Expatriates’ Strange Lives in Cambodia

Writer Frédéric Amat spent seven years exploring the parallel universe expatriates inhabit in Cambodia. Photo by Hong Minea

Friday, 16 March 2012
Roth Meas
The Phnom Penh Post

“They don’t really open the window to Cambodia. They don’t try to speak the language. They are not interested in the culture. When they finish their job, they just go to the foreign bars, have beers with friends. They live in Cambodia, but they don’t really live with Cambodians.”

Though many expats have decided to base themselves in Cambodia, and many have lived here for years or even decades, it remains the case that some of the country’s foreign community have only the faintest understanding of the culture and heritage of the people that surround them. Segregated from the local population, declining to make even the most perfunctory attempts to learn the language, and subsisting on a diet of Western food, in many ways they live a life indistinguishable from their lives back home.

It is this sort of expat experience that has been a constant source of fascination for 44 year-old French journalist Frédéric Amat, who has called Cambodia home since 1995. In his time here, he has seen myriad European and American residents of the country insulate themselves from local people. His new book, Expatriates’ Strange Lives in Cambodia, published last year in French and earlier this month in English, attempts to chronicle the lived experience of expats in the country, and touches on this phenomenon.

“I came to Cambodia to cover the fighting, especially in 1997,” Amat says. “I became interested in Cambodian culture. But at the same time, I became interested in foreign communities living in Cambodia. This was a poor country at that time. It started with nothing. There were a lot of expats and many expressed a lot of arrogance towards Cambodian people. I felt so much shock by the way these expat families treated the locals. This was the idea for me to write a book.”

Cupid Draws Back His Bow at Valentine's Speed Date and Auction

Friday, February 16, 2007

By Elizabeth Tomei and Suzy Khimm
THE CAMBODIA DAILY

Seated alone at tables strewn with flower petals, 30 of Phnom Penh's eligible expatriate men anxiously awaited the ring of Cupid's bell Wednesday night.

A few had wives or girlfriends—even a telltale wedding ring—but none saw anything wrong with a Valentine's night-out playing the "speed-dating" field at the FCC's rooftop terrace.

Women, clutching glasses of free-flowing wine and beer, moved from table to table every three minutes, and daters ranked their new acquaintances in the margins of a list of names as potential friends or lovers—or neither.

Originally conceived by a Jewish rabbi to ensure that Jewish singles could meet each other in large cities, speed-dating—as it is known—seems to suit the transient nomadic flux of Phnom Penh's expat population, according to organizers and participants at the FCC.

Attended by 30 men and 30 women, the serial-dating challenge was "a fun way to introduce new people," said FCC head chef Lucia Dengate, adding that the format appeals to people because it is non-committal.

The 60 participants paid $11 at the door, or $9 in advance, to join the event. Most agreed they got their money's worth: a bell rang every three minutes to signal that women should move along to their next date.

At the end of the night, daters submitted their forms—with each date's score—to the organizers who will later notify participants of the outcome by email, FCC Group Operations Manager Michelle Duncan said.

Contacted Thursday, Duncan said that three or four romantic matches were made, but friendship seemed to be the dominant feeing to come out of the night.

It was the second speed-dating night held at the FCC, and was punctuated by a charity ''bachelor auction," in which women bid on dates with eight different men.

The auction was the brainchild of two British expatriates, Jeni Dixon and Edward Pollard, after several late-night discussions with friends about "how few single, straight barang guys there are" in Phnom Penh's social circle, Dixon, 27, wrote in an email.

The names of the bachelors for auction were listed on a chalkboard under the heading "Today's Special," and they were cheekily described as a tree hugger, a mama's boy, a proteomic scientist and a "dark-haired, blue-eyed, long-lashed beauty of a man."

A US Embassy staffer was among the lucky women with winning bids in the auction, which ultimately raised $460 for the Indochina Starfish foundation, a local children's NGO.

Mitchell Isaacs, a 26-year-old bachelor who fetched $55 in the auction, said he was a bit overwhelmed by the attention.

"Who wants to buy me? That’s pretty intense," the Australian national said, adding that he was pleased with the price he sold for. "I was expecting, like, $12," he said.

Choup Channa, who observed the teeming crowd of expat daters from a nearby table, thought that speed-dating would be an ideal social event for young, 20-something Cambodians.

"It’s a way to be acquainted before being boyfriend-girlfriend,'' said the 25-year-old Khmer teacher. "It’d be a good way to meet," she said, "as long as the parents didn’t find out."