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).

Snuggles

Coming out of a up-tempo record... The restaurant is doing very well. Recently, a pair of puppies showed up on our door step. I thought they were just strays from the neighborhood until Jasmine asked me to name them. I saw the two snuggling together and suggested Luke and John. She liked the names and called the affectionate, adventurous one John - the shy and quiet one Luke. I really liked John, he got run over the next morning.

T.G.I.F.T.

Thank God It's Fucking Tuesday - because we are closed on tuesdays.

Cambodia 1300

In Cambodia it is the women who take charge of the trade. For this reason a foreigner, arriving in the country, loses no time in getting himself a mate, for he will find her commercial instincts a great asset.
Foreign sailors coming to the country note with pleasure that it is not necessary to wear clothes, and, since rice is easily had, women easily persuaded, houses easily run, furniture easily come by, and trade easily carried on, a great many sailors desert to take up permanent residence.
-Chou Ta-Kuan 1297 AD

Jasmine Restaurant

We returned from the states and got to work setting up the restaurant. Jasmine had a lovely birthday party, about 18 locals came by and had a great meal followed by cake and carcassonne. Then the monk came by the next day to bless our business and he told us the best day to open would be Monday (this was Saturday). So we opened on Monday. Our Swedish friend Anders was in town for the birthday and he stayed for the opening. We had no sign and no customers. The next day we were closed (we will be closed Tuesdays). I made a quick sign and strung some more christmas lights and Wednesday we opened. We were packed, overwhelmed and exhausted. Thursday the same groups came back for another meal and we were packed again - $100 in sales just that evening. We met some nice people and they all loved the food. They came by for breakfast the next day. Now it is Saturday and we have had only two customers ( it is 8 p.m.). The blender/ coffee grinder broke and the electric grill stopped working (need a better transformer) but we are pulling it off. Our customer have been reporting back at their guesthouses what excellent food we serve and that has prompted visits by the locals to snoop around for our secret. More later...

Jasmine Restaurant, Kampot

Jasmine Restaurant, Kampot
Originally uploaded by ubikwity.

Bob and Dave were visiting from Washington State.

wedding in sb

wedding insb
Originally uploaded by ubikwity.

Back in Cambodia

After three weeks stateside we are back in Cambodia. Once we are unpacked we will be focusing on getting the restaurant open. I hope to catch up on my blog backlog and get back to writing my novel. As I am writing this at the K-West restaurant on the riverside in Phnom Penh three security guards passed by and I looked around to see who they were escorting. A smiling old man with a coterie of woman passed a few feet from me ans smiled at me. I smiled back, he looked very familiar. He was very short, he looked in good health, and he only had a small group around him. They left the restaurant and got into three landcruisers. It was King Sihanouk. I checked by looking at my 10,000 riel note and asking my waitress...

Cambodia 1965

This is an interesting look at what Cambodia was like before the "troubles". Bear in mind that in 1968, Nixon began his secret bombing campaign and in 1970 Lon Nol overthrew King Sihanouk in a bloody coup that led to civilwar, culminating in the Pol Pot regime in 1975 which was overthrown in turn by the vietnamese invasion in 1978, which then led to another civil war that lasted until 1999.
In 1965 Cambodia was the richest nation in South East Asia.

wedding

wedding
Originally uploaded by ubikwity.

The groom and his family deliver gifts to the bride's family.

wedding

wedding
Originally uploaded by ubikwity.

faulty towers

January 4th 2006. Martin had suggested we take the newly paved road to Kep instead of the main route 3. This turned out to be an excellent suggestion as the road passes close to the elephant mountains and the road was smooth with little traffic. We stopped in Kep, at the Veranda, for a bite to eat around 3pm. When we reached Kampot the staff at the hotel had been alerted to our visit and they gave us a quick tour. Dusty furniture was piled up with big metal signs and loads of trash in the foyer. The place smelled bad. The water wasn’t working (the pump needed replacing) so the rooms were not ready to stay in. We went off in search of a hotel. A helpful moto-dop lead us to all the hotels he gets commissions from. We ended up at the Boray Bokor II hotel. A fairly new four story place that had hot water and air con for $20/night. The rooms still managed to be shabby and the staff were less than helpful. The next morning I asked the front desk for some coffee, they said they didn’t have any, so I asked if there was someplace near-by to have breakfast. They replied that yes, there used to be a place right across the street but it closed a few months ago. Anyplace that’s open? They looked at each other and shrugged. We went back to the Bokor Mountain Club and went through it again with some of the old staff that were still on the FCC payroll; Mr Punsavaan, the accountant, Mr Kunsavaan, the night guard, Tula (the old bartender) and Vitu, the day guards. I made rough sketches of the rooms and what was missing or needed fixing and took photos. We asked Tula about the boat that the FCC supposedly owned and he replied that it was docked across the river. We decided to go look at it. He described the road to take and that it was a long open hull fishing boat painted light blue. We followed his directions, drove over the bridge and then turned left, over a smaller bridge. Every boat was painted light blue and there were dozens moored there. We took a quick look at a pagoda that overlooked the river then decided to drive out towards the entrance to Bokor Mountain National Park. We missed the turn off and were about a third of the way to Sihanoukville when we turned back. It was 5pm when we stopped back at the BMC. Rather than spend another disappointing night at the Boray we booked a night at the Champrey Inn in Kep (mainly because it had such a nice photo in the guidebook of its pool). We had an excellent meal, and a very engaging conversation with the proprietor, Nicolas. How do I put this diplomatically? I was engaging Nicolas in conversation about ancient Rome, global warming, satellite imagery, Khmer history, and boutique hotel management, while Eric was still contemplating how to react to the frenchman’s Khmer husband. Eric was polite in the end but he was conspicuous in his fishing for strategically useful information (land values, potential competitors in Kampot, government contacts, etc.).

unemployment uninsurance

I used to work for a big corporate photo lab in LA. They handled all the big defense contractors and some movie studios. I started in order-entry but then moved up to black and white contact printer. The machine printers were pretty unique - big contraptions that sucked long rolls of photo paper through all the chemical baths and then dried and cut them into 8x10 glossy prints of head shots or experimental aircraft. At photography school I had learned to dodge and burn on graded archival paper using strict formulas for developing times and temperatures, none of which was required to run this machine. The guy who used to run the machine was an old timer who had been moved to the color roll printer because Lockheed had a big order for color glossies of it’s new stealth fighter. He trained me before he started the Lockheed job. The main things to worry about were paper jams and dust. I liked the job because when I was in the darkroom, if I turned on the safelight, a little red light went on outside the door forbidding anyone from entering my private space. I would listen to the gulf war on NPR and doodle. The place was thick with chemical fumes and it was too dark to read but no one, not even the boss, could enter when that red light was on. Jobs would be delivered to order entry by the in-house drivers. Then they would go to the repro department, unless it was a reprint job. Repro would turn the original image into an 8x10 neg and deliver it to me. I started work at ten, but most jobs wouldn’t get to me until after noon. This meant most nights I was working overtime. As time went by I started coming in later to work and my overtime disappeared. Three months went by, the Lockheed job was done - delivered to the congress and the press, and my mentor was let go. He was fired just before he was eligible for his retirement benefits. I was notified of this only after I went looking for him to help me with a particularly fucked up paper jam. They had the nuts to call him at home to ask him to talk me through the problem. He was noble enough to help me but I felt dirty. I was due for my yearly review (and expected raise) but they postponed it, explaining that my next review would be one year from the day I started as a printer ( having moved from customer service to production). I objected and they agreed to give me a review in six months. Some time later we got a big job from McDonnell/Douglas (another stealth fighter). Now they asked me to do the color contacts as well. I kept my overtime down by coming in late but I was still exhausted - they had us coming in on saturdays! My review came up. I went into it expecting a 25 cent an hour raise - the same as my previous reviews in order entry. They told me I was doing a great job but because I was late so often they were only going to give me a ten cent an hour raise. They also asked me to start training someone from order entry to run the contact machine. I did my best to explain their depravity and gave my two weeks notice. They offered my a 25 cent raise but I refused. They offered me a fifty cent raise. I told them if they wanted a loyal employee they shouldn’t have fired my mentor. I meant to point out that if I had accepted the raise I would be first in line at the next downsizing. They told me they needed me to finish the McDonnell/Douglas job and to train my replacement, so I agreed to give four weeks notice. Some months later I applied for unemployment insurance. They explained that I was not eligible because I had quit my job. Up to that point in my life I had no idea what unemployment insurance was, nor had I ever expected to need it. I explained that I quit because I was about to be downsized and I wanted to make a statement. I said that I quit because I was constantly exposed to hazardous fumes. I said I quit because my employers were cretinous fuckheads. They explained that I was not eligible because I had quit my job and my ex-employer has the last word on that.
I was reminded of this period in my life when recently my old employees at the Lodge have all been fired or quit and have come to me looking for work or a loan.
I thought about the economics of the unemployed. If jobs were plentiful and you could easily quit and find another job or have some expectation of insurance (that you had been paying dues on) until you found a better job, then managers and owners would have to actually work to keep things running smoothly. Most employees don’t slag off or steal or sabotage unless they have reason to. That reason is poor management. Managing a company is a cakewalk if your employees act like slaves because they are afraid they cannot put food on the table.

letter to the editor

Do Cambodians have freedom of Religion?

The article by D. Gillison in the Cambodia Daily on Sep. 18 shows some alarming statistics which deserve proper and deep analysis.
If we consider that Cambodia has 13 million inhabitants then the statistics show:
Population # of Pagodas/
Churches/Mosques # of worshippers per place of worship
Buddhist 93% 12,090,000 4163 (59%) 2904
Christian 2% 260,000 2400 (34%) 108
Muslim 5% 650,000 500 (7%) 1300

It is surprising that Christians, who represent 2% of the population, have 2400 churches or 34% of the total number of places of worship in Cambodia. Massive financial support from Christian groups from abroad fund the recent surge of church construction. Fundamentalist churches from the USA and Korea are very rich and very active in Cambodia. Today, these churches may not be well attended, but the objective is to use them as examples of successful proselytization, conversion, dissemination of the faith, to solicit money from believers back home. They show off the new buildings as examples of the church’s money well spent ‘saving souls’. These souls are mostly children. Children are happy to attend church meetings because they are given food and treats. During the children’s programs, adults and parents are not allowed to join or observe, so they don’t understand what is going on. Most Buddhists would assume that charity comes without the expectation of conversion yet these churches don’t give without also sermonizing. It is easier to manipulate a child’s mind than an adult’s. This will have grave consequences for Khmer society if families are divided; children becoming Christian while their elders remain Buddhist.
Cambodian leaders should be concerned about the threat that these fundamentalist groups pose to Khmer culture and society. Cambodian Buddhism is still recovering from the dark days of the Khmer Rouge. Khmers born between 1970 and 1993 have very little exposure to Buddhism, and as adults cannot teach important Buddhist values to their children. In Laos, Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka, where Buddhism is strong, there is less of a risk to the children. The Christian proselytizers are often ignorant of the damage they do to Khmer culture, focusing instead on the appearance of successful conversions to raise more money to continue their exploits here.
Freedom of Religion is a Human Right because it defines freedom of thought. Bribing poor children with treats and food to convert them to an alienating religion is not compatible with freedom of thought. Selling radio and television time to evangelicals is corrupt and corrupting. Christians do not have a monopoly on morality. Buddha lived and taught centuries before Christ, and in-deed many of Jesus’ best teachings bear a great similarity to the clarity of the Dharmapada. Perhaps it is the Cambodians who should be converting these guests to the Way.

“When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed; when we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.”
-Jomo Kenyatta, 1952
We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different be-cause they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.
-George Bernard Shaw

redundancy

To call someone a fat twat in Cambodia is redundant, because twat is the khmer word for fat.

motodop manners

When you want to tell a moto taxi that you have had a pleasant ride on the back of his moped, tell him, “I enjoyed my heinie”. This will let him know you appreciated the extra bit of duct tape he put on the metal seat you rode on, and the care he took when driving through every pothole at full speed. If he replies, “Joy my heinie?!”, you can reply, “Enjoy my heinie, away!”.

Please read comments for disclaimer...

route 3

route 3
Originally uploaded by ubikwity.

dog not on menu

dog not on menu
Originally uploaded by ubikwity.

kampot flood

kampot flood
Originally uploaded by ubikwity.

We went up to the rapids to visit the river, the next day the river came to visit us... The river was still 5 feet below its banks at sundown, although it was running very fast - I tried to call Hugh to ask him what he thought of the current but his phone wasn't ringing ( he had lost it in the river). We were awoken at 5 the next morning when our landlady called to tell us the river was flooding. Sure enough, in the grey, rainy morning we could see that the river was 4 feet over its bank and lapping at our door. The street in front of our house was a fast moving current of deep water. Within a few minutes the power was out. We tried to get sand bags and plastic to keep the rising water at bay but no one was selling. Our neighbors had enough dirt and plastic to keep the water out for a little while before they had to put all their furniture on their car (which they jacked up), they have only a single story house so they asked us to store some of their valuables in our second story. We moved most of the furniture upstairs, balanced the fridge on some chairs, put bricks under the large tables and cabinet. Makeshift boats were floating by at this point. Several large trees fell into the street and three large fishing boats dropped anchor right at our front door. The entire town was under water. I waded around taking pictures. Hugh's entire place (the Bodhi Villa) was underwater - he had evacuated his parents and guests by boat. The roads were all closed so we had to put off the trip to the embassy.Please see photos - more later

mark and jasmine sitting by the...