did what to whom, so the puzzle can be put together."

Written documents make up only one part of the archive. The center also houses some 20,000 photos, as well as many films. Staff have conducted more than 20,000 interviews with both victims and perpetrators.

There is also the physical information gathered from more than 19,000 mass graves. During the interview, Chhang said his office had just received word that another mass grave containing 60 bodies had been found. The suspected killer had apparently come back to the grave to loot it for gold.

Selfish Crimes
Most Cambodians are extremely reluctant to talk about the genocide. In classrooms, almost nothing is taught about the Khmer Rouge. Chhang describes one textbook that has a short paragraph on Pol Pot, which says "a lot of people were killed" when the dictator's government was in power.

Chhang lost two sisters and tens of other relatives during the Khmer Rouge era, and he came close to losing his own life.

As a 14-year-old boy working on a communal farm, he was caught picking a vegetable to eat, an act banned by the Khmer Rouge as selfish. Soldiers tortured him in front of his mother.

"She couldn't cry, because that was considered a crime, so she turned around and walked away," he said. "For years I didn't understand how she could do that. Now I know that it saved our lives."

When the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed in 1979, Cambodia's economy was completely shattered, and widespread starvation continued.

Chhang says his mother gave him the equivalent of a dollar and told him to walk to neighboring Thailand. After staying in a Thai refugee camp, Chhang made his way to Dallas, Texas, where he later worked on crime prevention.

He returned to Cambodia in 1992 to begin the work of documenting the atrocities committed during the genocide.

"This work must be done," said Chhang, who still has a big scar on his leg where a guard cut him with an ax. "We can't bring back what we lost. But without legal proceedings, we would give impunity to those who cultivate genocide."

Into Court
Meanwhile, the United Nations war crimes tribunal for Cambodia, similar to those established for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, has been delayed for years. There are concerns that many of those responsible for the atrocities will never set foot in court.

Pol Pot died of a reported heart attack in Cambodia in 1998. Only two major figures from the old regime are in custody. Some believe the current government could even block a tribunal, because many of its officials were themselves members of the Khmer Rouge.

Chhang, however, says the public has benefited a lot just from the debate surrounding the tribunal.

"As long as people stay engaged, everyone benefits," he said.

November 2005 in Cambodia

2005-11-30T13:29:00.000+07:00

Tuesday the 1st
Those crazy Philippines
Dull Bank Holiday Tuesday evening, just lounging around at home watching some television, when there is a knock at the door (a very rare occurrence here) it was my (slightly crazy) Philippine neighbours, it seems that they were having yet another party at their place, and as usual the neighbour gets the invite to remove the risk of complaints about the noise – they can get pretty rowdy when full of that Philippine rum !

So I figure I would pop round for an hour or so, show my face and then slip back home to watch the season one finale of Deadwood on HBO (sad, sad, sad, I know!)

Wednesday the 2nd
To Holiday, or not to holiday?
Technically today is not a holiday, however as part of the bank holiday fell over the weekend, I know for a fact that a lot of my colleagues would simply not come in today so that they did not miss out on a bank holiday just because it feel on a Saturday or Sunday

I went into the office in the morning and was on my own until 10 o’clock, when I decided that I could just as easily finish the presentation I was working on at home.

Thursday the 3rd
Book Launch at Friends Restaurant
A friend of a friend has written a new book about Cambodia. She is an anthropologist, who was here to help my friend raise money for a free school that he was building.

The launch was held at Friends Restaurant, which is an overpriced, pretentious, NGO-elite hang out that normally I would not go to, but as Dickon is a friend and as he has worked so hard for the last two years trying to build a new school, I felt I should go and support him (plus it was free food and drinks)

The book is called ‘The Monk, The Farmer, The Merchant, The Mother’ by Anne Best.

It contains the life stories of 4 people (a monk, farmer, merchant and a mother; oddly enough) all of them are from Battambang province and are all in their 70’s or 80’s so they can remember King Sihanouk, the Lon Nol coup, the Thai invasion of Battambang, the Khmer Rouge/Pol Pot, the Vietnamese invasion/liberation/occupation of Cambodia and the UN fiasco after that. In short, they have lived through rougher, harder and shittier times than most people [me included] are realistically capable of imagining. I found it an interesting read for several reasons; having been here for a year and a half now and having many Khmer friends, I have heard similar stories about parts of these times but it was interesting to read four peoples recollections and thoughts on all these events without the associated worries or guilt.

Well, in order for Dickon to raise money for the building of his free school, he did not follow the usual route of writing proposals and beseeching NGO and other Aid agencies for cash, he simply got out his address book and wrote to all his family, friends and former colleagues. Of course, it helps that Dickon is an old Etonion and former Wall Street Banker – am sure that if I tried to raise US$250,000 in such a manner I would not manage much more than £3.50 !

Anne however is not one of his old public school/wall street crowd, and as such could not ‘just pop a cheque in the post’ so she decided to come to Cambodia for a month and give her time. After much discussion and thought she decided to write a book about the lives and history of some of the ordinary Khmer people. Funding was available to publish the book and then all profits from sales would go to the School Fund.

The crowd at the party was quite an eclectic mixture, from Khmer rice farmers to the Australian Ambassador there were approximately 50 people milling around sipping wine and congratulating themselves on a job well done. Dickon was rushing around greeting everyone, making sure that the restaurant did not run out of things and generally spent the night making sure that things ran smoothly for everyone else – poor guy.

Friday the 4th
Not a Bank Holiday, but still a day off

No electricity for half the morning and all of the afternoon.
I decide to take an early lunch and go to P’sar tool tom poung – also known as the Russian Market – where I relax in the shade with an iced coffee and a bowl of chicken fried rice.

After which I decide to treat myself to some new DVD’s - as a way to reduce expenditure in bars and restaurants over the weekend!
7 disc boxed set of The West Wing: Season 5 for US$12 (£7) yes, that should keep me busy over the weekend :-)

Wednesday the 9th
Independence Day
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-11/09/content_3754020.htm

Yes, 52 years ago today wirily old King Sihanouk finally managed to kick out the French colonists from Cambodia – he probably just told them that they had just invented the croissant in Vietnam and they all stormed over there in outrage, then got lost looking for the road back.

Today, his son King Sihamoni, lit the flame in the Independence Monument (a huge pineapple looking monument atop a series of steps in the middle of one of the few traffic roundabouts here in Cambodia)

While all this was going on, I had lunch with Nicky, Peter and Margaret – the volunteers that all arrived at the same time as me. Today is Nicky’s last day in Cambodia, at 18:30 this evening she is flying back to the UK for good.

Unfortunately, for some reason best known to herself, she chose to have this farewell lunch at Café Java, which is a horribly overpriced restaurant that seems to cater for horribly over paid NGO or diplomatic staff, the food is nice, very nice. But the portions are tiny and the prices large. After we had said our goodbyes I arrived back home and had a sandwich !

Thursday the 10th
Crunch time for cash
10AM this morning I have a meeting with the British Government’s Department for International Development (DFiD) I have to try and gauge the mood of the main man during it as afterwards I intend to try and hit him up for a job when my volunteer contract finishes next year. This could be tricky...

Sat in the embassy waiting room for 45 minutes until a receptionist came out and told me that the person I was meeting was not in the office today, ho hum. Guess that I will have to reschedule all this then…

Saturday the 12th
Getting Ready for a week of madness
Driving up the riverside this evening, we can see that the preparations for the water festival seem to have started, there are some dragon boats on the river already, some of which seem to be lit up with fairy lights…

A shudder runs over me as I recall the last two water festivals I have been here for. Approximately 1 million extra people travel in from the Provinces to watch the boat races and visit ‘the big city’

Traffic comes to a stand still. Police block off all roads near the river, and those leading to the riverside, so you are forced to walk shoulder to shoulder through the crowd like sardines – or in my case Khmer shoulder to my hip.

Any expat with an ounce of sense who has been here for one of these heads out of the city to the beach, or Bangkok, or Saigon, or anywhere that is not Phnom Penh.

I, of course, have no sense (and more importantly no cash) so I will be staying locked up here, unable to drive anywhere, go anywhere, do anything, etc.

One day during it all I will get dragged down to the river by everyone and will spend 4 hours walking along the one mile of riverside. As I stare and watch the multicoloured boats paddling like fury along the river in their heats, so to will all the slack jawed provincial Khmers fresh in from the rice paddies stare at me – ooo barang, ooo barang – will be there cry. A foreigner, a foreigner !

Oh well, I am convinced at times that my only purpose for being here in Cambodia is to amuse the natives. Ho hum.

Sunday the 13th
Glad I am in Cambodia and not the Philippines
Early evening there is a knock on my door – very unusual again – it is my Filipino neighbour, Dr Phil. He sponsors a basketball team here in Phnom Penh and today they had their very first win (55 to 54) so he is throwing a small party; this is, I think, the tenth party in 2 months he has had, they only need the slightest reason!

So we pop over to the next balcony, to have a beer and a bite to eat, just to be sociable you understand.

Along with the usual, BBQ chicken, BBQ pork, peanuts, et cetera, they hand me a dish of what they say is a great Filipino delicacy. It looked like some sort of pasta – a short relation of tagglieteli – but it was crispy and fried, also it seemed to be meaty rather than pasta, its texture was in parts like elastic and in parts like gravel. The whole thing had clearly been marinated in some sort of industrial strength chilli (or possibly hydrochloric acid).

After a couple of very unpleasant mouthfuls I asked ‘so what exactly is this?’

After a swift discussion in Tagalong a translation was rendered ‘deep fried strips of pigs face, cheeks and ears.

My next beer was very, very, swiftly finished.

Monday the 14th
Ooo, those Damn Filipinos.
My head hurts again.

Getting into the office for 07:00 was a struggle this morning. Although I could have easily had another hour in bed as hardly anyone was in this close to a big Khmer festival.

Around 8 I went out for breakfast with a few of the boys and by the time that we had gotten back to the office (08:20) the boss had already gone home, so everyone that had come in was starting to pack up and think about leaving as well !

At 10 I there was only me and the cleaner in the office, ho hum, guess it is time to start the holiday.

The Water Festival – Bon Omn Thouk: the 15th to the 17th
First day of bon omm thouck
The water festival here in Cambodia is a unique event. The Country is very flat and has a six month monsoon season. By the end of the rainy season, roughly November, the country is very water-logged, the water table rises so high that the Tonle Sap River actually reverses its direction and starts flowing back into the Tonle Sap Lake, this also happens in November. This is what the water festival celebrates, the end of the rains, the reversal of the river and the start of the growing and harvest season. Also, it is the only Khmer festival that is not family orientated; all of the other big Khmer festivals see a desertion of Phnom Penh with most of the Khmers returning to their home towns and home provinces to hold family celebrations. The water festival sees the opposite, the population of Phnom Penh is roughly 1.3 million, during the week of the water festival an extra 1 million Khmers come to the city to celebrate, to watch the boat races, to compete in the boat races and generally party. This, near, doubling of the city’s population usually causes complete gridlock and havoc on the cities roads, making it virtually impossible to travel by car or motorbike, with tens of thousands of people walking everywhere blocking the roads and setting up roadside barbeques, refreshment stalls and even sleeping.

Tuesday the 15th
Enjoyed a leisurely day at home and then thought in the evening that we should head up to the river to see what was going on.

After several attempts it was declared hopeless. An extra million visitors are estimated to be in Phnom Penh this week.

Most of them seem to be on foot and standing in the roads around the city, along with all the extra; vans, cars, tuk-tuk’s, cyclos, motos, bicycles, et cetra.

In addition to this everybody and their uncle seems to have set up stalls on every square inch of pavement (and several back roads) selling everything from BBQ chicken to red silk stuffed elephants to fake Birkenstocks

Wednesday the 16th
Chaos out there!
Attempting a different route to the river side this evening was just as bad. However with a little perseverance and a lot of honking and aggressive driving, it only took me 35 minutes to travel the 4 kilometres to Dave’s new bar.

The idea was to leave the bike at Dave’s bar (with his guard keeping an eye on it) and then walk the last 3 or 4 blocks to the river. However, I was feeling, hot, harassed and tired when I got there, so I stayed and had a drink with Dave, Brian, Paul and few other that we there.

Thursday the 17th
Last (official) day of the water festival
I am struggling to find a parking space in several impromptu parking lots that have been set up outside peoples houses. Eventually finding one the guy whose house it was tells me how much it will cost, roughly four times the usual cost; plus he would not be staying open all night. So I head back into the night looking for another space, when I realise that I am only a couple of blocks away from Paul, (a friend of mine) house. Now Paul is out of the country at the minute (smart guy) but I know his security guard and he works all through the night, so a quick word with him and my bike is safe and sound inside the compound and we all start walking, or rather trying to walk through the sheer mass of people.

Khmer government officials say that an extra 1 million people have descended on the city. Most of which will be congregating in a ten block area by the riverside. Oh what fun…

Friday the 18th
Back to work
In a way I am almost glad to be back in the office, at least here I am not surrounded by millions of screaming people and melting to death drip by drip.

As expected there are only two of us in the office by 08:00, but I have several things that I can happily finish on my own, in peace and quiet and in the cool, cool, air-conditioned building

Monday the 21st to Friday the 26th
A quiet week, with just work and no nights out – saving money for the house move!

Sunday the 27th
For one time only, USA band DENGUE FEVER is playing the Peace Pub. Everyone who knows their music tells me that this will be an awesome gig. Without doubt, the first real non expat rock’n’ roll band to play in PP.

Tickets are $5 and entitle the customer to two draft beers or soft drinks. Tickets are available from Peace Pub or can be purchased on the door if available.

“I live in Southern California. I have seen and talked to the band several times. If you get a chance, go and see this group. They are simply awesome. The guys in the group are some of the best musicians you will see anywhere. They sound like they were dropped right out of the sixties. “ Shasta

‘’multicultural pop featuring the vocals of Cambodian-American Chhom Nimol (all the vocals are sung in Khmer). Retro surf guitar, the throwback psychedelic tone of the Farfisa organ, rhythms on songs like ‘Pow Pow’ that conjure visions of James Bond dancing the Swim in a Hong Kong nightclub, as well as the absence of any post-punk or disco residue, create a sense of time displacement.'’ Dengue Fever review in local paper.
Not quite sure what the reviewer is saying there, but he seemed to like them!?!?

The concert was due to start at 8:30 that evening, so I decided to get there early to make sure I got a good seat, 7:30 and the bar was already starting to fill up!

Dengue Fever - the gig that never was...

Monday the 28th
Boxes, boxes, boxes.
Damn, I hate moving house! Spent the day surrounded by boxes and packing things. It is amazing how much stuff I have managed to accumulate in nearly two years here !
Down stairs with boxes, back up stairs, et cetera. Damn, I hate moving house!

Tuesday the 29th
Pickup Truck, more boxes, hired Khmer labour and lots and lots of steps.
I had to go into work this morning for an (allegedly) important meeting. So I left the final box packing Figuring that after lunch I and the couple of Khmer guys I had hired could load the furniture, cooker and heavy stuff.

Arrived back at lunch to find that the van could not get here until 4:30pm…

8PM finally in my new flat (10 minutes up the road) just the unpacking to do !

Did I mention that, damn I hate moving house ?

Wednesday the 30th
Mobile again at last !
Vay phoned me last night to say that my bike was ready to be picked up from his bike shop. Turns out that the problem was the clutch plate, it had been replaced before I bought the bike, but the moron fixing the bike did not know the difference between a clutch plate and a brake plate…

Anyway, all fixed and for the princely sum of US$20 – (including an oil change, just for the fun of it)

Almost finished the unpacking, hampered slightly by the lack of a few things – like a wardrobe!

Ho hum.

Remember back when I was all keen and enthusiastic about being a volunteer, and recommending to some of you to do it… mmm?

Cambodian film festival

2005-11-29T08:54:00.000+07:00

Vampire and ghost stories top the bill as Cambodian film festival opens.

Cambodia's struggling film industry -- undergoing a revival after being obliterated by communist rule in the 1970s -- opened its second national film festival Monday with vampire and ghost stories dominating the competition entries.

Nine of the 22 entries were horror movies, but government leaders told local stars and producers gathered for the film festival preview that if they want to succeed, they must steer away from superstition and move toward realism.

Filmmakers should choose themes "more relevant to reality in Cambodia," if they want to succeed, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An said in the festival's opening speech.

Cambodia's film industry was destroyed by the communist Khmer Rouge, whose brutal 1975-79 rule is blamed for the deaths of at least 1.7 million people by starvation, execution, overwork and disease.

The Khmer Rouge, trying to create an agrarian utopia, believed that artistic, educational and intellectual pursuits were corrupt practices.

The film industry has struggled to revive itself since the late 1980s, when a couple of hundred production companies had sprung up to churn out scores of amateurish videos.

However, an influx of higher quality foreign movies has reduced the number of Cambodian production houses to just a handful today, as broadcasters opt for more professionally produced programs.

Beside the scary movies, the entries included "Decho Domden" -- an epic about a 12th-century Cambodian hero who led his warriors to drive out invaders from neighboring Thailand.

The five-day festival is the second after one held in 1990, organizers said. A nine-member judging panel will view all 22 entries before announcing the winner on Dec. 2.

A preview of the entries was held at Chaktomuk Theater in the capital Phnom Penh

Dengue Fever - The gig that never was

2005-11-28T09:44:00.000+07:00

Sunday the 27th
For one time only, USA band DENGUE FEVER is playing the Peace Pub. Everyone who knows their music tells me that this will be an awesome gig. Without doubt, the first real non expat rock’n’ roll band to play in PP.
Tickets are $5 and entitle the customer to two draft beers or soft drinks. Tickets are available from Peace Pub or can be purchased on the door if available.

“I live in Southern California. I have seen and talked to the band several times. If you get a chance, go and see this group. They are simply awesome. The guys in the group are some of the best musicians you will see anywhere. They sound like they were dropped right out of the sixties. “ Shasta

‘’multicultural pop featuring the vocals of Cambodian-American Chhom Nimol (all the vocals are sung in Khmer). Retro surf guitar, the throwback psychedelic tone of the Farfisa organ, rhythms on songs like ‘Pow Pow’ that conjure visions of James Bond dancing the Swim in a Hong Kong nightclub, as well as the absence of any post-punk or disco residue, create a sense of time displacement.'’ Dengue Fever review.
Not quite sure what the reviewer is saying there, but he seemed to like them!?!?

The concert was due to start at 8:30 that evening, so I decided to get there early to make sure I got a good seat, 7:30 and the bar was already starting to fill up!

Dengue Fever - The gig that never was

Well, Sunday evening turned out to an entertaining night at the Peace Pub; but not for the reasons billed.

A crowd of some 80 strong people had turned up to see the band Dengue Fever play its live funky brand of Khmer American popular music.

Unfortunately, the band did not turn up until about 20 minutes after they were due to start playing, they spent five minutes making their way through the crowd to find the owner, whereupon they told him that they did not like the look of it all, plus the lead singer was feeling ‘a bit under the weather’ so they then walked out leaving the poor owner to deal with a crowd of very annoyed people.

The deal was, US$5 for entry to see the band, but your ticket got you two free drinks ($3 worth) now, most of the crowd had been there for a while and had had their free drinks. So poor Dave (the owner) gets up on stage, tells everyone that the band had refused to play. He then offers everyone in the bar another free drink (so we are now up to $4.50 in drinks per head)

On top of that, Dave has had to have the stage built, hire equipment, print posters and tickets, pay people to distribute flyers and had extra staff in for the night.

So I think that it is fair to say he is seriously out of pocket on all this!

Of course, not everyone in the crowd was happy about this solution. One guy was so angry and screaming so loudly, that at one point Dave leaned over the bar to me and said ‘psst, Darren, get out side and fetch my security guards, quick!’

So while poor Dave was trying to deal with this guy, and several others who had appeared to back him up, another disgruntled customer, a youngish woman of the American persuasion, was standing near my end of the bar screaming at the poor young Khmer girl, Som Nang, working behind the bar that she was very upset and where the hell was her free gin and tonic. In that time honoured method, when the foreigner did not understand what the English speaker had said, she just started repeating it louder and slower; because as we all know, if you speak loud enough and slow enough, the natives will finally understand you.

A small irony of the woman screaming, shouting and raving at the defenceless Khmer barmaid is that the American woman in question works here for an NGO that is supposed to be addressing gender equality in impoverished rural communities.

So it was a lose ~ lose situation for the Peace Pub. Screwed over by the band, upset customers are always the loudest, out of pocket; but the behaviour of the worst of the customers really was appalling to watch.

As for my friends and myself, we just sat back and watched the pantomime characters work themselves into an ulcer or coronary. While simultaneously offering the US$1 for their unused tickets (3 beers for a dollar works for me :-)

Ho Hum

More Kampot Euthanasia News ???

2005-11-25T10:05:00.000+07:00

Well, this crackpot American has had his first court appearence

*** *** *** ***

A Californian man accused of defaming a sleepy Cambodian province by promoting it as the perfect place to commit suicide has defended himself on Thursday, saying he meant nobody any harm.

"I am an old man in a small town in Cambodia. I don't want to cause any trouble for anybody. But I do have my own beliefs which, if I can, I will tell people about," Roger Graham, 57, told Reuters after appearing in court in Kampot, a coastal town.

Graham, who runs the Blue Mountain Coffee and Internet Cafe, was answering a lawsuit lodged against him by Kampot's provincial governor Puth Chandarith over of his Web site www.euthanasiaincambodia.com.

"If they want to throw me out of the country, they can. All I want to do is to run a little cafe and live the rest of my life in peace. I intend to die here," he said.

Still emerging from decades of war, including the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s in which 1.7 million people died, Cambodia has no laws governing euthanasia or assisted suicide, and the issue does not rank as a high priority in what is one of Asia's poorest nations.

Despite this, the government has come under pressure to close the Web site after the suicide of a 47-year-old British woman whose relatives believe its message -- "You're going to die anyway, so why not in Cambodia?" -- influenced her decision.

Since the controversy blew up a month ago, Graham said nearly half a million people had visited his Web site, which reopened two weeks ago after a temporary closure, compared to a paltry 1,600 per month before.

"Saying euthanasia harms Cambodia's tourism does not make sense. Around 450,000 visitors have looked at my Web Site and some of those will come here," he said with a smile.

He also stood by his convictions that individuals had the right to choose the time and place of their death, and, given the absence of any relevant laws, Cambodia made sense as a location.

"This is a good place for them to choose if they want to do," Graham told Reuters in his small cafe, overlooking a river.

"Kampot is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. I get to see the sun rise and the sun set. I get people coming by and saying hello with smiling and happy faces."

Prosecutors who questioned Graham said they had not filed any charges against Graham and needed more time to make a decision.

New Toy - Links away from my Blog !?!?

2005-11-22T08:37:00.000+07:00

Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls,

After what seems an eternity, I have managed to work out how to put links into the side bar.

Yes, I am a Luddite.

Cheers

D

Fish long way from home ?

2005-11-21T09:05:00.000+07:00

the start of this news article starts like a bad joke...

***

A Cambodia-flagged ship on Friday bumped into a Bulgarian hooker near the Black Sea port of Burgas, injuring two people and leaving one missing, Sofia News Agency reported Saturday.

The Bulgarian boat sank with three fishermen aboard on Friday evening.

Two were rescued by the crew of another ship sailing nearby, but one person went missing, said the report.

The Cambodian boat had attempted to leave Bulgarian territorialwaters, but was seized by a police patrol boat, it said.

The Fishery and Aquaculture Agency said fishing is forbidden inthe area where the accident happened.

Changing the face of crime-fighting in Cambodia

2005-11-11T14:35:00.000+07:00

Six years since this project / report, and no changes at all to report...

***

The Criminal Justice Assistance Project, funded by the Australian government, is helping to turn around a dysfunctional force. James East reports

A Cambodian Buddhist monk is behind bars for murder thanks to the gift of fingerprint test kits donated to the country's cash-strapped police. It may not seem much of a gift, but it is, in a Southeast Asia nation where policing is little more than basic. While Cambodia's police force has a core of well-trained and disciplined officers, the remainder have few skills and almost no equipment. This is due to decades of civil war and the havoc wrought by the 1975 to 1979 Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot in which lawyers, police officers and judges were executed.

International criminal justice experts from Australia are now helpingthe Royal Cambodian Police to build a force that can keep pace with crime syndicates that are increasingly using the country as a base from which to traffic drugs, arms and to organise the kidnappings of wealthy businessmen to be held for ransom.

In the three years that the team has been working it has helped put in place basic operating procedures and an appreciation of the value of human rights as part of an overall drive to change the culture of policing. The Cambodia Criminal Justice Assistance Project, funded by the Australian Government to the tune of US$8.75 million, is a wide-ranging programme designed to improve the quality of justice across the board. In five provinces, including the capital Phnom Penh, investigating judicial police, the courts and prisons are receiving support and advice from the team of 10. The advisers have their work cut out.

The 67,000-strong national and 6,000-strong judicial police forces are massively bloated thanks, in part, to an influx of former Khmer Rouge and militia officers, given jobs in a government amnesty to end civil war. Not all police are independent. Many senior officers are alleged to be linked to Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party. Officers earn a paltry $10-20 and corruption and bribery is so rampant that it has turned most Cambodians against those supposed to enforce the law.

To top it all, Cambodians have been so brutalised by years of war that the modus operandi of police officers when dealing with a suspect has typically been to extract a confession with a beating and then submit the paperwork to a judge. A conviction is secured with little or no corroborating evidence.

One of the advisers sums up the difficulties as:
A lack of trust in the police, some of whom are linked to powerful criminals
Senior positions being taken by party men with no policing experience
A lack of forensic gear, vehicles, and equipped police stations
Political infighting among government ministers resulting in confusion.

'We are trying to take the police out of politics but this is an old problem and will not change overnight. It is not just a question of planning but of changing the mindset of senior officers,' the adviser said. Against this backdrop the Australian team is working with officers to change the way they view their jobs, to restructure the top-heavy force, and to bring in ranking based on merit.

Eventually some 20,000 police will be retrenched - through a retraining and resettlement programme - over a five-year period. Future selection, promotion and retirement of officers will be based on guidelines currently being reviewed by the advisers and police chiefs.

Senior officers and Interior and Justice Ministry chiefs have already put in place reforms to ensure investigations are better handled and that suspects and criminals are dealt with fairly in courts and prisons. The team has also embarked on an ambitious programme to upgrade police stations, prisons and courts, rebuilding crumbling offices and cell blocks and supplying such basic equipment as tables and chairs as well as vehicles. So far two new provincial police stations have been built and one upgraded at a cost of US$185,000.

Around US$1.6m has been spent on courts and prisons.The advisers are also training police instructors in everything from crime scene investigation to obtaining arrest warrants and from suspects' rights to filing a proper court report. The project has led to the formal training of in excess of 450 officers and on-the-job training is now underway. Eventually 25 police instructors will be trained on how to share their skills and on what to teach.

Police adviser Stephen Woodall says the new operations manual is the key document in laying the foundation for future reforms. Drawn up after consultations with senior officers it has been sent out to officers across the country. The project is also helping to improve record keeping.

Basic database and indexing systems are being implemented. In addition, there has been a massive fingerprinting exercise of prison inmates and suspects with records being kept on cards at national police headquarters. More than 4,000 prints have been taken in 12 months.

Establishing a simple paper-based system is a priority, but Mr Woodall is also looking to bring in computers, helping officers to leapfrog into the 21st century. With training, officers will eventually be able to access a database of crime information and even create photofit pictures of suspects. Naturally not everyone is happy with the reforms.

A more independent force challenges traditional party political strongholds and corrupt practices. But the Australians are careful to steer clear of politics. They believe, in the long term, that the adoption of the operating procedures will change the culture of policing. Mr Woodall said: 'We have deliberately remained apolitical. It is really the only way that we could remain here. Putting the procedures in place and educating top down provides a pretty sound basis for the future and creates an awareness of good policing practice at all levels.'

Training tailored to the local environment is also key to officers understanding the need for the operation procedures. Mr Woodall said: 'I use the comparison of buying a new motorbike and introducing new ways of doing things.

To look after the motorbike you need to look at the operations manual.' He also encourages officers to talk about policing issues in small groups. They are nervous at first but soon open up. The approach is very different from the Cambodian way where subordinates do not question their seniors and from previous training sessions run by some Western block countries who lectured their audiences.

Improved case file management and training already seems to working its way through the system. Judges have praised the police for an improvement in the quality of case files presented to the courts. The number of convictions has also risen as police enforce the laws.

In the last 12 months the number of prisoners has risen by more than 500. The pace of the implementation of the reforms depends, for the most part, on the will of the country's political leaders, but the Australian team says establishing relationships is key to winning over senior officers.

Now police officers are hungry for the training sessions and are begging the Australians to pump in more funds and assistance and a further three-year project is being considered. Although the advisers are working in only five provinces the operating procedures and training have so impressed police chiefs that it is now filtering out to more remote regions and there are plans to establish three regional training centres.

Colonel Monh Kamsan, deputy director of the Scientific and Technical police, is frank about the help the Australians have given. 'Before the project came we did not have any professional skills at all. We were not active because we did not have any equipment and our officers had not been trained,' he said.

Kompong Cham - Small town Cambodia

2005-11-11T08:35:00.000+07:00

We're sitting under a great old tree, on plastic chairs by the slick stirring waters of the Mekong.

To our right the brilliantly lit, Japanese-funded Kasuma Bridge spans out into the darkness. On the far bank we can see the faint outline of the old French-era guard tower. Nearby a gaggle of sampans are tied to the river's edge, bobbing and bumping in the current.

A moonrise breaks on the horizon, bathing the river in a ghostly hue. It's midnight in Kompong Cham and we have the entire place to ourselves.

Kompong Cham had its heyday back in the 1930s and '40s, when the town was a cosmopolitan Indochinese river port supporting the sprawling French-administered rubber plantations that once patchworked across much of this part of Cambodia. Many of these plantations were destroyed during the American war and those that survived the bombing languished in disrepair during the Khmer Rouge period. Today, moves are afoot to resuscitate the business and one can easily visit a plantation.

The name Kompong Cham refers to a sizeable population of Chams who took up residence after being chased out of Vietnam when the Kingdom of Champa collapsed. These people, distinctive in their religion, dress, customs and language, were picked out for particular attention by the Khmer Rouge, who decimated their population during the Khmer Rouge period. Today, with its plentiful Chinese-script signs, Kompong Cham feels more like a Chinese trading town than the Cham agrarian centre it once was.

While precious little remains to bear evidence to the Cham period, Kompong Cham has a wealth of French colonial relics. The ever-watchful guard tower on the far bank of the Mekong sits in direct line of sight to the mayor's house in the centre of Kompong Cham. In time's past, guards would light a furnace atop it to warn the town that invaders were on the way. Until recently in a state of disrepair, the tower was recently restored - supposedly with a French expat's money - and painted pink.

The town also has its fair share of French-influenced buildings and trader shopfronts, which while often badly dilapidated, retain an austere grace so totally lacking from the more modern concoctions that flank them. While not nearly as beautiful as Phnom Penh, Kompong Cham retains enough urban points of interest for at least a pleasing stroll through town, and given its small size it's no challenge to explore the back lanes on foot.

Many think of the Mekong River as a singular mammoth waterway twisting its way down from Cambodia's northern frontier with Laos before pouring itself out and across Vietnam's delta. It's also a river of many tributaries, and exploring some of these by boat from Kompong Cham is what easily justifies a longer stay than your guidebook may suggest. Cruising up a narrow tributary is like dropping back 100 years in time. Unadulterated village life is on full display here, intermingled with forest and bamboo, with the occasional rundown colonial mansion - once home to plantation overseers and their families - poking out above the trees.

Wat Maha Leap is one of Cambodia's largest remaining wooden temples and sits towards the border with Prey Veng Province, a 40-minute boat ride along the Tonle Thoit (small river) tributary to the south of Kompong Cham. When the Khmer Rouge seized power, many temples were pillaged and burnt to the ground, but superstition, it seems, protected Wat Maha Leap.

Believed to be over 100 years old, the temple's exterior is bland and unappealing, but the interior reveals towering gilded teak columns (each requiring an entire tree) supporting a beautifully-painted sky blue roof. We found it to be eerily reminiscent of Wat Phra That Lampang Luang in northern Thailand.

Sadly, while the temple survived the Khmer Rouge, it is slowly losing a long-running battle with termites burrowing through the slender columns.Upon leaving the wat, continue along the river to the renowned weaving village of Prey Chung Kran.

Jump out of the boat to the familiar click clack, click clack of villager's looms, and visit house after house where weavers fashion an excellent range of Khmer kramas and a variety of other fabrics. Buying off the loom here will guarantee yourself a better price than in Phnom Penh - in fact many stores in Phnom Penh travel here to buy their stock - and you're also supporting a worthwhile cottage industry.

When you're done at the temple and village, return to the Mekong and head back towards Kompong Cham. En route be sure to stop off at the island of Ko Paen, which sits towards the west bank of the Mekong just to the south of Kompong Cham.

When the Mekong is low, you can cycle or walk to the island by a small bamboo bridge, but when the river is high, the bridge disappears under the muddy brown waters and a boat becomes a requirement rather than an option.

A small agrarian island, Ko Paen is a terrific spot to observe typical Khmer rural life. Watch out for the fishermen standing by the river's bank with huge badminton-racket-like hand-held white fishing nets. They stand by the river's edge scooping the net through the river, drawing a slow but steady catch. In the late afternoon light, these nets really glisten - don't forget your camera.

Kompong Cham has a seemingly disproportionate number of really friendly motorbike guys who speak amazing English and know the town like the back of their hand. Combine a chat to these guys with an evening at Mekong Crossing with Joe, who harks from Pennsylvania and has forgotten more about Kompong Cham than most ever knew, and you'll have enough activities to keep you busy here for a month.

After all there's still Khmer ruins, hilltop temples, more boat trips and even an abandoned air base - all requiring your attention.

And don't forget to fit in a few midnight drinks under the shade of the big tree on the Mekong's bank.

Former inmate imparts lessons

2005-11-11T08:32:00.000+07:00

One day during his 20-month prison term, Thea Som realized it was time to change.

"I woke up and looked in the mirror and said, 'I'm not going to take this any more. I'm going to live life with a passion. I'm not going to live life so paranoid,'" Som, now 24 and a youth outreach worker in Springfield, told a group of students at the Florence Learning Center yesterday.

He spoke as part of a school-year-long effort by the Veterans Education Project at the center, which is an alternative public school for high school-age students.
Rob M. Wilson, project director, said speakers are brought in who provide a wide perspective on the effects of war.

"We want to bring in voices from our community, men and women who have gone through hardship and challenges, made some pretty serious mistakes, confronted violence in war and on the streets and come through the experience with insight and lessons that can be valuable to young people to help them develop better critical thinking skills," Wilson said.

Som told the students how he once beat people up and sold drugs, and how after he was released from jail, he was picked up by immigration authorities who imprisoned him for another two years.

He was threatened with deportation to Cambodia, a country his mother fled from to a refuge camp in Thailand where he was born. He knows no one in Cambodia.

In this country, his mother had never told him what had happened to her in Cambodia, how she watched as his older brother was shot in front of her. He learned this after his incarceration, when he interviewed his mother to learn about her life.

Som said he "grew up in silence." Filled with anger, he barely managed to graduate from Amherst-Pelham Regional High School and got arrested repeatedly. Finally, he was sentenced to 2½ years in jail, 20 months of which he served.

When he got out, he was a changed person. In jail, he had begun to write about his experiences and became involved with the Performance Project, a theater group made up of present and former inmates.

"I used to be scared to show how I felt. I didn't want to be vulnerable. People were going to think I'm soft," said Som, who works for the Anti-Displacement Project in Springfield and lives in Amherst.

Students at the Florence Learning Center told Som about their own experiences that relate to his. In interviews, they said his experiences put their lives in perspective.

"It makes you look on the positive side. When I'm having a bad day, I think that guy had it way worse than I did. It changes everything around," said Rich A. Morin, 18, a student at the center.

'Euthanasia tourism' sparks outrage!

2005-11-04T09:33:00.000+07:00

This story has been front page news in the Cambodia Daily 'newspaper' all week, oddly enough the only online reference to it is in the Hindustan Times ?!?!

***

Websites advocating 'euthanasia tourism' allegedly posted by a US national from a sleepy Cambodian town have sparked outrage and confusion as businesses and the government debate what action to take.

The family and friends of a British national have already alleged that the twin sites were directly linked to a 47-year-old woman's suicide in September in Kampot, about 180 km from the capital, following the break-up of a relationship.

At least 20 business owners in the tourist town have signed a petition and forwarded it to the provincial government demanding the sites be closed because they damage the reputation of Cambodia and its developing tourism industry.

The provincial police, the ministry of interior and the ministry of tourism all said this week they were aware of the problem but were confused about what they could do as the problem was so unusual and new to Cambodia.

One of the euthanasia websites carries the banner "You are going to die anyway, so why not in Cambodia?" and both sites actively urge people considering suicide or euthanasia to visit the country, claiming there is no law against these practices in the kingdom.

"The websites say that whoever wants to kill themselves, it is easy in Kampot," a deputy provincial police chief in Chiva said.

"They tell people that if a foreigner wants to kill himself, he should come here. This is not good for the reputation of our province."

But he added that although he had completed a report and sent it to the ministry of interior, he had no idea at this stage what action he could take or what criminal charges he might be able to bring against the sites' author.

The ministry is reviewing its options and had not decided how to proceed. But it said the websites were undesirable and not welcome.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7242_1536173,00180008.htm

Private Killing Fields

2005-10-28T13:28:00.000+07:00

The rare, half intelligent, article on Cambodia in the international press...

Follow above link to full story.

Cambodia has become a self-devouring nation in which just about everything seems to be for sale or lease: forests, fisheries, mining concessions, air routes, ship registrations, toxic dumps, weapons, women, girls, boys, babies...

Government Resort to Recourse on Defamation

2005-10-25T15:35:00.000+07:00

The Royal Government of Cambodia has taken strong action against allegations on territorial issue, viewed as political attack against the ruling parties, especially the prominent Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen.

For years now, opposition politicians and some NGO activists have repeatedly made either direct or indirect allegations against the government over border issue with neighboring countries including Viet Nam, Laos and Thailand.

Such allegations are apparently utilized as a political tool , rather than real intention to find a solution, to degrade the popularity of the Prime Minister and to win heart and mind of the Cambodian people.

To eliminate doubts over the territorial issue, the Royal Government of Cambodia has resorted to legal recourse to bring those who make allegations to court where, as claimed by Samdech Hun Sen, they can tell the truth and help the government pin-point any parts of the territory lost during the tenure of the Prime Minister.

As a result, seven people have been sued and taken to court although some of them managed to flee the country to avoid inquiries and investigations.

However, Mom Sonando, a border-issue critic who is the owner of FM105 Radion Station and Rong Chhun, president of Independent Teachers' Association have been detained on warrants by Phnom Penh Court prosecutor.

At last but not least, Prince Sisowath Thomico, a royal family member fled the country on October 18, 2005 only one day after pledging to wage a hunger strike and confront defamation charges filed by the government. The prince is one of the seven people who have been charged on defamations over territorial issue.

On his arrival from the 2nd ASEAN-China Expo in China in the afternoon of October 19, 2005, Samdech Hun Sen mocked at the prince by saying "Prince Thomico disappoints (Cambodian) citizens. He should have stayed and lived up to his pledge ".

On Friday this week, the government is scheduled to meet, discuss and approve a number of projects including the document pertaining to the signing of the additional treaty on October 10 between Cambodia and Viet Nam.
The document needs to be adopted by the National Assembly and ratified by the King.(ends)

Khmer Vampires ???

2005-10-12T13:59:00.000+07:00

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Black magic may have driven a Cambodian couple to bite off their daughter's thumb nails and suck her blood, officials said Sunday.

Chheng Chhorn, 46, and Srun Yoeung, 37, attacked their 12-year-old child before dawn on Thursday while she was still asleep, biting off her thumb nails and a small part of her nose to drink her blood, said Keo Norea Phy, a police official in Kampong Cham province where the incident occurred.

Neighbours rushed to the couple's house and rescued the girl after hearing her screams.

After treatment at a hospital in Kampong Cham, about 50 miles east of Phnom Penh, the girl was placed in the custody of other villagers. Relatives had taken her parents to a black magic healer to chase away the evil spirit that was believed to have possessed them, the police official said.

"We, the police, just have no idea what offence to charge them with," Keo Norea Phy said.
Preap Nhim, a local official, said the couple sold noodles in their village and had never before acted in a strange manner. He said they may have been driven by the spirit guarding the altar they kept inside their house.

Cambodia is a Buddhist country, but many people in the countryside are deeply superstitious. Some claim the ability to communicate with the dead and cure the sick by exorcising evil spirits from their bodies.

Friday the 30th September

2005-10-07T11:17:00.000+07:00

Philippine Birthday Party No. 2
Regular readers may recall me attending my Philippine neighbour’s birthday party a couple of months back. Today is his brother-in-laws birthday (he was 22) and so they are having a party next-door. And so as good neighbours, they invite me – presumably to cut of any objections J
Despite only living 6 inches away I was late to the start of the party and it was kicking off with the food when we got there, the food was excellent, it had been prepared by my neighbours mother-in-law, an 80 year old Philippine woman who speaks surprisingly good English, for her sons birthday she had been slaving away in the kitchen all day preparing:

Stir fry noodles with pork, veg and chillies
Barbequed King Prawns
Shrimp paste spring rolls
Roast chicken
And of course the ubiquitous Boiled Rice

Halfway through us grazing the buffet the main dish for the food arrived, having been prepared by the only Philippine restaurant in Phnom Penh. It was a traditional Philippine dish made for parties - it was a suckling pig that had been barbequed whole. I have to say, it was fantastic.

An hour or so into it some more guests arrive a mixture of young Philippine guys and young Khmer guys turn up, friend of the birthday boy, I move out onto the balcony to join them for a drink – that was were things started to go wrong.

While having a few beers with them they started playing some Philippine drinking games, some semi frozen rum and fruit juice concoction was involved – in addition to the beers – after an hour or so of that a few more of their friends turned up, but we had run out of Philippine rum to make the punch needed for the drinking game, oh no, luckily they had brought with them a couple of two litre bottles of Johnny Walker… aghhhh.

I think that I managed to crawl into my bed next-door at around 3AM

Saturday the 1st of October
There is a power drill inside my head

Oh my head hurts.

Never, ever, ever, get into Philippine drinking games involving Philippine rum.

Cambodia is an affordable paradise

2005-10-07T08:57:00.000+07:00

Sihanoukville, Cambodia - I hop on the back of the little motor scooter without an ounce of trepidation. After two days in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's rapidly bustling little capital, I now view my regular trips on this country's taxis with two parts adventure and one part economic relief.

A moto is a cheap way to see Cambodia and cool in more ways than one. There's nothing like beating the heat of a hot Southeast Asian night by flying through traffic on the back of a scooter - even going the wrong way down a one-way street.

But this is different. I'm not in the city anymore. I'm far from it, far from any sense of what people view as Cambodia. Pounding along a bumpy dirt road, we pass a tiny village of six wooden structures where a man sleeps in a hammock and a child pulls a crude, wooden wagon.

A little boy and his brother wave and smile at me. We swerve to avoid a goat.

This road into the real Cambodia ends at a spectacular beach. I hop off the back and forget to pay the driver as I stare open- mouthed at an expansive stretch of fine, white sand, nary a single hotel, souvenir stand or bar in sight. The only signs of civilization are two small, wooden shelters, serving only as protection from a rainstorm.

Full Article here:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/travel/ci_3089811