Your tax dollars buy my aid junket

Originally sent: 29 December 2005 About this series After getting back here from Australia, I had a trip to Sihanoukville for Australian Volunteers “In Country Meeting” which I could only describe as an “utterly pointless AusAid-funded junket”. I used those exact words on the evaluation sheet of the meeting, so hopefully it will filter back… Continue reading Your tax dollars buy my aid junket

Selling raw human misery to Quincy Jones

Originally sent: 22 November 2005. About this series My bizarre marketing task for the month has been deciding how to suitably horrify Quincy Jones. For those of you playing at home, Quincy Jones is the all-time most nominated Grammy artist with a total of 77 nominations and 27 winning Grammys. He has won an Emmy… Continue reading Selling raw human misery to Quincy Jones

Faux Pho

Originally sent: 10 October 2005 About this series Pchum Ben, a holiday to appease the spirits of the dead, happened last week. Most Cambodians leave Phnom Penh to give offerings of food at their local pagoda to ensure that their deceased relatives don’t return from the grave to stalk the earth as a hungry legion… Continue reading Faux Pho

Keeping it Riel

Originally sent: 23 August 2005 About this series M and I recently has four day weekend in Bangkok which was great for all the wrong reasons: my personal highlights were going to the movies; eating Mexican food, smallgoods, and two and half pork-fuelled hours of yum-cha; and staying in a carpeted room. M picked the… Continue reading Keeping it Riel

“They can’t drink the alcohol or woo the ladies”

Originally sent: 27 June 2005 About this series I’m in Battambang: which is famous across Indochina for its decrepit colonial French architecture, raunchy statues of garudas having their way with apsaras and a state of sleepiness that gives the lack of English expressions for somnolence a bad name. Since the Khmer Rouge stopped firing rocket-propelled… Continue reading “They can’t drink the alcohol or woo the ladies”

Phnomenon

Sent: 10 April 2005 It’s day seven of CNN becoming Pope Channel, and M and I are rapidly settling in the expat Cambodian lifestyle. Fairly unsurprisingly, Phnom Penh is absolutely different to what I thought – I was expecting everything that we need to do to be much harder. Quite embarrassingly, practically everyone that you… Continue reading Phnomenon

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