Phnom Penh

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Chinese New Year. A time honoured tradition that is the most important event of the year for Singaporeans. It's a time to visit family and friends, to give thanks for the past year, and wish each other good fortune in the coming year. For both myself and Michelle, the occassion held special significance...it meant we had 2 public holidays. Therefore we decided to get the f*ck outta Dodge and bugger off to another country for a few days. A few searches on a couple of the budget airline sites and we came up with Phnom Pehn in Cambodia for our destination. To say that I didn't know much about the city would be an understatement (I was flat out spelling or pronouncing the damn name let alone be able to recite any facts about it). However I did remember watching the movie "The Killing Fields" years ago so I was confident I had a reasonable grasp of the culture.

16/02/07 - Day One
All I can say is for anyone going to Phnom Pehn, apply for an eVisa. The visa application line was pretty long and it didn't look like it was going anywhere in a hurry.

Anyway we got out of the airport but our ride arranged by the hotel was not there. Apparently he drove off with someone else which is a bit odd as he would have had our names on a bit of paper he was holding up. Anyway we eventually got to our hotel, The Billabong Hotel, and had our first beer. On a sidenote I would thoroughly recommend this hotel. One of only half a dozen hotels with a pool, it's cheaper than most at around SNG$60/night, conveniently located, staff are helpful and friendly, and you can get a drink anytime of the day or night.

We then had our first ride in a tuk tuk and headed for the Riverfront, the main drag for restaurants and cheap beer. US$0.70 for a Angkor beer during happy hour...nice. This was another curious thing the fact that the US dollar is used widely in Phnom Pehn despite having a local currency, the Riel. Most things are quoted in US dollars and you will often get change back in both US and Riel. Anything below USD$1 and you have to use Riel. There are no coins only notes. I think the lowest Riel note is 100 which is about 2.5 cents. It is also advisable to carry small denominations as things don't cost much...you may find it hard getting change for a $20 note from a tuk tuk driver for instance.
Anyway we had dinner at the Riverside and tried some of the local Khymer food, which is similar to Thai food, spicey curries, stir fries etc. During dinner a lot of young kids came by carrying trays of pirated books. Whatever you do, do not buy a Lonely Planet guide of Cambodia before you come. You can get it here for between $3 - $7 dollars, depending on how stupid you are. Actually think someone tried to sell me a Lonely Planet on Korea for $8 - $9 dollars. Anyway ended up stocking up on Lonely Planet guides and other books by the end of the trip. Back to the kids. We meant one girl who was just so cute. She came up and shook our hands and could talk English reasonably well. She asked what are names were, where we were from etc., and she had the biggest smile. Now anyone who knows me understands that I'm what you would call a man's man. Even if you don't know me, it's pretty obvious, right? My intimating physical characteristics are matched by my steely gaze and tough guy personality. You can tell that I'm the sort of guy who wouldn't hesitate in popping a cap in your ass if you so much as looked at me the wrong way. Well even despite this, this little girl, who's name we found out was Cher (pronounced Gia), even made an impression on me.

After dinner we headed to a bar. Ended up at a bar called 51 run by a Kiwi named Justin. We got friendly with the staff and vowed we would came back before we left.

17/02/07 - Day Two
Bright and early I strolled down to breakfast at midday I think. Michelle had been up and about since 9.30am. We took the tuk tuk again and started off through the daytime traffic. Initially it's a bit worrying driving through the city. There's not a lot of traffic lights and at first glance it just appears to be a free for all. However after a while you realise there is some order to the chaos. The golden rule appears to be avoid anything that's in front of you. Even crossing the road can be an experience. You look at the traffic and wonder just how you are going to get to the otherside. The technique the locals use seems to be, walk slowly forward, don't stop, never go back, and people will avoid you. You could just about cross the road blindfolded. After a while I felt completely at ease driving around and got the hang of crossing the road.

Our first stop was Central Market. A collection of all things that could possibly be sold and a few things that probably shouldn't...the slab of meat with a town of flies living on it comes to mind. There were quite a few beggers around the market as well. I was avoiding looking at them but Michelle couldn't help herself. Apparently there was a lady with no eyes being lead by a young girl, people with deformaties, limbs missing etc. Cambodia is supposed to be one of the heaviest mined countries in the world with several million landmines scattered around the place so there were quite a few landmine victims begging for money. I actually stood on a couple of landmines while I was there but luckily I remembered to pack a box of Band-Aids. Anyway Michelle started giving money to them and in no time at all we seemed to have a following of beggers walking around with us. One woman with a baby kept pointing to her baby saying "baby yum yum". We walked off trying to lose her but she kept following us. It got too much so we decided to hail a tuk tuk and go to the Russian market. The woman followed us to the very end until we started moving off in the tuk tuk...a bit freaky.

The Russian market was similar to Central market, beggers and all, however they also sold pirated dvd's. USD$2 for a dvd which is pretty good. Several DVD's later and we headed back to Riverside for another beer drinking session.

I could sit at Riverside with a beer in my hand and watch the traffic for hours. Doesn't sound like much fun (did I mention I have a beer in my hand), but it's not your run of the mill traffic. Mostly consists of motorbikes with 3,4,5 or 6 (was the record) people on one bike at a time whilst juggling their shopping, tuk tuks, bicycles, men pulling carts, a few cars, and yes we even saw an elephant mosey on by.

We hit a few bars. Equinox which was empty except for a handful of tourists...it was early though. At the recommendation of our tuk tuk driver we went to Elsewhere next. Has an outdoor area with a small pool, not bad but also quiet. We then went back to Bar 51 as we said we would. We started chatting to this Aussie guy who has been living in Thailand for the past 17 years but who comes to Cambodia regularly. He gave us his camera to check out some photos...and well Michelle flicked one photo forward too many and it was a picture of some girl giving some guy a blow job. The guy, "Tony", quickly said that that was a mate of his. It's like "no that's not me taking a picture of myself getting a blow job...that would be sick...that's my mate getting a blow job...who I've taken a picture of"...ummm much better. Anyway Tony reckoned that he knew everyone worth knowing in Cambodia. He said he was going to another bar called Martini's and asked if we wanted to join him. He had a bodyguard there he nicknamed Mr Smith & Wesson. According to him, if we walked in that place with him, no one would ever give us any trouble whilst we were in Cambodia. Apparently if someone hassled us, it would get to him in like 2 minutes and he would come with gun in tow. Anyway given the explicit photo we saw earlier and the fact that he was talking about having a gun, naturally we said we would join him.

We arrived at Martini's and sure enough a rather hefty local was there to greet him...his bodyguard. He looked clearly agitated when he saw me and moved his hand closer to his gun for reassurance. I immediately said "whoa big fella, I'm not going to hurt you". He immediately looked more relieved until I grabbed his arm and said, "unless you cross me of course". With that he took a big gulp and said "yes sir". Martini's was full of working girls and was reasonably busy. In fact any bar you go out to and see local girls, 90% will be working girls. One of them, a rather short girl, greeted Tony as he walked in. Tony later said that he would probably take her home, not to do anything of course, but to just give her a nice place to stay for the night...right. We start drinking and Tony pulls out a joint. I take a few puffs (I didn't inhale Mum), just to be socialable. When I get up to go to the toilet, Mr Smith & Wesson gets up and escorts me there. I'm tempted to start a fight with someone as I feel 10 feet tall with my bodyguard in tow, but I think better of it and settle for a pee only.
We have a few more beers and we tell Tony that we are going to go to another bar, The Heart of Darkness. He previously warned us not to go there as he said it was quite dangerous. A lot of Khmer gangsters hung out there and it wouldn't be hard to get into trouble. There was actually a fatal shooting there a couple of years back and the place was closed down for a while. Anyway I tell him he's a pussy and we leave.
The Heart of Darkness didn't appear to be especially dangerous. We did get checked for guns when we entered but it seemed a normal nightclub. We headed for the dancefloor which was packed. The music wasn't that great so we left. We visited a couple of more bars, Shanghai bar and then the Walkabout. Both bars had freelance girls chatting up the punters inside.

18/02/07 - Day Three
After another late start we headed to the legendary founding place of Phnom Pehn, Wat Phnom, a temple built on an artificial hill. The stairs leading to the temple are lined with beggers. It was a daunting prospect walking up but we slipped behind some other tourists which made it easier. After Wat Phnom we did the walking tour as described in our $4 Cambodian Lonely Planet. We took in the Central Market as I was keen to try some unusual food like a tarantulla or some form of insect. However try as we did, we couldn't find anywhere that sold them, although supposingly you can get things like that there.

After the walking tour we had dinner at Riverside again. We tried some Mekong lobster at one of the restaurants there. We had finished eating and were sitting outside when a shirtless young boy around 10 years old, appeared through the plants that were separating the restaurant from the road. He pointed to my plate and said "yum yum". There were only empty lobster shells on my plate and I told him so. However it appeared that he was so hungry that he didn't care and he kept repeating "yum yum", so I offered the plate to him. He grabbed the shell and went off eating the mouthful of sauce left inside. He then offered the rest of what little there was to a little girl who was with him. A sobering experience which made us realise how poor this country really was.

We then headed to the Seeing Hands Massage palour where all the masseurs are blind. The lady I had asked me if I had any troublesome areas. I told her the neck so she started massaging that area. After a little while she said I mostly have trouble with the right side which was correct (caused by years of using a mouse for hours on end)...so she must have known what she was doing.

19/02/07 - Day Four
A shock to my system as we decide to go to the Killing Fields at 8am. To get there it's a 15km drive on a dusty rough road sourth-east of the city. This is where people were executed and buried in mass graves during the Khmer Rouge's rule between 1975 - 1979. The Fields basically consists of multiple pits where the graves have been dug up, a memorial house where the victim's skulls are buried, and a number of signs around the place explaining this is where the truck stop was, this is where they stored the instruments used for torture but nothing remains of the original structures. To me it fails to recreate any sense of dread that such a place should command. However our next stop, The Tuol Sleng Museum, a prison, did a better job at this.

Tuol Sleng was a former high school which was turned into a detention centre by the Khmer Rouge, known as Security Prison 21 (S-21). The government's idea was to create an agrarian society so they rounded up the country's educated and basically tortured them to obtain forced confessions. Once the confessions were obtained they were taken to sites like the Killing Fields and executed. Photos of prisoners are on display as the Khmer Rouge were meticulous in keeping records. A lot of the guards were only children as young as 12 which were brainwashed into believing in nothing except the government and to treat anyone who opposed as the enemy, even their own family. It amazes me that a government could kill 1.5 million of it's own people, and that it was allowed to go on for years. In fact it seems that countries such as the US provided aid to the Khmer Rouge, even after the Vietnamese invaded them out of power. The reason was that the US saw Pol Pot as a Cold War ally as he was at war with the Vietnamese which were allied to the Soviet Union. The US also played a large part in allowing Pol Pot's regime to gain power in the first place by illegally and secretly bombing Cambodia, a neutral country, between 1969 and 1973. The US should be up for war crimes. It gets more f*cked up the more I read about it.

After the museum we headed to the Royal Palace. On the way our tuk tuk driver asked if we wanted to stop at his house and have some coconut juice. We agreed and found that his family ran a hairdressing salon where they also lived. After the Royal Palace we had a relaxing afternoon by the pool at the hotel. Tony had earlier told us that the kids which sell the books don't get any of the proceeds. All the money goes to an adult who use the kids because people are more likely to buy from them. He said the best way of helping these kids is to give them food. From what we had seen already, including the lobster shell experience, we knew this to be true. It seemed both Michelle and myself had the same idea about dinner that evening. We both wanted to find the little girl we met on the first night and ask her to have dinner with us.

We went back to the same area we had been previously and asked some of the kids if they knew Cher. They said they did and within moments Cher was at our table. We asked her if she wanted to eat with us and with a huge smile she sat down and began looking at the menu. It was a bit hard as there were about half a dozen other kids who also wanted in on the action. Sounds cruel but we moved table so that we were inside the restaurant as opposed to outside so we wouldn't be overrun with children wanting to join us. Turned out that Cher had expensive tastes (she ordered the crab), and a big appetite (she ended up eating more than us). Cher told us that she was 11 and that she went to school from 7am to 11am and then sold books until 10pm. Apparently she usually only sold at most 3 books a day and gave all the money she made to her mother. We asked her if she had an address so we could write her letters. She replied, "do you have email?" We were shocked and amused at this revelation, but turns out that she has email at school. After dinner we gave her $30 to do what she wanted with. In a country where the average yearly income is $300, it was a lot of money to her and I don't think she could quite believe we were giving it to her. After saying our goodbyes we went back to the hotel for a nightcap.

Despite having to get up early the next morning, we stayed up for a number of beers. I don't think either one of us wanted to be the one to say "last beer" as doing so would have signified the end of our trip. We were also both still high from dinner. The face of Cher throughout the evening would be the equivalent of a child in a Western country on Christmas day. We reflected on the fact that the last few days had been a great experience, but I believe if we had not found Cher that night, we would have left Phnom Pehn feeling somewhat unfulfilled.

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Photos

Russian Market
If only we had hammocks at work

Comments

[Andrew]

He is back
So good to see the intrepid reporter back in action. Give up your day job and become a journalist, you owe it to the readers of the world!