Splendid Isolation

Sometimes the mundane tells you a lot. There I sit in splendid isolation sipping my Lao Beer. Just a few weeks ago this was was the most popular convenience store in Takhmau. I'd have been lucky to get a seat most hours of the day or night. Even if I found a seat I'd have been surrounded by noodle-slurping, smartphone-wielding, game-playing youngsters. 

Now they're all gone.

Since the border dispute with Thailand there is an orchestrated boycott of all things deemed to be Thai. Some of us are old enough to remember the 2003 anti-Thai riots in Phnom Penh, the ransacked hotel, the Thai Ambassador escaping from his Embassy through the back door and by boat. Yet those shameful episodes did not last long, fortunately. Relations soon returned to normal. This time it's different, it's taking much longer, no real tangible end in sight.

Why are such once favourite venues being sacrificed? If the boycott lasts much longer, they will close. What happened to the phrase often heard, much repeated “Thai goods are best” usually stated when condemning those from Vietnam. Cambodians will miss their Thai products when they are no more. So please do be careful with what you wish for.

We must also remember it is all Cambodians with jobs in these shops, mainly young women. Most of them have few other chances of decent work to help their families. A fair few probably have family members who have had to return from working in Thailand.

Remember “Never Again”? It was heard in the aftermath of the evil Khmer Rouge rule. That call was made most loudly after the end of World World War II, so much so that the new international rules-based order was created. The United Nations and other institutions were established all with one simple hope in mind. It was to find a better way for nations and peoples to resolve their differences than by lethal armed conflict.

Leaders, both political and military, wield the means to wage wars, but they should be subject to restraint by their country-folk, whose blood and treasure they are sacrificing. Evil regimes such as those of Germany and Japan in the 1930s, or the Khmer Rouge of the 1970s, relied on goading people to go along with them. It was easy to command widespread support in those days by indoctrination with poorly educated masses. The 1950s and beyond witnessed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and concerted formal and informal education for citizens everywhere to know that they had choices. 

No longer do citizens have to obey leaders unquestioningly. The same thing happened in Cambodia in the 1990s and beyond, in fact on a remarkable scale in a whole host of ways. (E.g Voter Education (page 40); Human Rights; Youth etc)

Yet here we are again in regional conflict with populations showing due obedience, rallying to nationalistic rhetoric and blithely heeding the call to boycott Thai establishments and goods. The exact same kind of thing is being played out in Thailand against Cambodians.

We keep reading perverse claims about whose culture ancient dress or dance belongs to, when in fact many of these traditions predate the borders that they now fight over. Today's post-colonial nation states and borders just did not exist. The various peoples and groups in South East Asia have much more in common than divides them. Plus of course they have far more to gain from living productively with each other.

Well for now, despite all that new education, an abundance of new technology and forms of media, few people are going against leaders. Indeed brave souls who do risk it are called disloyal, encounter hostility from friends, and worse  risk official punishment.

There is no groundswell, no sustained momentum for peace.

Eventually sense will prevail, it always does eventually in the end. Until then or our local shop closes, I will continue to drink my Beer Lao alone in splendid isolation.

.........ooo0ooo.........

This Op Ed was declined on 8 December 2025 for publication as the Cambodia/Thailand border dispute erupted again in armed conflict.

The editor explained: "....we cannot proceed with the publication, given the current sensitivities between Cambodia and Thailand. Being reminded of painful past events certainly doesn't augur well in the current circumstances."

My reply: " I do beg to disagree of course as would most international observers.  When similar circumstances from the past resonate in present ones, it shows that lessons have not been learned and the means to prevent similar ones from recurring are not working.

Equally today's "sensitivities" include upsetting current authorities, i.e. self-censorship is at work.

However you do have to walk a delicate line."

Although the 1991 Paris Peace Accords were a long time ago, they are still International Law, and a binding agreement about how signatory parties should conduct themselves.

Both Thailand and basically the same leadership in Cambodia, one of four factions, signed them committing to peace.

They should be reminded of this, loudly and by countries and international agencies calling for restraint.  (See also the 30 year re-visit by Michelle Vachon.)