CommentaryExpat LifePhnom Penh

Reflections of a Returning Expat

There are a number of aspects of life in Phnom Penh that those living here may take for granted, but which are seen through new eyes once you have been away for a long time. Having recently moved back to Phnom Penh after three years out of the country, I thought I knew what to expect when I returned, but I found there were a few surprising elements of life in Cambodia that it hadn’t occurred to me to consider.

Firstly, the pollution: living in a busy city day-in, day-out, your senses become accustomed to all that Phnom Penh has to throw at you. You barely register the scents that invade your nostrils, let alone stop to think what else is clogging your every breath. But that first tuk-tuk ride into town from the airport reminded me just what kind of environment we’re living in.

As we breathed in the alluring aroma of exhaust fumes, with a (not so) healthy dose of burning garbage and open sewage mixed in, I began to understand why the first reaction of previous visitors to the city had often been to the pollution. Before, I hadn’t batted an eyelid when tuk-tuks would angle themselves as close as possible to whichever large vehicle was spewing fumes in your face; this time, I felt like I could barely breathe. Even the durian smelled acceptable in comparison.

Of course, that didn’t last long. It’s amazing how quickly your lungs acclimatise to constant congestion and short of re-thinking your decision to live here in the first place, there’s isn’t much to be done about it.

A more visible sign of time spent out of the country is the construction explosion that has occurred over the past few years. It’s still Phnom Penh, but leave for too long and you feel like you’re returning to a different city. I’d been expecting a few changes, but I don’t think I had sufficiently prepared myself for the existence of quite so many air-conditioned coffee shops.

For those here permanently, these things are gradual. You become resigned to the endless sounds of construction outside your bedroom window at the crack of dawn. Navigating the streets has always been a challenge, so an extra pile of bricks or truckload of poles is nothing unusual. But still, the development of Phnom Penh seems to be progressing at an alarming rate. You look up one day to find half the buildings around you have sprouted an extra couple of storeys. A friend recently told me they were away for just a month and returned to find new buildings on their street. Imagine the difference when arriving after years – there are parts of the city that now seem unrecognisable.

One part of the city landscape that does appear unchanged is the amount of kids living and working on the streets. Living here often makes you feel somewhat immune to their stares, but do you see them differently when returning from abroad?

Having spent a considerable amount of time in India prior to my last sojourn in Cambodia, I have to admit I was rather hardened to the constant barrage of ‘buy something, two for one dollar’. Upon my return this time, I was fully prepared to be accosted by hoardes of small children vying for my attention when dining in areas like the riverside. I certainly hadn’t been expecting to be startled by this aspect of Phnom Penh, but my reaction actually took me by surprise.

Spending a few years in the relatively sheltered West, where such sights would certainly not be viewed as acceptable, had softened me more than I thought. Remove the frustration of having to deal with a barrage of pleas yet again and it is much easier to see the tired child behind the box of books they are carrying.

This level of sensitivity was something I used to think only afflicted tourists. However, returning has given me a fresh perspective on things I had started to take for granted before, and it will be interesting to see whether time will change this once again.

I have also found that time spent in Phnom Penh can lead to a certain disregard for personal safety. In a city where motorbikes are so commonplace, it’s easy to become blasé about the dangers you face every time you step into the street.

When I lived here before, I would hop on and off motos all the time, completely comfortable with balancing on sideways in a skirt while holding armfuls of shopping bags and listening to the driver chat away on his phone as he drove headlong towards a truck.

But I have to admit that spending time in safety-conscious Europe changes your outlook on these things. Tearing around town on the back of a rental agent’s bike a couple of days after arriving was less of a thrill and more a fear of a rather painful spill. As we charged down Norodom in the middle of rush hour, straight into an afternoon thunderstorm, I watched in terror as my driver alternated between texting on one phone and talking into another while weaving on and off the pavement. Feeling decidedly vulnerable and aware of my mortality, I wondered how on earth I had been so calm about this before.

Despite this, just a few weeks later I found myself embracing the Cambodian philosophy of just going with the flow, regardless of regulations, rainstorms or road closures. I’m just doing it with a decent helmet on my head this time round.

All in all, returning to Phnom Penh is a curious mixture of revisiting the old and exploring the new, much like the city itself. Look at your feet and you see the same crazy streets, but lift your eyes to the skyline and it’s clear that things are changing fast. Cambodia is a place to expect the unexpected; I guess the most important thing is to never take anything here too much for granted.

Jenny Conrad

6 thoughts on “Reflections of a Returning Expat

  • yep. first time I went was early 2009. just visited again and came back mid 2013.
    there are new bridges, apartment complexes, skyscrapers, expanded airport. crazy

    Reply
  • lady, you are way to self-absorbed and your article reflects this. as you begin to consider things other than yourself your writing will improve as well. context matters

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  • I think you write very well. I enjoyed reading your article.

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  • Vannareth

    Good writing. I myself find it hard to digest the many terrible things in this city. The worst is the pollution: visual, aural and environmental. I said so as a Cambodian who lived abroad too long.

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  • stonefruit

    When I first arrived in 2005, I was

    1) absolutely mesmerized but what was by far the weirdest and most unique country among the 30ish I had already been to even by then,

    2) mesmerized by the chance to spend a substantial length of time learning about a country with some of the most interesting history in the world,

    3) everything was dirt cheap,

    4) eager to assess on a visceral daily basis the impact of what was by far the most bizarre humanitarian disaster of the 20th century,

    5) eager to gain my first bit of teaching experience and sincerely eager to rebuild the intellectual infrastructure shattered by this disaster, simply from a humanitarian perspective,

    6) in love with the incredibly free, “libertarian,” generally “live and let live” culture (especially for expats),

    7) captivated by the Xanadu/pleasure dome quality of the place (which was also dirt cheap), and

    8) enthusiastic as hell to investigate the substantial expat community, which had tons of some of the weirdest, most interesting, and colorful characters I had ever met in my life.

    On the other hand, now:

    1) It is still relatively weird and unique, but very rapidly becoming much, much less so, as it westernizes and gets more prosperous at a rapid rate of speed. Now, everyone has smart phones and aspires to the most banal consumerism and all the rest of the stuff the rest of the world typically wants, but that I myself have never really cared about. Fair enough, they had it hard, really hard, and everyone everywhere deserves all the comfort and convenience they feel they need and can afford. But, overall, it is rapidly starting to make Phnom Penh physically look and psychically feel pretty much just like everywhere else on the planet.

    2) I am no longer “mesmerized by the chance to spend a substantial length of time learning about a country with some of the most interesting history in the world,” Mainly, because I have now learned most of it. From the Khmer Empire’s mighty rise and tragic fall, their ongoing hassles over many long centuries with Thailand, Vietnam, and the Chams, the French period, the wild political goings-on in the post World War II era, the tremendous struggles faced by the various political opposition groups during that same period, the incredibly vibrant cultural flowering during the Lon Nol period, the Lon Nol coup itself, the incredibly tragic secret bombing planned by Nixon and Kissinger (which probably provided the final push of the Khmer Rouge into power), obviously the Khmer Rouge period itself (in depth), the Vietnamese invasion, the “wild, wild west” period for many years after the installation of Hun Sen, and the country’s slow recovery since then, which is rapidly gaining speed. That is obviously not everything, which I can’t know and never will, and certainly others know quite a lot more about it than I do, but it is a lot, and I think I have gotten the gist of it by now.

    3) Nothing is dirt cheap anymore and prices on virtually everything have skyrocketed, just in the 8 years I have been coming here. A much larger version of the room at the place I am staying at now was 180 USD/month in 2005; now it is 400 and while nicer, much smaller. A meal that would cost 1 USD in Thailand (and be way tastier) costs 4-5 USD here now. If you want western food, what would have been 2-3 USD even a few years ago, is now 5-6 USD. Etc. etc., right down the line. I mean sure, there are tons of hard-core local places where you can get full for maybe 1.5 USD even today, but they are not always the tastiest (certainly not when compared to Thailand, especially) and, frankly, I don’t want to eat that kind of food every day, and it really still only saves me 3-4 USD on a meal.

    4) In my four visits over 8 years, an entire year of my life has been spent here, when you add all up. After all of that exposure to Cambodia , I have “thoroughly assessed on a visceral daily basis the impact of what was by far the most bizarre humanitarian disaster of the 20th century, and its overall impact” and it is still, often, simply just emotionally exhausting, when you get right down to it. The other impacts are many but the saddest and most obvious one is that so many of the people unfortunately remain as stupid as a sack of hammers and I think it will take Cambodia another 30 years to recover, simply to get back to the vibrancy of the 1970-1975 Lon Nol era, let alone arrive at whatever the reigning contemporary, international standards of intellectual, cultural, and economic life are at any given time. There also remains a strange “hauntedness” among many people, even to this day, especially among those over, say, roughly, 50 years of age, who probably did and had done to them things of such cruelty and bizarreness that the average westerner could barely comprehend it (a “hauntedness” which is doubtless is a significant source of the emotional exhaustion I sometimes feel here). Other impacts, obviously, include corruption being off the scale, an ongoing huge disparity of wealth (that might even be getting worse in spite of the growth of a so-called “middle class”), a tremendous sense of entitlement among the elite, that exceeds what I have seen in every other of the very many countries I have been to, and on ongoing bit of skittishness among a significant segment of the population. And the crowing irony is, of course, that the country has been ruled since 1980 primarily by ex-Khmer Rouge installed by Vietnam. Of course, there are other impacts, but you get the drift.

    5) “I was eager to gain my first bit of teaching experience and sincerely eager to rebuild the intellectual infrastructure shattered by this disaster” Well, I did gain my first teaching experience here and am poised to gain a little more and I am grateful for that. Even though, as many intellectual snobs – and perhaps professional people with an especially practical and mercenary streak – often say, “teaching in Cambodia is not exactly a resume builder.’” Kai said it in Thailand two months ago. And, as much as this offends me, there is probably also some significant truth to it as well. I have been proud of and humbled by the opportunity to have actually have done something concrete to help rebuild the “shattered intellectual infrastructure,” but I am not a saint. My altruism has it limits and I think I have done my time. And the overall process of intellectual rebuilding will take decades. And I sure as shit ain’t waiting around here that long.

    6) The “incredibly free, ‘libertarian,’ generally ‘live and let live’ culture (especially for expats)” still does exist. In many ways, I would argue that, ironically, in a dictatorship, for expats, this is arguably the freest country in the world, a world plummeting headlong towards technotronic fascism. This remains one of Cambodia’s best features and begs the question, “well, if I losing faith with Cambodia, and I fear and hate the rapid onslaught of technotronic fascism, then where the hell else do I go?” Frankly, I don’t have a good answer for that. Or even really one at all. This is a source of grave and immediate concern.

    7) I was “captivated by the Xanadu/pleasure dome quality of the place (which was also dirt cheap).” This too still exists, and remains one of the few things that does also still remain dirt cheap as well. But, frankly, the older I get, the less I care about this. Especially at the level of wild excess because one “can” and it is “cheap,” therefore one does. This no longer appeals to me. And the bar girls, in 2005, I was naïve enough to think that while, sure, they wanted some money, but there was also real affection and tenderness involved. I am sure that if someone who spoke Khmer, was polite, smiled a lot, spread around an adequate amount of bread, then actual affection and tenderness could emerge, even among the bar girls. But, basically, I realize now, that while of course there are “shades of gray,” and a broad spectrum in the raunchiness or decorum of the girlie bars, in essence, virtually of these girls are businesswomen, which few other options in life, seeking as much money as they can as quickly as they can while they still look good, and ideally catch a well-healed foreigner as a sugar daddy. I have talked to a lot of expats about this and by far the most common anecdote I hear on this topic, after “they are just in it for the money, so be careful” is “yeah, I know most of them are just in it for the money but my girl is different” and this always comes from veteran expats, many of whom even speak Khmer, have been here for years, and should know better – and the girl turns out not be different! I can’t tell you how many times I have heard that one. I had two girls last December (for life experience and scientific research purposes) and basically just found it sad and a bit creepy.

    8) While the “substantial expat community” certainly “had tons of some of the weirdest, most interesting, colorful characters I had ever met in my life” back in 2005, and to some extent still does, far, far less than it used to. Many have gotten local wives or girlfriends and are out and about far less than before, or have just simply become a lot less wild and crazy guys after becoming family men, or have moved on to other locations, or have lost significant steam. Or perhaps even more than a few have also just croaked. I see a lot more of just simply elderly white men lately (who I think it is probably safe to say are just garden variety short-term sex tourists and not real semi- to long-term expats) than a wide variety of “wild and crazy” expats from all over the world with amazing attitudes, exuberances, and extremely compelling stories of life and adventure to tell. Also, as Phnom Penh and Cambodia continues to explode in importance and volume of traffic on the ever-increasing twentysomething backpacker route through southeast Asia, these people too are obviously not “wild and crazy” expats but simple (and often unusually smug) tourists who are not that interesting, just in Phnom Penh for a few days before they wander off to their next destination, and this is a major change in the scene as well. I have only been in Phnom Penh this time for a month so far, and have been very busy with job related stuff, but, frankly, it seems like the “wild and crazy” expat scene is teetering on the brink of extinction. Which is a real heartbreaker.

    Having said all that, it is not all gloom and doom. Phnom Penh is rapidly emerging as a “foodie” city, with an ever increasing amount of restaurants on the higher end, in a variety of world cuisines, which was not something I expecting to see happen, certainly not as quickly as it has, but it has arrived, quite strongly. Unfortunately, while the quality and variety appear to be quite good, the prices are basically Western. So I can’t even afford to check out the only real improvement in this town since I first came.

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    • I understand how you feel. You feel sorry for the effect of globalization into the country. Yet, to me, while it is sad to get rid of the past, I think good for the people here to get the balance between what is happening in the country as well as the world. As a young generation who was born 10 years after the Khmer Rogue, I as well as other young Cambodians, never feel sorry much to ourselves. And I strongly believe about the future of the country because more people are educated (though there are still problem in the rural area). Well, we, you, they did built Rome in two days. I understand the feeling when I visited Hanoi. I felt sorry for the people here during Vietnamese War, but actually they younger generation remember very little things about it. Then I reflected to myself that actually I didn’t remember much about the Khmer Rogue. And Cambodia and Vietnam are so much more than the war as people from the West think. We have thousand years of memory to recall and forget. All the best. 🙂 x

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