How I ended up in a Cambodian brothel thanks to a Tardis

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Cambodia is one of my favourite countries, after so much adversity the people have so much optimism. In Cambodia, we book 5 star hotels because of our dollars strength. They like modern things, interspersed with thousands of years of history in a quirky little style of decor all of their own. The french occupied days left a fondness for fine imitation Luis IX furniture and opulent chandeliers and grand arches and verandahs that some Cambodian hotels have emulated with their own twist - adding bizarelly modern gadgets found nowhere else in the world. Things like Steam showers with telephones, stereos and televisions in there and elevators that are constructed entirely of some wierd perspex with LED lighting like Snoops Dawgs hummer limo. Going down to the lobby is like droppin acid straight from the woodstock days... Why are the walls melting again?


Things that you see as concepts in design magazines bought by no one else in the world but Cambodian hoteliers. Toilets that warm upon contact with your bum in the tropics should come with a warning..Giants first pit stop had him walking out saying.."Watch that bidet thingo, I nearly blew my ballbag off".


But only half the hotel is like this, the rest is as unchanged as the day the Khmer Rouge marched into the town and emptied it of all life and turned the clock back to the year zero. The entire city lay dead for four years while the madness raged around it. Some of the hotel rooms really havent been updated since those days, when the journalists reporting on the vietnam war giving cambodia a mention at the end of wired correspondances back in the US or Australia hired out these rooms for months and years and called them home. The journos who drank at the foreign correspondants club and waited to be choppered out while the city fell lived here. Looking around one of the old rooms I can see the desk someone wouldve sat at writing articles on the bombing as saigon and phnom penh fell.


Theyre faded and lime green and dusty these old rooms but when the hotel staff realise the new rooms arent to your liking, mainly because while they look a zillion dollars the mattresses are made of some material that nasa should be trying out for space re entry vehicles, you can ask for one of the "old rooms". We spent two nights in one of the new rooms before I took a wrong turn down a hallway and found the old rooms.

I had decided to brave the shower after having fun wading around in monsoon flooded streets for a while because all tuktuks and bikes stopped running. Now having a shower seems like a fairly easy task, except when the shower is the space age experimental sauna steamer sprayer shower. Like 14 nozzles of superheated water aimed at you from all directions. In the process of trying to turn off the jets I somehow managed to turn on both the television and the stereo plus the steam bath function. Suddenly the whole thing started steaming up..and heating up. I started finding it hard to breathe and tried to pull the door open and get the hell out of there. Except the door wouldnt open because I had somehow managed to program the steambath for 6 minutes..which meant 6 minutes of being steamed like brocolli. I was pressing buttons and trying to get the hell out of there with the tv blaring Al Jazeera news and the stereo playing Neil Diamond.

I was beginning to feel like i was about to pass out and even though i was yelling Giant couldnt hear me over the hum of the space capsule. I suddenly remembered the phone and with much wiping away of steam on the directory numbers next to the handset finally rang the living room and as soon as Giant answered yelled QUICK HELP IM STUCK IN THE SHOWER IM COOKINGGGG!!!!!!!!!!........

By the time he waded through the extravagent genuine reproduction furniture and made it into the bathroom the space capsule was totally filled with steam swirling around a really scared skinny naked chick. He tried pulling the door open only to realise to open it, he had to turn off the timer on the outside keypad. Im yelling at him to press buttons and hes muttering about needing his glasses while turning the tv to some thai soap opera and the stereo to Barbara Streisand. I thought about the irony of the last bit of music I ever heard being "Memories" as the door finally swung open.



"Stupid thing tried to kill me..dont go near it" I spluttered while splashing cold water over myself from the sink, which looked like a normal sink so I assumed it wouldnt try to kill me. Giant was still pressing buttons muttering and changing tv channels so when all else fails, remove key from hotel door and kill all power. After a few glasses of water I got dressed and we headed out onto one of the balconies to watch the sunset and two monkeys bonking and four dogs fighting in the backyards below. We thought about dinner and after tiring of watching monkeys bonk, which doesnt take that long so female monkeys must never feel the need to get a cramp in their leg or a headache, and headed back inside to brave the melting elevator down to the lobby.



We started walking up the corridor towards the elevator and I heard giant mumbling something about things looking different. I told him this was the old part of the hotel and had asked to move to those rooms the next night so we could sleep. This elevator looked normal, but it was a teleporter. No shit, teleporting machines are alive and well in Cambodian hotels.



We stepped into the elevator and pressed 1 for the lobby. It started going down then stopped and the doors behind us opened. I thought ok this must be the old route to the lobby and walked out into.....a brothel.



As soon as we turned the corner of the hall a handful of korean businessmen turned to stare at us. Bad techno music came from what I thought must have been a bar behind the red roped passage so we walked in to be confronted by naked girls draped allover korean and western businessmen surrounded by little cubicles with black lace curtains. The whole place stopped and fell silent as all eyes turned our way.



There were no other middle aged white couples there. They looked as suprised as we did.



Its not often that ive got no freakin idea whats going on at all but at that moment..I couldnt quite work out how we had ended up in this strange little parallel universe.



I stood there with a really dumb look on my face until one brave little man stepped out from behind the bar and said in his best english "Wrong Place yes?"



Yes buddy, we were indeed in the wrong place. So what exactly do you do when you find yourself transported to a cambodian brothel?.....well, you have a drink to process the moment and tell yourself one of the things everyone should do in life just once is accept the offer of the girl with the mickey mouse ears and school uniform to escort you back to the "real desk".



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Comments

[liliram]

Am in stitches!
Geessh, you got me laughing all through your blog. Hilarious. I really enjoyed this. Some adventure. :))