[3] The Khmer-Portuguese mestizo or kon kat as they are called in Khmer retain Portuguese and Spanish family names to this day, while their physical appearance has moulded in with that of the locals.
[4] Bernard Col de Monteiro was born around 1839 in the Catholic village of Ponhea Lu, close to the capital of Oudom, north of Phnom Penh.
He is eighteen years old, no nose like that of all his countrymen, beautiful red skin, silk pants that come above the knee and a gray felt hat that amazes the whole land.Col de Monteiro kept an excellent reputation among the French as later in 1890, Adhémard Leclère had similar words of praise for the kings' secretary interpreter.
[8] At the end of 1873, Col de Monteiro was involved in a commercial scam as his official signature was abusively used by "false count and quintessential carpetbagger",[9] Frédéric Thomas-Caraman, one of the first French merchants established in Phnom Penh in the 1860s' who used the Khmer King's reputation to go on a shopping spree in Paris.
[11] The humiliation was such that some historians recorded that he was "thrown out the window"[12] while his descendants recalled that he had to suffer long years in prison for standing up for the independence of Cambodia,[13] both of which a mere crystallisation of a distant but painful memory.
[18] His transcription in Latin letters has been criticized for its lack of literal faithfulness to the original as it attempts to provide an optimistic way of telling history about Cambodia, in order to please the French.
Through his Catholic faith, his knowledge of languages and his position at the Royal palace, he was instrumental in facilitating the relationships between King Norodom and the French missionaries of that period.