Phnomenal

Cambodia is a revelation. Pretty much all I previously knew about the place could be personified in two rather unsavoury men - Pol Pot and Gary Glitter (for the non-UK-celeb-focused, Glitter was a 70s glam popstar turned paedophile who relocated to Cambodia following his release from prison in the UK - old, bald, failed, evil). Yet this poor embattled country has a strongly beating heart and a warm character all of its own, and I can’t wait to get to know it better.

We only had four days scheduled for our trip - essentially an extended run across the border and back to renew our Thai visas. We planned to spend a day in Phnom Penh, which was meant to be vile, and visit the Killing Fields - an unpleasant but important dose of history in the SE Asia backpacker circuit. We would then travel up to visit the temples of Angkor Wat, which were meant to be amazing and a shocking juxtaposition when compared with Phnom Penh - ancient glory and piety versus contemporary filth and sleaze.

Stepping out of the surprisingly attractive Phnom Penh arrivals hall, we hopped on the back of motorbikes and zipped into the city, chatting as the wind blew through my hair to my driver, Sakhama. (He wasn’t exactly “driving” but it sounds rather rude to call him my “rider”.) Sakhama and his colleague offered to be our personal motorbike chauffeurs and guides for the day. Bombing around on a motorbike really is the only way to go city-sightseeing, dahling.

Our first stop was the Tuol Sleng museum. Originally a school in a Phnom Penh suburb, the Khmer Rouge took the building over and turned it into the infamous S-21 prison and torture chambers. Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge brought around 15,000 men, women and children here. 7 came out alive. I won’t go into too many details about the place or the museum exhibits, as it would make for pretty depressing reading and can probably only really be appreciated firsthand. If you want to read more and see some pictures (it didn’t seem appropriate to take any), click here . The museum was followed by a trip to the actual killing fields, where excavations of mass graves uncovered about 70,000 of the estimated 1.7 million executed by the Khmer Rouge, many of whose skulls are displayed in a glass memorial tower. It all made for a profoundly moving experience and a very, very sad morning - even the thrills of the motorbike ride back to town could only help blow my tears from my cheeks.

By lunch we needed something to cheer us up, so went for a tapas lunch in a restaurant called Friends - staffed by former street kids, giving them the chance of a new life in the hospitality industry, and all funds from the restaurant go to the kids’ support and training. The grub was great too, and our moods began to lift.

When it was time to hit the beer in the evening, I braced myself for a deluge of sleazy old expats, wide-eyed young prostitutes, taxi-driving drug pushers, beggars with missing limbs and pickpockets carrying guns (all of which we had been warned to expect). Sundown on the Phnom Penh promenade could not have been further from my misguided expectations.

The left bank of the Tonlé Sap river, just before its confluence with the Mekong, is lined with lively restaurants, funky shops and elegant bars. Far from the heart of darkness, this area had the charm of any top notch capital city, with its vast choice of international and Khmer cuisine (which was yummy), vintage clothes stores and leather couches under slow-swirling fans where the cocktails went down easy. Sure, the seedy side is there if you were to look for it, and the poverty appears on occasional corners, but Dublin, London, Paris are no different.
Despite my enamour with the night scene, I did still feel slightly uncomfortable at times witnessing the phenomenon (which is certainly not unique to Cambodia and prevalent in many parts of Thailand) of the fat/ugly/old western man and the young/beautiful Asian girl, who somehow finds him the most captivating man in the world. After quite a few glasses of cheap French wine, I befriended the bar girl Rany, who explained to me how this is an added complexity to the scourge of sex tourism in Cambodia - most of these women are not hookers, she insisted. The men want a beautiful girl to accompany them on their holiday or even to bring back home, both on their arm and in their bed. From the girls’ perspective, they get free holidays and often commission from the resorts to which they bring their new boyfriends (who, of course, foot all bills). They may even get a new life in the West where they will never worry about money again. A fair swap for shagging the old perv? The men surely know that the girls are only after their money, but don’t care - this is about the luckiest they’re ever gonna get. Is this prostitution? I’m not sure. It’s more like overt and accepted gold-digging, with both sides believing they benefit from the arrangement. It’s not pleasant to watch and in an ideal world money would never be factor in relationships, but this isn’t something unique to Asia. I’m pretty sure it happens in bars in Dublin, London, Paris and elsewhere, it’s just not quite so obvious. And this ‘industry’ brings a huge amount of tourist dollars to the Cambodian economy beyond the girls in the bars. It certainly made me think more about the various shades of grey within the complexities of this theme. As Cambodia has worked so hard to stamp out paedophilia and child abuse (Glitter was deported, and is now in prison again in Vietnam), the ‘scourge’ of sex tourism is less easy to pigeon hole.

Back to lighter matters and the boozing continued. With a couple of new French friends we watched England crash out of the World Cup to the delight of all, and the cocktails and vino were sunk well into the night. It’s very hard to express, after all the talk of genocide and prostitution, just how fun the atmosphere in Phnom Penh is. Happy hours start in most bars at 4pm and run until 9 or 10 - an encouragement of afternoon drinking is something I admire in a city. The backpacker ghetto by the lakeside my be earthier than the glam of the riverside bars, but offers similar levels of fun, albeit clad in tie-dye and beanbags rather than mahogany and velvet. And everywhere, at every turn, I was amazed by the Cambodian people. They are so outgoing and friendly, constantly chatting and laughing. You can see the physical scars of their history (amputations, burns) but it’s hard to see the emotional scars - they must be there, behind the veneer, perhaps away from the tourists, but this truly does not seem like a nation who went through a horrific genocidal civil war a mere 25 years ago. How they have managed to achieve this level of emotional healing I can’t figure out. They don’t seem to have the religious aspect the Thais have - indeed, while the Thais have a remarkable way of recovering from trauma, they are much calmer and quieter than the Cambodians, who seem a bit more raucous and open. It’s something which has fascinated me for years, ever since I first went to Serbia back in the day - when a nation has gone through horrors the likes of wish us Irish (and most Westerners) can not even imagine, how can that nation’s people be more full of smiles, positivity and energy than us privileged few?

We loved Phnom Penh so much we never made it to Angkor Wat. 24 hours just wasn’t going to be enough to properly take in this remarkable city with its many layers and intricacies. But we pledged to go back to Cambodia, to see the old temples, and hopefully also to learn more about this amazing place. I know that long-term healing is about more than the ability to turn on a smile, but in the context of all we saw and learned during those few short days, the constant displays of pearly whites were incredible to witness.

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