The Walkabout Joker Draw is now in Week 40. Friday night’s possible jackpot will be $7,924.

There are 14 face down cards remaining. One of those cards is the jackpot-winning Joker. Two of those cards are Aces that win a moto.

Recent ticket sales data is as follows:

Week Thirty Seven – 694 tickets sold
Week Thirty Eight – 822 (+128 increase from prior week)
Week Thirty Nine – 982 (+160)

I estimate that Friday night there will be 1,195 tickets sold and placed in the Walkabout drum (a +213 ticket increase from last week). Maybe fewer if it rains. Maybe more if that crap band is playing over at Black Cat.

This means that the odds of a patron winning the $7,924 jackpot with a single $1 ticket on Friday will be approximately 1 in 16,730 (i.e., 1/1,195 x 1/14 = 1/16,730). The “expected return” on each $1 ticket purchased, factoring in the value of the two Aces remaining, will be roughly 57 cents.

If you read my article last week, you may notice that this week’s odds of winning and expected return are worse than last week’s. Even though this week’s jackpot is higher, entering the drawing this week will undoubtedly be a suckier gambling proposition than it was last week.

You may be asking “Why have the odds of winning and expected return gotten worse, if there are now fewer face down cards remaining and a higher jackpot?” Here is why. As the jackpot has risen over $6,000, ticket sales have rapidly and irrationally increased, while the chances of someone pulling the Joker have only marginally improved.

Three weeks ago, the bar sold 694 tickets, with the lucky ticket holder having a 1 in 17 (5.9%) chance of turning over the Joker and winning the $6,675 jackpot. This week, the bar will sell about 72% more tickets than it did three weeks ago, making the chances of having your own ticket called much, much lower.

Meanwhile, this week’s lucky ticket holder will have only a slightly better 1 in 14 (7.1%) chance of turning over the Joker. Also, though there will be far more tickets in the drum this week than there were three weeks ago, the jackpot will be only 19% higher ($7,924 this week vs. $6,675 three weeks ago).

For all of these reasons, I can’t recommend wasting your precious beer or hooker money on Walkabout Joker Draw tickets this week. But if you want to hang out in the bar and try the “Deal or No Deal” gambit when someone else’s ticket number is called, go ahead and offer that lucky bastard up to $600 for the called ticket.

The actual “value” of the called ticket will be $680, as it gives the holder a 7.1% chance of drawing the $7,924 Joker (an opportunity worth $566) plus a 14.3% chance of drawing one of the two Aces (an opportunity worth $114 if each moto is valued at $800). Just try not to get punched if you win.

Good luck!

GavinMac

I’ve got a Dutch expat friend who has a rather novel idea for dealing with what he calls the “scourge of tuk tuks in Cambodia”.

“They should do what they do in Tunisia!” he says. “Ban them from even talking to the tourists – they can only speak to you if you speak to them first. It’s brilliant!”

It seems pretty extreme to me, even by Muslim country standards. But you can’t help agreeing with the sentiment to some extent. Talk to most expats or tourists, and they’ll say that one of the main detractions of this beautiful country is the continual gauntlet of pestering tuk tuk drivers trying to make a fast buck.

I once walked down the riverside in Phnom Penh and was bombarded by 17 “tuk tuk sirs” in the space of 50 yards. I know because I counted. They could see I’d just been asked several times in the space of a few feet, but the next ones asked anyway. With the heat and the traffic, and the piled-up tuk tuks, mopeds and Land Cruisers blocking every pavement, it’s enough to test the patience of even the most modest and saintly person.

But Siem Reap is the worst place for it. It makes no difference how long you’ve lived in town. There are hundreds of them around the Old Market area hissing “skunk”, “cocaine”, “massage”, “boom boom” and then giggling at your answers like a pack of hyenas. It can be quite intimidating at times, other times it’s just intensely irritating.

Sometime ago they banned tuk tuks from entering Pub Street at night. But although it means it’s about the only part of town you can walk through without navigating your way through the inch-wide gaps between prowling tuk tuks, it makes little difference. They just park their contraptions round the corner and clap their hands at you as soon as you leave – or look as though you’re about to leave – a bar or restaurant.

I hate it when they clap their hands. A friend came to visit me recently and was shocked at my general apathy towards taxi drivers.

“I think you should spend a week on a Buddhist retreat,” he said to me at one point.

He said he felt sorry for them and all they were doing was trying to feed their families. I said I’d have a lot more sympathy if they didn’t try to scalp you because you’ve got a white face. When you find out the prices the locals pay it makes your blood boil. I once spent a morning travelling around on a tuk tuk with a hard-dealing Vietnamese shop-owner. We must have driven 20km, stopping at various stores for supplies. At the end, the bill came to 10,000 riel. So you can imagine my rage the next day when a tuk tuk driver demanded $10 for a fare that was barely a tenth of the distance.

My friend is right, of course – I should be more tolerant. But the simple truth is not everyone can be a tuk tuk driver – there are not enough fares to go round as it is. And as each new crop appears, the incessant badgering is just going to get worse.

There should be a limit on tuk tuk numbers. It would be quite easy to police. You can’t just buy a tuk tuk and set yourself up on a corner shouting “skunk” at tourists, and demanding extortionate fares for a short trip up the road. Drivers have to pay $5 a year to the Government for a licence, and on top of this, depending on the allotted pitch, a fee of about $10 a month to the local tuk tuk guild – an amount that drivers can recoup by getting between $5 and $10 a month advertising a business on their back-board. I imagine if officials started putting limits on tuk tuk numbers, it would get strong support from existing drivers, not to mention the expats and tourists slowly being driven to madness.

It’s no surprise to see nearly every tourist in Siem Reap riding a bicycle these days. I’m surprised the tuk tuks aren’t going round with screwdrivers bursting tyres, they must be so livid at the sight. But if they only charged a reasonable fare, and you weren’t forced to go into a ridiculous haggling process every time you want a ride, they might get more trade.

It happened to me when I was cycling back from Angkor Thom one evening. There was a huge cloudburst and the road was soon a foot deep in water. Eventually I pulled over as a tuk tuk drew up beside me. We tied my bike to the back with rope, zipped up the tarpaulin, and then he hit me with the price.

“$15 to go back to the old market?!” I yelled at him, pointing out that it was normally $3 or $4 at most.

He looked out at the road, and smiled. “It’s raining,” he said.

As I say, I have to keep remembering to take a deep breath and remind myself that they’re only trying to feed their families, and I shouldn’t really blame them for trying it on. But whenever the 20th tuk tuk driver claps his hands at me in the space of a few yards, sometimes I can’t help wondering whether they’ve got it right in Tunisia.

Alex Watts

My nine-month quest to learn how to cook Cambodian food hasn’t been an easy one. There are only a few decent cookbooks on the subject, and even they’re filled with contradictions, making it even harder to get to the bottom of what is undoubtedly one of the world’s most overlooked cuisines.

You might have thought I’d lost a bet when I set out to do this, especially as I can only speak a few words of Khmer, or at least ones that are understood. But I really wanted to go somewhere that hasn’t been done to death. I’ve always loved Indian food, for instance, and haven’t been helped by the fact that there are a few very good Indian restaurants out here, when I should have been researching the local delicacies, but the world hardly needs another book or blog on Indian food.

But saying that, given that Cambodian cuisine was heavily influenced by the cooking of early Indian traders, and then much later by Cham Muslim, Vietnamese, and Chinese immigrants and invaders, and then French imperialists, whose only legacy in this beautiful country seems to be the humble baguette, it’s impossible to know where one food starts and another ends.

Take ‘loc lac’ for instance (beef steak stir-fried in oyster sauce and ketchup). It’s easily the second most famous Cambodian dish after the repulsive unofficial national dish of amok. It’s on every menu, even in places that do actually serve proper traditional dishes. But it’s undoubtedly Vietnamese – even the name is Vietnamese.

And calling it ‘English loc lac’ with the courtesy of a fried egg on top is just ridiculous – and shows just how unconfident Cambodians are about their food, and how reluctantly they reveal the real, pongy, delicious stuff that they hide near the ruins at Angkor Wat.

Talk to one chef, and they’ll say one thing, talk to another and they’ll say something else. Some will point out how the Khmer Empire ruled Thailand for hundreds of years, and gave its food as much as it took, and that tom yam soup is actually Cambodian. While others claim amok is a Thai dish.

No-one seems to be in agreement about anything. And it isn’t helped by the fact that it’s virtually impossible to find traditional ethnic Khmer food in Cambodia, and even when you do, it’s stuffed full of MSG and drenched in horrible bottled sauces.

You can still find it in the countryside, passed from mother to daughter in homes and a few restaurants and street stalls, as I’ve written about in the past. But I knew my quest wouldn’t be complete without visiting Joannès Rivière (pic above) – a chef widely seen as one of the world’s leading experts on Cambodian cuisine.

The Frenchman, who worked as a food consultant for Rick Stein when he visited the country for one of his programmes, has been shining the path in the Cambodian culinary capital of Siem Reap for the past nine years. Chefs and food writers kept telling me that what he doesn’t know about Cambodian food can be written on a 100 riel note.

I was convinced Rivière was the man to talk to, even if he was only going to dispel a few of my theories, and even more so when celebrity chef Raymond Blanc heaped huge praise on him last month during a visit to Cuisine Wat Damnak.

“Oh mon Dieu, this man can cook, he is blessed!” Blanc wrote on his blog after trying his Cambodian tasting menu.

The menu certainly sounded interesting – an amuse bouche of green mango salad; fresh rice flake pancake with prawn, smoked fish and aubergine puree; pan-fried chlang (an eel-like fish from the nearby Tonle Sap lake) with crisp vegetables and hyacinth blossom; quail curry with pumpkin and long beans; and a sticky rice crème brûlée.

“Those moments are rare when you know that you are in the presence of a very gifted craftsman,” added Blanc. “Remember this name: Joannès Rivière.”

That was it – I had to meet the man. I caught a bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, and was about to give the chef a call when I got embroiled in a couple of news stories. Two weeks later, I rang and he told me to come round the next day.

I walked along the dusty, crater-filled side streets near Wat Damnak temple, a mile or so from town, and then spotted the restaurant’s blue logo. The place had been converted from a traditional Khmer house, with a large kitchen extension at the back, and was set in a beautiful garden.

Rivière emerged from the kitchen with fat beads of sweat rolling down his forehead. He gestured me to a seat flanked by herb pots and we shared two bottles of ice cold water as the midday sun beat down.

He was good company, and very self-effacing given his credentials. You only had to look at him to see he had cooking and restaurants in his blood. He grew up working in his family’s small restaurant in Roanne, in the Loire region of France, and then went to chef school for three years before working as a pastry chef in Nantucket and Philadelphia.

He then decided he needed a change of scene and moved to Cambodia, working as a volunteer for two years teaching impoverished kids cooking and hospitality skills at the French NGO-run Sala Bai Hotel School in Siem Reap.

But savings don’t last forever, however much Buddha’s on your side, and he spent the next five years as executive chef of one of the northern city’s most prestigious venues, Hotel de la Paix, launching its renowned Cambodian degustation menu. In April last year, during Cambodia’s hottest month, and at the beginning of the low season, he and his wife Carole opened Cuisine Wat Damnak “with the aim of serving delicious and imaginative Cambodian food to locals, expats and travellers alike”. They also had a baby.

“It wasn’t a very clever idea,” chuckles Rivière, rubbing his eyes. “I wouldn’t recommend to have a baby and open a restaurant at the same time. It’s extremely tiring! You finish work at midnight and then you have to wake up at 6am, and it’s like this every single day!”

It wasn’t the most auspicious start. Business was fairly slow, and then he was hit by last year’s severe flooding and had to close for two months. But the word slowly got round as foodie tourists and expats and rich Khmers from Phnom Penh flocked to see a Frenchman showcasing traditional Cambodian recipes using seasonal fish, fruit and vegetables that are nearly impossible to source.

“I wanted to open a restaurant like you would in France or England by focusing on the products, which is actually very rarely the case in Cambodia. So I base all the recipes on that. If I find a good fish then we change the menu, and put the fish on the menu,” he says.

ivière built up a network of local suppliers, getting freshwater fish from the Tonle Sap and pigs from farms near the world-famous temples of Angkor Wat. “The two good meats in Cambodia are fish and pork,” he explains. “If you can get Cambodian pork – because 70% of the pork here is imported from Vietnam, and is industrially farmed.”

The beautifully-white local pig meat is showcased in dishes like braised pork shank with star anis, caramelised palm sugar, fresh bamboo shoots, and crispy trotter. But it’s the freshwater fish he’s most proud of – a food that he says truly defines Cambodian cuisine.

“There are very, very good freshwater fish here. The Tonle Sap is actually the second biggest source of freshwater fish in the world after the Amazon, and because the ecosystem is so unique there is a variety of fish of all types.”

There are two fish on that day. Kay, which is originally from the Danube, but was introduced to Cambodia to help boost fish stocks. “They’re very, very bad in Europe – they taste like shit. But here they’re very good. They’re one of the best fish from the lake,” he says. It’s served as a fillet with tamarind reduction and pounded ambarella (golden apple).

The other is sanday (butter catfish), a big, torpedo-shaped predator with a large mouth and small tail that migrates between the Mekong and Tonle Sap. He serves that in a yellow curry sauce with green jackfruit.

Both are highly prized by Cambodians, and fetch high prices at the market, where Rivière, 32, follows the French tradition of shopping every morning for that night’s menu. With some foods only available for a month or two every year, he creates a new menu every week. But he’s given up describing his food as “local and seasonal”, cringing at the Noma-fuelled cliché it’s become.

“Everyone says that now,” he chuckles. “Now we say we choose premium products that happen to be seasonal…”

His food will dash any preconceptions about Cambodian food – or at least what most people think is Cambodian food – being bland and uninteresting. It’s piquantly flavoured with herbs, fish paste, fish sauce, and fermented soy beans. He’s a big fan of bold flavours like Cambodia’s famous fish ‘cheese’ prahok, and its more expensive sister maam, which is milder and more refined, if you can describe rotten fish that way, because it’s made using a different fermentation process.

He runs off to the kitchen and brings back a Tupperware box full of maam (pic above), which he will bake that night with minced pork and egg, and serve with herbs, flowers and local crudités.
“I always get it from the same supplier. She makes it for me without colour or MSG. The fish is salted for 24 hours then stacked in a jar with salted rice and galangal, and stored for one month until it becomes sour,” he says. “I don’t invent anything, I just use local products, and use quite traditional combinations, and then the technique and the presentation are definitely French.”

Another thing that differentiates his food is coriander. He doesn’t use it. It’s hard to find, because like carrots, potatoes, and onions, it doesn’t grow well in Cambodia. Instead, most restaurants use culantro, or lawn parsley, a coriander-tasting, jagged-toothed herb originally from the Caribbean (pic above). But he doesn’t use that either because he says it was brought here by Chinese immigrants, and you generally don’t find it in traditional Cambodian dishes.

Confusingly though, he does use ‘local thyme’ (chir slokkrahs, or pig’s ear – pic below), even though it’s another herb from the Caribbean. It’s a common fragrance often used in traditional Cambodian beef and tripe recipes, he explains. I don’t push the point any further.

He shows me the kitchen, pointing out the foot-high flood mark on the wooden door frame. It’s a lovely, airy space built on to the back of the house. When I mention how much it must have cost him, he just shrugs: “I have to spend 14 hours a day in here, so I want it to be a nice place.”

He leads me into a side chamber where a girl is prepping frogs for his pan-fried frog meat on a dry Vietnamese soup dish. Hang on – Vietnamese? I’m confused already. They have a short conversation in Khmer. From what I can tell she’s not too happy because the frogs aren’t as big as the last batch.

He leads me back into the main kitchen and proudly shows me the chicken stock simmering on the stove (pics below and above). He starts off by frying prahok paste, and then adds water, barbecued chicken, plenty of lemon grass stalks, lime leaves, and several heads of garlic, which will be carefully peeled and used as a garnish. The sour soup is then served with straw mushrooms, potulac, holy basil, and local thyme on the $17 five-course tasting menu.

Next to it is a tray of aubergines grilled to black. They’ll be made into a paste with ground smoked fish (pic below) to go with the fresh rice flake pancake. In the fridge is a bowl of chocolate and holy basil ganache, which is served on the second tasting menu, a six-courser for $24, with rice praline and salted caramel sheet.

I can tell from his passion, the presentation of the dishes, the quality of his ingredients, and the incredible smells why Blanc was so impressed – the fellow Frenchman describing his food as having “supreme command in the spicing, warm in the mouth, long flavours so perfect, complex but no sophistication: simply delicious.”

I ask him about the TV chef’s visit, but Rivière just shrugs.

“I knew his name but I wasn’t very familiar with his restaurant or anything. The chef from La Residence called me and said I want to book a table for Raymond Blanc – and I was fully booked. And he said ‘Oh come on, it’s Raymond Blanc!’ So we found him a table at the back in a dark corner of the terrace so he wouldn’t see too much,” he laughs.

Afterwards, Blanc asked for a tour of the kitchen and shook hands with the staff. He was intrigued by one of the dishes – ‘soup outside the pot’ – a vibrant, green dish of raw herbs and vegetables which at the last minute has broth made from dried fish and spices poured over it.

“He said I’ve never had such a thing before, this is genius! But it’s not something I invented, it’s very, very, traditional. Cambodians will put grated boiled eggs in it to thicken it up, but we don’t because it looks quite ugly…”

I ask whether it’s possible that Cambodia might be on its way to its first big restaurant award, given Blanc’s hyperbole, and the painfully-trendy vogue for locally-picked weeds, but Rivière just laughs in his usual modest manner.

“It’s not me who’d going to decide that,” he says.

Then I ask if I can do a day in his kitchen as part of the interview. He looks less surprised than reluctant. Then he suggests I meet him at the market at 7.45 on Wednesday morning and we take it from there…

Alex Watts

This article was first posted on the excellent Chef Sandwich blog.

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“So you wanna come over to my place for a treatment?” The towering, barefoot man with a bed sheet wrapped around his waist drawled (henceforth known as ‘The Shaman’). The Tiger Lady was perched on her wooden platform at the side of the dirt road, her usual cackle on hold while she watched this negotiation with curiosity and suspicion.

We were in a village near the Bakong temple outside Siem Reap, where I was staying at a yoga retreat center. “Oh, this is my Indian garb,” he said, noticing my noticing of his attire, clearly a much better way of putting it.

The Shaman was a spiritual healer fresh from stints in Brazil, India and the Himalayas, though was born in that Mecca of spiritual energy that is Brooklyn, New York. He had been wearing actual clothes (Western garb) when I met him the day before, and had regaled me with tales of his exploits and travels, and what brought him to Cambodia (a bus).

As I was staring at him trying to count the number of things wrong with this picture (did I mention he had a recent major head injury that had left him unconscious for 2 weeks?), a tourist rode by on a bicycle. “Hey, how you doing,” The Shaman called to the tourist, who scowled and muttered a string of expletives, and peddled faster.

Suddenly I was indignant – who was this backpacker to judge anyone, with his fisherman pants and money belt – he was probably just fresh from an orphanage tour or slum visit. I turned back to my new friend / healer / fellow-Brooklynite, “Let’s do it.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I am a hardcore needle junkie, and can’t go more than a month without a fix. Acupuncture is an ancient healing practice originating in China that has exploded in popularity in the West. Its devotees seek it out to treat pain, stress, infertility, and a host of medical problems.

If you have a specific complaint – a strained muscle, headaches, etc. it is probably easier for the practitioner to diagnose. “I like it and it makes me feel good,” is the best reason I can write down on the form as to why I’ve shown up at their office, so practitioners usually have difficulty coming up with a treatment plan for me, but they do their best.

The initial exam includes testing your pulse and a thorough examination of your tongue (Is it white? Glossy? Are there bite marks?), all of which hold clues as to how your internal organs are functioning. Then they’ll press down on your stomach in various points around your belly button to see if there’s any pain in the internal organs.

If you’re needle-phobic, this definitely isn’t for you, as the thought of being used as a human pincushion is probably your worst nightmare. But it doesn’t hurt. You feel a tiny prick when the needle goes in, but then it fades. That’s when the fun starts. My visit with the Shaman took place in his living room, where I stretched out on a low wooden bed with a thin mattress.

After the exam and interview (basic health and lifestyle questions) he got to work. I had needles in the crook of my elbows, the webbing between my thumb and pointer finger, outside my wrist, at the sides of my knees and shins and one in my sternum. When he placed the one in the webbing between my big and second toe, I jumped 10 feet in the air, which has happened before. He explained that’s a tough spot to get right and usually means the needle has hit a nerve. After he adjusted it slightly it felt much better.

When he was done sticking me he left and went into the other room. I laid back and experienced an intense surging through my whole body, everything humming like I was plugged into a giant electric socket. I would periodically black out, my eyelids fluttering closed, then come to again.

I heard music, saw things floating above the bed, had strange half-awake dreams about people and things from my past, but I never felt completely awake or asleep. The energy would flow in waves up and down my body, then subside, then come back. Sometimes there was something close to pain, like an all-over burning feeling, but it never quite reached that level, it was more like very strong sensation. None of this was unpleasant, just very, very intense.

After 20 or 30 minutes he came back and removed the needles and gave me some water as I shakily sat up. I told him everything I had experienced, and he confirmed what others have told me, that most people don’t react quite that strongly. The effects (at least for me) were intense.

It felt like my whole body had been rebooted and refreshed, and my brain felt incredibly clear and at peace. I felt good but woozy for several hours after, and very sensitive to light, sound, color – basically any stimuli. Any kind of stress or anxiety evaporated and I felt bright, alive, focused. You can see the appeal. For those of you into drugs, I highly recommend it as it’s a high with no come-down.

After watching me stumble out of his house and wandering down the road to the yoga center, the Tiger Lady would no longer look at or acknowledge me, and (I’m guessing) yelled at her kids not to talk to me since the chorus of hellos quieted down (Tiger Lady is an old woman with a giant mane of curly grey/yellow hair and no teeth whatsoever who runs a little roadside food stand and lays on her side on a wooden table cackling all day. I would miss her friendship, but, well, not really. I was glad I had seen The Shaman.).

The Shaman lives in Siem Reap, and kookiness aside he has an amazing touch and his clients speak very highly of him. Here in Phnom Penh there is a Korean doctor on Street 334 between Street 63 and Monivong. His shoulder-length bleached blonde hair makes him look like a mix between a kindly grandmother and an aging punk rocker, but he is very good, and a bargain at $15/session. Then there is the Dutch man who has a physiotherapy practice, who is also excellent but slightly more expensive.

If you have contacts in the Chinese community there are a lot more practitioners, but I’ve been told they don’t speak English, so it would be difficult to conduct a session. If the thought of having acupuncture in Cambodia is frightening – and everything with the word Cambodian in front of it is more frightening: elective surgery, bikini wax – the practitioners listed above are all highly trained and qualified. Give it a go – what’s the worst that could happen?

Pajama Moto

Excitement is building once again for Friday’s Walkabout Joker Draw. The promotion is now in its 39th consecutive week without a winner. The jackpot is up to a healthy $7,433. That’s a lot of money. It would cover the rent for more than four years for an English teacher’s dingy, torture chamber-looking apartment.

As most Phnom Penh barflies know, the Walkabout Joker Draw begins with 53 playing cards placed face down on a board that is locked and mounted under glass in the Walkabout Bar. One of those 53 cards is a Joker. The bar puts up an initial $500 jackpot amount during Week One.

Starting with the Friday of Week One, the bar sells numbered drawing tickets for $1 each and places the ticket stubs in a drum. At about 9 p.m., a single ticket is pulled from the drum and the number of the ticket is called out.

If your ticket number is called, you win . . . well, nothing yet. As the holder of the called ticket, you are given the opportunity to turn over one of the face down cards from the board. If you turn over the Joker, you win the posted jackpot. Hooray! If you turn over any other card, you lose.

If the holder of the called ticket turns over any card other than the Joker, that losing card is placed face up in the display case for all to see, and the case is locked up again. The game then continues to Week Two the following Friday with a new drawing and only 52 face down cards. If nobody wins, it continues to Week Three with only 51 face down cards remaining. And so on.

The bar keeps 50% of all the ticket sales proceeds to “cover expenses,” and the remaining 50% of the proceeds is placed back into the ever-increasing jackpot for the following week. Play continues from week to week, with the jackpot increasing each week, and the number of remaining face down cards decreasing, until some lucky bastard pulls the joker and wins the jackpot.

Sometimes the game ends after just a few weeks, with someone turning over the Joker when the jackpots are quite small (under $1,000). But from January 2009 through January 2010, there was an epic run where the Walkabout Joker Draw ran for the full 53 consecutive weeks, with the Joker being the last (53rd) card turned over. The jackpot that was ultimately paid out was $24,586.

Whenever someone wins a Joker Draw jackpot, a new deck is cracked open, 53 new cards are placed face down under the glass, and the game begins again with a new “Week One” drawing and a new $500 jackpot offered by the bar. The Walkabout also promises a $500 “party” for everyone in the bar whenever somebody wins the jackpot. The $500 party is of no consequence to the bettor, except that it removes the peer pressure of spending some of your winnings buying drinks for all of your new freeloading best friends.

Notably, the Walkabout used to start Week One with a $1,000 jackpot donated by the house, but with no guaranteed party. It was expected that if you won a huge jackpot, you would throw some money around for drinks. Then in March 2005, a chubby Welshman won $8,100 and didn’t buy anyone a single drink. The balloon chasers were outraged, and the mandatory $500 party was born.

How to Calculate Your Expected Return on a $1 Ticket

In determining whether and when to play the Walkabout Joker Draw, there are three variables that a smart gambler will consider: (a) the number of tickets that will be in the drum, (b) the number of face down cards left on the board, and (c) the amount of the jackpot. If you know or can estimate these three variables, you can quickly calculate whether the game is worth playing that week.

The number of tickets in the drum determines the odds of having your ticket called. The number of face down cards left on the board determines your odds of turning over the Joker if you have the called ticket.

So, to determine your overall odds of winning the jackpot with a single ticket purchased, you simply multiply the number of tickets in the drum by the number of face down cards left on the board. If there are two hundred tickets in the drum and ten face down cards on the board, your odds of winning the jackpot will be (1 in 200) x (1 in 10) = a 1 in 2,000 chance of winning the jackpot. Got it?

Once you determine your chance of winning, it’s easy to determine how smart a bet it is. Look at the total amount of the jackpot. Is the dollar amount of the jackpot more than or less than your odds of winning with a $1 ticket? If the jackpot amount is a lot less than your odds of winning the jackpot with a $1 ticket, this is a sucker’s bet.

Most casino games of chance have an expected return of about 95 cents to 99 cents for each dollar played. If you see a sign that says “97% payback on slots,” that means that the expected return for every $1 played is 97 cents. The “house edge” will be 3%. There are some really poor-value casino games that have expected returns of under 95 cents on each dollar wagered. Double zero roulette, for example, has a “house edge” of 5.36%, or an expected return to the bettor of 94.74 cents for every dollar wagered. Not very good. Roulette, particularly double zero roulette, is kind of a sucker’s game.

Ideally, you want to place wagers that have an expected return of close to 100%, or, better yet, more than 100%. If a $1 wager has an expected return of more than $1, that means the odds are in your favor and that, statistically speaking, wagering should be a profitable venture in the long run.

This Friday’s Drawing: The Calculations

Let’s look at this Friday’s upcoming Walkabout drawing. We know that there are 15 face down cards remaining. We know that the posted jackpot is $7,433. The only variable that we don’t “know” is how many tickets will be in the drum Friday night. Even if you go to the Walkabout Friday night, it will be really hard to count the exact number of tiny paper tickets placed in that big drum. Especially if you’re drunk and busy trying to chat up a deaf mute prostitute.

Although we don’t know for sure how many tickets will be purchased and placed in the drum, we can reasonably estimate how many there will be. Only 15 of the original 53 cards remain face down, which means that 38 cards have been turned over. That’s one card per week during the prior thirty eight weeks. We are now in Week Thirty Nine.

Recall that during Week One, the initial jackpot offered by the bar was $500. So, over the next 38 weeks, the jackpot has increased by $6,933 from the initial $500 to the current jackpot of $7,433. Since the bar puts half of the ticket proceeds into the jackpot each week, we know that the bar has sold $6,933 x 2 tickets over 38 weeks = 13,866 tickets sold. This means that the bar has sold an average of 365 tickets per week.

So, should we estimate that there will be 365 tickets in the drum this Friday? Fuck no. Walkabout patrons are not as brain dead as their disheveled, Zombie-like appearances would suggest. They don’t buy the same number of tickets each week. They are smart enough to buy an awful lot more Joker Draw tickets when the jackpot is high than they do in the early weeks of the game when the jackpot is quite low. The bar has sold an average of 365 tickets per week, but there will be far more than 365 tickets sold this week.

How many tickets will be sold this week? I estimate 975 tickets. Here’s why I say that. Two weeks ago, the jackpot was $6,675. Last week it was $7,022 (a $347 increase from the prior week). The $347 increase in the jackpot last week meant that 694 tickets were sold two weeks ago, because the weekly jackpot increase is always 50% of the prior week‘s ticket sales.

The jackpot is now at $7,433 (a $411 increase from last week). That means that 822 tickets were sold last week.

We know that patrons buy progressively more tickets each week as the jackpot increases. So we can reasonably predict that after selling 694 tickets two weeks ago and 822 tickets last week, the Walkabout will sell somewhere between 950 and 1000 tickets this Friday. That’s why I estimate 975. If there are 975 tickets in the drum this week, the odds of having your single $1 ticket called will be 1 in 975.

If your ticket number is called, the odds of you then turning over the Joker will be 1 in 15. This means that the overall odds of winning the jackpot with a single ticket (i.e., having your ticket called AND picking the right card) Friday night will be about 1 in 975 x 1 in 15 = about a 1 in 14,625 chance of winning the jackpot. Slightly better than your odds of being shot in the ass while drunkenly walking home from St. 51 that same night.

So, Friday night, for the price of $1, the Walkabout will be offering you about a 1 in 14,625 chance to win $7,433. That’s not a very good wager. The “expected return” on that wager is only 50.8 cents, because the jackpot of $7,433 is only 50.8% of the 1 in 14,625 odds of winning.

Imagine if I offered you the opportunity to wager $1 on a coin flip. Heads, I keep your dollar. Tails, I give you back your dollar plus my 51 cents. Would you take that bet? I hope not.

But wait, shrewd observers will point out that the Walkabout is offering not only the $7,433 jackpot, but also other lesser prizes for turning over Aces and Kings. How do these prizes affect your expected return on a single $1 ticket?

Forum readers report that two of the current 38 face up cards are Aces, meaning two of the fifteen remaining face down cards are Aces. Turning over an Ace wins a motorbike, which we will value at $800. Because there are two face down Aces remaining, your chances of winning a motorbike will be 2 in 14,625. This actually adds 11 cents to the 50.8 cent expected return of your $1 wager. (2/14,625 x 800 = .11). Not bad.

One of the face downs cards is a King. Turning over a King wins a 26” flat screen TV, which we will value at $200. The 1 in 14,625 chance of winning this $200 prize adds an additional 1.4 cents to your expected return on a $1 wager. So, factoring in the prizes for Aces and Kings, your overall expected return on a $1 ticket Friday night will be about 50.8 cents + 11 cents + 1.4 cents = about 63 cents. The Walkabout’s overall “house edge” will be roughly 37%, compared to a 1% – 5% house edge on most casino games.

What to Do if You are a Degenerate Gambler

Even if you like to gamble, I cannot recommend that you wager on any game of chance where the expected return on each dollar wagered is only 63 cents. That’s a true sucker’s bet. For that reason, I cannot recommend that you enter the Walkabout Joker Draw this Friday night.

But let’s say you are a degenerate gambler, you have $1 in your pocket, and you are itching turn that into at least $7,433 so that you can pay off your student loans or something. What should you do? You would be better off going to a casino that offers the relatively crappy game of “double zero” roulette. Put your $1 on a single number. Watch the wheel spin. If your number hits, you will be paid 35 to 1, and you will now have $36 sitting on your number. Let it all ride on the same number again. If it hits again, you will now have $1,296.

Next, move your $1,296 pile of chips to “red.” Only douchebags bet on black. Watch the wheel spin three more times and let your bet ride on red each time. If it comes up red three times in a row, you will now have $10,368, which is 40% more than the $7,433 Joker Draw jackpot.

Now, the odds of walking up to a casino’s roulette table with $1 and turning it into $10,368 by hitting a single number twice and then red three times in a row are not great. To be precise, those odds are 1/38 x 1/38 x 18/38 x 18/38 x 18/38 = 1 in 13,605. Yet these odds are still better than the estimated 1 in 14,625 odds of a $1 ticket winning the Walkabout Joker Draw Friday night, and the $10,368 roulette payoff is 40% higher than the $7,433 Joker Draw jackpot.

So skip the silly drawing this week and just take your dollar to a local casino instead. Casinos. More money, better odds, classier hookers.

Is There Another Way to Play the Joker Draw this Week, Aside from Buying a $1 Ticket?

Please note that I’m not saying that you should never enter the Walkabout Joker Draw. If you wait until there are five or fewer cards remaining, it can be a very smart wager. Two years ago, when the Joker Draw entered Week Fifty, the game actually had a positive expected return. The jackpot was over $17,000, the bar was selling 4,000 tickets per week, and only 4 cards remained. The $17,000+ jackpot amount exceed the 1 in 16,000 estimated chance of winning, and entering the drawing actually had a positive expected outcome during Week Fifty through Week Fifty Three of the promotion.

This week is only Week Thirty Nine, and with fifteen face down cards on the board, the drawing is not worth entering. But there is one way that a sharp gambler could cash in on the Walkabout jackpot this Friday night.

Here’s what you should do. Go to an ATM Friday night and take out $500. Go over to the Walkabout. Don’t buy a ticket. Just work the crowd. Talk to the hookers. Let them know that you’re interested in immediately buying the “called ticket” off the person whose ticket number is called.

Whoever has their ticket number called will be given the opportunity to go up to the board and turn over a card. This opportunity gives them a 1 in 15 chance of winning the $7,433 jackpot, plus a 2 in 15 chance of winning an $800 motorbike, plus a 1 in 15 chance of winning a $200 TV. That means that simply owning the called ticket will be “worth” about $615.52 (1/15 x $7,433) + (2/15 x $800) + (1/15 x $200) = $615.52.

When the winning ticket number is called out, look for the person who is excitedly jumping up and down. That’s your mark. With any luck, it will be an impoverished hooker or an English teacher. English teachers make great marks for this venture, because they are poor and, unlike hookers, quite bad at math.

Calmly walk up to your excited mark, confirm that he or she is holding the right ticket, take $300 out of your pocket, and offer your mark $300 on the spot for that ticket. Like a Howie Mandel “Deal or No Deal” thing.

Would a Walkabout skank turn down a guaranteed $300 just to take a 1 in 15 shot at turning over a Joker worth $7,433? Would an English teacher? If they do, offer $400 for the ticket. Then $500.

If you can buy that called ticket from a hooker or English teacher for $300, you will have made an incredible deal. Sure, even with the called ticket in your hand, it’s still unlikely that you’ll win the jackpot or a motorbike. You’ll probably win nothing at all and end up just blowing $300. But the 1 in 15 chance of winning $7,433, plus the chance of winning other prizes, makes it well worth the $300 – $500 risk. The expected return for each of the 300 dollars you spend for the “called ticket” will be $2.08, compared to the 63 cent expected return for each of the 975 dollars spent by all the suckers who bought regular tickets.

Now here’s the best part. Imagine that you make the shrewd decision to buy the called ticket from that hooker for $300 – $500, so that you can take your shot at the jackpot. You then hand “your” called ticket in to Walkabout management. With the whole bar watching, you walk up to the board, you randomly pick out a face down card, and you just happen to get very lucky and pick the Joker. Everyone in the bar would admire you and say “Wow, that guy was clever, he properly assessed the odds, he used his financial superiority to purchase the called ticket from that impoverished hooker for less than its true value, and then he got really lucky to pick the Joker and win the jackpot.” Right?

No fucking way. Everyone in the bar would think the game was rigged and that you must have offered $300 – $500 for the called ticket because you knew all along where the joker was. Pandemonium would ensue. Other ticket holders would demand their money back. You would probably get punched. The angry hooker and her friends would claim that she is entitled to the whole jackpot. The bar might refuse to pay you. The freeloaders would clamor for their $500 free beer party. It would be a fantastic scene. Do it.

Some final advice

1. Like I said two years ago, you should never play the Joker Draw during the early weeks of the promotion, but you should always play the Joker Draw if it gets down to the last few cards. Hold most of your money for the last three weeks, when the expected returns really skyrocket. If the game goes down to the last two weeks, wager every dollar you can on Joker Draw tickets, even money you can’t afford to lose.

2. If you do enter the drawing and your ticket number is called, don’t yell “I won!” and immediately thrust your ticket in the air in the overcrowded bar. Someone could grab it from your hand, and you could end up at the bottom of a nasty scrum like the one for Barry Bonds’ 756th home run ball. Look at your ticket, take a deep breath, act like you lost, and calmly seek out the Walkabout manager and show him the ticket. That’s it. Be cool.

3. If your ticket is called and you turn over the Joker, make appropriate arrangements with the Walkabout manager to collect the money later, and then get the hell out of there. For safety reasons, they don’t hand you thousands of dollars on the spot with the entire town watching. Keep your head down and get out of the bar as soon as possible with as few motodops seeing your face as possible.

4. If you win a big jackpot, there’s no obligation to buy drinks for anyone, but you should tip the Walkabout staff generously. I don’t mean the corrupt security guards, I mean the poor girls who sling drinks to sex tourists and clean their cum-stained bedrooms. Winning over $7,000 and not dropping a few hundred bucks on the establishment’s impoverished staff is exceptionally bad form.

5. If no one wins the jackpot for the next few weeks, and the jackpot gets over $10,000, don’t bring any Walkabout girls back to your room while the posted jackpot is that high. Those skanks will steal whatever isn’t nailed down in order to buy Joker Draw tickets.

GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

GavinMac

This is a revised, updated, and totally improved version of an article that some idiot with too much time on his hands originally posted in the discussion forums back in December 2009

One of the strangest stories of the week must surely be the government ban on spit-roasting cows in public. Apparently, pen-pushers in Phnom Penh think the sight of calf carcasses being slowly barbecued and then chopped up in full view of squeamish passers-by could incite violence and is bad for the image of Cambodia.

The Council of Ministers signed a directive ordering all ‘koo dut’ restaurants to remove these grisly sights following a meeting by the Supreme Council of the Mohanikaya Buddhist order, which decided they glorify the killing of animals.

“Grilling cows in front of the restaurants is a show of support for violence in a country that believes in the Buddhist religion. It can instil the ideas of a massacre to a child and push them to commit violence in society,” council member Chhoeng Bunchhea told reporters, adding that rotisserie chickens and whole roast ducks were okay because they were “small size” animals.

They passed a request for a ban to ministers, which came into force last month. It was reported as a ban in Phnom Penh. But when I phoned a spokesman for Cambodia’s Ministry of Information, he confirmed that it would be rolled out across the country. He said ministers had agreed with the Buddhist order’s concerns that it was against their religion.

“We don’t want to see this kind of thing,” he said. “You can still sell it, but we don’t want it being cooked in public. Restaurants can put it in the kitchen, but not on display.”

Have they been into a Khmer restaurant kitchen? The vast majority are so tiny that if you put a roast cow in there, there wouldn’t be room for the cook. Other officials cited hygiene concerns about cooking in the street, which is ridiculous when you see the state of many indoor kitchens here, and the dozens of busy food stalls perched on every corner.

The only time I got food poisoning after eating spit-roast cow was when I went to the strip of barbecue restaurants on street 13, opposite Wat Ounalom. I was convinced it was nothing to do with the beef – roasting meat and then finishing it off directly over red-hot coals is a good way of killing bacteria, regardless of whether it’s done in public or not. It was far more likely to have been the accompanying tray of raw vegetables that emerged from the grimy dungeon of a kitchen overlooking the toilets.

Surprisingly enough, so far the beef ban’s been widely ignored. But now officials are vowing to step up enforcement. Pen In, Phsar Kandal II commune chief, told the Cambodia Daily she would ask police to remove the spit-roast cows if the restaurants didn’t move them.

“I have (explained to restaurant owners) not to grill cows like this because it looks very bad and especially because it’s unsanitary,” she said.

Journalists in Phnom Penh I heard from today said there was no sign of police action, with restaurants still doing a roaring trade by Phsar Kandal. And up here in Siem Reap, spit-roast cow eateries said they hadn’t even heard of the ban, let alone received the directive.

The owner of one restaurant I go to for my barbecued beef fixes thought I was winding him up to start with, and it took a good couple of minutes for him to believe me.

“It’s crazy,” he said, “People love seeing the cow being cooked.”

As he sweated in the mid-morning sun, filling the animal’s belly with lemon grass, hot basil, and paddy field herbs, and then sewing up the cavity with wire, a group of monks wandered past from nearby Wat Damnak temple. They didn’t cross the road, or clench their nostrils, or drench us in water to remove evil spirits, they glanced at the cow and smiled.

But however much it is against Buddhist sensibilities, I think it’s a shame if the Government does enforce the ban. It would undoubtedly lead to a lot of restaurants closing, and a lot of families being plunged on to the bread line.

Grilled cow, with its tray of crudités, salt, pepper and lime dip, and prahok sauce, is one of the best meals to be had in Cambodia. The government should be showcasing these dishes, and promoting the country’s badly-marketed cuisine, rather than ordering them to be swept off the streets.

And if they really are worried about the sight of these spit-roasts inciting violence, and being a bad image for Cambodia, perhaps they should take a look at the blood-thirsty tourists shelling out $10 a time to throw live chickens into crowded crocodile pens.

Or better still, take a look at the country’s many shooting ranges, where drunken Russians can relive moments from their favourite Arnie films. When last I checked, they’d stopped allowing holidaymakers to fire rocket launchers at live cows at $500 a pop, but they’ll quite happily supply smaller animals for cack-handed tourists to blast at – provided you pay of course.

Alex Watts

(Photos by Dom Bailey)

Imagine a place so filthy, infested and decrepit that the Khmer Rouge didn’t want to use it as one of their torture chambers, so used it instead as a pigpen. That place was T3 prison, one of the first pieces of infrastructure built under the French protectorate.

The first buildings went up in 1877, and other than that brief period in the 1970s, it was in constant use until the turn of the millennium. Situated in the center of the city, between the National Museum and Kandal Market, it was one of Asia’s most dreaded prisons.

It was strange turning off the riverside and passing by Wat Ounalom and then seeing the grimy slime-encrusted walls and rusty barbed wire surrounding it and one could only envision the hell that existed inside.

In the year 2000 after the hellhole was finally torn down, the prisoners were moved to a new custom-built $2.5 million T3 on the outskirts of town in Meanchey District, with most of the funding coming from the sale of the land and that prison is now renamed Correctional Center 1.

An older facility exists nearby, Correctional Center 2, the Prey Sar prison for women and children, but both centers are more commonly known as Prey Sar.

Bad as T3 was, not far up the street, on the corner of 154 and Pasteur was an even worse place. Part of a larger police headquarters, this was PJ Prison, from the French Police Judiciaire. Built in 1937, it served briefly as the notorious S21, but in 1976 this moved to the more familiar Tuol Sleng location.

PJ became a prison again in the subsequent People’s Republic of Kampuchea and as there was no functioning court system detainees were essentially warehoused there for long periods, often without charge. In fact, there was no actual court system at all until 1982. Living conditions in general were extremely poor at this time, so they must have been unbelievable inside any prison. Beatings were common, and torture was routinely used in interrogation sessions.

One former police officer from Phnom Penh described an especially abusive interrogator saying: “Nobody dares to protest against this guy because he’s such a barbarian that for no reason at all he would throw any one of his own personnel in jail”.

A 1994 UN investigation revealed that the unit, built as a short-term lockup for 30-40 inmates, was actually housing 216. Overcrowding was so severe that sewage overflowed into cells and some inmates even had to sleep in the latrine. Shackling was common, as was prisoner on prisoner violence, and malnourishment and disease were rampant.

It’s surprising to think that later on, after the nearby T3 was demolished, prisoners would pay to be moved to PJ from other prisons. However, by this time conditions had improved a lot after a UN/Australian funded initiative.

The T3 compound did have one thing going for it though: the huge advantage of being in the center of town made it so much more convenient for visitors than other jails. Some foreigners incarcerated there reported it as being relatively comfortable due to the ease of getting meals delivered from local restaurants and apparently some were even let out during the day on the condition that they promised to return for the evening roll-call. One even escaped. (pictured below)

There’s no such choice now; the whole block was flattened a few years ago and PJ relocated to the faraway north of Russei Keo District.

Cambodia had one of the lowest incarceration rates in the world in the mid 1990s, but since then the prison population has risen at an alarming rate. Overcrowding, abuse, violence, disease, poor sanitation and starvation rations are endemic. Nowadays on the site of T3 is a row of barbecued beef restaurants and where PJ prison once stood is Golden Sorya Mall. (see below)

Dermot Sheehan

As you might expect in a sweltering tropical climate, creatures of all sorts abound here. The city center is a bit barren; it has plenty of trees but not much else as most ground is built on or paved and there aren’t so many opportunities for wildlife.

Of course, like any city around the world, there are the rats and cockroaches. These are commonly spotted flitting from one drain hole to the next, in all sorts of neighborhoods. While most modern concrete buildings can keep rodents out, cockroaches can fly and so can get in almost anywhere. The cockroaches you see in town seem to be rarer in rural areas, perhaps because of higher concentrations of predators.

Both rats and mice are called “gondaw” here. This may perhaps be because unlike where I grew up, there aren’t two clearly distinct types, there seem to be quite a few, and it can be difficult to tell whether some are actually large mice or juvenile rats. Many seem to grow to a much larger size than the city rats common in colder climes and there are also many other similar jungle and paddy rats around.

A while back, I heard a bit of a rumpus in the front yard. Weird squealing sounds and excited chatting. The house backs onto a wetland, and due to a lot of garbage being thrown straight into the lake it’s hardly surprising that there are a lot of pests around.

Because of the scale of the problem which extends for many kilometers, no one tidy individual could make any difference to this.

Exterminating the rats in one area may result in short- term gains, but their places will quickly be taken by other rats from nearby. I’ve tried using poison. It can work very well as far as killing them goes, but the problem is that you don’t have any control over where they are going to die. They tend to die in inaccessible spots, writhing in agony, in cavities around your house, and they soon stink really badly, so sometimes it’s better to trap them.

Anyway, back to the rumpus, it was just a large rat that had been caught in one of the old fellah’s spring cage-traps. He was trying to kill it by stabbing it with a piece of coat-hanger wire and it was screaming with pain but the wire was bending and although it could just have given in it wouldn’t. After a few minutes of him trying to corner the bouncing and bleeding rat by trapping it against the cage with the wire, he caught it a few times in various appendages, but there was no mortal wound.

I was getting a bit sickened by all this brutality, so I suggested a better tool. There was a solid- looking screwdriver nearby, so I grabbed that and switched the heads around from flat to cross-head. This thing wasn’t going to bend, but after a while I still couldn’t seem to nail the rodent.

I suggested dunking the whole cage in some water to drown it, but that was rejected as disgusting. So he proceeded with stabbing the rat, which was bleeding from about six places by now, but the beast still wasn’t dying.

The noise was driving me nuts, it wouldn’t goddamn shut up and it wouldn’t just die. The old fellah finally gave up, picked up the cage, walked across the street, and dumped the mashed-up but still very much alive creature into the ditch across the road, perhaps as a humanitarian gesture.

I’m a bit worried that that one might come back.

Demot Sheehan

Jonathan is extremely vulnerable and may harm himself.

He is believed to be in CAMBODIA, possibly in Phnom Penh.

Jonathan has disappeared in the past and normally likes to stay in 5 Star hotels.

It is extremely important for his own health that he is located soon.

Here is a printable PDF of Jonathan’s missing poster. If you are in or going to Cambodia, please download and print this for display.

Do you have any information?

From Cambodia you can call +44800 098 8485 but this will incur costs. Please check before you call.

Alternatively you may prefer to email any information to operations@missingabroad.org

All information wil be treated in the strictest confidence.

There’s only one problem with staying in the rooftop Jacuzzi suite at the Plantation (Phnom Penh’s newest urban retreat): It has spoiled me for travelling anywhere else for a while.

It’s like the first time I upgraded to Business Class. It ruined me for life as I now find myself glancing longingly at the huge reclining chairs and premier wine list in the front rows as I drag myself into my shoebox seat in steerage.

At the Plantation, there’s not much missing for my taste. It offers a place to check in and get pampered amid the dusty streets of the city. It’s a tranquil oasis from the outside turmoil of tuk tuks and pushcarts and there are surprises around every corner.

Firstly, it’s unobtrusive. Hidden behind white walls and a heavy wooden gate on Street 184, the resort is tucked between haircutting shops and hang bais where motodop drivers slurp noodle soup for breakfast and pushcarts announce the eagerly anticipated arrival of baguettes and duck eggs. The Plantation subtly whispers its presence with a pair of orange silk lanterns – hanging like a pair of miniature hot air balloons above the entrance – and a reception area fronted by a shallow pond filled with lotus blossoms.

The hotel was designed by Ivan Tizianel and Michel Verrot, architects and specialists who preserved the front building (the former Ministry of Labour in the 1930s) and tastefully added 70 rooms, all of which are miniature works of art. There’s lots of white everywhere with touches of vivid greens, yellows and oranges in the silk bedrunners, pillows, seating and artwork. Some rooms overlook the pool, some have private terraces and some are tucked away in the back with tiny gardens and outdoor seating.

But there’s no beating the lavish, enormous rooftop suite. More than 200 square meters of luxury with its own private entrance and two balconies – one with enough space to fit a small orchestra and the other with a Jacuzzi tub for two under the stars (or the sun, depending on your time of bathing).

There’s a huge living space with a flat-screen TV and two couches (which would work as single beds), a huge bedroom with a smaller balcony and two sleek bathrooms, one with a glass door opening onto the Jacuzzi balcony.

To paraphrase the words of “Hotel California”… You can check in anytime you want but you may never leave..

Then there’s the pool. If you ever needed an excuse to linger, this would be it. It’s a shimmering body of water, brimming over the edges of a hand-crafted natural slate pool, fringed by stark white individual cabanas, each with its own fan, mattress and light; and several with steps down to the water. It’s a spot made for lounging.

Palm trees stand to attention around the perimeter and a comfortable poolside restaurant offers a variety of dishes and cocktails, competitively priced to keep you at the resort.

At present, the pool and spa are only available for guests but the hotel plans to open a second pool and spa later this year which will be open to the public.

While the Plantation may be designed for luxury, it’s also designed to promote local culture and environmental practices by planting lush foliage, promoting local artists and using locally produced goods, such as the sugar-palm wood used in most of the furniture which protects against deforestation.

As far as I’m concerned, it leaves me feeling good about feeling good

Gabi Yetter

The Plantation
# 28, street 184 – Phnom Penh, Cambodia