By Mary Boland

You’ll find more tourists than journalists at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club on Sisowath Quay

“We always thought we had the name,” says the club’s first president and former Reuters journalist Leo Dobbs. “We gave them a bit of cachet – they couldn’t do it on their own without the journalists – but we did know it was a business arrangement.”

Diplomats, UN staff and expat visitors flocked to the “F”. A club constitution was drafted and a board established. With the FCC’s help, the first Khmer journalists’ association was set up. Speakers in the club’s heyday included actor Peter Ustinov, Timorese resistance hero Xanana Gusmão and Oscar winner Haing Ngor from film The Killing Fields, says OPCC treasurer and former president Luke Hunt.

There are stories – confirmed or denied, depending on whom you ask – of wild nights when rounds of ammunition were drunkenly shot from the terrace. Everything changed, however, when the correspondents discovered the commercial side of the house had registered the FCC name, and several variations of it, with the Ministry of Commerce.

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