Campuccino #91

Sou Sdei and welcome to Campuccino, your bi-monthly dispatch of key headlines in Cambodia with a dash of opinion.

To new subscribers, welcome! I’m Darathtey, a communication consultant, writer, and researcher. Learn more about my work here.

I’m very touched by the number of responses I received after the last newsletter. While I deeply believe in what I do, your engagement and interaction make it even more worthwhile for me. Thank you! And double thank you to 27 of you who wrote me emails, and 5 of you who left comments below the last issue. I read every single one and feel incredibly grateful for such a dedicated community. I apologise for not responding to each email individually. I’m currently navigating some mental health challenges that require much of my energy and headspace. As for what's next, I'm planning to keep things pretty much the same, but I'm excited to spend more time on arts and culture section when something really grabs my attention and sparks my curiosity.

- Darathtey

Cambodia’s border conflict with Thailand continues to escalate in many ways. There were restricting hours of borders opening, closing of borders, ceasing import of many things such as electricity, internet, fruits, and fuel from Thailand, leaked phone calls of leaders' conversation, to put it briefly. I gotta be honest with you, I’m exhausted of this news and of both sides. There’s no winner from any kind of war. And, I’m going to just leave it at that. If you want to get into the nitty gritty of the border dispute between Cambodia and Thailand, read this post by Kouprey.

On a positive note, Cambodia recently put e-cigarette manufacturing on its Negative List of Investments. Of course, the move was met with a bit of cynicism from stakeholders around the reality of implementation but it is still the right step regardless. I wish similar thing will be done to alcohol, especially beers, which is a big problem here.

Another positive note (because we could all use any small dose of positive notes we can squeeze out, am I right?), especially for my start-ups/business inclined subscribers, Plug and Play finally made it apparent in Cambodia. For those of you who had similar questions as I did on what exactly Plug and Play is, it is a techie innovation startup platform from Silicon Valley. Excuse my rookie description as I’m way out of my depth here. The only plug and play I know is my trusty PS5. 🤷🏽‍♀️
Anyhow, Plug and Play Cambodia was launched at American University of Phnom Penh’s Technology centre with the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications as its founding partners.

Visually Pleasing

Arts & Culture

💃🏽 As much as I want to maintain an optimistic mindset and say that Cambodians have developed a better understanding of culture and intellectual property in arts and cultural products, what I'm about to tell you makes me incredibly frustrated and angry. Beyond the border conflict with Thailand that has dominated Cambodia's Facebook feeds for the past few weeks, another story has taken over my timeline: the drama surrounding a Cambodian Miss Supranational finalist (no, I didn't know what it was either. Just another pageant contest that has escaped my interest) who adapted a dance choreography for her talent performance without permission from the creator.
It's difficult to explain this entire situation in a newsletter without writing something as long as a research paper, but I'll try to summarise it as clearly as possible. About ten years ago, Hun Pen debuted the Krud Dance on Cambodia's Got Talent. The dance is incredible and still gives me goosebumps whenever I watch it. Pen is a trained classical and contemporary dancer, choreographer, and Deputy Director of Performing Arts at the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.
Chhum Chandara, Miss Supranational Cambodia 2025, when failed to secure Pen’s availability to teach her the dance, learned the choreography on her own, filmed herself performing it, and submitted it to the selection committee in Poland for the Miss Supranational International finale. The controversy erupted when she was selected and prepared to perform there.
I'll spare you the back-and-forth arguments from both sides in the public domain. My main concern is the public reaction I've observed on social media. While one side rightfully supports the artist's rights and calls out copyright infringement (applause, please), another side doesn't understand the value of original work. They hide behind the "Khmer Slanh Khmer" (KSK, or "Khmer Love Khmer") logic, believing that everything can be shared without consent for the sake of representing Cambodia on the international stage. But do we really want to represent ourselves using stolen work? I don't think so.
I'm glad the artist essentially won this battle and the copied version of her dance was removed, though not without considerable social media drama. Nevertheless, this incident demonstrates that Cambodia has a long way to go in understanding and valuing original artistic creations and their creators.
Read Hun Pen’s announcement here.

🍚 I’m going to talk about food now, and for those of you who are not interested, feel free to skip this part. Last week, I went to a six-chef collaboration event hosted by one of my favourite restaurants, Bai Sor. Obviously, this is not sponsored. I spent my own money to eat there. The event featured six Cambodian chefs, including Bai Sor's own. I was intrigued to see Cambodian cuisine showcased this way and curious to watch six chefs working in one open kitchen (the word "behind" from The Bear kept echoing in my head all evening).
It was a 12-course tasting menu consisting of various interpretations or tweaks of Cambodian dishes. My top three were Prahok Ktis with pork belly by Chef Tim Pheak from Baisor, coconut-based sour soup with duck by Chef Mork Mengly from Pinak Pou Restaurant, and Khmer noodle with crab brain-based curry by Chef Lim Linda, MasterChef Cambodia Season 3 Runner-up. I love the elevation of these three dishes. By switching key components of the dishes, they made the dishes taste almost different yet familiar at the same time, in a good way.
My least favourite dish was the fried baby shrimp with papaya salad by Chef Saom Orn, winner of MasterChef Cambodia Season 3. I didn't think the two components worked together, as the papaya salad was far too mild for the deep-fried baby shrimp, which are usually served with a punchy lime-pepper sauce. The dish also sent me into a low-key food rage due to the portion served to my table of two. There was one piece of deep-fried prawn (about half the size of my debit card) and a tablespoon's worth of papaya salad. While I understand I was in for a 12-course meal and wouldn't be going home hungry, I was bothered to see such an affordable street food served in such a ridiculously small portion. For reference, you can get a palm-size crispy fried shrimp for somewhere between $0.50 to $1 off the street or street stalls. It felt wrong, and it didn't even taste great. In my unprofessional opinion, you can't make something feel like fine dining by simply shrinking its size.

Okay, rant over.

Campuccino is a fortnightly dispatch of key headlines in Cambodia, written by @DarathteyDin.

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