Singapore and Cambodian governments, jobs and aid

I got a called from the Al Jazeera TV station last week. It was their office in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, and they wanted to do a story on foreign aid and its impact on Cambodia. The researcher came across the blog and thought I'd be perfect for a contrarian view on foreign donations. This is because I state categorically that Bloom is NOT an NGO and why we refuse to register as one. Anyway, the TV station's panel discussion will take place in Phnom Penh on Wednesday (I have no idea when the show will be broadcast) and I have to miss it because Alan is away and I need to look after my dogs, which always come first.

I did reply to their question on why I disagree with the huge amount of donation this country receives (see below). At the end of the day, what is more effective in helping this country is not aid, but jobs. I am optimistic that eventually, Cambodia will make it. Khmers want to learn English and the government is trying to make this place more conducive for business. I am not sure the government bothers too much about improving the average Cambodian standard of living through foreign investment, but whatever--that improvement in the average Khmer life *will* happen. A happy consequence of FDI.

The former developing countries that have succeeded, like Singapore and South Korea, did so not through aid, but through industry. I cannot comment on South Korea but I've always thought that one of the reasons Singapore succeeded is precisely because we lack natural resources.

In resource rich countries like the Gulf states and African nations, there is really no compelling reason for the government to invest in its people. They can get rich simply through the land--oil, forests, plantations etc. You will find that these countries I mention do not bother with educating its people. In fact, in many ways, it makes sense for these governments NOT to educate its people--educated people tend to be troublemakers, challenging the status quo.

Contrast this with the case of Singapore, which has nothing--no land, no rice, not even our own water (we import this from Malaysia). There is no other way for the government to get rich, except through its people. That is why the Singapore government invested in our education and training--to make us a diligent workforce that would attract foreign investors. One of the ways the government can then make money is through taxation. A cynical or pragmatic view of politics? People often tell me how good the Singapore government is, for investing in our education, but I was never convinced that "good" means "altruistic" in this case.

So what do we make of the many, many governments in countries such as the US, Canada, Australia that have both natural resources and a firm belief in education? They're smart enough to recognise the country can only be as powerful as its people are? I don't know. I *do* know it has taken the west hundreds of years to get to where they are, and they had the industrial revolution which empowered many people, economically. Perhaps they had to invest in education because of pressure from their by now economically powerful people? I don't know the answer but the history of education should tell us, which is why I will go investigate.

Anyway, here is the gist of my answer to Al Jazeera:

"I believe regular and constant handouts create a dependency mentality that is ultimately detrimental to people--and not just Cambodians. You can draw comparisons with the welfare system in developed countries, which I think discourages work and independence, replaces pride with poor self-esteem and marginalises instead of integrating people into economic and community life. All over the world, welfare benefits have created people who are dysfunctional--whether the indigenous people in the US, Australia or Canada. These "beneficiaries" are often stuck in a cycle of drug and alcohol abuse, violence and despondency.

"I believe there is value and honour in work, and it is work that often makes life interesting and worthwhile. We feel a sense of achievement when we create something of value and we share a sense of belonging when we work alongside other people. With Bloom, we are taking small steps for Cambodians to learn a skill and a trade so they can produce and sell quality products that people all over the world want, thereby, be part of the international trading community."

Almost Three in Four Cambodians have paid a bribe in 2007

And 20 to 30 per cent of Cambodia's land is owned by 1% of the population (!) From www.business-anti-corruption.com

Also, a 2007 survey conducted by Transparency International, 72 percent of Cambodians reported paying a bribe to receive a public service. This percentage is the highest in the Asia-Pacific region and second only to Cameroon (79 percent) internationally.

I wonder if this includes the parents who send their kids to school. Cambodian children who attend state schools have to pay 500 to 1000 (USD0.25) riels everyday to their teacher, ostensibly for extra tuition classes. And no wonder, considering teachers here earn a pitiful USD50 a month (less in the provinces).

More information about Cambodia's corruption can be found in this UPI Asia article by Lao Mong Hay, a senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong who was previously director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. UPIAsiaonline.com

I was interested in the topic after reading about Cambodian activists who submitted an anti-corruption petition with over one million signatures to parliament in May.

Cambodia is ranked 162 out of 179 countries in Transparency International's 2007 corruption index--an appalling statistic, considering Zimbabwe ranked 150.

From the UPI Asia article: "Another survey conducted two years later by the Economic Institute of Cambodia in Phnom Penh showed that in 2005 the private sector paid “unofficial fees”—that is, bribes – to public officials amounting to US$330 million, an amount it said was “2.5 times higher than that of official payment” and “represented also about 50 percent of the total government budget revenue in 2005.”

In 2006, the World Bank suspended contracts with Cambodia after finding evidence of corruption and fraud in 43 contracts. But this was reinstated In 2007, apparently the World Bank was happy with the good governance framework the Cambodian government came up with.

Privatisation has made things worse. Fully or partially privatised sectors include transportation, health care, education, bank but also agricultural public companies such as the rubber plantations, the fertilizer company, fish export company. "The process of privatisation has resulted in many of the state-owned companies, as well as much land concessions, being awarded to high-level politicians and their cronies. In fact 20 to 30% of Cambodia's land is owned by 1% of the population.

"Cambodia is a cash-based economy, which also makes corruption easier. Many business transactions are made in cash. Only 1% of working capital comes from the commercial banks."

Cambodian prostitutes protest police crackdown

In yesterday's news: Two hundred prostitutes protested peacefully in Phnom Penh. They said they had been unlawfully detained, and then beaten and raped by guards at the rehabilitation center where they were held. I quote from the AP article

"Some of them (the sex workers) were beaten and gang raped by the center guards, and most of the time they did not use condoms," said Chan Dina, a 31-year-old prostitute and member of the Cambodian Prostitute Union, a sex workers' advocacy group.

"Pich Sokchea urged the government to end the crackdown because it was affecting the livelihood of sex workers, many of whom were forced into the profession by poverty and debts. "We are people who sacrifice everything for the sake of our families and for our livelihood."

"Police Lt. Gen. Khieu Sopheak, the Interior Ministry's spokesman, dismissed claims that police committed violence against sex workers and said none was mistreated in the crackdown. He defended the crackdown, calling sex work unacceptable in Cambodia."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iyJ-JyIbPDfhPBVGJVDXCd5DTRGwD913BI080

The Interior Ministry's spokesman comment epitomises the hypocrisy that exists in this country. Publicly, Khmer officials and society condemn the sex trade, but privately, many of them engage in it, visiting prostitutes, taking on mistresses (make no mistake- this is also sex trade) and even making money from it.

From a BBC programme: "A few months ago, another foreign group working to protect children from the sex industry organised a raid on a brothel. It turned out the place was owned by a particularly powerful policeman."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4078304.stm

Human rights groups estimate that out of as many as 100,000 prostitutes in Cambodia, one third are underage (younger than 18).

Real Estate Boom in Cambodia's Capital

"Since Cambodia is still a very poor country that has never seen so much investment capital flying around, the trend is unnerving some observers. "Where is the money coming from? Cash coming out from under the mattresses, cash coming from overseas," says John Brisden, vice-chairman of Acleda Bank, the largest bank in Cambodia. He calls the real estate boom "very unusual" because much of it is not being financed by bank loans. Are there signs that the boom may be running its course? Brisden doesn't see a sudden popping of the bubble. Instead, he says, "people envision a slowdown. The scenario is a lot of empty high-rise properties but no forced sales." Businessweek

I met a woman in Phnom Penh whose landlord sold the Sisowath Quay property for USD3.5 million last month. This woman ran a fairly large restaurant on his site and had to move. USD3.5 mil! How can the buyer think he can make back the money? Cambodia's average income is still USD50 a month.

To me, property prices here are driven by speculation, and are not grounded in reality. When there are empty high-rise properties, it will cause a ripple effect, driving down rents and sale prices of other properties, affecting the entire economy (see how home prices have affected the US economy now)--even if as the Acleda Bank guy believes, there will be "no forced sales" of those high-rises owned by the filthy rich.

This same woman also told me how her landlord got to be so rich, basically by squatting in villas that were empty after the war. After the Khmer Rouge were defeated, people started straggling back to their home towns only to find them deserted and destroyed. Those who squatted are benefitting now. The sad thing is this Khmer woman blames her father, "a true communist", she said, for not being clever enough to grab more property when others were doing so. She believes the land grabbers are the smart ones, whereas people like her father, who concentrated on building the country after the war, are the stupid ones--working all their lives for "nothing".

Tragic. It is just like my family back in Singapore and Malaysia who think: if you are so clever, why aren't you rich? And conversely, if you are rich, you must be clever. To me, clever are people who come up with a medical cure, or invent something useful--not people who become rich by accident or by cunning. But it is a sad fact, as one of my Khmer friends confirmed. His family blames him for taking on an NGO job that doesn't pay as well as a job in a private company. My friend does it because he is kind and wants to help his country, but gets no thanks from his family.

More from Businessweek:

"The Phnom Penh skyscrapers, which will be more than three times higher than the tallest existing building in Cambodia, are the most dazzling projects. And the most controversial. The developer of the $240 million Gold Tower 42, Yonwoo Co., expects construction to take three and a half years to complete. Already, says Teng Rithy, sales manager for Gold Tower 42, "high-ranking Cambodians and some foreigners from other Asian countries" are plunking down deposits. "We are 80% sold out," he boasts.

"But residential skyscrapers are a new concept in a country that not too long ago was still giving away property, not trying to market a 40th-floor condo for $1.6 million. "I feel it's a little bit early for that," says Sung Bonna, head of Bonna Realty, one of the leading real estate firms in Cambodia. "They said it's going to be a success. But I don't know. If it doesn't happen, it is not good for us."

"Bonna says the whole idea of a real estate market in Cambodia is so new that no one can predict how it will turn. "We used to share property, not sell it. After the Pol Pot regime, however many properties you want, you can take all of them." He says there is a need for more modern restaurants, office buildings, and commercial centers, but the supply and demand for residential properties is in balance."

Update: June 7: I just saw this message on khmer440.com

"Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 6:00 pm Post subject: Property prices
Across the Jap bridge they are asking $200,000 for properties they sold for $60,000 only 2 years ago.
In America you can buy a 5 bedroom detached with swimming pool that cost $450,000 2 years ago for $180,000 now.
My house in the UK has dropped in value by $80,000 in the past year.
Where the fuck do they get these prices from in Cambodia."

My sentiments exactly.

Country for sale

Very depressing and long article--makes me want to get out of this place. I normally don't post entire articles but this one should be read by all. The real information comes halfway down so look out of it. Respect to writers Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark for succeeding in doing a really good investigative piece.

The Guardian newspaper.
Saturday April 26 2008
Country for sale.
Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark

Almost half of Cambodia has been sold to foreign speculators in the past 18 months - and hundreds of thousands who fled the Khmer Rouge are homeless once more. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report

Sang Run, his hair stiff with sea salt, chugs out into the Gulf of Kompong Som in his weather-beaten turquoise boat, looking for blackling. He scours the shallow, blue water, waiting for a shoal to appear, before skimming his net across the water. He does the same every day, taking his catch to auction on Independence Beach in Cambodia's southern port city of Sihanoukville.

It looks like a scene Sang Run was born into. But 20 years ago the beach was deserted, and he was a schoolteacher in Mondulkiri, a forested province hundreds of miles away in the east of the country. Back then, he could talk all day about palm sugar and betel nuts. He was something of an amateur botanist, but had never seen the sea - nor had any of the group who today gather around his silvery haul flapping in the sand on Independence Beach. Former nurse Srey Pov, who runs a Khmer restaurant along the beach, also came from a province many miles away. She still cannot swim, she says, shrugging. Heads nod around her. Cambodia is a nation that would drown if their boat tipped over; it is also a country whose citizens mostly do not belong to the places where they have ended up.

The Khmer Rouge saw to that, eviscerating the kingdom after coming to power. It was a movement that drew inspiration from Mao's Cultural Revolution, collectivising all the land; but it grew to love terror more than ideology. The ferocity of the regime sent more than 300,000 rushing into exile. At least two million urban Cambodians were route-marched into the paddy fields to near certain death. Worst hit was the Eastern Zone, bordering Vietnam, where Sang Run came from. Its people were derided as "duck's arses with chicken's heads" as the Khmer Rouge grew to mistrust the Vietnamese and accused Mondulkiri people of being disloyal - too sympathetic to their neighbours across the border. Their names were added to those who were to be purged; the catalogue of "crimes" became so long, so general, that anyone could stand accused. The wave of random violence and retribution that scythed through the countryside for three years, eight months and 21 days killed one in five of the population.

Sang Run's family all vanished, but he survived, hiding in the forests, living off what he could pluck and hunt. When the Vietnamese invaded in 1978 - overthrowing the Khmer Rouge a year later - Sang Run found his way, like thousands of others, to Cambodia's 300-mile long shoreline. Stretching between Thailand and Vietnam, the region had been a Khmer Rouge stronghold, controlled by Pol Pot's notorious commander, Ta Mok, who was known as The Butcher. In the 80s, when the fishing shacks and noodle stores went up along the Sihanoukville coast, there was no development plan. There had never been a tradition of thriving fishing communities along the coast - few Cambodians lived there except in the old French colonial towns. The shoreline had been empty - miles of palm-fringed beach front interspersed with the few port towns, including Kep, Sihanoukville and Ream.

Survivors began to build new lives there, learning to love the sea. Some took boats to a nearby archipelago of 22 coral-fringed, uninhabited islands, building up clusters of villages on atolls with names such as Rabbit, Snake and Turtle. Within 10 years, the whole coastline had been patchily settled by newcomers, among them a former farmer, Soch Tith, a stocky man with corncob hands, who was sick every time he got in a boat, but still found his way to faraway Koh Rong, the largest of the islands - 7,800 hectares of jungle. There he cleared small patches to grow fruit.

By 2006, these communities had schools, political representation, and many householders even had papers, stamped by the Sihanoukville governor, Say Hak, which guaranteed them the permanent right to stay under the 2001 Cambodian Land Law. The central government in Phnom Penh had in the 90s designated the entire coast and its islands as State Public Land that could not be bartered or developed.

Then, during the past couple of years, a disturbing wave of rumours swept the coastal communities. Sang Run says that in September 2006 he heard that Snake Island, half a mile out to sea, had been secretly sold to Russians. He did not check. Cambodians ask little from their government; a wariness of authority is a legacy of years of blood-letting under Pol Pot. In any case, it was a familiar story. Shortly after Hun Sen, Cambodia's prime minister, came to power in 1985, frenzied landgrabbing began: influential political allies and wealthy business associates raced to claim land that the Khmer Rouge had seized, gobbling up such large chunks of the cities, forests and paddy fields that Cambodians used to say the rich were eating the country. By 2006, the World Bank estimated that 40,000 had been made homeless in Phnom Penh alone. But, until now, no one had bothered with the coast. Sang Run paid no particular attention to the Snake Island rumour. He should have - it signalled a radical new course for the Cambodian government.

Three months later, Sang Run was out in his boat at 7am when disaster struck his village. He arrived back at 11am to find bulldozers had flattened his home and those of the 229 families who lived beside him. He heard from neighbours that it had happened in an instant. Uniformed men, sent in by governor Say Hak, used electric batons to chase terrified residents from the burning ruins; three of Sang Run's neighbours were knocked unconscious. Village Number One - a mundane name that failed to capture the beauty of its uninterrupted sea views and vegetable gardens that ran to the beach - had been erased. Sang Run heard that a hotel was planned, although no information was given to the people evicted from their homes for a further 18 months.

Nurse-turned-restaurateur Srey Pov tells us that, by early 2007, rumours were buzzing around Sihanoukville's covered market that virtually every island in the region was up for sale. Over the following months, Koh Russei and Koh Ta Kiev, Koh Bong and Koh Ouen, Koh Preus, Koh Krabei and Koh Tres were all snapped up by foreigners, who then started negotiating for mainland sites, too, among them public beaches with names such as Serendipity, Occheuteal and Otres. In February, 47-year-old Srey Pov was evicted, too, her Independence Beach restaurant shut down to make way for another rumoured hotel. "All I've got left is the chairs and tables," she says - they're stacked up in the cramped living room of her Sihanoukville home. Former farmer Soch Tith, on Koh Rong, was the last to hear that last month his island had been sold, too, to a British developer.

What none of these people knew was that the troubled kingdom of Cambodia, a precarious debtor-nation underpinned by more than £500m of hand-outs from the international community, had suddenly found itself a refuge for cash and speculators fleeing paralysed western financial markets. As London and New York, overcome by the US sub-prime crisis, began grinding to a halt last year, many in the City had moved on, transferring liquid assets to the east.

Foreign fund managers had started pitching up in Phnom Penh wearing linen shirts and khaki drip-dry jungle wear, alerted by the country's unexpected boom in tourism that in 2006 had seen one-and-a-half million visitors overcome the west's collective memories of Cambodia's recent past to travel to the temples of Angkor Wat. Enticed also by indicators that suggested the feeble economy was turning a corner, super-rich, predominately British, French and Swiss speculators, fuelled by a high-risk machismo, came hunting for profits of 30% or more. Their interest was land speculation: buying up large sites in developing countries that they would then sit on in the hope that, with the influx of tourists, land values would soar.

Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) have, in effect, put the country up for sale. Crucially, they permit investors to form 100% foreign-owned companies in Cambodia that can buy land and real estate outright - or at least on 99-year plus 99-year leases. No other country in the world countenances such a deal. Even in Thailand and Vietnam, where similar land speculation and profiteering are under way, foreigners can be only minority shareholders.

There were other inducements. Many foreign funds - hedge funds, property funds, private equity funds - operating on the outer margins of the financial world thrive on complexity, risk and maximising profit. In Phnom Penh, they found an ideal partner in the prime minister, who has created a unique business environment. Since the mid-90s, Hun Sen and the CPP have declined to enforce money-laundering legislation and have concerned themselves little with the probity of investors. Foreign businessmen were offered nine-year tax holidays, and were allowed to hold their cash in US dollars in banks outside the country.

"Only recently, no one would touch us," Brett Sciaroni, a Phnom Penh-based US lawyer who acts for many new western investors, tells us. "We were dirt. And suddenly we were gold." John Brinsden, a British banker, now vice chairman of Cambodia's national Acleda Bank, agrees: "In 2001, only 200 people came to the government's investment conference. At our most recent, we ran out of chairs."

In July 2007, Hun Sen, gambling on his people's tenuous connection with the land, changed the designation of the southern islands so they could be sold. The forests, lakes, beaches and reefs - and the lives of the thousands of residents - were quietly transferred into the hands of private western developers. Arguing that Cambodia could become a tourist magnet to challenge Thailand, the prime minister began a fire sale of mainland beaches. By March this year, virtually all Cambodia's accessible and sandy coast was in private hands, either Cambodian or foreign. Those who lived or worked there were turfed out - some jailed, others beaten, virtually all denied meaningful compensation. The deals went unannounced; no tenders or plans were ever officially published. All that was known was that more than £1,000m in foreign finance found its way into the country in 2007, a 1,500% increase over the previous four years. It was as if Alistair Darling, the British chancellor, had decided to raise some extra cash by trading the Isles of Wight, Man and the Hebrides, throwing in Formby Sands, the entire Cornish coastline and Brighton seafront - before trousering the proceeds.

It was abundantly clear to observers, including the World Bank and Amnesty International, that by making these private deals, Hun Sen was denying prosperity to most of his people, causing the country's social fabric to unwind like thread from a bobbin. Today, more than 150,000 people are threatened with eviction. Forty-five per cent of the country's entire landmass has been sold off - from the land ringing Angkor Wat to the colonial buildings of Phnom Penh to the south-western islands. Professor Yash Ghai, the UN human rights emissary to Cambodia, warned, "One does not need expertise in human rights to recognise that many policies of the government have... deprived people of their economic resources and means of livelihood, and denied them their dignity." He added, "I believe that the deliberate rejection of the concept of a state governed by the rule of law has been central to the ruling party's hold on power."

It was Hun Sen who, as early as 1989, realised the power of land. Rhodri Williams, a researcher for the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, points out that, as Hun Sen privatised the land, "he simultaneously cut off the rights of 360,000 exiled Cambodians, awarding prime slices to political allies and friends." The exiles were Cambodians who had fled the Khmer Rouge into Thailand and beyond in 1975; they had titles to the land, but this counted for nothing when they returned to claim it. Hun Sen said Cambodia should start again.

Although he bathes his speeches in socialist values, even his closest aides told us that Hun Sen was more often than not a pragmatist. He joined the Communist party in the 60s and enlisted in the Khmer Rouge in the 70s, before defecting to the Vietnamese-backed government in the 80s. In the 90s, he embraced the free market. Tourism was not a promising prospect in the early days - the remnants of Khmer Rouge, violently hostile to outsiders, were too much of a risk. When western travellers did begin to explore, they were taking their lives in their hands. In 1994, Briton Mark Slater, Frenchman Jean-Michel Braquet and Australian David Wilson were kidnapped while riding a train through Sihanoukville, and all of them executed. Two years later, Christopher Howes, a British de-mining expert, together with a Cambodian colleague, were murdered as they worked 10 miles north of Angkor Wat.

By 2006, the country seemed safer, and was finally becoming a tourist destination. That September, the CPP received its first foreign offer in the coastal area: a Russian investor living in Phnom Penh wanted to buy an island. This deal would become the template for every developer to come. Alexander Trofimov created a Cambodian shell company to buy Koh Puos, or Snake Island. With cash apparently no object, he proposed to stunned government officials that he would link the island to a mainland beach - known as Hawaii - with a 900-metre suspension bridge. "He also asked to buy Hawaii beach," the official who oversaw that meeting told us. "And we gave it to him." No figures were published. The official claimed he didn't know them.

Locals who used the beach and island were kept in the dark. No one quizzed Trofimov. He produced a book of cut-and-paste designs that he said would encompass a £150m resort consisting of 900 tightly packed villas, a dolphin aquarium, two hotels, a shopping centre and a marina - all crammed into an egg cup-sized island. It was enticing stuff for the CPP, although the project faltered when Trofimov was accused of having sex with underage girls, and jailed this year. However, two more Russian businessmen seamlessly emerged to take up the reins, representing a Cypriot-holding company that, it later transpired, had owned the Koh Puos project from the off.

Arnaud Darc was quick off the mark, too. A quietly spoken and likeable French businessman, Darc had arrived in Cambodia in the 90s, building a hotel and restaurant business in Phnom Penh. In 2006, after hearing from a French colleague working at Sihanoukville's provincial airport that the runway was likely to be extended, he identified two massive beach-front sites totalling more than 220 hectares that he liked the look of. He brought in Jean-Louis Charon, a Parisian real estate tycoon, whose Nexity company is the largest in France, and whose name brought in "40 French high-net worths", as Darc described them; they raised £12.5m to be held by City Star, a foreign-owned investment company. "The maths was easy, and the returns potentially fantastic," Darc said. City Star's land values quadrupled as soon as the Cambodian government confirmed the airport rumours, a spokesman for the Sihanoukville governor's office told us.

The investors could have sold up and come away rich. But this was development with a difference. City Star investors wanted more, but did not want to go to the trouble of constructing anything. They were speculating on the future value of the land, believing that by adding only modest infrastructure, perhaps attaching big-name hoteliers, they would reap vast profits in seven to 10 years. Darc's group continued buying, snapping up 333 hectares on Koh Russei and Koh Ta Kiev, two islands off Ream. Such was the appetite for easy money that City Star raised a further £30m in a matter of days from a second group of French high rollers last July, this time to buy in Phnom Penh.

Darc's model appealed to British investors behind LimeTree Capital, a Hong Kong-based private equity group that in 2007 bought up chunks of beach front near Ream; sites it planned to leave idle for many years until prices peaked. This spring, a third entrepreneur, Frenchman Alain Dupuis, through his Cambodian company LBL International, bought Koh Sramaoch. Soon after, Koh Tonsay, or Rabbit Island, was auctioned off to Chinese investors; 14 fishing families were evicted to make way for a casino and a golf course.

On the mainland, Sang Run returned to the beach to find his village in Sihanoukville destroyed to make way, supposedly, for a hotel. A few hotels have been built, but generally the sites remain empty. The Cambodian economy has grown by more than 24% over 18 months and land values have in some cases risen by more than 100%, so there are fortunes to be made from doing nothing but wait.

Australians Rory and Mel Hunter were the only investors who made an attempt to incorporate into their plans the people whose land they were buying. An advertising executive, Rory had come to Cambodia to work for an agency in Phnom Penh. During a week-long vacation in 2006, he and his wife, Mel, had set out on a diving trip around the Koh Rong archipelago and fell in love with the twin islands of Koh Bong and Koh Ouen, attached to one another by a coral reef and cupped in a shallow strait - they were known collectively as the Sweethearts. "We dreamed of a beautiful resort where people could immerse themselves in a new part of Asia," Mel said. They began negotiations with two village men to buy their houses and those owned by 60 other families. "They thought we were nuts," Rory said. "The two head guys wanted £7,500 each. We agreed and signed the contract in a boat out in the strait. We helped take down their tin shacks, and slowly relocated all the families and their homes to Koh Rong, across the strait." They worked for weeks to clear 20 years of debris, while beginning negotiations with the government to buy the islands themselves.

The Hunters drummed up backing from a handful of British speculators, including a currency broker who (preferring we didn't use his name) tells us why he leapt at the opportunity. "I loved the deal from the start. Let's be honest, who wants 6%? I wanted a deal that would wake me up in the night, sweating. We could make good money," he says over drinks in Phnom Penh, his City suit exchanged for shorts and a T-shirt. "There was a buzz about Cambodia you don't get elsewhere. It's Cambodia, the killing fields and all that stuff. Something different to show your mates back home. I show them the visa in my passport. I have something they don't."

But the Hunters' enterprise would soon be challenged by a cascade of deals involving neighbouring islands. While they worked on retraining local fishermen on neighbouring Koh Rong, British property developer Marty Kaye bought the ground from under their feet. Kaye, who had spent much of his career working on construction in Hong Kong, had spotted the island while planning an £800m luxury tourist development on a nearby Vietnamese island, Phu Quoc. He told us: "I was walking down the beach on Phu Quoc, seeing where we were going to put the golf course, and I spotted another island. No one knew what it was. We looked on Google Earth and it seemed to be Koh Rong, in adjacent Cambodia. I said, 'Let's see if we can get anywhere on Koh Rong, too.'"

Kaye, who runs Millennium property fund, began negotiating. "Here was a chance to buy an undeveloped island almost as long as Hong Kong," he said. "Nowhere else in the world could you create your own kingdom from scratch - unlike the car-crash planning of Thai islands like Koh Samui." The Cambodian government gave him 18 months to produce more details, and he worked on an outline plan whose initial development would cost £100m. When the government signed the deal, it made no mention of the census it had just carried out recording how many thousands of people (the government won't reveal the figures) live on the 7,800-hectare island.

Kaye is not worried: "Two guys and a lawyer will see everyone. But what most of them don't understand is that even if they have papers, they are not worth anything. All of them are registered only locally, not in Phnom Penh, so they will have absolutely no case. Others are just squatters with no papers at all." It helped that Kaye's Cambodian partner was tycoon Kith Meng, a multi-millionaire with interests in banking, mobile phones and real estate - and a close friend of the prime minister, Hun Sen.

"Kith Meng wants everything done yesterday," Kaye said. "We are going to move as fast as we can. It's fantastically exciting, the opportunity to zone the whole island, to see where the luxury exclusive villa plots will be, for the Brad Pitts, etc." It is an investment that gives the present residents of Koh Rong just over a year to make a solid case for keeping their homes or finding new ones.

If they are evicted, places in the area to make a new home are becoming scarce. With all the big islands sold, even smaller outcrops have gone, too, including a clump of rocks known as Nail Island, bought by Ukrainian entrepreneur Nickolai Doroshenko, who has transformed it into a James Bond-style lair, complete with a giant fibre-glass shark that soars over the fortress-like construction. He already owns Victory Beach, in Sihanoukville, a restaurant stuffed with live snakes and a bar that advertises "swimming girls".

The sale of the century continued with the mainland beaches. At the end of January, the Sokha Hotel Group, run by Sok Kong, a Cambodian oligarch and Hun Sen ally, was confirmed as the new owner of the lion's share of Occheuteal Beach, the largest and most popular public dune in the region, which was closed off to make way for a 1,000-room hotel and golf course. The deal was originally negotiated in June 2006 when, local fisherman told us, bulldozers and 10 trucks of armed men demolished 71 homes and 40 local restaurants.

Not wanting to be left out, Say Hak, Sihanoukville's governor, acquired a small island for himself, on which he built a villa and jetty; while Sbaung Sarath, the wife of his deputy, bought half of Sihanoukville's public Independence Beach in February 2008, evicting scores of families in the process. Among them was Srey Pov. She travelled to Phnom Penh with 27 other families to protest, but returned with nothing. "The developer issued a warning," she says. "They threatened to pay the city authorities to get rid of us. We knew what that meant." Independence Beach now languishes behind high fencing, as Srey Pov feared, waiting for the five-star tourists who will enjoy exclusive access to the powder-white sand.

Days later, Sbaung Sarath struck again, securing part of Sihanoukville's Otres Beach, one of the last public dunes, where Queenco, a London-listed casino company, also announced in February that it had bought 56 hectares. Queenco declined to comment on its Sihanoukville project, but it has already had consequences - 100 fishing families have been evicted. They have built a row of makeshift bamboo shacks, held together with plastic sheeting and whatever rubbish they could recycle, along a 200-yard stretch of a nearby main road. On the day we visited, they were drying out from an overnight storm that had filled their ramshackle homes with rainwater.

Aom Heat, 63, used to have a wonderful view over Otres beach and the gulf beyond. She was forced off her land last April. Now all she can see are the hubcaps and exhaust pipes of lorries that tear by. She and many of her neighbours had arrived on Otres Beach after fleeing the Khmer Rouge in the early 80s, building a fishing village they christened Spean Ches, or Burning Bridge. "When the eviction notices were served on us in September 2006, we were determined to fight," she says. She could not bear to lose everything again. "We lodged a complaint with the Senate Committee on Human Rights that ruled it was a matter for the courts." But the Sihanoukville governor's men did not wait for a court order. They turned up at the seaside village in April last year, Aom Heat says, and, "they burned down 26 houses and bulldozed 86 more, destroying all the pots and pans, clothes and food supplies. We were in a blind panic." Thirteen injured men were arrested and jailed, including one of Aom Heat's sons. Although made homeless, they were charged with "wrongful damage of property", and nine of them found guilty without witnesses or evidence produced. Despite having served their time while waiting for the case to be heard, the men were thrown back into jail pending an appeal from the prosecution, who complained they had been dealt with too leniently.

No one can agree what impact the foreign land sales will have on the Cambodian economy because so little information is made public. Although Cambodia is nominally a democracy that has held three general elections to date, and has a nominal opposition party, the CPP parliamentarians and cabinet are remote and dismissive of their people. They are not required to report on their interests or assets, making it impossible to deduce how much Hun Sen and his cabinet have personally benefited - although the World Bank reported last year that corruption, coupled with a lack of transparency, was "choking economic growth".

Since the land sell-offs, members of the government and its allies have been splashing huge sums around. A Korean developer told us that when he marketed Phnom Penh's first skyscraper, the 42-storey Gold Tower project in February, all two dozen £750,000 penthouse suites were bought within 24 hours by "an honour roll of the CPP and its friends in the military". There are other telltale signs, such as the canary yellow Hummers and hi-spec Range Rovers with blacked-out windows that rumble around Phnom Penh, in a country where the average annual income is less than £150.

Simon Taylor, the director of Global Witness, an international NGO that was forced to leave the country last year, having accused the CPP of running a logging racket, paints a depressing picture: "A shadow state has grown up, a government that misappropriates public assets, extorts from businesses and manages an extensive illicit economy. It is administered by senior ministers who are fluent in the jargon of good governance and sustainable development." One of Hun Sen's closest advisers, who requested anonymity, disagrees, telling us: "Hun Sen believes that liberal democracy is unsuited to a country whose skills have been drained and demographics wildly skewed by the Khmer Rouge."

Everything comes down to how much money you have in your pocket, according to Doug Clayton, from Leopard Asia, a fund of Swiss and British bankers that is about to invest £25m in Cambodia. "This kind of money opens any door," he says. How does Clayton pitch the Hun Sen brand back home? "Candidly? In investment circles, no one knows anything about this place. It's off the radar. In our pitch I talk up the new economic figures. I talk up stability." Clayton adds: "When the dust settles, the government here will probably end up looking something like the one in Singapore." There, Lee Kuan Yew served as prime minister from 1959 to 1990. Cambodian pollsters, looking to the general election that will run this July, predict a clear CPP victory, putting Hun Sen at the helm for many more years, too.

What will this mean for people such as Sang Run, who is now surviving in a makeshift home behind Independence Beach? Has the legacy of the Khmer Rouge been purged? Naly Pilorge, director of Licadho, a local human rights NGO, thinks not: "Everyone claims Cambodia has come through the period of barbarism, but the sadism is still bubbling beneath the surface. Extreme violence, greed and disregard for the most basic human rights - of giving people a place to live - are still with us daily. The methods of the past are being used to dictate our future."

Phnom Penh on fire and Olympic Sponsors under fire

I am now in Kathmandu, Nepal but received this urgent email from Sophon, the director at Riverkids (www.riverkidsproject.org). Please pass this message along and help if you can.

Dear All

Please find the photos of the a slum area in Phnom Penh had been burned during Khmer New Year. Over 450 houses had been burned and over 1000 people including children are homeless. The rain season starts soon. The people will face much problems,but they get little help from the Government. I really appreciate if you could share little help to those people.

Thanks,
From Sophon

It's the third big fire in Cambodia in 6 months. "In January, a fire destroyed a riverside shantytown in Kampong Chhnang, leaving some 1,500 people homeless. And about 15,000 people, mainly ethnic Vietnamese, were made homeless when fires swept through two squatter camps in Phnom Penh last November." (bbc.com)

I will be back in Cambodia mid-May. On Friday I will be off to Pokhara to visit a Tibetan refugee settlement. Tourists are still barred from Tibet so I am unable to go to Lhasa. I have managed to speak to a number of Tibetans who are living in Nepal though, and will post their thoughts later.

In the face of fresh protests in Tibet, some consumers have already started protesting against the Olympic sponsors. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/23/olympicgames2008.china?gusrc=rss&feed=media

"In the first signs of a wobble by the Games’ commercial backers after a wave of demonstrations, Coca-Cola, Samsung and Lenovo will not field their logo-covered vehicles as the flame makes its way through Nagano." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/article3672001.ece

If you are interested, here is a list of some of the sponsors, courtesy of blogger hunterseeker. http://hunterseeker.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/list-of-beijing-olympic-sponsors/

International Olympic Committee Partners
Atos Origin
Coca-Cola
General Electric
John Hancock
Eastman Kodak Company
Lenovo Group Limited (formerly Legend Computer Systems Limited)
McDonald’s
Panasonic
Samsung
Swatch
Visa

Corporate Partners of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China
Air China
Bank of China
China Mobile
China Netcom
General Electric
Volkswagen

Dogs in Nepal and Cambodia

It's almost 2am and soon I will be on a plane bound for Kathmandu, yay! This is my first holiday (not counting home visits lah!) since moving to Cambodia almost 2 years ago, and I am so excited. Why Nepal? Well, a Bloom customer from the UK, Anne, told me she loves Nepal so much she has been there 16 times! She then invited me to join her for her April trip. Among other things, I will be checking out the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre. Anne told me Nepal is so poor that many of the dogs suffer from malnutrition and mange. She showed me some heartrending photos when we met in Siem Reap.

Although Cambodia is also a poor country, Khmers love their dogs and take care of them to the best of their ability. When Nessie was expecting, practically everyone we know asked us for a puppy. I have never seen a dog with mange here. Most of them seem to have happy lives, running freely, rolling about in the dirt and sniffing and eating away at rubbish. Still, Isabelle, the German vet we go to here in Siem Reap, says medium sized dogs live on average, only 5 years in this country, mainly due to a poor diet (dogs here are fed mostly rice, but as dogs are hunters, they need protein more than carbohydrates) and lack of vaccinations. Female dogs have it especially bad, as they just reproduce and reproduce which takes a toll.

Dogs in the countryside are even worse off. When I visited Takeo, I actually arranged to have two starving dogs brought back to Phnom Penh where they would have homes. Unfortunately, one died. I had given him to Neang and she was unable to take him to the vet when he was sick, as she simply could not afford it. I did not know he was in bad shape as Neang never tells me her problems. I only found out later the puppy had died. At that time Neang and I cried together at the little lost life. It is still traumatic, thinking about this and I feel sad. Here I was thinking he would have a better chance in the city where there is more food, when I probably brought him to his death (perhaps it was a virus he got, as Austin contracted Parvo in Phnom Penh). "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

I love dogs and want to investigate the possibility of starting an animal shelter here in Siem Reap. The challenges for me are (1) funding, as it is very expensive to feed and medicate the animals (my personal finances are committed to Bloom) (2) finding land that is big and far away enough from neighbours so they won't complain and (3) getting a vet involved.

So anyone reading this who is interested in the project, please contact me. I'll wrote a post when I get back from Nepal on the lessons I learnt at the Animal Centre.
I will also try to visit Lhasa if possible to see for myself the Tibet situation.

Neang

This is Neang, with her paternal granny and her cousin. I love the photo below of Neang and her grandmother. They have such character and are such strong women. I think Neang is very photogenic. She is the one who was working as a construction worker for 6000riels (about USD1.50) a day. I have written about her elsewhere because Neang is the one whose situation moved me most. She stayed in a hut made out of cement bag walls and had no electricity, water or a toilet. This is her new home in Chhbar Ampou, for which she pays USD22 a month. The entire room can be seen in this photograph and this is her home. You can see she has very few possessions. It looks dingy but believe me, it is steps up from where she was (you can see older photos of her former home on this blog). Here, in her concrete room, she is protected from the elements and she has a wooden bed frame to sleep on. She also has access to water and a common toilet and bathroom (shared toilets are common for poorer Khmers, often 6 or more people share a single toilet and bathroom) and importantly, she has electricity, which means she has the fan for the terrible April heat. She is another one who is always thanking me, and keeps telling me she loves her job as if she is worried all the time she may lose it. Neang's husband used to beat her, before he moved on to another woman, a friend of Neang's. She is 30 and lives with her grandmother. Neang has no children. Photo courtesy of Bloom customer Corey Torpie (www.coreytorpie.com) Update on 23 May: I just learnt that Neang's granny, the beautiful old lady in this photo has died. She died sometime in April, around Khmer New Year, so soon after we met her. It was a big shock to me. She looked well, although I'm sure she was not. That is the way in Cambodia. On average women live below 60 years and Neang's granny was 60-something.

Sophea

Sophea is a fantastic worker and I really appreciate her hard work. She is very shy but when she opens up, she has a really nice laugh. I find Khmers like to laugh--they are not a sullen lot at all. She is always saying "aw-koon thom thom, bong srei" or "thank you big big, elder sister" (even though I am younger than Sophea--it's a form of respect). She is actually not well, and has a cyst which causes her much pain sometimes, yet she is always the first to help me with my bags when I arrive from Siem Reap. I have considered taking her to Vietnam to see a doctor but she says it is not necessary. Here she is in her house with her mother (left). On the walls of Khmer houses you will find pictures of singers and actresses and you can see some in Sophea's house. Also photos of her relatives, dead and alive. Sophea has had a very very tragic life, but to protect her privacy I won't go into details. She has one teenage daughter, still in school, who lives with her and her mom. Photo courtesy of Corey Torpie (www.coreytorpie.com)

Edany and her daughter

Beautiful photo of Edany and her 8 year old daughter. Corey took such a great pic with the little boy from the neighbourhood running to the riverside. We were at the riverside across the bridge--I love this area, it is cool and breezy and not yet developed. No doubt it will be one day, as the villagers are sitting on prime land that is quickly being snapped up by developers who want to build all sorts of riverfront businesses. Dany's mother (pictured below) pays USD10 a month to rent a small plot of land on which to build her own wooden house (that's the wooden patio they are sitting on below). It is only USD7.50 to rent a plot of land at the riverbank because sometimes houses fall into the river. Dany tells me they are worried one day they will lose their homes as soil erosion means eventually the riverbank will move closer inland. Dany is divorced from her husband and also has a 19 year old daughter. Photo courtesy of Bloom customer Corey Torpie (www.coreytorpie.com)

Sewing Silhouette

This is Sophea in silhouette. It looks like she is working in the dark, but take a look at the next pic! This one is a aerial view of Sophea and Kamhut at their sewing machines. Photos courtesy of Corey Torpie (www.coreytorpie.com)

Outside and Inside the Bloom workshop

This one shows the outside of the workshop. It's in a little lane in the city, just off street 163. It's a nice little neighbourhood and neighbours often stop by to chat and their children play along this corridor. The women love children and are happy to be around them and their noisy games. Most of the Bloom team cycle to work and you can see their bicycles parked here. Edany's bike was stolen one day from right under their noses! Now they lock their bikes.
Inside the workshop. The typical Khmer flat "ptayh l'wairng" is a terrace house that is longish (usually 4m by 20m). "Wairng" in Khmer means "long". That's me and Sipha sitting on the floor trying to decide on how many pieces of the new designs we should make. Photos courtesy of Corey Torpie (www.coreytorpie.com)

Quality control

Here you see our QC mean machine! Sareoun is a star--he's responsible and is always joking with the women. Because he knows he is better off than all of the women (his parents own a pig farm), he puts their needs in front of his. Sareoun is married with no children and previously worked at a Chinese garment factory and then at Hagar, the Swiss NGO, where they all trained to make bags. Photo courtesy of Corey Torpie (www.coreytorpie.com)

Handmade Bags 2

This one shows Saroeun using a lighter to burn the edges of the nylon strap to stop them from fraying. It sounds very primitive, the tools we use. The bags are handmade so we do not use expensive equipment like you find in factories. With machinery, all the different parts are mass produced efficiently, whereas it's more time-consuming to do it the "traditional" way. Photo courtesy of Corey Torpie (www.coreytorpie.com). Corey came by to buy our bags one day and spent the next day with the Bloom team. She is a brilliant photographer--go check out her site and you can see beautiful photos of China and Europe.

Handmade Bags

I really like this pic. It shows Sophea straightening the edges of the rice bag before sewing. Photo courtesy of Corey Torpie (www.coreytorpie.com).

The Bloom team

One customer, Corey, from the US, took a series of photographs of Bloom. She aims to write a story on Bloom and get it published, to help raise awareness of our little project. We all had fun showing Corey our workshop and how we make the bags. Then we took her around Chhbar Ampou where the women live and Corey took some great pics of the women and their families. This one was taken outside the workshop. From left: Sareoun, Kamhut, Sipha, Neang, Sophea and Edany. I'm the one squatting in front! We are al carrying Bloom's handmade recycled fishfeed bags. Photo courtesy of Bloom customer Corey Torpie (www.coreytorpie.com).

Sex trade in Cambodia, Childish Khmers and the Blame Game

I am posting a comment I wrote on this website run by a Khmer-American. In general Oudam is a good, thoughtful, site, and gives an insight into overseas Khmers and they way they think and feel about their country. But it also has horrors such as, "After all, we Khmers built Angkor– it’s in our blood to be great." oudam.com

It's like the Chinese always saying we invented gun powder, paper, bridges and what have you and so are destined to rule the world. It always disturbs me, this misplaced sense of pride. I am sure if we went into it, most cultures would have produced something great at one time or another, so how should we play this game of my invention is bigger than yours?

Anyway, the comment I left was in response to Oudam showing Dan Rivers' CNN report on the sex trade in Cambodia

The comment failed to appear, but since I've written it, I figure I may as well post it on my blog.

This is the quote I take issue with:

"The work of Mam Somaly, the former prostitute featured in this video, is admirable. However, a glaring omission from the report is the throngs of Western sex tourists and pedophiles who come to Cambodia each day to exploit our women and children and help fuel the sex trade. They’d arrive by the plane-loads, fanning out across towns and villages taking advantage of impoverished Cambodian women and children."

This is what I said:

Please give us facts and figures. You do not help the discussion by fanning racist flames and repeating hearsay information.

Do a bit of research and you will find actual figures:

October 08, 2007
High demand for virgins from mostly Asian clients is fuelling the flow of underage girls into Cambodia's sex trade, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says.

About 38 per cent of the women and girls surveyed working in the sex trade in Cambodia entered the industry by selling their virginity, IOM found, while 85 per cent of the clients paying to sleep with them were Asian men. See humantrafficking.org

and this March 2006 report:

Bearup (2003) also conducted a quantitative study with convenience sampling of 580 young people (13–28 years old) living in Phnom Penh and found that 60 percent of male university students knew others who had been involved with bauk (gang-rape).

Percent beaten by gangsters in past year - 60.6

Percent whose money was taken by gangsters in past year - 67.2

Percent raped by a single gangster in past year - 43.7

Percent gang raped by gangster in past year - 42.7

"While the level of violence reported here from clients seems high compared to the limited data available from elsewhere in Asia (Jenkins et al., 2002), the interviews reveal that many of the men referred to as clients are in fact gangsters and out-of-uniform police.

"Altogether, 86.8 percent of female freelance sex workers and 90.8 percent of srey sraos (transvestites) had been raped in the past year. The percent raped by police last year was 41.8, and the percent raped by gangsters last year 62.0, whereas the percent raped by clients last year was 73.8. In total, the percent of freelance sex workers raped by anyone last year was 85.3.

Please don't tell me the people the university students know, the gangsters and the police are "Westerners". They are clearly Khmer. So you can understand my fury at Khmers who abuse their own people and then have unwitting allies like yourself who distract from the problem by trying to point fingers elsewhere.

If you really want to do something to help your people in this area, you need to get your facts right first. It is far simpler to take the easy way out and blame foreigners for a problem that is mostly caused by Khmers and can be solved by Khmers, by the Cambodian government and police themselves, if they weren't some of the biggest perpetrators.

Diana Saw
a Singaporean woman living in Cambodia

I get really angry at what I perceive to be a common Khmer trait: blaming other people and not taking responsibility for one's own actions. This happened (notice i use the past tense, because things have changed) a lot with the Bloom team. It was impossible to get anyone to own up to any wrongdoing and forget about getting anyone to say "Sorry". Every single time, workers would blame one of their peers for a mistake. It was always somebody else's fault. And it was always done behind the other's back. It was terrible and reminded me of primary school, when kids lie and blame someone else when confronted by the teacher. I am still reeling from an incident where two women gave two completely different accounts of the same incident, one of them clearly a barefaced liar ("Barefaced" or "Boldface": "Barefaced is one year older than bold-faced; its first print appearance dates to 1590. But the original meaning of barefaced was literal: it meant "having the face uncovered,".... barefaced soon came to describe something "unconcealed or open"; and then something "showing or having a lack of scruples." Merriam-Webster Online).

Of course they were worried about consequences, but being an adult means taking responsibility for one's actions. In this regard, I find Khmers to be very childish--if you reprimand them, for instance, they will laugh or giggle, as a way of hiding embarrassment, instead of discussing the issue like adults. It used to drive me crazy when our first housekeeper (the one who ran away to the province, taking my camera etc with her) giggled every time I pointed out the things she did incorrectly (like putting the rice cooker pot in the microwave!).

As I said, things have changed with Bloom. It has taken almost 2 years, but the team leaders Sipha and Saren are now (sometimes) willing to point out mistakes on their own and apologise for them, even before I notice anything. Part of it was reassuring the team that it is ok to make mistakes, as long as we learn. I repeated this constantly, every time someone made a mistake at work--it could be drawing the wrong template, so the bags would turn out wrong, for instance. I honestly think it is ok for me to lose a bit of money for the workers to learn, because they will improve as workers which will benefit the business in the long run. And I am glad they seem to have more confidence in themselves and appear to be more responsible than when we first met.

Khmer Paratha and Singapore Food

For dinner yesterday, I bought couple of banana Parathas or "Prata" as we lazy Singaporeans spell it. Yes, Cambodia has its own version of the paratha: it's made with prata (I gave up trying to spell it properly), egg, condensed milk and bananas and it's sold by a mobile hawker. The man I buy from is usually in front of Molly Malone's in the old market area. He is there only in the evenings. The prata is cut up into bite-sized pieces, then stuck into a plastic bag with a paper base and you eat it with a long satay (skewered meat) stick.

The prata costs USD1 (it was only 3000 riels 2 weeks ago...damn this inflation. I have been thinking of writing about the topic for a while now. Inflation here is a crazy 11 per cent). It's really expensive. I remember eating plain pratas at the prata shop near the university in Singapore for only SGD0.40 (about USD0.30 at current exchange rates). It was SGD0.60 when I left 2 years ago, although the price has probably gone up now. You can also get pratas in the Makmak's Corner in Phnom Penh (USD1.20 with egg) and a plate of Mee Goreng (fried noodles) for USD2.50 (it's only SGD2.50 back home!). Teh Tarik is USD0.80!

So although Malaysian and Singapore food is available in Cambodia, I seldom eat it, because it's so expensive (Westerners though, rave that the pratas here are "true bargains") and it usually can't compare to the real thing back home. I remember being so disappointed at my USD2.50 bowl of prawn noodles at Sophia's Kitchen, a Malaysian run restaurant. The only one I like is Klang Boy, around the Central Market in Phnom Penh. It's run by a Malaysian man and although he is famous for his bakuteh (pork ribs soup), I actually prefer the wanton mee. The best on in Cambodia (and some say Batam...hahaha!)

A motodop told me Khmer pratas were introduced to this country only 3 years ago. Everyone knows it's Indian food but I wonder how many locals can afford to eat it. Actually, I have only seen foreigners buying the food.

The prata man asked me about "New Zealong" yesterday when we were talking about Singapore. My Khmer is only so-so, so I didn't understand him. It was only when he said, "Like Hun Sen," that I realised he was asking me about Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore's Prime Minister!

Khmers like to show off that they know something about your country. It is a useful trick to pull with tourists. You hear the little child book-sellers on the streets reciting, "The capital of Australia is Canberra, the population is 20 million..." to Aussie tourists, who are usually so impressed, they slow down and listen to the little hustlers (and maybe even buy a book).

Philosophy and NGOs

Today's New York Times had 2 very interesting and pertinent articles for me. The first, "In a New Generation of College Students, Many Opt for the Life Examined" reports how students in the US are rediscovering the importance of philosophy and are enrolling into Philosophy courses in droves.

I majored in philosophy in university (I loved it so much, I went on to do an MA in the subject). At that time, many people didn't understand why. It was seen to be a flaky subject and oh, "How will you get a job? Who wants to employ a philosopher? What could you do?" Actually, a lot. It helped me head the company I was working for in four years.

Here is why: Philosophy comes from the Greek word "Philosophia" (φιλοσοφία), which means "the love of wisdom" (philein = "to love" + sophia = wisdom). In philosophy, you do not sit under trees talking about pointless things. You learn the skill of analysis, because the love of wisdom requires the analysis of arguments, which is really the analysis of thinking itself. How do you know what anyone is saying is true? You examine his/her premises and conclusion(s). Philosophy clarifies your thinking and if you are honest, forces you to come to conclusions whether you like them or not.

Here are 2 quotes from the NYT article which I think succinctly describes why philosophy is making a comeback:

David E. Schrader, executive director of the American Philosophical Association, a professional organization with 11,000 members, said that in an era in which people change careers frequently, philosophy makes sense. “It’s a major that helps them become quick learners and gives them strong skills in writing, analysis and critical thinking,” he said.

“If I were to start again as an undergraduate, I would major in philosophy,” said Matthew Goldstein, the CUNY chancellor, who majored in mathematics and statistics. “I think that subject is really at the core of just about everything we do. If you study humanities or political systems or sciences in general, philosophy is really the mother ship from which all of these disciplines grow.”

I won't rip off the entire NYT article. You can read it here:


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/education/06philosophy.html?em&ex=1207713600&en=6690d92b7d7470f8&ei=5087%0A

The second article is called "Your True Calling Could Suit a Nonprofit".

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/jobs/06career.html?em&ex=1207713600&en=fd9380b8e8715fe9&ei=5087%0A

People looking to move to Cambodia to join an NGO should read this. It's written in a Q&A format and dishes some very good advice, such as forget about sending in your resume.

"Nonprofits tend to obtain referrals from staff members and other nonprofits, or to look to their volunteers when they hire. So consider working your way into an organization by volunteering first, either at your chosen nonprofit or one with a similar mission. Be sure to volunteer in a way that uses the skills you already have or helps you learn new ones.

One person interviewed eventually turned his back against nonprofits:

“No matter how good a volunteer board is, it’s not the same as a corporate board, because everyone has a different agenda,” said Mr. Olson, who returned to the private sector a year later to be vice president for public affairs at Video Professor Inc., a company in Lakewood, Colo., that sells self-tutorial programs. “There was a purity to corporate life I missed,” he said.

There is value, he said, to “a company just getting the job done based on the needs of the marketplace.”

I think there are only two nonprofits or NGOs I would work for: Oxfam and Doctors without Borders. These 2 organisations seem to me to be doing real good work, although I have to say I have not investigated the matter. Oxfam is not allowed to register in Singapore as a charity [ everyone knows you Brits are troublemakers! :) ] but they are here in Cambodia. As for MSF, I don't have medical training, but hey, I am trained in philosophy, so will definitely be of help, somehow.

China Blue

I was motivated to post this comment on the entrepreneurs.com.sg site after someone said he wondered about minimum wage in China, when I pointed out what it was in Cambodia (USD50 for 48 hours a week):

Thanks for all who wrote encouraging things about Bloom. I really appreciate the kind words.

Re the comment about China's workers. You can easily Google the minimum wage in China. A June 07 report from Reuters: "The highest current minimum wage in China is [USD]$106 a month in the southern business center of Shenzhen. The lowest is $35 a month in the eastern province of Jiangxi. Shanghai, one of the world's most expensive cities, raised its minimum monthly wage by $7.80 to $98 a month last year."

Whether factories pay is another matter. If you've watched the documentary "China Blue", which follows the lives of a teenage factory worker and her boss, you will understand factories in China that try to treat and pay workers fairly simply cannot survive. They need to compete for the business of your Wal-marts and the like. These latter companies drive prices down because a) they need to sell clothes at the low prices demanded by customers and/or b) because they want to line their pockets and those of their shareholders.

I face the same challenges at Bloom. Many, many customers bargain with us, or try to drive prices down because they think, as a business located in the third-world, we should be priced like a Chinese factory. If I disagree, they take their business elsewhere. This means Bloom suffers. But I stick to my guns and tell these people (politely, of course) to piss off, because a) I am not running a Chinese factory and b) I believe strongly people should be paid fairly for their work, and I am not going to screw Bloom (which belongs to the workers) and c) Bloom invests in quality, which I believe is worth paying for.

At the end of the day, let us not kid ourselves and take the easy, unthinking, way out of blaming the factory owner and other people along the supply chain. The buck lies squarely with consumers, with people like you and me. Workers all over the world get exploited because we persist in buying things at a bargain, without understanding, or caring to understand, real world prices (the actual cost of a product, if workers were paid fairly) and we persist in buying branded goods, whatever the prices, again, not giving a thought as to how they were made.

It requires effort, certainly, to make an informed judgement about our consumer purchases, but don't you think it is worth it, to know that a teenage girl and her friends were not kept up 20 hours straight to produce x pairs of jeans, for which they were paid pittance, just so you can enjoy wearing a label on your backside? As a consumer you can make your voice heard. Vote with your wallet.

You can read more about the excellent "China Blue" here:
http://ruafrica.rutgers.edu/global_initiative/events/media/cb_synopsis.pdf

Diana Saw

Update from my last blog entry: Today, China has jailed yet another person for giving 2 interviews and writing 5 articles. Hu Jia is 34 years old and is a well-known human rights activist. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7327763.stm

Another person, Yang Chunlin, who called for human rights to take precedence over the Olympic Games, was sentenced to five years in jail in late March. Meanwhile, veteran dissident languishes in Beijing Number 2 Prison, where 5 inmates have died from illness in 2007 alone. Human Rights in China alleges that inmates have been deprived of meat, fresh vegetables, and adequate outdoor exercise for an extended period of time. http://www.hrichina.org/public/contents/press?revision%5fid=48283&item%5fid=48281

Do people need more reason to boycott the Beijing Olympics?

"We are not so different, you and I"

I received an email from a customer from Australia, Russell, who pointed me to AVAAZ.ORG (did I mention how I love Bloom for putting me in touch with like-minded individuals I would otherwise have never known?). AVAAZ.ORG is an online global people's movement campaigning for the world's most pressing issues, such as global warming and peace in the Middle East. I signed up to this one on Tibet:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/98.php/?cl_tf_sign=1

"Petition to Chinese President Hu Jintao:

As citizens around the world, we call on you to show restraint and respect for human rights in your response to the protests in Tibet, and to address the concerns of all Tibetans by opening meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Only dialogue and reform will bring lasting stability. China's brightest future, and its most positive relationship with the world, lies in harmonious development, dialogue and respect."

AVAAZ needs 2 million signatures by 31st March. To date, 1,270,622 have signed - 1 million target reached in just 7 days! Petition delivery in 4 days, so please if you are reading this - join the global voice for peace.

Although I am ethnic--though not wholly--Chinese (I am third-generation Chinese Singaporean, but also have Thai blood on my mom's side), I despise many of the things the Chinese government is doing, not just in Tibet, but also in Sudan and it's enough for me to boycott the Olympics and to call on friends to do the same. It should be said, though, that what the Chinese are doing in terms of promoting national self-interest is no different or morally more repugnant than what the US does for its self interest, in Nicaragua, Chile and numerous other countries (for further reading, you may want to read Noam Chomsky or John Pilger, two of my heroes). Or indeed, what Singapore does. Among the things done in the name of national self-interest, Singapore sells arms to Burma and was crucial in the military's early days of consolidating and building power.

Here is an except from a 1998 report in Jane's Intelligence Review.

"The SLORC ("State Law and Order Restoration Council", or the name adopted in 1997 by Burma's military junta), faced with the country's economic collapse and fearful of a link-up between ethnic insurgents in the countryside and urban-based dissidents, was desperate to restock its depleted armouries. China and Thailand were quick to step in with offers of support, but the first country to come to the regime's rescue was in fact Singapore.

Traces of a relationship

Details are hard to come by but, according to one regional journal, in October 1988 hundreds of boxes marked 'Allied Ordnance, Singapore' were unloaded from two vessels of Burma's Five Star Shipping Line in Rangoon's port. These shipments reportedly included mortars, ammunition and raw materials for Burma's arms factories. The consignment also contained 84 mm rockets for the Burmese army's Carl Gustav recoilless guns, which were made by Chartered Industries of Singapore under licence from Forenade Fabriksverken in Sweden. The shipment thus violated an agreement under which the original export licence had been negotiated, requiring that any re-exports only be made with the permission of the Swedish Government. No
such clearance was granted.

In August 1989 Singapore was again accused of providing arms to the SLORC when weapons and ammunition originating in Belgium and Israel were trans-shipped to Burma, apparently with the assistance of SKS Marketing, a newly formed Singapore-based joint venture with the Burmese military regime. There have been reports that these latter shipments included second-hand 40 mm RPG-2 grenade launchers and 57 mm anti-tank guns of Eastern Bloc origin. One well-informed Burma -watcher has suggested that this equipment may have come from Palestinian stocks captured in southern Lebanon by Israel in 1982 and re-sold to Burma.

It is highly unlikely that any of these arms shipments to Burma could have been made without the knowledge and support of the Singapore Government."

http://www.burmalibrary.org/reg.burma/archives/199803/msg00280.html


This 1998 article also reported "Singapore is now Burma's largest foreign investor, with over US$1 billion committed to nearly 50 different projects (mainly in hotels, property development and tourism)". For all its support, "Singapore [is] in a category reserved for Burma's special friends, a category currently shared only by the Burmese junta's main financial backer and strategic ally: China."

I am reminded of Dr Evil saying to Austin Powers, "We are not so different, you and I". Yes, but two wrongs don't make a right. Regardless of what country you are from and what your government has done, we still can, as individuals, make our opinions heard. If you had watched this week's HardTalk where Stephen Sackur talks to China's most censored writer, Liao Yiwu, you may have heard how he was locked in solitary confinement for 23 days, with his hands cuffed behind his back all through those 23 days. Liao has been arrested numerous times and imprisoned. The first time was in March 1990 while working on a movie about the government´s persecution of persons involved in the June 4th (Tiananmen) Movement. He tried to commit suicide twice.

In the show he talks about freedom to write and publish being taken for granted in the West but in China it is like opening a door, a little at a time. It was a very depressing half-hour for me, to see this human being, 50 years old, so beaten down, despite his claims that he is now in a "healthy" place and is a "healthy" person. But for me, Liao had an important message: I am among the privileged in this world who have the ability to write and publish. I should not waste this opportunity, so denied to people more talented and brave and deserving than me.

The little bag that travelled the world

These photos were sent to me by a Bloom customer. Lee works for the Clinton Foundation in Phnom Penh (the organisation helps fight the spread of AIDS) and visited the Bloom shop at the Russian Market. Later, he asked us to custom make a messenger bag for him, using a rice sack brought all the way from Tibet. The bag then travelled with Lee to San Francisco (and elsewhere I'm sure!) The rice sacks in Tibet are unique, with pictures of Yaks on them. Here in Cambodia, we only get fish and other farm animals, or pictures of the countryside. Here is an except of Lee's email:

"The Yak bags turned out great! Here's a photo! I carry mine with me everywhere now. Thank you so much for the excellent design and the quick turnaround. I was in a San Francisco club last weekend, and saw someone with a similar bag, but with a Jellyfish on it. I thought we had an instant bond! I think this design is really taking off in places like NY and SF..."

It's so cool people all over the world are using recycled products now. I really hope the idea will take off in a big way globally, which would be great news for Bloom bags!

Shopping and Tipping

I had an email from someone who has taken a photo of the bus stop I mention in the previous blog entry on public transport. You can see the pic here on crossingcambodia.blogspot.com

It's a really good blog focusing on everything to do with traffic in Cambodia. The mystery writer also has another blog which compares prices between the different supermarkets in Phnom Penh--a very useful guide if you live, or are planning to live in Phnom Penh. Check it out here!

It's inspired me to write an entry on prices here in Siem Reap, where I now live. In Phnom Penh, we used to shop at Lucky on Sihanouk, cos we could walk there from BKK3. In Siem Reap, we go to the wet market in "Psar Jah" ("old market"), the market around Pub Street. There we can get broccoli (sometimes) for 10,000 riels (about USD2.50) a kg and Cambodian beef for USD5 a kg. The price for broccoli is similar to that back in Singapore. The only difference is that here, in Cambodia, you are paying for the stalk. In Singapore, the broccoli stalks are smaller. Here, they are really big, because I guess, Khmers eat the stalk as well. We prefer to eat (and therefore pay for) the florets because that is where the goodness is.

The other thing about buying vegetables in the market is the prices fluctuate wildly. Cauliflower can cost 3000 riels (USD0.75) a kg one day and 5000 riels the next, depending on supply. But in general, you can get good, fresh food at the market. For fancy cheeses and English back bacon (USD22 a kg!), you can go to Angkor Market along Sivatha Boulevard. It is the biggest supermarket, and even has trolleys. We usually shop at the minimarket just a bit up the road, and across the street, from Angkor Market, though, because it is cheaper. A 2 litre bottle of milk costs USD3.30 there and USD3.80 at Angkor Market. Just wait till Lucky opens! All these other minimarts that have been overcharging customers will be in for a shock. I can't wait.

The one supermarket I boycott here in Siem Reap is the one just in front of Sok San Palace, called Huy Meng. It has expanded recently because of demand, taking over the MaxMart that was previously beside it (MaxMart itself has expanded its other premises, about 200m south of Huy Meng). The reason I boycott this supermarket is because every single time I shop there, the cashiers try to shortchange me. Not by a lot, by a hundred or two or maybe five hundred riels (USD0.125), but for me, it is the principle. If I wanted to give away a freaking 100 riel (USD0.025) note, I would rather give it to the poor boy who loiters outside collecting aluminum cans or even to the beggar mother, than to be ripped off by some guy working in an air-conditioned convenience store who gets a salary for doing this job.

The way they do it is to round off the amount the charge you. So for instance, if your bill is USD3.10, they will ask you for $3 and 500 riels, when it should be 400 riels. Or USD0.15 would be 1000 riels, instead of 600. This was when the exchange rate was 4000 to the dollar, so please don't tell me that the mistake is because of the exchange rate. In fact, the first time I challenged the cashier, I asked what the exchange rate was before pointing out to him he was mathematically challenged (ok, I didn't, but I did tell him what the right amount should be).

I thought ok, it could be an honest mistake. But after the third consecutive time it happened, I lost my temper, and told the cashier (this time it was a woman) "Every time I shop here you try to cheat me of a few hundred riels. The next time this happens I will tell your boss." I had it in my mind that the owner of Huy Meng was unaware of how his staff was scamming customers. But who knows? Maybe he doesn't even mind, because it's not costing him anything (although it has cost him this customer). But I would like to believe he is in the dark about this.

The problem is obviously the staff regularly get away with this. This is one problem living in a tourist town like Siem Reap--foreigners who live here get treated like tourists. Tourists who come here think nothing of throwing riels around or losing a few hundred here and there (it is such small money, it hardly seems worth it to quibble). But as I have already written, if you have money to spare, please give a thought as to how you are spending it. Do you really want to give it to the cashier as a tip (where in the world do supermarket cashiers get tips?), or could that 100 riel note be better used elsewhere. Again, it takes effort to think, instead of saying, "keep the change" or worse, not even engaging your brain to realise you have been scammed.

Here is a thought: instead of letting people cheat you out of the small notes, why not get your right change, keep them all, and drop them in a donation box for the Bopha Angkor Children's Hospital?

Here is another thought: instead of tipping, you could do the same with your tips. Why? Because I think tipping subsidises the pub or restaurant owners. Instead of paying fair wages, they underpay and use "tipping" as a way to attract staff. I just met a 23 year old guy who works at a restaurant on Sivatha who gets USD40 a month to work as a waiter 8 hours a day, 7 days a week with no annual holidays. His meals are covered by the restaurant and of course, the owner says, "you have tips".

This country is not like Italy, where I've been told, waiters take their profession as a career, and are treated as professionals. Waiters here are just trying to make a living, and the moment they can find a better job, they'd leave. This is why restaurants and pubs here are forever looking for service staff. Even the established and huge Red Piano has had a help wanted sign since I moved here almost 4 months ago! Another posh restaurant in a small lane has been looking for a (woman, they specify) manager for three months to no avail.

No Public Transport

I've written about this before, about how the lack of public transport in Phnom Penh means poor people end up paying a large percentage of their income on private transport. The thought came up again today, that Cambodia should have a public transport system within cities, but for another reason. We were having a beer by the river here in Siem Reap. Siem Reap has far from fulfilled its potential and can be such a lovely place for tourists. Instead, it is likely to be more unpleasant. With the tourist boom attracting more people to the town, traffic for one thing, will become worse. I was just having an email conversation with someone who has lived in Phnom Penh for 8 years and has seen how the traffic has exploded there.

Why is there no public transport within towns in Cambodia? Not even in the capital Phnom Penh. There cannot be many cities the size of Phnom Penh without public transport. It seems at one point, there was a public bus plying the main road of the city, because I have seen signposts of the bus schedule in a couple of places (one along Sihanouk Boulevard). They must be a remnant of the past. But I had no luck Googling this. Why did public transport in Phnom Penh fail? Who ran it? For how long?

Of course the reason there is no public system must be that the government cannot be bothered with it. Here is the mission statement of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport. It is nothing to do with the provision of transport, only with infrastructure.

http://www.mpwt.gov.kh/mission.htm

And here is what the World Bank says about the problem

Urban Transport

The Cambodia urban transport infrastructure was severely damaged and/or neglected during the years of fighting. In Cambodia, all urban transport is road based and traffic volumes are growing rapidly, especially in Phnom Penh and Siam Reap. Public transport is limited to buses as there are no subways in the country.

There is no formally adopted road and road transport policy in Cambodia, and this particularly affects urban road transport. Phnom Penh has emerging congestion problems and there is a need for a strategic transport policy to set the proper framework. This needs to consider factors such as facilities for non-motorized traffic, the role of rail, and private sector involvement, especially in the area of establishing road tolls. There is also a need to ensure sufficient finance for urban road maintenance as well as paving unpaved roads in urban areas.

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/EASTASIAPACIFICEXT/EXTEAPREGTOPTRANSPORT/0,,contentMDK:20458706~menuPK:2066305~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~theSitePK:574066,00.html



"Private sector involvement, especially in the area of establishing road tolls"? Is that the most pressing reason to get the private sector involved? How about getting the private sector to supply public transport first?

This topic has obviously been debated as I found one letter writer, Stan Khan, who wrote in the Phnom Penh Post, Issue 13/09, April 23 - May 6, 2004 arguing:

"Cambodia should look to the Philippines and its Jeepney minibus system as a model for public transit.

Jeepneys are individually owned but they operate on fixed routes without public subsidy and provide urban transportation in the range of 500 to 600 riel equivalent."

A minibus system should be very easy to set up.

The city would lay out the routes, establish basic rules and fares and sell low-cost permits to anyone who wants to provide service.

The more the city is able to replace motorbikes with multi-passenger vehicles the better off it will be in terms of congestion, accidents and serious injuries."

There are private bus companies like GST and Sorya but these only provide inter-province services. Are the companies not allowed, or do they find it financially non-viable to provide the service within the city and towns?

If prevention of accidents is not a big enough reason for the government to provide public transport, how about thinking about productivity, as less congestion means people get to work on time. Think about how much wastage there is in a place like Bangkok, where people's time is spent in traffic. Or how about thinking about pollution? Phnom Penh and Siem Reap could be such nice places to live if not for the vehicle exhaust fumes.

It's probably harder than it seems to get a public transport system right and people the world over complain about their country's public transport. But we have to start somewhere. Certainly Singapore went through its share of difficulties in establishing a nationwide transport system. You can read about its history here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_transport_in_Singapore