California Meets Southeast Asia

How might our environment influence our mental and physical well-being and performance? The sometimes mysterious power of place and space reminds us that the natural and built environments that surround us exert great influence over our brains and bodies. Our successes and failures in fields such as planning and architecture, and our efforts to build healthier and more efficient living and working communities, shape our perceptions of and interactions with our environment as they impact the quality of our everyday lives.

Who hasn’t asked how their lives would be different if they had been born and raised in a different place? This is one of the many reasons we occasionally compare and contrast California with distant and different places; we not only learn more about the other, but we learn more about ourselves and our places in the world. And so in our stories, to satisfy our curiosity about our similarities and differences, we must advance far beyond superficial tourist industry and social media pressures that encourage people to simply “post envy-inducing photos of their glamorous getaways”; instead, we appreciate the substantive learning experiences offered by these distant landscapes and cultures, we understand the powerful connections to California, and we recognize the rapid changes that are transforming all of us and our landscapes.  

Our population of approximately 7.7 billion people on this Earth continues to grow in ways that challenge us to solve problems, use resources more efficiently, and improve our quality of life. Even as many of the 40 million people in California struggle to solve problems associated with crowding and congestion, we might learn from other places where these problems are far more serious. Here, we take you to Cambodia and Thailand, parts of Southeast Asia where a rich and powerful empire once ebbed and flowed for nearly 600 years, but where horrific conflicts and war brought widespread devastation during the last century.

These regions have been recovering with rampant growth in their cities and a dramatic infusion of people and money from other parts of Asia. Though changes have been slower to impact smaller rural settlements, patterns of unbridled development are crowding major urban areas with economic opportunities, traffic chaos and gridlock, and appalling pollution that can overwhelm the senses, forcing us to ask what can be done better. Californians might learn from a land where rules are bent or even absent within an atmosphere of historical (and sometimes current) foreign intervention, conflict, corruption, and dictatorship, but where most people are working hard to survive each day to improve their lives and communities.  

Our ties with Southeast Asia have become far more obvious and relevant and practical to Californians during the last several decades. We have already considered in our book and as a story on this web site the largest concentrations of Vietnamese people in the world outside of Vietnam, particularly in the burgeoning Little Saigons of Orange County and San Jose. Our book also surveys the more disadvantaged Hmong population that settled mostly in the Central Valley from the Southeast Asian highlands, especially around Fresno (the largest concentration), Merced, and Tulare. Both of these groups originally escaped as refugees in the chaos, destruction, and death that followed after the United States ended its involvement in the Vietnam War during the 1970s. The largest Laotian populations outside Southeast Asia are also scattered across California.

Here, we focus on the Cambodian populations and communities that were established when refugees from the war and the brutal killing fields that devastated Cambodia fled to California since the 1970s. And though Thailand was impacted very differently by that war, various Thai immigrant streams, especially since the 1980s, have created their own communities in our state. All of these Southeast Asian groups have established their largest concentrations outside of their homelands right here in California. Here we take you to parts of Southeast Asia and then show you how Southeast Asia has come to California as we consider how growth and development change our sense of place in both places. We were recently reminded of our powerful connections when the new Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak crippled Southeast Asia and then rippled through these businesses and communities in California in 2020.

It is easy to contrast physical Southeast Asia from the Golden State. Though you will find scenic sea stacks rising above some California surf, you will not find the steep limestone towers that form islands surrounded by mangrove habitats so commonly highlighted in Thailand’s tourist brochures. And though visitors continue to flock to California’s sunny south coast attractions, our Mediterranean climates are relatively cold compared to the tropical coastlines of Cambodia and Thailand.

Located around just 10 degrees north of the equator, these places are much farther south than Cabo San Lucas and about the same latitude as Costa Rica and Panama. And so, in contrast to California, their beloved coastlines and crowded cities never get cold as high pressure over Asia dominates their hot and sunny low sun season “winters”; their humid and sticky monsoon season floods their “summers” with heavy rains into September and October. Temperatures near 90 F during the day and the 70s F late at night are common in January, though it is cooler to the north. Warm tropical waters hug their coastlines where you can find coral reefs and other environments never experienced around our cold California current.

Their agricultural products reflect these physical differences. Rice production rules in both Cambodia and Thailand, with an abundance of rubber, sugar cane, coconuts, and what Californians might consider other exotic tropical fruits. You will find some of these fruit trees at local nurseries within diverse Southeast Asian communities that have emerged in Southern California’s coastal plains, but they will often require special attention and a lot of water in our Mediterranean climates.

Though more compact Cambodia has a much smaller area and population, its population density is nearly the same as elongated California. Today’s population has grown to over 16 million and the median age remains relatively young: about 25.6 years, though fertility rates and percentage population increase has slowed since the 1980s. And though only about a quarter of Cambodia’s population is considered urban, this might not be evident in the busy congestion of Phnom Penh or even Siem Reap.

In contrast, Thailand’s population of about 70 million is not only greater but considerably denser than California’s, as growing urban populations have recently surpassed rural settlements there. These cities are home to the growing industrial and service industries that are attracting job seekers. Thailand’s economic evolution and growth that has brought millions out of poverty continues far ahead of Cambodia, but both countries have been sources of economic migrations that have produced new enclaves in California during recent decades.

The rate of change especially in Cambodia and Thailand urban areas is breathtaking, literally. Recent rampant growth and development and an infusion of wealth and people from China and India has created unimaginable congestion and pollution in the cities. Each beach town and cherished coastline or island is discovered and then overrun within a few years. (The new Coronavirus outbreak of 2020 temporarily calmed the crowds, but devastated the region’s tourist industry.) Dangerous air pollution chokes the cities when that capping high pressure dominates during the “winter” dry season.

There are obvious signs of hardworking people running the treadmills toward what they hope will be new economic opportunities. Moms and dads are seen commuting in chaotic traffic on the front and back of one scooter, sandwiching two babies or kids on the same seat between them, all without helmets, scenes unimaginable in the Golden State. Street and open market food vendors compete to offer their delicious meals for what seem to be mistakenly low prices compared to California standards. At night, especially in Thailand cities, the infamous multi-billion-dollar sex industry emerges along their raucous walking streets, fueled by desperate workers and the tourists who seek them. All of this among the gritty dust of the dry season or in the mud and floods of the wet season. Through it all, many people remain friendly and optimistic, while some hear and wonder about stories, real and imagined, of life in a place called California.

And so, the largest number of people in the world from Thailand and Cambodia has settled in California. And they have brought far more than their revered recipes to the Golden State. The Thai community in Southern California is around 100,000, largest in the world outside Asia. Centered along Hollywood Blvd., you will find the world’s first officially designated Thai Town.

According to the Thai Community Development Center there, the most recent immigrations (since the 1980s) include people who are not refugees, but economic immigrants. These more recent immigrants are mainly poorer and less educated and skilled. Have they found better opportunities and lives in California? The Center writes: “All peoples have a basic right to a decent standard of living and quality of life. Yet, in the Thai and other disadvantaged communities, people are living in substandard housing and lack access to basic health services, education and quality employment.  Since its establishment, Thai CDC has addressed the multifaceted needs of Thai immigrants.” Many, particularly within second or third generations, have found success and the California Dream and have become established leaders, sometimes after dispersing into surrounding communities.

Cambodia Town in Long Beach is home to the largest concentration of Cambodians (around 20,000 of the more than 100,000 in California) beyond Cambodia. It is clustered in a diverse neighborhood on the east side along Anaheim Street and is also known as Little Cambodia or Little Phnom Penh.

Large migrations of Cambodian refugees to the United States occurred when they somehow escaped the war’s devastating bombings and the killing fields of brutal Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge during the 1970s. An even larger wave of refugees (that had survived the destruction and chaos of this war and genocide that claimed millions of lives) flowed in after the Khmer Rouge was defeated around 1979. These people who had experienced unthinkable hardships and torture were originally distributed across the country until they clustered in California communities that included Long Beach and others in the Central Valley. Immigrants continue to struggle along with today’s second and third generation Cambodian Americans who are searching for and sometimes finding their own far-too-elusive California Dreams.

As in many other ethnic enclaves in the state with their families, organizations, restaurants, shops, and other businesses, community leaders work to improve today’s opportunities and quality of life. From their web site: “Cambodia Town Inc. is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that spearheaded the campaign to designate a 1.2-mile stretch in Long Beach as “Cambodia Town”. Cambodia Town’s mission is to use Cambodian cultural customs and traditions to improve the social and economic well-being of residents and business owners in Central Long Beach. By preserving the Cambodian heritage, we give hope and a strengthened identity to our youth, and by empowering the community we promote the revitalization of our neighborhoods.”

Today, community members look back to a country with the longest-serving (since the 1980s) prime minister in the world, sometimes labelled a dictator by the opposition. This might lead some to wonder if the only things Cambodia and California have in common are their first letters and their people who dream to live better lives, whether in a struggling Cambodia or here, in competition for part of that California Dream. 

We hope our abbreviated attempts to show how California meets Southeast Asia will help you better understand the Golden State as it also opens a clearer window to view our diverse communities and our world.