Vietnamese text message game on TV. Is it my imagination, or is the pace slightly more hectic than at home?
And the prize for “Ben’s favorite Southeast Asian capital” goes to… drumroll please… Phnom Penh! The city is vibrant, modern, intriguing, and is guaranteed to keep your head spinning from dusk till dawn! The Khmer people are tremendously friendly, and once again you can’t help but reciprocate the hearty smiles you encounter. In fact, it seems no matter what you’re after, you can be sure a big smile will always get you better service and a cheaper price. It’s almost like a secret code or something: “Oh, you’re one of the happy people! Well in that case, let me get you the pizza that didn’t fall on the floor!” It’s truly amazing, and makes me wish this felicitous Illuminati worked everywhere!
Because everyone is so cheery, you’d never guess the country was effectively eviscerated just thirty years ago by the Khmer Rouge. Their disastrous “Year Zero”-project saw city-dwellers forcibly moved to the country-side to work on farms, regardless of whether they were qualified or not.
Whenever we arrive in a new city, we usually like to dedicate one or two days to see the so-called must-see sights around town. In Phnom Penh, this makes for a pretty grim excursion, with most of the “attractions” revolving around past terror and death. The most famous of these are of course the notorious Killing Fields, a testament to what happens when homicidal ignorance is left unchecked. The Fields were formerly an orchard, and lush green trees are still scattered around, swaying gently in the breeze. When bathed in sunlight and accompanied by the sounds of children playing in a school-yard nearby, the place isn’t nearly as gloomy as one might expect. You could even say it’s pleasant. On closer inspection, however, you find some pretty grim reminders of the place’s history, the most thought-provoking of which must be the Buddhist Stupa towering in the center of the Fields. It is filled with roughly nine thousand cracked human skulls, all that remains of the people bludgeoned to death in order to save precious bullets. Dozens of unearthed mass graves dot the landscape and a quick walk around reveals clothing and shoes still sticking out from the soil. So much for the pleasant and sunny ambiance…
If I felt the Killing Fields were at first less dreary than what I expected, then the Toul Sleng museum certainly more than compensated for them. This former high school was converted into “Security Prison 21”, where people were tortured before being shipped to the Killing Fields for execution. I don’t believe in Karma, but it really seemed like the rooms there radiated some kind of terror and despair as soon as you stepped into them. After a mere minute or so I actually felt physically ill just standing in one. The fact that it used to be a school somehow made it all the worse, because the cells were still clearly identifiable as classrooms, but with leg shackles and blood-splatter casting a sinister aura over them, obviously out of place in a place of learning.
Silent screams
Moving on to executions that make more sense, it must be noted that of course Phnom Penh was also an important stop for my trusty companion Mr. T. as it was where his cathartic bibliocide was to take place. To facilitate this, we took a tuk-tuk (no pun intended) early one morning to a shooting range on the outskirts of town, where we were promptly given a rather peculiar menu to browse through. I can’t remember every weapon available there, nor did I know what most of them were exactly, but the list comprised of at least an AK-47, an M-60, an M-16, an MP-5, an M1 Garand Carbine and a Tommy Gun. Also, live chickens could be purchased as targets, and I have been led to believe cows and the like can also be negotiated for. Seeing as how I had nothing against any animals, I decided to skip the chickens and cows, but did opt for the classic AK-47 as I figured it had the least chance of misfiring in my face. After exchanging a few “Are you sure we should be giving this guy a gun?”-looks, the attendants agreed to let me use Mr. T. as a target. Within minutes I was lining up my sights and wondering whether I should’ve blindfolded the poor book or at least offered a cigarette or something.
The first shot ripped through the binding, tearing a quarter of my Literature Review into confetti. Not exactly sure what to do next, I aimed for a “Lethal weapon” smiley face, which turned out to result in most of the bullets missing the target. By this stage the attendants had got the gist of what I was trying to do, and enthusiastically offered a shotgun to finish the job with. Let me tell you, I have never seen a Master’s thesis fly like that :) I will post a video of the actual execution as soon as I get to a computer where editing footage doesn’t take weeks. Trust me, it is worth the wait ;)
My quest completed, I finally felt like I was at peace with the motherfucking time-vampire that was Mr. T. In order to celebrate this, we headed for a rather literal pub-crawl in the midst of Phnom Penh nightlife. By the time we finally hit upon a disco called “The Heart of Darkness”, we had been reduced to a drunken stupor by four consecutive happy hours in as many bars. Apparently the place has earned a bit of notoriety because the young Khmer elite frequent it and are quick to get their bodyguards to beat the shit out of you for any perceived slight. Once again, all we found was one hell of a party! As we wandered back to our hotel at dawn, we agreed that Phnom Penh rocks and that we should both definitely buy houses there as soon as possible. Although the latter part seems less like a great idea now, the former is all the more true! The upshot of this great first impression of Cambodia is that we decided to change our plans a little. Instead of heading straight to Siem Reap and onward to Thailand, we will enjoy a few quality days on the beach in Sihanoukville, known colloquially as Snookyville. It is supposedly the premier beach-resort of Cambodia, so it should serve as a nice decompression chamber before returning home to the drudgery of another two months of holidays. Peace out, y’all!
P. S. You succeed at last! (Ignore the video)
Jimmy Cliff – You can get if you really want
W. H. Auden: Funeral Blues
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
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