Cambodia Calling

Happy Khmer New Year

2011-04-24T11:22:00.002+07:00

15 April 2011

Sousaday joul ch’nam thmei! Happy Khmer New Year! It's my fifth Khmer New Year - how time flies. I’m working in the Bloom shop here in Siem Reap for the next three days as my team has gone back to their home towns in the provinces. The Bloom women come from all over Cambodia – Prey Veng, Svey Rieng, Kampong Thom, Kampong Cham, etc.

Siem Reap is so quiet today, as most Khmers have gone home for the three- day holiday. There are few tourists around, probably because it’s so hot (my neighbour keeps spraying the ground with water in a bid to keep his shop cool.) The tourists must all be at the pool. It’s so quiet I should close the shop but I keep thinking I’m paying rent and everyday I don’t open and sell something, we are losing money.

I’m taking this opportunity to finally write something for the blog. It’s been three months – the longest I’ve gone without writing I think.

I’ve been so busy since opening the Bloom Garden Guesthouse in September. Already, we are number three on TripAdvisor, which is very motivating to our small guesthouse team. You can see the pride in Kagna’s, Ya’s, Rathy’s and Piseth’s eyes. Every time we move up the ranks they tell each other excitedly and seem more driven to be the best.

The guesthouse business can be tiring – well, it’s as tiring as you make it to be, I suppose. I’m the sort of guesthouse owner who is involved in my guests’ holiday, simply because I’m a people-person, and love, love, love, getting to know new people.

I’m always curious about other people’s lives, so I spend a lot of time with my houseguests, having dinners, hanging out at pubs, talking about the Cambodia I know, and learning about their home countries.

One of the most amazing conversations I had was with a young Israeli couple, who told me most Israelis want peace. They were once on the right track but that process was derailed. I found the couple to be very educated, well-travelled and compassionate and humble. We had $1 tapas and drinks one night together with my expat friends, mostly NGO workers and volunteers. Their friend from Ecuador joined us (first time I’d met an Ecuadorian in my life!) and I learnt Ecuador is one of the biggest exporters of bananas, as well as having oil.

Although tiring, it’s been great fun – I’ve met so many incredible, lovely, amazing people. I will remember always these two crazy Canadian ladies, whom I met at separate occasions, both travelling on their own. I say “crazy” with affection. I love crazy people. With them, what you see is what you get. It’s the ones who appear normal that freak me out, because you never really know what they really think or feel.

One evening Alan says to a mutual friend he doesn’t understand why I invest so much in transient friendships. Well, what is one supposed to do? If I have chemistry, and “click” with someone, I’m not going to hold back and pretend it’s not there, and stop myself from getting to know someone. Anyway, it’s the nature of an expat’s life – friendships are transient because either your friends leave, or you will, someday. If you believe what the Buddhists say, everything is impermanence anyway.

Thank goodness for Facebook for keeping in touch. I do fear the Big Brother aspects of Facebook, something that is always lurking at the back of my mind, but for now, its usefulness outweighs the fear.

Anyway, so between running the guesthouse and the shop, I’ve had no desire to write. I find when my life is full, writing takes a backseat. It’s a shame because I find writing cathartic. If I spent more time writing, I’d probably drink less!

My neighbour, the owner of a restaurant, just told me his four staff members are working today because “they have the Hun Sen spirit; they want to work”. (Hun Sen is Cambodia’s Prime Minister). Yeah, right. I am sure they’d prefer to be with their families during this holiday. But I have a guesthouse now, and I understand there are no holidays for those in the hospitality business. So the staff members at the Bloom guesthouse are working over Khmer New Year. We have real team spirit and I left it up to the team to decide who works when so we’ve planned to take turns going on leave during the holidays. Rathy, who chose to work all through Khmer New Year, gets paid twice the daily rate, as is according to Cambodian law.

Silly Runnings - Cambodian style

2011-02-22T16:20:00.000+07:00

I loved this Youtube video and wanted to share. Thanks to my friend Dale :)

Fire in Siem Reap town today

2010-12-08T16:19:00.000+07:00

Alan and I were coming out of Lucky supermarket when we noticed big smoke behind the building. Kosal was picking us up so I went with him on his moto to see what was going on. We went behind lucky, turning right. Many people were also racing to see what was going on. We saw thick, black smoke rising. Kosal had to stop his moto as there was a jam. I hopped off and walked towards the fire.

I saw this - a fire truck was already there and people were helping to pull the hose to spray the fire, which was engulfing a typical Cambodian provision shop, made of wood, with a zinc roof.

You can see the fire truck in this picture.

The policemen were trying to get people to stand back, away from the fire.

I stood opposite, outside the Angkor Land Hotel. This guy was racing to connect a hose from the hotel to help put out the fire.

The fire trucks managed to hose down the flames in less than 15 minutes.

The house was completely destroyed by that time.

You can see the coconuts spilling all over the ground. The umbrella was also burnt. There was hardly anything left of the small provisions stall.

The fire truck was leaving and you can see the policeman on the right holding up the electrical wire with his baton. At first I was thinking he was trying to prevent the wire from catching fire.

Then I realised he was lifting the electrical wire to let the fire truck pass under. You can see more clearly in the photo below.

This lady was crying and hugging her son, so I assume it is her shop that burnt down. She had only grabbed her little blue metal cash box.

I felt so sad for the lady I wanted to cry. Must be terrible to lose everything in this way. But many Cambodian houses are similarly vulnerable to fires, because the walls are made of wooden planks and zinc sheets for the roof. Very few people have fire insurance so when you lose it all, there is nothing you can do. I've often thought about the houses we have rented in Cambodia. What happens if there is a fire? The landlord loses everything because the tenant cannot be expected to pay, and the landlord has no insurance.

The house Alan and I rented in Siem Reap is actually a death trap if there is a fire because there is only one door in and out of the house. Plus, all the windows have grilles (typical here in Cambodia because of security concerns).

Thank goodness the Bloom guesthouse is better designed, with a front and back door, another two more doors upstairs to the large balconies on the front and back. Best of all, there are no grilles on any of the windows - good for easy escape in case of a fire!

GREEN IS REVOLUTION!

2010-12-06T14:56:00.001+07:00

I keep meaning to put photos up of our new shop but have been so busy with our new guesthouse. I did write in a previous entry how proud I was of our new wall. I had rented this shop space because I thought the walls outside the shop had potential as a marketing tool. It was previously salmon coloured so I white washed it and paid a Cambodian artist, Khey, to paint our new logo and the words. (Khey has 2 shops of his own, one in the Old Market and another one near my previous shop where he sells his original paintings).

This is the Bloom wall:

In the day time.

And at night.

Tuk tuks line our street at night.

Khey did such a good job! Many, many tourists take photos of the green wall, with our logo and "Green is Revolution". They even pose with it!

I chose this slogan over many I have in mind, because I think it best encapsulates what we stand for. I had adapted it from Iran's Green Revolution, the name given to 2009's Iranian Presidential Election, in which many Persian protestors risked their lives to dispute the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

Green is revolution in so many ways. As I see it, concern of the environment is waking people up from their robotic consumer lifestyles. So many people go through lives semi-conscious, never really using the brain to think about the choices we make.

To me, the green movement is revolutionary, forcing us to re-examine the way we thoughtlessly consume the earth's limited resources. We are only now beginning to think about our unsustainable lifestyles and the stress it puts on our planet. From buying hybrid cars to changing our diets (fat people cause climate change, says the British government's chief green adviser) to buying recycled goods, many, many people are trying to make changes in the way they lead their lives, so as to live more responsibly. (Some say it is too late, but I think better late than never).

For me, the green revolution also means change towards a fairer, more just, and more thoughtful society. People now care more about other people and animals and things as they think about how climate change affects poor people (half a million displaced people in Bangladesh pour into the capital Dhaka each year as their homes are destroyed); polar bears (forced to be cannibals as they have smaller platforms to hunt seals); and our planet's future ("by 2025 there could be three billion people without adequate water as the population rises still further. And massive urbanisation, increased encroachment on animal territory, and concentrated livestock production could trigger new pandemics" - 2009 State of the Future).

It is my hope that this new concern for other people also includes interest in making trade fair, in ending the exploitation of poor people in the third world, just so we in the developed world can have our cheap consumer goods.

I think it is happening. I have seen people come to the realisation that part of the problem about climate change is that rich countries are consuming too much at the expense of other countries. From there, it is not a big jump to conclude that the lifestyles of people in the developed world are being subsidised by poor people in the third world. Thinking about climate change, people realise how interconnected we are, how interdependent we are, and how one problem in one part of the world will ultimately affect the rest of us.

And this is how "Green is Revolution" applies to Bloom. At Bloom, we make products with recycled materials as our way of contributing to saving the environment. At the same time, we pay fair wages to producers and charge fair prices to customers as our way of trying to make trade fair. This is why the other part of the wall says "Making Trade Fair - one bag at a time." I hope this makes sense to you. But if not, please let me know, as it helps me sharpen my thinking about the issue.

A final pic. My team was so cute. They asked me to take a photo of them in front of the wall because they had seen many tourists do the same.

From left: Bora, Kagna, Socheata and Piseth. Hope to see you at Bloom Cambodia!

Opportunists and Conspiracy theorists

2010-11-24T09:20:00.002+07:00

My staff members at the Bloom guesthouse told me banana sellers in Phnom Penh took advantage of the tragedy in Phnom Penh and raised the prices of bananas in the city. Cambodians offer bananas and light incense (3 or 5 sticks, different from the 2 sticks that the Chinese offer) and candles to pray for the dead. Everyone bought bananas, even in Siem Reap, to pray that those who died in the stampede will go to heaven.

So these banana sellers in Phnom Penh were selling a bunch of bananas for 15,000riels or even 30,000riels (US$7.50). The normal price is 1500riels ($0.40) or 2500riels. Even in Siem Reap, the price went up, to 5,000 (US$1.25) or 7,000 riels per bunch.

Kagna's sister-in-law, who is a fruit seller in Psar Leu market here in Siem Reap said, "Why these people like this?" She believes "do good, get good" so will not raise her prices from the usual 2500 riels. Everyone is disgusted with the opportunistic merchants. But even at those prices, the bananas were sold out in the city.

Cambodians are finding it hard to understand how so many people can die in such a short time. In just 6 hours, more than 300 people died (latest reports put the figure closer to 400). Kagna says even in Pol Pot's time, not so many people died in such a short time (I don't know if this is true). She said Prime Minister Hun Sen "cry and cry" on TV and that during the six hours, he was exhorting the people on the bridge "don't run, don't run." She said he was beamed live on TV and they broadcast his message on loudhailers around the bridge.

Some theories have emerged. Some say it is because it is the year of the Tiger and tigers like meat and blood, so it is a year for disaster (err...not a very good theory if you ask me).

Others say it was caused by agents who are opposed to the government so that the Cambodian people will blame the government for its ineptitude (err...also not a very good theory, in my view, because the people who shouted must have been amongst the crowd, so risked their lives as well. Unless people think these "secret agents" had a way of escaping after causing the panic). But the government has said it will find and punish those responsible for shouting that the bridge was about to collapse.

Another theory is the panic was caused by Cambodian "hooligans" who like to play a game. The game involves linking arms and moving the human chain altogether forwards and then backwards. People will then fall, causing laughter and cries. Usually the youth do this on the streets during the Water Festival.

But maybe the simplest explanation is the right one. Occam's Razor is a principle that recommends selecting the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions.

Cambodians are not the only ones to have experienced a stampede. This study found a total of 215 human stampede events were reported from 1980 to 2007, resulting in 7069 deaths and at least 14,078 injuries.

There are many things that can cause a stampede. When the Brooklyn Bridge just opened, a woman tripped, which contributed to fears that the bridge would collapse. "As she lost her footing another woman screamed, and the throng behind crowded forward so rapidly that those at the top of the steps were pushed over and fell in a heap." (abstract found in the New York Times.)

In 2005, 1000 people died in the Baghdad Bridge Stampede . There were rumours of a suicide bomber. Interior Minister Bayan Baqir Solagh said that one person "pointed a finger at another person saying that he was carrying explosives...and that led to the panic".

In 1989, 96 people --all fans of Liverpool F.C.-- died in the Hillsborough disaster. In 2007, 3 people died and 30 were injured in Chongqing, China, when a supermarket offered 20% discount on cooking oil. And in 1896, 1389 people were killed in a crush as people tried to get presents during the Coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II. (All these records can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stampede).

So I don't think the stampede was caused by enemies of the state. We still do not know what caused it, but it could be as simple as a one person suggesting the bridge could collapse. If enough people hear and believe him, that would be enough to cause a panic.

For me, the important thing is that the authorities learn from this tragedy. Stampede can be prevented by more organised crowd control, barriers and preventing extreme density of people.

This interesting Slate article, on "How not to get trampled at [Obama's] Inauguration" tells you the warning signs of an imminent crowd crush and what to do in such a situation. Here are some pointers:

1. There needs to be communication - with barriers, signs, or loudhailers. "Crowds are rarely belligerent, but they can become deadly if, for example, there's no way to announce that someone has fallen down and everyone must take a step back."

2. You also need space around you, and the article suggests no more than four people per square meter. "Otherwise, if someone jostles you, you won't have room to stick a foot out to stabilize yourself. If you fall, other people may trip over you, creating a pileup. Meanwhile, the rest of the crowd will continue to surge forward, unaware of your situation, and the pressure will build."

3. If you do feel like you are being touched on all four sides, you need to move to the margins. Try to move sideways. "After that, the last opportunity to escape may be when you feel shock waves travel through the crowd. This happens when people at the back push forward, but the people at the front have no where to go. If you feel the crowd sway like this, you are in serious danger. Wait until the crowd stops moving and then inch your way sideways and backward, zigzagging to safety. Just as you might swim back to shore in the ocean, try to navigate during the pause between waves."

Almost 400 dead at Water Festival stampede

2010-11-23T16:45:00.005+07:00

Very sad day for Cambodians. As if their lives are not hard enough, the rare chance ordinary Khmers - many from the countryside who come to Phnom Penh to watch the annual boat race - had a chance to rejoice and celebrate, they met with tragedy. The Guardian reported a policeman saying most of those killed were not people from Phnom Penh, but from the provinces who wanted to walk on the new Rainbow Bridge over the Tonle Sap, close to the festivities.

Fortunately none of the Bloom women was on the bridge but they were seriously depressed today when I spoke to them on the phone. I told them to take the day off. (I live in Siem Reap, so am far from the tragedy but our workshop is in Phnom Penh). Later I heard Kamhut's father and brother were injured on a bus going home from Phnom Penh to her province in Kampong Thom. The bus had got into an accident. Four million people were in Phnom Penh for the weekend celebrations but the organisers had only expected 2. Phnom Penh has about 1.5 million residents.

I called Kamhut and as usual she sounded happy and cheery but when I told her to take as much time away from work as she needs and to call me if she needs anything, she started crying. Kamhut is only 23. We are all hoping her family will be ok.

We don't yet know what caused the panic. The New York Daily News reported that a witness has said the stampede started when 10 people in the crowd fainted, causing others around them to panic. In an earlier Guardian article, a doctor said the two major causes of death were suffocation and electrocution.

Sean Ngu, an Australian who was visiting family and friends in Cambodia, told the BBC. "There were too many people on the bridge and then both ends were pushing. This caused a sudden panic. The pushing caused those in the middle to fall to the ground, then [get] crushed. Panic started and at least 50 people jumped in the river. People tried to climb on to the bridge, grabbing and pulling [electric] cables which came loose and electrical shock caused more deaths."

It also seems the police did not handle the situation well. CNN reported a Phnom Penh Post journalist as saying police began firing water cannons onto a bridge to an island in the center of a river in an effort to get them to continue moving across the bridge. "That just caused complete and utter panic," he told CNN in a telephone interview. A friend who has lived in Phnom Penh for many years told me that by the end of the Water Festival celebrations (when the tragedy happened), many policemen are drunk and so security can be lax.

I watched the news on Cambodian TV and took these images off Bayon TV. You can see the human crush.

It was reported that two-thirds of the dead were women. The injured were laid down on the streets.

Those who were injured were taken to Calmette Hospital. The hospital could not cope, so people were laid down on the floor.

The dead were covered with white sheets at the hospital.

From another Cambodian news channel. The police were at the site today. You can see crowds at the scene.

This is the bridge.

Strewn with slippers.

Interview with the man in charge

Bayon TV organised a donation drive for the victims. They were taking phone calls from donors and you can see this man on the right holding out a USD20 note to donate.

The Cambodian government has said it would compensate 5 million rielsm or USD1250 to the families of each of the dead and 1 million riels each to those injured. This man is announcing who donated and how much and thanking them. People were donating whatever they could. There were many for 20,000 riels, or just USD5, and from as far away as Banteay Manchey.

I want to donate too and will have a collection box for victims at the Bloom shop. But how can I ensure whatever money me and my team and our friends raise do reach the victims? It sounds cynical but I am adamant the money we contribute does not do go to somebody's retirement fund.

The only thing I can think about is to find victims myself and hand the money over. So this is the plan. First we collect the money, then I will get the Bloom team in Phnom Penh to ask around so they find people in their provinces who were affected by the tragedy and we give them the money ourselves--directly. It may be a long shot, but maybe not, because people in the provinces are tightly-knit. I'm sure we will manage to find the right people to give the money to.

Would you kill your mother?

2010-11-15T20:33:00.002+07:00

Just read this shocking article in India's tehelka.com.

"Maariyamma is likely to be killed by her children because they cannot afford her. They will give her a loving oil bath. Several glasses of coconut water. A mouthful of mud. Perhaps a poison injection. She is just one of many old parents in Tamil Nadu dying in this way. But no one blinks at these ritual murders." [...]

"When 65-year-old Maariyamma suspected this might happen to her too, she moved out of her son’s house two years ago. “I’m not well enough to live on my own, but it is better than being killed by them,” she says. Amazingly, there is no bitterness in her voice. Or anger. “They’re struggling hard to take care of their own children,” says Maariyamma, of her sons." [...]

“When the milk is being poured, the nose is held tight,” says [farmer] Dorairaj. This ‘milk treatment’ is often preceded by starvation. The household stops serving the parent solid food. “When milk is poured uninterruptedly into the mouth, it goes into the respiratory track. A starving person cannot withstand even a moment’s suffocation,” says 60-year-old Paul Raj, coordinator of a district elders’ welfare association."

Incredibly tragic. It is so common that the practice even has a name - thalaikoothal in Tamil.

As an Asian who grew up with the concept of filial piety, I find this very shocking. In Singapore, we are taught from young that our parents sacrifice to bring us up. So when they are old, it is our turn, as children, to take care of them. Singapore even has a Maintenance of Parents Act, enacted in 1995. It is a legal requirement for adult children to look after their parents, and some parents have indeed sued their children for "parent support".

But Singapore is a rich country. We do not face the same problems as the very poor in India, where according to government statistics, more than 17,500 farmers killed themselves between 2002 and 2006 every year. (Read more on wikipedia). (I wonder if thalaikoothal happens in desperately poor parts of Cambodia at all?)

One way of looking at thalaikoothal is it's mercy killing. As one Doctor Death told the Telheka reporter: “I am not killing anybody who may have a longer life. It is done only in the last and final stage of one’s life. Why should they suffer in poverty?”

So there is no debate about euthanasia in the Virudhunagar district in Tamil Nadu, the way there is in our countries, where poverty is not a reason to kill your parents or loved ones. I googled to find other cultures that kill the aged among them and found this:

Aged people who have outlived their usefulness and whose life is a burden both to themselves and their relatives are put to death by stabbing or strangulation. This is customarily done at the request of the individual concerned, but not always so. Aged people who are a hindrance on the trail are abandoned.
—Antoon A. Leenaars, on the Labrador Inuit, in Suicide in Canada (1916) Quoted in wikipedia/wiki/Inuit).

I was once told American Indians pinch the noses of babies when they want them to stop crying. The babies soon learn crying makes them suffocate. The Indians do this because the babies' cries alerted animals or enemies to their presence. I am reminded of this story as I think about how sometimes people do things that seem strange to us, but they do it because they have to survive.

Sambo the elephant may be evicted from her Wat Phnom home

2010-11-15T10:21:00.005+07:00

Very sad news. My friend Mariam Arthur has been working hard to find Sambo the elephant (the only one in Phnom Penh) a permanent home. The 50 year old elephant survived the war, Khmer Rouge, only to face yet another challenge. There does not seem to be a place for him in the modern city that is Phnom Penh. Elephants live till a hundred so Sambo will need a place to stay for the next 50 years.

Sambo's owner Sinsorn was told on the 11 November that Sambo must leave Wat Phnom and never return because people complain Sambo disrupts traffic.

Mariam feels the best place for Sambo is the Royal Palace. Sambo needs a safe place to sleep at night. I was horrified to read this from Mariam: "Not only is this instability bad for her health, she is susceptible to nighttime raids by men trying to cut pieces of her for their magic power."

Mariam has written to various Cambodian authorities. On Nov 12, she received a rejection letter from the Royal Palace. (To see all correspondence, please visit this facebook page.)

The most urgent thing now is food for Sambo. "Sambo's only source of income for food was by giving rides at Wat Phnom. Therefore, after she finishes today's food supply, she will no longer have any food," Mariam writes.

If you have been touched by Sambo in some way, as I have (I attended her 50th birthday party and was moved to tears by the gentle animal), please consider giving Sambo money for food until she and her owner/caretaker Sinsorn is able to find a way to earn money for food. You can contact Mariam at theroadgypsy@gmail.com.

If you doubt Sinsorn's love for Sambo, please read this touching story of how Sinsorn met Sambo as a child and man and elephant were reunited after the war. There seems to be genuine affection between the two. You can read it here at ~~somanorodom.wordpress.com.~~ www.sea-globe.com. (I have just been informed by the editor of Southeast Asia Globe that the blogger i originally credited had plagiarised Grzegorz Ostrega's original story for the Globe. Shame on you somanorodom. You give all bloggers a bad name and shame on me for assuming you are a blogger like me, writing things from your heart.)

If you have any good ideas on how to help Sambo, please do let me know.

Before you pay to volunteer abroad, think of the harm you might do

2010-11-14T11:07:00.015+07:00

Just read this excellent article criticising voluntourism, "Before you pay to volunteer abroad, think of the harm you might do" by the UK's Observer newspaper, republished in the Guardian.

"Insiders call them guilt trips. All those teenagers heading off on gap years, fired up with enthusiasm. Those middle-aged professionals spending a small fortune to give something back to society. And those new retirees determined to spend their downtime spreading a little happiness.

"Now the flipside of these well-intentioned dreams has been laid bare in an incendiary report by South African and British academics which focuses on "Aids orphan tourism" in southern Africa, but challenges many cherished beliefs.

"The study reveals that short-term volunteer projects can do more harm than good. Wealthy tourists prevent local workers from getting much-needed jobs, especially when they pay to volunteer; hard-pressed institutions waste time looking after them and money upgrading facilities; and abused or abandoned children form emotional attachments to the visitors, who increase their trauma by disappearing back home. "The more I delved into it, the more disturbing I found it," said Amy Norman, one of the researchers."

The article notes, in Cambodia, orphanages are proliferating - the numbers have increased by 65% in just 3 years. And an official study found just a quarter of children in these so-called orphanages have actually lost both parents. As I wrote here and here, why would people work when they can get money for free? Many of the charities in Cambodia are run by entrepreneurs, out to make money from other people's misery. And there is a lot of money to be made, as long as there are kind but unthinking people who think simply donating money or even their time, makes a positive difference.

"The desire to engage with the world is laudable, as is the desire to volunteer," the Observer article concludes. "But we need to tread more carefully. Unless we have time and transferable skills, we might do better to travel, trade and spend money in developing countries. The rapid growth of "voluntourism" is like the rapid growth of the aid industry: salving our own consciences without fully examining the consequences for the people we seek to help. All too often, our heartfelt efforts to help only make matters worse."

This is why I set Bloom up as a social enterprise - a business with social aims - and not an NGO. If people need jobs, give them jobs, not handouts. Why is it so many Westerners are quick to note this in developed countries, telling me handouts have failed the aborigines in Australia, or the first nations in Canada, criticising the welfare system and welfare mentality, but yet persist in doing the very same thing in developing countries? Why is it so many tourists tell me they'd rather buy a book from a handicapped man than to give him money, a donation, because they respect him for working rather than begging, yet would rather support a charity that gives handouts, than to support a socially-minded business which is trying, just like the handicapped man, to be self-reliant?

(Is it because people do not trust businesses and prefer to place their trust in a charity, where the very name "NGO" or "charity" or "orphanage" is meant to dignify the organisation and its practices? People should realise a name is but a name and just as there are good and bad businesses, there are good and bad charities.)

At the very high level, let's not kid ourselves, foreign aid operates as foreign policy. Handouts in exchange for business concessions, or access to prized industries. Why do you think China "donates" almost a billion dollars to this country? And this September essay in counterpunch.org points out "Former National Security Advisor in the Clinton White House and failed nominee to head the CIA, Anthony “Tony” Lake is now Executive Director of the United Nations Children Fund, UNICEF." The writer makes an interesting claim: "From CIA to UNICEF? The charge that every person who has headed a major western aid agency has an intelligence background has been proven time and time again." One day I will try to find out if this is true.

Unless we get involved in politics, there is little ordinary people like you and me can do about how our government spends its money, how much and how it allocates foreign aid. But, as individuals, we *can* do something about the way our money affects other people. We can and should be more careful in how we spend our money. We should be more thoughtful.

I found out the Singapore government has a policy for every school-going child to go on at least one overseas "mission" by the time he or she leaves secondary school. It is called CIP, or Community Involvement Programme, and there is big money to be made. There are travel companies, or agents, that charge the schools a lot of money (but since the money is there, and paid for by the government--taxpayers, really--who care?) to organise voluntourism trips. These agents in Singapore then outsource the organising of the Cambodian trip to Cambodia-based groups, which then get a little of the money.

My Singaporean expat friends and I know well that, in general, these trips benefit more the Singapore students than they do the Cambodian ones. I say "in general", because now and again, a particular Cambodian person will benefit much, from sponsored studies to his or her family being sponsored financially for a while. A village could also have a bonanza if the students come up with enough cash for a bridge, toilets, or road. However, in general and in most cases, flying in and out of a country, staying just 4 or 5 days, spending half a day with this group, one day with another organisation, leaves no long term benefit for the NGO or the people they help.

I was disturbed when I first learnt in 2006 about the international schools in Singapore where students have to raise funds to pay for their volunteer trip. They raise about SGD$2000, each, for their trip to build houses and paint schools and what not. I had thought at the time - that's a lot of money in Cambodia. Would not that US$1300 or US$1400, or whatever the exchange rate is now, create more benefit for the Cambodian villagers if they had hired Cambodian workers to build the structures? That creates jobs, a sense of purpose and usefulness, and more than that - Cambodian men and women are probably far better at construction than kids at an international school and can do the job more efficiently and maybe even spend the money more efficiently, if you can ensure accountability (please don't tell me that's a big "if" - I know of many success cases from my friends Deborah Groves' NGO Helping Hands and Dale Edmond's NGO riverkidsproject.)

When I pointed this out to the head of a Cambodia-based NGO, one of the beneficiaries of this "outreach" programme, she said to me, it is for the students as much as the Khmers. She remembers how one troubled American teenager who came to Cambodia to build houses for the poor went away a changed person. She says these trips have lasting impact on the volunteers. I suppose the ultimate hope is that some of these students may remember enough of the trip to one day make policies that would help the world's poor.

I certainly hope so. I have to make clear I am not against all NGOs because I have seen how some have made a positive impact in the country (I mentioned my favourite 2 earlier). What I'd just like is for people to pay more attention to how they help other people - to be more selective and creative in how they contribute they time and efforts.

Because at the end of the day, I have seen how simple voluntourism can have lasting, negative, consequences for Cambodia: through creating false charities, keeping the country's people poor, promoting corruption, creating more performers and actors and snakeoil salesmen than skilled workers, subsidising the charity with your free labour and money, and creating a false economy with propped up jobs, with salaries so inflated by donations they would never compete or survive in the real world.

Singapore in company with Rwanda and Cambodia

2010-11-09T13:10:00.001+07:00

I just read this post on www.pressrun.net which described how Singapore’s Home Affairs Minister and Law Minister K Shanmugam, speaking at Columbia University, said that the Singapore media is more trusted by Singaporeans than the US media is by Americans.

He mentioned this in response to the 2010 Press Freedom Index by Reporters without Borders which ranked Singapore 136th out of 178 countries.

If you look at the Gallup Poll , the one quoted by Mr Shanmugam, Singapore is in good company. Other top-ranking countries whose people believe the media include Rwanda (86% of the people trusts the media - or so they said and/or so it was reported), Philippines (75%), Cambodia (72%), Niger (72%), Botswana and Tanzania (69%, the same as Singapore). Who wouldn't want to be in this elite group?

Caning for overstaying tourist visa in Singapore

2010-11-08T16:05:00.000+07:00

Just read this on wsj online: US man faces caning in Singapore for overstaying.

"Kamari Kenyada Charlton, 37 years old, a U.S. citizen born in the Bahamas, has been charged by the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority of Singapore for overstaying his three-month tourist visa by 169 days. He has been in custody since Sept. 1, when he was arrested at Singapore's Changi Airport trying to leave the country."

In Cambodia, you are charged US$5 a day for every day you overstay, no questions asked.

Singapore sometimes slaps on a fine but when and why we do not know. "A relative of Mr. Kamari's wife who overstayed in Singapore for 194 days, but settled the issue by paying a fine of 500 Singaporean dollars (US$382). Mr. Kamari's lawyer, M. Ravi, said he plans to take the case to Singapore's High Court on grounds of discrimination, contending Mr. Kamari faces different treatment."

At least Cambodia is consistent.

Bloom Garden Guesthouse website and the business of commission

2010-11-06T20:48:00.003+07:00

You can visit the site here at bloomguesthouse.com. We've had one reservation via the website already! Thanks to Singaporean friends, Jean and Fern, for the great website!

We've had a steady stream of visitors since we opened 2 months ago and one guest, Jenica, is returning to stay with us, this time with her parents. Yay! I'm glad we're getting returning guests - it means we must be doing something right!

It has been slow going, though, and I've been told it takes 6 months to 1 year before a guesthouse really takes off, cos it takes time for people to know you exist. It may take us longer, since I refuse to play the commission game. We will not pay tuktuk drivers commission to take people to our guesthouse and to the Bloom bag shop. Since opening the guesthouse, I am learning so much about how tourism works in Siem Reap.

For instance, there are guesthouses that pay bus companies and tuktuk drivers to take tourists the moment they pick them up from the border towns directly to their guesthouses. Then there are guesthouses that let tuktuk drivers take customers to their establishments at inflated prices. So the tuktuk driver may tell a tourist that XYZ guesthouse charges $30 a room a night, when the price is really $15. The guesthouse lets the tuktuk driver keep the difference ($15 in this case). It costs the guesthouse nothing - the owner gets his $15 and the tuktuk driver, whatever he can get away with.

I was amazed to find this out - don't tourists learn what the real prices are and won't they be angry when they do? My Cambodian friends laugh. How can they? How can the tourist find out? They only stay for 2 or 3 nights. Nobody volunteers the real rate. They won't know the real price unless they talk to some other tourist, but this rarely happens.

In fact, I was told by well-meaning Cambodian friends that this is what I have to do, if I want to make it in the guesthouse business. Otherwise I just won't be able to compete with the other guesthouses.

I keep explaining, patiently, that this is not how I want to do business. It make take me a longer time to get our name out, and to get customers, but I think about the long term, not the short term. It was the way with Bloom bags, now more than 4 years old, and it will be the way with Bloom Guesthouse.

I explain to my Cambodian friends that I want to be in business for a long time, taking time to build a good company. And in business, your word must mean something. You cannot cheat customers and you must be honest and have integrity because, if you are dishonest, word will spread and you will start to lose customers. What is the point of ruining your reputation just for a quick buck?

Too many people here think short term, just take a tourist to the cleaners while they can, without thinking of the longer term consequences. An Australian friend explained to a group of young university-going Cambodians that because of the scams, many Australians she knows will not return to Cambodia.

The commission business extends also to tour leaders. I was stunned the other day when a Westerner came into the new Bloom bag shop in Siem Reap. He fingered a bag, asking how much it was, and saying it was very well-made. Then he said "I am a tour leader. I can bring you many customers. But you pay me commission."

He was young, tattooed (not that it means anything, but I mention it as an identifier - in case someone reading this recognises him as his/her tour leader) and had a Russian or East European accent. It took me about 5 seconds before I understood what was going on. Instinctively I said no, we do not pay commission. Disappointed, he tried again, "My customers will spend a lot of money in your shop. You pay me a little commission." I repeated "we do not pay commission" and he left.

Tour leaders even get commission from restaurants. I was having dinner at the Soup Dragon with friends one night when this British man from Plymouth (as he told my friends), a tour leader said he was bringing in 24 people (who were right now at a cultural show, while he did his negotiating with the restaurant in advance).

I heard him say to the Khmer manageress "you pay me this (figure - I did not know what it was) and I think it is fair. Otherwise you will not have 24 customers. This way, you win, and I win." I was so disgusted I could not even bring myself to be friendly with him when he came over to our table for some small talk while waiting for his group to arrive.

I know this happens with the tuktuks, but I was honestly surprised to see Westerners behaving in the same way - accepting kickbacks as part of the job. It shows just how naive I am - even though I've lived in Cambodia for almost 5 years. I am sure many tourists to Cambodia are similarly naive.

I'd already had the experience with tuktuks. One day, I had a call from a tuktuk driver whose customers were trying to find the new Bloom shop (now opposite the provincial hospital on the same street as the U-Care Pharmacy, round the corner from the new D's Books). They had bought bags from us previously and returned to get some more.

After they left, the tuk tuk driver returned to ask for a commission. He did not believe Kagna that we do not pay commission and asked to speak with me. I repeated we do not. Angry, he said he would not take any more customers to our shop. Fine, I said, that's alright with us. Indignant, Kagna and Bora told him, you did not take them anyway, they *asked* you to take them here. In that sense, *we* helped you get a customer. But of course he did not see things that way.

Subsequently, I found out all the big shops in Siem Reap pay commission - to tuktuk drivers, tour guides, travel agents - whoever makes the reference. My tuktuk driver told me the apsara dinner shows pay 50% commission to drivers. 50%!

The going rate is 20%. But with so much competition, the stakes are high. One very large, expensive, workshop/shop in Siem Reap which makes its own handicrafts had a lottery last year, specially for tour guides. They stood to win a motorcycle. This year, it is a car.

I refuse to be part of this, even though I know it will cost us business. But that's fine. Bloom customers are not run-of-the-mill shoppers anyway. Neither are they sheep-people, following some tour leader, guide, tuktuk driver to whereever he or she takes them. In my experience, Bloom customers are independent-minded, sincere and honest, and genuinely care about people and the planet. They fully deserve my respect. No way will I disrespect them by making them pay for someone else's kickbacks.

So I made this sign and stuck it on the wall outside our shop:

I had met people from the two tour companies mentioned who told me they do not condone this practise of accepting kickbacks. I'm so glad not all are like that.

A customer asked if this sign made us controversial. I guess it may, I said, but the truth is the truth. It did occur to me that our beautiful wall may get defaced, though (will post pics soon - it's so beautiful tourists take photos of it, even pose with it!)

Panama court overturns US tycoon's will to leave $50m to poor children

2010-10-04T07:41:00.000+07:00

- says it should go to his millionaire family instead. Read full story in the Guardian.co.uk.

The handicapped bicycle repair man

2010-10-01T14:12:00.000+07:00

Lois and I cycled to the Old Market today. Along the way, we decided to get some air pumped and the chain checked. Lucky us! We found this man and his son in a small lane just beside the Angkor National Museum.

I don't know if you can see it from this photo, but the Cambodian man is a double amputee.

This photo makes it clearer. He has these plastic legs, which an NGO provided. It was in 1983 that he lost his legs. He was 16 years old, a boy soldier, when he stepped on a land mine. He is now 43 years old and has taught himself to fix bicycles. He was also teaching his son what to do, so his son can learn the trade, although he said he'd prefer it if his son could do something else as you don't make a lot of money repairing bicycles.

He is usually under the big palm tree just beyond. It is in the lane beside the museum. He moved today because there is a fair going on at the museum but usually he is under the tree.

Father and son. The man has 5 children and he and his son have very good chemistry. The son obviously loves his dad, which I take to mean he is a good father. To oil and tighten the chains and pump air, the man asked for only 1000 riels (25cents US), which is the Cambodian price. I was very happy he did not try to cheat us, as Lois is obviously a foreigner. I gave him a dollar, which I was prepared to do even if he'd asked, because I admire and respect him for earning a living instead of begging. Having said that, I stopped my bike on the way back just to give a very old man money because he looked so destitute. I think there are circumstances where a person has no choice but to beg, for instance, when you are very old and cannot find employment.

The boy's eyes widened and both father and son said thank you. I promised I would send all our bicycles from the guesthouse to him for repair. Lois also gave his son some money as she was touched he did not try to cheat us. See, it pays to be honest, Cambodian merchants!

Lois' visit and Bloom Garden Guesthouse

2010-10-01T12:57:00.003+07:00

I'm writing this as I sit on the terrace at Bloom Garden Guesthouse. My Australian friend Lois just left for Preah Vihear after spending a night here. Lois has an NGO in Preah Vihear, at the Thai border, and where Thailand and Cambodia are fighting over the cliff-side temple. The young women are given free education and lodgings at a dormitory, and this year, four of them qualified for university in Phnom Penh. They are the first in their family, if not the entire village, to have this opportunity, which Lois hopes will change their lives and those of the community.

This is Lois, at the guesthouse lobby, proudly showing off the miniature Christening dresses that she and a friend taught some of the women at Preah Vihear to make. The miniatures are beautifully made - I had a close look and the workmanship is impeccable. The women are paid a fair wage and can earn up to US$120 a month, says Lois.

This is what these tiny dresses look like. Lois tells me there are some 300 miniature clubs around the world, so potentially a large market for these doll-like dresses. They are made from imported French lace, so it is not something the Cambodians will be able to copy. Copying is a big problem for those of us involved in product design and manufacture in Cambodia, especially for those of us who believe in using locally made and sourced materials--like me, cos of the carbon footprint and also to create as many jobs as possible for the local community. It is not easy juggling business decisions and one's principles and I am glad I have not caved in yet, unlike Bono, who decided to tackle African poverty by moving production base to China.

I got to know Lois when she contacted me for an interview for her PhD thesis on social entrepreneurship (SE) and we've had many interesting discussions on SE models (I refuse donations but Lois thinks it's still possible to accept donations and be an SE. I'll write about these discussions separately because they are interesting.)

When Lois checked out, she actually paid US$20 for the room, instead of US$15 that we asked for, as she said $20 is the price it should be! My friend Sun also said I had underpriced the rooms when she visited, but because we are new, I decided on special rates. (See why I love my friends? They're all people with a sense of fairness).

Anyway, this is the view I'm looking at while typing this at the guesthouse terrace.

I love the open space and the view of the trees and the sky. Because Singapore is one of the densest countries in the world, it is hard to get a view unblocked by tall buildings, so I always appreciate it when I see a large expanse of sky. And of cos the breeze is nice too.

Yesterday, one of our water lilies bloomed, so I took the chance to photograph it. So pink and pretty!

Here is the lone lily, underneath the orchids. Lois and I had breakfast here and it is very peaceful and quiet. The other day while I was sitting there with a friend, a tiny bird hopped by.

And these are the orchids.

Private water raiding threatens Angkor's temples built on sand

2010-09-28T21:37:00.002+07:00

From today's guardian.co.uk:

"Unchecked development, and the widespread, unregulated pumping of groundwater throughout Siem Reap city, has raised concerns that the temples, including the world's largest religious monument, Angkor Wat, could crack or crumble if too much water is drained away."

Funny, I was just talking to my landlord about this. He says the water table in Siem Reap is being destroyed by the big hotels. (I was told by one contractor that a 5 star hotel in Siem Reap is pumping water from a well that is 150m deep).

This photo shows how low the water is, at the Siem Reap river. The river runs through the town. This photo was taken a couple of weeks ago, during the current rainy season.

The water level is low because, my landlord tells me, the water is being diverted to Baray area ("baray" means reservoir in Khmer) for the farmers. I have no idea if this is true. (Contrast this with last year's floods).

In the Guardian article, Peou Hang, deputy director of water management for the Cambodian government's Angkor conservation body (Apsara), was quoted as saying the pumping was unregulated, and almost impossible to police.

"We cannot [find out] ... the exact quantity they extract every day. I ask them, but they do not want to answer our questions, so we have to make an estimation."

But why is it so difficult to tabulate just how much water the city is using? Why can't each hotel/household be forced to install a meter? I wasn't sure if you can measure water usage from a well (as opposed to piped city water), but a quick google check tells me that you can.

This article from Oregonstate.edu shows you how:

"Groundwater is an important resource in Oregon. As more people depend on groundwater, some water tables around the State are dropping, threatening their water supplies. State law requires that groundwater be managed as a renewable resource, and that water tables do not drop permanently.

To assess the size of the groundwater resource and monitor the effects of development and drought, State law requires an aquifer test on every well with a water right. Part of that test is to measure the depth of water in the well. We'll discuss three methods of measuring water levels in this publication."

This being Cambodia, Mr Poeu's point about it being difficult to police stands true--with or without the meters. After all, this is a country where policemen are paid a pitiful salary--around US$40, I was told.

At the very least, though, the big hotels in Siem Reap should be made accountable, as they consume and waste huge amounts of water. Here are figures from another popular holiday destination, Goa: "In terms of water requirement, low-budget hotels needed 573 litres per room per day. Luxury hotels, in contrast, needed 1,335 litres per room per day (or 2.33 times), as they have huge landscaped areas, swimming pools, two or three restaurants, and other facilities." (see choike.org).

Kingdom Breweries: Cambodia's New Craft Beer

2010-09-28T19:16:00.003+07:00

Here in Cambodia, you can buy a number of beers from around the region. Besides the Cambodian national beer, Angkor ("My country, my beer", and the one we favour), you can buy Beer Lao (the national beer of Lao), Anchor (pronounced "An-cher" in Cambodia. If you say "anchor", chances are you will get an Angkor instead) and Tiger (both owned by Singapore's Asia Pacific Breweries). More recently, we tried this really awful one, called Zorok and made in Vietnam.

You can also get expensive Asahi (Japan) which at one time was the same price as Angkor. The Asahi we used to buy was made in Thailand, but then sometime last year, they stopped bringing it in, so you could only buy the Asahi that was made in Japan, so much more expensive. Why is the Thai made Asahi no longer available in Cambodia? Who knows? Somebody not paying enough to the right person? The market wasn't big enough? (hard to believe)

Anyway, Time.com this week featured Kingdom Breweries, a German start-up in Phnom Penh:

"Cambodia might not be counted among the world's most eminent beer-producing countries, but change is brewing. From its premises on the banks of the Tonle Sap, Phnom Penh's newest boutique brewer, Kingdom Breweries, is gearing up to give local brands a run for their riel — using only the best German and Czech hops, premium German malt and top-quality water to produce its flagship pilsner.

"Can I offer you one?" CEO Peter Brongers asks, proffering an ice-cool bottle of the first batch ever brewed. "Some of the locals might think it's too bitter, but I think it's perfect."

You'll probably think so too, if you like the crisp, light and dry style of European lager. Kingdom's bearded German brewmaster Peter Haupenthal is hoping to win the locals over with his product's body and consistency — important attributes in a town where microbrew is popular but varies wildly in quality, with poor heads, soapy textures and artificial colors (bright red or acid green anyone?) being not uncommon. After plenty of experimentation and patience, Kingdom has only recently arrived at the final recipe that it hopes will educate the market. "Unfortunately, making a good beer takes time," Haupenthal says, "and we can't speed up the process."

The fledgling brand will officially launch on Oct. 1, and visitors are welcome to observe the production process. Tours of the brewery can be arranged and include a chat with Haupenthal and a drink in the on-site bar, with its leather upholstered bar stools, studded Chesterfield couch and hardwood counter.

"When we launch in the market, we want to establish Kingdom as one of Southeast Asia's leading boutique breweries," says Brongers. Looks like Cambodia could finally be taking its place on the world's beer map. See kingdombreweries.com for more.

Cambodia: Trade Union leaders at risk

2010-09-26T10:49:00.001+07:00

Please support Amnesty International's call for action for safety for Cambodia's trade unionists (you can click here to send the email via Amnesty UK:

"Dear Sirs

I am writing to express my concern for the safety of several union leaders and activists, including Ath Thorn, Morn Nhim and Tola Moeun, who face possible arrest and legal action as a result of their legitimate work in protecting workers rights in Cambodia.

I call on the authorities to ensure that union leaders, activists and strikers are not subject to harassment, intimidation or threat of arrest and legal action for exercising their right to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.

I call on the authorities to guarantee the rights of all human rights defenders, including union members and activists, in accordance with international human rights treaties.

In particular, I remind you of Cambodia’s obligations under the International Labour Organisation core conventions 87 and 98, which Cambodia ratified in 1999, which guarantees the right to strike, to organise and to collectively bargain.

I would appreciate a response to my appeal.

Please select a recipient(s)

Sar Kheng - Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior
Ministry of Interior
No 75 Norodom Blvd
Khan Chamkamon, Phnom Penh
Kingdom of Cambodia
Fax: 00855 23 212 708 / 00855 23 726 052

Ith Sam Heng - Minister of Social Affairs, Labour, Vocational Training and Youth Rehabilitation
No 788B Preah Monivong Blvd Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Fax: 00855 23 726 086

His Excellency Mr. Nambora Hor - Ambassador
The Royal Embassy of Cambodia,
64 Brondesbury Park,
Willesden Green,
London

NW6 7AT
Fax: 020 8451 7594

Bono's foundation gave just 0.12% of money to charity

2010-09-25T14:44:00.001+07:00

Figures from the 2008 tax returns of ONE foundation, the singer's organisation, show it received $14,993,873 in donations from philanthropists in 2008, of which just $184,732 was distributed to three charities. So what happened to the rest? More than $8 million was spent on executive and employee salaries.

In addition Edun, Bono’s fashion label, shifted some of its production base from Africa to China. Edun had position itself as an “ethical” fashion house that was set up to aleviate poverty in … Africa.

What a hypocrite.

Read the full story on blogs.telegraph.co.uk - "Make Bono History".

I posted this on my facebook yesterday and got some good comments from friends:

Mara: "We must ask these so called charities and NGOs what percentage of the actual $ go to their intended causes."

Steve: "Why don't we see stories like this about NGOs in Cambodia being held accountable? Maybe due to a professional courtesy from the local government? You know, like the way that sharks don't eat lawyers!"

Caron: "Do not donate to NGO's based in Cambodia unless you've done a lot of research into their funds accountability! Corruption is rife! NGO's are a joke! You want to make a difference? Do it in your own town first."

Diana Saw: "I am so glad my friends know the truth. This is why I dislike many NGOs - especially after living in Cambodia and learning these NGOs exist for the staff, and not for the people they are supposed to be helping."

Steve: "Even some (many perhaps?) large NGOs that do some really good and important work here operate without a level of integrity and accountability that would be acceptable in their own home countries. So much for setting an example, demonstrating leadership and investing in innovation. Instead there are massive exports of mediocrity and greed in much too high a proportion that come along with the good stuff."

TEDx Talk

2010-09-24T23:47:00.001+07:00

I'm a fan of TED, you know, that "Ideas worth spreading" website with sometimes brilliant speeches by really interesting people. Don't know it? Check it out here: Ted.com. I guarantee you will find an interesting topic/speech. I like this one.

Anyway, there is an extension to TED, called "TEDx", "a program of local, self-organised events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience." There is a TEDx Singapore.

I was asked to speak at one of the events, which is happening tomorrow. It's a shame I cannot make the trip home to Singapore at this time. I can't go because as you know, I have just opened a guesthouse and am currently hosting four guests. In addition, the Bloom shop in Siem Reap is moving end of the month as our lease runs out. We are moving not far from the Old Market, but moving is a Big Deal, because there are contract details to be sorted and renovations to be made.

Anyway, this is the talk happening tomorrow. It is a global event.

"The Future We Will Make"- The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and us TEDx organisers have teamed up for a very special 'live' global event hosted by TED curator Chris Anderson. Featuring talks by some of the world's most inspired thinkers and doers, we will look at what changes have taken place in the last decade, and what more needs to be done to ensure the health and well-being of future generations. On Saturday 25 September, we will bring you the stream of this entire event + live speakers to bring this theme to local relevance."

The organisers were looking for ideas, experiences and endeavours related to Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). And if you know Bloom, you'd know we are pursuing the same MDGs. I have to say it is just a coincidence, though -- I never started out wanting to fulfil some United Nations goal (in my ignorance, I only learnt about the goals this year, when a Dutch filmmaker who filmed Bloom told me how he got funding from his government just by quoting the MDGs). Very simply, my goals for Bloom are based on justice and fairness and equality, which I supposed are the same principles as those supporting the MDGs.

This is how my project Bloom shares many, if not all, of the MDGs:

- We alleviate poverty by giving very poor Cambodians good, fair paying, jobs with 28 days paid holidays a year (Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger).

- We aim to help single mothers and women in general (Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women)

- Their kids can go to school (Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education)

- We have 3 months maternity leave, health insurance and a great working environment (where essentially the team manages itself without me), which I guess contributes to achieving Goal 4: Reduce child mortality rate; Goal 5: Improve maternal health and Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.

- And of course, we make use of recycled and/or organic materials in our products - please see bloomcambodia.com for our products (Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability)

- And Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development. Bloom is a Singaporean founded/funded, Cambodian managed and operated, social enterprise. We have found customers and supporters all over the world, including Amnesty International, Care International, and many private organisations, big and small. In fact, we just completed an order for 1800 bags to an Australian furniture shop who are using our recycled bags as in-store carriers.

Bloom's motto is "Help the poor, help the planet", which I guess covers it.

If you are interested in this event, you can "attend" it 'live' online, tomorrow on www.livestream.com/tedx. Don't you just love the Internet?

Casino operator moves into Cambodia; property company pulls out

2010-09-21T17:55:00.000+07:00

"Queenco Leisure, the hotel and casino operator, is moving into Cambodia.

"It today signed a joint-venture deal with Paradise Investment to open a hotel, casino, restaurant and karaoke premises.

"This is Queenco's first move into Asia, though it has businesses in Greece, Belgrade and Bucharest. It will own 70% of the Cambodian venture, which will initially be based at the Holiday Palace Hotel in Sihanoukville in Cambodia..."

Read the full story on thisislondon.co.uk

Meanwhile, another London-listed company has not fared too well with its Cambodia gamble. Incorporated in the Cayman Islands, JSM Indochina

"had almost no revenue for the first six months, receiving only $263,485 from rental income, according to a report filed with the London Stock Exchange late last week.

"Its expenses included $7.6 million in fees to managers, consultants and directors, and a $7.1 “impairment loss” of cash pledged with banks, according to the interim statement.

"The London AIM-listed company is currently selling nine properties across Cambodia and Vietnam."

Full story in the Phnom Penh Post.

Sun's visit

2010-09-18T12:22:00.001+07:00

On Monday I went to pick my friend Sun up from the Siem Reap International Airport. Here she is coming out of the airport - she travels light! I was so happy to see her!

Sun was impressed and surprised with how modern the airport was. Like many people, she had assumed because Cambodia is a third world country, everything must be shabby. She was also surprised at how large the houses in Cambodia can be - like the guesthouse we rented. She asked how much it would sell for in Cambodia. I have no idea but the landlady said she was offered over USD1 million for her house and land (60m by 70m). Sun could not believe it.

I met Sun at my first job - she was the designer and I, deputy editor, at the magazine we worked at. I've known her for more than 11 years now! She is very talented and has lived in London for almost a decade, working as a designer. She was telling me how expensive Singapore has become. She had to lug home a Nespresso (some kind of trendy coffee machine) for her family because it cost SGD300 in the UK and SGD650 in Singapore. A branded handbag was 50% more in Singapore than in the UK. What's happened to Singapore? Singapore used to be the place to go for electronics and designer goods, and the UK was known as "Rip-off Britain".

Well, partly the pound has dropped. But the other thing is that goods in Singapore usually arrive through designated distributors (middlemen), which take their cut. In the UK, you can now buy things through Amazon, direct from the maker.

Sorry for the digression, this was supposed to be about Sun and her visit.

I took her to the Old Market to do a bit of shopping after she went to the temples alone (at USD20 a day entrance fee, it is not something I can afford to do often). This nice young lady showed us how to use a kroma (traditional Cambodian scarf that has multiple uses). Sun is wearing it the traditional way for women.

Here she is with the kroma on her head using her girly iPhone, studded with pink crystals. Very surreal - who'd have imagined a young woman to be wearing a kroma on her head and using an iPhone at the same time!

Sun has a kind heart and bought two books ($5 each) from Khim, aka "Jerry". Khim is a 16 year old Cambodian boy who lost one leg due to a car accident in Phnom Penh. He told me he was compensated with USD2000 by the driver of the "big car" but had to give $500 to the police. I asked why and he said it was because the police stopped the car from driving off. He then spent about a thousand at the hospital for the operation and to "buy blood". He has been selling books around Pub Street and the Alley since his dad died and family moved to Siem Reap a few years ago. Khim is a very happy, optimistic boy.

I did not take enough photos of Sun and with her. She actually stayed at our guesthouse and was our first customer. I took photos of her in the big bed with mosquito net but it's in her iPhone. She'll have to email me the photos!

Sun was around when I signed the contract for the new Bloom shop. Yes, we are moving! Our lease ends this month and the landlord is jacking up the price to an unrealistic amount so we are moving. This space is 200m from the Old Market, near all the "Happy Pizza" shops and the new D's Books (which moved from Pub Street this year - no doubt also due to increased rent).

Sun thinks I should have a projection on one wall, relating the Bloom story (that's her arm there!). She told me I can get a second hand projector cheap in Singapore because it is old technology. This is the space - currently used as a parking lot for the owner's motorbikes. It's longish and has a lot of potential, I think. But I am no interior decorator. If you have been to the Bloom shop, you will know how amateurish it is. Not at all slick like some of the other souvenir shops in town.

Soon it was time for Sun to go. I asked her what she thought of Cambodia. She found Cambodians "very sweet" and the town and shops interesting. She plans to return next year with her family which will be great because she is such a cute and bubbly person. I really had a great five days with her and miss her already. Sun took Om Pheon's tuktuk everywhere and left the Bloom guesthouse team a small tip when she left, so they were very happy.

I took her to the airport. Her Silkair flight was delayed by 15mins so we sat chatting. Suddenly there was a commotion and we saw the airport staff using a broom to hit a snake. It stopped moving and this man tried to brush it to the side. Not knowing I speak Khmer, the man told his friend I was "cherkoot" (crazy) for wanting to take a photo of the snake.

The dead snake in front of the airport trolleys. Sun was a little freaked out - I guess you do not see snakes in many airports around the world. But I think snakes are part of nature and wished they did not beat it to death. But many Cambodians are scared of snakes, I suppose for good reason.

After leaving Sun, I saw this on the way back from the airport: Cambodian families waiting for a plane to take off.

This was the plane, a Vietnamese carrier. I told Om Phoen to stop for a bit and saw the plane take off. It was very loud! Om Phoen asked me if this is what I take to go home. I said something like that. Planes are pretty amazing. This is how they work.

Thary the bracelet maker

2010-09-17T21:50:00.002+07:00

Thary is a young Cambodian man who was born with very small legs. He is from Takeo province but came to Siem Reap about a year ago to look for work. I first met Thary at the Angkor Night Market, where I had a shop (now closed because I could not compete with the shops selling copies of our bags at very low prices). Thary was employed at another shop as a salesperson for US$30 a month, working 7 hours a night (5pm-12am). (As a comparison, we were paying our shop assistant $80).

Handicapped people are often bullied because it is hard for them to get jobs. Anyway, Thary was hoping I would be able to employ him but I could not as the shop already had one person. When I found out he could weave bracelets, I offered him free space at the Bloom shop (next to the Warehouse pub) to do the work. But I did tell him we did not have much passing trade at that time as it was low season.

So what Thary did was he looked around and found a spot in the Alley, south of Pub Street. It is a great location, as there are many tourists there at night. Soon he was able to buy a motorcycle. He jokes with Kagna, our shop assistant, that he is a rich man now. :)

You can see Thary's crutches in the photo. He needs help to get on the motorcycle, but once he is on it, he is independent. I always tease him about his motorcycle and his fancy new haircut. He is very proud of his red bike and always shows me where he parks it.

I brought my French friend, Aline, to meet Thary. Aline is an awesome lady. I really admire her. She raises money every year from her small village in France to help Cambodians through Deborah Grove's Helping Hands, an NGO that has done some amazing, innovative work in Siem Reap. (Deborah's story is much like mine - came to Cambodia on a holiday and something happened to shock her into action).

Aline was very happy to meet Thary and chose many bracelets (US$1 each) to take home with her as gifts for donors and for fundraising. Here she is selecting from the many bracelets Thary has made. The inside of the bracelets are cut from plastic soda bottles which is then covered with colourful thread that you see hanging. You can choose 2 colours for each bracelet - one for the background, and one for the name.

Aline also ordered some (US$2 each) for her daughters-in-law and granddaughter and here you can see Thary making them. He ties the thread to his toe and starts weaving. You can already see the words CECILE being formed. Thary is completely self-taught. He did not read books or watch Youtube videos to learn how to make the letters. He figured it out all on his own. Very clever -- I can't do it!

A happy Aline and an even happier Thary (He told me Aline was his only customer that night - it's low season so things are a bit slow for us all). If you are in Siem Reap, do drop by to give Thary a pat on the back for being such an entrepreneur - and don't forget to buy his bracelets!

Bloom Garden Guesthouse

2010-09-16T18:24:00.007+07:00

Update 15Nov2010: Website for Bloom Garden Guesthouse is up! Please click bloomguesthouse.com.

I'm sorry I have not updated the blog for over a month. Especially sorry to the new followers who have joined this blog. I can tell you all now why I have been M.I.A.: I am opening a guesthouse!

Yes, I fear I am becoming a cliche -- "How romantically ex-pat of you", said an American philosopher friend.

I'll explain why: I have had so many emails from people asking me to recommend a guesthouse I figured I may as well open my own.

The second reason is I have met so many people who drop in the Bloom shop who tell me they have been scammed that I decided by opening a guesthouse I can provide honest service and information to travellers. My biggest beef is with the operators of the Chong Kneas floating village boat scam . So many tourists have told me how they'd been cheated. I really hope I will be able to advise people *before* they get ripped off instead of hearing about the bad experience.

Anyway, so this is what I have been up to. I was very lucky to have found this lovely 2 storey, 10 bedroom villa located on the road to Angkor Wat.

We are in between the Old Market and the temples of Angkor. A 5 minute drive to the temple ticketing booth and less than 10 mins to the Old Market (where the Bloom bag shop is located).

If you know me, you'd know I love nature. I've always dreamed of working with the National Parks Board in Singapore, just taking care of plants (I also love animals and went to Nepal a few years ago to learn from the fantastic animal shelter there - the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre). So it was a criteria that the guesthouse had to have a garden. Flowers are a bonus as it fits into the Bloom idea of Cambodian women blossoming once given the right encouragement and environment. So I was happy to find the garden is full of flowers like periwinkles, roses, japanese roses, chrysanthemums and my favourite, orchids (also Singapore's national flower).

There are only 10 bedrooms, each 4m by 5m and with ensuite bathroom. Every one of the rooms opens to beautiful greenery. I find it very tranquil and soothing. Seriously, if I did not have 5 dogs , I would move into this house.

This is a Double Room on the first floor.

And one on the ground floor.

These are the twin rooms.

Every room has its own mini-fridge as well as cable TV (with more than 90 channels in many different languages - Korean, Russian, Italian, French and Chinese among others). I removed the wooden door that was hiding the fridge after finding the fridge was overheating because there was nowhere for the hot air to escape. What this means is that the fridge is working about 10 times extra to stay cool. It's a terrible waste of energy. I could drill holes in the cabinet but that would not provide as much air circulation as simply removing the cabinet door. So that was what I did. Next time you're in a hotel room, check out the mini-fridge and how hot it is in the cabinet. I think many people build things just for aesthetic reasons, not caring about energy usage or wastage. I suppose 5 star hotels do not care about the electricity bill since they charge enough, but we should do it for the environment anyway.

All the beds have spring mattresses - "guarantee for 11 years" :) Spring mattresses are very expensive in Cambodia (singles more than US$300) so most people use foam mattresses. In case you think it's memory foam - it's not. The best description is really a sponge. We sleep on a sponge mattress in our rented house and after 3 years it has a serious depression which is starting to hurt my back.

I did not buy these expensive spring mattresses in the guesthouse -- they came with the villa, which has a history. It used to accommodate the managers at the nearby Le Meridien Hotel, while the hotel was being constructed. Presumably the mattresses were acquired by the hotel for its staff. I have been sleeping in the guesthouse as I have a friend over (our first customer!) and I have to say a good mattress makes a lot of difference to my sleep. I am thinking of investing in a good mattress for my bed now. I added the mosquito nets because I know gardens tend to attract mozzies and other insects. It's an extra precaution even though all the rooms have aircon and mosquito netting. Plus, I love sleeping under the net - I feel like a princess! (Another thing to put into my rented home and at US$11, it's something I can afford)

The villa has a meeting room that has a large table that seats a maximum of 12 persons. I'm not sure if I should keep it as a meeting room or convert it into something else. Ideally, I'd like to start a second sewing workshop in these premises as I'm already paying rent, and so customers can see for themselves what goes into the making of a recycled bag. But I think the noise of the machines may be annoying. Another idea is to make a small workshop in the garden, but apart from the guesthouse. We'll see.

And here is the lovely breakfast area. We're not having a full-fledged restaurant at the moment, as I'd just like to focus on providing comfortable rooms. We do, however, provide free breakfast to all our guests - eggs, wholemeal toast, grilled tomatoes, fruit, coffee and tea. Our cook, Nga, is a new graduate from the Sala Bai school, a very worthwhile project that provides hospitality training to bright but poor youth in Cambodia. Every year, many young people apply but only a select number is chosen. I wrote about Sala Bai when I did a story for AsiaLIFE magazine a couple of years ago and remembered to call them when I opened this guesthouse.

The breakfast area is big enough that I am thinking of using the place in the mornings to teach English to tuktuk drivers like Om Pheon ("Om" is how you address an elderly old man in Cambodia).

There is also a bar counter. Maybe at some point we could have a bar. My friend Jimmy is always asking Alan to open a pub called "POT" - Philosopher On Tap (Alan is a philosopher - no joke, he has a philosophy book published by Penguin). It does sound like fun, talking to people over a beer but Alan is very private which is why you never see him on my blog.

The pool table is in the car port. I don't play pool and am not sure how popular it will be with my guests. But I inherited this from the previous owner. I'm just leaving it for the time being but again, I think the space could be used for something else.

This is the garden path from the restaurant/bar.

The path lead to a couple of stone tables with chairs.

Garden path leads to a swing for two

The front garden, big enough for a swimming pool, which would be just perfect. I love swimming and swim almost every day when I stay with my parents in their condominium whenever I go to Singapore for a visit. But I was quoted US$27,000 for a 6m x 10m (1.4m deep) pool by a Thai company. Eeps! A guesthouse I know spent $23,000 for a slightly smaller one, so I think those are typical prices here in Cambodia. For a while I was obsessed with building my own pool, after reading quite a lot about it online. There are even Youtube videos that teach you how. It just seemed like a fun project. I even discovered there are things called "Natural swimming pools".

This is the balcony with its super shiny tiled floor. Ok, that's it. It's been a long entry and I need to meet my friend/guest now for dinner. I have created a Facebook page for Bloom Garden Guesthouse if you'd like to see more photos. I will also be writing about my fabulous team. I am so lucky to have great team members to help me with this new venture. And as keeping with Bloom's principles, there will be profit sharing for our Cambodian team. For now I leave you with this:

Our Apsara (Celestial Maiden) welcomes you!

Edit: Oops! Just had a couple of email enquiries - I'm so sorry I forgot to list the prices. We are having a special opening promotion from now until Oct 31, 2010: US$15 for one person and US$20 for two people. Prices include free breakfast, Internet + wifi, pickup and use of bicycles. High season rates (Nov - March) are US$20 and $30 respectively. Hope to see you at Bloom some time! :)

Siem Reap police - tourist experience

2010-08-06T13:33:00.000+07:00

David posted a comment on my blog post Tourist Police in Siem Reap.

Hello,
we got a problem, my credit card was robbed and we try to write a complain in the tourism office near Angkor. We were there for about 1 hour, they were asking stupid questions about at what time we called the bank, how much money we got in the account, we had to show them the letter from the bank, just to lost time. We say we wanted only the complain form to sent to the bank, but he didn´t give us a copy. After that, they burned the paper in front of us. After that I realised they wanted money from me, and all the questions were only to know how much money I have and so give more money to them. Corruption is even here, in the face of the tourism in Angkor.

Terrible. The policemen should be ashamed of themselves. To think I actually spoke well of them in my earlier post, based on another tourist's experience.

I recently wrote about the corruption in Cambodia and how from the very top, it trickles down to the people.

This report in 2007: Almost 75% of Cambodians have paid a bribe.

And here is my own experience in 2007 Dealing with the Cambodian Police.

Guy builds island with plastic bottles - and lives on it

2010-07-26T20:45:00.000+07:00

Amazing Youtube video. It took him 2.5 years to build the island in Mexico. Now if I can only find a spot in Cambodia...

Chinese philanthropist gives away his wealth

2010-07-25T15:02:00.001+07:00

Photo: Yang Junopo for The Globe and Mail. Story from theglobeandmail.com:

"With that endowment, Mr. Yu became the first Chinese national to give more than $1-billion to charity, now having contributed almost $1.3-billion in cash and real estate to the Yu Pengnian Foundation...

“If my children are competent, they don’t need my money,” Mr. Yu explained. “If they’re not, leaving them a lot of money is only doing them harm.”

In a society where capitalism is just 30 years old, and charitable giving an even younger concept, Mr. Yu says one of his primary goals in making a show out of giving his money away was to set an example to other rich Chinese. “Everybody has a different view of money. Some do good things with it, some rich people do nothing with it. …My goal is to be a leader, a pioneer who encourages rich people, inside and outside of China, to do something charitable.”

I hope wealthy Cambodians are listening - especially to the part about giving your children lots of money.

Cambodian women athletes

2010-07-24T10:13:00.002+07:00

What a great story, from the Christian Science Monitor, by Kounila Keo, Contributor / July 16, 2010:

"Cambodia women are breaking free of social stigmas and disproving myths to succeed in the world of sports.

Vath Chamroeurn, secretary-general of the National Olympic Committee of Cambodia, says that over the past several years women have accounted for 30 percent of the total population of athletes representing Cambodia in international contests. In 2009 alone, Cambodian female athletes won one gold medal, four silvers, and 13 bronzes in the 25th Southeast Asian Games held in Laos. Events included pétanque, tae kwon do, volleyball, weight lifting, and wrestling.

Lack Som Ath, general director of the General Department of Sports at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, says that Cambodian female athletes participate in as many as 20 sports.

One shining example is Duch Sophorn – Cambodia’s finest player of pétanque (a form of boules), who has won gold, silver, and bronze medals in international competitions over the past 10 years. Her success has inspired many young girls to pursue athletics. But she admits it has come at a price in a society that views athletic-looking women as sterile and unattractive.

“I have developed muscles and [I am] very strong. [If] men don’t like me, I don’t care, as long as I love myself,” says Ms. Sophorn."

Gold found in Cambodia

2010-07-23T12:38:00.006+07:00

I was told by a Cambodian friend that there is gold in Cambodia. He says a Chinese company has the license for the gold digging and the government does not want people to know so they are keeping mum about it.

Not quite.

I did a google search and found Singapore's Straits Times reported the news in May. "CAMBODIA said on Monday that Australian firm OZ Minerals had discovered around 8.1 million tonnes of gold on its territory, ahead of a conference intended to draw in mining investment."

From Gold mine may leave people homeless in Cambodia:

"The gold deposit that both [Australian] exploration company OzMinerals and the Cambodian government are excited about lies in the remote Mondulkiri province, 500 km from Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh.

"After 17 years of exploration the government believes this could be the biggest find so far in Cambodia, yielding at least 600,000 ounces of gold. The project is in its infancy and will not be viable as a mine unless OzMinerals can do more small scale drilling and sampling to see if it can yield more than two million ounces of gold.

"The government says the residents have deliberately built their homes on land owned by OzMinerals and will not be compensated, and if they do not move the government will burn their homes or bulldoze them."

I wonder if Oz Minerals had to do the same as BHP Billiton for access to the mines. BHP had allegedly paid "tea money". In April, the Sydney Morning Herald published a report on the scandal.

"In … terms of the minerals exploration agreement with the Cambodian government, which granted BHP Billiton and Mitsubishi the right to explore for bauxite, an amount of $US1 million was formally paid to the Cambodian government in September 2006," BHP wrote.

But BHP did admit "that its own internal investigation - a response to inquiries from the SEC - had uncovered evidence "regarding possible violations of applicable anti-corruption laws involving interactions with government officials."

BHP has paid New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardell to help them. I have a friend from school working in this firm (yes Singaporeans are everywhere). But of course my friend will not give me information. This is why she gets paid the big bucks.

If my Cambodian friend is right, Oz Minerals is not the only company that has found gold in Cambodia. So have the Chinese. He says the Chinese have sent the gold for tests to ascertain its quality. My friend is unhappy because of course he'd prefer if the gold stayed in Cambodian hands.

Mondulkiri is remote and relatively unexplored, so has much mining potential. The people there are dirt poor, and because the area is so remote, they are often neglected. Most children don't go to school and small children go into the small holes in the quarries looking for minerals (much like the children chimney sweeps in Europe a century or two ago). A friend who visited told me the locals get paid US$5 a kg of zircons. US$5. Do you know how hard it is to find a kilogramme of stones?

I was also told the volcano lake of Mondulkiri has been sold to a foreign company to build a casino. This information was from a foreigner working there but I have been unable to confirm this as there are no news reports. I really hope it is not true because I think that would be a mistake.

Mondukiri is not like Las Vegas, a desert with no natural attractions, so a casino city is the only draw. Building a casino will attract only one sort of tourists at the expense of many other tourists who'd like to see the natural beauty of Cambodia.

As for Oz Minerals, it too, is not without scandal.

Cambodian beauty shop

2010-07-10T14:18:00.001+07:00

Cambodia's beauty shops range from the very simple, hole-in-the-wall kind, to more upmarket salons found in supermarket malls such as Lucky and in the main streets. In Phnom Penh, for instance, "London" and "Singapore" are well-known. A common joke is if anyone was going to London or Singapore that weekend.

For me though, I always go with my Khmer friends to the ones in a market, simply because it is cheaper - US$1 for a hairwash and $1 for a hair cut. I also like the service. The best hairwashes are done by the ladyboys because they are strong and passionate about their job. You can find them working at stalls in the Old Market.

My friends and I favour a small beauty shop in psar dum krolyiang (Krolyiang Tree Market) here in Siem Reap. It is a local market and not centrally located so tourists do not go there.

Here is the shop. You can see the ceiling is padded with cardboard boxes. I asked why and it is to keep the place cool since the shop, like all the others, has a tin roof. In front there is a plastic sheet to keep the rain off. The sheet is all green and mouldy.

The tiny fan. It looks like a toy fan. See the re-used cardboard boxes?

The shop is lit with a few fluorescent tubes.

All simply connected.

These are the sockets. Could be disastrous if something goes wrong with the electrical wiring, I guess, since the shop is just a wooden shack. But they are careful as no one here has insurance.

Tin sheets make up one wall.

And wood the other. (Here the hairdresser is giving my friend a head massage).

Manicure. Also US$1.

Where we put our slippers, next to the hanging sachets of shampoo and creams. When I first arrived in Cambodia, I was dismayed to learn poor people had to buy sachets of shampoo for 500riels (US$0.125) each, for a tiny amount. They do not buy the bottles that we buy because these cost a few dollars. Many Cambodians do not have a few dollars to spend at one go, since many live hand-to-mouth. They make the sachets last a few days. As you know, usually when you buy in bulk, you save money cos the unit price ($/ml in this case) goes down. So buying in small quantities is another way the poor pays more.

I was dismayed because I had just arrived from Singapore where magazines routinely give out free sachets of beauty products as samples. Some of those free sachets were bigger than what the Cambodians have to pay for.

This is one of life's irony - the richer you are, and the more you can afford it, the more freebies you get. Just think of all those movie stars and what they get free.

Where celebrities get free goodies because companies want to be associated with them, the middle-classes are given freebies as advertising. The hope is that we will spend our disposable incomes after trying out the products.

As for the poor, since they have no disposable income, companies are not interested in enticing them - so no free stuff.

The products, in a glass cabinet. Mostly cheap, unknown, brands from China or Thailand. But Dove (see the deodorant?) and Revlon (hair colour) are big here in Cambodia. Revlon, especially, has been marketing itself aggressively in this country. I am told MAC, which I used when I was working in Singapore, costs only US$3 here. Of course it is fake, from Thailand. But the Dove and Revlon are the genuine article.

The rinse. Most market stall beauty shops are so tiny, there is no space to get a full length chair to stretch out. You always need to bend your knees. Here is my Cambodian friend getting her hair rinsed after the shampoo. There is no running water, no pipes, and no tap. So how to rinse?

With this! A giant 60 litre pail filled with water. The hairdresser scoops the water and pours it over your hair. (Yes, no warm rinses either. Only cold water). I thought it was great. Saves a lot of water this way. The water is bought from peddlers who go around the market (distilled water is cheap in this country - just $1 for 20 litres and one day I will show you why).

I have to point out the beauty shops in the Old Market in heart of Siem Reap do have pipes and therefore running water. Not all Cambodian beauty shops are as basic as this.

I know many friends who balk at the idea of getting their hair washed in this way, but I've never had any problems (no itchiness I mean). Try it, the next time you're in Cambodia!

Paedophile's rubbish dump scam

2010-07-08T16:52:00.002+07:00

Khmer440 is a funny online forum. I used to read it while living in Phnom Penh but found it less relevant to Siem Reap so stopped after relocating in 2007. Recently a friend, a fan of the site, told me last year Khmer440 forumners were already onto the British paedophile David Fletcher.

Indeed they were. You can read the thread here.

I find Khmer440 funny because of the spats between the different bar owners and the expats who frequent the different establishments. It's also instructive because some of these guys have been in Phnom Penh for a long time and know the ins-and-outs. And the gossip is always good entertainment. I am glad I live in Siem Reap though. Siem Reap just seems less...complicated.

Anyway, I was reading the thread and found this bit interesting. From ryan_asia:

Posted: Sun May 02, 2010 3:46 pm Post subject:
I was visiting Phnom Penh around two and a half years ago and stayed at the guesthouse next to DF's (David Fletcher's) bar. I saw the fliers on his tables about helping the people at the dump. Back then I was stupid and thought anybody could help save the world. I asked David what I could do to help and he replied that the people needed rubber boots.

I asked him how many were needed and what the cost was. He needed 100 pairs and said they cost $3.00 each. Thankfully I didn't have $300 on me at the time. The next day I asked a Khmer lady working were I stayed next door if she could go hunt them down for me. I didn't want to go myself and get ripped off with Barang pricing.

I gave her $300 and asked her to see if she couldn't get them for less as I was buying a large quantity. I assumed that was the end of that money but she came back with the boots and gave me back $150. Incredible honesty given what she was getting paid for a salary.

Read the whole post here. Thanks for sharing ryan_asia.

Many times at Phnom Penh's riverside my friends and I would get accosted by some Khmer man with flyers trying to convince us to pay to visit the dump. I think it was US$15 for food and the trip there. The pushy man would even harass us in the restaurant, so I'm sure he gets a commission (why else try so hard?). Often the man would ignore me, only giving the fliers to my white friends. Of course I always advised friends against signing up for the trip, believing it to be a scam (turns out I was right - how shocking).

Fletcher is now behind bars. He was arrested in Bangkok after fleeing Cambodia because of an expose in UK's Sunday Mirror.

Anyway the point of this post: Tourists to Cambodia who would like to help please do not participate in the work of some random "charitable" organisation you encounter, no matter how persuasive it seems. You need to find out more.

One of the strategies Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, recommends is this:

"Aid agencies should increasingly be concentrated in the most difficult environments, accept more risk. Ordinary citizens should not support poorly informed [may I add, and intentionally corrupt ones] vociferous lobbies whose efforts are counterproductive and severely constrain what the Aid agencies can do."

Tuk Tuk Politics

2010-07-08T11:12:00.002+07:00

I dislike many of Cambodia's tuk tuk drivers. I once read in a forum some guy defending them as "mostly decent guys trying to earn a living." In my experience most of them are crooks.

I say this having personally taken many tuk tuks (those hired by other people), negotiated on behalf of visiting friends, even employed wives of tuk tuk drivers (no more). I have encountered dozens of them in my 4 years in Cambodia and have grown to dislike them.

Today I learnt I am not alone, which is what prompted this blog post. Wandering Mama had this to say about Cambodia's tuk tuk drivers:

"In a word: Obnoxious. The smarmy guys outside our hotel in Phnom Penh gave us sob-stories while plying us with business cards and trying to exhort promises that we would call only them....The thing is if you tell them to go scratch or get pissy they love it. They want you to get mad. Then they lay it on thick and talk shit to their buddies about you in Khmer, laughing about getting the foreigner riled. And riled you get. Following one such exchange with a driver today, WPapa and I got into one of those classic on-the-street yelling matches (Why the F are we here, this was your idea…”) We were sweating, dragging kids along a busy street without a sidewalk, headed nowhere, all keyed up by the damn drivers."

This was in Phnom Penh and I've been told the tuk tuks there are much more aggressive than in Siem Reap. Oh the stories I have heard.

This one, by a French expat friend. It was late, after midnight, when she tried to get a tuk tuk to take her home, a distance that was literally 200 metres away (yes, I would have walked too - but it was late). The guy wanted US$3, for a trip that would cost US$1 at most. Ok, it was late, so she offered US$2. But he wouldn't budge. Fed up, she decided to call a taxi, which would have been cheaper (meter starts at $1 and the 200 m would amount to less than US$2 for an air-conditioned, smooth ride).

The tuk tuk driver started swearing at her and yelling "fucking Chinese taxi company". My friend was perplexed, as we all are - this guy who was sleeping in his tuk tuk would rather continue sleeping than earn an easy US$2. So why even bother to get up to talk to my friend?

Those of you living in the US or Singapore or some other rich country may be thinking, "Come on, it's only an extra buck." It is. But for many of us expats, it's become a matter of principle.

My American friend, a woman, tells me she would rather walk a mile to find another tuk tuk than to use the one that pissed her off by trying to gouge her from the words "tuk tuk madam".

It's like what my partner Alan says: We are happy to be generous, but don't anticipate our generosity.

(Perhaps you think it is a matter of principle for the tuk tuk driver too - "US$3 or nothing for me to wake up from my sleep and drive 200m". Fair enough, but then don't get pissy if the potential customer choses otherwise).

This is why I only use and recommend tuk tuk drivers who are known to me - Phoen in Siem Reap and Sophal in Phnom Penh. These 2 men I have known for 3 years. And the reason I continued to hire Phoen and Sophal after the first chance meeting with them is because they were honest and decent. Cambodia is like Bali to me in this regard - so many crooks that when you meet a decent person, you just want to reward him for his honesty. Completely screwed up I know, but this is how I often think and act - giving an extra tip for "honesty".

Anyway, this post is about tuk tuk driver politics.

I just learned this about Siem Reap - when a guesthouse sends a tuk tuk driver to pick you up at the airport, the guesthouse DOES NOT PAY the tuk tuk driver. The drivers do it for free, because they hope you will then employ them for your 3 day tour to Angkor Wat.

I think this is dishonest and disgusting - come on, guesthouse owners, your customer is paying you for the guesthouse (in my friend's case, 7 nights!), why can't you pay your tuk tuk driver a couple of bucks for providing this service to your customer? (If any guesthouse owner pays his/her tuk tuk drivers for this service instead of asking them to suck it up, let me know - I will recommend your establishment to my friends).

It makes me mad because customers are deceived and limits their choice of tuk tuk (if they know the truth and are decent people).

Let me explain.

My friends, a couple, who were staying at a Singapore-owned guesthouse had this happen to them. They had no idea the tuk tuk driver who got them at the airport was not paid, so they only gave him a US$1 tip. Meanwhile, because the guy had gone to get them for free, he was mightily displeased to learn from the couple that they may be going with Phoen to Angkor Wat.

Of course, he did not dare say anything to me. What happened was Kagna's friend, another tuk tuk driver, had dropped by the Bloom shop in the hopes of the couple using his tuk tuk (Kagna had mentioned to them I had friends visiting). That started the dispute. Tuk tuk 1 told tuk tuk 2 off, saying "hands off - since I picked them up at the airport, they are my customers".

When my friends and I found out tuk tuk 1 was not paid by the guesthouse, of course we felt bad for him. My friends decided they could either pay him for the airport trip ($5) or use his tuk tuk to go to Angkor (he wanted US$15 even though it is just $10-$12 nowadays because it is low season). They decided to go to Angkor with him for just one day.

It was easy money for him, as we spent a lot of time at the temples taking photos, so only did the main three. If you ride a motorbike in Cambodia, you will know the petrol costs less than a litre for this distance, so about a dollar (the tuk tuk is basically a carriage pulled by a motorbike). If he owns his tuk tuk as this guy did, U$$14 was profit (ok, maybe $12 or $13 if you minus maintenance costs).

This is why there are so many motodops and tuk tuk drivers in Cambodia - it is very profitable business. Chhun Hy used to bug me all the time to lend him money to buy a motorbike because he wanted to be a motodop in his free time because he knew how much money he could earn.

So don't pay any attention to the drivers when tell you the price of petrol has gone up, they have to pay for petrol for your 200-meter, $2, ride etc etc. In fact the price of petrol has come down from a high of almost $1.25 a litre (I think it was 2008?).

Still, not the end of the politicking.

The couple was staying for a week and during Angkor Wat day, tuk tuk 1 kept bugging my friends about their itinerary because he wanted them to continue to employ him for the rest of their stay. Apart from not guarding our things, resulting in the loss of a reflector (for photography), tuk tuk 1 lied to tuk tuk 2 (Kagna's friend) and said the couple had gone home the next day, warding off competition in this way.

Finally, on the last day, I had arranged for Phoen to go to the guesthouse at 5:30am to pick up the couple, as they wanted to watch sunrise on the way to the airport (you can see a very beautiful, striking, large and low orange ball on the horizon).

When Phoen arrived, the security guard at the guesthouse (it was so early that only the guard was around) told him the couple had already left. Phoen was calling me - at 5:30am!! - in a panic. I was really grumpy, since I had gone to bed at 2am. I told him to just wait for my friends. My friends and I don't lie, I told Pheon. If we say we will do something, we will do it.

My friends did appear, of course. Later, Phoen told me he was angry with the "niak eeum" ("night watchman") for lying to him. He says it is because the niak eeum and tuk tuk 1 (the designated guesthouse tuk tuk) are friends, so in cahoots.

Because there are more and more tuk tuk drivers in Siem Reap (I can't find any information on the numbers), it is very competitive. It is low season to boot, so many of the tuk tuks are struggling. Kagna's friend for instance, has a newborn. To save money, he has sent his wife and child to his hometown in the countryside where his family can look after them, while he continues to work in Siem Reap.

I would like to help Kagna's friend, but I can't help everyone. In this case, helping him would be at Phoen's expense. I'll try to spilt customers between them. This is why I often think of a tuk tuk cooperative. All customers go through a single point of contact and the business is divided between the drivers and the profits are shared. Of course there will be some who will prefer being independent, but that's fine. It's to help those who can't make it on their own, like Phoen, cos he doesn't speak English.

Russians re-incarnated in Cambodia!

2010-06-30T09:34:00.002+07:00

The other day Kagna was reading Angkor Thom magazine, a bestseller in Cambodia. I had written a "review" of one of the issues last June where I described the stories published. I see things have not changed...

This story features a pair of albino brothers. Here is Angkor Thom's version: The brothers are reincarnated white people (!!!)

The monk was the first discovered reincarnated white person in that neighbourhood. The story is that he was a Russian who died in Cambodia and then re-incarnated in Cambodia (or some rubbish like that).

The extended family - all brown skinned except the boy. So how do you explain the way he looks? How do you explain a brown-skinned mother giving birth to a white-skinned boy?

He was re-incarnated of course.

In a way I don't blame the rural people. How could they have any idea about albinism (a congenital disorder in which persons have an absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes because of a defect in an enzyme that is responsible for producing melanin). You would try to explain the situation somehow and a Russian plane crashing into the village and the Russians being re-incarnated, bursting out in their next life, as a whitish Khmer, would be one way...

But really, the publishers of Angkor Thom should know better - and I suspect they do. They just publish such nonsense in order to sell their rag. The thing is, Kagna actually believes the story, even after I explained about albinos to her and how they are found all over the world.

Here is a photo of an albino boy taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism. I explained how I knew an albino boy in primary school in Singapore and he had to keep out of the sun because lack of pigmentation makes people more susceptible to sunburn and skin cancers. The sun also hurt the boy's eyes.

Kagna said this was not the case in the Khmer-white boys, they can play in the sun and have no problems with their eyesight. Therefore, they are not albinos, but re-incarnated white people. Q.E.D.

Sigh.

I wish Angkor Thom would be more responsible and make use of its wide reach to teach people things instead of writing rubbish. They could use their influence to really educate the population, teach them things about nature and the world. Albinism is fascinating in itself. Why not write about this?

Then again, even supposedly educated USA has rags that talk about women giving birth to three headed monsters and this:

The Alien is a favourite story

So he was wheeled out again for Obama.

Sigh.

Wanted: Cambodian student in Singapore

2010-06-30T08:46:00.002+07:00

I just received this email from a teacher friend in Singapore:

Diana,
how have u been?
btw, do u happen to know any cambodian youths who are studying in singapore currently?
I am trying to get some of them to do some sharing with my teams on language and cross cultural issues..

regds
Ann Tat

I don't know any Khmers studying in Singapore but if you do, please send Ann Tat an email at anntat@yahoo.com

Thanks everyone!

Update on Bloom the social enterprise

2010-06-28T21:53:00.009+07:00

(Bloom duffel bags - all ready for shipment!)

I keep saying I do not write about Bloom enough. I know many people follow our story. They have emailed me to say they'd like to hear more about my experiences setting up a social enterprise and whether and how successful it can be.

I was reminded of this recently after I posted this on my Facebook: Diana Saw: "Yes! deleted about a 100 "friends"-- people i can't even recognise from their photos and others who don't matter to me. hope this way i can see the updates of only real friends."

[I usually do housekeeping on Facebook because I don't want so many friends. After a while it gets hard to keep track of everyone. When I see these people with 1000's of friends I just want to laugh. Who are you kidding? You're obviously just using them for marketing and (self) promotional purposes.]

Most people said "Phew, glad to still be on your list." But then I got this response from a Facebook friend, John.

"Diana, There's very little reason for me to still be able to see this, but I'm glad I can. I fell in love with Cambodia, Bloom products and then the business a couple years ago on my first visit. I hope to spend a lot more time in country in coming years. Bloom is in inspiration about how to do business the right way there. Next time you have to weed the list, maybe there's another way to keep people like me informed about the Bloom story while still tracking your close friends here. Thanks again."

It was a good reminder. This was my response:

Diana Saw: hey john! that's a really good point. thanks so much for reminding me. i went a little berserk early this morning cos my kitten died and wanted to feel like i was doing something useful. i actually have a bloom list of friends--people i know through bloom (those people on my friends list who look like supermodels are not friends i hang out with in real life - i met them all through bloom!). in fact i think 300+ of my friends fall in the bloom category. i have kept them all because i really appreciate their support. the people i deleted are mostly people from my past job, school etc who add me just so. even though we have moved on and don't even send an email to say hi - just "add friend". it's stupid, really. anyway keep in touch and i hope to see you in srok khmer soon! :)

Yes, it has been a very sad couple of weeks for me because a two week old abandoned kitten I found on Sok San road and took care for 2 weeks died. I will write about the experience when I am able to. I can't really right now cos it still breaks my heart.

Anyway, I will try to write more about Bloom. The reality is that I have many interests outside of Bloom. I am curious about Cambodia and interested in my environment here in Siem Reap which is why I blog so much about it. I am also more interested in workers' rights and liberty and justice than in business--and that's the truth.

Much of business is very mundane and uninteresting. Sometimes I can hardly believe I spend my time writing emails to customers who negotiate prices. I am so tired of explaining over and over again why our bags are priced as they are, why they are not as cheap as a factory-made bag. I struggle to keep at these email exchanges when all I want to say "screw it, it's just not worth it. let me refer you to a chinese site that sells cheap and rubbish quality bags".

This part of business is uninteresting at best and unedifying--petty even--at worst.

It is something other friends who have multimillion dollar businesses tell me they dislike too. Possibly it is because my friends are like me, i.e., not real salespeople to begin with. Still, it is something we all recognise and accept has to be done. After all, owners or bosses can delegate many things but, at some point, it falls on the owner/founder/boss to explain why the business is run the way it is (in management speak, it is called "escalation". Staff members are asked to "escalate the problem" to their higher ups, and there is none so high up than the boss).

In Bloom's case, because it is small and I am the only foreigner, it falls on me to deal with things like these. I can hire a professional Khmer manager, I guess, but my intention has always been to help the poorest Khmers, not the middle classes. This is why I have steered clear of hiring managers at Bloom, preferring to hire more sewers, i.e., workers. I like workers; I don't like middle managers quite so much. In my experience workers contribute way more to a business than middle managers.

One solution to this specific problem is to send a template email so I don't have to put in so much effort. But I like responding to enquiries in a personal manner because after all, it is me, a person, dealing with another person.

However, this email from a very good customer in the US shows me there are people who tend to forget about other people when they get caught up in the pursuit of profits. My customer had been talking to a very large online Pet store that is not so Smart:

"They loved the collars leashes but wanted to buy them at a disgustingly low price, plus I paid to ship to them & they have this stupid policy about markdown money if products don't sell through a certain amount every 30 day period. I could go bankrupt just filling their order. I honestly don't understand how anyone can sell to them. I (obviously) graciously declined & told them it is part of my business plan to not only build in a % to each product to give back to charities, but that amazingly enough I needed to have a bit of profit in it as well - to which they replied "Oh, I see. Good Luck" click, hangup. My kids asked me if I was upset because I had put hours into presentations for them - but I said no - I was actually a bit relieved that I avoided getting dragged into a corporate mill that would milk me dry."

My customer is great and these are the people I usually end up doing business with--people who care about others instead of simply lining their own pockets. People like my customer and me want to prove that it is possible to do business in an ethical way, in a way that does not exploit anyone, and in a way that gives back to society. Sadly, many people running large corporations (and even small ones) do not think the same way and operate selfishly.

The other reason I don't blog so much about Bloom is that after almost 4 years, Bloom runs pretty much as a well-oiled machine. The workshop is in Phnom Penh under the hands of a very capable young man, Sina, who not only cuts the ricebags into shape but also oversees production together with another very capable young lady, Kamhut, who also makes the templates. As you can see, we would like our managers to also be hands on and involved in the production of the bags. No one is stuck in an office making decisions that have no relevance to the business.

Meanwhile I live in Siem Reap, a 6 hour bus ride away (I made the move to Siem Reap in Nov 2007). It was always the plan for Bloom to be a workers' cooperative, eventually running on its own without me.

Of course there are issues that crop up now and again. The most costly mistake, apart from Sipha stealing from us, was when we did not write the name of the customer who was awaiting the bags at Bangkok's Le Meridien. EMS (Express Mail Service) Bangkok refused to release the bags to Le Meridien even though the hotel knew who to give the bags to. At the same time, EMS Cambodia refused to accept any responsibility even though they had accepted the forms without the addressee and cleared the parcel. Yes, EMS, you suck.

Finally, after a month of to and fro-ing, the bags arrived back in Phnom Penh and we had to pay for the bags to be re-routed to Holland, at a cost of almost US$300 dollars. Thankfully, the customer was kind enough to share the bill for that. But it was still a costly lesson.

At that time, many friends had asked me to dock the pay of the person responsible for the mistake but, come on, everyone makes mistakes. I know the Khmer staff member responsible felt really bad and even asked to be removed from this responsibility for fear of making the same mistake again.

Anyway, the point is mistakes happen in business, as they do in any other aspect in life. No matter how well you plan things, accidents do happen. The good thing is we did learn something from this and have instituted a new process--forms have always to be double-checked by someone else before they are sent off. A simple enough idea, but one we did not think about until the mistake happened.

Ok that's it for now. It's 10 pm Cambodia time now and I have to take dad to the airport at half past six in the morning by tuktuk. I will make an effort to write more about Bloom, I promise!

Broken chair

2010-06-28T10:31:00.000+07:00

I took this photo to show people that nothing is quickly thrown away in Cambodia. Everything is used until it absolutely has got no life left. I contrast this with Singapore, with its throwaway culture. I know people who will throw or give away a pair of shoes once the heels are scruffed. I've even received donations of clothes from Singaporeans - with tags still intact!

Anyway you can see this plastic chair has been sewn together with wire after it broke in places, to extend its life.

The funny thing was where I saw the chair.

Here! Outside ABA bank on Sivatha in Siem Reap. You'd think a bank would have enough money to replace a broken chair...

Reporters without Borders' open letter to Singapore Prime Minister

2010-06-27T17:22:00.002+07:00

People do not believe me when I tell them "first world" Singapore ranks lower than third world Cambodia in the Press Freedom Index, an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by Reporters without Borders. For 2009, Cambodia ranks 117 and Singapore, 133. It is an improvement for both countries from 2008's ranking, when Cambodia was 126 and Singapore, 144, out of 175 countries. In my blog post last year, I tried to explain Singapore's repression is more subtle than Cambodia's, but no less effective. Unlike Cambodia, you don't get shot in broad daylight in Singapore for expressing dissenting views in the media. Rather, it is the fear of lawsuits and losing lots of money (possibly even made bankrupt in the case of Singaporeans) that silences foreign media and local critics.

Anyway, following is the letter from RSF which explains the state of press freedom in Singapore (original is here).

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
Prime Minister’s Office
Orchard Road
Istana
Singapore 238823

Paris, 25 March 2010

Dear Prime Minister,

A foreign news organisation has yet again been forced to apologise to you and your father and pay you a large sum of money for publishing an article you did not like. This time it is the New York Times Co. that is a victim of this double punishment because of a compliant judicial system that always rules in favour of you and your family in all the lawsuits you bring against foreign news media.

Before the New York Times Co., you succeeded in punishing the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), FinanceAsia.com, The Economist, International Herald Tribune and Asian Wall Street Journal for their coverage of the political and economic situation in your country.

Threatened by a trial, the New York Times Co. apologised to you and your father, Lee Kuan Yew, for the article “All in the Family,” written by Philip Bowring and published in the 15 February issue of the International Herald Tribune. As well as an apology, this US media company had to pay 114,000 US dollars in damages.

Your lawyer, Davinder Singh, said Bowring’s article violated an “agreement” between your family and the International Herald Tribune, which was sentenced in 1994 to pay a large sum in damages for an article entitled “The claims about Asian values don’t usually bear scrutiny.”

The now defunct Far Eastern Economic Review agreed last November, after a long legal wrangle, to pay you and your father 290,000 US dollars in damages. Despite a lack of evidence, Singaporean judges ruled in favour of your family both in the original trial and on appeal without a thought for media freedom.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the judicial harassment which you and your father have practiced for years in order to prevent foreign news media from taking too close an interest in how you run your country. It does serious and lasting harm to press freedom in Singapore.

Your government has repeatedly displayed a disturbing inability to tolerate foreign journalists. Last October, for example, Benjamin Bland, a British freelancer who strings for The Economist and The Daily Telegraph, was denied a visa and permission to cover an APEC summit in Singapore. “I was forced to leave Singapore after the government refused to renew my work visa without any explanation,” Bland told Reporters Without Borders.

But the censorship has above all affected local media and local artistic production. In October 2009, for example, the ministry of information, communication and arts upheld a ban on a documentary by Singaporean filmmaker Martyn See about government opponent Said Zahari.

In response to the publication of the Reporters Without Borders 2009 press freedom index, in which Singapore was ranked 133rd out of 175 countries, your law minister, K. Shanmugam, described it as “absurd” and “disconnected from reality.”

Unfortunately, the facts show that we are right.

In the six years since you became prime minister and said you favoured an “open” society, we have seen very few improvements in the situation of free speech.

We therefore think your government should take the following measures as a matter of urgency:

1. Put a stop to the libel actions which you and your relatives have been bringing against Singaporean and foreign media that cover Singaporean developments in an independent manner. As the UN special rapporteur for freedom of expression recently said, the prime minister, his minister and high officials must refrain from suing journalists over their articles and comments.
2. Amend the criminal code so as to abolish prison sentences for press offences.
3. Amend the press law, especially the articles concerning the granting of publication licences. The current restrictions are preventing the emergence of independent media. The film law should also be relaxed.
4. Reform the national security law so as to abolish administrative detention, which allows the authorities to imprison people because of what they think.
5. Reform the Media Development Authority so that it is no longer able to censor and can solely make recommendations about TV programmes and films.
6. Allow government opponents and civil society representatives unrestricted access to the public media.
7. Guarantee the editorial independence of all the media owned by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and Media Corporation of Singapore (Mediacorp).
8. Transfer the money that your family has obtained in damages from foreign and Singaporean news media to a support fund for imprisoned journalists that Reporters Without Borders proposes to set up.

We regret that you, the members of your government and your father keep citing the need to guarantee Singapore’s stability as grounds for controlling the media and maintaining its draconian laws. Countries that show the most respect for press freedom, such as Finland and Norway, are peaceful and prosperous democracies. Freedom of expression is not a source of political unrest. Quite the contrary.

You have perpetuated your father’s legacy by continuing to harass and intimidate news media. As a result, aside from a few websites specialising in Singapore, no news outlet can publish independent news and information about issues affecting the political situation in your country.

We would be very honoured to be able to meet with you in order to talk about our observations and our proposals for guaranteeing press freedom in Singapore in person.

Respectfully,
Jean-François Julliard
Secretary-General

I love starving artists

2010-06-27T16:22:00.003+07:00

So do I - that's why I don't give them any money, lol.
(Spotted in downtown Siem Reap.)

Happy with Tandem Bike

2010-06-27T10:42:00.000+07:00

is quit funny. New addition to Siem Reap. So far I have only seen a Caucasian man with his son riding one. Looks fun.

Praying Mantis

2010-06-27T10:32:00.000+07:00

Austin found a praying mantis the other day.

It's a funny creature. Look at it lifting its "wings", trying to look bigger.

Raaah! stay away!

This is its face. Kindda cute. It's called a praying mantis because of the "prayer-like stance". This was what I found out from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis. More:

"Mantises are exclusively predatory. Insects form the primary diet, but larger species have been known to prey on small lizards, frogs, birds,snakes, fish and even rodents; they will prey upon any species small enough to successfully capture and devour. Most species of mantis are known to engage in cannibalism...

"The female may start feeding by biting off the male’s head (as with any prey), and if mating had begun, the male’s movements may become even more vigorous in its delivery of sperm. Early researchers thought that because copulatory movement is controlled by ganglion in the abdomen, not the head, removal of the male’s head was a reproductive strategy by females to enhance fertilisation while obtaining sustenance. Later, this behaviour appeared to be an artifact of intrusive laboratory observation. Whether the behaviour in the field is natural, or also the result of distractions caused by the human observer, remains controversial. Mantises are highly visual organisms, and notice any disturbance occurring in the laboratory or field such as bright lights or moving scientists."

Fascinating.

More Siem Reap graffiti

2010-06-27T10:16:00.000+07:00

Almost 2 years ago I wrote about graffiti art appearing in Siem Reap. This was the first that I noticed. Since then, they have been popping up everywhere. I like the colours and think they brighten up the place. I have been trying to find them all. This one is on Sivatha, near the florist (there is only one).

This one is just opposite Pub Street in the old market area, just round the corner from the U-Care pharmacy.

This is in The Lane, behind Pub Street. It says "Thank You (aur kun) Siem Reap"

The names are Sopheara (Khmer), Taz and Katherine (not Khmer). I guess this was a Cambodian-Western collaboration. Aw-koon guys/gals ! :)

Then there was this...

some children's drawing on a wall next to this altar, which I found funny, lol.

Vintage Volkswagen Beetle

2010-06-27T09:44:00.000+07:00

With Cambodian license plate, that's all. :)

Cambodian and Korean find love in Asia

2010-06-26T20:50:00.007+07:00

I really like this Korean show called "Love in Asia". It is about foreigners who marry Koreans and their stories. There are more than 1 million foreigners in Korea, according to the "Love in Asia" website. One memorable episode was about a woman from Moldova (people in Korea all think she is from the Maldives) who married a Korean man and how she and her children live in Korea. Her older son found it difficult because his Korean classmates discriminated against him because he looks different. Things changed after the mother gave a talk about her country in his class one day.

Anyway, on 25 May, KBS World broadcast an episode on a Cambodian woman, Theary (they spelt it "Tieri" on the show) who is married to a Korean man. They have one son. The film crew followed her home to Cambodia - her first trip home after more than 2 years living in South Korea.

(It's nice to see a successful marriage between a Cambodian and a Korean. The Cambodian government had twice banned marriages between Khmer women to South Korean men because of trafficking problems.)

I took the following images off the TV.

The Korean hosts of "Love in Asia"

Theary gave her parents an electric rice cooker. She had to teach them to use it and they were amazed after half and hour, fluffy white rice appeared. Her family's house in Phnom Penh is really basic. No wonder Theary was heartbroken to see her family living in a shack, compared with her home in Korea with amenities.

The family's hometown is an hour from Phnom Penh and she went there for a visit. Her father is a cook and he made a meal specially for her - including her favourite...a pig skin dish

You can see the slats on the floor board. The floor is made of bamboo and is raised above the ground. This is common of Cambodian houses in the countryside, where the wooden houses are on stilts in case of flooding. Also, the underneath of the house provides shade and shelter for the animals.

The family went home for Khmer New Year, or "choul chnam thmey". I like the way KBS tells the story, so I leave them to do it...

versus 22.8% in South Korea (more - 29.2% - are Christian, in case you are wondering why there are so many Korean missionaries in Cambodia)

It is a giant buddha - I have no idea where it is in Phnom Penh.

Along the way we see people who seem to have white powder on their faces, which is soon explained...

At night, the family goes to the riverside in Phnom Penh to pray. She wishes her father...

And he wishes her and ties red string on her wrist for good luck.

At night, the family goes to a dance party.

Her son, Eunho likes Cambodian hammocks!

But soon it is time to part. This was sad, watching Theary say bye and not knowing when she will be back...

At the end of the show they asked Theary's about her dreams...

Good luck Theary! Hope to see you in Cambodia again soon!

British paedophile runs kid's charity in Cambodia

2010-06-26T20:12:00.000+07:00

I had shared the story with my Facebook friends but did not do so on the blog. I just got this email so I think maybe I should help spread the word. You can read the story on the Mirror ((in the email below) or go to the journalist's site and read the unedited version here: http://www.andrew-drummond.com/tag/scott-neeson/. Be prepared to be sickened.

Hi!

I'm a volunteer in Cambodia (just for 2 months though), and I read your blog quite often. Anyway, I saw this article from somewhere else which you might be interested to see. It's an expose about a British pedophile running a charity over here in Cambodia. I think he's still doing it even now, and the authorities ain't or can't do anything about it. I think your blog/facebook has a pretty wide reach, so might be good to just post it up, and let more people know about it. (And also for people to generally be more wary of such "charities" over here, and not to just part with their money without finding out more about the charity first =X)

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/06/20/british-paedo-running-kids-charity-in-cambodia-115875-22345300/

Wee Kee

Siem Reap shops

2010-06-25T11:51:00.000+07:00

Slipper shop on the same road as the Handsome Man shop.

Cambodian fashion is very similar to Thai fashion. Bright bold colours and tight fitting.

The Camera Repair shop is next to the bottled water shop.

A new luxury watch shop on Sivutha Boulevard

Wedding cake house on the road to Psar Leu

fitting for a bakery!

Looking for Liza Kerkache

2010-06-25T10:42:00.001+07:00

I met this wonderful lady at my shop last year. Subsequently we spent almost everyday together, and Liza even rolled up her sleeves to help me redecorate the shop. But I have lost touch with Liza. I don't have her email and can't find her online. (I am not even sure I spelt her last name correctly).

This is what I know of Liza. She is a North African and Indian beauty, born in France. Liza is married to an Irishman with whom she has a young son. The family currently lives in Australia where her hubby is a pediatrician. Liza - if you are reading this, please contact me! I think about you often and am still using the oil burner you gave me :)

I hope someone out there can help me get in touch with her again. Your reward will be a Bloom bag!

Satellite TV (and World Cup) in Siem Reap

2010-06-25T10:21:00.004+07:00

This is the cable TV company in Siem Reap, RSCTV. We get 85 channels for US$5 a month. One of the best deals in Cambodia, which made me wonder if many of the channels were pirated - duh. These are the satellite dishes used to receive all the channels. Ch'ran, ch'ran! ("many, many").

The company is great - very professional. Every month their guys come on a motorbike to the house to collect the money (now why can't the electricity people do the same, saving me this trouble?). They always give us a receipt for the $5. We had some problems with channels 80-84 (84 is my beloved Al Jazeera) and told them when they came round for the bill. They returned an hour later to fix the problem. Service is very good and we are very happy with our cable TV.

My poor (ok, not so poor) friends in Singapore have to pay a minimum of US$50 to watch the World Cup, but we get it for free (via Malaysian, Thai and Vietnamese sports channels). The high prices led to public demonstrations, rare in tightly controlled Singapore. Yes, Singaporeans are serious about their soccer, lol.

Stretch limo in Cambodia

2010-06-25T09:59:00.002+07:00

You don't expect to see this sort of thing in Cambodia, one of the world's poorest countries, where 77.7% of the population live on less than US$2 a day, 59% have no access to safe drinking water, 83% without access to basic sanitation and the life expectancy is only 58 years. (See http://www.dollaraweek.org/learn)

But in touristy Siem Reap, where the Amansara (Angelina Jolie supposedly stays here when she is in town) charges upwards of US$750 a night, you can find things like this stretch limo. Initially very jarring to the senses - but I'm not surprised anymore.

The limo belongs to Sokha hotel, owned by the Sokimex group, owned by Oknha Sok Kong, who has close ties with the ruling Cambodian People's Party. FYI - Sokimex shares in the revenue from the sales of tickets to Angkor Wat, the other beneficiary being the Apsara Authority. (See here and here). Currently, Sokha hotels is building an US$80 million, 600 room, 5 star hotel in Sihanoukville which has come under some scrutiny. It has also started construction on a 800 room, 5 star hotel in Phnom Penh.

Anyway, just so you know - you can travel in style like a hiphop mogul, even in Cambodia.

Failed state No. 40 - Cambodia

2010-06-25T01:32:00.002+07:00

Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace's 5th Annual Failed State Index ranks Cambodia at number 40. It shares the dubious distinction with Laos and Rwanda.

40. CAMBODIA
Score: 88.7
This young Cambodian mother is turning her infant over to the care of a safe house built for families of persons living with HIV/AIDS and run by a Canadian NGO. About 170,000 Cambodians are HIV positive. [See photo on Foreign Policy linked below]

Good news though - Cambodia moved up 9 spots from last year's index (Laos moved up 4 places and Rwanda, 5).

Number 1 is Somalia, which has topped the ranking for the last 3 years. "After two decades of chaos, the country is today largely under the control of Islamist militant groups, the most notorious and powerful of which is al-Shabab. A second faction, Hizbul Islam, rivals the former in brutality -- it recently executed two Somalis for the crime of watching the World Cup."

The Philippines is at #51 (up 2 spots from last year) and the last country on the list (hardly a failed state, but in the "sustainable category"), is Norway, at #177.

Read "Postcards from Hell" on Foreign Policy.com. Full list of countries by Failed States Index on Wikipedia.

US jails Cambodia coup plotter Chhun Yasith for life

2010-06-23T19:30:00.001+07:00

"A Cambodian-born accountant has been jailed for life in the US for plotting a failed coup attempt against the Cambodian government 10 years ago.

Chhun Yasith, 53, was found guilty by a court in Los Angeles in 2008 of four charges relating to the failed attack.

Dozens of armed men attacked government buildings in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, in a bid to overthrow Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Chhun is a naturalised US citizen who fled Cambodia as a refugee in 1982.

He grew frustrated with the lack of free elections under Hun Sen, a former member of the Khmer Rouge under dictator Pol Pot, said Chhun's lawyer Richard Callahan.

"He saw Hun Sen as on an even par with Pol Pot," Mr Callahan said.

Chhun also wanted to avenge the death of his father, whom he witnessed being beheaded by Khmer Rouge soldiers, Mr Callahan added."

Full story on the BBC.

Where the Mind is Without Fear

2010-06-20T13:08:00.000+07:00

Where The Mind Is Without Fear
Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Dear Yellow Pages

2010-06-18T09:52:00.002+07:00

We have a thing called "The Internet". Please stop wasting stuff.

via Faconbitz at Reddit.

Warren Buffett pledges to give 99% of his wealth to charity

2010-06-17T16:12:00.001+07:00

Buffet and Bill Gates are trying to get fellow billionaires like Oprah and George Soros to donate 50% of their wealth to charity now or at death.

This is an excerpt of Buffett's personal pledge, published in Fortune:

"First, my pledge: More than 99% of my wealth will go to philanthropy during my lifetime or at death. Measured by dollars, this commitment is large. In a comparative sense, though, many individuals give more to others every day.

"Millions of people who regularly contribute to churches, schools, and other organizations thereby relinquish the use of funds that would otherwise benefit their own families. The dollars these people drop into a collection plate or give to United Way mean forgone movies, dinners out, or other personal pleasures. In contrast, my family and I will give up nothing we need or want by fulfilling this 99% pledge.

"Moreover, this pledge does not leave me contributing the most precious asset, which is time. Many people, including -- I'm proud to say -- my three children, give extensively of their own time and talents to help others. Gifts of this kind often prove far more valuable than money. A struggling child, befriended and nurtured by a caring mentor, receives a gift whose value far exceeds what can be bestowed by a check. My sister, Doris, extends significant person-to-person help daily. I've done little of this."

[...]

"My luck was accentuated by my living in a market system that sometimes produces distorted results, though overall it serves our country well. I've worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. In short, fate's distribution of long straws is wildly capricious."

Good for him. He joins the ranks of my heroes - places I usually reserve for people like the owner of this laundry.

Han Han, Reddit - the Chinese and the Americans

2010-06-17T14:06:00.011+07:00

Han Han (韩寒) is the Chinese blogger on Time's most influential list. I caught him on CNN's Talk Asia and was very impressed.

I have to confess that my general impression of the Chinese is not good. My impression of the Chinese people is that they love money and are not too bothered with ethics. The milk scandal is a prime example of how I think Chinese people 杀人不眨眼 ("kill people without batting an eyelid") in the pursuit of money. In business, my impression of the Chinese is captured in their saying: "There are no good or bad businessmen; there is only the one that makes money and the one that doesn't."

Watching Han Han on TV that day was a real eye-opener. In that half-hour, I literally saw a paradigm shift in my mind and saw the Chinese in a different light. Han Han reminded me that people everywhere are the same. He's just an ordinary citizen fighting the same political forces we all battle with, in our respective countries, so as to achieve greater liberty and justice. (One of my favourite quotes is from the movie V for Vendetta: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.")

Later, I realised what was going on. Although ethnic Chinese, I have never felt much in common with the Chinese people, because culturally Singaporean Chinese are very different from the mainland Chinese (indeed with the Chinese elsewhere, such as those in the US or Indonesia or Thailand or Hong Kong - I do however enjoy Taiwanese chat shows and get the humour in a way I do not for mainland Chinese shows).

Very simply, we developed in different ways because of our different histories. I always find it strange when a mainland Chinese person says to me "You should know what I mean, being Chinese." In fact, I very often don't know he or she means. I may look Chinese but I had a very Westernised education specialising in Western philosophy (I have an M.A. in this). I also ended up with a Western partner whom I have been with for more than a decade now.

I am sure my education was key in causing me to rebel against many aspects of Chinese culture that simply did not make sense to me, above all, the cultural and religious practices that revolve around gaining prosperity (i.e., money - see what I mean?). I favour rationalism, appealing to reason and empiricism, than on hand-me-down customs and traditions. My parents and I rarely see eye-to-eye.

But of course culture is a hard thing to fight, so I retain some of it, such as a sense of filial piety that seems strange to my partner. I sometimes feel guilty for choosing this life, for giving my money to complete strangers, rather than to my parents and family - which is what Asian culture dictates. A very good friend from school whom I have known since we were 13 sometimes calls me "不孝女", literally, "unfilial daughter" - don't worry, despite this, we're still best friends and Khim has even given me money for Bloom which I am using to pay for Sina's university fees. :) Khim is the complete opposite. Unlike me who has chosen to live in another country away from my family, she returned early from a posting to Beijing just to be with her parents in Singapore.

Another reason why I do not considered the Chinese to be just like me is that I do not have close friends from China and have never had the opportunity to discuss their hopes and dreams and fears with them. (I do have a few on Facebook and really liked Daisy, a former freelance editor from Hainan I had worked with in Singapore. She was just the sweetest person.)

And even though I do read and write Chinese, I find it much, much harder than English, so would never spend the time to read Chinese blogs (unlike Khim whose Chinese is as powerful as her English, I might add). As a result, I never really understood how Chinese people think. What I know of the Chinese is what I see and read in the news.

I have the same impression of the US. Most of what I read about the US makes me dislike the country, its conspicuous consumerism, its foreign policies, its arrogance, its stupidity and self-righteousness. (To be perfectly honest, when the sub-prime crisis first happened in the US, I found it hard to sympathise with Americans, thinking, "Well, you were the people who voted for George W Bush - twice.")

However, the difference with Americans is I share their language and as a result have come to know many Americans which has helped promote my understanding of the people.

In fact, my favourite website, reddit.com is populated mostly by Americans. I always feel at home when I visit reddit, more so than when I visit a Singapore site. I recently shared this with my Facebook friends explaining why I love reddit and declared redditors to be "my people".

Language to me is a big barrier in understanding a culture and its people - this is why I find the many French and Koreans I meet in Cambodia strange. For this reason, I am interested in learning the French and Korean languages. This is also why I don't understand expats who live in Cambodia and don't make an effort to learn the language. How can you understand the people otherwise? (Not that learning the language will make you understand the Khmers, I can attest to that. It's is just a necessary, not a sufficient, condition.)

Anyway, on to Han Han.

Asia! magazine is published in Singapore by my friend Han Shih out of Singapore and has some great articles. Like this one - Chinese student offers to pay for job. Because the job market in China is so competitive, young people have to resort to taking a negative salary just to get one.

Asia! translated and published Han Han's blog post on the Foxconn suicides. (Some background for those not aware of the FoxConn scandal. "From Between Jan 2010 to May 2010, twelve Foxconn employees attempted suicide, with ten deaths... Compared to China's overall suicide rate, the suicide rate at Foxconn is not statistically aberrant but the rapid rate of the suicides is unusual...While offering an option to the [assaulted Reuters] reporter to file a police report, the police officer informed him that he is free to choose whichever option but he must note that Foxconn receives special status locally." - From Wikipedia on FoxConn).

Writes Han Han:

"If you increase the salary of Foxconn workers by tenfold, would that mean no one will kill himself? Well, only if inflation doesn’t increase tenfold. But of course the Big Boss won’t agree to it; even if he does, the government will issue orders to stop him.

"That our politicians have been able to flex their muscles in the international political arena, and play games, it’s all thanks to you – every one of you, cheap labour – for you are China’s bargaining chip, our GDP. Whether this is a consequence of China’s unique socialism or capitalism, it remains to be fathomed. What is clear is that such tragedies, much as they should be raging in our hearts, they remain splattered, smeared on the ground."

Click on asiamag.com here to read Han Han's entire post.

Cambodian Film "ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE" to be shown in NY this week

2010-06-15T08:23:00.004+07:00

Dear Ms. Saw,

I hope this email finds you very well. I was reading your blog, and I wanted to be in touch to send you some information about a very powerful film on Cambodia that will be playing in the upcoming Human Rights Watch Film Festival at New York’s Lincoln Center from June 18-20. We are hoping that since the issues you work around are closely linked to those touched on in the film - that you might be able to help us to share information about the film to your members and supporters. We have a blurb for you to post:

“From June 18-20, Human Rights Watch International Film Festival will be screening ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in NYC. ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE follows filmmaker Thet Sambath as he uncovers terrifying personal explanations for the Cambodian genocide by allowing the perpetrators to speak for themselves. You can find more information at www.hrw.org . At all of the screenings of the film, the filmmakers Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath will be present to answer questions from the audience. Stephen Holden of the New York Times said ‘the story of Mr. Thet Sambath, who spent years researching and interviewing, is a testament to one man’s persistent search for the truth. The faces and voices of these ordinary people forced to kill raises the age-old question: Who, in the same situation, would have acted differently?’ (read more at: nytimes.com)”

We think your supporters would be interested in the film because it touches upon issues of social and national justice, as well as international reconciliation. With so much global attention on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia – we hope that the film will teach and inspire New Yorkers to learn more about Cambodia and become more active in their communities.

We are hoping to have a strong audience for these special events and hope that you can help by spreading the word to your readers. We are pasting an HTML flyer below, which includes an image, ticket links, and information about the screenings. Please let me know if you need any further information on the film or have any questions, you can reach me by email at yees@hrw.org.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Best Regards,
Sterling Yee
Outreach Consultant
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival



	NEW YORK PREMIERE OF ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE + Q&A June 18-20, 2010 at The Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater



	Please join us for the New York Premiere of this astonishing documentary. Follow filmmaker Thet Sambath as he uncovers terrifying personal explanations for the Cambodian genocide by allowing the perpetrators to speak for themselves. We are delighted that both filmmakers Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath will be present for a discussion after the screenings. Find out more Presented in association with International Center for Transitional Justice andMargaret Mead Film and Video Festival SCREENINGS: Friday, June 18 4:00 \| Invite friends Saturday, June 19 6:30 \| Invite friends Sunday, June 20 1:30 \| Invite friends All screenings are at the Walter Reade Theater 165 West 65th Street, New York, NY 10023 Find out more on www.hrw.org/iff
	Would you like to receive occasional updates on special film events for the Human Rights Watch Film Festival? Sign up for our e-mailing list

Feeding Siem Reap's rubbish collecting children

2010-06-12T16:15:00.009+07:00

Thursday 10 June marked the day Mavis' Touch A Life (TAL) food programme opened at her house near Wat Po Lanka. Previously Mavis would cook food and deliver to residents at the very poor Mondul 3 district. She has since rented a house, for people to drop in for meals, so providing a soup-kitchen like service.

They were up since 6am to buy and prepare the food. The "ait-jai" (rubbish collecting) children around the area had been told to come today at noon. They were waiting outside the gate at 11. The children must have been hungry. Mavis' landlord is such a good guy and obviously believes in what she is doing. His whole family came to help out with the cooking.

The meals are vegetarian, with protein from eggs and toufu. The fried eggs with long beans would turn out to be a hit with the children...

Not so the morning glory fried with garlic, fish sauce, sugar and salt. Later, Kagna explained to me for poor people in Cambodia, morning glory (or kangkong as we call it in Singapore and Malaysia) is a staple dish because it is so cheap (500 riels to 1000 riels a kg or US$0.12 to US$0.25 a kg). So that's why the children didn't eat it - they were probably sick of it! A lesson for us - no more "tro-kun" in the future.

There was also vegetable soup, with carrots, winter melon, potatoes and onions, flavoured with vegetable seasoning and salt. Some of the children really liked the soup - but no one liked the onions... Here is my father (he's here for a visit) helping to scoop soup into individual bowls for the children.

The children who were waiting outside are finally allowed in at noon. But what are they doing?

Washing their hands! Mavis would like them to learn and practise good hygiene habits and has provided clean water and soap.

A feast! A total of 17 kids turned up. Not bad for the first day. We told the children to spread the word. TAL hopes to provide meals for the ait-jai adults as well.

The beautiful TAL house

where the meals are served.

This boy is just 8 years old and is forced to collect rubbish. A warm meal at lunch time is much appreciated. Sometimes they get packed food from home which turns cold by lunch time. Mostly, they will have to fend for themselves, perhaps buying snacks - so long as they bring home the expected amount of money every day.

This cute girl is the youngest of the lot - only 6 years old, wearing an over-sized T-shirt. She was so happy. The kids are so sweet and incredibly polite and helpful. Mavis says the children in our countries are different, not as sweet and obedient. I guess children in developed countries are used to having it easy and can be spoilt.

This 12 year old boy has barely finished swallowing his food and is going for seconds! He was so hungry. He ate the most!

After eating the children help clean up - they wash their individual plates, first in a bucket of rice water with dish washing liquid added (it is amazing - the rice water really helps remove grease).

The second pail is clean water in which they dip the plates, and then finally in a third pail.

The weather is so hot, some of the boys took the opportunity to have a cool shower.

Helping my friend!

Thank you TAL! We will be back (TAL serves food 3 times a week)

Off to work again. The sacks on both sides of the bicycle are for putting the cans/plastic bottles/cardboard the kids find which will then be sold on to a recycling centre).

Joom reap lia Mavis! Aw-koon chran! (bye bye Mavis, thank you very much!)

Me and Mavis on NewsRadio 93.8 today

2010-06-10T10:34:00.005+07:00

I just got an email from Shaffiq, a super nice reporter from MediaCorp who visited Siem Reap last week and contacted me about an interview. I was so surprised to see him sitting on the floor of the Bloom shop when I went to meet him. How atypical of a Singaporean! (Usually the Singaporeans I meet in Cambodia are a little haughty, and obsessed about cleanliness - no way would they sit on a shop floor in Cambodia!) Straightaway I knew I would like this guy. :)

We had a great time, having dinner and drinks almost every day he was here. Shaffiq fell in love with Siem Reap and says he will be back.

Anyway, I introduced Shaffiq to Mavis whom I've written about before. She runs Touch A Life, a food programme here in Siem Reap. Mavis just rented a house this month in order to start some sort of a soup kitchen for the rubbish collectors and other poor and needy people.

Shaffiq interviewed us on tape and edited it for the radio programme - it wasn't 'live', thank goodness! I learnt it was broadcast on radio in Singapore this morning and Shaffiq emailed me the transcript. Here it is:

10/06/10 Helping the needy in Cambodia FTR
Siem Reap, a major gateway to Cambodia, is only about two hours away by plane from Singapore.
It still has the feel of a charming sleepy little town.
However, this may change - thanks to a rise in tourist traffic as the majestic Angkor Wat lies only a stone's throw away.
Despite this development, Cambodia remains one of the poorest countries in Asia.
Many of its people are still picking up the pieces after enduring years of hardship - from a war with Vietnam that only ended in 1989 to the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime that left some 1.7 million people dead.
Even though most Singaporeans are content to just join the droves of tourists over the ruins of Angkor, some have decided to reach out to needy Cambodians and help them get on with their lives.
Shaffiq Alkhatib caught up with two Singaporean women who are doing just that - and are calling Siem Reap home.
IN: Tucked away...
OUT:...938LIVE
DUR: 5min 21s
TITLE: 10/06 Cambodia FTR
===============
Tucked away along a little street in downtown Siem Reap lies a shop that's only slightly bigger than a bedroom in a typical HDB flat.
But unlike the many stores in the area that mainly offer trinkets to tourists, Bloom sells colourful, handmade bags made from recycled materials such as rice sacks and animal-feed bags.
Its owner is 38-year-old Singaporean, Diana Saw.
She used to draw a six-figure annual salary when she was the regional General Manager for an Australia-based multi-national publishing company.
But a trip to Siem Reap in April 2006 with a friend from a non-government organisation or NGO against child trafficking changed everything.
The NGO, called Riverkids, is run by a Singaporean couple.
"During that four-day holiday, I encountered a mother who sold her newborn baby boy for a hundred US dollars. How can you know about things that go in your own backyard and go on with your lives? And so I decided because I don't have children and I don't have a mortgage, I could easily just move. So I convinced my partner that this is the right thing to do. Now I don't earn anything because I started Bloom with my own savings and I wanted the money to go to the Khmers. But as a business, I've learnt you can't run business that way. So at some point, I have to pay myself a salary."
Ms Saw returned to Cambodia a month later to rent a house.
Another month later, she settled there.
She stresses that Bloom is not an NGO but a social enterprise.
She has hired 15 local Cambodians to make the bags in Phnom Penh and two to take care of the shop in Siem Reap.
" To me, I feel the NGOs here, a lot of them have not left a legacy. If they did their jobs well, they could up and leave and the country will still be able to operate without them. But I don't think that's the case in Cambodia. If the NGOs were to up and leave, a lot of people will lose their jobs and it's still one of the poorest countries in the world. So for me, I want the benefits to accrue to the poorest...And the other thing I noticed is when people get donations, they have this welfare mentality. And I think if people need jobs, you give them jobs. Teach a man to fish rather than throw him a fish."
Ms Saw pays her employees a minimum of 70 US dollars for a 40-hour work week.
In Cambodia, similar workers usually get 20 US dollars less and they slog for 48 hours a week.
"I follow Singapore law. They have 14 days sick leave a year, plus 14 days public holidays. So they've got 28 days paid annual holidays. And that's why nobody resigns from Bloom basically."
Business may be "blooming" now.
But Ms Saw still encounters cultural differences that sometimes hinder her noble intentions.
"For me, it's always the culture. You adapt or you'll die! If people are interested in doing business in Cambodia, you really need a very good local partner or friend. I was very lucky. Even my landlords have been very helpful to me. People have been very generous. I've got many good Cambodian friends - from my landlords to my staff to even former staff. They've come back to help me whenever I have a problem."
Another Singaporean, 55-year old Mavis Ching, prepares free meals for the needy in Siem Reap.
She usually finds it difficult to communicate effectively with the Cambodians as they speak Khmer, and she isn't fluent in the language.
"But there are enough people who I know speak enough English to help me by. Otherwise, when you reach out from the heart, it's easy to get things done."
The former piano teacher is the founder of an NGO, called Touch A Life.
Ms Ching, who arrived in Cambodia in June 2008, now whips up about 2,500 meals a month.
She would then hop on a motorcycle to distribute them to the residents of nearby villages.
"In Cambodia, I cook meals which I offer to poor people. I think they deserve to have a free meal once in a while. They're vegetarian-based meals, vegetables with proteins coming from eggs and tofu. I had two different kitchens to cook in. One was in the kitchen of a hospitality school - the Shinta Mani Hotel and another one was in the kitchen of a disabled group of people. I decided to help them by having them cook for me so it was a means of income for them. But now the hotel is being renovated for expansion, so that one is out and the disabled people have moved to the village."
Because of these changes, Ms Ching has decided to use her own kitchen.
She wants to operate a meal centre from her own home this month to serve about 100 needy people a day.
Ms Ching will open her doors to them three times a week.
Two days will be set aside to distribute food to the villagers.
"I can tell you the total expenses, including transport, it's about 1,500 US dollars a month. (And where do you get your income from?) It's from well-wishers, friends, family, people who feel moved to help."
Some of her Cambodian friends pitched in - they transformed the verandah of her rented bungalow into an eating area for the needy.
They also built four wooden tables and eight benches, and transformed her backyard into a kitchen area spacious enough to prepare large amounts of food.
It also comes with a sturdy new shelter with a thatched roof so that Ms Ching and her volunteers can cook in comfort.
Ms Ching and Ms Saw are glowing examples of individuals who have left the comfort of home to do their part to help the needy.
I'm Shaffiq Alkhatib for 938LIVE.
end

Riverkids project on Singapore TV

2010-06-07T19:34:00.001+07:00

Dale Edmonds, founder of Riverkidsproject.org was interviewed 'live' on Channel News Asia's (CNA) Prime Time Morning. That's a screenshot of Dale from the programme. To watch the interview go to http://www.channelnewsasia.com/ptm/interviews/index.htm.

I've taken a screenshot of the site to show you where to click. Pretty sure it won't be on that page after a while so go watch it now and learn about child trafficking!

Full disclosure: Although not a fan of NGOs in general, I am a trustee of Riverkids Project, because I believe in the NGO and the work they do. Dale and husband Jimmy Yap are friends of mine whom I've known for a decade now. And Sophon, the Cambodian director is simply the best Khmer I know. He's a really, really good person with a big, big heart.

Dale was recently nominated for the 2010 Singapore Woman Award, by Singapore broadcaster Mediacorp, which owns the CNA channel among [all] others. Good on you Dale! Keep up the good work (and you too, Sophon)!

I am Political; not political

2010-05-29T19:53:00.012+07:00

It was pointed out to me the other day that I am Political (with a capital "P"); not political.

I was saying to a friend how I sometimes think I should be more of an actress and play the networking game a little better so as to advance Bloom's interests. In short, perhaps I should be more political; like the politician who says whatever his audience wants to hear in order to get elected.

As an example, I had met a Singaporean MP (Member of Parliament) who came to the Bloom shop here in Siem Reap about a year ago to meet with me. The lady MP was interested in social entrepreneurship and her American assistant (a blond, female, fresh Ivy League grad from the US) had set up a meeting for us. So it has come to this - Singaporean MPs having American assistants. I was puzzled, wondering why a Singaporean was not doing the job. Perhaps it is in her private capacity that this MP had hired the American, since she is likely to be involved in other businesses, as are all other Singaporean MPs.

Ms MP is in her forties and a typical Singaporean. The first question she asked me was what I did at my former job. This is also typical of the US, I have been told. What job you do, what car you drive, where you live and in what house.

This did not annoy me as much as what I felt to be her patronising attitude. Perhaps she did not mean to come across that way, but she did. I think Singaporean MPs are used to deference from Singaporeans, who in general do not challenge but are respectful, nay, fearful, of authority. They may get such treatment on home turf. But they forget the rest of the world does not give two hoots who they are and what they do. That includes me, a Singaporean living in Cambodia.

The MP said she was here on a mission to meet with high-level Cambodian government officials to promote social entrepreneurship in Cambodia. "We think Cambodia has lots of potential in this area," she said. "We know we are not as good as you people on the ground. So we leave the grassroots project to people like you. For us, we are focused on doing things at a higher-level."

This pissed me off for two reasons. In the first place, it was no less difficult for me than it would be for her to start a grassroots project. I did not start out good at the ground level. I got good. Through four years of experience and pressing on despite the many difficulties. I went ahead and did it because I believe it makes a - not a - the difference. I want the benefits to accrue to the poorest - and not the richest, whether by intention or as a by-product (a "negative externality" as economists put it, where corruption is seen as a cost of commerce, where the benefit is greater than the cost).

Secondly, I am fed up, seriously fed up, of people like her and the organisations they represent. She told me she has been working with "organisations" for more than a decade.

"Really? Which ones?" I asked, genuinely interested.

"The World Economic Forum."

At this, I finally blurted, "So you are the enemy. Just like the World Bank and the IMF."

In saying this I share the views of the thousands of protestors and anti-globalisation activists who hold demonstrations at every WEF meeting in Davos, Switzerland, since the late 1990s, to protest against the meeting of "fat cats in the snow" as U2's Bono put it. (See what some of these fat cats ate at this year's event, and what the leaders people at a G8 meeting had on the menu.)

People like me are critical of the globalisation of corporate capitalism, where multi-national corporations that seek to maximise profits get away without accountability to workers' rights, safety and environmental standards.

The current oil spill clean up caused by BP is a good example. The damage is estimated to cost US$14 billion but the maximum fine to BP is a mere US$75 million, peanuts for a company that made US$13.96 billion profits for one year, 2009, down from US$25.59 billion (! Cambodia's GDP is about US$10 billion) for 2008.

And who pays the rest of the $14 billion damage? Guess.

By signalling they will bail out the follies of these huge companies, government regulators reward companies like BP, and Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase. As Zach Carter, writing in alternet.org puts it: "That scenario radically distorts the market, making massive and unnecessary risk-taking the rational choice for bigwig bankers. If their bets pay off, the bank books huge profits. If the bets backfire, the government will bail out the bank."

Also interesting is "Anatomy of the BP oil spill: A disaster waiting to happen" on e360.yale.edu. When companies reward executive bonuses based on metrics, risks are ignored. "BP and other companies tend to measure safety and environmental compliance on a day-to-day, checklist basis, to the point of basing executive bonuses on those metrics. But even if worker accident rates fall to zero, that may reveal nothing about the risk of a major disaster. “These things we are talking about are risks that won’t show up this year, next year — it may be 10 years down the road before you see one of these big blowouts or refinery accidents,” Andrew Hopkins, a sociology professor at the Australian National University said. “This same thing happened in the global financial crisis. Bankers were paid big bonuses for risks taken this year or next year, but the real risks came home to roost years later.”

If you need any more proof that BP values money over the lives of its workers, check out this leaked BP memo.

But I digress. This blog post is about me, after all, a Political-with-a-capital-P-person .

I do not know why Ms MP was taken aback. If her American assistant had done her job, she would know that I am a socialist and count Noam Chomsky as one of my heroes. I make no effort to hide these facts and in fact declare them on all my sites (check out my blogger profile for instance). In fact, I did say to Ms MP that our discussions about social entrepreneurship failed to address the main problem - capitalism.

Clearly a little put off by me, Ms MP parting shot to me was, "My advice to you is to try to bring people to your side of the table." Spoken like a true politician - with a small letter "p". (By the way, the great photo of the Geisha is by Sushicam)

I did not say to her then what I thought - people like you who do things at the "high-level" rather than at the grassroots are simply parasites. For without the people at the grassroots what job would you do? Your work, your very "high-level" job is based on everything "people like us" do at the ground level. All your talking, pontificating in posh hotels over crazy expensive meals - what is that based on? A whole parasitic industry has been created on the work "people like us" do.

So, in what sense does my friend think I am Political? In Aristotle's sense, when he says "Man is by nature a political animal", a social animal, for whom the pursuit of political life is to live according to what is Good (eu zen or eudaimonia).

I think my friend is right. I do care about Politics with a capital "P", in the general, larger sense of organising society and economic and political institutions that is best for the Good of human beings. I do not care about being "political" in the smaller sense of pursuing self-interest. Nor do I care for political people and politicians.

Ultimately, not being political, not playing the game, not pretending to be interested in people, not pursuing all avenues for Bloom may be my loss, and Bloom's loss. Ms MP and my path may cross again one day, for instance, and I may regret not being more congenial to her. But I choose to live my life with honesty, and I choose not to live in fear.

(The big problem with Singaporeans is self-censorship. I knew Singaporeans who were worried they would not get their government flats if they were critical of the ruling party. The result is the people censor their thoughts and speech on their own, so government censors do not have to do the work.

As I have written in another blog post, "Yukos oil tycoon turned political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky once said, "It is the Singapore model, it is a term that people understand in Russia these days. It means that theoretically you have a free press, but in practice there is self-censorship. Theoretically you have courts; in practice the courts adopt decisions dictated from above. Theoretically there are civil rights enshrined in the constitution; in practice you are not able to exercise some of these rights.")

Besides, I could never be a politician - I am a crap actress.

Touch a Life Food Programme in Siem Reap

2010-05-23T17:03:00.000+07:00

I took these photos on April 6, when I went with my friend Mavis on one of her many trips to feed poor people in Mondul 3 district, a very poor area in Siem Reap. Tourists are often surprised to learn that Siem Reap is one of the poorest provinces in the country. Step out of Siem Reap town, barely 30 mins away on a motorbike, and you will see the crushing poverty. (In 2008, I wrote about New Hope, an NGO operating in Mondul 3).

Mavis (in the middle) is a Singaporean mother of two who has lived in Malacca, the former Portugese colonial town in Malaysia, for two decades. She started a food programme in Malacca and brought the programme to Siem Reap about 2 years ago, which was when we first met.

The beauty on the back of the motorbike is Jesseca Liu, a popular Malaysian-born, Singapore-based, actress. Jesseca had come for a visit with her family but got stuck without a flight out (long story). It was funny, we took her for a massage in Siem Reap and all the massage girls insisted on taking a photo with Jesseca cos they recognised her as Ruan Mian Mian, the Vietnamese bride in a Singapore drama series called "Portrait of Home" (同心圆). The show was dubbed in Khmer and shown on TV. Everywhere we went Khmers would gawk and say she is sa'at. They especially loved her fair skin. Having met her I can confirm she really is beautiful, inside and out.

This is one of my heroes, Bel, a Cambodian man who lost his right leg when he stepped on a landmine when he was nine. Bel helps Mavis by delivering the food she cooks to the villagers. I was so touched seeing him ride his moto holding on to his crutch with the packets of food strapped to the back of the bike.

Bel in front, Mavis and Jess on second bike. I'm behind them on another moto, balancing sitting side saddle and taking these photos. Yes, I am almost local!

The first stop. You can see why. A malnourished girl with her mom who has 3 other children. Boxes of food (vegetarian, Mavis believes it is best) for the whole family.

Food for the families identified as very poor

Here you can see Bel, on his crutch, feeding the children. I am always touched when I see these photos. Really, to the point of tears. Here is a man whose life must have been hard. He told me he remembers bleeding, bleeding all over the place and the trip to the hospital took over a day and when he arrived, he was stinking from sweat and blood and no wonder the nurses weren't kind.

And look at Bel now. Only in his twenties and a proud man helping his fellow Khmers. I know I can be cynical and doubt the good foreigners like me are doing for this country because Khmers can be so manipulative and corrupt. But people like Bel put me to shame. He still has a hard life but despite this he tries to help other disabled people whom he takes in and feeds. I want to do more for people like Bel. They really do deserve better.

Wee happy children with wee packets of crackers.

Where the children live. Leaf roof, zinc and cardboard walls. Where is the toilet I hear you ask. There is none. They do everything in the bushes. No running water either. Water is from common wells some distance away.

Nothing is wasted. Leftover rice is dried in the sun and fed to the animals. Mavis will be back Tues and I'll post more photos of our next trip. Read more about Bel and Mavis here at atablefortwo.com.au. If you would like to donate to help Mavis please go to Touch A Life. If you would like the money to go to Bel and his KILT (Khmer Independent Life Team), please let Mavis know.

Phillip Lim 3.1 - a Cambodian designer

2010-05-13T15:22:00.000+07:00

I just learnt from this LA Times article that designer Phillip Lim is Cambodian. Quite sad to read about his relationship with his mother who smuggled her children out of Cambodia in 1975.

"Lim has never invited his mom -- or any of his family -- to his runway shows. Or told them how much his clothes cost. (His line falls in the contemporary category, so most pieces are less than $1,000.) His mother only recently learned that his work has been featured in magazines when a French relative phoned her after seeing his name in Jalouse.

"LIKE so many immigrant children who don't go into professional fields, Lim thinks he's disappointed his parents, for whom going into fashion was on par with becoming a small-time seamstress.

[...]

"Even now, more than 30 years later, she tears up talking about the summer of 1975 when she and her late husband Pary escaped from Cambodia in the middle of the night, huddled in a boat with their six children who were all under the age of 13. The Lims are Chinese, but their ancestors migrated to Cambodia after Japan invaded. When Pol Pot took over, "I was afraid he was going to draft my boys as children soldiers," Hannah says, as her daughter Lisa translates. They escaped to a refugee camp in Thailand, where a Christian organization sponsored their move to San Diego. Pary worked odd jobs while Hannah sewed simple garments at home for 5 to 10 cents apiece."

Female sex tourism

2010-04-30T17:40:00.002+07:00

In today's Globalpost.com: Female sex tourism in Senegal attracts women who will pay for romance.

"Moussa flipped through a stack of photos. In one image, an overweight, Spanish woman — his first "girlfriend" — has her arms around his small frame. She gave him $500, he said, before heading home. Another photo is a self-taken shot of him with an Italian woman who he said gave him the $650 to open his souvenir shop in Dakar where we now sit, drinking spicy Touba coffee.

He pointed out the gifts tourists send him: CDs, USB drives, a guitar, an MP3 player and a DVD player.

“I don’t ask for money," he said. "We go out. They pay for everything. We have sex. Before they leave, they give me a bit cash to help me out."

Some call it male prostitution, while others say it's just women doing what middle-aged men have been doing for centuries: Taking up with someone half their age and giving that new friend an all-expenses-paid ride in exchange for sex and a new lease on life. [...]

But, others in Senegal say it is not that innocent. It's exploitation on both sides, they say, and sex tourism has sullied the country's reputation and corrupted its youth.

But, closing up his shop back in Dakar to head off to drum practice, Moussa said he's not worried about what other people think.

"I haven't met her yet," he said, "The woman who's not so old, who loves me, who's willing to do anything. The woman who will get me a visa and a plane ticket out of here." [...]

"I saw quite a few young men there with old, white women. I began to question my morality. What are you doing with this old woman? She could be your mom. You've become a gigolo, someone who doesn't have ambition, someone who is ready to do anything for money,” he said.

Years ago at a club in the Gambia, Pape saw a young man gyrating sexily in front of three old white women. One of the women reached out and patted his butt before shaking her head no, like it was a piece of fruit in the market.

"That memory comes back to me often lately," he said, stamping out one cigarette and lighting up another. "Once I find a good job, I will get my dignity back. But for now, I'm a prostitute."

According to Wikipedia, destinations for female sex tourism in southeast Asia are Bali, Indonesia and Phuket, Thailand. No mention of Cambodia, but of course it takes place here as well because of the wealth disparity between the locals and the visitors.

I have a funny story about a friend of a friend, a female sex tourist who likes to sample men from all over the world. This Dutch woman slept with a Cambodian man, a waiter at her hotel, while she was on holiday in Battambang. Later, she complained about his small size. We were amazed that she actually told the guy: "It's ok, don't worry. We Europeans are bigger, that's all." (I am sure she was just "unlucky" though, as other friends have told me otherwise!)

I also met a motodop (motocycle taxi driver) who told me about his Japanese "girlfriend". She came to holiday in Siem Reap for a week and spent one night in his family home. She told him she loved him and asked him to wait for her after she leaves. Meanwhile, he sends her emails but she is busy, he says. The Japanese woman takes about a month to reply to his emails. He said she has asked him to go to work in Japan but his mother does not want him to go. He will wait for her for 5 years, he told me. He has not seen her in a year and a half.

According to the wikipedia article, "Social reasons for women seeking promiscuous and no-strings-attached sex abroad include the dating war, as typified by extreme competition between the sexes in schools, the workplace, while dating, in marriages, and even in contentious divorces. The dating war appears especially to drive sex tourism by Australian and Japanese women, and to a lesser extent, German and Scandinavian female tourists."

In Singapore, Japanese women have a reputation for wanting "Sun, Shopping and Sex" while on holiday. I had heard how one of the bird trainers at a local attraction, the Singapore Bird Park, used to entertain Japanese women at the park--after hours of course. But there is a difference with someone like the Singaporean bird trainer who does not do it for the money and a man who feels a sugar mommy is his way out of poverty.

So we can make a distinction when Jeannette Belliveau, 51, a former sex tourist who remarried, and who wrote the book, Romance on the Road, says : "There is the view that these women are guilty of hypocrisy and that they are exploiting poor men. This is nonsense. Sex between two adults that doesn't harm either partner is without question a good thing." I learnt so much from it. It healed me after a painful divorce."

Sex between two consenting adults does not always mean no one is hurt. Just ask Pape from Senegal who said: "Once I find a good job, I will get my dignity back. But for now, I'm a prostitute."

KFC Denmark's website hacked

2010-04-30T15:24:00.000+07:00

Just took this screenshot from kfc.dk. No doubt KFC will try to fix it soon.

Cellcard giving out US$10,000 every day until May 7

2010-04-29T20:49:00.003+07:00

Since Friday 23rd April, one Cambodian has won US$10,000 daily! The lucky draw winnings are like nothing Cambodians have seen before and the daily broadcast of Cellcard Mobitel winners is the talk among my Khmer friends (I don't know why the Phnom Penh Post did not report this. Can't talk about the Cambodian Daily since the dinosaur does not even have a website.)

My Khmer friends in Siem Reap are peeved because they say the winners are all from Phnom Penh (I'm not sure if this is true). Kagna was so funny. She said one woman she saw on telly was super-excited and kept asking, "where can I get the $10,000?" But some other winners were not very impressed, leading Kagna to conclude that these people in Phnom Penh must be "very rich, so $10,000 not important for them".

We started talking about what we would do if we won the money and Kagna, who works with me in the Bloom shop, said she would give some to poor people, and put the rest in a bank. I said I would invest it in Bloom. And Ratha, a young woman working in another shop, said she would put everything in a bank. Kagna joked - why not share some with me?

To enter the lucky draw, which lasts for 15 days until 7 May, users have to SMS ‘10000’ to 8888, at US$0.15 per SMS. The more SMSs you send, the greater your chances of winning. Plus, every dollar you top-up from April 23 to May 7 is equal to 1 entry, so the bigger the top-up, the more entries you have.

So US$10,000 every day for 15 days, that's US$150,000 the company is giving out. At 15 US cents per SMS, Cellcard Mobitel would have earned US$150,000 if subscribers send a total of 1 million SMSs. But I don't know what it costs Cellcard to operate the service (or what the promotional activities is costing them) so I've no idea how many SMSs they would need to breakeven.

In any case, we need not worry for Cellcard Mobitel, owned by Cambodian tycoon Kith Meng, who is also president of the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce (pictured). His company made the news last year for winning a US$100 million loan from the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank. "Our vision is that people should have the opportunity to escape poverty and improve their lives," states the IFC on its website.

According to this 13 March 2009 report by the Phnom Penh Post, "The IFC believes the US$100 million project will increase service coverage to 75 percent of the Kingdom's population by 2012. Mobitel reached 62 percent of the country at the end of last year, company data show."

Callcard is Cambodia's leading telecom operator by market share, with 2.172 million subscribers as of March 2009.

It is trying to ward off competition from the aggressive Metfone, the mobile service operated by the military-owned Vietnamese mobile operator, Viettel. Metfone attracted 500,000 subscribers in the first three months of its trial service.

Cambodia has one of the most competitive telecoms market in the world, according to Gary Foo, chief marketing manager of Hello, which is owned by Malaysia’s Axiata Group. He told Voice of America his company was facing its toughest competition since it arrived in 1997.]

“[Cambodia] is one of the most competitive markets in the world, actually, just because of the fact that there are too many players in the market,” he said. That has led led to a slowdown in new subscribers, Foo said.

More from VOA:

Prior to 2008, only four mobile phone operators existed in Cambodia: Khmer Royal Group’s Mobitel, Thai Shin Satellite’s Mfone, Axiata’s Hello, and Applifone’s Star-Cell.

One year later, five more players entered, Cube, owned by Cambodian-Israeli Cambodia Advance Communication; Excell, owned by Cambodia’s GT-TELL; Metfone, owned by Vietnamese’s Viettel; Smart Mobile’s Latelz and Beeline, with investment from Russia’s VimpelCom.

That’s nine mobile phone operators for 14 million people, compared to China’s three state-run companies for 1.3 billion people, or four companies each in Vietnam and Thailand, which have, respectively, 80 million and 60 million people.

(More than 4 million Cambodians use mobile phones, an increase of 1 million in the past year alone.)

And here is a hilarious blogpost comparing the service of the 9 telcos in Cambodia. It is translated by Google translate from Chinese so it is not very grammatical (the original Chinese version is here):

Arrogance's largest telecommunications company Mobitel
If you have insufficient balance in the pull out, then you will hear "your number is insufficient balance, please refill, otherwise your number will be on X is X day X years removed from the system!"

Metfone is the most progressive companies
Metfone 097 is Cambodia's major competition to provide mobile telecommunications company, first appeared in Cambodia, one year, 894.6 thousand in the people. It can be said to be "third boss", and its fee is not expensive. A Sim Card 3 $, out $ 2.5 to buy a Sim card.

Hello is the most backward companies
Hello 015 016 081 is a step backward Cambodia mobile telecommunications company, for a long time in Cambodia for years, with the same old Camsin, and now only 627.2 thousand people in the use of inferior Metfone. It can be said to be "the fourth boss", and its fee is not expensive, $ 0.07 per minute. Out to buy a Sim card 1$.

Bloom nominated for the Body Shop 2010 grant

2010-04-23T21:41:00.000+07:00

I don't write about Bloom enough. Many things actually happen with Bloom but I have many interests which I blog about. Anyway, two weeks ago I received this email which made me very happy:

From: [name removed for privacy]@thebodyshop.com
To: "diana@bloomcambodia.com"
Sent: Thu, April 8, 2010 7:13:38 PM
Subject: INVITATION TO APPLY FOR FUNDING

Dear Ms Saw

Your organisation has been nominated by an employee of the Body Shop International for potential funding under our Asia Pacific Grants Programme at The Body Shop Foundation, the charitable trust of the company (www.thebodyshopfoundation.org).

We have attached a letter of invitation and an application form for you to complete and return to us by 14th June 2010 if you would like to apply for funding.

Can you please acknowledge receipt of this invitation by return email so that we know you have received our message and let us know if you will be applying for funding in 2010.

Yours sincerely
[name removed for privacy]
Grants Administrator
The Body Shop Foundation
Watersmead, Littlehampton
West Sussex, BN17 6LS

---------------------------------------------
From me:

Dear [...],

Thank you so much for the email. I appreciate the email very much and am touched one of the Body Shop's employees recommended us.

Although the money would be handy, from day one, we have decided not to rely on donations, preferring to make it on our own as a social enterprise, producing things that consumers are willing to buy from us. The reason is we are really striving to be self-reliant.

Many thanks again for contacting Bloom Cambodia and Happy Khmer New Year to you from sunny Cambodia!

Best regards,
Diana

---------------------------------------------

Dear Ms Saw

Thank you very much for your email. We wish you continued success with Bloom Cambodia. It looks like such a fantastic group.

Yours sincerely

[...]
Grants Administrator
The Body Shop Foundation
Watersmead, Littlehampton
West Sussex, BN17 6LS

Fee for depositing cash in Acleda bank

2010-04-23T15:47:00.003+07:00

So a friend of mine asked me to pass US$100 to a Cambodian young woman she knows who needed the money for her studies. This friend is in Australia and was unable to transfer the money from her Australian bank to my ANZ bank account in Cambodia [why I wonder, since they are all Aussie]. In the end she deposited the money into my Singapore bank account.

The Cambodian woman has an account with Acleda (pronounced "A. C. Leda"] Bank. I took the $100 to Acleda on Sivatha Boulevard here in Siem Reap town, thinking there would be no cost to me if I deposited cash into her account. The other option was to transfer it from my ANZ to her Acleda, which would most certainly involve a fee - Australian banks are notorious for charging customers for just about anything they can get away with.

Well, home-grown Cambodian bank Acleda must have learnt a lesson from some of these greedy banks. Acleda charged me US$2 to deposit CASH into one of their bank accounts. Incredible.

When I asked why they said it was because I was depositing the money at a different branch from the account holder's. It would only be free if I went to Phnom Penh's Steung Man Chey branch and deposited the cash there. Doing it at any other branch (and Acleda has more than 200 dotted all over the country) costs US$2.

The woman at the bank did not say I was charged the fee because it is not my account, but because I was depositing money in a different branch.

So can you imagine if you are an Acelda bank account holder and you opened your account somewhere in Phnom Penh. Later you moved to Siem Reap for work (or even from Steung Man Chey to say, Olympic, in Phnom Penh). Every time you deposit money into your bank account from a different location to the one where you opened the account you are charged $2. In case readers think US$2 is a small amount - it is what many people in Cambodia work a whole day, i.e., 8 hours, to earn.

Simply outrageous.

The thing is, almost exactly a year ago I sat in a meeting with Mr In Channy, the bank's President and CEO, together with a group of students from Insead. I even asked him a question on whether he thought the bank was growing too quickly in tough economic times (remember this was last year). His answer: no - because they are focused on micro-finance and rural people are largely unaffected by last year's global economic crisis.

We were all very impressed with Mr Channy's sincerity and personal achievements and also with Acleda's accomplishments. Really, Acleda is an amazing success story. It started out in 1993 as NGO funded by the ILO and UNDP.

Today, it has more than $900 million in total assets and ranks number one in deposits at over $670 million, with over $530 million in loans outstanding. I really should have written about the day spent with staff from Acleda - we even visited some of its micro-finance customers in a village - but just never got around to it. It was one of the best organisations the team met.

After that meeting, I had two thoughts: one to open a Acleda bank account for Bloom and two, to get the Bloom workers to take out a micro-finance loan to buy shares of Bloom.

Well, now I don't know if this is such a good idea (and just as well I sat on it!).

Interrogating a Torturer

2010-04-23T13:41:00.000+07:00

I just watched this powerful documentary on Al Jazeera. "Interrogating a Torturer" follows Uruguayan journalist, Gerardo Brusezzi, who was tortured almost 30 years ago in Argentina. He returns to the country to confront one of his torturers in a filmed meeting. He meets Julio Simon, the first torturer to be convicted for crimes against humanity in Argentina. I found this interesting also in light of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge trial.

For 27 years Brusezzi nurtured a fantasy of what he would do to his torturers, who pissed and spat in the drinking water given to prisoners, who raped the men with sticks and who practised karate on them. Brusezzi learnt karate and lifted weights in preparation of doing to his torturers what they did to him before killing the men. Upon meeting Simon, Brsezzi realised that vengeance was not what he was after - that it would not solve anything. Just like the Count of Monte Cristo.

"It's confronting those who tried to destroy me physically and psychologically," said Brusezzi. "And my only intention is to show you that you didn't destroy me, that you made me stronger."

This is the background to these two men's tragic stories:

In March 1976, a military junta headed by General Rafael Videla overthrew Argentina's democratically elected government and launched a campaign of terror against all who opposed the coup. In the following seven years, Argentina's "dirty war" saw 15,000 people executed and 30,000 'disappeared'. Two-hundred and fifty concentration camps - where so-called 'terrorists' were routinely and systematically tortured while being interrogated - were set up throughout the country. Read more and watch the full video on Al Jazeera's People and Power.

Louis Vuitton in Cambodia?

2010-04-22T13:05:00.007+07:00

According to this Oct 2009 China Times article, Cambodia is on the list of new LV shops that will be launched across Asia - unsurprising, really, as reports of LV wanting to set up shop in Cambodia can be traced back to 2002.

The China Times article comes after the opening of LV's 440th shop in Ulaan Bataar, capital of Mongolia. Chairman and CEO Yves Carcelle said at the Ulaan Bataar shop opening: "LV's philosophy of opening shops is not to wait until there is a business district/market area (商圈) before we enter, but rather, whereever LV opens our shops, it is to create a market area."

Gossip is that the LV shop, if it does open, will be housed in the US$300 million Gold Tower 42 on Sihanouk Boulevard, supposedly Phnom Penh's poshest building. Gold Tower 42 is slated to be completed in October 2011.

But it could also open in Siem Reap. An Oct 2002 Australian Financial Review report:

"Visitors to the Cambodian temples may soon be able to buy a Louis Vuitton handbag nearby. LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton is the world's biggest producer of luxury clothing and accessories. The company's head of operations in Thailand and Vietnam, Guillaume Thery, says new stores are earmarked for Angkor Wat, near Cambodia's temple complex, and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam..."

While LVMH cannot make up its mind about Cambodia, it did open in Ho Chi Minh city in Q3 of 2007.

No doubt Cambodia's glitterati and wannabes will be thrilled to welcome LV. Sad, really. I much prefer this "LV" on a Khmer street kid. LOL.

Anyway, below is an excerpt of the Chinese text for those who can read Chinese and for New York Mag's coverage of the Mongolian shop opening (nothing about Cambodia though) click here.

更新日期:2009/10/28 02:44
謝學豐／台北報導
中國時報【謝學豐／台北報導】

法國精品路易威登（ＬＶ）的開店哲學，讓許多同業參不透玄機。ＬＶ全球第四百四十家專賣店，上周末在蒙古人民共和國首都烏蘭巴托開幕，品牌時尚版圖邁入第六十二個國家。ＬＶ下一個重大展店計畫是三年內進軍黎巴嫩，不畏中東地區烽火連天，要印證「富貴險中求」的說法。

ＬＶ全球主席兼行政總裁賈世傑（Yves Carcelle）在蒙古店開幕時說：「ＬＶ的開店哲學從來就不是等待商圈成立才進場，而是ＬＶ所到之處，就要創造商圈。」

ＬＶ在時尚旱地掀起法國精品風，連柬埔寨也在預定名單裡。

...

Death penalty in Singapore; not in Cambodia

2010-04-21T23:43:00.005+07:00

I was so sad to read this Story of a Boy, about Yong Vui Kong, a young Malaysian man who was just 18 and a half year old when he was caught making a drug delivery in Singapore. In a story that could be set in Cambodia, Vui Kong came from a poor family and ran away from home when he was just 12. He washed cars to survive, making about RM$3 (US$0.90) a day. Eventually he met a "Big Brother", who fed and clothed him, and took him to fancy restaurants. Vui Kong felt compelled to do anything “Big Brother” said. More importantly, he needed the money to pay for his mother's medical treatment.

The police found 47.27 grammes of heroin on him. A judge eventually handed him the mandatory death sentence for drug trafficking.

I remember watching French TV with English subtitles sometime in February. It was an episode of L'Editoriale and on the death penalty. The host said Singapore has the highest number of executions per capita, while the country with the most number of executions is China. I remember how horrified and disgusted I was when later I told my French friend about it over dinner. She could hardly believe it, since Singapore is supposedly a "first world" country.

[From wikipedia: Singapore had the highest per-capita execution rate in the world between 1994 and 1999, estimated by the United Nations to be 13.57 executions per one million population during that period. And out of 174 executions recorded by Amnesty International from press reports between 1993 and 2003, the number of foreign nationals totals 93, which is more than half. Many of them are believed to have been migrant workers. No wonder science fiction author William Gibson wrote a travel piece on Singapore sarcastically titled "Disneyland with the Death Penalty".]

I am glad to see the city-state has made progress. According to the Guardian: "Singapore has seen a big decline in its use of the death penalty since having the highest execution rate in the world in the 1990s, but the government is resisting any change to the law. Singapore's attorney general, Walter Woon, has argued that parliament has the power to show mercy in individual cases."

Cambodia has no death penalty, since abolishing it in 1989. (For a list of abolitionist countries, visit Amnesty.org).

In this, Cambodia bucks the trend among Southeast Asian countries.

"The only region that goes against this trend [away from the death penalty] is Southeast Asia. At the last meeting of ASEAN, the leaders of Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines said they were in favor of the death penalty and especially for sentencing drug traffickers to death. But that is the only region in the world that goes against this trend."

"There is a very interesting exception in Southeast Asia: Cambodia. Cambodia abolished the death penalty and the president of the parliament of Cambodia was in Strasbourg for the World Congress against the Death Penalty last year. He explained that like Europe, Cambodia had experienced genocide, and this was the main reason the Cambodians had decided to abolish the death penalty.

In fact, in Europe, it was easier to abolish the death penalty because we had two genocides, two world wars on our continent. It was after these debaucheries of violence that Europe abolished it."

From a 2001 Carnegie Council interview with staff from Together Against the Death Penalty. (The Philippines abolished the death penalty in 2006 - Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore still have not).

You can see the leaflets of a campaign by Singaporeans who argue against the mandatory death penalty for drug traffickers.

As for Vui Kong, only a Presidential pardon will save him. Unfortunately, President Nathan, who has been in power since 1999, is not known to have granted clemency to any condemned prisoner.

Fatfighters!

2010-04-21T15:44:00.002+07:00

Photo and text from modeledbehaviour.com:

"This is Chauncy Morlan, and around 100 years ago his obesity was so shocking that people would pay money to see him as he toured the country as a circus “fat man”. I find the unremarkableness of his size to be a telling sign of how we’ve pushed the limits of obesity in the past 100 years. Imagine, if you will, what society would look like if 100 years from now if what passed as spectacularly obese today would not even turn heads at the mall."

Michelle Obama brought fat back into the picture with her plans to fight childhood obesity. The US is the fattest developed nation, and Americans consume on average 2,700 calories a day - about 500 calories more than 40 years ago, more than what Cambodians consume today. (Does that mean Khmers are tinier than Americans 40 years ago?)

(Khmers consume 2160 calories daily according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which recommends a minimum daily per capita intake of roughly 2,100 calories).

In 2008, 68 percent of American adults were overweight, and 34 percent were obese; roughly one in three children and adolescents was overweight, and nearly one in five was obese. By 2015, a shocking 41 per cent of Americans will be obese.

"Beating Obesity" is a thoughtful article on the subject. Written by Marc Ambinder and published in the Atlantic, Ambinder himself was obese, and chose the US$30,000 bariatric surgery. He lost 85 pounds (38.6kg).

"But why did the obesity rate accelerate in the United States beginning in the 1980s, setting us apart from our peers in other developed countries? (Though the Mexicans and the British come close.)," asks Ambinder. "Did Ronald Reagan’s declaration that “it’s morning again in America” prompt us all to start eating bigger breakfasts?"

It's a complicated issue and fat people may be lacking the FTO gene. Which is not to say people do not have a responsibility to try to gain control of their weight.

I for one applaud Ms Obama for having the guts to tackle this issue, because in this PC (politically correct) age, you can be accused of "fattism". Governments can and should do more.

Ambinder writes: “[I]f you go with the flow in America today, you will end up overweight or obese,” Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told me when I met him at an obesity conference in Washington last summer. “This does not absolve individuals of the responsibility of trying to get more exercise and eat healthier. But it suggests a synergy between policy intervention and personal efforts to lose weight.”

The US government should also pay attention to obesity because it is costs the country's coffers billions of dollars. According to the Surgeon General the total annual cost of obesity in the United States was $117 billion for the year 2000.

A more recent 2008 study by The Conference Board found the cost to the US economy in lost working days and extra healthcare costs is a US$45 billion a year. Also in today's WSJ Marketwatch: "If you don't lose weight your finances will".

So I wish Michelle Obama well and hope she fares better than the Naked Chef Jamie Oliver did. Oliver was reduced to tears trying to convince Virginians to eat better.

Christopher Hitchens re-reads Animal Farm

2010-04-19T13:27:00.001+07:00

George Orwell's Animal Farm, written in 1943-44 and published in 1946, is one of my favourite books.

In an introduction, Orwell writes

". . . for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the socialist movement. On my return from Spain [Orwell fought against the Fascists] I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone . . . However, the actual details of the story did not come to me for some time until one day (I was then living in a small village) I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat."

I proceeded to analyse Marx's theory from the animals' point of view.

According to Wikipedia's List of books banned by governments: "Author’s preface suppressed in nearly all editions. In the 1940s, Allied forces found the book critical of the USSR, and therefore the material was too controversial to print during wartime; publishers were reticent to print the work, and copies were suppressed. A play of Animal Farm was banned in Kenya in 1991, because it criticizes corrupt leaders. In 2002, the novel was banned in the schools of the United Arab Emirates, because it contained text or images that goes against Islamic and Arab values."

And here is a pic of George Orwell, one of my heroes.

Learn more about the context in which the book was written in Christopher Hitchens' review for the Guardian.

Microsoft's sweatshop?

2010-04-18T20:01:00.001+07:00

This photo supposedly shows Chinese workers in a factory in Dongguan, China, slumped in exhaustion at their workstations. To be honest, it looks like they are napping to me, the way Cambodians do during their lunch break.

Anyway, this is what the UK's Daily Mail reports (surprising, since it's a right-wing tabloid):

"Showing Chinese sweatshop workers slumped over their desks with exhaustion, it is an image that Microsoft won't want the world to see.

Employed for gruelling 15-hour shifts, in appalling conditions and 86f heat, many fall asleep on their stations during their meagre ten-minute breaks.

For as little as 34p an hour, the men and women work six or seven days a week, making computer mice and web cams for the American multinational computer company.

This photo and others like it were smuggled out of the KYE Systems factory at Dongguan, China, as part of a three-year investigation by the National Labour Committee, a human rights organisation which campaigns for workers across the globe.

[...]

Microsoft said it was committed to the 'fair treatment and safety of workers'. A spokesman added: 'We are aware of the NLC report and we have commenced an investigation. 'We take these claims seriously and we will take appropriate remedial measures in regard to any findings of misconduct.'"

Cambodia's Fake Mercedes

2010-04-17T22:16:00.000+07:00

This letter about a trip in Cambodia was published in Malaysian newspaper The Star and won the writer a hotel stay.

One of my expat friends in Phnom Penh, a Brit, had a fake Mercedes van. She told me the insignia was stuck on a Japanese or Korean make. Maybe that was what happened to the letter writer!

The winning letter:

Scary car ride

My friends and I went to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap for a holiday not long ago. Upon checking in, we decided to book a ground package offered by the hotel. Transport would be provided from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap.

At the appointed time, we became apprehensive when we saw an old Mercedes Benz with a “For Sale” sign pasted on the windscreen roll up.

Two hours into the trip, the car started shaking. This was not a good sign. An hour later, it was the steering wheel’s turn to shake — violently.

We told the driver to stop the car and check what was wrong. And what did we find? One of the wheels was loose! Most of the bolts and nuts had dropped off!

Our driver recovered odds and ends along the road but none of these fallen parts could be used any more. Imagine our horror. If we had gone on for another hour, the wheel would have rolled off!

What would have happened had we not asked the driver to stop?

We had an anxious ride the rest of the way with said wheel held in place by only three nuts borrowed from the other three wheels.

Imagine the relief we felt when we finally arrived at Siem Reap! The horrifying car ride aside, the trip was actually pleasant and enjoyable.

Diana Kho, Kajang

Canada's Aspire wants Cambodia's iron ore to sell to China

2010-04-17T22:00:00.002+07:00

From otcnewswire:

Aspire International, Inc. (“Aspire” or the “Company”) (OTCBB:APIT) announced today that a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed with the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy (MIME) of Cambodia for conducting geological data collection in Phnum Ngout area, Salakrau district, Pailin province, Ratanakmondol and Samlot districts, Battambang province, Kingdom of Cambodia.

The objective of the MOU is the cooperation of geological data collection for preliminary geological survey for mineral deposits in the above-mentioned area. The MIME Ministry of Cambodia agrees to allow the Company to cooperate with General Department of Mineral Resources (GDMR) to conduct the geological data collection to consider in applying for the exploration and exploiting licenses in the future.

The surface area by mining standards is quite exceptional at 261 square kilometers. This sizeable area under acquisition is considered to contain rich amounts of Iron Ore that, based on historical exploration data, represents a potential resource size believed to be in excess of 1 billion tons of exploitable Iron Ore.

Iron Ore has more than doubled in price over the past year and currently sells for as high as $140 per ton. With recent media reports of expectations of prices in excess of $200 per ton by year’s end, it makes this MOU an especially valuable opportunity for Aspire to acquire a very sizeable Iron Ore deposit so close to China, which is by far the largest importer and most voracious consumer of Iron Ore in the entire world.

Aspire International Inc. (OTCBB:APIT) was registered on December 18, 2007 in the state of Maryland. Perfisans Networks Corporation, founded in 2001, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Aspire International Inc. and is headquartered in Markham, Ontario, Canada.

More information can be obtained from the Company’s web sites at www.perfisans.com and http://www.apit.ca

Australian investors' US$600mil Cambodian land deal

2010-04-17T21:52:00.000+07:00

Australia’s former finance minister, Peter Costello, announced a USD600 million investment in Cambodia, for more than 100,000 hectares of land - a deal four times larger by value than any single agricultural investment in Cambodia. Costello is now the MD of BKK Partners Ltd, a corporate advisory firm based in Sydney. The reason for his client's investment? "Rising food prices in 2008 alerted investors to the returns they can make from buying or leasing tracts of land in poor countries that have plenty of water and fertile land."

Cambodians have called for transparency:

We would hope that this kind of investment from a society like Australia would be done in a proper manner," [MP] Son Chhay said. "I would very much like that this BKK company provides the contract to the public so I can have a copy of that."

Land in Cambodia is a complicated topic, not least because of the Khmer Rouge rule in the 1970s, when private property was abolished and land documents destroyed. In recent years around 1.1 million land title documents have been awarded, but that is less than 10 percent of the total land parcels, says the World Bank, which was involved in the scheme.

Combine a lack of title with the fact that around 80 percent of the 14 million Cambodians live in rural areas, and around 40 percent of them live under the poverty line, and the rising landlessness problem has many worried about social instability.

Read full story on IPS News.