'No Escape' banned in Cambodia

"No Escape," an action movie scheduled for release on Aug. 26, has been banned in Cambodia.

The film is apparently set in Malaysia, but was filmed in Thailand and uses props with Khmer letters. The trailer includes scenes of police carrying riot shields painted with Khmer letters, however the letters (or the shields) are upside down. This is the stated reason the Cambodian government decided to ban the movie.

A reasonable person might suspect the ban has more to do with the reported plot, which involves a family of foreigners caught up in a coup that lets loose bloodthirsty mobs. The trailer might remind some people of events in 1997.

Long Beach revolutionary's appeal rejected

A U.S. appeals court today rejected an appeal by Yasith Chhun, a California tax preparer and leader of a failed Cambodian coup, to overturn a life sentence for conspiracy to commit murder and destroy property in a foreign country.

Chhun formed the Cambodian Freedom Fighters in 1998 to overthrow the government of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. The CFF's Operation Volcano culminated in an attack on government buildings in Phnom Penh on Nov. 24, 2000, that left several civilians and soldiers dead and the long-ruling Hun Sen firmly in charge.

On April 16, 2008, a U.S. jury found Chhun guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country, conspiracy to damage or destroy property in a foreign country, mounting an expedition against a friendly nation, and conspiracy to launch a weapon of mass destruction outside the United States. Two years later he was sentenced to life in prison.

His appeal, according to court documents, claimed that Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act was too vague. Chhun argued that attempting to overthrow the government of Cambodia was not terrorism, and therefore an "antiterrorism" law couldn't apply.

Three judges with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. In the ruling, judge Carlos T. Bea wrote "it is not absurd for Congress to want to prevent people within the borders of the United States from plotting to commit murder in a foreign country. That is so even though much of the impetus behind this part of AEDPA was to fight terrorism in the United States."

In his appeal, Chhun also argued that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that he knew his revolutionary activities would lead to murder. He stated his actions may have involved "recklessness," but not "malice aforethought" — because he intended to arrest Hun Sen and limit casualties during his coup.

However, the judges pointed to letters and plans introduced in the trial, including documents written or delivered by Chhun urging CFF members to "shoot to kill (surviving enemies) on the spot" and "send them to ... hell in the near future."

Another argument advanced by Chhun was that America was not "at peace" with Cambodia because of U.S. criticism of Hun Sen in the wake of the 1997 coup. The judges were unmoved.

It is true that the U.S. government didn't aggressively track down the CFF until years after the Phnom Penh attack — and after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Adam Piore, in his excellent "The Accidental Terrorist," wrote that defense attorney Richard M. Callahan Jr. described Chhun as "a victim of shifting political winds, a sacrificial lamb offered up in exchange for Cambodia’s cooperation with the war on terror."

The ruling is embedded here:

A year in Cambodia

It's a new year, a time for people to take stock of their lives and create unrealistic expectations for the near future. In Cambodia, this meant mass protests for new elections and a higher minimum wage for garment workers — and a brutal crackdown by the government.

The economy may be falling apart, troops may be gunning down people in the streets, but that doesn't stop swarms of tourists from descending on the Kingdom of Cambodia. (Just as a tip, this may not be the best time to move to Cambodia and start a bar.)

I made this simple little game in 2006 as a page filler for a magazine that shall remain nameless.

Satire.

Cambodia has serious problems. Being a cheap tourist destination certainly brings in hard currency, but if you see Cambodia as some alcohol-fueled hedonistic paradise where there are no consequences, you probably shouldn't move there.

If you know someone who's crazy enough to seriously considering moving to Cambodia, send them a pdf of The Cambodia Game. Or take a look at another political board game I created: Mango Republic.

Stay safe everybody.

Mangoes and independence

Free and independent — for a few days.

Cambodia achieved independence from France on Nov. 9, 1953, as the Fourth Republic's global empire slipped from its grasp.

It's been a rocky 60 years, to say the least.

It's not much, but in honor of Independence Day, "Falling in the Well of Love" is free. Grab a copy while you can. If you like it, I suggest you buy a copy of "At Home on the Mekong."

In other news, Mango Republic is now officially enshrined on Board Game Geek. The Kickstarter campaign is at 24 percent — check it out if you're interested in playing at being a dictator of a developing nation.

Dancing orphans

The transactional nature of orphanage tourism in Cambodia is very, very, very bad. But legions of dancing Cambodians are highly entertaining.

Which makes delightful Gangnam Style music parodies performed by Cambodian orphans all the more fraught with ethical issues.



So is this a smart fundraising effort or exploitation?

Repeating the Stages of Foreign Man in Cambodia

Most of what I write rapidly fades away. I'm sure there are a few tattered copies of columns I wrote pinned to a bulletin board somewhere, but most people read, chuckle (I hope) and toss it in the recycling bin.

But occasionally some things pop back up. 

Years ago I wrote a few pieces for Bayon Pearnik, a free monthly publication that could be generously described as childishly irreverent. Not the high point of my career, but you write what you can sell. 

But now one of those "articles" is back and with a large helping of plagiarism and copyright issues! As Khmer440 writer Gavin Mac noticed, the Bayon Pearnik is now in the habit of reprinting old copy and outright lifting stories from foreign publications. And the Pearnik recently dusted off "Stages of Foreign Man in Cambodia," which I sold to the magazine in 2005. (I didn't want my name on it then as it seemed foolish to mock NGOs while I was working for various development organizations.)

As there seems to be some interest in it, I've posted it here. Be warned, Mac refers to it as a "trite" and "crap" "attempt at humor." 

Stages of Foreign Man in Cambodia

Amateur anthropologists have documented these stages in the lives of foreigners visiting Cambodia. To be sure, not all foreigners meet these sleazy stereotypes. Many conform to other, more disgusting stereotypes.

The Professional Tourist Year 1:

You are amazed at the hustle and bustle of the city of Phnom Penh, awed by the ruins of Angkor Wat. Every pub and guesthouse you visit has air-con. You see Cambodians as friendly and lovable. Motodops are an adventure and you often try to converse with them in your pidgin Khmer. The nightlife is exciting, your savings are impressive, and life is grand.

The NGO Worker Year 1:

Within hours of arriving in Cambodia you have signed a contract with a no-hostage clause and a request that “short-term volunteers not form long-term relationships.” The first night you truly understand tropical heat when the fan dies along with the power for hours. The second day you discover your stipend will cover rice, and not much else. Your social life consists of the occasional card or board game, played with other volunteers as poor as you.

The Professional Tourist Year 2:

The country loses some of its charm, and you lose most of your savings, when you threaten to kick out your rent-a-girlfriend in a drunken rage and fail to police your passport and bankbook before passing out. Air-conditioned rooms are a distant memory and the finest brew you can afford is served at BB World. You started teaching English at a school, but it failed to pay you before it went bankrupt and disappeared overnight. You eat rice every day.

The NGO Worker Year 2:

After being promoted to a project advisor, you can finally afford BB World! Unfortunately, you’ve been assigned to a project in a distant province and are only allowed to visit Phnom Penh for organizational meetings and recuperation from such tropical niceties as malaria, dengue fever, and typhoid. Your social life consists of being heckled by the village idiot in the local market and the medical staff at your favorite clinic. Much to the chagrin of your superiors, you have formed a relationship with a local.

The Professional Tourist Year 3:

After a few bad starts, you have amassed enough experience to be hired by a language institution that actually pays its teachers. You complain bitterly about Khmer and Vietnamese women to all who will listen to you between rounds at the local bar/brothel, yet are unable to refrain from “flirting.” You consider the temples to be little more than dull heaps of rubble, but you still take every chance to hire a motorcycle and ride out to the provinces as it gives you a chance to run down locals.

The NGO Worker Year 3:

After writing a winning proposal advocating that a 16-degree office is an optimal work environment, you’ve been promoted to the country management team. The five-year, $500,000 grant from USAID covers a competitive salary, a large air-conditioned office, three accountants, a driver and a late-model all-terrain vehicle that will never travel farther than the airport. Renewal is assured, so

long as never condone prostitution during working hours. You’ll need that salary, as your upcoming traditional Khmer wedding

will cost more than most Cambodians make in 15 years.

The Professional Tourist in the future:

You’ve plowed your savings from teaching into a small business that caters exclusively to tourists. A bevy of girls looking for foreign husbands actually run the business. This steady trickle of income allows you to more fully enjoy your burgeoning alcoholism and the resulting foolish antics. Most expatriates avoid you, but the freshman tourists find you a colorful and remarkable wit.

The NGO Worker in the future:

After years of hard work, or work at least, you have risen through the ranks to be country director of your respective NGO. While you rarely see the poor Cambodians (or your wife and children) you came to this country to help, you know you are doing them good with your hectic schedule of coordinating meetings, action planning and resource networking. In fact, you rarely see anyone outside your circle of NGO directors, consultants and advisors. But other people don’t have air-conditioning.

And the piece's final line, which I did not write (it was added by the editor):

Any bells of familiarity ringing?

Which makes it hilarious that they reprinted it. 

'Ultra-nationalists and xenophobic racists'

Nate Thayer writes:

Pol Pot’s Cambodia bears a stark resemblance to the Kim family dynastic rule that runs North Korea today. There is a reason they were each others closest ideological allies.

Which raises the issue of why? The dirty little secret is that Khmer Rouge weren’t communists. They were Cambodian. In the heart of far to many Cambodian’s, there lurks a Khmer Rouge in varying degrees of dormancy. ...

[T]he Khmer Rouge were more accurately characterized as ultra-nationalists and xenophobic racists (with many similarities to fascism) intent on creating their own version of organized power deeply rooted in current Khmer political culture.

Fundamentally — and sadly — little has changed in Cambodia. Even the leading opposition figure is an unabashed xenophobe.

While it is about North Korean propaganda, B.R. Myers' "The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters" sheds some light on the politics of race, isolation and population-destroying paranoia.

Follow Nate Thayer on Twitter. I'd tell you to buy his book — he deserves to be paid — but it's out of print.

You get what you pay for

Found in a used bookshop here in Salem: a Lonely Planet guidebook from 1989.

Grinding civil war, widespread banditry, accessible only through one embattled neighbor that treated it as a client state— yes, the People's Republic of Kampuchea was perfect for budget travel.

This is not a sign, it's a book

"Hand-Painted Signs of Kratie" is a descriptive if not imaginative title — but it's surprisingly interesting.

Anyone who has found himself staring at a unique sign in Cambodia would find something to like about this book. If nothing else, it will stir up memories of the bizarre commerce that has long since left the main streets of the West (hog stud services, anyone?).

Many of the signs are, of course, in Khmer. That's not as much a problem if you're illiterate in the language, because many of the signs are crafted for a populace that unfortunately has limited literacy skills.

That my wife is from Kratie and I have visited the area many times is an added bonus. Perhaps someday I'll be able to go on a sign tour and match the photos in the book with the real things. Assuming any of the originals remain.

It's available on Amazon and directly from the author.

What do you tell a toddler about genocide?

A Path of Stars by Anne Sibley O'Brien is a calm yet heart-wrenching story about a young Cambodian-American girl learning what her grandmother lost during the Khmer Rouge and watching her cope with the pain of losing what little connection she still had to her homeland.

Yet while the story flirts with sorrow and should bring a tear (or more) to the reader's eye, it does avoid any in-depth portrayal of the horrors that racked Cambodia during the 1970s. How can one tell a child about unbridled civil war and genocide and starvation? How can one tell a child what it means to never see a beloved brother again?

The illustrations are nebulous and warm, comforting almost, as the grandmother tells of her childhood and then the escape from her war-torn homeland.

The are a few minor caveats. The gender of the children's names seems confused. (Dara is traditionally a boy's name.) And the story is only in English and doesn't include Khmer. But the details are spot-on, down to the parents picking up Thai takeout when they don't want to cook.

Overall, this is an excellent storybook for parents who want to gently remind children that many people suffer from wounds that are not visible. Or perhaps to try to explain why their elders will forever be caught between two worlds.

In short, buy it.

The hollow city

It's hard to comprehend Phnom Penh being that empty.

Hat tip to CamboDonut.

Update: To compare, this is Phnom Penh today:

A reading from "At Home on the Mekong"

Becoming accustomed to the prevailing norms of a different culture is a challenge, especially when you run into people who are overly friendly by any standard.

For more entertaining stories from Cambodia, buy "At Home on the Mekong" or "Falling in the Well of Love."

A positive comment!

Cambodian journalist, TEDx speaker and blogger Kounila Keo says:

I've been reading Will Koenig's new awesome book called "Falling in the well of Love" for the last couple of days. Been intrigued with it.

Thanks so much for the book! Really recommend it to Cambodians and those who are married to Cambodians. :-D

You can buy the book on Amazon.

The cover of my upcoming book

This the cover of my new collection of columns. It will soon be available on Amazon and — with a bit more work – on Apple's iBookstore.

Other titles I considered included:

• So I Married a Cambodian

• From the Mekong to the Willamette

• Trans-Pacific

• Mango Madness (well not really, but it's a great song)

The retired king is dead

Official portrait — Hosted by Wikipedia

Norodom Sihanouk — former king of Cambodia, filmmaker, autocratic despot and all-around renaissance man — has been described as influential, volatile, crafty, charismatic, and above all mercurial.

And, at age 89, he's dead.

This is both shocking and unsurprising as the now-retired king has been in poor health for many years. It's not uncommon to hear he was in France for medical treatment when he was deposed in 1970, though other works describe it as a vacation or a quiet diplomatic round through Europe and the Soviet sphere. But whether he was in country or in exile, firmly in control or a pawn, he was still the "pres moha ksat," the god-king.

I was in Cambodia before Sihanouk abdicated the throne. (He retired in 2004 to bounce between Beijing and Pyongyang, where he apparently felt at home.) His face, and that of Queen Monineath, was inescapable back then. Their portraits were displayed in every schoolroom, government building and in most private businesses.

I saw them during the Water Festival in 2003. I found myself caught in a massive, hot crowd of revelers outside the National Palace. I didn't exactly blend in, but being taller than everyone else did allow me to enjoy the occasional cool breeze — and see the royal couple waving and smiling as they were driven by in a convertible.

The king looked thinner than his portrait, and the queen a bit heavier. But it was the first time I had seen royalty, and they were only a hundred feet away.

Cambodian politics is notoriously messy, but it's something that the king and queen could ride around without worry in front of a huge crowd. His absence will be felt.

Histories: Doughboys and twisted pistols

Cambodia has changed dramatically over the years — days even. When I lived in Pursat for a year, I would return to Phnom Penh every few weeks and feel lost because so many many buildings had sprung up or a functional roundabout had been torn up and replaced with a treacherous intersection.

But while the skyscrapers rising over Phnom Penh are new, the constant rebuilding is not a new phenomenon. The Southeast Asia Digital Library exhibit "Then and Now: Historical Photographs of Cambodia" has thousands of photographs charting Cambodia's evolution over the past 70 years.

The above photo shows a monument built to honor those who died fighting to preserve Cambodia's imperial master, France. Standing in the middle of the Stad Jas traffic circle, it would be impossible to miss for people entering Phnom Penh from the north — a potent symbol of France's sway over Indochina.

But the doughboy is a symbol of a conflict many wars past:

This monument was built by the French to commemorate those who lost their lives in World War I. The statue was later destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. ... The site of the former monument is located close to the French Embassy, north of Monivong Boulevard.

A different monument, a pistol with a twisted barrel, now stands in the middle of the circle. It is intended to symbolize nonviolence, but it's easy to miss if you're roaring into Phnom Penh from Chroy Changvar or National Road 5.

Andrew Hem: 'Paint like there's no tomorrow'

Andrew Hem's book, Dreams Towards Reality, will be published by Zero Plus Publishing in August.

A Long Beach revolutionary

After you've immigrated to a foreign land, built a thriving tax-preparation business and amassed multiple wives, what's next?

Declaring yourself the Cambodian Moses and fomenting a coup d'état, apparently. At least that's what Yasith Chhun did.

"The Accidental Terrorist" is an amazing work of journalism. It has a fascinating level of detail but is tightly written and manages to get things right — a challenge considering the convoluted history of Southeast Asia.

Author Adam Piore should be commended.

Also, if you're going to start a rebellion, don't brag about it to The New York Times.

More from the publisher — The Atavist — is available here.

Update: PRI's The World interviewed Adam Piore. Have a listen:

Hello Mr. Dragon!

It's Khmer New Year — that means handfuls of corn starch, buckets of water and a free book! My book is free for the next few days. Grab it while you can and don't get maimed by an angkungh seed!

Adventurous ways to travel Cambodia

In my book, I have a column about cheaply traveling around Cambodia. My preferred mode was riding in the crowded pickup taxis that link most every lonely village in the provinces. It can be tough, but it offers great views and is a cheap adventure for the daring backpacker.

Freelance photographer Dominic Stafford has has gone above and beyond by crossing Banteay Meanchey province by hitching rides on kuyon — single-axle tractors that are little more than powerful motors on a pair of diminutive wheels.

Travelers assemble a flying bed in Pursat province in December 2004.
Photo by Will Koenig.

He also rode a "flying bed" — which is a wooden pallet strapped to a pair of train axles and shares the rails with much larger trains. While it's a useful way to access remote villages, in my experience it's not much fun once the novelty wears off. Many rail lines run through the middle of nowhere, leaving you with no options if you are thirsty or if the contraption breaks down. And the whole time you are acutely aware that a massive locomotive could come hurtling around a blind curve at any moment.

A bicycle may be slower, but at least you can stop whenever you want.

As always, there are many more adventures in my book.