Bokor HIll Station circa 1924

Bokor1\ old-side
Originally uploaded by ubikwity

This is the Bokor Mountain Hill Station as it was just after the French completed construction. The Cambodians have just recently begun fixing the 41 km road from Kampot to the 1000 meter cliffside that overlooks the Gulkf of Thailand. The ruined buildings of the hill station are worth the visit as is the stunning view.

Is Tourism a Renewable Resource?

The simple answer is yes, it is a renewable resource. The complicated answer is no, tourism is like a loaded gun, if you point it in the wrong direction someone could get hurt. There are too many examples of attractive destinations becoming over developed to a point of total desolation. Like mining and forestry if tourism is not managed carefully soon there will be no resource left at all. Kampot has been isolated even longer than most other parts of Cambodia and has only just begun to take aim at its tourists. Local businesses and government agencies are in a unique position to influence the types of tourist that would be attracted to Kampot. Already a great many come to see the natural beauty of the river, bay, and mountains surrounding the city. They come to see the old town with its crumbling colonial architecture. They come to take the rough road up to Bokor Hill Station. Often they come to spend some time volunteering for a local project helping the Khmers to better their own lot. Tourist and Ex-pats alike have found Kampot a nice respite from the chaos of Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and Sihanoukville. Existing businesses are already doing a good job of catering to these visitors and they should work together in anticipation of greater numbers that will be coming. By working together they can influence the government to promote sustainable development projects and share in the resulting preservation of Kampot’s culture and environment for decades to come. By seeking only to secure their own piece of the tourist pie they insure that they will only be a lot of crumbs held together by their own dough.
(Editorial for the Kampot Dar'laing issue #3

Ten things you can do at home to simulate living in Cambodia

Some of you reading my blog or looking at my flickr photos may think that I am living in a tropical paradise. I have prepared a list of things you can do to simulate living in Cambodia.
1) Turn off all the hot water taps except to one shower.
2) Leave your windows open all the time and remove any screens from them.
3) Set your thermostat to 86 degrees
4) At least twice a week fill a bucket with water and splash it on an interior wall to promote mold growth.
5) Leave little piles of sugar in every room to encourage ants and other creatures to come live with you.
6) Only shop for food at the farmer’s market or an asian speciality store where you cannot identify any products.
7) Do not drive yourself anywhere, take a bicycle or have a friend with a pick-up truck drive you - you must stand in the back of the pick-up.
8) Go to a pet shop and buy one of the following to let loose in your house: lizard, snake, scorpion, large spider, rat, or pig.
9) Tune your television to only receive CNN and 5 foreign language stations.
10) Find some neighborhood kid, preferably with a learning disability who doesn’t like you, and pay him to do your laundry in cold dirty water.

Kampot River

Kampot River
Originally uploaded by ubikwity

Please Clean Up Our Town

One way or another
by Mark Norris for the Kampot Dar'laing
The dry season brings a flurry of building activity - resurfacing roads, new statuary, more houses and hotels. The work must be finished before the serious rains begin. This flurry brings with it an increase in dust and debris. This season it has also brought an increase in fees for garbage collection. The new rates are applied to local residences and businesses based on a fair and detailed pricing structure as laid out in the document titled, “The Prices that we needs to collect”.
The fees fall into six well defined categories: 1) Normal House, 2) House to be Corporation, 3) Restaurant, Hotel, Dance Hall, and Entertainment Club, 4) Good Shop and service, 5) Service of the Clinic and Schools, and 6) Companies, Factories, Handicraft, and Ports. These have clear subcategories, like, “Ground of the flat ($1/month)”, “House for foreigners ($5/month)”, “House in Plot ($5/ month)”, “The house in the building of an orphan ($0.50/month)”, “Dance Hall, Discotaquiet, Night Club that has bigness size (parking space)($15/month)”, “The hotel has not restaurants, are cheaper that $10 per night ($15/month)”, and, “The other Dust that has no Limit time ($5/month)”.
It is not clear, however, if these fees are cumulative. For example; if you owned an international ($100/month), royal ($100/month), port ($50/month), with a Parking space ($100/month), and “the other Dust that has no Limit time” ($5/month) would you pay a combined $355/month or could you assume that the Dust comes with the parking space and only pay $350/month?
I have a vague recollection of living in a city where they charged a set fee per barrel of garbage regardless of whether or not my noodle shop had an air-conditioner...
PS. If you must know, I am building an orphan in my house ($0.50/month)

This article was published in the Kampot Dar'laing. I would note that our garbage collection was 2000 riel per month ( $0.50) for the past year and under the new rules it would be $20 per month with no change in service other than new uniforms for the garbage collectors. We negotiated them down to $5/month and got them to agree to sweep the street occasionally (hasn't happened yet).