18 May 2005

This wasn't absolutely impossible...

...but it still seemed pretty unlikely: Lion Mutilates 42 Midgets in Cambodian Ring-Fight

Some strange things do happen in Cambodia — cows curing disease, dogs giving birth to kittens, Hun Sen getting re-elected as prime minister — but what made this story too hard to swallow for me was that I knew that Kampong Chhnang could never have afforded a lion, no matter how big a crowd they managed to fit into their arena.

Still, the fact that you regularly see midgets boxing on the street as a way of earning money made this article plausible enough that several long-term expat Phnom Penh residents thought it might just be true.