There are many things in this country of hard and searing heat that I find frustrating, puzzling and simply drive me to desperation. Please hear me out because what I?m going to say is simply my opinion and you may have figured it out already, in which case forgive me…

A Warning to Flame Jugglers: Part 2 – Opening Exchanges
His opening attack almost had me. His large flame pointed weapon nearly caught me on the side of the head as he attacked. I ducked as the flame slightly singed my coiffure. I smelt the acrid smell of human hair aflame. I parried the next few blows and then stood…

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 in the heart of Phnom Penh’s backpacker ghetto. There are…

A Warning To Flame Jugglers: Part I
The Arena I squinted as I looked up into the blue skies of Phnom Penh. It was a hot day in that peculiar time in which the end of the Rainy season merges with the attractive climes of the cool season. In that period the weather of Cambodia resignedly resorts…

The Natives Are Restless (An Uninvited Dinner Guest in Pursat)
Some time ago I went to visit the throbbing metropolis of Pursat for a few days and this is what happened. I was in my room on the night of my arrival and I thought I would wander out and find some food and buy a beer, so I went…

Fear, Fancy and Fiction in Cambodia: A journey heroic in scale and ambition
It all started as I sat sipping a Pimm’s on my balcony in the provinces. My stallion Argonaut stood happily in the front paddock, chewing sugar cane, and smiling fondly at Peggy, his pink flanked companion and friend from Phnom Penh. I was contemplating one of life’s mysteries. My two…

Cambodia: Can’t live with it, can’t live without it…
Bitching about Cambodia, slagging off the natives, complaining about living in Phnom Penh: How often do you hear these topics raised in conversation? Everyone does it surely. Not just the overhearing of course, but really getting stuck in yourself, a decent gripe about traffic lunacy, slating the bent officials squeezing…

Khmer Food Is #1 (part two)
So where is all this good Khmer food hiding? Hint: you won’t find it in any backpacker place or tourist restaurant. Let’s begin the day with breakfast: decent noodle soup can be had for 3000r just a few blocks west of Capitol at O Reussey Restaurant (thick yellow noodles with…

Khmer food is #1 (part one)
I don’t mean that Cambodian cooking is like eating the infamously suspect locally produced rubbers, though others may have investigated this further, but then what they were doing with undersized, inferior quality cock sheaths so I close to their taste buds I choose to ignore. If the statement is taken…

Doesn’t Living in Cambodia Drive You Mad?
“Everyone who lives in Cambodia ends up going mad; that”s why you have to leave.” I”ve heard this piece of lore a fair few times, and whilst finding it intriguing, I always had some lingering doubts. The first person to bring it up in my presence was a young American;…
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