[timtom123]

Spent significant time in Vietnam & Cambodia & Thailand. Cambodia is a sad country full of desperate people. "less-policed" is the entire country. ~50 years since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide.

Vietnam was by far my favorite of the three and the contrast between the three countries is stark.

[parthdesai]

> Spent significant time in Vietnam & Cambodia & Thailand. Cambodia is a sad country full of desperate people.

Probably should also include which country is responsible for the current condition of the country.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1175241-once-you-ve-been-to...

[ctxc]

Content: "Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević."

I had to read up, and...my goodness.

Apparently the US bombed a neutral Cambodia secretly to incite Vietnam's neighboring countries and put pressure on them, killing 30k to 150k civilians. This caused unrest, and gave way to Khmer Rouge to sieze power, using "defense against the US" as propoganda.

[UltraSane]

I think PolPot has more responsibility for this.

[dunkvg]

Yes they are not on the same level, Thailand used to be far ahead but has stagnated and Vietnam has caught up, Cambodia is so far behind you cannot imagine it will ever catch up with its neighboring countries. They still use dollars as currency because the local currency is so unstable

[OutOfHere]

How does Laos compare?

[timtom123]

Sorry, I can't say. I always stayed near the water for work as a dive master or ESL teacher, so I never made it to Laos.

[bugbuddy]

[flagged]

[dang]

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45597318 also. I'm sympathetic for where you're coming from, even though I don't fully understand—but this implementation is not working.

[alephnerd]

My SO's family is from the portion of Gia Lai neighboring Cambodia. Gia Lai itself is fairly poor, but ime the neighboring half of Cambodia is even poorer and desperate.

It's the same story in the Mekong Delta as well (having had to go to extended family weddings in rural An Giang).

And calling out the relative lawlessness in Cambodia is not racism in any shape or form. Based on your comment history, it seems you are reflexively defensive about Cambodia to a startling degree.

Cambodia was dealt a bad hand, but so was Vietnam and Laos as well, yet neither have the same degree of institutionalized criminality that you see in Cambodia.

The problem at the end of the day lies with the country's leadership, and a quasi-reformed Khmer Rouge member like Hun Sen just isn't the right leader to help Cambodia develop out of the LDC category.

Heck, Bangladesh (historically a peer of Cambodia) was also formed due to a tumultuous history and severe instability in the 1970s-90s, but concentrated on state capacity development - something which Cambodia's leadership thumbed their nose at in the 2010s.

[zahlman]

> To call a country full of any type of people is the definition of racism.

"The USA is full of people who believe in freedom of speech". Racist?

[WalterBright]

Different cultures are ... wait for it ... different. There are cultures I would not want to live in.

There's a reason why so many people are desperate to get into the US.

[skrebbel]

> * To call a country full of any type of people is the definition of racism*

This is bullshit. This kind of stuff isn’t black and white. Am I racist for calling Monaco a place full of rich people? Of course not, I’m describing the situation people are in, not their characters. Same holds here.