Tag Archives: Mac Hathaway
Drunken Dances and Violent Games with Fetching Office Girls: The Khmer New Year Staff Party
When the management declared that we would all stop work at noon on the last day before the recent holiday to have a staff party, most of the foreign staff anticipated the cultural awkwardness to come and skipped out to…
Cambodia Daytrips: Lovek
A small blue sign sits to the right side of the road bearing the words Traleng Keng Pagoda. Next to it is a large concrete archway, covered in elaborate designs and flowing Khmer script, over a narrow road leading through…
Daytrips: Bavel
We take Sisowath Quay north until we pass under the Japanese Bridge. There the road becomes the smooth, paved National Hwy. # 5 leading to Kompong Chhnang, Pursat, and Battambang. The area is known as Srok Russey Keo. Extending far…
Freak Show 2: The HIV/AIDS Case
Nowhere in Cambodia do such incommensurable worldviews meet as in the relationships between sex workers and punters. This meeting of different worlds is what I find most interesting about Southeast Asian nightlife. In ordinary relationships, first encounters follow more recognisable…
The Boeng Kak Lake Freak Show
I dragged my girl up to the lake one afternoon for breakfast. I don’t go there often, especially in the morning, but I had an inexplicable craving for museli, and I didn’t know where else to get a bowl but…
Cambodia Stories: The Knife, the Dummy, and the Little Cafe in Poipet
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When my young Thai friend said she’d meet me in Cambodia for Khmer New Year, I promised to pick her up at Poipet. She had the impression that Cambodia was a ‘dangerous’ place, where they burn Thais on crosses made…