https://cne.wtf/2019/02/02/the-prince-w ... t-pol-pot/Norodom Chantarangsey was an uncle of Norodom Sihanouk.
By 1973 Chantarangsey had denounced his nephew Sihanouk, renounced his Norodom name, and joined Lon Nol’s anti-royalist army. He was a Brigadier-General, probably the best Lon Nol had. He was also the loosest of loose cannons, carving out his own private kingdom where neither the KR nor Lon Nol dared touch him. The following is from the New York Times, April 1973:
“ONE of the more bizarre characters in the drama is Brig. Gen. Norodom Chantarangsey, who has become a virtually independent warlord astride Highway Four, which leads to the port of Kompong Saom (previously known as Sihanoukville).
As a teen‐ager, Prince Chantarangsey fought the French, later joined the army and attended military academies in Vietnam and France. On his return to Cambodia in 1957, he was put in jail by his uncle, Prince Sihanouk, for suspected disloyalty.
After three years of imprisonment, Chantarangsey was let out, and promptly went into a variety of lucrative business ventures. Eventually, Sihanouk made him a director of the Phnom Penh casino. Like all those involved with this establishment, Chantarangsey made a fortune. When Sihanouk was ousted, Chantarangsey was asked if he would raise a brigade to fight the Cornmunists. He would, and did. Today he commands the 13th Brigade and controls an area of about 200 square miles, with 60 villages and 100,000 people.
“Uneasy about this possible rival, Lon Non has tried to detack some of Chantarangsey’s units for duty elsewhere. Chantarangsey, who has his own dreams for the future, would not allow his force to be chipped away. Under a compromise, the units have been detached on paper, but in fact they remain in Chantarangsey’s feudal fief and under his direct command. The reason Chantarangsey can enjoy such independence—and this is where the corruption comes in—is that he has been using his money to buy American arms from the neighboring generals, and it would not be safe to challenge him.”
How it ended: executed by the Khmer Rouge in April 1975.
Dale of Cambodia.
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That casino is shrouded in distant memory but had a serious impact at the time. As far as I know it was in a building near the Club Nautique, just south of the Cambodiana, next to open water. In the 90s this area was reclaimed to create what is now a rapidly developing area. The casino, along with other ones set up in Kep and on Bokor mountain were desperate attempts to raise capital in a state that had essentially refused US aid and was trying to walk a tightrope between very disparate elements who continued to fund them. The French always stayed in the picture but the Chinese became the main donor to Cambodia's military and civilian infrastructure by the late 60s.Eventually, Sihanouk made him a director of the Phnom Penh casino.
The casinos were disasters anyway. The Kep casino was completely destroyed in an insane night of destruction in 1966, where a mob descended on it and methodically smashed everything, it never re-opened. The Bokor casino was never popular as it was too much trouble to drive up the hill and it was still in living memory that hundreds of workers/ corvée labor had died constructing the road - so it was associated with death rather than luck. The casino in Phnom Penh became notorious for locals losing their properties/ shirts and shoes. So a new directive came in saying nobody could enter without shoes, as this obviously meant they were totally broke. Within no time there were people hiring out shoes on the steps of the casino.
Anyway, great footage, thanks for that.
Romantic Cambodia is dead and gone. It's with McKinley in the grave.
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