Sweet Cucumber has always been about my life as a barang in Cambodia, and since I’m no longer living there, I find it irrelevant to post to it any longer.

However, I have revived most of the archives of the blog - going back all the way to July 2004, should anyone still feel the urge to rummage through my history. There’s still some nice posts and photo albums to be found in here, but everything not directly related to Cambodia has been removed (slimming down from 900 to about 440 posts). All comments have been closed as well.

Take care y’all, and thanks for visiting !

- Guy

Every May, when the rains come, water levels in the Mekong start to rise.

When the river flows into Phnom Penh it meets another river that drains from a lake in central Cambodia.
So full is the Mekong that it reverses that river’s flow, forcing water back upstream and expanding the lake more than five-fold.

This is the Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia. Cambodians call it the Great Lake.

Link to BBC article.

Honda Super Cub: 0 to 60 million in 50 years

Quoting Autoblog.com:

Marketing folks at Rover used to boast that the first car most people of the world ever saw was a Land Rover. That’s a pretty spurious claim, but anyone who has travelled in Asia will agree that the first vehicle that most of Earth’s residents owned was and is the venerable Honda Cub.

Fifty years ago, Honda knocked out just 24,000 of the ground breaking mopeds, but last year factories around the world built a whopping 4.7 million of the little blighters and now the 60 millionth Cub has rolled off one of Honda’s multiple production lines.

To put things in perspective, 35 million Corollas have been sold to date, 30 million F-Series trucks have left Ford dealers and VW sold a paltry 21.5 million original Beetles. How many of those 60 million Cubs are still putting along is anyone’s guess, but having watched The Discovery Channel try to destroy one, we think it’s fair to say “most”.

And here’s me on my Honda Dream (an evolution of the Super Cub) in Phnom Penh’s streets, August 2004.

All I’m saying is “if you’ve never driven a step-through in se-Asia, you never lived properly.”
Good times !

Other countries of interest:

Cambodia: 91. Kinda expected. Could’ve been worse, like… Thailand: 118

Surprisingly, Vietnam ranks 37th, right behind France. Vietnam is where I’ll go next, I think.

And here’s the ranking of my favourite country of the world, and the source of all misery in current history: the United States of America: 97. Yay.

Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born US journalist whose enslavement and escape from the Khmer Rouge became the subject of the famous film, The Killing Fields, has died.

BBC article…

A LIVELY QUINTET OF FRENCH INDO-CHINA
Cambodians are passionately fond of music, and possess a variety of wind and stringed instruments. They learn a little of this and a little of that, but all without any set rule or system, and having no written music, their tunes are taught by ear. The more musical will often meet together and repeat their favourite tunes by the hour, steadily chewing betel like ruminant cattle the while {…?}

THE HOUR OF RECREATION FOR THE PUPILS OF THE BONZE
Cambodian boys are taught to read and write by the bonzes of their particular districts, and are obliged to spend a certain period in the monastery, where they wait upon the bonzes and accompany them on formal visits to the surrounding villages. Their heads are shaved in childhood; sometimes a small tuft of hair is left; this ceremony of shaving being regarded as a most important family festival.

TRADITIONAL FIGURES OF CAMBODIA, INDICATIVE OF THE POMP AND POWER OF ITS SOVEREIGN
Despite the heavy drain on Treasury gold, the Khmer dancers, who belong to the harem, are maintained by the king in accordance with Cambodian tradition. The most beautiful women of the kingdom are among their numbers, for if a girl showed promise of great beauty it was thought that in giving her to the king the parents would call down divine protection upon themselves and families, so the children were sent to the palace to fulfil their “brilliant destinies”

—

From the incredible The Secret Museum of Mankind.

What really bugs me enormously here, is that many goods are fake.

I suspect most of these fake goods come from the great land of China, and they’re getting really good at it.

Okay, the fake Sony TV’s are a dead giveaway, and when my standup-fan is labeled Nasional, I know it is not a National (although the logo is strikingly similar), but some fakes are very, very hard to notice. Or not at all, until you start using them.

Although I have no problem with obvious fakes - I knew what I was buying when I bought the crap Nasional at O’Russey market, what else could I think when I spend $15 on a big ventilator? - I become rather irritated when I spend real (big Western-like) $$ on something which is obviously made to con me.

A few examples I recently ran into, just for the fun of it:

- Oral B toothbrush: Same packaging as anywhere, same price as in Europe. Lasted 1 week…
- Gillette Sensor razorblades: Very expensive. Very unusable - not even for one shave.
- Duracell alkaline batteries: lasted 1 week in my mouse. Normally: about 3 months.
- Coca-Cola can: looked very much like the original (I didn’t spot it first), tasted like shit.
- Gatorade thirst quencher: exactly the same bottle, tasted like ehm, nothing.
- Solex padlock: “Made in the USA”, literally fell apart after a 2 weeks. Another wasted $15.
- Absolut vodka: absolutely fake.
- Sony remote control: I spotted it because the “Return” button was spelled “Retrun”.
- Let’s not even mention fake money, shall we ?

And I’m not even talking about perfumes, soaps, and other similar articles.

Some articles are obviously fake. You get what you pay for. Mainly clothing and apparel brands. There’s no such thing as a Gucci purse for $10.

Related to all this flaky faky, is my agony in having to deal with the overall inferior quality of most goods in general, available oh, everywhere. Sometimes it’s little things like pencils and ballpens, staplers, bedsheets, keys, DVD’s and CD’s, connectors and wires, etc… and sometimes it’s just the big things too. Furniture, bathroom accessories, woodwork, lamp fixings…, the list goes on forever.

Actually, it’s quite hard to buy anything of decent quality here. Even if I really wanted badly to spend big bucks on it.

The inferiority of things also spans most handywork, done by so-called professionals. You cannot even begin to imagine how many times I have had things “fixed”, only to fail or simply fall apart again after 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week (but never more). It sometimes makes me almost cry…

There is absolutely no quality control here, and for a control freak like me, that’s simply and teethgnashingly annoying.

Dammit.

This evening we had a second customer in one week with counterfeit $100 bills. Three of them this time…

It was from a guy I completely trust (after all, I always lose in playing chess with him), so we were okay.

There’s lots of counterfeit dollar notes circulating in Cambodia - especially the 100’s, so people be careful out there !

==== How to easily catch counterfeit dollar notes ====

- Take your left index finger and thumb, and squeeze em tightly over the edge in the middle of the note

- Do the same with your right index and thumb, and place them 4 fingers really close to each other
(just like you want to rip a piece of paper).

- Gently twist the left-hand side backwards, and the right-hand side forwards, as if you want to tear the paper, but don’t really tear it.

- If the note rips [easily], then it’s most probably a fake. If the paper is just a little bit ehm, twisted, it might be real.

- The really easy way: hold the note in front of a blacklight.

If a thick, white-ish fluorescent line runs vertically across the note (on the left side, if I recall well), then it’s real. If no fluorescent things are visible: throw away the note

====

All together now: thank you, bong Guy !

The bar is doing rather well.

Witness the photo above: our first branch in Dakota, the US of A.

Picture kindly provided by our correspondent Sz, ehm, somewhere in the UK.

Let me tell you. Running a [hostess] bar in Cambodia is tuff.

It could be nice though, if it weren’t for the girls or the customers.
The girls are a constant pain in the frikkin’ arsehole. There’s always something, either with themselves, their boyfriend, or their mom. And it’s always their mom; never it is daddy. “Mom is sick. I go visit mommy in province.” “Mom has problem with money, I go see.”"Mom is dying, I come back one week.” “Mom dead, I come back ten days.” Et cetera ad nauseam.
Weird though… I never ever heard one of the ladies mentioning the word “Dad”. Really. As if they don’t exist, and the girls magically popped out of their moms, immaculate-conception-style or something.

Also, they are loud. The girls, not the daddies (they are non-existent, remember?).
I’m not sure why the ho’s are so loud. The bar is small enough to hear someone whispering from the other side, and the music is more often than not on a decent speak-and-I-shall-hear level. They squawk, gabble and cackle as the raucous clucking cry of a goose on speed, and they will do so on every occasion they see fit. That means: always, all the time. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to put on music in the bar.

They confuse hip-hop with R&B.
When they ask me “bong Guy, put on some hip-hop”, and when I actually do so (I do have a good collection of relatively proper HH, plus 6000 other and mostly better songs), they look Dazed & Confused (ya’ll know Led Zeppelin is back together for a tour, don’t ya ?). “But, bong Guy, we cannot dance to this !” “Yeah well, but you asked for hip-hop, so here it is”, I tease.
So then I put on the R&B playlist (560 freakin’ bad songs), and they start dancing. Well, sometimes. They only dance to tunes they know. The same crap that has been playing in The Heart of Darkness for say, the last 4 years. Oh god, someone help me, please.

I’ve got one waitress though - I resist calling her the uber-cackler, since her voice cuts through bones like my dick through butter - who likes The Beatles. Yep. Them. I dunno where she picked that up. Maybe from her English boyfriend, whom now left for university in Brighton, but no worries, she’s got two more boyfriends in reserve. Anyway, there’s two problems with this: a) she sings along with every song (ouch), and b) she doesn’t know the words. Not to mention the fact that her shrill voice makes my dick go limp so it can’t cut through butter anymore.

The really worrying part about the girls is that most of them - should I resist saying this? - are… dumb. Like in, dumb, dumberer, dumbest. Don’t get me wrong; they’re all sweet (kinda) and nice (sorta) and beautiful (ehm…) and all that, but they wasn’t first in the department of braincell-overflow. I can hardly blame them for it though, having had no dad and a sick mom and an addicted brother and shit, but still… more than two brain cells would’ve been nice.

Like this girl - her name escapes me, but I’m quite sure it starts with “Srey” - a couple of weeks ago… We had our aircon repaired (kinda, sorta), and the airconnoisseurs had a stepladder in front of one of our double swinging-doors at the entrance. This was around six, when the girls start ehm, swinging in (did I mention they always come too late?). So this Srey woman tries to open that particular door where there’s a stepladder with a man on it behind. The door hits the ladder (of course), and so the ladder sways. Everyone in the bar - not excluding the poor fella on the ladder - shouts at her “watch out!”. So, she tries again, once more hitting the ladder. After the third time she tried, everyone screams “Use the *other* door, you cackling goose!!”, so yea, she tried a fourth time before it dawned on her that we actually have two doors. One blocked by a stepladder, the other not.

There’s more similar stories, but hey, the ladies are sweet and nice and beautiful and all that.

Then there’s the customers.

I love my customers. Especially when they pay.

Problem is, some of them don’t pay. So those… I don’t love.

Like today, four Khmer guys walk in, and start buying drinks for themselves and all of the girls. They like to hang it out broad, you know, those rich Khmers. Show their bling-bling, and tinkle their platinum… I won’t mention the fact that those particular asshats arrived in an old and battered minivan - I can see you checking out our place, bro’s ! - so I already knew we were in for trouble.
And yes indeed, when four dudes walk in with guns — they mainly carry guns because they have really small wieners and drive old minivans, and also to shoot at waitresses in beer gardens sometimes — then sit with about eight girls and pay them [lady]drinks and make a lot of ruckus, I know we’re going to have some sort of money-transaction problem after the fact.
When we present them with their bill - a measly $50 - they make a problem.
“We no buy *two* beers for the girls!”
“Ehm, yes you did. All the girls says so, and we saw you actually ordering them.”
“No, no, we only pay for one lady drink per girl. And not *eight* girls, but only *four*!”
“Well, whatever. Here’s your bill. Please. Fifty fuckin’ bucks. Please.”
“We no have money.”
“Oh.”

So three of them walk out, on the search for some money.

Fifteen minutes later, upon their return, the whole discussion starts again.

My manager, who tries to handle this precarious situation as good as she can (I didn’t want to deal with it. Too tired, and I simply would’ve killed them anyway) asks them if they would agree to pay for a bill with only one ladydrink per girl, instead of two.
She proceeds changing the bill, presents it to them, and says “Thirty four dollars, please?”

“No. Cannot do. We only have thirty (30) dollars.”

Sigh. Fuckwits.

Last Monday two Khmer guys and one supposedly Khmer wife walk in, and sit at the bar. Most of the time, when we have Khmer customers, we have no problems - they’re cool. But sometimes some of our girls get alerted, and the waitresses too… I guess it’s an attitude thing or something we barangs can not fathom…
Anyway, these gents and lady behave nicely, and order three ABC beers. For those not in the knowing, ABC beer is a locally brewed stout of the very bitter, very nasty kind. Quite expensive too. The wifey apparently wanted something else, but hubby says no, ABC it’ll be.
Then there’s a second round of ABC’s, and finally a third one (wow, we went through our whole 3-months old stock in one hour!). And then it’s pay time.
So the dude whips out a $100 bill. They always do that. Invariably. As if I am impressed by a $100 bill…
My manager always come to ask me wether she has to accept this bill, because she doesn’t (didn’t) know how to check if it’s counterfeit or not. So, I check that note (we have blacklights; that makes it very easy)…

“I’m very sorry sir, but this bank note is false”, I go.
[first red flag raised]

“Oh, really ? O hum… Okay, here’s another $100 note then.”
[second red flag raised]

Me… checks.

“Oops, counterfeit note again, sir. Sorry ’bout that.”
[another red flag goes up in my brain]

“Ah ? Strange, that. Can you try this one then ?”

Me.. checking the third $100 note…

“No sir, false again.”
[a whole army of red flags is now waving in my head]

So the guy keeps trying me until we finally reach $600.

“Excuse me, sir, I feel bad for you (not, you ass). Where did you get this money from ?”

Him: “From the ATM machine at ANZ bank.”

Me: “Ah, but that might explain it, sir. I know for a fact that ANZ Bank does not always checks their notes they put in the ATM’s.” [not true]

Read: “I’m fucking saving your face here, you fake-rich dumbass. You should actually pay me for that.”

The guy mumbles a few words to his co-drinker, whom then whips out his wallet, and simply pays with a [real] $50 note.

Counterfeit money laundering scheme failed, twat. Hahaha.

When the trio finally heads for the exit, the woman throws up all of her nicely digested ABC (plus some loclac beef or suki-soup, I’m not sure) over our counter, splashing it all over the floor and barstools as well.

Very nice, thank you and see you again. Bring some Riels with you next time.

Then there’s the story of the drunken English dude who ruined and smashed our bathroom, claiming he “didn’t fuckin’ do it”, although we saw him coming out of the bathroom and a girl went in just after him and he was about the only customer. Who then attacked me when I told him to calm down, sit at the bar, finish his drink and get the hell out of here…

Or the Dutch guy who always verbally abuses the girls until they cry. “You have the face of a pig”, “your tits are too small, and you’re too sexy for me” (indeed, dude), “I have more money than you” (and waves a stack of Riels), or deliberately gives the waitress too much money and waits to check and see “if they’re honest enough to bring him back his change”…

Or the pseudo-rich Khmer lady owner of Q-Bar who walks in at midnight, and wants “to have four ladies from the Sugar Shack, because I have important customers, and they need to dance on the bar”… Who then proceeds without paying the $20 bar fines (”I have no money with me”) , and let those girls work in her bar until 5AM. (I wasn’t present, and she told my manager she knew me well - which, of course, isn’t true at all). When I head over to the Q-Bar to reclaim at least the bar fines, she refuses and let her four body guards try to beat me up…

Or the old and lonely Dutch guy who only drinks the cheapest beer (one, sporadically two), claims one or two girls for at least an hour to play a game but never buys them a ladydrink, rants on and on about all that is wrong with the world, who’s going to build a space station on the moon (I’m not joking), and generally behaves like a complete dimwit.

And I’m not even mentioning the drones (endless drones), the freaks, the know-it-betters, the advanced travelers, the drunken losers, the patriots (mostly US citizens), the racists, the woman-haters (why the hell are you in my bar, dude?), the groovy-story tellers, the frustrated dwellers, the loners… the list goes on.

But most of my customers are nice. Yeah.
And the bar is good, and we offer the best drinks and an unrivaled service in town.

Anyway, the bar is up for sale. $18K only. A bargain, me thinks.

This just in, via Jeff’s Jungle Bar blog:

Malaysia’s QSR to open KFC outlets in Cambodia

KUALA LUMPUR: QSR Brands Bhd is expanding its restaurant business under the KFC brand to Cambodia.

The first outlet is expected to be operational in Phnom Penh by year-end, said chairman Tan Sri Muhammad Ali Hashim during a press conference to announce the new venture Thursday.

The group plans to open four outlets initially in the capital as well as in major towns. This would be followed by two new restaurants every year.

The expansion to Cambodia involves setting up a joint venture company with two local partners, Royal Group of Companies Ltd and Rightlink Corp Ltd. QSR will hold 55% while Royal Group and Rightlink have 35% and 10% respectively.

QSR’s initial investment is about US$3mil (RM10.5mil), which will be funded internally.

The group is hopeful that Cambodia would contribute profitably in the first year. “Everyone likes to eat chicken,” Muhammad Ali said, adding that the country has a population of more than 14 million.

Presently, overseas operations, namely Singapore and Brunei, contribute about 15% of revenue.

If this latest venture proves to be successful, the group will consider expanding the Pizza Hut and Ayamas brands to Cambodia as well, Muhammad Ali said.

He noted that besides Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos also did not have the KFC presence.

—————————————

Quiz time, in glorious multiple choice:

Q1:
What typically marks the end of the developing part in the phrase: “A Developing Country” ?

A1:

• The presence of ATM machines.
• The presence of McDonalds burger joints.
• The presence of KTC ehm, restaurants.
• The presence of Pizza Hut huts.
• The presence of 7/11’s.
• The presence of vile & evil companies like, such as, The Royal Group.
• The unlocking of the iPhone.
• None of the above.
• All of the above.

Q2:
What typically marks the end of a country, regardless of its state of development ?

A2:

• See A1.

—————————————

Goddammit.