A Dictator's Guide to Exile [-A MUST READ for Hun Xen and his family]

(Photo: DAP news)

You’ve been a wealthy, powerful leader for decades. When you’ll be broke, friendless and out of a job. What do you do? Where do you go? The Thai Red Shirts love you, but will they let you go live in Thailand? Your Viet bosses loved you, but since you will be out of power, do you think they will love you any more? Your CPP cronies, do you think they will hide you when they have no place to run themselves? Will Laos give you shelter? Look at how they treated Norodom Sihanouk? Better think your options hard...

Photo: Carlos Garcia Rawlins/AP

You’ve been a wealthy, powerful leader for decades. Now you’re broke, friendless and out of a job. What do you do? Where do you go?

As embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and his family prepare to pack up and head off to exile in Tunisia, we thought it was time to offer tips on life after dictatorship.

(Photo: RICHARD VOGEL/AP)

Running a country --- ineffectively as you may have done it -- has prepared you for all types of jobs. The problem, of course, is that most people won't hire you. Fortunately you have a few inspiring models to look at, namely exiled Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Ky (pictured). After the defeat of South Vietnam in 1975, Ky fled to southern California and opened up a a liquor store, which turned into a successful little venture. No, you're not going to be able to afford $380-million dollar yachts, but you'll survive.

(Photo: Bachrach/Getty Images)

When Baby Doc Duvalier (pictured in 1984) was forced out of Haiti in 1986, "He left the country on a plane that was literally loaded with goodies from the presidential palace and the central bank of Haiti," says Riccardo Orizio, who interviewed Duvalier for his book Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators. Soon after he lost most of his wealth to his ex-wife (pictured) and found himself unable to even pay for electricity, "jumping bills from hotels and restaurants" because he was so broke.

(Photo: Michael Gottschalk/AP)

Libya's Gadhafi and Egypt's Mubarak have lost most of their remaining allies in the last few months. (We will never again see President Obama photographed so near either of them). But world leaders never know who will end up coming to their defense. When Haiti's Baby Doc was at the breaking point in exile, a bunch of taxi drivers from back home started sending him money, ultimately providing a pension that kept him alive. Jail is also a good place to look for allies, the New York Times point out.

Choose your exile location carefully

(Photo: ADAM BUTLER/AP)

Paris and London, which have long tradition of hosting fallen strongmen, are the best exile destinations if you can get in, says Orizio. What's really crucial, he says, is to pick a country "where the foreign policy is old enough, realistic enough to understand that a bad guy is not necessary the root of all evils."

Egypt's Mubarak has chosen to stay in his own country, in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh (pictured here), which Orizio says he thinks is a bad choice.

Dictators' Wives

Sure you might have to spend your life married to a hated man, but that doesn't mean that being a dictators' wife doesn't have some perks (like, say, 2,000+ pairs of shoes or a $3 million wedding). With Gadhafi raising the profile of dictators, we take a look at the women behind the despots.

Imelda Marcos

Imelda Marcos grew up a poor country girl from the hinterlands of the Philippine archipelago, but she more than made up for her childhood poverty during her husband Ferdinand's 20-year reign as dictator of the Philippines. The unrepentant former beauty queen and her authoritarian husband made off with billions of dollars from the Philippines' coffers and enjoyed lavish estates numbering in the dozens, from the island of Luzon to Manhattan.

Imelda is best known, of course, for her collection of footwear: When she and Ferdinand were run out of the country in 1986, she left behind her shoe collection, totaling around 2,700 pairs.

Elena Ceauşescu

The wife of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu was feted by a state-orchestrated personality cult, but all the proclamations and honorary degrees she amassed couldn't save her from the wrath of the Romanian people. After the Romanian revolution, she and Nicolae were apprehended as they tried to flee the country. They were put through a public show trial, then executed on Christmas Day 1989.

The Romanians' wrath was, perhaps, understandable—at Elena's urging, Nicolae banned abortion and mandated that women have a minimum of four, then five children. The policy created a generation of emotionally and physically fractured children who grew up in state-run orphanages. The kids' poor health was treated with mass blood transfusions, which spread AIDS throughout the orphan population.

Jiang Qing

(Photo: XINHUA/AP)

Known as Madame Mao, or the first lady of communism, Jiang Qing was just as politically powerful and feared as her husband. Qing had a successful acting career in her twenties, when she was known as "Lán Píng."

After several marriages to directors and businessmen, Qing met Mao at the country's communist headquarters, where there was a protest of the invasion of Japan. Though Mao was already married, the two wed in 1938 and Qing signed a contract stipulating that she would not appear in public because of her husband's other wife.

The two had a daughter, and Qing worked for Mao as his personal secretary. Eventually she moved up in the ranks to become the architect of the Cultural Revolution.

After Mao died, in 1976, Qing was sentenced to death but, the sentence was later reduced to life in prison. She was diagnosed with throat cancer but refused medication. She was released in 1991 to get medical treatment, but 10 days later she committed suicide.

Where will you go, Lok Chumteav Thom?