I think everyone here must be really familiar with an infamous article 7 Reasons Why You Really Shouldn’t Move to Cambodia. I have read it a couple times to make sure i fully get the meaning of the article. I was pissed off a little bit, however i have to agree with some facts in that article.

Interestingly, a couples months ago, one of my former lecturer shared it on his facebook, guess what there were so many of my classmates came up to comment on that post. No doubt, they were really pissed off with the author. I can't imagine what would they do to the author if they saw him or her. Sad thing was that they eventually presumed that the article was written by Thai people to discourage foreigner to come to live and visit Cambodia.

Written by a board member here.
Emblematic of what I do not like about the other site.
Sneering colonialism, more a reflection of the author's mindset than reality.

Honestly? It's a light-hearted piece that struggles to walk the fine line of "expat approved". It's not the greatest bit of writing in the world but it's also far from the worst.

I don't think it was meant in a sneering way; I just think it was meant to work within the narrowly confined community of K440... it shouldn't have been on the front page so much as a post on there. Then it would have achieved its objective - making people laugh without pissing people off.

Getting offended over someone's opinion, particularly when there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek involved, seems an over the top reaction to this. Humour almost always has to have a punchline (read victim) for it to work. I can better understand why a Khmer might be upset by it - ESL speakers, no matter how good, can often miss sarcasm, irony, etc. particularly if they are portrayed differently in the native language. (For example, almost all Chinese humour is based on puns - which are very easy to come by when every word has four meanings based on the tone - but very little sarcasm which isn't going to be good in a face culture. I don't know Khmer language well enough to examine that in context.) If you can't see the humour it probably comes across as an arrogant put down of Cambodia... but reading it through again, I don't think it is. It's more a pointed joke at the quality of expat this country attracts in a lot of cases.

I've read it too, but I saw only few reasons. How do you know the author ?

Cambodia could be replaced by any developing country. Issues are issues..

There is a reply here which is pure crap for me (or a masterpiece for others)... Easy life , cheap visas, cheap life, lot of opportunities.... Tintin in Congo is not far. Funny Expat

http://www.movetocambodia.com/expat-lif ... -cambodia/

The author is not Thai or yuon.

I can understand that people get angry when reading it. You have to remember that a vast majority of those people have never been outside of the country, and those few that have went to neighbouring countries in Asia. Therefore they don't know the view that the author is comparing with. And honestly, they probably struggle with the language as well.

With this in mind it's very easy to make the impression that the points are negatively reflecting the country as a whole. I read the comments of the article, some of them are hillarious. People defend themselves by saying "but what about Angkor Wat, what about this and that", pointing at things that nobody is actually spending full time on. Angkor Wat is a tourist destination, no expat is going to live in Cambodia because of Angkor Wat.

The article is, as someone already said, half satire. It ridicules expats, the type that comes here for cheap booze and drugs. The author is actually making fun of us. He has written another article published on the same site called "7 Ways Cambodia Can Solve its Foreign Dude Problem". You should read that, too.

it is lost in translation into Khmer English comprehension.
obviously it offended a lot of nationals; it gives us barang bad face.

deliberate baiting.

Samouth wrote:I think everyone here must be really familiar with an infamous article 7 Reasons Why You Really Shouldn’t Move to Cambodia. I have read it a couple times to make sure i fully get the meaning of the article. I was pissed off a little bit, however i have to agree with some facts in that article.

Pity you did not write this yesterday "Gavinmac" the author was at the party last night, I could have introduced you.

Kuroneko wrote:

Samouth wrote:I think everyone here must be really familiar with an infamous article 7 Reasons Why You Really Shouldn’t Move to Cambodia. I have read it a couple times to make sure i fully get the meaning of the article. I was pissed off a little bit, however i have to agree with some facts in that article.

Pity you did not write this yesterday "Gavinmac" the author was at the party last night, I could have introduced you.

Thanks for pointing out his name. I read it a couple times, but i didn't really see the name of the author. Wow, it would be nice to see, sit him down and talk about it. Perhaps he could teach me about sarcastic and irony.