Cambodian people

Khmers people are fantastically nice and accommodating.  They rely on each other's help - farming, commuting, retiring and dealing with illness.  There is no unemployment insurance or welfare, there's community.  For those that come up short on the latter, things are ugly fast.  Even when Phea would give a group of kids the leftover two baguettes from a picnic lunch, one would take the bag and break off chunks for his 10 friends who would just stand and wait before having one himself. 

They need to cooperate as things aren't all that easy here.  The basics of life come from daily toil that's hard - there isn't much coasting.  If you can make $2,000/year here you're doing ok, but deflation of wages (and prices a little) is kicking in.

Power goes on and off, rural homes use car batteries they pay to have charged daily.  That also means some little kids carry batteries seemingly half their weight for a few kilometers daily.  A string, friend, and stick over two shoulders sure helps.  Ice is bought daily, if the iceman doesn't come someone has to put their most important stuff in the neighbours icebox.  Fresh water and sewage don't exactly exist, and if they do, are isolated and actually don't deliver quite as promised.  Water is boiled or bought, or just drank and people deal with not being well.  Rice farming is hard work, even with basic tractors and oxen.  So is massively overloading vehicles - it takes many helping hands to lift and tie all that in place - the people are small, so strength of lifting comes from numbers.  Over loading a moto means someone holds it up, another one loads, and another one ties stuff on.  When the wheel falls of the trailer (we observed wheels falling off everything that moves is fairly common), somebody has to find a lot, rock, or chunk of metal to hold the axle up with, and the rest lift the trailer.  Not falling off a vehicle or moto comes from everyone hanging onto and watching each other.  This country is ripe for jokes like "how many Khmers does it take to ____?".  But it's due to necessity, not incompetence, so the humor isn't exactly there, although they think it's a bit funny too.

They help each other and seem to like doing so.  Bad driving habits are the only place where I can observe irrational selfish thinking - other than that it's very collaborative.  Houses don't exactly have walls or an "inside" and an "outside" clearly how we have.  Motos don't have individual seats.  Those lack of lines physically are analogous to the lack of lines dividing people and their daily routines.

This country has challenges, I hope the top sees it and thinks about it genuinely instead of just living off the masses. Mainly from my guess is making the huge mass of kids under 20 educated and able to contribute.  Apparently new rules are they all have to go to grade 12.  But actually improving the time in school would be helpful too - to make do with work schedules and numbers of kids versus schools, it seems most go half days - morning or afternoon not both.

There's controversial hydroelectric projects that will flood a couple of valleys - I see little grounds for controversy.  It's great people don't want to flood valleys, but on the scale of world problems, that one doesn't rank high for me.  When the alternative is diesel generated, completely sporadic and intermittent power, with limited national penetration and effectiveness and rural electrification using batteries only, reliable power is of high utility.  Canadians pay less for electricity than here on a nominal basis, and when it's measured by employment time as the denominator rather than straight nominal currency, the difference is huge.  The percent of time the average Cambodian spends earning their electricity for a year is something like a hundred times more than someone here by an article I read that had accompanying math that was easily verifiable by a few side calculations.  That's why this country already has 100% penetration of super expensive (to them) compact fluorescent light bulbs - basic economics work and isn't lost on them. 

Electricity that's reliable and relatively "costless" on a marginal basis like a government hydro project can bring refrigeration, proliferation of communications infrastructure, and maybe even those UV bulb end use water sterilizers and so on (they'd probably go a long way in the country's kitchens too).  Restaurants can have those bug zapper lantern things. Communications help tourism, enforcement of crime, trafficking, etc.  In large parts of the country, if someone sees something bad happening, they can't communicate it in a timely manner to someone who can help (or don't yet have phones even if infrastructure there).  Reading is easier with lights, school is better.  Traffic circles have big statues (elephants, tigers, etc.) because not everyone can read, but they sure know what a giant elephant looks like, so you can say "left at the elephant".
 
Aside from electricity related improvements, cleanliness needs improving.  If I were a dictator (or elected government) I'd get on my citizens band radio virtual pulpet and tell all the people (Buddhism proclaims to love the earth and it's creatures, right? Sounds like an effective lever to me) to start by at least going around their hut and picking up all the junk.  I think that's constructive, they don't need any more crazy dictators.  Seriously, it's not that hard, and it'd help any country look, feel, and be that much more proud, clean and worthwhile.  Appearance is one thing.  Rotting muck and smell and your house pets bringing that crud back on their paws...

To ease the health care "system" burden, doubling up the lanes on the 5 main highways would be a big help.  Road building can't be expensive here, old equipment works in this weather, and the area is pancake flat with really good solid dry rock everywhere.  Speeding truck + moto interaction isn't a good thing, it ends ugly.  They're working on some of the main routes already.  There seem to be a lot of police that I don't see doing too much - a decade long push toward gradual traffic safety and orderliness seems like it'd be zero marginal cash cost yet NPV positive - especially with the driving population growing massively (maybe even cash positive if fines are used).
  
Once that's done, an education of not letting your chicken sit on the kitchen table or the cow to do it's business in the living room is a pretty low cost step change.  Make some 50 foot rule, hell even 20 feet, about what goes into an animal or person's body and what comes out of it.

I don't know if this is invented, doable, or feasible, but an "at home do it yourself dog and cat castration kit" is needed, I know that sounds a bit off, but seriously I bet a ziploc bag handout with snips, a rubber band suture that dissolves, some anesthetic, and lots of disinfectant.  Instead of millions of ratty mongrels, 1/10th the number of relatively clean cats and dogs would probably go a long way towards keeping everything a notch healthier, and I'm sure the animals would actually prefer it... they have short, hard, lonely lives on the streets.

Tax or whatever the cost of cigarettes go above $0.50/pack would probably be positive.

But what do I know, that's just some blab of a guy who can pedal and type on a computer, two skills pretty abstract from usefulness.  If they actually want development examples, lots of nearby countries have a head start on the development track, they'd have more relevant experience.

What I do know is the Khmers are open to change and have seen the worst of the worst, so by default everything in the world is looking up.  They will work hard and sincerely appreciate any assistance/direction given what I've seen, it's not a country of people looking for handouts to be "made better" by external forces.