"Holiday in Cambodia"!


The Phnom Penh experience...

14 January 1999...This morning I flew into Phnom Penh, standing on the airstrip going "Damn, I'm in Cambodia." Got a taxi to a guest house an Aussie had recommended in Bangkok, for $3/night, and then set off to explore.

A short walk to the right, you run into the Tonle Sap River, wide and framed on this side by a big concrete sloping wall where young boys strip down and go for a splash, men of all ages wrap scarves around their waists and shimmy out of their shorts to bathe in the murky waters, as fishing boats creep along and occasionally drop their large, white nets.

The streets and avenues are wide, but some barely paved ones remind me so much of Kathmandu, as the dust and motorbike fumes merge into hack-inducing clouds. Cars, bicycles, and motorbikes bounce along, trying to avoid potholes filled with fetid waters, vegetable skank from markets, and stray rubbish.

The Royal Palace, the Museum, all open until 11 a.m., then close until 2 p.m.--a kind of siesta. So I linger around the National Museum until they let us in. It only takes about an hour to stroll around, and most of the museum sculpture and artwork are pieces lifted from the temples at Angkor Wat and other sacred sites in Cambodia. A few impressive ones, amazing detail, accuracy and grace for pieces ranging from the 6th century. Another museum intrigue, the squealing, rustling of bats, thousands of them in the eaves above your head, but you can't see them as a second ceiling was built to protect visitors from bat droppings. One wall by the exit is black with oozing batshit from above. They were gonna remove the bats but discovered they're a species only found in the museum!

On my way in, a group of moto (motorbikes, hired like taxis here) drivers offered their services and one has decided to wait for me until I come out. Amputees, victims of land mines, on crutches and in dilapidated wheelchairs, beg for money and seem to settle for a cigarette each.

Dararot is waiting patiently for me to come out. I find myself saying I want to go see Choeung Ek ("the killing fields") and Tuol Sleng (the genocide museum), all in one breath, in one day, like I'm going to Buckingham Palace or something.

Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields

When Pol Pot stormed Phnom Penh in 1975, many city-dwellers fled for their lives to the countryside. Many others who stayed behind were systematically executed, seemingly without cause or reason, but certain individuals were particularly singled out: intellectuals, teachers, speakers of foreign languages, but also peasants, Cabinet members, women, children, and eventually, even members of Pol Pot's regime.

Tuol Svay Prey High School was turned into a prison and renamed Tuol Sleng, with high walls and barbed wire built around it. Here, the classrooms were made into holding cells by building tiny brick cubicles up from the floors. Accused of holding back the "revolution"--much the same as in Red China--the victims were interrogated and tortured, from being dunked into huge vats of water until close to drowning, to having their fingernails ripped out or their heads placed in a vise. A large wooden beam structure looks as if it might have been a swingset for the former school, but instead, the two iron rings protruding down from the beam were used to string bound and gagged captives up by the wrists (which were behind their backs).

The large vessels for holding water for dunking still sit, with accumulated debris in the bottom. Holding cells have dark stains of red and black on the floors, as if the blood had never been cleaned up when Pol Pot's reign of terror ended. Rusted metal boxes are strewn around the rooms, "toilets" for the inmates, and huge steel bars with ankle rings help formulate a gruesome picture of what it might've been like. Victims not in the brick-wall holding cells were laid in beds side-by-side, their ankles locked into the steel rings which were held fast by a heavy metal, horizontal bar, positioned between two bars which came up vertically from the floor. The victims locked in, side-by-side, were forbidden to speak to one another, and the rules of the prison were strictly enforced; those who deviated were flogged with whips or ropes, or tortured unimaginably.

Dararot...tells me he's 40 (but looks about 22). He was in Phnom Penh when Pol Pot arrived, and like many others, he fled, not knowing where his mother, father, and sister were. He eventually ended up in Siem Reap and further west, close to the Thai border, where he remained for three years--until the Vietnamese invaded and "rescued" Cambodia from Pol Pot.

He found out only later that his parents, sister, and uncle had been killed. He wants to point out the photos of his mother and father to me--amidst hundreds of other photos of men, women, and children who had been tortured and later murdered. At Tuol Sleng, photos of victims, as well as their torture, line the walls; haunting eyes peer out from emaciated bodies. Like the nazis, the Khmer Rouge documented their atrocities. Dararot points out the two separate photos of his parents and I nod in solemn respect.

The prison buildings are run down, the paint peeled and chunks blown away by gunfire and granades. It has the sobering quality of Alcatraz: standing there amidst the peace and surrounding beauty, knowing that so much horror had gone on there. The cheerful voices of young guys playing volleyball behind one of the buildings seems incongruous.

After victims were interrogated and tortured at Tuol Sleng, they were taken to Choeung Ek, the killing fields, Cambodia's Auschwitz--if they survived the torture.

We bump along a long, dusty road and suddenly the land off to the left starts looking lumpy behind the barbed fences and wooden posts: some 8,900 skulls/remains have been found, but many more remain. I pay $2 at the entrance and find myself greeted by a large Buddhist stupa, and inside, in rectangular glass casing, reaching layer upon layer, to the stupa's ceiling; are human skulls, just sitting there jumbled together like they had never been anything but skulls. The bottom layer in the glass encasing has a few placards: "mature male, 40 years old and up", "senile female over 60 years old", "European"...

The sight of it is stupefying, the tragedy unfathomable, and I find it hard to take in; perhaps not wanting to believe it. I'm reminded of that percentage of the US population polled that don't believe the Holocaust ever happened. It's just too unbelievable. But it's all real, all here, right here in my face. I mean, my God, what was I doing in 1975? Running around, playing with my friends, going to school and summer camp, fed, clothed, cared for. I've seen nothing.

Dararot tells me his uncle and sister were killed here and points out a white sign marker of a mass grave which reads "150 women and children". Another says "100 victims with heads cut off". Dararot shows me a heavy spine from a thick trunked sugar palm. The spine branches were used to slit people's throats. Wooden posts lie around as testimony to the clubbings. Pol Pot wouldn't allow the use of guns, so every victim was tortured "by hand", and murdered equally mercilessly. Many of the skulls show large holes and cracks, indicating heavy blows to the head.

As we walk alongside the graves, Dararot stoops down and moves the dirt around with his fingers, producing a human tooth and handing it to me to examine. My stomach turns. We kick up shards of bone as we walk, and sometimes find whole pieces lying on the grass. Yet again there's that odd air of tranquility, flowers growing in the grave sites and traditional Cambodian music, carried on the wind from a house nearby.

So Dararot returns from the mountains after three years. His father, a policeman, who spoke French, Japanese, Thai, and English--bad skills and job to have possessed under Pol Pot--has been murdered. His mother, a teacher, gone as well. Do you believe him? I've started not to. It's all too much, the photos in the museum, the familial connections in specific mass graves, and MOSTLY the fact he looks so young. So I've decided he's lying to me, embellishing so I might take some kind of pity and give him more money than the $5 I'm giving.

But the point is, the story he's told me, it's somebody's story, somebody's mother, father, sister, uncle. An estimated 1-2 million people perished in a country of only 7 million people. Somebody's life has been made miserable by what the KR did, and many lives are still miserable because of it. The hard thing to get over is that with the fall and decline of Pol Pot, the government encouraged KR members to come down out of the mountains, to quit their guerilla activities, and join with the government to start afresh. To this day, you've got murderers and rapists from the reign of terror, earning money and respect in the government!

"Guns, girls and ganja"

So I'm reading this book, right, it's called "Off the Rails in Phnom Penh: Into the dark heart of guns, girls, and ganja". It was recommended by another guy in Bangkok and I've relied on it more heavily than Lonely Planet for an inside look at Phnom Penh. Some of the chapters are subtitled, "Lawlessness", "Sex", "Drugs", "Coup"--but most of the stories within relate to the degeneracy and corruption of the ex-pats who make Phnom Penh their home. There are exceptions, of course, but many of the conversations in the guesthouses, frequented by backpackers passing through, businessmen on holiday, as well as scores of people who make their living teaching English or working for UN agencies here...many of the conversations do, in fact, revolve around sex, drugs, and guns.

Anyone, especially men, keen on any of the above, would find themselves seated comfortably at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party as everything gets turned upside down, anything goes, and everyone around you is willing to talk about it. The book talks about prostitution, where there are certain streets just lined with wooden shack brothels with hundreds of girls--mostly very young ones--lingering and beckoning. An entire village outside Phnom Penh is made up of brothels, sex for $2-3 and a whole evening's companionship at the discos for $20. Obviously, it's the oldest profession in the world, yes, but it's 14 and 15 year olds being taken by foreign guys who are caught up in the ease of it all.

Then there's the violence. Cambodia, it's recent history, combined with the absolute freedom to carry firearms around--the ex-pats again, get caught up in that intrigue and many head off to the firing range where they're free to frolic with anything from machine guns to granades.

The ganja, cheap and easy, sold in the markets next to the dried squid, served on pizza at some guest houses. Foreigners, stoned out of their minds, shooting at the firing range and sleeping with 14 year-olds. Heroin's big, too, and it's not so taboo--people (apparently) talk about doing it (and all of the aforementioned), as if it were the most mundane thing.

So I get back to my guest house and catch the tail end of "The Killing Fields", an HBO movie being broadcast via satellite, order some dinner, and pull up a chair next to a small group of people: Frank, a grey-bearded extremist from Alaska, the kind you'd expect to be holed up in a compound somewhere with lots of guns and canned foods; a trippy guy from Holland who swears he doesn't do drugs; a middle-aged nerdy Bostonian, who sports a red nose, beer paunch, and constantly makes trivial, unrelated additions to the conversation.

"I'm a professional beer drinker," answers the Alaskan when I ask him, then goes on to explain he usually travels in Central America, skipping the Alaskan winters, but this time a friend convinced him to try Cambodia. We make witty small talk about Phnom Penh and its insanity, and suddenly the insanity unravels before my very eyes. Frank's tempering his descriptions of a 15 year-old Guatemalan girl for my benefit, the Dutch guy's talking excitedly about the joy of firing a gun, and the red-nose from Boston pipes in something about guns being a great thing to have. Yet despite the fact I'm sitting with two pot-bellied, middle-aged American men with whom I have nothing in common, and the Dutch guy talking so fast I can't understand him, I find them all amusing, even stimulating, to talk to.

Alaska's asking me if I'm with the NRA, and that I should join; Boston looks with disgust on my Special Filter 555s from the UK and quips, "That's too bad, I'm invested in RJ Reynolds." The "flying Dutchman" moans that we Americans always keep bringing up America. Next thing you know, they're all telling me I should go to the shooting range and for $15 I can shoot off 100 rounds on an AK-47, and they'll take a photo of me so I can scare off anybody who messes with me back in the States. The twisted thing about Phnom Penh is that I, a total pacifist, was starting to feel that weird energy and was actually getting excited about firing off a machine gun.

We got to talking about Siem Reap, where I'm going day after next to visit Angkor Wat. "Anything else to see up there?" I asked. "Couple of good brothels, but I guess you wouldn't be interested in that." "Hmm...no...guess not."

And so it goes, two hours of meaningful-less conversation. Alaska tells me how the floor under our table got a hole in it. Four years back a German guy and Cambodian womann had a kid. He was a rich guy, owned property across the river, but the woman wanted him killed so she'd get the property. So she hires someone to kill him by tossing a grenade into the restaurant area of the guesthouse, where he was sitting, but when the attackers came, the mother of the woman saw from the kitchen what was happening and attacked the attacker. The grenade went off and killed both of them, leaving chunks of holes in the floor and walls. The German guy fled the country with the kid, and the Khmer woman got the property she wanted--true story. And that's just one of many I've heard in just two hours chatting.


Two youngish guys, an American and a very tall European, amble in, mumbling about food and going upstairs to roll a couple of fat joints. No one pays any attention and our conversation continues: Noam Chomsky, Chesapeake Bay seafood, education, nuclear power..."I think they should put a nuclear power plant in the middle of every wildlife reserve," the Bostonian says stoically after glancing up at Discovery Channel on the TV, "so the duckies can keep their feet warm." The Alaskan grins and takes another gulp of Heinekin.

A commercial shows amputees and victims of landmines, pathetic scenes fading in and out, melodramatic music in the background. "What that, an ad for leprosy? land mines or something?" Boston mutters. "Land mines," says Alaska, "we'll never give those up, no way. We need those to kill people."

The conversation returns to the shit-beer they have in Holland, even as Alaska swigs on his Heinekin, and the Dutchman is off on his playful attacks on America. A lull in the conversation allows me to escape to my room with what little sense I have left. Dararot comes at 8 a.m. to take me to see some temples out in the country.

Day tripping to the temples of Udong

16 January...Dararot picks me up at 8 a.m. and I hop on the back of the bike and off we go, through the mad rush of Phnom Penh traffic, the narrow misses with other motorbikes, cyclos, bicycles, and automobiles--the no-helmet sensation of freedom and a tinge of dinger. As we pull away from the city, we pass by the Muslim end of town, with mosques built facing west in the direction of Mecca, and even signs written in Indonesian.

Though Cambodia is predominantly Buddhist, much of its influence came from India, so there's a strong Hindu undercurrent in its early sculpture, and Cambodian music seems to have that ethereal Indian quality. Historical associations include connections to Java and Sumatra, so Islam made its impact as well. The city bustle thins out and we're soon passing open terrain, wide fields of rice which stretch as far as the eye can see to the mountains, and nearby, separating houses built on stilts from the roadside, manmade fishing quarries. When the villages disappear behind us, the roadsides turn into swampy ponds with huge pink lotus blossoms atop bending green stems. Dararot stops to let me take photos and picks a stem with a closed bud for me; later I can leave it as an offering to Buddha.

After almost two hours of driving, we turn left up a dusty dirt road, bouncing along until we reach the temple area. The temples and stupas are situated on a series of small adjacent hills, so we climb the steps up to the first one and find, to my disappointment, loads of workers reconstructing the monument, as well as the one just beyond it. We pass by two monks, old men in tattered orange-brown robes, seated under a tree eating mandarins. Dararot prostrates himself to them, kneeling and bowing to the earth several times with his palms pressed together. The monks wants to know if I can speak French. I shake my head no. "I....speak....little...English..." the one on the left finally manages, and smiles.

We walk on and find another small group of monks seated at a wooden table and open-air shelter just behind the stupa. Dararot prostrates and bows again. From this hill we can see the stupas rising up from the next hills so we continue on, stopping in to light incense before a big statue of Buddha, housed in a run-down cement building. The Buddhas I've seen in Cambodia seem more primitive-looking, the crafsmanship oddly imperfect, with oversimplified facial features, and the painted ones always have thick red lips.

We explored further and finally ended up at the next to last monument, a mere shell of its original, as the Khmer Rouge had blown it up in the 70s, leaving the seemingly ancient remnants of huge columns which now sprout weeds high up at the top, battered archways partially blown away, and the right knee and shoulder of what was once, no coubt, a magnificent Buddha. Despite the ugliness of its destruction, some pieces of colorful pottery are still in place, and a tiny altar with flowers and offerings brighten the environs.

I imagined what it once must have looked like as I peeked through the archways and stone-formed windows to glimpse the surrounding countryside. The Udong temple area was also a safe hideout for many fleeing from Phnom Penh when Pol Pot took over. Today it's a popular weekend spot for picnickers.

We walked back to where we had left the motorbike by a roadside stand and bought some water and snacks in return for the shopkeep's watching the motorbike (motorbikes get stolen all the time and sold on what is now a dwindling black market). Around 11:00 all the schoolkids were walking or riding by on bicycles, returning home for the mid-day break from the heat. They return to school at 2 p.m. when the day cools off.

Cambodian kids have been really friendly and willingly let themselves be photographed. I've encountered only a few begging. The best part of the day: not a single tourist in sight to break the spell of being in a strange land.

We got back to the city and I found all the Last Home (guesthouse) "misfits" from the previous night. Decided to hop on the back of Sonny's (guesthouse driver) motorbike with the flying Dutchman for a trip to the Russian Market. So with Sonny driving, the hefty Dutchman wedged in the middle, and me on the back, lets and feet dangling precariously, we cruised over to the market. Me, looking for a t-shirt, and the Dutchman for an antique knife.

The Russian Market is so called as it used to be a black market for things from Russia, including all manner of guns and ammunition. Now it's a complicated, covered maze of stalls selling Cambodian textiles, sarongs, and checked scarves (Khmer style), fruits, vegetables, smelly meats and animal carcasses, motorbike parts (stolen), dishware, dried fish and squid, Buddha statuettes and small wooden furniture items, plus huge bags of ganja ("ga-ancha") for US$2. The woman selling ganja has hand-rolled samples all ready to hand out, but all I want is a photo. Sonny translates that they don't want photos taken as the market manager could get in trouble if it gets into the newspapers. Pot is illegal, but abundantly available, and obviously the least of law enforcement concerns in Phnom Penh.

We walked away with just t-shirts, and on the way back the Dutchman and I stopped off at the FCCC (Foreign Correspondents Club of Cambodia) for a coke, hoping to eavesdrop on some informative conversation between the journalists/photographers who hang out there. Nothing so exciting happened, but it was nice to sit on the bar stools overlooking the street, enjoying the open-air view of the Tonle Sap River.

"Cambodia's a weird place," we both agreed. But we both like weird places. He was turned off by Vietnam as everything there now is so geared to tourists you can hardly find anything to do on your own. "So many stupid backpackers," he lamented, "they should all be shot. Now Nepal, there I met some 'awesome' people. These backpackers in Southeast Asia are just boring," referring to us guidebook-toting, beaten path types, as opposed to people like him. He rents a motorbike and travels 1,000 km on his own to undiscovered territory. I wondered if he was making exception for me by even hanging out with me.

Back at Last Home, the usual entourage. An Australian girl cycling around for a couple of years, started somewhere in Europe and has done everything overland--took me up on my free Thai massage offer, so I had my first "victim" since my teacher in Bangkok. I came back down around 10:30 p.m. to find the Misfits still lingering, and they convinced me to sit up and bullshit with them awhile. An inebriated, middle-aged Welshman whose voice sounded uncannily like Dick Van Dyke, joined the table and announced he was looking for some Demerol for his head. He settled for the Excedrin PM I gave him and I excused myself to pack for my trip to Siem Reap.

Siem Reap: The Angkor Wat Adventure Begins

At 6:30 a.m., Sonny took me on his motorbike, my heavy bulk of green backpack wedged in front of him under the handlebars, to the ferry and I boarded the express boat with all the other travellers. The best spot is on top of the boat, a long, narrow speedboat with a cabin underneath and rails on either side on top. You strap your bag to a rail so it doesn't fall off, and you take your spot in the sun. But as it turns out, it's a windy, cold ride on the top, so everybody ended up crouching and lying amongst the bags to block the wind, trying desperately to cover up with sarongs and sweatshirts.

We sped up the river, narrow at first with occasional huts on stilts and people waving as we went by. Flat expanses of rice fields and dry land reaching out eyond. This is the dry season so everything's relatively brown, except for the rice plants and trees. The next time I looked up from my book we were far up the river and the shores had widened to the point you could no longer see land in any direction. Into the fourth hour, my bladder was aching and I was too timid to try to lower myself from the top of the boat down to the side landings to go for a pee inside. It would just have to wait.

Eventually we arrived at a village situated on the river, and we began to inch along up to the ferry landing. Meanwhile the boat was invaded by touts/moto drivers from different guesthouses in Siem Reap. I was accosted many times and one guy finally won out and started the spiel about taking me for free if I hired him the next day to go out to Angkor Wat.

All the advice I'd gotten from the Misfits was to disassociate from the guesthouse and hire a guy from the street so I could do a little round-about wheeling and dealing. The Angkor Wat temples pass costs US$20/day--a lot in a country where one night's accommodation is only $3--and $40 for a 3-day pass, as there's a lot to see in just one day. But there are ways around it, which sound sketchy, but I was assured they would work and it was safe (this, coming from the Misfits).

If you go at 4 a.m., before daybreak, no one sees you go in and your driver, whom you pay like $5-6, will wait around for you all day. So, they advised, walk away from your guesthouse and hire some driver off the street the night before, make the deal in advance, and make sure they come for you at 3:45 a.m.

The driver from the ferry kept prodding me, laying on the guilt that he was unemployed and hadn't had any tourists in a month, and constantly trying to get in good with me. I was thinking only of my bladder, so as soon as we got off the boat, he took my bag and directed me to the police station, a wooden structure on stilts on the water. I followed the wooden planks along the side of the buildings to a waist-high tin door hanging off its hinges. I peeked inside and realized I was about to pee in the most primitive "toilet" (besides a squat in the woods) I'd yet encountered: two thin, parallel wooden slats, placed horizontally to the "door", and in between, open space and the murky waters below--don't want to even think about people bathing and washing in this water. But they do, they have to.

I relieved myself without falling through the slats and went back out to find Son, my driver, waiting for me with my bag on his bike. He was trying so hard to make conversation and be friendly, but today I just wasn't in the mood. Sometimes you get so tired of hearing how rough their lives are, and how much you can help them out by buying this or that, or hiring them or whatever, and how they're studying Engllish and trying to better themselves, and blahblahblah. I'm not insensitive to it, but today, today I just didn't want to hear it.

We arrived at Naga Guesthouse and again he made a modest plea that I hire him for Angkor and again I said I didn't want to decide today, and I had to talk to my "friend". Checked in at Naga, my name,nationality, and occupation listed there under those of other travellers: a "fish baker" from Oz, a "confusion expert" from the UK...

After a long nap I went out hunting for a driver for tomorrow and found a guy on the street about 10 minutes' walk from my place. I explained what I wanted to do, my devious scheme, so he agreed to come for me at 3:45 a.m., though his English wasn't so good and I'm still not sure he understood. We'll see what happens when I'm standing out in the dark during the wee hours waiting for him to show.

7:45 p.m. A few travellers seated around the tables, talking quietly, and Cambodian soap operas on TV. The characters' voices voiced-over so the soundtrack doesn't quite match up with the lips, and all the young female character voices are spoken by the same person, sounding very much like a Cambodian Disney chipmunk.

Angkor Wat temples and tribulations

18 January 1999...Yesterday morning, 3:45 a.m. I squeezed out between the gates of my guesthouse and looked for my driver. 3:50 still nowhere to be seen, so I walked down to the next road and searched for signs of life, finally hailed a driver and explained I wanted to go to Angkor Wat--now--so I wouldn't have to pay. He spoke absoutely ZERO English but another moto driver stopped to translate that I'd pay $6 for him to take me and back.

So off we went into the dark. I could see nothing and had no idea where we were going, but soon we were on roads which led under huge stone, carved archways leading into the Angkor Wat area. Around 4:30 we finally stopped the bike on a bridge entrance to Angkor Thom, surrounded by broken statues which lined both sides of the bridge. So we waited in the dark, listening to the night sounds, looking up at the stars, smoking--and occasionally he'd say something to me in Cambodian and I'd answer in English. I have no idea what we "talked" about sitting there for two hours in the dark.

Except for the police guards armed with AKs at the entryways, we didn't see anyone for a few hours. One policeman approached us in shorts and T-shirt, having just woken up, so I thought it wise to offer a cigarette and hoped he wouldn't ask (or care) if I had a pass to the temples. It was the longest wait for sunrise I've ever experienced, and as day broke around 6 a.m., my driver took me a little way down the road to Bayon, one of the temples of Angkor Thom.

The nice thing was, there was no one at all around as early as I, so I explored the Byon without seeing anyone. Lots of little corridors and crevices to bend under and duck out of, and three levels to explore. Stupas all around with smiling Buddha-like faces on each of their four sides. Little-by-little, they turned from grey to golden with the sun's rays.

Angkor Thom is a series of complexes near the largest and main Angkor Wat temple. From the Bayon we went down the road to Ta Phrom, by far my favorite. It's one they've left much as they found it in the 19th century, partially hidden in the jungle, with giant tree roots choking the stones and growing up, seemingly out of the temple ruins, their long, thick roots sprawling in every direction. I hired a 14 year-old kid to be my guide for $2 and he took me exploring in the nooks and crannies. Many of the passageways are completely impassible with rubble and fallen columns and blocks--but the place has an awesome aura, as if you're the first to have ever stumbled upon it.

We visited Ta Keo, much less impressive, before heading on to Angkor Wat, massive, and gorgeous, an artistic feat, but my heart was still with Ta Phrom. By mid-day I was pretty much templed out, so we returned and I slept all afternoon.

My first bike driver (from the ferry to the guesthouse) was lingering around my guesthouse and wanted to know where I'd been, an annoying habit Cambodians have of prying and pushing. Frank insisted it was because of their communist history, having to know everything about everyone. He may be right.

I ended up telling the driver I'd gone with my "friend" to see the temples (he had spent the whole morning looking and waiting for me, though I'd never given any indication that I'd go anywhere with him). Finally he offered to take me the following afternoon to see the market and then the sunset at Angkor (after 5:30 it's free to visit the temples). So we made plans as I knew I'd be leaving soon after that; I forgot to apply for my visa for Vietnam, much to my disappointment, so I would have to hurry back to Phnom Penh and apply for it. It takes four days.

Joined two guys, an American and an Aussie, for dinner at a little riverside cafe where Khmer musicians played traditional Cambodian music, and on our way back, we stopped into a nightclub to check out the scene--very groovy. And very Cambodian, with few hints of Westernization, lots of Indian-sounding influences, everyone dancing a kind of line dance where they take a few steps forward then back, turn to the side and all the while making slow fluid hand gestures, rolling the wrists around and splaying the fingers.

Middle of the night cramps and diarrhea kept me in bed most of the day. Cancelled the market and sunset because I still felt unwell and knew any conversation with the persistent moto driver would just drive me to further irritation. He's taking me to the ferry early in the morning.

Phnom Penh: the Return

20 January...the ferry trip was pretty much a "nightmare" though I tried to convince myself it wasn't all that bad, just another adventure. I knew as soon as I got on the boat--a cabin below blaring loud Cambodian TV, and our first sluggist leg, cruising away from the pier and already stuck on a sandbar--that things wouldn't go smoothly.

A couple of times we were sitting adrift on the river, the engine totally shot (no doubt from the violent effort it took to get off the damn sandbar, engines gunning and mud, dirt, sand and water flying everywhere). By the time we stopped at Kampeng Chang, a port town still north of Phnom Penh, everyone was told to disembark as the boat wasn't going to make it any further.

Unbelievably the boat company paid for shared taxis to the city and I jumped in with a Swede and an American guy for the two-hour trip. Got into Last Home in time to take a moto to the Vietnamese Embassy and apply for my visa--it'll be ready Saturday morning, so the earliest I can leave is Sunday, five days from now.

Until then I'm trying to spend as little money as possible, which means a lot of hours of reading and just sitting around the guesthouse--plus flirting with the Swedish guy :-)

"Gimme back my bullets"

21 January...Had an appointment with Frank and Tim at the shooting range, so we all hopped on back of three motos and rode the long way out of the city to a small shooting range: three targets with a shadow human figure to shoot at.

A makeshift open-air shelter wood construction with M-16s and AK47s hung in the far left corner, and then a little room with hand grenades and smaller weapons to choose from. I felt a little tense just looking at all of them, and a little more uneasy watching the Cambodian guys in combat fatigues shooting at the targets.

Enlarged poster photos showed the Cambodian military at work: arresting two men in a field, helping wounded men in wartime, and my personal favorite, two soldiers hiding in a bush, one gesturing to the other not to shoot at the white truck with the red cross on the door! Frank was sporting his NRA hat--appropriately--and we got a classic photo of me in the cap holding an AK47. The cap and the AK47 go together, but me and all of it, how incongruous is that?

I shot 30 rounds for $15, single-shots at first, then switched to automatic to let a stream of bullets fly. Hardest part was the weight of the gun--my shoulders ached from the effort of just holding it steady. And then the kick (as the gun blasts), a slight thump on the inside of my right shoulder.

Frank and Tim, gun enthusiasts, and me along for the joyride. "I taught all three of my wives to shoot," Frank beamed proudly as he walked back from the target holding his "Dirty Old Man" shirt up so we could see the fresh bullet holes. It wasn't as weird as I expected, to hold a gun in my hands, but again, I was a little tense about the whole thing. Just holding a loaded weapon in my hands, not a feeling of power so much as fear, of what I might do to someone/thing else.

Before we left I started asking Frank to tell me what the NRA stood for, asking for three main tenets as I was trying to be open-minded about an organization I've always had a general distaste for. Just another funny thing about Phnom Penh, carrying on conversations with someone like him, a "dirty old man" who takes Viagra so he can sleep with pubescent Vietnamese girls in the local brothels. Yet we get on well, jibe at each other, and whenever I roll my eyes in disbelief at his candor, he grins wide and leans forward and says in slow, drawn out, gentle tones, "That's because you're a liberal feminist," which sense me into incredulous fits of laughter.

So the NRA....Frank boast that Charleton Heston, the great American actor, is president, and the organization was formed around 1890, and it was essentially a government organization aimed at teaching firearm safety. Young kids in school were taught how to use guns properly and safely. Leftover arms from war/military were redistributed among the populace. Of course, Frank added, we uphold the Second Ammendment right to keep and bear arms.

"But what about all the people who abuse that right, and how do you reconcile your belief with the crisis of gun violence we have in our country?"
"Well, that's a good question, and I don't really have an answer. But why should I, who have never used a weapon irresponsibly, never hurt another human being with one, give up my right, because of all those people with behavioral disorders who abuse it?"

Somehow I felt like he had a point there, and I was surprised to so easily be able to see where he was coming from. Of course there are other aspects of his twisted philosophy that I can't handle and at that point, I just tend to laugh in total disbelief.

"I say we should stop being squeamish about killing children," he imitates the announcer on TV's "Politically Incorrect". "Those kids in Arkansas that shot their classmates," he continues, "lousy upbringing in shit homes. Like rabid dogs, just shoot 'em!"

If ever there were a place of freedom to be totally non-politically correct, Phnom Penh is it. Where you hear words like "Jap" and "Negro" thrown around without a flinch, and sleazy whorehouse tales told with pride and a touch of romanticism. The sweet smell of ganja floats in the air as hand-rolled joints are smoked at the dinner table, and every night, middle-aged men sit around swapping tales and offbeat opinions. Drinking beer into the wee hours, their bowels are constantly wrecked as they try to compensate the next day with digestive biscuits and soup. Frank gets fuzzy and tries to hit on me, but he and the others are more intrigued by the tiny-trim frames of Asian women.

25 January...What a way to end in Phnom Penh! I hung out with Jo, a Welsh girl, my last few days there, and on my last night we bar-hopped around, finally ending up at a club where we danced all night, arriving home at 6 a.m., and by 7 I was on the moto with Sonny to the Olympic Market to catch a taxi to the Vietnam border.

Six adults and two small children in a Toyota Camry, fying down the barely paved road to the border--a ferry crossing just an hour outside Phonom Penh where we all got out and waited in the hot sun, and I got accosted by kids selling drinks and snacks, gum, bread, quail eggs, etc. Turned them all down, but they hung around and we had a good time laughing and goofing off. They, in hysterical fits as I sang along to the Cambodian music in the background.

At one point a small boy, an amputee with a prosthetic leg, came up and asked for money and they all went silent, watching, waiting for my response, as I'd bought nothing from anyone of them, and as it turned out, gave nothing to him either--but it was pretty heart-wrenching and hard not to.

Piled back in the car, got on the ferry, then had more kids with faces pressed against the windows, begging for food and money. I had a small loaf of French bread so I handed half through the window and lots of greedy hands reached for it; only one child won. One girl stayed put outside my window the whole way over, but received nothing more. Good-naturedly she said "bye-bye" and waved as the boat approached the other shore.

So grateful not to have been in the front seat, and glad too that I couldn't see around the two heads in the single seat in front of me. The driver kept his hand on the horn, screeching to alert other vehicles of our presence, those on our side, as well as the oncoming cyclists, motos, cars, trucks. It was totally mad--swerving and lurching from one side of the road to the other to avoid the oncoming, as well as the gaping craters in the road, which we usually hit anyway and the impact would send us all bouncing a few inches out of our seats and "whoompf!" back down again. We stopped once and all the doors opened, the driver got out, the man wedged in the front seat, as well as the older lady next to me. Everyone darted for the bushes to squat or pee while the woman with the kids helped her toddler pull down his pants and whiz by the backdoor.

At the border you walk up to a little roadside stand on the Cambodian side and have your passport stamped, then pass a towering gate to exit Cambodia, walk through a quick no-man's-land, a dirt lane which leads to the large gate opposite: Vietnam.

On to Vietnam...