A Cambodian man who brought a dog to roast for the main course of a family dinner slashed his brother-in-law with a machete after asking for a second helping and being told the dish was finished, police said on Monday.
The deputy police chief of Sa'ang district just outside Phnom Penh, Un Savuth, said that farmer Uch Oeurn (22) had arrived at his sister's home last Friday with a dog in a bag, which he invited brother-in-law Pon Ty (25) to roast.
"But when Oeurn had finished eating his first dish of dog, he asked for more and was told there was none, so he became angry and accused his brother-in-law of being stingy," Savuth said.
"He was very drunk, and when someone passed him a machete, he chopped his brother-in-law Ty in the leg, the head and the neck before running away. We are seeking him now," he said.
However despite being badly wounded, Ty jumped up and badly beat Oeurn's brother Uch Chan, whom he accused of suppling the weapon, before being sent to hospital, Savuth added, causing further family tensions.
"They were very drunk, and Oeurn was angry because it was his dog and he was hungry, but we don't think he had known the dog for long -- we think he stole it on the way to the party," Savuth said.
Dog is traditionally eaten as a drinking snack with copious amounts of rice wine by some groups of Cambodians.
Oueurn faces 10 years in jail if convicted.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Chicken and Melon Soup
Cambodian chicken and melon soup (Machu Angkor)
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Yield: 6 servings
The authentic version of this soup calls for winter melon, a large mild Asian muskmelon--this recipe offers substitutes that are easier to find—and prahok, Cambodia's fermented fish paste, for which we have substituted the more widely available fish sauce. Look for condensed tamarind juice in Asian food markets. Serve this soup with a bowl of hot rice, to be mixed in at the table.
5 cups water
3 whole chicken breasts, skin on, bone in
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 Crenshaw melon, cubed, or 1 medium cucumber or zucchini, peeled, seeded,coarsely chopped
1/2 cup pineapple chunks
1 tablespoon each: condensed tamarind juice or lime juice, fish sauce
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon peanut oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
8 cherry tomatoes, halved
2 tablespoons minced basil
Heat water, chicken and salt to boiling in large saucepan. Reduce heat; cover. Simmer 1 hour. Skim off any fat. Remove chicken from broth; let cool enough to remove meat from bones. Discard skin and bones. Shred chicken meat; return to broth. Add melon, pineapple, tamarind juice, fish sauce and sugar to broth; heat to boiling.
Meanwhile, heat oil in small skillet over medium heat. Add garlic; cook until soft, about 1 minute. Remove soup from heat. Add tomatoes and basil to soup; stir in garlic.
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Yield: 6 servings
The authentic version of this soup calls for winter melon, a large mild Asian muskmelon--this recipe offers substitutes that are easier to find—and prahok, Cambodia's fermented fish paste, for which we have substituted the more widely available fish sauce. Look for condensed tamarind juice in Asian food markets. Serve this soup with a bowl of hot rice, to be mixed in at the table.
5 cups water
3 whole chicken breasts, skin on, bone in
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 Crenshaw melon, cubed, or 1 medium cucumber or zucchini, peeled, seeded,coarsely chopped
1/2 cup pineapple chunks
1 tablespoon each: condensed tamarind juice or lime juice, fish sauce
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon peanut oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
8 cherry tomatoes, halved
2 tablespoons minced basil
Heat water, chicken and salt to boiling in large saucepan. Reduce heat; cover. Simmer 1 hour. Skim off any fat. Remove chicken from broth; let cool enough to remove meat from bones. Discard skin and bones. Shred chicken meat; return to broth. Add melon, pineapple, tamarind juice, fish sauce and sugar to broth; heat to boiling.
Meanwhile, heat oil in small skillet over medium heat. Add garlic; cook until soft, about 1 minute. Remove soup from heat. Add tomatoes and basil to soup; stir in garlic.
Cambodian Food
Yes, yes, I know, another article about food...
Tourists who venture into Cambodia are usually so focused on the ethereal carvings of Angkor Wat and surrounding ancient temples that the country's food gets scant attention.
Some travellers fly in just for the day from Bangkok, allowing barely enough time to a quick lunch between temple visits.
Guidebooks are terse on the subject. Frommer calls Cambodia "a difficult destination," and like other travel books, yields no specific details about dining experiences.
Perhaps Cambodian cuisine is overshadowed by the food of its neighbours, the more popular, fiery dishes of Thailand and the French-Chinese fare of Vietnam.
And yet, a Cambodian renaissance is under way. A recent issue of Travel and Leisure magazine proclaimed Cambodia "the next hot spot." Tourist hotels are sprouting on the road between Siem Reap and Angkor Wat, 6 miles away. Markets display plentiful food and tourists can eat very well in restaurants and hotels. The adventuresome, seeking a true taste of Cambodia, can visit the night markets and eat cheaply.
Chef Luu Meng of the Sunway Hotel here defines Cambodian food by comparing it to its neighbours:
"We are not too spicy like Thai cooking, and we don't use fish sauce to cook as do the Vietnamese."
Instead, Meng said, Cambodian food is flavoured with herb pastes, ground fresh daily, or with make-your-eyes-water prahok, a fermented fish paste. Prahok can enliven anything, from a dip for fresh vegetables to a fragrant soup.
The herb paste combines the ever-popular lemon grass, galangal root, turmeric, lime zest, garlic, shallot and dried chilies, though expert cooks tailor the blend to the dish they are making. The paste especially stars in a classic Cambodian soup made with king prawns.
As Cambodia emerges from years of isolation, cooks, Meng among them, are fusing local dishes with the flavors of their Southeast Asian neighbors, adding some Thai and Vietnamese characters. That's the newest trend, he says, speaking of restaurant food.
On his own menu, favorites include grilled king prawns with tamarind sauce and roast chicken with lemon grass. All dishes strive to achieve and balance the four basic Cambodian flavor elements: sweet, sour, salty and bitter.
Home cooking is simpler, with pork, chicken and fish as the flavoring agents. A typical Cambodian family dinner includes three dishes: soup, grilled meat or fish and a vegetable.
Dessert is the same everywhere, for tourists and locals alike: a plate of fresh fruit, usually including watermelon, pineapple and dragon fruit (like a soft, sweet apple speckled with black).
The Tonle Sap, is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world, is critical to the Cambodian diet. Up to 75 percent of the country's protein comes from fish, and the lake supplies more than 300 species. Probably a few frogs, too: One of the country's signature dishes is barbecued stuffed whole frog.
Like the Vietnamese, most Cambodians begin their day with noodle soup, unless they are breakfasting on rice soup similar to Chinese congee.
"Some people like fried noodles in the morning," said Chhenglay Meas, chef-owner of Cheng Heng, a restaurant in St. Paul, Minn. Meas fled Cambodia with her husband and two daughters to escape the Khmer Rouge.
Meas cooks chha kuy teiv, noodles with bean sprouts, green onions, bits of meat, and a topping of roasted peanuts.
One-pot meals are popular with Cambodian home cooks, particularly samlor kakau, which blends tiny eggplants, green papaya, long beans, leaves from young peppers, bitter melon, lemon grass and roasted ground rice. Fish or chicken might be added to this Khmer stew, she described.
"Cambodians like the contrast of sweet and sour. The sour cleans up the tongue and is refreshing," says Meas, whose hometown is Kampong Cham, "where the real Cambodian food is still cooked."
Raised in a family of educated and professional people, she remembers eating very well on dishes such as river lobster with "burning sugar," the caramelized sauce that appears on finer menus.
At holidays, her family would enjoy a Cambodian version of hot pot, immersing meats and vegetables in a boiling broth.
"We would eat, laugh and joke while cooking," she recalls of happier times in her country.
Meas' daughter, Kunrath Lam, who manages Cheng Heng, described how to make a family-size batch of fragrant machu Angkor, from their soup entree list. An aunt who had just traveled to St. Paul from Cambodia for a family wedding brought the secret ingredient, ma orm, an herb grown in the rice fields.
Though a waitress said she had seen a fresh version of the basil-like herb in a nearby Rainbow grocery store, the dried version is difficult to find, even in Asian grocery stores. Home cooks can substitute fresh Thai basil.
Condensed tamarind juice, also available in Asian markets, adds the sour element to compliment the sweetness of pineapple. It also keeps the vegetables crisp in the soup, Lam said.
Tourists who venture into Cambodia are usually so focused on the ethereal carvings of Angkor Wat and surrounding ancient temples that the country's food gets scant attention.
Some travellers fly in just for the day from Bangkok, allowing barely enough time to a quick lunch between temple visits.
Guidebooks are terse on the subject. Frommer calls Cambodia "a difficult destination," and like other travel books, yields no specific details about dining experiences.
Perhaps Cambodian cuisine is overshadowed by the food of its neighbours, the more popular, fiery dishes of Thailand and the French-Chinese fare of Vietnam.
And yet, a Cambodian renaissance is under way. A recent issue of Travel and Leisure magazine proclaimed Cambodia "the next hot spot." Tourist hotels are sprouting on the road between Siem Reap and Angkor Wat, 6 miles away. Markets display plentiful food and tourists can eat very well in restaurants and hotels. The adventuresome, seeking a true taste of Cambodia, can visit the night markets and eat cheaply.
Chef Luu Meng of the Sunway Hotel here defines Cambodian food by comparing it to its neighbours:
"We are not too spicy like Thai cooking, and we don't use fish sauce to cook as do the Vietnamese."
Instead, Meng said, Cambodian food is flavoured with herb pastes, ground fresh daily, or with make-your-eyes-water prahok, a fermented fish paste. Prahok can enliven anything, from a dip for fresh vegetables to a fragrant soup.
The herb paste combines the ever-popular lemon grass, galangal root, turmeric, lime zest, garlic, shallot and dried chilies, though expert cooks tailor the blend to the dish they are making. The paste especially stars in a classic Cambodian soup made with king prawns.
As Cambodia emerges from years of isolation, cooks, Meng among them, are fusing local dishes with the flavors of their Southeast Asian neighbors, adding some Thai and Vietnamese characters. That's the newest trend, he says, speaking of restaurant food.
On his own menu, favorites include grilled king prawns with tamarind sauce and roast chicken with lemon grass. All dishes strive to achieve and balance the four basic Cambodian flavor elements: sweet, sour, salty and bitter.
Home cooking is simpler, with pork, chicken and fish as the flavoring agents. A typical Cambodian family dinner includes three dishes: soup, grilled meat or fish and a vegetable.
Dessert is the same everywhere, for tourists and locals alike: a plate of fresh fruit, usually including watermelon, pineapple and dragon fruit (like a soft, sweet apple speckled with black).
The Tonle Sap, is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world, is critical to the Cambodian diet. Up to 75 percent of the country's protein comes from fish, and the lake supplies more than 300 species. Probably a few frogs, too: One of the country's signature dishes is barbecued stuffed whole frog.
Like the Vietnamese, most Cambodians begin their day with noodle soup, unless they are breakfasting on rice soup similar to Chinese congee.
"Some people like fried noodles in the morning," said Chhenglay Meas, chef-owner of Cheng Heng, a restaurant in St. Paul, Minn. Meas fled Cambodia with her husband and two daughters to escape the Khmer Rouge.
Meas cooks chha kuy teiv, noodles with bean sprouts, green onions, bits of meat, and a topping of roasted peanuts.
One-pot meals are popular with Cambodian home cooks, particularly samlor kakau, which blends tiny eggplants, green papaya, long beans, leaves from young peppers, bitter melon, lemon grass and roasted ground rice. Fish or chicken might be added to this Khmer stew, she described.
"Cambodians like the contrast of sweet and sour. The sour cleans up the tongue and is refreshing," says Meas, whose hometown is Kampong Cham, "where the real Cambodian food is still cooked."
Raised in a family of educated and professional people, she remembers eating very well on dishes such as river lobster with "burning sugar," the caramelized sauce that appears on finer menus.
At holidays, her family would enjoy a Cambodian version of hot pot, immersing meats and vegetables in a boiling broth.
"We would eat, laugh and joke while cooking," she recalls of happier times in her country.
Meas' daughter, Kunrath Lam, who manages Cheng Heng, described how to make a family-size batch of fragrant machu Angkor, from their soup entree list. An aunt who had just traveled to St. Paul from Cambodia for a family wedding brought the secret ingredient, ma orm, an herb grown in the rice fields.
Though a waitress said she had seen a fresh version of the basil-like herb in a nearby Rainbow grocery store, the dried version is difficult to find, even in Asian grocery stores. Home cooks can substitute fresh Thai basil.
Condensed tamarind juice, also available in Asian markets, adds the sour element to compliment the sweetness of pineapple. It also keeps the vegetables crisp in the soup, Lam said.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
A Khmer History, not yet finished.
With thanks to the Cambodian Documentation Centre, additional reporting by DC
*** *** *** ***
He looks back and he does not know how he did it - how he survived the Khmer Rouge.
You would wonder too.
Mr Youk Chhang was just 14 when Khmer Rouge soldiers chased him and thousands of other Cambodians from Phnom Penh to the countryside in April 1975.
It was the start of 'Year Zero' according to the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot, who wanted Cambodia to become an agrarian communist utopia.
For Mr Chhang, it was the start of four long years under the regime and many brushes with death.
Now 44, he spoke to academics and diplomats at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies recently. He spoke about how Asean can help with the tribunal set up to bring the killers to justice.
It is all about finding answers for the country and humanity - and himself, he said.
'My sister died. I want some answers. Otherwise, who do I forgive?'
And he has much to forgive.
DUG CANALS, ATE SNAKES
He spent the Khmer Rouge years digging canals as part of a youth mobile unit, away from his family, which had been moved to Battambang province, 250km north-west of Phnom Penh.
He had to learn to swim so that he could dive into the flooded rice fields and cut sugarcane.
He also had to steal food, find edible leaves in the jungle and kill and eat snakes and rats.
His communist masters may have trumpeted atheism, but food became his god, he said.
'I never thought of dying. Instead, I hoped for a good night's sleep and to have enough to eat one day. That hope encouraged me to fight for life.'
He was thrown into jail for weeks once, after trying to steal food for his pregnant sister.
MUM AFRAID TO CRY
'They hit me with an axe, pushed me to the ground, tied me up with rope and put me in jail.
My mother was afraid to cry in front of them while they were torturing me. Crying was also a crime under the Khmer Rouge, ' he said.
Ten of his family members died for various 'crimes'.
A brother-in-law caught stealing garbage to feed his three children was beaten and died from his injuries.
His wife - one of Mr Chhang's five sisters - kept his body and did not report his death for a week so that she could collect his food ration for her kids.
SISTER SPLIT OPEN, KILLED
She was later accused of stealing rice from a communal kitchen, and when she denied it, a Khmer Rouge cadre slashed opened her belly and killed her, said Mr Chhang.
His family members were among the 1.7 million to two million Cambodians - about a quarter of the country's population - who died of starvation, or by forced labour or execution by the time the Vietnamese invasion in early 1979 toppled the Khmer Rouge.
That is when a 17-year-old Mr Chhang walked across the Thai border to a refugee camp.
'I had no fear. Not even of landmines. I just walked. Looking back, I do not know how I did it,' he said.
Two years later - with '$10 and just one pair of jeans' - he found his way to Texas and a new life.
He worked and went to university in the US before returning to Phnom Penh in 1992 to work for the United Nations.
'I wanted to do something for Cambodia and for my mother,' he said.
His mother, who had remained behind in Cambodia, is still alive.
'My mother was lucky. And I was lucky,' he said.
'There're so many other families who were not so lucky.'
As director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia for the past 10 years, he is documenting the Khmer Rouge years.
His centre has mapped more than 19,000 mass graves and 167 prisons (or extermination centres).
DEATH THREATS
In a country yet to bury the past, it is no wonder he has received death threats because of his work, he said.
But the father of two added: 'I am prepared to trade my life for truth... I believe in the truth... being sincere and honest... the truth will set you free.'
During the seminar, Mr Chhang spoke passionately on the need to find closure.
'You ask the rank and file Khmer Rouge now why they killed and they say they do not know.
Yet the leaders say they did not give orders to kill. So how did two million people lose their lives?
'I do not have the answer. You have to search for your own truth.'
His work is also a struggle against historical amnesia.
Already, young Cambodians are finding it hard to come to terms with their parents' experience.
'They can't believe there was a time when there was no money, no video games, no ice-cream, no school,' Mr Chhang noted.
And while youngsters think black is 'cool', that - for their parents - was the colour of death, the colour the Khmer Rouge cadres dressed in.
A whole generation of Cambodians still needs to find ways to deal with the memory of what happened between 1975 and 1979, he said.
His niece, who was 5 or 6 when her parents and sister died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, still believes a tale relatives told her at the time: Her family had just gone away for a while and would come back for her.
STILL WAITING FOR MUM and DAD
'We told her: 'See, they even left you a bowl of water to drink'. And she stopped crying. She's now 31, married with three kids, and that bowl - she's kept it in a safe deposit box in the Bank of Maryland,' said Mr Chhang.
She's struggling to hang on to that story even as her own children ask her: 'Where are your parents? Why do not they visit us in the holidays?'
Mr Chhang said: 'She couldn't answer. She told the kids: 'Your uncle knows. I'll send him an e-mail. He'll tell you.''
Mr Chhang hasn't answered that e-mail.
To date, no Khmer Rouge leaders have been brought to justice.
SURVIVING LEADERS
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998.
Surviving leaders likely to be tried are
· Nuon Chea, former chief ideologue;
· Khieu Samphan, head of state;
· Ieng Sary, foreign minister;
· Ta Mok, army chief; and
· Kang Kek Ieu, who headed the notorious S-21 prison, which is now the genocide museum in Phnom Penh.
Mr Chhang said data collected by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia will be offered to both the defence and the prosecution at the tribunal.
*** *** *** ***
He looks back and he does not know how he did it - how he survived the Khmer Rouge.
You would wonder too.
Mr Youk Chhang was just 14 when Khmer Rouge soldiers chased him and thousands of other Cambodians from Phnom Penh to the countryside in April 1975.
It was the start of 'Year Zero' according to the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot, who wanted Cambodia to become an agrarian communist utopia.
For Mr Chhang, it was the start of four long years under the regime and many brushes with death.
Now 44, he spoke to academics and diplomats at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies recently. He spoke about how Asean can help with the tribunal set up to bring the killers to justice.
It is all about finding answers for the country and humanity - and himself, he said.
'My sister died. I want some answers. Otherwise, who do I forgive?'
And he has much to forgive.
DUG CANALS, ATE SNAKES
He spent the Khmer Rouge years digging canals as part of a youth mobile unit, away from his family, which had been moved to Battambang province, 250km north-west of Phnom Penh.
He had to learn to swim so that he could dive into the flooded rice fields and cut sugarcane.
He also had to steal food, find edible leaves in the jungle and kill and eat snakes and rats.
His communist masters may have trumpeted atheism, but food became his god, he said.
'I never thought of dying. Instead, I hoped for a good night's sleep and to have enough to eat one day. That hope encouraged me to fight for life.'
He was thrown into jail for weeks once, after trying to steal food for his pregnant sister.
MUM AFRAID TO CRY
'They hit me with an axe, pushed me to the ground, tied me up with rope and put me in jail.
My mother was afraid to cry in front of them while they were torturing me. Crying was also a crime under the Khmer Rouge, ' he said.
Ten of his family members died for various 'crimes'.
A brother-in-law caught stealing garbage to feed his three children was beaten and died from his injuries.
His wife - one of Mr Chhang's five sisters - kept his body and did not report his death for a week so that she could collect his food ration for her kids.
SISTER SPLIT OPEN, KILLED
She was later accused of stealing rice from a communal kitchen, and when she denied it, a Khmer Rouge cadre slashed opened her belly and killed her, said Mr Chhang.
His family members were among the 1.7 million to two million Cambodians - about a quarter of the country's population - who died of starvation, or by forced labour or execution by the time the Vietnamese invasion in early 1979 toppled the Khmer Rouge.
That is when a 17-year-old Mr Chhang walked across the Thai border to a refugee camp.
'I had no fear. Not even of landmines. I just walked. Looking back, I do not know how I did it,' he said.
Two years later - with '$10 and just one pair of jeans' - he found his way to Texas and a new life.
He worked and went to university in the US before returning to Phnom Penh in 1992 to work for the United Nations.
'I wanted to do something for Cambodia and for my mother,' he said.
His mother, who had remained behind in Cambodia, is still alive.
'My mother was lucky. And I was lucky,' he said.
'There're so many other families who were not so lucky.'
As director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia for the past 10 years, he is documenting the Khmer Rouge years.
His centre has mapped more than 19,000 mass graves and 167 prisons (or extermination centres).
DEATH THREATS
In a country yet to bury the past, it is no wonder he has received death threats because of his work, he said.
But the father of two added: 'I am prepared to trade my life for truth... I believe in the truth... being sincere and honest... the truth will set you free.'
During the seminar, Mr Chhang spoke passionately on the need to find closure.
'You ask the rank and file Khmer Rouge now why they killed and they say they do not know.
Yet the leaders say they did not give orders to kill. So how did two million people lose their lives?
'I do not have the answer. You have to search for your own truth.'
His work is also a struggle against historical amnesia.
Already, young Cambodians are finding it hard to come to terms with their parents' experience.
'They can't believe there was a time when there was no money, no video games, no ice-cream, no school,' Mr Chhang noted.
And while youngsters think black is 'cool', that - for their parents - was the colour of death, the colour the Khmer Rouge cadres dressed in.
A whole generation of Cambodians still needs to find ways to deal with the memory of what happened between 1975 and 1979, he said.
His niece, who was 5 or 6 when her parents and sister died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, still believes a tale relatives told her at the time: Her family had just gone away for a while and would come back for her.
STILL WAITING FOR MUM and DAD
'We told her: 'See, they even left you a bowl of water to drink'. And she stopped crying. She's now 31, married with three kids, and that bowl - she's kept it in a safe deposit box in the Bank of Maryland,' said Mr Chhang.
She's struggling to hang on to that story even as her own children ask her: 'Where are your parents? Why do not they visit us in the holidays?'
Mr Chhang said: 'She couldn't answer. She told the kids: 'Your uncle knows. I'll send him an e-mail. He'll tell you.''
Mr Chhang hasn't answered that e-mail.
To date, no Khmer Rouge leaders have been brought to justice.
SURVIVING LEADERS
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998.
Surviving leaders likely to be tried are
· Nuon Chea, former chief ideologue;
· Khieu Samphan, head of state;
· Ieng Sary, foreign minister;
· Ta Mok, army chief; and
· Kang Kek Ieu, who headed the notorious S-21 prison, which is now the genocide museum in Phnom Penh.
Mr Chhang said data collected by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia will be offered to both the defence and the prosecution at the tribunal.
Cambodian Cricket
The country turned to the insects during famine, but now the bugs are fine dining.
PHUM THUN MONG, CAMBODIA -- By day, the emerald rice fields look like ordinary, peaceful paddies. But when dusk falls, sheets of plastic unfurl from bamboo frames, electric-blue neon tubes flicker on, and hordes of Cambodian crickets are lured to untimely, watery deaths.
The humble chirping cricket became a part of Cambodians' diet during the famine years of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and has remained a part of Cambodia's cuisine since.
But this year, huge numbers of Cambodians in central Kampong Thom province have jumped in
on the business as demand has spiked, leading to innovative ways of catching the critters.
Roadside at the village of Thun Mong, 40-year-old Soun Sang smokes a cigarette in the violet light cast by some of his lamps, awaiting the night's haul with some trepidation as an unusual drizzle sets in.
"Some nights only a few come, so it's really not reliable," he says, gesturing to the horizon, where blue lights zigzag as far as the eye can see. "But when there are a lot, there might be 3,000 kilograms collected in this area."
Like many in this village, Mr. Sang started catching crickets this year when he noticed his neighbours setting up newfangled traps and doing well. They earn 2,000 to 5,000 riel (between 60 cents and $1.50) a kilogram.
The traps, devised only a season or two ago, consist of a rectangular bamboo frame hung with a sheet of plastic, topped by a blue fluorescent tube to attract the insects, and powered by a car battery or diesel generator. A pond is dug to catch the crickets after they hit the plastic and hurtle to the ground.
They seem simple but still cost about 170,000 riel to put together, a serious investment in impoverished Cambodia, where more than a third of the population gets by on under a dollar a day.
Mr. Sang recalled how he began eating crickets in desperation during the 1975-79 ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime, which oversaw the deaths of up to two million Cambodians, many from starvation.
"We started eating them during Pol Pot's regime, but back then we caught the crickets by digging holes. We didn't have these lamps," he said. "We had to play hide and seek [to avoid capture and punishment] and at that time we toasted them over a fire. Now we can fry them up in oil and they have a better taste. And now I'm not worried at all about being caught."
Mr. Sang lost an arm and several fingers when he stepped on a land mine in 1988. He now keeps cows and draws a monthly pension of 100,000 riels.
"If the crickets come, I can make a really good profit. Some nights I collect up to 30 kilograms," Mr. Sang, a father of two, said.
At Arunras restaurant -- considered the best in Kampong Thom city -- manager Nari, who declined to give her surname, demonstrated how to eat the insects, selecting from a tray of crickets fried with green onions, garlic and salt.
She sells about 20 kilograms a day but first offered the insects, until recently seen as unsophisticated street food in Cambodia, only a month ago as her customers started demanding them.
The 45-year-old entrepreneur used her ruby-polished nails to pluck a dewinged and gutted carcass off the pile. She snapped off and discarded two thick hind legs before biting into the head with a crunch. A plate of about 50 costs 5,000 riel.
"People eat them with beer or just about anything at all.," she said, popping the rest of the insect into her lipsticked mouth.
Ou Bossphoan, director of the provincial Department of Agriculture, is taking the upsurge in demand seriously.
"People need extra income and this provides Kampong Thom people with a new income," he said in his office, a stone's throw from the market where sellers were offloading the disappointing haul of the night before.
And the senior official confirmed that the cricket obsession is going upmarket.
"Our officials here in the past were not interested in crickets, but this year, we are eating a lot.
When I go to a restaurant, I too order crickets."
PHUM THUN MONG, CAMBODIA -- By day, the emerald rice fields look like ordinary, peaceful paddies. But when dusk falls, sheets of plastic unfurl from bamboo frames, electric-blue neon tubes flicker on, and hordes of Cambodian crickets are lured to untimely, watery deaths.
The humble chirping cricket became a part of Cambodians' diet during the famine years of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and has remained a part of Cambodia's cuisine since.
But this year, huge numbers of Cambodians in central Kampong Thom province have jumped in
on the business as demand has spiked, leading to innovative ways of catching the critters.
Roadside at the village of Thun Mong, 40-year-old Soun Sang smokes a cigarette in the violet light cast by some of his lamps, awaiting the night's haul with some trepidation as an unusual drizzle sets in.
"Some nights only a few come, so it's really not reliable," he says, gesturing to the horizon, where blue lights zigzag as far as the eye can see. "But when there are a lot, there might be 3,000 kilograms collected in this area."
Like many in this village, Mr. Sang started catching crickets this year when he noticed his neighbours setting up newfangled traps and doing well. They earn 2,000 to 5,000 riel (between 60 cents and $1.50) a kilogram.
The traps, devised only a season or two ago, consist of a rectangular bamboo frame hung with a sheet of plastic, topped by a blue fluorescent tube to attract the insects, and powered by a car battery or diesel generator. A pond is dug to catch the crickets after they hit the plastic and hurtle to the ground.
They seem simple but still cost about 170,000 riel to put together, a serious investment in impoverished Cambodia, where more than a third of the population gets by on under a dollar a day.
Mr. Sang recalled how he began eating crickets in desperation during the 1975-79 ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime, which oversaw the deaths of up to two million Cambodians, many from starvation.
"We started eating them during Pol Pot's regime, but back then we caught the crickets by digging holes. We didn't have these lamps," he said. "We had to play hide and seek [to avoid capture and punishment] and at that time we toasted them over a fire. Now we can fry them up in oil and they have a better taste. And now I'm not worried at all about being caught."
Mr. Sang lost an arm and several fingers when he stepped on a land mine in 1988. He now keeps cows and draws a monthly pension of 100,000 riels.
"If the crickets come, I can make a really good profit. Some nights I collect up to 30 kilograms," Mr. Sang, a father of two, said.
At Arunras restaurant -- considered the best in Kampong Thom city -- manager Nari, who declined to give her surname, demonstrated how to eat the insects, selecting from a tray of crickets fried with green onions, garlic and salt.
She sells about 20 kilograms a day but first offered the insects, until recently seen as unsophisticated street food in Cambodia, only a month ago as her customers started demanding them.
The 45-year-old entrepreneur used her ruby-polished nails to pluck a dewinged and gutted carcass off the pile. She snapped off and discarded two thick hind legs before biting into the head with a crunch. A plate of about 50 costs 5,000 riel.
"People eat them with beer or just about anything at all.," she said, popping the rest of the insect into her lipsticked mouth.
Ou Bossphoan, director of the provincial Department of Agriculture, is taking the upsurge in demand seriously.
"People need extra income and this provides Kampong Thom people with a new income," he said in his office, a stone's throw from the market where sellers were offloading the disappointing haul of the night before.
And the senior official confirmed that the cricket obsession is going upmarket.
"Our officials here in the past were not interested in crickets, but this year, we are eating a lot.
When I go to a restaurant, I too order crickets."
HUN SEN’S GOVERNMENT HAS FAILED TO ACHIEVE GOALS
From the
Cambodia Daily Monday, July 18th, 2005
After reading “PM Sings Own Praises, Critic’s Views Diverge” I feel funny about Prime Minister Hun Sen’s speech.
I really feel funny that he cares only about Cambodian people and the nation. Under his leadership for almost 25 years he performed much worse than what Cambodian people expected that he would.
More than 25 years have passed since the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown.
Millions of Cambodians survived from starving or overwork. Unfortunately, we still suffer from corruption, bureaucracy and an unfair judiciary system, which is led by an incapable prime minister who does not want to give up power.
Every year, apart from begging money from donor countries, what can Hun Sen’s government do? If he is a capable prime minister, he should restore and develop the country by himself without depending on aid from the international community.
Roughly $500 million per year in international aid has been given for reducing Cambodian people’s poverty by improving the living standards, health and education and to reform the judiciary system.
Where has the money gone?
Under his government, he has brought down the land area of the country. In addition, Hun Sen’s government has set out strategies included in Cambodia’s National Poverty Reduction, Cambodia’s Millennium Development Goals and other planning and policy documents, as well as reform programs. The all sound like great goals. But he and his group just beat around the bush.
Cambodians are living under the poverty line (the povertyline being 60 cents a day income!?!)
They are trying to go out of the country to find jobs in neighboring countries that accuse of illegal entry and often shoot at us. Cambodian people are dying of hunger, there are thousands of cases of their land being grabbed by powerful people. The prime minister used to declare that he wouldn’t let any Cambodians starve to death, as in the Khmer Rouge regime.
Moreover, he would give up power if land grabbing issues continued to go unsolved.
Now it has been revealed that Hun Sen’s government is unlikely to achieve many of it goals. But he never gives up. If the UN arranges free and fair national elections, he will be a shameful loser as we now need a revolution.
Cambodia Daily Monday, July 18th, 2005
After reading “PM Sings Own Praises, Critic’s Views Diverge” I feel funny about Prime Minister Hun Sen’s speech.
I really feel funny that he cares only about Cambodian people and the nation. Under his leadership for almost 25 years he performed much worse than what Cambodian people expected that he would.
More than 25 years have passed since the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown.
Millions of Cambodians survived from starving or overwork. Unfortunately, we still suffer from corruption, bureaucracy and an unfair judiciary system, which is led by an incapable prime minister who does not want to give up power.
Every year, apart from begging money from donor countries, what can Hun Sen’s government do? If he is a capable prime minister, he should restore and develop the country by himself without depending on aid from the international community.
Roughly $500 million per year in international aid has been given for reducing Cambodian people’s poverty by improving the living standards, health and education and to reform the judiciary system.
Where has the money gone?
Under his government, he has brought down the land area of the country. In addition, Hun Sen’s government has set out strategies included in Cambodia’s National Poverty Reduction, Cambodia’s Millennium Development Goals and other planning and policy documents, as well as reform programs. The all sound like great goals. But he and his group just beat around the bush.
Cambodians are living under the poverty line (the povertyline being 60 cents a day income!?!)
They are trying to go out of the country to find jobs in neighboring countries that accuse of illegal entry and often shoot at us. Cambodian people are dying of hunger, there are thousands of cases of their land being grabbed by powerful people. The prime minister used to declare that he wouldn’t let any Cambodians starve to death, as in the Khmer Rouge regime.
Moreover, he would give up power if land grabbing issues continued to go unsolved.
Now it has been revealed that Hun Sen’s government is unlikely to achieve many of it goals. But he never gives up. If the UN arranges free and fair national elections, he will be a shameful loser as we now need a revolution.
Food in Viet Nam - for a change...
Okay, a non Cambodia article for you all !
Dining in Viet Nam - thanks to The Economist
*** *** ***
As communism crumbles, a great cuisine revives
IN VIETNAMESE, simple tasks are not as "easy as pie"-they're "like eating dog's brain". But until recently, eating dog's brain was not easy at all. Vietnam's old communist regime frowned on bourgeois excesses, such as eating out. The few restaurants that survived were drab, soulless spots reserved for party grandees and visiting dignitaries. Anyway, there was not much food on offer. Thanks to a disastrous attempt to force all the country's small family farms to merge into giant collectives, Vietnam flirted with famine in the 1980s. A decent portion of rice, let alone a dog's brain, constituted a feast.
Faced with desperate food shortages and a growing exodus of "boat people", the government undertook tentative market reforms. Its first step was to give peasants secure tenure over the land they farmed, and freedom to sell their crops at a profit. Gradually, other forms of private enterprise won freer rein. The ensuing revolution was not just agricultural, economic and social, but also gastronomic. Ten years ago, there were only three restaurants serving dog along the dyke that protects Hanoi from the Red river; now there are 25. Hungry Hanoians can feast not only on dog's brain, but also sausages of dogmeat with beans and bitter herbs, grilled dog with ginger and shrimp sauce, boiled dog with lemongrass and steamed dog's liver with chilli and lime.
Geography determined the basics of Vietnamese food. The vast deltas of the Red river and the Mekong provide the staple, rice, while the strip of coast that connects them supplies abundant fish. Every other aspect of Vietnamese cuisine, however, has changed along with the country's tumultuous history. Chinese invaders introduced chopsticks and soy sauce. French colonists brought coffee, now the country's biggest cash crop. Pressed rice cakes became popular during the war with America, as a durable and lightweight ration. American ice-cream, which had been sidelined by Russian slush, has made a comeback since America and Vietnam re-established diplomatic ties in 1995.
Nowadays, free-market reforms are having a profound effect on Vietnamese food, most obviously in terms of the quantity available. In 2000, Vietnam produced some 32m tonnes of rice: more than twice the output of 1987. That huge increase has transformed the country from a net importer of rice to the world's second-largest exporter (after Thailand). Over the same period, production of chicken and pork-and much else-more than doubled.
But this plenty is unevenly distributed. A third of Vietnamese children are underweight, and even more are stunted. Ethnic minorities living along Vietnam's mountainous borders with Laos and China are the hungriest, and the north is hungrier than the south. The weather in the Mekong delta (in the south) is warm and wet all the time, allowing farmers to churn out three rice crops a year. The chilly northern winters, by contrast, limit their counterparts in the Red river valley to two. The war's legacy plays a role, too. The south was only subjected to collectivisation for about a decade after reunification, compared with some 40 years in the north, so agriculture suffered less disruption.
Many Vietnamese still have to eat whatever they can lay their hands on. Pet birds and dogs are kept indoors to save them from the cooking pot. In 1998, the government tried to reduce the consumption of snakes and cats by banning their sale, since the exploding rat population was damaging crops. Instead, peasants simply took to eating rats as well. The dwindling number of rats, in turn, has caused an explosion in the numbers of another tasty
treat: snails.
Meanwhile, in nearby Ho Chi Minh city, the country's commercial capital, a recent survey found that 12.5% of children were obese-and the figure is rising. Local restaurants vie with one another in expense and luxury. Hoang Khai, a local businessman, recalls how his family always celebrated at home when he was young, because there was nowhere to go out. He decided to change all that, by ploughing the returns from his textile business into a restaurant lavish enough to suit the city's business elite. The result is Au Manoir de Khai, a colonial villa smothered in gilt and silk where a meal with imported wine can set you back more than most Vietnamese earn in a year.
Mr Khai's humbler compatriots are also learning to enjoy their food again. Take Lan, who has been cooking Hanoi's famous beef-noodle soup, pho bo, for over 20 years at a hole-in-the-wall stand in the city's old quarter. She learned the trade from her parents, she says, but never bothered to put any effort into it since the shop belonged to the state. In the 1990s, however, it was sold to an entrepreneur as part of the government's economic reforms. Now she uses only the softest noodles, and stews her beef broth for eight hours before serving-twice as long as before. People are fussier now, she explains, and won't tolerate slapdash service.
Of silkworms and goats' testicles
Indeed, Vietnam's culinary renaissance is helping to revive traditions lost during the years of war, famine and repression. Didier Corlou, a French chef who has married into a Vietnamese family, explains how his in-laws eagerly contributed old recipes for his recent book on Hanoian cuisine. Several new restaurants in Hanoi have helped to popularise old-fashioned medicinal wine. Diners at the inexpensive Highway 4, for example, merrily knock back shots flavoured with silkworm, snake, crow or goat's testicles. The food, too, is a souped-up version of traditional mountain cuisine, complete with rural treats such as eel or frog. Even street food is being
gentrified: at Quan An Ngon in Ho Chi Minh city, bejewelled ladies wash down their stuffed pancakes and hot-and-sour soup with sips of chardonnay.
There are innovations as well as resuscitations. Highway 4 serves spring rolls containing foreign ingredients such as wasabi paste and mayonnaise. These are so popular that several other local restaurants have copied the recipe. Mooncakes, a delicacy sold in the autumn, now come stuffed with chocolate as well as the standard beans and egg. Bars-a foreign concept in Vietnam, where food always accompanies drink-are beginning to spread.
Unlike the cheap pubs that draw only men, the comedy acts, raffles and bands at the new nightspots attract both men and women. But the biggest new craze of all is the ubiquitous com, a sort of Vietnamese fast-food joint. Whereas traditional street stalls serve only one dish, com stands offer a wide choice of ready-made toppings to accompany a bowl of rice. Poor Vietnamese, delighted by the variety and convenience, are flocking to them.
Not everyone is happy about these changes. Cha Ka Le Vong, a Hanoi restaurant which only serves a thick stew of fish and herbs, has survived three wars, two famines, several attempts at nationalisation, hyperinflation, and the dramatic boom and bust of the 1990s. But the old lady who runs it considers current culinary trends a tougher challenge than any of that. Coms, new-fangled foreign ingredients, and even well-entrenched French imports, such as bread or French fries, are "a threat to our tradition", she rails. To this day, Vietnam has no McDonald's.
But most Vietnamese are adapting to commercial pressures all too readily. Farmers, suddenly paid according to what they produce, are slathering their crops in pesticides to increase their yields. Many Hanoians fear that this may damage their health; the market stalls that advertise "clean vegetables" are doing a roaring trade, even though their wares cost as much as 25% more. Eating pho probably poses a more serious threat, since some unscrupulous merchants try to preserve perishable noodles with formaldehyde or boric acid. Indeed, food scares have become common enough that the World Health Organisation is helping Vietnam to set up a food-safety agency.
Other dodgy tradesmen make a fortune serving endangered species to superstitious diners. The menu of the Lamrice restaurant in Hanoi offers a whole roast civet cat for 120,000 dong ($8) or porcupine steamed with ginger for 50,000 dong. Liquor bottles filled with bear paws and tiger penises decorate the walls. In Ho Chi Minh city, sea-turtle meat goes for 300,000 dong a kilo, while one enterprising salesman offers to produce a bear and draw its bile on the spot for $400.
He also sells tiger meat, he says, to "men whose flags are drooping". All these animals are protected by law, but as Pac Bo, the owner of Lamrice, puts it, he has "good relations" with the authorities, so no one bothers him. The unabated trade in wildlife is all the more alarming since half of the big new mammals discovered worldwide in the past century were found in Vietnam.
Piracy, too, goes entirely unchecked. La Vie, the country's most popular mineral water, contends with a host of blatant knock-offs with names like La Vi, La Ve and La Viei. Vietnam's best fish sauce comes from the island of Phu Quoc, off the southern coast-so every fish-sauce producer with initiative slaps a "Phu Quoc" label on his inferior swill. Despairing of official help, the islanders have entered a joint venture with Unilever, an international consumer-goods firm, which may have enough cash and clout to pressure the authorities to curb the counterfeiters.
There could be no better sign of the free-market turmoil to which Vietnamese food is suddenly being exposed. Fish sauce is the basic condiment for all Vietnamese food, and Phu Quoc its finest incarnation. Imagine French vintners granting Coca-Cola distribution rights over their grandscrus. In fact, one impassioned Vietnamese argues, the comparison is inadequate, since fish sauce is a more sophisticated product than wine: only a tiny number of wines survive longer than 50 years, whereas fish sauce continues to grow in flavour and complexity indefinitely. The wood of the barrels in which it ferments, the quality of the anchovies and salt from which it is made, the weather and temperature during the fermentation process-all these factors, he explains with a faraway look in his eyes, affect the flavour of the finished product. The producer, he continues, knows that the sauce is ready for bottling when the flies have stopped swarming over the rotting brew.
Unilever has promised not to alter this challenging flavour for foreign palates. Nor will it need to. Given Vietnam's new wealth and interest in its culinary heritage, making money out of Phu Quoc fish sauce should be like eating dog's brain.
Dining in Viet Nam - thanks to The Economist
*** *** ***
As communism crumbles, a great cuisine revives
IN VIETNAMESE, simple tasks are not as "easy as pie"-they're "like eating dog's brain". But until recently, eating dog's brain was not easy at all. Vietnam's old communist regime frowned on bourgeois excesses, such as eating out. The few restaurants that survived were drab, soulless spots reserved for party grandees and visiting dignitaries. Anyway, there was not much food on offer. Thanks to a disastrous attempt to force all the country's small family farms to merge into giant collectives, Vietnam flirted with famine in the 1980s. A decent portion of rice, let alone a dog's brain, constituted a feast.
Faced with desperate food shortages and a growing exodus of "boat people", the government undertook tentative market reforms. Its first step was to give peasants secure tenure over the land they farmed, and freedom to sell their crops at a profit. Gradually, other forms of private enterprise won freer rein. The ensuing revolution was not just agricultural, economic and social, but also gastronomic. Ten years ago, there were only three restaurants serving dog along the dyke that protects Hanoi from the Red river; now there are 25. Hungry Hanoians can feast not only on dog's brain, but also sausages of dogmeat with beans and bitter herbs, grilled dog with ginger and shrimp sauce, boiled dog with lemongrass and steamed dog's liver with chilli and lime.
Geography determined the basics of Vietnamese food. The vast deltas of the Red river and the Mekong provide the staple, rice, while the strip of coast that connects them supplies abundant fish. Every other aspect of Vietnamese cuisine, however, has changed along with the country's tumultuous history. Chinese invaders introduced chopsticks and soy sauce. French colonists brought coffee, now the country's biggest cash crop. Pressed rice cakes became popular during the war with America, as a durable and lightweight ration. American ice-cream, which had been sidelined by Russian slush, has made a comeback since America and Vietnam re-established diplomatic ties in 1995.
Nowadays, free-market reforms are having a profound effect on Vietnamese food, most obviously in terms of the quantity available. In 2000, Vietnam produced some 32m tonnes of rice: more than twice the output of 1987. That huge increase has transformed the country from a net importer of rice to the world's second-largest exporter (after Thailand). Over the same period, production of chicken and pork-and much else-more than doubled.
But this plenty is unevenly distributed. A third of Vietnamese children are underweight, and even more are stunted. Ethnic minorities living along Vietnam's mountainous borders with Laos and China are the hungriest, and the north is hungrier than the south. The weather in the Mekong delta (in the south) is warm and wet all the time, allowing farmers to churn out three rice crops a year. The chilly northern winters, by contrast, limit their counterparts in the Red river valley to two. The war's legacy plays a role, too. The south was only subjected to collectivisation for about a decade after reunification, compared with some 40 years in the north, so agriculture suffered less disruption.
Many Vietnamese still have to eat whatever they can lay their hands on. Pet birds and dogs are kept indoors to save them from the cooking pot. In 1998, the government tried to reduce the consumption of snakes and cats by banning their sale, since the exploding rat population was damaging crops. Instead, peasants simply took to eating rats as well. The dwindling number of rats, in turn, has caused an explosion in the numbers of another tasty
treat: snails.
Meanwhile, in nearby Ho Chi Minh city, the country's commercial capital, a recent survey found that 12.5% of children were obese-and the figure is rising. Local restaurants vie with one another in expense and luxury. Hoang Khai, a local businessman, recalls how his family always celebrated at home when he was young, because there was nowhere to go out. He decided to change all that, by ploughing the returns from his textile business into a restaurant lavish enough to suit the city's business elite. The result is Au Manoir de Khai, a colonial villa smothered in gilt and silk where a meal with imported wine can set you back more than most Vietnamese earn in a year.
Mr Khai's humbler compatriots are also learning to enjoy their food again. Take Lan, who has been cooking Hanoi's famous beef-noodle soup, pho bo, for over 20 years at a hole-in-the-wall stand in the city's old quarter. She learned the trade from her parents, she says, but never bothered to put any effort into it since the shop belonged to the state. In the 1990s, however, it was sold to an entrepreneur as part of the government's economic reforms. Now she uses only the softest noodles, and stews her beef broth for eight hours before serving-twice as long as before. People are fussier now, she explains, and won't tolerate slapdash service.
Of silkworms and goats' testicles
Indeed, Vietnam's culinary renaissance is helping to revive traditions lost during the years of war, famine and repression. Didier Corlou, a French chef who has married into a Vietnamese family, explains how his in-laws eagerly contributed old recipes for his recent book on Hanoian cuisine. Several new restaurants in Hanoi have helped to popularise old-fashioned medicinal wine. Diners at the inexpensive Highway 4, for example, merrily knock back shots flavoured with silkworm, snake, crow or goat's testicles. The food, too, is a souped-up version of traditional mountain cuisine, complete with rural treats such as eel or frog. Even street food is being
gentrified: at Quan An Ngon in Ho Chi Minh city, bejewelled ladies wash down their stuffed pancakes and hot-and-sour soup with sips of chardonnay.
There are innovations as well as resuscitations. Highway 4 serves spring rolls containing foreign ingredients such as wasabi paste and mayonnaise. These are so popular that several other local restaurants have copied the recipe. Mooncakes, a delicacy sold in the autumn, now come stuffed with chocolate as well as the standard beans and egg. Bars-a foreign concept in Vietnam, where food always accompanies drink-are beginning to spread.
Unlike the cheap pubs that draw only men, the comedy acts, raffles and bands at the new nightspots attract both men and women. But the biggest new craze of all is the ubiquitous com, a sort of Vietnamese fast-food joint. Whereas traditional street stalls serve only one dish, com stands offer a wide choice of ready-made toppings to accompany a bowl of rice. Poor Vietnamese, delighted by the variety and convenience, are flocking to them.
Not everyone is happy about these changes. Cha Ka Le Vong, a Hanoi restaurant which only serves a thick stew of fish and herbs, has survived three wars, two famines, several attempts at nationalisation, hyperinflation, and the dramatic boom and bust of the 1990s. But the old lady who runs it considers current culinary trends a tougher challenge than any of that. Coms, new-fangled foreign ingredients, and even well-entrenched French imports, such as bread or French fries, are "a threat to our tradition", she rails. To this day, Vietnam has no McDonald's.
But most Vietnamese are adapting to commercial pressures all too readily. Farmers, suddenly paid according to what they produce, are slathering their crops in pesticides to increase their yields. Many Hanoians fear that this may damage their health; the market stalls that advertise "clean vegetables" are doing a roaring trade, even though their wares cost as much as 25% more. Eating pho probably poses a more serious threat, since some unscrupulous merchants try to preserve perishable noodles with formaldehyde or boric acid. Indeed, food scares have become common enough that the World Health Organisation is helping Vietnam to set up a food-safety agency.
Other dodgy tradesmen make a fortune serving endangered species to superstitious diners. The menu of the Lamrice restaurant in Hanoi offers a whole roast civet cat for 120,000 dong ($8) or porcupine steamed with ginger for 50,000 dong. Liquor bottles filled with bear paws and tiger penises decorate the walls. In Ho Chi Minh city, sea-turtle meat goes for 300,000 dong a kilo, while one enterprising salesman offers to produce a bear and draw its bile on the spot for $400.
He also sells tiger meat, he says, to "men whose flags are drooping". All these animals are protected by law, but as Pac Bo, the owner of Lamrice, puts it, he has "good relations" with the authorities, so no one bothers him. The unabated trade in wildlife is all the more alarming since half of the big new mammals discovered worldwide in the past century were found in Vietnam.
Piracy, too, goes entirely unchecked. La Vie, the country's most popular mineral water, contends with a host of blatant knock-offs with names like La Vi, La Ve and La Viei. Vietnam's best fish sauce comes from the island of Phu Quoc, off the southern coast-so every fish-sauce producer with initiative slaps a "Phu Quoc" label on his inferior swill. Despairing of official help, the islanders have entered a joint venture with Unilever, an international consumer-goods firm, which may have enough cash and clout to pressure the authorities to curb the counterfeiters.
There could be no better sign of the free-market turmoil to which Vietnamese food is suddenly being exposed. Fish sauce is the basic condiment for all Vietnamese food, and Phu Quoc its finest incarnation. Imagine French vintners granting Coca-Cola distribution rights over their grandscrus. In fact, one impassioned Vietnamese argues, the comparison is inadequate, since fish sauce is a more sophisticated product than wine: only a tiny number of wines survive longer than 50 years, whereas fish sauce continues to grow in flavour and complexity indefinitely. The wood of the barrels in which it ferments, the quality of the anchovies and salt from which it is made, the weather and temperature during the fermentation process-all these factors, he explains with a faraway look in his eyes, affect the flavour of the finished product. The producer, he continues, knows that the sauce is ready for bottling when the flies have stopped swarming over the rotting brew.
Unilever has promised not to alter this challenging flavour for foreign palates. Nor will it need to. Given Vietnam's new wealth and interest in its culinary heritage, making money out of Phu Quoc fish sauce should be like eating dog's brain.
Cambodia unveils Phnom Penh development plan
The Bureau of Urban Affairs of Phnom Penh Municipality has made a plan to expand the city and build major new infrastructures by 2020 to accommodate Phnom Penh's growing economic activities and population, local press reported on Monday.
Chhay Rithisen, chief of the Municipality's Department of Basic Construction and Land Planning, said on Friday that the Phnom Penh area will be broadened north, south, east and west, with Wat Phnom as the central point and city limits forming a radius of 30 km, the Chinese-language newspaper The Commercial News reported.
The area opposite Chaktomukh River will be developed into a ' new' area and some urban zones will become Phnom Penh affiliated towns. Growing annually by 3.2 percent, the capital's 1.3-million- strong population is expected to reach 2.5 million by 2020. Necessary infrastructure to be built includes roads, boulevards, canals and a railway system to link the city's growing and dispersed areas, according to The Cambodian Press Review. High-rise buildings, which are absent from Phnom Penh's skyline, will be built at the entrances of the city and by the river and lake.
To fund the future boom of the city, the Phnom Penh Municipality will promote investment in the construction of buildings and apartments. Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema, on a visit to Bangkok last week, has said that the capital has 569 poor communities with 25 percent living on public land, which he said is a problem that needs to be solved, reported khmer newspaper Island of Peace. To reduce the number of poor communities, the city is seeking partners to improve the capital's urbanization. The Phnom Penh 2020 plan has already been approved by the Ministry of Land Management and now it needs to be ratified by the government.
Chhay Rithisen, chief of the Municipality's Department of Basic Construction and Land Planning, said on Friday that the Phnom Penh area will be broadened north, south, east and west, with Wat Phnom as the central point and city limits forming a radius of 30 km, the Chinese-language newspaper The Commercial News reported.
The area opposite Chaktomukh River will be developed into a ' new' area and some urban zones will become Phnom Penh affiliated towns. Growing annually by 3.2 percent, the capital's 1.3-million- strong population is expected to reach 2.5 million by 2020. Necessary infrastructure to be built includes roads, boulevards, canals and a railway system to link the city's growing and dispersed areas, according to The Cambodian Press Review. High-rise buildings, which are absent from Phnom Penh's skyline, will be built at the entrances of the city and by the river and lake.
To fund the future boom of the city, the Phnom Penh Municipality will promote investment in the construction of buildings and apartments. Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema, on a visit to Bangkok last week, has said that the capital has 569 poor communities with 25 percent living on public land, which he said is a problem that needs to be solved, reported khmer newspaper Island of Peace. To reduce the number of poor communities, the city is seeking partners to improve the capital's urbanization. The Phnom Penh 2020 plan has already been approved by the Ministry of Land Management and now it needs to be ratified by the government.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Short Break !
Right,
Am off now for a long weekend; Kampot(Bokor), Kep and Sihanoukville – well possibly, planning is always a little hit and miss here !
Back in the office on Thursday the 21st
D
Am off now for a long weekend; Kampot(Bokor), Kep and Sihanoukville – well possibly, planning is always a little hit and miss here !
Back in the office on Thursday the 21st
D
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Things Can Only Get Wetter
We have now reached the dog days of theyear’s; the temperature has risen to its
yearly zenith. Like a tidal rhythm the heat has roared and surged upwards for one last punishing blast prior to the arrival of the monsoon rains which will kiss of Cambodia sometime soon, please, please.
This last, wilful blast from the furnace has pushed the temperature up into the bragging zone which is all very cheery if your mission in life is to sip coconut juice on a beach but it can be a morose and wearying struggle here in Phnom Penh.
Last week we had a couple more 42 degree days and I had the quite astonishing experience of Khmers telling me that it was just ‘too hot to work.’ This is rather like an Eskimo phoning up his boss and saying that he’s not coming out of the igloo today because the weather is a bit nippy. Of course this has to be balanced by the happy sight of other Khmers braving the searing heat in their best woolly fleece lined jackets.
For barangs, this kind of heat can have an enfeebling effect, making one either want to die or fall asleep and Phnom Penh last week seemed to full of bedraggled and humiliated whities rushing around from one air-conditioned pod to the next whilst trying not to get their pink skins toasted in the insufferable heat.
My theory around this sudden change in temperature is that it is not wholly unconnected to the sharp rise in the number of NGO types to be seen feeding from the Cambodian lentil trough. It is quite possible that the sheer volume of bullshit coming from them has gradually burnt a hole in the ozone layer.
Whilst wilting in my favourite watering hole last week I got into conversation with a friend much admired for his observation of, and keen insight into the follies of Western NGO’s and he regaled me with a story which, I feel, sums up the relationship International NGO’s have with Cambodia.
Firstly, we have a project (with seemingly laudable aims) being initiated between a Khmer Government Ministry and a bank well known for its involvement in development issues. A figure of around $11 million for the two year project is arrived at. Even at this stage however, the bank wants rewarding for its involvement in initiating the scam and a few million dollars are therefore shaved off in various fees.
Next, an expensive base needs to be found in Phnom Penh and this has to be kitted out to Western standards.Then a dozen or so ‘consultants’ and ‘advisors’ need recruiting from North America and Europe. All of these ladies and gentlemen will be on high end Western salaries. They will all need housing in luxury colonial properties for the duration of their two year contracts and will obviously receive a sparking new land cruiser and chauffer each. And we have not even begun to talk about expenses and ‘per diem’ yet.
So the budget is shaved by a few more million dollars.
Now all the whities are sitting comfortably at the lentil trough, the local staff can be recruited.
Obviously, these guys don’t cost $400 per hour (plus expenses) but there are a hundred of them on the payroll and they all have to be provided with a motor scooter each.
Lastly we need to buy our specialised equipment which does not come cheap and has to be shipped over from Europe which means that the somewhat diminished figure of about $1 million is left over to actually ‘do the work’ for the duration of the contract. And all this is assuming that no local corruption has taken place at any level.
This leads me to an inescapable and apocalyptic conclusion.
It has become clear that most of the supposed aid money coming into Cambodia merely passes through the country before finding its way back to the USA and Europe and whilst local corruption quite obviously does take place (or how else would that civil servant on a salary of $300 per month be able to throw a $10,000 birthday party for his 12 year old son…) it only happens after the banks, consultants and advisors have calmly but forensically skimmed the pot of its cream.
And we now reach the finale. It transpires that the $11 million provided for this project is actually a loan. Every single cent of it is added to the national debt and will have to be paid back with interest by the Khmers.
It is a bit like inviting somebody into your house, giving them free board and lodgings, letting them loaf around on your sofa drinking your beer and channel hopping all day and then giving them a hefty monthly paycheque. In return, they kindly agree to pay your cleaner's local salary each few weeks.
So next time you see a fat air conditioned Land Cruiser pulling up outside Java Café, remember that the $500 dollar an hour 'consultant' inside is being sponsored and paid for in full by a provincial rice picker earning $1 a day. And it all makes perfect sense.
yearly zenith. Like a tidal rhythm the heat has roared and surged upwards for one last punishing blast prior to the arrival of the monsoon rains which will kiss of Cambodia sometime soon, please, please.
This last, wilful blast from the furnace has pushed the temperature up into the bragging zone which is all very cheery if your mission in life is to sip coconut juice on a beach but it can be a morose and wearying struggle here in Phnom Penh.
Last week we had a couple more 42 degree days and I had the quite astonishing experience of Khmers telling me that it was just ‘too hot to work.’ This is rather like an Eskimo phoning up his boss and saying that he’s not coming out of the igloo today because the weather is a bit nippy. Of course this has to be balanced by the happy sight of other Khmers braving the searing heat in their best woolly fleece lined jackets.
For barangs, this kind of heat can have an enfeebling effect, making one either want to die or fall asleep and Phnom Penh last week seemed to full of bedraggled and humiliated whities rushing around from one air-conditioned pod to the next whilst trying not to get their pink skins toasted in the insufferable heat.
My theory around this sudden change in temperature is that it is not wholly unconnected to the sharp rise in the number of NGO types to be seen feeding from the Cambodian lentil trough. It is quite possible that the sheer volume of bullshit coming from them has gradually burnt a hole in the ozone layer.
Whilst wilting in my favourite watering hole last week I got into conversation with a friend much admired for his observation of, and keen insight into the follies of Western NGO’s and he regaled me with a story which, I feel, sums up the relationship International NGO’s have with Cambodia.
Firstly, we have a project (with seemingly laudable aims) being initiated between a Khmer Government Ministry and a bank well known for its involvement in development issues. A figure of around $11 million for the two year project is arrived at. Even at this stage however, the bank wants rewarding for its involvement in initiating the scam and a few million dollars are therefore shaved off in various fees.
Next, an expensive base needs to be found in Phnom Penh and this has to be kitted out to Western standards.Then a dozen or so ‘consultants’ and ‘advisors’ need recruiting from North America and Europe. All of these ladies and gentlemen will be on high end Western salaries. They will all need housing in luxury colonial properties for the duration of their two year contracts and will obviously receive a sparking new land cruiser and chauffer each. And we have not even begun to talk about expenses and ‘per diem’ yet.
So the budget is shaved by a few more million dollars.
Now all the whities are sitting comfortably at the lentil trough, the local staff can be recruited.
Obviously, these guys don’t cost $400 per hour (plus expenses) but there are a hundred of them on the payroll and they all have to be provided with a motor scooter each.
Lastly we need to buy our specialised equipment which does not come cheap and has to be shipped over from Europe which means that the somewhat diminished figure of about $1 million is left over to actually ‘do the work’ for the duration of the contract. And all this is assuming that no local corruption has taken place at any level.
This leads me to an inescapable and apocalyptic conclusion.
It has become clear that most of the supposed aid money coming into Cambodia merely passes through the country before finding its way back to the USA and Europe and whilst local corruption quite obviously does take place (or how else would that civil servant on a salary of $300 per month be able to throw a $10,000 birthday party for his 12 year old son…) it only happens after the banks, consultants and advisors have calmly but forensically skimmed the pot of its cream.
And we now reach the finale. It transpires that the $11 million provided for this project is actually a loan. Every single cent of it is added to the national debt and will have to be paid back with interest by the Khmers.
It is a bit like inviting somebody into your house, giving them free board and lodgings, letting them loaf around on your sofa drinking your beer and channel hopping all day and then giving them a hefty monthly paycheque. In return, they kindly agree to pay your cleaner's local salary each few weeks.
So next time you see a fat air conditioned Land Cruiser pulling up outside Java Café, remember that the $500 dollar an hour 'consultant' inside is being sponsored and paid for in full by a provincial rice picker earning $1 a day. And it all makes perfect sense.
CAMBODIA The Legacy and Lessons of UNTAC
The UN peacekeeping operation in Cambodia in 1992-93 was unique. It was the first occasion on which the UN has taken over the administration of an independent member state, organised and run an election (as opposed to monitoring or supervising), had its own radio station and gaol, and been responsible for promoting and safeguarding human rights at national level. As the most comprehensive 'second-generation' UN peace operation to date, it is replete with lessons for the future.
The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was set up in February 1992 to implement the Paris Peace Accords of October 1991, the product of intense diplomatic activity over many years. Its job was to restore peace and civil government in a country ruined by decades of civil war and neglect, to hold free and fair elections leading to a new constitution and to 'kick-start' the rehabilitation of the country. It was to exercise 'supervision' or 'supervision or control' over all aspects of government, including foreign affairs, national defence, finance, public security and information, and to supervise, monitor and verify the withdrawal and non-return of foreign military forces; to canton, disarm and demobilise Cambodia's fighting factions, confiscate caches of weapons and military supplies, promote and protect human rights, oversee military security and maintain law and order, repatriate and resettle refugees and displaced persons, assist in mine clearance and the establishment of training programmes in mine clearance and mine awareness, rehabilitate essential infrastructure and assist in economic reconstruction and development.
Headed by Yasushi Akashi, with Lieutenant-General John Sanderson as the head of the Military Component, UNTAC involved 15 900 military, 3 600 civilian police, 2 000 civilians and 450 UN Volunteers, as well as locally recruited staff and interpreters. It cost over $1.5 billion, and was carried out within budget and on time.
UNTAC's most notable success was the preparations for and conduct of the elections. An estimated 89.5 per cent of the population voted in the first real elections ever held in the country. UNTAC also succeeded in isolating the Khmer Rouge, beginning the tortuous process of national reconciliation and giving the Cambodian people for the first time in almost 40 years the opportunity to choose their government in a comparatively free, fair and democratic manner. A new constitution was written, a new government formed, and an integrated national army was established. In addition UNTAC repatriated all Cambodian refugees from the Thai border and closed the camps there, freed the press, alleviated conditions in the prisons, started the gargantuan task of mine clearance, imparted new skills to thousands of Cambodians, fostered the rapid growth of human rights consciousness and other civic values and began restoring Cambodia's shattered infrastructure. UNTAC achieved immense success in its 'hearts and minds' campaign and in its use of civilian volunteers.
Important lessons from the Cambodia operation:
Intense efforts should be made to reduce the delay between a negotiated settlement and deployment of a peacekeeping force and its associated mechanisms and infrastructure. UN peacekeeping operations should 'hit the ground running' and be prepared to take control immediately. UNTAC's late deployment was one of the biggest flaws of the Cambodia mission.
The UN Secretariat lacked the experience, resources and qualified personnel to organise a mission of such complexity, magnitude and novelty at short notice. The negotiators of the peace accords and the UN Security Council apparently gave little thought to how the Secretariat might cope or whether it might need additional resources to organise and maintain UNTAC.
The inadequacy of its advance planning affected UNTAC for the whole of its life cycle. Apart from the lack of capacity at UN headquarters, advance planning was hindered by a disjunction between the negotiation of the Paris Accords and their implementation. All the senior leadership-designate of a peacekeeping mission should be involved, where possible, in the negotiation and planning phases leading up to deployment.
The Paris Peace Accords had set the UN a seemingly impossible schedule. The Cambodia operation has been called by some critics a race against time.
The usual practice in UN peacekeeping missions of handing over the entire mission to the force commander to manage was seriously inadequate in the case of the Cambodia operation. Contact with UN headquarters was spasmodic. The secondment of dedicated mission liaison officers to New York on a short-rotation basis should be standard procedure for the duration of such complex missions in future.
UN financial and administrative procedures were complex and time-consuming. Greater delegation of financial authority and faster and more flexible procurement procedures would all have helped the functioning of UNTAC's administration.
Criticism of the UN Secretariat alone for its organisational lapses in the Cambodian operation is, however, unfair. It should also be directed at the international community and the Security Council for not equipping the UN with the requisite capacity before entrusting it with such a mission.
UNTAC's loose strategic co-ordination arrangements resulted in waste, duplication of effort and lack of synergy. Better strategic co-ordination is needed between the components of large multi-purpose UN missions. Proper co-ordination between the military and civilian personnel of peacekeeping missions is essential and the UN must develop a more sophisticated conception of the operation of multifunctional missions. The improvisation that characterised much of UNTAC's performance, noble though it may have been, cannot be the basis for future UN exercises in nation building.
A complex organisation like UNTAC, which needs to be established quickly and to operate efficiently from the outset, should have among its leadership someone with the requisite high-level managerial training and organisational experience, perhaps with a background in a multinational corporation. UN bureaucrats may not have such skills.
Future such operations involving control of a civilian administration will need to take into account the possibility of both active and passive opposition to UN supervision and control.
The use of force in any future operations to deal with violations of a cease-fire or with threats to a UN peacekeeping operation must be backed up by the proper military capacity, and the UN should be more prepared to capitalise on its political advantages. Future missions must also be prepared to wrest control promptly and confidently from the local authorities when they are mandated to do so. UNTAC was not equipped for enforcement, nor was it part of its mandate, and to make it so would have been politically impossible. In the event, it did not need to defend itself. It was able to maintain a strict definition of 'self-defence', minimum use of force and neutrality; Akashi opted for a 'low-key administrative approach' consistent with his general handling of Khmer Rouge defiance and intimidation of voters, and the 'worst case'--a major Khmer Rouge attack on polling day--in fact never happened--fortunately. The case could have been very different.
The mixed experience of the military contingents from some countries probably indicates that the use of reservists and conscripts for peacekeeping operations is not appropriate and that it is more efficient to restrict the number of countries from which contingents are drawn. The UN in future should be more selective about the countries from which forces are made up.
The civil police element in any comprehensive peacekeeping mission is critical to good relations with the local populace and must be the subject of more careful UN attention. In Cambodia they were seriously under-prepared, confused about their role and lacking in essential support.
Human rights should be a paramount concern in cases where government authority has collapsed or when a neutral political environment is required for electoral purposes. The UN should develop 'justice packages' comprising all the elements of a model legal system which can be employed when the UN is required to take over the administration of 'failed states' or those otherwise needing temporary international tutelage.
The UN should be more conscious of the possible undesired economic consequences of its intervention in a country and be prepared to offset them, using its own economic weight in creative ways.
Subsequent political developments in Cambodia have not been encouraging, but the passage of time has made it clear that they do not constitute an indictment of the UNTAC operation.
No international operation can guarantee the continued peaceful democratic development of a country. In this case, as in others, it is up to the Cambodians themselves.
The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was set up in February 1992 to implement the Paris Peace Accords of October 1991, the product of intense diplomatic activity over many years. Its job was to restore peace and civil government in a country ruined by decades of civil war and neglect, to hold free and fair elections leading to a new constitution and to 'kick-start' the rehabilitation of the country. It was to exercise 'supervision' or 'supervision or control' over all aspects of government, including foreign affairs, national defence, finance, public security and information, and to supervise, monitor and verify the withdrawal and non-return of foreign military forces; to canton, disarm and demobilise Cambodia's fighting factions, confiscate caches of weapons and military supplies, promote and protect human rights, oversee military security and maintain law and order, repatriate and resettle refugees and displaced persons, assist in mine clearance and the establishment of training programmes in mine clearance and mine awareness, rehabilitate essential infrastructure and assist in economic reconstruction and development.
Headed by Yasushi Akashi, with Lieutenant-General John Sanderson as the head of the Military Component, UNTAC involved 15 900 military, 3 600 civilian police, 2 000 civilians and 450 UN Volunteers, as well as locally recruited staff and interpreters. It cost over $1.5 billion, and was carried out within budget and on time.
UNTAC's most notable success was the preparations for and conduct of the elections. An estimated 89.5 per cent of the population voted in the first real elections ever held in the country. UNTAC also succeeded in isolating the Khmer Rouge, beginning the tortuous process of national reconciliation and giving the Cambodian people for the first time in almost 40 years the opportunity to choose their government in a comparatively free, fair and democratic manner. A new constitution was written, a new government formed, and an integrated national army was established. In addition UNTAC repatriated all Cambodian refugees from the Thai border and closed the camps there, freed the press, alleviated conditions in the prisons, started the gargantuan task of mine clearance, imparted new skills to thousands of Cambodians, fostered the rapid growth of human rights consciousness and other civic values and began restoring Cambodia's shattered infrastructure. UNTAC achieved immense success in its 'hearts and minds' campaign and in its use of civilian volunteers.
Important lessons from the Cambodia operation:
Intense efforts should be made to reduce the delay between a negotiated settlement and deployment of a peacekeeping force and its associated mechanisms and infrastructure. UN peacekeeping operations should 'hit the ground running' and be prepared to take control immediately. UNTAC's late deployment was one of the biggest flaws of the Cambodia mission.
The UN Secretariat lacked the experience, resources and qualified personnel to organise a mission of such complexity, magnitude and novelty at short notice. The negotiators of the peace accords and the UN Security Council apparently gave little thought to how the Secretariat might cope or whether it might need additional resources to organise and maintain UNTAC.
The inadequacy of its advance planning affected UNTAC for the whole of its life cycle. Apart from the lack of capacity at UN headquarters, advance planning was hindered by a disjunction between the negotiation of the Paris Accords and their implementation. All the senior leadership-designate of a peacekeeping mission should be involved, where possible, in the negotiation and planning phases leading up to deployment.
The Paris Peace Accords had set the UN a seemingly impossible schedule. The Cambodia operation has been called by some critics a race against time.
The usual practice in UN peacekeeping missions of handing over the entire mission to the force commander to manage was seriously inadequate in the case of the Cambodia operation. Contact with UN headquarters was spasmodic. The secondment of dedicated mission liaison officers to New York on a short-rotation basis should be standard procedure for the duration of such complex missions in future.
UN financial and administrative procedures were complex and time-consuming. Greater delegation of financial authority and faster and more flexible procurement procedures would all have helped the functioning of UNTAC's administration.
Criticism of the UN Secretariat alone for its organisational lapses in the Cambodian operation is, however, unfair. It should also be directed at the international community and the Security Council for not equipping the UN with the requisite capacity before entrusting it with such a mission.
UNTAC's loose strategic co-ordination arrangements resulted in waste, duplication of effort and lack of synergy. Better strategic co-ordination is needed between the components of large multi-purpose UN missions. Proper co-ordination between the military and civilian personnel of peacekeeping missions is essential and the UN must develop a more sophisticated conception of the operation of multifunctional missions. The improvisation that characterised much of UNTAC's performance, noble though it may have been, cannot be the basis for future UN exercises in nation building.
A complex organisation like UNTAC, which needs to be established quickly and to operate efficiently from the outset, should have among its leadership someone with the requisite high-level managerial training and organisational experience, perhaps with a background in a multinational corporation. UN bureaucrats may not have such skills.
Future such operations involving control of a civilian administration will need to take into account the possibility of both active and passive opposition to UN supervision and control.
The use of force in any future operations to deal with violations of a cease-fire or with threats to a UN peacekeeping operation must be backed up by the proper military capacity, and the UN should be more prepared to capitalise on its political advantages. Future missions must also be prepared to wrest control promptly and confidently from the local authorities when they are mandated to do so. UNTAC was not equipped for enforcement, nor was it part of its mandate, and to make it so would have been politically impossible. In the event, it did not need to defend itself. It was able to maintain a strict definition of 'self-defence', minimum use of force and neutrality; Akashi opted for a 'low-key administrative approach' consistent with his general handling of Khmer Rouge defiance and intimidation of voters, and the 'worst case'--a major Khmer Rouge attack on polling day--in fact never happened--fortunately. The case could have been very different.
The mixed experience of the military contingents from some countries probably indicates that the use of reservists and conscripts for peacekeeping operations is not appropriate and that it is more efficient to restrict the number of countries from which contingents are drawn. The UN in future should be more selective about the countries from which forces are made up.
The civil police element in any comprehensive peacekeeping mission is critical to good relations with the local populace and must be the subject of more careful UN attention. In Cambodia they were seriously under-prepared, confused about their role and lacking in essential support.
Human rights should be a paramount concern in cases where government authority has collapsed or when a neutral political environment is required for electoral purposes. The UN should develop 'justice packages' comprising all the elements of a model legal system which can be employed when the UN is required to take over the administration of 'failed states' or those otherwise needing temporary international tutelage.
The UN should be more conscious of the possible undesired economic consequences of its intervention in a country and be prepared to offset them, using its own economic weight in creative ways.
Subsequent political developments in Cambodia have not been encouraging, but the passage of time has made it clear that they do not constitute an indictment of the UNTAC operation.
No international operation can guarantee the continued peaceful democratic development of a country. In this case, as in others, it is up to the Cambodians themselves.
Friday, July 08, 2005
London Terror felt in Cambodia
Thursday the 7th
Terror Attacks London
I had a lunch meeting today with some colleagues from VSO, it was also the chance to meet the new IT Specialist volunteer that is going to be joining us here at the Ministry of Fish. Returning to the office after the lunch I take our new IT Girl with me to introduce her to everyone - well, everyone that was here...
After the meet ‘n’ greet I run her back home and I decide that I will finish off working at home for the rest of the day, peace and quiet for a dull report.
Working on a super dull report on 'fish exports to Thailand' I put the TV on in the background, just for some noise and the odd distraction.
The scenes of London on the screen, and the news coming in about the bombings kept me from even starting my report. Familiar places and sights, familiar feelings – I was in London for several other terrorist acts.
I text and check in with several friends in London, just to make sure that everyone is okay. By 8 O’clock the news is repeating itself (badly) and I have heard from everyone in London. I decide to head out for a bit, to see some fellow Brits and to talk to them about it all.
An hour later I am sat in the middle of a screaming argument between Peter and David about politics, religion, terror, et cetera. Pete had spent the afternoon worrying and trying to get hold of all his family and his friends in London, and still had not heard from some of them that worked in areas where the bombs had gone off, he was upset and looking to lash out in anger and frustration – “Slit all their fucking Muslim throats!” he vents.
Dave, whose family was originally from Northern Ireland, remembers the IRA Birmingham bombings and remembers that his grandfather, an old factory worker of no strong political beliefs, being beaten up by a mob of idiots for the crime of ‘having an Irish accent’
Between these two views / comments, several beers, misplaced bile, frustration, worry and anger these two friends of mine had a spectacular argument and falling out; cries of ‘racist’ ‘shut up’ ‘get out of my bar’ et cetera filled the air.
I can not help but think that this is precisely the sort of thing that helps and strengthens these acts of terror.
When we are divided amongst ourselves, when we question our own thoughts and friends and actions, when we start fighting amongst ourselves, surely that is when they have won.
We really do not want these people to win, do we.
Terror Attacks London
I had a lunch meeting today with some colleagues from VSO, it was also the chance to meet the new IT Specialist volunteer that is going to be joining us here at the Ministry of Fish. Returning to the office after the lunch I take our new IT Girl with me to introduce her to everyone - well, everyone that was here...
After the meet ‘n’ greet I run her back home and I decide that I will finish off working at home for the rest of the day, peace and quiet for a dull report.
Working on a super dull report on 'fish exports to Thailand' I put the TV on in the background, just for some noise and the odd distraction.
The scenes of London on the screen, and the news coming in about the bombings kept me from even starting my report. Familiar places and sights, familiar feelings – I was in London for several other terrorist acts.
I text and check in with several friends in London, just to make sure that everyone is okay. By 8 O’clock the news is repeating itself (badly) and I have heard from everyone in London. I decide to head out for a bit, to see some fellow Brits and to talk to them about it all.
An hour later I am sat in the middle of a screaming argument between Peter and David about politics, religion, terror, et cetera. Pete had spent the afternoon worrying and trying to get hold of all his family and his friends in London, and still had not heard from some of them that worked in areas where the bombs had gone off, he was upset and looking to lash out in anger and frustration – “Slit all their fucking Muslim throats!” he vents.
Dave, whose family was originally from Northern Ireland, remembers the IRA Birmingham bombings and remembers that his grandfather, an old factory worker of no strong political beliefs, being beaten up by a mob of idiots for the crime of ‘having an Irish accent’
Between these two views / comments, several beers, misplaced bile, frustration, worry and anger these two friends of mine had a spectacular argument and falling out; cries of ‘racist’ ‘shut up’ ‘get out of my bar’ et cetera filled the air.
I can not help but think that this is precisely the sort of thing that helps and strengthens these acts of terror.
When we are divided amongst ourselves, when we question our own thoughts and friends and actions, when we start fighting amongst ourselves, surely that is when they have won.
We really do not want these people to win, do we.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Wednesday the 6th Evening
Out with the boys(?!?)
My good friend Peter has accepted a new job up in Battambang (6 hours NW of PP) for the next 6 to 12 months. He is leaving very early on Saturday morning so a few of us decided to meet up last night for a drink, or three, and to start saying goodbye. A couple of hours into it Lee – a mutual friend of ours – had to leave as he was feeling somewhat tired and had an early start in the morning. So off he went and we all carried on – dining on Jamaician style spicy beef patties with a minty yoghurt dip and supping on the beer of Lao.
A couple of hours later Lee burst back into the Peace Café all a fluster and very agitated.
“two fucking lady-boys just tried to mug me” he cried across the bar.
“gin, give me gin now!”
“two fucking lady-boys just tried to mug me” he reiterated at the same volume.
Well, after several gins and Lee catching his breath the story unfolded.
Having left the Peace café he decided to stop on the way home to pick up a pizza; while doing so another friend of ours phoned him to say that he had just arried in Phnom Penh (He works in the provinces normally) and was in the Shanghai Bar.
So Lee popped into the Shanghai for a quick one, explained that he was on his way home and started strolling down St. 172 towards St. 63 where he thought he could catch a moto home.
Halfway down that street, a motodop pulled up along side him with two women on the back, the driver starts saying ‘Mister, Mister, you want lady? You want lady? Two Lady 5 dollar!’
Lee says no and just carries on walking, not really looking at them. When one of the ‘women’ hops off the bike and grabs his arm “Oy” comes the deep bass voice of the ‘woman’
Lee half turns and tries to pull his arm free, as he does so he sees the square chin, the 5O’Clock shadow and the burly forearms that are holding him.
He gets as far as saying “What the f….” when this hairy-backed Mary slaps him across his face.
Reeling from the blow, Lee feels the other gender-bender rummaging for his wallet (he hopes) in his jeans pocket. Gathering some presence of mind Lee manages to slap the pocket fiddler across the face and break free.
Rushing for St. 63 he sees another moto-driver sat on the corner watching this with bemusement and wonder – I guess from a distance it would have looked like two women attacked him and he ran off !
Jumping on the back of this moto Lee screams for him to just drive, drive, drive.
After clearing the scene, Lee decides that he is in need of a drink, and so, heads back down to the Peace Café to join us, again.
It is a strange world out here.
My good friend Peter has accepted a new job up in Battambang (6 hours NW of PP) for the next 6 to 12 months. He is leaving very early on Saturday morning so a few of us decided to meet up last night for a drink, or three, and to start saying goodbye. A couple of hours into it Lee – a mutual friend of ours – had to leave as he was feeling somewhat tired and had an early start in the morning. So off he went and we all carried on – dining on Jamaician style spicy beef patties with a minty yoghurt dip and supping on the beer of Lao.
A couple of hours later Lee burst back into the Peace Café all a fluster and very agitated.
“two fucking lady-boys just tried to mug me” he cried across the bar.
“gin, give me gin now!”
“two fucking lady-boys just tried to mug me” he reiterated at the same volume.
Well, after several gins and Lee catching his breath the story unfolded.
Having left the Peace café he decided to stop on the way home to pick up a pizza; while doing so another friend of ours phoned him to say that he had just arried in Phnom Penh (He works in the provinces normally) and was in the Shanghai Bar.
So Lee popped into the Shanghai for a quick one, explained that he was on his way home and started strolling down St. 172 towards St. 63 where he thought he could catch a moto home.
Halfway down that street, a motodop pulled up along side him with two women on the back, the driver starts saying ‘Mister, Mister, you want lady? You want lady? Two Lady 5 dollar!’
Lee says no and just carries on walking, not really looking at them. When one of the ‘women’ hops off the bike and grabs his arm “Oy” comes the deep bass voice of the ‘woman’
Lee half turns and tries to pull his arm free, as he does so he sees the square chin, the 5O’Clock shadow and the burly forearms that are holding him.
He gets as far as saying “What the f….” when this hairy-backed Mary slaps him across his face.
Reeling from the blow, Lee feels the other gender-bender rummaging for his wallet (he hopes) in his jeans pocket. Gathering some presence of mind Lee manages to slap the pocket fiddler across the face and break free.
Rushing for St. 63 he sees another moto-driver sat on the corner watching this with bemusement and wonder – I guess from a distance it would have looked like two women attacked him and he ran off !
Jumping on the back of this moto Lee screams for him to just drive, drive, drive.
After clearing the scene, Lee decides that he is in need of a drink, and so, heads back down to the Peace Café to join us, again.
It is a strange world out here.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Transport Hunting
Saturday the 19th
Transport Hunting
Having a small budget for a replacement motorbike, thanks to my wonderful parents, I spend the morning travelling around the Khmer orientated bike shops, figuring that they would have lower prices than the ones that cater to expatriates. This put all of my language skills to the test, but numbers are the one area of this language that I can actually manage fairly well. Just in case though, I took Heng with me for back up, support, extra translation and haggling services.
The strange thing about motorbikes in Cambodia is that the vast majority of expatriates ride 250cc dirt bikes; which might have been necessary 5 years ago when their were no tarmac roads, or maybe necessary now if you spend all of your time out the furthest, most remote provinces, but 90% of the roads that I drive on, even when I am out of Phnom Penh, are okay. So for this strange reason the 250cc dirt bikes are all a lot more expensive than larger road bikes. A decent 250cc dirt bike costs between US$1,500 and US$3,500. my old bike (prior to it being stolen, spit, spit, spit) was a Honda KL400cc custom, which I bought at the rock bottom price of US$450, the guy selling it was originally asking for US$750, but I was negotiating with him 2 days before he left the country for good, and nobody else had been to see it, which gave me something of an advantage!
So visiting 5 or 6 bike shops around town this morning I discovered that the 250’s were all still really expensive and that the bigger bikes [400cc, to 750cc] were much better value. All except the one that I saw that I really, really, liked, it was fresh off the boat from Japan, the only one in the country, a Suzuki Slingshot 400cc 16valve in a metallic yellow and black finish. 0 to 60mph in 4 seconds! Unfortunately it was priced at US$2,000, much, much, more than I could stretch to on a volunteer allowance, even with help from mum and dad !
So half a dozen bike shops, much haggling and negotiating, not too mention much sweating in the 40C+ heat, I finally settle on my new bike. A Honda VF750 Custom Classic; it took me nearly an hour of haggling, discussing, drinking coffee, test driving and threatening to leave and go to another shop, but I managed to get him down from US$900 to US$750, which would leave me just enough left in the budget to pay the official registration fee, buy the licence plates from the police (just do not ask…) and to buy 5 metres of heavy duty chain and a large padlock!
Also as part of the deal I got him to agree to do a few more things to the bike before I pay for it – new tyres, new plugs, oil change, replace a broken clutch lever – which means that I have to wait until Monday before I can pick it up.
Think I might take the afternoon off work on Monday, just so that I can cruise around town and play on my new bike – err, oops, sorry, I mean, road test my new bike to get used to it !
Transport Hunting
Having a small budget for a replacement motorbike, thanks to my wonderful parents, I spend the morning travelling around the Khmer orientated bike shops, figuring that they would have lower prices than the ones that cater to expatriates. This put all of my language skills to the test, but numbers are the one area of this language that I can actually manage fairly well. Just in case though, I took Heng with me for back up, support, extra translation and haggling services.
The strange thing about motorbikes in Cambodia is that the vast majority of expatriates ride 250cc dirt bikes; which might have been necessary 5 years ago when their were no tarmac roads, or maybe necessary now if you spend all of your time out the furthest, most remote provinces, but 90% of the roads that I drive on, even when I am out of Phnom Penh, are okay. So for this strange reason the 250cc dirt bikes are all a lot more expensive than larger road bikes. A decent 250cc dirt bike costs between US$1,500 and US$3,500. my old bike (prior to it being stolen, spit, spit, spit) was a Honda KL400cc custom, which I bought at the rock bottom price of US$450, the guy selling it was originally asking for US$750, but I was negotiating with him 2 days before he left the country for good, and nobody else had been to see it, which gave me something of an advantage!
So visiting 5 or 6 bike shops around town this morning I discovered that the 250’s were all still really expensive and that the bigger bikes [400cc, to 750cc] were much better value. All except the one that I saw that I really, really, liked, it was fresh off the boat from Japan, the only one in the country, a Suzuki Slingshot 400cc 16valve in a metallic yellow and black finish. 0 to 60mph in 4 seconds! Unfortunately it was priced at US$2,000, much, much, more than I could stretch to on a volunteer allowance, even with help from mum and dad !
So half a dozen bike shops, much haggling and negotiating, not too mention much sweating in the 40C+ heat, I finally settle on my new bike. A Honda VF750 Custom Classic; it took me nearly an hour of haggling, discussing, drinking coffee, test driving and threatening to leave and go to another shop, but I managed to get him down from US$900 to US$750, which would leave me just enough left in the budget to pay the official registration fee, buy the licence plates from the police (just do not ask…) and to buy 5 metres of heavy duty chain and a large padlock!
Also as part of the deal I got him to agree to do a few more things to the bike before I pay for it – new tyres, new plugs, oil change, replace a broken clutch lever – which means that I have to wait until Monday before I can pick it up.
Think I might take the afternoon off work on Monday, just so that I can cruise around town and play on my new bike – err, oops, sorry, I mean, road test my new bike to get used to it !
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
NGO Monitor Org.
NGO Monitor Overview of NGOs
What is an NGO
Non Goverment Organisation
NGO Monitor defines NGOs as autonomous non-profit and non-party/politically-unaffiliated organizations that advance a particular cause or set of causes in the public interest. The range of causes on which an NGO can focus is unlimited, but a cardinal principle is that NGOs operate in a manner consistent with the objectives for which they receive funds. Donations are an NGO's lifeline because they are independent organizations. Funding can come from governments, the UN, private trusts and philanthropies, individual donations, religious institutions, and, in many cases, other NGOs.
NGOs can contribute to democracy through challenging governments and promoting social interests, but they themselves are not democratic institutions and have no democratic accountability. An NGO is only accountable to its particular funding organizations and members. Meanwhile, criticism of a human rights NGO is often dismissed as an attack on the values of human rights themselves.
Different Types of NGO
NGO Monitor was founded to address these issues by tracking the activities of humanitarian NGOs. In this framework, it is important to distinguish between three types of NGOs.
The first group consists of international bodies such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, whose operations are truly global and very influential. Amnesty International, for example, claims a membership of one and a half million, and an annual operating budget of $30 million with projects in 140 countries.
The second group is made up of region-specific NGOs such as Miftah, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (PHR-I), and LAW. These regional "humanitarian" NGOs restrict their activities to the Arab-Israeli conflict and, in most cases, to criticism of Israel. The third group consists of NGOs that collect funds for a variety of projects and areas, and provide financial and technical support to smaller regional NGOs. Examples include the Ford Foundation, International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) New Israel Fund, Christian Aid, and the Advocacy Project.
How Do NGOs Operate
Much of the moral authority of NGOs, as well as their political strength, comes from support from funding and facilitator organizations. The huge budgets that NGOs have acquired turn them into political superpowers. Although the funding groups have a responsibility to ensure that their funds and support are not being directed in covert ways to support terrorism or political campaigns, such as the one being conducted by the Arab world against Israel, this requirement is largely ignored. While funding organizations have taken great care to establish financial-transparency mechanisms to make sure money is not misappropriated, the substantive work that the NGOs engage in has been subject to far less scrutiny. As a result, funding institutions and individuals have granted significant political power to organizations that hide behind a veneer of "moral guardianship."
Whom Funds NGOs
One can categorize three types of funding bodies active in the areas of human rights and humanitarian issues. The first consists of governmental bodies and UN organizations, such as the European Union, UNICEF,16 USAID, CIDA (Canada), and other ministries for overseas assistance. The second type, identified above, is made up of other NGOs that style themselves as "facilitator organizations," providing invaluable logistical, technical, financial, and professional support, such as the ICJ. The third type includes foundations such as the Ford Foundation and the German Fund for Palestinian NGOs.
Many well-meaning institutions may have unknowingly contributed political ammunition in the public relations war against Israel by continuing to finance NGOs that use a human right facade to conduct a campaign to delegitimize Israel. There are even Jewish organizations, such as the New Israel Fund, that have been deceived into assisting allegedly "humanitarian and reconciliation organizations," such as the Arab Association of Human Rights whose real activities focus on the propaganda war against Israel and are far removed from universal human rights issues.
What is an NGO
Non Goverment Organisation
NGO Monitor defines NGOs as autonomous non-profit and non-party/politically-unaffiliated organizations that advance a particular cause or set of causes in the public interest. The range of causes on which an NGO can focus is unlimited, but a cardinal principle is that NGOs operate in a manner consistent with the objectives for which they receive funds. Donations are an NGO's lifeline because they are independent organizations. Funding can come from governments, the UN, private trusts and philanthropies, individual donations, religious institutions, and, in many cases, other NGOs.
NGOs can contribute to democracy through challenging governments and promoting social interests, but they themselves are not democratic institutions and have no democratic accountability. An NGO is only accountable to its particular funding organizations and members. Meanwhile, criticism of a human rights NGO is often dismissed as an attack on the values of human rights themselves.
Different Types of NGO
NGO Monitor was founded to address these issues by tracking the activities of humanitarian NGOs. In this framework, it is important to distinguish between three types of NGOs.
The first group consists of international bodies such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, whose operations are truly global and very influential. Amnesty International, for example, claims a membership of one and a half million, and an annual operating budget of $30 million with projects in 140 countries.
The second group is made up of region-specific NGOs such as Miftah, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (PHR-I), and LAW. These regional "humanitarian" NGOs restrict their activities to the Arab-Israeli conflict and, in most cases, to criticism of Israel. The third group consists of NGOs that collect funds for a variety of projects and areas, and provide financial and technical support to smaller regional NGOs. Examples include the Ford Foundation, International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) New Israel Fund, Christian Aid, and the Advocacy Project.
How Do NGOs Operate
Much of the moral authority of NGOs, as well as their political strength, comes from support from funding and facilitator organizations. The huge budgets that NGOs have acquired turn them into political superpowers. Although the funding groups have a responsibility to ensure that their funds and support are not being directed in covert ways to support terrorism or political campaigns, such as the one being conducted by the Arab world against Israel, this requirement is largely ignored. While funding organizations have taken great care to establish financial-transparency mechanisms to make sure money is not misappropriated, the substantive work that the NGOs engage in has been subject to far less scrutiny. As a result, funding institutions and individuals have granted significant political power to organizations that hide behind a veneer of "moral guardianship."
Whom Funds NGOs
One can categorize three types of funding bodies active in the areas of human rights and humanitarian issues. The first consists of governmental bodies and UN organizations, such as the European Union, UNICEF,16 USAID, CIDA (Canada), and other ministries for overseas assistance. The second type, identified above, is made up of other NGOs that style themselves as "facilitator organizations," providing invaluable logistical, technical, financial, and professional support, such as the ICJ. The third type includes foundations such as the Ford Foundation and the German Fund for Palestinian NGOs.
Many well-meaning institutions may have unknowingly contributed political ammunition in the public relations war against Israel by continuing to finance NGOs that use a human right facade to conduct a campaign to delegitimize Israel. There are even Jewish organizations, such as the New Israel Fund, that have been deceived into assisting allegedly "humanitarian and reconciliation organizations," such as the Arab Association of Human Rights whose real activities focus on the propaganda war against Israel and are far removed from universal human rights issues.
Monday, July 04, 2005
VSO Cambodia - Pay Cut update.
Just to add insult to injury, the Head of VSO-Cambodia has just left for a nice long 4 week holiday, the whole of July, touring several other Countries – along with his wife and three kids.
I am currently saving up for a long weekend down at Sihanoukville next month when I have friends over…
Ho Hum.
I mean, I know that I agreed to come and work as a volunteer, but I was informed in the VSO-London office that the average Khmer survives on around US$20 a month, so the US$200 I have for food, petrol, et cetera should be generous and comfortable.
However, this simply is not true.
Khmers do not survive on US$20.
They most certainly do not survive on that in Phnom Penh. All of my Khmer colleagues earn much, much, more than that, more than I get as a stipend as well.
I guess it is difficult for certain members of the NGO community to see the people of Cambodia from so high up in their air-conditioned ivory towers.
I am currently saving up for a long weekend down at Sihanoukville next month when I have friends over…
Ho Hum.
I mean, I know that I agreed to come and work as a volunteer, but I was informed in the VSO-London office that the average Khmer survives on around US$20 a month, so the US$200 I have for food, petrol, et cetera should be generous and comfortable.
However, this simply is not true.
Khmers do not survive on US$20.
They most certainly do not survive on that in Phnom Penh. All of my Khmer colleagues earn much, much, more than that, more than I get as a stipend as well.
I guess it is difficult for certain members of the NGO community to see the people of Cambodia from so high up in their air-conditioned ivory towers.
Friday, July 01, 2005
VSO Cambodia - news from the office...
I can hear a gecko laughing in the background somewhere…
Just received my monthly Newsletter from the VSO Cambodia office.
The first article in it was about how the office here needs to buy a new car, a nice shiny new 4x4 Land cruiser or something – bring the total up to 4 cars.
Now, us Phnom Penh volunteers have to buy our own transport, or buy it twice if you get your motorbike stolen…
But with an estimated 60 VSO volunteer-professionals working here by the end of the year, they feel that they need more fancy off-road cars to run around the city and country in.
The second article was that the VSO Cambodia director, in consultation with head office in London, feels that the current VSO stipend for Cambodia IS TOO HIGH !
Now, after I pay my rent and bills, I have about US$200 left for little luxuries every month like; food, petrol, et cetera or even the odd night out (heaven forbid) !?!
I would also like to point out at this point that the VSO staff (as opposed to us volunteers) is here earning the equivalent to their salary back in the UK – plus it is tax free...
So how the hell would they know if the allowance we receive is too high ???
During the 18 months that I have been here I have spent around US$10,000 of my own money.
No wonder I am losing patience with some of these people.
Yes, defiantly enough to make a gecko laugh.
Just received my monthly Newsletter from the VSO Cambodia office.
The first article in it was about how the office here needs to buy a new car, a nice shiny new 4x4 Land cruiser or something – bring the total up to 4 cars.
Now, us Phnom Penh volunteers have to buy our own transport, or buy it twice if you get your motorbike stolen…
But with an estimated 60 VSO volunteer-professionals working here by the end of the year, they feel that they need more fancy off-road cars to run around the city and country in.
The second article was that the VSO Cambodia director, in consultation with head office in London, feels that the current VSO stipend for Cambodia IS TOO HIGH !
Now, after I pay my rent and bills, I have about US$200 left for little luxuries every month like; food, petrol, et cetera or even the odd night out (heaven forbid) !?!
I would also like to point out at this point that the VSO staff (as opposed to us volunteers) is here earning the equivalent to their salary back in the UK – plus it is tax free...
So how the hell would they know if the allowance we receive is too high ???
During the 18 months that I have been here I have spent around US$10,000 of my own money.
No wonder I am losing patience with some of these people.
Yes, defiantly enough to make a gecko laugh.
National Fish Day !
June the 29th
National Fish Day III
Is it really only a year since the last National Fish Day?
It must say something about me working at the Ministry of Fish that this year I hardly even snigger anymore when I say ‘National Fish Day’…
I am looking at my gold embossed invitation from the Prime Minister of Cambodia, requesting the pleasure of the company of ‘His Excellency Darren Conquest’.
It does still makes me laugh when Khmers refer to me as ‘Your Excellency’ if only they knew me better :-)
03:30 – yes, half past three in the morning – my alarm goes off, it takes every ounce of will power I process (yes, both ounces) to drag myself out of bed at this most ungodly hour.
04:10 – I am sat in the office with a very strong iced coffee waiting for the rest of my colleagues
to turn up, my boss is pacing up and down the car-park muttering ‘no discipline’ to himself and me
05:00 – the large air-conditioned bus is here…
05:15 – the rest of my colleagues turn up and the bus that ‘had to leave at 04:30 or we would be late’ finally get on the road
I manage to doze a little on the road out of town, but once we reached the provincial roads there was no chance of it. You maybe able to avoid the bumps and potholes on a bike, but on a 44 seat bus you just hit everything.
06:30 – we reach the ferry town of Neak Luong, a place I have been to half a dozen times over the last year. Stretching our legs for the 15 minute ferry crossing of the Mekong river we are accosted by numerous people selling cold drinks, snacks, nik naks and keepsakes, all par for the course.
06:45 once over the Mekong the bus pulls into a petrol station – presumably to fill up on contraband petrol smuggled here from the Vietnamese border which is only an hour away from here. So we all descend on a small pavement restaurant and set about eating breakfast; my usual rice with pork and chilli’s came with an added bonus in this part of the country hard boiled barbequed eggs!?!? Slightly tough in texture, but quite a pleasant taste!
07:15 we are back on the road for the final stretch to the lake
07:45 – cutting it fine I take my seat on the dais with the Prime Minister, one of the deputy Prime Ministers (they have 4 you know!) the Minister of Agriculture, the Director of Fisheries and other assorted big wigs.
08:00 – the opening speech is from H.E. Suran the Minister of Agriculture, Farms and Fisheries, I hardly listened to the simultaneous translation earpiece, I had edited and rewritten this speech last week, I could have given it!
While I am busy not paying attention to my own Minister I am looking at Hun Sen, the Prime Minister, he is sat one row in front of me and 3 seats to the left. An old woman is sat just behind him with an aluminium briefcase which I see her open. She starts taking out the contents and lays them out on the coffee table in front of Hun Sen. A gold and ivory ashtray, a gold lighter, a packet of 555 brand cigarettes, a crystal glass with silver filigree base, handle and lid, several chilled packets of wet wipes and an ice cold bottle of Evian water. - now that is what you call personal service, guess it pays to be a Prime Minister even in a poor third world country :-)
08:30 – the Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen get up to make his speech, taking the silver/crystal glass of ice cold Evian with him… As usual his 30 minute speech lasted 40 minutes and only about 10 of that was about fish, the rest was his usual relevance safari about monks, education, history, the king and the obligatory anecdote about ‘when I was a boy growing up in a rice field with no shoes…’
09:10 – speeches over, those of us on the dais head down to the marina to start the ceremonial releasing of fish into the lake, half a dozen huge fish tanks have been set up on the end of the dock, filled with fingerlings, baby eels, crabs, lobsters, et cetera. We all had some flat shrimping nets and took it in turns to fish out some critters and toss them in the lake.
09:30 – and the chopper is spinning up its blades to fly the PM off to his next engagement, I meanwhile an walking through a dusty field looking for the damn bus because everyone else had already wandered of.
12:00 – back in Phnom Penh safe and sound, spot of lunch and then back to the office for a meeting. Think I might leave early though…
National Fish Day III
Is it really only a year since the last National Fish Day?
It must say something about me working at the Ministry of Fish that this year I hardly even snigger anymore when I say ‘National Fish Day’…
I am looking at my gold embossed invitation from the Prime Minister of Cambodia, requesting the pleasure of the company of ‘His Excellency Darren Conquest’.
It does still makes me laugh when Khmers refer to me as ‘Your Excellency’ if only they knew me better :-)
03:30 – yes, half past three in the morning – my alarm goes off, it takes every ounce of will power I process (yes, both ounces) to drag myself out of bed at this most ungodly hour.
04:10 – I am sat in the office with a very strong iced coffee waiting for the rest of my colleagues
to turn up, my boss is pacing up and down the car-park muttering ‘no discipline’ to himself and me
05:00 – the large air-conditioned bus is here…
05:15 – the rest of my colleagues turn up and the bus that ‘had to leave at 04:30 or we would be late’ finally get on the road
I manage to doze a little on the road out of town, but once we reached the provincial roads there was no chance of it. You maybe able to avoid the bumps and potholes on a bike, but on a 44 seat bus you just hit everything.
06:30 – we reach the ferry town of Neak Luong, a place I have been to half a dozen times over the last year. Stretching our legs for the 15 minute ferry crossing of the Mekong river we are accosted by numerous people selling cold drinks, snacks, nik naks and keepsakes, all par for the course.
06:45 once over the Mekong the bus pulls into a petrol station – presumably to fill up on contraband petrol smuggled here from the Vietnamese border which is only an hour away from here. So we all descend on a small pavement restaurant and set about eating breakfast; my usual rice with pork and chilli’s came with an added bonus in this part of the country hard boiled barbequed eggs!?!? Slightly tough in texture, but quite a pleasant taste!
07:15 we are back on the road for the final stretch to the lake
07:45 – cutting it fine I take my seat on the dais with the Prime Minister, one of the deputy Prime Ministers (they have 4 you know!) the Minister of Agriculture, the Director of Fisheries and other assorted big wigs.
08:00 – the opening speech is from H.E. Suran the Minister of Agriculture, Farms and Fisheries, I hardly listened to the simultaneous translation earpiece, I had edited and rewritten this speech last week, I could have given it!
While I am busy not paying attention to my own Minister I am looking at Hun Sen, the Prime Minister, he is sat one row in front of me and 3 seats to the left. An old woman is sat just behind him with an aluminium briefcase which I see her open. She starts taking out the contents and lays them out on the coffee table in front of Hun Sen. A gold and ivory ashtray, a gold lighter, a packet of 555 brand cigarettes, a crystal glass with silver filigree base, handle and lid, several chilled packets of wet wipes and an ice cold bottle of Evian water. - now that is what you call personal service, guess it pays to be a Prime Minister even in a poor third world country :-)
08:30 – the Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen get up to make his speech, taking the silver/crystal glass of ice cold Evian with him… As usual his 30 minute speech lasted 40 minutes and only about 10 of that was about fish, the rest was his usual relevance safari about monks, education, history, the king and the obligatory anecdote about ‘when I was a boy growing up in a rice field with no shoes…’
09:10 – speeches over, those of us on the dais head down to the marina to start the ceremonial releasing of fish into the lake, half a dozen huge fish tanks have been set up on the end of the dock, filled with fingerlings, baby eels, crabs, lobsters, et cetera. We all had some flat shrimping nets and took it in turns to fish out some critters and toss them in the lake.
09:30 – and the chopper is spinning up its blades to fly the PM off to his next engagement, I meanwhile an walking through a dusty field looking for the damn bus because everyone else had already wandered of.
12:00 – back in Phnom Penh safe and sound, spot of lunch and then back to the office for a meeting. Think I might leave early though…
Police or Beggars with guns ???
Again, a late post, sorry, been busy !
Monday the 20th
Her Majesty, Queen Monirith of Cambodia’s Birthday
Yes, it is the second of the 2 bank holidays this month.
Good old Queen Monirith of Cambodia is having a royal knees-up at the palace this evening, a few of the guys I work with at the Ministry had invites, but unfortunately I was not able to get one. Damn, only attending one royal birthday party this month, what is the world coming too !
So instead I had to console myself with going and picking up my new motor bike; vroom, vroom.
Collecting my nice shiny new set of wheels, I head north up Monivong Boulevard – a duel carriageway running North to South through the centre of the city, just to give it a little try out. Stopping at a set of traffic lights near the central market I am suddenly surrounded by Khmer police.
They have set up an ‘informal’ checkpoint and start asking for registration documents et cetera. Having just collected the bike I had not had time (like 5 minutes of ownership!) to go to my local police station and purchase (that is to say, bribe) the documents from the local police chief (because that is the way that it works here) so for the fourth time in a month I am being shaken down for a back hander by the corrupt police here. I am starting to suspect that the government has not paid them for a few months, which is what is causing this sudden increase in impromptu traffic police road blocks and check points. So ten minutes later, and US$5 lighter, I am at the shop having my licence plates made, ho hum.
Now, the official cost to register a motorbike with the police and get license plates made is US$12 for a Khmer and US$20 for a foreigner. After haggling for 20 minutes with my local police chief the lowest he would go was US$250 !!!
Now if you get stopped by the traffic police and you 'do not have your documents on you’ the spot fine is officially 2,000r – (or 50cents / 30pence) although if a foreigner is stopped they usually open the haggling at US$10 or even US$20, normally I end up paying US$1 – but it helps that I can haggle in Khmer, only once have I ever paid 2,000r and that guy did not haggle, just asked for the 2,000r and let me go! (he may have been new on the job)
So, if I usually pay US$1 when stopped by the police I would have to be stopped 250 times and not pay anything at all to break even on the size of the bribe the police chief wanted to register my bike…
I had a guy on a street corner make my unofficial license plate for US$3. it will take me a long time and a lot of US$1 stops to get to US$250, although I might try again for registered plates in a month or so when the government finally gets around to giving the police their back-pay. All US$20 a month of it !?!? No wonder the traffic police here are so corrupt, not even in Cambodia can you live on US$20 a month, not even close.
Monday the 20th
Her Majesty, Queen Monirith of Cambodia’s Birthday
Yes, it is the second of the 2 bank holidays this month.
Good old Queen Monirith of Cambodia is having a royal knees-up at the palace this evening, a few of the guys I work with at the Ministry had invites, but unfortunately I was not able to get one. Damn, only attending one royal birthday party this month, what is the world coming too !
So instead I had to console myself with going and picking up my new motor bike; vroom, vroom.
Collecting my nice shiny new set of wheels, I head north up Monivong Boulevard – a duel carriageway running North to South through the centre of the city, just to give it a little try out. Stopping at a set of traffic lights near the central market I am suddenly surrounded by Khmer police.
They have set up an ‘informal’ checkpoint and start asking for registration documents et cetera. Having just collected the bike I had not had time (like 5 minutes of ownership!) to go to my local police station and purchase (that is to say, bribe) the documents from the local police chief (because that is the way that it works here) so for the fourth time in a month I am being shaken down for a back hander by the corrupt police here. I am starting to suspect that the government has not paid them for a few months, which is what is causing this sudden increase in impromptu traffic police road blocks and check points. So ten minutes later, and US$5 lighter, I am at the shop having my licence plates made, ho hum.
Now, the official cost to register a motorbike with the police and get license plates made is US$12 for a Khmer and US$20 for a foreigner. After haggling for 20 minutes with my local police chief the lowest he would go was US$250 !!!
Now if you get stopped by the traffic police and you 'do not have your documents on you’ the spot fine is officially 2,000r – (or 50cents / 30pence) although if a foreigner is stopped they usually open the haggling at US$10 or even US$20, normally I end up paying US$1 – but it helps that I can haggle in Khmer, only once have I ever paid 2,000r and that guy did not haggle, just asked for the 2,000r and let me go! (he may have been new on the job)
So, if I usually pay US$1 when stopped by the police I would have to be stopped 250 times and not pay anything at all to break even on the size of the bribe the police chief wanted to register my bike…
I had a guy on a street corner make my unofficial license plate for US$3. it will take me a long time and a lot of US$1 stops to get to US$250, although I might try again for registered plates in a month or so when the government finally gets around to giving the police their back-pay. All US$20 a month of it !?!? No wonder the traffic police here are so corrupt, not even in Cambodia can you live on US$20 a month, not even close.
The Birthday of Queen Elizabeth of England
Slightly belated posting of this story, sorry, been busy !
Thursday the 16th of June
The Birthday of Queen Elizabeth of England
Because of the confluence of events today, I actually forgot for a while that I was going to the embassy ball, I also forgot that my bike had been stolen and that I had not transport.
Deciding that I did still want to go to the embassy ball I got ready and suddenly realised that I was going to have to arrive there by motodop, motorcycle taxi.
So, dressed up to the nines, suited’n’booted, dressed and pressed; I am sat on the back of a scruffy looking 20 year old Honda Daelim, with a slightly confused motodop weaving in and out of traffic along Mao Tse Tung Boulevard. As we approach the Intercontinental Hotel the police are blocking off traffic going both ways as several large black 4x4’s with tinted windows were pulling into the Hotel at the same time; yes the Khmer top brass were there; a couple of the deputy Prime Ministers (Cambodia has 5) as well as several Ministers and Under Secretaries.
My driver was somewhat unsure about driving through all this police and security, until I was able, in Khmer, to assure him that I was going to the same place as everyone else!
Once through the elaborate security procedures inside the hotel – a young girl taking coats – we enter the main Ballroom, around 200 people were there already. Circulating slowly around the room a waitress wandered past and handed me a glass of Champagne. Not yet seeing anyone that I knew I paused briefly by a large ice sculpture of a London Double Decker bus !?!
At that point the Under Secretary from the British Embassy took the stage, three feet to the right of me, hello everybody!
He explained that the British Ambassador, David Reader, could not be with us this evening as he had flown up to Siem Reap, the little boy that died had been Canadian and Canada is still part of the British Commonwealth like Australia. We were asked to observe a minutes silence before the rest of the speeches.
Fortunately the rest of the speeches only took about 10 minutes – other Khmer speeches I have attended over the last year have gone on for over an hour per person; culturally the more important you are the longer you speak for, thankfully this was not the case here.
At the close of the speeches, both the Khmer and British National anthems were played and sung by the 8 piece band I had not previously noticed. The singer was a Khmer woman, and I have to say, it was slightly strange hearing ‘god save our gracious queen’ sung in a Khmer accent !
Although the four violinists seemed excellent throughout the night, the piano player kept yawning and chatting to one of the cello players.
The formalities over, I took to mingling with the other guests.
In a country of near constant oppressive heat, where you usually have to dress for comfort, no so much for style, it was nice to see so many people make the effort to dress up. The diplomatic corps were there of course, with representatives from most of the city’s Embassies, turned out as neatly as if they were working in a London office. My fellow volunteers had also made a major effort. There was however a small contingent of the NGO crowd who it seems had decided to come dressed as unwashed smelly old hippies, although I suspect that this is their normal mode of dress… The Khmers were all dressed in ‘serious business attire’ and they seemed to view those in scruffy T-shirts and tattered, floral dresses with some bafflement, Khmers can be ultra conservative at times, and this sort of event with senior officials and a couple of members of the royal family present was, to them, a very serious affair.
Anyway, after a couple of hours socialising and catching up with friends of mine that normally work out in the provinces we decided to head over to the assorted buffet tables.
As my normal existence is mostly on rice (around 15 meals of rice a week, out of 21) I do tend to get slightly carried away when presented with food from home, doubly so if it has been prepared in a 5 star hotel restaurant and even more so if it is made from ingredients that had been airlifted in from the UK by diplomatic courier !
The hot buffet selection included:
Steak and Kidney pie, with a super-light and fluffy short crust pastry lid
Lincolnshire sausages
Rare fillet of Aberdeen Angus
Yorkshire puddings
Vegetable fritters
Mini jacket potatoes stuffed with spiced lamb
Fish with a dry curry rub crust
Chips and roast potatoes
For dessert we had a selection of; cheesecake, bread and butter pudding, fruit salad, ice cream.
On a separate buffet table they also had; Asian noodles, fried rice, et cetera. However, I decided to give the rice and noodles a miss for the evening :-)
Thursday the 16th of June
The Birthday of Queen Elizabeth of England
Because of the confluence of events today, I actually forgot for a while that I was going to the embassy ball, I also forgot that my bike had been stolen and that I had not transport.
Deciding that I did still want to go to the embassy ball I got ready and suddenly realised that I was going to have to arrive there by motodop, motorcycle taxi.
So, dressed up to the nines, suited’n’booted, dressed and pressed; I am sat on the back of a scruffy looking 20 year old Honda Daelim, with a slightly confused motodop weaving in and out of traffic along Mao Tse Tung Boulevard. As we approach the Intercontinental Hotel the police are blocking off traffic going both ways as several large black 4x4’s with tinted windows were pulling into the Hotel at the same time; yes the Khmer top brass were there; a couple of the deputy Prime Ministers (Cambodia has 5) as well as several Ministers and Under Secretaries.
My driver was somewhat unsure about driving through all this police and security, until I was able, in Khmer, to assure him that I was going to the same place as everyone else!
Once through the elaborate security procedures inside the hotel – a young girl taking coats – we enter the main Ballroom, around 200 people were there already. Circulating slowly around the room a waitress wandered past and handed me a glass of Champagne. Not yet seeing anyone that I knew I paused briefly by a large ice sculpture of a London Double Decker bus !?!
At that point the Under Secretary from the British Embassy took the stage, three feet to the right of me, hello everybody!
He explained that the British Ambassador, David Reader, could not be with us this evening as he had flown up to Siem Reap, the little boy that died had been Canadian and Canada is still part of the British Commonwealth like Australia. We were asked to observe a minutes silence before the rest of the speeches.
Fortunately the rest of the speeches only took about 10 minutes – other Khmer speeches I have attended over the last year have gone on for over an hour per person; culturally the more important you are the longer you speak for, thankfully this was not the case here.
At the close of the speeches, both the Khmer and British National anthems were played and sung by the 8 piece band I had not previously noticed. The singer was a Khmer woman, and I have to say, it was slightly strange hearing ‘god save our gracious queen’ sung in a Khmer accent !
Although the four violinists seemed excellent throughout the night, the piano player kept yawning and chatting to one of the cello players.
The formalities over, I took to mingling with the other guests.
In a country of near constant oppressive heat, where you usually have to dress for comfort, no so much for style, it was nice to see so many people make the effort to dress up. The diplomatic corps were there of course, with representatives from most of the city’s Embassies, turned out as neatly as if they were working in a London office. My fellow volunteers had also made a major effort. There was however a small contingent of the NGO crowd who it seems had decided to come dressed as unwashed smelly old hippies, although I suspect that this is their normal mode of dress… The Khmers were all dressed in ‘serious business attire’ and they seemed to view those in scruffy T-shirts and tattered, floral dresses with some bafflement, Khmers can be ultra conservative at times, and this sort of event with senior officials and a couple of members of the royal family present was, to them, a very serious affair.
Anyway, after a couple of hours socialising and catching up with friends of mine that normally work out in the provinces we decided to head over to the assorted buffet tables.
As my normal existence is mostly on rice (around 15 meals of rice a week, out of 21) I do tend to get slightly carried away when presented with food from home, doubly so if it has been prepared in a 5 star hotel restaurant and even more so if it is made from ingredients that had been airlifted in from the UK by diplomatic courier !
The hot buffet selection included:
Steak and Kidney pie, with a super-light and fluffy short crust pastry lid
Lincolnshire sausages
Rare fillet of Aberdeen Angus
Yorkshire puddings
Vegetable fritters
Mini jacket potatoes stuffed with spiced lamb
Fish with a dry curry rub crust
Chips and roast potatoes
For dessert we had a selection of; cheesecake, bread and butter pudding, fruit salad, ice cream.
On a separate buffet table they also had; Asian noodles, fried rice, et cetera. However, I decided to give the rice and noodles a miss for the evening :-)
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