Khmer Intelligence

Khmer Intelligence operates as if it were a news service disseminating its reports by email. I get my copy from samngat@yahoo.com. How I got on their mailing list, I do not know. They are, of course, anti-government and staunchly pro-SRP. I assume they are based in France, although they report in English.

A lot of times their reports serve only one purpose, it seems – to destabilize the government in order to get rid of Hun Sen who is seen as the primary source of all evil in Cambodia.

On October 07, 2010, this rather obscure outfit ran two reports. One is claiming that the Vietnamese leadership is quietly moving to have Hun Sen replaced from his position as the next candidate for Prime Minister in the 2013 elections. It also named Men Sam An as the possible successor. I am sure this lady was glad to read her name in this report. If she was vying for that job, nothing could have come at a worse time than this. If KI (are they connected to KI-Media at all?) is aiming to destabilize Hun Sen this was the wrong ploy. If indeed it were true, Hun Sen would just grill this lady what her plans were and simply sack her from her post. This way he would consolidate his power rather than weaken his position.

KI sent out numerous pieces of misinformation in the past, e. g. the wobbly state of the Foreign Trade Bank, and I venture to say that this is just another one.

The second story claims that Hun Sen equipped his most loyal army units with the new tanks Cambodia bought from Eastern Europe. The say he has become paranoid about a possible internal coup and will use those units to strengthen his grip on power. Historically it is true that autocratic heads of state get more paranoid the longer they stay in power but I can’t believe that this is the case with Hun Sen - quite the opposite.

Hun Sen is achieving ever-greater stature internationally with each conference, e. g. the U. S. – Asean meeting in New York, or the EU-Asean meeting in Brussels recently. The economy is on the rebound, people are not all unhappy with the current state of affairs, as in some way they do participate in it, as little as it may for the majority. I personally cannot see any unrest among the population in general.

In addition, one good indicator of the economic resurgence is the resumed strong building activity all over Cambodia, not only in Phnom Penh. Real estate prices have stabilized, although at lower level (but still too high in my humble opinion). The nomenclature, Hun Sen’s power base, is satisfied too and won’t want to upset the apple cart. And finally, Hun Sen is a close friend of Vietnam’s power elite and they couldn’t wish for a better ally in his post, I believe. So they have no reason to get him out.

It probably is true that China and Vietnam are maneuvering for dominance of the region, but it takes place on the economic front and nothing can beat China there at the moment, right?

I guess KI is just a bunch of old Lon Nol refugees in France, the U. S. and Australia who cling to their outdated views of the world and Cambodia and just can’t see that the 2010 world scene has drastically changed from the 1970ies, ‘80ies, and even ‘90ies.

This is proven in another piece they ran. Cambodian communities all over the world are organizing campaigns to revive the 1991 Paris Agreements.

Cambodian communities all over the world? Hey, how many are we talking about here – millions? Yeah, right. Estimates of overseas Khmer run anywhere from 300,000 to 400,000 worldwide. One third is too young to be politically active, one fifth is too old or too apathetic, and 80% of all adults are politically inactive to begin with (if you go by averages in other nations). What remains are maybe 20,000 people worldwide. (Wow that sure is an impressive number.) Additionally, they are not even Cambodian citizens; at least other countries see it this way. So do you think this will meet with great interest in the signatory nations? I don’t think so. As long as there is no strong movement from within Cambodia pushing for some international action, if such were needed, I can’t see how any of those countries’ governments will lend an ear to them. It is futile, can’t they see this? In this case even a constant drop in the bucket won’t fill it, believe me.

Cambodian Oddities

Although I usually refrain from writing about certain cultural particularities as this would sometimes lead people to be biased. I just consider them normal.

But there are a couple of things that really struck me as odd; they are also completely non-sensical.

There is this belief especially among middle-aged women – I have never encountered it in younger ones yet – that drinking too much water makes you fat. Consequently, they drink just a glass or two a day. It may come as no surprise to the discerning observer that a lot of people suffer from migrane and severe headaches; a direct result of dehydration. When those headaches get too bad they go see a nurse or a doctor who puts them on an IV of saline solution to replenish their body water. This is good business especially for the nurses who normally do this on the side at home; I don’t know where the saline solution comes form, and I don’t really want to speculate, but I do have my theory here.

Anyway, I wonder where this silly belief comes from. Why they choose to see a nurse for an IV so quickly – they call that whole thing ‘chah serum’ – may come from the Communist period. Health care at that time was free so it was really easy to get it. Nobody in the West would think of going to get an IV for the same symptoms. At $150 per doctor’s visit in the U. S. for instance, that is no surprise either.

The second oddity is that some people don’t dry their bodies with towels after a shower or bath. Reason: if you rub the body with that towel you rub that water into the skin. The water is not entirely clean as a lot of people, especially in the countryside, use rain water or bathe in the river. By letting their body air-dry they don’t get any bacteria into their body. Well, it may make perfect sense at first glance, but it also demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the human body.

Business Korean Style?

This is something that has only now come to my attention. There is a pretty large Korean conglomorate that opened a bank, a construction company, and an architectural design office in Phnom Penh a while back.

They had plans to build some De-Castle style condos near the airport. One of their buildings called for a height of 42 meters (I wouldn’t know how many stories that would make it). As it happened, this building was right smack in the landing and take-off zone of the airport and exceeded the permissible structure height as prescribed by air traffic control procedures and aircraft performance criteria.

Now this is a big company and one would have thought they would have some pretty well-educated persons at the top. You know what happened? They wanted to bribe the airport and air traffic control officials to give them an exemption - never mind, air safety.

When their bribery attempts failed, they simply wanted to buy the company that operates the airport. That company is French-owned and they still have some 30 years to go on their concession. Perhaps, the concession is not sellable under the terms of their contract; perhaps, the offer was not good enough; perhaps the profitabiliy is so good that no offer would have been good enough.

Anyway, give me a break. What were those knuckle-heads thinking? Anything goes in Cambodia? A lot does, but not everything.

Moving to Cambodia

Although quite a bit has been happening on both the political and economic front in the past two months I have not been able to maintain this blog for some time. I have given up my U. S. residence for good now (although I still have my business and own property there). I also moved into new homes in Phnom Penh and in Sihanouk province, which kept me busy for the last two to three months. I had lived in a furnished 2-bedroom apartment in Phnom Penh and a weekend cottage before.

I think I will have a little more time to furnish some inside info on Cambodia again in the future. First, however, let me tell those overseas Khmer considering moving back to Cambodia lock, stock, and barrel what is involved in such a move; financially, cutting through red tape, setting up or building your own home, etc.

In the past I have always encouraged overseas Khmer to move back in order to help develop the country. We all know Cambodia is still in dire need of people with a better education, know-how in modern business, experts in various fields ranging from agriculture, mid-sized construction, to small manufacturing, knowledge of international trade, and teachers, among others.

From my many encounters with Cambodians overseas I know they all long to be back in their home-country but really don’t know what to do here; whether they can afford the same things they are used to in their adopted countries, maintain the same life-style, etc. It certainly is a big decision. I am aware that most overseas Khmer just make enough to make ends meet; not a whole lot have struck it ‘rich’ overseas; they just have normal jobs; many times they barely eke out a living, oftentimes due to the lack of proficient knowledge of English, French, or German; the languages of the countries that most of them went to. Of course, their children who were born overseas don’t harbor those feelings. They more or less assimilated into the new culture and feel as belonging there rather than here. But nevertheless, I would still recommend the younger people as well to at least consider it; the money might not be as good here, in fact, it definitely isn’t, but possibly it might be more rewarding in other respects.

However, once they are ready to go ahead with their plans they may be surprised how much it actually costs to make that actual move if you want to take your whole belongings with you.

Now I had furniture for a 4-bedroom house, one SUV, one motorcycle, one 22’ power boat. My residence was Florida, which is almost exactly halfway around the world from Cambodia, so the cost is higher than from California, or Europe for that matter.

First, I forgot about the power boat. It would have cost $15,000 for the freight alone; I had checked into how much the import duty would have been, but boats weren’t in the books of the customs department. Anyway, that was too much for my taste so I simply sold the boat.

Next, I wanted to take my SUV, a 2001 MB ML320, and my motorbike, a 2003 Honda 750 Shadow ACE. Put into a container the freight would have been $5,500 for both; import duty for the MB around $11,000, and $1,100 for the motorcycle.

The lowest quote I got for the furniture, another 40’-container, was $9,300 including insurance, so altogether I was looking at around $26,000 to $27,000 just for freight and duty. My freight agent in Phnom Penh also advised me that there would be some import duty on the personal belongings, e. g. TV, computer, and such. All of a sudden that added up to possibly over $30,000.

Consequently, I scratched the car and the motorbike. I sold both which paid for the freight for the furniture. That made it a lot more acceptable. Additionally, I had an SUV in Cambodia already. We needed to add the flight tickets for the family into our tally, which set us back another $6,000 (not to mention the trip to Washington, D.C. and New York my wife and I took as a farewell tour, which slimmed our pocket books by another $4,000; but after the hassle of packing things and getting the house ready for sale we thought we had earned that trip).

When we got to Cambodia we moved right into the house in Phnom Penh my wife’s uncle and aunt had prepared for us already; additionally two of our kids had arrived a month earlier, so we didn’t have to do much on that end. Nevertheless the house needed to be furnished, we needed motorbikes for the kids to get around, etc. – cost for fridge, TV, furniture, curtains, and so on, $7,000. The furniture from our house in the U. S. was to go to our house in Sihanouk province.

That container was still on the water and it took a month until it arrived in Sihanoukville port. Total transit time from the house in Florida to Cambodia was 51 days. While we were waiting we prepared all the paperwork for the import clearance. Besides the ocean bill of lading, the Cambodian customs department requires a commercial invoice (never mind that this was a personal move), and an itemized inventory of each item. Virtually everyone in the U. S. owns some kind of gun; so did I. I wanted to take them but those were definitely no-go items. I tried for a special permit but was categorically turned down; so sold they were too.

Of course, now the haggling started over whether or not there was any import duty payable. I left that in the hands of my freight agent. To my vast relief he reported to me on the day the container was finally cleared that we were exempted as the whole affair was declared as my wife’s return to Cambodia. Nevertheless, we still needed to part with a whopping $1,350, which broke down into fees for the port, Camcontrol (the official inspection agency), import permits, clearance fees, fees for documents, approval fees, x-ray inspection fees (each container is x-rayed, so forget about trying to smuggle in something illegal, e. g. weapons, drugs, etc.), warehousing, and transportation. In comparison to clear an inbound container in the U. S. is around $60 in agent’s fees, but the terminal handling charges are about $500; anyway, it is still way cheaper in the U. S. (I know; I have owned an import business there for 20 years).

If you do the math you get a neat $25,000 plus miscellaneous out-of-pocket expenses to make that move for a family of 4. (I had gotten rid of at least one quarter of our furniture in the U.S.) Obviously only few people will move into two homes at the same time, so take off the $7,000 for house in Phnom Penh. But $18,000 plus will still make you think twice. You may deduct about $2,000 if you move from California, and $3,000 if you move from Europe. Fewer belongings won’t make a big difference as a 20’-container is about $300 less than a 40’er. The only consideration might be to sell off your stuff and start from scratch in Cambodia. If you want to maintain a Western standard it will cost you at least $15,000 too to buy everything from fridge to sofa, chairs, etc.; and it is a question of quality too.

Is it really worth making that move? It all depends on your motivation for it. Mine was pretty clear; I have a Cambodian wife, and two Cambodian children who still live at home; I firmly believed the children should go back to make their contribution to Cambodia, as small as it may be. Others might think differently; in fact, I guess most of them do.

Most serious Westerners, of course, come to live here from world-weariness, that is, weariness of our Western - what I perceive as - degeneration. It is slowly finding its way into Cambodia too, judging by what young Khmer people consider ‘in’ in terms of life style and what’s important to them. It also used to be that Westerners came here for the low cost of living. That may turn out to be a fallacy. If you live and eat like a Khmer, yes, but if you continue with your Western life-style, there is hardly any difference any more, except for eating out, rent (if you rent), medical costs, clothes. Anyway, this is the second time that I have come here to live here full-time, so there is at least one person who thought it worth it.

The Cambodian Catch-22

The new school year has begun or is about to begin. As always, each year students need to register for their new classes. High school student Srey Lea (that ubiquitous name for Cambodian girls) wanted to change school from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh as her grandparents who had raised her had moved there. She was quite astonished to learn, however, that the new school would charge her about $150. She would also have needed to get her transcripts from the old school, which of course would have cost some more money. It goes without saying that she didn’t have it. So in the end she stayed in Siem Reap and will finish her senior year there.

Srey Lea is the younger of two children. At age 30, her father died of liver cirrhosis when she was 3 or 4. Needless to say, they were poor, and the mother was left to fend for herself and her two young children. Her mother remarried shortly thereafter and had five more children with her second husband over the next 15 years. Srey Lea and her older brother were then raised by the grandparents as the mother could not handle that many children, not to mention she and her second husband didn’t have any money either and lived hand to mouth. Actually, they were their adoptive grandparents as they had adopted the mother when she was age 8. For all intents and purposes her mother abandoned them.

When Srey Lea graduates from high school, which will cost her money again for the diploma, she won’t have the approximately $200 it costs per semester to go to college. Her path is marked for her. She will either get married right out of high school, have children, or will get a low-paying job as a waitress, seamstress at a garment factory, or similar. She is poor so is not considered a good catch by eligible young man. Consequently, she will probably get married to someone with a similar background. Her grandparents, without money or income themselves, who found shelter with their niece, can’t be of help any more either.

Can Srey Lea break out of that poverty cycle? Not likely. She is trapped in that vicious cycle of poor people all over the world. First, her parents were poor and uneducated; consequently, had no idea of birth control; they just kept on having babies although they couldn’t even feed their children. This left Srey Lea without the means to better her own fate. Only a better education would have gotten her out of that cycle. So she will also be poor and, despite her high school education, mostly ignorant about family planning. More likely than not, she will follow in the footprints of her mother.

This is the malaise that still besets Cambodia today. Children are born into poor families, and despite their own best efforts, they have no options of finding a way out of poverty. This can only change if they will not have to worry about school fees or money for textbooks. Public schools are free of charge officially, but teachers’ pay is so low they are dependent on unofficial ‘contributions’ from parents. This can amount to about $20 to $30 a month, plus fare for a motodup if the school is a not within walking distance. Parents in the cities are looking at about $60 a month just to send their children to school. It is self-evident many cannot afford this on an income of $160 or so a month. Hence, there is still a rather high share of children who leave school after four or five grades, if that at all. This is the dire truth and, unfortunately, this means social progress will be very slow in materializing.