Top 5 Cambodian delicacies

Cambodian food doesn’t have a great press, and has long been overshadowed by its neighbours Vietnam and Thailand. But there is much more to this fresh, healthy cuisine with its seasonal dishes of bitter, sour, sweet, salty and umami flavours than meets the eye. Here are five of Cambodia’s best meals, all of which can be had for a few dollars – and deserve far wider recognition.

Boiled crab with salt, pepper and lime dip

Dish: This incredibly simple dip is made from sea salt, Cambodia’s world-beating Kampot pepper, and lime juice. You’ll get it with everything from hunks of spit-roast calf to green mango. But it goes best with freshly boiled blue swimmer crabs, which although contain little brown head meat, and virtually no morsels in the claws, more than make up for it with the generously fleshy chine. In restaurants, they usually serve a mix of two thirds freshly-ground black pepper to one third salt then carefully squeeze in two or three lime quarters and mix it in front of you. It might seem a laughably simple procedure, but they take it as seriously as a chef de rang would the preparation of crepe suzette, squeezing in the ‘correct’ amount of lime juice until there is the right moistness to the sauce.

Where: You’ll have few better days than sitting at a restaurant in Kep’s famous crab market, looking out to sea, while supping cold beer and dunking freshly boiled crab into this splendid dip.

Chicken porridge soup

Dish: Cambodia is truly the land of soups. I don’t think you’ll find a country with such a high proportion on menus, and there is nearly always a broth at every family meal. But of all the great soups in Cambodia, and there are plenty, this is my favourite. The bowl is always topped with nutty, browned garlic, and as you dig into the rice, there is the occasional limp crunch of bean sprouts and the pleasing discovery of a little piece of chicken or bone to suck on. Then there is the chicken stock, hinting of lime leaf and lemon grass, julienne strips of ginger, the soapy richness of blood pudding, and the yolks taken from the hens’ ovaries, which glint like amber pearls. I could go on…

Where: Food stalls in Phnom Penh’s Central Market. It’s a seething sauna, but the soups are second to none.

Prahok ling

Dish: This is an incredibly powerful meal, flavoured with Cambodia’s notoriously foul-smelling fermented fish paste, prahok. The paste is fried with hand-chopped pork, onion, garlic, egg, and chilli. And it’s so strong there are strict government laws in place to ensure you only get a small saucer of the stuff, which you eat with boiled jasmine rice and chunks of raw aubergine, cucumber, green tomato, and white cabbage to take the edge off the extremely pungent, blue cheese-like taste.

Where: Khmer Food Village, opposite NagaWorld in Phnom Penh, or Bopha Leak Khluon restaurant, near Hotel de la Paix, Siem Reap.

Cambodian dried fish omelette

Dish: The best version I’ve had was made with duck eggs and tiny smoked fish that had been soaked in brine, and then grilled over smouldering wood for eight hours until they were hard and chewy. But mostly dried fish are used. The fish are broken up into small pieces and then added to a pan with chopped onion and garlic and fried for a couple of minutes. A couple of beaten eggs and black pepper are added, and the omelette is served very thin and dry with a plate of crudités and rice.

Where: You’ll be hard pushed to find a better version than at Keur Keur Coffee Shop, #75 Street 118, Phnom Penh.

Grilled pork with rice and pickles

Dish: This is easily Cambodia’s best breakfast. There is something incredible in the way the pickled vegetables, chewy slices of grilled pork, and the clear pork broth work together with pickled chillies from the condiment trays. The pork is marinated for hours and then slowly grilled, and has a deliciously salty flavour and intense red colour. You pour spoonfuls of stock over the rice and pork and then dig in. The pickle is usually made from carrot, cucumber and daikon. They are cut on a mandolin into julienne strips and then salted. The water produced is drained off and then they are soused in a pickling mixture of water, vinegar, sugar, salt and spices. Think kimchi without all the PR.

Where: Any busy Khmer eatery at breakfast time. But get there before 10am – it’s usually all gone by then.

 

Street study

Few can ignore the metre-high images of men in tight-fitting dresses. They provoke giggles, questions and uncomfortable sideways stares.

If indifference is the enemy, Dareth Rosaline is winning. Her series of portraits along Sisowath Quay, part of the week-long Photo Phnom Penh festival, explores identity, sexuality and the cultural perceptions connected with appearance.

Other exhibits address weightier concerns. For the festival’s opening at the European Commission on December 7, giant images of Cambodian trees will cover the commission’s exterior wall on Norodom Boulevard, a not-so-subtle nod to the ecological necessity of greenery and, perhaps, the country’s inability to better protect its dwindling forest cover.

“I don’t care if people like it or not,” says Christian Caujolle, the festival’s curator. “If they are astonished, love, hate – that means they have seen something and that they have reacted.”

In all, more than 100 photographers from around the world will take part in 26 exhibits across 16 locations – not including the outdoor installations along the quay and other events, which all in account for more than 1,000 photographs. Disbelief settles over Caujolle as he assesses the scope of it all. “We are crazy,” he says.

Caujolle is no stranger to photography, or big ideas. After university, where he studied Spanish literature, he joined the left-wing newspaper Liberation, founded in 1973 by Jean-Paul Sartre and others. He began covering art and photography in the mid-1970s and became the paper’s picture editor in 1981.

In those days, Paris had only one photography gallery: Agathe Gaillard. “I was going to that gallery every Saturday,” Caujolle told FK Magazine in August. “I was spending my afternoons there and I met Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Kertész, Bill Brant, Ralph Gibson, Larry Clark, Brassaï, Robert Doisneau, Izis, Edouard Boubat.”

Caujolle began teaching photography at the French Cultural Centre in Phnom Penh in 1995, and many of today’s established and rising stars – Mak Remissa, Tang Chin Sothy, Kim Hak, Sovan Philong – came from his programme, Studio Image.

By the mid-2000s, Phnom Penh’s small but growing community of photographers needed an outlet to show their work. They longed for a platform to exchange ideas with shutterbugs from elsewhere. In 2008, the French Cultural Centre asked Caujolle if he could put something together. He didn’t hesitate. “The concept was immediately very clear for me,” he says.”The idea is one of exchange between Europe and Asia, with mostly young artists.”

This year’s festival presents an A-list of overseas talent. Michael Ackerman will make his first appearance in Asia, showing images from his next book at Java Café. French photographer and artist JR will create a Phnom Penh installation of his worldwide exhibit Inside Out, which comprises series of oversized black-and-white portraits hung in local communities. Isabel Munoz, the Spanish photographer known for her exquisite studies of the human form, will present a series on apsaras. Georges Ruosse, the space-bending anamorphic artist, is currently constructing images scheduled for unveiling on the wall of the French Embassy.

“If only a small minority of the Phnom Penhites will really grasp the subtleties of the proposed exhibitions, it will at least confront them with something unusual,” says John Vink, whose works on the late King Father Norodom Sihanouk will be presented on opening night.

The need to provoke runs deep through photography. But conversations cannot exist where knowledge of the form is absent. In Phnom Penh, as in most cities, educating a wider audience means getting images outside the galleries and into the street, where pictures can pose for everyday people. “We will not change the world with Photo Phnom Penh,” Caujolle says, “but the education purpose is part of the product.”

A natural teacher, Caujolle’s desire to share drives not only the festival’s outdoor agenda, but its commitment to keeping access free and open to all. The festival remains dedicated to the local public, he says, and while interaction between locals and foreigners is useful, it’s the exchange between countrymen that carries the greatest significance.

“There was a generation born around 1980, where in each field you find between one and five people who have that strong necessity of expression and who are talented and who have things to say. I am deeply moved by that,” Caujolle says. He hopes you will be too.

WHO: Cambodian and international photographers
WHAT: Photo Phnom Penh, international photo festival
WHERE: Across Phnom Penh (see institutfrancais-cambodge.com/ppp for details)
WHEN: December 7 – 12
WHY: World-class photography at your disposal

 

Dish: Dealing with the day after

Here at The Advisor we are, believe it or not, writers. And if there’s one thing writers know about, it’s drinking. Writing too, of course. But mainly drinking. From the beaded can of Angkor and the overpriced bottle of shiraz or rioja to the tequila, fags, vodka shots, hard drugs and frenetic sex with strangers, we know all about it.

But that, dear reader, is another story for another column. For today we wish to speak of drinking. Or more specifically the ramifications of drinking: the hangover. And who better to go to for advice on curing hangovers (For yes! They can be cured!) than that blushing doyenne of the brandy bottle, young Kingsley Amis?

An inveterate pisshead, Amis identified two facets to the hangover: the physical and the metaphysical. The perfect morning-after panacea, if it indeed exists, will attack both angles of your hangover. Ever at your service, we have scoured Phnom Penh to ensure you never again have to endure “that ineffable compound of depression… anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear of the future”.

Hangover food 1: Marmite

One reason many of us feel so bad the morning after a heavy drinking session is because alcohol depletes your system of essential nutrients, including B vitamins. A lack of B vitamins can cause anxiety and depression, so try munching on Marmite – a rich source of the vitamin B complex – to lift your mood. As an added benefit, Marmite has high sodium content which can help replace the salts lost through drinking alcohol. Try the savoury spread on toast for an added fix of carbs.

Hangover food 2: Watermelon

Not only does alcohol deplete your body of nutrients, it can also lead to low blood sugar levels, which may leave you feeling weak and shaky. To counteract this, try snacking on watermelon which is not just high in fructose but is also water-rich to boost hydration. On top of this, watermelon is high in many essential nutrients, including vitamin C, B-vitamins and magnesium.

Hangover food 3: Ginger

If too much boozing has left you feeling queasy, ginger is the perfect food to help settle your stomach and relieve nausea. While you may not feel much like chewing on the food in its original form, you could try adding some grated ginger to hot water for a ginger tea, blending it into a fresh fruit or vegetable juice, or snacking on ginger biscuits for a tummy soothing treat.

Hangover food 4: Eggs

Scrambled, fried or boiled, eggs are a popular hangover breakfast, and the good news is they are a great choice for beating the nastiest of hangovers. Firstly, eggs are extremely rich in protein, which helps raise mood-boosting serotonin levels, as well as reducing nausea. Furthermore, eggs are rich in an amino acid called cystine, which helps fight the alcohol-induced toxins contributing to your hangover.

Hangover food 5: Bananas 

Bananas are packed with potassium and magnesium, two of the minerals often depleted in our bodies when alcohol is consumed. A lack of potassium in the body can lead to nausea, weakness and tiredness, so stocking up on bananas can help reduce these classic hangover symptoms. As an added bonus bananas are natural antacids, so great for reducing stomach acid, and are good for providing a boost of energy if you have a busy day ahead.

Hangover food 6: Coconut juice

That thundering morning-after headache that feels like the publican used your brain as a trampoline is largely the result of dehydration, and few things are better than the juice of a young coconut to quell the thumping. Coconut water contains five electrolytes – three more than Gatorade – and the juice is similar enough to human blood that it can safely be used intravenously as a rehydration fluid. Furthermore, coconut water is low in sugar and calories and high in potassium, vitamin C and anti-oxidants, which boozing causes your body to shed.

What not to have: Hair of the dog

Unless you’re a committed aficionado of benders and blackouts, drinking more alcohol the morning after the night before is unlikely to genuinely improve your condition. Sure, a few pints might make you think you feel better, but only because you’re drunk again. And in such an inebriated state, you’re in no position to diagnose what condition you’re condition is in.

And, finally, any conversation about drinking, hangovers, cures and false remedies would be incomplete without a mention of Mongolia’s ancient hangover secret: pickled sheep eyes in tomato juice.
You definitely don’t want any of that.

Manic impression

 “When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild and freak out and do anything they want to do.” – Jimi Hendrix

The greatest electric guitarist in the history of music was just 27 years old when he was found on the floor of his girlfriend Monika Dannemann’s home in Notting Hill, London. And it was at precisely the same age that Darrell Young, better known as Niki Buzz – founder of 1980s US hard-rock power trios Vendetta and M-80 – picked up a guitar for the very first time. It would not be the last. “I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes,” Hendrix once said. What his Rock Hall biography describes as ‘the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music’ would make of Play Like Jimi, an Amsterdam-based tribute band fronted by Buzz, can only be imagined. For as John Mayer writes in Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 Greatest Artists Of All Time, “Hendrix invented a kind of cool. The cool of a big conch-shell belt. The cool of boots that your jeans are tucked into. If Jimi Hendrix is an influence on somebody, you can immediately tell. Give me a guy who’s got some kind of weird-ass goatee and an applejack hat, and you just go, ‘He got to you, didn’t he?’” As Hendrix devotees celebrate what would have been his 70th birthday on November 27, days after the news that previously unreleased Hendrix material is due out next year (People, Hell and Angels will be the 11th posthumous Hendrix album), The Advisor corners Play Like Jimi’s flamboyant front man, who plays 13 instruments; won a James Brown-sponsored music contest when he was 13; has performed with everyone from The Ramones to Patti Smith, once formed a band with the only man ever to get thrown out by Ozzy Osbourne for being too badass (Ozzy himself once bit the head off a live bat on stage), and, yes, has got some kind of weird-ass goatee. Joining him are bass player Martin Seij, a Dutch metalhead, and former Wailers drummer Winston Scholsberg.

What would Jimi be doing if he were alive today?

Niki: At this point, he’d probably be doing jazz fusion of some sort. He was going in that direction; he was already jamming with Miles Davis and a rap group back then, a group called Lost Poets. Jimi would have been at the forefront of rap.

The new album has been described as pioneering what became Earth, Wind and Fire’s sound.

Niki: Toward the end of Jimi’s career, he wanted to experiment a lot but his manager didn’t want that at all; he wanted the original experience. The last thing he wanted the world to see was Jimi as a black man. He wanted the world to see Jimi as a white rock star with a good tan, and the blacker Jimi became the more it upset him.

How much of a political force was Jimi?

Winston: The way he used his music, the way he spoke about the war, the way Machine Gun talked about the injustice of the war – that was the most political statement he made. If you listen to Machine Gun, you understand how deeply concerned he was with what was happening.

The song Machine Gun has been described by musicologist Andy Aledort as ‘the premier example of Hendrix’s unparalleled genius as a rock guitarist.’

Niki: I was a drummer when I first heard the Band of Gypsys album. I’ll never forget the first time I heard Machine Gun. It completely changed the way I looked at guitar – and I wasn’t even a guitarist then. I didn’t start playing guitar until I was 27, which is strange because Jimi died at 27. When I heard the sound of his guitar crying and wailing, just like a mother or father watching their child being shot down… On top of that, he made the guitar actually sound like a machine gun and bombs dropping. I never thought such emotion and visualisation could come out of any instrument. There’s no way you can listen to Machine Gun and not feel every ounce of the pain of war. It’s probably the best song that’s ever been recorded in the history of music.

You’ve said before the only way to play like Jimi is to let the guitar play you.

Martin: If you let the instrument play for you, instead of struggling with the notes to make the song sound like it sounds; if you let the music flow through you and let the guitar do its thing, that’s when it becomes like Jimi.

Niki: Most people, especially guitarists, believe that playing like Jimi is putting on the record and learning it note for note. Any moron can do that; it doesn’t take any talent. If you want to play like Jimi, first of all you have to be in touch with nature then you have to be in touch with your emotions. Jimi played in colours and he played completely from his emotions. He was very shy so he expressed all of his feelings through his guitar: his love, his anger, his hopes, his dreams.

Curtis Knight, who was close to Hendrix, has described you as the best guitarist he’s ever played with since Jimi. That’s one hell of a compliment.   

Niki: I really love Jimi Hendrix, but didn’t play him at first. I had a band in 1982 called Vendetta. A dream come true for most guitar players would have been being produced by Eddie Kramer, who produced Hendrix. Kramer came to me and said ‘I want to produce you.’ And I said no. I chose Max Norman to produce the album, because I didn’t want the stigma of being Jimi Hendrix. Everybody was comparing me to him anyway. I should tell you about how I met Curtis Knight. He used to manage Pure Hell, the first black punk rock band. I was the resident Dr Fix-it sort of guitarist at Planet Studios. I came in one day to play and Curtis was sitting on the couch. He looks at me and says: ‘Yeah, you look like you can play.’

That’s how he gauged your musical ability: ‘You look the part!’?

Niki: [laughs] So he says ‘Come listen to this!’ and he took me into the studio and played a track. I then played it and he goes: ‘OK, you’re my guitar player now.’ We mostly just did studio stuff, and he owned a limousine service. I finally talked him into doing a couple of gigs down in South Carolina and we were on stage, playing, and there was a guy in the front row who was weeping and sobbing to the point where it was disturbing. I told someone to bring him back stage and he’s on his knees, sobbing. He thought Curtis Knight was dead and I was dead because he was a big Vendetta and M-80 fan, and I hadn’t been on the scene in a while. He couldn’t believe he was seeing two of his biggest idols on the same stage and they were alive.

You’ve rubbed some extraordinary shoulders: Joan Jett, Patti Smith, The Ramones. Who stands out?

Winston: [laughs] That’s a good question. Answer that, brother! Come on!

Niki: Since you’re a punk vocalist, I have a great story for you. Do you know The Dead Boys? OK, so me and The Dead Boys’ lead singer Stiv Bators were best friends. He was an absolute intellectual; we’d sit in a coffee shop and discuss politics for hours. The drummer, whose nickname was Beaver, he was a normal guy but he really wanted to be a punk. The Dead Boys were down near Avenue A, Avenue B – we call it Alphabet City. At that point in New York, Alphabet City made Beirut look like Beverly Hills. The only people there were Hells Angels and drug dealers; it was serious. Anyway, the drummer decided to earn his punk badge by going into Alphabet City and throwing some racial slurs at the Puerto Ricans there. He ended up getting stabbed 32 times. That’s a hell of a way to earn your punk badge.

And what was it like in M-80 working with Don Costa, the only man ever to get kicked out of Ozzy Osborne’s band for being too much of a badass?

Niki: Oh, Jesus. OK, I’m going to tell you about the most famous M-80 gig ever. We were at The Troubador in LA, going to the gig, and Don Costa says: ‘Look, I can’t go in the limo with you. I’m going in my own limo.’ Alright, whatever. So we arrive at the gig and Don Costa is wrapped up like The Mummy; he was taped up head to toe, there was nothing but his eyes showing, and he had smeared cat shit all over himself.

Oh no.

Niki: Oh yes! [laughs] And the drummer sat down and played in an LA jail cell. He literally went to the LA County Jail, where they were replacing the cells, and reconstructed a complete jail cell as our stage set. He had to go into the cell to get on the drums and when he went in he took one of Costa’s extra bass guitars, which I thought was his own. Here we go: we start the concert, and of course there’s this girl on her boyfriend’s shoulders and she starts flashing the band with her big tits. Costa leans over and starts sucking them while he’s playing, which the boyfriend didn’t take too kindly to. So he puts the girl down and starts to swing at Costa. Costa then goes to the back of the stage and comes back out with a pickaxe and starts swinging it at the guy. So now we don’t have a bass player any more because he’s too busy swinging a pickaxe at this guy he’s fighting with. I’m saying to myself OK, I’m the lead singer and the guitar player; I’ll carry the show until he quits this. All of a sudden the drums stop. Sam opens up the case for what I thought was a spare bass guitar and it’s a 12-gauge shotgun…

No! 

Niki: …and he starts blowing holes in the ceiling of the club! Now I’m the only one left actually playing music here, and at that point I was only wearing a chamois – I’m part native American – and so you’ve got this guy in a loin cloth playing guitar; one guy blowing holes in the ceiling, and another guy swinging a pickaxe. That was M-80. Costa was certifiably insane. This wasn’t an act. You know why he got kicked out by Ozzy?

Something to do with a cheese-grater…

Niki: Worse. He used to bring live bunnies on stage and gut them. And he had a cheese-grater on the back of his guitar, which would grate his stomach while he was playing until there was blood everywhere.

And you thought forming a band with this guy would be a good idea why?

[laughter]

Winston: Yeah, Niki. Why?! Thank you for asking that question, Phoenix. We’ve been waiting for him to answer that for years.

Niki: He was the best bass player ever. I just got a fan mail the other day asking if he was still alive and someone told me they think he’s dead, because no one’s heard from his since. Last time I saw him was at The Rainbow, where he showed up in women’s lingerie, motorcycle boots and smoking a cigar.

So how does one go from shotguns, pickaxes and cheese-graters to recording the soundtrack for The Personals, a documentary about the sex lives of the elderly in New York? Just how kinky ARE old people in Manhattan?

[Laughter]

Niki: Every time I land at JFK, my phone starts ringing. People just know I’m in town. This time, it was Planet Studios. I go down there and am just shooting the shit when this guy comes running down the stairs with complete panic on his face. ‘I need a drummer! I need a drummer!’ Everyone pointed at me. It was Miles Davis’ road manager; we hadn’t seen each other in ten years. Miles used to have a recording studio next to mine and would come in and watch me play. Anyway, this guy was recording the soundtrack for a documentary but his drummer hadn’t shown up. So we played through it for about 45 minutes and then I took off the headphones and said OK, I’m ready to do it. And the guy says: ‘No, you’re done. Don’t touch it.’ They had four days to do it; I did it in 45 minutes, first take – and holy shit, it won an Oscar! You know what my wife said to me? ‘That’s good. What are you going to cook for dinner?’

So your Oscar-winning experience will forever be wedded to the visual of old people having sex?    

[More laughter, none of it Niki’s]

Niki: No! Let me tell you something: I have never to this day seen the damned film…
WHO: Play Like Jimi
WHAT: Hendrix resurrected
WHERE: Memphis Bar, St. 118 (Nov 30) & Sharky Bar, St. 130 (Dec 1)
WHEN: 8pm November 30 (Memphis) & December 1 (Sharky’s)
WHY: See ‘What’

 

Dish: On the bubble

The year: 248,000 BC. Ug returns to his village aglow with pride, eager to share his discovery of strange new magic which could warm his family during the winter. He calls it ‘fire’. No longer will his people be forced to survive on nuts and berries; ‘fire’ gives them the option of eating a nut, berry and woolly mammoth soufflé. Thus, more or less, the practice of cooking was born.

In archaeological terms, it wasn’t all that long ago that homo sapiens switched from being omnivores to what Heribert Watzke, the chemist who set up the food material science department at Nestlé in Switzerland, calls ‘coctivores’ – taken from the Latin coquere (‘to cook’). As we humans have gradually altered, augmented and processed our food, taking it further and further away from its natural form, our diets have changed us. Folk in Australia and the States are now taking the initiative to go back to their roots. Rather than trading in their shirts and phones for loincloths and clubs, however, they’re eating food as nature intended: raw.

Raw foodism – the practice of eating foods cooked no higher than 104°F (40°C) – was started in the late 19th century by Swiss doctor Maximilian Bircher-Benner, better known for inventing muesli. It wasn’t until the 1980s that it became popularised by the book Raw Energy – Eat Your Way to Radiant Health, which advocates a 75% raw diet rich in seeds, sprouts and fresh vegetable juices as a means to fight disease, slow the ageing process, and improve emotional health.

In the past ten years, raw foodism has become increasingly popular in Australia and America, particularly in California where actor Woody Harrelson has opened his own raw restaurant. But if you think raw foodists are nothing but carrot nibblers, think again: menus comprise far more than simple salads. And as James Stewart, owner of RAWsome raw food supermarket in California, says: “When you start eating raw protein and whatnot, you actually can feel it within minutes or hours. It’s that quick. Energetically, your body feels clean. You don’t feel challenged or bogged down, you don’t get tired.”

Central to raw food theory is the fact that cooking food destroys natural enzymes – the life force within food which triggers digestion – exhausting the poor old pancreas. We might feel fine eating cooked food, but that’s largely because most of us have never experienced the alternative. The first place to offer that alternative here in Phnom Penh is ARTillery, where the menu – already more vegan-friendly than most – has been expanded to include several raw dishes.

“Eating raw food gives me more energy and it was that that started it,” says co-owner Emma, who trained under a raw food chef in Australia. “I was feeling quite sluggish here, drinking beers and eating a lot of rice. I was still vegetarian but I wasn’t feeling that great and I’m really into putting things in your food that can make you feel better.” Try it and brace yourself for what she describes as “a mental energy that you can’t get from any other diet”.

Take, for example, ARTillery’s raw pizza: to make the base, flax seeds, almonds and cashews are first ground finely then put into a dehydrator, which uses heat and air to reduce water content. They then add a salsa-esque topping and cashew ‘cream’ – essentially, cashews soaked in water then blended to make a fatty cream. Other choices include raw falafel; raw crackers with raw hummus; raw coconut and cashew pie; raw cheesecake, and a raw apple pie which could outdo any of its cooked counterparts in a county fair.

For the hardcore element, the arts cafe also offers a five-day ‘raw food cleanse’: three raw meals delivered to your door containing zero animal products, zero sugars, no processed fats and no preservatives, all washed down with booster shots, such as chlorophyll and spirulina, to reap the maximum health benefits.

After November’s initial test run, 17 out of 20 of ARTillery’s raw food experimentalists came back for more – despite one or two reporting the occasional craving for something hot. “It’s really for resetting your body,” says Emma. “It makes you analyse what you’re putting in your body and why, making sure you’re getting the most amount of nutrients from what you actually put inside.” To sign up for the next cleanse, starting December 3, call Emma on 078 985530. 

ARTillery, Street 240½ (near Mosaic Gallery); 078 985530.

 

Jailhouse rap

It had been a long time since I last went to the circus. The love affair started during childhood, under the travelling big tops that came to small American towns, bringing with them worlds of magic. It then progressed, later in life, to witnessing and taking part in extreme psychedelic sideshows, with glass eating, fire spinning and genital stapling – but it’s probably best not to ask about that. The experience was always a powerful electric shock to the subconscious; something that broke the walls formed by routine, expanded ideas about what it’s possible to do with the body and mind, and filled the soul with infant-like wonder, awe of the world. None of this, however, prepared me for Phare Ponleu Selpak.

The first thing that engages the viewer is the two musicians on stage, with an instrument-to-human ration of about 5:1. Then there’s how they interact and improvise with the circus performers, giving cues back and forth no different than a jamming band. Groups of acrobats work together as if they all occupy a single body. A young man speed paints as performance art. A young contortionist, bent over backwards, uses her feet to shoot a bow and arrow at a balloon.

Most impressively, the whole thing goes beyond the usual role of circus, gripping the viewer’s emotions and carrying them along for a wordless narrative, holding tightly all the way. As Francroix, communications manager of Phare Ponleu Selpak and an acrobat with a decade’s experience, explains: “The technique is there to explain something, to tell a story. In that way, we are similar to a French contemporary circus but it’s Khmer style – telling Khmer stories about how people are living in Cambodia.” Entranced, I decide to run away to Battambang to join the Phare Ponleu Selpak circus school.

The first step was to trace Khmer circus back to its roots. Was this just another export from Europe, carelessly left behind like litter in the late 19th century? Not even close. Paintings in a 400-year-old pagoda in Kampong Chhnang depict circus acts, as do bas reliefs in Angkor Wat’s Bayon temple, which feature juggling, acrobatics, and acts with animals. All of this coming from a culture which couldn’t possibly have had any contact with the bloodbaths that passed for circuses in ancient Rome.

So where did it go and why did it lie dormant for so many years? Not even historians, the people whose job it is to work that out, have been able to work that out. What’s more important, though, is that it was revived. During the last throes of the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodian refugees in Vietnam and Russia instinctively knew how urgent it was to preserve something of their culture. That something was circus.

One of these refugees, Narin, trained and studied with other orphaned youths in Russia. With the help of sympathetic Russian, Vietnamese, and Laotian harbourers, she brought her skills back to found the Circus School in the Royal University of Phnom Penh. Khoun Det, a graduate of the programme and fellow refugee, brought a similar vision to what had hitherto been a visual arts school in the Anh Chan village of Battambang province. After eight bumpy hours on a bus, I am finally here.

The environment is alien but soothingly so. A bizzaro campus set up, with a ceaseless jam session from the music school, gives the place a kind of folk festival vibe. The theatre school, animation studio, painting and drawing school, graphic design school, public school and playground are abuzz with children of every age deeply involved in their respective labours of love. Walking straight through, to the right of their home-field big top, leads me to the circus school.

Originally used as a self-defence and gymnastics space, the building still echoes that, albeit with modified equipment. Seven-year-olds from the on-site school cartwheel about gleefully as jugglers practice to the 4/4 timing of their coaches’ “Muy, bpee, bpaiy, bpowun…” Asked for a breakdown of the day, Alex, a volunteer aerials acrobat coach, says: “It depends on the age group. For the very young kids, they come in and they have classes with different instructions in acrobatics and juggling. They come every weekday, sometimes on Saturdays, from eight to twelve o’clock then from two to four o’clock.

“The teenagers, who have been there for quite a while, they train themselves. They’ve already got mad skills; they’re just helping out the younger guys. It’s a big family: they’re all brothers, sisters, uncles and aunties. Then from four to six, some of them have rehearsals depending on what shows are going on. When they’re working with coaches, it’s not really a structured class; they’re working on their own specific stuff for the shows that they’re involved in.” This particular circus stays in the family, too: most graduates come straight back to teach others and help keep the project alive.

Having asked nicely, I’m given free use of this extraordinary space – along with the thoughtful advice to stretch first – in order to try out my own circus skills. Spinning, flipping, climbing, and suspending, I taste the peace and clarity that lies on the other side of concentration and focus. But that doesn’t come before numerous entertaining pratfalls. An inexpertly mounted aerial silk can swing from side to side, nearly colliding with other gymnasts, as I learn. Back flips cannot be done on suspended rings unless immediately following a front flip: arms, as it turns out, simply don’t bend that way. It’s clear these guys are physically and psychologically light years beyond that.

Being naturally hypermobile (double jointed) in all four ball-and-socket joints, I thought I might have a natural advantage. While that isn’t entirely untrue, there’s a lot more to it than I’d expected. It requires years of practice and training, as well as upper body strength. Apparently, I have neither.`

This puts into perspective just how much discipline these young circus students have inside them. Since 2003, their first tour of Europe, they’ve returned there every summer and are today received with increasing enthusiasm in France, Germany, Spain and the UK. Their act has also graced the stages of Manila, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, China, Korea, Japan, Tasmania and Algeria. Here in Cambodia, they now plan to visit Phnom Penh once a month and are in the process of building their own tent in Siem Reap.

With the taming of all this talent, surely their parents must be beaming with pride? Actually, come to think of it, how do traditional Khmer villagers respond to so colourful a career choice? It wasn’t easy at first, say the students. Srey Bandoul, founder of the visual arts school, recalls: “People thought circus, for the girls,” he gestures with his hands around his belly, “they cannot get pregnant.” Says Francois: “At first, it was difficult for them to accept it because the circus is very close; it’s very touchy feely and they’re on the stage. We spent a lot of time explaining what circus is.” Today, smiling parents can be seen in the front row during every performance.

The next show coming to the capital, directed by the first generation of circus graduates, is being staged with the Philippine Educational Theatre Association. Eclipse is a dark tale of discrimination, alienation and divine retribution. “This is one of our most theatrical,” says Zoe, one of the circus administrators. “It’s also very Khmer; you don’t see the influence of Western cultures like in other shows that we have.”

WHO: The circus
WHAT: Eclipse
WHERE: Beeline Arena, Chroy Changvar Peninsula (2nd right after Japanese Bridge)
WHEN: 6pm November 24
WHY: “Circus art is about courage, solidarity, and peace.” – Phare Ponleu Selpak founder, Khoun Det

All the small things

Ayako Kimura holds up her coffee cup for closer inspection. “Finding the beauty behind everyday objects, catching their energy, the echoes of their life – this is what photography can do.” Seeing my nonplussed expression, the 28-year-old photographer says softly, “Now perhaps you understand 60% of what I’m trying to say, but the photographs will show you 95%. To see the small things is enriching.” She places the cup back on the table.

Kimura’s first solo exhibition, opening at Craft Peace Cafe on November 17, is full of small things. A Clear Pulse features images of quotidian objects which are often overlooked in the rush of life: a spill of rambutans, an unopened lotus, a wrinkled hand. “I want to capture their history, their energy, their beauty,” Kimura says, explaining her fascination with these apparently unremarkable everyday objects.

Beauty is a common thread in her photographs, which are characterised on a stylistic level by soft light, static composition and a low-angle composition redolent of traditional Japanese aesthetics. The Osaka-born photographer, who has been based in Cambodia for over a year, admits that her tendency to find the best in her photographic subjects, be they a roadside cow or a handful of green peppercorns, might well stem from her day job as a commercial photographer. However, she also sees her fascination with beauty as integral to her personality as an artist: “I respect the subject and I want to show its good side; maybe this is my character,” she muses. “But if I were a war photographer maybe this would change!”

While far from a latter day Robert Capa, Kimura is not averse to using her depictions of beauty to examine serious social issues. Like many creatives in contemporary Cambodia she expresses concern over the swift changes sweeping the country. Moves towards mass-production and assembly line aesthetics, comparable to the cultural shifts experienced by Japan in decades past, affect people in invisible ways. “In modern Japan everything is readymade, everything is identical. This affects people’s views on beauty, and changes cultural values.”

The rubric of industrialisation and globalisation which subtends modern living is largely absent in A Clear Pulse. Instead, the photographs depict timeless scenes: landscapes, portraits and numerous still lives. One striking image, a swarm of brown bodies clambering in the branches of a banyan tree, captures the childlike joy in life which Kimura is so keen to portray. “I want people to notice the small things in life before they’re gone. I think this is what I can do.”

WHO: Ayako Kimura
WHAT: A Clear Pulse photo exhibition
WHERE: Craft Peace Cafe, St. 392, BKK1
WHEN: From 2pm November 17 (tea and cakes provided!)
WHY: Learn to appreciate the little things

 

Best of Phnom Penh 2012: THE VERDICT

THE VERDICT Cambodia’s capital has been weighed, it has been measured, and it has not in the least bit been found wanting. In what world could anywhere possibly beat Phnom Penh? So here it is: the absolute Best Of 2012 – the city’s finest arts & entertainment; people and places, and eats and treats – as voted for by YOU. 

Best place to meet gangsters

St Tropez

No evening in Phnom Penh is complete without spending time in the company of the city’s high-rolling gangsters. We’re not talking rinky-dink small-timers here; we’re talking about the Lexus-Rolex-Moet crowd. If that’s how you get your kicks, St Tropez is the place for you. Saunter around in stilettos for three minutes and you’ll be invited to partake of beverages with Japanese businessmen with – as most mothers would have it – ‘more money than sense’. They may look like teddy bears on the outside, but under their suits lie wonderlands of yakuza tattoos. Trust us, we speak from experience. Don’t forget to check your firearms at the entrance.

Best junior genius

Reaksmey Yean

The man, the myth, the afro: fast becoming something of a local celebrity, self-proclaimed arts advocate Reaksmey is involved in just about every cultural event the city has. When he’s not inspiring his Battambang-based arts collective Trotchaek Pneik, you’ll find him co-organising cultural festivals, or sharing pearls of wisdom on art and revolution from Singapore to Slovenia. As the city’s first Khmer curator, based in Equinox’s informal gallery space, it’s probably safe to say that Reaksmey and his ‘fro may just be the face of the future.

Best empty threat

Election weekend alcohol ban

Out of a desire for sober and rational decision making during the commune elections, the powers that be ordered a country-wide ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol from midnight June 2 (a Friday) to midnight June 4 (a Sunday). Surely, this wouldn’t impact the foreign community, non-citizens who can’t vote anyway, right? The answer is yes and no. Shops did not sell any booze whatsoever… to people who weren’t regulars. Expatriate watering-holes didn’t serve any alcohol either… unless it was in a coffee cup, or the venue’s doors and windows were tinted black. With some patrons embracing the occasion by bar-hopping in 1920s gangster attire, it was a wonderful party for everyone who risked… well, not a whole lot, as it turned out.

Best friend we’ve lost this year

The badly subtitled channel

As anyone who’s bought DVDs locally knows, it’s common practice in the bootlegging industry to use translation software to get new releases out as fast as possible. Fair enough. Luckily for us, these movies are translated from English to Chinese and then back into English again, often with hilarious results. Up until quite recently, bold and brazen television pirates have aired these subtitled films, filling our living rooms with laughter and joy. These great interpretations of the language are brought to you by the people who translate the famous line “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this any more” from The Network as “ANGRY IS NO MORE!” Of course, we could just buy DVDs at the Russian Market and turn on closed captioning, but it just isn’t the same. We miss you, buddy.

Best place to feel better about yourself

Walkabout

If Charles Bukowski, the American poet and novelist infamous for boozing and whoring (think Hemingway in the slums of Los Angeles), were alive today and stumbled into Walkabout on Street 51, he’d probably take a look around, consider it far too seedy, and leave quietly and quickly. Home to dead-beats, scoundrels, miscreants, loose women, and drinks which cost more than they should, Walkabout is a ‘sports bar’ open 24 hours a day which serves greasy Western food to greasy Western people. For maximum feel-better-about-yourself effect, it’s best to go in the pre-noon daylight hours when you can’t tell whether people are waking up with beer or simply haven’t slept yet. You’ll leave with a smile on your face, a tune in your heart, and wildly renewed self-esteem.

Best bandwagon jumping

Angry Birds Foreign Language School

In the rural depths of Banteay Meanchey province, language schools have been dropping like flies for want of students – until July when Yem Nary came up with a sure-fire way to lure in young learners: tricking them into thinking the school was an arcade! “I had an idea that if I created a school and gave it a strange name to attract the children, then they would ask their parents to study at my school,” she explained. Inspiring cries of ‘This has gone too far!’, Angry Birds Foreign Language School was born. At $2.50 per month, one can only hope the education lives up to the standard set by its name.

Best supernatural phenomenon

King Father goes to the Moon

King Father Norodom Sihanouk may have recently left this world, but the move is just one more step on his continuing cosmic journey. As if by way of assurance, the King Father took a brief pit stop shortly after his passing to smile down upon his people from the Moon. In the days since, the man noted by the Guinness Book of World Records as having held the greatest number of political titles has assumed the posts of Prime Minister of the Moon, King of the Moon, Emperor of the Moon, and Big Lunar Kahuna. Asked by reporters if he had any final words, the King Father simply requested that he be sent his golf clubs.

Best Cambodian politician cowering in self-exile

Sam Rainsy

In Buddhism’s 134 worlds of hell, surely there is one reserved for fast-talking politicians who run their mouth and then run away, leaving their followers to take the fall. Sam Rainsy has officially crossed the ruling party three times – twice for defamation, once for racial incitement and destruction of property – and each time, rather than sack up and face the bull, the Phnom Penh city slicker has fled to France, where he speaks in solemn tones about fighting the system. By contrast, his security chief, Srun Vong Vannak, did 18 months in T-3. Outspoken gadflies Cheam Channy, Khem Sokha and Mom Sonando (yet again) have all stood with the courage of their convictions and done prison time instead of cowering safely ensconced in the cafes of the Champs-Élysées. Rainsy, if he ever hopes to regain his Champion of Democracy status, might need to do the same.

Best radio DJ

Mom Sonando

Mom Sonando, the 71-year-old owner of Beehive Radio and an unrelenting critic of the status quo, is nothing if not a bee in the establishment’s bonnet – so much so that he is currently doing a 20-year stretch for ‘insurrection’ and ‘inciting people to take up weapons against the state’, charges everyone from the US State Department on down call absolute bullshit. Mom was abroad, in fact, when the court announced the charges, which carried a maximum 30-year sentence. He came home anyway, an old man willing to die in prison for the truths he held in his heart. After an arrest in 2003, Mom Sonando told journalists: “They blame me for broadcasting an opinion of a listener which turned out to be untrue. But if I have to go to jail to allow people to express their opinion, I am happy.”

Best dive bar

Zeppelin Cafe

The closest thing to genuine rock ’n’ roll vintage as Phnom Penh will ever likely get, the Zeppelin Cafe is a power-chord time warp stuck on overdrive in rock music’s greatest decade. It’s like classic rock radio came to life in the form of a smoke-stained dive bar in Phnom Penh. Genuine Kiss and Sex Pistols posters adorn the walls. A rebel flag, with a skull and the words ‘Lynyrd Skynyrd’ hand-painted across it, hangs from the shop-house terrace. Cocktails start at $1.50 and wine is admiringly overpriced. Yet the defining glory of any true dive bar is a surly bar owner. The Zeppelin has Jun, as famous for his legendary collection of rock vinyl as he is for his unwillingness to play requests. Jimi Hendrix. Black Sabbath. Led Zeppelin. Cheap Trick. Deep Purple. The list of all-time greats is endless. Just don’t ask for Stairway to Heaven, or any song, for that matter. It’s Jun’s bar. Not yours.

Best tourist scam

Motorbike rental and theft

This category, incredibly, seems to have more genuine entries than the Kingdom has residents. The motorbike rental scam works like this: unsuspecting punter rocks up to the local Crappy Crappy moto-rental joint, plunks down his or her passport and rents a crappy moto with the stipulation that punter is responsible for replacing said crappy moto – at vendor-friendly inflated prices – in the event of loss or theft. Vendor gives punter a cheap lock and key for protection. Punter rides off into the sunset. Vendor stooges, who also have a key to the lock, follow in hot pursuit. Come morning, it’s bye-bye moto, bye-bye money. Hello, sucker.

Best street corner to score dope

Street 178 and Sisowath Quay

More than a few sketchy street corners in town could take the prize here, but the boys at the corner of Street 178 and Sisowath win on account of sheer unabashed ballsiness. “Buy ganja,” some tuk-tuk driver screams across the street to passing foreigners. “Buy skunk,” another one offers to a well-dressed middle-aged couple who, judging by the perplexed look on their faces, have absolutely no idea what he is talking about. “I’m going to call the police,” steamed one finally fed-up shop owner. “I am the police,” the drug dealer replied. “You want to buy ganja?”

Best place to lose your life savings

Naga Casino

Let’s face it, if you were a cashed-up zillionaire with stacks of money to burn, what better place to burn it than Naga Casino? Unlike the second-rate dens that line the streets in Bavet, Nago Casino has all kinds of class. The Aristocrat Wine & Cigar Bar sells Cubans by the box, and its list of single malts would temp Mother Teresa in for a tipple. Kick the lights at Darlin Darlin, the place’s contrived (hey, it’s a casino) opium-den disco, where dancing and semi-private lounges await. Then, when you’re ready to truly burn it, Naga’s 7,000-square-metre ‘gaming floor’ is waiting mercilessly to take your every last penny. Go ahead. Game on.

Best place to see a fight

CTN Boxing Arena

Of course by ‘fight’, we mean by people who actually know what they are doing. Not a couple of gin-soaked back-packers suffering the hallucination that Cambodia turned them into John Wayne (or for die-hard fans, John Wayne Parr, if you like). At the CTN boxing arena, intimacy, action and high-energy fans combine to create an unparalleled stage for witnessing the Kun Khmer blood sport. The arena is small, holding at most 1,500 fans, but no seat is more than a few metres from the ring. Because of the intimacy, on Sunday afternoons, when the country’s best fighters are slugging it out, the thundering, white-noise roars of the crowd are intoxicating, and a palpable rush of mob frenzy courses through the aisles.

Best hidden bar

Bar Sito

Chicago mob boss Al Capone would have appreciated a place like this. Dark wood panelling; exposed brickwork and a subterranean ambience evoke the spirit of Prohibition in 1930s America. It was a time when square-jawed gangsters roamed the streets armed with Thompson submachine guns, while anti-prohibitionists, known as ‘wets’, swarmed speakeasies in defiance of the nationwide ban on booze. These high-class hang-outs were more often than not owned by the likes of the man called Scarface and reeked of the indulgence that went hand-in-hand with criminal enterprise. Such is Bar Sito, Spanish for ‘small bar’ – the newest creation by the brains behind Chinese House and Botanico. But be warned: finding your way into Bar Sito is almost as hard as finding your way out of Alcatraz. It’s tucked away on the Phnom Penh equivalent of Platform 9¾ in the King’s Cross Station of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. Navigate by standing with your back to the doors of Wine Warehouse at #32 Street 240 then turning to your right. Take a few paces and you’ll pass an arts space called Mosaic Gallery. Beyond its far edge you’ll see a small walkway that snakes off to the right. Follow it. When you’re directly in front of the Japanese furniture shop, turn to your right: on the heavy looking wooden door now in front of you you’ll see a discreet metal plaque that reads ‘Bar Sito’. Bada bing.

Best rebel with a cause

HRH Princess Soma Norodom

Dwarfed by tropical topiary that has been manicured by the hands of 100 gardeners, the figure perched on a tiny bridge fidgets in front of the camera. “Is this OK?” She inclines her head slightly and a delicate diamante tiara, borrowed from her seamstress especially for the photo shoot, slides with a ‘plop’ into the fishpond below. Soma “Please don’t call me ‘Princess’” Norodom spent her formative years in Long Beach, California, her royal lineage a closely guarded secret. In 2010, she gave up a flourishing media career in the US to come home and take care of her dying father. Here, this impossibly charming royal rebel has hosted a progressive English-language radio talk show; become a popular conduit for an establishment many consider outmoded, and striven to challenge the status-quo in the most constructive ways possible. Naysayers would do well to remember the words of Theodore Roosevelt: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.”

Best place to get injured in a mosh pit

Sliten6ix and Anti-Fate gigs

The meat-grinder is completely without mercy, devouring all flesh that strays into its gravitational pull. Bodies are sucked violently into the vortex, necks whipping back and forth like striking cobras. Clenched fists flail the air, showering high arcs of sweat. In the epicentre of this churning maelstrom, to the visceral screech of Cambodia’s first and only deathcore band, a trio of black-clad teens has linked arms, and is dancing – of all things – the can-can. This is moshing, Sliten6ix style (the ‘6’ refers to ‘five individual souls conjoining together and creating one metal soul’; the ‘sliten’ means ‘slit and sewn’). They’re the vanguard of Phnom Penh’s new metal militia and when they’re sharing the stage (most often at Sharky’s and Equinox) with all-Khmer punk rockers The Anti-Fate, they catalyse what is quite possibly the country’s only Wall Of Death. Watching headbangers smash full-bore into each other is nothing if not a spectacular spectator sport, but know this: stray too close and you could sustain serious injury. \m/

Best comeuppance

Duch’s life sentence

Within the clinical white walls of the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia, S-21 prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, took the stand. For a brief moment his eyes locked with those of Rob Hamill, whose big brother Kerry was tortured to death at the notorious Khmer Rouge interrogation centre in 1978. “He challenged me: it was more than a feeling,” says Hamill, who came here in 2009 to retrace his brother’s final steps before delivering one of the tribunal’s most incendiary testimonies. “The judges came in, we stood up and I looked across the courtroom and he was just staring at me. We stared at each other for about 10 seconds. I felt that was quite a challenging thing to do, for someone who was supposedly remorseful and seeking forgiveness. It intrigued me. For me, trying to forgive, it didn’t bode well.” When Duch’s sentence was reduced from 30 years to 19 for time served, it got worse: the man who presided over as many as 17,000 executions could one day walk free. And worse: he later appealed. In February judges at the UN-backed court not only rejected that appeal but increased the sentence from 35 years to life imprisonment. Now that’s karma.

 

 

The signs, they are a-changing

In the bleakness of the three years, eight months and 20 days of Khmer Rouge rule, during which the spectre of death loomed ever large, one group of artisans in particular found themselves on the wrong side of history.Cambodia’s sign-painters, straddling two spheres especially reviled by Pol Pot’s troops – commerce and the arts – were ideal ideological prey for the regime. Murdered almost to a man (sign-painting is historically a male endeavour), there remained few sign-painters to pass on their craft to younger generations. This fact, coupled with the rising popularity of digital design and the economic attractions of mass production, means that the country’s tradition of hand-painted business signage is at risk of fading away altogether.

 

“They are part of a Cambodian tradition that’s in decline, and isn’t practised by anywhere near as many people as it used to be,” says Sam Roberts, author of a new book on the Kingdom’s painted signs which will be published this month. “This is something that would otherwise be lost, a piece of Cambodian tradition that could disappear. By making a record of the craft, however small a record this is, it means that when these signs are obliterated, if anyone wanted to bring them back they have a record of them.”

Undoubtedly a rich resource for future generations, Roberts’ book, Hand-Painted Signs of Kratie, is much more besides. By tracing the sufferance and survival of sign-painting, the book explores shifts in Cambodian aesthetics and culture, proving a means to reflection on the country’s past, present and future.

The story starts in the halcyon days of the 1960s, Cambodia’s golden age. Sign-painting was then an accepted and thriving profession, the most effective form of communication in a country with minimal infrastructure and a low literacy rate in many areas. The craft was employed to advertise a plethora of goods and services, from dog-meat sellers to public health pronunciations.

With the coming of the Khmer Rouge, signs and their painters fell out of favour, along with all other perceived symbols of capitalism and liberal aesthetics. This explains the paucity of extant signs from that period, a loss lamented by aficionados such as Roberts, who laughingly compares the hunt for pre-Pol Pot relics to the quest for the Holy Grail. The profession picked up once more in the 1990s as NGOs and businesses flooded the country, but this resurgence was not to last.

“It’s definitely on the decline right now,” says Roberts, more than a little sadly. “Even the signs in the book, a lot of them aren’t there any more.” While there are practical and economic explanations for the increasing popularity of cheap, mass-produced signage, Roberts notes there may also be deeper socio-cultural trends shaping Cambodia’s urban landscape.

“My theory is that these signs and their demise are indicative of a phase of a country’s development,” he explains. “There’s a perception that digital signs are more modern and perfect, and people value that. I think a culture has to go through that phase of mechanisation and digitisation, and when it emerges from that people begin to appreciate the value of hand-crafted creations.”

Coming from that post-industrialised perspective, Roberts’ appreciation of the hand-crafted aesthetic is apparent throughout the book. Juxtaposing 170 photographs with thoughtful exploration of Cambodia’s art and history, Hand-Painted Signs of Kratie is a continuation of the author’s fascination with ‘ghost signs’, the peeling painted remnants of early 20th century advertising still visible across Europe and North America. Founder of an online archive of such signs, Roberts acknowledges that he is “a sucker for nostalgia”, but he’s adamant that appreciation of a hand-crafted aesthetic is more than just longing for times gone by.

“I don’t want to see a regression to the Middle Ages, but I do think there has to be a balance between a digitised society and reconnecting people with humanity,” he insists. “When you see something handcrafted it mediates a connection between you and the person who created it… And that’s more soulful, more human than everything being mass-produced and mechanical.”

Hand-Painted Signs of Kratie will be available from mid-November and will be followed on December 4 by an exhibition at Cambodian Living Arts, giving Phnom Penhites the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the signs of changing times.

WHO: Sam Roberts and Cambodia’s sign painters
WHAT: Hand-Painted Signs of Kratie
WHERE: http://kratie.ghostsigns.co.uk/buy
WHEN: Mid-November
WHY: See the ghosts of signs past

 

Wild things

As erections go, it’s a hard one to miss – if you’ll pardon the appalling pun. Longer than a human forearm and twice the girth, this monstrous appendage looms from between two wrinkled thighs like an anaconda with advanced rigor mortis. Could this be animal speak for ‘happy’? “That’s getting into anthropomorphism but he’s got his donger out, so that’s a good thing…” Dr Wayne McCallum grins as Kiri positions himself over a mound of sand, splays all four legs and then squashes it flat, ears flapping. “That elephant’s got two trunks!” McCallum roars with laughter. “Yeah, he’s happy.”

It was not always so. Eighteen months ago, an emaciated sack of grey skin and bones appeared on the front page of a local newspaper beneath the headline ‘The zoo of horrors’. Teuk Chhou Zoo, just outside Kampot, was then the private menagerie of one Nhim Vanda, a four-star general and vice president of the National Committee for Disaster Management. He had built the zoo with Hun Sen’s blessing in 1999, along with another at Prey Veng. A government website described it as ‘a wonderful place to spend a fun-filled afternoon with your family’.

The reality was rather less wonderful. Cramped, filthy cages; untreated injuries; no clean water; scant evidence of food: the list of transgressions was long. Orang-utans starved of any shelter hung listlessly from the bars of a tiny cage. Eagles nursed damaged wings in enclosures too small for them to stretch. “It is so hard for me to find food and clean water to provide to the animals because in one day I get money from tourists totalling about 20,000 riel (US$5) to 100,000 riel, but I pay much more than that for food,” His Excellency said at the time. “[Wildlife NGOs] should be proud of me and encourage me because I like my animals more than my own son.” The Cambodian authorities chose to say nothing at all.

Today, that same elephant – once on the cusp of starvation – is all but unrecognisable. Seila, the female who shares Kiri’s newly expanded enclosure, is bouncing up and down on a bright blue bin. The plastic crumples like paper beneath her feet. Kiri flaps her ears, moves on to the next bin, and repeats the process. You’d be hard-pressed to describe her as mammoth, but her frame is infinitely less skeletal than in the now-infamous photo from March last year.

“The good news is we’ve stabilised a bad zoo,” says McCallum, part of the team responsible for the extreme makeover now unfolding within the walls of Teuk Chhou. “The elephants are the perfect symbol of the transition, given how emaciated they were. The fact is a lot of the animals were dying. We had a gibbon who looked like he’d come from a death camp.”

Stabilisation first arrived in the form of Rory and Melita Hunter, the Australian husband-and-wife team who transformed Song Saa into Cambodia’s first luxury island resort. Working closely with the zoo’s owner, the pair enlisted Wildlife Alliance director Nick Marx, who brings with him more than 30 years’ experience in animal welfare. Next came the Elephant Asia Rescue and Survival foundation’s Louise Rogerson, who – with the help of two Hong Kong donors – has completely transformed the “ellie enclosure”.

“The enclosure took three months; it’s a huge change,” she says in a soft Mancunian accent. “Their pool was smelly and dirty; there were frogs and filth and rubbish in it. We cleaned all that out and now they play in it every day. Kiri’s favourite toy is the tyre: he throws it around everywhere. They’re so much happier. The main worry with these animals in captivity is food: they weren’t getting enough. They were getting about two wheelbarrows of grass a day, but they need up to 10% of their bodyweight, which is about 200kg a day. They’re still small for their age because of malnutrition.” Little is known of the elephants’ history, as with most of the animals here, she notes (many are believed to have been given to the original owner as gifts).

Mankind has been keeping wild beasts in captivity for thousands of years, often with tragic results. During the dedication of Ancient Rome’s Colosseum by Emperor Titus, according to historian WEH Lecky, as many as 5,000 animals perished in a single day. People have, on occasion, fared little better: in 1906, the Bronx Zoo in New York displayed Congolese pygmy Ota Benga in a cage with chimpanzees and then an orang-utan by way of demonstrating the ‘missing link’. But with the arrival of the 20th century came the ‘modern zoo’. Far from the living museums of their ‘arks in parks’ forebears, they exist not only to document how wildlife and habitats are declining, but to find ways to halt that decline.

Footprints is Song Saa’s new privately funded philanthropic arm. Directed by McCallum, an affable nature-loving New Zealander who moved here in 2003, its aim is to transform ‘the zoo of horrors’ into a state-of-the-art wildlife and environmental education centre via a five-year, $250,000 master plan. “We want it to be a journey, rather than just a menagerie. It’s both a journey into the zoo and a journey into its transformation into a wildlife education park. The way you interact with the exhibits will be part of the educational process.”

‘Interacting with the exhibits’, on one of Teuk Chhou’s Paws and Claws Wildlife Encounters, means anything from shovelling elephant poo to bottle-feeding a full-grown tiger, which is about as easy as it sounds. Following the keeper’s instructions to the letter, I rest the tip of a giant syringe filled with lactose-free milk on one of the bars of a tigress’ enclosure. The gently growling big cat seizes it with her incisors and neatly nips it off, nearly swallowing the syringe in the process. Milk for the male, Meanchey, gets inadvertently squirted straight up his nostrils.

Allowing curious folk to get up close and personal with some of Teuk Chhou’s 134 animals, which span 43 species, is one way Footprints hopes to cover the $8,000 monthly food bill. For $25, you can spend half a day getting to know some of Teuk Chhou’s most colourful characters. For $45, you can experience a full day in the life of a zoopkeeper by bathing elephants, ‘blissing out’ a colourful hornbill; making toys for the animals; coming face to face with big cats, preparing food and the aforementioned shovelling of elephant poo, among many other just-as-aromatic strains. Proceeds are ploughed straight back into feeding the animals and building better enclosures.

“What we’re trying to do is look at it as an overall experience, not just for the visitors, but also for the animals,” says Rory Hunter, the Sydney-born property developer who, along with his wife Melita, owns Song Saa. “We’re doing it on a habitat basis. There’ll be a journey through tree-lined forest, where you have an elevated view over Kampot; then the park will be divided into wetland, jungle, and forest habitats. The landscape will be relevant not only to the animals in here, but also to the local wildlife. At least 50% of our animals are native to Cambodia – not just the big well-known species, but also lesser-known species, like civets, which people don’t realise are native. In 20 years’ time, they probably won’t exist in the wild.”

WHO: Wild things
WHAT: The new Teuk Chhou Zoo
WHERE: Thmei district, Kampot province
WHEN: Now
WHY: Help transform ‘the zoo of horrors’ into a park of hope