Dealing with Oily Skin and Acne in Hot, Humid, Sweaty, Sticky, Dirty Cambodia

It didn’t take me long after landing in Cambodia to figure out that my oily, acne prone skin doesn’t mesh well with the climate here…and things went from bad to worse in a hurry. I have gone through a very long process of trial and error to discover what works. And lucky for you, I am willing to share this glorious revelation with all of you. I have been using my current method for over two months now, and have been enjoying near-perfect skin the whole time. I hope it works for you as well as it did for me!

Basically, my skin has dual personalities. It gets oily and shiny, but if I use a cleanser meant for oily skin, my face feels like it shrunk three sizes and can no longer smile. It gets flaky, dry spots and totally freaks out if I use anything too harsh. I now use a gentle cleanser meant for normal to oily skin by Oil of Olay and an anti-aging moisturizer.

The trick to dealing with the acne here is to constantly be exfoliating away the layer of dead skin on top. Otherwise, all the sweat and humidity and dust and smog and oil that build up on our skin throughout an average day in Phnom Penh gets buried underneath that top layer. For some reason, my face doesn’t like to shed the dead skin cells for some reason…so I have to manually force it. I have stumbled upon two secret weapons that have brought victory to the acne battle: the first is Tretinoin cream (otherwise known as Retin A or Renova, which is prescription-only and very expensive in the States) and microdermabrasion cream (which you can make yourself at home for cheap, otherwise will cost you an arm and a leg at the store).

I have good news about the tretinoin cream…I was shopping at a local pharmacy the other day, and stumbled across a whole shelf of it. It is the brand that comes from Singapore called “Stieva” and comes in a variety of potency…and the best part is, it’s only a little more than $7 bucks a tube. Hurray! I don’t remember the name of the pharmacy, sorry. But I’m sure they sell it in most.

You can read my article about how to make microdermabrasion cream at home here, and the article about how to use both products here. (Sorry, but I don’t feel like typing the whole thing twice.)
Just be sure to wear a sunscreen when following this method, otherwise some nasty burns are in store…since you are, in essence, peeling off the entire top layer of your skin.

Please let me know how it goes, if you decide to give this a try.