Cambodia & Laos Defence Forum

[Aepsilons]

Cambodia honors 2 Vietnamese for building new army vehicle


King Norodom Sihamoni of Cambodia has issued recognition certificates to two Vietnamese for helping Cambodia repair armored vehicles and even create a new one for the country’s military. The duo have also been awarded medals of honor for their contributions to Cambodia’s technological development.


Tran Quoc Hai, a self-taught engineer known for homemaking his own aircraft in Vietnam, and his son Tran Quoc Thanh, hailing from the southern Tay Ninh province, were awarded the military medals this October after the two helped repair damaged armored personnel carriers and even build a brand-new one for the Cambodian army.


Cambodia also certified that the father and son are professional repairmen of made-in-Soviet BRDM 2 and BTR60PB armored personnel carriers.


When Hai went to Cambodia to fix a wheat planting machine at Cambodian Army’s 70 Brigade, he saw that several armored vehicles failed to start and expressed his intention to repair them.


After receiving a nod from local authorities, Hai started to repair the BRDM 2 on a US$25,000 budget, initially sourced from his own pocket. The carrier he fixed reduces its consumption of fuel from 45 liters of diesel to 25 liters and is capable of firing from a shorter distance.


After this achievement, Hai has been assigned by the 70 Brigade to fix 10 more armored vehicles and to build brand-new ones.


After four months, Hai and his son successfully made their own armored personnel carrier. His vehicle is able to fire targets at a distance of 7m, instead of 150 meters as old ones do, and is equipped with fire power on both sides.

Cambodia honors 2 Vietnamese for building new army vehicle

 

[Aepsilons]

lol, that was hilarious in bits

buahaha! I give it to the Khmers for their nationalism, small yet 'terrible'.

 

[dichoi]

Cambodia honors 2 Vietnamese for building new army vehicle


King Norodom Sihamoni of Cambodia has issued recognition certificates to two Vietnamese for helping Cambodia repair armored vehicles and even create a new one for the country’s military. The duo have also been awarded medals of honor for their contributions to Cambodia’s technological development.


Tran Quoc Hai, a self-taught engineer known for homemaking his own aircraft in Vietnam, and his son Tran Quoc Thanh, hailing from the southern Tay Ninh province, were awarded the military medals this October after the two helped repair damaged armored personnel carriers and even build a brand-new one for the Cambodian army.


Cambodia also certified that the father and son are professional repairmen of made-in-Soviet BRDM 2 and BTR60PB armored personnel carriers.


When Hai went to Cambodia to fix a wheat planting machine at Cambodian Army’s 70 Brigade, he saw that several armored vehicles failed to start and expressed his intention to repair them.


After receiving a nod from local authorities, Hai started to repair the BRDM 2 on a US$25,000 budget, initially sourced from his own pocket. The carrier he fixed reduces its consumption of fuel from 45 liters of diesel to 25 liters and is capable of firing from a shorter distance.


After this achievement, Hai has been assigned by the 70 Brigade to fix 10 more armored vehicles and to build brand-new ones.


After four months, Hai and his son successfully made their own armored personnel carrier. His vehicle is able to fire targets at a distance of 7m, instead of 150 meters as old ones do, and is equipped with fire power on both sides.

Cambodia honors 2 Vietnamese for building new army vehicle

congrat to Mr. Hai Lua from Vietnam.

 

[alaungphaya]

I know, I had seen that for a while, but the key question is why?

And I'll tell you, its very easy to be that way. Most people that visit Thailand feel that way; once they live there for some time, most change their views. There is the external face of Thai people and the real face of them. I was like you once until some experiences showed me the true character of Thai people, the hidden face behind Thai culture. It was not a good experience, so when the subject of Thailand comes, that comes back to me and there are emotions involved. I don't pretend to tell you how to see things, just to caution you that there are 2 sides of the culture and the people.

What happened to you in Thailand?

 

[Soryu]

congrat to Mr. Hai Lua from Vietnam.

Great, but many Vietnamese media news made many bullshjt about this new to get view rate .... so stupid.

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

All of these guys look so small n skinny...?

 

[Carlosa]

I alway love Khmer culture especially the Apsara dance.

Those Apsara dancers look like goddesses, I've seen them perform quite a few times, very graceful dancers. Khmer culture is quite nice, but regrettably, much of it was destroyed by the Khmer Rouge and the country is now trying to rebuild itself. Almost all those dancers were killed by the K. Rouge. The country had to rely on a few Cambodians living abroad to reconstitute the dance again.

 

[Carlosa]

What happened to you in Thailand?

Like I used to say, I had positive views of Thailand; I was very well aware of many things that are not ok, but overall, I had a positive view of the country, the people and the culture. I've been going to Thailand for about 20 years, for business, I used to import merchandise from there to the US market. I had an small factory in China and in 2009 I made the big mistake of moving it to Thailand, to Chiang Mai since I felt better dealing with it in Thailand and I never been much of a lover of China anyway. I was living in Thailand most of the year.

I changed my views about Thai people and culture after opening the factory and having Thai people working for me. That opened my eyes and that's how I learned the way that Thai people REALLY are, something that easily escapes most people visiting or living there until they get deep into the social fabric of Thailand and that's when you really see it.

Most foreigners and visitors to Thailand are wearing the "pink glasses", they see everything rosy, they see how nice Thai people are, how polite, how pleasant, etc, etc and they feel like they love Thai people and Thailand. Even for people living there, its not easy to pass that stage. I though I knew Thailand very well, but I was wrong.

I had a really bad business experience that almost destroyed my business and I'm still far from being where I used to be because of that. ALL my problems were because of the dysfunctional traits of Thai people, not just lazy which is quite well known and I knew that, but so many things that made it very difficult to deal with them and succeed, specially as a small business.

Many of these issues I would not want to mention in public because it would be very derogative to Thai people, but I'll say just one example: they are pathological liers, they lie all the time, they are so used to lie because they do it all the time in order to save face, its second nature to them. Thai people don't trust or believe other Thai people because they know themselves. Their cultural trait that says that you have to please others, its so ingrained in their culture that they rarely talk straight. If you walk on the street and you ask for directions to go somewhere and they don't know where it is, never mind, they can't say "I don't know, sorry", they will just tell you some direction, even they know its wrong because they want to save face, they don't want to admit that they don't know.

I used to have an assistant, one day I told him "can you check if such and such work is finished? He checks and tells me "Yes, its finished". Ok, very good, thank you. I happened to check the next day and I see that its actually not finished. This type of thing happened a few times. I got tired of it and confronted him, "Why you don't tell me the truth?" Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't want to give you bad news, I wanted to please you". Do you guys get the point? This is just one of many, many things that I can say. Its a dysfunctional culture in so many ways and it has so many contradictions. Yes, Thai people seem very nice and loving, but there are 2 sides to them and there are also many dark things behind that culture, but Thai people usually do a very good job to hide all that and present themselves as such a wonderful country and culture. Their work ethic is the worst that I ever seen, by very far. The Thai workers that I had always had some type of problem, whether is getting drunk during the weekend and not come for 1 or 2 days or something else, but ALWAYS something. The Burmese workers never had a problem. All my foreign friends with businesses were telling me the same things. Thai people are known for being extremely irresponsible and unreliable. 50% of the people that I hired, never even showed up for work the first day, we called them "we happened to you that didn't come to work? Oh sorry, had a motorcycle accident, I'll come tomorrow", but never showed up again. UNRELIABLE & LAZY. Period.

Yes, there are good things too and truly nice people too, but what I said is pervasive and most foreigners there know it very well. I could say many, many more things, but I'll stop here.

 

[Indos]

Very interesting to see how intertwined Cambodia's special forces groups are with Indonesia's. Good to see the cooperation of both Cambodia with Indonesia.

Indonesia send 10.000 troops during Cambodia peace process, the relationship is close indeed.

 

[Viet]

Those Apsara dancers look like goddesses, I've seen them perform quite a few times, very graceful dancers. Khmer culture is quite nice, but regrettably, much of it was destroyed by the Khmer Rouge and the country is now trying to rebuild itself. Almost all those dancers were killed by the K. Rouge. The country had to rely on a few Cambodians living abroad to reconstitute the dance again.

because of the madness of the red khmer, cambodia lost completely it´s history. there is virtually nothing left: no history books, no records of their ancient kingdom, no no nothing. really sad. the red khmer destroyed, killed, and burned everything. they try to reconstruct some of Khmer cultures through scripts in the temples, or history records of China and Vietnam.

 

[Carlosa]

I'd like to add that during the Thai - Cambodian conflict, pretty much everybody in the region (at the level of governments) knew what was really going on and what the true causes of the conflict was as a conflict created by internal political reasons in Thailand and everybody pretty much supported the Cambodian position, openly or not.

The actual reason why the Viet Army started to move into Cambodia was because Cambodia detected preparations by the Thai army to attack Cambodia in a very wide front and it was perceived that they might try to occupy and annex large areas of Cambodia. The position of the yellow shirts (supported by the army) was so fanatical and extreme in terms of their hard core nationalism and their views that see Cambodia as an ex province of Thailand that should be recaptured, that really alarmed Cambodia and Vietnam, that's why the Viets went in there and that ended up diffusing the situation.

 

[alaungphaya]

Like I used to say, I had positive views of Thailand; I was very well aware of many things that are not ok, but overall, I had a positive view of the country, the people and the culture. I've been going to Thailand for about 20 years, for business, I used to import merchandise from there to the US market. I had an small factory in China and in 2009 I made the big mistake of moving it to Thailand, to Chiang Mai since I felt better dealing with it in Thailand and I never been much of a lover of China anyway. I was living in Thailand most of the year.

I changed my views about Thai people and culture after opening the factory and having Thai people working for me. That opened my eyes and that's how I learned the way that Thai people REALLY are, something that easily escapes most people visiting or living there until they get deep into the social fabric of Thailand and that's when you really see it.

Most foreigners and visitors to Thailand are wearing the "pink glasses", they see everything rosy, they see how nice Thai people are, how polite, how pleasant, etc, etc and they feel like they love Thai people and Thailand. Even for people living there, its not easy to pass that stage. I though I knew Thailand very well, but I was wrong.

I had a really bad business experience that almost destroyed my business and I'm still far from being where I used to be because of that. ALL my problems were because of the dysfunctional traits of Thai people, not just lazy which is quite well known and I knew that, but so many things that made it very difficult to deal with them and succeed, specially as a small business.

Many of these issues I would not want to mention in public because it would be very derogative to Thai people, but I'll say just one example: they are pathological liers, they lie all the time, they are so used to lie because they do it all the time in order to save face, its second nature to them. Thai people don't trust or believe other Thai people because they know themselves. Their cultural trait that says that you have to please others, its so ingrained in their culture that they rarely talk straight. If you walk on the street and you ask for directions to go somewhere and they don't know where it is, never mind, they can't say "I don't know, sorry", they will just tell you some direction, even they know its wrong because they want to save face, they don't want to admit that they don't know.

I used to have an assistant, one day I told him "can you check if such and such work is finished? He checks and tells me "Yes, its finished". Ok, very good, thank you. I happened to check the next day and I see that its actually not finished. This type of thing happened a few times. I got tired of it and confronted him, "Why you don't tell me the truth?" Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't want to give you bad news, I wanted to please you". Do you guys get the point? This is just one of many, many things that I can say. Its a dysfunctional culture in so many ways and it has so many contradictions. Yes, Thai people seem very nice and loving, but there are 2 sides to them and there are also many dark things behind that culture, but Thai people usually do a very good job to hide all that and present themselves as such a wonderful country and culture. Their work ethic is the worst that I ever seen, by very far. The Thai workers that I had always had some type of problem, whether is getting drunk during the weekend and not come for 1 or 2 days or something else, but ALWAYS something. The Burmese workers never had a problem. All my foreign friends with businesses were telling me the same things. Thai people are known for being extremely irresponsible and unreliable. 50% of the people that I hired, never even showed up for work the first day, we called them "we happened to you that didn't come to work? Oh sorry, had a motorcycle accident, I'll come tomorrow", but never showed up again. UNRELIABLE & LAZY. Period.

Yes, there are good things too and truly nice people too, but what I said is pervasive and most foreigners there know it very well. I could say many, many more things, but I'll stop here.

Really sorry to hear that. But business is always like that in Asia. I think Asians as a whole value harmony above truth.

 

[Carlosa]

because of the madness of the red khmer, cambodia lost completely it´s history. there is virtually nothing left: no history books, no records of their ancient kingdom, no no nothing. really sad. the red khmer destroyed, killed, and burned everything. they try to reconstruct some of Khmer cultures through scripts in the temples, or history records of China and Vietnam.

Very correct, Cambodia was almost lost and in the end it was saved by Vietnam. I find it very amusing how people criticize Vietnam and forget who created that war in the first place and what would had happened to what remained of Cambodia if Vietnam didn't attack. Yes, once there, the Viets did push their own agenda and what the heck, why not? they shed blood for Cambodia. Others, like China and Thailand supported the Khmer Rouge which mades them accomplices in the murder of millions of civilians, but I don't hear much criticism of them for that.

 

[Carlosa]

Really sorry to hear that. But business is always like that in Asia. I think Asians as a whole value harmony above truth.

Yes, I know, I got over it, but that experience did allow me to get to know Thai people from the inside, that's why I often criticize the capability of the Thai army, I know them only too well.

 

[Echo_419]

Very correct, Cambodia was almost lost and in the end it was saved by Vietnam. I find it very amusing how people criticize Vietnam and forget who created that war in the first place and what would had happened to what remained of Cambodia if Vietnam didn't attack. Yes, once there, the Viets did push their own agenda and what the heck, why not? they shed blood for Cambodia. Others, like China and Thailand supported the Khmer Rouge which mades them accomplices in the murder of millions of civilians, but I don't hear much criticism of them for that.

Good thing you folks were around