Though many expats have decided to base
themselves in Cambodia, and many have lived here for years or even decades, it
remains the case that some of the country’s foreign community have only the
faintest understanding of the culture and heritage of the people that surround
them.
Segregated
from the local population, declining to make even the most perfunctory attempts
to learn the language, and subsisting on a diet of Western food, in many ways
they live a life indistinguishable from their lives back home.
It is
this sort of expat experience that has been a constant source of fascination
for 44 year-old French journalist Frédéric Amat, who has called Cambodia home
since 1995. In his time here, he has seen myriad European and American
residents of the country insulate themselves from local people. His new book,
Expatriates’ Strange Lives in Cambodia, published last year in French and
earlier this month in English, attempts to chronicle the lived experience of
expats in the country, and touches on this phenomenon.
“I came
to Cambodia to cover the fighting, especially in 1997,” Amat says. “I became
interested in Cambodian culture. But at the same time, I became interested in
foreign communities living in Cambodia. This was a poor country at that time.
It started with nothing. There were a lot of expats and many expressed a lot of
arrogance towards Cambodian people. I felt so much shock by the way these expat
families treated the locals. This was the idea for me to write a book.”
Amat
says that many expats first come to Cambodia as tourists with an idealised
picture of the country’s people and its natural beauty, leading to unrealistic
expectations when they decide to settle here over the long term.
“When
they just visit as a tourist, Cambodia is like what they saw in postcard, a
beautiful country. When they decided to live, then they turn to the back of the
postcard and they begin to face a lot of culture shock: bad traffic, poverty,
beggars.”
Rather
than confront these issues, many instead decided to form their own expat
communities and separate themselves away from local people.
“They
don’t really open the window to Cambodia. They don’t try to speak the language.
They are not interested in the culture. When they finish their job, they just
go to the foreign bars, have beers with friends. They live in Cambodia, but
they don’t really live with Cambodians.”
Frédéric
Amat took at least seven years to compile the activities, routines and problems
of the expat community into his book. Of particular interest to him were those
foreigners who travelled to Cambodia to look for a prospective partner.
“A lot
of single men come here because it’s easier for them to find love in Cambodia
than their own country. They go to the bars in Cambodia. Some of them have the
Cambodian girls from the bars. I write about the girls in the bars, who do not
adhere to the usual traditions of Cambodian girls,” he said.
In the
last chapter, Amat gives his formulation for how expats can enjoy life in
Cambodia to the fullest. To him, Cambodia is not a hard place to live and
people are not hard to communicate with; the only barrier lies in foreigners
refusing to truly open themselves to the society. If they open their mind a
bit, they will enjoy their life here.
Jérôme
Moriniére, the publisher of Cambodia’s Tuk Tuk Editions publishing house, has
printed 4,000 copies of Amat’s work in English, with distribution planned for
Thailand, Laos and Myanmar in the coming weeks.
“Mostly
our writers wrote books about Angkor temples or the Khmer Rouge; this is the
first time that we’ve published a work about people’s daily life, their social
life and their culture,” Moriniére said.
-
Expatriates’ Strange Lives in Cambodia is available at Monument bookstores and
the airports in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap for US$12.
Roth
Meas
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