Blundering into a Chinese Maze

[Sihanoukville, 11/7/23]

When I visited Kolab, Cambodia six weeks ago, I could see the basic accommodations of any settlement. There was a market where food was sold, not just to take home, but to eat right there. With plastic stools at the crudest wooden tables, none qualified as a restaurant, but it was good enough for locals. Clothing, household goods and farming tools were also available at wooden stalls. Kolab’s most impressive building was its Buddhist temple, with a school attached to it. Everything in Kolab grew from the needs of its inhabitants, with their market the most essential. Should their eateries, temple and school disappear, they can still go on.

By contrast, almost nothing has sprung from native needs in ghastly Sihanoukville. First off, its many casinos are off limits to Cambodians, and very few can afford to buy or rent a home here. With most making less than $10 a day, even one night at a Sihanoukville hotel is out of the question. This remade city was never meant for them, but the Chinese.

Chinese love to gamble more than anyone. Knowing how self-destructive this can be, China outlawed gambling, then it repossessed Macao. Many Chinese, then, flooded there to have a fabulous time while ruining themselves.

Living in Philly, I sometimes visited Bethlehem. Its massive steel plant had been bought by Sands, so now, “gamers” could brood over their less burdensome wallets in the shadow of rusting yet still picturesque smoke stacks. One bitter Chinese, though, decided to get even, sort of, by taking a shit in Sands’ garage. Each day, busloads arrived from New York’s three Chinatowns. Chinese were Sands’ best customers.

Though Macao was dandy enough for dummies, Sihanoukville sounded even better, for it had cheaper food and hotels, a tropical climate and beaches. Plus, returning Chinese could boast of having visited a foreign country.

Gambling generates freelancing, spontaneous and organized crime, so any casino magnate, like Trump, for example, must be in bed with dozens of gangsters. Just look at all those blotchy and ulcerous legs sticking out from under the blanket. Look at how they wiggle.

Once here, the triads branched into other rackets, most notably online scamming. Chinese, Taiwanese, Malaysians, Vietnamese, Thais and Cambodians have all been lured, then trapped. Locked inside buildings, each is forced to seduce hundreds of lonely, horny men, mostly their compatriots. I, for example, could pose as some sexy babe, but with that innocent, country girl look. I’m just a peasant, see? Still, my photos are so lickable, you won’t mind paying my school tuition, or help with my mom’s enormous medical bills. In so much pain, she’s screaming as I type, so please, daddy?

I’ve never had a man so handsome pay so much attention to me. I’m just one ugly girl, and stupid too, so why do you like me? When I chat with you, I get so nervous, I shake! Yesterday when you said kiss, I blushed for the rest of the day.

No writer, I don’t need to come up with plots. My triad has dozens scripted out. Should I fail to meet my quota, they’ll kick me in the balls or electrocute me. The only way out for a cyber slave is to beg his family to send thousands of dollars to these Chinese gentlemen. Some slaves just jumped out the window, if he had access to one.

What am I performing my pitiful song and dance on SubStack?! Since I’m already in Sihanoukville, I should offer my romance scamming skills to the nearest triad. Looking up, I see five obviously Chinese guys waddling by. Too obese and near sighted to knock down a standee, they sure don’t look like gangsters, but you never know.

Lesser Chinese crimes included operating unlicensed businesses, including, for example, the Jinding Casino on Koh Rong Samloem. Far from inconspicuous, it blared loud music onto the beach and dumped untreated sewage into the ocean. Though local authorities were fully aware of these problems, they couldn’t raze this casino for a lack of heavy equipment, they claimed. Yeah, right. Of course, no one knows how many clandestine casinos there were in Sihanoukville.

Five months ago, the body of Byun Ah-yeong was discovered at a Phnom Penh construction site. The Korean had no bra and her panties were worn inside out. In Cambodia just two days before being killed, she was last seen alive walking into a Chinese run hospital that advertised all these services on its sign, “Chinese and Western medicines, pediatrics, internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, dermatology and acupuncture.” Unlicensed, it didn’t employ even a single doctor.

In 2021, a Chinese in Phnom Penh was fined $30,000 for keeping a pet lion. How this beast was brought into Cambodia in the first place is unknown. Just a week later, the lion was returned to its owner, on the order of Hun Sen, Cambodia’s prime minister for 28 years. His son, Hun Manet, is now in power.

In Sihanoukville not quite four days, I can’t wait to get the hell out, and I’ve never said this about any place. Having promised an Australian expat I’ll pay him a visit, I’ll linger just a bit longer, so please pray for me to not go mad!

Having lived in Sihanoukville for nine years, the expat must have his reasons. I’d like to hear them.

All that’s kept me going so far were snapshots of joyful normality, such as a pantless two-year-old boy playing with a bulldog puppie. In the States, his parents would be arrested, and this kid taken away. His preference for having lots of air between his legs surely indicates he was born into the wrong body, so hormone treatment is in order, with surgery, at an unlicensed Chinese clinic, scheduled for next week.

Though much of life is purgatory or hellish, we get enough glimpses of heaven to believe that it’s possible not just in the afterlife, but here, now, if only fleetingly, in tiny doses. When I ordered a black coffee to write this piece, the Amazon barista gave me a sweetly sympathetic smile. Though I hadn’t walked that far to get here, my haggard face was covered in sweat.

“You look like shit, grandpa,” her angelic eyes clearly said, “and there’s unclipped hair sticking out of your nose. Two days in a row, you’ve come in here to bang nonsense on your laptop…”

It’s nearly 5PM and I haven’t had a proper meal all day. In Sihanoukville, Chinese is the best and most widely available choice, of course, so wontons it will be.

[Sihanoukville, 11/8/23]

[Sihanoukville, 11/8/23]

[Sihanoukville, 11/8/23]

[Sihanoukville, 11/7/23]