A Phnom Penh snack vendor sporting an Angry Birds T-shirt. In rural and urban Cambodia alike, Angry Birds fashion is a runaway hit. (Patrick Winn/GlobalPost)The dust-choked Cambodian province of Prey Vang seldom conjures the phrase "fashion phenomenon."
But this week, while on assignment in a remote village, I couldn't help but notice all the cartoon beaks pointing at me from dozens of Cambodians' T-shirts, caps and jackets.
It seemed like every tenth guy or girl was adorned in Angry Birds fashion. Even in this dirt-road farming village, where I'd traveled to interview a human trafficking victim, a local vendor had stitched a felt, yellow Angry Bird to her cutesy blouses to up their selling price.
In the capital, Phnom Penh, the Angry Birds swarm with Hitchcockian intensity: on teenagers' trucker caps, grade schoolers' backpacks and, for the ladies, on pastel-hued flip-flops.
Cambodia's Angry Birds obsession is powerful. But what's driving it?
The Angry Birds are hardly the first bits of Western ephemera to captivate distant places. In Cambodia at least, Mickey Mouse is still enjoying his run as evidenced by this primary school wall art. See more pictures and read the rest of the article at Global Post.
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