September in April

It’s been September in April in Kampot. In the week or so centering around Khmer New Year we had close to 12 inches – 30cm – of rain with two very heavy deluges and the rest of the time it was dark and cloudy with lighter rainfalls almost every day. That is exactly what you’d expect in September, our heaviest month which in fact receives an average of 12 inches of precipitation.

This is my eleventh April in Cambodia and I’ve never seen anything like it. At least 3 or 4 of those years saw no precipitation whatever, not a drop. They were characterized by a relentless overbearing heat. In the five years I’ve lived in Kampot my cistern, which collects rainwater from the roof, has gone completely dry twice. This year it never got down to half. Climate Change anyone?

Just before the first torrent we had temperatures in the high 90s – 36-37C – which is very rare for Kampot since we are close to the sea and its moderating effects. Since warmer air holds more moisture, it follows that rainfall will increase with rising temperatures. At some point the use of the term global warming morphed into climate change, and it’s a bit more accurate since, for instance, climate change actually is bringing unusually cold wintry weather to places like the UK. Still, there have now been 336 consecutive months in which global temperature has exceeded the twentieth century average.

Almost all climate change predictions have underestimated the pace of change. That is partly because of the impacts of feedback loops. For instance, when ice, which reflects sunlight melts, leaving much darker blue sea or rock, more heat is absorbed. Each measure of melting then accelerates the loss of additional ice. While there’s no way to definitively attribute individual climate events to man’s impact on the climate, erratic or unusual weather is exactly what the models predict.

Nonetheless, Cambodia is doing its part to make things worse. But first, around the beginning of April there were news reports of  serious power outages in the capital. Why is that, the national electric company was asked, when the Kamchey dam near Kampot is now finished and working? When there’s water behind the dam it can provide almost half of Phnom Penh’s total demand, which is 400 megawatts (but growing at 20 to 25% per year). Unfortunately, in April, the time its power is needed most, there’s (usually) no water so the dam was working at only 10% of capacity. A few days later, representatives of the dam said they’d found a way to conserve water, so could send more juice the capital’s way. Mysteriously, right after that our water pressure went limp. No water at all for a couple hours a day. So water pressure is back with the heavy rain and I expect there’s a lot more water to pass through the generators at the dam.

If it hadn’t started raining, Cambodia’s first coal-fired plant which is due online in June or July, would’ve taken up the slack. At 700 megawatts, it can supply nearly twice the capital’s demand. The nice thing about coal is that it’s relatively cheap, but that’s its only saving grace. Under the best conditions it’ll produce large amounts of CO2. Being built by the Chinese it’ll also almost certainly spew lots of other more immediately toxic gases and particulates into the air. Modern coal plants can be relatively clean on matters other than CO2, but it’s hard to imagine the Chinese builders giving a damn about Cambodia’s air quality, considering China’s own air is among the worst in the world. Air pollution controls make a plant cost a lot more, so it’s extremely unlikely to happen, especially with Cambodia in such a subservient position.

Most new power projects in Cambo, both hydro and coal, are structured as BOT or build, operate, transfer. The developer finances and builds the plant, operates it for 30 or 40 years and then turns it over to the government. Cambodia, in its haste for power and development at any cost, has accepted whatever terms the Chinese – they’re almost all Chinese – have offered. This usually includes penalties for not using power. In other words, if there’s a surplus of power, the government pays anyway. And that’s understandable, nobody’s going to put up hundreds of millions of dollars without some guarantee of payback. Still that could potentially be a very big problem in the future.

Is this exceptionally wet April a harbinger of extreme rainfall later in the season? Impossible to say, but it’s remarkable nonetheless. It could turn hot and dry next week, normal for this time of year, but if it is a portent of things to come we could be in for some serious flooding. As mentioned previously, right at a natural bottleneck in the river, across from the government buildings at the southern end of town, there’s been extensive landfilling, making the river even smaller there.

Being an estuary, thus essentially part of the sea, the water level reflects the tides more than anything else. The exception being in case of very heavy rainfall bringing water down from the mountains combined with a storm surge and high tide that brings large amounts of water in from the sea. In that case, that bottleneck will serve to flood large areas of the city. I’m not looking forward to it.

In other Kampot news the riverside walk is being extended south to the old port, Cambodia’s first port. There are sometimes large fishing boats docked there but mostly it’s for small boats. A wood boardwalk about 1.2 meters wide is being built there, I assume to provide a place for the small fishing boats to dock in the early morning when they return from the sea. There isn’t a lot of development there at present but a lot of property has changed hands and a one hectare lot just south of the government buildings has been cleared – they cut down lots of healthy trees but did leave one sugar palm – so I expect a substantial development is in progress.

At the other end of town river road is in the process of being widened and paved, I believe all the way to the road the leads to dam, about 11 kilometers. That work has involved felling lots of nice old trees which beautifully graced the road, sometimes making a leafy green canopy. That was my favorite bike ride, but no more, it’ll just be a wide busy highway you use to get somewhere, not someplace to take your time and enjoy on a bicycle.

I know progress is inevitable and important and that road had to be done eventually since it was a disaster for anything larger than a motorbike, but I’m still personally disappointed at the loss of  green and tranquility. The one aspect I do have to take exception to is that they’re widening it more than needs to be. That extra capacity won’t be needed at least for the next decade or so, so the trees could’ve remained a little longer, but Cambodian officials love their pavement so they had to go.

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.

Kampot Chronicles August 2012

Kampot Chronicles - August 2012

A friend, who I’ve known practically since I first came to Cambodia almost ten years ago, stopped by in Kampot, first time for him in several years: his observation; This town is really boutiquey. Being as he’d just spent several months in Koh Kong, just about anything would seem boutiquey… but still… the little Pot has definitely become a destination for travelers and expats, indicated by the number of shops selling trinkets, tourist clothes and Kampot pepper that’ve cropped up in the past year or so. Kampot pepper now has a geographic designation, which means the name cannot be used elsewhere and has considerably raised demand for it. We’re also Cambodia’s center of sea salt production, so salt and pepper town.

Kampot is nothing compared to the tourist/expat Mecca’s of Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville, but it’s also far from the foreigner deserts of all the other small towns in Cambo. A friend, who’s lived in Battambang - Cambodia’s second largest city - for quite a long time came to visit last year; he was amazed at the number of white faces ambling around town.

There are advantages of a little boutiqueiness. While I’m perfectly comfortable in local restaurants and bars outfitted with plastic chairs, fold-up metal tables, glaring bright white florescent lights and décor consisting exclusively of beer posters and pennants, there is some comfort in surroundings created with the Westerner in mind. For one, in place of a TV blasting out Khmer karaoke songs or cartoons or soap-opera-dramas dubbed in Khmer, you get to hear those old familiar songs and musical styles. While I’m capable of handling an el cheapo cup of bitter, low quality coffee embellished with a super-sweet, pseudo-milk dairy creamer, a real cup of quality java is a positive treat. Kampot now has two, soon-to-be three, coffee shops in the western tradition.

It takes a minimum of expat/travelers to support those types of venues. I don’t have any problem seeing lots of backpackers around as do some of my friends who get nervous and tetchy in their presence (actually, seeing people wheeling suitcases around rough third world streets and sidewalks looks a lot stranger to me) and I do appreciate that there’re enough of them around to enable a variety of businesses to sprout.

It wasn’t that long ago that I had a couple or three bars to go to and had some days off in between. I’d get my entertainment kicks in the capital and return for an R and R in Kampot. Now, what with all that’s happening around town, I have to force myself to take a night or two off.

For one there’s the Tuesday night trivia quiz at Blissful Guest House. The quiz consists of a picture round where you need to name people or places - one time it was boobs - followed by two general questions rounds - quick, What’s the coldest capital city in the world? Ulan Bator, Mongolia. How many languages does BBC broadcast in? 27. What century was the main temple at Angkor Wat built? 12th. Finally there’s a music round where you have to identify both song and artist from the first five or ten seconds of the track. Since my team is a bunch of geriatrics, we pretty much fall down on almost anything recorded past the seventies and eighties, so we have to do very good on the general questions before the music round or we’re sunk. After bringing up the rear for a couple of weeks, and not winning for about two months, we’ve won twice in a row as of this writing. Prize is a 3-liter tower of beer.

Then there’s live music. It’s the August mini-high season and there are 5 nights a week of scheduled music. A lot of the same guys are involved but there’s a different mix on almost every occasion. Since I play conga drums I can sit in almost any night. There are also special events; the Greenhouse had a Saturday night 2 band party with more than 50 people attending. One friend, being too drunk to drive home, rented a room at 2am, another found himself crashed out on the tiny sand beach in the morning. A great time was had by all.

The Greenhouse is the reincarnation of the former Snow’s bar which sat on the river in Phnom Penh for quite a long time. It was carefully dismantled, hauled down here and reassembled in a beautiful spot on Kampot’s river about 7 kilometers from town. About 15% of the building had to be replaced. Now the floor is actually level. The building was improved by removing the low ceiling on the front one third of the structure thus opening it up to the high vaulted ceiling. It’s a special place. 

While I tremendously appreciate the live music and have become addicted to quiz night, the greatest improvement for me personally is Ecran, our new movie theater. There are quite a few things I can say I miss about living in the states; Portland, Oregon in particular. My kids and grandkids and lifelong friends, mountains and forests and seashore crisscrossed with well maintained and marked trails, beautifully preserved architecture and respect for the past, but what I’ve really been missing is intelligent, artistic, brain-teaser flicks. Real movies, not car chase, crash and explode, shoot-em’-ups designed to appeal to teenage boys. Those kind of movies are slick and crafty and the special effects are spectacular, all right, but after 3 or 5 minutes of brilliantly choreographed car chases (or if it’s a Chinese movie, flying-through-the-air kung-fu-fighting) I’m bored silly.

Well, in this case, in terms of my own preferences, we’ve got it all. I’ve been going about twice a week since it opened a month ago, but almost every movie is one I want to see. The Artist, the silent movie that won lots of awards, started it off. Then there was Mr. Nice and Blow, two big-time-drug-dealer movies. 127 hours, the flick about the guy who gets his arm wedged in between two rocks while out hiking and, after more than five days stuck there, has to cut it off to survive. The new Woody Allen; Dangerous Method, the film about the relationship between Jung and Freud; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; three music-hero movies; Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd and The Doors: What more could you ask for? And the set up is perfect: 4-meter screen with an excellent sound system and comfortable seating including two platforms with cushions and pillows.

For most of you out there, probably 95%, having a legitimate cinema is not such a big deal because you’re probably in the habit of watching the latest flicks on your TV or computer. But since I don’t do TV - I’ve only cohabited with one for a total of four years since 1965 - a real theater is my only option. Besides, at 71 my eyes aren’t the greatest so I miss a lot watching on a small screen. Add the interruptions and casualness of watching at home and I’m just not interested. I want to be immersed, I want it to be an experience rather than time-killing entertainment. To sum up; I’m thrilled, my prayers have been answered, I couldn’t have done it better.

Then there’s the grass hut/karaoke bars, the small town equivalent of big city hostess venues, which I’ve only recently discovered after nearly five years in Kampot. They’re usually out on the edge of town in a outdoor setting. There’ll be a row of karaoke rooms rentable for $3 per hour and tables under thatch roofs for just drinking. Beers range from 3000 riel to a dollar; usually served warm with ice. Similar to the typical low-cost local restaurant, all the décor is beer posters with an occasional mobile phone poster thrown in for good measure. Strangely enough they often display posters for beers they don’t sell. One has posters for a locally brewed wheat beer! Who ever heard of such a thing? Of course they don’t carry it.

They’re fine just for drinking but if you want female companionship there’s a $3 charge for her to sit at your table, but no extra cost for lady drinks or bar fines for her to leave the premises. Hardly any speak English, so it’s a bit of a challenge communicating. Some of the girls are staff, most are floaters. If a venue is busy they make a few calls and like magic, they’re flooded with staff.

All in all a big challenge for me to stay home a couple nights a week.

There’s been a rush of work restoring or rebuilding riverfront properties. I mentioned that to a friend who told me the authorities told property owners to get it together or else. Of course, I have no idea what the ‘or else’ might entail, but we know how it works here in our adopted home. In some ways the old derelict buildings gave the town some character. Boutiquey is okay but not when it completely takes over the vibe. In any case the renovation is happening and is taking place at the start of a new property bubble. I’ve heard one riverfront owner asking $250,000 for a single shophouse. That price might be justifiable on Phnom Penh’s river, but for Kampot somewhere in the stratosphere in terms of true value. The only way that property could be worth that much is if you think someone else will pay even more for it in the future.

For a simple rule of thumb, figure a property costing $250 grand needs to be able to garner 1% a month of that, or $2500, in rent to justify that price. In Kampot, that’s beyond absurd. The little burg is a special place and growing rapidly, but the most profitable business in town couldn’t afford half that in rent without it eating up almost all of its profits. Still, people with money seem to be starry eyed about the town’s potential and so ridiculous prices are being asked and outsize rents are being paid.

For instance, the owner of the town’s new 8 story hotel set up his kid with a bar on the river. It’s cool, modern, nicely decorated but at a rent of $550 per month for a space that doesn’t extent very far back, a pure cash sink. With utilities and two staff, they’d have to sell close to 60 beers a night to break even, yet in the two months it’s been open I haven’t seen a total of 50 customers the whole time. Sure it’s low season, but still it’s quite unimaginable how they’ll make the rent even in high season, especially with new bars opening regularly and with all the renovating being done, even more new spaces are being created for competitors.

Competition will also come from the renovation of the old market which is nearing completion. In addition to about 80 market stalls which are going for $125 month there’ll be room for several restaurant stalls. Once again, I don’t see where the business is going to come from, but I’ve been wrong about these things many times in the past, so who knows?

With all the push for tourism and expats it came as a great surprise when new directional signs - you know the ones with the giant billboard on top - turned out to be only in Khmer. Even the one on the way up to Bokor has no English. Those are the only ones in the country I’ve seen that don’t include English. What could they have been thinking?

The riverfront walkway renovation is almost complete with a public toilet, of all things, at the north end near the new bridge. The only public space yet to be improved is the pond at the south end of town. It’s 4 or 5 hectares and big enough for boating and other water fun. Technically it’s no longer a pond: it’s gotten so overgrown lately it’s more like a wetland. I sure hope the city has sensitive, green recreational plans for the space but I fear the worst.

Finally, next to the governor’s mansion at the southern end of town, which I understand is slated to become a museum, a new elections office has been constructed. It’s been very nicely done in traditional Cambodian architecture except for two garish semi-circular, three story columns of ultra modern blue glass. Who would do such a thing? That’s like putting flashing electric lights on Angkor Wat… Hey, wait… a few years ago the government did want to brighten up the temples with colored lights, only (thankfully) to be shot down by the Angkor Authority… Oh, well.

My friend, mentioned in the first paragraph, who only planned to stay for a few days, stayed for more than ten. It happens a lot, people come expecting to pass quickly through, but then don’t want to leave.

Kampot Chronicles September 2011

One of the things I always liked best about Kampot, Cambodia was the tall stately old casuarina trees that lined the riverfront. Their beautiful lacy conifer type leaves have a special grace about them. The trees, which I guessed to be about 60 to 80 years old, are actually a century old according to a local Khmer.

Every time I’d ride my bicycle along the river I’d get a warm grateful feeling, like it was a privilege to live among them. Over the nearly five years I’ve lived here, I’d often remarked to myself how great it was that the authorities here hadn’t tortured and emasculated them the way the old trees of Phnom Penh had been mistreated. So, of course, it had to happen. Far be it for Cambodians to see a hundred year old tree, nay a nearly kilometer long row of centenarian trees, as a venerable natural work of art. What were once fifty to eighty foot - 15 to 23 meter - tall, grand and beautiful trees are now 15 to 20 foot tall trunks with a few branches hanging off of them. Total uglification.

Ironically, even while they severely cut back the casuarina trees they left the parasitical strangler trees and branches in place. The stranglers seed up high in the tree and send their roots down to the ground. Eventually when there are enough roots surrounding the trunk, they merge together and strangle it. So parasite stranglers okay; beautiful old trees, mauled and ravaged.

In five years they’ll have a clump of green leaves to start to provide shade again and in a generation they’ll start to look good again, meanwhile every time I look at those emasculated trunks or even think about what they’ve done I get sick to my stomach, not to mention angry. At one point while they were doing their dirty work, I started yelling, at no one in particular, to express my displeasure. Two Khmers I talked to said they were dangerous: you know in the next ten or twenty years a branch might fall and hurt someone, as if there aren’t scads of more dangerous aspects of daily life in Cambodia. I expect they were mimicking the official line, though I’m afraid one of the authorities’ motivations may be to sell some of the very valuable lumber.

It’s not just on the river where they’ve gone on their arboreal rampage, in other places they’ve cut down old trees so they could plant neat rows of saplings. A century old tree can not be replaced with a sapling unless you want to wait around a lifetime for it to achieve the same level of grandeur. They did the same thing in Phnom Penh when redoing the riverfront. There were four very large old trees whose roots were encroaching on the embankment near Street 178. They couldn’t be bothered to design around them, they had to go. Even worse was the giant tree that once sat close to Sisowath at Street 118. It interfered with their sidewalk design so it too had to be axed.

To me every old tree is a precious asset, especially in an urban context where they provide shade and oxygen as well as calming green energy to offset the overwhelming sense of concrete, metal and pavement of a typical city. It should take an act of God to remove one of those trees.

I spent five years back in the seventies living in the mountains of southern Oregon, noted for its ancient forests, the small percentage that remain anyway. At that time the official mantra of the US Forest Service, in line with the logging industry, was that 400 year old trees were in the process of dying so should be cut down before the lumber was lost and besides they weren’t producing wood as fast as young trees could, so they needed to be liquidated (their word). Never mind that they might have another 200 or 300 or 400 years to live, they had to go. When there’s money to be made, all other considerations are secondary.

Leaving that sour, disturbing and depressing note, my favorite little burg is looking up,  though it’s kind of subdued now in the middle of September, height of rainy season. We had lots of rain recently, 10 inches came down in three days as a result of tropical storm Nock-ten. The official figures for Phnom Penh for September, the heaviest month for rainfall, is 12 inches so that was a real deluge. I don’t know what the official figure for Kampot is though I’m pretty sure it’s more than the capital. After 2.5 inches fell in the first couple of hours it just kept coming down in what I think of as a constant but light Oregon rain, alternating with tropical torrents. There was no sign of the sun for three days. The one difference to Oregon is that it’s always cold when it rains there, never above 68º F - 20º C, even in the middle of summer. You always avoid getting drenched but when it does happen here the air and water are so warm you really don’t mind it that much. Ironically enough, it hasn’t hardly rained in the week since the deluge.

Heavy rainfall is a bit problematical for access where I live. I do a lot of biking around town and the three worst roads I’ve come across are the ones I need to access my house. My place is about 50 meters from River Road about 200 meters from the new bridge. When I first moved in four years ago there was a small temporary pond at the intersection which would dry up not long after the last heavy rains. Most of the street frontage was ponds and wetlands. When property owners started filling in their watery places and the rain no longer had any place to go - there’s no drainage system - the pond began to deepen and take on seasonal characteristics. It got so deep I couldn’t drive my Camry through the center of it.

Last dry season somebody, or maybe it was the neighbors all together, got the bright idea to fill it in so they brought in several dumploads of fine river sand - probably because it’s cheap here - and it made a very nice, smooth road for the duration of the dry season. Unfortunately it turned slick as snot with the first substantial rains. The first vehicle to attempt to drive it was a small dual-wheeled truck; it slid over to the soft edge of the road and had to be towed out, nobody’s tried it since. There is a passage at the edge of the road for bikes and motos that’s doable but quite messy when wet. Meanwhile filling in the seasonal pond that once covered the road at the intersection of River Road and my connecting road, has now moved the water up to just before my house where the last pond, that is adjacent to my house, is located. Now heavy rains take all of the runoff for a large area into the last pond where it reaches higher than it ever has before and floods part of my yard in the process. As well, the road becomes a pond about 6 inches deep in front of my house. River Road itself is a foot deep in places.

There’s a lot of road construction happening all over town and River Road is kind of a priority so I assume it’s on their list for improvement and they’ll get to it next dry season. Problem is; often when they improve a street, they waste a lot of money making it far wider than it’ll ever need to be and so they don’t have enough money to make even minimal improvements to others that desperately need it. I have the same complaint about how things are done in Oregon, so that kind of waste is not peculiar to Cambodia; however, officials here do love asphalt seas. Kampot’s main traffic circle, for instance, is three or four times larger than traffic would ever warrant, unless you’re talking 50 years in the future and the city has grown to a million people.

There are several reasons why excessive pavement is a mistake. First, or course, pavement is expensive, there’s no sense in spending the money if it’s not actually needed. Secondly, it’s ugly; greenery is esthetically preferable and besides, usable by people. Thirdly, pavement is referred to as an impervious surface. The larger the pavement area, the greater the size of the drainage system necessary to drain off rainwater and thus the greater likelihood of flooding when the rain comes down too fast for the system to handle. The rain that falls on unpaved surfaces is easily absorbed into the ground. Finally, pavement, being dark in color absorbs heat making the city less comfortable and adding to global warming.

September, along with June, are the slowest months in regards to both expats and travelers and so the town is really quiet. Many of the bars are also very slow, though we still are able to get together live music jams two or three times a week. Most of the players are regulars but there are always people passing through to spice up the repertoire. I haven’t seen jams this good in years. I’ve been playing drums - congas or bongos, whatever is available - at every possible jam… I try not to miss one. When high season hits and all the snowbirds return it’ll be one of the best places to hear live music in Cambodia. I keep thinking Kampot will turn into a traveler hot spot like Pushkar or Hampi in India or Dali or Yangshou in China. I’m not sure I’ll like it when my favorite little town becomes an ‘in’ place and maybe I’ll need to abandon it and search out another great but undiscovered small town home. Meanwhile it’ll take some time before that happens and it’ll be fun to have a real scene here.

The old market which was built in the mid-sixties and then sat derelict after it was gutted by fire a few years later is finally being rehabbed. It’s really a fine old building. It’ll be really cool when it’s done and with all the new shops, restaurants and bars opening up all around it, old town will be transformed.

The riverfront promenade is within a month or two of being finished. Compared to its former seedy life when it was mostly unkempt grass with a few planters and the odd crumbling concrete bench and hardly anybody went there, it’s now very heavily used. The park strip between the old market and the bus/taxi station is also finished. All of the city’s traffic circles have also been upgraded. The main traffic circle now sports a 3 meter tall durian surrounded by other outsized fruits; it’s quite a nice sculpture.

Once they’ve finished all the park strips, they really ought to search out vacant places to establish ‘real’ parks: that is, places that are partly semi-natural replete with small forests, creeks and ponds and partly for sports with football pitches, tennis courts and basketball courts, etc. The people who govern this country have, I’m sure, all visited European and American cities where they’ve seen large parks like Central Park in New York and Hyde Park in London and yet there isn’t a single city in Cambodia that has a real park, except maybe Siem Reap where there are substantial undeveloped green areas.

Phnom Penh once had lots of lakes and wetlands suitable for park space - back in the 1960’s you could rent a rowboat to explore Boeng Kak Lake - but they’ve all been filled in and developed. The former undeveloped park at the tip of the Chroy Changvar peninsula, which was a spectacular setting for a large green space was given away for development. Even the greenspace surrounding Olympic Stadium is slowly being whittled away for development. A shameful 2% of the capital is in park space and that includes traffic islands like that surrounding Independence Monument, which is, absurdly enough, off limits to people. Have the country’s leaders never been to or seen pictures of Central Park and noticed that some of the most valuable properties in New York are those overlooking the park?

Fortunately, in regards to a small city like Kampot, you’re never far from the countryside so lack of parks is not going to impact so seriously on the people’s well-being. Not like Phnom Penh which is oppressively and distressingly being built up and expanding far from the city center with nary a thought to adding public space on the periphery. If you don’t live near the river or Olympic Stadium there’s nothing except a few noisy, polluted traffic islands for miles around.

One aspect of Kampot getting up in the world is that land prices have returned to the high levels of 2007. For three years my land was worth half what I paid for it. That rise in value is good for me since I’m now trying to sell it. I’ve discovered I really don’t want to be a gentleman farmer and go through all the hassle of building a house and maintaining a country property. I’m happy in my rental house on the edge of town.

If anybody out there is interested in buying a sweet little 5000 square meter piece of Cambodia, get in touch: my email is stancam@ekit.com. It has a view of Bokor, lots of fruit trees - some large and mature - and a well with sweet tasting water. It’s about 3 kilometers from Kampot and 250 meters from Sihanoukville Road.