So you’ve met a nice Cambodian chick. Maybe you met her at a pagoda. Maybe you met her in the toilet at Martini’s. I don’t judge.

You’ve spent a bit of time with her, you like her, and now you have an important decision to make. No, not about marrying her yet, you moron. I’m talking about a more long-lasting decision. You need to decide whether or not to “friend” her on Facebook.

This is a situation fraught with potential pitfalls, but I’m not going to dwell on the negatives here. Instead, I simply present the seven reasons why you should friend Cambodian women on Facebook.

1. Facebook is the best way to investigate a Cambodian woman’s life history.

If you go on a first date with a Western woman, you can get an idea pretty quickly about what kind of woman she is. You’ll probably learn about her upbringing, does she speak English like a white trash skank, how many times has she been married or engaged, etc. You can also subtly cross-examine a Western chick and find out if her overall life story makes sense. If she tells you “I dropped out of high school and immediately got a job as an airline pilot,” you will know that she is lying. Ideally, by the end of that first date with a Western woman, you will at least have a good idea whether she has ever worked as a hooker.

It is much harder to figure out a Cambodian woman’s background simply by talking to her. There’s usually a language barrier and a culture barrier, and the Cambodian women you encounter in areas frequented by foreigners can be quite skilled at obfuscation.

Imagine that a rather cute 24 year-old waitress with good English skills starts working at your favorite respectable restaurant. If you ask her where else she has worked or lived, she’s not going to say, “Oh, that’s a funny story. I moved to Phnom Penh to work at Pussycat Bar, and then I spent two years living in Frankfurt with a German husband who liked to shit on me during sex.”

Instead, she will say something like this. “I stay home. Never work. Have problem with my stomach. Study in school. Help my mother in the market.” If you press her for details, she will probably respond with giggles or claims not to understand you. You will have no idea if she is telling you the truth, or how she paid for that Samsung Galaxy S3 she’s always playing with.

This is where “friending” her on Facebook becomes essential. Facebook is the great Cambodian chick truth detector. The first thing you should do after “friending” her is look at her list of Facebook friends. If most of her friends look like slutty bargirls and creepy sexpats, that’s an extremely bad sign.

Next, look at all of her Facebook photos. Photos have no language barrier, and photos don’t lie. Except for those “skinny” pictures of Kirstie Alley.

Ideally, a “good” Cambodian girl’s Facebook photos should never show her doing anything that costs any money at all. Any photos of the girl traveling to any place other than Phnom Penh or her home village should be viewed with immediate suspicion. Travel is an expensive luxury for most Cambodians. Young Cambodian women generally can’t afford to go anywhere unless they are being supported by a white dude. So even if there’s no white dude in that photo of a Cambodian woman standing in front of the Petronas Towers, it just means that her white boyfriend took the photo.

Even simple, everyday photos of Cambodian women can be loaded with telling clues. You should print out every photo of the girl in high resolution, and then scrutinize it with a magnifying glass like you’re examining a grainy Loch Ness Monster snapshot. Look at what she is wearing, who she is with, and what restaurant she seems to be at. Ask yourself questions. “Where does this girl get the money to eat at Stonegrill?” “Could she be turning tricks? She’s supposed to be a student.” “Is that the reflection of a French guy in her salad fork?”

2. Facebook will tell you which other guys she has had sex with or is about to have sex with.

When you look at the girl’s Facebook “friends” list, pay particular attention to any white guys in that list. White guys are bad news. She’s obviously not related to them, so who the hell are they? Well, about ⅓ of her white male Facebook friends will probably be guys she has had sex with. Another ⅓ are white guys who want to have sex with her. The remaining ⅓ are her friends’ white husbands. Some of whom may nonetheless be trying to have sex with her.

Also, every attractive Cambodian woman has at least two or three Cambodian guys who are hopelessly in love with her. You’ll want to know who these guys are, because they will probably try to cockblock you at some point. Fortunately, these hapless Cambodian suitors are easily identifiable on Facebook. They are the guys who obsessively “like” all of the girl’s status updates and who frequently “tag” her in romantic pictures of rainbows, hearts, and animals having sex.

3. Facebook creates a permanent connection with the girl in case you ever misplace her.

If you temporarily lose track of a western woman, it’s usually not that hard to find her. You probably have mutual friends, or you know her address, or you know her last name and can google her. In a pinch, you could even hire a private investigator to track her down. Not that I’ve ever done that.

Cambodian women are a lot harder to find once they disappear. And they tend to disappear frequently and without warning. One day that cute 24 year-old waitress will be giggling and batting her eyes at you, and the next day you will walk into the restaurant and be told that she “stopped work.” Her friends and former co-workers will never tell you know where she went. They have a mafia-like code of silence on that. Even if the co-workers are not sworn to secrecy, they still won’t tell you, because they don’t want you to start spending your money at the girl’s new place of work instead of at the current place.

Without Facebook, you’d be out of luck in finding her. It’s not like you can just wander the streets of Phnom Penh asking everyone, “Do you know a girl named Sreymom? You know, short girl, dark skin, dark hair.” That hardly ever works.

4. Cambodian women post a lot of photos of themselves and their hot friends.

One of the worst things about being Facebook friends with Western women is that they are always posting photos of their kids. And white women who don’t have kids over-compensate by posting a bunch of photos of their fucking dogs.

Cambodian women mercifully refrain from doing this. They usually just post photos of themselves sitting around eating food with their sisters and their cute friends. If all the girls happen to get dolled up to go to a wedding or something, it is virtually guaranteed that they will post photos on Facebook. This is good. “Friending” Cambodian women vastly improves the eye candy in your daily Facebook feed.

My all-time favorite Facebook page is actually the one for “Cambodia Supermodels.” If you “friend” that page, you get a regular stream of photos of tall, thin, attractive Cambodian broads in cute outfits. Very nice.

5. A Cambodian woman’s Facebook status updates will tell you if she would make a good wife.

Facebook status updates give you excellent insight into a Cambodian woman’s emotional stability and her suitability for marriage to a foreign man. If you’re thinking about marrying a Cambodian woman and moving her to your country, you want a cheerful woman who can happily adapt to new cultures and new experiences. Someone who can handle the isolation and emotional detachment she may experience when you separate her from her family. Ideally, you also want a woman who isn’t batshit crazy.

Imagine if the woman in question frequently posts “Rain, rain make me boring,” and you’re thinking of marrying her and moving her to Galway. That’s not good. Does she constantly “like” photos of moto crash victims and “share” photos of women slitting their wrists? Maybe she wouldn’t make the best mother for your children.

There are basically six words that you never want to see in a Cambodian woman’s Facebook status updates. Those six words are “lonely,” “bored,” “sick,” “cry,” “headache,” and “knife.” If you see these six words, just walk away from the relationship. Then start scanning her cute friends’ Facebook profiles for a girl who usually posts that she is “lucky,” “happy,” and “up for something kinky today.” Jackpot.

6. Because have you ever tried to have an actual phone conversation with a Cambodian woman? It’s exhausting.

One of the best things about Facebook is that it allows you to interact with a Cambodian woman without having to talk to them on the phone. Phone-based relationships with Cambodian women are the worst. Cambodian women tend to call at odd hours to see of they can catch you with another woman. You can’t really understand what they’re saying over the phone, and then they like to hand the phone off so you can talk to their family members for absolutely no reason. This can be a genuine nuisance. If you “friend” Cambodian women on Facebook, you can then dodge their calls from time to time and just use Facebook chat to interact with them when it’s convenient for you. It’s quite liberating.

7. You can use your own Facebook profile to let Cambodian chicks know that you are capable of bedding white women.

Lastly, keep in mind that Facebook is not just a way for you to obtain information about Cambodian women, it’s also a way for you to share information with these women about yourself. Selective information, of course.

We all know that nothing makes any woman hornier than her realization that you can attract other women who are better looking than she is. Fortunately, Cambodian women think that all white women are better looking than they are. Use this to your advantage.

If you want to impress and attract Cambodian women via Facebook, all you have to do is post a bunch of photos of yourself with every white woman you have ever dated. That’s it. If you don’t have any photos of white ex-girlfriends, just post photos of yourself white any white woman you know — your female friends, your sister, any pale white chick will do.

It doesn’t even matter if the white woman you are pictured with is remotely attractive, because Cambodian chicks will still think she is “sa’art.” Even a photo of you with your arm around a ravishing beauty like your middle-aged Polish cleaning lady will give you instant sexual credibility with any Cambodian woman. Good luck.

Please stay tuned for my next article, which may or may not be titled 7 Reasons Why You Should Never “Friend” Cambodian Women on Facebook.

Gavinmac

It’s been five months since I wrote “7 Reasons Why You Should Friend Cambodian Women on Facebook.” During that time, I followed my own advice and became Facebook friends with a bunch of Cambodian women. This has been an absolute disaster. So I now feel compelled to present the 7 Reasons Why You Should Never “Friend” Cambodian Women on Facebook.

1. Your worlds will collide.

I’ve always advocated that you should keep your Cambodia life separate from your life back in your home country. You friends and family back home do not need to know what you are doing in Cambodia. Sure, they probably assume that you’re drunkenly snorting cocaine off an impoverished hooker’s stomach, but it’s still better if they don’t see photographic proof of this.

One of the problems with Facebook is that, with the exception of private messaging, your interactions with your Facebook friends are generally visible to all of your other friends. The moment that you “friend” a Cambodian woman on Facebook, this event will be broadcast to all of your other Facebook friends.

Many Cambodian women look younger than their real ages. They also tend to use stupid, childish Facebook names instead of their real names. So when you “friend” a Cambodian woman on Facebook, all of your friends back home will receive a notice saying something like “Thomas is now friends with SreySweetLonelyCutieKittenFace.” That’s not good.

When your friends see that, they will be curious about who the hell “SreySweetLonelyCutieKittenFace” is. They will undoubtedly click through to her Facebook profile.

SreySweetLonelyCutieKittenFace will probably have a lot of profile photos of herself in childish poses, like pouting and poking her cheek with her index finger. While wearing an Angry Birds t-shirt. Even if she’s 22 years old, none of your friends will believe she is over 18. You will look like a total creep. Once you become Facebook friends with three or four of these women, it will be very apparent to your family back home that you aren’t really in Cambodia “for the temples.”

2. Their Facebook posts are totally depressing.

Western women generally use Facebook to post about events. Things that they are doing. They post about their vacations, their hobbies, their kids’ soccer games, and other activities that nobody fucking cares about.

Cambodian women don’t have money to do interesting things. And because of their difficult upbringings, they don’t have a lot of hobbies. When most Cambodian women were old enough to help out around the house, they worked. No one paid for them to take yoga classes and equestrian lessons.

So, Cambodian women don’t use Facebook to post about activities and things they are doing. They use Facebook to post about emotions. Things that they are feeling. After all, feelings are free.

Here’s what’s strange about this. In person, most young Cambodian women are happy, pleasant, charming individuals. They are quick with a smile, and they love to laugh and have fun. But on Facebook, these same young Cambodian women are a bunch of headache-having, stomach-aching, heartbroken, lonely, suicidal attention-seekers. I’d say that 90% of their Facebook updates are sad comments about their miserable lives. The remaining 10% are mostly about noodle soup.

3. You don’t have to “friend” Cambodian women because they have no privacy filters anyway.

In my previous article, I pointed out that Facebook is a good way to investigate a Cambodian woman’s life history and suitability for marriage. Her Facebook profile and photos will tell you how she spends her free time and how many white dudes she has probably slept with.

Most Western women apparently live in fear of stalkers, bill collectors, and identify thieves, so they always have their Facebook profiles set to “private.” You can’t see any of their profile photos or learn any information about them at all unless they first accept your “friend request.”

Fortunately, Cambodian women have no such privacy hangups. Most of them have their Facebook profiles set to “public,” so that everyone with internet access can see their photos and read their mopey status updates.

Here’s how you can use this to your advantage. If you meet a Cambodian woman who interests you, ask for her Facebook handle. Then look up her profile, check out all of her photos, but never send her a friend request. You’ll get to see all of the photos and information about her, without her learning anything about you. As an added bonus, she’ll be left wondering why you asked for her Facebook ID but then never sent her a friend request. This will make you seem much more attractive to her. Women love the snub.

4. Their comments will embarrass the shit out of you.

One of the problems with befriending Cambodian women on Facebook is that they will then have free rein to post inane comments on your Facebook page in response to all of your status updates and photos. It’s bad enough that you’re Facebook friends with a bunch of 22 year old Asian chicks who look 17. When they start posting comments all over your Facebook page in broken English, you’re going to look even creepier.

Their comments will be visible to all of your Facebook friends and family members, and you never know when they might say something inappropriate. Imagine if you post a photo of your five year old niece, and then one of your Cambodian female friends comments that the photo is “sexy nas.” That’s the kind of stuff they do. Often.

5. They will “tag” you in all of their photos for no reason.

Facebook has a feature called photo “tagging.” When you post a photo, you have the option to identify other people who are in the photo by “tagging” their names to the photo. This means that your photo will be publicized not just to your friends, but also to all of the friends of the person who you just “tagged” in the photo.

Cambodians don’t understand the concept of Facebook tagging. A Cambodian woman will post a photo of just herself and then randomly “tag” 15-20 friends’ names to the photo for no apparent reason. Including you.

So what ends up happening is that your own Facebook profile will soon be dominated by a bunch of random photos of Cambodian chicks eating dinner, attending weddings, and posing in bathroom mirrors. And God forbid that that one of your Cambodian female friends works in a girly bar. Every now and then she’ll suddenly post a photo of herself and all of her scantily-clad bargirl friends and then “tag” you in that photo. This means that her slutfest snapshot will promptly be publicized to all of your own Facebook friends as a “photo of Thomas.” You really don’t need that.

6. Friending Cambodian women on Facebook gives them another way to stalk you.

Cambodian women can be very accomplished stalkers. They call at odd hours, they check up on your whereabouts, and they gossip about your comings and goings. Befriending them on Facebook gives you information about them, but it also gives them information about you. An attentive Cambodian woman who monitors your Facebook profile will soon see the names, photos, and comments of all of her competitors, i.e. other Cambodian women.

It’s really hard to juggle relationships with multiple Cambodian women if you are friends with all of them on Facebook. They will soon know all about each other, and they will be able to contact each other to compare notes. You will have no longer have any secrets at all, and if one of the girls holds a grudge, it won’t be safe to leave your apartment.

7. If you start dating a Cambodian woman, her Facebook posts will become a public “relationship report card” for the entire world see.

I mentioned earlier that Cambodian women often post about their feelings. Well, if you’re in a relationship with a Cambodian woman, many of her day-to-day feelings will probably be about you. She will have no qualms about using Facebook to publicly broadcast where you stand with her on a daily basis.

Let’s say that you’re dating a Western woman, and one day she catches you glancing across a restaurant at another woman. The Western woman may tell you to stop and that it hurts her feelings. More likely, she’ll give you the silent treatment, withhold sex, and then claim that nothing is bothering her until you eventually guess what you’ve done wrong. In any event, the situation will eventually be resolved. Privately.

If you disappoint a Cambodian woman, she will immediately go to Facebook to report to all of her friends about how you’ve screwed up. And she’ll probably exaggerate it for dramatic effect. If a Cambodian woman catches you glancing across a restaurant at another woman, she will go on Facebook and post, “Today I so sad because my boyfriend love someone else.” Then it will be up to you to explain to the entire Facebook world that you’re not a philanderer.

And forget about marrying a Cambodian woman who has Facebook access. Soon she’ll be Facebook friends with all of your closest friends and family members. Her Facebook updates will be an ongoing marriage progress report for all of your friends and family to see. Really, it will just be a litany of posts like, “Today I very bored,” “Marriage can be difficult,” and “I love my husband, but so hard to fake the orgasms.”

Gavinmac

So I grabbed a copy of the April 2013 Bayon Pearnik while departing one of my favorite lunch spots today.

As I was flipping through the magazine’s highlights (the hostess bar ads), I ran across an article on page 28 titled “Stages of Foreign Man in Cambodia.” The article appears to be an attempt at humor, containing trite observations about how tourists and NGO workers view the country differently over the years, as they progress from wide eyed optimists to full blown alcoholics.

The article ends by asking “Any bells of familiarity ringing?”

Yes, Bayon Pearnik, there were bells of familiarity ringing. You printed the same crap article word for word in your September 2005 edition.

This made me quite curious. I looked at the next page (29) of this month’s BP and there is an article titled “Self-development Amid the Temples in Cambodia.”

This is a fairly well written, first person account of visiting some of Cambodia’s more well known temples. There’s no byline, so I thought maybe the article was just written by BP “staff.” It wasn’t. It was written by Kate Edgley and published in The Guardian last January. BP apparently just took her name off the article and re-published it word for word. Strangely, they used different photos though. I guess that using The Guardian photographer’s photos without compensation or acknowledgement would have been wrong.

It’s obvious that the Bayon Pearnik plagiarizes its non-Cambodia political content; I didn’t know that they also copied the Cambodia stuff from other sources too. I don’t know if I should be outraged by this or jealous that they haven’t reprinted any of my own top notch material about marrying Cambodian women, Facebook customs, and embassy dudes visiting hostess bars.

Gavinmac

Lately, there have been a lot of Westerners moving to Cambodia or making plans to move to Cambodia. This is partly due to the difficult job market in many Western countries, and it’s partly due to Cambodia becoming a more “mainstream” destination for tourists and expatriates. Some of the recent interest in Cambodia has come from Westerners living in Thailand. Rising prices in Thailand and stricter Thai visa regulations have already contributed to a noticeable influx of shifty-eyed, tattooed sexpats creeping across the border into Cambodia. Fortunately, a lot of those dudes haven’t made it past Sihanoukville.

There has been such an overwhelming interest in moving to Cambodia that two recent books have been published on the topic. Lina Goldberg published the excellent “Move to Cambodia: A Guide to Living and Working in the Kingdom of Wonder” in late 2012. Earlier this year, Khmer440 contributor Gabi Yetter released her own very well-received manual, “The Definitive Guide to Southeast Asia: Cambodia.”

Both of these books provide helpful information and optimistic encouragement to readers who are considering relocating to Cambodia. It’s the optimistic encouragement that I have a problem with. I personally believe that there are significant drawbacks to moving to Cambodia that could probably fill an entire book. Maybe not a real book, but definitely one of those silly e-books.

Unlike Ms. Goldberg and Ms. Yetter, I don’t have the necessary work ethic or attention span to write a whole book about anything. So I’m just going to offer these 7 Reasons Why You Really Shouldn’t Move to Cambodia.

1. You will die younger in Cambodia.

This is a big one. The average life expectancy for Westerners living in Western countries is about 75 to 80 years old, depending on the country. Unofficially, the average life expectancy for Western expatriates living in Cambodia is 57.4 years old.

There are a number of reasons why moving to Cambodia will shave about twenty years off your life. Cambodia has a lot of common diseases that you would never catch in your home country, like Typhoid, Dengue Fever, Hepatitis, and Malaria. The medical care in Cambodia is atrociously bad. The ambulances are unreliable; the doctors are unqualified; the hospitals are unsanitary. Even easily treatable illnesses can quickly become life-threatening if Cambodian doctors get involved.

Sometimes expats in Cambodia succumb not to illness, but to traffic accidents or other hazards. Expats like to ride motorbikes, often helmetless, presumably because they think it makes them look cool. This can be rather dangerous in a country with reckless local drivers, no enforcement of traffic laws, and poor emergency medical care. Private ambulances in Cambodia will actually refuse to take patients who are seriously injured, because they don’t want to risk transporting a dying patient who won’t be able to pay the hospital bill.

But perhaps the primary reason why expats tend to die young in Cambodia is that many of them “lose the plot” and develop unhealthy habits involving drugs, alcohol, and prostitution. This leads to weekly reports of expats in their forties and fifties being found dead on their bathroom floors from a “heart attack” or “fall.”

Cambodia is full of dangers, and very few of the locals even know basic first aid. If you start choking in a restaurant in a Western country, your waiter or another customer will quickly perform the Heimlich Maneuver on you. If you start choking in a restaurant in Cambodia, the locals will all stand around dumbfounded and stare at you until you turn blue and collapse on the floor. Only then will one of them spring into action and attempt to revive you by vigorously rubbing tiger balm on your forehead.

2. Cambodia is a horrible place to raise a child.

If you have a child or you are planning to have children, you definitely should not move to Cambodia. World Health Organization statistics show that a child born in Cambodia is ten times more likely to die before the age of 5 than a child born in France. All of the diseases that kill adults in Cambodia are even more dangerous to young children. Kids are also more likely to be involved in accidents requiring emergency medical care, because kids are fragile and kind of stupid.

While children may be coddled and overprotected in Western societies, they are simply left to their Darwinian fate in Cambodia. Cambodian children are often seen wandering the streets without adult supervision or perched helmetless on the front of passing motorbikes. Last year a “mystery illness” killed 60 children in Cambodia. Nobody really cared.

Raising any child in Cambodia presents grave risks that you wouldn’t have in a Western country. If your daughter develops acute appendicitis in your home country, you can take her to the emergency room at a modern hospital. A knowledgeable doctor will promptly diagnose her condition, a skilled surgeon will remove her appendix before it bursts, and she’ll be back to normal in no time.

If your daughter develops acute appendicitis in Cambodia . . . well, she’s probably screwed. Just start over with a new kid.

Let’s assume that your children are lucky and that the Cambodian diseases, traffic accidents, and poor medical care don’t kill them. Their future will still be quite bleak. The educational system in Cambodia is absolutely dire, from the primary schools through the universities. The only way to properly educate your child in Cambodia is to pay about $15,000 per year to send her to a top international school. This is going to be hard to afford if you moved to Cambodia to teach English for $9 an hour.

You may fancy the idea of moving to “wild” Cambodia, but the true test of being a good parent is whether you place your child’s safety and security above your own interests. That’s why many devoted parents from third world countries will do anything possible to sneak their families into Western countries where their kids will have a brighter future.

As young Western citizens, your children enjoy the same wonderful opportunity that you had to grow up in a civilized country with good schools, quality health care, free speech, seat belts, career prospects, democracy, Fig Newtons, and long life expectancies. They would kindly appreciate if you don’t fuck all that up for them by raising them in a corrupt, oppressive third world shithole. Your choice.

What amazes me is that the Westerners who decide to raise their children in Cambodia remain in total denial about what terrible, selfish parents they really are. Some have even started a Yahoo group called the “Cambodia Parent Network,” where they exchange tips on how to raise their doomed offspring in a country where no responsible Western parent would ever voluntarily raise a child. Cambodia Parent Network? Good grief. That’s like starting the Chernobyl Gardening Club.

3. The infrastructure sucks.

Even compared to neighboring countries like Vietnam and Thailand, the infrastructure in Cambodia is truly appalling. The schools, hospitals, roads, and utilities are all of very poor quality. Trash piles up in the street. Rats and roaches abound. Main roads in the capital city are now gridlocked during rush hours, and traffic only gets worse each year. There is no mass transit system and nowhere to park your car. Sidewalks are impassable. Internet connections are relatively slow. The tap water is dodgy. There are no zoning laws and no effective law enforcement. The noise pollution from karaoke parlors at 2 a.m., barking dogs at 4 a.m., and construction workers at 6 a.m. can be unbearable.

Many expats report regular power outages in their neighborhoods, sometimes lasting 3-5 hours a day. That will put a major damper on your online porn habit.

Cambodia does have excellent nightlife, but there’s absolutely nothing to do during the day – no decent parks, cinemas, museums, malls, libraries, etc. Just walking outside between the hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. can be quite unpleasant due to the heat and humidity. Oh, and Cambodia smells really bad. If you’re thinking of moving to Phnom Penh, you need to know that the entire city stinks of garbage, smoke, urine, and rotten fish. Not just the Walkabout.

4. Living in Cambodia will destroy your financial future.

Let us agree that the hallmark of a successful life is living as long as possible while simultaneously acquiring as many material possessions as you can. Like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, but with a hot young wife too.

You may be able to find a hot young wife in Cambodia, but unless you are transferred there by a multinational company, you’re not going to make any decent money working in Cambodia. If you’re one of these guys who just decides to move to Cambodia to “teach English” or “open a bar,” you will guarantee yourself a life of relative poverty. You’ll likely start out making about $8 – $10 per hour, which would be the bare minimum wage in many Western countries.

You may be thinking, “But I heard I can teach English and live like a king making $1,200 per month in Cambodia.” You can’t. You’ll be able to afford a relatively crappy Khmer-style apartment with tiled walls, bars on the windows, unreliable electricity, and loud, annoying neighbors. Near Russian Market, of course.

You won’t be saving any money, and you won’t have health insurance. So if you get sick and and can’t teach for a few weeks, you’ll be on the verge of selling your passport for noodle money.

Unlike the minimum wage earners in Western countries, you won’t even be paying into social security, or a pension plan, or any kind of retirement benefits. So just plan on working in a low paid teaching job in Cambodia until the day you die. Of course, your lack of retirement planning will be the least of your concerns when you’re lying on your deathbed in a dirty Cambodian hospital at age 57.

Because you’ll have no savings, you won’t even be able to leave money to take care of your wife and kids when you die. Keep in mind that your kids will already be well behind the financial eight ball because you raised them in an impoverished country with an inadequate school system and few legitimate career opportunities.

I know what you’re thinking now. “I’ll just move to Cambodia for a few years, then I’ll move back home and get a good job that pays well.” Not a chance. The job market is extremely competitive these days in most Western countries. Cambodia still has a notorious reputation, and it’s hard to get a good job when the hiring manager who reviews your application says, “This candidate has a fascinating resumé. I wonder if he’s a pedophile.”

5. Your mother will be so disappointed.

If you move to Cambodia, you’re probably going to have to tell your mother at some point. Of course she’ll tell you that she supports your decision, because that’s what good mothers do. But deep down, she will be crushed that you are moving so far away from her.

You have a moral obligation to help take care of your mother in her later years. Don’t be a selfish ass who passes that responsibility off on your siblings so that you can live 8,000 miles away in Cambodia getting drunk by 3 p.m. every day.

Yes, your mother will know what you’re really doing in Cambodia. You might as well just send her a Mother’s Day card that says “Thanks for raising me and all that, sorry I haven’t seen you in a few years, it just turns out that I enjoy drugs, alcohol and hookers much more than spending time with you.”

And what if you eventually have kids in Cambodia? Are you going to deprive your mother of the pleasure of seeing her sickly, under-educated, half-brown grandchildren because you’re raising them 8,000 miles away from her? That’s a cruel, selfish thing to do to your mom. She may justifiably respond to this affront by cutting you out of her will. And since you’ll be working for peanuts in Cambodia, that inheritance would have been your only chance of acquiring any real money during your lifetime.

6. You’ll become an alcoholic and have to make friends with gossipy, alcoholic expats.

Cambodia has long been a haven for fugitives and fuck ups, deadbeats and deathpats. And those are just the St. 136 bar owners.

There are a lot of Western bar owners in Cambodia, because there are a lot of Western bars in Cambodia. Excessive drinking is by far the most popular pastime among Western expatriates. You will probably end up spending a lot of time drinking in these dingy bars, since there’s really nothing else to do for fun in Cambodia.

Because Cambodia only attracts certain types of expats, you will end up making friends in bars with the kind of undesirable people that you would never associate with back home. Junkies. Whoremongers. Journalists.

Even though you have little in common with these people, you will become friends out of necessity, because you need someone to drink with and they need someone to drink with. You will end up spending a lot of time with them, but you will never be able to trust them like your real friends back home. In fact, your new drinking buddies in Cambodia will never even bother to learn your last name. You’ll just forever be known in expat circles by your first name, which is always preceded by an additional descriptive term. Back home your name may be Robert Jenkins; in Cambodia you’ll be “NoseHair Bob.”

Most importantly, your expat friends in Cambodia will not help you at all if you begin to spiral out of control. If you start routinely binge drinking in your home country, your true friends back home will express concern for your well-being and try to stop you from destroying your life. Your expat friends in Cambodia will hand you another beer and try to introduce you to their meth dealer.

7. Your Thai girlfriend will absolutely hate it.

It’s not just Westerners who are getting caught up in the craze of moving to Cambodia. During the last few months, several new posters have actually joined the Khmer440 discussion forums to ask about getting visas for their Thai wives and girlfriends to move to Cambodia also.

We all know that opportunistic young Thai women have been marrying or shacking up with older Western men for decades. But the unstated agreement in these relationships is that the Western man is supposed to improve the poor girl’s standard of living. The impoverished Thai woman reluctantly allows the older Western man’s unsightly, wrinkled penis to enter her vagina from time to time. In exchange, the Western man moves the Thai woman to a proper Western country, or he builds her an oversized house in her home province that is the envy of all her slutty, gold-digging friends. Then she waits comfortably for him to die. That’s the deal that your Thai wife or girlfriend signed up for.

Moving a Thai woman to Cambodia does not improve her standard of living. It’s a shocking downgrade. It will seem to her like a cruel joke, not unlike bailing a black friend out of jail and then driving him straight to a Ku Klux Klan rally. The words a Thai woman longs to hear from her farang boyfriend are “Pack your bags dear, we’re flying to Paris.” Not, “Go buy some Purell, we’re moving to Cambodia.”

Just the idea of setting foot in Cambodia is truly horrifying to many Thai women. You need to understand that all Thais look down on Cambodians, in the strange way that the poor bastards who live in Cleveland still look down on those losers from Detroit. Even the most open-minded Thai girlfriend is probably going to ask some skeptical questions about moving to Cambodia. “What’s Cambodia like?” she will ask. The correct answer is, “It’s a lot like your village in Isaan, except the people are poorer, everyone’s skin is darker, no one speaks Thai, and the food sucks.”

So if you’re a struggling expat in Thailand whose meager foreign pension can no longer keep up with the rising Thai baht, please don’t punish your innocent Thai girlfriend by moving with her to Cambodia. There is a better solution. Do the noble thing that troubled expats in Thailand have been doing for years – break up with your girlfriend and then leap to your death from the balcony of your Pattaya condo.

Gavinmac is a regular contributor to Khmer440 who is considering moving to Cambodia in early 2014. His other “7 Reasons” articles can be found here.

It’s a low-key Thursday night in Phnom Penh. The early evening rains have subsided, and you are meeting a friend for dinner at a respectable Western restaurant. As you walk in to the restaurant, you see a couple quietly eating dinner at a nearby table. It’s an ex-bargirl with her Western husband or boyfriend. But it’s not just any ex-bargirl. It’s one you know.

At first you don’t even recognize her, because you haven’t seen her in a few years, and a lot of ex-bargirls kind of look alike. There are so many older Western males with young Asian females in Cambodia that these couples easily blend into the local scenery. You do a brief double-take as you pass by them. She looks up at you, and then you realize that yes, she is definitely That Girl from That Bar.

By referring to her as an “ex-bargirl,” I do not mean to pass any judgment upon her or upon you. Maybe she worked in a proper bar/restaurant, and she simply served you lunch a few times a week. But maybe she worked at night in a sleazy Street 104 hostess bar. Maybe she’s your ex-lover, and you both passionately dated for a while but couldn’t quite make the relationship work. Maybe she was a doe-eyed cashier, and you just bought her a bunch of lady drinks and masturbated to her Facebook page. Who knows.

In any event, regardless of whatever relationship you once had with this woman, you now have to decide whether to say hello to her and her husband. I consider myself an expert at interacting with bargirls when I encounter them in their natural bar habitats. I have memorized all the perfunctory bargirl introductory questions and answers, in English and Khmer. I can predict most bargirls’ Connect Four moves before they make them. I know exactly how long I should let an older bargirl massage my shoulders before shaking her off so that I’m not socially obligated to buy her a lady drink. (Answer: seven seconds).

But whenever I spot an ex-bargirl somewhere outside her bar, with a husband or boyfriend, it momentarily stuns me. I freeze up. I stare at the ground and start saying to myself, “Don’tlookatthebargirl, Don’tlookathebargirl”. Sort of like when I see handicapped people.

I really have no idea what to do in these situations. Actually, because I live in Las Vegas, I do have a little bit of personal perspective. My hometown friends and I used to visit a few strip clubs every now and then. There’s an unwritten Las Vegas rule that if you ever happen to see a stripper during the daytime eating lunch with her husband at Fatburger, you don’t walk up to her and say, “Hey, Peaches! How have you been! Almost didn’t recognize you without the pole!” This just isn’t done.

So I employ the same aloof strategy whenever I see Cambodian ex-bargirls with their husbands. I “blank” them, as my British friends would say. I think this is actually the courteous thing to do. Put yourself in the husband’s situation. He married a woman who used to work in a Phnom Penh bar serving Western guys. He probably doesn’t want every outing with his wife to be a series of meet and greets with all the white dudes she knows from her bar-working days. Most of the white guys she knows probably either slept with her or tried to sleep with her. That’s what white dudes do in Cambodia.

Put yourself in the girl’s situation. She has moved on from her bar life and gotten married. Does she want her husband to be constantly reminded of her bar-working past by seeing a parade of ex-customers saying hello to her? Probably not.

You should also keep in mind that some of these ex-bargirls are quite skilled at the art of deception. Her new husband may not even know that she ever worked at That Bar Where You Met Her. She may have convinced him that she learned English in a monastery from some surprisingly ribald monks.

If you dare to say hello to her and her husband, you might quickly get dragged into her web of deceit. What if her husband promptly asks where you met her? Should you answer truthfully? Any comment you make in his presence could be fraught with peril, because the life story she once told you might be completely different from the one she has told him. Imagine if you say something innocuous to her like “How’s your sister?” and then her husband turns to her and says “I thought you were an only child.” That could be awkward.

On the other hand, this woman is a human being. She has feelings. You may have enjoyed a friendly relationship with her, in some form or another, over a number of years. Isn’t it terribly impolite to ignore her and her husband just because you met her in a bar? Maybe she really wants to say hello and to proudly introduce her new husband to you. Heck, maybe the husband is trapped in night after night of tedious conversation with a decades-younger Cambodian wife, and he’s dying to chat with anyone about any topic other than the weather, her stomachaches, and the quality of her fish soup.

Nevertheless, when faced with this situation, I always err on the side of discretion and pretend not to know the girl. I act like I’m in a spy thriller and I’m a CIA agent who doesn’t want to expose my source. If I sense that she is really trying to get my attention, I might reciprocate with a nod and a half-smile of recognition from across the room, like a Seinfeld-esque “funeral hello.” The husband can probably see that. Maybe that’s worse.

On a related note, I have noticed that at least three ex-bargirl acquaintances have stealthily “unfriended” me on Facebook in the last year. I’m quite sure I did nothing to offend them; I think they just got married and decided that it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to stay in touch. I respect that. I wish them well. I just hope I don’t ever run into them with their new husbands at Rahu.

Gavinmac

Oh crap, it happened again. Just yesterday, Cambodian police announced that they are searching for a 48 year-old British man in connection with the presumed murder of a Cambodian woman. Apparently, the suspect fled his hotel in quite a haste after allegedly killing a “lady visitor” and stuffing her dead body under his bed.

The details of this particular incident may be revolting, but sadly, the report of a Westerner being implicated in a crime in Cambodia is no longer surprising at all.

Every time I return to Cambodia after a few months away from the country, I’m amazed by the rapidly increasing number of Westerners who are visiting or living in the Kingdom. Cambodia now welcomes over four million foreign tourists annually – six times as many tourists as it received just ten years ago.

It’s not just the tourist numbers that are increasing. Thanks to a rising Thai baht and some cockblocking visa restrictions implemented across the border in Thailand, the number of expatriates moving to Cambodia has also swelled in recent years. Unfortunately, while the quantity of foreigners in Cambodia continues to multiply, the quality of foreigners visiting and moving to Cambodia appears to have declined.

Hardly a day goes by now without a sensational article in the local press about a Western lowlife engaging in some embarrassing or criminal behavior that seems to cast all foreign visitors to Cambodia in a negative light.

But if you read those news articles and you take just a cursory look at the Western meth heads, burnouts, booze hounds, bums, and beggars wandering the streets of Phnom Penh, you will quickly realize that Cambodia doesn’t have a general problem with “foreigners” causing trouble in the country.

Cambodia has a specific problem with foreign men.

Think about it. Foreign women don’t flee criminal charges
in their home countries and move to Cambodia to buy sex from teenagers, abuse drugs and alcohol, molest orphans, and assist suicides in Kampot.

Foreign men do that.

You never see local newspaper photos of a crazy foreign woman setting fire to her apartment building while wearing only a Speedo.

You don’t read about foreign women in Cambodia glassing bargirls, stealing Wild Turkey from supermarkets, strangling Vietnamese prostitutes, or setting up fake charities to get access to vulnerable garbage dump kids. Foreign men in Cambodia do that.

You rarely see foreign women driving drunk and killing Khmers or hopping around ancient temples with their peckers hanging out. If a Cambodian hotel owner rents a room to a foreign woman, he can be relatively confident that she’s not going to smash up the hotel, burglarize the other rooms, or leave a dead hooker under the bed.

As far as I know, Cambodian police have never arrested any Western women for stealing cars,
dealing drugs, raping masseuses, robbing banks, sodomizing beggar kids, cutting off the thumbs of local thieves, or wrapping their dead roommates in tarp and sleeping with their decomposing bodies. Western men in Cambodia get arrested for that stuff. Pretty often.

Am I suggesting that foreign women in Cambodia are perfect? No. They are sometimes seen plodding around in ill-fitting backpacker garb and trying to pay 900 riel for a tuk tuk ride. But by and large (and I do mean large), the foreign women you meet in Cambodia are decent, law-abiding people who are here to do something positive with their lives. A foreign woman who moves to Cambodia almost always does so for a noble purpose, like working, volunteering, or supporting her man. In the meantime, the most popular reason for foreign men to move to Cambodia in 2013 was “could no longer afford the booze and hookers in Pattaya.”

Do you know what else foreign women almost never do in Cambodia? Die. Okay, every now and then you may hear about a drug overdose by a honeymooning bride, but that’s quite rare.

Self-destructive foreign men, on the other hand, bite the dust in Cambodia with alarming frequency. They jump from buildings and leap from bridges. They hang themselves, stab themselves, shoot themselves, and drink themselves to death.

Most commonly, they die from drug related “heart attacks” in Sihanoukville or on Phnom Penh’s Street 51, where the Grim Reaper stalks the notorious Walkabout Hotel.

Am I suggesting that every foreign man in Cambodia is a sexually deviant, alcoholic jailbird who will inevitably harm himself or someone else with his disgusting and dangerous behavior? No, not every one. But it cannot be denied that all of the raping, killing, stealing, and dying by foreign dudes in Cambodia inflicts untold suffering upon the Cambodians who are victimized by their crimes, not to mention the burden on local authorities who have to clean up the foreign corpses and ship them back to Croydon.

There are so many undesirable foreign dudes menacing Cambodia now that the Cambodian government should really do something to solve this problem. Here are 7 ways it could do so:

1. Impose gender-based visa fees

At the moment, Cambodian tourist visas cost $20 per month. Ordinary (business) visas cost $25 per month. Here’s my proposal. Starting immediately, entry visas should be totally free. For women. Visa fees for men should be doubled, to $40 a month for tourist visas and $50 a month for business visas.

Hear me out on this. While I have not seen any statistics showing what percent of foreign visitors to Cambodia are male, it is undoubtedly well over 50%. My guess is that the Western expat community may be as much as 75% male.

This male-female visitor ratio is unnatural. If a bar or nightclub attracts disproportionately too many dudes, it will impose a cover charge for men and offer “ladies night” promotions to women. This prevents the place from turning into an undesirable nightly sausagefest. If the strategy works for bars, why shouldn’t countries do the same thing?

Doubling visa fees for men and eliminating fees for women will generate substantially more revenue for Cambodia, because there are more male visitors than females. Instead of 4 million annual visitors paying $20 each ($80 million), there will be about 2.5 million male visitors paying $40 each ($100 million), and 1.5 million females entering for free.

The change would have absolutely no financial impact on all the normal male-female couples who visit Cambodia as legitimate tourists. The husband’s visa costs would double and the wife’s visa costs would be eliminated, so that’s a wash.

The increase would only detrimentally impact all the “lone wolf” males who visit Cambodia each year– the exact demographic that causes most of the trouble once they get into the country. Doubling their visa fees would offset the costs of hosting these high risk, death-prone visitors, and it might dissuade some of them from showing up at all. Any single dude who is deterred from visiting Cambodia due to a $20 increase in his visa fee probably wouldn’t have contributed much to the local economy anyway.

What about the cost of extending an ordinary (business) visa to remain in Cambodia for a full year? Right now that costs about $285. Under my proposal, the one year visa extension would be free for women but cost twice as much (about $570) for men. This would help attract desirable female expatriates, while simultaneously deterring immigration from a less desirable, oversaturated group (i.e., single dudes who can’t afford $570 per year to stay in the country).

You may think, “This idea is crazy. Cambodia would never implement deliberately discriminatory visa fees based on gender.” Why not? Cambodia already imposes weird age restrictions and financial requirements on foreign men who wish to marry Cambodian women; discriminatory rules that are not imposed against foreign women who wish to marry Cambodian men.

Raising visa fees for foreign men would be a simple and effective way for Cambodia to increase revenue by tens of millions of dollars and control immigration from a particular, problematic subset of foreign visitors that Cambodian law already discriminates against. The only remaining question is whether some skint expat dudes would try to save the $570 by applying for their visa extensions disguised as women, like Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari in “Bosom Buddies.” Well, of course they would.

2. Ban foreign men from teaching Cambodian children

Many of the foreign men in Cambodia support themselves by teaching English to Cambodian children. It seems that almost any Westerner can find a teaching job in Cambodia, even with no prior experience or qualifications. Disturbingly, there have been numerous incidents of Western men getting jobs as teachers in Cambodia even though they have prior records in their home countries of sex crimes against children. One American serial pedophile told the FBI that he came to Cambodia specifically because it was an easy place for a convicted sex offender to find work as a teacher.

It’s not feasible for Cambodian schools or the Cambodian government to conduct worldwide background checks to determine which foreign teachers are prior sex offenders. The only surefire way to protect Cambodian children is to ban foreign men from teaching them at all.

Children are loud, annoying, germ rockets who are best cared for by women anyway. It’s quite unnatural for an adult male to ever want to spend time with any children other than his own. Any white guy who randomly shows up in Cambodia to “help the children” should probably be kept as far away from kids as humanly possible. If you had a child, would you rather leave the kid with an unknown Western woman for the day, or leave the kid with the next white dude you find walking along Phnom Penh’s riverside? I thought so.

I’m actually surprised that a ban on foreign men teaching kids hasn’t happened yet. When foreigners do bad things to Cambodians, the Cambodian government usually responds with a sweeping ban of whatever activity led to the abuse. When news broke of abusive marriages between Korean men and Cambodian women, Cambodia simply banned Korean men from marrying its women. When Malaysian employers mistreated some Cambodian maids, Cambodia banned Malaysian recruiters from hiring more maids. Following reports of child trafficking, Cambodia banned foreigners from adopting Cambodian children.

I realize that most foreign male teachers in Cambodia are not rapists or child molesters. But there have been enough horrific reports of sexual abuse of Cambodian children by foreign male teachers that ban-happy Cambodia should just forbid foreign men from teaching kids.

Why can’t the foreign dudes in Cambodia teach English to adults, while foreign women teach the children? If schools can’t find enough Western women to teach Cambodian kids, they can hire Filipinas. The kids may end up speaking English with a silly Filipina accent, but at least they won’t be molested by their teachers.

3. Only give long term visas to foreigners with jobs, businesses, or spouses in Cambodia

For the first quarter century following the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia had no reason to restrict immigration from Western visitors, because no Westerner in his right mind wanted to move here. Times have changed though. The standard of living in Cambodia has improved in recent years, while economic conditions in some Western countries have significantly deteriorated.

Many Western men now view Cambodia as a desirable place to live. They may tell you that they enjoy Cambodia for the “freedom,” which apparently includes the freedom to drink their own blood and eat their own shit.

Unfortunately, Cambodia still lets absolutely any Westerner stay in the country forever, even if he is unemployed, homeless, and begging on the streets. Shockingly, Cambodia even lets Western pedophiles remain in the country after they have committed sex crimes against Cambodian children, leading to their subsequent arrests for abusing Cambodian children again and again and again.

It’s time for Cambodia to tighten its visa requirements and deport its foreign pedophiles. Send the undesirable Western dudes packing for the Philippines.

4. Interrogate and search single male travelers on arrival

I’m a single Western male who has flown into Phnom Penh airport about two dozen times. No Cambodian immigration officer has ever asked me a single question. No customs officer has ever searched my bag.

There’s a scene in the movie “Taken” where Liam Neeson’s character impersonates a French intelligence officer and tells some Albanian gangsters, “You think because we are tolerant that we are weak and helpless.” The utter indifference displayed by Cambodian customs and immigration officers creates a first impression among visitors that local law enforcement is inept and that “no one cares what I do here.” This nonchalance emboldens foreigners to misbehave once they enter the country.

Cambodia should put on a show at the airport to make foreign dudes believe they have arrived in a country with competent law enforcement that pays attention to what visitors do here. As passengers exit the plane, women and couples should be sent to the normal immigration line. Creepy single guys should be referred to a special line, where an immigration officer may ask them questions like, “What’s the purpose of your trip to Cambodia?” “How long have you lived in Thailand?” and “Ewww, why is your passport covered in vaseline?”

I sometimes get questioned and treated like a sex tourist by U.S. immigration officers when I return from Cambodia. As far as I’m concerned, that mildly humiliating experience should start in Cambodia itself. How will Cambodian immigration officers decide which foreign men to interrogate? That’s easy. Guys traveling alone. Guys wearing tank tops. Guys who look like Steve Buscemi.

Sex tourists are like cockroaches. They hate sunlight, both literally and figuratively. Shine a light on their activities by asking them questions on arrival and looking through all their luggage.

The foreigners who commit sex crimes in Cambodia are invariably found in possession of kiddie porn, dildos, handcuffs, Rohypnol, and other creepy shit.

When you find a foreigner entering the country with an entire suitcase full of condoms and Viagra, remind him that it’s illegal to have sex with children. Watch how he stammers and avoids eye contact and mutters some nonsense about being here to “see the temples.”

Even if you let the guy into the country, he’ll know that you know that he’s a disgusting pervert. This may make him less likely to misbehave during his trip. Shoplifting is deterred when store employees simply say “hello” to customers who enter, because potential shoplifters know that they’ve been noticed. Same idea.

Don’t tell me that Cambodia doesn’t have the resources to question and search foreign male visitors. Cambodians are naturally inquisitive people. It makes no sense that immigration officers who should be scrutinizing foreign visitors remain mute during every encounter, but I can’t walk ten feet down the street without a tuk tuk driver asking me where I’m going and what I’m doing. Cambodia should just deputize a bunch of volunteer motodops to work at the airport and tell them, “Go ask those white guys a lot of annoying personal questions and search their bags. Anything illegal you find, you can keep.”

5. Stop giving visas on arrival to Africans

The most important rule of a successful modern immigration policy is “Never let in immigrants from countries poorer than your own.” Very few countries are poorer than Cambodia, and most of those shitholes are located right in the middle of Africa.

Cambodia has seen an influx of dodgy African males during the last decade, from lovely places like Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Guinea, and Cameroon. Do you know why so many African dudes are moving to Cambodia? Because virtually no other country will let them in.

African men probably behave even worse in Cambodia than Western men. Sure, they may not be accomplished sex criminals, but the Africans in Cambodia have shown a strong aptitude for drug
trafficking, fraud, robbery, and the occasional kidnap and murder.

Africans who arrive in Cambodia also regularly overstay their visas, because, let’s face it, the squalor of Phnom Penh is a fucking paradise when compared to Ouagadougou.

I propose the following solution. Every year the United Nations publishes the “Human Development Index,” a report that basically ranks all the countries on earth from nicest to crappiest. Cambodia is usually ranked about 140th, ahead of only the most screwed up countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Cambodian immigration officials should just look at that report every year and draw a big red line right under Cambodia. Anybody from a country listed below Cambodia should be denied a visa on arrival.

6. Criminalize extramarital sex between foreign men and local women

Did you know that in Vietnam, it’s illegal for a foreign man to share a hotel room with a Vietnamese woman unless they are married? Lao law similarly prohibits sexual contact between foreigners and Lao nationals if they are not married. Do some people break those laws? Of course. Forbidden sex is totally hot. It’s hotter than make up sex, and almost as hot as conjugal visit sex.

But these laws are still a major disincentive to bottomfeeding sex tourists, who always prefer the path of least pussy resistance. Vietnam and Laos both have warm weather, cheap beer, and beautiful women. Yet, thanks to these laws, they are not overrun with sex-crazed Western men like parts of Cambodia and Thailand.

Cambodian law already restricts marriage between foreign men and local women, so why not announce a few new laws restricting sex and cohabitation as well? Even if the laws prove impossible to enforce, their mere existence may slow down the tide of horny foreign men parading nightly between Street 104 and Street 136.

7. May I suggest the occasional civil war?

Cambodia’s absolute best hope of quickly clearing out its foreign dude debris would be if its ongoing election protests suddenly turn violent. Nothing will scare off the junkies and sex tourists like a nice, loud civil war and then a decade of U.N. oversight and artificially high prices.

It wouldn’t even have to be a full blown civil war. All you need is enough violence and unrest for the U.K. Foreign Office to advise against travel to Cambodia. As soon as that happens, British travel insurance will be invalidated in Cambodia. This is important, because British tourists never go anywhere without travel insurance. Few things terrify a Welshman more than the thought of having to spend his own money to see a doctor. Trust me, if a few bombs go off and the Foreign Office blacklists Cambodia, virtually all of the shirtless Brits in Sihanoukville will quickly decamp to Bognor Regis.

And when the British government advises against travel to Cambodia, the U.S. State Department will quickly follow suit, because they don’t want to be sued by some dumb American who gets shot in the ass and then complains that no one warned him that civil wars are dangerous.

Soon the sleazy French, the kinky Germans, and the drunken Australians will all disappear too. Yes, a bloody civil war that tears Cambodia apart would be totally worth it, if it meant I’d never have to see another dude like this guy basking outside Paddy Rice.

Gavinmac is a foreign dude who spends far too much time in Cambodia. His other “7 Reasons” articles can be found here.

Nathan Hansford, an Australian businessman working in Thailand who reportedly “disappeared” several months ago, has been found in Cambodia, according to a statement from his family. The Sydney Morning Herald reported last week that Hansford went missing from his Thai wife in Bangkok in December and that he had no contact with his family in Australia since then. Hansford’s sister arrived in Bangkok to look for him on March 4, at which point Thai authorities began searching for him as well.

Hansford’s family now reports that Hansford has been found in Cambodia, where he was suffering from “amnesia.” The statement from Hansford’s family notably does does not say: (1) where Hansford was found in Cambodia (Phnom Penh hospital, Siem Reap guesthouse, or Sihanoukville hostess bar?); (2) whether Hansford received any medical treatment for his amnesia or whether his amnesia is self-diagnosed; (3) whether his alleged amnesia-causing but non-debilitating traffic accident occurred in Cambodia, Thailand, or Narnia, or (4) whether Hansford entered Cambodia before or after the press reported last week that Thai authorities had started looking for him.

Adding to the intrigue is that Hansford worked in the financial services industry in Asia for many years, specifically in “cash management.” Cambodia has long had a reputation as a haven for Western fugitives, including those who have committed financial crimes in other countries.

Apparently, no reporters have yet been able interview Hansford or any member of his family regarding his whereabouts over the last four months or the circumstances of how he was found in Cambodia. Hansford’s family has instead requested “privacy” so that Hansford has the “time and space to return to his full health.”

Did you encounter Nathan Hansford in Cambodia during the last four months? Do you sometimes suffer from amnesia in Cambodia, or do you wish that you did? Feel free to comment below or join the discussion here.

Gavinmac

Monday’s edition of the Phnom Penh Post included an article about Sebastian Reuiji, a Dutch convicted pedophile who was recently released from police custody in Siem Reap province. Apparently, Reuji will not be deported from Cambodia, because Cambodian authorities often inexplicably allow known convicted foreign pedophiles to remain in the country to abuse Cambodian children again and again and again and again.

The Post’s article about Reuiji also included a brief update about Jason Todd Baumbach, a 45 year-old American from Burton, Michigan. Baumbach was arrested in Phnom Penh in September 2008 on charges of having sex with a thirteen year-old Cambodian girl. The press reported that Baumbach had known the girl for over a year and had a long term sexual relationship with her. Baumbach reportedly gained access to the girl by paying her school fees and asking her impoverished parents to allow him to act as her adoptive father.

In March 2009, Baumbach was sentenced by a Cambodian court to a term of thirteen years in prison. He was also ordered to pay $5,000 in compensation to his victim’s family. His lengthy prison sentence was imposed over the objection of his lawyer, Chap Keo, who simultaneously argued that Baumbach and the girl never had sex and that the girl’s family had given Baumbach permission to marry her when she turned eighteen.

Disturbingly, Baumbach’s thirteen year-old Cambodian victim may not be the only child he sexually abused. A Spanish child protection NGO reported in 2009 that Baumbach was wanted by Thai police for abusing a minor in Thailand in 2007, but he fled to Cambodia before Thai police could arrest him.

Baumbach currently resides at Prey Sar prison, located on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Monday’s update on Baumbach’s case in the Post stated that the Supreme Court of Cambodia recently “upheld the seven-year imprisonment of US national Jason Todd Baumbach.” This is rather confusing, because Baumbach’s original sentence was reported to be thirteen years, not seven years. If the Cambodian Supreme Court has now changed that sentence to seven years, then the article should have said that the court “reduced” or “slashed” Baumbach’s sentence, not “upheld” it.

Baumbach’s original thirteen year sentence would have kept him in prison until 2021 or 2022, roughly seven years from now. Perhaps that’s what the Post reporter meant; that the Supreme Court has upheld the remaining seven years of Baumbach’s original sentence. If that’s not what he meant, and if the court reduced Baumbach’s sentence from thirteen years to seven, he could be released in 2015 or 2016, depending on whether he receives credit for time served from the date of his September 2008 arrest.

Regardless of whether Baumbach is getting out in 2015, 2016, or 2022, it appears that he, his Michigan family, and possibly even his former victim may be making big plans for his release. Baumbach recently announced via Facebook that he is engaged to local woman identified only as “Srey Pov,” a common Cambodian given name which literally means “the youngest girl.”

Baumbach and his fiancee have a joint Facebook “engagement page” stating that they met in August 2007. This is consistent with press reports that Baumbach had known his 13 year-old victim for over a year prior to his September 2008 arrest.

From her Facebook profile photos, Baumbach’s fiancee appears to be about 18 to 20 years old. His sexual abuse victim was reported to be 13 years old when he was arrested in 2008; she would be about 19 years old now.

(Note: K440 has disguised Srey Pov’s appearance.)

Additionally, Baumbach has commented on Facebook that he and “Srey Pov” have had a “tacit agreement for years” to get married. Baumbach’s lawyer argued in 2009 that the family of Baumbach’s 13 year-old victim had agreed to allow him to marry her when she turned eighteen.

In many countries, convicted sex offenders are prohibited from having contact with their victims, especially child victims, while serving their sentences. If Baumbach’s fiancee is his former 13 year-old sexual abuse victim, then it appears that they have had ongoing contact and a continuing romantic “relationship” throughout the duration of his imprisonment in Cambodia. If that is the case, Baumbach may have continued to exercise the same creepy psychological control over her that a 45 year-old sexual predator would be expected to have over the impoverished, teenage victim of his sexual abuse.

Remarkably, comments on Baumbach’s Facebook page also reveal that many of his friends and family members back in Michigan are quite supportive of his engagement and pending nuptials. A number of his Facebook friends “liked” his engagement announcement or posted “Congrats!” A relative named Kate Baumbach even commented that Baumbach would be a sympathetic figure on the American television talk show circuit. She posted, “Please tell me you will write a book after we close the current chapter and your boots hit MI soil…or snow since I’d like it to be soon and we are white washed here. I will help with promotion and publication Oprah is no longer on but I envision you on someone’s couch telling your tale to a dismayed studio audience. Congrats!”

Oprah Winfrey’s show may no longer be on the air, but we all know that Baumbach’s sleazy tale is much better suited for Jerry Springer. He responded to “Kate’s” Facebook post by saying, “Thanks! A book should be inevitable but the publication date will likely remain undetermined for a good while since the scope and angle have not yet solidified, however, I appreciate the encouragement and future promotion offer.” It’s rather scary to think that the “scope” of Baumbach’s book is “not yet solidified.” Is he planning to sexually abuse more children and write about that?

The logistics of how Baumbach plans to marry his young Cambodian fiancee remain unclear. In a refreshing change from usual Cambodian protocol, Baumbach is scheduled to be deported from Cambodia at the conclusion of his prison sentence. He would probably find it quite difficult to arrange a fiancee visa for his bride to be to join him to marry in the United States, given the nature and history of their romantic “relationship.”

Moreover, there is a possibility that Baumbach could still face further criminal charges for child sex crimes after he is deported from Cambodia. If the aforementioned 2009 report from a Spanish NGO is correct that Baumbach fled Thailand in 2007 to avoid arrest for abusing a minor there, Baumbach could be extradited to Thailand for prosecution after serving his sentence in Cambodia.

If his alleged abuse of the minor in Thailand was sexual in nature, he could also be prosecuted by the U.S. for that conduct under the 2003 “PROTECT Act,” a law which criminalizes child sex offenses committed by American citizens in foreign countries. There is also a remote possibility that the U.S. government could try to prosecute Baumbach under the “PROTECT Act” for the same sex offense for which he has already served time in Cambodia, although such a prosecution would face numerous legal hurdles and likely be hampered by a lack of cooperation from his Cambodian victim, to whom Baumbach may now be engaged.

Do you you have any thoughts or opinions on Jason Baumbach’s engagement? Please feel free to comment below or join the forum discussion here.

Gavinmac

Gavinmac ponders the murder of William Bryan Glenn in Cambodia and asks whether the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh was at fault for his homicide

Last week, the expatriate community in Cambodia learned of the shocking murder of an American teacher in Phnom Penh. The body of William Bryan Glenn, a 43 year-old native of Mississippi, was found dumped on the outskirts of the capital during the early morning of July 9.

The perpetrators remain at large, and the motive for Glenn’s killing is unknown. What is known, however, is that the murder was particularly brutal. Glenn was savagely beaten and strangled, and then his body was wrapped in a curtain and tossed in a garbage heap.

Glenn had only lived in Cambodia for about two months, after previously teaching in Thailand and China. Glenn’s estranged Thai wife, Nittaya Glenn, told the Cambodia Daily that Glenn had called her many times to tell her that he was afraid of certain Cambodian people and wanted to leave the country quickly. Mrs. Glenn offered to buy her husband a plane ticket to China.

Mrs. Glenn said that Glenn went to the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh on July 7 to get extra passport pages because he wanted to leave Cambodia immediately for China. Obtaining extra passport pages is normally a routine process that takes about 30 minutes.

It is unknown how long Glenn was in the U.S. Embassy on July 7. He apparently did not get the extra passport pages. In fact, according to his wife, Glenn told her that he was worried because the U.S. Embassy actually confiscated his passport. This made it impossible for Glenn to leave Cambodia, and he was brutally murdered less than 48 hours later.

There are only a few reasons why a U.S. embassy would revoke or confiscate an American citizen’s passport. One of those reasons is the existence of a criminal warrant for the arrest of that citizen back in the United States. U.S. embassies will often revoke the passport of an American citizen wanted for crimes in America, and then offer to issue a new limited passport valid only for travel to the U.S. This is a way that the government pressure fugitives to return to the United States to meet their obligations, thus avoiding the expense and difficulties of extraditing these fugitives from foreign lands.

The Phnom Penh Post has reported that Glenn was, in fact, wanted in the United States for “drugs charges.” A Cambodian police official confirmed to the Post that the U.S. embassy kept Glenn’s passport because he was a “wanted criminal.” The Mississippi press now reports that Glenn was wanted there for missing a 2002 trial date on charges of third offense DUI and manufacturing methamphetamine.

The embassy’s revocation of Glenn’s passport over these 12 year-old drug and DUI charges would been devastating to his efforts to flee whoever was hunting him. Obviously, without a passport, Glenn could not leave Cambodia. The sudden loss of his passport would have also impeded his ability to move to other accommodation in Cambodia in order to evade his pursuers. Most hotels and guesthouses in Cambodia demand a passport when a foreigner checks in, and the hotel staff them verifies the Cambodian visa contained therein.

Revoking Glenn’s passport would have also made it harder for Glenn to rent a car or motorbike to leave Phnom Penh, because rental agencies usually demand the original passport as collateral. Revoking Glenn’s passport would have also prevented him from engaging in certain banking transactions to obtain funds he may have needed to flee the city.

Importantly, the U.S. Embassy’s revocation of Glenn’s passport also invalidated Glenn’s lawful visa status in Cambodia, as the Cambodian visa is linked to the passport and the visa sticker is affixed to a page in the passport. Without a valid Cambodian visa, Glenn might be been less likely to seek needed assistance from Cambodian police.

A passportless American in a foreign country is somewhat paralyzed and helpless. A passportless American in a small foreign country who is being pursued by murderous foreign nationals is a sitting duck. William Glenn, blocked by his own government in his attempt to flee Cambodia, was brutally beaten and strangled to death here less than 48 hours later.

Volume 7 of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual states:

“The U.S. Department of State and our embassies and consulates abroad have no greater responsibility than the protection of U.S. citizens overseas.”

Last year, during remarks at a U.S. citizen “town hall” meeting in Siem Reap, U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia William Todd stated:

My Embassy colleagues and I work to promote U.S. business, provide humanitarian assistance, strengthen diplomatic ties with our host nation counterparts, and much more. Of our many responsibilities, however, none is more important than serving our fellow American citizens. Your safety, health, and welfare are our number one priorities, and that’s why we traveled to Siem Reap to meet with you today. I even met with the tourism police in Siem Reap today to stress to them the high-level of attention that the U.S. Embassy places on protecting U.S. citizens.

Did the U.S. embassy make the safety and welfare of William Glenn its “number one priority” on July 7, 2014, when it denied him simple passport services that would have allowed him to flee a murderous foreign threat? Did the embassy place a “high level of attention” on protecting Glenn when it revoked his passport and pushed him back out into the streets of Phnom Penh, where he was viciously murdered within 48 hours?

The answer to both questions is obviously no. The U.S. Embassy’s highest priority on July 7 was not “protecting” or “serving” its citizen William Bryan Glenn, but punishing him for his alleged prior involvement with drugs in the United States more than a decade ago. The U.S. embassy put the U.S. Justice Department’s policy of relentlessly pursuing drug criminals ahead of the U.S. State Department’s own policy of having “no greater responsibility than the protection of U.S. citizens overseas.”

The manufacture of methamphetamine is undoubtedly a serious problem in America. But an arrest warrant for an American citizen on a 12 year-old drug or drunk driving charge should not also serve as that citizen’s death warrant, if he finds himself overseas and in need of passport services to flee a foreign threat. All American citizens deserve the same protection from their government when traveling in foreign lands, regardless of whatever legal skeletons they may have in their closets back home. A U.S. embassy’s deliberate obstruction of an American citizen’s attempt to leave a country where that citizen feels unsafe is disgraceful and contrary to U.S. State Department policy.

Some may argue that U.S. embassy personnel in Cambodia probably had no way of knowing of any threats to William Glenn’s life. But Glenn wasn’t just any U.S. citizen, whose troubles were completely unknown to the U.S. embassy. Cambodian police have reported that U.S. law enforcement agents requested Cambodian cooperation in monitoring Glenn as a “person of interest” in a criminal investigation. The U.S. embassy personnel who were monitoring Glenn as an alleged drug criminal would have known that drug criminals often get themselves mixed up in dangerous life-or-death situations. Glenn, while being monitored by U.S. embassy personnel, was murdered, quite literally, “on their watch.”

Moreover, Glenn was reportedly rather vocal with his Thai wife about his fear of remaining in Cambodia. It is likely that, at the moment he was informed by embassy staff of the revocation of his passport, he would have been equally vocal, if not positively frantic, with embassy staff about his urgent need to leave.

A full investigation should be conducted into the revocation of William Glenn’s passport and what transpired when Glenn visited the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh on July 7. Interactions between citizens and consular staff at the embassy in Phnom Penh usually happen in a large hall, with each communication being spoken (or shouted) through bulletproof glass, within earshot of all the other people who are waiting to speak to consular officers. There may have been witnesses to the exchange between Glenn and the consular staff. There are undoubtedly surveillance cameras in the room where the interaction took place, and there may be audio recordings as well.

We should also ask: Is it the policy of U.S. embassy consular staff to inquire into an American citizen’s possible urgent life-or-death need to use a passport before they revoke it? If that isn’t the policy, then it should be. Changing the policy now would be too late to save the life of William Bryan Glenn, but it might save the life of the next American citizen with an old criminal warrant who finds himself in danger overseas and in need of passport services to flee a foreign threat.

Gavinmac

Click here to discuss the murder of William Bryan Glenn in the K440 forums.

Peter was the first real friend I ever made in Cambodia. I’m sure that those of you who only knew Peter’s internet persona probably think he was just a petty, temperamental bastard online. He was much more than that. He was also a petty, temperamental bastard in real life — but in a strangely charming and likable way.

Sometime around 2005, I started posting a lot on Khmer440, but I deliberately avoided meeting anyone from the website, because back then I thought that meeting dudes through the internet was totally gay. The only poster I was interested in meeting was the website’s admin, “keeping_it_riel.” He seemed witty and intelligent, and he had a gift for making up hilarious new terms to lightheartedly insult other posters. Also, he had started moving some of my forum posts to the Khmer440 front page, which sort of made me feel like a real writer. Peter/KiR was passionate about Khmer440’s front page content, and he always believed that those articles, not the discussion forums, were the “essence” of Khmer440.

Peter and I exchanged phone numbers, and then we exchanged texts for a few nights before I built up the nerve to meet him in person. For some reason, he proposed meeting at “Soho 2” bar, which was a weird upstairs bar located on the ass end of the Street 51 strip. The bar’s only redeeming quality was that the staff wore sexy white nurse’s uniforms.

I walked up the grungy staircase to Soho 2 and saw Peter sitting at the bar. He was the only customer in there, of course, because stairs are like Kryptonite to Street 51 sexpats. Peter smiled and introduced himself. He then told me that we had to leave immediately, because he had a bad history with the barmaid standing three feet away.

This would be a recurring theme of my future meetings with Peter. He would sometimes veto whatever bar I proposed meeting at, because he hated the owner, or because he was afraid of running into an expat there with whom he was squabbling. We’d often end up getting together at crappy “out of the way” bars with no other customers, like Nightlife or Barbados.

I remember that in 2006 he excitedly urged me to meet him at a new bar on St. 136, which he claimed was a well decorated and classy bar, with attractive, but “low key” hostesses. The name of that bar? Bogey and Bacall! Shortly after our outing there, Peter took a dislike to one of the bar’s co-owners, David Fletcher. He started digging up dirt on Fletcher’s past, and then exposed him on Khmer440 as a UK sex offender.

That was Peter. One day he might be praising you and your bar, the next day he’d be launching an aggressive online campaign to ruin your life. You never knew what might trigger that; Fletch probably served him a warm beer or something.

To be friends with Peter meant that, from time to time, he would stop talking to you for some incredibly silly reason. Staying on his good side took constant diplomacy. He was so easily offended that it bordered on comical.

If you walked into a crowded bar, and you didn’t see him and say hello, he might take that as a snub and stop speaking to you for months. Few can forget the infamous incident when someone dared open up Garage Bar for half a night over the Khmer New Year break without calling Peter. I think he boycotted Garage for a year over that one.

I once arranged a dinner with about six other Khmer440 posters, but I didn’t invite Peter, because he was seriously feuding with half of them at the time. When Peter later heard about the dinner, he sent me a one word private message, which read, “Cunt.”

Nonetheless, I always made the effort to get back in Peter’s good graces, because he was funny and interesting, and well, shit, I knew I didn’t want to be on his bad side. Involving Peter in group outings was a perilous proposition, so we usually met for a meal or drinks one-on-one. I always enjoyed the time we spent together. He was insightful about Cambodia, and he had a wickedly funny sense of humor and an unparalleled way with words.

Peter could speak knowledgeably about anything: music, football, politics, you name it. But truth be told, when we got together, we mostly gossiped about expats and Khmer440 posters. If you are a Khmer440 poster reading this, then Peter and I undoubtedly gossiped over a meal or beers about what a total fuck up you are. We talked about your substance abuse, the jobs you were fired from, and the bargirls we couldn’t believe you were dating.

I’m not a great conversationalist, and the first few times I saw Peter, whenever there was a lull in the conversation, I would simply say “What’s the deal with [insert username of Khmer440 poster here]?” Peter would giggle and tell me that poster’s most scandalous personal secrets, and we would both crack up laughing. We were very mature like that.

In recent years, Peter had mellowed. He married a lovely wife, he drank less, and he usually preferred getting lunch or dinner together rather than going to bars. Our topics of conversation even changed a bit. He’d always start by asking “How’s your love life?” I’d always respond, “Not good.” Then we’d talk about his master’s degree course, or how happy he was to be married, or about the house he and his wife were buying. But with those formalities out of the way, we would invariably revert to talking shit about expats and Khmer440 posters. We probably brought out the worst in each other that way.

Peter was a man of principles, even if his principles were sometimes misguided. When he was selling Khmer440, he said that he had a much higher bid from a rich young Khmer guy, but he wanted to sell the site to an expat so that Khmer440 would retain its expat flavor. He also had a short list of prospective expat buyers to whom he would never sell the site, probably because he thought they were “cock trumpets.”

Peter and I had our last lunch a month ago at the new Buffalo Sister location near Russian Market. It was a long lunch; the place was absolutely packed with white chicks, and it took ages to get our sandwiches. It was an enjoyable lunch though, they always were with Peter, and I wish I remembered more of what we talked about.

I do remember sharing our final laugh together, as we left Buffalo Sister and started walking down the street. Peter pointed across the road at a yellow, Thai-style tuk tuk. He told me that the large, bearded Westerner driving the tuk tuk was StroppyChops from the rival CEO forum. We both laughed about how fucking ridiculous he looks in that thing.

Peter and I said our goodbyes, and I hopped in a (totally different) tuk tuk to go back to Daun Penh. That was the last time I saw him.

Peter will be missed by his loving wife, his many friends, and maybe even by some of his “twatflannel” enemies. He was a colorful and hilarious fixture in the local expat scene for more than twelve years, and Phnom Penh and Khmer440 won’t be the same without him. May he rest in peace.

I. INTRODUCTION

Let me start out by saying that I don’t really follow Cambodian politics. I couldn’t tell Sam Rainsy from Sam Waterston. I’ve always been much more interested in local news stories about Westerners overdosing in street 172 flophouses or getting arrested at 3 a.m. for fighting with their hookers.

Those sensational expat stories are my wheelhouse, the stuff I love commenting about online. The incessant local news coverage of all the CPP/CNRP squabbling just bores me to tears.

I don’t even have a strong preference among the three local English-language print newspapers. I will happily read any of the papers that the cute waitress at Cadillac Bar hands me when I walk in for breakfast. But if I have to choose, I will usually go for the Cambodia Daily first. I don’t have the necessary attention span to read all those long-winded articles in the Phnom Penh Post, and the Khmer Times has always come across to me as a bit amateurish and “ranty blogger” in tone.

That said, one of the things I love about the Khmer Times is that they frequently cover “expatriate interest” news stories that interest me, like crime on Virak Buntham night buses, the doomsday work permit crackdown, and that totally rapey hostel in Kampot. The Cambodia Daily and Phnom Penh Post are usually too self-important or too slow to properly cover such tabloidish, expat-centric matters.

The Khmer Times’ coverage of these stories, by real Western journalists, has been welcome and well-received. Their coverage has filled an important local void between the unfettered rumormongering about expat interest matters found on Khmer440, and the snooty refusal of the Post and Daily to dirty their hands with stories that expats actually want to read.

With this introduction out of the way, let’s get to the fun stuff.

II. HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT WHAT THE KHMER TIMES’ PUBLISHER DID.

A few days ago, a Khmer440 poster using the moniker “CDLongtime” started a discussion thread accusing T. Mohan, the Malaysian publisher and Managing Editor of the Khmer Times, of plagiarizing parts of his December 13 editorial column, titled “Social Media’s Propensity for Creating a Culture of Hatred.” Mr. Mohan apparently lifted whole paragraphs of this column from essays found online about the dangers of social media, including an ESL student’s final exam essay.

Because I am a shit-stirring prick with way too much time on my hands, I started looking at Mr. Mohan’s other Khmer Times editorial columns, to check if the plagiarism exposed by “CDLongtime” was isolated or rampant. I found sixty or so other columns by Mr. Mohan online. I skimmed each of these columns, looking for any well-written or insightful phrases, sentences or paragraphs. Often there weren’t any. When I did find well written sentences, I pasted them into my google search engine to see if there were any prior uses of those sentences online.

The results of this crude investigatory exercise were equal parts surprising, disturbing, and fucking hilarious. On no less than 21 occasions between August 2014 and the present, Mr. Mohan has printed plagiarized content in his Khmer Times editorial columns, often stealing full paragraphs of someone else’s words and reprinting them under his own name.

Mr. Mohan has stolen content from students, academics, and even a priest. However, the primary targets of Mr. Mohan’s plagiarism have been his fellow Malaysian journalists. It seems that Mr. Mohan simply reads coverage of Malaysian political events in the Malaysian papers, then he blatantly and bizarrely republishes full paragraphs of this coverage in the Khmer Times under his own name a few days later, offering it as his own original commentary about Cambodian politics.

Mr. Mohan has stolen content from Malaysia Today, the Malay Mail, and most frequently, from Malaysia’s most popular English language newspaper, The Star. On August 13, 2014, The Star printed a column by Datuk Zaid Ibrahim titled “The Convoluted Anwar and Khalid Story.” The column started like this:

The next day, a column by Mr. Mohan called “The CPP and CNRP Story” was printed in the Khmer Times. It looked like this:

As you can see, Mr. Mohan replaced the names “Anwar and Khalid” with “CPP and CNRP,” and he swapped “in the real word called Cambodia” for “in the real world called Sengalor.” Aside from that, he simply reprinted paragraphs of a Malaysian columnist’s words about Malaysia as his own commentary about Cambodia, the very next day.

It gets worse. Two weeks later, Mr. Mohan wrote a column titled “Mr. Hun Sen’s Exacting Personality.” Here is an excerpt:

Mr. Mohan opines that Hun Sen is exacting and opinionated, and he supports this with observations about Hun Sen “taking jabs” and listing, in point form, misgivings about his cabinet and administration. Mr. Mohan describes an official having a “deja vu moment” when Hun Sen’s “volcano erupted.” He then quotes that official as saying that Hun Sen’s volcano had been “boiling for some time” and “he said he is going to say even more.”

Did any of this really happen? Did Hun Sen really “take jabs” and “list misgivings in point form” about his cabinet, as Mohan describes it? Did Hun Sen’s “volcano erupt” in front of the official that Mohan quotes?

Four days earlier, on August 24, 2014, a column by Joceline Tan titled “Dr. Mahathir on the Attack” was published in The Star. Dr. Mahathir is Malaysia’s former premier. Here is an excerpt from Ms. Tan’s column:

A real journalist, I am not. Real journalists can drink lots of whiskey, smoke cigars without coughing, and if you criticize their writing, they will totally sucker punch you. Real journalists might debate whether Mr. Mohan’s August 28, 2014 column contained news reporting or merely editorial commentary. What I see is a guy who publishes and claims to edit a newspaper in Cambodia printing observations and quotes about the Cambodian prime minister that he knows are absolutely fictitious, because he stole those descriptions and quotes from someone else’s observations of a different political figure in Malaysia.

III. SERIOUSLY, HE DID THIS A LOT.

On August 2, 2015, Mr. Mohan wrote a column titled “Culture of Dialogue or Pragmatic Politics.” Much of the content from this column was shamelessly stolen from an essay written by a Filipino undergraduate student named Raymond Clarence Yu Rodis. In fairness, Mohan’s whole column wasn’t stolen from the Filipino kid, just the beginning, the middle, and the end.

Most troublingly, the Filipino student’s essay quoted from a Filipino Congressman, as follows:

As one congressman so honestly put it after switching parties himself, “You’re not in office for yourself but for your constituents. It’s a big advantage if you’re with the administration because they’re the ones in power who can give benefits to your constituents.”

Mohan’s column then takes this quote and falsely attributes it to a Cambodian politician who supposedly said the words to Mohan personally, over a cup of coffee:

On September 11, 2014, Mr. Mohan used his column to inform Khmer Times readers of “an avalanche of hate comments that have flooded our social media by people of all races and religions, who do not seem to care that their careless comments can hurt the feelings of others.”

Mohan ended the column on a positive note, saying the hateful comments had actually left him “in stitches”:

Was this the truth? Did Mr. Mohan and the Khmer Times really receive an “avalanche” of hate comments that “flooded” their social media from people of all races and religions, but which ultimately left Mohan in stitches?

Did this really happen to Mr. Mohan? Or did it happen to someone else entirely, someone like Wong Chun Wai, the Managing Director of The Star, who wrote word-for-word about the exact same experience, in a column that appeared in The Star just four days earlier?

Some expats who actually follow Cambodian politics will say that the Khmer Times is a “mouthpiece” for the CPP. I don’t know. Many of Mr. Mohan’s editorial columns do seem to rant against Sam Rainsy, the CNRP, NGOs, social media, and foreign “agent provocateurs” who seek disrupt the blissful status quo of happiness, prosperity and bubble gum that Cambodians enjoy under the HE regime.

Mr. Mohan wrote one such lengthy rant on August 30 of this year, in a column titled, “Electoral Promises and Protests – A Digestive Anatomy.” In that column, he accuses politicians and foreign actors of hijacking protest movements in Cambodia. He describes peaceful, friendly protests in Cambodia being hijacked by “familiar faces” — speakers who turned the crowd angry and hateful. Mohan describes that “When the tear gas canisters began to rain, the beautiful smiles and hope faded away.”

It sure sounds like Mohan was describing protests he witnessed, or commenting on the Cambodian protests covered by his reporters. But his descriptions of friendly street protests in Cambodia being hijacked by outsiders and nefarious “familiar faces” until tear gas canisters rained were entirely fictitious. He stole all that stuff from a description of Malaysian anti-government protests that appeared in Free Malaysia Today a week earlier.

IV. ON ETHICS AND CHRISTMAS HANDBAGS

I don’t know much about journalistic ethics. Journalists probably have a bunch of annoying little ethical rules, like “Don’t stare at the cleavage of your female interviewees” and “Don’t wear the same shirt to Quealy’s Bar more than three days in a row.”

But if I had to guess, I’d guess that the two absolutely most important cardinal rules of journalistic ethics are: “Don’t steal another journalist’s material, and don’t make shit up.”

Passing off stolen content as a newspaper’s original material is pretty bad. But what Mohan did is far worse. He didn’t just feed his readers stolen content, he also fed them false content.

Allow me to make a Christmas analogy. Let’s say I walk into a high end department store tomorrow, steal a Louis Vuitton handbag, wrap it up, and give it to my girlfriend for Christmas. That would be an unethical, criminal thing to do, and it would victimize the store that I steal from.

But do you know what would be even sleazier? If I walk into Bangkok’s Patpong Market, steal a counterfeit Louis Vuitton handbag, then wrap it up and give it to my girlfriend and tell her that I bought it and that it’s real.

That’s essentially what T. Mohan did here. He didn’t offer his readers plagiarized but otherwise honest and genuine observations about Cambodia that another local journalist happened to write first. If he had done that, he would have been caught immediately, just like I would probably get caught rather quickly if I tried to shoplift a genuine handbag from Bloomingdale’s.

Instead, Mr. Mohan took an easier but even more deceitful path. He repeatedly stole knock off content from Malaysian newspapers about things happening there, figuring that no one in Cambodia was looking. Then he wrapped this counterfeit content up for his Khmer Times readers by occasionally changing a few of the names, and sold it to them as genuine content and commentary concerning the CPP, CNRP, and political events in Cambodia.

Why did Mr. Mohan do this? Perhaps to sell newspapers, but also to desperately push an editorial political agenda that he couldn’t support simply by relying on own his own reporters’ truthful and professional reporting of events that really occurred in Cambodia.

V. CONCLUSION

So what happens next? Shortly after the Mohan plagiarism brouhaha appeared in the Khmer440 discussion forums, the Khmer Times printed this notice:

The notice informs readers that the paper is investigating allegations of plagiarism in “several opinion pieces.” The word “several” literally means “more than two, but not many.” We’re now up to 21 documented instances of plagiarism, which I’d suggest is way north of “several,” and pretty far into the realm of “many.”

I also think it will be hard for the Khmer Times editors to credibly diminish Mr. Mohan’s misconduct as mere plagiarism limited to “opinion pieces.” Mr. Mohan has used his pulpit as publisher and Managing Editor of the Khmer Times not just to brazenly steal other journalists’ content, but also to attribute false quotes, describe imaginary conversations, and falsely tell his readers about a non-existent avalanche of hate comments that his paper never really received.

Mr. Mohan and the editors who serve him at the Khmer Times will probably be judged by the expat community, by other journalists, and by the jackass keyboard warriors on Khmer440 according to how they respond to all these allegations.

Anyway, please stay tuned for the next installment in this series: Plagiarism, Phonyism and Buffoonery at the Khmer Times: Part 2 – Fake Letters to the Editor.

I. INTRODUCTION

Part 1 of this article discussed rampant plagiarism in columns written by T. Mohan, the publisher and (up until last week) managing editor of the Khmer Times. This part 2 will address some rather dubious “letters to the editor” printed in the Khmer Times, many of which mimic themes in Mr. Mohan’s editorial columns — Hun Sen is good, Facebook is bad, Sam Rainsy probably murdered Buddha.

Before we get to these letters though, let’s discuss why newspapers print letters to the editor in the first place. Letters to the editor are a way for angry uncles and other readers to interact with a newspaper and make their views known to other readers. These letters are a barometer of public opinion on the issues of the day, and they measure how well a paper is engaging its readers. A newspaper that receives many letters from readers praising the paper and expressing support for its news coverage and editorial columns is probably doing a better job than a paper that receives only the occasional expletive-laden missive telling the editors how much they all suck.

II. FAKE LETTERS FROM FICTITIOUS INTELLECTUAL CAMBODIANS

On July 3, 2014, the Khmer Times printed a letter to the editor from “Concerned Cambodian.” The letter expressed concern that a certain unnamed anti-Vietnamese “demagogue” was causing disunity in the country. It was real subtle like that.

The letter invoked American historian Henry Adams, and it expressed dismay that “[p]olarised debates and comments dominate our daily conversations, with the odium being more profound on social media and cyberspace.”

“Odium” is a great word. Hey, how many Cambodians do you know who quote historians and toss around words like “demagogue” and “odium”? Probably zero. But this is actually a recurring feature of the Khmer Times’ Letters to the Editor – numerous anti-CNRP letters purportedly written by Cambodians whose vocabulary rivals that of William F. Buckley.

Alas, I’m sorry to report that this letter to the Khmer Times was a fake. These words decrying the odium of zealotry and anti-Vietnamese racism in local politics were not written by a really well-educated “Concerned Cambodian.” The words were written a day earlier by a Malaysian columnist in The Star:

The phony letter from “Concerned Cambodian” was actually one of three letters to the editor printed in the Khmer Times on July 3, 2014. The next letter was purportedly from a writer in Siem Reap expressing support for a smoking ban. It was also a plagiarized fake.

The final letter, from “Fed Up citizen, Kampot” criticized local government commune chiefs for the CPP’s poor showing in the last election. Was the citizenry of Kampot really “fed up” about their local chiefs failing to deliver for CPP in prior last election? Perhaps not. The words were also taken from a letter to the editor of The Star a few days earlier.

So we know the Khmer Times printed three plagiarized, fake letters on July 3, 2014. That must be some kind of record, right? Sadly, no. On August 28, the Khmer Times printed five letters to the editor purportedly from readers of the paper. All five were fake.

The most notable fake letter printed on August 28, 2014 was from “Khemn Ngoun, Siem Reap.”

Siem Reap does exist, let’s give Mr. Mohan credit for that. But if you google “Khemn Ngoun” (with the exact term in quotes) you will see that the only result returned is this letter to the editor. There is no other record online of the existence of anyone named “Khemn Ngoun.” That’s pretty suspicious.

Predictably, like many of the letters to the editor printed in the Khmer Times, this letter from “Khemn Ngoun” complained about anti-government protests in Cambodia. It urged government leaders to enforce the law against protesters, noting their “uncontrollable violent urges.” Khemn Ngoun also observed that “We don’t have to look far in Cambodia to see how election rhetoric has mutated into racist organizations spewing their venom uncontrolled.”

Khemn Ngoun and his thoughts on violent, uncontrolled racist protests in Cambodia are fictitious. The words were taken from a letter to the editor of a Malaysian newspaper, the Sun Daily, complaining about violence and racism in Malaysia:

The other four letters to the editor printed in the Khmer Times on August 28, 2014 were similarly fraudulent. A letter from “Concerned Cambodian” complaining about graft was taken from a letter to the Star.

The letter from “FB hater” complaining about social media (a pet peeve addressed in several of Mr. Mohan’s columns) was taken from a column in the Sun Daily.

“Touch Seila” was another effort at a Khmer fake name; the letter printed under this name was plagiarized from a letter to The Star six days earlier.

Lastly, the letter from the imaginary “Linda Teng, Singapore” was actually written to the editor of the Sun Daily earlier that month by a probably real person named Denis Hayes.

The fake letters from “Khemn Ngoun” and “Touch Seila” show that someone at the Khmer Times — probably Mr. Mohan — wasn’t very good at thinking up Khmer fake names. Other dubious Khmer letter writers included:

Sok Ponarith (July 31, 2014, questioning whether Cambodian society is doomed, in part due to Facebook)
Aun Srey Vannak (March 24, 2015, says people should stop politicking and government should get back to work)
Hout Wathana (June 16, 2015 street beggars are a traffic nuisance)
Charlie Seng Ponlok (July 16, 2015, denouncing anti-Vietnamese riots)
Tommy Sovannarothh (September 10, 2015, complaining about National Road Number 4)
Sorn Sopheary, Wisconsin (December 1, 2015, thinks Hun Sen is a great and strong leader)

You can google any of those names above, putting the exact name in quotes, and you’ll get no google results for those names ever appearing online except in the Khmer Times letters to the editor. There are no Facebook pages under those names, no twitter accounts, no other online references to anyone ever having those names.

Does that mean that all of those letters, and others, from Cambodians printed in the Khmer Times are fakes? No. But since we know that Mr. Mohan faked other letters from Cambodians by putting fake Khmer names like “Khemn Ngoun” on pro-government letters copied from Malaysian papers, it does not seem unreasonable to believe that he might entirely fabricate other letters and put weird fake Khmer names on them as well.

III. FAKE LETTERS FROM IMAGINARY EXPATS LIKE “RICHIE McDODDS”

Of course, the Khmer Times didn’t just print letters to the editor from Khmers. They also printed a bunch of letters to the editor from Westerners.

Now, there’s an art to choosing a believable Western fake name. You don’t don’t want to pick a name that’s too common, like “Thomas Jones.” That will sound fake. But you also don’t want to choose a ridiculous name like “Doctor Rosenpenis,” the name that “Fletch” famously offered when he was looking for the hospital records room.

Most of the letters to the editor of the Khmer Times from Western writers seem to fall into either the “overly common name” category or the “ridiculous name” category. The Khmer Times printed questionable letters from the following common Anglo-Saxon names:

Mike Samuels, Phnom Penh (July 31, 2014, complaining that the opposition “is determined to spill blood”)
Jason Richards, long term Cambodia resident (February 19, 2015, asking “what in blazes is going on” with work permits)
Timothy Perkins, Washington, DC (August 2, 2015, says maybe Cambodia should turn to China not the US)
Shawn Baker, Visiting Student (August 2, 2015, commends the Khmer Times’ publisher as an “old hand” who has “brought a refreshingly bright and welcome change to the Cambodia English print market.”)
Steven Peters, Phnom Penh (August 25, 2015, complaining of “the provocation of the border disputes by the opposition party politicians”)
Tom Wilkinson, long term resident of Cambodia (September 10, 2015, thinks groups should break away from CNRP)
Bill Jensen, Phnom Penh (December 6, 2015, lamenting that Sam Rainsy has deceived the EU to pressure Cambodia)

We’re pretty good at Khmer440 at tracking down expats online when their names hit the local newspapers, even if they have relatively common names. We just run a search for the expat’s name plus “cambodia” or “phnom,” and usually that will show a real expat’s online presence, like a Facebook page, a LinkedIn page, his Florida mugshots, etc.

But time after time, when I searched online for Khmer Times’ letter writers like “Bill Jensen” and “Tom Wilkinson” having any connection to Cambodia, I got no results. I also asked in the Khmer440 discussion forums if recognized the names of such Western letter writers, some of whom are identified in the Khmer Times as “long term residents” of Cambodia. No one responded that they knew any of these letter writers. This leads me to believe that many of these “expat” letter writers simply do not exist.

As for letters to the Khmer Times from Westerners with ridiculous names, consider the following:

Richie McDodds, Long Beach, former long term resident in Cambodia (September 25, 2014, addressing corruption in Cambodia)
Paul Say Cavnar (October 14, 2015, says Hun Sen “is an astute politician who knows what he has to do for Cambodians and Cambodia but at times lacks the political and the all-important personal will to make the changes direly needed to ensure Cambodia is indeed on the right path,” while Sam Rainsy “knows nothing about policies other than a plethora of demagogic ideas which are seen to be coherent policies”)
Simon Art (November 10, 2014, complaining about sky bridges and poor roads)
Richard Steven Say (November 10, 2015, discussing similarity between Cambodian and Malaysian politics)
Sean Peterson Udom (December 1, 2015, stop weapons shipments to ISIS)
Paul Richards Say (December 26, 2015, believes dual citizen Cambodians shouldn’t be allowed to vote)

The “Richie McDodds” letter addressing corruption is definitely phony; it was plagiarized from this column that appeared in The Star a day earlier.

Two weeks later, the Khmer Times printed two more letters addressing corruption in Cambodia, from “K.C. Wong” and “Tim MacPherson.” The “K.C. Wong” letter was plagiarized from this letter to the editor of The Star by “Tunkul Abdul Aziz.” “Tim MacPherson” also does not exist; that October 6, 2014 letter was plagiarized from a letter by Walter Sandosam printed in The Star three days earlier.

If you google any of the weird names listed above like “Sean Peterson Udom” and “Paul Say Cavnar” you will find no records of these names ever appearing online at any other time except in the Khmer Times’ letters to the editor.

IV. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THESE FAKE LETTERS?

The logical assumption is that Mr. Mohan is behind many or all of the fake letters to the editor printed in the Khmer Times. Numerous columns under his name were plagiarized from Malaysian newspapers, and many of the fake letters to the Khmer Times’ editor were plagiarized from the same Malaysian sources.

However, there are also dubious letters to the Khmer Times’ editor that were not plagiarized from Malaysian papers. These appear to be “original” letters written by Mohan or someone else and then attributed to Cambodians or expats with goofy names.

Some of these letters do bear similarities to Mr. Mohan’s writings. Like Mohan’s columns, the letters use a lot exclamation points, and they tend to be pro-government and anti-CNRP. Also, Mr. Mohan is Malaysian, and a disproportionate number of the questionable letters to the Khmer Times editor reference Malaysia in some way.

On February 12, 2015, the Khmer Times printed a letter from “Malaysian Muslim” and also printed a letter from “Robby Wilson” comparing tourist buses in Cambodia to tourist buses in Malaysia. A few months earlier, the Khmer Times printed an odd letter from “Ken G. Swanson, tourist, Scotland.” “Mr. Swanson” supposedly wrote to complain about uncultured Westerners posing nude at Angkor Wat. He drew a comparison with Western tourists who had once posed nude on a sacred Malaysian mountain and caused an earthquake. I didn’t even know Scots believed in that stuff.

Julia Wallace, Editor-at-Large of the Cambodia Daily, pointed out on Twitter about two weeks ago that the Khmer Times “clearly fabricate[s] many letters to the editor.” That’s why I started looking into this to begin with. It turns out that Ms. Wallace was right.

I have also been informed that some Khmer Times’ staff and those with a connection to the newsroom previously suspected that letters to the editor were faked. Is it really plausible that Khmer Times’ competitors and staff knew or suspected that many of their letters to the editors were fake, but the Khmer Times senior editors themselves — who were supposed to have received the letters — knew nothing about these fabrications?

The “letters to the editor” page of the Khmer Times invites readers to send their letters to editor@khmertimeskh.com . Almost no one uses the Cambodian postal system, so any letters to the editor would have likely come via this email address.

It is unclear who has access to that email inbox. At times Mr. Mohan would respond personally to letters to the editor. At other times, the then editor-in-chief Jim Brooke asked readers to send letters “to me” at the same email address. If multiple editors at the Khmer Times accessed that email inbox, this would mean that multiple editors knew or should have known that the paper was printing imaginary letters to the editor that it had never actually received.

Mr. Brooke once praised T. Mohan as the Khmer Times’ “tireless and imaginative” leader. I think we can agree that any person who would make the effort to fabricate so many letters from fictional Cambodians and expats is both “tireless” and “imaginative.”

V. WHY THE HELL DID THE KHMER TIMES DO THIS?

Readers want to read popular newspapers. Advertisers want to advertise in popular newspapers. Some of the plagiarized letters were fairly benign, like this fake letter advocating English proficiency for Cambodians (plagiarized from here) or this fake letter from “Concerned Parent” about drowning deaths in Cambodia (plagiarized from here).

I think the Khmer Times printed some of these letters from fake readers in Siem Reap, New York, and Wisconsin, to fill space and give the appearance that the paper was widely read in Cambodia and internationally. On the paper’s one year anniversary, Mr. Brooke cited all the feedback and comments from readers as proof of the paper’s success.

But there was something more nefarious about all this than just the journalistic equivalent of a teenage girl hanging a bunch of fake Valentine’s Day cards in her locker to get attention. The Khmer Times didn’t merely fabricate a few extra “filler” letters to the editor to make its readers and advertisers think it was popular. Many of the fake letters from both Cambodians and expats were substantive and provocative, decrying violent protesters “spewing their venom,” opposition demagogues causing “disunity,” and the evils of social media.

The Khmer Times fabricated these letters in an apparent campaign to manipulate public opinion, by deceiving its readers about what other members of the community were really saying about Cambodia’s most important political issues of the day. This scheme demonstrated a blatant disregard for journalistic ethics, which are based on telling readers the truth about what is happening around them, rather than trying to hoodwink them. The fact that Mr. Mohan actually thought his clumsy campaign of deceit would work is a profound insult to the intelligence of the Khmer Times’ readers.

Longtime readers of Khmer440 will surely remember the name Kenneth Drew Wilcox. Wilcox is a psychologist who had a private practice in Phnom Penh from about 2005 through 2010.

Dr. Wilcox’ online resume says that he started his private practice in Cambodia in March 2004, but that claim is absolutely untrue. In 2004, he was still living in the U.S, and he was having a rather bad time.

He started the year off with a bang, getting arrested for drunk driving in Broward County, Florida, during the early morning hours of January 1, 2004. He was also charged with “obstruction without violence” during this arrest, because he falsely told police that his name was “Russell McKinnon Wilcox.” That’s his older brother.

About two months later, Wilcox was charged with grand theft in Broward County Florida, based on a complaint from his ex-landlord. The landlord claimed that he asked Wilcox to leave his furnished apartment, under threat of eviction, for non-payment of rent. When Wilcox moved out, $3,200 worth of furniture was missing from the apartment.

That wasn’t the first time Wilcox had been charged with theft. In May 2004, Wilcox pled guilty to larceny for stealing a leather jacket from a Neiman Marcus store in Virginia back in 2003.

August 2004 saw Wilcox get arrested again in Broward County for drunk driving and eluding police, in the now infamous “piss stained pants” incident.

Wilcox was later picked up for a probation violation on November 1, 2004. He was released from the Broward County jail on December 7, 2004 and apparently fled to Cambodia sometime after that, while the felony theft and eluding charges against him were still pending. A felony warrant for his arrest was issued by a Broward County judge on February 22, 2005.

Dr. Wilcox set up a psychology practice in Phnom Penh in 2005 under the name “Wilcox Associates.” Wilcox’ psychology practice include counseling services relating to substance abuse, child protection, and domestic violence. He and his 21 year-old Cambodia boyfriend, Tek “Weslee” Lim, later opened “Thor Health Services” in 2009.

Dr. Wilcox became well known in expat social circles, and he even had a regular radio show on 97.5 Love FM. He reportedly claimed that he was an heir to the Gillette razor fortune.

The wheels came off Dr. Wilcox’ expat experience in October 2010, when it was reported on Khmer440 and later in the Cambodia Daily that he was wanted by the FBI on a federal charge of international flight from his Florida felony arrest warrants.

Around this time, a Khmer440 poster observed that Weslee had once posted on Facebook that Wilcox physically abused him by by tasing him in the neck multiple times. Weslee’s Facebook post was later deleted. Weslee, the co-owner of THOR Health Services, defended Wilcox in the local press, saying that the rumors about Wilcox’ past were untrue.

Dr. Wilcox was arrested in Cambodia in November 2010 and transported back to the U.S. to face the charges against him. He spent a few months in jail and was released in early 2011.

______________________________________________________________

Khmer440 hasn’t checked up on the good doctor Wilcox since he was released from jail about five years ago. We figured that this would be a good time to update what he and Weslee have been up to. Apparently, Weslee managed to join Wilcox in Florida, and the two married in Washington D.C. and had a very gay wedding reception at the Trump Miami Resort on April 20, 2013.

Notably, Wilcox’s personal blog spins the story of his departure from Cambodia quite differently from what we all remember. In a June 2013 blog post, Wilcox wrote, “our situation became too dangerous as our work placed us at odds with powerful leaders who did not wish to be exposed for their corruption and abuses. As the situation became unmanageable, I was forced to leave the country out of fear for my safety, leaving Wes behind in the protection of his family.”

Wilcox’s blog makes no mention that he was wanted by the FBI and arrested and deported from Cambodia to face charges in Florida for, among other things, stealing his landlord’s furniture. No, the way he tells it, he was forced to leave Cambodia because he was on an ass-kicking crusade exposing corruption and abuse by powerful leaders.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Dr. Wilcox has resumed practicing as a psychologist in the Miami area. He claims that his practice focuses on counseling for substance abuse and relationship issues. However, the Florida Board of Psychology website has a “lookup” page where members of the public can verify if someone who claims to be a psychologist actually holds a license to practice psychology in Florida. Kenneth Wilcox is not listed as a licensed psychologist in this online database. It is a crime under Florida law to hold yourself out as a psychologist if you don’t hold such a license.

Wilcox is very active in gay and LGBT causes in the Miami area and is involved with various community organizations. He and Weslee both serve on the board of advisors to the “Unity Coalition” and advocacy group for gay and LGBT Hispanics.

Bizarrely, Wilcox is identified on the Unity Coalition website as “Dr. Ken Carrington-Wilcox.” He also has a Facebook page under the name “Kenneth Carrington Wilcox,” and he blogs under the name “Dr. Ken Carrington.” But who is Carrington? Wilcox’ middle name is Drew. Has Dr. Wilcox, who reportedly claimed to be an heir to the Gillette fortune, simply adopted the last name of the oil-rich family from the long-running American TV series, Dynasty?

What is more troubling is that at about 11 p.m. on August 23, 2015, Wilcox was arrested by Miami-Dade police for allegedly attacking his husband of two and half years, Tek “Weslee” Lim. According to the police report, Weslee (identified in the police report as “Tek”) claimed that Wilcox was drinking and became jealous and tore Weslee’s shirt and scratched the left side of chest. Weslee reported that Wilcox also threw him onto the bed and tried to choke him.

Wilcox was charged with misdemeanor battery. He spent about 24 hours in jail, then he posted bail and was released. As a condition of his release he was ordered to have “no contact” with Weslee. That order was lifted nine days later. The case against Wilcox was subsequently dropped at the end of September. It is unknown if Weslee, like many vulnerable domestic violence victims, refused to cooperate with the prosecution.

Judging from recent social media photos, Wilcox and Weslee remain a couple. It also appears that, despite Wilcox’s long and continuing record of alcohol related arrests, and his recent arrest for trying to choke his husband, he continues to offering counseling services in the Miami area regarding matters relating to substance abuse and domestic violence.

1. The Foreshadowing

In late March, a new Khmer440 poster with the username “sniper_m4” started a topic in our discussion forums about “Being Followed.” Sniper_m4 expressed concern that a tuk tuk driver recently told his wife that he was being followed by Actions pour les Enfants (“APLE”), a well known pedophile-hunting, child protection NGO.

Sniper_m4 was shocked and perplexed by this news that he was being followed by an NGO that combats child sex abuse. He explained that he had been living in Cambodia for five years, after spending three years in Thailand. He worked as a teacher and was married to an educated, middle class Cambodian woman. He had almost no contact with children and led a quiet and boring life in Cambodia, aside from regular visits to a few totally respectable Street 136 hostess bars.

Sniper_m4 wrote that “There is no reason for this investigation . . . . I have nothing to hide and I want this harassment to stop.” He asked the Khmer440 online community for guidance. That’s never a good idea.

Anti-NGO crackpots and paranoid meth-heads abound amongst some segments of Cambodia’s expatriate community. Not surprisingly, sniper_m4’s request for advice on how to avoid “entrapment” by APLE prompted a few genuinely unhelpful responses from Khmer440 keyboard warriors like myself. We briefly mocked him for being a paranoid weirdo, and we pointed out that tuk tuk drivers are never reliable sources of information about anything. Then our online discourse about sniper_m4’s predicament quickly tapered off, and we all went back to discussing local news events, debating Cambodian political developments, and making dick jokes.

2. The Reported Arrest of Eric Erdmann in Phnom Penh

About a month later, things got rather interesting. On April 22, the Khmer language website “Cambodia Express News” reported that Cambodian police, with the assistance of the FBI, had arrested 44 year-old American Eric David Erdmann in Phnom Penh on U.S. charges related to pedophilia. The article included photos of Erdmann, seated in a wheelchair, being pushed out of a building next to Tokyo Barber Shop on Street 278. Erdmann was accompanied by uniformed Cambodian law enforcement personnel and by a white guy in sunglasses who looks just like an FBI agent, assuming that FBI agents in Cambodia enjoy casual Fridays.

The article about Erdmann’s arrest quickly became a hot topic in the Khmer440 discussion forums. Some of us can’t resist gossiping about Westerners who are arrested in Cambodia, especially when there is a good photo of the arrestee’s “perp walk.” Or, in Erdmann’s case, a “perp roll.”

It did not take long before a keen Khmer440 poster found the Facebook page of an Eric Erdmann living in Cambodia, as well as online records of an Eric David Erdman fleeing probation in Multnomah County, Oregon in 2010 after conviction on five felony counts of “Second Degree Encouraging Child Sex Abuse.” That statute covers crimes involving child pornography.

3. Erdmann is un-arrested and lashes out online

Shortly after the article about Erdmann’s arrest hit the Khmer440 discussion forums, another unusual thing happened. “Sniper_m4” jumped into the discussion and declared that “I am Eric Erdmann and this article is a lie.” He demanded that the discussion of his arrest on U.S. sex charges be deleted from Khmer440 or he would sue for defamation, notwithstanding that the owners of Khmer440 can barely pay their own bar tabs.

Erdmann then offered his side of the “arrest” story. He said that he was briefly detained for visa overstay by Cambodian authorities because his passport and visa recently expired. He was then released with instructions to get a new passport and renew his visa.

Erdmann explained, “The FBI was not involved in this at all. Zero, zilch.” He said that a regular U.S. embassy staffer was there simply to look out for his interests. He said that his detention had nothing to do with U.S. sex charges and that this was a “complete falsehood” fabricated by a “hack reporter.” Erdmann also mentioned that he was photographed in a wheelchair because he had broken his leg in a recent accident.

In support of his claim of innocence, Erdmann pointed out that “There are many Eric Erdmanns in America.” He explained, “I am from Wisconsin. Not Oregon. Perhaps the media got their information crossed.”

Erdmann volunteered that he had a criminal record in Wisconsin and Illinois for drunk driving, driving without a license, as well as a record for theft of gasoline from a highway gas station in Illinois. However, he denied ever being charged with any sex crime or any crime in Oregon. He flatly stated that “I have never been to Oregon” and “I am not wanted on sex charges past present or future.”

On April 23, the Cambodia Daily picked up the story. They reported that Erdmann was allegedly wanted on sex charges in Oregon and had been arrested by Khmer immigration police after being caught without a passport. Erdmann told the Cambodia Daily that he had merely overstayed his visa and that allegations of child sex crimes in the U.S. were “a bunch of fucking lies.”

Erdmann’s claims of mistaken identity or mistaken reporting appeared to have some credibility. His Facebook page shows that he really is from Wisconsin, not Oregon. A different Eric Erdmann lives in Portland, Oregon.

Moreover, online records refer to the conviction of Eric David “Erdman” on child sex crimes in Oregon, not “Erdmann.”

Perhaps what was most convincing was that Erdmann was promptly released right after his detention or arrest or whatever it was. He wasn’t in custody, crazily shouting about his innocence through jail bars. He was back at home, posting frequently on Khmer440 and playing violent video games. That’s living the dream of any fortysomething year-old expat in Cambodia.

As proof of his freedom, Erdmann even uploaded a weird hostage-looking photo of himself eating breakfast at home on the same morning that the Cambodia Daily ran its article about his arrest on supposed pedophilia charges.

The FBI and local authorities don’t normally track down American fugitive sex offenders in Cambodia and then immediately release them. Something was off here. It seemed quite possible, even likely, that Erdmann was telling the truth that his brief immigration detention was unrelated to any U.S. sex crimes. Erdmann even related that U.S. embassy personnel had apologized to him and that the embassy was telling third parties that the news of his arrest on sex charges was untrue.

Meanwhile, over the next few days, both the Khmer Times and Cambodia Daily ran articles explaining that local police had simply permitted Erdmann to receive post-arrest treatment at Calmette Hospital for his broken leg, but that Erdmann was nonetheless scheduled to be deported soon due to pedophilia-related charges in the U.S. Erdmann denied these reports. He told the Khmer Times that “I’m not wanted for sex charges” and “I don’t even know where the hell this shit came from.” Erdmann maintained that he was in Wisconsin when the other “Erdman” was arrested on sex charges in Oregon.

Erdmann similarly told the Cambodia Daily, “It would be one thing to say I am arrested for passport and visa overstay . . . But to sit there and make these accusations that I’m some freakin’ pedophile wanted on freaking sex crimes, it’s ridiculous.” Erdmann claimed he was being “lied to by multiple fronts” and that he would be returning to the U.S. voluntarily because his visa and passport expired. He called the Cambodia Daily “an unprofesional media writing a story based off of no facts.”

Over on Khmer440, Erdmann’s denials began to sound rather fishy, and the tide of opinion turned against him as more online information was discovered suggesting that Erdmann a.k.a “sniper_m4” might be the Oregon child sex offender after all.

4. Erdmann’s deportation to Florida

Erdmann left Cambodia on April 27. The Cambodia Daily, quoting local law enforcement officials, reported that Erdmann had been blacklisted and deported and would be met by U.S. authorities in Qatar and then brought back to the U.S.

Two days later, Erdmann re-appeared on Khmer440, posting again as “sniper_m4.” He reiterated that he merely overstayed his visa in Cambodia, wasn’t a sex offender, and that he had traveled freely and voluntarily from Cambodia to Florida, where he was “free as a bird” and “NOT IN FUCKING JAIL.” In a great display of online showmanship, Erdmann even uploaded a photo of himself lying in bed at his parents’ house in Florida, holding a sign that read “F.U. Cambodia Daily.”

Erdmann declared that “Everything that has come out of the Daily has been false so far” and “I started commenting in this post to debunk the news article from Cambodia Daily and I have done that.”

Finally, Erdmann challenged Khmer440’s “fuck tards who want to believe the lies” to meet him face to face when he returns to Cambodia, suggesting that he intends to dispense some sweet ass-kicking justice to anyone who suggests to his face that he is the subject of those Oregon child sex charges. After all, Erdmann is from Wisconsin and has “never been to Oregon,” or so he says.

5. The Oregon child porn prosecution

OK, enough with the foreplay. Let’s get to the salacious stuff and figure out who is telling the truth — Eric Erdmann or the “hack reporters” in Cambodia.

We’ll start with records from Multnomah County, Oregon. According to a court filing, Eric David “Erdman” landed at Portland International Airport on September 3, 2007 on a flight from Bangkok via Tokyo. He told Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) officers that he had been living in Thailand with an older woman he met online. Which is totally crazy, because the whole point of traveling to Thailand for a girlfriend is to get a much younger, hotter one. I digress.

CBP officers found a computer tower in “Erdman’s” luggage. They thought this was odd; people usually just carry laptops around. When officers asked him about the contents of the computer tower, his face turned red. When they asked him for his parents’ address and phone number, he dropped his head onto the baggage belt. The officers told him they were going to seize his computer, and he freaked out and said that he had six months of “work” stored on it.

“Erdman” was free to go, but agents took his computer to their offices in downtown Portland where they searched it the next day. They found more than eighty images of sexually explicit conduct involving children, stored in a subdirectory of a first person shooter video game called “Far Cry.”

“Erdman” was questioned again by federal agents about a week later. He was visibly shaking during that interview and admitted using the “Far Cry” files but denied knowledge of the child pornography. After that interview, he hightailed it back to Thailand.

Almost a year and a half later, on February 2, 2009, an Eric David “Erdman” was indicted by a Multnomah County, Oregon grand jury on 18 separate counts of felony Encouraging Child Sex Abuse in the First Degree, Oregon’s child pornography statute. A warrant for his arrest was issued that day.

On Christmas Day 2009, “Erdman” re-entered the United States from Thailand at Chicago O’Hare Airport. He was promptly arrested at the airport, because he was wanted on the felony charges in Oregon. He also had a 17 year-old warrant for his arrest for theft from a highway gas station in Illinois. The Illinois court correctly spelled his name “Eric D. Erdmann.”

Erdmann agreed to be extradited to Oregon to face prosecution on the child pornography charges. First he was held in the Livingston County, Illinois jail on the theft charge until January 21, 2010. Then he was transported to Multnomah County, Oregon and booked into jail there the same day.

Oregon officials recommended that Erdmann be denied bail because he was a flight risk. He was held in the Multnomah County Jail for the entire duration of the proceedings against him. Erdmann’s trial was eventually set for July 13, 2010.

On the day of trial, Erdmann pled no contest to five lesser charges of felony Encouraging Child Sex Abuse in the Second Degree. A no contest plea means that he did not contest the charges, and he agreed to be convicted and sentenced, without admitting guilt. The remaining charges were dismissed.

Erdmann was sentenced to 120 days in jail (time already served) and three years’ supervised probation. Erdmann specifically agreed to the “sex offender package” — that he would be designated a sex offender and required to register as a sex offender for life.

Erdmann was released from jail that day, and he moved into a halfway house/shelter. He was subject to Oregon’s general terms of probation for three years, like no drugs, no weapons, and don’t leave the state without permission. He also agreed to other specific probation terms, like: (1) complete a sex offender treatment program, (2) register as a sex offender, (3) stay away from schools, parks, and children, (4) don’t look at ANY pornography, (5) meet with a probation officer every Tuesday, and (6) don’t go to any bars, strip clubs, or massage parlors.

To be honest, these probation terms sound like a real drag. Instead of strictly adhering to these terms, Erdmann did the next best thing. He fled to Cambodia — a country with a reputation as a haven for Western pedophiles — and began working as a teacher and frequenting bars in the capital’s red light district.

When Erdmann’s probation officer realized that he vanished, she informed the court that he had violated his probation. Multnomah County Judge Michael McShane issued a warrant for Erdmann’s arrest on December 13, 2010 for violating probation. There has been no subsequent activity in the case. The arrest warrant remains active as of the date of this article.

Erdmann is not listed on Oregon’s online Sex Offender registry. Perhaps sex offender registration in Oregon should not be done on the fucking honor system.

6. How do we know that Eric Erdmann, the guy arrested in Cambodia, is the same guy who fled probation after conviction on child sex crimes in Oregon?

- There is a strong resemblance between photos in Erdmann/sniper_m4’s photobucket account and the online mugshot of the “Eric Erdman” convicted in Multnomah County, Oregon. Erdmann denies he’s the guy, but he sure looks like the same guy here:

- Erdmann’s primary argument of mistaken identity on the Oregon sex charges is, “I’m not from Oregon. I’m from Wisconsin.” The Oregon court records show that the guy caught in Oregon with child pornography was actually from Wisconsin and was just passing through Portland’s airport when he got caught.

- Erdmann posted on Khmer440 as “sniper_m4” that he lived in Thailand for three years before spending the last five years in Cambodia. The guy caught with child pornography in Oregon was returning to the U.S. from Thailand in 2007. He was then arrested at Chicago O’Hare Airport in 2009 after returning from Thailand again.

- Erdmann’s Facebook account, photobucket account, and “sniper_m4” posts on Khmer440 show that he is an aficionado of first person shooter video games. The nervous, red-faced dude caught with child pornography at Portland airport stored that pornography in “Far Cry” gaming files.

- Though Erdmann claims he has never been to Oregon, a user named “sniper_m4” posted on a video game discussion website called “cryengine.com” from 2008 through 2010. His profile lists his location as “Oregon, U.S.A.” He suggested that any lawyers who tried to take his PC would be “shot at.”

- The guy convicted on sex charges in Oregon was born on June 19, 1972. Erdmann volunteered on Khmer440 that he has a criminal record in Wisconsin and Illinois for drunk driving, driving without a license, and theft. Erdmann’s Facebook account says he is from Waukesha County, Wisconsin. Court records show that a local man named Eric D. Erdmann was arrested there numerous times, including for drunk driving and driving without a license. Illinois records show that an Eric D. Erdmann from Wisconsin was arrested there for misdemeanor theft in 1992. All of these records list Erdmann’s date of birth as June 19, 1972, the same date of the birth as the man convicted in Oregon.

- Wisconsin records show that the “Eric D. Erdmann” caught driving without a license there had a street address of 1940 Division St., East Troy, Wisconsin, 53120. Oregon records show that the “Eric David Erdman” caught with child porn there had a street address of 1940 Division St., East Troy, Wisconsin, 53120.

- Although the Oregon child sex charges were filed against an “Eric David Erdman,” this was just a misspelling of the last name “Erdmann.” The defendant in the Oregon case actually filled out several documents by hand where he corrected the misspelling by printing and then signing his own name “Erdmann.” Here is his signature on the 2010 Oregon plea agreement:

This looks an awful lot like “Eric D. Erdmann’s” signature on his 1998 guilty plea for drunk driving in Waukesha County, Wisconsin:

All of these documents rather conclusively show that the Eric David Erdmann a.k.a. “sniper_m4” who was recently deported from Cambodia is the very same fugitive “Eric David Erdman” who was convicted of child pornography charges in Oregon in 2010 and fled his probation after serving jail time there. Erdmann’s repeated claims on Khmer440 and to the press in Cambodia that he has “never been to Oregon” and is “not wanted on sex charges past present or future” were spectacularly untrue.

7. The Money Shot

Erdmann has a lot invested in his lies and his denials of the Oregon child sex offense charges. He told his wife and her family that the news reports were false, such that they might “go after” the journalist who wrote the article.

Erdmann might still try to claim that although he is a 43 year-old thieving, drunk driving, gasoline stealing, violent video game-loving guy named Eric David Erdmann from Wisconsin who once lived in Thailand, he’s NOT the same 43 year-old thieving, drunk driving, gasoline stealing, Thailand-living, violent video game-loving Eric David Erdmann from Wisconsin who got caught with child pornography while passing through Oregon. “Same Same But Different Guy,” Erdmann might say.

If you are a gullible, tinfoil hat wearing nutcase who might be inclined to believe Erdmann, please consider the following final nugget of evidence. The “Eric David Erdman(n)” convicted on child sex charges in Oregon listed his father as a character reference in his bail application. He said his father’s phone number was (941) 637-xxxx. A quick google search shows that this phone number is a “landline” registered to a house located at 1601 Islamorada Blvd. in Punta Gorda, Florida.

Erdmann/Sniper_m4 told us on Khmer440 that his parents live in Florida. In fact, to prove that he was not wanted and was “free as a bird” in America, Erdmann uploaded that photo of himself lying in bed in his parents’ Florida home, holding a sign reading “F.U. Cambodia Daily.”

Erdmann added:

“If I am a fugative that escaped to Cambodia running from child sex charges (according to the Cambodia Daily). Why am I laying in my parents bed and NOT IN FUCKING JAIL?I told you asshats I wasnt wanted. But noooo lets all listen to the dumb fuck daily news. I will be returning to Cambodia soon enough and that asshole reporter who wrote that hit piece better tread lightly. . . . Child sex charges lmao!”

LMAO, indeed. The “location services” on Erdmann’s phone were turned on when he took that photo. If you upload the photo to a simple web service like this one, the geo-tagging data on the photo reveals that it was taken at 1601 Islamorada Blvd. in Punta Gorda, Florida.

That’s right, in an effort to prove to Cambodia Daily assholes and Khmer440 “fuck tards” that he is not the same “Eric David Erdman(n)” who fled probation after a child sex conviction in Oregon, Erdmann uploaded a selfie lying in bed in the exact Florida house where the Oregon defendant told the court that his father could be contacted.

It’s a low-key Thursday night in Phnom Penh. The early evening rains have subsided, and you are meeting a friend for dinner at a respectable Western restaurant. As you walk in to the restaurant, you see a couple quietly eating dinner at a nearby table. It’s an ex-bargirl with her Western husband or boyfriend. But it’s not just any ex-bargirl. It’s one you know.

At first you don’t even recognize her, because you haven’t seen her in a few years, and a lot of ex-bargirls kind of look alike. There are so many older Western males with young Asian females in Cambodia that these couples easily blend into the local scenery. You do a brief double-take as you pass by them. She looks up at you, and then you realize that yes, she is definitely That Girl from That Bar.

By referring to her as an “ex-bargirl,” I do not mean to pass any judgment upon her or upon you. Maybe she worked in a proper bar/restaurant, and she simply served you lunch a few times a week. But maybe she worked at night in a sleazy Street 104 hostess bar. Maybe she’s your ex-lover, and you both passionately dated for a while but couldn’t quite make the relationship work. Maybe she was a doe-eyed cashier, and you just bought her a bunch of lady drinks and masturbated to her Facebook page. Who knows.

In any event, regardless of whatever relationship you once had with this woman, you now have to decide whether to say hello to her and her husband. I consider myself an expert at interacting with bargirls when I encounter them in their natural bar habitats. I have memorized all the perfunctory bargirl introductory questions and answers, in English and Khmer. I can predict most bargirls’ Connect Four moves before they make them. I know exactly how long I should let an older bargirl massage my shoulders before shaking her off so that I’m not socially obligated to buy her a lady drink. (Answer: seven seconds).

But whenever I spot an ex-bargirl somewhere outside her bar, with a husband or boyfriend, it momentarily stuns me. I freeze up. I stare at the ground and start saying to myself, “Don’tlookatthebargirl, Don’tlookathebargirl”. Sort of like when I see handicapped people.

I really have no idea what to do in these situations. Actually, because I live in Las Vegas, I do have a little bit of personal perspective. My hometown friends and I used to visit a few strip clubs every now and then. There’s an unwritten Las Vegas rule that if you ever happen to see a stripper during the daytime eating lunch with her husband at Fatburger, you don’t walk up to her and say, “Hey, Peaches! How have you been! Almost didn’t recognize you without the pole!” This just isn’t done.

So I employ the same aloof strategy whenever I see Cambodian ex-bargirls with their husbands. I “blank” them, as my British friends would say. I think this is actually the courteous thing to do. Put yourself in the husband’s situation. He married a woman who used to work in a Phnom Penh bar serving Western guys. He probably doesn’t want every outing with his wife to be a series of meet and greets with all the white dudes she knows from her bar-working days. Most of the white guys she knows probably either slept with her or tried to sleep with her. That’s what white dudes do in Cambodia.

Put yourself in the girl’s situation. She has moved on from her bar life and gotten married. Does she want her husband to be constantly reminded of her bar-working past by seeing a parade of ex-customers saying hello to her? Probably not.

You should also keep in mind that some of these ex-bargirls are quite skilled at the art of deception. Her new husband may not even know that she ever worked at That Bar Where You Met Her. She may have convinced him that she learned English in a monastery from some surprisingly ribald monks.

If you dare to say hello to her and her husband, you might quickly get dragged into her web of deceit. What if her husband promptly asks where you met her? Should you answer truthfully? Any comment you make in his presence could be fraught with peril, because the life story she once told you might be completely different from the one she has told him. Imagine if you say something innocuous to her like “How’s your sister?” and then her husband turns to her and says “I thought you were an only child.” That could be awkward.

On the other hand, this woman is a human being. She has feelings. You may have enjoyed a friendly relationship with her, in some form or another, over a number of years. Isn’t it terribly impolite to ignore her and her husband just because you met her in a bar? Maybe she really wants to say hello and to proudly introduce her new husband to you. Heck, maybe the husband is trapped in night after night of tedious conversation with a decades-younger Cambodian wife, and he’s dying to chat with anyone about any topic other than the weather, her stomachaches, and the quality of her fish soup.

Nevertheless, when faced with this situation, I always err on the side of discretion and pretend not to know the girl. I act like I’m in a spy thriller and I’m a CIA agent who doesn’t want to expose my source. If I sense that she is really trying to get my attention, I might reciprocate with a nod and a half-smile of recognition from across the room, like a Seinfeld-esque “funeral hello.” The husband can probably see that. Maybe that’s worse.

On a related note, I have noticed that at least three ex-bargirl acquaintances have stealthily “unfriended” me on Facebook in the last year. I’m quite sure I did nothing to offend them; I think they just got married and decided that it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to stay in touch. I respect that. I wish them well. I just hope I don’t ever run into them with their new husbands at Rahu.

Gavinmac

Oh crap, it happened again. Just yesterday, Cambodian police announced that they are searching for a 48 year-old British man in connection with the presumed murder of a Cambodian woman. Apparently, the suspect fled his hotel in quite a haste after allegedly killing a “lady visitor” and stuffing her dead body under his bed.

The details of this particular incident may be revolting, but sadly, the report of a Westerner being implicated in a crime in Cambodia is no longer surprising at all.

Every time I return to Cambodia after a few months away from the country, I’m amazed by the rapidly increasing number of Westerners who are visiting or living in the Kingdom. Cambodia now welcomes over four million foreign tourists annually – six times as many tourists as it received just ten years ago.

It’s not just the tourist numbers that are increasing. Thanks to a rising Thai baht and some cockblocking visa restrictions implemented across the border in Thailand, the number of expatriates moving to Cambodia has also swelled in recent years. Unfortunately, while the quantity of foreigners in Cambodia continues to multiply, the quality of foreigners visiting and moving to Cambodia appears to have declined.

Hardly a day goes by now without a sensational article in the local press about a Western lowlife engaging in some embarrassing or criminal behavior that seems to cast all foreign visitors to Cambodia in a negative light.

But if you read those news articles and you take just a cursory look at the Western meth heads, burnouts, booze hounds, bums, and beggars wandering the streets of Phnom Penh, you will quickly realize that Cambodia doesn’t have a general problem with “foreigners” causing trouble in the country.

Cambodia has a specific problem with foreign men.

Think about it. Foreign women don’t flee criminal charges
in their home countries and move to Cambodia to buy sex from teenagers, abuse drugs and alcohol, molest orphans, and assist suicides in Kampot.

Foreign men do that.

You never see local newspaper photos of a crazy foreign woman setting fire to her apartment building while wearing only a Speedo.

You don’t read about foreign women in Cambodia glassing bargirls, stealing Wild Turkey from supermarkets, strangling Vietnamese prostitutes, or setting up fake charities to get access to vulnerable garbage dump kids. Foreign men in Cambodia do that.

You rarely see foreign women driving drunk and killing Khmers or hopping around ancient temples with their peckers hanging out. If a Cambodian hotel owner rents a room to a foreign woman, he can be relatively confident that she’s not going to smash up the hotel, burglarize the other rooms, or leave a dead hooker under the bed.

As far as I know, Cambodian police have never arrested any Western women for stealing cars,
dealing drugs, raping masseuses, robbing banks, sodomizing beggar kids, cutting off the thumbs of local thieves, or wrapping their dead roommates in tarp and sleeping with their decomposing bodies. Western men in Cambodia get arrested for that stuff. Pretty often.

Am I suggesting that foreign women in Cambodia are perfect? No. They are sometimes seen plodding around in ill-fitting backpacker garb and trying to pay 900 riel for a tuk tuk ride. But by and large (and I do mean large), the foreign women you meet in Cambodia are decent, law-abiding people who are here to do something positive with their lives. A foreign woman who moves to Cambodia almost always does so for a noble purpose, like working, volunteering, or supporting her man. In the meantime, the most popular reason for foreign men to move to Cambodia in 2013 was “could no longer afford the booze and hookers in Pattaya.”

Do you know what else foreign women almost never do in Cambodia? Die. Okay, every now and then you may hear about a drug overdose by a honeymooning bride, but that’s quite rare.

Self-destructive foreign men, on the other hand, bite the dust in Cambodia with alarming frequency. They jump from buildings and leap from bridges. They hang themselves, stab themselves, shoot themselves, and drink themselves to death.

Most commonly, they die from drug related “heart attacks” in Sihanoukville or on Phnom Penh’s Street 51, where the Grim Reaper stalks the notorious Walkabout Hotel.

Am I suggesting that every foreign man in Cambodia is a sexually deviant, alcoholic jailbird who will inevitably harm himself or someone else with his disgusting and dangerous behavior? No, not every one. But it cannot be denied that all of the raping, killing, stealing, and dying by foreign dudes in Cambodia inflicts untold suffering upon the Cambodians who are victimized by their crimes, not to mention the burden on local authorities who have to clean up the foreign corpses and ship them back to Croydon.

There are so many undesirable foreign dudes menacing Cambodia now that the Cambodian government should really do something to solve this problem. Here are 7 ways it could do so:

1. Impose gender-based visa fees

At the moment, Cambodian tourist visas cost $20 per month. Ordinary (business) visas cost $25 per month. Here’s my proposal. Starting immediately, entry visas should be totally free. For women. Visa fees for men should be doubled, to $40 a month for tourist visas and $50 a month for business visas.

Hear me out on this. While I have not seen any statistics showing what percent of foreign visitors to Cambodia are male, it is undoubtedly well over 50%. My guess is that the Western expat community may be as much as 75% male.

This male-female visitor ratio is unnatural. If a bar or nightclub attracts disproportionately too many dudes, it will impose a cover charge for men and offer “ladies night” promotions to women. This prevents the place from turning into an undesirable nightly sausagefest. If the strategy works for bars, why shouldn’t countries do the same thing?

Doubling visa fees for men and eliminating fees for women will generate substantially more revenue for Cambodia, because there are more male visitors than females. Instead of 4 million annual visitors paying $20 each ($80 million), there will be about 2.5 million male visitors paying $40 each ($100 million), and 1.5 million females entering for free.

The change would have absolutely no financial impact on all the normal male-female couples who visit Cambodia as legitimate tourists. The husband’s visa costs would double and the wife’s visa costs would be eliminated, so that’s a wash.

The increase would only detrimentally impact all the “lone wolf” males who visit Cambodia each year– the exact demographic that causes most of the trouble once they get into the country. Doubling their visa fees would offset the costs of hosting these high risk, death–prone visitors, and it might dissuade some of them from showing up at all. Any single dude who is deterred from visiting Cambodia due to a $20 increase in his visa fee probably wouldn’t have contributed much to the local economy anyway.

What about the cost of extending an ordinary (business) visa to remain in Cambodia for a full year? Right now that costs about $285. Under my proposal, the one year visa extension would be free for women but cost twice as much (about $570) for men. This would help attract desirable female expatriates, while simultaneously deterring immigration from a less desirable, oversaturated group (i.e., single dudes who can’t afford $570 per year to stay in the country).

You may think, “This idea is crazy. Cambodia would never implement deliberately discriminatory visa fees based on gender.” Why not? Cambodia already imposes weird age restrictions and financial requirements on foreign men who wish to marry Cambodian women; discriminatory rules that are not imposed against foreign women who wish to marry Cambodian men.

Raising visa fees for foreign men would be a simple and effective way for Cambodia to increase revenue by tens of millions of dollars and control immigration from a particular, problematic subset of foreign visitors that Cambodian law already discriminates against. The only remaining question is whether some skint expat dudes would try to save the $570 by applying for their visa extensions disguised as women, like Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari in “Bosom Buddies.” Well, of course they would.

2. Ban foreign men from teaching Cambodian children

Many of the foreign men in Cambodia support themselves by teaching English to Cambodian children. It seems that almost any Westerner can find a teaching job in Cambodia, even with no prior experience or qualifications. Disturbingly, there have been numerous incidents of Western men getting jobs as teachers in Cambodia even though they have prior records in their home countries of sex crimes against children. One American serial pedophile told the FBI that he came to Cambodia specifically because it was an easy place for a convicted sex offender to find work as a teacher.

It’s not feasible for Cambodian schools or the Cambodian government to conduct worldwide background checks to determine which foreign teachers are prior sex offenders. The only surefire way to protect Cambodian children is to ban foreign men from teaching them at all.

Children are loud, annoying, germ rockets who are best cared for by women anyway. It’s quite unnatural for an adult male to ever want to spend time with any children other than his own. Any white guy who randomly shows up in Cambodia to “help the children” should probably be kept as far away from kids as humanly possible. If you had a child, would you rather leave the kid with an unknown Western woman for the day, or leave the kid with the next white dude you find walking along Phnom Penh’s riverside? I thought so.

I’m actually surprised that a ban on foreign men teaching kids hasn’t happened yet. When foreigners do bad things to Cambodians, the Cambodian government usually responds with a sweeping ban of whatever activity led to the abuse. When news broke of abusive marriages between Korean men and Cambodian women, Cambodia simply banned Korean men from marrying its women. When Malaysian employers mistreated some Cambodian maids, Cambodia banned Malaysian recruiters from hiring more maids. Following reports of child trafficking, Cambodia banned foreigners from adopting Cambodian children.

I realize that most foreign male teachers in Cambodia are not rapists or child molesters. But there have been enough horrific reports of sexual abuse of Cambodian children by foreign male teachers that ban-happy Cambodia should just forbid foreign men from teaching kids.

Why can’t the foreign dudes in Cambodia teach English to adults, while foreign women teach the children? If schools can’t find enough Western women to teach Cambodian kids, they can hire Filipinas. The kids may end up speaking English with a silly Filipina accent, but at least they won’t be molested by their teachers.

3. Only give long term visas to foreigners with jobs, businesses, or spouses in Cambodia

For the first quarter century following the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia had no reason to restrict immigration from Western visitors, because no Westerner in his right mind wanted to move here. Times have changed though. The standard of living in Cambodia has improved in recent years, while economic conditions in some Western countries have significantly deteriorated.

Many Western men now view Cambodia as a desirable place to live. They may tell you that they enjoy Cambodia for the “freedom,” which apparently includes the freedom to drink their own blood and eat their own shit.

Unfortunately, Cambodia still lets absolutely any Westerner stay in the country forever, even if he is unemployed, homeless, and begging on the streets. Shockingly, Cambodia even lets Western pedophiles remain in the country after they have committed sex crimes against Cambodian children, leading to their subsequent arrests for abusing Cambodian children again and again and again.

It’s time for Cambodia to tighten its visa requirements and deport its foreign pedophiles. Send the undesirable Western dudes packing for the Philippines.

4. Interrogate and search single male travelers on arrival

I’m a single Western male who has flown into Phnom Penh airport about two dozen times. No Cambodian immigration officer has ever asked me a single question. No customs officer has ever searched my bag.

There’s a scene in the movie “Taken” where Liam Neeson’s character impersonates a French intelligence officer and tells some Albanian gangsters, “You think because we are tolerant that we are weak and helpless.” The utter indifference displayed by Cambodian customs and immigration officers creates a first impression among visitors that local law enforcement is inept and that “no one cares what I do here.” This nonchalance emboldens foreigners to misbehave once they enter the country.

Cambodia should put on a show at the airport to make foreign dudes believe they have arrived in a country with competent law enforcement that pays attention to what visitors do here. As passengers exit the plane, women and couples should be sent to the normal immigration line. Creepy single guys should be referred to a special line, where an immigration officer may ask them questions like, “What’s the purpose of your trip to Cambodia?” “How long have you lived in Thailand?” and “Ewww, why is your passport covered in vaseline?”

I sometimes get questioned and treated like a sex tourist by U.S. immigration officers when I return from Cambodia. As far as I’m concerned, that mildly humiliating experience should start in Cambodia itself. How will Cambodian immigration officers decide which foreign men to interrogate? That’s easy. Guys traveling alone. Guys wearing tank tops. Guys who look like Steve Buscemi.

Sex tourists are like cockroaches. They hate sunlight, both literally and figuratively. Shine a light on their activities by asking them questions on arrival and looking through all their luggage.

The foreigners who commit sex crimes in Cambodia are invariably found in possession of kiddie porn, dildos, handcuffs, Rohypnol, and other creepy shit.

When you find a foreigner entering the country with an entire suitcase full of condoms and Viagra, remind him that it’s illegal to have sex with children. Watch how he stammers and avoids eye contact and mutters some nonsense about being here to “see the temples.”

Even if you let the guy into the country, he’ll know that you know that he’s a disgusting pervert. This may make him less likely to misbehave during his trip. Shoplifting is deterred when store employees simply say “hello” to customers who enter, because potential shoplifters know that they’ve been noticed. Same idea.

Don’t tell me that Cambodia doesn’t have the resources to question and search foreign male visitors. Cambodians are naturally inquisitive people. It makes no sense that immigration officers who should be scrutinizing foreign visitors remain mute during every encounter, but I can’t walk ten feet down the street without a tuk tuk driver asking me where I’m going and what I’m doing. Cambodia should just deputize a bunch of volunteer motodops to work at the airport and tell them, “Go ask those white guys a lot of annoying personal questions and search their bags. Anything illegal you find, you can keep.”

5. Stop giving visas on arrival to Africans

The most important rule of a successful modern immigration policy is “Never let in immigrants from countries poorer than your own.” Very few countries are poorer than Cambodia, and most of those shitholes are located right in the middle of Africa.

Cambodia has seen an influx of dodgy African males during the last decade, from lovely places like Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Guinea, and Cameroon. Do you know why so many African dudes are moving to Cambodia? Because virtually no other country will let them in.

African men probably behave even worse in Cambodia than Western men. Sure, they may not be accomplished sex criminals, but the Africans in Cambodia have shown a strong aptitude for drug
trafficking, fraud, robbery, and the occasional kidnap and murder.

Africans who arrive in Cambodia also regularly overstay their visas, because, let’s face it, the squalor of Phnom Penh is a fucking paradise when compared to Ouagadougou.

I propose the following solution. Every year the United Nations publishes the “Human Development Index,” a report that basically ranks all the countries on earth from nicest to crappiest. Cambodia is usually ranked about 140th, ahead of only the most screwed up countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Cambodian immigration officials should just look at that report every year and draw a big red line right under Cambodia. Anybody from a country listed below Cambodia should be denied a visa on arrival.

6. Criminalize extramarital sex between foreign men and local women

Did you know that in Vietnam, it’s illegal for a foreign man to share a hotel room with a Vietnamese woman unless they are married? Lao law similarly prohibits sexual contact between foreigners and Lao nationals if they are not married. Do some people break those laws? Of course. Forbidden sex is totally hot. It’s hotter than make up sex, and almost as hot as conjugal visit sex.

But these laws are still a major disincentive to bottomfeeding sex tourists, who always prefer the path of least pussy resistance. Vietnam and Laos both have warm weather, cheap beer, and beautiful women. Yet, thanks to these laws, they are not overrun with sex-crazed Western men like parts of Cambodia and Thailand.

Cambodian law already restricts marriage between foreign men and local women, so why not announce a few new laws restricting sex and cohabitation as well? Even if the laws prove impossible to enforce, their mere existence may slow down the tide of horny foreign men parading nightly between Street 104 and Street 136.

7. May I suggest the occasional civil war?

Cambodia’s absolute best hope of quickly clearing out its foreign dude debris would be if its ongoing election protests suddenly turn violent. Nothing will scare off the junkies and sex tourists like a nice, loud civil war and then a decade of U.N. oversight and artificially high prices.

It wouldn’t even have to be a full blown civil war. All you need is enough violence and unrest for the U.K. Foreign Office to advise against travel to Cambodia. As soon as that happens, British travel insurance will be invalidated in Cambodia. This is important, because British tourists never go anywhere without travel insurance. Few things terrify a Welshman more than the thought of having to spend his own money to see a doctor. Trust me, if a few bombs go off and the Foreign Office blacklists Cambodia, virtually all of the shirtless Brits in Sihanoukville will quickly decamp to Bognor Regis.

And when the British government advises against travel to Cambodia, the U.S. State Department will quickly follow suit, because they don’t want to be sued by some dumb American who gets shot in the ass and then complains that no one warned him that civil wars are dangerous.

Soon the sleazy French, the kinky Germans, and the drunken Australians will all disappear too. Yes, a bloody civil war that tears Cambodia apart would be totally worth it, if it meant I’d never have to see another dude like this guy basking outside Paddy Rice.

Gavinmac is a foreign dude who spends far too much time in Cambodia. His other “7 Reasons” articles can be found here.

Nathan Hansford, an Australian businessman working in Thailand who reportedly “disappeared” several months ago, has been found in Cambodia, according to a statement from his family. The Sydney Morning Herald reported last week that Hansford went missing from his Thai wife in Bangkok in December and that he had no contact with his family in Australia since then. Hansford’s sister arrived in Bangkok to look for him on March 4, at which point Thai authorities began searching for him as well.

Hansford’s family now reports that Hansford has been found in Cambodia, where he was suffering from “amnesia.” The statement from Hansford’s family notably does does not say: (1) where Hansford was found in Cambodia (Phnom Penh hospital, Siem Reap guesthouse, or Sihanoukville hostess bar?); (2) whether Hansford received any medical treatment for his amnesia or whether his amnesia is self-diagnosed; (3) whether his alleged amnesia-causing but non-debilitating traffic accident occurred in Cambodia, Thailand, or Narnia, or (4) whether Hansford entered Cambodia before or after the press reported last week that Thai authorities had started looking for him.

Adding to the intrigue is that Hansford worked in the financial services industry in Asia for many years, specifically in “cash management.” Cambodia has long had a reputation as a haven for Western fugitives, including those who have committed financial crimes in other countries.

Apparently, no reporters have yet been able interview Hansford or any member of his family regarding his whereabouts over the last four months or the circumstances of how he was found in Cambodia. Hansford’s family has instead requested “privacy” so that Hansford has the “time and space to return to his full health.”

Did you encounter Nathan Hansford in Cambodia during the last four months? Do you sometimes suffer from amnesia in Cambodia, or do you wish that you did? Feel free to comment below or join the discussion here.

Gavinmac

Monday’s edition of the Phnom Penh Post included an article about Sebastian Reuiji, a Dutch convicted pedophile who was recently released from police custody in Siem Reap province. Apparently, Reuji will not be deported from Cambodia, because Cambodian authorities often inexplicably allow known convicted foreign pedophiles to remain in the country to abuse Cambodian children again and again and again and again.

The Post’s article about Reuiji also included a brief update about Jason Todd Baumbach, a 45 year-old American from Burton, Michigan. Baumbach was arrested in Phnom Penh in September 2008 on charges of having sex with a thirteen year-old Cambodian girl. The press reported that Baumbach had known the girl for over a year and had a long term sexual relationship with her. Baumbach reportedly gained access to the girl by paying her school fees and asking her impoverished parents to allow him to act as her adoptive father.

In March 2009, Baumbach was sentenced by a Cambodian court to a term of thirteen years in prison. He was also ordered to pay $5,000 in compensation to his victim’s family. His lengthy prison sentence was imposed over the objection of his lawyer, Chap Keo, who simultaneously argued that Baumbach and the girl never had sex and that the girl’s family had given Baumbach permission to marry her when she turned eighteen.

Disturbingly, Baumbach’s thirteen year-old Cambodian victim may not be the only child he sexually abused. A Spanish child protection NGO reported in 2009 that Baumbach was wanted by Thai police for abusing a minor in Thailand in 2007, but he fled to Cambodia before Thai police could arrest him.

Baumbach currently resides at Prey Sar prison, located on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Monday’s update on Baumbach’s case in the Post stated that the Supreme Court of Cambodia recently “upheld the seven-year imprisonment of US national Jason Todd Baumbach.” This is rather confusing, because Baumbach’s original sentence was reported to be thirteen years, not seven years. If the Cambodian Supreme Court has now changed that sentence to seven years, then the article should have said that the court “reduced” or “slashed” Baumbach’s sentence, not “upheld” it.

Baumbach’s original thirteen year sentence would have kept him in prison until 2021 or 2022, roughly seven years from now. Perhaps that’s what the Post reporter meant; that the Supreme Court has upheld the remaining seven years of Baumbach’s original sentence. If that’s not what he meant, and if the court reduced Baumbach’s sentence from thirteen years to seven, he could be released in 2015 or 2016, depending on whether he receives credit for time served from the date of his September 2008 arrest.

Regardless of whether Baumbach is getting out in 2015, 2016, or 2022, it appears that he, his Michigan family, and possibly even his former victim may be making big plans for his release. Baumbach recently announced via Facebook that he is engaged to local woman identified only as “Srey Pov,” a common Cambodian given name which literally means “the youngest girl.”

Baumbach and his fiancee have a joint Facebook “engagement page” stating that they met in August 2007. This is consistent with press reports that Baumbach had known his 13 year-old victim for over a year prior to his September 2008 arrest.

From her Facebook profile photos, Baumbach’s fiancee appears to be about 18 to 20 years old. His sexual abuse victim was reported to be 13 years old when he was arrested in 2008; she would be about 19 years old now.

(Note: K440 has disguised Srey Pov’s appearance.)

Additionally, Baumbach has commented on Facebook that he and “Srey Pov” have had a “tacit agreement for years” to get married. Baumbach’s lawyer argued in 2009 that the family of Baumbach’s 13 year-old victim had agreed to allow him to marry her when she turned eighteen.

In many countries, convicted sex offenders are prohibited from having contact with their victims, especially child victims, while serving their sentences. If Baumbach’s fiancee is his former 13 year-old sexual abuse victim, then it appears that they have had ongoing contact and a continuing romantic “relationship” throughout the duration of his imprisonment in Cambodia. If that is the case, Baumbach may have continued to exercise the same creepy psychological control over her that a 45 year-old sexual predator would be expected to have over the impoverished, teenage victim of his sexual abuse.

Remarkably, comments on Baumbach’s Facebook page also reveal that many of his friends and family members back in Michigan are quite supportive of his engagement and pending nuptials. A number of his Facebook friends “liked” his engagement announcement or posted “Congrats!” A relative named Kate Baumbach even commented that Baumbach would be a sympathetic figure on the American television talk show circuit. She posted, “Please tell me you will write a book after we close the current chapter and your boots hit MI soil…or snow since I’d like it to be soon and we are white washed here. I will help with promotion and publication Oprah is no longer on but I envision you on someone’s couch telling your tale to a dismayed studio audience. Congrats!”

Oprah Winfrey’s show may no longer be on the air, but we all know that Baumbach’s sleazy tale is much better suited for Jerry Springer. He responded to “Kate’s” Facebook post by saying, “Thanks! A book should be inevitable but the publication date will likely remain undetermined for a good while since the scope and angle have not yet solidified, however, I appreciate the encouragement and future promotion offer.” It’s rather scary to think that the “scope” of Baumbach’s book is “not yet solidified.” Is he planning to sexually abuse more children and write about that?

The logistics of how Baumbach plans to marry his young Cambodian fiancee remain unclear. In a refreshing change from usual Cambodian protocol, Baumbach is scheduled to be deported from Cambodia at the conclusion of his prison sentence. He would probably find it quite difficult to arrange a fiancee visa for his bride to be to join him to marry in the United States, given the nature and history of their romantic “relationship.”

Moreover, there is a possibility that Baumbach could still face further criminal charges for child sex crimes after he is deported from Cambodia. If the aforementioned 2009 report from a Spanish NGO is correct that Baumbach fled Thailand in 2007 to avoid arrest for abusing a minor there, Baumbach could be extradited to Thailand for prosecution after serving his sentence in Cambodia.

If his alleged abuse of the minor in Thailand was sexual in nature, he could also be prosecuted by the U.S. for that conduct under the 2003 “PROTECT Act,” a law which criminalizes child sex offenses committed by American citizens in foreign countries. There is also a remote possibility that the U.S. government could try to prosecute Baumbach under the “PROTECT Act” for the same sex offense for which he has already served time in Cambodia, although such a prosecution would face numerous legal hurdles and likely be hampered by a lack of cooperation from his Cambodian victim, to whom Baumbach may now be engaged.

Do you you have any thoughts or opinions on Jason Baumbach’s engagement? Please feel free to comment below or join the forum discussion here.

Gavinmac

Gavinmac ponders the murder of William Bryan Glenn in Cambodia and asks whether the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh was at fault for his homicide

Last week, the expatriate community in Cambodia learned of the shocking murder of an American teacher in Phnom Penh. The body of William Bryan Glenn, a 43 year-old native of Mississippi, was found dumped on the outskirts of the capital during the early morning of July 9.

The perpetrators remain at large, and the motive for Glenn’s killing is unknown. What is known, however, is that the murder was particularly brutal. Glenn was savagely beaten and strangled, and then his body was wrapped in a curtain and tossed in a garbage heap.

Glenn had only lived in Cambodia for about two months, after previously teaching in Thailand and China. Glenn’s estranged Thai wife, Nittaya Glenn, told the Cambodia Daily that Glenn had called her many times to tell her that he was afraid of certain Cambodian people and wanted to leave the country quickly. Mrs. Glenn offered to buy her husband a plane ticket to China.

Mrs. Glenn said that Glenn went to the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh on July 7 to get extra passport pages because he wanted to leave Cambodia immediately for China. Obtaining extra passport pages is normally a routine process that takes about 30 minutes.

It is unknown how long Glenn was in the U.S. Embassy on July 7. He apparently did not get the extra passport pages. In fact, according to his wife, Glenn told her that he was worried because the U.S. Embassy actually confiscated his passport. This made it impossible for Glenn to leave Cambodia, and he was brutally murdered less than 48 hours later.

There are only a few reasons why a U.S. embassy would revoke or confiscate an American citizen’s passport. One of those reasons is the existence of a criminal warrant for the arrest of that citizen back in the United States. U.S. embassies will often revoke the passport of an American citizen wanted for crimes in America, and then offer to issue a new limited passport valid only for travel to the U.S. This is a way that the government pressure fugitives to return to the United States to meet their obligations, thus avoiding the expense and difficulties of extraditing these fugitives from foreign lands.

The Phnom Penh Post has reported that Glenn was, in fact, wanted in the United States for “drugs charges.” A Cambodian police official confirmed to the Post that the U.S. embassy kept Glenn’s passport because he was a “wanted criminal.” The Mississippi press now reports that Glenn was wanted there for missing a 2002 trial date on charges of third offense DUI and manufacturing methamphetamine.

The embassy’s revocation of Glenn’s passport over these 12 year-old drug and DUI charges would been devastating to his efforts to flee whoever was hunting him. Obviously, without a passport, Glenn could not leave Cambodia. The sudden loss of his passport would have also impeded his ability to move to other accommodation in Cambodia in order to evade his pursuers. Most hotels and guesthouses in Cambodia demand a passport when a foreigner checks in, and the hotel staff them verifies the Cambodian visa contained therein.

Revoking Glenn’s passport would have also made it harder for Glenn to rent a car or motorbike to leave Phnom Penh, because rental agencies usually demand the original passport as collateral. Revoking Glenn’s passport would have also prevented him from engaging in certain banking transactions to obtain funds he may have needed to flee the city.

Importantly, the U.S. Embassy’s revocation of Glenn’s passport also invalidated Glenn’s lawful visa status in Cambodia, as the Cambodian visa is linked to the passport and the visa sticker is affixed to a page in the passport. Without a valid Cambodian visa, Glenn might be been less likely to seek needed assistance from Cambodian police.

A passportless American in a foreign country is somewhat paralyzed and helpless. A passportless American in a small foreign country who is being pursued by murderous foreign nationals is a sitting duck. William Glenn, blocked by his own government in his attempt to flee Cambodia, was brutally beaten and strangled to death here less than 48 hours later.

Volume 7 of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual states:

“The U.S. Department of State and our embassies and consulates abroad have no greater responsibility than the protection of U.S. citizens overseas.”

Last year, during remarks at a U.S. citizen “town hall” meeting in Siem Reap, U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia William Todd stated:

My Embassy colleagues and I work to promote U.S. business, provide humanitarian assistance, strengthen diplomatic ties with our host nation counterparts, and much more. Of our many responsibilities, however, none is more important than serving our fellow American citizens. Your safety, health, and welfare are our number one priorities, and that’s why we traveled to Siem Reap to meet with you today. I even met with the tourism police in Siem Reap today to stress to them the high-level of attention that the U.S. Embassy places on protecting U.S. citizens.

Did the U.S. embassy make the safety and welfare of William Glenn its “number one priority” on July 7, 2014, when it denied him simple passport services that would have allowed him to flee a murderous foreign threat? Did the embassy place a “high level of attention” on protecting Glenn when it revoked his passport and pushed him back out into the streets of Phnom Penh, where he was viciously murdered within 48 hours?

The answer to both questions is obviously no. The U.S. Embassy’s highest priority on July 7 was not “protecting” or “serving” its citizen William Bryan Glenn, but punishing him for his alleged prior involvement with drugs in the United States more than a decade ago. The U.S. embassy put the U.S. Justice Department’s policy of relentlessly pursuing drug criminals ahead of the U.S. State Department’s own policy of having “no greater responsibility than the protection of U.S. citizens overseas.”

The manufacture of methamphetamine is undoubtedly a serious problem in America. But an arrest warrant for an American citizen on a 12 year-old drug or drunk driving charge should not also serve as that citizen’s death warrant, if he finds himself overseas and in need of passport services to flee a foreign threat. All American citizens deserve the same protection from their government when traveling in foreign lands, regardless of whatever legal skeletons they may have in their closets back home. A U.S. embassy’s deliberate obstruction of an American citizen’s attempt to leave a country where that citizen feels unsafe is disgraceful and contrary to U.S. State Department policy.

Some may argue that U.S. embassy personnel in Cambodia probably had no way of knowing of any threats to William Glenn’s life. But Glenn wasn’t just any U.S. citizen, whose troubles were completely unknown to the U.S. embassy. Cambodian police have reported that U.S. law enforcement agents requested Cambodian cooperation in monitoring Glenn as a “person of interest” in a criminal investigation. The U.S. embassy personnel who were monitoring Glenn as an alleged drug criminal would have known that drug criminals often get themselves mixed up in dangerous life-or-death situations. Glenn, while being monitored by U.S. embassy personnel, was murdered, quite literally, “on their watch.”

Moreover, Glenn was reportedly rather vocal with his Thai wife about his fear of remaining in Cambodia. It is likely that, at the moment he was informed by embassy staff of the revocation of his passport, he would have been equally vocal, if not positively frantic, with embassy staff about his urgent need to leave.

A full investigation should be conducted into the revocation of William Glenn’s passport and what transpired when Glenn visited the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh on July 7. Interactions between citizens and consular staff at the embassy in Phnom Penh usually happen in a large hall, with each communication being spoken (or shouted) through bulletproof glass, within earshot of all the other people who are waiting to speak to consular officers. There may have been witnesses to the exchange between Glenn and the consular staff. There are undoubtedly surveillance cameras in the room where the interaction took place, and there may be audio recordings as well.

We should also ask: Is it the policy of U.S. embassy consular staff to inquire into an American citizen’s possible urgent life-or-death need to use a passport before they revoke it? If that isn’t the policy, then it should be. Changing the policy now would be too late to save the life of William Bryan Glenn, but it might save the life of the next American citizen with an old criminal warrant who finds himself in danger overseas and in need of passport services to flee a foreign threat.

Gavinmac

Click here to discuss the murder of William Bryan Glenn in the K440 forums.

Peter was the first real friend I ever made in Cambodia. I’m sure that those of you who only knew Peter’s internet persona probably think he was just a petty, temperamental bastard online. He was much more than that. He was also a petty, temperamental bastard in real life — but in a strangely charming and likable way.

Sometime around 2005, I started posting a lot on Khmer440, but I deliberately avoided meeting anyone from the website, because back then I thought that meeting dudes through the internet was totally gay. The only poster I was interested in meeting was the website’s admin, “keeping_it_riel.” He seemed witty and intelligent, and he had a gift for making up hilarious new terms to lightheartedly insult other posters. Also, he had started moving some of my forum posts to the Khmer440 front page, which sort of made me feel like a real writer. Peter/KiR was passionate about Khmer440’s front page content, and he always believed that those articles, not the discussion forums, were the “essence” of Khmer440.

Peter and I exchanged phone numbers, and then we exchanged texts for a few nights before I built up the nerve to meet him in person. For some reason, he proposed meeting at “Soho 2” bar, which was a weird upstairs bar located on the ass end of the Street 51 strip. The bar’s only redeeming quality was that the staff wore sexy white nurse’s uniforms.

I walked up the grungy staircase to Soho 2 and saw Peter sitting at the bar. He was the only customer in there, of course, because stairs are like Kryptonite to Street 51 sexpats. Peter smiled and introduced himself. He then told me that we had to leave immediately, because he had a bad history with the barmaid standing three feet away.

This would be a recurring theme of my future meetings with Peter. He would sometimes veto whatever bar I proposed meeting at, because he hated the owner, or because he was afraid of running into an expat there with whom he was squabbling. We’d often end up getting together at crappy “out of the way” bars with no other customers, like Nightlife or Barbados.

I remember that in 2006 he excitedly urged me to meet him at a new bar on St. 136, which he claimed was a well decorated and classy bar, with attractive, but “low key” hostesses. The name of that bar? Bogey and Bacall! Shortly after our outing there, Peter took a dislike to one of the bar’s co-owners, David Fletcher. He started digging up dirt on Fletcher’s past, and then exposed him on Khmer440 as a UK sex offender.

That was Peter. One day he might be praising you and your bar, the next day he’d be launching an aggressive online campaign to ruin your life. You never knew what might trigger that; Fletch probably served him a warm beer or something.

To be friends with Peter meant that, from time to time, he would stop talking to you for some incredibly silly reason. Staying on his good side took constant diplomacy. He was so easily offended that it bordered on comical.

If you walked into a crowded bar, and you didn’t see him and say hello, he might take that as a snub and stop speaking to you for months. Few can forget the infamous incident when someone dared open up Garage Bar for half a night over the Khmer New Year break without calling Peter. I think he boycotted Garage for a year over that one.

I once arranged a dinner with about six other Khmer440 posters, but I didn’t invite Peter, because he was seriously feuding with half of them at the time. When Peter later heard about the dinner, he sent me a one word private message, which read, “Cunt.”

Nonetheless, I always made the effort to get back in Peter’s good graces, because he was funny and interesting, and well, shit, I knew I didn’t want to be on his bad side. Involving Peter in group outings was a perilous proposition, so we usually met for a meal or drinks one-on-one. I always enjoyed the time we spent together. He was insightful about Cambodia, and he had a wickedly funny sense of humor and an unparalleled way with words.

Peter could speak knowledgeably about anything: music, football, politics, you name it. But truth be told, when we got together, we mostly gossiped about expats and Khmer440 posters. If you are a Khmer440 poster reading this, then Peter and I undoubtedly gossiped over a meal or beers about what a total fuck up you are. We talked about your substance abuse, the jobs you were fired from, and the bargirls we couldn’t believe you were dating.

I’m not a great conversationalist, and the first few times I saw Peter, whenever there was a lull in the conversation, I would simply say “What’s the deal with [insert username of Khmer440 poster here]?” Peter would giggle and tell me that poster’s most scandalous personal secrets, and we would both crack up laughing. We were very mature like that.

In recent years, Peter had mellowed. He married a lovely wife, he drank less, and he usually preferred getting lunch or dinner together rather than going to bars. Our topics of conversation even changed a bit. He’d always start by asking “How’s your love life?” I’d always respond, “Not good.” Then we’d talk about his master’s degree course, or how happy he was to be married, or about the house he and his wife were buying. But with those formalities out of the way, we would invariably revert to talking shit about expats and Khmer440 posters. We probably brought out the worst in each other that way.

Peter was a man of principles, even if his principles were sometimes misguided. When he was selling Khmer440, he said that he had a much higher bid from a rich young Khmer guy, but he wanted to sell the site to an expat so that Khmer440 would retain its expat flavor. He also had a short list of prospective expat buyers to whom he would never sell the site, probably because he thought they were “cock trumpets.”

Peter and I had our last lunch a month ago at the new Buffalo Sister location near Russian Market. It was a long lunch; the place was absolutely packed with white chicks, and it took ages to get our sandwiches. It was an enjoyable lunch though, they always were with Peter, and I wish I remembered more of what we talked about.

I do remember sharing our final laugh together, as we left Buffalo Sister and started walking down the street. Peter pointed across the road at a yellow, Thai-style tuk tuk. He told me that the large, bearded Westerner driving the tuk tuk was StroppyChops from the rival CEO forum. We both laughed about how fucking ridiculous he looks in that thing.

Peter and I said our goodbyes, and I hopped in a (totally different) tuk tuk to go back to Daun Penh. That was the last time I saw him.

Peter will be missed by his loving wife, his many friends, and maybe even by some of his “twatflannel” enemies. He was a colorful and hilarious fixture in the local expat scene for more than twelve years, and Phnom Penh and Khmer440 won’t be the same without him. May he rest in peace.