One of the weirder aspects of the Water Festival was the presence of an American

named Bob sitting cross-legged on the pavement on Sisowath Quay with a cardboard

sign in front of him that read:

Job Open

$120/month

-assistant

-massage

-speak English

Robert

[email protected]

Bob, who drew a crowd of bewildered onlookers, said he hails from Lynn, Massachusetts.

He spent a year in Mexico and had just come to Cambodia after spending five years

in Thailand. When asked what he did for a living, he replied: "I do nothing.

I've been retired for seven years. I own over 9,000 websites."

He said $120 was only an opening bid for the person he was looking to hire and that,

depending on "the abilities of the person," he was willing to go up to

$160 or $175 per month. It was unclear what the person would do to "assist"

Bob except that giving him an unspecified number of massages was part of the deal.

** Parents of kids at the Lycée Francais Rene Descartes are ticked off. Several

are circulating a petition demanding that the school take "more direct and more

effective" action to stop a spate of attacks by monkeys on children. Various

sources say between three and six kids have been bitten. In one instance a child's

face was raked and left bleeding.

One idea for how to solve the monkey problem that is allegedly circulating is to

bring in a guy with a rifle and shoot them. "It would be an RCAF operation,"

said a wizened source.

The monkeys are coming from Wat Phnom where, according to a ticket seller there,

the population of "over 200" is expanding rapidly. "There's one monkey

born every day," said the ticket seller, who was afraid to give her name but

said she was not afraid of the monkeys.

Hotel Le Royal had a monkey problem last year. They hired Pestbusters, who brought

in cages with bananas in them to lure in the monkeys. GM Stephan Gnaegi said the

monkeys were too smart, smelled the trap and fled, never to return. "We thought

of putting sleeping pills in bananas but were sensitive to the issue as the monkeys

came from Wat Phnom," said Gnaegi. "We didn't want to cause a fuss."