Dawn breaks, and I slumber on. Eventually I rouse myself, and head down to the hotel veranda for another exquisite bacon cheeseburger and fries. Phnom Penh is apparently not a fully paid-up member of the South East Asian Diet Plan.
Nick and Sonny have gone to hire a motorbike. I drink a soda and chat to a motorcycle driver. He offers to take us to the shooting range, where we can fire handguns, AK-47s, M-16s, rocket launchers, etc etc. Then the Killing Fields, and S-21 if we’re interested. The round trip is maybe 40km, and the price will be $4.
Nick and Sonny return on the hired motorbike, and we agree to take the trip. I sit on the back of our driver’s bike, and Nick follows with Sonny on the back of his. A quick petrol stop, and then we’re off on the long drive to the shooting range.
Outside urban Phnom Penh, on a long busy country road, people stare at the three white men. Some look suspiciously at us, others smile and wave, or shout “Hallo”! There are very few cars, a few trucks, but the traffic is overwhelmingly motorbikes. We see two, three, four, even five people on one motorbike. One of them is actually carrying two passengers and a bicycle.
And then the rain starts – a torrential downpour. We pull over to the side of the road and wait under the tin roof of a shack where a local family live and work. They’re collecting the rainwater in the polystyrene boxes discarded by the factories nearby. They’ll sell the rainwater by the tank for a couple of dollars. A small girl is out washing her bicycle in the rain. Nothing is wasted.
Eventually the rain passes and we set off again. We wind round back roads, past an apparently abandoned assault course, and finally reach the shooting range. We’re greeted by a gaggle of Cambodians, one with a huge grin. “Your driver tells me you want to shoot a rocket launcher”, he smiles – you can sense he can almost smell the dollars. We tell him that at $200 a shot, that’s a little outside our price range, and his face visibly sags.
Sonny and Nick eventually decide on a couple of handguns to fire at the open-air range – I, as the token Brit, am playing the conscientious objector today, and just watch. We’re given ear protectors, but Nick fires off the first shot before I think to put mine on. I’m almost deafened – guns are loud. They’re only firing at paper poster targets, but the feeling that this is all too real is inescapable. This is my first experience with live firearms, and I’m taken aback at how simple it is for such a small piece of metal to wreak such havoc.
The handguns are soon depleted of ammunition, and we move into an enclosed brick corridor to fire the AK-47. One magazine of 30 bullets costs $30, and Nick and Sonny fire off 15 each. Even with the ear protectors the noise is deafening.
We pay up, take a few photos, and then it’s back onto the motorbikes as we head for the Killing Fields (Choeung Ek, actually). The ride is easy enough on the tarmac roads, but as we get closer to our destination the road surface swiftly deteriorates into mud.
Eventually we arrive at Choeung Ek, our clothes covered in mud spray, and we pay $3 each for the privilege of standing in what appears to be a paddy field. Child beggars follow us around the muddy track, continuously begging us for dollars as our shoes become caked in crap.
We complete the circuit and walk back to the waiting motorbikes. We had planned to visit S-21 as well, but this waste of time has put us off tourist attractions for today, and we just want to get back to the hotel, change our now filthy clothes and have a thorough wash.
For dinner we head up to the Rendezvous Cafe by the riverside again – another stupendously good (and cheap) meal, and then we wander down to Sharky’s.
Sharky’s is a rock bar not far from our hotel, and its slogan is “Survive 3 mortar rounds and get a free t-shirt”. Disappointingly, a “mortar round” is a cocktail.
9-ball and 15-ball pool tables, draft beer, a wide variety of cocktails, local and western food, decent music and a swarm of, shall we say, “ladies of negotiable affection” make for a lively atmosphere, and Sonny and I make a commendable dent in their stock of Anchor (not Angkor) Beer.
Next stop is the Heart of Darkness – I was wary, having read online about a murder there last year, but we decided to brave it. We are thoroughly searched for weapons on the way in – further reading since the trip suggests that this is mostly for show. Westerners (who are going to be unarmed anyway) are thoroughly frisked, whilst the Khmer gangsters get waved through without any checks…
Thankfully, our visit is incident-free – we glug a beer each and leave before the dirty looks we are getting from the locals turn into anything more serious.
We were going to head to Martini’s after that, but a particularly insistent taxi tout suggests we try Zapata Bar. To be fair, it was a pleasant enough venue, with cheap beer and very attentive company. A Khmer girl stands behind my barstool, massaging my neck and shoulders while I make short work of a Beer Lao.
Finally we do make our way to Martini’s, and it’s quite a sight. A chap with no arms or legs greets us at the door, and after another weapon-frisking we’re out on the patio sipping the evening’s final Heineken and fending off the by-now-obligatory pushy whores.
