Major Changes here at Cambodia Creatives

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We’re going through some major changes here at Cambodia Creatives. For the moment the internship and other recruitment is suspended. We’ve hired a few people now and we need more work coming in to justify any further expansion.

We’re working on a major travel writing project (the output could be measured in books per week – tens of thousands of words a day). We’re also trying to take care of all of our original customers in the way that they expect to be taken care of. That means there’s going to be a shortage of blog posts here for a while.

However, if you’d like to read something we’ve written recently we’ve just published a piece on culture shock in Cambodia on the ExpatsBlog forum. Hope you enjoy it and we’ll be back soon.

Dental Tourism and Cambodia

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Thailand is the prime destination for medical tourism in this region. It has a resounding reputation for everything from palliative care to gender reassignment surgery. It is low cost without sacrificing on quality (at least for the places patronized by foreigners – sadly, the same cannot be said for those facilities geared exclusively to the Thais themselves). It also offers excellent dentistry on the same terms. So why did I choose Cambodia instead?

A big thumbs up for the folks at Pachem. No-one enjoys going to the dentist but they did a great job.

Firstly, my one and only experience with a Thai dentist was not a good one. They didn’t actually fix the problem and that’s no use. Secondly, because if you choose the right dentist here in Cambodia; you’ll get all the modern wonders of high-end dentistry (including dentists fully educated in the UK) for even less money.

Nobody likes going to the dentist but it was worth it here. Let’s take a quick look at the break down of the bill; scale and polish, 5 fillings, 2 root canals, 3 wisdom teeth extracted, checkup, temporary crown and then a ceramic crown. Cost? Less than $500. That’s right less than $500. You simply couldn’t get a better deal on your care if you tried.

So what was the experience like? The Pachem dental clinic is based in Siem Reap. It is opposite the Angkor National Museum (in an obvious bid to catch the eye of tourists) and the office is in a small office/housing unit. The surgery is spotlessly clean when you enter and almost everyone speaks English – from the dentists to receptionists. That’s always a good start, I wouldn’t trust someone I couldn’t understand to do anything other than emergency surgery and even then only if I had absolutely no other choice.

A checkup (including x-rays) sets you back a whopping $8 and at the end they’ll present you with a precise break down of the work they think you should have. This includes the exact costs you will pay – so there will be no nasty surprises at the end of the treatment.  (Though you may need to pay for prescription painkillers or antibiotics from the local chemist – no more than $10).

If you agree to go ahead with the work you’ll pay 50% of the cost before you start and the balance either at the end of at the start of the 2nd session (I had to go back a lot).

The work (in my admittedly amateur opinion) was first rate, the level of care at least the equal of anything I’ve had done before (except in a mega-dentist in Dubai but that might have been influenced by the stunning Swedish blonde who worked on my teeth there). When it transpired that the work would take longer than expected there was also no suggestion that I’d need to pay more (perhaps they’ll get me back next time).

All in all it was an excellent experience (as far as a trip to the dentist can be an excellent experience) and I’d heartily recommend the folks at Pachem. Dental tourism is just another string to Cambodia’s bow but one worth considering if you’re travelling to the region and would like to avoid the mega-bills of the dentists back home.

Coming Soon from Cambodia Creatives

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It’s a lot later than I thought it would be… but Cambodia Creatives will be publishing its’ first title in a few weeks. Here’s a sneak preview of the cover art.

Cambodia Creatives - China Business Book

A lot of work and effort has gone into this title. It’s the first of many to come. We’ll be redoing the website soon to reflect a lot of changes in the way we’re working here at Cambodia Creatives. This is just the beginning. :-)

Expatriates’ Strange Lives in Cambodia (A Review)

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What can I say? I was hoping for depth and insight. What I got was 200 pages that could have been better expressed in 4 pages.

An early warning sign for this book might be the local publisher, Tuk Tuk Editions. There’s nothing wrong with small press publications but there’s a lot wrong with a book that clearly wasn’t written in English being poorly proof-read in translation. The number of missing articles (that’s “the” and “a”) makes pouring through the pages a painful experience. Then every word which ends in an “s” in French suddenly gains an “s” in English too. It wasn’t a cheap text at nearly $15 and really it badly needed work before printing.

Frederic Amat’s work is however no better than the proof-reading. Fred’s got a bee in his bonnet regarding the expatriate experience. He’s decided that there are 3 types of expatriate in Cambodia (one for each of the major expatriate centers in the country – Siem Reap, Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh) and that they’re all a bit crap.

Nice theory Fred but where’s your evidence? For a book that is supposedly compiled from experience and many interviews it’s all a bit dependent on Fred’s viewpoint.  How dare professional expats moving through not embrace the local culture? How dare people retire or avoid their own culture? How dare they try and integrate? His outrage is very much on a scatter gun basis.

Sadly, he doesn’t supply much in the way of a better approach either. He feels that his own perspective is unique and one that cannot easily be adopted by others.

All of this might have been bearable but the language is abysmal. Never afraid to use ten words where one would do – Fred’s a dullard of the first order. The entire book might have been better produced as a four page flyer for a student magazine.

The whole thing drips with contempt and badly thought out humor. If you’re looking to gain a deeper understanding of the expatriate life, you really won’t find it here. A new hand in the country might end up terminally depressed from being on the receiving end of Fred’s scorn. The rest of us can simply dismiss it.

I’d love to know how this got published. I suspect it’s because he’s friends with some of the movers and shakers on the local scene. I can’t believe John Burdett (the finest writer in Asia in my opinion) gave the blurb for the cover. I can only assume he got paid well for it.

When it comes to Expatriates’ Strange Lives in Cambodia you’d be better off spending your money on a foot rub. A foot rub won’t make you understand other expatriates any better but it will remind you why came. Where else in the world can you get a 3 hour massage for $15?

The Thai-Thai Restaurant (A Review)

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The Thai-Thai is as unspectacular from the inside as it is from the outside.

It’s strange but there’s not much comparison between Thai and Cambodian cookery. They former relies on crazy combinations and chilies to delight the palate; the latter is simpler and rather more delicate. If you’re used to Thai food you can find Cambodian cuisine extremely dull – if you love Cambodian food Thai can be overwhelming.

Fortunately I don’t fall into either camp. My main diet is home cooked foods and that means Western. So I can take pleasure in both Khmer and Thai cookery without worrying about which I prefer. The Thai-Thai restaurant is one of a handful of Thai specialist places in town alongside the Chiang Mai Restaurant and Schnitzel-Wirtin.

The Positives

If you want choice then Thai-Thai is the hands down winner. The menu comes in a packed A4 binder and there are several dishes on each page. Things very from insanely spicy to not at all spicy.  It takes a few minutes to make your mind up and the good news is they carry Singha beer to help aid the decision making process.

Singha is probably Thailand’s finest export. Cambodian beers are pretty bad, Anchor’s hell on your stomach, Angkor’s hell on the taste buds, Cambodia tastes like water and so on.

I opted for barbecued pork with rice and my dining partner headed straight for the Pad Krapow (ground pork, onions, chili and rice topped with a fried egg).

The Negatives

There’s no air conditioning and the fan placed next to the table didn’t make the heat bearable at all. The food seemed to take a long, long time to be cooked (possibly no bad thing at least you know it’s more likely to be fresh).

The bathroom was disgusting. It didn’t seem to have been cleaned in weeks. It stank and was covered in spiders (and that never makes me happy).

The food itself was OK. Nothing special. The Pad Krapow was nowhere near as good as Schnitzel-Wirtin’s offering and my pork was on the dry side.

Overall

The Thai-Thai might be worth another go but in a town with more than a hundred restaurants it’s not going to see my business again for a long while. The beer was cold. The price was reasonable but the food was only so-so and the bathrooms were unacceptable. For the moment Schnitzel-Wirtin remains the finest Thai food option in Siem Reap by quite a long way.

River of Time – A Book Review

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A big thumbs up for River of Time which brings you a wonderful perspective on the larger events during the fall of Saigon and the fall of Phnom Penh.

River of Time is not solely concerned with Cambodia. However, Cambodia plays a big part in the events of Jon Swain’s life. If you don’t know Jon was the Western reporter whose life featured in the film; The Killing Fields. His adult life began when he entered the French Foreign Legion and while he shortly drummed out for wanting to be a writer – it inspired him to lead a life along the road less travelled.

He managed to wangle a job as a journalist in Cambodia and was here during part of the Khmer Rouge period and when he wasn’t here he was witnessing the fall of Saigon to communist rule. His love for the region and its peoples is clear and you find yourself drawn into the details of his life quickly and affably. His turn of phrase is sometimes a little laborious but unlike Francois Bizot he comes across as a sympathetic character who is caught up in events that mirror his worst fears.

It’s another weepy book.

I recently reviewed “Survival in the Killing Fields” a book which cost me a whole box of Kleenex to get through. River of Time isn’t quite as emotional but it’s not far off. The moment when they have to leave Pran behind (Pran is the Cambodian subject of the Killing Fields movie) is truly heart breaking. This is particularly true when you consider how Pran saved his life only a few days earlier when they were abducted on the streets of Phnom Penh by overly enthusiastic junior members of the Khmer Rouge.

I don’t like book reviews that give away the plot of a book. Spoilers are not cool. Yet, it’s interesting to see, that once this pattern of facing danger had established itself in Jon’s life, how he continues to place himself in danger. After he leaves South East Asia he goes on to get himself kidnapped in Ethiopia.

Conclusion

River of Time is not as essential as Survival in the Killing Fields, at least to me. Having said that – it’s very much worth a read to get an incisive Western perspective into many of the events that unfurled during South East Asia’s darkest hours.

One thing I’ve realized is that my tour through the literary works surrounding Cambodia’s recent past is that I should be buying shares in tissue companies. River of Time’s a really good book and it’s worthy of anyone’s tears.

The Siem Reap Shooting Range

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It may qualify as the most expensive 2 minutes of entertainment in my whole life. It turns out that firing an AK-47 is not only satisfying but quicker than a teenage boy on his first date. The question is was it worth it?

How to Get There

Guns, glorious guns, nothing quite like them… Yes, it’s an infantile obsession but I don’t care. I have no intention of hurting people with them but killing paper targets is cool.

The Siem Reap Shooting Range lays a long way down the road towards Banteay Srey and that means the usual discussion as you enter the Angkor National Park. “Where are your tickets?” Your tuk-tuk driver then explains that these crazy people aren’t visiting the 8th wonder of the world they are off to shoot things. This quickly ends the conversation as the ticket collector goes to hide in her booth and waits for the lunatics to leave.

The drive out is fantastic. You speed through the Cambodian countryside and get your only real view of how ordinary Cambodians live. Wooden houses on stilts, scraggy (and possibly rabid) dogs on every street corner and if you’re really lucky a tree falls over and nearly kills everyone in your tuk-tuk. This didn’t happen on the day we went to the range but it did happen when I went to the Landmine Museum.

Then in the middle of nowhere there’s a stretch of brand new road with a truck terminal on it, this is the signal that it’s time to go cross-country. You turn right at the sign for the “cooperation army” and bounce down a red sand track. Before you know it, you’re on an actual army base and there are 3 bored gentlemen with lots of guns staring at the next batch of fools waiting to be fleeced so they can feel like Rambo for 20 seconds.

The Choice

As soon as you arrive they’re dragging you into a room bedecked with lots of guns. You can shoot pretty much anything you want as long as you have the cash. You can even chuck a grenade if you like.

This is the indoor range – there’s an outdoor range too. Grab your gun and spray the walls with it, if you’re lucky you might even ding the target. The weapons weren’t the best maintained and they hadn’t been calibrated with the sights at all. Never mind – I still held and fired an AK-47.

We opted for the AK-47. Well almost an AK-47 it’s been adapted to fire .22 caliber pellets. It is half the price of the real thing and we’re not that wealthy so it’s as far as our wallets will let us go. Mike steps up to the plate first and rattles through his clip in seconds. I’m not really watching the first few shots as like an idiot I’m stood in the wrong place and find myself dodging the spent cases as they discharge from the gun.

Then it’s my turn. The nice thing about the .22 is there’s no recoil so you just ram the gun into your shoulder and shoot. It’s a bit like playing with a toy gun apart from the holes it’s tearing in the target and the wall behind it. It takes no more than a minute but there’s something really satisfying about killing our make believe mujahedeen (yes, the target is dressed up like an Afghan soldier – which is odd because I’m pretty certain there’s never been a quarrel between Afghanistan and Cambodia).

We hand over our cash ($100 for the 2 clips) and I’m foolish enough to buy a $15 t-shirt to commemorate the experience too.

The Verdict

At $50 for a minute’s entertainment this is something I won’t be doing again in a hurry. However, if I’m honest – I loved the experience. If I were much, much richer I could see taking this up as a hobby. I’ve no desire to start turning people into Swiss cheese but there really is something quintessentially manly about firing a sub-machine gun. I only hit my target with 1 in 3 shots so I expect in real life he’d have shot me before I shot him. I’m proud to say that while only one shot ended up in the scoring ring I did get him right between the eyes…

Abacus Restaurant (A Review)

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Not everything in Siem Reap comes with a price tag of $5. That’s a good thing, while I love the range of cheap eats in town there’s a great case for investing a little more in dinner every now and again. Abacus comes highly recommended for its fresh take on French cookery with a hint of Khmer cuisine. So we decided that it might make for the perfect romantic meal location and went out to check it out.

The Positives

Abacus in Siem Reap offers a lovely atmosphere to dine in. As you can see by Cambodian standards this place is very, very plush indeed.

Abacus have an extremely friendly meet and greet team. We’d made reservations but the place wasn’t quite busy enough to justify the advanced phone call though I suspect that would have been a different case if we’d have arrived on Valentine’s Day.

We chose to sit outdoors as it was reasonably cool but inside looked clean, well-presented and if the a/c works you might prefer it during the summer months.

I had the beef carpaccio to start and it came with an extremely generous amount of parmesan, that’s a good thing in my book – I love cheese. My companion had a crab and wasabi salad which was exquisitely presented and she devoured it like she hadn’t eaten for a week.

The main, for me, was a beef tenderloin in gravy with mushrooms, aubergine and mashed potato and for my partner a pork tenderloin in plum sauce with new potatoes, beetroot and asparagus. The beef was excellent (they even managed to get it almost blue) as was the gravy. The real winner was the pork though, the sauce was about the best thing I’ve tried in Siem Reap and my partner darn near inhaled her meal.

We rounded off with dessert for a change and I opted for the crème brulee and she for the pistachio mousse with lemon sorbet. Only a minor niggle here and there was too much sugar on an extremely shallow crème brulee. My dining partner on the other hand couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about her choice.

The Negatives

Abacus is just as lovely outside as it is inside.

Service was a lot sketchy following the meet and greet. This was particularly true when trying to order dessert when the servers had disappeared.

The menu is presented on a blackboard and it feels a little lazy as it’s essentially the same menu on the website but with a couple of specials. It would be easier (particularly for ESL speakers) if they could present this on a card instead – it makes you feel a little pressured to make a decision on your food as well.

The house wine was also distinctly unimpressive but at least it wasn’t ridiculously expensive.

Overall

The food at Abacus is first rate and so it should be – the total bill for 2 including 2 glasses of house red was $70. That’s about three times what you’d pay anywhere else in town. The look and feel is also extremely nice. The real niggle was the service, for this kind of money you could eat in any of the town’s five star hotels and you’d expect much, much better service there. I’d definitely go back, it was a fabulous dining experience but I don’t think it will be a regular occasion not because it’s expensive but because I’d prefer not to have to ask for a dessert menu five times (or even once for that matter).

The Landmine Museum, Siem Reap (A Review)

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The Landmine Museum in Siem Reap is easy to spot on the road to Banteay Srey. It’s on the right hand side of the road maybe a mile past the Butterfly Farm. Everyone should visit, it’s one of the few socially responsible acts of tourism available here.

Imagine being 10 years old, your parents have been killed by a ruthless group controlling your country. You are now dragged into an orphanage and given a gun. You have a job now. Your job is to kill on command. You will fight for your parents’ murderers until another group forces you to fight for them. Then because killing is what you know – when you escape that group you go back and join the army.

It doesn’t sound like the recipe for becoming a CNN man of the year does it? Yet, in the case of Aki Ra that’s exactly what it took. Aki Ra is the founder of the Landmine Museum in Siem Reap. His story is an amazing one. After he left the army he decided he wanted to make up for some of the wrong that he had done.

So he went out to clear landmines. He did this without formal training and without special equipment. He attracted international attention for his efforts. This brought a little money in, he spent that on setting up an orphanage so that landmine victims’ families would no longer have to suffer. Then the world forbade him to clear mines anymore – the lack of training being a big problem from an outside observer’s point of view.

This didn’t stop him, he raised the money for formal UN training and he still clears landmines today. The orphanage has expanded its’ scope too and he takes in children from all over the area with special needs (he helps HIV+ children, polio victims and more).

The Museum

In essence the Landmine Museum is special because of Aki Ra. It’s not the most impressive museum; it’s a pile of defused mines and some stories to go with the victims of the mines that got away. You’d have to have a very hard-heart to be unimpressed with his efforts though.

The center piece of the Landmine Museum is this floating display of demined ordnance. You may also be lucky enough to spot one of the turtles swimming around it. Then to round things off buy a little something in the gift shop. Give back and give generously.

I do wish they’d kill the spiders hanging off every wall. I hate spiders, really I do. But I braved the place anyway and it made me feel extremely fortunate to be from such a privileged background. The orphanage, as it should be, is off limits to visitors though occasionally you’ll meet one of the children scampering across the site.

The gift shop has the advantage of selling the only truly extra-large t-shirts in the whole of Siem Reap – so if you’re on the tubby side (like me) you can make your fashion budget go a little further and support a good cause at the same time.

Given that it’s on the road to Banteay Srey you should stop and visit on the way down. Your $4 entry fee is basically used to promote further good works and that would make it a bargain at twice the price.

Landmines and Cambodia

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If you see this sign, take note and get the heck away from wherever you are – carefully.

It’s not possible to live in Cambodia for very long without sooner or later talking about landmines. Thanks to a succession of civil and unofficial international wars Cambodia has a lot of landmines kicking about. It’s estimated that there may be 6 million (give or take a million or two) lying around waiting for someone to step on them.

And sadly, step on them they do. There are over 40,000 amputees in Cambodia thanks to these vicious pieces of equipment. While the casualties caused are dropping each year (currently 2-300 people a year stand on mines, compared to more than 1,000 a year at the Millennium) they are still of very serious concern.

So the first thing to remember is that while places like Siem Reap and Phnom Penh are landmine free – most of the rest of the country is not. So if you’d like to explore backwater Cambodia (and you should it’s got some of the nicest natural space in all of Asia) you’d better learn the rules. If you see a minefield sign – stay the heck out. If you’re wandering around anywhere that isn’t a major pedestrian centre – walk in other people’s footprints on the trail, if there aren’t any don’t go there.

It’s worth noting that if you’re a man you are 9 times as likely to stand on a mine as a woman is. So chaps don’t rely on following your lady through a minefield, many of them will only go off when someone heavy stands on them.  You might also want to consider the fact that it can take up to 15-20 hours to get to a hospital capable of treating victims. Most damage is irreparable if not treated within 6 hours.

Our policy is never to publish exploitative pictures of people on this blog. Their lives are hard enough without being treated like a freak show. So here’s nice picture of mines that have been deactivated and which are now on exhibit in the Siem Reap, Landmine Museum. We’ll be looking at the Landmine Museum in another post – not too long from now.

The impact of landmines on Cambodians is extremely serious. It’s not just the being blow up bit (which is about as serious as it gets). It’s also the economic consequences of landmines being found on your land. Once there’s a certainty that your land is mined – you have no chance of working it and that means you and your family drop straight into poverty.

Demining operations are in force and have been for nearly 3 decades now. However, given the limited financial resources of the country (and the limited number of donations made to this cause) it may be that another decade or two will pass before the majority of the country can be considered completely safe.

Here in Siem Reap landmine victims are a daily fact of life. There are several amputees in town trying to support their families by selling books – they are not beggars. Their lives are hard (one poor man has a specially adapted bicycle which he has to peddle with his arms as his legs are gone) and they deserve your support. So if you’d like to do something at least a little positive for landmine victims don’t shoo these guys away when you visit, take a couple of seconds to pick up a souvenir from them rather than one of the big bookstores selling the same books for more money.