Man about town

via CAAI

Friday, 24 December 2010 15:00 Peter Olszewski

Hero rerun on TV

IT’S been a big year for Aki Ra and the Cambodian Self Help Demining NGO.

Aki Ra’s nomination for CNN hero of the year and his subsequent elevation to one of the year’s top 10 CNN heroes brought in much needed bounty.

The NGO, which was formed in 2008, said on its website: “This honour has helped greatly in raising our profile.”

This year, Cambodian Self Help Demining cleared seven villages, removed 153 mines and UXOs, put 4695 people back on land that had been killing them, and built and supported two village schools and paid the teachers’ monthly salaries. During the year the NGO also increased its stable of full-time deminers from 15 to 25.

Aki Ra was also featured in The CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute Show which was originally broadcast on November 25.

For readers who missed this broadcast, the program will again be shown on CNN in Cambodia tonight at 5pm, and twice on Christmas Day, at 1am and 6am.

The show is hosted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, and presenters include Halle Berry, Jessica Alba and Gerard Butler. Musical performances by Bon Jovi, Sugarland and John Legend are also featured.

Hotel gold list

CONDE Nast Traveler magazine has released its prestigious Gold List of hotels for 2011. Five Cambodia n hotels are listed in the Asian section, all of them in Siem Reap.

The exclusive Amansara heads the Siem Reap list with an overall score of 93.

Hotel de la Paix, with 89.7, came second, narrowly beating Sofitel Angkor Phokeetra Golf and Spa Resort, which scored 89.6.

La Residence d’Angkor scored 88.5, and Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor scored 88.1.

Festive season singer

SOFITEL Hotel is jazzing up its festive season entertainment with the vocal talents of Miss Zoey Jones. She hails from Lancashire, England and graduated from the Doreen Bird College of Performing Arts in the UK in 2001. She has performed on the Kiss FM UK Tour, was lead vocalist at Rock in Rio (Lisbon) and in September featured as a soloist at Studio 182 in Phnom Penh.

Zoey will be performing her repertoire of bass, falsetto, mezzo-soprano, soprano, jazz and soul tonight, December 24, at the Christmas Eve gala dinner and again next Friday at the New Year’s Eve gala dinner. In between these shows she will be singing in the hotel’s Explorer Tales bar.