Phnom Penh

Sorry all, I've been in Florida or otherwise occupied away from the computer.  Let's push and finish this ol' blog.  This next one might be familliar if you have seen our little magazine.  Anyway, after a long bus ride from Saigon, I ended up in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Cambodia, with its history of violence and a recent tragic past, is a place of dichotomy.  Common guides often speak of warmth, hospitality, and beauty on the same page as warnings of armed robbery and drive-by brick attacks aimed at foreigners along the banks of the Mekong on the same page.  The scars of the ultra-communist Khmer Rouge regime attract huge numbers of socially-aware tourists while leftover landmines and assault rifles have taken their toll on the population and given the country something of a renegade reputation.
Cambodia is a contradiction; at once beautiful and violent which gives way to the frequent comparison to the Wild West.  When driving through outpost towns on the side of a poorly maintained and heavily holed “highway” from the Thai border to the capital, Phnom Penh, this comparison is valid.
A burnt-brown dust hangs in the air, kicked up by every manner of vehicle from tour bus, to car, to homemade “Road Warrior” contraptions that would lead to instant arrest in the U.S.A.  Buildings stretch in rows alongside the road, both shaded by the tall palms in front and covered in their dead leaves.  The storefronts are well worn or run-down, depending on how you look at it.  Sun-worn locals adorn the entrances, sitting around, talking, drinking or smoking if they aren’t selling fruit, meat or sweeping away clouds of dust with palm-leaf brooms.  Many people kick up dirt to add to the ever present haze with bare feet.  Here and there men sleep in a ragged and faded hammock tied to a couple of leaning palms.  Dogs lay in the shade batting flies and the occasional weathered old man with patchy brown skin and unkempt hair wanders naked into the Mekong.
The guidebooks lead you to believe that some of the people in this “frontier” are armed with more than a six-shooter.  They are probably right but it doesn’t seem to matter much.

A store in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

I will confess a certain level of apprehension and paranoia before I crossed the border between Vietnam and Cambodia.  I have been in hairy situations before and Phnom Penh seemed to have potential for things to go bad pretty quick.
As the bus carrying a couple dozen travelers from Saigon to Phnom Penh -a mix of locals and western tourists- came into the city limits I began to wonder if I had bitten off more than I could chew.
There was no real plan, so to speak.  I had no place to stay and my wad of cash was becoming a little smaller each day.  Further, I had been hauling a year’s worth of possessions from South Korea along with my camera equipment; if there was a brick thrower in the area I probably wouldn’t even make it off of the bus.
When the bus pulled into a derelict station that consisted of a faded white stone building accented by decaying wood and a dirt “parking lot” I became overwhelmed.

I stepped into the oppressive heat and dirt-filled air to the barrage of tuk-tuk drivers shouting, beckoning, and stopping one step shy of kidnapping.  Luggage was pulled from the storage compartments of the bus and dumped onto the dirt.  It was hard to maneuver between the people and vehicles.  Tuk-Tuk drivers spoke in varying levels of English, and a blizzard of Khmer filled the air.  The crowd of my fellow bus travelers dissipated in a cloud of confused faces staring off, unable to efficiently process what was going on until one of the tuk-tuk drivers shouted loud enough to cut through the staccato and then they were riding off into a cloud of dust and a cluster-fuck traffic.
I picked up my dirt covered luggage and tried to leave the chaos, only to come face to face with one of the tuk-tuk drivers.
“Are you alone?”  He asked.
“Yeah, I am.”
“OK, then I will take you to a hotel.” He said.
“I need a cheap one.”
“Ok, $25,” off the top of his head.
I agreed.  I had been taken for a long and expensive ride when I was in Saigon to a hotel with an astronomical price.  Cheaper accommodation can be found in Phnom Penh, but I didn’t mind paying the $25 if I had a decent place to sleep and didn’t have to worry about being shot, stabbed, hit by a brick, or all three at once.
The driver, a squat dark skinned man in a baseball cap loaded my luggage onto the rack and I hopped into the back for my first tuk-tuk ride.
Tuk-tuks seem more exciting than they are because they remind you of a hay-ride or going down a hill in a red wagon when you were a kid.  Ideally, a tuk-tuk ride is less apt to send you flying into the certain death of Phnom Penh traffic but the possibility is there and that makes it exciting.  Also, like all of Southeast Asia, there is the chance of actually being a participant in a motorbike bag snatching which can result in such vacation-making events such as a stolen camera or death, if you are unlucky enough to be pulled onto the street.
I sat with my camera bag tangled in my arms.
My driver called himself DJ Camera.  He was a gregarious man somewhere near

middle age.  He spoke with the enthusiasm of someone trying to sell you something, anything.  He asked where I was coming from and what I was doing tomorrow.  The roof of the tuk-tuk was adorned with flyers of tourist attractions and DJ Camera arm-in-arm with blonde girls and backpackers.  DJ Camera was also a guide.
We passed the ever-present Southeast Asia gas stations: small wagons with cola and Fanta bottles full of gasoline and baking in the sun.  Motorbikes whined past us and people crossed the street, often barefoot, with no apparent regard for their lives.  An occasional “delivery” bike passed by, recently slaughtered poultry bouncing were strapped to the sides; they flopped with each bump as though reliving their death throes.
“Tomorrow,” DJ Camera said as he played a mad game of Frogger with his tuk-tuk and our lives, “I show you Cambodia.”