In the wake of Thailand’s most recent coup d’état, the last few months have brought news that the new military regime would begin cracking down on the country’s liberal visa laws in an effort to rid the place of its ribald and unwanted riffraff:  illegal workers, wanted criminals, and Australians.  Thai visa regulations allow foreigners from visa-free states to enter the country, stay for 30 days, and then make a border-run to obtain a new 30 day exemption. Getting oneself acclimated with the inscrutable visa rules in Thailand can be a complex, convoluted and expensive ordeal. Indeed, one of the reasons I chose to live in Cambodia over Thailand was the relative ease of Cambodia’s visa process.

Needless to say, one consequence of Thailand’s tightening visa laws discussed at length on the Khmer440 is the potential for some of Thailand’s farang to become Cambodia’s barang. There will doubtless be many apprehensive and funereal individuals in the Land of Smiles who may chance upon this article seeking some measure of guidance on whether to relocate to Cambodia. This article is not meant to be a didactic pontification on which country is “better” to live in. But being someone who has lived and worked in both Thailand and Cambodia for extended periods of time, I’d like to offer a pertinent juxtaposition on some of the most relevant categories by which to compare these two countries and, particularly, the two capital cities.

Food: Thailand beats Cambodia

I’m not a food critic: I just pretend to be one on Khmer440. I grew up in a Sicilian household in New York, and it wasn’t until I left for college that I discovered alternative food options to eggplant carbonara, pasta, and pizza.

Thai food is a world-renowned cuisine, pleasing on the palate both for those who enjoy extreme spiciness and those who do not. The care put into the art of cooking distinguishes Thai dishes from the Khmer versions of very similar concoctions. I am always impressed with the variety of uses of coconut milk and peanuts when I find myself eating in Thailand, and the food you can buy from street stalls in Bangkok can rival some of the best kitchens in Manhattan. Moreover, northern Thai food, originating from the Lanna culture, offers a slightly different blend of curries and spices that provides additional diversity.

The one thing I personally dislike about Thai food is that it never leaves me feeling full; after I savage a bowl of tom yum soup, I feel like this main dish was just the entrée to something much more satisfying. When I finish my dinner, I want to feel guilty about the calories I’ve ingested, my prim carnality temporarily tossed out the window.

Khmer food is just lacking that extra special something which I’m not sure is even possible to articular but, rather, something to try yourself. It’s not Cambodia’s fault their food is as bland as it is – many of the country’s recipes, some influenced by French cooking techniques, were lost during the genocide of the late 1970s.

There are some unique things to sample in Cambodia: the malodorous prohok, Cambodia’s national cheese dish which is actually quite tasty, the fulsome baby duck embryo eggs hawked on the street by Khmer men armed with a mobile heater attached to a motorbike and a loudspeaker, and fried spiders seasoned with something akin to the packaged powder you find in a box of Rice-A-Roni. Did I say Khmer food was boring? Maybe I take that back.

Cost of living: Cambodia beats Thailand

There is no doubt that most things are cheaper in Cambodia than in Thailand. Monthly rent costs, commodities at the local markets, beer, and getting appliances repaired are a few examples of this. Street food, eating in a nice restaurant, a cup of coffee in a café, and bar fines are roughly equal. Transportation, while significantly easier in Cambodia due to the sheer size, mass, and density of Bangkok, is also about the same price.

Traffic: Cambodia beats Thailand

I am not saying that Bangkok’s traffic is better to sit in than Phnom Penh’s. Thailand “wins” this dubious category despite having an impressively big and cheap mass transit system encompassing the streets, the air, and the underground. That notwithstanding, I can count on one hand the urban metropolises I have been to where one had to plan their daily activities around the oppressive mass of humanity that passes for a national grid. Bangkok, in my experience, ranks somewhere between Jakarta and Mexico City. Yes, it’s that bad.

This isn’t to suggest that Phnom Penh doesn’t have its own traffic issues.  It does, and they are worthy of an entire article in themselves.

Shopping and availability of goods: Thailand beats Cambodia

While things may be cheaper in Cambodia, there is a significant contrast between the infrastructure of the two countries, with Thailand scoring a major edge. The haute couture scene is a major economic engine in Thailand driven by an expanding middle class and mainstream transnational corporations establishing boutiques in the many upscale malls.

Cambodia has AEON mall, where the Khmer are content walking around in the air conditioned premises resigned only to window shopping. The Khmer prefer to shop at their local psar (market), buying clothes and food from the “pajama mafia,” middle aged women whose nickname is earned based on their inimitable outfits more befitting dental assistants.

There’s not a lot that you can’t buy in Thailand.  Sourcing the same items in Cambodia can often be problematic.

Motodop intelligence: Thailand beats Cambodia

I wanted to make sure I threw this in there as this is one of the banes of my existence living in Phnom Penh. The motodop drivers in this city are some of the most imbecilic morons to inhabit this planet. They sit around on their bikes for most of the day (when they aren’t sleeping on them) shouting at anyone with white skin walking by if they want a ride. Then, when you want to actually use their services, they haven’t a clue where to go besides the various psars or wats peppered around town. Ask them to go to the moon, and they’ll eagerly accept the fare, nodding their heads with vacuous ineptness only to stop within ten seconds of you hopping on to ask one of their similarly deficient mates where to go.

Motodup Safety: Cambodia beats Thailand

I went with a motodup in Bangkok once; mercifully, it will be the last time. Somewhere between going airborne over an overpass on Rama VI, and a head-on near miss with the #15 bus by Democracy Monument, I had a premonition of a photo of my decapitated body showing up on the Bestgore or LiveLeak websites as the latest tragic farang death on the streets of Thailand. At least the Khmer motodops have no pretension of being Mario Andretti.

Women: Thailand beats Cambodia

I mean no offense by employing this category as a way of comparing the two countries, but the reality is that many men travel to this area of the world seeking companionship. Khmer women won’t ask you for as much money as a Thai hooker would but they will expect you to provide financially for them and, in all likelihood, their families as well. If it weren’t for matters of economics, the average Khmer woman would probably choose to be with a Khmer man.

The average Thai woman tends to be a little more sophisticated than that. There are many well-educated, intelligent and gainfully employed Thai women who seek foreign men for husbands with strenuous determination, as adduced by the various dating apps I have come across in the country. It helps to know the language to some extent and having a strong financial footing is necessary in most cases. Genuine relationships can be formed more easily and with less drama than one might expect.

Cambodia, however, is a much poorer country and love is expressed predominantly in terms of money or material possessions. It’s possible to find a Khmer girlfriend or future wife here who does not look at you as if you were an ATM machine, but it’s difficult. I know of too many horror stories of foreign men becoming involved with Khmer women and getting entangled in a sordid web of deceit and duplicity which, in addition to causing untold headache and heartache, also leads to a significant reduction in personal net worth.

Language, Culture, and Happiness: Cambodia beats Thailand

In contrast to Thai, Khmer is not a tonal language. As someone who struggles with languages, I find basic Khmer easy to pick up. Even the prosody of the language is not that difficult to understand compared to other Southeast Asia languages. I also find it more fun to use when haggling on the streets or in the markets, with the students in my class who can’t get enough of the silly terms I employ, to the Khmer staff at the bars.

In general, Thais seems to be more serious, cold and impatient with foreigners. This partly has to do with each country’s historical narrative. Thailand was the only nation of the so-called Global South that was never colonized; Thais have been spoiled by decades of tourist capital, and a quick rebound from the financial crisis of the late 1990s. Cambodia only gained independence from France in 1954; its era of self-determination was interrupted by one of the worst genocides of the 20th century to be followed by a civil war which ravaged the country until the early 1990s. The Cambodians learn to get on with only the very basics, relying on their family units and religion for support.

Both cultures can be xenophobic and ethnocentric to “others,” but I have never felt threatened or feared for my safety in either country. And this is despite being shaken down by the police in both places at various times and ask to make a donation to some official looking slob in order to secure a revised opinion of whatever my innocent actions were.

In the end, it’s a matter of different strokes for different folks. Both countries have quirky idiosyncrasies that can either endear or annoy different expats. And with flights between the two capital cities taking only an hour, you may even be able to enjoy the best of both worlds.

Forget every inspirational advert and film you have seen about life in developing countries: smiling kids, appreciative adults, and the joy of helping your fellow man. It’s all sentimental bollocks. After a several weeks in a Khmer village it’s all about basic survival. So, if you ever end up alone in the provinces here are three things you must avoid at all costs.

Children

Cambodian villages overflow with roaming urchins. Upon sighting a foreigner, these semi-feral creatures surround you chorusing, “Hello whatssurname,” “hello whassurname.”

Engaging these tykes is a world of pain. You must ignore them completely. If politeness compels, issue a single “hello” and no more.

Now some readers will peg me as a curmudgeon. “How awful”, they will think. “If I go to a Khmer village I will teach those underprivileged youngsters everything I know.” Well, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.

These kids are unaware that after an exchange of “hello” the interaction should end or move onto discussing subjects of mutual interest. They are under the impression that exchanges of “hello” should continue until one of the parties drops dead from exhaustion.

And it’s not just “hello” they are after. Any vocal response will do. Speaking no English, even “piss off” is received with squeals of delight, and once engaged the gang swells with excitement, more kids join until you are trailed by a smelly carnival chanting “hello whassurname.”

It’s undignified for all involved. To avoid this, issue a single “hello” and then ignore them completely. The children will test your resolve but you must outlast them. You must not weaken. Peace will be your reward.

Weddings

Cambodians approach weddings like a competitive sport. So when the option of inviting the only local barang in the village presents itself, most jump at the opportunity to have a white soul wander amidst their guests like some lost yeti.

After I made the fatal mistake of going to a first wedding, the invites came flooding in. Everyone wanted a piece of the barang freakshow. This would have been fine if Khmer weddings were fun to attend. But each one follows the same dismal routine.

After paying an entry fee worthy of the most exclusive Phnom Penh nightclub a seat at a table is presented. The floor beneath is already awash with balled-up serviettes, beer cans and plastic cups. Then the inedible fare comes – vinegary mango salad, a fish packed with razor-sharp bones, and a pot of gummy beef. Remember, this is the countryside; there are no restaurants and no Panda Marts. You must eat the wedding food or go hungry.

Cans of boiling hot beer are produced and served over ice to create a watery brew that only the most dedicated alcoholics could stomach. Refusing to drink is not an option. You don’t know enough Khmer to give an excuse. There is no option but to guzzle it down.

Now the combination of bad beer and food is fermenting into a poisonous swamp in your belly, it is time to be hit the dance floor. The traditional hand-flipping dance is charming enough but the steps are too fine for the average drunk barang so all that is achieved is a grotesque imitation, like the elephant man dancing salsa.

By now, the substandard grub, beer and dancing has produced a state of intense indigestion. But sitting down is not an option. Drunken relatives are on hand to drag you back into the throng.

Beneath the feet of the guests, the debris from a hundred tables is crushed into the red earth.

Teaching English

Teaching English in South-East Asia is a pursuit favoured by trustifarians, bail-skippers and wide-eyed 20 year-olds. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone apart from properly qualified teachers.  This is particularly the case in rural Cambodia where the prevailing pedagogy seems designed to baffle the barang driftwood that find themselves struggling to have their class pronounce the sound, “th”.

Cambodian education is based on repetition. For them repetition seems to equal comprehension. You think that perhaps it’s time to put a stop to this archaic method. Better have each kid talk on their own as if they were having a real conversation.

The problem is, when the English books are removed all that is left is a terrified child with no clue how to form even the most rudimentary sentences.

“I have… have… have… one brother and… two bro- sister.” After two minutes of this, out of pity, you let the child sit down and move on to the next.

“I have… one brother… and two… sister.” OK, that was better. Around the time the fifth child has claimed to have “one brother” and “two sister” a rat is smelled. Once you have chucked a broom at the rat, you begin to realise that each child is just parroting the same answer.

After the failure of your reforms you are asked to return to the book repetition. Now your foray into international development consists of days spent reading paragraphs from tattered textbooks about how Mary wants to buy ice-cream and some Jolly Rancher from the 7-11. The kids repeat it all perfectly. Everyone goes home happy.

I rather enjoy getting out of the States and coming to Cambodia for Christmas and New Years, not only because it’s considerably warmer, but just to escape the whole commercialism-shoved-down-your-throat thing that America does so painfully well. I can only take so much of that shit. Seems like the “Christmas Push” starts sometime in July and just doesn’t let up until January. You’d think it would end after Christmas, but then there’s that week after when the shit you got as a present breaks, you take it back for a refund, and now there are new sales to take the refund money from you. It’s the “American Way”.

I find it interestingly strange that in an almost exclusively Buddhist country the concept of Christmas pops up here and there, no doubt for the exclusive benefit of foreigners. The thing that is concerning is that good old American “Commercial Consumption”, employing mass -media advertisement using that rapid-fire, never-ending, mind-numbing process is creeping into Cambodia little by little to gain its cancer-like foothold where it can to find a place to grow and thrive. The exact thing I try to escape from.

Case in point: Budweiser Beer.

In Siem Reap (as in Phnom Penh, and countless other places I’m sure) you see the plastic banners advertising Budweiser beer (originally a Czech brew now manufactured in the States which has been pawning itself off as something being German) that uses rice in its recipe.Rice? It’s right there on the label! They’d lock you up in Germany for that shit. Not for me, never touch it unless I’m near dying from thirst and even then I’d think long and hard. In November and December these banners are all over the place depicting icicles, snowmen, and of course, Santa and his reindeer. You’ve seen ‘em. Aren’t they wonderful? They certainly get me into that festive, holiday mood!

A stroke of advertisement genius in a place that has never seen a snowflake, eh?

So, I turn to my Khmer brother and point at this banner with Santa who it would seems, swills Budweiser every waking moment, hence, making him “jolly”, considering the smile on his face.

“Know who that is?”, I ask.

He shrugs in a “no” kind of way and I tell him it’s Santa Claus (which, I know in other places all over the world answers to a variety of names, but I stick with the one I was told as a lad) and in short order I begin to unfold the story which does plenty to reinforce in his mind (and mine as well at least to a degree) that without a doubt, Americans are some of the most truly bat-shit crazy lunatics on the planet, probably to be avoided whenever possible. Well, all except me, of course.

So, here we go.

“Well, that’s Santa Claus and he lives up at the North Pole with Mrs. Claus and about 50 elves which is another word for “midget”. They wear pointy hats and have curly shoes, not exactly arctic wear. The North Pole is fucking cold, with nothing but snow and ice and why anyone in their right mind would live there is beyond me. For that matter, Mrs. Claus must be a hell of a woman to put up with that shit. You’d never find an American woman that would live less than 10 miles from a shopping mall.”

“Anyway, Santa has a workshop. A big fucking workshop. It must be some kind of industrial complex. All year long, Santa cracks the whip and the midgets make toys for children. Kind of like the Cambodian garment workers deal over here. He probably doesn’t pay them shit either, but they get all the Budweiser they can drink for free. Come to think of it, why he uses midgets is a mystery to me, you’d think he’d get more productivity out of regular full-grown people, wouldn’t you? Nevermind. Well, all year long they crank out these toys, and since up at the North Pole where the days are six months long, that means during half the year, they’re working in the dark. How can you make something in the fucking dark? No wonder toys aren’t worth a shit and break the first time you play with ‘em. How can you build toys by fucking brail?”

I get the Khmer nod and smile at this point. I know I get the smile out of respect while at the same even though he speaks and understands English and street slang better than the average bear, there is no way he has any idea what I’m babbling on about. Undeterred, I plod on….

“So, all this toy-making stops on the 22nd or the 23rd I’m going to guess, because on December 24th, Santa puts on that red suit that you see in the picture. A big red suit, because Santa is a really fat guy who as you can see drinks a lot of Budweiser beer. That explains the red cheeks, see? Red suit, red cheeks, Santa is one color-coordinated guy! And he takes all these toys, enough for every child ON EARTH and loads them into his sled.”

Sled. An explanation is order.

“ Umm..a sled is like a car for snow, except this sled can fly. Well, not the sled so much, but see those animals with the funny horns? Those are reindeer. Reindeer. Yes, I understand they should be called snow-deer, or ice-deer, but that’s just how it goes. “

“These reindeer that Santa has for his sled can FLY!!!” Isn’t that cool? At this point I’m extending my arms like a 747 and doing a little dance in a circle. Keep in mind I’m saying this to someone who has never been on an airplane in his life. My Khmer brother is now looking at me like I have a third eye.

“They fly? Like bird in sky?”

“Yup. And see the one out front? With the red nose? Well, he’s the boss of the reindeer and his name is Rudolph. Roo-dol-phffff. He’s Santa’s favorite and I don’t know for sure but I think both he and Santa drink Budweiser beer all day long at the North Pole because it’s so fucking cold up there. I know I would. Maybe not Budweiser, because I hate that shit, but something alcoholic. That explains why they both have big red noses.”

Well, that seems logical, eh? We proceed.

“Santa loves his reindeer very much, and he gave each of them a name. The four right behind Rudolph are named…umm, let’s see…“Hops”, “Malt”, “Barley” and “Pop-Top”. I’m getting old and it’s too hard to remember all their names but I think one is named “Heineken” and another is called “Guinness”. Look it up on Google.”

“Notice how Santa has the big smile? That’s because he’s “jolly”, which means “happy”. He says, “Ho-ho-ho mui teit!!” a lot.”

My audience is now transfixed, mouth agape staring up at the banner which has now become a truly mystifying image.

“Now, on December 24th, Santa loads all the toys into the sled and feeds lots of Budweiser beer to all the reindeer and off they go. Maybe Santa takes a couple of kegs along to refuel the reindeer, not sure. Anyway, Santa and the reindeer take off and fly ALL OVER THE WORLD and deliver toys to children EVERYWHERE. Isn’t that amazing? Can you believe it? I can’t get from Siem Reap to Seattle in 24 hours, but Santa with Rudolph and the other reindeer all boozed up on Budweiser can get to every single goddamn house in the WORLD in the same amount of time because you can bet your ass that Santa doesn’t have a fucking 13 hour layover in Seoul.”

“Santa never come to my house?” is the reply in that question/statement Khmer kind of way.

“Well, see, there’s a couple of things about that. First, Santa only comes to your house if you’ve been good. He knows when you are sleeping and he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. Santa keeps track, he has a list and he checks it twice. Well, actually two. One is if you’ve been bad, and one if you’ve been good. I think that’s how he cuts down deliveries to save some time. But, remember when the cop pulled you over for not wearing a helmet and grabbed the keys until you gave him some money? Remember how you punched him the face, knocked him to the ground and kicked him? Well, I think that put you on the wrong list. And if Santa has never come to your house, you’ve been pulling a lot of shit for quite some time it seems.”

“Fuck policeman. All he want is bribe.”

“Well, I understand but Santa doesn’t have time to go through details. You’re either bad or good. It’s that simple”.

I can see the gears turning.

“Prime Minister never see Santa too?”

“Never has, never will. He’s on the wrong list.”

Ah, there’s that big Khmer smile I so dearly love.

“But the other thing is that you’re supposed to do is leave milk and cookies for Santa when he comes to your house. If you don’t, Santa might not come next year. For an old man, Santa has a hell of a memory.”

“So…Santa need bribe, too? Like policeman?”

Hmmm. Yeah, you got a point, there. Moving on…

“So…Santa’s flying with the reindeer, the toys, and the Budweiser, right? He lands on the roof of everyone’s house, parks, and he gets into the house by going down the chimney.”

“Chim-nee?”

“Yeah. Lots of houses have a chimney, so they can make fire in the house and the smoke has a place to go.”

Startled, he shouts, “MAKE FIRE IN HOUSE?”

“No, no…the fire is made in a special place where it stays but the chimney is a tube that lets the smoke go outside.”

“Tube very big.”

“Well, not real big…(I fashion my arms into a circle and let my fingertips meet)…it’s about like this.

I can see the gears are turning again as my Khmer brother looks up at Santa on the Budweiser banner.

“Santa bigger than that. Why not Santa park outside house on ground and come in through door?”

My Khmer brother is nobody’s fool.

“Well, that’s a good question and maybe he does in some places, but the United States sure as hell isn’t one of them. Santa would get his fucking head blown off in America if he came in someone’s front door in the middle of the night.”

Again, startled, he exclaims, “YOU SHOOT SANTA?”

“Well, no…not me personally, but there’s a lot of assholes in the States with guns that sure as hell would. And after Santa, the reindeer would be next. Those reindeer taste pretty good. I think that’s the reason why in the States he comes down the chimney. He knows Americans are fucking nuts.”

He’s nodding in agreement as he’s beginning to see the light.

“Now, in the house is a tree…”

“Tree grow in house?”

“Well, no. We cut the tree down in the forest and bring it into the house.”

“Do police know?”

“Sure, everyone does it.”

“And not go to jail?”

“Naw…actually, most people pay someone else to cut down the tree.”

“So tree die?”

“Yes, the tree die. It’s a custom we have. We kill trees to celebrate the birth of Christ.”

There’s that look again.

“Nevermind. Look, Santa comes down the chimney with the toys and he hangs out a bit to eat the milk and cookies. Sometimes the father of the house might leave him a shot of whisky because he knows Santa has a long way to go and its fucking cold at 35,000 feet. So after the cookies, milk and whisky are gone, Santa puts the toys under the tree and goes back up the chimney, gets in the sled, and off they go to the next house. You always know that Santa has been to your house when you get up in the morning of Christmas and the milk, cookies and whisky is gone and there are toys under the tree”.

“Santa look old. How old Santa?”

“Yeah, you’re right. Santa is an old guy and probably getting sick of this stuff. Someday Santa is just going to just use Fed Ex, eat the reindeer, fire the midgets and buy a bar on Pub Street where he can sell Budweiser and drink for free.”

There you have it. I’m explaining the whole concept of Santa Claus to my Khmer brother as he’s looking up at the Budweiser banner in wide-eyed wonder and as I go through the mythical tale, the irony of it all certainly isn’t lost on me. Icicles…snowmen…reindeer…fat man in a red suit…all to sell beer in a place where the temperature rarely gets below 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

I felt a little guilty after my last piece. It’s easy to sit back and pick holes in things for cheap laughs and it’s not too difficult, living among the privations of village life, to find foibles left, right and centre. So, to counter that and rebalance my kharmic merit, here are four awesome things about living in a Khmer village that you should definitely try if you get the chance.

Harvesting Rice

As anyone who has spent time in Cambodia will tell you, rice occupies for Khmers that defining space in the national consciousness that the British have for tea, Americans have for fast food and the Swiss have for wire-rimmed spectacles and being neutral.

During harvest season the offers come thick and fast. “Will you help harvest the rice today?”  No, not today, thanks. I avoided the task. It sounded too much like hard work. Until the day I relented and slopped, apprehensively through the paddies towards a patch of land owned by a family I’m friends with.

The work was sensual. The only sound was the whip and thrash of sickles slashing. Protected from the blistering sun by long-peaked caps and voluminous shirts we moved methodically, gleaning the field until only stubs were left poking from the water that glistened in the late afternoon sun.

Sure, I got back-ache but I also connected to something post-modern man pines for while tapping at a lonely keyboard. That thing psychoanalyst James Hillman called, “[the] human nostalgia for freedom in a primitive Eden.” By running my own hands over the plants that would make my dinner my connection to the Earth was momentarily much more real than the abstract realm of words, bank balances and pre-packaged goods I usually inhabit.

Precept Day

 If there’s one thing Cambodians love (apart from their rice fields), it’s their religion. Few things will render you as many approving nods as bowing to the Buddha and taking part in a ceremony or two. Living as I do in temple it wasn’t long before I noticed the regular gathering of elderly people in the monk’s house where they chanted together before making their way to the main hall to join the devoted congregation for more chanting.

It was precept day. Precepts are the Buddhist version of the Ten Commandments. There are five precepts for laypeople and three more for the clergy, and once a week the community gathers to promise to abide by the rules.

Having been practicing Buddhism as taught in the West for a number of years I was already practicing the five precepts (no stealing, killing, lying, intoxicants or harmful sexual behaviour) and reaping benefits such as no hangovers, fewer dramas and a more balanced existence.

So, on precept day, I decided to chant along with the old people and clergy and take on the greater challenge of the eight precepts. The eight precepts include the usual five but have an extra three: no sensual entertainment (e.g. TV and music), no comfy chairs and no eating after 12pm.

The idea behind all this is to clear space for focused meditation, even though Khmers don’t practice meditation and prefer to think of their precept practice as gaining merit for a good rebirth. As a good Western agnostic this does little to motivate my approach, but Buddhism is nothing if not flexible.

With no dinner, TV or reading to distract me there was plenty of time for meditation. Long, difficult hours spent watching my breath and developing equanimity and peace with the bits of my psyche that usually send me running to the hills of TV, food and sex.

But the biggest benefit was the kudos my practice got me from the villagers. News of my devotion spread quickly and I received more than the usual nods of approval and pats on the back the next day.

Drinking Coffee

Being human, the Khmers naturally love the blood of the bean. If you haven’t yet tried the oil-thick Khmer brew served at roadside coffee shacks then get yourself out of Brown’s and onto a miniscule plastic stool ASAP.

The coffee shop in my village is not only a place to dose up on caffeine until you can see through time but a gathering centre for bored farmers, local gamblers and nursing mothers.

Spend an afternoon staring at the flickering TV as the “Master Suki Soup” advert comes on for the 43^rd time; and laugh at the antics of the toddlers as they roll empty saucepans around the floor and do pretend writing in their older siblings’ school books.

Above all it’s time to bond with the locals. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve gone to pay only to find my coffee’s been covered by a smiling farmer. Sure the language barrier is difficult but you only really need to know enough Khmer to cover three main topics:

1. Explaining why on Earth you’re not married
2. Explaining the finer details of your financial transactions
3. Discussing the trials and tribulations of the rice crops that year

The Pothole Slalom

Driving in the city can be a headache. The sweat soaks the fabric on the inside of your helmet and trickles down your forehead. The pollution burns your eyes and rivers of molten motos get stuck at an inestimable number of traffic lights. Movement is not easy in the city.

In the village, with its dirt roads and emerald paddies stretching on either side into the blue distance, things are more fun. The potholes are not so much invitations to an early grave but dimples in the road that make your drive more interesting. Swerve and flick your bike deftly around each one gaining imaginary points for each one successfully avoided.

It regularly occurs to me how similar driving in Cambodia is to old Playstation 2 games like Crazy Taxi, and how much playing those games prepared me for the unexpected hazards and absurd tribulations that occur on provincial roads.

Having avoided the worst potholes, ahead was an old man hobbling along with his walking stick and, rising from the rice paddies on the other side was a chariot dragged by snorting water buffalo. The space was narrow but it was too late to slow and I knew I had to make it. And I did. What a rush. Almost hearing the ringing of points, the air rushed past making my eyes stream*.

*Disclaimer: Please don’t drive dangerously. Unless you want to have fun. Then it’s fine.

In the midst of government upheaval, civil war or even genocide, the decision by those who finally seize power to alter the national flag of a country is a minor footnote to the death and destruction accompanying such social unrest. Or, perhaps, it is not.

A country’s flag is a symbol; as is the act of changing one. Cambodia’s history is rife with coups, invasions and occupations which has not only fomented regime change but has also provided the impetus for the flag’s numerous transformations over the years. Since 1863, there have been numerous different national flags, including periods of time when more than one flag was in use in Cambodia – depending upon where one was in the country – and at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

This article is a brief overview of each of the country’s recent flags together with a summary of the conditions and circumstances which necessitated the flag’s various amendments.

Pre-1863 Kingdom of Cambodia

Flags and coats of arms have been used by nations and empires from the beginning of time. For the purpose of the article I am choosing to begin with a brief statement about the flag in use before 1863.

Prior to 1863, the Khmer ‘nation’ was in a state of disrepair. Several humiliations had occurred throughout the course of the preceding four centuries, including being conquered by Siam from the west, and Vietnam from the east. The French protectorate, requested by King Norodom, imparted a certain political distinction to Cambodia, which some social scientists see as a paradigm shift when critically assessing the nation’s history.

The pre-protectorate flag is better described as a pennant. It is a yellow triangle turned on its side so the base is depicted on the far left pointing right. The inner yellow triangle is bordered in green, a color that has never appeared in a Cambodian flag since. It was a truly unique style of flag, rarely used by other countries in recent centuries.

French Protectorate of Cambodia 1863-1948

Cambodia became a French protectorate in 1867, although historical data suggests the flag in use during this era was inaugurated in 1863.

It is unclear whether the image of Angkor Wat had been used as a national symbol before, but the temple features prominently in several other Cambodian flags through the years including the current one.

Blue, white, and red are three colors which are common to many East and Southeast Asian countries – including the Khmer Empire – going back centuries. They are the colors of the French flag as well, so it’s not surprising they were used in the protectorate. What is interesting is the use of red to designate the borders of the temple. This was only used only once more, in Lon Nol’s short-lived Khmer Republic.

Cambodia remained a part of French Indochina throughout the first half of the 20th century, although its status in the union was unclear after the Nazi occupation of France and the establishment of the Vichy government in 1940. The Atlantic Charter, crafted by the Allies in 1941, implicitly called for an end to imperialism as well. That, coupled with the French humiliation at Dien Bien Phu and the decision to prioritize its crumbling colony in Algeria paved the way for Cambodian independence in 1953. The flag, however, had already changed in 1948.

Cambodian Flag During Japanese Occupation 1945

Before that, though, there was a brief period when Cambodia’s flag reflected its status as an occupied country of Japan which held Cambodia from 1941 until its unconditional surrender in WWII. The Japanese authorities in Cambodia established a pro-Tokyo puppet state and between March and October of 1945 sanctioned the establishment of an official flag.

Against a red background, there are a total of 6 white squares: a central, white thin-lined square with a solid white square in the middle, and four more solid white squares in each corner. It is unknown what this symbolized; it was similar to neither Japan’s national flag nor the Japanese Army’s war flag. Furthermore, Japanese occupations in other Asian nations typically used Japan’s national flag.

At its zenith, the Japanese empire stretched from northern China to present day Indonesia and as far west as Burma. Compared to some of its other subjects, Cambodia could count itself lucky that Japan treated it with a certain degree of persiflage rather than the type of repression witnessed in places like China or Singapore. The flag reverted to the French Protectorate style once the Japanese were removed.

Kingdom of Cambodia 1948-1970

This is the current flag in use today.  Although it was first used in 1948, Cambodia’s official independence as the Kingdom of Cambodia occurred in 1953 when King Norodom Sihanouk became the country’s ruling monarch.

The horizontal triband was adopted and the colors from the previous flag maintained. The depiction of Angkor Wat is outlined with black fimbriation. Buddhism was a major theme under Sihanouk’s rule, both as King and as a politician following his abdication in 1955. The Angkor Wat temple should be seen as both a symbol of national pride during this time, and culturally and religiously significant. “In a world without pity”, Sihanouk once told a New York Times reporter, “the survival of a country as small as Cambodia depends on your god and my Buddha.”

Cambodia was not immune to the geopolitical chess game of the Cold War period and proxy wars of the two global superpowers. In the delicate balancing act of trying to steer the country clear of international and regional tensions, as well as an effort to maintain Cambodia’s neutrality, Sihanouk tried to play the role of the great compromiser. This pleased no one, enraged everyone, and precipitated the collapse of his regime.

Khmer Republic 1970-1975

The tales of political intrigue – deal making and breaking between factions loyal to Sihanouk, the Sangkum, and myriad opposition parties radically opposed to him – were more than mere unpleasant innuendo in the run-up to the coup that ultimately ousted the King Father. General Lon Nol was awarded the premiership by Sihanouk in 1966, and the Sangkum dominated the political landscape of the Kingdom of Cambodia. The Sangkum had its own schisms, however, and it was the far-right, reactionary elements led by Lon Nol that succeed in toppling Sihanouk in March 1970. The far left was reduced to observer status at this time, but an underground movement led by Saloth Sar and a few others was beginning to take shape.

The flag of the Khmer Republic was very different from previous flags. A red canton was introduced with the Angkor Wat, now with red borders similar to the French Protectorate flag, minimized in order to fit into the canton. According to the Khmer Republic’s constitution, the three stars represented three items: the nation, the republic, and Buddhism. The constitution also references the three branches of the government (legislature, executive, and judicial) and the three jewels of Buddhism (Buddha, Dharma, and the Sangha).

In contrast to Sihanouk’s vehement anti-Americanism, Lon Nol’s regime became a willing enabler of the US foreign policy towards Southeast Asia engineered by Nixon and Kissinger. The US military pounded Cambodia’s eastern provinces and beyond throughout the course of its war in Vietnam. Eight years of saturation bombing and a wanton disregard for the sanctity of life significantly deepened the gravity of the country’s descent into madness. It also drove many of Cambodia’s peasants into the arms of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement based in the country’s hinterland.

Democratic Kampuchea 1975-1979

After months of remorseless fighting, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh in April 1975, and forcibly evacuated the capital city. It banned things like families, money, and religion as its ultra-Maoist leaders attempted to create an agrarian communist utopia. Most readers are no doubt aware of the grim statistics to emerge from this era: millions displaced, disappeared and killed. Historical estimates cite figures between one and two million dead from starvation, overwork, and execution, roughly 20% of the population in that decade.

There is a mild but unmistakable irony that the flag used in Democratic Kampuchea was quite similar to the modern Vietnamese flag, the neighboring nation to the east which liberated Cambodia and put an end to its genocide. Instead of a five-pointed yellow star on a red background, there is a three-spired depiction of Angkor Wat with no borders or outlines at all. The flag’s simplistic design reflected a political philosophy that preached simplicity and curtailed creativity.

People’s Republic of Kampuchea 1979-1989

Former Khmer Rouge military officers who had defected to Vietnam led an invasion into Cambodia in December 1978 and ousted the Khmer Rouge from power. However, the government of Democratic Kampuchea maintained strongholds along the Thai border and were part of the ruling coalition which was recognized at the UN by both China and the United States. When the People’s Republic of Kampuchea was declared, the country itself was a shambles: the educated class had been mostly liquidated, food and medical care were non-existent, and the infrastructure was in a state of disrepair.

The flag of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea maintained a similar design to Democratic Kampuchea with the notable exception of the towers of the Angkor Wat which were altered from three to five.

This was not a new design. It had been used first by the Khmer Issarak (“Free Khmer”) anti-French resistance in the immediate post-World War II period until Cambodia’s official independence in 1953. It was then used by the Vietnamese-based dissident group, the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, who viewed the struggle against the Khmer Rouge to be analogous with the one waged against imperial France.

State of Cambodia 1989-1991

Political scientists are unclear exactly where the administration of Hun Sen and company fit on Cambodia’s political spectrum; somewhere on the left but obviously not as far the Khmer Rouge. In 1989, he renamed the country the State of Cambodia, most likely an attempt to distance the nation from the negative connotation the word Kampuchea had attracted in western circles.

The new flag reincorporated the intricate Angkor Wat design, outlined in black once again, but maintaining five towers representing various industries in Cambodia: soldiers, traders, workers, peasants, and intellectuals. The use of red and blue was an integration of previous flag designs.

The country remained in a state of civil war being waged between Khmer Rouge remnants clustered around the Thai border, and the de facto government of the State of Cambodia. This lasted until the signing of the 1991 Paris Peace Accords.

United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) 1991-1993

UNTAC signified the first time the United Nations took over the administration of a sovereign member state. Diplomatic personnel, led by Sergio de Mello, trekked deep into Khmer Rouge territory to negotiate its disarmament, which was ultimately unsuccessful. Elections were held in 1993 and a coalition involving the Royalist Party FUNCINPEC, led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh, and the Cambodian People’s Party, led by Hun Sen, was formed. A new constitution was also introduced.

The UNTAC flag was styled in customary UN fashion: a powered blue background and a white, physical image of Cambodia’s geographic space with the word “Kampuchea” spelled in Khmer across the country’s face. This design has since been used by the UN in other parts of the globe where it has undertaken peacekeeping and/or peacemaking operations such as Kosovo and East Timor.

The flag and time period deserve space here because of the impact the UN left on Cambodia in the years which followed, both positive and negative. UNTAC was the first step taken in Cambodia to bringing about the resolution of a decades-long conflict. However, the arrival of international institutions left Cambodia heavily dependent on foreign aid.

Kingdom of Cambodia 1993-Present

The country was renamed the Kingdom of Cambodia after the UN departed, and the flag reverted to the one used during the last Kingdom of Cambodia period.

The past two decades have been tumultuous but constant. There have been crackdowns and there have been amnesties; there has been war, and peace. The flag has not been changed, however, a reality mirroring the political administration of the country. Next year will mark the 22nd year of the present Kingdom of Cambodia, precisely the same amount of years the previous Kingdom of Cambodia lasted. Whether the symbolism of that peculiar fact is a good thing or something darker might simply depend on the reader.

There are few in the expat community here who haven’t heard a thing or two about Nick Mclernan, 40, and Martin Gates, 24: Singlet Senior and Singlet Junior, Beavis and Butthead, Dumb and Dumber — half the city seems to have an opinion. For those that don’t know of this seedy morality tale of things gone awry in the Kingdom of Wonder, it focuses on the plight of two British men, McLernan and Gates, and strikes at the very heart of just what duties and responsibilities an Embassy has towards its citizens abroad.

In the case of the British Embassy in Phnom Penh: these duties are strictly limited. So strict in fact, that Mclernan now lies in Calmette Hospital, disfigured, fighting for his life, and piling up medical bills which it seems no one will pay, though I doubt the Embassy much cares. In the end, it wasn’t vagrancy, drugs or anything remotely exotic that got him. He was hit by a truck.

Meanwhile, a dead-to-the-world Gates has stepped onto the tarmac at Heathrow, presumably to read that his mate is not in fact dead, as he first thought, but on life support, at a hospital just a stone’s throw away from the Embassy where he went so many times asking for help. Surely a mindfuck too many for such a young and already fucked-up mind.

All this would have been avoided if the British Embassy had the wherewithal to make a simple discretionary loan, way back in February. Yes, February. Things look impossible now. At what point does Mclernan’s life support get turned off? The way things stand, someone, somewhere is going to have to make that call, and the British Embassy’s decision making, indirectly or otherwise, will be seen by many to have been a major factor.

The details are murky, very murky indeed. Sometime in December 2014, Mclernan inherited the not-too-untidy sum of £32,691 (close to $50,000) on the sale of a house in Bournemouth left to him by his recently deceased mother. By late February he was living destitute on the streets of Phnom Penh, with his best mate, Gates, whom he had taken away to “get a break from it all, as a treat.” They claimed to have been the victim of theft.

They were soon knocking on the Embassy’s door asking for flights and emergency travel documents home. The Embassy said no. Again and again and again. The Embassy were given more than a little hassle for this, not least of all from myself. On March 18, in the first of several emails I wrote explaining why they immediately needed to be flown home: “They currently are both hungry, look skeletal and are covered in mosquito bites, and it’s quite likely they will end up starving to death or in Cambodian prison for vagrancy. If either of these things were to happen, and frankly it is looking likely, it is a legitimate response that the British Embassy would be accused of a lack of due care to its citizens.”’

Their response was a boilerplate one, but one that many feel is more than reasonable: “What we cannot do is pay bills or give money from public funds because we are not funded to do this and it is the obligation of individuals to take responsibility for themselves. It would also be unfair for those who take out insurance to subsidise those who do not, and individuals would not normally get these bills paid if they were in the UK.”

Of course, there are two positions here and they go to the core of what divides the ‘Left’ and ‘Right’: how much should the state help it citizens, particularly the poor, needy and, in this case, the none too smart? The arguments are well worn. Most people know where they stand, won’t budge, but love to argue it anyway. Lefties believe in common pooled resources to help people when they are in desperate need, even when brought about by their own misdeeds. The Embassy, for the moment at least (for we live in austere times), seemingly employs the approach of the Right: individuals taking responsibility for themselves. Fair enough.

When I initially met Gates and Mclernan, I was eager to help and went to the Embassy with them to find out what was going on. Regardless of the financials, they were treated less than respectfully. The Embassy’s Khmer staff clearly wanted them to go away (it was their fourth visit by now). They didn’t seem to be getting any sensible advice whatsoever. They were just asked to give cash for emergency travel documents (which was strange as at a later date, I went to Embassy to pay cash for Mclernan and was not allowed in).

After what I had seen, I was keen to help them and arranged to put a small story in a newspaper, the Khmer Times. I had been warned off the paper by many, particularly by journalists who said I should have nothing to do with them and that it was widely considered a joke newspaper. I took this with a pinch of salt, as journos slag off other publications as a matter of course. But on this one, they were right. My admittedly hastily written article was changed in bizarre fashion. My lead, which had been about the shoddy Embassy treatment I had witnessed, was replaced by something about how the government was cracking down on crime. The Embassy was barely mentioned. In less than 24 hours the Khmer Times had pulled the story, offering me no explanations despite my repeatedly asking them, fueling suspicion amongst an already sceptical audience that the story was somehow hoaxed.

Nevertheless the article did the rounds on the local internet and I came in for a hammering of sorts. Some of it was mild: I had been duped and was naive. Some of it went off into wild flights of fancy and was quite entertaining – I had faked the whole story to promote a film about two dumb expats I was showing at the cinemas (an unfortunate coincidence), even that I was staging the whole thing to shoot material for a new movie.

The UK Daily Mail mentioned the stir the story had caused, so I showed them an updated draft of the story. They wanted more info. Of course they did – that’s what this story needed all along. Wary of how the Mail would portray them I declined, saying that I would try instead to crowdfund their flights home. This too went badly, some people were supportive but others called me a fraud and a scammer, even suggesting I was a sock-puppet for Gates or Mclernan. Not believing their story was something I could understand (I had reservations myself), but what caught me off guard was the sheer number of people that thought these guys were not deserving of help at all. Surely it was clear to see that it would end badly if they weren’t flown out. Even some of my friends were giving me shit. One new, but much loved friend shouted at me: “You’re a cunt. You’re a cunt. No-one gives a fuck about those two junkies. What are you trying to do? You’re nothing.”

And in many ways he was right, not many people did care (and I can be a bit of a cunt).

My biggest surprise was not that other people didn’t want to help and/or didn’t believe them, but that people were so hostile to the fact that I wanted to help at all. People seemed actively hostile to the fact I wanted to help, idiots or not. Nevertheless the furore helped a little, and Gates and Mclernan were received kindly by many people on the street who wanted to help them out.

Liberal hippy pinkos and Daily Mail lovers aside, the real meat and drink was to be had over just how Singlet Senior and Son had lost all their money. They said there was a theft at a hostel in Sihanoukville where they were staying on February 21, just a few days before they were set to leave, and they lost virtually everything they had – smartphones, $3,000 cash, a Macbook – and that on contacting his bank Mclernan’s bank up to £15,000 had been removed from his bank, through frequent withdrawals from ATMs as well as online payments. At this point Mclernan did not freeze his account, saying it would effectively deny him access to his only remaining money. In response to this the public said, and I paraphrase: bollocks, utter bollocks.

Holes were quickly found in their story. Things didn’t add up, and too many questions were left unanswered: Just how can you get defrauded for £15,000 off a debit card in the space of a few weeks? Why was there no record of the robbery? Why didn’t they go to the police? Why did they leave a $100 tab at the last place there is record of them staying? Essentially, they were seen as liars and to many at least that made them undeserving. For some it was far worse than this: they were junkies, scammers, methheads, chavs; they had been seen ‘drooling’ after leaving public toilets; they even had criminal records. Morbid humour set in, some saying they deserved to die or they should have syringes stabbed in their eyes: they got what they deserved.

And there seemed to be a fair bit of classism involved too. I couldn’t help thinking that if these were nice middle-class chaps the Embassy would have flown them home long ago, but therein lay the paradox – those guys would have had the money wired in minutes. Gates and Mclernan were having no such luck. They were relying on the kindness of strangers to stay alive.

It proved impossible to work out exactly where the money went. Did Gates and Mclernan take drugs? Certainly. Were they drug addicts? Possibly. Fuck-ups? Undoubtedly. I still think they were robbed or scammed at some level. How and for what amount, I do not know. If it was due to their own stupidity, I do not know, but I just can’t see them blowing every single last piece of coin, not to mention losing all their clothes. I think they were easy targets and got conned somehow. A lot of people think I’m naïve on this, and they have good reason to: the guys were an infuriating pair of idiots, unreliable, disorganized, ill-informed, losing and forgetting things constantly. They actually did remind of me Beavis and Butthead.

I spent a fair bit of time with Martin and Nick, helped them out where I could, took the piss out of them when thing got a bit glum, which was often. They always seemed like ok lads to me, definitely not the sharpest tools, some of the mental illnesses to which they claimed were all too evident. They wrote me a kind thank you letter when I had put them up for the night. But all-in-all, their character is irrelevant. It was clear from the outset that if they were not flown home they were going to end up in a very bad situation indeed.

The British Embassy’s own guidelines state: “A discretionary loan from public funds to help you return to the UK may only be considered in very exceptional circumstances and only if you have used up all other methods of getting funds.” This is the part where the British Embassy failed to do its job. Why were they continually refused this emergency loan? If they had been given it, they would both be back in the UK, with their passports confiscated. Why, in six weeks of constantly knocking on the Embassy’s door, were they not repatriated? Whilst the machinations of bureaucracies are slow, in “exceptional circumstances” you need to be able to be flexible enough to be able to act, show some dynamism, particularly in Cambodia: this nation of deathpats.

On these terms, the Embassy simply failed to deliver. Khmer440 told the Embassy yesterday that it would be running a story about Nick and Martin. They replied this morning: “The British Embassy can confirm that a British national has been hospitalised in Phnom Penh. We are providing consular assistance.” They then directed us to a website link of a pamphlet entitled FCO Brits Abroad 2014.

Currently, Nick is living on a life support machine and someone might well have to take the decision to turn off the machine. The situation should have never ever have got this far.

It’s a constant refrain on both Khmer440 and pretty much any guidebook you care to mention: Khmer food really isn’t up to much, especially when compared to that of its neighbours in Thailand and Vietnam. It’s a terrible admission but in the two years or more I’ve been living in Phnom Penh, I’ve never bothered trying local cuisine. Why bother when there is so much good and very affordable French, Italian, Chinese, Indian, American, Thai, Mexican food available everywhere, and when the nearest attempt to go local is a trip to my local Pho café round the corner?

After living in Thailand for so many years when eating Thai food on the streets, in shophouse cafes and in five star restaurants was the norm, my reluctance was difficult to explain. Perhaps I bought into the whole ‘Cambodian food is crap’ thing too easily and too lazily.

All this changed recently when I got the chance to eat at Malis on Norodom, just south of Independence Monument. OK, OK, I know what you’re going to say: Malis is a high end restaurant and hardly constitutes ‘going native’ in the same way as eating 2000 riel borbor from a street vendor, or chowing down on a plate of rice and gristle at Orussey Market, but I do so unapologetically. If you’re going to sample French food, you might as well start at L’Atelier or Septime in Paris; similarly if you’re after a great introduction to Khmer food, you might as well start at the top with Malis.

It was a very good experience, and I’d recommend it to anyone wanting to ease their way into proper Khmer cooking.

My partner and I ate there on a Friday night, a good choice because it was buzzing without being boisterous. I took her there because she hasn’t tried Khmer food either, and I had heard it was a nice place to impress someone. It was interesting to see the range of people eating. At one table near us a group of young professional Khmers were celebrating someone’s birthday. Behind us were a group of six young western women on a girl’s night out: I suspect the cocktail bars around St 308 took a pounding later on. Scattered here and there were couples – western couples, mixed couples and khmer couples.

It’s easy to see why. Malis is a very nice place to take a partner, and perfect for a romantic dinner. Located in what was presumably a villa but hidden behind a large ochre wall protecting you from the rush hour traffic, it’s a ridiculously peaceful setting with courtyard dining featuring tables scattered around a fish pond. You can eat inside if you wish, but as it was one of those warm evenings just before the rainy seasons start, we thought we would sit outside.

We ordered a couple of strong cocktails to start, excellent value at (I think) $4 each. In what bizarre world are high-end cocktails in a five star restaurant only $4 each? What nonsense is this? We didn’t complain and enjoyed them while ordering dinner.

The menu at Malis is vast and for a beginner it can be difficult to know where to start. In the end we took a relatively safe route and ordered things that seemed familiar or that I’d heard of before: some local clams in hot basil sauce and an interesting scallop dish where the meat is served on half shells with green capcisum and kampon green peppers. Both were very very good, especially the clams with were juicy, meaty and just a tad spicy. More on that later.

I’m told the classic Khmer dish is Fish Amok. I’ve seen it on riverside menu boards, but had never tried it. My partner ordered it and it came perfectly bundled up in three banana leave-wrapped portions. The fish was delicate and the amok sauce was sweet and tasty. I could have done with a bit more kick to it, but I believe that is the way they are meant to be served. My taste buds have been destroyed by my love affair with Thai chillis.

We also ordered a Khmer curry, in this case a beautiful Saraman beef curry so well cooked that the beef – presumably stripped from the stringy carcasses of those hopeless creatures causing accidents on Cambodian roads – was melt in the mouth tender. Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended, and very good portion size; enough to know you’ve eaten it, not too much to make you not want to explore something else.

And we did – dessert. I love crème brulee. Give me a crème brulee and you have a friend for life. Malis gave me a sweet pumpkin crème brulee and I can see Malis and I are going to be very close friends for a long time. I will keep coming back simply to have the crème brulee, it was that good. A nice crispy top, and a lovely creamy pumpkin filling. It was as good as it was unexpected.

One of the things that had previously put me off trying Malis was a notion that it was expensive. Let’s put that nonsense to bed right now. For a top quality restaurant selling quality food with great service in a nice setting it is very well priced indeed. Nothing we ordered was more than $6-$8 each, which is ridiculously good value in anyone’s book. The crème brulee – did I mention the crème brulee already – was $3. Where else in the world are you going to get a world class quality dessert with an interesting twist for $3?

Yes there were more expensive dishes. I recall seeing a Kampot pepper crab dish that nudged over double figures, and I think it’s possible to order fresh cooked lobster at ‘market prices’ and one day I’m sure I will head back and try them. But most of the dishes on Malis’ extensive menu are priced in single digits, and are excellent value for money. I think our entire bill came to around $70, but that included cocktails and a bottle of wine.

What did I like about Malis? I liked the ambience, the prices, the setting, the service and I was impressed with the food. What would I change? Well, I had to nitpick I prefer spicy to non-spicy, but that’s not a gripe with Malis; it’s a reflection of Khmer food. But I will definitely go back, especially when I have visitors to Cambodia who want to the sample local food in a great environment. It’s the perfect entertainment spot.

And the next day I’ll take them to Orussey Market for some rice and gristle to show them the other side of Khmer cooking.

My general rule of thumb growing up has been that if your phone is ringing before 7am on a workday, it’s either very good news (like “your sister just had the baby!” type of good news) or very bad news. In Cambodia, it has been my experience that it is always bad news.

And so at 6:45am on a Monday morning last month, when my phone began ringing before the alarm, I had already subconsciously prepared myself for a frustrating start to the day.

“Hello?” I answer somewhat languidly, having seen the name and number and realizing that it couldn’t possibly be anyone else.

“Tim this is Visal I cannot drive you today because have flat tire but will pick up in the afternoon is OK,” replies Visal, former tuk tuk driver since demoted to motodop, utilizing his customary run-on sentence technique and ending with his inimitable “is OK” rhetorical that he uses to end virtually every sentence – neither question nor statement.

Visal is my motodop, providing daily transportation on the back of his motorbike to and from my job because I am too terror-stricken to drive myself in Phnom Penh’s traffic. I pay Visal $60 at the beginning of every month to shuttle me in the morning and back in the afternoon, a rate which works out to $1.50 one way. Visal persuasively explained that it would be better for him to get paid monthly so that he could get work done on his bike. He had received his lump sum payment the Friday preceding this particular Monday, rendering me impecunious to use another driver without first stopping at an ATM to be followed by a money changer because believing a motodop could change anything larger than a $5 bill is akin to believing the Sun revolves around the Earth.

I have always found that living in Cambodia is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you really can do anything you want here without the hassle of the burdensome regulations that have come to strangle the Western world: you can start a business, drive the wrong direction on major boulevards while talking on your phone, and generally act the fool with complete impunity from the forces of law and order. On the other hand, small problems can snowball into major inconveniences: power cuts when you’re working on an important business project, people driving the wrong direction on major boulevards while talking on the phone, and friends of yours acting a fool in one bar or another.

Is Visal’s phone call an example of “very bad news?” Probably not. At the end of the day, it’s just another small pain in the neck that is the tradeoff of living in Phnom Penh. But does his bike really have a flat tire or did he stay up too late the night before buying beer for his mates at his local KTV with the money I paid him? I wonder, but never insinuate.

I can never articulate my anger at Visal. Maybe because I feel bad for him? Maybe because I know if I yell at him he won’t come to pick me up in the afternoon either? Why did I agree to pay him for the entire month, I inwardly remonstrate with myself. Now he’s got me by the balls.

“Yes, well OK then. Thank you for calling Visal.”

The Past

My friendship, if one wants to call it that, dates back more than three years with Visal. With a skin tone comparable to someone with permanent jaundice and eyes to match, Visal was one of the first local acquaintances I made upon my arrival in the Kingdom of Wonder in early 2012. He was the only tuk tuk driver posted outside my guesthouse in the Wat Botom area who didn’t clap in my face whilst inquiring if I wanted to go to the shooting range. I later found out he was the only driver without the nearly incestuous kickback relationship with the hotels on the street as well. Being a newly-arrived outsider with no friends, I felt a certain kinship with him. While driving me around the city and conversing with him throughout that day I got the impression he wasn’t completely vacuous either. But aimless, jobless, and near enough penniless, Visal seemed the type whose life was the epitome of an impoverished Third World existence.

“Tim, I ask you question is ok?” Visal inquired on that Monday afternoon when he did indeed collect me in the afternoon from my job.

“Sure Visal. Ask away.” Is he going to ask me to pay for the flat tire repair? I’ll take 2:1 odds for that one. Is he going to apologize for not coming in the morning? Not bloody likely. Well go ahead and ask your damn question; I’m sitting on the back of your motorbike man, it’s not like I have a choice in the matter.

“Saturday you will come to see my family? They live in Kandal province. I will drive you, you not have to pay anything to go there! Is ok?”

I have been down this road before. I have traveled to the provinces to meet my ex-girlfriend’s family where I not only had to pay for the ride out there, but I was also expected to cover two boxes of beer for the extended family which included an ice-addicted brother and an uncle whose occupation was to drive around on a motorbike fixing oscillating fans.

“Oh gee Visal, I don’t know. I’ll have to check my schedule first.” I don’t want to be intentionally perfidious, but I simply can’t find a polite way to explain to him that I would rather stick pins in my balls than spend my weekend sitting on the floor of my motodop’s impoverished family’s wooden shack drinking warm Angkor and eating squid and beef on that portable barbeque thing everyone seems to have except me. But ultimately I relent. I agree to visit his family over the weekend, and of course it turns out to be one of the coolest, most memorable experiences of my time in Cambodia.

“Tim, I have the great news,” Visal exclaims to me one day a few months back, misusing English’s definite article as is his wont. “The U.S. Embassy is hiring 100 security guards and I want to ask if you can help me with the online application.”

This is actually something I would have no problem assisting him in. Any embassy job is highly sought after for Cambodians and the salary could provide the employees with extra discretionary income to perhaps send one of their kids to school who otherwise would not have been able to go. But I feel the need to warn him of the seriousness of working for the U.S. government “You know Visal, working security for the U.S. Embassy is not the same as working security for Smile Mart right? You can’t be lazy.”

Visal nearly guffaws through the open front of his helmet. Turns out, in the late 1990s, Visal had a security position at the U.S. Embassy. He lost it nearly two months after starting because he fell asleep on the job. “Back then, I had very good salary and I would go out every night. In the morning, I was very tired. What can I do?” he pondered with regret, but also with a hint of a smile.

At first, I could only muster a rueful shake of the head. I have never met such lazy people in all my travels. But then, even I had to smile too. I have never met such people who are as content with their lives as Cambodians.

The Present

A few odd jobs and Visal was eventually able to put together enough money to purchase a tuk tuk. But after his wife became sick with a life threatening illness, the medical bills forced him to sell it. “What did you get demoted to motodop?” I asked upon running into him for the first time since my return to Phnom Penh last year. “Pretty soon you’re gonna be the net ru jayk guy selling grilled bananas on the side of the road,” I added with a little too much laughter than was called for. Visal didn’t find my sense of humor agreeable.

I try to be as empathetic and understanding as I can whilst living in this developing country. The longer you stay here, the easier this is. That said, no one likes to have their benevolence taken advantage of. My relationship with Visal became, for me, the perfect encapsulation of how these two juxtaposed sentiments are always in constant conflict with one another here.

There was one time where I gave Visal an extra phone I had because his cheap, ten-dollar Nokia was hopelessly broken and he hadn’t the funds to replace it. “If you’re ever going to be late, just call me, please. That’s all I ask,” I instructed him.

And yet there I was one day after work, standing in the oppressive heat of Cambodia’s dry season for 25 minutes, sweating bullets and waiting for Visal but neither seeing him or receiving a phone call. I tried calling him but kept getting that automated Khmer message which tells you the person you are trying to call has their phone off.

“Where the hell were you yesterday?” I demanded in a rare moment of rage the following morning after I had to pay an extra $1.50 to get home after already paying Visal at the beginning of the month.

“Oyyyyyy, I have big problem with bike chain. What can I do?” Another favorite expression of his apparently.

“You could have called me! Didn’t I just give you a god damn phone for exactly this scenario?”
“I know you give me phone but I have no money on the phone ha ha ha.”

Luckily for Visal I have Sicilian blood coursing through my veins, and the ability to coldly calculate the options available to me before I make a rash decision based on raw emotions. Should I just hit him with one punch to the lower jaw and end his day right there? Or should I throw him to the ground and stomp him a few times?

In the end, I laughed along with him because what would getting angry accomplish? Indeed, what can I do?

“I’m only paying you $50 this month,” I calmly articulated to Visal some days after that. “The reason is that you failed to pick me up one day last month so I am docking you $1.50 for that. Moreover, we have three public holidays this month when I do not need you to drive me.”

The look appearing on Visal’s face was one of malevolent indignation. “This is not good to me you know. You know my family very poor you no need to be cheap like this.”

“Visal listen to me. You drive me in the morning and afternoon. There is nothing preventing you from picking up other customers at all other times of the day to earn more money. If you don’t like this arrangement, I will find someone else to drive me.” And then, after a pause, “Is OK?” for good measure.

There are certain images one never forgets. For me, the top three are the Twin Towers falling down, that malnourished African boy and the vulture waiting behind him, and the look of betrayal on Visal’s face when he saw me one time being driven by another motodop. He will accept the $50 for this month.

But Visal is very clever, more precocious than even most of the American university students I used to teach. He’ll get me back: 2,000 riel for a bottle of water here, 5,000 for a liter of gasoline there.

“Didn’t I just pay you $60 yesterday? Why do you need to borrow 5,000 riel for petrol today?”

“Oyyyyyyy-”

“Alright, alright. Here. Forget it!”

Trying to contest these matters with Cambodians is an exercise in futility. Visal has the home-field advantage here, and he’s going to win.

The Future

I considered getting a bicycle a few times. It would certainly be more simplistic and also comes with a sense of independence and self-reliance. But I was confronted with the question of how to break the news to Visal. If I told him on the last day of the month that I didn’t need him anymore, just when he would be anticipating his next payday, it would be a rather heartless thing to do. But I reasoned that if I gave him his two weeks’ notice, he might just piss off and not take me for the final two weeks. Three years in Cambodia have told me that loyalty doesn’t go far here. Would it be appropriate to pay him $10 of separation money the way I once paid for my ex-girlfriend’s lunch after informing her the relationship was over?

But there is always something else preventing me from giving Visal his marching orders. After a long day at work, to walk out the doors and see Visal (usually) waiting at the curb in a plaid shirt two or three sizes too big taking a brief, little siesta on his bike, his goofy but genuinely mirthful smile upon seeing me, and listening to him pontificate on some random anecdote of Khmer culture, I realize that Visal is as much a part of my life in this country than anything. I can no more fire him than I can imagine leaving Cambodia at this point. For better or worse, no matter how annoyed I get at Visal, I recognize that I need him, as crazy as that might sound. I am here to stay in Cambodia as Visal is here to stay with me.

What can I do?

The Cambodia Daily has today reported that police have arrested AeroCambodia CEO, Brian Naswall, for allegedly assaulting a 12 year old girl on Koh Pich on Friday night. Mr Naswall is due to appear in court to face charges today.

The full story as reported in the CD here:

Police arrested an American man Friday night in Phnom Penh after they allegedly caught him sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in the presence of two other underage girls, an official and an NGO said Sunday.

Pol Phiethey, director of the Interior Ministry’s anti-human trafficking department, said Sunday that police arrested Brian Naswall on Koh Pich island in Chamkar Mon district’s Tonle Bassac commune.

“I can only tell you that that guy is American and he will be sent to the court tomorrow,” Mr. Phiethey said, declining to provide further details.

Samleang Seila, country director of anti-pedophile NGO Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE), whose organization assisted police in their investigation, said commune police arrested Mr. Naswell in the act of abusing the 12-year-old.

“He was caught red-handed by the local police,” he said.

Mr. Seila said that six alleged victims had come forward so far in Phnom Penh to give statements and he expected more victims would be found as the investigation progresses.

“Police are also looking at other witnesses and victims as well as digital evidence,” he said. “They suspect he was producing pornographic material.”

According to a statement released Sunday by APLE, Mr. Naswell allegedly lured the girls to a quiet area on Koh Pich island with the promise of money before abusing the 12-year-old.

The statement also identified Mr. Naswell as the CEO of Aero Cambodia, a Phnom Penh-based aviation firm that operates throughout the country.

In the mid-19th Century the French explorer Henry Mouhot was sitting in a hut in the thick jungle of central Cambodia when he wrote the following lines:

“We are surrounded by forests, which are infested with elephants, buffaloes, tigers, wild boars, and the ground all about is covered with their footprints. We live in almost a besieged place, every moment dreading some attack of the enemy, and keeping our guns constantly loaded. Sometimes they come close to our quarters, and we cannot go even a few steps into the woods without hearing them….From time to time, also, I stop to listen to the roaring of a tiger, who is wandering round our dwelling and looking longingly at the pigs through their fence of planks and bamboos. Again, I hear the rhinoceros breaking down the bamboos which oppose his progress towards the brambles encircling our garden, on which he intends to banquet.”

Mount had just been to Angkor, being one of the first Westerners to see it, and the great Buddhist structure was at that time the abode of leopards, deer, and gibbons. He was on his way to Luang Prabang (where he would die of malaria) and before he reached the unnavigable Mekong River waterfalls at Si Phon Don he shot a leopard in mid-air as it sprung at one of his porters. Along the way he traveled through a sea of tropical forest that constituted the whole known world of the local people.

Mouhot’s Cambodia is no more (though they are reintroducing gibbons to the forests of Angkor Park — an exciting endeavor). Tigers and rhinos are extinct in modern Cambodia, and leopards probably hanging by a thread (although the smaller cats seem to be faring better). The great tapestry of tree crowns that blanketed Cambodia are still remembered by many people alive today, though all but a few very important (and some substantial) fragments remain.

I can only speak with anything resembling authority about Virachey National Park (VNP) way up in the Kingdom’s Northeast. That 3,325 sq. kilometer swath of jungle, mountains, rivers, and grasslands took on the name “Virachey” (which means something like ‘strong, victorious man’) in 1993, when NGOs nudged the Royal Cambodian Government into gazetting it as a National Park. VNP has experienced a rollercoaster of highs and lows since its creation, enjoying at turns strong protection and virtual anarchy, and at times it can feel like this is its final hour.

VNP is one of those precious relics of tropical forest that remain, and although it has certainly been bruised and battered in recent years, this is one Park that cannot be lost.

The core area of VNP is in better shape than any other protected area in Cambodia, including the Cardamom Mountains — at least that’s what an experienced conservation NGO worker recently told me. Inspiring words, and they ring true as I’ve been into the remote interior of VNP many times, setting up camera traps and investigating the status of the border area with Laos. Earlier this year we hiked for five days (one-way) from the Sesan River to reach the sacred Haling-Halang mountains, the high ridge of which serves as the international border with Laos.

The forest at the base of that massif is simply exuberant. It is a primeval world gargantuan trees, streaming vines, whooping gibbons, growling hornbills, and enigmatic mammals — a magical place straight out of Lord of the Rings. To date our cameras have uncovered black bear, sun bear, gaur, dhole, clouded leopard, golden cat, marbled cat, leopard cat, douc langur, stump-tailed macaque, pig-tailed macaque, binturong, hog badger, serow, sambar deer, muntjac, and many other species. Mouhot never made it here.

The day after we summited the border peak (where we unexpectedly came across a cement marker; I later learned that this was helicoptered up in 2003 as part of a joint Cambodia-Laos effort to demarcate the border), we followed an elephant trail that was littered with old piles of dung sprouting with mushrooms. This natural forest road, trampled smooth by forest giants, led through even more bewitching forest. “Number one forest in Cambodia,” VNP ranger Sou remarked several times that day. As we followed along we came upon a strange tree carving. It was a sketch of a primitive-looking man knifed into the bark of tree. It gave me a strange feeling, and my old Brao friend Kam-la was disturbed by it. “He says it is a sign of the spirits of Haling-Halang,” Sou translated. Kam-la looked down and muttered a few more words while looking nervously at his feet. “And he says it might also be a sign of the Tek-Tek.” Kam-la was scared.

Highlanders across Ratanakiri speak of the “Tek Tek” or “wild man of the forest” who supposedly haunts the rugged border peaks shared by Cambodia and Laos. The southern half of all these mountains lay in VNP, while the northern sections belong to Laos’ all but unknown Nam Ghong Provincial Protected Area (NGPAA) and which go by the name of the Kaseng Mountains in Lao. In Laos the Indochinese Sasquatch goes by the name of Phi kong koy, and it has been described calling out chillingly into the night of the Annamite Mountains of Laos as recently as 2015 in William deBuys’ evocative book The Last Unicorn: A Search for One of Earth’s Rarest Creatures, which is about the Saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), a primitive bovine native to the Annamite Cordillera that was last camera-trapped in 2013 but may already be extinct today due to hunting pressures.

In Vietnam this mysterious monkey-man is called the Ngoui Rung (literally ‘man of the forest’) and both American and Vietnamese combatants claim to have seen and fired on the hairy creatures during the War of Indochina (one US commander told biologist Jeffrey A. McNeely that the monster ripped two of his soldiers heads off (Soul of the Tiger, p. 325). Some might speculate that his words are a testament to what drugs can do to your brain, but the man is apparently a US official of some importance today.

This magnificent ecosystem and its enchanting inhabitants are under serious threat today. The park, which has essentially been split in half with its Stung Treng and Ratanakiri sections now separately administered, is being shredded near Siem Pang district, and rumors are going around that some sort of border road is under construction in that area of the park, a road which will undoubtedly be used for loggers, poachers, agriculturalists, miners, everyone. It’s old news that VNP’s eastern flank alongside Vietnam has been under heavy pressure for many years, and additional rumors have it that Vietnam will finance a “border belt” road inside of Laos that would hug VNP. One can imagine how easy it will be for Laos and Vietnam to plunder what are currently VNP’s most inaccessible areas if this plan goes ahead. I spent some time on Google Earth zooming and searching inside of Laos’ NGPPA and sure enough small dirt roads lead very close to the border with VNP, stopping only where the high border mountains become too steep. Two of these roads lead to Haling-Halang, and surely footpaths lead into VNP.

The image above shows a poacher (most likely Vietnamese) with a large rifle hunting solo on the Haling-Halang border peak. He is days away from any settlement on either side of the border and almost certainly used the new dirt roads in Laos to penetrate VNP.

People will say that Cambodia has to develop, that it has to “catch up” with Japan, the EU, and the USA (that’s pipe dream, of course, and everyone knows it; Cambodia cannot and does not need to “catch up” with Japan and USA in terms of GDP in order for the Kingdom’s residents to have healthy, fulfilling lives). To begin with, I would argue that preserving portions of a country’s natural heritage is part of the development process and is a clear sign of development. Does Cambodia want to be the “Haiti of Southeast Asia” — a country that has lost 98% of its natural forest cover and stands to suffer a great deal more poverty in the years to come?

Some will say that environmentalists are idealistic and naive, but to me it is painfully obvious that those who argue that cutting down all the trees, dredging and damming all the rivers, and destroying the natural environment will somehow result in every family having a beautiful home, two new cars in the driveway, and children studying in the USA and UK are utterly and hopelessly utopian. People who put forth such hogwash are delusional, and usually stand to profit by it. On the contrary it has been shown time and again that devastating the natural environment exacerbates rather than fixes social inequality.

Mouhot envisioned a future in which Cambodia would become something like the breadbasket of the world, supplying cotton, coffee, indigo, and many other productions to global markets. He didn’t foresee rubber, cassava, and other agricultural products as destroying the wilderness he so loved (and he also presciently foresaw foreign powers controlling this production). Probably the Kingdom’s jungles were simply so vast that the ideas of animal extinctions and wholesale deforestation would have sounded ludicrous. I envy him his perspective, and I am sure that he would be dumbfounded and heartbroken by what he’d see of the Kingdom’s forest cover and wildlife populations today.

Today a rolling nightmare of destruction is threatening and wiping out the last wild places of Indochina. Some say that the anarchy of Laos makes Cambodia look well-organized and efficient in terms of environmental protection, and Vietnam’s protected areas, the old conservationists hands bemoan, has simply been butchered. Virachey, as well as the Cardamom Mountains, Prey Lang, and Mondulkiri Protected Forest are some of the last great gems not only for Cambodia, but for Indochina, and the world.

I hope to visit Cambodia again this Fall (I’ve been doing ethnographic research, trekking, and conservation projects in Virachey since 2010) to give a presentation to the Ministry of Environment showcasing the work that the Virachey National Park Staff and my small conservation group, Habitat ID, have done. I want to help the government visualize just how special and beautiful Virachey is, to help them feel proud of Cambodia’s amazing natural heritage. We will also need new memory cards, batteries, and funds to send the rangers and porters in to check the cameras. If anyone would like to help out, you can do so here at Save Virachey National Park https://savevirachey.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/support-our-january-2015-camera-trapping-expedition/. You can also contribute by donating memory cards, new batteries, and other field supplies to VNP (if you’d like to do this, email me at: greg.mccann1@gmail.com). You can also help out by trekking in the Park and giving local highlanders some confidence in the concept of ecotourism and the idea that wildlife and trees are worth money standing and alive.

I wrote earlier that tigers and rhinos are extinct in Cambodia, and it’s difficult to say that Tek-Teks are extinct when their existence has never been proven. However, when one stands on one of the many savannah hills of the Veal Thom Grasslands and looks out at the rugged chain of jungle-clothed border mountains so far away and steep and virtually inaccessible, it is not impossible to imagine that a few tigers might still prowl the crags, letting out a lonely roar from their hilltop eyries, and that Tek-Teks still call out in the night in the most remote valleys, sending chills down poachers’ spines. Virachey still has the kind of habitat that can set the mind to dreaming, that can let a visitor know of Mouhot’s Cambodia, whatever is left of it.

Visitors and expats alike have many a tale of being hoodwinked in the Kingdom of Wonder. Whilst the Siem Reap milk scam, the Filipino blackjack shysters and an army of Chinese fake monks fill the forums and travel blogs, it seems like every man and his pig is in the business of relieving white folk of their hard earned dollar bills. In the spirit of public awareness and community well-being, and inspired by some crap that was on the National Geographic channel late at night, your ever intrepid correspondent, Pedro, has bravely put himself out on the front line, learning the tricks of the hucksters trade. He’s getting scammed so YOU don’t have to be. Many months of careful planning have seen Pedro touring Cambodia – choosing the locations where Khmer con artists congregate, and relaying this information back to the unwary readers of khmer440.

1. The School Scam

The value of education is realized more in Cambodia than almost anywhere on earth. Fresh faced youths and aging professors alike come flooding in to the country, proud of their internet TEFL certificate (120 hours + extra grammar), and no longer required to sign the sexual offenders register. Mostly they are welcomed with open arms by school directors, keen to enhance the knowledge of Cambodian students (thought of, almost, as their own children).

However, not all of these bastions of enlightenment are as ethically charged as most – some are outright dodgy. Here’s a typical school scammer’s modus operand . .

Recruits will meet the director and/or head of HR. These serpent-like fellows will smile and tell you how important it is to uphold the school’s core principles, something like ‘Discipline, Morality, Excellence’. Impressed with this ethos, the unwary TEFLer will sign a contract agreeing $10-12 per hour and agree to start Monday.

Once entering the classroom, the victim will find 30 students aged between 5 to 26 years old, ripped to the tits on taurine laden energy drinks and high on iPhones, with all the discipline, morality and excellence of a bonobo chimp’s family get together orgy.

When it’s time for the pay-check, the accounts lady will explain that there were 16 unpaid holidays that month and the salary has been docked money for contract deposit, books, work-permit and 10% government tax, and because the director needs to fill his new Toyota Tacoma with gasoline. Pay slips to show these are against school policy.

Top tip: Teachers should do their homework

2. The Marketplace

The hustle and bustle of local markets is a dreamy delight of unforgettable aromas and colours. Although it’s every backpackers dream to see a chicken get its throat slit and giant catfish having their heads staved in with a wooden mallet, some of the unscrupulous vendors have tricks dirtier than the puddles of blood, guts and rotting waste which flow ankle deep into the gutters.

A) The pineapple scam. Also called the SCC, after the discoverer, this is a nasty scam which seems to target all foreigners. Don’t be fooled by the idea of price fluctuations on your favourite fruit and veggies: there are only 2 prices in Cambodia, local and pale face, with the difference being as much as 500 Riel! Don’t allow this blatant racism to continue. Either give your bar-girl-friend-prostitute $50 to do the shopping and get the ‘local’ price, or visit Lucky Supermarket, where all the prices are clearly displayed and your cash will go into coffers of a multi-chain store and not into the pocket of a greedy peasant who sees all white skinned folk as an ATM in flip-flops and a stupid hat.

B) The wrong change. If Stephen Hawking didn’t have a built in calculator, even the greatest scientific mind of our generation would find it difficult multiplying and dividing numbers by 4000 to get the USD/KHR price. The charlatans purveying market goods know this, and as sure as they overcharge unwary customers, they are guaranteed to hand over a fist full of Riels in change for your large denomination US bill, always shy of a few bob.

Top tip: To remedy this buyers should count their notes thrice, do the maths and get a different number each time, before waving hands about manically and shouting the few random numbers they know in Khmer. Often keen not to make a fuss the wily tradesperson will do some sort of gypsy trickery involving sleight of hand so, on the 4th count and with the help of a calculator, the missing money will have reappeared and everything totaled up correctly andas if by magic, making it appear that the victim was in the wrong the whole time.

3. The Locals Drinking Scam.

This trick uses the mark’s good nature and willingness to fit in with the locals to the shyster’s advantage. A group of shirtless men will offer a place to sit and knock back some warm beer with ice. They’ll invite the hapless barang to help themselves to a bit of dried fish, and clink glasses with a hearty ‘Chol moi!’ every 5 seconds. But, as soon as the 24 case of Klang has been imbibed by the drinking buddies, things turn nasty as they badger you to ‘Tin kay moi tiet?’, which is the local parlance for ‘White devil. You buy us more beer, or we’ll kick your fucking head in’, costing the target anything from $10 upwards.

Quality beer is readily available in expat bars for as little as $1.50 a glass, and with this small surcharge it’s guaranteed that no poverty stricken locals will be able to afford more than a peek through the window.

4. Bill padding.

Sadly many Cambodian drinking holes are not staffed with friendly Ted Danson/Kirstie Alley types like in Cheers. Instead, when the bill comes the unsuspecting customer is hit with a bill for 18 triple vodka Red Bulls and 6 Angkor drafts, when they clearly remember only ordering and drinking 13 triple vodka Red Bulls and 4 Angkor drafts. Sadly the only way out of this situation is to pay up and warn others later, or flay your arms around like a madman, shout obscenities and threaten to set fire to motorbikes until the police come.

Top tip: Principles will cost hundreds of dollars.

5. The marriage scam.

It’s a common enough situation. Boy meets beautiful dusky skinned maiden and falls head over heels in lust. After a week or so she suggests that you should take a trip to her village to meet her family. She will ask for a few hundred dollars to make the visit a success. After a 6 hour bus journey to Kompong somewhere, the hapless beau will be greeted by a peasant army, forced into pink pantaloons and have his photo taken several thousand times. After a reasonably lavish feast the sweetheart will announce in broken English that this was the engagement party, the wedding will be in 4 months (because her fortune telling uncle foresees this date as auspicious) and you’d better come up with 10 grand pronto.

Top tip: Lie. Feign terminal cancer, a family emergency in Cuba, explain you’ve suddenly come to terms with your true sexuality, anything. Then run. Run as fast and as far as possible.

6. The Khmer card con.

Whilst the Filipinos have the baddest rep for swindling with a rigged deck, countryside Cambodians can be equally as shady. Normally someone with half decent English proficiency will invite you to play and show you the rules. With stakes as high as 1000r a time, they will ‘help’ you by muttering some unintelligible words, seizing your hand and throw down random cards with aplomb. You’ll win each time and be several thousand Riel the richer, until your new buddy thinks it’s time for him to be dealt back into the game. Then, the rules seem to change and every card you play is wrong, everyone laughs at you as they slam down the queens and you lose all the winnings and a few thousand more on top.

Top tip: Take the money won with the help, say thank you and leave the gamblers to their game.

7. The Massage scam.

As fellow sufferers of lumbago and rheumatoid arthritis know, there’s nothing like a good professional rub down by a registered masseuse to get one feeling good and limber. Luckily, in Cambodia every third building after a phone shop is a massage parlour, offering a quality massage for as little as 10,000KHR. However, like many other so-called businesses in Scambodia, such places can be nefarious enterprises, hell-bent on getting money for nothing.

After a particularly painful bout of back pain, I visited one such place on Hanoi Road, which was luckily still open at midnight. After being shown to a squalid room and told to lie down on a filthy mattress, the girl proceeded to ignore the area giving me jip and gave a half-hearted attempt to massage my back and shoulders. 10 minutes later she flipped me over and began to stroke my Tommy Todger, releasing her hands off it long enough to show 10 fingers and whisper ‘Dop dollar’.

Keen to see if this place was just a one off bad egg, I spent the next 12 days going to other establishments to find out whether this scam was common. Sadly it is, and although the lower spine flair ups are still crippling me, my nuts are as empty as Boueng Kak Lake and I later required a shot of penicillin to my buttocks.

Top tip: Take extra caution in Siem Reap, as up there these tricky minxes often work in pairs. And don’t tell your spouse.

All in all Cambodia is a safe place to visit and live, but it’s best to use due diligence in any situation, listen to advice from those who have seen the tricks and scams firsthand and always use common sense in any strange or potentially dangerous situation. Safety first, people and try not to venture out of BBK1 after sundown.

Death and taxes are the only things certain in life so they reckon. Well death anyway: some people never pay taxes. Where you choose to live invariably impacts on where you’re likely to die and, in some cases, how. Some expats choose to live in Southeast Asia and some die there too. Expats who choose to live in Southeast Asia can be misfits, mercenaries, missionaries or parts thereof. I mean missionary in a broader sense. Not merely proselytisers, like Mormons on bikes in Phnom Penh, but educationalists, or those who may be working in skills development or community empowerment.

But for sure it’s a region with a reputation for more than a few expats dying before their time. There can be a variety of reasons for this. Things in Southeast Asia will kill you much faster than at home, sometimes rather innocuous things.

Big Doug was a Kiwi who’d lived in Cambodia for years, right from after the civil war back in the nineties. He used to run the Rebel Guesthouse in Koh Kong City. I’ve stayed there. His business card featured Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, a fitting moniker as it’s a bit like the Wild West. He was diabetic, a big man morbidly obese. One day a young kid on a motorbike clipped Doug’s shin with his foot peg, cutting him to the bone. The kid’s family stumped up with some compensation by way of a cash payment. The cops brokered the deal for a fee, a perk of the job. Doug’s wound festered. He made regular trips to Thailand for medical care. The dressings were always clean but the tropical heat took its toll. When I revisited Cambodia I was told Doug was dead, blood poisoning. His wound had never healed.

One day I was sat next to a South African nurse on a bus to Battambang. We spoke about the curtailed longevity of many expats living in Southeast Asia. As we headed across the sunbaked plains of north western Cambodia, I think we concluded that expats make a decision subconsciously or otherwise, to trade the lifestyle here for a shorter time on the planet. The onset of morbidities perfectly treatable back home might mean a serious reduction of quality of life here, even death. But that trading a potentially shorter life in one of the most wonderful parts of the world was infinitely preferable to living longer in a country you no longer enjoy, like back home. It was a trade-off you were prepared to accept, and many do.

A mate of mine who lives in Thailand said that he agrees one hundred percent with this. He’s lived in the City of Angels for ages and reckons that living in Bangkok takes at least 10 years off of your life. He’d come across a recent post on a blog written by an expat. The post went something like this. Since the writer moved to Thailand in 2002, he’d been lucky enough to enjoy the company of a few expats, some retired, some working for coin or volunteering. But with a recent passing, he’d realised that every one of those friends were now dead. Suicide, cancer, motorbike accidents, one cause went unspecified, and diabetes. He was shocked that none of these people were older than 65 years, and several were in their 30’s. In addition, two more friends ‘went mad’ and two more were now alcoholics.

My mate, a keen observer of life in Thailand and not just of expats, told me that Thailand does have a reputation for the early deaths of foreigners. Mainly these are in motor accidents. Thinking on he said he’d known a journalist who got run over by a truck, a friend who got wiped out on his motorbike, and others who expired relatively young with various ailments. Only last month a colleague’s 11-year-old daughter fell to her death from the 20th floor of a condo.

There’s even a website rather morbidly dedicated to documenting the deaths of foreigners in Thailand. Suicides are common. Usually these are expat males caught up in some sordid financial wrangle with a local woman or more to the point, with her family. There’s a few expats been burned that way, some losing their life savings. The “lucky” ones may be able to re-enter the workforce and put some more money away before it’s too late. Some can wind up living on the streets in places like Pattaya. Others throw themselves from high rises, or drive headlong into a rubbish truck at high speed.

Many expats in places like Cambodia or Thailand adopt unhealthy lifestyles. There’s alcohol, poor diet and a lack of exercise. Often they don’t fill in their time constructively. It’s not uncommon to see sexpats and potential deadpats in bars before lunchtime, usually in the company of farm girls driven to cities by the lack of opportunities in rural areas. Of Cambodia with its long tropical nights, one long time expat, a Swiss paediatrician said, “you either become a readaholic or an alcoholic.”

There are motorbikes and drownings. You’d be amazed at the numbers of tourists and some expats who decide to jump into a pool and can’t swim. Of the former it seems a particular trait of late of Arabs and Russians. Then there are traffic fatalities. Southeast Asians die on the roads in their thousands every year, some foreigners too. Usually these are motorbikes but more usually scooters, the cheapest most accessible form of motorised transport. Drivers are reckless and if involved in an accident invariably flee the scene. This includes bus and train drivers, and even a couple of airline pilots on Koh Samui, except that they couldn’t fit out the cockpit windows.

The South African nurse mentioned earlier was in Cambodia researching her PhD on human trafficking. She told me of the wonders of East Africa. She had left years before and now worked as a charge nurse at a major Singapore hospital. She didn’t especially rate the standard of healthcare in Singapore. Places like Singapore are where those with money in places like Cambodia go to for medical treatment unobtainable at home.

There are limited pathology services in Cambodia for example. An expat doctor living in Phnom Penh told me the so-called laboratories are just fronts where the rich stash their cash. He told me of an Irishman who, against his medical advice, had a mole tested at such a place with fatal consequences. He’d been given a phoney report. By the time he got back to the doctor it was too late.

Pharmacies in Cambodia can be two-a-penny. Often they are clustered together. Self-medication is the rule. Cambodians tend to value volume, colour and variety as this is equated with efficacy. It’s the placebo effect for the impoverished. There’s no such thing as a controlled substance, which can lead to all sorts of related issues. Generally, use-by dates are irrelevant. Morphine and heroin are widely available and cheap.

Death by misadventure is a common occurrence in Cambodia. According to Khmer440, at least 95 expats have died in Cambodia in the first nine and a half months of 2015. Some are murdered. Some die as a result of overdoses. Some die in crashes that wouldn’t kill them in the west. Some commit suicide and many of the causes of death are never discovered, a result of local official incompetence and indifference. Many of the victims have perhaps burned their bridges back home and get into a tight spot with seemingly no way out, like the Finnish owner of Suomi Guesthouse on Street 172, found dead in his room with rent arrears. Others suffer horrific deaths, like the poor unidentified soul murdered and stuffed into a suitcase found floating in the river near Kep recently, his head poking out and his tattoo sliced off to render him anonymous.

Backpackers buy cheap heroin thinking it is cocaine with often fatal consequences. Bodies can go undiscovered in hotels for several days, making a grisly find for staff. They ride bikes drunk with little protection, and have no road sense in a country with little formal road sense. Bodies sometimes turn up in Tonle Sap, hands bound with wire their throats cut. One sexpat TEFLer with a reputation for not paying taxi girls was discovered dumped in a drain.

Don’t have a crash on Cambodian roads. Getting into a traffic accident anywhere is serious, but in Cambodia it’s particularly so. Get insurance and be prepared. An ambulance, if there is one, may refuse seriously injured patients for fear that death may prohibit paying the bill. Healthcare is rudimentary. The best hospitals are all in Phnom Penh, but even those are poor by international standards with low quality care and low paid staff trying to get by by inflating your bill.

Expat hospitals like SOS International exist across the region offering services at exorbitant rates no actual person can afford. One Australian I met was treated at one in Vietnam. Stricken with a condition in Nha Trang, he spent days in a public hospital room with a pregnant Vietnamese woman. He was so ill she had to help him to the toilet and he relied on her family cooking him food. In the end a Soviet-era ambulance drove him to Saigon where he woke in the SOS facility. The head doctor, a Dane, came in the next morning smoking a cigar. He asked which he wanted first, the good or the bad news. He was told the good news was they knew what was wrong with him, he had dengue fever. The bad news was the hospital charged US$1200 a night. “How many nights can you afford?” The Aussie replied “just one, this one,” So they moved him down the road to a guesthouse, where they treated him as an outpatient.

Rural Cambodia has health centres, basic primary care facilities usually located in villages. Larger provincial centres have referral hospitals, a mixed bag. It’s common in Cambodian hospitals for staff to double dip with “dual practice”, working in private facilities while still being paid to be at work at a public facility. Wages are low, facilities Spartan. Rich Cambodians go offshore, the poor make do. I’ve seen women post-caesarean lying on a bare bamboo slat frame in tropical heat. There’s no pillow or bed linen, and no food unless their family provides.

I once saw a dead man, a local, on a footpath in Phnom Penh. People gathered around and stared. I’m unsure how long he lay there before being collected to who knows where. An Irishman told me about an American who fell to his death from an apartment building. His body was in the street all morning because no one knew who he was or who to call. Eventually someone called the embassy.

A Frenchman killed himself, and his Khmer wife was understandably distraught. The Frenchman was a heroin addict and dealer. The police were closing in, and he hadn’t the money to buy them off, or to leave the country, besides there was his young family to consider. Another expat took his wife to inform the French Embassy. Security wouldn’t let her in. In the end security called her mother-in-law in France, told her bluntly here son was dead and hung-up.

As someone wrote, if you are living in Cambodia and if you’re unmarried or not in a relationship (or even if you are) it is probably best to have a friend or two – people you can rely on – to organise your affairs if required.

Choosing to live in one of the most fascinating parts of the world has many benefits, and can be rewarding for all kinds of reasons. An English writer living in Chiang Rai explained Southeast Asia to me as follow; “a paradox: what is good for the soul is bad for the bank account (usually) and vice versa.” He went on to say that it’s not easy doing both because the system is set up so that people either have too much time, and too little money, or too much money with no time to enjoy it.

But after several years living in Asia expats often find returning home an impossible option, even if they may think they want to. They’re just too used to the lifestyle in their adopted land. As John Le Carre once said ‘Nothing ever bridged the gap between the man who went, and the man who stayed behind’.

There may be no money either and western life is expensive. Your beautiful Khmer wife may not like it, and be lonely. They’ll also have to consider those links and networks left behind. Those friends and family who stayed will have “moved on”. Ultimately, they’ll be a certain disconnect. What once was will never be again.

By choosing to live out your days here you make certain choices about where you’ll finally wind up exiting. You should make sure you’re comfortable with your choice. Think it through, shoot it down to the bone.

This is a slightly updated version of an article that first appeared on www.michaelbatson.co.nz. Many thanks to the author for permission to reproduce it here.

Walking briskly down a dusty, pock-marked street off of Monivong Boulevard, Smay Manira turns her chestnut head just slightly enough for the casual observer to see a thin smile set in the middle of a face covered by a bright yellow hijab. It’s nearly dusk, the bright red orb in the western sky slowly descending over Boeung Kak lake–a picturesque sunset had the lake actually been filled with water. The adhan atop one of the two minarets of the Al-Serkal Mosque is calling Muslims to prayer and Manira, kneeling at the end of a perfectly straight line of fellow female worshippers inside after washing her feet, is grateful.

“Cham are allowed to pray in Cambodia without fear [of persecution],” say Manira, a student studying a for a master’s degree in English at a university in Phnom Penh. “All of my grandparents were killed by Pol Pot just for being Cham.”

Cambodia is a Buddhist country but had an estimated 236,000 Muslims in 2009, according to the Pew Research Center. Moreover, there are 520 mosques dotted around the country. The majority of Muslims in Cambodia are ethnic Cham, but not all Cham are Muslims; in Vietnam, the Cham are predominantly Hindu. The size of the total Cham population in the 12th century was rather impressive, but through a mixture of military defeats, inter-ethnic marriages, and cultural assimilation, their numbers dwindled to an estimated 400,000 today.

The phenomenon of religious extremism has been a ubiquitous part of myriad societies for centuries and even millenniums.Today, Buddhists lynch mobs in Burma attack Rohingya Muslims with phlegmatic normalcy, the Islamic State lops off heads of anyone and everyone in their way in Iraq and Syria, and this is to say nothing of the recent resurgence in violence between Israelis and Palestinians, nor of the horrific attacks which happened in Paris over the weekend.

The research question being explored here is why has Cambodia, a country with as violent and tragic a past as anywhere in the world, so far escaped the type of religious violence which is currently being waged in places that had hitherto been much more stable? According to Manira, as well as government officials, the reason is because of Cambodia’s religious tolerance.

“We see the world, in some countries religion has broken the nation,” the Prime Minister explained at the Al-Serkal Mosque’s inauguration earlier this year, as quoted in an article in the Cambodia Daily. “But for Cambodia, I can proudly say that we have lived together peacefully among races and religions.”

Cham are also given the right to vote and to stand for election in Cambodia. This was not always the case. During the Khmer Rouge regime, a particularly dyspeptic time period when any and all minority groups were targeted and organized religion was banned, an estimated 100,000 Cham were killed–roughly 40% of the entire group’s community in Cambodia at the time.

Others, however, take a more skeptical tone.

“It is because [Cambodia’s Muslims] do not have the numbers yet,” says Mate Jina, a Thai businessman with holdings in Cambodia. “In the south of Thailand the Muslims are in the majority and so you see them go crazy every so often trying to rip Thailand apart.”

When Thailand isn’t being ripped apart by its own dubious electoral system, class politics, or military coups, there indeed have been sporadic acts of violence, including bombings, in the three most southern provinces where Salafists have at times demanded independence or annexation by Malaysia. This past August, a bomb exploded inside a Hindu shrine in the middle of Bangkok’s shopping district which the Thai junta has blamed on Uighur Muslims from China.

Would the Cham become more assertive or even more extremist if their population were larger? It is perhaps a moot point when discussing a minority group representing just over 1% of the national population, a demographic reality not likely to change anytime soon. For the moment, Cambodia looks like a beacon of religious tolerance and freedom, the nation’s xenophobia and exophthalmic rage aimed more in the direction of the local Vietnamese community.

For people like Manira, her vituperative jawline matching the scowl on her face when asked about an Islamic-oriented uprising in Cambodia one day, the question is anathema.

“My goal is to become an English lecturer at a university, to own my own house, and to have children one day. Most people have goals like this,” she postulates with bucolic certainty. “My family does not want to go back to the days of Pol Pot.”

And as soon as she finishes her soliloquy, an engine nearby fulminates like an IED on a road in Kabul. But in Cambodia, alas, it is merely an old Daelim motobike coughing up its last breath.

If Britain is a nation of shopkeepers, then Cambodia is a nation of fishermen….. It’s a (admittedly disputed) fact that the Cambodian currency, the riel, is named after the d’trey riel, a small fish used to make everyone’s favourite protein source, prahok. From the world’s largest catfish, to the snakeheads – walking, air breathing nightmares now causing mayhem after being introduced to American waterways – Cambodians can’t get enough of fish, a staple foodstuff which comes cheaply, or for those with time and access to water, for free.

Freaky eyed fisherman Jeremy Wade was on the idiot box recently, touring the world as usual to hunt down third-hand accounts of people being mullered by some mystery aquatic ‘River Monster’. Those who are familiar with the format will know that the intrepid Jezza spends the best part of an hour gathering information from indigenous fisher folk, does a spot of angling to catch the wrong sort of fish and, within the closing minutes of the show and to much dramatic monologues and music, finally hooks his target.

Pretty much a standard piece of broadcasting, stuck between a show about catching big tuna fish (why do Americans always use the term toona fish?, It’s pretty obvious what a tuna is, although the Khmer language does the same), Alaskan crabbers and a bunch of hardened Alaskans (and at least one 440er it seems) panning for gold in the Yukon mountains. Today, however, Mr Wade and his production crew were in Cambodia, tracking down a beast from the deep which has been biting the bollocks off Cambodians.

Obviously the local angle piqued my interest, so I sat and watched the whole overly dramatic tosh with Mrs Pedro, who thought the strange barang off the telly might catch a naga, or something, given the tension and interviews with the castrated and blinded Khmer victims of this underwater leviathan.

I suffered with Jeremy as he fished out on the Mekong with all his fancy gear, snagging only submerged trees on the end of his rod and reel. The boat owner guide was pissing himself with laughter. ‘Why crazy barang no use net?’, his eyes seemed to say. I cringed as the host cast out lines on the brutal Khmer Rouge regime with each cast of his bait. I shouted at the box every time Jeremy feared for his life when his line got tangled with the possibility of a landmine or unexploded 10,000lb M-121 being on the end.

“I could lose an arm,” he said dramatically. “Or even worse . . .”

‘IT’S JUST ANOTHER LOG, JEREMY, YOU BIG POOF!’

Poor Jeremy even slummed it up in downtown Kandal ‘…where people earn around $2 a day, and may not welcome outsider.’ It turned out the residents there got him to put on a krama and jump into a rubbish strewn, rat infested stretch of backwater and help them get the nets in. That part was quite funny, as Jeremy waded way out of his comfort zone, the falsities of UXOs and river monsters being genuinely superseded by the realities of Weil’s disease and septicemia. The bit where, after the catch, they forced him to eat it, and ‘chol moy’ lukewarm cans of Klang, was sadly left on the floor of the editing room.

After fruitlessly fishing the Mekong, the show ended on the Tonle Sap lake, where viewers finally came face to face with the freshwater menace, not a giant snakehead, a naga, or even a merman, but a d’trey kambot, a species of puffer fish, which happens to have a nasty nip.

So endemic is this so called monster, Mrs P informed me, that kids catch them for fun and torture them to death, just to see them inflate. Children can be so cruel, and in the they provinces make their own fun, which goes to show even if a species evolves a deadly toxin that only Japanese people are crazy enough to risk eating, and is capable of biting off genitalia, any small entertainment value still means it’s toast.

In the real reel riel world, I have as much patience for angling as a leisure pursuit as a Ritalin addicted 10 year old, off his meds and in a highly stimulating environment. Unless the fish jump onto my best bait presentation, learned from a Bob Nudd video (no relation to you-know-who), I’m a fishing failure. I couldn’t even catch a trout in one of those pay-for-what-you-pull-out pools, where the fish are basically trained to leap out the water.

Me and Strange Dave got bored one day in Battambang, bought a telescopic rod and some tackle, a bag of mealworms as bait and got permission to fish in a small pond where huge fish could be seen basking on the surface. After hours of chain smoking and drinking warm cans we had nada, not even a nibble, when along came the Khmer crocodile lady and scooped up a respectably dinner sized specimen with her hands. With her fucking hands! This proved once more that a hungry Cambodian is a more than competent adversary to anything foolish enough to move and be edible.

After watching Jeremy Wade ponce about Cambodia, only to find something that looked good on the telly, but actually fairly mundane in the flesh (a bit like pornography) I decided to hunt down a d’trey kambot myself, and allow the kids torture it to death, should I succeed.

If a world renowned boggle-eyed marine-biologist with an ITV production budget behind him can do it, why can’t Pedro, in his 2nd best underpants, with a homemade gill net borrowed from an alcoholic neighbour? And given that the nearest hunting grounds are downstream from Kampong Speu market, poo-poos, not UXOs should hold the greatest concern.

Before jumping into the murky waters of the Steung Prek Thnaot, the Small Sugar Palm River, it seemed a good idea to study my quarry. In the 2015 episode ‘Mekong Mutilator’, according to Wikipedia, Jeremy deduced it was a Fang’s Puffer, pao cochinchinesis ‘….a species of freshwater puffer fish native to the basins of the Mekong and Chao Phraya Rivers. This species grows to a length of 7 centimetres (2.8 inches). It is known for its reputation to attack people by slicing off bits of flesh. Their tendency to take chunks of human flesh is similar to piranhas…..’

Righty ho. Mr Bong Lim, as usual, was well in his cups around breakfast time, and allowed me and the brother in law to take his trusty net, so down to the river we went to catch ourselves a puffer fish.

The technique was simple enough: walk out into the fast moving current with each of holding a bamboo pole, with the net tied and weighted between us. Then we would walk slowly back to the shallows, before closing the net and having a look at what we had trapped.

Our first haul brought up some leaves and twigs and a small, silvery fish, like a minnow, which was deemed good enough to eat and thrown in a bucket, where it floated belly up for a few minutes and died.

Our second paddle out produced another minnow and what I presume to be some sort of cichlid, like the ones my dad kept in an aquarium back in the 80’s, when tropical fish keeping was all the rage. Both got tossed in with the dead one, but the cichlid got a small moment of revenge when it shot up its back spinal fin and pricked me with a dozen hypodermics.

Nothing had even tickled my gonads yet, let alone taken a slice from the Millardino family jewels, so we went out once more, this time to a shallow part of the river, with nasty overhanging trees and even nastier oozing mud on the bottom. This time, to quote Borat was ‘Great success’, not one, but two deadly puffer fish were flapping helplessly in the net.

IN YOUR FACE, JEREMY WADE!

And that was that. The brother in law, bored of walking up and down the river, went diving for fresh water mussels, which required less effort for more reward while I studied the two fish, consulted Google images, and confirmed that, for once, my fishing expedition had come up roses. The red spot on the side confirmed these were the correct form of Tetraodontidae.

The bucket of small fry, molluscs and deadly river monsters were taken home. The former were cooked up, whereas the toxic little beasts, which according to TV have been terrorising Cambodians were tortured for a little bit in the name of science before being released back into the wild, unharmed.

Honest.

The flora and fauna of Cambodia has suffered a fair bit over the past few decades. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Pol Pot and his cronies fled to sanctuary in the vast swathes of forested mountains in the north and west and used the cover to launch hit and run attacks on occupying Vietnamese forces and their Cambodian allies, with similar guerilla strategies that Victor Charlie had inflicted on Uncle Sam in the 60’s and 70’s.

Understandably pissed off by this, the Vietnamese, under General Le Duc Anh implemented the K5 plan. About as workable as building a fence around Mexico, a 700km border buffer zone was stripped of trees and replanted with enough anti-personnel ordnance to blow up the moon. At some point after this ecological and humanitarian folly, those in the military and some smart cookie farmers, such as the ironically named Mr Try (pronounced tree) realized that these pesky tonnages of timber giving refuge to Maoist saboteurs, hidden booby-traps and blocking important roads were worth money, a hell of a lot of lovely, paper, spendable money.

Then came the poor farmers, never adverse to a bit of slash n’ burn agriculture. In a country unable to feed a population suffering regular famines, tree hugging legislation wasn’t exactly a top concern. Anybody echoing the tactics of ‘Swampy’ of British environmental protest movement fame, would have ended up in a shallow grave with an AK exit wound coming out of their dreadlocks.

As the forest was stripped, the wildlife was eradicated, through habitat loss and easier hunting by Cambodians who, to supplement a diet of rice, will eat anything larger than a mouse which is stupid enough to breathe and move. A close third in the logging race, behind Nigeria and Vietnam, Cambodia went from one of the most bio-diverse areas outside of the Amazon to an eco-apocalypse within a generation. In 2005 a UN report from the Food and Agriculture Organization estimated 25,000 square kilometres of forest had been lost between 1990 and 2005.

It was in 2005 that King Sihamoni, a few months into his reign, made a Royal Decree on the Designation of Animals and Plants as National Symbols of the Kingdom of Cambodia to bring awareness and offer some very limited protection to some iconic species.

In case readers are unfamiliar with the specimens, here is a brief lowdown on the lucky 7 which made the list.

1. The National Mammal: The Kouprey. “Bos suavely”

Not actually a Sihamoni symbol, the poor old forest cow was given the honour of national animal by then Prince Sihanouk back in the 60s. Only discovered by zoology in 1937, very little is known about this most unfortunate ox, except for its run of bad luck. The first, and only live specimen studied was shipped to France as an Indian bison, or gaur, only to grow into something weird and hitherto unknown to western science. Sadly, this poor specimen starved to death under the Nazi occupation, which is ironic as German scientists were keen on reinventing the giant aurochs, believed by some to be a close cousin of the kouprey. Although, in the grand scheme of things, the death of a zoo cow was probably not heaviest the weight on Hitler’s conscience at the time.

In 1964, US biologist Dr Charles H Wharton managed to corral 5 live kouprey, although 3 escaped and the other 2 keeled other and died. The last confirmed sighting by a man of science, also Dr Wharton was in 1967. Then Cambodia was bombed back to the stone age and the animal was lost forever. Only anecdotal evidence exists for a herd supposedly roaming around the Thai border in the 1980s, but several expeditions have been led, including one by Nate Thayer and Tim Page, and despite costing a small fortune, they found diddly-squat.

Controversy has even dogged the right of a kouprey to be its own species, rather than a hybrid of wild ox/zebu cattle, but genetic research has come down on the side of the forest ox. A bit late, all things considered, as they are most likely extinct anyway. More recent environmental action now focuses on protecting what is left out there, instead of pouring cash into hunting big-horned sasquatches.

2. The National Bird: The Giant Ibis, Pseudibis gigantic

Once a common site along the Mekong lowlands 100 years ago, the largest member of the ibis family is now reduced to an optimistic 100 breeding pairs left in Cambodia and Laos. Despite being a metre high and over a metre long, very little is known about the habits of this oversized avian. Apparently they eat all sorts of aquatic life, from eels to frogs and worms. The loss of wild buffalo digging up wallowing holes, along with the usual hunting and habitat destruction and climate change has almost seen the total demise of the wonderful wader. Through the work of dedicated twitchers, eco-tourism is now the name of the game when trying to save the species, with Tmatboey in Preah Vihear reputed to be the best place to catch a glimpse of one in the wild. A series of projects is helping locals learn to cash in on this boom in a sustainable manner. A royal decree named the giant ibis the national bird in 1994.

3. The National Reptile: The Southern River Terrapin AKA The Royal Turtle Batagur affines

The Chinese, gifted at eating just about anything, will pay big money for endangered wildlife. The rarer the better, with a price tag to match for consumption, medicine, magic or just something to have around the house, the trade in just about everything seems to head north from Cambodia, if it hasn’t already been eaten at source. The trade in turtles and terrapins to China has decimated wild populations of batagur across Asia.

The eggs of this large freshwater reptile were once a preserved delicacy of the Royal Cambodian Court and each animal belonged to the King, a bit like swans in England. Locals capturing them would take them to be blessed by monks and released back into their preferred habitats of streams and mangroves. Yet by the 1980s the terrapin was thought to have been hunted to extinction, until re-discovered in Koh Kong province in 2000. It has been the National Reptile since 2005, and a captive breeding program has seen some of the animals returned to the wild, although it is not known whether the King claims his ancient right to enjoy the odd egg on toast for breakfast anymore.

4. National Fish: The Giant Mekong Barb/Siamese Carp Catlocarpio siamensis

The cyprinid family of fish is both the largest of fish species, with some 3000 species, and the largest family of vertebrates, and Indochina native Catlocarpio siamensis, also known as giant Siamese carp/Mekong barb, is the largest of the clan. Despite all the superlatives, the only habitats of this mighty monster – the Mae Klong, Mekong and Chao Phraya rivers – have become so overfished, polluted and damned up that this king of the deep is on the critically endangered list.

Here are some statistics: the maximum length is somewhere in the region of 3 metres and they can weigh up to 300kg, although none over 1.8 metres and 180kg has been caught since 1964. Cambodian fishermen pulled out 200 tonnes (yes tonnes) in that same year; in 1980 only 50 fish (yes fish) were caught from the murky Mekong. 2000 saw just 10 specimens.

This passive, mostly vegetarian creature, which prefers to live in pairs in deep pools, can be seen on the bas reliefs of Angkor Wat, and, apparently has scales which make the best shuttlecocks for that Cambodian sporty past time of ‘keepy puppy.’

At the same time the King gave the fish a royal decree in Cambodia, in 2005, the neighbours in Saigon were getting into in a commercial farming racket, and now Mekong barb are a common site in Vietnamese markets and restaurants, with a million cultivated in the delta region each year. Efforts to breed and release haven’t fared so well, with 50,000 young fish set loose failing to reach 1kg. Although bringing home the bacon as a cultivated cash crop, in the wild the Mekong barb is about as fucked as a halal-taco stand at a Donald Trump rally.

5. National Tree: The Sugar Palm

A tree which gives out a juice to get you pissed – I waxed lyrical about this in another article last year and I can’t be arsed to do it again. Great tree, great laxative, and useful for about a gazillion other things. Not so endangered, but beats the much sought after rosewood tree (good enough to get shot at by Thai commandoes for) and favourite precursor choice for 90s ravers, with a passion for arbophilia and techno, the sassafras.

6. National Fruit: The Chicken Egg Banana/Lady Finger banana Musa Aromatica

Why isn’t Cambodia officially known as a banana republic? Because it still has a king. One whom is, incidentally, reputed to be a big fan of fruits. Despite all the variety of flora in Cambodia, the cheak pong moan made the top of the fruity list. Shorter, fatter and sweeter than those that the Man from Del Monte swans around saying yes to, the chicken egg ‘nana is a well seen sight up and down the country, where it is eaten in all conceivable forms, and the plant (actually a herb, not a tree) can be used in all manner of imaginative ways. Ancestral spirits love the things too, as they are offered up at private altars and at the pagodas, along with sticks of smoldering incense for every occasion going.

However, at the end of the day, it’s only a banana, as common as dog shit in inner city parks, and nothing to get too excited about.

7. National Flower: Rumdoul Mitrella mesnyi (wrong) Sphaerocoryne affinis (correct)

His Royal Highness The King is also said to be a floral aficionado, and gave the common rumduol the honour of a royal decree and rank of national bloom. This fragrant member of the soursop fruit family is highly regarded in these parts for its aroma, strongest in the early morning and evening, and grown all over the place to try to mask the smell of cow dung and smoldering plastic. Districts are named after it, scented candles are made from it and beautiful Cambodian ladies are compared to it, like a summer’s day.

Next time I have a cup of tea and a fairy cake with himself, I’m going to make a few more suggestions to beef up the list, however I’m still undecided on some of the catagories.

National Insect: Tiger Mosquito (dengue, baby), Cockroach, Housefly or Big Bastard Moth?

National Lampoon: Sam Rainsy?

National 4×4: So many choices.

National National Holiday: There’s always room for one more.

Longtime readers of Khmer440 will surely remember the name Kenneth Drew Wilcox. Wilcox is a psychologist who had a private practice in Phnom Penh from about 2005 through 2010.

Dr. Wilcox’ online resume says that he started his private practice in Cambodia in March 2004, but that claim is absolutely untrue. In 2004, he was still living in the U.S, and he was having a rather bad time.

He started the year off with a bang, getting arrested for drunk driving in Broward County, Florida, during the early morning hours of January 1, 2004. He was also charged with “obstruction without violence” during this arrest, because he falsely told police that his name was “Russell McKinnon Wilcox.” That’s his older brother.

About two months later, Wilcox was charged with grand theft in Broward County Florida, based on a complaint from his ex-landlord. The landlord claimed that he asked Wilcox to leave his furnished apartment, under threat of eviction, for non-payment of rent. When Wilcox moved out, $3,200 worth of furniture was missing from the apartment.

That wasn’t the first time Wilcox had been charged with theft. In May 2004, Wilcox pled guilty to larceny for stealing a leather jacket from a Neiman Marcus store in Virginia back in 2003.

August 2004 saw Wilcox get arrested again in Broward County for drunk driving and eluding police, in the now infamous “piss stained pants” incident.

Wilcox was later picked up for a probation violation on November 1, 2004. He was released from the Broward County jail on December 7, 2004 and apparently fled to Cambodia sometime after that, while the felony theft and eluding charges against him were still pending. A felony warrant for his arrest was issued by a Broward County judge on February 22, 2005.

Dr. Wilcox set up a psychology practice in Phnom Penh in 2005 under the name “Wilcox Associates.” Wilcox’ psychology practice include counseling services relating to substance abuse, child protection, and domestic violence. He and his 21 year-old Cambodia boyfriend, Tek “Weslee” Lim, later opened “Thor Health Services” in 2009.

Dr. Wilcox became well known in expat social circles, and he even had a regular radio show on 97.5 Love FM. He reportedly claimed that he was an heir to the Gillette razor fortune.

The wheels came off Dr. Wilcox’ expat experience in October 2010, when it was reported on Khmer440 and later in the Cambodia Daily that he was wanted by the FBI on a federal charge of international flight from his Florida felony arrest warrants.

Around this time, a Khmer440 poster observed that Weslee had once posted on Facebook that Wilcox physically abused him by by tasing him in the neck multiple times. Weslee’s Facebook post was later deleted. Weslee, the co-owner of THOR Health Services, defended Wilcox in the local press, saying that the rumors about Wilcox’ past were untrue.

Dr. Wilcox was arrested in Cambodia in November 2010 and transported back to the U.S. to face the charges against him. He spent a few months in jail and was released in early 2011.

______________________________________________________________

Khmer440 hasn’t checked up on the good doctor Wilcox since he was released from jail about five years ago. We figured that this would be a good time to update what he and Weslee have been up to. Apparently, Weslee managed to join Wilcox in Florida, and the two married in Washington D.C. and had a very gay wedding reception at the Trump Miami Resort on April 20, 2013.

Notably, Wilcox’s personal blog spins the story of his departure from Cambodia quite differently from what we all remember. In a June 2013 blog post, Wilcox wrote, “our situation became too dangerous as our work placed us at odds with powerful leaders who did not wish to be exposed for their corruption and abuses. As the situation became unmanageable, I was forced to leave the country out of fear for my safety, leaving Wes behind in the protection of his family.”

Wilcox’s blog makes no mention that he was wanted by the FBI and arrested and deported from Cambodia to face charges in Florida for, among other things, stealing his landlord’s furniture. No, the way he tells it, he was forced to leave Cambodia because he was on an ass-kicking crusade exposing corruption and abuse by powerful leaders.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Dr. Wilcox has resumed practicing as a psychologist in the Miami area. He claims that his practice focuses on counseling for substance abuse and relationship issues. However, the Florida Board of Psychology website has a “lookup” page where members of the public can verify if someone who claims to be a psychologist actually holds a license to practice psychology in Florida. Kenneth Wilcox is not listed as a licensed psychologist in this online database. It is a crime under Florida law to hold yourself out as a psychologist if you don’t hold such a license.

Wilcox is very active in gay and LGBT causes in the Miami area and is involved with various community organizations. He and Weslee both serve on the board of advisors to the “Unity Coalition” and advocacy group for gay and LGBT Hispanics.

Bizarrely, Wilcox is identified on the Unity Coalition website as “Dr. Ken Carrington-Wilcox.” He also has a Facebook page under the name “Kenneth Carrington Wilcox,” and he blogs under the name “Dr. Ken Carrington.” But who is Carrington? Wilcox’ middle name is Drew. Has Dr. Wilcox, who reportedly claimed to be an heir to the Gillette fortune, simply adopted the last name of the oil-rich family from the long-running American TV series, Dynasty?

What is more troubling is that at about 11 p.m. on August 23, 2015, Wilcox was arrested by Miami-Dade police for allegedly attacking his husband of two and half years, Tek “Weslee” Lim. According to the police report, Weslee (identified in the police report as “Tek”) claimed that Wilcox was drinking and became jealous and tore Weslee’s shirt and scratched the left side of chest. Weslee reported that Wilcox also threw him onto the bed and tried to choke him.

Wilcox was charged with misdemeanor battery. He spent about 24 hours in jail, then he posted bail and was released. As a condition of his release he was ordered to have “no contact” with Weslee. That order was lifted nine days later. The case against Wilcox was subsequently dropped at the end of September. It is unknown if Weslee, like many vulnerable domestic violence victims, refused to cooperate with the prosecution.

Judging from recent social media photos, Wilcox and Weslee remain a couple. It also appears that, despite Wilcox’s long and continuing record of alcohol related arrests, and his recent arrest for trying to choke his husband, he continues to offering counseling services in the Miami area regarding matters relating to substance abuse and domestic violence.

A young woman from Finland, Jenny Jokela, died earlier this week from head injuries following an accident on the motorbike she was riding in Sihanoukville. Miss Jokela, 22, worked at Papayago Guesthouse and had been in Cambodia for several months.

It is believed that Ms Jokela’s moto crashed into a lamppost, and that no other vehicle was involved. According to police officials who attended the scene, Ms Jokela wasn’t wearing a helmet.

This is the latest in a run of similar deaths and injuries involving expats riding bikes without helmets. A few months ago, wellknown British owner of Charley Harpers Guesthouse, Tony James, died in a similar incident.

Ms Jokela’s death is the 43rd reported expat fatality in Cambodia this year, and the 14th in Sihanoukville.

More information appears on this Khmer440 thread

A popular discussion topic around Phnom Penh in recent months has been the news that Cambodia was to ‘graduate’ to middle-income country status on July 1 last week. I heard about this during my first meeting here in February, with a EuroCham Board of Director; I listened as the US Ambassador discussed the challenges and opportunities this will bring with AmCham general members; it is the opening line in the Asia Development Bank’s Country Operations Business Plan; and I even had a discussion about this at the bar late one night the other week.

But I’ve also found that there is a great misunderstanding about this classification – given by the  World Bank – and how it differs from similar statuses given by, for example, the WTO, and also a lot of misunderstanding about what this means for Cambodia as a whole.

The World Bank divides countries into four different income groups according to their 2016 GNI per capita:

Low income countries (LICs) below $1,045;
Lower middle income countries (LMICs) between $1,046- $4,125;
Upper middle income countries (UMICs) between $4,126-$12,735;
High income countries (HICs), $12,736 or higher.^[1]

Countries are automatically reassigned on July 1 each year, based on the estimate of their GNI per capita for the previous calendar year.^[2] After registering a $1,020 GNI per capita for 2014,^[3]  Cambodia surpassed the threshold for 2015 and was accordingly reassigned at the end of last week.

The World Bank classification differs from the United Nation (and WTO) classification, which relies upon additional factors and is more subjective rather than based purely on numbers. The UN classifies the lowest level of developing countries as “Least Developed Countries” (LDCs). It reviews the list every three years, and takes into account three criteria: Gross national income per capita; Human assets; and Economic vulnerability.^[4] Only four countries have ever graduated from LDC status, with three more due to graduate in coming years. Once a determination is made to graduate a country, they normally set a date for it (maybe five years in the future) to give time to assess any changes that would effect that determination.

The WTO generally adheres to the UN’s determination, although there are no actual WTO definitions of ‘developed’ or ‘developing’ countries.^[5] LDCs in the WTO are designated on the basis of self-selection, meaning that Cambodia will never be forcibly and suddenly removed that list, and the benefits that come with it.

There are two main rankings at play here. Cambodia has moved from a lower income country to a lower-middle income country under the World Bank definition. When that happens the country loses some of the privileges and preferences in terms of Official Development Assistance (ODA), and that may also have an adverse effect on private donations. However, for the foreseeable future, Cambodia will remain a “Least Developed Country” according to both the UN and WTO. Within the WTO framework, it will continue to be able to use the special provisions provided through that agreement, which include the Everything But Arms tariff and duty free exports to the EU, amongst others. It will take some time for its UN status to change.

So what does this mean for development aid?

There is a concern that Cambodia’s graduation to LMIC status means it is likely to lose a large amount of much needed aid. A number of leading international NGOs have spoken out recently about the classification process in general, and how it is linked to aid. It is feared that by ‘graduating’ and losing access to still very much needed aid dollars, there is an increased risk to reverse growth trends and then ‘reverse graduate’ and fall back down the ladder.

However, this does not appear to be the case with Cambodia. The two main donor programs affected by changing classifications are the World Bank’s ODA and the World Banks’s International Development Association (IDA), which offer grants and loans respectively. When some countries graduate to LMIC status they stop receiving both the grants and loans on favorable terms, and even need to accelerate repayment of existing debt. It is easy to see how this could create an immediate hurdle to overcome. But Cambodia will not fall into this category; it has not been benefiting from World Bank grants or loans since  the World Bank ceased funding programs in Cambodia for political reasons in 2011. This has just changed, as it was announced on May 19th of this year that the World Bank would cease its punitive stance, and the Bank approved the 2016-2017 Country Engagement Note for Cambodia, which includes seven investment projects totaling around $250 million of funding.^[6]

The World Bank is not the only donor to begin, continue, or increase its funding to Cambodia this year. The ongoing ADB portfolio for Cambodia has a value of $1.176 billion, comprising 63 loans and grants implemented through 35 projects.^[7] The ADB also operates its own classification system, using the World Bank’s same financial cutoff amount, but including an assessment of the country’s credit worthiness also.^[8] It is not known when Cambodia will graduate from the ADB’s Group A category, but when it does the graduation normally takes about 4 years to complete, leaving substantial time for contingency planning.

There have also been large amounts of bilateral aid from donor countries. Between 2000 and 2011 it is estimated that China loaned $1.16 billion while Japan loaned Cambodia $386 million. In May it was announced that China will provide $450 million in development aid over the next few years, on top of the over $2 billion that China has invested in hydroelectric power in Cambodia. The European Union is the self-professed largest donor of development aid in Cambodia, and the overall development assistance to Cambodia by the European partners from 2014-2018 is estimated at 892 million euros in grants and 478 million euros in loans (totaling of 1.37 billion euros).^[9] Included in that sum is more than 410 million euros allocated for 2014-2020 to enhance Cambodia’s own national development policies. Additionally, at the ASEAN-Russia conference in May Cambodia and Russia signed eight separate agreements, focussing on developing trade, while Cambodia continues to lobby for the conversion of $1.5 billion in debt to Russia to development aid.

Other factors to consider are that both foreign direct investment (FDI) and tax revenue are growing rapidly. In 2013 FDI into Cambodia reached $1.2 billion, climbing to $1.8 billion in 2015 (or 10% of GDP). Tax revenue increased from 10% of GDP in 2010 to 15.1% in 2015, and is projected to continue to grow due to improved administration and continued economic growth.

Cambodia is home to thousands of NGOs which operate on their own agenda, some focused on Cambodia, some allocating resources where they see the most need. There is a chance the new classification will make both private donors and NGOs find it less desirable to donate to Cambodia. Doctors Without Borders recently said that “there is a tendency to perceive NGO programmes and in particular humanitarian programs as being synonymous with low-income-countries. In the evolving aid architecture this is no longer the case.”^[10] With the number of LICs decreasing (a projected level of about 20 will remain by 2025), donors will still need to focus on LMICs heavily.

The main takeaway should be that this is not a pivotal, dire moment for Cambodia. The many sources of funding will not be affected immediately, especially with pledged donations for at least the next four years, and the Everything But Arms scheme will continue for exports to Europe. Graduating from the LIC category can have drastic effects for some countries, especially those heavily dependent on the World Bank’s grants and loans, but Cambodia is not one of them. There are still several challenges that need to be continually overcome for development in the Kingdom to continue, but this should be considered a positive milestone, one that will increase private sector investment, help Cambodia establish a credit rating, and advance it towards its self stated goal of reaching Upper Middle Income status in the next ten years.

^[1] http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-and-lending-groups

^[2] https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/378834-how-does-the-world-bank-classify-countries

^[3] http://data.worldbank.org/country/cambodia

^[4] http://unctad.org/en/Pages/ALDC/Least%20Developed%20Countries/UN-recognition-of-LDCs.aspx

^[5] https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org7_e.htm

^[6] http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2016/05/19/new-country-engagement-plan-for-cambodia-outlines-more-world-bank-group-support-to-help-reduce-poverty

^[7] Asian Development Bank Country Operations Business Plan, Cambodia 2016-2018 [Dec 2015]

^[8] http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/page/30786/files/oma1.pdf

^[9] http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/cambodia/documents/publications/2015/2015_eu_dev_aid_cambodia_en.pdf

^[10] ‘Warning: Becoming a Middle-Income Country can seriously damage your health’ [Jan 2015]

Let’s be honest; Cambodia isn’t the most literary country on the planet, and it’s rare to find genuine scholarly works on the country.  As far as we are aware, there is no definitive encyclopedia on Cambodia and Cambodian culture.  The UK has Encylopedia Britannica, the US has Websters, Collins, Pears and Groliers, but our adopted home has nothing.    Until now.   Khmer440 is proud to publish the first edition of the Encylopedia Cambodiana.

ABC – Like British alkie staple Special Brew, except drunk by the rich instead of tramps.

Aeon Mall - The place to be seen and look at things.

A’jai - Scrap collectors who turn you empty beer cans into hard cash. Wheel around a handcart with a squeeker.

Anchor Beer - Pronounced An-choor, this piss in a tin can be drunk by the score, with little alcoholic effect other than wind and nausea.

Angkor Beer – As above, but with added heartburn

Angkor Wat - Stones in a field. The cash cow of Cambodia and source of national pride. A magnet for half the combined populations of China, Korea and Japan who play the popular competitive Asian sport of ‘Follow the man with the flag’ daily. The only thing Cambodia is famous for, other than child prostitution.

Ants – Forget mosquitoes, snakes and spiders, armies of the little red bastards up to the massive red bastards make life murder. Found everywhere, but most vicious in the countryside – 96% of leaves and tree bark are infested. Often hide in drying clothes, leading to painful underwear encounters. Prepare by injecting yourself with borax.

APLE – French paedo hunters, who are so good at their job they hunt paedos even within their own organisation.

ASEAN – A group of 10 South East Asian Nations who talk a lot, but get little done. Cambodia has the status of the Chinese patsy within the bloc.

Baht – Either the word for yes, or the currency of Thailand favoured in border towns such as Poipet.

Bar – Places for people to drink cheap piss. Range from a little depressing to full on suicidal depending on ambiance, staff and the mental issues and hypertension of the current owner (trying to sell, turnkey operation).

Backpackers – Mostly younger tourists with poor hygiene and little money. Commonly to be found wearing elephant pants, or dead from overdose of china white, masquerading as cocaine. Occasionally spotted baring breasts at Kampot backpacker hostels.

Barfine – A prozzie tax, payable to an establishment before you can take a bargirl out and bone her.

Bargirls – Bored provincial totty in various states of emotional meltdown. Will pretend to have a good time whilst glandular white men buy them overpriced Vodka and Red Bull. Can be persuaded to have lacklustre sex with Viagra-popping pensioners in exchange for hard cash.

Battambang – Cambodia’s second city, now overrun with artists, hipsters and stab-happy deported Californian gangbangers. Boasts a train made out of bamboo, a circus and a growing expat community so bored they drink until 10.25pm, when the town shuts.

Beggars – Should be given a kick up the backside, or ignored, or given a few hundred Riel to go away. The latter will ensure they hobble around the corner of 136 and tell the rest of the gang there’s a bleeding heart sat outside the bar eating a cheeseburger.

Beef – Meat flavoured chewing gum.

BELTEI – A famous factory school franchise with a reputation of employing degenerates as English teachers. Surprisingly good Khmer department.

Bleeding Hearts – People who genuinely believe they can save Cambodia. Normally go lop-lop trying.

Blind Singers - If 40c heat at a stubbornly red traffic light isn’t enough, somebody thought having a sightless girl screeching on a microphone accompanied by an equally disabled keyboard player would a good idea.

Boueng Kak Lake – Once the habitat of backpackers, taxi girls and iceheads, since filled in and sending the former residents out to wander the city like feral beasts. Currently a barren wasteland/construction site. Still some former residents won’t let it go and moan about progress all the way to Prey Sar.

Bokor - A famous mountain top retreat of the French. Now has a casino complex.

BKK1 – Where the posh folk live.

Buddha, The – Some enlightened prince who preached about the spiritual and the trappings of material wealth. His gold leaf statues are worshiped with gifts of material wealth.

Burger King – Now That’s What I Call Development 2014

Cambodia Daily – A local rag. Contains some local news Without Fear or Favor. Pinches the rest from international broadsheets.

Cambodian People’s Party, The – Every day is a party for these Cambodian People.

Cambodian National Rescue Party, The – The only viable political opposition planning to make Cambodia great again, restore the Ankorian Empire, take back lost territory from Vietnam and make everyone rich. One leader sipping on a Chateauneuf de Pap along the Champs Elysee, the other currently hunkered down in the HQ, getting his paperwork in order before an extended leave of absence in the big house. See Kem Sokha and Sam Rainsy

Cats – where did half their tails go?

Cashiers – The highest up on the whore scale. Will have sex for money, but not with just anyone.

Casinos – The house always wins in countries where there are laws and regulations. Waddya think’s gonna happen in a country without such statutes?

CELTA – The #1 English teaching training certificate, available in Bangkok for around $1000 and 4 weeks of precious time. Also available in Koh San Road, Bangkok, for around $25 and an hour waiting around for your name to get printed.

Chams – Native followers of Mohammed, mistrusted by the Buddhist majority because of an ability to cast magic spells and a lack of partaking in the local diet of pig flesh and booze. Any with the funds follow the hadith laid down in the Qu’aran that the faithful should drive Toyotas and display an ornate engraved silver tissue box on the rear parcel shelf.

Chen – See Chinese.

Chickens – Ensure everyone in the countryside is awake by 4.30am if the ceremonies aren’t running that day. Cambodian alarm clocks and basis for dinner. Less meat and more bones than a supermodel.

China White – Particularly strong heroin touted by tuk-tuks and the few residents left at lakeside. Allegedly sold as cocaine. Makes people die, the curious and hardened addicts alike. Even Pete Doherty wouldn’t last more than a few heavy sessions.

Chinese, The – Every February most Cambodians suddenly remember that Great-great-granny arrived on a banana boat from Yunnan, so thus can’t possibly work for that week out of respect for their ancestry. Now the big investors in all areas of society, in return for support of the global superpower’s claim to own half the sea in the world. I for one would like to welcome our new Sino master race overlords.

Choeung Ek – The killing fields.

Competent Authorities - Solvers of crimes. The police.

Corruption – A national pastime, and one of the few things the countries excels at.  Cambodia ranks 160 out of 175 on the corruption index, which, when looked at in a positive note makes it number 15 in the world – which is where Croatia team sits on the FIFA world rankings. And the competition at the top of the table is tough – Somalia, North Korea, Afghanistan. Those boys are top of their game. Go team Cambodia!

Cows – Symbols of wealth in the countryside and costing a year’s salary to a factory worker. Inexplicably allowed to wander freely and stop heavy goods vehicles on major highways. For comment on meat to bone ratio, see chickens.

Christians – Swarming towards poverty like flies to a freshly curled dog turd. Invariably seen ruddy-faced, white shortsleeve-shirted and name-badged cycling through the streets of BKK1 accompanied by obligatory token Khmer convert, silently wondering why they aren’t in their SUV.

CP – Khmer Fried Chicken.

Dailims – Motor scooters for those who can’t afford ‘the Dream’. Favoured by motodops.

Deportees – Those born in Cambodia or Thailand, allowed into the USA, failed at the American dream and forcibly sent back to their birthland. Can be spotted by their sheer size, fondness for baggy clothing and speaking in a West Coast vernacular. Khmericans.

Diarrhea – The screaming Ab-Dabs. Every mealtime is playing Russian roulette with one’s bowels

Dirtbikes – Look really cool racing around on an old Baja 250cc, less cool when standing around, broken down and needing a foot push from a Dailim. Even less cool after crashing into a Dailim, lying in a ditch with an eye popped out and having to foot blood money for the peasants you inadvertently killed.

Divorce – After 1-3 kids with his wife, a husband decides to run off with his much younger mistress and start all over again.

Dogs – Barking harbingers of disease. Shout loudly and carry a big stick. Like anything that grows, breathes or moves, can be a tasty snack.

Dollar, US – 4000 Riel +/-.

Dream, Honda – The two wheel transport of social standing.

Durian – Fruit smelling of death. Humour your Cambodian hosts by remarking on the quality of their death smelling fruit compared to death smelling fruit from Thailand, as every Khmer knows Thai durian is fit only for feeding to pigs.

Dust – Dried earth and faecal matter covers everything and penetrates harder than Ron Jeremy on 25 Kamagra.

Education – Three teachers walk into a bar. One goes ‘Ow!’ Another gets a drink. The third talks in a loud voice about how to raise it, then gets drunk and calls in sick next morning. Another calls the bar to ask the drunk teacher what an adverb is (again). See teaching.

Electricite du Cambodge – Like anything remotely French; expensive, lazy, backward and inefficient.

ELT – Another poor quality language school giving bi-monthly salaries to alkies, methpats and sex offenders.

English – The 2^nd language of choice (much to the chagrin of the former colonial power- the French). “Hello, what your name?” “I miss you.” “Hey handsome man, yes, you very handsome.”  “Thanks you.”

Expats – Boozing sots, mostly found with their own tribe and sub-tribes, in their familiar territories of bars. Mostly harmless, but best avoided unless necessary. Often to be found squabbling on Khmer440, reading squabbles on Khmer440, or reading Khmer440 but sniffily denying it (see Cambodia Daily).

Facebook – What people play when they should be working. Excellent place to find and ‘Like’ pictures of decapitated moto accident victims.

Factories – Cheap sweatshops where uneducated workers toil in slave-like conditions to bolster the profits of multinational corporations like GAP. Or the fledgling beacons of a free market based economy.

Filipinos – Budget English teachers, Christian missionaries and card game scam artists.

Fish – Like it boney with essence du mud? Feel empathy as the aquatic life is smashed from its skull by a strong-armed market woman.

Foetus eggs – Tasty snacks of duck, just a few days short of breaking out, feathered and flapping.

Freelancers – Somewhere between bargirls and Taxi girls. Save on barfines but probably have anything portable stolen post coitus.

French, The – Former colonial masters, and still pissed off that nobody speaks their language anymore.

FUNCINPEC – Like bad hair cuts, shellsuits, VHS and Hulk Hogan – popular in the 90s, charmingly irrelevant today.

Funerals – Held after death, 7 days after death, 100 days after death, 1 year after death, 2 years after death and so on, until the death is forgotten or the ancestors bankrupted. Like weddings, the start early, go on for days and are very noisy.

Gap Yearers – Come to Cambodia and dig holes for poor rural villagers who will lie about in hammocks not believing their luck as young white people dig holes for them.

Gambling – When will it rain? 5/1 odds on the 4.15-4.30pm time window.

Gendarmerie – The police with big guns, don’t fuck with them.

Ganja – An ingredient in happy pizza, a traditional sup flavouring and medicine for sick farm animals. Easily available, although technically illegal. Quality ranges from high-grade chronic to stuff only suitable for feeding to pigs. Available from tuk-tuks, and happy pizza shops.

Gary Glitter – AKA Paul Gadd. Former glam rock singer who single handedly promoted Cambodia’s tourist reputation.

Golden Sorya Mall – If the concept of Dante’s hell were ever to be brought to the earth, it would have the same ambience as GSM, only with more beer, middle aged sex prowlers, fish games and sex-zombie prostitutes hooked on meth.

Ghosts – What terrifies Khmer more than anything else than traffic accidents, serious disease, death and other things that actually exist.

Grey Girls – Similar to cashiers.

Guest House – Cheap hotels where weary travellers can take a break from the road, married men can bang their mistresses, teenage lovers can get some snuggle time and youths can smoke cheap crack unmolested. Available by the hour or by the night.

Hammocks – Cambodian offices. Where the CEO, most senior family member or upholding of the law spend their time snoozing, playing facebook and giving orders to underlings. Also used at night as spare guest beds for visitors.

Happy Pizza – Traditional Italian oven based dough with sprinklings of marijuana as a psychotropic oregano substitute.

H.E.- Like Lord Voldemort and Yahweh, one should never mention this name in public. One of the world’s leading strongman, one-eyed war veteran and longest serving democratic leader after Robert Mugabe, if you do happen to utter the two three letter words, remember to include the full title, growing every year. To not do so risks a defamation case or a bullet in the head as quick as you can say ‘Kem Ley’.

Helmets – Because no one likes to see brains in the morning.

Heroin – See China white.

Ice – Either solid cubes of frozen water, added to beer to make it palatable in the provinces, or solid crystals of meth-amphetamine, smoked using elaborate water bongs and drinking straws, regularly found in small plastic pouches in the out-turned pockets of freshies and freshie girlfriends in police perp walk pics.

International Aid – Like herpes, the gift that keeps on giving. The mainstay of the Cambodian economy and a magic ATM card for the ruling elite.  See Lexus and Range Rover.  Largely provided by guilt-ridden western governments, but now increasingly the preferred sucker providers are China, Korea, Russia and Japan who can’t be arsed linking it to progress on human rights.

Jackfruit – Durian’s poor cousin.

Jungle – You’re about 20 years too late to see anything decent. Like the eponymous breakbeat techno genre, it used to be massive.

Kampong – A port. The provinces Cham, Chnang, Thom, Speu and sometimes Saom. Here be dragons.

Kampot – Cambodia’s Alabama/Royston Vasey. Home to a secretive sect of drug users, rapey bartenders and worshippers of a pineapple effigy.

Kampuchea – The land of the Khmer. Previously known as French Indochina, Khmer Republic, Democratic Kampuchea, The People’s Republic of Kampuchea and currently The Kingdom of Cambodia. Name used only by hipsters and backpackers.

Kandal – The bit outside Phnom Penh.

Kem Sokha – A dirty talking little political lover of young poontang. Will probably be in prison at time of publishing.

Kep – Makes Kampot seem interesting. Crabs live here.

Khmer – The dominant ethnic group of Cambodia. Whether to pronounce it ‘Cum-air’or ‘Cum-eye’ has been the cause of many a bar brawl between rival sets of cunning linguists.

Khmer Rouge – Ultra-nationalist, Maoist rebels, who took control of the country from 1975 to early 1979. Killed a substantial part of the population through execution and forced labour. NOT the good guys. Original home of some of today’s leaders, but let’s not go there.

Khmer440.com – A much derided website where people argue over such important topics as work-permits, the Jewish conspiracy, the price of pineapples and whether it’s actually pronounced ‘cum-eye four fortey’. And, no, we’re not telling you what the 440 refers to, so stop asking.

Khmer Times, The – The Daily Plagiarism Planet.  Resting place for articles first published in and stolen from Malaysian newspapers and student dissertations.

Kikilu- A thankfully going out of fashion saying, once popular with teenagers to describe the act of sexual intercourse. From the noise dogs make when doing it, apparently.

Killing Fields, The – See Choeung Ek. Also an award winning film about the Cambodian genocide.

KiR: Keeping it riel, a dead guy of much controversy. His ghost still haunts the internet.

Kirirom- A forested plateau, famous for its temperate climate and pine trees. Like a tropical Wales.

Klang Beer – Known as Domrei (elephant), this stronger than regular flavoured pisswater is a big favourite of rural peasants.

Koh Kong – A province next to Thailand.

Koh Rong – An island where a collective of Agatha Christie’s fictional detectives could enjoy getting their teeth into solving a series of unexplained deaths.

KTV – What passes for entertainment in Asia.

Lakeside – See Boueng Kak Lake

Lexus – The chosen Chelsea tractor for those with cash who like sitting in traffic in comfort or belting up Highway 4 at 150km/h.

Life – Cheap and often short.

Limes - Are called lemons. Nobody knows what lemons are called.

Lizards – Get everywhere and often found dead after being crushed in a doorway.

Lop-lop – How you end up after too long here.

Lucky – Either you are or you aren’t. Also a popular prefix for any sort of business, especially with the number 168, eg Lucky Lucky 168 Used Electrical Supplies and Drink, Tourism, Shop. Also abbreviation of Lucky Supermarket – overpriced supermarket notorious for packers pilfering your produce.

Mangos – Some of the world’s finest tropical fruit is produced in these climes, ruined by dipping in half a metric ton of sugar, salt and crushed chili pepper.

Maps – Confuse your motodop or tuk-tuk by showing him one.

Marriage – The ultimate aim of all Cambodian females. See divorce and mistress.

Mekong River – An impressive waterway which begins in Tibet, winds through Burma, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia before spilling out into the sea in Southern Vietnam. Getting dammed to buggery for hydroelectricity, so possibly doomed as we know it.

Meth – A Japanese invented stimulant, developed by Nazi Germany. See ice and yamma.

Mistress – Perhaps a throwback from French colonialists, every man of certain status should have one to meet in a guesthouse. Often the victims of disfigurement and murder at the hands of a jealous wife. See Piseth Pilika

Monkeys – Of the species macaque, these buggers will steal anything and bear

Mosquitos – Flying bastards. Good chance of dengue, moderate chance of malaria in some regions and now the bloody zika virus from being bitten by the winged shits.

Monsoon – Big rain May-November.

Motodop – A cheap way to drive around looking for a place the driver said ‘I know’. Also purveyors of illicit drugs and prostitutes. Budget tuk-tuks. Often double as APLE spies.

Nigerians – Fine footballers, spreaders of evangelical Christian values amongst the Cambodian poor and sometimes drug dealers, pimps and internet scammers.

Norodom – The royal house.

Norodom Sihanouk – Revered side shifting king, responsible for a lot of bad things, best chums with Kim Il-Sung and Chairman Mao. Now shuffled of his mortal coil and residing in the moon.

Norodom Sihamoni – Current king. The only monarch in the world to speak Czech, a lover of ballet. Cambodia has an elective monarchy system, where the monarch is chosen by a committee, rather than the hereditary system most commonly practiced; a peculiarity shared on with some Malay states, and Vatican city, which is appropriate as the king is about as likely to produce a legitimate heir as the pontiff.

NGO – Non-Governmental Organisation, saving Cambodia one donation and one tweet at a time.

Om – Term for a man who is older than your father, great uncle.

Oranges – Grown in Pursat and Battambang. Should be called greens for accuracy.

Ouen – Term for a girl younger than you, or term of affection for your Mrs, who is going to be younger than you anyway, unless you’re weird.

On – Term for male younger than you. A boy.

Pattaya Trash – Expat exports from across the border, the result of tightening visa laws in Thailand, now leading to tightening visa laws in Cambodia. Singlet wearers.

Pchum Benh – Cambodian Halloween, a 15 day long festival. where respects are paid to the dead and ghosts with small mouths are fed rice and sweets to keep their evil haunting manifestations placated until next year. Monks stay up all night chanting to open the gates of hell, for some reason. Uniquely Cambodian, and a major holiday around the end of September/beginning of October.

Phnom Penh – A grubby, traffic congested shit hole with some good restaurants, where most people live ‘cos that’s where the money is. The capital city.

Phnom Penh Post – Another English language rag.

Pork – The standard meat. Those with dietary requirements should check carefully.

Prahoc – Rotten fish left to ferment in the sun. Cambodian cheese. Pungent.

Poipet – Often the tourists first experience of Cambodia. A major border crossing with Thailand. Full of casinos, taxi girls and yamma. Probably the worst town in the kingdom.

Pol Pot – AKA Saloth Sar, AKA Brother Number One. Former teacher and General Secretary of the Communist Party of Cambodia. Secretive leader of the Khmer Rogue (Angkar ) movement and Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. Died near Anglong Veng aged 73.

Police – Got a crime to report? How much you pay? The competent authorities.

Poverty Porn – Pictures of starving brown children raise funds for NGOs.

Pornography – Illegal, but doesn’t stop everyone watching it on smartphones and posting their favourites on Facebook.

Prey Sar – The monkey house, the nick. Where drug dealers, sex offenders, thieves, murderers and opposition politicians end up.

Progress – Mass evictions of the poor to build condominiums, shopping malls and parking spaces for SUVs.

Pu – A man older than you, but not as old as your father. An uncle.

PUC – Pananansansssatrassa University Cambodia, see BELTEI, but without the good reputation for Khmer studies.

Pursat – An uninspiring western province.

Qingming – Chinese festival, held 15 days after spring equinox, where those who claim some sort of Chen heritage go to sweep the graves of the departed, eat broiled chicken and drink beer. Another excuse to skip work/school.

Quagmire – Most of Cambodia between May-November.

Quealys – Once a popular hole in the wall, now a less popular hole in st 172.

Range Rover – When a Lexus just isn’t showing off enough.

Rattanakiri – North eastern province with a few trees left.

Rats – Big chewing, disease spreading rodent bastards. Sometimes a tasty snack.

Rebels MC – Harmless motorcycle enthusiasts who do a lot of charity work or a ruthless meth-producing gang of outlaws. Occasionally to be found crashing their bikes into villa gates at 2am.

Red – Lucky colour, especially in string form.

Relatives – Your average Cambodian has ten to the power of twelvety brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins etc.

Rice – Breakfast, lunch, dinner, between meal snacks and pudding.

Riel – The local currency. Funny money.

Riverside – Where the flotsam and jetsam of Phnom Penh end up. Streets running off Sisowath Quay roughly from 108-240.

RCAF – The Royal Cambodian Armed Forces- Combat troops 125,000, reservists- 200,000, generals – well over 1200 generals, about 1 for every 100 rank and file soldiers.

Sam Rainsy – Bespectacled fool who has spent 20 odd years trying to play the big man at poltics with 20 odd years of failure. Spends his time in his natural habitat of France, whinging about injustice and begging for his turn to ruin the country.

Siem Reap – The tourist town close to where the rocks in the field are.

Sihanoukville – See Shitsville.

Singlets – Sleeveless T-shirts. Wifebeaters.

Singlet Brothers – Two hapless UK methheads from Bournemouth who surfaced in Cambodia in early 2015 to spend Singlet Senior’s inheritance on drugs, only to end up destitute and demanding help from the UK Embassy on the front page of the equally hapless Khmer Times. Singlet Junior is back selling dope in the UK. Singlet Senior was last seen having gone feral in the Orussey Market district.

Shitsville – The commonly used term for the port town on the Cambodian Riviera. Sihanoukville, Kampong Saom, Paradise Sur Mer.

Singapore – An independent island state where rich Cambodians go on holiday and for medical treatment. Largely built on Cambodian sand illegally dredged from Koh Kong.

Sin Sisamuth – Popular singer who infused western melodies with traditional Khmer lyrics. Killed by Khmer Rouge.

Smartphones – Everybody’s got to have one.

Snacks - To be enjoyed approximately every 90 minutes. Sold everywhere in different guises, and sometimes cunningly disguised as tarantulas and other horrible insects.

Snakes –  Can be a problem, but with a steady hand, nerves of steel and a sharp scythe, can be the solution to dinner. Tiny ones pierced onto sticks are served as snacks in beer gardens.

Sup –  Soup. Cambodians love soup, especially when its flavoured indigestible river weeds and fish skeletons.

SUV – See Lexus and Range Rover.

Tamarind – Sour tree beans.

Taxi Girls –  Street walkers, brass flutes, freelancers. Ladies of the night lower down the whorescale than bargirls. So called, because, like a taxi, a punter can hail one down, jump in, go for a ride and jump out, all for a set fare.

Teaching – White? Semi-literate? Have a drinking problem which can just about be kept under control? Cambodia needs you*! Earn $10-12 per hour Call 0800-TEFLTIME now, and live the dream like so many others!

 *Employees who upset the students by making them learn, or shit themselves and strip naked in the street under the influence of drink and drugs, may be terminated without warning.

TEFL – The poor man’s CELTA.

Thailand – The western neighbour. A bit like Cambodia, but with better food, roads, hospitals and shopping amenities, which were all stolen off the Angkorian Empire anyway.

Tonle Sap – A lake that’s just too damned big to fill in. Also the name for the river flowing out of the lake that sometimes flows backwards.

Toyota - The people’s choice of semi-affordable car ownership.

Traffic police – Just don’t stop, ever.

Twatflannel – A Douche canoe.

Tuk-tuk – A moto-scooter powered chariot, piloted by off duty policeman, APLE informant, and/or drug dealers.

United States of America – Uncle Sam has long been forgiven for carpet bombing Cambodia in the 1970s and supporting the Khmer Rouge guerillas after 1979. All imperialist Yankee tourists from Great Satan Land are free to visit on easy visas and can even spend their own greenbacks to feel at home. Aid money is dutifully requested by the government, but please, no strings attached about how it’s spent or clauses about that inconvenient human rights nonsense.

United Kingdom, Embassy of – British? In trouble? You’re fucked sonny Jim. See Singlet Brothers.

UNTAC – United Nations Transitional Authority, Cambodia. Loads of foreigners who turned up in droves, spending big bucks on a crippled country, bringing democratic elections, cholera, HIV and prostitutes, before packing up and buggering off.

Valium – Mother’s little helpers available from all good pharmacists.

Vegetables – Wash thoroughly to avoid diarrhea.

Vegetarians – A mostly alien concept. Even Buddhist monks eat flesh. Some restaurants cater for these strange people.

Viagra – Over the counter penile pills for when a stiff drink isn’t enough.

Victory Hill – A notorious outskirt of Shitsville.

Victory over Genocide Day – January 7^th, when Cambodians begrudgingly admit the Vietnamese saved them from Khmer Rouge destruction. January 8^th it’s business as younsual.

Vietnam – The devil’s spawn who stole the Mekong Delta, Prey Nokor (Saigon), Kampuchea Krom, that big island off Kampot, Angkor Wat etc, then halted the Pol Pot genocide, lost 30,000 troops fighting to keep Pol Pot and allied forces from retaking control and left quietly when asked to. Several million Vietnamese citizens are still in Cambodia, according to popular belief, and must be expelled, because they’re up to something.

Voluntourists – See gap yearers.

Walkabout, The – Notorious Australian-run dosshouse and 24 hour den of iniquity. Now sadly closed down..

Wat – A Buddhist pagoda. Either a place for reflection on an ancient belief system, where the young are given spiritual teachings and the elderly given shelter and alms, or a Bacchus inspired hotbed of sexy fun time, drinking and drug smoking sessions. It all depends on the chief monk.

Wat Phnom – A park in the middle of a roundabout. Home to thieving primates by day and ladies of ill repute by night..

Water Festival – Bon Om Touk, in Khmer, the end of the rainy season is celebrated by provincial peasants who flood into Phnom Penh to watch boat races. 2010 saw a horrific stampede, where 347 people were crushed to death, but locals will tell you the death toll was much higher and covered up by competent authorities.

Weddings – Expensive, obnoxious, ostentatious parties where the groom goes as Liberace and the bride as Lady Gaga, only with more costume changes. Continue for 72 hours straight. Particularly noted for inedible food (see Sup), warm beer and cans of Orange Fanta, that everyone ignores. The better weddings come complete with a shooting or two.  See marriage.

White skin – The basis on which physical beauty rests.

Whore scale – Cashiers/grey girls, bargirls, taxigirls. In descending  order.

Wife – Now only one is legal, thanks to certain randy royals. Second and subsequent ‘wives’ may only officially be mistresses now. King Sihanouk had 6 wives and over a dozen confirmed mistresses.

Worms – Parasites that live in your bottom. Albendazole treatment is recommended every 6 months or so.

Xanax – Alprazolam. In the west Xanax is highly regulated prescription drug to treat anxiety and depression. In Cambodia it can be bought for a dollar from all good pharmacies to be used for a good time or a good sleep.

Xenophobia – If you ain’t Vietnamese, you ain’t gotta worry. Unless, of course you act like a tit towards angry, white man hating tuk-tuk drivers. Or unless you’re ‘Africa Man.’

Xylophone – Known as a reneat aek, the plinky plonky tones of this percussion instrument accompanies the wailing to inform the neighbourhood that somebody has just died, died a 100 days ago or the anniversary of someone’s demise.

Yab Mong – You crazy fool.

Yamma – Like the other ice, but cheaper.

Youn – Derogatory term for a citizen of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. See Vietnam. Much-loved by Sam Rainsy.

Zombies – See Golden Sorya Mall.

Zoo – There’s a crap one at Takmao. And an even crappier one run by a Government minister at Kampot. Don’t go.

Zoophilia – Sometimes Cambodian men get caught having sex with cows.

For me, the sight that most encapsulated the rebirth of passenger services in Cambodia was the two young children, travelling on a train for the very first time, accompanied by their grandfather or great-grandfather. The looks of awe and excitement on their faces make all the hard work of the team at Royal Railway more than worthwhile.

But then again, that awe and excitement was also on the faces of many of the adult Khmers too. Once we had boarded the train at Phnom Penh , including my scooter in the freight car, my partner, at 37, had that same ‘Xmas morning’ look as those two young children.

While there have been intermittent services over the last few decades, the reality is that it has been 40 years since regular and reliable trains have run here. Before this year, the last passenger train to run was the Phnom Penh to Battambang service, which experienced frequent derailments, in 2009.

To many observers here, the reality of passenger trains returning here seemed a distant hope, and few expected any sort of service before the end of the decade. But Royal Railway, with a 30 year concession to operate the Cambodian Railway Network, has surprised everyone, relaunching the southern railway line passenger services in April 2016. In addition to coaches, there are flatbed cars on which you can load your vehicle for a very small price.

For those of us who have regularly travelled between the capital and Kampot or Sihanoukville, we’ve all experienced those ‘life flashing before you’ white-knuckle moments as the minivan driver overtakes a truck while another lorry hurtles towards you at breakneck speed. We’ve all closed our eyes and offered silent prayers to multiple deities as we see a dog/buffalo/child on bike come rushing onto the road with no awareness of the busy traffic ahead. And we’ve all stretched our legs wearily at some ambiguous halfway point and breathed in the wonderful dust clouds created by passing trucks.

It may only have been operating for 6 months but in that time the service has already improved dramatically. While the schedule still advises that Sihanoukville is a 7 hour journey, the reality is that due to better average speeds now, the train often arrives earlier. Kampot is only around 4 hours’ journey by train which is very comparable to the same trip by road.

Inside the carriages are comfortable enough – and this will also improve as new rolling stock arrives and refurbishments continue – and the passenger areas are air conditioned too so are nice and cool for those expat and tourist sensibilities. Staff have refreshments for sale, and when you reach the first station (Takeo) there are vendors with everything from a hot meal to a toothbrush.

For safety reasons – something that is high on Royal Railway’s priority list – the train goes fairly slow as it leaves Phnom Penh. Many people still live beside the tracks and still haven’t lost their curiosity and excitement even after 6 months. Adults smile, children wave, and tourists get a little glimpse of a side of Phnom Penh they might normally miss.

Once we escape the city the locomotive picks up speed – these days they can get to 65km/h on some stretches; hardly world record levels but given they were only managing around half of that when they started, it is testament to the hard work put in by Royal Railway in improving the tracks and the rolling stock while still prioritising safety. But for me the main highlight – other than the avoidance of road travel – is the chance to kick back and watch the stunning Cambodian countryside as you meander along at a relaxing but steady pace.

We arrived in Kampot on schedule – and that was despite a slight delay in leaving due to adding on an extra freight car to accommodate passengers who turned up with motos but no moto tickets.

With services on the Northern Line (Phnom Penh to Poipet) due to start sometime in the next 12 months, the railway network in Cambodia is truly back on track