So Meta Right Now...

Blogs open communication in Cambodia

Fri Sep 21, 3:00 PM

By Ker Munthit, The Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - A Cambodian blogger asked recently whether former King Norodom Sihanouk should be considered the country's founding father of blogging.

He got no definitive answer. Cambodian blog watchers say the 84-year-old monarch may not have known he was blogging when he unveiled his website, updated daily by his staff since 2002 with his views on national affairs, correspondence with his admirers and news about his film-making hobby.

But it is clear that young, tech-savvy Cambodians are joining Sihanouk in embracing blogs. The trend is changing their lives and their communication with people abroad - even as electricity remains an unreachable dream for most households in this poverty-ridden nation of 14 million.

"This is a kind of cultural revolution now happening here in terms of self-expression," said Norbert Klein, a longtime resident from Germany who is considered the person who introduced e-mail to Cambodia, through a dial-up connection in 1994. "It is completely a new era in Cambodian life."

Cambodians with the skills and the means to blog are discovering a wider world and using the personal online journals to show off their personalities and views about the issues facing their country, from corruption to food safety.

"Blogging transforms the way we communicate and share information," said 25-year-old student blogger Ly Borin.

To his surprise, a recent blog post of his on poor food safety in Cambodia drew a comment from an international traveler. He said interaction with a stranger living perhaps half a world away was unimaginable in Cambodia just a few years ago.

Cambodia became one of the most isolated countries in the world during the late 1970s, when the communist Khmer Rouge were in power and cut off virtually all links with the outside world as they applied radical policies that led to the death of 1.7 million people. The Khmer Rouge were ousted in 1979, but the country is still struggling to rebuild. Fewer than one-third of 1 per cent of Cambodians have regular web access.

If the Internet opened a path for news from outside Cambodia, blogging is turning the path into a two-way street.

"Having a blog brings me up to date with technology," said Keo Kalyan, a 17-year-old student whose nom-de-blog is "DeeDee, School Girl Genius! Khmer-Cyberkid." "I can do social networking and contact other bloggers" around the world.

She and three peers organized the first-ever Cambodian Bloggers Summit - the "Cloggers Summit" to the cognoscenti. Foreign professional bloggers and 200 university students took part in the two-day meeting in Cambodia last month to trade ideas.

Her team also has conducted 14 workshops for 1,700 students to share their knowledge about digital technology.

Raymond Leos, an American professor of communications and media arts at a Phnom Penh university, said Sihanouk showed his countrymen blogging's broad potential.

After seeing TV images of same-sex weddings in San Francisco in 2004, Sihanouk posted a statement expressing his support for gay marriage. When a foreigner allegedly wrote him an e-mail criticizing his stance on the subject, Sihanouk shot back on his website, saying "I thank you for insulting me" but "I am not gay."

"We can learn from him that blogging can be fun, interesting and provocative," Leos said.

One politically conscious blogger rapped Prime Minister Hun Sen's government over its failure to curb chronic corruption.

"I feel so shameful of our Prime Minister Hun Sen. We are begging the world for money," Vanak Thom wrote on his "Blog By Khmer." "(His) government is too corrupt. Without corruption, I know our Cambodia can be free from the abyss of this poverty."

Human Rights Watch continues to criticize the Cambodian government's treatment of dissent, but bloggers are able to express at least some overt criticism. And there is no official censorship.

More to the point, said John Weeks, an American who runs the House32.com web design firm in Phnom Penh, blogs are not yet relevant to most Cambodians.

"I don't see blogs where farmers talk about rainfall, or where (motorbike-taxi drivers) complain about gas prices," he said.

For starters, the blogs are generally in English, a language that's becoming more popular among the new generation than French, which is the legacy of colonial times. Yet, English is spoken and read by only a tiny fraction of the country's population, limiting usefulness of the blogs to the elite.

Although there are blogs in Khmer, the Cambodian language, their growth is also hampered by the lack of standardized native fonts, said Klein, the early Internet user.

Cambodia's Internet penetration also is among the lowest in the world, in part due to high electricity and network connection costs. An hour of access at an Internet cafe here costs about 2,000 riel, or 50 cents, while 35 per cent of Cambodians make less than the poverty-level income of 45 cents a day.

While only a tiny proportion of Cambodians go online, the Pew Internet and American Life Project says more than 71 per cent of American adults use the Internet. About 13 per cent of residents of neighboring Thailand and 19 per cent of people in Vietnam have regular access, said Preetam Rai, Southeast Asian editor of Global Voices.

Seeking to reduce poverty and encourage economic growth by narrowing the digital divide, Cambodia's government has made national computer literacy a priority. It is linking local governments and national agencies to a main government data center, using a $50 million loan from South Korea, said Soung Noy, deputy secretary-general of the official National Information Communications Technology Development Authority.

Blogger Ly Borin said modern technology such as computers are simply too advanced for many older Cambodians, who have mostly just been struggling to survive for the past 30 years. The new technology, he said, "is hard for them to follow."

Cambodia's violent past also has made many older people - though not Sihanouk - fearful of speaking their minds, Klein said.

Less elevated Cambodians than Sihanouk meanwhile said they hoped to use their blogs to show how far their country has come from its troubled past. "Cambodia is not just about Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot," said Bun Tharum, 25, referring to the now-defunct radical communist group and its late leader. "Now we have a tool to inform the outside world about how we are thinking and progressing." - On the Net:

Keo Kalyan: http://deedeedoll.blogspot.com

Vanak Thom: http://blogbykhmer.blogspot.com

Bun Tharum: http://www.tharum.info

Norodom Sihanouk: http://www.norodomsihanouk.info

Government's ICT development agency: http://www.nida.gov.kh

The Provision of Psychiatric Care in a Post-Conflict Setting

The multitude of mental health problems caused by living on the verge of death and starvation--both during the khmer rouge and afterwards during the vietnamese occupation--are tremendous and overwhelming. So many khmer still react to things with base emotions, and this is a central reason for sudden fits of violent rage, acid attacks, alcoholism, etc.

I've met and worked with both Dr Chak Thida and Prof. Ka Sunbonat. Both are quite dedicated doctors who have taken the enormous responsibility of organizing the National Mental Health Programme and providing therapy to even just a few of the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) who could greatly benefit from such therapy.

Cambodia's long look backwards; doctors struggle to heal a troubled country

by Seth MeixnerTue Sep 4, 9:30 AM ET

"I always have nightmares about being chased by something black, a shadow," says doctor Sotheara Chhim, describing the aftermath of peering into the dark places most Cambodians are trying to forget.

"It is not something clear, but it is probably relevant to the Khmer Rouge," says Chhim, one of only 26 psychiatrists providing care for a rising tide of Cambodians who are no longer able to cope with the damage caused by the brutalities of the past.

"I listen to so many stories. I dream about being in a kind of trap, a cage," says Chhim, himself a survivor of the apocalypse that engulfed Cambodia in the late 1970s, explaining the personal toll exacted by confronting, again and again, other people's demons.

Chhim, who directs the Transcultural Psychosocial Organisation (TPO), one of the country's few mental health facilities, warns that worse could be yet to come as a genocide tribunal forces Khmer Rouge victims to re-live atrocities inflicted by the regime.

But the psychological fallout of the trials only highlights a much broader need for mental health services in one of the region's most traumatised countries.

"The incidents of mental illness are getting higher from year to year, but still a lot of psychological problems are not being cared for," says Dr Ka Sunbaunat, dean at the University of Health Sciences and director of the National Programme for Mental Health.

Some 30 percent of Cambodia's nearly 14 million people reportedly suffer from a debilitating mental condition -- from anxiety and chronic unexplained physical pain to unpredictable mood swings or sudden eruptions of rage.

Millions more are thought to be plagued by less profound problems, but the true extent of mental illness in Cambodia -- caused as much by today's crushing poverty, neglect and abuse as by past upheavals -- is unknown.

What is clear to Chhim and other healthcare providers is that Cambodia is woefully unprepared to address this issue, with one psychiatrist for every half a million people.

"At the government mental health clinics, one psychiatrists sees over 30 patients a day -- you would be exhausted. I can see only three or four a day in order to provide good care," he says.

As many as 100 people line up each day outside Phnom Penh's municipal referral clinic, where the government established a psychiatric ward two years ago, one of 61 now open throughout the country.

They wait for a chance to speak with the psychiatrist on duty, or perhaps to see one of a handful of medical residents drafted from the nearby university.

"Sometimes we have problems. With mental patients you have to spend time and when we're overcrowded like this there is not enough time," says Dr Chak Thida, walking briskly amidst the dozens of mostly middle-aged men and women arriving one recent morning at the clean and, for Cambodia, well-equipped clinic.

But even with facilities such as this, Chak Thida says, "we need more resources ... we need more psychological education for the public. People don't know that they are ill".

-- Cambodia's unwanted peace dividend --

A decade of peace following the country's long civil conflict has ironically led to an eruption of mental health problems, as Cambodians, freed from the daily traumas of war, have time for perhaps unwanted reflection, stirring sometimes devastating memories, doctors say.

"After the Khmer Rouge the trauma was still going on -- people were struggling to survive. Somehow even if they felt pain, they put it aside," Chhim says.

"For Cambodia the fighting stopped less than 10 years ago, so the people have just started getting on with their lives and that pain is starting to come back."

But many do not understand the cause of that pain, and a majority of mental health cases are often un-diagnosed or mis-treated.

As many as 80 percent of Cambodians going to see general practitioners are actually suffering from psychological trauma, Ka Sunbaunat explains.

"They don't believe they have psychiatric health problems -- they believe this is normal for everybody after the war," he says.

Doctors say they are battling ignorance or heavy social stigmas that often associate mental problems with witchcraft or sorcery.

"There is no recognition of mental health, most of the people we meet never come to us straight away -- they go to traditional healers, they think that their problems are caused by black magic," Chhim says.

Chhim's TPO is engaged in an ambitious public education campaign that he says reaches as many as 10,000 people a year.

The group trains traditional village authority figures such as monks to recognise the symptoms of mental trauma, and organises counselling sessions for alcoholics or victims of domestic violence. Substance abuse and physical attacks are the most common causes and affects of mental trauma today, Chhim says.

"To help people deal with trauma, a lot of things have to be involved, we need a holistic approach bringing in things like religion and social justice," he says.

"We are purely community-oriented. We train the stakeholders, especially the traditional healers, the monks, the nuns, those who help the people in the communities with their problems so that they are able to recognise these problems and provide support."

Ahead of the Khmer Rouge trials, TPO is preparing a campaign to deal specifically with mental issues that are expected to arise as a result of dredging up the blackest chapter in Cambodia's modern history.

Chhim says the group plans to distribute leaflets detailing the symptoms of post traumatic stress syndrome and other related illnesses, a well as provide counselling for those directly involved in the trials as witnesses.

"The tribunal can trigger memories," Chhim says. "The people who experienced these terrible events will (re-live) the experience when they hear about investigations or crimes. It will reactivate the traumatic memories."

Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork, or were executed by the communist Khmer Rouge which took over the country in 1975 and set about erasing modern Cambodia and trying to create an agrarian utopia in its place.

Millions were exiled to vast collective farms, while money, schools and religion were outlawed. The educated, including doctors, were systematically hunted down and killed.

Khmer Rouge leaders called the first year of their rule "Year Zero".

For most Cambodians it was simply the end of the world -- the fall of the regime in 1979 was followed almost 20 years of famine and conflict, the effects of which still echo today.

"Some people say the Khmer Rouge (regime) was so long ago that maybe the Cambodian people forgot," Chhim says. "But actually we don't forget. People have not had the chance to deal with this."

While some healthcare experts hope the trial will bring into sharp relief the failings of the current system, others are less optimistic.

"From the beginning people believed the tribunal had some miraculous healing power, when in fact it does not," says Ka Sunbaunat.

"My parents died. After a year of trial my parents remain dead -- how can I feel better? We should think about what Cambodian people are really suffering from.

"People who are victims (of the Khmer Rouge) suffer more from the poverty and hardship in their daily lives."

Cambodia's garment mills face impasse

By Erika Kinetz, The Christian Science Monitor

Not much gets made in Cambodia except clothes.

Garments account for an astonishing 80 percent of this impoverished Southeast Asian nation's exports, and the World Bank estimates that the industry, which was worth $2.5 billion last year, helps support – directly or indirectly – about 1 in 5 Cambodians, according to government estimates.

US trade policy essentially created Cambodia's garment industry, thanks to a 1999 bilateral deal that granted Cambodia preferential access to US markets in exchange for guarantees on labor standards. Now some argue that US trade policy – in the form of high tariffs – is helping to undo it.

The irony is especially acute because many observers now look to Cambodia as a model of labor-friendly manufacturing, and they say that if Cambodia fails, it will mean the death not just of one industry in one nation, but of the dream of ethical manufacturing itself.

"There was a door for small countries like Cambodia," says Cambodia's minister of commerce, Cham Prasidh. "Now there is no more door. Those who can produce cheaper and faster will sell more."

And that means China.

Shifts in the global garment industry are favoring more developed nations, like China, over the world's poorest. US quotas that benefited Cambodia have expired – or will soon – and the question Cambodia now faces is how to compete with nations that have better infrastructure, more qualified labor forces, deeper supply chains, faster productivity growth, and cheaper electricity.

One easy answer for Cambodia would be to have its major trading partner – the United States, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of Cambodia's garment exports – eliminate its tariffs. Cambodian officials have been lobbying Congress since 2004 to cut those tariffs, which last year averaged nearly 16 percent. China paid, on average, just over 3 percent on its top US exports.

Mr. Cham led a delegation to Washington in July to drum up support in Congress for the TRADE Act, a bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate in February that would slash tariffs on goods from 14 poor Asian nations, including Cambodia.

The US already provides generous trade benefits to many of the world's poorest countries through regional agreements in Africa and the Caribbean, and the EU and Canada already grant Cambodia access to their markets nearly duty- and quota-free.

Cambodian officials are hoping that later this month, House Democrats will introduce legislation that would exempt all of the world's poorest nations, including Cambodia, from tariffs.

Roland Eng, Cambodia's former ambassador to the US, maintains that legislation favoring poor countries won't affect the level of US imports, merely the pattern. "Instead of importing from China, you will import more from least-developed countries," says Mr. Eng. "We're not preventing jobs from going to the US; we're preventing jobs from going to China," he adds.

For an underdeveloped nation, Cambodia already pays relatively more in duties than some developed economies. Edward Gresser, the director of the trade and global markets project at the Washington-based Progressive Policy Institute, said in an e-mail that as of mid-2006, the US had collected $196 million in tariffs on $1.1 billion worth of Cambodian goods, but only $199 million on $27 billion in imports from Britain.

For its part, the US Embassy in Phnom Penh says that the United States is considering trade benefits for Cambodia, but within the stalled Doha round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization. Government and garment-industry officials in Cambodia are hoping for a faster, more localized solution. They say they can't afford to wait.

Next year, US safeguards on Chinese garment imports are set to expire and international monitoring of Cambodia's factories, a cornerstone of Cambodia's 1999 trade deal with the US, may also cease. That could spell the end of Cambodia's labor-friendly garment sector, which has been held up as a model by the industrialized world.

But despite the good intentions, Cambodia's good labor practices cost money in the long term, and Van Sou Ieng, the chairman of the Garment Manufacturer's Association of Cambodia, says it will be hard to live up to those standards if Cambodia can't compete on price, which he says is impossible without tariff relief.

Eng says the social and economic costs of a garment sector slowdown would be enormous. Most garment workers are women, who have left the traditionally protective structures of family and village that govern rural life. Unemployed, Eng says they will be particularly vulnerable to HIV infection and human trafficking. "All the social efforts of the past ten years will be in vain," he says.

It wasn't supposed to be that way. Rachel Louise Snyder, author of the forthcoming book "Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade," says that if Cambodia's garment industry fails, the ramifications will extend far beyond the borders of this tiny nation.

"The industrialized world has set them up as an example of great positive social change that can be achieved with political and economic will," says Ms. Synder, who lives in Phnom Penh. "What does it say to the rest of the world if we allow them to fail?"

A Brief Foray into the Economics of Present-Day Cambodia

Great article, Erica! Especially the lead sentence.

Cambodia, long an Asian mouse, may be ready to roar

By Erika Kinetz, International Herald Tribune

Friday, July 27, 2007

Most Cambodians live with two realities: rain and rice. The country that three decades ago abolished money has today embarked on the very long process of adding two new words to the national vocabulary: stocks and bonds.


The Cambodian government recently got its first sovereign debt ratings from the global ratings agencies Standard & Poor's and Moody's, and plans are afoot to open domestic stock and bond exchanges in 2009.


Take a ride into the countryside, where the vast majority of Cambodians live and work in conditions more than one observer has described as more African than Asian, and the very notion of an incipient derivatives market seems absurd.


But in the past few years, investors - not just donors, who still prop up the economy of this tiny, impoverished nation - have started to give Cambodia a good, hard second look. That is no small accomplishment for a nation still recovering from the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist group that not only abolished money during its 1975 to 1979 rule, but also oversaw the deaths of about two million people - roughly one-quarter of the population at the time. After the Khmer Rouge was ousted by the Vietnamese, Cambodia sank into two more decades of civil war.


These days, the notoriously weak judiciary, lack of openness, deep and pervasive corruption, rampant smuggling, mediocre infrastructure (the postal service is barely functional and electricity costs are exorbitant), and the lack of a well-trained work force make Cambodia what has been politely called a challenging business environment.


But not, apparently, too challenging. Foreign direct investment, led by South Korea and China, rose from $121 million in 2004 to $475 million in 2006, according to data from the National Bank of Cambodia and the International Monetary Fund. Historically high levels of liquidity in global markets, as well as a regional boom and a growing perception that, after 30 years of domestic strife, stability has finally taken root, have all helped draw investment.


In January, the country got its first investment bank, Tong Yang Investment, part of the Tong Yang Group of companies in South Korea. Tong Yang plans to start a real estate investment fund of about $100 million focused on Cambodia and Vietnam and marketed to South Korean investors by the end of this year. Other private equity funds are apparently in the works.


Although Cambodia's meager population of 14 million people means that the country is a hard sell for big consumer companies, others have been drawn by the nation's soaring gross domestic product. In the past decade, GDP growth has ranged from a low of 5 percent in 1998, following the bloody factional fighting of 1997, to a high of 13.5 percent in 2005, according to the Finance Ministry.


Over the past three years, Cambodia has sustained average GDP growth of 11.4 percent a year, and the IMF predicts GDP growth will level off to around 9 percent for 2007. Inflation was at 4.7 percent in 2006, according to the ministry. The government has also been deepening its commercial law framework.


"You've got a story of macroeconomic stability," said John Nelmes, the IMF representative for Cambodia. "That's proving comfortable for businesses to invest."


The Australian mining giant BHP Billiton, and its partner, Mitsubishi, have begun a large bauxite exploration project in Cambodia, and Oxiana, the Australian company that runs the huge Sepon copper and gold mine in Laos, is digging for gold in the jungles of northeastern Cambodia.


The promise of oil off the coast of Cambodia has attracted a host of adventurous companies, including the U.S. oil giant Chevron and China's CNOOC and China Petrotech.


At the end of June, a delegation of French business leaders, including representatives of Total Exploration & Production, Société Générale, France Télécom, Lafarge Cement, and the hotel group Accor, came to Cambodia for a fact-finding tour. Japan sent a similar delegation this month, and Biwako Bio-Laboratory has said that it plans to invest up to $800 million in Cambodia for biodiesel production. On Monday, General Electric opened a branch office in Phnom Penh.


Bretton Sciaroni, a lawyer who has practiced in Cambodia since 1993, cited another factor in the country's appeal: the pro-business stance of the government.


Sciaroni, who also serves as a legal adviser to the government, said that when a client, the U.S. packaging company Crown Holdings, wanted to open a factory in Phnom Penh, getting the government to lower its 7 percent tariff on raw aluminum imports was as simple as asking. "The minister of economy and finance, Keat Chhon, asked my client what they wanted it to be," Sciaroni recalled. "My client said zero percent. He said, fine, and zero percent it is."


"People at the highest levels of government understand the necessity of getting stuff done," he added.


Officials describe the turn to capital markets as part of the nation's natural economic evolution. Last month, donors, including China, pledged to deliver $689 million in aid to Cambodia.


"We still need donor assistance," said Hang Chuon Naron, the secretary general of the Ministry of Economy and Finance. But he added that Cambodia would need more - and more kinds of - financing as its economy expands.


The nation's economic base is still quite narrow, dominated by tourism and the garment industry, which could suffer from Vietnam's recent accession to the World Trade Organization and the expiration of U.S. and European quotas on Chinese textiles, scheduled for the end of next year.


Cambodia also has a high level of public debt - most of it on favorable, concessional terms - and it does a poor job of collecting taxes.


On the upside, Cambodia's manufacturing base has been slowly broadening. Oil, natural gas and the mineral sector are promising, and real estate has been booming, some say too much.


Sciaroni said a number of his clients had been buying up property along Cambodia's southern beaches, hoping that the new airport in Sihanoukville would eventually draw tourists who intended to visit only the Angkor Wat temple, in the north, and then leave. "You don't see it yet, but in three to five years, you're going to see major development on the south coast of Cambodia," he said.


Look around Phnom Penh and the opportunities for growth are evident: no tall office buildings, no real golf course, few malls. But the question Han Kyung Tae, Tong Yang Investment's chief representative in Cambodia, has been asking himself lately is whether all the heady talk about surging investment and the rise of capital markets is premature.


"One day, I see the big potential," he said. "The next I'm skeptical."


Right now, Sciaroni said, few domestic companies outside the financial sector, where annual audits are required, would meet even minimal listing criteria. "Transparency doesn't exist for the majority of companies here today," he said.


That has not stopped the Korea Exchange, which operates the Korean Stock Exchange, from jumping in to help develop Cambodian securities markets.


Talk with Koreans of a certain age in Phnom Penh and they will tell you that Cambodia reminds them of their childhood home. The financial sector is no different: Fifty years ago, South Korea, like Cambodia today, depended heavily on foreign aid and was struggling to develop domestic sources of financing. Korea is now trying to share the miracle of its own growth, said Hong-Sik Choi, the executive director of Global Business Development at the Korea Exchange.


"Korea has experienced a miracle to transform itself from the poorest country to the 11th largest economy in the world during the last half century," he explained. "The securities market was at the center of Korea's economic growth."


Hang, the Finance Ministry official, knows that his country is not for the fainthearted. "Cambodia is high risk, but it's also high return," he said.


And while he concedes that Cambodia's road to economic maturity will be long, he maintains that the advent of publicly traded securities will demand new systems of accounting, openness and accountability, which could improve the quality of the business environment as a whole.


Jie Sun, the deputy director of the Research Center for International Finance at Beijing's Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the major lesson - and perhaps the most instructive for Cambodia - that China learned in the 15 years since Deng Xiaoping opened the gates to Chinese-style capitalism, was that capital markets could help a country with the slow and challenging work of improving its business environment.


"The Chinese have realized that the main function of the stock market is to improve corporate governance," he said at a recent conference sponsored by the Economic Institute of Cambodia, an independent research institute and consultancy in Phnom Penh. "After 15 years, we have now come to the point."

Cambodian Opera Singer

Cambodia's Tenor a Symbol of Its Re-Emergence

by Rachel Louise Snyder

PS: I had a drink with this guy on my friend Theary's balcony during Water Festival last November. A really nice guy with an amazing voice, and a very cool story!

Lee's Skype-In

I know I haven't written in quite some time, but I just acquired a new tool that will hopefully facilitate greater contact between me and the world outside Cambodia.

The tool is called called SkypeIn. SkypeIn gives me a local U.S. phone number for other people to call, and I can access that number on my computer anywhere in the world. If I am on Skype at the time, the Skype program will ring and I can answer and talk to you! If I'm not on Skype, you will be forwarded to my voicemail so you can leave a message, and I promise to call back as soon as I possibly can! Basically, you can call from your home or your mobile, and it costs the same as a local call in the US.

My Skype In number is (925) 265-8250.

I hope to hear all of your lovely voices soon!

The Man, The Myth, The Legend: Two Nights with Asia's Tom Jones

Without a doubt, the best thing to do in Phnom Penh on any given weekend is to spend an evening at an Asia’s Tom Jones performance at the Hotel Cambodiana, the largest and most over-the-top hotel in Phnom Penh. This Tom Jones impersonator par-excellence plays nightly in a bar that looks like it came straight outta Vegas. Gold pillars, lavish mirrors, and slot machines abound!

I first went to see this literal Phnom-enon three weeks ago with my friends Duncan and Gin. Not knowing what to expect, and thinking that I would hardly enjoy it (considering I’m barely a fan of Tom Jones’ music), I entered the extravagant bar and my spirits were instantly lifted.

Asia’s Tom Jones was introduced as such—not by his real name, but as “Asia’s Tom Jones,” a man clouded in a shroud of mystery. Who is he? What motivates him? And why is he in Cambodia?

As we found out, Asia’s Tom Jones is a force to be reckoned with—he’s over 50, yet his pelvic thrusts, arm swings, gluteal rotations, and countless other dance moves are performed with the vitality of a 25-year-old Tom Jones when “It’s Not Unusual” just came out.

Asia’s Tom Jones came onstage wearing tight black pants, a slick black Jacket that he throws off when he starts sweating, and a black shirt which was progressively unbuttoned throughout the night. His hair was crafted into a perfect Tom Jones ‘fro, and he even impersonated the real Tom Jones’ Welsh accent, turning Asia’s Tom Jones’ speech into a crazy concoction of Malaysian-Indian-Welsh English.

Serenading the audience

On our first night seeing this legend, we were joined by two British Tom Jones fans who happened to be passing through Phnom Penh during a 2-year stint of traveling the world. They downed their drinks twice as quickly as the rest of us and were up dancing and singing along just as quickly. Singing without a backing band, Asia’s Tom Jones wailed through hits like Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” as well as Tom Jones’ “Delilah” and “Sex Bomb.” His voice held a power and range that I have rarely heard in a live performance. Without a band, he was essentially singing over pre-recorded synth-versions of these songs—more or less, it was the best karaoke performance I have ever heard.

Even more remarkably, without a band, Asia’s Tom Jones had to create all of the energy onstage by himself, which he executed with ease. He had people clapping and singing along throughout the performance, and towards the end, a bunch of wealthy Khmers got up and danced and we all joined in. Towards the end of the night, the Khmers raised their arms in the air as they belted out the lyrics in an accented chorus until Asia’s Tom Jones finished his encore in a ball of sweat and energy.

Everybody gettin' down to Asia's Tom Jones during "Sexbomb"

However, to our mutual disappointment, Asia’s Tom Jones neglected to sing “It’s Not Unusual.” It was a strategic move, however, as this omission just fanned the flames of our admiration and forced Duncan, Gin and I to go back two weeks later.

Duncan, Gin and I posing with Asia's Tom Jones. We are all in a state of ecstasy after his performance. In fact, his performances can be rated based on how sweaty he is at the end of the show. After this photo, when my arm let go of Asia's Tom Jones' back and shoulder, it was covered in sweat. It was truly one of his best shows ever!

The second time around, I brought the Huge in Asia crew with me. Nate, Kai, and Alan are from Oakland and have been living in Hanoi the last few months, volunteering at an orphanage, teaching English, and filming AMAZING videos that are posted on their Vlog, www.hugeinasia.com. A few weeks ago, they rented motorcycles and biked down to Ho Chi Minh City and then over to Cambodia. Desiring to have fun in Phnom Penh and generate material for their Vlog, we agreed that the best thing to do that evening was to encounter, admire, and really try to understand Asia’s Tom Jones.

We arrived with high hopes, only to have them crushed by a lackluster first set. I think Asia’s Tom Jones was disappointed by how few people were in the audience. Duncan and Gin even left after that first set. However, not to be dissuaded and knowing that Asia’s Tom Jones was saving his best stuff for later in the evening, Huge in Asia and I elected to film an interview with him during his set break. Asia’s Tom Jones agreed, and he walked to the interview down a yellow-lit corridor like a true rock star. The four of us sat down and interviewed him in the lobby of the hotel, and what we discovered was a truly moving rags-to-riches story, if riches are calculated in undying admiration across the world by Tom Jones’ fans and the opportunity to play at festivals with 30,000 people in attendance, accompanied by a 40-piece backing band (quite the contrast from his Karaoke gig at the Cambodiana).

Gin and I in the yellow-lit corridor. Even we look cool in these pictures, so you can imagine how heroic and badass Asia's Tom Jones looked walking down this same hallway.

Part of the mystery of this man was revealed during the interview, including his real name—Mark Sylvester. He is a Malaysian of Indian descent. In 1980, with no money in his pocket at age 25, he decided to impersonate the singer for whom he had the most admiration in the world—Tom Jones. It didn’t hurt that he knew the lyrics to all of Tom Jones’ songs because they were constantly played on the radio in the electronics repair shop where he was working at the time. So Mr. Sylvester entered an American Idol-esque contest and won!

He didn’t think about making a career of it, until, out of pure luck, had the opportunity to meet the real Tom Jones on the star’s Malaysian tour stop only six months later, in late 1980. From there, he knew he had to follow his dream. He has been known as Asia’s Tom Jones ever since.

The interview truly reached its peak when Asia’s Tom Jones described how he enters into another state of being during performances, channeling the energy and sexual power of Tom Jones himself.

This interview reinvigorated Asia’s Tom Jones, and he came into the second set with a vengeance and a desire to truly rock our worlds. At that point, the bar was filled with about 50 people who were ready to be rocked.

What’s more, Asia’s Tom Jones allowed us to film his second set. Alan and Kai took shot from different angles all around the bar. At times, Asia’s Tom Jones sang directly into the camera, making funny faces and sexually suggestive advances to the lens. At one point, he even unbuttoned his shirt more than usual and presented the audience with a squeeze of one beautiful bosom.

To take us even higher than we already were, Asia’s Tom Jones broke out “It’s Not Unusual” towards the end of the set. Everyone clapped and sang along, as Asia’s Tom Jones swung his hips and arms in perfect impersonation, nay, complete admiration, of the real Tom Jones. During the last song, Kai, Nate and I got up to dance, and Asia’s Tom Jones sang directly to us. We wanted the whole place to join in, and finally one European got up and showed us his moves. When the song was over, we all experienced a feeling of utter bliss as we shook Asia’s Tom Jones’ hand as he left the stage.

Truly, Asia’s Tom Jones is an event not to miss. Duncan, Gin and I are going to figure out when he his playing his last show in Phnom Penh, and we will bring everyone we know to the performance so he can give us an utterly incredible farewell.

Huge in Asia made a Video of the evening, and it is a downright moving piece of art. See the video here: Asia’s Tom Jones Video. The video may take a while to load, but trust me, it will be one of the best things you watch this year!

Khmer Wedding Blowout!

So to ring in the month of March, my co-worker Samath held his giant wedding at this incredible wedding complex on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. The complex hosts 10 different 300+ person weddings every night, complete with food and drink and bands and dancing and festivities. Below is a photographic account of the night.

Samath and his wife, in their official wedding photo that greeted people as they entered the complex. Note that their wedding is officially sponsored by Heineken :)

The groom himself, in one of his 4-5 outfits over the course of the evening. He greeted us in a yellow suit, then changed into this red jacket adorned with a giant ruby necklace.

Dinner is the first event of the evening. That's my new colleague Dana in the foreground. Nicole and Sovatha are chowing down in the background.

My best Khmer friend Saingyouth (Youth for short) and I are chillin' at dinner. Youth is presenting his best Godfather pose. I just couldn't hold mine.

Beer was liberally imbibed during and after dinner. Here are some of my colleagues partaking in the post-dinner festivities.

The official wedding ceremony took place that morning, with only family and close friends in attendance. However, the wedding celebration that evening included some ceremonial activities as well, which took place after dinner. First, the bride and groom walked down a row in between all invitees as we all throw flowers on them.


After the flowers, the bride and groom circled the center table on which a 5-tiered cake was resting (it was a Cake Walk!--the significance of this will be lost on anyone who did not attend Westival at Lafayette Elementary School) . They circled the table five times, in part because odd numbers represent good luck.


The bride and groom then stood for a few minutes next to the bride's parents. Check out the Khmer modern-love-ballad band rocking out in the background in front of the pink and red hearts-and-love backdrop!

After the Cake Walk came the sparklers!

And after the sparklers came the silly string!

The bride and groom and cake, all covered in pink silly string!

The groom's friend, a chef at the wedding complex, carrying the Sword of Destiny.

The Sword of Destiny made one cut into each tier of cake.

Finally, the bride and groom opened up two bottles of champagne and poured champagne onto the tower of champagne flutes. The champagne overflowed the first glass and trickled down into the flutes below. The flutes were then passed out among the closest family members, a toast was made and the festivities continued.

After these ceremonies, group circle dancing began and lasted for a few more hours.

Valentine's Day Festivities

What is a single guy to do on Valentine’s Day in Phnom Penh? Well, participate in a Charity Bachelor Auction and two rounds of Speed Dating…Claro, pues!

The night’s events take place at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club (FCC), a bar and restaurant with a huge amount of history in Phnom Penh—as the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh in 1975, the last foreign news reporters gathered at this restaurant until they evacuated for their personal safety. It is in a three-storey, tasteful French-colonial-style building with wonderful views over the Tone Sap river. The Valentine’s Day events took place on the rooftop bar.

I arrive at 7pm, my faux-hawk looking quite sexy. I stand around awkwardly for about 15 minutes before anyone else I know shows up, and then the ball gets rolling. Registration (which, for the bachelors being auctioned, is free), description of the rules and schedule for the evening, acquisition of first and second drinks, etc. And then the Speed Dating begins...

Speed dating consists of men sitting around cocktail tables, engaging in 3 minute conversations with the women who rotate around them. Drinks are free-flowing, and after every date, I write down the name of my date on a piece of paper and then check a box next to their name as either “no interest,” “friend interest,” or “love interest.” A few days after the event, the organizers are to email out the list of people who were correctly matched with me as either a friend or love interest (meaning they also checked the same box, i.e. we were on the same page).

Luckily, nobody takes this event too seriously. I have heard that in the US, people pay $100 for the night and, and before even saying their names, launch right into questions like “What are the top 3 characteristics you look for in a partner, and how do you express your commitment to your partner?” Quite frankly, that sounds like a particularly awful night of torture and I am so glad tonight is not intense like that. Maybe I do not get to know people that well, but I have quite a lot of fun and engage in short conversations with a bunch of women, some of whom I am already friends with, others of whom I am meeting for the first time. Because I did not get to know anybody well, my choices for “love interest” are mainly based on my initial physical attraction to them.

Halfway through speed-dating, the Charity Bachelor Auction begins. All of the proceeds from the bids are donated to the Starfish Foundation, an NGO doing work locally. Eight of the most eligible bachelors in Phnom Penh are auctioned off, four in this first round, and four after a subsequent round of speed dating. The audience surges as many people, including all of my colleagues, come upstairs just to see us eligible men sell our bodies for charity.

Each man who is called before me (“Come on down!") walks to the stage and looks fairly terrified as their biographies are read and as the bidding begins. Finally, it is my turn, and I walk up and strike a pose. I’m quite terrified as well, and at one point I look into the audience and see my friend Jeni signaling for me to smile. This gesture even surprises me, being the smiley person that I am. Though really, I was just displaying my Blue Steel pose. I swear!

For those who are interested, the official biography of my life until this point is the following:

Lee hails from San Francisco, California (well, close to there anyway).

Lee attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, the smallest state in the US of A

[A sentence about my work here in Phnom Penh. Unfortunately, no reference to my work can be shown on this blog anymore]

Lee has been in Cirque du Soleil and was once asked to work for a kitchen on a boat in the Galapagos. His pesto has already become famous across Phnom Penh.

Lee has chatted with Thom Yorke about Arnold Schwartzenegger. However, he has yet to chat with his own governor about Thom Yorke.

Lee enjoys getting hyphy, good trying, Huge in Asia, going to Trader Joe's, Pachamama, volleyball, Piling Rats, kicking SIT Bolivia’s ass for being good at life, Portland, Oregon, pretending to know something about architecture, and Rogue Wave.

Each woman does not just bid on a man to give the proceeds to charity—she receives something out of it in return! Each bachelor has a date lined up. My date, arranged with the help of my friend Lis, consists of a charming drive through smoggy Phnom Penh in a tuk-tuk, followed by wine and chocolate on a Mekong River cruise. After the cruise is finished, we are to be whisked away to dinner at La Luna, the best Italian restaurant in Phnom Penh. [We were able to line up a free meal there in exchange for advertising their name during the announcement of my date! Pretty sweet, huh?]

The bidding starts at $10, and continues in $5 increments up and up and up. A young woman who I don’t know has the high bid for a few seconds, and I am excited. And then Lili, my boss’ wife, outbids her at $40. Lili wins, which is completely hilarious. I exit the stage and present her with a rose and a hug.

[Unfortunately, Lili left a week later, and we were not able to go on our date. This means I currently have free reign over taking someone to my liking J]

The man who takes the highest auction price is Eitan, a 25-year-old Israeli who was able to line up a one-hour airplane flying lesson for his date. Naturally, he goes for $100.

The night continues in revelry and dancing. I am interviewed by the Cambodia Daily, whose reporters excel at investigative journalism—they even participate in speed dating, certainly mixing business with pleasure. Unfortunately, none of my quotes are used in the article, which I will post right here (Thanks Suzy!):

Seated alone at tables strewn with flower petals, 30 of Phnom Penh's eligible expatriate men anxiously awaited the ring of Cupid's bell on Wednesday night.

A few had wives or girlfriends-even a telltale wedding ring-but none saw anything wrong with a Valentine's night-out playing the "speed-dating" field at the FCC's rooftop terrace.

Women, clutching glasses of free-flowing wine and beer, moved from table to table every three minutes, and daters ranked their new acquaintances in the margins of a list of names as potential friends or lovers-or neither.

Originally conceived by a Jewish rabbi to ensure that Jewish singles could meet each other in large cities, speed-dating-as it is known-seems to suit the transient, nomadic flux of Phnom Penh's expat population, according to organizers and participants at the FCC.

Attended by 30 men and 30 women, the serial-dating challenge was "a fun way to introduce new people," said FCC head chef Lucia Dengate, adding that the format appeals to people because it is non-committal.

The 60 participants paid $11 at the door, or $9 in advance, to join the event. Most agreed they got their money's worth: a bell rang every 3 minutes to signal that women should move along to their next date.

At the end of the night, daters submitted their forms-with each date's score-to the organizers who will later notify participants of the outcome by e-mail, FCC Group Operations Manager Michelle Duncan said.

Contacted on Thursday, Duncan said that three or four romantic matches were made, but friendship seemed to be the dominant feeling to come out of the night.

It was the second speed-dating night held at the FCC, and was punctuated by a charity "bachelor auction," in which women bid on dates with eight different men.

The auction was the brainchild of two British expatriates, Jeni Dixon and Edward Pollard, after several late-night discussions with friends about "how few single, straight barang guys there are" in Phnom Penh's social circle, Dixon, 27, wrote in an e-mail.

The names of the bachelors for auction were listed on a chalkboard under the heading "Today's Special," and they were cheekily described as a tree hugger, a mama's boy, a proteomic scientist, and a "dark-haired, blue-eyed, long-lashed beauty of a man."

A US Embassy staffer was among the lucky women with winning bids in the auction, which ultimately raised $460 for the Indochina Starfish foundation, a local children's NGO.

Mitchell Isaacs, a 26-year-old bachelor who fetched $55 in the auction, said he was a bit overwhelmed by the attention.

"Who wants to buy me? That's pretty intense," the Australian national said, adding that he was pleased with the price he sold for. "I was expecting, like, $12," he said.

Choup Channa, who observed the teeming crowd of expat daters from a nearby table, thought that speed-dating would be an ideal social event for young, 20-something Cambodians.

"It's a way to be acquainted before being boyfriend-girlfriend," said the 25-year-old Khmer teacher.

"It'd be a good way to meet," she said, "as long as the parents didn't find out."

Two days later, I receive an email with the names of two ladies who are matched as “Love Interests” and three who are matched as “Friend Interests.” That means I was part of about 1/2 of the love matches made that night. Holla!

I definitely went into this whole night thinking I would revel more in how ironic and ridiculous the night would be. But I ended up getting caught up in the excitement and real fun of it all! Really, quite like my experience on The Price is Right, if not quite so flashy.

It's Mango Season, and I'm in Love!

So delicious!

Also, it is Mangosteen season here, which is fabulous news! However, despite its name, this fruit bears no resemblance to mangoes in either appearance or taste.

According to Wikipedia:

The outer shell of the fruit, its exocarp, is firm (softens during ripening), typically 4-6 cm in diameter, and contains astringent phytochemicals which discourage infestation by insects, fungi, plant viruses and bacteria. The same phytochemicals are pigments giving the exocarp its characteristic purple color, including phenolic acids, also called phenols. These pigments have antioxidant properties which afford the fruit further protection from ultraviolet radiation and free radicals generated during photosynthesis. Isolation of exocarp pigments has permitted their identity to be revealed as xanthones, mainly garcinol and mangostin[1], which, as phenolics, make the exocarp highly astringent and inedible.

Cutting through the shell, one finds edible flesh, botanically defined as an aril, shaped like a peeled tangerine but bright white, about 3-5 cm in diameter, nested in a deep red outer pod. Depending on the fruit size and ripeness, there might be seeds in the aril segments. The seeds, however, are not palatable unless roasted. The number of aril pods is directly related to the number of petals on the bottom of the pericarp. On average, a mangosteen has 5 aril segments (round up figure). The plant does not start producing fruit until around 15 years old, which is somewhat an impediment to cultivation.

The fragrant flesh is sweet and creamy, citrusy with a touch of peach flavor. In Asia, the mangosteen fruit is known as the "Queen of Fruits."

Yummy!