Invest in a breakdown: your heirs will thank you!

Being quite charmed by this dilapidated town I am delighted to find that I have, for once in my life, preceded the real estate boom. The market is anyone’s and there are buildings for sale everywhere. Hell, there’s only one five-star resort in the south of Cambodia. It’s untouched territory! There’s money to be made!


If I were a little closer to my post-prime-Brando-Garbo days, I’d be more than tempted to buy a crumbling colonial villa in Kampot, settle in, and compare the pace of architectural decay to my own corporeal and mental decline. With a stock of long white dresses and a bigger hat (which I probably should have now), I’m confident I could competently enact an elegant and anachronistic unravelling. A bit of swanning, a bit of swooning, naps a-plenty, the development of minor expertise in the history of pepper cultivation and the preparation of crabs, tea before 5pm, gin afterwards: perfect. In case you are worrying that the heat has addled my brain, may I remind you that there are some very eminent reference points for the convergences of heat, emotional breakdown, faded architectural glory, and the passage of empires: Blanche DuBois, Aschenbach (is it?) from Death in Venice, Jeremy Irons’ character in Damage, Miss Havisham (without the heat)… And hey, I’m on a river in south-east Asia, thinking about colonialism, why not Kurtz, either the Conrad or Coppola version? If this all sounds a bit loopy, I’ll turn to midnight’s child, Saleem Sinai for support: ‘What grew best in the heat: fantasy, irrationality, lust.’ Would this not be a suitable setting for such a withdrawal from the cares of the world?


Fragile a flower as I am, I’ll grant that some of the buildings do have a head start.

Indolent I may be but I’m not quite ready for a terminal breakdown as, when I, with difficulty, apply thought to the matter, nothing really ends particularly well for my role models. The property market will have to take care of itself.