A question of hygiene...

After some more recent, and some longer-term experiences with Cambodians, I'm forced to conclude that hygiene is a subjective ideal--a state of mind rather than any specifically justifiable reality. To give you a sense of some of the contradictions:

1. On the one hand, Khmers would generally abstain from swimming in rivers or lakes which Westerners perceive as clean and suitable. On the other hand, they seem not to wash their towels more than once a year.
2. On the one hand, Khmers wipe down their eating utensils with paper napkins and drink only from straws because bottle/can rims can be dirty. On the other hand, they often eat lunch in the heat of the day from fly-infested pots of food that have been sitting out since near breakfast-time.
3. On the one hand, Khmers correctly believe that very hot frying sanitizes food. On the other hand, they don't seem to know that frying the same foods multiple times in old/rancid oil has other nasty consequences.
4. On the one hand, Khmers consider ice as a sanitary entity--to the extent that they mix it with their beer. On the other hand, their ice is made with melting-point-reducing chemicals and often shaved from blocks that have been transported around in the dust on dirty oxcart surfaces.
5. On the one hand, Khmers wake up every morning and spend a while sweeping their houses and patios. On the other hand, they tolerate exceedingly strong mildew odors in their living spaces and from their clothes.
6. On the one hand, Khmers are fastidious about showering and personal hygiene. On the other hand, they often install their leaky bathrooms adjacent to kitchens.
7. On the one hand, urban Khmers are careful to drink boiled water/tea or purified water. On the other hand, they swish their mouths out with tap water (more often than just after brushing their teeth).
   

Now, I don't posit from this that Westerners are lacking in such contradictions. My point here is that the conditions in a developing country means that some measures are taken for hygiene, while many other measures, for cost reasons, have to dealt with psychologically. Take the bathroom/kitchen example. Naturally, it costs less to install a water column in only one place in the house--so if you can share it between the kitchen and bathroom, you don't need to go through the extra expense of plumbing other areas. One can simply view the bathroom as a place of cleanliness and not as a dirty depository for human waste. Or take ice, which is perhaps even more demonstrative. If ice was transported in sanitary trucks, it would be more expensive--so it is easier to simply believe that freezing kills bacteria and that any bacteria that did get onto the ice during transport will be drained off as the ice melts before it is used. After biting into a few pebbles in my beer-on-the-rocks, I can assure you that hygiene here is more a matter of hope and belief than reality.

On a side note of a more grumbly nature--I realize that there is a spectrum in the construction industry ranging from minimalist and cheap to extravagant and expensive. But I swear, Khmer remodelings (and often new buildings) are constructed with a tree-house mentality. Wiring is done post-morten--which means ratty extension cords running everywhere. Thin particle-board walls are built without studs and matched with metal doorframes and solid-core doors. Hefty locks are fastened to wimpy and vulnerable chains. Sound-proof 8-inch thick cement side-walls are matched with hollow plastic-sheet ceiling material, to the effect that one hears everything going on at the neighbors place anyway. Nice faucets are matched with wobbly and ugly-blue plastic piping. Curtains are almost never installed--instead some jerry-rigged pulley system controls ugly plastic roller-out shades hanging in the patios. Nice glass panes are installed on metal frames that have no swing-control, to the effect that many people have at least one half-shattered glass door in their house somewhere. Nice stone thresholds are installed under doors that don't actually prevent the rain from coming in under the door. Mosquito nets are meticulously installed on all windows, but never on doorways, to the effect that bugs and fresh air are one in the same... anyway, the list could go on. Many of these things apply to houses I have lived in, but many are gleaned from houses that I have visited.

Cambodia--give me an angle, please!

In the long process of getting settled into Phnom Penh, I've had to allow myself to be ripped off 10-25% on most occasions when I need something--whether it's extension cords, kitchen utensils, bedding, etc. This is the "price" that "we" pay for being foreigners. After all, in a country where museum admissions are multiplied by 10 for foreigners, it's only fair to expect that regular marketers will expect a little premium.

That being said, I do put my foot down occasionally and I use a few dirty tricks here-and-there to avoid some of the heftiest costs. When I bought my air conditioner, I picked out the model at one shop, then sent a Khmer friend to a shop across the street to bargain for the same model. Not ideal for the first shop, but that's their loss for trying to rip me off on such a big purchase. When I bought my motorbike in the province, I bought from family of friends so they dropped the foreigner-premium.

I have an even dirtier trick that I use when I do, in fact, know the price. I will try to bargain down to the normal price in a civil way, but if they insist on the foreigner price, I just give them the wrong amount (in an obvious way) and walk away from the shop with my purchase. If I was truly ripping them off, they would chase me down, but at that point they usually realize that it's not worth the hassle and anyway they still cut quite a profit. This strategy works especially well with motorbike taxi drivers if you have the correct change; get on the bike and tell him to drive to your destination. When you arrive, don't bother to haggle on the price--just give him the normal pay and walk away. He might beg for a bit more as you walk away, but at that point he's doing it on want rather than need.

Now--on to my real point here: in all these games, I am just trying to get down to the normal Cambodian price--but are there any situations in which I can get a better price? Well, indeed there are and these are also situations in which Cambodians cannot easily do better. The secret is of course a long-standing family tradition--garage sailing and buy-swell-swap with other foreigners. The ticket is to exploit Westerners' sense of second-hand prices. In Cambodia, the second hand market is thriving and people expect that second, third, or even fourth hand cell phones still retain much of their original value. Westerners' generally see second hand things as a nuisance to get rid of, and view their value is having been halved or more. I've furnished my house mostly with second hand stuff from other foreigners--amazing my Khmer friends with the deals I've been getting and all of the freebies they've thrown in.

One day, as I showed up with a fresh load of nifty furniture, my landlord sourly muttered in Khmer, "oh my, he is filling up my house!" And therein lies the issue: Westeners are consumers, and they accumulate, which means that moving entails the burden of disposing of their things. Khmer people are minimalists, sometimes out of necessity but often for cultural reasons, and they value everything they have. A Khmer person selling off things from his house would never, as a nice American mother did to me recently, just throw in an extra fan or sculpture or potted plant "just because". Contrary to the belief of my landlord, I view my apartment is modestly furnished: a living/eating space with an armchair, couch, and bookshelf. A bedroom with a bamboo closet, a bed, a bookshelf and a desk.

That being said, my neighbors, who share an identically-sized apartment, manage to squeeze four tweens into the same space and have almost no furnishings. A bamboo cot in front of the TV, a computer desk between them all, a few mats to sleep on, and a bowl for doing laundry. Occasionally, they set up a mosquito net. No plants, no space to eat except the floor (quite normal for Khmers), and just one place to lounge between them. I find them napping on the tile floor in positions that would leave me a bruise on my hip for a month. But then again, they effectively spend $30 per month each on rent and they probably spent $100 to furnish it, as opposed to $600.

Perhaps rather incongruously, they each own motorbikes valued at around $1500 and cell phones valued at around $200-300. But in the end, very few people will see their apartment and everyone around them will see their motorbike and phone.

In the end, I'm showing off to no one and they are showing off to everyone. But with white skin, I don't need to show my wealth outwardly or differentiate myself--a situation Khmers do very much have to deal with. Still, I get my daily dose/reminder of white privilege every time I walk by their door on my way downstairs.

On a slightly more sinister note...

Phnom Penh--Cambodia. I made the rather entrepreneurial investment of buying a motorbike in the province of Bantey Meanchey while visiting a good friend there. Since motorbikes arrive by land via Thailand and there is considerable sale competition, the price that bikes fetch in border towns is necessarily cheaper. The general idea is to shave off $90 from the price while only adding $10 to have your bike follow you on a truck with some sacks of rice to Phnom Penh the next day. In the end, I was (and still am) the proud owner of a 2008 Honda Wave 100cc - red and black.

Now, our family has quite a history of buying junkers in order to avoid having to worry about theft. Since a lot of my ability to deal with traders, officials, and brokers depends on making a good "show", I needed a bike that would attract some attention--so the old family way was not going to work. But, as the title of this entry suggests, having a junker does help you avoid theft.

On the evening in question, I pulled up to my local internet shop and parked my bike next to a load of other bikes, some even more expensive than mine. None of them had any extra security employed additional to the normal steering lock. I locked my handlebars like the rest and sat in a booth where my bike my visible. Over the next hour or so, I kept glancing out at the bike to make sure she was still there and never saw anything out of the order. When I emerged, I saw a little boy running down the street but just thought he was as delivery boy. But when I sat down on my bike, I noticed my key would not go into the ignition. I sat perplexed for a moment until I realized what had happened. A thief had jammed a Vietnamese-designed t-shaped key into the ignition and tried to use brute force to turn the ignition. He was actually successful--my handlebar was no longer locked. After playing around with the ignition I actually turned it without having to insert my key. The thief was clearly a few minutes away from making off with my bike.

I drove off with no key in the ignition after having arranged to secure my bike indoors for the night. As I pulled up to a stoplight, I noticed some fellow motorists looking at my bike with its lack of key in the ignition. You can imagine the cognitive dissonance: a foreigner stole a motorbike?!

The next morning, I met with a friend to get my lock replaced and install some new security features. When the ignition came out at the locksmith (also a Vietnamese boy, incidentally), we discovered the the thief had broken all but one of the pins with his little tool. We replaced the whole thing for $1.50, parts and labor. Next, we went to one of the motorbike centers in Phnom Penh-- O'Russey Market. For $15, I outfitted her with a U-lock on the front and bought an extra chain lock for the back. The salesman proudly gave me a hacksaw to exhibit that the lock could not be sawed through easily. After one attempt, I was convinced as well.

I am determined now not to have my secured bike stolen, but I've heard some stories of muggers cordoning off roads in order to rob motorbikes from people, grand-theft-auto style. Will definitely take the lit roads at night.

On a secondary note about security in general: I admit that my view of Cambodia is a bit tarnished now that I actually own valuable things and have an apartment. I think I spend at least 20 minutes every day extra on securing my home and motorbike, even though I have bars on all the doors and windows and live on the third floor with no easily accessible climbing route. In order to avoid being a victim, I have to think like a thief. How would I rob my own house? How can I secure things so that doesn't happen? At this point, my valuables are behind two locked doors, but a thief could try to fish things through the bars in the bedroom windows. To that effect, I have a lockbox but am still trying to figure out a way to secure my laptops which are the perfect size to go through the bars.

But after all that creativity in securing my things--I still hear stories about superhero thieves who manage to steal heavy motorbikes from 4-floor stairwells and out of 60-foot drops--all after disabling security systems. How can I compete with that?

I Dream of Nokias and Camrys

Chances are, if you're a Cambodian in Phnom Penh, you probably own at least one of the following: a Honda Dream motorbike, a Toyota Camry, or a Nokia cell phone. One of the consequences of the lack of standards mixing with poor market information diffusion in a very communitarian society, is that everyone tends to buy all of the same things.

In this way, a Honda Dream is a "strong" moto, though it is mostly style and popularity driving it (and the price). The Toyota Camry is supposedly the perfect balance between American sedan style and durability, the quintessential middle class car. The elites boys all drive Lexus SUVs or CRVs with the name emblazoned loudly on the side. And a Nokia is a well built phone that will somehow magically save you cell phone time--not sure how that one works.

So the market is always booming for these guys and they continue to maintain market share even decades later.

3 days down, 209 to go in Cambodia

I can't explain why, but I was in a hurry to "settle down" this time around in Cambodia. My last three visits have seen me "floating" from place to place, not having any main base of operations and treating Cambodia like a pit-stop. This time, perhaps the knowledge that I would be spending a long time here propelled me to grind out a living right away.

My good friend Sary picked me up from the airport... in a car. Now to understand the amazement of this, consider that I have spend months working and living with Sary but have never been in a car with him. In fact, I can count the number of times I've been in a car at all in Cambodia. Needless to say, it was a luxurious experience. We immediately squared me away with a $15/night room at a guest house called Town View, and then exchanged the car for a motorbike... a far more ubiquitious means of transportation in Cambodia. After a rip-roaring breakfast of Gkaw-Ko (beef-back stew), we started apartment hunting.

Nothing more complicated than driving up and down roads in residential areas looking up for "To Let" signs. In this way, we saw ten apartments in two hours. We went from the tourist district to a peripheral market district called Depot Market. Naturally, the last place we looked at was the big winner. A one-bedroom on the third floor of a little row house. My landlord is the owner of a little shop at the ground level, and nearby are all the amenities I might need. Being 15 minutes from most of the development organizations is not ideal, but I'm hoping my proximity to my cooperation partner CEDAC and more of the wet markets will more than make up for it. It's no riverfront property, that's for sure, but it's authentic, quaint, and practical, not to mention dirt-cheap.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the aggravating exercise of trying to buy furnishings. Since that day, I've had much more luck and a few choice items have fallen into my lap by such gems as a French mother of four, a 9-month-any-minute pregnant mattress saleswoman, a Francophone Singaporean, and a retro butch-cut office supply shopkeeper. Sary and then Piseth (my former translator) have been helping me immensely--to the extent that I haven't needed a motorbike taxi ride till the evening of my third day. And more friends are offering their help all the time.

It dawned on me today that I actually have no non-Cambodian friends left here. Oh sure, I know a few former professors and a couple of old development aid career cats, but my only real consistent friends are Khmer. And let's hope it stays that way, for language-learning's sake!

So, all in all, coming into the third night, I am looking at a partially furnished apartment; my neighbors are old drinking buddies from 2004/2007; a few meetings are in the works for my research; and I'm still struggling with the heat. A lot to look forward to.

Sing!... apore

The West, with a twist. A good friend once told me after returning from a visit in Japan that he had a hard time "seeing" prosperity there because he associated all things foreign with underdevelopment. Japan's "differentness" immediately invoked connotations of poverty and sweaty backs, even though he was looking at one of the most developed countries in the world.

Well, I haven't been to Japan but I can relate, to a degree, after having visited Singapore. Remembering that my fascination with Asia began, and will probably end, with Cambodia. So it is natural that my experience of Asia uses Cambodia as a benchmark. Of course, I am smart enough to consciously not be victim to my distorted benchmark, but I must admit that the few times I encountered an annoying tout, a pushcart peddling fried 'whatever', or a wet market in Singapore, I sighed and looked on as if I was seeing the "real" Asia hidden among all the skyscrapers imported from the West.

That all being said, I enjoyed Singapore immensely... for what it was. And what was it? A booming metropolis, carefully engineered living, and enough local flavor to keep my Asian fetish supplied. Its government-sponsored sense of order even appeased my latent need for Ordnung inspired by my last tenure in Germany. Above all, I was extremely pleased with the intense mobility afforded by the Singaporean government. The mass transit system is fast and immaculate, not to mention comprehensive. People have commented that Singapore is a 24-hour kind of place: well, that's true because it doesn't take forever to get somewhere and do something. In order to see Bangkok as comprehensively as I saw Singapore in one day, it would probably take one week, and a lot more heat exhaustion.

Efficiency is, of course, just one virtue. Being able to "see" a bird park, the commercial district, the harbor district, the financial district, Chinatown and even the night-life areas in one day might also indicate that I didn't really do a thorough job. And that's partly true. But it beats the hell out of rotting in Bangkok traffic and breathing led smoke from the loud Tuktuk just ahead.

More specifically, I very much enjoyed the Singapore skyline, it's cute English riverside, and its something-for-everyone shopping district (Orchard). But most of all, I enjoyed it's harbor. After a dubious ride through construction sites to the Marina Barrage, I found an architectural wonder that was Singapore's reservoir pump house. Green-roof technology and sustainability focus gone wild. Beautiful views of the harbor ships, the entire skyline, and a cool wind blowing on you all the time. The largest solar array in Singapore? Check. Free and fun exhibits? Check. Kite flying? Check. Walks on the reservoir dam? Check. (Protection from a storm? Check.) Fireworks and free water? Check. And given that the Marina was my last stop after a long day, let's give it a few more "Checks".

Market Ironies in Cambodia

Consider this irony: a country like Cambodia produces clothing shoes, bedding, and wood furniture for many high-end retail companies abroad, but one looks for good shoes, bedding, or wood furniture in Cambodia, it will become apparent that these homemade goods are the exception and, unfortunately, the cheap Chinese or Vietnamese knock offs are the rule.

In some sectors in Cambodia, there's a tragic form of globalization at work in Cambodia, in which predatory companies exploit both labor and consumers in Cambodia at the same time. The only justice is when entrepreneurial workers sneak out nice Gap clothes, Nike sneakers and Levis jeans. The tragedy is that knock-offs are so ubiquitous that no one will believe a poor girl that her Levis are the real thing. In all likelihood, even she will be exploited by someone one level down in domestic the private sector.

In many cases, I have been that consumer being exploited here. Having arrived in Cambodia a few days ago (and miraculously, having found an amazing apartment within four hours), it has been just this ironic tragedy that has followed me around as I attempted (and am still attempting) to furnish my apartment. Consider the following situation: a white, sweaty, and sunburned male trying to buy towels and a rice cooker. Snap analysis: a tourist. Second thought: oops, probably an expat trying to set up a home. Further analysis: I bargain in Khmer and I know many of the prices, so I am not a Freshman in Cambodia. Why, then, should 75% of the shopkeepers try to pull the 1000% markup on me and think they can get away with it? Do they only do the snap analysis... do they ignore telltale signs of experience? Frankly, I don't know but the consistency of this experience has me dazzled, and a bit frustrated. On principle, I won't buy things for the retail European price, so if the shopkeeper rejected any good offers (remember, I've lived in Israel and they bargain hard), I won't buy, even if I'm desperate. I toweled myself off with a pair of pants one night after a run-in with three annoying towel salespeople in a row. The next day in the market, I immediately get a straight up offer that's reasonable and I don't even have to bargain. What gives?!

And it's not just retail. I spent four hours looking for apartments of roughly the same specs, with only location being different in some cases. Adjusting for quality a bit, I bargained hard down to offers of $400, $300, $250 a month. In the end, I found a place for $80. Being unfurnished, it's going to cost me roughly $600 to set everything up, which could crudely be seen as a rent increase to $130/month. Consider alternatively, that these furnishings I am purchasing are an investment, and we're talking maybe $100/month. So, if a friend comes to Cambodia looking asking about a reasonable price on a one-bedroom, 1200 square-foot apartment in Phnom Penh, I am going to say not more than $400 and not less than $80. Good luck, friend. And thanks for all the help clarifying the market, Cambodia.

That being said, a shoe shine is 25 cents in Cambodia. No bargains necessary. Hallelujah.