Night on the Town with Friends.

Having fun with friends. There are so many people here doing interesting things. Join us for an evening out with some buddies.

Not only is Jane a competent English teacher, as you can see here, Jane can proficiently perform simultaneous, multi-hand, sign language as well: LEFT HAND: Yak, Yak, Yak. Jeff is wrong. RIGHT HAND: Bunny ears to emphasise her perception my logic/opinion is misguided.

Chean Long goes by his last name, Long. This image captures so well Long's warm, gentle and thoughtful personality.

Long and Jane.

Lisa.

Foreigners Marketing to Foreigners

A treasured friend of mine, Dean Clealand, was just promoted from CEO, ANZ Bank Cambodia to CEO, ANZ Bank Asia. Sadly for me, Dean relocates to Singapore to take on this great promotion.

ANZ stands for Australian New Zealand Bank and has taken Cambodia by storm. Cambodians over 45 years-old don't trust banks. Older folks literally bury their savings in the form of cash, gold or precious stones. Young folks (nearly 50% of Cambodians are under the age of 25) were not around in the mid-seventies when money was abolished and people of wealth and intellect were executed. At that time, 1975, Cambodia had a population of roughly 7 million souls. By 1979 between 1.5m and 2.0m were killed or starved by a lunatic leader, hell bent on a radical variant of Maoism.

Cambodia has been a cash based society ever since, for the last 32 years. US Dollars, thank you very much. Only now is the notion of "checks" being awkwardly accepted as payment. Up until ANZ came upon the scene, credit cards were nearly unthinkable, save the five-star hotels.

ANZ has gotten millions of folks banking here for the first time. Credit cards here are tricky.There is no credit rating facility here. No TRW or Trans Union. Makes sense. It has been a cash economy.

ANZ has done a good job with comfortably introducing the ATM. No big deal to you--revolutionary here.

Now for the fun part of the story. ANZ Bank has the major cities covered in Cambodia, they are expanding into the Provence's. Get this--because the rural banks are air-conditioned locals feel that they should not enter. Air-conditioning is for rich people. And why do rich people like it cold anyway?
The story gets better. Taking-off ones shoes entering a building is polite in the Provence's and often customary in cities. ANZ found new Provence customers kicking-off their shoes at the door of their new banks making a mess and incompatible with their image. ANZ is dealing with this fact and interestingly hit problems they never saw coming.
Telling customers that it is OK to wear their shoes in the bank is apparently a bit unsettling. Only dirty places do you wear your shoes here. On top of that, villagers extrapolated, that customers now needed to wear shoes to be customers. These are problems that are so much fun to think on. One of my favorite quotes from Albert Einstein is: "Brilliant people solve problems, genius' avoid them". What a virtue.

For more information on ANZ, see www.anzroyal.com

Photographing With Friends at Wat Phnom

Wat Phnom is the most memorable park in the city of Phnom Penh. In many ways, it is a park that has the same components as any center-city park in the world. Being Cambodia, there is a twist. Troops of wild monkeys roam in the trees and on the ground, just looking for opportunity and trouble. Also in the trees, very high-up, are thousands of three to five pound bats with two-foot wing-spans sleeping until the twilight. You wouldn't know they were there unless you were told to look.
And then there is 46 year-old Sambo the elephant.
Along on this adventure is Kavita, Lisa and Long. A bit more about these people in the following blog which was also shot the same day as this one.

Norodom Property Demolition

Last month my business partner, Em Buntha and I closed escrow on a wonderful parcel of land on Norodom Boulevard, four buildings down from the 'Independence Monument' in downtown Phnom Penh. A very prestigious address in a very fashionable district.
The property has two large, single-family residences. We determined this was not the highest and best use of the land and the homes are now in the process of being demolished. (It should be noted, the homes were of no architectural or historic value).
The process of demolition and development in Cambodia is not even vaguely similar to the United States. This demolition job is a case in point. To begin with, not only did we not pay a penny for the demolition, instead--the demolition contractor paid us for the privilege of carting-off an estimated 65,000-tons of brick, concrete, steel, windows, doors, hardware, tiles and fixtures. And get this, nothing will go to the dump. Everything will be sold. Even the broken bricks and shards of concrete. No wrecking ball, no crane, no bulldozer, no front-end loader. Instead we have 30 fellows with 30 sledge-hammers. The rubble is carried to one of five, mini-dump trucks, in wicker baskets, no less, which in turn, whisk off to deliver their bounty to awaiting buyers.
Joining me at the work site in these photographs are Kavita, Lisa and Long. Kavita and Lisa are both Australians working here in Phnom Penh. Kavita is of Malaysian decent. Long is Khmer (Cambodian) but educated in the United States and speaks with an 'American' accent, both in English and Khmer. I love to tease Long that he looks more like a Mexican gardener than any Cambodian. All three of these folks are wonderful Spirits and I really enjoy their company.