The country's best-known corporate citizen, Intercontinental Hotel owner and former Chamber of Commerce president Theng Bunma, once pulled out a gun and shot out the tire of a Royal Air Cambodge Boeing 737 after a dispute over an excess baggage charge. The Paris-educated philosophy graduate spent five years as a Buddhist monk and four as an artist before reluctantly agreeing to return to Cambodia in 1993 to help his father rebuild the family business. It had been destroyed when the Khmer Rouge seized Phnom Penh 18 years earlier. Somehow Phallaboth hasn't been eaten alive. That's partly thanks to the fact that the overall economic climate is gradually improving.
Violence is down.
The prime minister, according to diplomats, is even cracking down on corruption. All of these things have encouraged the expats to return and been a salvation for the residential and school project. There are now more than 100 children enrolled in school, just shy of the 120 needed to break even. The first apartments and stand-alone houses, put on hold in 1997, come on line in September. Hun Sen. Nonetheless, politics has set him back a number of times.