you go to ankor wat and little children are the main pests, I want to stamp on their feet!

Cambodians are not stupid.
We are just ignorance due to 30 years of no education.
I am a Cambodian and I smart as hell.

The people (e.g. many, if not, most Barangs who frequent [Khmer440 link removed.] who say that Khmers in Cambodia are stupid (‘Phleu” in Khmer) are generalisers.

To some extent, they are right, depending on how one defines intelligence. It is very difficult to find local Khmers who have the initiative, the problem-solving and the critical thinking skills that enable them to hold down high-level jobs in multinational corporations, NGOs or such organizations.

On the other hand, one can pretty much say the same thing about many Thais, Indonesians, Malaysians, Chinese as well in varying degrees.

The problem is the worst in Cambodia, partly because of the country’s history for the past 50 years and partly because, as Chiz pointed out, “the education system in Cambodia sucks”.

Besides the culture of corruption that has required students to bribe their teachers from Kindergarten upwards, Cambodia’s education system relies on rote learning and does not train students to question, challenge, debate and do all the things that are part and parcel of the normal Western education system. As in Conf.u.cian societies, “the nail that stands up gets hammered”. Students are to be seen, not heard.

Americans, in particular, equate articulateness with intelligence. Most of the time, they assume wrongly that local Khmers who smile and do not say much are dumb or stupid.

In reality, in the cities, many local Khmers are very street-smart and very cunning. Some of the people in Cambodia are Pol Pot survivors and many of the others are children and grand-children of survivors. They project a veneer of innocence, plainness, dumbness (in the minds of the foreigners) but many are among the most manipulative and devious people one can find.

In my opinion, having worked and traveled all over Asia, if I were to generalize, I don’t think local Khmers are any less intelligent than their neighbors.

Many of the “stupid” things that are happening in Cambodia , e.g. selling children into prostitution, are caused by extreme poverty and/ or greed, the absense of a strong moral fiber, ignorance. Behind the obscene wealth, the ostentatious showing off, by shamelessly raping the country while neglecting the most basic human needs of the people (food, shelter, education, the teaching of civics), the moral conduct of the country’s political and business elite (basically one and the same, through inter-marriage) is reprehensible.
And yet, these people are widely admired and envied by many of the poor people who will not hesitate to imitate them, if given the chance.

What we have in Cambodia is a mentality of “ keep them poor and ignorant”, they will think it’s normal that we are obscenely rich (at their and at the country’s expense) and will continue voting for us.

I apologize in advance if my next comments are going to start a row.

I am going to talk about a sterotype in Cambodia that is actually racist . Khmers who have Chinese blood are imbued with a business sense that makes them more intelligent than pure Khmers. I have heard over and over again the same stereotype used by many Sino_Khmers, especially when they choose potential sons or daughters-in-law.

In other words, never mind about what many foreigners say.

Many Sino-Khmers are the ones who say that pure Khmers are ignorant (Lognong), stupid (Phleu) or not very intelligent (Aat Mean Pagna).

It is important to understand that a country with hundreds of murders each day will not get an international community talking

Since the beginning of our trip, we’ve been involved in what has felt like a continuous crime wave. The country that I once regarded as rough in some places but largely peaceful has turned into a place that leaves me feeling unnerved and uncomfortable...
Mugged in Siem Reap...one of the children reached into his pocket and stole his phone.

you start to realise that you have nothing at all in common with them [expats] and that in fact you think the opposite to what they feel the majority of the time, you think everyone is parasitical and after your money, that all kindness is false and then eventually you go to see something very moving like the Khmer Rouge Trials and as you listen to the stories of the victims you start to cry, but not for them, for you and the overwhelming crapness of the place.

nemo wrote: the French were left with one and only option – go to a foreign land and bring the people from there to work in Cambodia. Vietnam was the closest and since colonization of Thailand was never much of a success for the French, Vietnam it was.

TheGrinchSR wrote:Apparently the Khmer Rouge hung around until 1998 running the place too... what a fuckwit this lass is.

Vietnam was still bombing [Cambodia] until 1999

At Ankor Wat - built in the 12th century - by that time we had the bayeux tapestry, magna carta, a thousand years after the romans built great ampitheatres, before that the greeks built intricate friezes on the acropolis, before that there were the pyramids!!! Angkor wat is basically a big estate with lots of empty buildings with carvingd, if you want to see something similar only better go to versailles or hampton court! Same difference only less exotic! Don't you think it's slightly patronising to be like oh it's amazing what they achieved that early on - by that time chinese and europeans had already established mercantile trading and we're like wow they built a palace in the jungle.