Still More on Phnom Penh & Cambodia

I'm not sure how they deal with their genocidal past in Camrybodia.  S21/Tuol Sleng where the Khmer Rouge did their photographing and some of their torturing is something of a tourist attraction.  Most of the people I saw visiting inside were foreigners like me but I did see a few locals.  All of the people outside were aggressive beggars waiting to pounce on the foreigners leaving. 

Pol Pot died of old age a free man and his henchmen are either free men or in the current government.  Most of Asia runs on an undercurrent of corruption that would be astonishing by US standards but in Cambodia it's right out there in in the open in such a festering cesspool that even I could smell it.  If a citizen attracts the attention of the Cambodian government and speaks out the government will sue them for defamation, and win.  If you sue them for defamation they'll sue you back for defamation for having sued them and they'll win. 

Another big problem in Cambodia is acid.  They supposedly use it in a process on rubber plantations but it has other more social uses.  Have a grudge against someone?  Just hire some goons, arm them with acid and with just a splash your victim will be taught a lesson they'll never forget (if they live).  Stories like this are easy to find:
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2009102329141/National-news/acid-attack-appeal-scheduled.html
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/selected_features/acid_laced_vengeance.htm

There's a whole network of charities just for acid attack survivors.

Phnom Penh still suffers from the Khmer Rouge period.  Phnom Penh was abandoned for a few years and anyone who knew anything about maintaining it (plumbers, electricians, masons, mechanics, elevator repairmen, traffic engineers and planners, etc) was executed.  Today much of Phnom Penh's houses have no electricity, business all keep generators about the size of a small pickup truck out front or out back.  The country has no electric grid.  The government runs what electricity production and importation (from Thailand & VN) there is and charges at the meter about 4 times what electrical service costs in Thailand & VN but hey, someone has to pay for those $80,000 Lexus SUV's and fenced compounds I saw in Phnom Penh.

I flew to Phnom Penh from Bangkok, Phnom Penh makes Bangkok seem like the city of the future.  Bangkok is still a chaotic but loveable mess of a 3rd world city but it has reliable electricity, well stocked stores, modern rail mass transit, even taxis.  Phnom Penh, a national capital of 2 million has none of these things, not even so much as a city bus.  Gangs of street kids aggressively and persistently beg, in English, to pasty white faced me.  I've read that their money goes to glue and gasoline to sniff.

But for a foreigner like me Phnom Penh was memorable fun.  Good food, dollar beer, lots to see but I stayed in the part of town where the UN and the do-gooder NGO's live.  Parts of Phnom Penh that I saw to and from the airport unfortunately looked like 3rd world hell holes.

Phnom Penh – Where Old Camrys Go to Die

What do you call a country where everything is priced in US dollars, where a beer costs just $1 (.75 during happy hour) but signs in English warn you to not patronize the country’s infamous child sex industry? Here’s a hint, I found it in my hotel room but I’m seeing it all over town:

Cambodia is still recovering from wars involving the United States, its neighbor to the east Vietnam and a civil war which culminated in a genocide that wiped out a generation and targeted anyone with any knowledge (doctors, teachers, engineers) about anything beyond day to day farming and peasantry for death.  2 million Cambodians perished at the hands of their countrymen.

Here's a story that ties obvious corruption and a convicted Russian pedophile in one nasty little package: Pedophile Was Permitted To Leave Prison  Why?  To go visit one of his many investments,of course.

The present government of Cambodia is a corrupt mess but I’m sure that most Cambodians find that preferable to the genocidal government that it replaced.  So Cambodia is a land of dollar beer and no local industry to speak of other than tuk-tuk taxi driving and child prostitution.  So why are the streets choked with Lexus cars, motorbikes and tuk-tuks?  And why are a majority of the cars I see in Phnom Penh Toyotas and why are the lions share of those Lexus SUV’s and Toyota Land Cruisers and Camrys yet there are no Honda Accords (but plenty of Honda CRV’s)?  

But wait, it gets stranger.  The Camrys are all American spec with US 2.5 MPH bumpers and I’d bet every last one of them popped out of Toyota’s assembly plant in Georgetown, Kentucky.  They look very different from the Thai assembled Camrys I saw in Bangkok and that Toyota sells in most of the world outside of North America.  I rode in one from the Phnom Penh airport to my hotel and noticed that the speedo showed MPH, not KPH.  Then I started noticing that some of the Camrys on Phnom Penh’s streets carried stickers on their rumps from dealers in places like Miami, FL and Norman, OK.  A few had California license plates, one a Colorado tag.  I’ve combed through the Internet and other travelers have noticed the dominance of the Camry here but nobody has an explanation why. 

My best guess is that these Camrys were indeed built and bought either new or more likely used in America by Cambodians or Cambodian Americans and sent home to the rest of the family. That would also explain the Toyota Tacomas I’m seeing.  Outside of North America the Toyota pickup is known as the Hi-Lux and I’ve seen a few of those along with a few other North America only models such as the Toyota Matrix.

I have no explanation for all of the Toyota Land Cruisers I see in Phnom Penh in both Toyota and Lexus dress.  Most are late model and the Land Cruiser sells for around $65,000 new in the US, the Lexus variant costs around $76,000.  They have big thirsty V-8’s, all of this in a country with next to no economy and no Lexus dealers.