City of Fakes - Phnom Penh`s Thriving Pirated Goods Market
I was just trawling through my archives and found this story - City of Fakes - from 2006, about Cambodia`s refusal to enforce international copyright laws. Of course, Cambodia is known to be a country where everything is for sale, if only one puts the right amount of dollars on the table. One glorious consequence of this alleged culture of impunity is the astounding a variety of fake consumer products that have been manufactured on the cheap (and often shoddy). As if half the country was not real at all. For me, the pivotal moment came when a branch of Hooters, an American fast food chain, which traditionally employs girls with large breasts (as waitresses), opened in Cambodia`s capital. Hooters did not last, it closed after a few weeks, but the illicit trade of pirated goods continues.
On the legit front, a real deal KFC opened in Phnom Penh in 2009 and apparently there`s a MacDonalds too - allegedly located inside the unsightly and heavily fortified US Embassy - but that´s another story.
So read on…
The one-legged veteran carries a little basket in front of his chest, crammed with books. “You read the Killing Fields, you need Lonely Planet, only two dollars.”
The middle-aged man moves surprisingly quickly through the crowds in front of Phsar Thmey, Phnom Penh’s finest market, an imposing French Art Deco structure. The tourists huddle together as other unfortunates move in, some missing limbs, others eyes. A young girl with a beautifully placid face leads a blind beggar with a fiddle along the wide approach to the market. Despite the din of the whining instrument, the book-seller remains persistent. While he cannot read any of the titles he sells, he is desperate to make a sale nonetheless, “Read about Pol Pot, about Khmer Rouge, only four dollars.”
Every single title in his collection is a fake. The Lonely Planets, the David Chandlers, the Killing Fields, all fake. The veteran is not offering books, but photocopies of books. And he’s by no means alone. On the main approach to the Phsar Thmey, a number of stalls sell a much larger number of titles than the mobile vendor – all copied as well. Avid readers will find most titles relating to contemporary and ancient Cambodian and South East Asian history – from Graham Greene’s ‘The Quiet American’ to shoddy reprints of White Lotus facsimile reprints of 19th century manuscripts by French explorers in Cambodia, to new titles such as Nic Dunlop’s ‘The Last Executioner’. The workmanship of these titles is dubious at best, pages are crooked or missing.
As shoppers penetrate deeper into the market, it becomes apparent that almost nothing here, but for the barely-fresh meat on display in one corner of the great hall, is quite real. Pirated goods are offered everywhere.
“You want Rolex watch, I have Ray-Ban sunglasses,” young sales-women call out from high stools perched behind huge glass cases of hundreds of fake consumer items. PlayStation games and Lacoste shirts, Camel trousers, Gucci handbags and the newest Hollywood movies on DVD, Samsonite suitcases (re-branded Samsonith) and North Face rucksacks, all on sale for a few dollars. The biggest market in Cambodia’s capital sells nothing but fakes. And the preferred currency, for traders and shoppers alike, is not the ever-depreciating Riel, the Cambodian currency, but the US-Dollar.
Welcome to Phnom Penh, population three million and growing fast, once called the Pearl of Asia, now the capital city of a country mired in violence, nepotism, corruption and impunity. Cambodia’s journey into the 21st Century has been painful and things are only just beginning to fall apart again.
After three decades of US bombing, total war, a communist revolution, genocide, famine, a Vietnamese invasion, a failed UN mission and years of massive foreign aid that has made the rich immeasurably richer and the poor marginally better off, Cambodia is unable to look after itself and yet it is so riddled with bad deals that the world has turned its back and much needed foreign investors take their money elsewhere. Politics in peace time remain brutal and all stratas of civil society, from the judges down to farmers in remote provinces, struggle to do their jobs, while natural resources, such as the country’s evergreen forests and fish stocks are being depleted as quickly as possible.
A currently UN sponsored trial of the remaining former Khmer Rouge leaders is likely to be a sham and very unlikely to develop into any serious debate of the country’s painful past or its uncertain future. Nevertheless, tourists now arrive in the hundreds of thousands to marvel at the temples of Angkor, and in Phnom Penh, generally known for its sordid night-life, more than a hundred foreign-owned bars have opened in the last years. Surprisingly, despite all this development, not a single American food franchise has an outlet in Phnom Penh. Imagine, a capital city that’s been on the international tourist circuit for at least five years and doesn’t have a McDonalds or KFC or two?
It sounds too good to be true and unfortunately cannot be attributed to the Cambodians’ superior taste in dining culture, but rather to the greed of its government, which is currently being forced to pay back 7.6 million US-Dollars of World Bank funds that never reached their intended targets, the poor. It’s a clear enough signal to chase away all but the hardiest investors (unscrupulous Chinese companies example, for cutting down vast tracts of protected jungle to grow mono-cultures such as pine and cassava, in league with a national government breaking its own laws).
All the more surprising then, that a branch of Hooters has just thrown its doors open in Phnom Penh. Hooters is an American fast food chain that sells burgers and has been growing steadily over the last years. There are more than 300 Hooters outlets in the US and many others in 19 different countries, including China and Singapore. The secret of its success back in the States is simple – the waitresses get paid just 2 Dollars an hour, have large breasts and are instructed not to mind that customers ogle at them, as they serve huge platters of beef-burgers and chicken wings. Having large breasts appears to be the main employment criteria for happy Hooters girls all over the States.
When it comes to breast size, young women in Shanghai cannot compete with American girls, nor do they have the resources to acquire implants, as so many of their American colleagues do. When Hooters was recruiting employees for its first Chinese outlet some months ago, this most basic employment criteria, the entire raison d’être of the company, was dropped from interviews.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the restaurant is a roaring success, especially amongst families. What’s important to its Chinese customers is that Hooters is quintessentially American, not that it’s as unsophisticated, sleazy and vulgar a cultural export as can be. All that is lost in translation.
Ed is the manager of Hooters in Phnom Penh. He’s standing outside his property, watching a couple of girls brush the pavement. Hooters - Phnom Penh lies right in the centre of one of the city’s nightlife strips, round the corner from the notorious ‘Heart Of Darkness’ bar, which has been the scene of repeated shoot-outs between rich drunken Cambodians in recent years.
“We don’t actually sell any food right now. Maybe we will next week. The food is going to be just the same as back in the States, you know, chicken wings with honey and all that.” Ed glances nervously down the street, “But we got girls.”
The sign in front of his shop looks very genuine, very new and sparkling, but that’s as far as it goes. Hooters - Phnom Penh is a tiny hole-in-the-wall type hostess bar, one of many in the city. “No one comes in here thinking that this is a real Hooters. I have girls. This is Asia.”
Still, Ed has obviously given his business venture some thought. “I don’t actually think that Hooters girls in the US have such large breasts as their reputation puts out. And that’s not really a problem in Cambodia anyway. What’s so different is that the girls in the US are so service-orientated. My Hooters girls are much more unpredictable, they might be friendly or they might just put the beer down in front of you without a word. That’s Cambodia.”
Ed doesn’t appear to find this discouraging and likes to expand on Hooters philosophy, “Hooters in the US offers burgers with eye-candy. In my Hooters, you can take the candy home.”
A stone’s throw away from Hooters, Phnom Penh’s first genuine multi-storey shopping centre has just opened, a glass-domed monstrosity right across the street from Phsar Thmey. It’s higher than Angkor Wat; in fact, it’s the highest building in the country. Innocent visitors who have checked the markets and found only shoddy copies of western consumer goods might expect different products here. They will be almost completely disappointed. Storey upon storey presents nicely designed air-conditioned shops, selling nothing but faked goods – more watches, DVDs, CDs, video-games. Only the top floor holds a branch of the Pizza Company, a Thai franchise that sells virtually inedible American-style pizzas.
Even the so-called Happy Pizzas sold in various outlets around town, flavored on request with potent marihuana leaves, taste more genuine than this. Nevertheless, much like Hooters in Shanghai and Singapore, the Pizza Company in Phnom Penh is a roaring success, a family outing, a place where hi-so high rollers like to be seen. Once more, much is lost in translation.
A local bar owner comments, “The Thais are testing the water. The Pizza Company outlet and the Dairy Queen at the airport are ventures designed to find out how much they’ll be taken for, and whether they can turn in a profit. That might decide moves by other corporate chains. That’s Scambodia for you.”
A foreign diplomat explains how difficult investment is made by Cambodia’s government, ”Two Indian businessmen recently visited to see if it might be possible to build a large cashew processing plant in Cambodia. The country already produces quite a lot of cashew nuts. They traveled to one of the most promising provinces. There they were told that the governor would demand a thirty percent cut on every single cashew product they might want to export from Cambodia. The potential investors just shook their heads and left.”
Phnom Penh is catching up though. More and more roads have their potholes filled, the police are becoming more sophisticated at fleecing the city’s inhabitants and new shops and villas are springing up all over the place. Gated neighborhoods are mushrooming in a semi-organised profusion of new armored palaces and the shantytowns where most people live are slowly being torn down or pushed out into the rice paddies. Amongst all this renewal, the majority of people, the poor, the unemployed and unemployable, wander about in a daze.
The tourists barely notice as they rush from genocide museum to bargain shopping spree. Several genuine looking DVD, CD and book shops have recently opened around town. One is even called ‘Real CD World’. The discs and books on sale are better copies than those offered at Phsar Thmey, but still, very obviously copies. What’s worse, none of this pirated material is produced in Cambodia, but comes in by the truck load from China or Malaysia. Cambodia produces virtually nothing.
In a country where most people have to survive on a dollar or two a day, one might argue that selling genuine CDs or DVDs or books at standard international prices would be absurd, even obscene. But even at 1.5 US$ a pop for a brand new Hollywood movie, the locals aren’t anywhere to be seen in these outlets, they are too poor and not interested. It’s all for the tourists and ex-pats who live in the city.
As are the scores of girlie bars, brothels and massage salons that sprung up more than a decade ago during the UN’s transitional authority in Cambodia to service over-paid foreign personnel. These days, the girls serve tourists, diplomats, NGO workers, business men as well as the occasional faded rock star, and other human flotsam a country as poor and vulnerable as Cambodia invariably attracts.
In Cambodia, a land of make-belief, everything is possible and even the reality of the sex trade can become a fantasy cloaked in badly copied but comforting corporate trappings we understand and cherish. The world is lost in translation.
For his part, Ed, the manager of Hooters Phnom Penh, is not ambitious, “I don’t care about Hooters elsewhere. I picked the end of the world, so no one can find me.”
First published in Untamed Travel.
