The Holy Trinity

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Phnom Penh - Day One

Alarming wake up call at 5.15am and we head downstairs. We meet an English guy in the lift.
HIM: Where are you off to so early?
US: The airport, we're flying to Phnom Penh.
HIM: Fooking hell! You didn't organise that very well.
US: No, I suppose not. What are you doing up so early?
HIM: Breakfast.
US: What? At 5.30 in the morning.
HIM: Fook yeah!
And he looks at us like we are strange, strange fellows.

Joe and I arrive in Phnom Penh at 9.00am and get a good feeling from its small and friendly airport. Tez will arrive in 20 minutes so we buy a couple of bottles of water and wait. Tez is first off the plane and comes through the arrival gate at 9.25am. The three G1s are once again reunited and ready to bust.

We search for our pre-arranged driver that is supposed to be holding a sign saying "Weklome Frank Weggell" but can't find him anywhere. After much searching I find our bloke hiding in a corner holding a sign that reads "Helloo, Kay Ramsay".

He takes us straight to the Dara Reang Sey Hotel and we sit in the attached restaurant where they serve us meals and 4 long necks of Angkor Beer. After much chat, drinking, catch up, drinking, tall travel tales, drinking and more chat, Tez and Joe need a little afternoon sleep! (Transition day). Buster Leggett, instead, goes for a walk and returns an hour later. They are still asleep so I order a few beers and enjoy a delicious chicken and salad sandwich (was there coconut in there?) The lads finally come down looking refreshed and baby-faced and we go for a long walk along the river. Traffic everywhere but no one drives faster than 15kph in a slowly weaving ballet of the automobile. Cars have both right and left hand drive but everyone ostensibly drives on the right hand side. As we walk the night is full of the constant cries of "Hello!"

Eventually we come to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Cambodia and make our way to the 3rd floor balcony where the view is fan-bloody-tas-bloody-tic. We enjoy a few frosty ones and then make our way to a restaurant on the river. We no sooner sit down than the whole city blacks out. Candles are produced, the meal arrives and the Busters are well happy.

Phnom Penh - Day Two

Started the day with egg scramble and ham and we were off. We had organised a driver to take us around all day. First stop: The Killing Fields. A long dusty 15 km drive and we were at the entrance of the 20th century's most obscene act. There is a stupa containing the bones of 9,000 people killed here. The real horror of the place is that it is all so ordinary. I don't particularly want to recount the methods of execution here but it was a horrible, sobering place.

Then on to the S21 Genocide Museum - another blight on humanity. Over 14,000 people were "processed" here and 14 survived. Every detainee had a passport style photo taken with the date of their arrest attached. I found a picture of one young bloke interred on 9/10/78, my 18th birthday. I remember that day well but what was happening to that poor bastard by the time the sun set. The whole place was fucking horrible.

The Busters needed something a bit more uplifting so our driver took us to the Silver Pagoda - a gigantic place that has a floor made entirely of silver. Then we went to the Royal Palace and the National Museum but the horror of the morning weighed heavily on our minds. Accordingly we rushed over to the FCCC for a pleasant afternoons drinking. We were going to go to a different restaurant for a meal but we couldn't move, we simply couldn't move. We ordered more food and drinks and spent the next 7 hours drinking and eating and getting the Buster equilibrium back. It was after 1.00am when I retired to my hotel room and, happily, "Summer Lovers" was on TV. Woodsy was right, it is the best film ever made.

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