There’s quite a lot of Westerners  teaching English around Cambodia, and Sihanoukville (sorry, Preah Sihanouk, as it has been officially re-named recently) is no exception. Most of them are native speakers, some of them not. Some of them has been hired by private schools, some are volunteering in the hundreds of NGOs .
Well, we were asking ourselves :  who represents the best English teacher in the eyes of the average Khmer youth? We have asked a few students around town and following are the results of our survey:

Brits.
Definitely no, Khmer students do not really understand why such people talk cut sentences thru their noses. Local guys are also amazed by the fact Brits use complicated ways just to say “ yes ” or “ no ” ( eg. “ I’m afraid not...” or “ Sure I do...”, “ well, I’ll try...” etc.) .
You know, Khmer is a grammatically and syntactically simple language and the locals are not used to such linguistic finesses. Too difficult.....aut yol teh !

Aussies.
They should be coming from another planet. If the Internet connection is slow, for example, an Aussie will say it is “slaay”. A simple ‘OK’ down under sounds like “aykhaay”. Khmer don’t understand a word when they talk, just their prolonged “yeeeeeeeeeeeeeehh” or “rrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighth”. Thumb down for those funny guys from OZ.

Yankees.
Slightly better than the formers, but their rounded “r” is not an easy thing to reproduce in the whole of Asia. These should be certainly a teaching guy in town who cometh from the Lone Star state, as a couple of days ago I heard a kid telling a tourist: “ OK, yer no buy my bracelet nao, y’kin git it lerer, innit? ”

French.
Double thump down. They get paid to teach English but in fact they end up teaching French because they are convinced there is no better language in the world. Ah, la grandeur ….

Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians.
The best. Indeed.
We got some of them in our school, from time to time, and the response from the students was prompt, the understanding rate grew up together with a general improvement of English conversation around our place. These Aryans talk slowly and their words are neatly pronounced. Easy to understand.
We can imagine what could happen when some of our students find a job in an upscale hotel:

RECEPTION: “Gut morning, zir, may I help you?”

GUEST: “Yeah, I’ve got a non-working light in my bathroom”

RECEPTION: “Ach so, zir, you’re telling me a licht in ze bathrum ist not working? Fery sorry, zir, vir vill sent van technician immediately, zenk you for kolling”