It’s the holidays, and I want to talk to you about a very, very annoying Christmas song, one that nevertheless has a special, perverse place in my heart thanks to my time in Cambodia. It’s called “Last Christmas,” and was created by those British songster scamps “Wham,” who you’ve probably never heard of outside of […]
Tag: cambodia
Anti-Vietnam Protests in Phnom Penh, Cambodia – Oct 6th
Protests against a Vietnamese officials statement about the historical ownership of Kampuchea Krom – what is now Southern Vietnam – continued into a third day on Monday, as members of various groups allied against the Vietnamese presence in Cambodia gathered outside the Vietnamese Embassy on Monivong Boulevard. By my estimation, around 100 people were at […]
Anti-Vietnamese Protests in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Anti Vietnamese sentiment has been part of Cambodian culture for an exceedingly long time, and has only been on the rise since the hotly contested 2013 elections, in which the opposition CNRP party made animosity towards the Vietnamese, and their supposed colonial desires, a central tenet of its platform. Spearheaded by Khmer Krom minority groups, […]
Flying a Drone at Olympic Stadium – Cambodia
Phnom Penh’s Olympic stadium is saddled with a bit of a misnomer. Begun in 1963, the earthworks-heavy structure was crafted by revered Khmer architect Vann Molyvann, and was originally intended to host the 1963 Southeast Asian Peninsular Games. Politics got in the way, but the stadium and its 50,000 person capacity persist to this day. […]
Why I Hate Backpackers: An Illustrated Guide
I am regularly asked by acquaintances and friends why I hate backpackers. They are used to seeing my anti-backpacker screeds on Twitter or when they meet me at the bar, ready with my latest story about those horrible people who wear elephant-patterned pants and talk incessantly about spirituality. They conclude the obvious: I loathe backpackers […]
Bearded Men With Kramas – Phnom Penh cartoons
If you live in Phnom Penh, you’ve seen this guy. You may be this guy. The krama symbolizes exoticism and a sense of adventure, while the beard symbolizes rakish virility. The Moleskine and large, unwieldy camera indicate they are serious Travelers who are not to be lumped in with the backpacking riff-raff. I think it’s […]
Cambodia elections – photos from the rally on Friday
The rally on Friday was remarkable. A Mardi Gras atmosphere filled the air, and the CNRP supporters did a victory lap around Wat Phnom and kept going. Traffic stopped dead and people poured into the streets — including monks. Old men told me what they really thought about Hun Sen, speaking with remarkable frankness. All […]
Angkor Again: Exotic Friends
To feel jaded about one of the planet’s most impressive monuments, is perhaps, to be tired of life. Or it is just a normal state of the human condition: when confronted with wonder, we are inevitably prone to sorting it away into neat boxes, to (cleverly) making it less and less wondrous every single time […]
The Obama Drones/Cambodia Analogy: Ur Doing It Right?
Obama’s Nixonian Precedent – New York Times Drones invade our dreams in 2013, our blogs, and the sputtering discourse on television and on airwaves. Now the pundits have rediscovered the Cambodian carpet bombing nastiness of the Vietnam War era, and are making analogies left and right comparing small-scale drone strikes to the constant onslaught of […]
War correspondents of legend and song unveil memorial in Phnom Penh, Cambodia – GlobalPost
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Many of the most prominent surviving correspondents who covered Cambodia’s civil war gathered in Phnom Penh on Wednesday for the unveiling of a memorial to the “at least” 37 journalists who perished on Cambodian soil between 1970 and 1975. Buddhist monks performed religious rites and Cambodian information minister Khieu Kanharith […]