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Move To Cambodia - Book Review

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Move to Cambodia is a new up-to-date guide-book that has a lot of useful and must-know information about Cambodia. It’s written specifically for people who want to visit, live and work in the country.

Written by Lina Goldberg, a freelance writer based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

I read the book during my Pchum Ben holidays. It was a good read.

The book has 5 essential parts:

Move To Cambodia

1. Welcome to Cambodia - An Overview

Lina started by introducing a short history of Cambodia, its culture and courtesy. It is not long or boring like you read in other books. It is short and contains enough information to give you an idea how Cambodia was once an empire, then experienced a dark side of genocide and country itself as at present time.

The most interesting in this introduction is that it contains some specific actions that you must not do to Cambodian people.

I don’t think most of the foreigners are aware of what Lina called “Saving Face”. But as a local Cambodian myself, I can confirm that it is important.

If there’s any second edition of the book, I would suggest to add another must not do action “Tap the head”. Because it is also considered as a disrespect if you tap somebody’s head. I don’t know if you feel the same at your home.

I like the book because there’s a lot of insider information. I would give another example is that family is the first priority in Cambodia.

If you open a company in Cambodia, it’s important that you understand this behavior. There are many (insane) reasons you would find in “Move To Cambodia”, including corruption and bribes etc.

But if you move to Cambodia, you have to adapt to the country’s culture. You cannot run your business on your own way or the way you run at your home country.

This is Cambodia. You have to live and work in Cambodia’s way.

I would suggest that once you read those reasons, keep them for yourself. One day you need them to calm you down. I am sure they will be very useful.

I don’t want to see you live like a mad expat in my country :-)

2. Planning your move to Cambodia

You will find everything you need to know and what to do to prepare before you move to Cambodia. Starting from Visa, vaccinations and how much budget you would need according to the longer of your stay.

It’s interesting to see how Lina came up with a clear budget matrix. Because it will have a quite different between the cost of living in Phnom Penh and provinces.

3. Living in Cambodia

There are details information on what you should do when you first arrive in Cambodia. Those are the practical living styles of expats who currently live in Cambodia.

Lina took a great time to go, meet and interview various expats in Cambodia. You will get a lot of real experiences and advises from them in the book.

All the necessary information such as: transportation (with a good tip on how to take Tuk Tuk with a cheap price), home and apartments, hospital and clinics, safety and security etc.

4. Working in Cambodia

I totally agree that Cambodia is a country that you can find a job easily. Lina provided tips to all the level of working in Cambodia, starting from being an employee to employer.

You might disagree when Lina suggest to keep your business plan a part and start to networking with people, observe how they do business here in Cambodia.

I think it’s a good advise. Cambodia is a developing country. Your business plan might work or might not work better than practical tips.

There’s one thing I want to add, if you open a business in Cambodia. At the beginning, thing might not work as you expected but take your time and see what you need to understand and act according to the situation.

An adaptation would be required to sustain your business and move thing forward.

It will work just fine after you find your Cambodian’s way.

5. Resources: For More Information

As I mentioned earlier, the best way to get to know more about Cambodia is to start networking. I found the last part of the book is useful to make friends with other expats who live in the country.

There are useful websites, Facebook groups and few good books to read.

At this point, I want to thank to Lina for publishing this book. It is a very good book of Cambodia I’ve read.

To get the book, you can simply head to Move To Cambodia.

Have a good reading!

Anything you want

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I didn’t remember how I found Derek Sivers.

But I like reading his blog.

From time to time, his articles are featured in different popular medias.

He is a minimalist person.

I learned that he sold his company for 22 millions and gave it all to the charitable trust. He took only a 5% of its value per year. And when he dies, it all goes to charity.

I don’t think there’s another person in this would could do such crazy thing.

But he did it with a lot of good wills and he was really sure of what he was doing.

Anything you wantI bought his book Anything You Want while I was travelling to Siem Reap.

It is a short book.

The next morning when I arrived back to Phnom Penh, I already finished it.

It is short but a great book to read.

Derek wrote in very detail why he created his company CD Baby and why 10 years later he sold the company.

It was an enjoyable read. Every word counts. Every sentence gives us an unique experience.

There are 5 important concepts I learned from the book. And I hope Derek would feel OK if I share it here.

A business is started to solve a problem

Derek started CD Baby because he wanted to sell his CD online. There was no iTune or any website that have “Buy Now” button yet.

He created everything on his own. And finally he can sell his CD online. Then he started to add his friends’ CDs. It’s from there that Derek need to start a company because he want to help people to sell their music online.

His business is created to sell independent music online.

If you want to create a business, you should be able to answer that simple question. Does your business help to solve any problem?

If yes, what is it?

Never do anything just for the money

Derek takes care his customers more than his own goods. That’s the main reason why CD Baby grown so fast from a nothing company to a million dollar company.

He also mentioned the most important thing is to be happy. I think we all agree or you might not be agree but money doesn’t equal to happiness.

We just need to have it enough to make us happy.

So before making any decision in your business, you should ask yourself: are you happy with it? do your customers will be happy with it?

If the answer is yes, you can go ahead.

Make yourself unnecessary to the running of your business

In most case, I saw businessmen are busy and stressful.

That’s not a good sign.

You should be able to make yourself more happy when your business grow.

Isn’t the happiness that you want to have when you first started your company?

If you fail to release yourself, it is the matter of delegation and internal management.

As the owner of the company, you should be able to release yourself from daily operation.

You should reserve your main focus on how to improve your company rather than wasting time to take care of daily activities.

You don’t need a plan or a vision

I told myself often one day will come. One day I will have fund and good vision to start a company.

And I wait.

That day never come!

Derek suggests that whatever we can do now, do it now. We don’t have to wait until we have fund, good plan or big vision to start a business.

As soon as our business could solve a problem, do it with what we have now in hand. Thing will grow naturally when there’s demand.

It seems like I have to agree with him because that how CD Baby started and grown.

You can’t please everyone, so proudly exclude people

I think he is right.

We cannot please everyone.

Make sure you take care a number of people who you are happy to help. I think back to what I wanted to do for KhmerBird.

I wanted to increase more topics, find more writers for provide fresh contents about Cambodia. But Finally I have a feeling that I cannot please everyone.

I should better target a small audiences who support me so far, learn more about them and see what I can do better for them.

I could find a peace in mind after reading the book by knowing that I am not the only one who fail to please everyone.

But we should proud of we are doing now for the majority of the people.

To learn more, I would suggest you to read Anything You Want by Derek Sivers.

KhmerBird Guide To Blogging Coming in October

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I don’t know if it also happens to you. To me, everything seems to have its own time. I used to be a stressful person because there are many things I want to achieve.

As I confessed many times, I ended up by doing nothing.

Then I read a book that teaches on how to get things done.

I learned a lot from that book. And I finally found a good way of getting my things done as well.

I would suggest if there’s any part of your activities you want to improve, look for a book that could teach you how to do it.

A book usually costs you around 10$. I like kindle version. All books I bought are in kindle version.

The reason I like mobile version is that I can read anywhere, as soon as I have free time.

I explained everything here in How To Live A Happy Life Without Worry.

What I really want to say in this post?

I planned to write an eBook about blogging 2 or 3 years ago. I have ideas for the book. But I didn’t write down any single word.

There are two reasons for this: I gave myself an excuse because I was busy with my kid. On another hand, since I don’t blog often, the revenue from the blog was not so good.

That kind of situation is very bad if I want to launch the book and prove to people who I have successes in blogging.

That the two main reasons why I didn’t write the eBook.

Now I know how to manage my time. Vitou is now growing. I have a proper schedule to write blog post for KhmerBird.

Started from last month, I could see the revenue of the blog is increasing as double. Thank to my friend who help me to optimize my blog for Adsense.

Now it is a good time to start writing the eBook. I will call it: KhmerBird Guide To Blogging.

KhmerBird Guide To Blogging

There are 4 important parts I want to share in this e-book:

1. How to set up a blog

You don’t have to be an IT to set up a blog. You just need a good step by step guide to set up. The process might be done in 10 minutes.

Setup a blog is not difficult. But you need to do it in a right way since the beginning. Choosing a topic to write is also important because it can affect to your monetization later.

2. How to promote blog

Once you have your blog setup, you start to write contents and publish them on your blog.

It is important that people come and read your blog.

If nobody comes and gives you some feedback, you will get boring. It might be the end of your blog. You don’t have motivation to continue blogging.

Know how to promote your blog is very important.

3. How to monetize blog

Once your blog starts to have visitors and some feedbacks, you might want to start your monetization process.

You don’t have to feel shame of it. If you blog provides good contents, helps people to achieve something, there’s no reason to be afraid of making some revenue from your blog.

Nobody will complain this, I can assure you.

There are many ways of making money from blogging.

I hope after doing it myself through all the years, I could give you some advice on how you could earn some money from your hard work.

4. Secret tips on how to blog with a kid in hand

That’s the bonus but I do believe it might be useful to many people.

Most of them make excuse that they have a full-time job and family to take care. They don’t have time for blogging.

It is not true.

If you put your commitment and manage your time well, I am sure you will have plenty of time to blog.

Blogging doesn’t require much time.

For now, I work around 4 hours per week for KhmerBird.

The most important thing is that you set a schedule and you need to commit to your plan.

There are many people who have plenty of plans but there’s a few only who work the plan!

I will give myself a month to write this eBook. I thin to launch it at the middle of October or something.

I hope I already give you an idea what the book will talk about. Feel free to let me know if there’s something you need to learn or want me to share my own experiences about it.

I write this book because I want to share what I know about blogging. This book is for you, rather than for me.

And it is good if you could be a part of it.

Cheers.

River Of Time [Kindle Edition]

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I planned long time to introduce Cambodian films, books and everything good about Cambodia. I have read and watched many of them.

We just need a good time to write them down and put them on a page where it could give easy access to those who want to read more, learn more and watch more about Cambodia.

River Of Time
Today I want to introduce River Of Time, a book by Jon Swain, a British journalist who arrived in Indo-China in 1970 to cover the war for the Agence France-Presse news agency. Swain spent five years in Cambodia and South Vietnam as a war correspondent.

Swain’s reporting of the fall of Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975 won him the prestigious British Press Awards’ Journalist of the Year.

His story have also been told in the film “The Killing Field”. He wrote everything about his arrival in Phnom Penh in 1970 and what he loves about Indo-China, especially Cambodia.

He wrote:

Indo-China is a like a beautiful woman. She overwhelms you and you never quite understand why. Sometimes a man can lose his heart to a place, one that lures him back again and again.

I am also sad when I read this phrase from his book:

Even today, after years of suffering, the Cambodians do not have a strong sense of caring for their fellow men.

But I like the book and I am not alone who have enjoyed reading the true and well described memoir of Jon Swain.

These are the few testimonials of the book:

“A brilliant and unsettling examination of the age-old bonds between death, beauty, violence, and the imagination, which came together in Vietnam as nowhere else.” - J. G. Ballard, Sunday Times

” A splendid memoir… a tale, at once tragic and beautiful, of love and loss, of coming of age and of witnessing the end of Indochina as the West had known it for more than a century.” - LA Times

“An absolutely riveting book … haunting, compulsive, and beautifully written, River of Time looks set to become a classic.” - Alexander Frater, Observer

“A romantic, evocative and touching book, the story of a young man’s coming-of-age in the shocking but desperately alluring war zones of Cambodia and Vietnam.” - Sunday Telegraph

I would recommend this book to those who want to understand more about how Cambodia entered into the big war and bloody genocide.

It will definitively make you image how beautiful Cambodia was in the past.

Check out River Of Time [Kindle Edition] on Amazon. Good reading!

Golden Bones - Book Signing 28 June 2011

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Golden Bones Golden Bones is a true story.

It’s a book written by former ambassador Sichan Siv, a Cambodian born who escaped from Khmer Rouge in 1976 and became an American ambassador to UN between 2001-2006.

The book described from the childhood of Mr. Sichan, brings the glory period of Cambodia before the war.

Then the fall of 1975, Khmer Rouge came and evacuated people from the city, forced them to work on the fields.

Mr. Sichan escaped to refugee champ in Thailand and arrived in USA with 2 dollars in his pockets. He started to earn his living by driving the Taxi.

He resettled as a refugee in Connecticut and went on to get a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University.

From 1989-1993, Ambassador Siv worked for President George H. W. Bush as the White House Deputy Assistant for Public Liaison, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs.

In October 2001, President George W. Bush nominated him and he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate as the 28th Ambassador to the U.N. Economic and Social Council.

From 2001-2006, he also worked to promote U.S. interests in the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council.

Golden Bones will described in details how Mr. Sichan maintained his hopes and dreams. A lot of people found the book as an inspiration human story.

Monument Book will organized Book Signing again for Golden Bones on the 28 June 2011, starting from 06:00 pm. If you want to get a copy of Golden Bones with signature of the author, you should not miss the event.

See you there at the Monument Book.