PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA

Several centuries ago, according to Khmer legend, a wealthy woman named Penh built a temple for the Buddha on a hill not far from the Mekong river. The temple attracted throngs of pilgrims and before long a city had sprung up around it. This city was called Phnom Penh— the city on Penh’s hill.

Unlike those legendary pilgrims, however, I was not drawn to Penh’s city by religious zeal; I had come here to revel. Cambodia often finds itself in Thailand’s shadow because of the latter’s global reputation as a tourism hotbed. However, this nation of 14 million received more than 6 million tourists in 2017 and can easily match the best that Thailand has to offer in terms of attractions, culture, cuisine and beachlife. But it was a starkly different destination from the first two nations on my itinerary.

At the airport, I had paid a total of 45 dollars in bribes; twenty to two immigration officials, five to a photographer who took no photos, and another twenty to the faceless “big boss” upstairs. I spent more on bribes than on the visa, which costs 30 USD. As he stamped my passport, the immigration officer told me I should not make too much of the hand-greasing. I was from Africa; I must be used to this kind of thing. Same same. 

There are no metros or deluxe buses to carry travelers into the city from the airport. Of the two available options—Tuktuks and taxis—I elected to take the former. I had been told to pay no more than ten dollars for the trip downtown. When I asked the driver how much he wanted, he said, “twentay dollar!” I told him I had eight. “Okay, ten dollar!” I climbed aboard. One thing I did not know until I arrived in Phnom Penh is that the local currency—the Riel—is very rarely used. The American dollar is the preponderant means of payment.

Like many low-income countries, Cambodia is a place of remarkable socio-economic contrasts. On the streets of Phnom Penh, convertible Porsches and Rolls-Royce limousines jostle for space with tuktuks and scooters carrying two or three people apiece. I saw more SUVs on the journey from the airport than I saw during my entire stay in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has a per capita income of almost $40,000; Cambodia’s is only $1134. A friend would later remark that here, you either drive a Lexus or you’re dirt poor.

Cambodia's socio-economic contrasts find vivid expression on the streets of Phnom Penh

(Image by Scrawford)

As the driver weaved his way dangerously through the midday traffic, I began to experience something I had not since coming to Asia: blunt stares. Whenever we stopped at a light or other impediment, the people around would look at me with something approaching bemusement. Some would smile. I knew that people in Phnom Penh weren’t accustomed to seeing black Africans on their streets but the stares made me uneasy, to say the least. 

I arrived at Mad Monkey at about 1:00pm. Mad Monkey is a chain of party hostels in Asia with a reputation for ungoverned festivity. There are four in Cambodia alone, and almost half a dozen more at different locations in South-East Asia. After checking in, I sat myself behind copious draughts of Cambodia Beer at the rooftop bar, taking in the comings and goings below. 

 The view from the rooftop bar

That first evening, Mad Monkey lived up to its reputation. We had a large party with knock-down music and—every few minutes—free shots on the house. Those like me who are not given to dancing played beer pong. At midnight the party shut down and I took a taxi to town with two American friends I had met at the hostel. We went in and out of a few places before settling in a tavern on street 130. To our consternation it turned out to be a hostess bar and we soon found ourselves surrounded by Khmer call girls who spoke barely comprehensible English and laughed to excess. Using the few English words they knew, we tried to throw together a conversation—with little success.

After passing about an hour at the bar, it was time to leave. We decided to look for food before returning to the hostel. Our Tuktuk driver smiled weirdly when we asked him to take us to a place where we could get chicken. He said the places he knew were outside Phnom Penh. This surprised us—surely, there had to be at least one restaurant that served chicken in Phnom Penh.

It turns out that “chicken farm” in Cambodia is slang for a red light district. So when a farang asks a tuktuk driver where he can get chicken at 3:00 am, the driver naturally assumes you’re talking about human chicken. And the chicken farms, not surprisingly, are usually located out of town. Fortuitously, our driver eventually worked out that we were asking about chicken of the kind that lays; not the kind that gets laid. He took us to a place called the Russian market where we bought delectable fried chicken. Afterwards he drove us to Mad Monkey and we staggered to our rooms. After the disappointments of Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur’s party scenes, Phnom Penh’s vibrant nightlife brought a measure of respite.

 

The next day was New Year’s Eve. My friends (the two Americans from the previous night and a Dutchman) and I had quite a bit lined up for the day. First, we would go to shoot guns at the Phnom Penh shooting range. Then we would go to the killing field at Choeung Ek and, if time allowed, the genocide memorial at Tuol Sleng. I was rather anxious to fire a gun for what would be the first time in my life. But discharging a Kalashnikov turned out to be far from enjoyable. It’s a fearsome machine that kicks back like a truck.

After the shooting range we went to the Choeung Ek killing fields, where Pol Pot’s regime had murdered as many as one million Cambodians in the late seventies’ Cambodian version of Cultural Revolution. I had thought that after seeing the horrors of the Rwandan genocide at the memorial in Kigali earlier in the year, I would be impervious to the horrors of Cambodia’s genocide. Not so; I found the displays uniquely frightful. At some of the mass graves, there were human bones strewn about. The Stupa pictured below contained cabinets with thousands of punctured, smashed and shattered human skulls, as well as the crude tools that the Khmer Rouge executioners had used to murder their hapless victims. After Choeung Ek, none of us had the remotest desire for a second instalment of these horrors at Tuol Sleng. On the tuktuk ride back to Mad Monkey, little was said as we digested what we had just experienced. 

 The singular stupa at Choeung Ek. Zoom in close enough and you can see rows of human skulls behind its windows.

The New Year’s party at Mad Monkey brought a chance to shake off the melancholy. The dance floor as well as the bar filled up before the party had even begun. By nightfall, we had a colossal bender going. It seemed as though the whole of Phnom Penh was at Mad Monkey. At midnight, we were transferred to a different place a few streets away.  Here the crowd was even more spirited. So much so that the crossover to 2018 caught me flatfooted.

 Life at a party hostel (Image by Hostelworld)

At about 2:00 am we staggered through the empty streets of Phnom Penh in search of our way back to Mad Monkey. After getting lost twice or thrice, we found it. For me, that night had been a fitting closing curtain for a year that had not had a dearth of adventure.

 

As you might probably imagine, I spent much of the morning of New Year’s Day in bed. I woke up starved and went to placate my hunger pangs at a Khmer restaurant a few streets away. After a swim in the evening, I lazed at poolside downing Cider beers. The only time I left Mad Monkey was when my American friends said they were going to buy fried chicken at the Russian market and I decided to go along. We had grown quite addicted to the fried chicken. 

For the Americans as well as myself, January 2 was the last full day in Phnom Penh. They would be going to the resort city of Siem Reap in the North the next day; I would be flying to Bangkok. One of the Americans—Eddie—had been to Bangkok. About the famous city, he had said: “the entire city is a chicken farm”. Sounds like my kind of place, I thought. We passed the day seeing what little there was to see in Phnom Penh—the markets, the temples, the royal palace, and the national museum. Early that evening we returned to the Russian market for a final dinner of fried chicken then took a Tuktuk back to town. We lazed away what was left of the evening on the banks of the Mekong River.

The Americans left early the next morning to catch the first bus to Siem Reap. I checked out at noon and as I was not due at the airport until around 8:00pm, I killed time drinking beers at the pool. By the time I left Mad Monkey, I could not walk in a straight line. I told the Tuktuk driver to take me to the Russian market first, where I bought enough fried chicken to see me through the rest of the evening. Then he took me to the airport.