By creating a setting where nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and a supposedly free press proliferate amid an expatriate-friendly business environment and a low cost of living, HE has allowed Phnom Penh (which has acquired the objectionable nickname “Play Penh”) to become a haven for foreigners fleeing first world constraints and responsibilities, where sex and drugs are still cheap, and where a weak rule of law can provide a consequence-free environment.

The Post and the Daily, says Strangio, “provide high quality reporting and valuable training for young Khmer reporters, but they also form their own part of the mirage—a highly visible advertisement of the government’s ‘commitment’ to press freedom. They are only given such freedom because they have little impact.” The majority of Cambodian journalists—or Khmers, as they are known locally—are either affiliated with the ruling party or harassed by it. Indeed, when I worked at the Daily, there was risk of intimidation, but it was shouldered almost entirely by our Cambodian colleagues.

Like the press, Cambodia’s large aid community has become a tool of HE’s. Cambodia receives an average of a half billion dollars in foreign aid every year, according to Strangio, and there are 2,600 NGOs registered with the Cambodian government, employing some 43,000 people. In Cambodia much of the aid community is foundering, its leaders unwilling to be the ones responsible for pulling the plug on a failing project. “A spell in Cambodia is generally a comfortable step on the way to somewhere else, and everybody wants to leave with a gold star on their CV,” Strangio says.

HE’s henchmen, meanwhile, derive substantial income from bilking donor money, writes Strangio, which makes the government less accountable than if it relied on income from taxpayers. Meanwhile, the NGOs provide an array of basic services that the government doesn’t. Less tolerated, however, are NGOs that promote judicial reform, environmental protection, or human rights—those organizations often face banishment, or worse: the prominent Cambodian activist Chut Wutty, an opponent of illegal logging, was killed in 2012 by military police in front of two Cambodia Daily journalists. For many foreign aid workers, though, “life is good enough in Phnom Penh that it’s easy to let things slide, to accept a broken system, to drift through a posting,” writes Strangio. “The result is more than an aid economy; it’s an aid society, marked by relationships of dependence at every level, between donors, government officials, NGOs, and ordinary people.”

Western aid money, however, is becoming less important to HE, writes Strangio, as China emerges as a preferred partner in Cambodia’s development. Keen to exert its influence in the region, China gives generously with few strings attached—especially those strings related to human rights and democracy.

“Central to the Cambodian experience” for expats, according to the satirical Twitter feed @HunSensEye, is “strongman-driven stability.” But that stability can be withdrawn as easily as it was granted. In the 2013 elections, HE’s party fared poorly, despite polls that were widely believed to have been rigged in its favor. Subsequent protests were met with a violent response.

Thanks to a younger populace, less resigned to HE’s authoritarian rule, the prime minister’s prospects in the 2018 election are not promising. It’s unlikely, though, that the man who calls himself the “Illustrious Prince Great Supreme Protector and Famed Warrior” will accept electoral defeat. There’s nothing about his tenure so far that suggests he’ll relinquish power peacefully, which could mean the end of the mirage—and a serious inconvenience for the inhabitants of “Play Penh.”

A freelance writer based in New York and London, David Shaftel has contributed stories to The New York Times, The Financial Times’s Weekend edition, and Smithsonian Air & Space magazine, among other publications.