Byline: Wayne McCallum

‘Shit!’ I am in the departure lounge of Pochengtong Airport; you know that version of Cambodia where everything works. Kind of like a Khmer version of Tokyo. My flight is being called and I have just remembered that I haven’t bought Aunt Flo a present yet.

I owe Aunt Flo. She took on board my canary, my cat and my dog when I packed up sticks and came across to Cambodia on a whim; and now I am returning for a brief holiday in Aotearoa without a gift for my kind aunt. ‘Unthinkable! What to do?’

I’m kharma’d out; don’t believe in hauling stone Buddhas across the ocean and a banana from the café will not make it past New Zealand’s fascist biosecurity ‘police’ or Aunt Flo’s “What the fuck? I took on your entire domestic pet entourage and you bought me a piece of fruit?!” gift-o-meter.

‘Monument Books!’ Yes, the perennial airport gift lifesaver. Thank you! I have 30 bucks and 60 seconds… I am on a mission. ‘Quick! Quick! Out of my way, confused-looking Scandinavian backpacker with hairy kneecaps! Don’t cross my path, French woman with a suspicious similarity to Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour!’

[At least you are going to come out of this review with some new geographic and cultural reference points]

…then again: ‘Come back French woman with a suspicious similarity to Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour! Stop! Concentrate! Aunt Flo, Aunt Flo…’ Right, I’m back on focus, entering the hollow walls of Monument now.

Sure, the cat ate the canary, and then got run over, and then the dog ‘sort of went funny and keeled over’ (Flo’s words). Rural New Zealand is hard on domestic pets. I’m sure that Flo did her best and isn’t some sort of domestic pet psychopath (as we used to say back on the farm: ‘Sometimes you just have to go with the Flo’).

Right! Books, books. I need something that says ‘CAMBODIA, something, something.’ What’s this? ADB report? No. World Bank report. No! IMF treatise. What?

IMF,

Dirty IMF,

Takes away everything it can get,
Always making certain that there’s one thing left,

Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt…

Out-of-my-head obscure Bruce Cockburn song from the 1980s. I need a book, not a valid political statement. What I need is…

Big glossy coloured photos of ‘postcard poverty’: smiling faces, blue skies, Zen-looking buffalos, cherub monks; not too many skulls. And not an economic land concession, disaffected garment worker or pro-democracy demonstration in sight.

A little information, but not too much. And only slightly, periodically, incorrect. Flo is more a Woman’s Day than The Economist kind of aunt.

Did I mention temples? I need temples. Lots of them. Flo knows a good temple when she sees one.

Get the landlord to unblock the toilet and do something about the rats in the ceiling. Oops, wrong checklist.

Something that will fit in my carry-on and will look nice on a coffee table, but will, after a time, migrate to the bookshelves until, inevitably, over the passage of time and several epochs of dust, it will find itself somewhere behind several Harry Potters (‘for the grandchildren’); perhaps hiding that guilty pleasure volume of 50 Shades of Grey? ‘Aunt Flo, really, this is a family newspaper!’ Editor: ‘Whose family?!’

Oh god! Perfect!

Presenting Cambodia, Kingdom of Wonder – and it’s only 30 bucks!

SaVeD!

Money.

Book.

Thank you!

‘Hmmm… I wonder if that French woman who looks suspiciously like Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour is on my flight? And do I have any Bruce Cockburn on my iPod?’

Presenting Cambodia, by Mick Shippen, is available now from Monument Books priced $29.95.

In 2006 Save Cambodia’s Wildlife (SCW) published the first edition of its Atlas of Cambodia. This book provided a snapshot of the key demographic, economic and environmental trends in the Kingdom, as they existed at the time. With nothing similar available the publication quickly became a mainstay of many professional libraries. But that was a long time ago and things have changed immeasurably in the Kingdom, which means a review has become increasingly important. Pleasingly and to their credit, SCW have responded to this challenge and published a vastly larger and improved version (price TBC) launching at Meta House this week. Their effort is our gain: the 2014 version goes well beyond a simple update and offers new insights into the developments and trends that characterise contemporary Cambodia.

There are some key changes. While the previous Atlas limited itself to a narrow range of topics, the new version covers many more subjects: travel from chapters devoted to ‘Forests’ and ‘Biodiversity’ through to ‘Gender’ and ‘Energy’. The portrait format has also gone, replaced by a landscape imprint. This better suits the geographic shape of the Kingdom when it comes to depicting it on a map, allowing a single drawing of the country to sit comfortably on an entire page.

This permits more information to be put onto the maps themselves. An example is the minute detail, almost to the district in some locations, given to certain measures including, at one point, pig, poultry and cattle ownership (OK, I can hear you say: ‘Wayne, why exactly is this important?’ Well, livestock ownership is often a good indicator of rural family wealth). Another key change is the provision of more descriptive detail, such as the background content on global and regional climate zones and the impact of climate change, which strengthens understanding of what the maps, graphs and statistics in the Climate chapter imply for the country.

A further plus is an increased effort to place national trends in a regional context. Returning to climate change and the vexing question of human impact, a map has been included that illustrates Cambodia’s climate vulnerability in comparison to that of its East Asian neighbours. It’s enlightening, with the shades of the map clearly showing that, alongside the Philippines, the Kingdom is the most climate-change vulnerable nation in the region.

One particular detail stands out for me: two Landsat images of Phnom Penh that serve as a powerful symbol for the change that has occurred in the nation since publication of the original Atlas. The first provides a satellite image of Phnom Penh in May 2003 and is compared to an image taken from the same angle in May 2013. The differences are striking.

In the most recent image Boeung Kak lake is gone, of course, but so too are some lesser known but – judging by their size in the 2003 image – even larger lakes on the northern outskirts of the city. These, like Boeung Kak itself, have historically acted as hydrological bulwarks against flooding, so the implications for the future dry (or will they be webbed?) feet of the capital’s citizens is worth considering (climate change vulnerability, anyone?). The sheer expansion of the urban buildings depicted in the 2013 image is fascinating if not unnerving: Phnom Penh today appears double the size it was in 2003. Looking at this one is left to wonder what Ms Penh, the legendary founder of the capital, would make of her creation today, a question that is as difficult to answer as one that ponders what Phnom Penh might look like in a further ten years.

Finally, in another constructive addition, a complimentary website will permit online access to the publication’s different map layers, even allowing users to work with the charts themselves and add new information layers. New and improved, the Atlas of Cambodia, available at Monument Books, is a must for anyone serious about working in the Kingdom or seeking to understand it further.

WHO: Save Cambodia’s Wildlife
WHAT: Atlas of Cambodia book launch
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 6pm January 31
WHY: Make sense of modern Cambodia

I haven’t travelled to Burma (Myanmar) myself, though stories from more intrepid friends about the land of ‘a million pagodas’, alongside a growing fondness for Burmese food, seem destined to lead me there in the not-too-distant future.

And now a new book by Hans Kemp (photos) and Tom Vater (words), Burmese Light: Impressions from the Golden Land, may be the final nudge that inspires me to retrieve my backpack from beneath my bed, remove the cockroaches from my hiking boots and head off on the road to Mandalay (apologies to Mr Kipling).

First up, let’s get this out there: Burmese Light is the best photo-travelogue that I have read or browsed through in 2013 or nearly any year for that matter. Yes! It is simply that good.

OK, granted, I should admit that my consumption of this field is not exhaustive, but having whiled away hours in airport bookshops – where this book form comes into its own – from Seoul to San Francisco this past year, I am not without some experience on these matters. So with this statement out there, what evidence can I provide to back my claim?

Let’s start with Kemp’s images. Burmese Light is fair brimming with evocative and enticing pictures of the ‘Golden Land’, where the aspect of light, referenced in the book’s title, is artfully portrayed across 100 plus photographs. Kemp’s shots take the reader on a comprehensive circuit of the country, from the lower reaches of the Irrawaddy to the uplands of the remote northwest.

Beyond this, however, one of the secrets to good travel photography – to me, anyway – is the capacity to capture iconic scenes (sthink the temple plains of Bagan or the famed Golden Rock pagoda) in a new and different way, breaking away from the expected and providing something different in angle and perspective. Kemp exceeds this test again and again as he brings his lens to bear on another scene or element of daily Burmese life in a fresh and intoxicating way.

For me there are numerous highlights in Kemp’s photographs: one image captures a couple of far from Zen-looking monks, let’s say ‘grumpy’, on the steps of a pagoda (living proof of a ‘bad monk day’ perhaps?); flyaway pigeons in downtown Yangon, and silhouettes of the U Bein Bridge (Amarapura), reportedly the longest teak bridge in the world.

My favourite photograph appears, on first impression, to be a straightforward shot of a worshipper pouring water over a stone Buddha at one of Yangon’s numerous pagodas. But look beyond the person and deity and you will see that the entire scene is being played out in shadows on a large elephant statue behind. Whether intentional or not, this alleviates the image in craft and impact. Beautiful!

But Kemp’s photographs are only half of the story here. As important are the words of his partner, Tom Vater. No slouch with a pen – Vater has authored several works of fiction and non-fiction – his words give breath and meaning to the shapes, patterns and rhythms that Kemp captures in megapixels.

What I particularly enjoy about Vater’s writing is how he personalises his accounts and reproduces his experiences in a vivid way. One example is his description of the sweat condensing on the ceilings of the Taungbyone Shrine, north of Mandalay, as the worshippers pray in the non-air-conditioned space below. You can almost feel the humidity as he relays the encounter. Elsewhere, we are regaled with tales of train journeys to the north and boat trips along the Irrawaddy, all with the same descriptive prowess.

Invariably, for such a vast country, some parts of the ‘Golden Land’ do not feature in the book. Kemp and Vater are also careful to avoid any in-depth discussion of power and politics in the region. If you’re searching for an insight into the latter, look elsewhere.

To fully embrace this book, I suggest that you travel to the Irrawaddy Restaurant (Street 334), that you crack open a cool Myanmar (the national beer) and order a biriyani, and that you then place your copy of Burmese Light before you and start to scroll its pages. It may not be the same as being there, but it could be the next best thing.
For now, I leave with you with some contemplative lines from Mr Vater:

‘For now a wonderful, quiet and dignified charm, an almost serene innocence, borne of decades of isolation, permeates the country… How long this innocence will last before it gives way to new and challenging realities is anyone’s guess.’
It really is time to get that backpack out, methinks.
Burmese Light, by Hans Kemp and Tom Vater, is available on Amazon.com for $23.33.

Cambodia’s forests: to some a place of ‘sacred wild’; to others a source of timber and wildlife; to yet others an inconvenience, covering the soil they crave for the creation of a rubber or sugar plantation. Today, one cannot open a local newspaper without being confronted with yet another tale of forest clearing, land dispossession or wildlife poaching.

Cambodia’s forests stand at the frontline of the struggle over the country’s natural environments – how they are used, respected and managed – and the way that people and wildlife will be allowed to live and prosper within them now into the future. They are, if ever there was, a ‘contested’ zone.

It is into this conflict that a new book, Cambodia’s Contested Forest Domain, enters. Edited by Mark Poffenberger and with contributions from some of the foremost scholars on Cambodia’s natural environment (including Ian Baird, Jefferson Fox and Melissa Marschke), the book promises to provide some scholarly illumination on the challenges and opportunities facing Cambodia’s forests and the futures of those who depend on them. So how does it all stack up?

Firstly, the positive. By positioning itself in the interface of community – forest relations – thealigns itself neatly with a popular area of natural resource theory and practice. This, together with a set of authors who have honed their craft in this field of study, gives it both relevancy and depth.

Secondly, the detail provided in the editor’s introduction and the essays that follow will provide valuable information to anyone wishing to explore this field for themselves. In this capacity, Cambodia’s Contested Forest Domain provides a valuable starting point for others wishing to explore and comprehend local environmental issues further.

Thirdly, the publication’s essays draw on years of study from people who ‘know their stuff’. These are folk who’ve trekked through forests, slept on commune house balconies and been sucked on by leeches. They’ve done the hard yards and the depth and quality of research covered reflects this.

Now this is all fine and scholarly, but is it enough? Does the book deliver on the promise of its title? Here is where the problems start First up, by using the word ‘contest’ in its title the book gives the impression it’s going to embrace a particular approach in the studies that follow, one born of the exciting and emerging field of political ecology.

Now at this point, before you think, ‘What the hell is he talking about? I’m turning to the gig page,’ hold on! This little lesson could well be worth it. Political ecology explores the way the ‘meaning of things’ – forest, trees and animals, etc – are conferred and shaped through debates about their use and value. Behind this is the assertion that people respond to these ‘things’ based on the meanings and interpretations given to them by individuals and society.

However, because there are inevitably multiple interpretations of what forests are (‘sacred’, ‘home for wildlife’, ‘inconvenient land cover’), not all of these can be accommodated in the way they’re managed and exploited. This leads to ‘contests’, as different people and groups seek to have their interpretations take precedence over those of others. This competition is very important because, ultimately, the interpretation that becomes dominant, the one that ‘wins the contest’, will determine how a forest or other natural environment is exploited.

Lesson over! You can now see how the editor, by using the term ‘contest’ in the book’s title, creates an expectation that its respective authors will use these themes to explore the dynamics of forest conflicts in the Kingdom. That this subsequently fails to transpire, in any concerted and coordinated fashion, is my first disappointment. Let’s call it a case, perhaps unintentionally, of ‘false advertising’.

In comparison, the recent publication Beyond the Sacred Forest: Complicating Conservation in Southeast Asia does take on this opportunity and provides a series of excellent essays that grapple with the implications of political ecology for the region’s forests. Not the easiest read, it is still recommended here.

The second and arguably biggest concern is that, while the book features some of the most prominent ‘international’ scholars on Cambodia’s environmental issues, it includes only one Cambodian among its writers and not one voice from a forest community. This occurs despite the announcement in the editor’s introduction that: “The authors of this book take the position that one of the most promising approaches to restoring and conserving Cambodia’s forests… will be through the engagement of rural communities in their management.”

Apparently, such engagement does not extend to the inclusion of such communities’ words here. For an account that seeks to explore the role of local communities in the Kingdom’s forest debates, this seems a bit strange. Moreover it represents a lost opportunity, because there’s a range of excellent projects being undertaken here that seek to bring local voices into the forest debates underway. One only has to look at the outstanding documentary A River Changes Course, for example, to recognise the value of bringing these voices to the fore in debates about the Kingdom’s environmental conflicts.

It is also, of course, about respect.
This leaves me concerned that Cambodia’s Contested Forest Domain is perhaps the ultimate conceit: that it represents an effort by one group to assert their interpretations of Cambodia’s forest debates onto society, while minimising the voices and meanings of others. Perhaps I am just being too postmodern (or precious?), but it is by this measure, if nothing else, that the book disappoints.

Cambodia’s Contested Forest Domain: The Role of Community Forestry in the Millennium, edited by Mark Poffenberger, is available now from Monument Books for $13.

The cover of Shiny Objects Of Desire is a fairly prosaic photograph of Phnom Penh’s waterfront in the gathering twilight of a Mekong evening. It’s a view that anyone who has spent time atop Le Moon or one of the other numerous Riverside rooftop haunts will know well. It’s a nice enough photograph; it’s just, well, sort of plain for a ‘shop window’ to a novel set in the city.

But open the book out and lay it flat and you find something much more intriguing: a mirror image of the photograph on the front carries over to fill the rear jacket. Now the cover is transformed into something much more interesting and decidedly ‘non-prosaic’.

A cunning conceit, perhaps? PJ Coggan, Shiny Objects’ author, responds thus: “The rather nice mirror-image effect was a serendipitous fluke, for which I thank the young man at the printer’s who was in charge of putting the book together.”

Hmmm. OK, but the book’s cover is a suitable metaphor as any for Shiny Objects which, on the surface, starts off like a fairly straightforward crime novel but evolves into something much more interesting as its story, like a fan, unfolds across the streets, alleyways and boulevards of Phnom Penh.

The locations and places mentioned within should be well known to anyone who has spent time in the ‘charming city’. The cover’s riverfront is there, of course, while Norodom Boulevard features early on. Soon enough the less salubrious Street 136 makes an appearance; goodness even the street I live on turns up.

You can quickly fall into a game of ‘Phnom Penh bingo’, ticking off places that you recognise or which – through the ruse of a disguised name change – can guess, all of which gives the book a sort of homely feel. Coggan certainly seems right at home along Riverside and its surrounding districts, an experience born from an association with the city that began early last decade. “I first visited Phnom Penh in 2002, after leaving a job with the UN in Morocco. I wanted to try a career with more autonomy and decided I’d travel around taking photos and selling travel articles on a freelance basis. In 2006 I came back and stayed till 2008. I’ve been back in 2010 (a trip to Ratanakiri), 2012 (researching a second book) and 2013 (seeing Shiny Objects through the press).”

So what of the story? Like the cover, the account that lies between does not unfold as you might expect. At the centre of Coggan’s story is Burl, a Riverside expat restaurant owner. Burl is a man carefully avoiding emotional commitments, but who nonetheless remains fiercely loyal to his fellow expat bar-owner friends. Consequently, when one finds himself locked up at Prey Sar prison, Burl sees it as his duty to get his friend out.

There’s only one problem: the person he needs to placate in order to achieve this noble goal is soon dead as well, and before you can say ‘Tuk tuk snatch-and-grab on Street 19,’ Burl is the prime suspect. So far so normal, you might say, but underneath all this is a much more nuanced tale. As Coggan himself confesses: “The point is contained in the title. If you end up knowing what the shiny objects are, you’ve got it.”

Besides being a good read, Shiny Objects also serves as a useful knowledge pool of tips and hints of which even the most seasoned expat might not be aware. The most interesting of these, to this reviewer at least, is the fact the local constabulary maintains a file on every foreigner living in the city. Really. “The Foreigners Police really do exist, and they really do keep files on all the foreigners resident in the kingdom,” Coggan says.

As a regular Mother Teresa, like my fellow Advisor colleagues, I can safely say that my file is probably very small, but the rest of you out there beware: as Shiny Objects shows, there is much more to Phnom Penh than appears on the surface.

Shiny Objects Of Desire, by PJ Coggan, is available now from Monument Books priced at $13:50.

Eccentric, jaded and fading expats populate Harlan Wolff’s debut novel, Bangkok Rules, but before you say ‘another cliché-driven exposé of Bangkok life,’ (phew!) read on. The journey may well be worth it.

At the centre of this crime novel is Carl Engel, a private eye on the edge of destitution, who scores an apparent lucky break when he is hired to track down a long-forgotten missing person.

Facing a mid-life crisis of broadening chest and shirking options, Wolff’s protagonist is a man who, despite numerous foibles, understands the ‘rules’ for living and working in the ‘city of smiles’.

In fact, early on Carl seems to understand them so well that you have cause to wonder why his life has come so unstuck. That is until you see he’s his own worst enemy, squandering money, love and opportunity in the pit of his own vices.

While reading, I recalled memories of another book that explores the darker sides of an Asian city, Paul Theroux’s Saint Jack. Like Wolff’s lead, Jack is a long-term resident, this time of Singapore, with a similar understanding of the norms and codes that are necessary for surviving and working across the fringes of that city.

However, while Theroux avoids exploring the darkest corners of Singapore life, Wolff heartily embraces the noirish alcoves of Bangkok’s streets, sois and bars.

Plot wise, at the centre of Bangkok Rules is a serial murderer on a killing spree, sadistically making his way through the shadows and prostitutes of Bangkok’s underside. Carl’s investigation quickly intersects with the killer’s case as the two become one.

Or do they?

In the noir world of smoke and mirrors, nothing is as it seems. Carl’s case and life spiral out of control as the thin ice he’s built his existence on starts to crack.

Throughout, the reader is served up characters and images with which many an expat living in Southeast Asia, especially those of the male persuasion, will be familiar. Yet Wolff’s ability to engineer a phrase and breathe new words into old stereotypes gives them fresh life and meaning across the evolving plot of his novel.

Undoubtedly, Wolff, a long-time resident of Thailand and a private investigator, has dedicated time to new ways of writing about these things, with one or 50 stake-outs providing the time and opportunity to neatly tailor his phrases and metaphors.

Thus we are served weary ex-Vietnam vets; retired CIA spooks, overweight and sunburned sex tourists and corrupt local officials, all combined in a tale that becomes increasingly intertwined as it barrels towards its climax.

Clichéd? Formulaic? Sure! But Wolff’s debut will also give some readers pause for thought as the ‘mirror moments’ that he conjures yield reflections of themselves. The opportunity for such introspection is just one of the reasons for placing Bangkok Rules in your reading pile.

Bangkok Rules, by Harlan Wolff, is available from Monument Books at $14.