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| How i moved to Cambodia and opened 3 biz in 3 years |
  | I first visited Cambodia in 2004 with a friend, and i fell in love with the country within a few days.
I first visited Angkor Wat, of course which is the most beautiful temple of south east asia, then i went to Phnom Penh, the capital which is an amazing city, with the craziest traffic you could imagine, continued to the south, toward the coast. There we rented dirt bikes and took a 3 days trip along the sea. Imagine driving a bike in the smallest roads, no helmet so you can feel the wind, kids are jumping out of the bushes to salute you, everybody smiles at you...that was it, i had to come back !
I went back to France, sorted out my boring life, and started to look for a job opportunity in Cambodia. I found a contact, took a plane ticket, put everything i needed in a backpack and took off for good.
Arriving in Bangkok, i met a charming Thai girl who was managing an internet café, went out a bit with her, then moved on to settle in Phnom Penh.
There the job opportunity didn't work out, but since it's Cambodia, opportunities started jumping at me :)
The guy from the Top Banana guesthouse i was staying at was moving to Japan and was looking for someone to take over, and i needed something to do, so right away i said ok and took over the lease for a couple of $$ and started to run the guesthouse !
3 weeks later, i had to sell back the business to the family because of another story i'll maybe tell later, and i moved to another guesthouse and started doing what i knew : websites.
A couple of monthes later, i met a guy looking for a ship manager. He was running a cruise boat company and needed an expat to manage the staff on board and for the customers relationships. I immediatly took the job and started getting paid to cruise on the Mekong in a luxurious cruise ship !!
The cruise company had a s**t website and needed to replace it, so i slowly moved from the ship manager position to IT consultant and developper and made this cruise booking engine to help them developing their business.
In the meantime, the girl i met in Bangkok moved to live with me in Cambodia, and since she proved to be an amazing cook and she was looking for a job, we opened the "Setsara Thai restaurant" in Phnom Penh. Today the restaurant is getting quite successful and we manage to live out of it
6 months after the restaurant opening, i had a friend managing a bar who lost his job and was looking for an opportunity. The house next door to the restaurant was for rent, so took it and we opened the Equinox, bar, restaurant, tailor shop and gallery on the ground that he would do the work and i would get to drink for free :)
The bar is doing well and improving, we're actually building a second bar downstairs at the moment, as it gets pretty crowded some nights.
Since the restaurant and the bar were finally doing ok without me working on it, i decided to move on with other projects. In a random conversation with a friend, an interesting idea came up : renting screen space out internet cafes and re-sell it to local advertisers. I went back to my keyboard and start coding an app that sets the wallpaper and the homepage, i pulled out a quick website about Cambodia, associated with a couple of friends, and got started.
Today we've been doing some hard work on the content, and try to focus less on advertisers, and it seem to be working out.
Since the money made with the AdCafe website isn't yet amazing, the 2 friends i made it with and i associated to advertise ourself as IT consultants, and we created the IConsulting association which setup, design and host websites all around the world, and especially in Cambodia.
Wow, i just realized this is the longest post ever hope you didn't fell asleep while reading it ;)
| | Posted: 11/11/2007 at 02:51 | Read 740 times | 49 comments | Leave Comment |
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| Marco | 33 years old
Male
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Hometown: Toulouse
Last Login: 2/15/2009
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"Luxury is being able to turn down a job just because you have no pleasure doing it" |
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