Ergonomics 101

My dictionary defines ergonomics as the study of how equipment and furniture can be arranged in order that people can do work and other activities more efficiently and comfortably.

On that score Cambodia fails miserably, but that doesn’t matter much to the Khmer since they can sit cross-legged on a hard surface all day without even noticing they’re uncomfortable. Not so myself, I’m the canary in the comfort zone, not only because geezers need and like to be comfortable more than the young, pliable and adaptable, but also because my back always hurts from the heavy challenges I put it through in my younger days. There were times I couldn’t sit, stand or walk without the potential of excruciating pain if I wasn’t extremely careful of my movements: it’s not like that now, but still the pain is always there in the background.

Most of us here in Cambo can put up with discomfort since nothing is supposed to work just right here anyway and considering that living is cheap we don’t expect cushiness to be part of our everyday experience.

But if I’m at a bar or restaurant and the furniture is so poorly designed for comfort that my back is hurting, well, I’m not going to be able to hang around very long. That doesn’t matter so much in a restaurant since people don’t ordinarily spend much time eating, but in a bar where you might find yourself lingering for hours over multiple brews, comfort becomes important. As I say, some people hardly notice, still, if you’re the owner of a drinking or eating establishment, do you really want your customers to be uncomfortable? Most times there’s no difference in cost, you just need to know what to look for.

It’s not just the likes of Cambodia with dysfunctional furniture, sometimes I’ll be back in the states and I see furniture so poorly designed for comfort it’s a truly punishing experience. Sometimes designers will go through flights of fantasy in creating really beautiful, unique chairs that’re almost impossible to sit in.

‘Form follows function’ is a phrase coined by architect Louis Sullivan, who was mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright back in the early part of the 20^th century. It’s an extremely simple concept but a lot of designers still haven’t gotten the message. You know, if you’re designing a chair, your first task is to make it comfortable, after that, knock yourself out, do any crazy thing you want. For instance, last time I was in Siem Reap some years ago I stopped in at the FCC – Foreign Correspondent’s Club. In the outdoor seating area they had these beautiful, sleek, ultramodern easy chairs which were amongst the most uncomfortable chairs I’ve ever tried to sit in. The seat was so long, if you tried to sit all the way back, you felt like a kid with your legs sticking straight out; also the back of the chair was so short it offered no support whatever. You had to sit all the way forward and pretend there was no back.

Chairs are the most difficult pieces of furniture to design because they require angles, rather than rectangles. Most of the padded wicker chairs one finds in Cambodia have seats that are flat, that is, parallel to the ground. When you sit back in one of those your bum immediately slides forward. If the seat is angled backwards, even just a centimeter or two your bum has a bit of an anchor. If possible when sitting in a chair with a flat seat I’ll move the cushion forward and fold up the front to raise my legs up and lower my bum, making it far more comfortable. At least wicker easy chairs and sofas are generally at the proper height, that is, when you sit down your feet rest comfortably on the floor. Dangling feet is a no-no, it cuts off circulation to your legs and in my case causes back pain in a few minutes. Some are designed with rounded tops and arm rests. They look great but are a serious detriment to comfort. Arm rests need to be flat, otherwise all the weight of your arm is resting on a bone rather than soft tissue. Also, the flat armrest allows you to place a cup or glass on it.

Most wooden chairs and many wicker ones are way too high, especially considering how short the locals are. However, Cambodians are so accustomed to chairs built too high, they’re not comfortable in those cheap plastic chairs which are the correct dimensions so they’ll stack them up so they can have their legs dangle. To each his own. Once again Khmer are so used to being uncomfortable, they don’t even know the difference. Hard wood seats need to be scooped out for your butt, otherwise all your weight is resting on your pelvic bones, rather than on soft bum tissue, but that requires a lot of work and talent compared to leaving them flat. Adding a cushion solves that problem, but that might exacerbate the height problem. If the chair is intended for sitting upright then the seat is okay flat.

Bars are one of my favorite topics, which is not surprising considering how much time I spend in them. Therefore it’s especially frustrating to see how almost all of them are poorly designed here. The first, biggest mistake is height: 95% are too tall. There probably isn’t a bar in the entire US of A that’s as tall as the average here in Cambodia. If you don’t actually take the time to research proper height, then the natural tendency is to make it too high. This is similar to the first time you try to juggle: you always want to throw the ball forward rather than straight up. It’s an automatic response.

‘Belly up to the bar’ is an old saying. On that basis the bar should come up to the center of the average person’s belly, which means when that person is standing up leaning against the bar they can comfortably rest their arms on it. However, since most bar patrons are men, designing for the average man is probably right. On the other hand, when you also consider the average Cambodian is short and women also go to bars, it’s best to err a bit on the short side. Yes, tall men will be at a disadvantage, but you can’t please everybody and besides they’re always at a disadvantage and are used to it. Taking all that into account, the maximum height of a bar should be 110 cm or a bit more than 43 inches. Anything more makes no sense whatever and yet I’ve been to bars taller than my chin where Cambodian staff couldn’t even see over them.

The other glaring fault with the typical bar here is the lack of a proper overhang or the ability use a proper one because of the configuration of the footrest and stool. When you push your bar stool all the way in you should be able to rest your arms on the bar without leaning forward. By the third or fourth drink you (I) need something to lean on. The overhang should therefore be at least 30 cm or 1 foot; similar to what you have sitting at a dinner table. Otherwise to put your elbows on the bar you either have to sit on the edge of your chair and forego the comfort of the chair back or strain your back leaning forward. Yet most bars in Cambo have almost no overhang at all. It’s supposed to be a bar top not a counter top.

Sometimes the problem is that the footrest sticks out too far and/or the stool is slanted backwards preventing the chair from going all the way forward. Rails solve that problem or you can design a footrest similar to an overhang. Either way those are key calculations required for a bar to be comfortable. Some bars here have no footrest at all. Take a look at the contortions people go through with their legs when there’re standing up at a bar with no place to rest one of their feet.

The only way to partially compensate for lack of an overhang is to have stools with arm rests, but they take up more space at the bar. Which brings up the subject of proper stool design. The cross members that give the stool strength and stability also need to be placed at a level which allows you to comfortably rest your feet; that is, without being so low it leaves your legs dangling or so high it forces your knees up around your chin. Taking a clue from those cheap plastic chairs, the cross member should be 16 to 17 inches or 40 to 42 cm below the seat. Khmer chair builders place them without any thought to where feet need to rest. It should be possible to tell the wood or wicker shop where you want the cross members to be - you’re paying for them after all - but sometimes they’ll just ignore you and put them where they’re used to putting them; which is exactly my experience.

If you also want your bar to work efficiently for staff there needs to be an underhang or cutaway at the back, essentially a shelf at a lower level where drinks can be conveniently mixed. Having local staff who are almost uniformly short mixing drinks on top of a tall bar or trying to use a lower shelf without a cutaway by bending over and contorting their bodies does not lend to efficiency. Khmers will never complain, but it’s a small matter to do it right.

Finally on the topic of bars, there are often serious disconnects in the way the rooms are designed. There are several establishments in Kampot which call themselves bar/restaurants but when you walk by you see a room full of restaurant tables with a very small bar at the back of the room just big enough for 4 or 5 seats with punters showing their back to the street. With my tired old eyes I can’t tell who’s there so I won’t go into a bar like that unless I know who’s there beforehand, otherwise I may walk in and find that I really don’t want to hang out with the people there. I’d probably still buy a beer to avoid an embarrassing U-turn, but then I have to sit around bored trying to drink it fast. If you sit at a table you’re looking for privacy, if you sit at a bar you’re looking to be sociable. If you call yourself a bar then the bar itself needs to be the full length of the room so that passersby can see who’s there. Tiny little bars as adjuncts to restaurants can’t achieve critical mass of boozy energy and are generally patronized only by close friends. The tap is best at the front so potential customers can see what you’re serving and so staff can see who’s entering the bar when they’re pouring mugs.

The problem arises from most shophouses being 4 meters wide which means if you have a full length bar and leave yourself a little space to maneuver behind it, there’s not enough room for full-size tables on the opposite wall. Essentially, you can’t do justice to both at the same time.

Most bar patrons are men and we tend to piss more often then women so a bar owner saves a lot of trouble by including a urinal, especially if it’s in a separate space from the toilet. Here in Cambo that’s easy as you can just hang it from a wall without its own room. Flush toilets, especially the cheap ones sold in Cambodia, don’t hold up well after being flushed 100 times or more per day and there’s hardly anything less fun than fixing a dysfunctional toilet which might be full of old shit or piss. Besides you offer better service; nobody wants to hang around standing in line waiting to pee.

I’m also a great fan of industrial ceiling fans. One ceiling fan moves the equivalent amount of air of 4 or 5 wall fans and does it with far more comfort. Except when it’s on high power it provides a gentle breeze with a lot less noise than wall fans. And it’s important to note that fans are not just for cooling: with the amount of cigarette smoking that goes on here in Cambo it’s essential to keep air moving.

Ultimately, ambiance trumps comfort. The better the atmosphere - lighting, music, vibrations - the less important the ergonomics become. But that begs the question, Why punish your loyal customers with discomfort?

One final note on bars. Many are equipped with wicker stools. They’re cheap and they look good but they can occasionally be dangerous. They’re handmade and not always consistently fabricated and they also sometimes loosen up. About 5 years ago I came close to a serious injury from one. I was leaning over backwards, as I often do, when the stool, which was seriously unbalanced toward the rear, sent me hurtling to the floor. I knew I couldn’t let the back of my head hit the hard tiled floor so I turned as fast as I could and bounced my nose, which was sore for more than a week, off the floor instead. I could’ve easily gotten a concussion or worse if I’d let my skull do the bouncing.

A friend who used it later remarked right off that it was unbalanced. I wanted the stool to be retired immediately and was almost ready to totally trash it so it couldn’t be used again, but the owner just blew off the danger and left it in place. For a lousy $25 dollars, the cost of a new stool, he’s taking an unnecessary chance with his patron’s safety, in this case could even mean death. There is, however, a silver lining to this particular story since my nose, which had been pointing to the left from a much earlier break is now facing straight ahead. It’s not all that straight itself, but at least it’s pointing in the right direction.

Finally a note about ergonomics and computers. Most people nowadays have laptops, notebooks, ipads or such. They’re very convenient but are impossible to use ergonomically without a proper computer desk and auxiliary keyboard and maybe monitor. If the laptop monitor is at the proper height so that you’re looking at it straight ahead rather than looking down, then the keyboard is going to be too high and possibly cause carpal tunnel problems in your wrists. Conversely, if the keyboard is at the right height, then you’ll be looking down at the monitor. If you’re young and/or you don’t use it too long at a time, all that won’t matter much, you can get away with poor ergonomics. Otherwise do yourself a favor and buy a computer table, and while you’re at it a back-saving well-designed desk chair: Ergonomics means comfort and efficiency.

An Old Car is Like a Wife

I get attached to cars and since I’ve never had the wherewithal to own a new one, they’ve always been old and cranky. They’ve always had their share of dings, marks, rattles and quirks, but I’ve never cared much about outward impressions. As long as their hearts and moving parts are in reasonable or fixable state, I just carry on. If it’s a Toyota, like my ’88 Camry, you kinda feel like it’s a pretty solid machine that’s worth putting money into and maintaining. Wherever you go and especially in Cambodia, the most popular cars will be easiest to keep running just because of spare parts and dependability, but that doesn’t exempt you from a myriad of bewildering and mysterious problems, more of which I’ve encountered with my car than any one human being ought to have. Just like women, bewildering and mysterious.

But better than buying a KIA Sportage. I’ve known two guys who bought them. The first had fuel injector problems which could only be solved with four new injectors at $450 a pop. When a second friend bought one I hesitated to break his heart with the sordid tale of the first Sportage debacle. I only broke the story after he recounted how he couldn’t leave town with his because of certain disaster if it was driven very far.

For this comparison I’m not suggesting your wife, or cohabitating girlfriend, is equivalent to an old beater car (though she might well be) but rather the kind of hell she regularly puts you through just because of the nature of the beast. In this case the more beautiful and snazzy they are the more likely they are to give you the most shit. (To be fair, it’s not like we don’t also put them through some trying times, but they’ve got to make their own analogies.)

You wouldn’t dump your wife every time she asks you for a new bangle or bead, or breaks down in tears for unfathomable reasons or freaks out for (what seems to you) trivialities so why begrudge taking care of such a handy device as your car just because the bugger needs new brakes or an alternator or a battery or a new headlight switch once in a while. Even when it eats up three right front CV joints in six years and only 18,000 miles - twice happening on the road – you just grin and bear it. However, I wasn’t so smiley when it stranded me 40 kilometers from Kampot without the money to pay for the repair. When the mechanic who I managed to locate, with some difficulty, found out I could only pay half of the $65 repair job, he put me on lowest priority and made me wait from mid-morning till nearly 5 pm before he returned to finish the job. It turned out okay for him since I made up the shortfall with everything of value I was carrying with me: a rim and good quality tire, jumper cables, set of wrenches and a jack. As I discovered later when I went to replace the tire and rim, they alone were worth about $50.

But that was truly an excruciatingly, mortifyingly embarrassing episode. It happened on a bypass where a new bridge was under construction, so everybody on Highway 3 had a chance to see the morose barang struggling to smile and be nonchalant as they filed slowly by. The only saving grace, other than the mere magical fact that the mechanic actually did the job not knowing what he’d receive in return, was that a giant overloaded truck, which had even been elongated by two meters, but which only had a single rear axle, got stuck in the soft bypass road surface trying to climb back up to the highway. It was a sight to behold and took hours of unloading his cargo before he could get the thing unstuck.

Now I wouldn’t travel without a spare C-note or two in my pocket except in direst emergency. To top it off, I was forced to drive home at night which is a terrifying experience on Cambodia’s highways. You’ve got pedestrians, bicycles without lights, slow moving carts, diesel farm tractors and such which you can’t see until you get real close – at least I can’t with my tired old eyes – combined with giant trucks which blind you with their high-powered headlights. Besides, I gave the mechanic every riel I had so went the last 10 kilometers with the gas warning light on and (I’m convinced) made it up to my driveway on leftover fumes and angelic intervention.

The second time the CV joint went out on the road was a piece of cake in comparison, not that any breakdown on the road could ever be pleasant. I broke down in a small town and found a mechanic who had worked for the UN for 14 years and spoke good English. Not only that, but there was a hammock out back overlooking a small river to wait out the repair time.

If you’re planning a road trip with your old beater, you thank your lucky stars when it breaks down just before you leave, rather than on the road. In similar vein wouldn’t you rather be berated, yelled and screamed at at home, rather than have the old lady barge in while you’re having a peaceful beer with friends at your favorite suds depot and start screaming insults there?

Dealing with Khmer mechanics is also a lot like dealing with Khmer wives or partners. If that’s your situation, you’ll understand when I tell you about replacing my master window switch. Power windows are a great convenience but a big problem when they stop working, especially if they stop working when the window is stuck in the down position in rainy season. Having spent a lot of years as a mechanic, though of the untrained shade-tree type, you get to see which parts break down the easiest and where the vehicles are most vulnerable. The master window switch is one of them, especially here in the tropics where constant heat and humidity play havoc with electronics. It would work fine for a week or two and then just get locked into place. Sometimes it would start working again after a day or two. Other times I’d have to go to my Kampot mechanic and he’d take it apart, clean it up and it would work again… but only temporarily.

At first my Phnom Penh mechanic (they are definitely not available in Kampot) said a used one cost $50, but he couldn’t find one since they were prone to problems, so I asked about a new one; at $280 that was out of the question. Later he located one that was used in America but new to Cambodia at $80. It’s from a ’91 and the wiring’s a little different, he says, but he’s the primo electrical man so no problem. Fine, I say, it has to be done. I go to pick it up, the driver’s window now has an automatic switch, which is very convenient, actually, but when I closed the door the automatic shoulder seat belt – a feature of American cars – doesn’t work. (The majority of cars in Cambo were brought here used from America when they were about 10 years old.) Without it you only have the waist belt, which really isn’t enough if you actually want to be safe, so I ask why it doesn’t work. You didn’t tell me to do it, he replies. WTF? It worked when I brought it there, but according to his logic I was supposed to remind him to hook up everything that worked previously just like it did before. Khmers will say anything that comes to their minds when they don’t have a proper answer. The switch has been okay with minor problems except nobody else but him understands the wiring so when my Kampot mechanic looked at it, he was completely befuddled… so shit out of luck if anything does go wrong with it.

Then there’s the headlight switch. You know, you’re riding merrily along and totally without warning your headlights go off. The brights continued to work, but it’s not a great idea to blind vehicles coming your way. Then it’d work for a few days and same thing would happen. Mechanic takes the steering column apart, cleans up the switch and it works for a while. Finally, after doing that twice and the problem still reoccurring, I asked how much for a new used one, new ones again being prohibitively expensive. $28? For that little why am I messing around trying to make the old one work? However, it wasn’t that long before the ‘new’ old one started acting like the ‘old’ old one. I had the new one cleaned up recently and now it seems to be working.

The humidity here corrodes electrical parts with abandon. Now the thing to remember about the headlight switch is that it’s always hot, that is, it has power going to it whether or not the key is in the on position. Which means if there’s a short somewhere in the switch it’ll drain your battery. In my case it used to take only two days without driving it to kill the battery and I took to unhooking the battery after every time I drove the car… a real bore.

 Of course, this is nothing new since the lovable rattletrap has not started when it was supposed to at least a hundred times in the six years I’ve owned it and maybe a lot more… I lost count a long time ago. At this point I always carry a set of jumper cables and battery charger with me, just in case. Actually, I should also have an extension cord in the event the nearest plug is not close or people nearby don’t have one. It wasn’t always the switch that was the culprit, just in the last couple years I’ve replaced everything having to do with the starting and charging systems. It’s got 140,000 miles – 220,000 kilos – so you have to expect things to break down, though this car has really tested my patience.

I asked a friend who has an identical Camry about his. Very dependable, he says, in four years it’s started every time he turned the key. I was incredulous. He did have to do a few things to it, he said, so I thought I could do a ‘gotcha’ with CV joints. First he said 6 or 7 but then thought about it and said 4. So my 3 in 6 years is not so bad after all. One of the other things he had to do was replace the engine for $400, so, old cars, like wives, you just gotta deal with them.

I’ve heard guys say they bought an old jalopy, drove it for two years never having put a penny into it and then dumped it when it broke down. That’s never, even remotely, been my experience. For me they always need something, at least partly because I’ve spent enough time with cars to know when things are not working right and partly because I always want to correct the problem, which in some ways is easy here since it costs so little in labor to repair them. Unfortunately, low cost also implies low talent, even if highly intuitive, and the absence of diagnostic equipment so that many mechanics here are no more than shade-tree types like myself.

This is represented by a persistent problem I’ve had. From the start it has had the shakes at idle and especially stopped in gear. It’s not a big fault, just really uncomfortable. I’ve taken the problem to three mechanics. All three started with timing, no problem there. Then the air intake was cleaned out and the plugs and wires replaced. No change. While the PP mechanic was doing other stuff he noticed that the transmission made a strong clunking sound when put into gear and suggested maybe I needed a new one at $240. He even assured me that that would correct the shaking problem. I didn’t really believe him but it was a time when I had money in the bank and since I knew that wouldn’t last it seemed a good time to do it rather than wait until it broke down with me broke also. Being a Toyota it’s entirely possible that it might have kept going long after I was in my grave even with the clunking sound, but I didn’t want to take the chance. Of course, it made no difference whatever to the shaking.

I think it has to do with the valves, though nobody seems to have a compression gauge, let alone a computer to do diagnostics and taking it apart to check would cost some money. Meanwhile, after all the peripheral work that’s been done, it runs really strong once it’s out of idle range. Hit the gas and it flies. And it’s really comfortable on trips and the upholstery is perfect and original - not that fake leather - and a pleasure to relax in, so I’m in it for the duration, it’ll probably last as long as I do. Believe me I haven’t begun to exhaust detailing its troubles, but I have run out of space in this article.

So whatever it needs, I’ll do my best to placate it. Trading it in for another old beater could be courting disaster, at least I know what I’ve got and what to expect. Relationships are always a hassle, whether it’s a car or a wife; no matter how compatible you are, you’re going to have a lot of learning to do. And valuable learning at that. All you wives, wives-in-waiting and girlfriends out there, I hope you don’t take offense, I don’t mean to belittle your contribution to our personality development. Having done the husband thing three times myself I can attest to its importance regardless of the torture it sometimes put me through. Though my most difficult ex is still giving me shit 40 years since we parted – we have a kid to connect us - whenever her fickle sanity dissipates, which fortunately, at least towards me, isn’t very often, I begrudgingly have to admit she also taught me the most.

In some ways it’s easier to go without a wife than a car: once you’ve gotten used to having wheels, you feel deprived without them, even when you don’t use the car that often, whereas you can take or leave being a husband. On the other hand, it’s a lot easier to get rid of a car than a wife, it’s just a machine which can easily, if expensively, be replaced. But regarding a wife, if you ever cared about her, your parting will be extremely difficult, so until then it’s, Yes dear from now on I promise to pick up my socks from the floor and be more considerate of your often inscrutable feelings and listen to your nagging without going apoplectic with frustration and turning to the evil drink for solace.

Some Like it Cold

After being so long in the tropics, you just naturally feel superior about enjoying our endless summer, but I was reminded back in the states that a lot of people can’t take the heat.

But first a final note on beer available back in Oregon and a sort-of apology for my first beer article. I forgot to mention a beer I tried named Swill. On the label it says, Beer guy, don’t take yourself so seriously. It was a lager flavored with citrus and, well, I have to tell you it lived up to its name, at least to my taste. I wouldn’t buy it again, but I’m sure there are a lot of people like myself who have to try it at least once, so I expect they’ll do alright.

Thinking back on my first article on beer titled, They Don’t Like Good Beer, I have to admit that was pretty arrogant of me. A friend characterized my attitude as harsh or maybe brutal was how he put it. I did try to make clear that there’s no accounting for taste and everybody is different. I mean, you can’t help it if you like swill. It’s just one of those things. Moreover, being a geezer means I have special privileges and can get away with saying and doing things not allowed for you young’uns. We old farts have lots of space to be as ornery, opinionated and cantankerous as we wish. Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, lets move on.

The night before I left Oregon the temperature got down to 40ºF – -4ºC – quite cool for October 9. Except for a few days in mid-September when it was hot and a few more near the end of my trip when it was just warm enough to be friendly, I felt chilled most the time. Still, for a lot of people cold is far preferred over hot. A friend, who said her body temperature was naturally high, told me she got positively ill when the temperature reached up into the 80s – above 27ºC. I told her she could only visit Cambodia at night in December and January. When it got above 90F – 32C – almost everybody was complaining... while I could finally relax. At least I didn’t feel cold. Becoming old and decrepit is also a factor, it just gets harder to deal with the cold as you age; hot is simply a lot easier for us. If it’s really baking you can hit the hammock and make yourself a breeze. Other people here have to have their air-con but still prefer here to coldness. Personally, I don’t care about the heat, I continue on as I would otherwise; I won’t purposely choose to ride my bike or take a walk in the hot mid-day sun, but I also won’t think twice if it needs to be.

Before I go on I need to put in a plug for Fahrenheit, though I know it’s a totally lost cause – only the US and four other small countries around the Caribbean still use it. In all respects other than ambient temperature, the metric system is the only way to go. Sadly, in doing research for this article I was disabused of a notion about Fahrenheit that I’d maintained all my life. Until Wikipedia straightened me out, I was convinced that old man Fahrenheit, who lived in southern Germany, measured the temperature at his home for 5 years and placed the lowest temperature at zero (-18ºC) and the highest at one hundred (38C). It sounded totally plausible but turned out to be completely wrong.

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was Dutch. He placed 0º at the freezing point of brine and 100º was body temperature. After some minor fiddling around to match up freezing at 32º and boiling at 212º, body temperature turned out to be 98.6º F. I still think in inches, etc., but only because I’m used to it, not because it makes sense, but I think Fahrenheit is a better scale for everyday temperatures. Zero to 100 makes more sense than -18 to +38 and being a bigger scale allows for more accuracy. 28C could be 81, 82, or 83F since temperatures are rarely quoted in decimals. And if you say 70sF you know it’s cool to warm; whereas if you say 20sC you’d be talking about cool to hot. You’d have to qualify it by saying low 20s, etc. At any rate, here’s a simple conversion: 28C is 82F, 35C is 95F. And don’t mind me if I can’t help thinking in Fahrenheit, I’m just set in my ways.

Back on track, I can’t imagine anyone actually saying they like it hot, especially hot and humid. That includes everyone who’s here to escape the cold. We accept it and deal with it but it isn’t something we love. There may be one exception. Some years ago in Portland I was selling recycled metal at a scrap yard on a hot summer day over 90. One of the funky guys working there was wearing a padded vest so I couldn’t resist asking him why. He said he had a back problem and the only time it didn’t hurt was when he kept it hot. Otherwise, it’s really just a trade-off. I’ll accept the unpleasant hot so I don’t have to deal with the jittery, shivery cold. Besides, the times when it’s almost insufferably torrid here with sweat running out of every pore when you’re not even moving are balanced by the times when it’s a perfect balmy 80 or 82 degrees or so. Add a coolish breeze coming off the river here in Kampot and, well it just doesn’t get any better.

Portland’s climate also has its good points. It doesn’t freeze very often, so you rarely have to bundle up. Summer’s great with only a few really hot days and hardly any rain and except for those few hot days it feels fresh, bright and clean. For that you have to deal with six months of cool, dark, cloudy, misty, rainy, cabin-fever winter. In a cold climate, you generally keep your house cool to minimize the contrast to the outside and to save money and energy. As a result you (I) almost always feel a little chilled and edgy, without being able to fully relax.

In my earlier days I sought out the cold. At 18 I left my family in LA (we had just moved there a year or so earlier from Ohio) and migrated to New York. It seemed that the only thing people in California could talk about was how great it was to live in a warm climate, as if that was the only valid reason for choosing a place to live. It felt so vacuous and intellectually stultifying, especially when added to being in pastel fifteen-suburbs-in-search-of-a-city Los Angeles.

Cold is challenging, it’s brisk, fresh and energizing and if you’re prepared for it, no big deal. I spent years working outdoors in Portland. Even if it’s only 5 to 10C (40 to 50F) you don’t feel it if you’re working and staying active. On this last trip I was out on a day when a big storm came through. It was blustery, sideways-rainy and cold; altogether miserable is the only way to describe it. But also no big deal, if that’s what you’re into. Most people would hide away indoors on such a day, but I also saw people out riding bikes. I walked about 100 meters in the heavy (for Portland) rain and barely felt wet compared to being out in a Kampot downpour for about 5 seconds. At the Oregon coast, those stormy days carry a real punch: it rains a lot more and the winds routinely get up to 70mph – 110kph. It’s great fun…but only for a short time until you are thoroughly soaked and chilled.

Cold, perforce brings innovation and requires energy. There are lots of homeless people in LA where it’s almost always warm and quite a few in Portland where it’s uncomfortable for much of the year but not really cold, but in Saskatoon or Fairbanks, where the temperature easily gets down to -40 (F and C meet at -40) there is no such thing as being homeless, at least not in the winter.

In a cold climate, you must have heat, survival depends on it. In a hot climate you don’t have to have air-conditioning: You’ll certainly be uncomfortable, but you can live without it. You don’t even need four walls, just a roof for the rain and sun and something to keep the wind from howling through.

The following story illustrates the attitudes of some, possibly many rural Cambodians and maybe countryside people in other tropical countries. A do-gooder type set up a little factory in a small village with the idea of providing steady employment and paying the villagers well. He trained them in the work and was going to improve their lives. Everything went well in the beginning, he paid their first salaries, he was proud of himself. But the next day nobody showed up for work. When asked why they didn’t go to work they said that he paid so well, they had enough money to last for a while and that they’d return when they ran out of money.

I’m not sure where I remember that story from; it could well be a myth, but it does reflect an attitude that’s possible in a tropical place where life is naturally easy. Easy in the sense that it doesn’t take a lot to survive, not that rural people don’t have it hard in many other ways. The number of rural Cambodians who spend long hours working in garment factories belies the truth of that story to some extent, but it’s still a plausible scenario. There are, of course, lots of hardworking Cambodians, including many who out in the hot sun, but it’s still somehow easier than it would be to do the same work in freezing conditions.

In contrast, here’s a story from my time living in a hippie commune in southern Oregon. We lived in the mountains in homemade houses. It’s rarely very cold there because it’s relatively close to the Pacific Ocean so has a marine climate. As a result, many houses were not very tightly constructed, you know, plenty of air spaces through the siding and of course no insulation. One fellow spent a lot of time bragging about how great it was to have fresh air coming through to the inside. Besides, he would say, if it’s a little cool inside you can always hang out by the wood stove. Then one of those rare frigid air systems from the interior came barreling through with temperatures of 15F (-9C) and pushing the marine air out to the ocean. You never saw anybody work so diligently and speedily plugging all those fresh air holes… even though the frigid air was only going to last a few days.

Cold demands action while hot is conducive to inaction. Cold puts you on your toes while hot sets you flat on your back or in that idyllic hammock. Cold sets your teeth on edge and numbs your toes, heat brings sweat to your eyes and nose and clothes.

When I finally left New York for good, after bouncing back and forth between there and LA for ten years, I set off for northern California where the hippie commune, back-to-the-land movement was centered, besides I had friends there. I soon discovered that it was too expensive and close to the big city to allow for a truly self-reliant country lifestyle, so I moved further north and away from the city in stages till I landed in southern Oregon. Each stage was an improvement but still not enough for me; I wanted something colder, hardier and more remote where urban influences had less sway and masses of people couldn’t descend on you and hang out forever because the climate was so mild. You can’t lollygag when it’s really cold, you’ve got to get with the program.

From Oregon I made about a dozen exploratory forays out to the cold interior Pacific Northwest, mostly on my thumb. Probably half to two-thirds of the 70,000 miles of hitching I did from 1968 to 1980 was for the purpose of finding that perfect cold-country place. I was out in all weather, including in very cold places, and without money since I was a bona fide penniless hippie and that was the only way I could go. For all that, I never found my frigid fantasy homesite and was fated to live in cool, rainy Oregon for the next 22 years. As it happens, it was the perfect place for me for a lot of reasons and another lesson in going with the flow, which is not so easy when you’re young and trying to make your place in the world. What you really want may not be what you cosmically need and the more you fight against reality the less likely you are to find happiness.

And now for twelve years I’ve been here in forever sweaty Cambodia where the temperature rarely goes below 20C – 68F. There’s a time for everything, but I sure hope that doesn’t include returning to the ‘cold’, even if it’s only ‘cool’ Oregon.

My latest book, A Hitchhiker’s Tao, is based on my extensive thumbing experience and a large part is focused on my cold quest. It’s available only as an ebook and most easily purchased from smashwords.com… Look for Stan Kahn.

Back to Sweatland and More

What a welcome relief it was to step off the plane in Phnom Penh, after spending five weeks in a naturally cool place that was even cooler than normal and SWEAT. Oozing out all over, it was. The cold wasn’t all that bad, or wouldn’t be if one actually liked it, but in my waning years, not my cup of tea. That however is a story for another article…

First Portland, whose slogan lately, cooked up by a longtime, old-line record store is, Keep Portland Weird. It’s all over town in bumper stickers, etc. For instance, many bus riders say thank you to the driver as they exit. Weird huh? I might’ve chosen another word, like quirky or eccentric or unusual or trippy or odd or peculiar, but it wasn’t my idea so weird will have to do.

Certainly, if I had to live anywhere in the US, it would have to be Stumptown, so named because when the city was first developed in the 1850s the giant conifer trees that blanketed the area were easy enough to cut down (relatively speaking) but the huge stumps leftover were much more difficult to uproot so were left in the ground to naturally erode away, a process which took decades.

In the five years I was gone, two important streets were renamed. One for Caesar Chavez, fighter for farmworkers’ rights and the other for Rosa Parks, who famously refused to move to the back of a segregated bus in Alabama in the 1960’s. Portland never had the racial problems of many American cities for two basic reasons. One is that its minority population has always been so low – lowest proportion of any major American city, now about 20% – that white people never saw blacks as a threat. Even thirty years ago when the city had a definable ghetto there was always a large proportion of whites living there. Today, it’s been so upgraded and gentrified and peppered with cool, hip new shops and restaurants, it hardly qualifies as a ghetto, though there still are African-Americans living there. Secondly, there’s always been a sector of the population that’s fiercely progressive, liberal, integrationist. Height of ironies, they invaded the ghetto to the point where minorities can hardly afford to live there anymore.  

Being in Oregon also makes a difference. It was the first state to decriminalize marijuana in 1973. Assisted suicide was approved by the voters about 15 years ago… the only place in the world outside of Switzerland to enable it, though I believe some other countries are now coming on line. Oregon’s entire coast up to the vegetation line is public - compared to most of America where coastal property owners can build fences up to the high tide line – and there are 600 access points in 300 miles of coastline. In California, which has a spectacular coastline, you can sometimes drive 50 miles before finding a place to access it. Some years ago a group of Californians bought a remote oceanside Oregon property with the intention of bringing in boats loaded with weed. Unfortunately (for them and their plans) they had no idea about how things worked in Oregon so they built fences out to the high water line. Too bad… it looked highly suspicious to the locals and they got busted with the first shipment.

Portland doesn’t look all that different from the average mid-sized American city with some exceptions. It looks better than most because it’s so well taken care of which includes large areas of preserved older housing; it has all kinds of light rail trains and streetcars roaming around its vibrant central city; there’s lots of street sculpture strewn around and it’s growing in density where most American cities its size are spreading far and wide in typical suburban sprawl. It’s metro population is about 1.7 million, around the same size as Phnom Penh. It covers two or three times the area of PP but only half the area of other American cities of equivalent population.

Dense or otherwise, after my week on public transportation hobnobbing with the (un)usual characters, I spent a lot of time driving. Having wheels is very convenient, but other than a leisurely drive on a bucolic country highway, driving is a giant bore and hassle and mental frazzler. At least in the US it makes more sense: stay in your lane, keep a safe distance, watch for brake lights and you can zone out with your mind on some other planet. At first, when a car would come up to an intersection with me driving along a larger road I’d get a Cambo-based reflex half expecting the other car to dart in front of me. It took a few days to get that out of my system.

Traffic was horrendous at peak hours, partly because Portlanders have absolutely refused to allow any new freeways to be built or roads expanded and over the years car lanes have been reduced while bike lanes have increased. It’s what I call the ‘Let them stew’ theory of traffic management. If you make it hard enough for drivers, a lot of them will switch to alternatives; meanwhile you haven’t spent a ton of money and used a lot of valuable land to increase roadways.

Needless to say driving there is not at all like in Cambo where you have people on all manner of vehicles coming at you from all directions and nobody has actually stopped at a stop sign since the birth of the country, though some will actually look and others even slow down. In my car here I feel like a big fish with lots of little fish swarming around me and I try mightily to not be distracted because in a split second of letting my eyes wander some teenage kid will cut right in front with centimeters to spare and you know: KABOOM. Another big difference is that hardly anybody gets bent out of shape here for driving transgressions… even if you crash a red light and force others to stop for you. Try some of those tricks anywhere in the States, and even in Oregon and you’ve potentially got a livid road-rager to deal with.

Another of Oregon’s unique traits is its landmark land use law, passed in 1973 and still the only one of its kind in the country. It required that every city have a line drawn around it – an urban growth boundary - encompassing the already urbanized area. Until a city’s population grows to the point where additional land needs to be included inside the line it is nearly impossible to build urban type developments outside of it. It took 25 years of growth before the Portland metro area needed to expand the line and that boundary is now so clear you know immediately when you’ve crossed it. Urban to rural, like night into day. That saves valuable farmland and makes cities more efficient.

The contrast to Cambodia is stark; here you can build anything anywhere… as long as you don’t discomfort a bong tum – big man – in the process. That’s what happened at Martini Pub’s second location. Martini’s is a longtime local nightclub institution which has a large outdoor setting. A VIP living nearby didn’t like the noise and they were forced to move. The only restriction here is how close you can build to a public road. One of the reasons why we expats like living here is the lack of rules and restrictions, still, it’s not a great idea, for instance, to have noisy factories juxtaposed next to where people live. Included in the need for change is the way large factories are being built in the countryside in the middle of nowhere. Nevertheless, it seems like zoning and land use laws for Cambodia are far in the future. I believe there are building codes of some sort for Phnom Penh, but most people don’t bother to get permits so it wouldn’t matter much. A couple years back it was noted that less than half of builders got permits, though most of the larger projects were permitted.

America is the land of giant refrigerators and the immense supermarkets used to stock them. Shopping in one of those double-football-field sized stores is so distasteful, disagreeable, even demoralizing, you can’t help but want to stock up to avoid having to go back too soon. I tried to avoid them, but when it was necessary, I’d spend half an hour wandering around in abject frustration trying to find what I was looking for. I’ve never taken kindly to supermarkets. When I first starting getting high, you couldn’t coax me to go into one if you tried all day. Rather, you’d have to drag me in kicking and screaming. Just being in the parking lot gave me the willies.

And why does anyone need a thousand different breakfast cereals to choose from? Here in Cambodia we get whatever the wholesalers can pick up cheap and that means a constantly changing stock and since it includes products from a wide array of countries – New Zealand, Argentina, Germany, France and Egypt as well as the US – we actually have a greater choice; in particular when it comes to GMO free ones.

The one exception I’ll make to the choice thing is beer, there can never be too many available. As it happened the local store nearest where I stayed in a middle class part of town, which originally sold mostly food is now mostly beer and wine. They have a mind-boggling variety of brews so I was curious (and wanted to know for this article) about the number and asked the clerk how many different beers they sold. ‘Too many to count’, he responded at first so I pressed him, ‘500?’. ‘Oh no’, he says, ‘We have more than 500 domestic beers and maybe 1000 imports’. It was harvest time so they had at least a dozen pumpkin flavored beers and others spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, etc. I spent way too much money drinking quality brews knowing I’d be returning to the land of dearth of choices. Upon returning, however, it seems like our low-cost beers are pretty good in comparison to America’s and with brewpubs and microbreweries opening up, we may yet become a beer-lover’s paradise, though maybe not in my lifetime.

One of the best events I enjoyed while in Portland was the swiftlet bird show in Swift Park. It is named for a small corner of a park surrounding an elementary school in Portland and provides a great bird show. Starting about thirty years ago vast numbers of swiftlets – very small birds who spend almost all their time in the air - have turned the school’s big chimney into a stopping-off point in their migration from the Pacific Northwest to Central and South America. They roost by clinging to the inside of the chimney.

The school sits in a hilly part of town so in the process of making a flat place for the building and surrounding playing fields there’s a steep hillside in back of the school which, when you’re sitting there, places you at about eyelevel with the top of the chimney. Every afternoon starting at the end of August and lasting for about 5 or 6 weeks, somewhere between 5000 and 30,000 birds start gathering there an hour or so before nightfall in a swirling mass that looks like a funnel cloud. Meanwhile at least a thousand people bringing blankets and picnic food gather to watch the show. If it starts to get cold before the end of the migration and the time when the school can fire up the furnace, the kids just wear extra clothes and tough it out for the duration.

As part of the show there’s often a falcon or hawk or two who show up, causing much temporary dispersion and consternation to the swifts, as they pick off a little bird for supper. That, as you can imagine, really gets the crowd exercised. There’re plenty of swifts to go around, they’re in no danger whatever. The climax of the show is when they begin diving en masse into the chimney right about sunset. Wow, what a show.

As it happens swifts are no strangers to Kampot, though of course a completely different breed. Ours are called German’s swifts and are closely related to Edible-nest swifts which inhabit other parts of southeast Asia. All over town and out in the nearby countryside are specially constructed 3 to 4 story bird houses. They sometimes dress them up a bit with fake windows or porches. They play a continuous loop of bird sounds to lure the swiftlets, only changing the songs a bit around sunset. A friend who lived near one was driven half crazy by the unending chirping… he was a bit too sensitive.

Their nests are small semi-circular cups which they attach to the inside wall and are made up exclusively of their hardened saliva. For some strange reason they are prized by the Chinese who will pay $35 to $100 for a bowl of soup made out of them. Wholesale they bring somewhere between $2000 and $8000 per kilo, depending on the quality and color, and thus the reason why bird’s nest producers can afford to build multistory structures to house them. They are sprouting all over town. It’s one of our biggest industries.

I had a great time back in the States, especially after 5 years away, and really enjoyed seeing the kids and grandkids and friends of a lifetime. I also enjoyed seeing Portland changing and progressing, but 5 weeks seemed too long. Three would be plenty. I wouldn’t mind going back, but certainly not for at least a couple of years.

They Don't Like Good Beer

It Amazes me that most of the people I know in Cambodia prefer cheap, average to awful beer to the good stuff. But first, before you start feeling insulted because I may begin to lambaste your taste in beer, let me state very clearly that, 1) I’m a highly opinionated person, so take that into account, besides how else can you be a critic? and 2) As the French would say, chacon a son gout, (I hope I got that right, it’s been more than 50 years since I took French in college) which loosely translated means, There’s no accounting for taste. No matter how atrocious your taste in beer may be, you not only have a right to your opinion, but your taste buds may actually signal a swooning adoration for what, in my opinion, or even the wider opinion, is swill.

I’m certainly no expert in brewing aside from spending a lot of time in Oregon, one of the hot spots of microbreweries in the states, and having a long and enduring relationship with the suds. There aren’t many days that go by without me downing at least a couple of beers. In fact, the only time I won’t imbibe is the night after a blowout when I can’t bring myself to drink even one. It’s not even that I drink all that much, six or seven beers over a long night is about my maximum, not a lot by a serious drinker’s standards. In fact, I’ve saved tons of money over the years just because my intake is so limited. I do like spirits and other alcoholic beverages occasionally, but 90% to 95% of the time I’m after a cold, thirst-quenching beer.

We will certainly disagree on the quality of different beers but the one thing we (me and all you dedicated beer drinkers out there) can agree on that beer is the elixir of life, or one of the most important ones at least. It opens up our happiness centers, smoothes out the hard edges in our daily grinds, breaks down our inhibitions and allows us to relax and have fun. Even if we are not plagued with daily grinds as such, it still gives life an ease and pleasantness that’s difficult to achieve otherwise. The world is nuts, whatever it takes to surf through the big waves is good enough.   

Admittedly, all that happy, happy has its drawbacks. There’s only so many good times allocated to us before the happy, happy turns into total washout. It’s so much fun, you don’t know how to stop. That’s the way it is here in Cambodia… the bar culture is so much a part of the scene, and it’s so cheap, and all your friends are also out there having a good time, and… well, ‘nuff said.

Still, the quality of the suds has to make a difference to people spending hours and hours in imbibing mode, thus I’m baffled by the widespread indifference bordering on disdain on the part of many friends towards Kingdom beer, the only widely distributed craft beer in Cambodia. It’s far from the greatest of craft beers and equally far from the worst, coming up somewhere in the middle I would guess compared to the range of Oregon beers, which still makes it pretty good. Before I go any further, let me say I have no financial or other personal interest in Kingdom beer other than the desire to see it prosper so it stays available, so I can drink it whenever I can afford it.

What exactly are the complaints? One friend called it too hoppy. For me that’s the point. I like a rich, full-bodied hoppy flavor. Another, along the same line said, Yes, it’s got lots of flavor, but I don’t like it. A bar owner friend said, Nobody buys it, why pay $2.50 for a Kingdom when you can get a Beer Lao for half the price? (I can’t believe he chose Lao to make that comparison, more on that later.) Indeed, why drive a Lexus when a Corolla will get you there just the same for a quarter the price and maybe more on topic, why drink Johnny Walker Blue when Red will get you where you want to be at a small fraction of the cost? On the other hand, it makes total sense to drink down-market if you haven’t got the dough. But we’ve carried it too far, we’re so deep into a cheap canned beer culture we can’t deal with quality beer. However, cheap beer is also one of Cambodia’s strong points; you can have a good time every night without pissing away your life savings.

The dislike of Kingdom has gotten so strong it is widely rumored to be going out of business. They definitely were disappointed at the beer’s reception and were forced to make corrections in their business plan but I doubt if they’re about to fold. First they lowered the price of a case of bottles to $20 from $26, which definitely makes it easier for me to buy it. They also went into the cheap beer competition by producing Kingdom Gold in cans and pricing it about the same as the big three - Anchor, Angkor, Cambodia. They’ve recently set up a tent on a main street in Kampot to promote Gold, which doesn’t look much like they’re going out of business. The Gold is a lager and is competitive in quality and taste to the big mass produced beers – I like it better than those, though Cambo is hard to beat.

Another friend said, Sure it tastes good, but it’s not a beer you can drink all night. He actually had a point, though he didn’t realize it. That’s what I do, start with Kingdom then switch to cheaper beer, though that’s mostly because I don’t want to spend the extra money. However, I certainly wouldn’t do that in Oregon: I’m there so infrequently, the cost be damned, I’d never switch to Pabst or Miller from drinking quality beers unless I was in the direst of straits.

Well, what is it that makes Kingdom cost $20 per case as opposed to the mass produced beers that cost half as much, and the off brands which cost as little as $7.00 per case? In addition to the extra cost of putting beer in a glass bottle – in the case of Kingdom a custom bottle – as opposed to an aluminum can, there are only two basic factors that account for cost. Quality beer is the direct result of more expensive ingredients and the extra care taken in the brewing process. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll taste better, only that it has the potential to taste better.

The other valid reason for not drinking Kingdom exclusively is it’s a lot more fattening. Based on American-sized 12 ounce containers – about 350ml – an average cheap beer has about 140 calories; light beers contain about 100 calories; craft beers about 250 calories. So my friend, who can easily down 10 beers a night would be getting a full day’s calories just from beer if he only drank Kingdom, compared to 2/3 of his necessary daily intake from cheaper beers. Craft beers have more calories because they use richer, higher quality ingredients, like the difference between ice milk and ice cream. And they generally taste better because they use, for instance, more expensive malt and more than one type of better quality hops. An award winning Oregon craft beer uses a blend of five different varieties of hops; that’s not something you will find in a cheap beer.

The friend who accepted that Kingdom has more flavor but still didn’t like it is able to down Anchor draft without grimacing. Until recently, I could barely drink it and started looking for more expensive and less ecological alternatives. The quality seems very erratic; recently, it actually tasted good a few times, but then descended back into its normal bitter awfulness. It is advertised as smooth because there isn’t much to it, though it’s not the fact that it’s a pilsner, since Kingdom in bottles also has a pilsner along with a dark lager. I tend to think it wasn’t my taste buds playing tricks on me, but rather that they accidentally, mistakenly produced a better tasting beer, then realized they’d better get back to their regular awful taste so as not to confuse their customers. Anchor in cans is not that bad, though if faced with a choice between Anchor and Angkor, I’ll choose Angkor about 2/3 of the time, it’s got more to it.

I felt Cambo was better from the first taste, and thankfully the two bars I most patronize both have it on draft. Cambodia is sweet and light without a hint of harshness or bitterness. A friend who doesn’t like it called it too sweet, but sweet’s the opposite of bitter so that’s what makes it good. Cambo recently won third place in a category of 4% to 5% lagers in a beer tasting competition in London. I wasn’t surprised as it’s exceptional for a cheap beer. What did surprise me was that Tiger came in second place, which required that I buy one to include in this essay. I’ve drunk a few Tiger’s over the years but somehow it never impressed me as being worth the extra cost, but after drinking one for the purpose of describing it I’d have to say it’s pretty good and more flavorful than average. It’s clearly higher quality, but probably not enough for me to choose it above Cambo, for instance.

   Then there’s the environmental aspect. Draft is easily the least damaging to the planet, at least in Cambodia, since the kegs can be reused practically indefinitely, so I’ll nearly always go for draft first. But it does have its negatives since it has to be kept cold once it’s tapped and there’s a need for gas to bring it out of the keg. It’s also less consistent than cans or bottles depending on how long it takes to finish the keg – after three or four days the quality plummets. Cans are next on the environmental scale since aluminum is valuable and easily recyclable. But beer in cans simply cannot taste as good as in bottles or properly handled kegs. Nobody producing a quality beer would ever put it in cans, but that’s a problem here in Cambodia since the empty bottles aren’t recyclable, nobody wants them.    

Not saying many of the bottles couldn’t be designed to be washed and reused. Except for Kingdom, the bottles used by Angkor and Cambodia and other local breweries are all standard and interchangeable. However, they’d need to be purposely designed for washing since that requires a thicker glass than disposable bottles. Reusable bottles last an average of twenty washes, and if the energy necessary for the process were renewable then their ecological footprint would be about the same as draft, with better consistency and quality.

While we’re at it a discussion of other locally available beers is in order. My bar owner friend who thoroughly dislikes Kingdom and has Cambo on draft, sometimes prefers Klang, which I find astounding, sort of the outer limit of chacon a son gout, since I find it harsh, heavy, bitter and it leaves an unfriendly aftertaste. I don’t want to use up my entire repertoire of  negative adjectives on it or the list would be a lot longer. Klang which means strong in Khmer originally had a big 7% on its can but that caused a problem for some in power – I’m not sure why since the stouts are all at 8%. As a result they lowered the content to 6% and ceased to make a big deal of it. Even if I thought it tasted good I’d try to avoid it since I’d drink it just as fast as the 5 percenters, but it’d get me drunker sooner and send me home that much earlier. It’s super cheap, that much I can say for it - lately as little as $7 case. While we’re on the topic of nasty brews, Zorok, from Vietnam and Special deserve mention. Once I’ve paid for and opened a beer I’m going to drink it as a matter of principle, but man is it difficult with those two; both taste like weak dishwater with Special especially grotesque.

I recently tried a can of Phnom Penh beer; it was actually kind of bright and tasty, nothing like the cruddy suds that I remember from the last time – I’d actually buy it again. There’s a new beer called Ganzberg, which bills itself as German style. It’s good quality with a subtle, gentle taste, but not as flavorful as some of the others available. Beck’s is available at a reasonable price in a few places. It’s a good example of a hearty, strong tasting brew without a hint of bitterness, definitely worth the small extra cost.

I recently came across City beer. It’s available in only one place that I know of in Kampot. It’s brewed in Kampong Chhnang, though I had to get a Khmer friend to translate for me since there’s no info as to its genesis in English. It’s super cheap at $7.50 per case and is my favorite local beer aside from Kingdom bottles. After me going on about equating good beer with expensive ingredients you might rightly question how I could like one of the cheapest beers available. And I still wonder myself, but as often as I drink it, thinking maybe I’m missing something, it still comes out as one of the best; it’s light, bright, sparkly and full of flavor. It doesn’t have the quality of Cambo, but I like it better. And besides it’s cheap, which, when balanced out, makes it a bit easier for me to justify spending all that extra on Kingdom.

As I was touting City amongst friends at the bar, one fellow scoffed and said the motodops think it’s so bad they won’t touch it. Now this fellow often prefers Beer Lao to Cambo draft, so I retorted by saying, I’ve drunk lots of Lao over the years but I’ve never, ever thought, Gee, I’d like a Beer Lao tonight, it just never occurs to me. Just to make sure it was indeed as I remembered it I bought a can and yes, it was thick, syrupy, bitter and seriously lacking in bubblies. So chacon a son gout to you too buddy!

Cheeky Thieves

First a correction from last month’s article. I caught some heavy flack because of my erroneous history of the old market. I was first told the market was built in 1904. That sounded way too early and considering where the info came from that date seemed suspect. Guy and his wife, both in their sixties, owned a bar called Bonkers. The bar wasn’t all that successful and they both in succession drank themselves to death, so you see what I mean. Later when I read that it was built in the early sixties, I ran with it. However, our amateur historian kinda snarled at me as he searched out the net and found a aerial picture of Kampot from the thirties which clearly shows the market. Still, hard as he tried, he couldn’t find a definitive date for its opening or a time or reason for its abandonment. I expect it’ll all be clear when our new museum is open. There must be some locals who know about it. Will keep you posted.

Around the middle of February my house on the edge of Kampot was broken into… while I was sleeping. The window in the kitchen as well as those on the sides of the house have traditional wood shutters and, at least until recently, six vertical metal bars and one cross-piece. With such defenses, you tend to feel quite safe and secure, but as it turns out, those metal barriers aren’t much of a deterrent to wily, dedicated thieves.

It was about 3am and I heard a clunking sound. The time between 3am and 4am is the least active part of the day. You can be out and about and if you’re a thief, and possibly high on yama, you’ve got the streets to yourself. I’m a very light sleeper, partly from needing to wake up and trudge off to the bathroom to pee at least a couple of times every night, which comes from a combination of drinking beer every night and nearing geezerhood. Even without the need to relieve myself, I rarely sleep more than 2 hours continuously. All that considered, I easily heard the sound of the wood shutter in the kitchen being pried open. I made it a bit easier on the goniffs by not latching the top of the shutters, mostly from being lazy. (In fact, for a long time I left them open at night just to keep the air flowing.) The additional sound might’ve jarred me awake instead of remaining mostly asleep.

After prying open the wood shutters, they used what must’ve been a quite substantial crowbar to leverage one of the vertical metal bars out of the relatively flimsy wood casing it was set into. That too wasn’t soundless. Once the bar was out of the casing, they – there had to be at least two of them – bent it out of the way so one of them could squeeze through. It had to be a kid or a runt because it’s only 20cm – 8 inches – between the bars. And it had to be at least two because it took quite an effort for me to bend the bar back into place. The little bastard who slipped through the bars was definitely not strong enough.

At any rate, while that was all happening I’m thinking to myself, in a three-quarters dream state, wondering what I could use to throw at intruders or what I could otherwise do to fend them off, in case that was what was actually happening. As I was pondering that weighty question, they were rifling through my stuff in the living room. My bedroom is quite small and I’ve been lazy about getting shelving so I just toss the clothes I expect to wear in the near future on top of the spare bed in the living room. They managed to nick my $30 Nokia and find $10 in a pocket of the pants I’d worn the night before. It was near payday and I’d just borrowed the tenner to help get me through. Right after payday they might’ve gotten a couple hundred dollars. They didn’t take my computer because it’s a desktop, so it wouldn’t be easy to make a quick getaway hauling a lunky one of those around. They didn’t take my alto sax, because they probably wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do with it or how valuable it actually is, and they didn’t grab my precious $55 Sony short wave radio, undoubtedly thinking it’s just a copy that goes for about $5 new.

After a similar break-in happened to a neighbor several months back (though in that case entry through the kitchen was much easier) my landlady urged me to keep the door between the kitchen and rest of the house latched at night. But, as mentioned before, I have to wake up to piss often during the night and that would’ve meant hassling with the door every time, so my laziness and casualness triumphed.

Even though my house was built in 2001 and is made of concrete, it maintains the Khmer style of treating the kitchen/bath area as a separate add-on, so while the main part of the house has a high concrete ceiling, the kitchen has a lower, metal shed roof. At any rate, the kitchen is somewhat isolated from the rest of the house so the sound of the shutters being pried open was somewhat subdued. The same would not have been true if the door between the kitchen add-on and the remainder of the house was closed and latched since that’s a lot closer to my bed and I definitely would’ve fully woken up with the sound of that being broken through.

It must’ve been cosmic intervention that kept me from fully waking up, since I’ve been known to challenge ne’er-do-well’s in that context, but I would’ve been naked and had access to nothing to defend myself with and what could I do, half asleep, against a couple guys, each wielding a big crowbar or knife, or what have you. It’s possible my blood-curdling lion’s roar might’ve sent them scurrying away, but I also could’ve taken a chance of getting seriously injured.

Well, I showed the landlady the damage and she said she’d bring somebody by the next day to reinforce the metal bars by adding four cross pieces. Tomorrow never came but I hated to complain since the house is perfect for me and I’ve been there for 5 1/2 years in which she hasn’t raised the rent and we generally get on very well. So I let it slide thinking the thieves weren’t likely to return, especially since they got so little the first time. Like her I was being trusting and lackadaisical instead of serious about security.

Tomorrow, in fact, did come about 3 weeks later, except it wasn’t for improved security, but a second break-in. This time, fortunately, I was in Phnom Penh indulging in a three night marathon of drink and debauchery. The only reason why the latter is relevant, is that when I arrived home, the landlady was there to show me the damage. They came through the same compromised kitchen window and then broke through the wood door between the kitchen and living area, which I’d gotten into the habit of latching. They probably were the same guys. The real question is whether they had cased the place and knew I was away or thought they could invade a second time while I was sleeping. The second time I would’ve been a bit more prepared since I followed a friend’s advice and I now keep something substantial near my bed to swing at possible intruders.

The second time they got nothing. They hung around, opened a couple beers which they didn’t finish and made some noise which the next door neighbor heard, but didn’t notify the police of because she thought it was me. I never make noise at night be she wouldn’t necessarily know that.

The landlady was ready to bring in the workmen right then to reinforce the metal bars, but I absolutely refused since I was thoroughly drained from overdoing Phnom Penh and the drive back and it was past my nap time, so I said tomorrow and hit the sack for a fitful hour’s sleep.

When I awoke the landlady and a couple of police and others were out front so I dressed and went out to greet the commotion. As it turned out, the cops weren’t there because of the break-in but to hand me a document and have me sign off on a copy that I’d received it. But I refused since it was all in Khmer and I asked how I could sign something I couldn’t read. “Maybe it says I’m a bad man and must go to jail”. They got the message and left the document without getting my signature. More on the meaning of that after I finish the security aspect.

Since I’d refused to have the window reinforcing work done that day, I was left with a house that the thieves could practically walk right into, so I had to do something to protect myself for that one night. It was very unlikely that they’d return so soon, but I couldn’t take the chance so I put a heavy object in front of the flimsy wood door so they couldn’t walk right through it and then dumped a big basket of empty aluminum cans at the door so they’d make an ungodly racket trying to get into the living room, a noise which I couldn’t possibly sleep through. It sure was a hassle going through my makeshift barricade to pee three times that night, but I had no choice.

Well, the metal barriers on the windows did get reinforced with four extra cross members welded into place and the light duty wood door between the kitchen and living space has been replaced with a strong, practically impenetrable steel one. At this point nothing short of a blowtorch or wrecking crew is going to gain access into my house and no way I wouldn’t know when that was happening. Still it is a bit disconcerting to think how bold our thieves are becoming to hit the same house in such a short timespan. Of course, it could’ve been a different set of thieves, but I doubt it.

As for the document in Khmer that I didn’t sign, turns out it’s a notice to all those who are working in Cambo as well as those who hire non-citizens that they need to have work permits which, I later learned, cost $100 per year, with an extra $50 for expediting the process. The Phnom Penh immigration police are here to check us out and make sure we follow the rules. They are asking for back fees up to seven years, so a lot of money. They also told Bokor Mt. Lodge, located on the river in Kampot, they wanted them to add a 10% tax on room rates and 12% on restaurant meals. Hassle is coming to Cambo. If we have to start getting permits and paying taxes, that’s justifiable and maybe unavoidable – nobody could think it was always going to be so easy to live here - but backdating for up to seven years is pure robbery. The story is still unfolding but deadline looms so expect an update in the next issue.

In other news the second annual I Love Kampot River event was held this month. Various estimates gave the number of children attending at 600 to 1200. They sent out about 30 boats filled with kids who spent a couple hours picking up garbage along the river banks and they brought back about a hundred large sacks worth. They taught the kids a song about protecting the environment in which all sang together and all in all they had a good time and learned good civics lessons. Certainly most will not be as likely to casually toss their garbage around. And it’s great to see expats taking an interest in the community and volunteering for good deeds.

Kampot Update

The old market, a fine bit of architecture, was built in the late sixties but was gutted by fire just a couple years after it was completed and lay abandoned until recently. The above was published in my March Bayon Pearnik article. I caught some heavy flack because my history of the old market was way off. I was first told the market was built in 1904. That sounded way too early and considering where the info came from that date seemed suspect. It came  from a Brit and his wife, who were both in their sixties. They owned a bar called Bonkers; it wasn’t all that successful and they both in succession drank themselves to death, so you see what I mean. Later when I read that it was built in the early sixties, I ran with it. However, our amateur historian kinda snarled at me as he searched out the net and found a aerial picture of Kampot from the thirties which clearly shows the market. Still, hard as he tried, he couldn’t find a definitive date for its opening or a time or reason for its abandonment. I expect/hope it’ll all be clear when our new museum is open. There must be some locals who know about it. Will keep you posted.

Cambodia’s troubles kept it derelict for a long time until rehabilitation began about a year ago. It is now filling up, though mostly on the outside, none of the inner stalls have been rented yet. And in a curious juxtaposition, it’s bringing Khmer owned and oriented businesses to the riverfront. Until the market opened nearly all the businesses on the river were western owned or catered to westerners. In contrast, most of the new shops are clothing stores typical of everywhere in the city, but there’s also a tailor, a fancy “Mans Hairdresser” shop, tour/travel agents and a mini-mart. I expected more of the souvenir, specialty traveler clothing type to inhabit the market, but no, at least not yet.

At the front of the market facing the river are two restaurants that provide a study in contrasts. One is western styled with a thatched roof covering part of the large space, very nice plantings and a pleasant ambiance. The other is a Khmer style fast food place specializing in deep fried snacks, including chicken feet and meatballs and assorted other foods on a stick. The atmosphere is strictly bare-bones, cheap-plastic-chairs and -stools. It’s open only for late afternoon and early evening snacks and does a booming business though rent is high and margins are low so it remains to be seen how successful it will be.

There are lots of people around, the place is hopping, with new guest houses, restaurants and bars opening up regularly. I don’t mind having all those tourists around, especially knowing it’ll quiet down considerably in a couple months. There’s also been some very fine restorations of historic buildings. Kampot is a very old town, the country’s first port, and it’s old district is relatively well preserved.

The former governor’s mansion at the south end of the river promenade is being converted to a museum which they plan to make free. They’ve removed the air-conditioners to save in maintenance costs. Doing that has allowed them to open up and aerate the building: it’s looking good. Just a bit further south the riverfront park has been extended another 200 meters almost to the Aquatic Sports Center. I wouldn’t be surprised if they intend to extend it even further. That area is largely undeveloped but the way things are going, I expect it won’t stay that way long, especially with a new park on the river.

 The government has been going all out laying asphalt on nearly all the city’s thoroughfares. They evidently think westerners will be impressed by lots of nice pavement. They’ve improved all the park strips and traffic circles, so what else is there? There’s no real park the way we think of them in the west, but Cambodians don’t seem to grasp the concept of large natural green spaces with miniforests, ponds, grassy areas, picnic tables, and sports fields and courts. As a result, all they know about improving the city is to lay more pavement. In my neighborhood, just north of new bridge road, they’re going all out paving in concrete. I guess since it requires no special equipment – as asphalt does - only lots of labor which is cheap, it’s easier to do it that way.

As a measure of where Kampot is going, as well as Cambodia as a whole, I’ll recount my land experience. I purchased a 3000 meter plot 3 kilometers from town in 2008 in the last throes of the late property boom for $4.60 per square meter - $14,000. In between the time the contract was signed, but before the hard title was ready about 6 weeks later, the owners were offered $20,000.

Within a year or so, I decided the country gentleman/farmer life was not for me. At the age of 67 I couldn’t stand having my mind constantly boggled by house construction and maintenance, working the land and hiring local help; it was more than I could bear. However, by then the market had crashed and the land was barely worth $2/meter - $6000, so I was forced to wait to try to sell it. In the beginning of 2011, I offered it at $9000 and found a buyer, who as it turned out, couldn’t finish the payments. Last year I had two different people who really wanted it at $12,000 but didn’t have the money.

This year I offered it at $5/meter and still no buyer: everybody agreed that it was a nice piece of land and the price was fair but buying land is not like buying a cheap cellphone, it has to be the right person. About a month ago a real estate guy who I’d talked to 2 years before called and asked if the land was still available and what I wanted for it: I said $15,000 - $5/meter. He showed it to friends (who didn’t know I had land for sale) and said I wanted $6/meter! The longer I wait the more it’s worth, pretty soon it’ll be $50/meter. Well, probably not. Anyway, I’d just as soon sell it now at its current price before the next crash. It might not happen for a couple years, but I’d rather not take the chance. Meanwhile, it’s looking up for Kampot and Cambo.

On a sad and disturbing note, a naked young French tourist washed up on the river about a kilometer from the guest house she was staying in. By various accounts the police have a suspect or suspects, but we all hope the got the real culprit(s) and not just fingered the first bad guy who came along in order to have a quick resolution to the case. While that type of thing can happen anywhere and Cambo is far safer for us than a lot of other places in the world, it’s no less heart-rending and a cause for concern.  

Overload and Disconnect: About three years ago Highway 3 between Kampot and Sre Ambel, where it connects to Highway 4, was an excellent road, but once the reconstruction of route 3 between Phnom Penh and Kampot was finished, it became an alternate route for big trucks heading from the capital to Sihanoukville. As a consequence, until recent patching was done, it had become a shambles. It’s 20 kilometers farther going via Kampot, but evidently, considering the tolls on Highway 4, it must still be cheaper.

The reconstruction of route 3, as all the national roads that I’m aware of, was done with a layer of bitumen tar between two layers of gravel. The lower layer of gravel is rolled and packed down, the tar is added on top then a second layer of gravel is just tossed on top with the action of vehicles running over it creating a road surface. That works fine for a road used by light vehicles, though even there, potholes will develop quickly. As long as they are patched as soon as they appear the road can last quite a long time. That type of surface is used because it’s a lot cheaper than higher-quality asphalt pavement. If you’re driving on route 3 you’ll notice that the pavement on the bridges is asphalt, making a much smoother ride than the rest of the roadway which is bitumen. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s standard practice.

It’s a completely different story when overloaded trucks, especially giant ones, use the road. In that case, within a few months large sections of the surface are trashed. Cambodian truck drivers have an obsession with getting as much as they can on their rig, regularly loading 10 tons of material on a truck designed for 2 tons. Just recently in my neighborhood one such truck packed high with 50 kilo sacks of salt backed over a newly installed concrete drainage pipe buried under 10 or 15 cm of dirt and caved it right in. To tell you the truth I didn’t feel all that sorry for the trucker as I watched him as he was emptying most of the load so he could get the truck back on the road, and then, of course, having to reload the whole thing. I also wouldn’t sympathize all that much with him when his rig breaks down from overloading… though I guess even stupid and/or inconsiderate people deserve sympathy sometimes.

Overloading trucks actually doesn’t save all that much money when you factor in expensive repairs, highway breakdowns - which cost a lot more to fix - and the extra fuel needed to carry an excessive load. Probably the worst offenders are the rock trucks used in construction. The owners regularly raise up the sides 20 or 30 cm and then pile the rock as high as they can. They are so heavy they can barely do 40 kph at full throttle with the engine screaming. What’s more, some of the trucks that ply our roads are so large to begin with, even before their capacity has been expanded, that they would be too heavy to be allowed on American roads, so obviously pure disaster for roads here made of a thin layer of bitumen. However, even the new roads constructed of more durable asphalt are breaking up after only a year or so.

With no firm regulations and no enforcement of weight limits, the authorities will probably spend as much money repairing roads as building them. The only completely legitimate way to enforce weight limits would be by installing truck scales, not very likely here in the near future. On the other hand, it isn’t that hard to determine the weight of some materials, like a cubic meter of rock, and then measure the truck’s capacity to determine how much weight it’s carrying. The biggest trucks aren’t necessarily the worst offenders since it’s weight per axle that counts. Some of those, which are never seen in America, have triple rear axles and double  front steering axles. Along with the rock trucks, there are lots of giant stake bed trucks, with only single rear axles, loaded to the top with heavy materials.

The big truck problem is compounded in Kampot by the location of the access road to the new bridge - finished in 2010 - passing by the main entry to the public market. Public markets are notoriously congested so having lots of miscellaneous, extraneous traffic including giant trucks with their belching fumes, noisy engines and driver’s tendency to excessive horn blowing, doesn’t do much for the neighborhood’s ambiance or safety and is really not the way you design a city.

I have a degree in urban studies and have spent extensive mental energy mulling over planning concepts all my life so the problem was obvious to me from the start, but in this case the disconnect is so clear that several people with no such background have mentioned that problem to me. The planners faced a serious, though not intractable, dilemma since there was no easy alternative; that is, there was no other street they could’ve used that didn’t require purchasing expensive urban land. Except for the need to purchase almost 200 meters of right-of-way the street one block north would’ve been perfect since it’s largely fronted by industrial uses, which since they already tend to be noisy and polluting, mesh perfectly with highways. When developing greenfields, essentially blank slates, planners are free to design at will, but when dealing with the city ‘as built’, they are seriously constrained. In this case neither the bridge nor the market are going to be moved to accommodate good planning.

Ultimately, the only answer in this situation would be a bypass road or in the distant future a freeway. You never want through traffic, especially when that includes large trucks, going through a town or congested area. Until recently there was so little traffic in Cambodia that that didn’t matter much. Besides, the country was lucky to have any decent roads let alone modern limited-access highways.

One change likely to make a difference soon is the completion of the Phnom Penh – Sihanoukville rail line. Toll Holdings, an Australian company that has the concession to run the operation, has run a test train over the track and for some time has run a train to the Kampot Cement plant which is about halfway from the capital to Kampot. Bulk cargo is always cheaper and less damaging to the environment to transport via rail compared to road, so hopefully most heavy freight now busting up our highways will switch to rail. Also hopefully, they won’t wait long to start passenger service. The tracks are built for 80 kph trains and it’s only 150 kilometers from PP to KP so even with several stops it shouldn’t take more than 2/12 or 3 hours to make the run. Won’t that be great.

Also, bus services have improved immensely since I first started making the trip 6 years ago. Back then the trip took six hours or more, considering the condition of the roads, the extra distance of going through Kep (at the time the southern leg of highway 3 was almost impossible for large buses to negotiate) the road from the highway to Kep was a 15 kph dirt road, and the bridge 10 k’s east of Kampot was under construction. Now there are two big-bus lines going direct which cuts the trip down to 3 1/2 hours, and two ‘luxury’ minibus lines offering a very fast and comfortable ride. Still, nothing compares with a train ride where you can easily get out of your seat and walk around. Trains are also far superior scenically since the tracks go through the countryside as opposed to buses passing by lots of trashy roadside buildings, not to mention, here in Cambodia, honest-to-goodness roadside trash.