Foreigners come to Cambodia for a variety of reasons, most
of them not so altruistic as one might at first thought be led to believe.
According to a newspaper article there are about 80,000 foreigners living in
Cambodia. The majority of them come from Vietnam, China, South Korea, Malaysia,
and other Asian countries. Estimates how many Western expats live here are hard
to come by. They tend to stick out simply due to the fact of their different
looks. I personally estimate that there may be around 15,000 to 20,000 spread
out over the entire country. Most of them can naturally be found in Phnom Penh,
but Sihanoukville, a city of some 200,000, has a sizable foreign population too.
Most of the NGOs have their main offices in Phnom Penh. Although they do employ
local people, management and higher executive positions are usually staffed
with Westerners. The Christian churches of multitudinous denominations alone
account for a good share of those foreigners. Western embassies make up another
large chunk, probably led by the U. S. or Russian Embassy. But you also have independent business
people, a few artists, doctors, dentists, therapists, etc., not to mention retirees
who came here for the lower cost of living. Of course, there are a few
derelicts who amble along streets shirtless, filthy, and are often under the influence of alcohol
and drugs. These are the ones that are conspicuous the most and give the term
expat a bad rep. And one must not forget the many Westerners either who come
here to find cheap sex and drink, although I believe these a mostly seasonable
expats, not to mention the pedophiles who still think they can easily satisfy
their urges here. Law enforcement seems to have taken hold in that respect.
They are now quickly apprehended and sentenced to a few years in prison and then
swiftly deported (judging from newspaper accounts).
Although, many of the expats I can observe have settled down
here with a local wife living on a small income from a business or their
retirement benefits. I wouldn’t know of anyone who could be counted as
affluent.
What always amazes me, though, is that people practically immigrate
to a foreign country only to gather at drinking holes or establishments of
their own nationality or the same language. Nowadays, this is often replaced by
online forums, Facebook, and so on. There aren’t too many of those message
boards outside Facebook in Cambodia. In fact, I can think of only two
English-language boards that have a large readership. Some people don’t seem to
have anything else to do but spend their lives online. What’s also remarkable
is that there are usually only a few posters that populate a board and they
tend to dominate all discussions.
The quality of those two boards is very different. On one, verbal abuse and insults are
commonplace, the other one is a more subdued, but both primarily deal in hashing
over news and events that were reported before elsewhere. Seldom do they have
first-hand tidbits of interest to the general expat community. Of course, there are exceptions, and this is
why I usually check them out too. Sometimes they post things that have slipped
my attention elsewhere, although I am an avid news junkie.
These boards sometimes serve an individual poster’s vanity
first and foremost. They want to show how smart and educated they are. I
remember one instance when one individual was moved to post a copy of his
masters degree diploma when someone had questioned his education and his
intellect. Mind you, that was a 50-something mature man. That same man, now
proven highly educated, still felt driven to lay bare his soul in a series of
articles about his first experiences in Cambodia, including falling in love
with a hooker (was it?). What drives these people to disclose so much of their
private lives? At one point, he resigned from his teaching job at a local
university but couldn’t find anything else. So he went back to his own country
where obviously nobody was waiting for an elderly professor past his prime who
spent years in a ‘wretched’ country like Cambodia. He decided to head back to
Cambodia. He put all that on the board for everybody to read.
Since most of the information is second-hand, assumption,
conjecture, and speculation abound. A case in point was a recent incident where
a European man was arrested for raping a European girl at a guesthouse after
some joint heavy drinking. The facts were scant. Newspaper articles just
mentioned the arrest and the accusation. But both boards could not get enough
of that discussion, imagining all kinds of scenarios. Of course, googling makes
it possible once the name of the accused is known and they are not withheld in
the Cambodian press. So they quickly found out that the man had a rap sheet for
violence and sexual assault in his home country. That guy must be guilty for sure, right? Many
also had some good advice ready what to do and what not to do if you meet a
drunken girl. It turns out the evidence presented pointed to a consensual act
with the purported victim fallen down the staircase in her drunken state after
leaving the accused’s room sustaining the injuries her concerned friends took
to be the consequence of an assault. This had prompted them to assume that this
must be a case of rape. Anyway, the actual facts will not be known, I guess;
only the man involved will know exactly what happened; the girl obviously was
too drunk. The case was dismissed and the man was let go. This case is an
example par excellence of how a story can assume a life of its own on a message
board. You just need the right people. There is one who is especially diligent
in forming pre-conceived opinions without knowing the facts; he virtually
drives most of the discussions single-handedly. Best of all, he is by all
appearances not even a full-time expat but a seasonal visitor here to enjoy
some of the benefits local females are willing and able to bestow on him.
The Internet has replaced the physical get-togethers in
bars, it appears. And when you go to a café or bar, you see two or more people
sitting together with each tapping on their phone or tablet. Conversation –
none. Judging by the posts of some individuals one must think they just sit
there waiting for something to crop up so they can jump on it immediately.
Another, really obnoxious thing is that many people jump to
conclusions and despite being alerted that they got it wrong they maintain their
position even in the face of facts and real experiences. Others go and google
someone in order to see whether they can find any dirt on that person. There is
one individual with access to police records or court data in the U. S. The
results he will post on a board without hesitation. In the Western world this
all might fall under the term ‘Freedom of Expression’. But anonymity leads to
online behavior that would never be accepted in the non-virtual world there. Freedom
of expression has certain limits in Cambodia. Consequently, you won’t find any
disparaging or even insulting posts about the powers-that-be in Cambodia. Authorities
can now easily find out who posted something they might not like as a young
local man found out when he was arrested for calling for a color revolution in
Cambodia on Facebook. Individuals, though, who can hardly defend themselves are
easy prey for many people on those boards.
Of course, often a board also serves to vent someone’s
frustrations with the country and its people, and believe me, there can be
many. I guess, originally a foreign-language board was meant to inform people
about certain facts about a country and the life there. At least one of them in
English is far removed from that. To their credit they occasionally publish
real good and sometimes funny articles about the locals, the expats, the way of
life here. But that has become too infrequent and has moved to the background vis-à-vis
the many rather stupid posts. I noticed that even more level-headed people sometimes
succumb to an unfair and unjust disposition. Now, that’s disappointing.
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| No sunshine today |
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| No sunshine today |
Time to spend on the Internet in weather like this.
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