Well, Naga are supposed to have incredibly muscular faces, so I imagine they could probably chomp the head off a fallen naga (or a human). Also ties in with the ancient Naga Tribe's funerary practices of chopping heads off and putting them in piles.
Ayway, here's the first draft of the Cambodia section:
Republic of Cambodia: New Dreams and Old
“
Pride fills the heart, but food fills the belly.”
Posted by: Kangean
Cambodian History Timeline
1945: Imperial Japan's occupation of Cambodia ends.
1953: French colonial rule ends in Cambodia.
1970: Monarch of Cambodia deposed by right wing coup.
1975: Khmer Rouge takes over and begins its brutal genocide campaign, 2 million die.
1979: Vietnamese forces conquer Phnom Penh, Khmer Rouge ousted, but pockets of insurgents continue a reign of terror in the wilderness. First Vietnamese Occupation begins.
1989: Vietnamese forces leave Cambodia, Khmer Rouge vows to reconquer country.
1992: Cambodia becomes a UN protectorate.
1993: Cambodia becomes an independent republic again, Prince's party wins highest fraction of the vote.
2007: Those Khmer Rouge leaders as were still alive finally brought to trial for crimes in the “killing fields”.
2011: VITAS hits a poorly managed Cambodian healthcare system, 2 million die.
2012: The first Naga appears in Siem Reap, many worship it as a divine being.
2013: Cyclone Tanaguk devastates Cambodia's crops, mass starvations begin and hundreds of thousands of refugees flee to Thailand and Vietnam.
2014: Giant creatures now thought to be spirits appear in Ratanakiri. They become known as the Plig, and they devastate the villages in the area. As the Khmer people flee, the jungle grows up behind them.
2022: In the wake of waves of VITAS II, Sino-Khmer criminal syndicates take control of the government. Vietnam conquers Phnom Penh again, and the syndicates resort to insurgency.
2028: Vietnamese soldiers withdraw from Cambodia. The Plig expand their jungle into Stung Treng.
2029: In the wake of the Crash, Thailand falls under military rule and invades all of its neighbors, Cambodia loses quickly and becomes a vassal state.
2034: Insurgents from a disparate alliance of Sino-Khmer criminal syndicates force the withdrawal of Thai military. Cambodia is classified as a “Narco State” by the Corporate Court and loses all lines of credit.
2037: Vietnamese forces invade Cambodia and begin the Third Vietnamese Occupation.
2043: With the last of the Sino-Khmer criminal syndicates crushed, Vietnamese troops withdraw. Cambodia's monarchy is restored.
2056: ESPRIT Industries breaks ground on an arcology in Kampong Som.
2058: The Nagaraja Vasuki declares that the Cambodian monarchy is illegitimate and a civil war begins to take shape.
2062: The Four Winds Triad allies itself with the naga, and begins an insurgency in Northern Cambodia.
2063: ESPRIT Industries wage mage Sofie de Rochefort finds the lost Preah Khan – entitling her to be queen of Cambodia by ancient laws.
2065: Using the confusion of the Second Crash, the naga forces seize several provinces of Cambodia and Thailand. Vasuki claims Naga dominion over all Khmer people, and is seven times crowned Nagaraja over the new nation of Nag Kampuchea. Recognition is swiftly granted by Amazonia, Azania, Assam, Myanmar, and Manchuria.
2066: Tribal peoples allied with the Plig apply for and receive United Nations recognition for a country composed of portions of Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Cambodia's uncontrolled Northeastern provinces are awarded to the Montagnard Confederation.
2067: Sofie de Rochefort marries prince Narodorom and is crowned Queen of Cambodia. New elections are held, and the “Queen's Party” wins the most seats in parliament.
2068: Cambodia has an economic boom with heavy corporate investment. Immigration restrictions are eased, and millions of people move from more depressed regions – most notably Java and Myanmar.
2073: The Prince's Council of Nag Kampuchea formally accuses Cambodia of the assassination of Vasuki, war is declared.
It's hard to imagine sometimes, but from the glittering malls to the massive apartment complexes, essentially the entire city of Phnom Penh is brand new. Just ten years ago, this place was a crumbling ruin and the city we live and work in today did not exist in a recognizable form. Cambodia's economy was completely devastated by years of war and neglect, and by the time the queen took over, the country had hit total rock bottom. A successful secession of the Northern provinces, negative real economic growth, negative population growth, net outflow of both natural resources
and currency, and respect for governmental institutions so low that criminal gangs didn't even bother bribing them. It was bad. And yet, in the years since Sofie de Rochefort has been Queen, all those indicators have turned around. There was even talk of putting pressure on the Naga to give back key cultural sites. Not because the Naga had attacked Cambodia (though they did do that this year), but simply because Cambodians are finally feeling strong and optimistic enough about the country's future to want someone else to give some concessions for a change.
Historically, Cambodia has been a monarchy ruled by a king. Since the rise of the Khmer Rouge in the late 1960s, that's been a bit dodgy, with periods of no king at all and periods of constitutional monarchy, and periods of kakocracy with criminal gangs in control of things, and periods of Vietnamese occupation. That has left the traditions in a bit of turmoil. But the way it
used to work was that there was a sacred sword called the Preah Khan Reach (Preah Khan just means “sacred sword” – believe me when I say that Cambodians are
not confused about which sacred sword you are talking about) and only the king could hold it and holding it made you king. It's like Excalibur for England. All coronations were required to use it, and even when the country was conquered by force, the conquerer was not accepted until they successfully drew the sword. It tells the future of the Cambodian lands, sharpening itself in times of war and gaining a tinge of rust when times will be bad. In 1970, it turned rusty and
vanished during Lon Nol's ill fated coup, predicting that the Khmer Rouge would take over and began their massacres. And 93 years later it was found again by a corporate wage mage named Sofie de Rochefort. We now know that the Preah Khan Reach is a powerful magical artifact that among other things allows the holder to control the flow of water through the rivers of the country.
Nevertheless, many traditionalists opposed crowning Sofie de Rochefort, for a number of reasons. She wasn't Cambodian for one, and because she was only 28 at the time, but mostly it was because she was (and is) a
woman. Cambodia has historically never had a Queen. The monarch has always been a King and he normally takes many consorts. This crisis dragged on and on but was brought to a close in 2067, when Sofie de Rochefort married prince Narodorom, the old king abdicated, and the privy council selected Narodorom as King and Rochefort as Queen. Some people think she's the Queen because she has the sacred sword, some people think she's the queen because she is married to the King, but everyone agrees she is the Queen. And while she runs around giving literal monarchial blessings to agriculture that actually work, she makes a big show of respecting the political process by allowing everything to go through parliament. Of course, she also sponsors a wildly popular “Queen's Party” that stands for election and is basically her cult of personality, but she is very clear that she intends to get her way in parliament only so long as her people keep doing well in elections (which they have now done twice).
But remember what I said about everyone agreeing that Rochefort is Queen? Well... not exactly. The problem is that the Naga exist too. And mythologically, the entire race of the Khmer people, and the line of Kings in particular, are supposed to be descended from the Naga. The Preah Khan Reach exists because the Naga made it in ancient times. And the Naga don't like the Queen. You can go ask them yourself, because they seceded from Cambodia and created the rival state of Nag Kampuchea in 2065. There are not a small number of people who feel that all of Cambodia should join Nag Kampuchea in order to be part of the rightful kingdom. Of course, this feeling is not universal and is held by practically no foreigners, which is probably one of the reasons that Cambodia has been so keen to allow immigrants to come into the country since the Queen ascended to the throne.
Ten years ago, the royal armed forces were
bullshit, armed with archaic weapons built by the People's Republic of China (seriously) or whatever the Vietnamese had left here back in the 40s (if they were
lucky). The only really effective military powers in the country were ESPRIT Industries and the Naga dissidents. So it's not really surprising that Nag Kampuchea was able to secede during the crash. Since the new regime came in, a major campaign of easternization has begun. Not only has the government been spending to acquire military equipment from ESPRIT and Vietnam, but a concerted effort has been put in place to model the military on more successful models like the Japanese or Vietnamese systems. Cambodia's armed forces even have their own samurai. It is a fair bet that the country will not fold as easily as it did in '65. Which is a good thing, because Phnom Penh is not actually that far from Agkor.
- That's not a typo, and he doesn't mean “westernization”. The dominant military powers in the region are Japan, Vietnam, and Australia, in that order. When a military wants to modernize in Southeast Asia, they look East.
- Hannibal
- It's not just the military. Trid shows and clothing styles come from Tokyo, Hong Kong, Vladivostok, and Seoul. If you want to modernize anything in that region, you look East.
- Mamasan
ESPRIT Corporation
“
We must recognize the true state of the modern era: a permanent state of violent peace.”
No discussion of Cambodia's politics and economy can be complete without discussing ESPRIT. Two of the larger political parties in parliament can be considered to be fronts for ESPRIT. The Technocratic Party is basically a sock with ESPRIT's hand up its ass, and the Queen's Party is on such incredibly friendly terms with ESPRIT that the actual Queen draws a pension from ESPRIT from the years she spent working for the company. The country meanwhile has been hitting double digit growth numbers since de Rochefort's coronation, and that basically would not happen if ESPRIT weren't pumping money into the system at a phenomenal rate.
ESPRIT is an aspiring megacorp that never quite made it, and is seriously looking for a fight to claw its way up in the rankings. Understanding their motivations is as simple as understanding that they have lately been losing some staring contests to France, which has made them look weak to other corporations who have been able to get more cooperation from their local governments. As such, ESPRIT has spent the last ten years pursuing a policy of kicking over cripples and making sure they “get their way” from as many other countries as possible. Of especial interest is the fact that they are moving their upper management positions to expanding arcologies in Kampong Som, Bangui, and Montreal. It seems highly likely that ESPRIT intends to become a bigger part of the corporate world, even if they have to move out of France to do it.
- Joke's on them in Cambodia. There's a reason that Sofie de Rochefort kept her Queen's Party separate from ESPRIT's Technocratic Party. While her interests and theirs are aligned for the moment, that alliance won't last forever. I doubt ESPRIT realized how French their hand picked queen really was.
- Hannibal
- Or how Cambodian she'd become. The Queen has thrown herself into the role of assimilating into Khmer culture pretty seriously. People are calling her the “Egg Queen” because she is supposedly only White on the outside.
- Chun The Unavoidable
Corporate culture within ESPRIT is aggressively French,
especially in “frontier” areas like Cambodia or the CAE. Because of its highly formalized nature, a lot of people mistake it for Japanese business etiquette.
Do not do this. If you want to get by in ESPRIT corporate enclaves, it behooves you to learn something about how they do things and not to fall back into the familiar routines of other corporate milieus.
A Short Guide To French Corporate Culture
If you are coming from a background with Japanese Corporations...
- Make hand and eye contact. While French Corps put as much stock in formality and politeness as Shiawase, avoiding contact with people you are talking to is seen as a sign of dishonesty or weakness.
- Drink during meetings. Light inebriation during critical discussions is seen as a sign of confidence and truthfulness.
- Do not discuss matters of family or religion during work. These sorts of discussions are seen as irrelevant prying, and are quite insulting.
- Do not invite coworkers for after-work drinking. Outside the office, workers are expected to mingle with corporate citizens from other departments to avoid professional/social entanglements.
If you are coming from a background with American Corporations...
- Do not expect any decisions to be made during meetings. Meetings are for serious discussion, not for decision making.
- Do not question a superior's decision outside of a meeting. A manager or executive's decision is final, a meeting is the time and the place to question ideas or offer alternatives.
- Dress conservatively and formally every day, not just days when major events are expected. Your conduct is judged in many ways on how you present yourself. If you do not dress “classy” the assumption will be that you do not have class.
- Do not raise your voice. Speaking loudly implies that you are aggressive or attempting to cover for weakness. A statement made with emphasis will be regarded with suspicion rather than importance.
- Eat and drink during meetings. No one minds people chewing during important discussions. Meetings can be long, and it is expected that people will have lunch or dinner during the proceedings.
ESPRIT is a double A corp, and as you might expect, it produces a lot of things. They have high fashion clothing, they have a skilled positions staffing service, they have a line of self heating cuisine, and so on. But what really makes their mark is the weapons. ESPRIT Corporation is the fourth largest arms manufacturer on Earth (after Ares, Aztechnology, and Saeder-Krupp). They are especially known for PPEs – or Personal Protection Equipment (that's medical isolation materials and body armor). ESPRIT sells its weapons and armor with an aesthetic of light, elegant, and sturdy design, which understandably goes over better with armor (that you have to wear) than it does with weaponry (which you point at people). ESPRIT wholly or partially owned subsidiaries include Nestlé Foods, Danone Foods, Peugeot Automotive, ARCHOS Electronics, Nordstrom Retail, and Obstiné Construction. But they are most known for their Savalette Munitions, Thales-Raytheon, and GECI Engineering imprints that make guns and planes.
With all these war toys being cranked out, you'd think the company would start all kinds of fights. And you'd be right. ESPRIT seems to view fighting brushfire wars to be little more than an advertising expense. Having recently kicked over sand castles in Kitara, Luba, and Haiti, ESPRIT's natural progression seems to be to pick a fight with a bigger and more dangerous foe. I'm not saying that they necessarily had Vasuki killed, but I
am saying that if ESPRIT's forces acquit themselves well against the assaults on their corporate territories that the Naga are surely bringing, that they will sell a
lot more military body armor and stealth aircraft next year than they sold last year.
ESPRIT has several installations throughout Cambodia, and is the largest single corporation here. ESPRIT's red boutiques carry lots of Japanese wares, as ESPRIT still has a special relationship with Monobe (each company owning a seat on the board of the other). Because of Cambodia's relaxed immigration policy, ESPRIT can still expand cheaply in the Republic. Similarly, because of the expanding job marketplace, immigrants keep coming to Cambodia voluntarily. It is not at all clear what will happen to ESPRIT or society at large when the rapid expansion inevitably slows down. Fourteen percent growth is only possible because the country had hit bottom in the recent past, if there is any plan for what to do when the route of expansion of “rebuilding” comes to an end, it isn't public knowledge.
Immigration and You
“
I no longer recognize my home. It has become someone else's home.”
Six years ago, Cambodia's population hit rock bottom. Between wars and plagues and grinding poverty, there were waves and waves of people leaving the country. From a high of about 15 million people early in this century, the population had fallen to less than 8 million by 2067. And most of that is Khmer diaspora. People who simply could not handle living in a narco-state with no jobs and no healthcare to speak of. As the country's economy has been hitting double digit growth figures since then, the population has boomed up to a bit under 14 million. And most of that population growth has been immigrants. As you might imagine, this has caused some friction. And where there is friction, there are business opportunities.
The native Khmers, of which there are about seven and a half million, were the undisputed majority of the country until fairly recently. Like, seriously over ninety percent of the people looked Khmer, spoke Khmer, and ate Khmer food. Anyone over the age of ten remembers things being like that or they are from another country themselves (or in the case of the early immigrants,
both). Immigration has come with prosperity, but it has also come with the rise of ethnic gangs. The Năm Cam gang tries to overthrow Vietnam from Cambodia, the Myanmaran warlords try to turn the refugee camps into more Myanmar, and the Four Winds Triad tries to annex more of Cambodia into Nag Kampuchea. Criminal ethnic gangs really have been pushing the country into cross-border conflict with all of its neighbors. This isn't just a theoretical problem either, as the overextension of Chen gangs seriously provoked the Vietnamese army to flatten the place in 2037. With the country going to war with Nag Kampuchea and Siam, fears that criminal activity may draw the Vietnamese to conquer the place again are rather high in the talk show rotations.
With all the immigration, it can be hard to keep track of who all these people are. It isn't just Khmer anymore, and that means that for the first time in generations, you can have “weird” behavioral patterns in Phnom Penh and have people accept that as normal. Here are the most major non-Khmer ethnicities in Cambodia:
Cham
The Cham people are a despised, but native minority. Of the roughly half million Cham, almost all are either “Muslims” or Nagavenshi Hindus. While we have to use finger quotes to talk about their Islamicness (Cham Muslims do not even wear colorful Malaysian style scarves and most only pray on Fridays), the fact that the Hindus are unabashed supporters of the Naga has made them incredibly unpopular with the local authorities. They live in the south, mostly along the Vietnamese border in Kampong Cham – which is pretty much on the other side of the country from the Nag Kampuchea border. Nevertheless, there is quite a concern that Cham people will take up arms on behalf of the Naga, they
did do it before in 2065. Also of concern is the growing communication between the local Cham and the Cham of Pattani – because the Pattani Cham are
crazy Muslims. Like, the blowing yourself up to kill infidels kind. Kampong Cham has its own little Islamic insurgency going, as it turns out that Apostasy is an even bigger crime to conservative Muslims than Paganism is. Mostly they've been targeting Islamic Cham who aren't Islamic
enough, but that could change. The Cham have their own language, but you don't have to learn it unless you want to run with a Chamic gang, because they all speak Khmer or French or both.
- The Cambodian parliament has seriously considered making a Cham registry, to keep track of all the potential Cham dissidents. It didn't pass this time, but it sounds disturbingly like policies used in Sri Lanka and The United States.
- Immortal
- Just because it didn't pass doesn't mean they aren't doing it. You don't think that Zeta-ImpChem got the contract to make a genealogy database for the country for health reasons, do you?
- Mamasan
Vietnamese
Between the numerous invasions and the recent economic investment in Cambodia by the Khouang Combine, there have been a lot of Vietnamese people passing through Cambodia. But for all the Vietnamese who've been through the country, there are still less than a million Vietnamese actually living here. The local Vietnamese joke is “Cambodia: nice enough to invade, but you wouldn't want to
live here.” That goes over about as well with the natives as you'd expect. But the Vietnamese expats are
nothing like unified. There are basically two camps: the ones who like the nation of Vietnam, and the ones who hate it. The former camp is generally rich and powerful – folks who came in with the Vietnamese army and bought up land when it was cheap and made a killing or who came in with the Combine and make corp money. The latter group has an incredible wealth disparity, as the majority eek out a marginal existence while the leaders of the Năm Cam gang rake in mad money.
Chen
The Chen are what the Cambodians call Chinese people. Most of them are Cantonese or Teochiu, which means that one way or another they have family in Hainan or the Canton Confederation. There are about half a million of these people. Back in the 30s and 40s, a coalition of Chen dominated drug cartels pretty much ran the place, and they ran it into the
ground until the armies of Vietnam came and shot them all in the face. Still, a not-inconsiderable number of Chen managed to get out of the game and “go legit” before the hammer and sickle came down. So there are a fair number of Chen growing up with money that they didn't personally have to shoot anyone for, and they go to the best corp schools and speak flawless French and run businesses and stuff. But there are also Chen who gravitate back to the Triads. Yeah, you'll never hear about the Triads that the Vietnamese busted up (on account of them being busted up), but many join the Four Winds or the Red Lotus. And the Four Winds Triad runs guns to the Naga.
Javans and Sunda
I'm a Javan myself, and I can tell you exactly what makes Sunda different from Javans. But nobody in Cambodia can, so Javans and Sunda get lumped together something fierce. The thing is though, that through the magic of ethnic discrimination, it is
becoming true. The Urang Sunda are discriminated against in the same way and by the same people as actual Javans, and that has pushed the people together in a way that has not happened in the actual Republic of Java. Urang Sunda in Cambodia are more nationalistic about Java than actual people who live on Java. It's wacky. But despite how misty eyed they get about the Green and White, Javans in Cambodia are also very nationalistic
about Cambodia. Originally Cambodia brought in about a million people from the Republic of Java, mostly as construction workers for the major development programs of the late sixties, most of the original wave of immigrants have been fast tracked into citizenship with the Queen's Employed Person Road to Citizenship plan, so they aren't going anywhere. In fact, as people follow family members, our numbers have swelled to roughly twice that.
- The first construction projects were less ambitious than the “New Cambodia” stuff the Technocratic Party is jamming through parliament now, but it was also much less mechanized. There just isn't the need for construction labor today that there was five years ago. A lot of the new Javans get jobs in the expanding manufacturing and service sectors. The rest... well there's always the army and the expanding Javan criminal gangs.
- Kerrigan
French
There are about a million Europeans living in Cambodia today, which makes it the country with the highest percentage of Europeans in it in Southeast Asia unless you count Singapore Incorporated as a country. The French have come back to Indochina in a big way, and while they have the rallying cry “This time will be different”, a lot of people are unconvinced. Still, White people have on average better education, better health, and more technical training than the locals and are hired preferentially for the better jobs. That causes some resentment too. An important thing to remember though is that if something bad happens to some poor person, that gets handled by the Khmer Police. If something happens to a rich or important person, that gets handled by the Royal Cambodian Military Police. But if something bad happens to a
White person, that gets handled by the ESPRIT Investigative Forces. So a lot of low end criminals keep away from French people. You might even see them clear out of a club just because French people came in.
- If you're White in Cambodia, you are considered French. It doesn't matter if you're from the Scandinavian Union, Poland, or California, you are “French” to everyone who lives here.
- Monkeywrencher
Burmese
The Javans may be the “good” immigrants, but the Burmese are surely the “bad”. There are nearly a million refugees from Myanmar living in Cambodia, and very few of them have jobs. There are refugee camps all along the coast and the government is basically at a loss for what to do with them. The parallels between them and the Cambodians living in Siam, Malaysia, and Vietnam are too obvious to ignore, but that doesn't mean anyone is
happy about it. The camps are filled with crime and divided on ethnic, tribal, and racial grounds. Christian gangs monopolize aid from Europe and Africa despite their small numbers and it drives tensions up even higher.
Phnom Penh
“
New is a good adjective, but under the circumstances it hardly needs to be said.”
Phnom Penh is a special administrative district. It's the capital of the country, and by far the most populous. The country really underwent fifty
years of infrastructural neglect, and really only Phnom Penh and Kampong Som can be considered to be “finished” in any real way. The city used to be roughly 10% of the country's population, but today it's almost a quarter. If you leave the big city, there are still a lot of depopulated shanties where plants grow through cracks in the asphalt. But Phnom Penh itself
glitters. The city is fabricated in such a narrow time period that it's actually pretty easy to get lost – telling someone to turn left at the next Asian Deconstructive Neo-Functionalist building you will get quite a bit of confusion. The whole
cite is built in Asian Deconstructive Neo-Functionalism. There are some surviving wats here and there that have been refurbished nicely, but as a general rule any building you go into is going to have a rectangular footprint with tiered eaves and curved patterns in its molded façade. Good chances of it having a domed tiered tower worked into a corner if it's big. Most of the city is painted red, white, or yellow for that matter. It's colorful and elegant, but it gets monotonous after a while.
While there are about three million people living in Phnom Penh, less than a million of those people are actually Khmer. Javans actually outnumber Khmer in the Cambodian capital city. And yeah, the Human Nation doesn't like that. That might seem pretty weird, since roughly 68% of Javans are humans, but the Human Nation tailors its message to the country it operates is – in France they mostly talk about how elves are going to undermine secular society with their non-French theocratic ways and turn the entire country into a religious basket case like Tír na nÓg. And in Cambodia they've developed this entire narrative where non-human creatures and foreigners are the same thing – which is a pretty effective narrative considering the Naga and the Plig actually
are trying to destroy the country. But it's left them defending a narrative where they are opposed to foreigners even from France and Java. Historically, the government troops were pretty lenient on Human Nation crime because they mostly targeted Naga, Cham, and Hmong. But that honeymoon is coming to an end now that a majority of the people they bully are productive and loyal Cambodians. Human Nation thugs get pretty decent protection money from a lot of Khmer and Chen businesses – expect one of the up and coming Javan gangs to take over that market soon. The Human Nation simply don't have their competitive advantage in the extortion sector anymore.
The prostitution market is neither unionized nor monopolized, which means that it's currently operating at a pretty low level of efficiency. One hears tales of how the 28 Cranes used to have an entire district of Phnom Penh turned into a prostitution ward. But the Vietnamese shot all the Cranes right in the face, and the last of the brothel complexes got the bulldozer treatment in '68. Phnom Penh doesn't have a proper red light district, and boy does it need one. This sector is dominated by the Yakuza in Siam and by the Vory in Vietnam, but so far no one has put in the kind of police bribing, pimp crushing
investment needed to get the sex work industry up to standards in modern Cambodia.
- Street walkers are a sketchy proposition at the best of time, and that's basically what Phnom Penh offers. Costs are low, but there is no selection or John protections. Would not recommend.
- HugMonster
- The brothel complexes of the late 30s were impressive, but anyone could see that they had gone too far. Sooner or later some kind of government is going to step in, and you're not going to find any government that is OK with criminal gangs running an off-grid prostitute breeding program in a fortified dungeon complex. Of course the Vietnamese shut it down.
- Mamasan
The construction industry in Phnom Penh is mostly post-boom. Not in the whole country, but specifically in the special administrative district. Construction is therefore reorienting to produce in other areas. That restructuring is going to make people commute a lot farther from town to work, but it's also going to allow time for criminal elements to orient themselves to the new projects. There is a very real chance that the
next five years of construction will have higher marginal costs than the
last five years – even though the government points to an increased level of mechanization and productivity.
Phnom Penh sits at the crossroads of two of the world's great rivers (the Mekong and the Tonlé Sap), but also on the crossroads of cultures. Amok is made from Cambodian fish paste and Javan spice paste, and you can get it extruded from any vending machine in the city. Just as the Mekong and the Tonlé Sap join together in Phnom Penh, the different peoples
are forming a shared identity within the city. We'll see if the metaphor holds, because those rivers also
divide again while leaving the city.
