Khan Ny: A window into the economics of Cambodian life
- Brett
- Apr 11, 2018
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 6, 2019
Those who have been looking at my Instagram know that I was in the Siem Reap / Angkor Wat area last week and saw some very cool stuff. The posts for these things are linked here:
I’m not going to write about it here because loads of other people have, but I want to talk a little bit about the man who made a lot of this possible, my driver, Khan Ny. I found Khan Ny through one of the Irish friends, Conor, I met at my hostel in Phonm Penh and continued to hang out with in Siem Reap. Conor had hired Khan Ny to take a group up to Phonm Kulen, a National Park about an hour from town where there was a waterfall and some recently discovered ruins that are rarely visited. For those who know me you know this is exactly my jam so I went along. The next day I hired Khan Ny to take me to Angkor Wat in his Tuk Tuk and the day after that I hired him to take me to the airport in his car.
Khan Ny about 25. He recently moved to Siem Reap from a farm Siem Reap Province. He is married and has a one and a half year old son. His family rents a room in town near the hostel where I stayed. In addition to working as a driver he is in school studying English and Japanese. He works as a Tuk Tuk driver for one of the major hostels in town and also drives his car for a guy who has a number of drivers on retainer. He is friendly, his prices are fair, and he loves interacting with the people he drives. He is one of millions of Cambodians leaving the countryside in search of a brighter economic future. We are also Facebook friends now. If you are ever in Siem Reap / Angkor Wat I highly recommend you hire him. Here is the link to his website: https://khannysiemreapangkortours.com/.
So about his car. Khan Ny drives a 1998 Toyota Camry sedan. It has over 200,000 miles on it and I assume it originally came from the United States as the speedometer has MPH on it. Coincidentally, this was very similar to the type of car my ex (who I’m going to refer to as K from here on out) drove after college. We both loved K’s Camry, it was a real workhorse but sadly it met its end about 13 years into its life when I was rear ended. Or at least that’s what I thought happened to it. Now I wonder if the insurance company fixed it and shipped it to Cambodia to sell it to someone like Khan Ny. He takes great care of it and you can tell he sees it as his economic life blood. However, when he told me his 20 year old car cost him $300 per month and that he will be paying off the loan for 5 years my jaw dropped. After all, my 2014 Mazda3 costs me only $185 per month. How could this be?
So I did some Googling and determined that it’s possible that Khan Ny was exaggerating or that something was lost in translation but it is very clear that his 20 year old car is more expensive than mine. Here’s how the math works. A 20 year old Camry with 200,000 miles like Khan Ny’s cost around $7,000 in Cambodia, which is about what my insurance company gave us about $7,000 when they totaled K's car that was 13 years old and had 140,000 miles. The real kicker though is the interest rate. I enjoy a rate that is around 1.5% per year, because I have tremendous credit, believe me folks. Khan Ny does not likely enjoy this rate. One of the car loans I found online, the published interest rate was 14% and an article I found on microloans to high risk lenders said that the government was going to cap rates at 18%, down from a more typical 20 to 30%. If he was paying 30% interest for his car Khan Ny’s payments would be about $230 for a 5 year loan. The Cambodian government also levies high taxes and fees on cars.
Considering our group paid Khan Ny $60 to take us up to Phnom Kulen for the bulk of the day and I paid him $16 to take me around to the Angkor Wat temples for an afternoon, this is a lot of money. I guess this is just the reality of trying to start a business without access to cheap credit. In the time since he moved to the city Khan Ny seems to have done well, I hope he is able to keep it up.
At the end of my first day with Khan Ny he dropped our group off at the hostel he gave the three of us these wrist bands this his wife made. I've been wearing it ever since and because of the heat and humidity here it's gotten a bit dirty. It says Goodluck Brett. In the time since he moved to the city Khan Ny seems to have done well. I hope that he too has good luck and is able to provide a comfortable life for his family!
As always, thanks for reading, in case you’re interested in my sources they are linked here:
Chief Holdings Car Loan: http://www.chiefholdings.com.kh/PersonalLoans/CarLoan
Price of a 1998 Toyota Camry in Cambodia: https://www.khmer24.com/en/cars/cars-for-sale.html
Car Payment Estimator: https://www.carpaymentcalculator.net/
Microlending Interest Rate Cap Article: https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/central-bank-sets-interest-rate-ceiling-sparking-fears-126483/
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