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Rolling into Cambodia

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With its kitschy pseudo luxury and promise of instant wealth glossing over mass destitution, each casino is a Potemkin village, with its owner a master hustler, someone any sensible person should be super leery of, but there's one nation so drugged and gullible, it has actually entrusted such a conman with its destiny. That entire nation is a smoke and mirrors, nonstop come-on Potemkin village, however, where all news are fake, and each public figure is an imposter. At this all-you-can't-eat buffet, there is nothing but bullshit, where beneath each layer of bullshit are more cow pies, artfully presented, so the morbidly obese patrons keep lining up for more. Let them eat bullshit!

Outside Bavet, there is the preposterously named Manhattan Special Economic Zone. Most of the companies there are Taiwanese, making garments and electronics. Frequent strikes have broken out over wages and working conditions, and in 2012, the governor of Bavet shot into a crowd of strikers, hitting three women, two in the hand and one in the lung. Arrested only in 2015, Chhouk Bandith was given a draconian sentence of, ah, 18 months!

Crossing from Germany into Poland, I noticed the houses became shabbier, and I saw the same entering Cambodia from Vietnam. It was clear I was in a poorer country, and a dirtier one, too, with trash everywhere. Though Vietnamese also litter, they do sweep up, at least much more so than Cambodians. Later in Phnom Penh, I would see no more than a handful of public trash cans in a week, after walking for miles each day through various neighborhoods.

Houses on stilts, shopkeepers dozing on hammocks, a butcher sitting on a low stand surrounded by five forlorn pieces of meat, the Japanese flag on the commemorative plaque of several bridges, the word Angkor everywhere because it's the name of a beer and grand, elaborate gates to temples with magnificent roofs.

Chiphu, Prasaut, Svay Rieng, Svay Chrum, Kraol Kou, Kor An Doeuk, Kampong Trabaek, Neak Loeung, Kien Svay, each town was similarly dusty, sleepy and trash strewn, then the houses and stores brightened up, high rises rose, traffic thickened, nice cars appeared and folks became better dressed, for we had reached the capital, where most of the country's wealth seemed concentrated.

Say Cambodia, and most people will think of Angkor Wat, a long-dead city, and the Killing Fields, a genocidal site, but I only came to observe the most quotidian, and to muse on the resilience of these enduring people. The globe is filled with stateless nations, and in this corner of the world, there are the once powerful Chams and Mons, not to mention dozens of tribes even their countrymen have barely heard of.

Cambodia's motto is "Nation, Religion, King," and surely it's the first, with its ethnic cohesion and common language, that has allowed these people to forge forward. As for religion, the Khmers were Hindus before they became Buddhists, and their king, well, he's no more than a figurehead. Norodom Sihamoni has spent more time in Czechoslovakia or France than his nominal kingdom. His unifying function is also compromised by the fact that he's widely believed to be gay. At 64, Sihamoni is a lifetime bachelor, with no children, a big no-no.

Sihamoni's half brother, Norodom Ranariddh, was elected prime minister in a UN-sponsored election in 1993, but then was shoved aside by Hun Sen, the de facto ruler of Cambodia since 1985. A regiment commander under Pol Pot, Hun Sen fled to Vietnam with four soldiers in 1977, then returned to Cambodia with the invading Vietnamese on December 25th, 1978. In two weeks, the war was over, and the Vietnamese-speaking Hun Sen became the foreign minister in the Vietnamese-installed government. This year, Hun Sen will run for election unopposed after disbanding the opposition party and arresting its leader.

Pol Pot was a China-backed tyrant, and after being propped up by Vietnam, Hun Sen is also embracing China. Last month, the strong man said, "For sure, some people said that we are too close to China, but I want to ask back, 'Have you offered me anything apart from insulting, advising and threatening to impose sanctions on me?'" Between Chinese cash and Western censure, Hun Sen is choosing to fatten his already enormous bank account.

Western dough is also pouring into Cambodia, via NGOs and tourists. Strolling around downtown Phnom Penh, I saw white faces everywhere, and many of the businesses were clearly aimed at them. There are bars with names in English like Laughing Fat Man, Lone Star, Home of the Brave, Come Here, Male Boxx, Frog Skin, Bird in Hand, Angry Birds and Shooters, with the last showing, on its sign, John Travolta and Samuel Jackson aiming their pistols in Pulp Fiction.

The Dead Kennedys sang, "Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot / It's a holiday in Cambodia / Where you'll do what you're told / It's a holiday in Cambodia / Where the slums got so much soul / Pol Pot." Though the Communist is gone, his legacy is a huge attraction, and you can go to the Killing Fields in a tour bus that "keeps you away from heat, dust, polluted air, noise, rain and hassles!"

For my first meal in Phnom Penh, I decided on a rather grim, broken sidewalk eatery. Seated on a plastic chair in the semi-dark, I was approached by a 12-year-old waitress who spoke a passable English. After taking my order for beef fried rice ($3) and Angkor Beer ($1), she asked where I was from, which she jotted down on a piece of paper. Extremely curious, the girl chatted away with all the customers, and even hugged some as they left. Tiny, she wore a soccer jersey with a Cambodian flag patch.

"Is that your mom?" I nodded towards the cook, twenty feet away at her stall, manning a wok.

"Grandma!"

"How old is she?"

"Fifty-three. Or 54, because of Chinese New Year."

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Linh Dinh's Postcards from the End of America has just been published by Seven Stories Press. Tracking our deteriorating socialscape, he maintains a photo blog.


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