by Chris Tharp
In a desperate search for distraction I turned on the TV. Full cable—yes! This wasn’t some backpackers’ cave, but a real shiny hotel with hot water, sheets, and HBO. Nice. I lay back on the bed and flipped through the channels, settling on CNN. They were playing a program about Flight 93, interviewing family members of the folks who were on board that day. A wife described her final conversation with her husband before he—along with other passengers—stormed the cockpit and took the hijackers out. I was engrossed and felt an incoming tide of emotion well up from my gut. I attached myself to each word, and imagined myself on the plane that day. Salty tears. Could I do that? Could I call my wife and tell her that I loved her, knowing that it was all over? Could I rush blade-wielding fanatics, armed only with a service cart and fatalistic determination? Would I ever be able to muster such courage?
As the credits rolled, I clicked the remote and the screen went black. I listened to the hiss of the air-con and filled my lungs deeply with the cool air. I repeated this several times, and it seemed to do the trick. I grabbed my bag, picked up the key, reached for the door handle and got the hell out.
*
S-21 used to be a high school. Once the Khmer Rouge took over, they turned it into a hall of horrors. Thousands of political prisoners were sent to S-21 for “interrogation” and almost none lived to tell about it. Most were questioned, tortured, and then taken out to the Killing Fields just out of town, where they were “smashed.” This Khmer Rouge euphemism for “killed” wasn’t off the mark: in order to conserve ammunition, most prisoners were clubbed to death rather than shot. This is how over 17,000 sent through S-21—overseen by infamous comrade Duch (appropriately pronounced “douche”)—met their fate.
I spent two hours walking through the old school building and surrounding grounds, observing the unwritten rule of total silence. The place has been turned into the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a testament to the tragedy that Cambodians endured during those four terrible years in the late 1970s. Aside from the few surviving objects—leg shackles, an iron bedframe that served as a torture rack—the most haunting thing about the place was the photographs: thousands of black-and-white shots. All of the prisoners were photographed before the questions began. I could taste their fear. It was obvious that they all knew their fate. Confession of their “crimes” meant death; so did denial. And death would neither be quick nor merciful for any of them. Death would only come after prolonged and deliberately inflicted agony.
When I left the grounds of S-21, I was surrounded by beggars and children selling books. Wherever tourists go in Phnom Penh, the book-hawking kids follow, with their knock-off copies of Lonely Planet and pretty much every other English-language tome written about Cambodia. It comes as no surprise that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge dominate the collection. The day before, I had made the mistake of perusing the goods but not buying; this provoked the ire of the nine-year-old girl running the show, who pummeled me with a foul-mouthed torrent of hate: “Fucking asshole goddamn motherfucker shit fuck you!” she spat, stomping away while shooting me the finger. I avoided such abuse this time by picking up three.
The horse pills that I’d bought up in Kratie had done their work. The tide had ebbed, and I felt the most human I had in days—physically, at least. But the sight I had just taken in had shaken me deeply. It reminded me of the time I was in Germany and visited the Dachau concentration camp. It is one thing to study genocide—to watch the films and read the books and hear the accounts of the survivors. These things are all useful, disturbing, and necessary, but to visit the scene of the crime is another thing altogether—to see the gas chambers and touch the ovens with your bare hands—to walk amongst the spirits and absorb the horrible history. This is a humbling and overwhelming thing. Your extremities tingle in horror and you feel useless in the face of such incomprehensible death. So yes, my curry-poising was abating, but now my soul felt sick.
I needed beer.
My hotel was located on Phnom Penh’s riverfront, which was home to many other lodging establishments, not to mention scores of bars and cafes. It was the more upscale travelers’ area: the backpackers were consigned to a series of dilapidated guesthouses surrounding a rank, sewage-filled lake on the other side of town (the lake has since been drained and the hostels razed). My hotel, The Palm 2, was owned by a long-haired American expat and his Khmer wife. There seemed to be a lot of Americans in town, at least compared to other cities in the region. I sat down at one the outdoor tables in front of the entrance and ordered an Angkor beer. Once the beer arrived, I cracked open one of my newly purchased tomes and began to read.
I finished my beer quickly and flagged down the owner’s wife as she walked by the table.
“Hi. Could I please get another?”
“Okay,” she nodded, glancing down at the cover of my book, which featured a black-and-white photograph of Pol Pot.
“That man,” she said, looking me in the eyes. “He killed my sister.”
She walked away before I could respond and brought me a new beer without another word.
After about twenty minutes of learning about the childhood of one of the 20th century’s most infamous killers, my ear began to hone in on the conversation at a table across from me. Four aging white guys were downing beer, smoking, and regaling each other with tales of their exploits. Three of them had swollen, fat stomachs. Their ringleader was a balding white-bearded dude with a nasal Aussie twang. He looked like a sunburned Santa Claus.
“Yeah, she was a lil’ beauty, I tell ya… firm lil’ tits, peach of an ass… gorgeous lil’ thing.”
“Was this at the uh… the place over north of the river?” inquired a squat American with thick glasses and a very un-ironic mustache.
“Yeah, that’s the one mate. Well that night I must’ve popped two Viagras, cuz I was rarin’ to go. I fucked that girl in every hole in her body and then shot my wad straight all over her face—including those pouty lil’ cocksucking lips of hers.”
“There ya go, mate,” replied a withered, dentally challenged Brit. He sucked on a hand-rolled cigarette. His forearms were a mosaic of cheaply inked tattoos.
“But the way the pretty little thing wiped the spunk off, ya figured she’d been at this game for at least five years. I’m tellin’ ya mate, she was all about business. She even licked a bit off with the ol’ tongue.”
“Didn’t even blink, huh?” asked the rapt American, his adenoidal accent giving away his Chicago roots.
“Dead-eyed stare, mate. I reckon she liked it. Best meal she had in ages!”
They four of them exploded in laughter and clanked their bottles in a celebration of mutual scumbaggery. I had heard about the shamelessness of the expats in Cambodia—they are generally considered to be the worst in Asia (and that’s up against some stiff competition)—but doubted the veracity of some of the stories. Well, here was a whole flock of the shitbirds right in front of me. Existence confirmed.
I put down my book and headed back through the bar/lobby to have a piss, as well as to give my ears a rest. Sitting at one of the tables was a guy with scraggly reddish hair and wire-rimmed glasses. His eyes were fixed on the television on the wall. A soccer match was on.
“Come on ye mighty Reds!’
I took my leak and came back out.
“Good game?”
He didn’t take his eyes from the action on the field.
“Not so bad. We’re up one-nil—go on Gerard! Give it to ‘em!”
The midfielder shot and missed.
“Fook!” He sipped his beer and looked my way.
“You like football?” he asked.
“Sure. Sometimes.”
“That’s funny. I didn’t think you Yanks liked sah-kerr,” he mocked, drawing out the final r-coloring in a cheap attempt at an American accent. “The beautiful game is just too complicated for your minuscule brains. You twats prefer to watch a load of tubby cunts run around the pitch wearing helmets and pads, stopping every twenty seconds for McDon
ald’s adverts, as if you lot aren’t fat enough already. Shite game. End of.”
I laughed, but wasn’t going to let him off the hook.
“What’s with you insecure Brits? Always attacking a game of pure strategy and velocity that you simply don’t understand? What’s the matter, does your pussy hurt because you don’t have an empire anymore? Or maybe it’s your jaw muscles that are sore from having your collective mouths permanently wrapped around the stiff dick of the USA?”
“Well you got that one right, Yankee Doodle. It’s Thatcher and her minions started that shameful business—the wizened old fascist whore.” He finally turned my way, looked at me, and held out his hand.
“I’m Neil.”
“Chris.” We shook. “You English?”
“No way. I’m not English, I’m Scouse. I fookin’ hate England. Load of bellends.” He punctuated the last word with a disdainful sip of his beer before cracking a naughty grin.
“Ah, from the fair town of Liverpool.”
“And don’t ya ever forget it: home of the Fab Four and the greatest football team to ever walk the earth. How’d ya know that, anyway? Most Yanks can’t even find their own nobs, let alone a city-state on the globe.”
“Let’s just say that I’ve had a run in or two with a few of your kind.”
“‘My kind.’ Great. So ye know we’re the most hospitable and charming people in the world.”
“So I’ve been told… by other Scousers.”
“What better authority could ya ask for?”
He finished off his beer, and continued: “You hungry? I’m famished. Could use with a bit of scran.”
“Yeah, I think I can eat, though I’ve been a bit under the weather, if you know what I mean.” I rubbed my abdomen for emphasis.
“Uh-oh. A bit of the ol’ Delhi-belly got ya down? Gotta watch the dodgy curries in this part o’ the world, mate.”
“You should have told me three days ago. Anyhow, I’m on the up and up and think I’m finally ready for some grub.”
“Right. Let’s go then. You like Mexican food? Boo-ree-tos and the like?”
“What do you fuckin’ think? It’s our national cuisine”
“Sound. I know a good place down the road.”
“What about the game?”
“It’s a replay, watched it yesterday. Ends in a one-one draw.”
“Oh, the excitement!”
“Shut it, ya tit.”
The chicken tacos were the first solid food I’d had since Satan’s Laotian curry. I had to work a bit to get it all down, but that had more to do with the touchy state of my stomach than anything else: I could eat, but food had yet to be delicious again. However, the tortillas were made of corn and fresh cilantro was liberally sprinkled on top of the white meat, which was succulent and nice. Who knew that you could get decent Mexican in Cambodia?
“Not a bad feed here,” Neil said, finishing off his burrito. “For a full-time vegetarian, it can be difficult to get satisfactory victuals on the ol’ backpackers trail, unless you want to live solely off banana pancakes, muesli, and other such crap hippy fare. For those of youse over on the carnivorous dark side, it’s a much easier road. I hope you enjoyed your two tacos made from the flesh of real, murdered animals.”
“They were damned good, if you must know.”
“I must. And this salsa’s hotter than the surface of fookin’ Venus. Time to cool off with an ice-cold lager. I believe it’s your round, ya whopper.”
“‘Tis indeed.”
As I sauntered up to the bar to get a couple more cold bottles, I felt the subsonic thump-thump of hip-hop pumping forth from what must have been an extremely amped-up car stereo. This was a sound I was well acquainted with, having spent some years in one of the sketchier neighborhoods of Los Angeles. A shiny black Mercedes-Benz SUV rolled up and stopped in the middle of the street, right in front of the open-air restaurant/bar. The driver’s-side door swung open, blasting us all with pure bass and the agitated keyboard line from 50 Cent’s “Candy Store.” A thin, middle-aged man emerged from the car and ran around to the other side, where he opened the door for the passenger, a smartly dressed, well-fed Khmer in his late 20s who must have been the son of a politician, gangster, or both. Cambodia is a country where the line between government and organized crime is blurry at best.
With the music kicking, the car’s engine running, and both doors open, the young Khmer and his minion walked straight into the establishment, making a beeline for the bar. I could plainly see pained and fearful looks on the faces of the bar staff as the two approached.
The young Khmer walked up next to me and leaned back on the bar, taking in the scene. A Westerner in a Denver Broncos baseball cap stood just feet away, waiting for his drink. The young Khmer stared his way, pointed to his head, and barked, “Hat!”
This confused the white guy, who looked over and mumbled, “What?”
“Hat!” The young Khmer aggressively motioned to his head and then down.
“Huh?”
“He wants you to take off your hat, mate” chimed in Neil, who watched from our table nearby. “And if I were you I’d do it, quick-like.”
The white dude meekly complied, grabbed his drink, and slunk off.
The young Khmer glanced at Neil and then back to me, slightly smiling as he nodded in approval.
“You friend?” he asked.
“Uh… yeah.” I replied.
“You and… friend…you like… tequila?” He made a quick drinking motion with his hand.
“Uh, sure… thanks.”
“Come. Drink.”
I waved to Neil, who stood up and came to join us.
The young Khmer shouted to one of the men behind the bar, who reached to the upper shelf and grabbed a bottle of Patrón.
“Patrón? Wow. You can’t get good tequila in Korea.” I remarked.
“Never heard of it,” snipped Neil. “I generally think tequila is shite.”
The bartender lined up three clear shots, which we took down together.
“Good, yeah?” said the young Khmer, laughing.
“Oh baby.”
“Well, I stand corrected. That is smooth stuff,” said a smiling Neil. The young Khmer patted him on the back.
“Patrón is some top-shelf shit,” I said. “It’s really meant to be sipped, not shot, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
Under further orders, the bartender poured three more.
Our host raised his glass and shouted, “Jul mouy!”
I attempted to repeat the toast: “Ju… jul…”
“Jul mouy!” he instructed.
“Jul mouy!” I repeated.
“Cheers, big ears,” joined in Neil.
After downing our shots, the young Khmer reached into his pocket and produced a roll of US bills the size of a baseball, something straight out of a mafia movie. It fit in nicely with the rap music still blaring from his Benz. He peeled three twenties off the top and paid the bill, which was more than most Cambodians make in a month. He then began to address his sidekick in their own tongue. Though he wasn’t shouting, we didn’t need a translator to know that the words were less than complementary. He then turned back to us and switched to English.
“Him,” he pointed to the older servant. “He so stupid. So fucking idiot.”
The young Khmer then took his hand and proceeded to rake it over the face of the older man, mauling his lips, nose, and eyes with his open palm. He finished by mockingly slapping the man’s now-flushed cheek, while gently laughing through gritted teeth. The lackey endured the humiliation in silence.
The young Khmer suddenly changed the subject: “You like smoke? Ganja?”
Neil glanced my way and raised his eyebrows. “It’s not like we have much of a choice, now do we mate?”
I shot Neil a hard look.
“But if you’re offering,” he continued, “I’m sure we’d be more than happy to oblige,”
The young Khmer whipped out a bag of weed an
d expertly rolled up a joint right there at the bar. We sipped our beers and looked on with a mixture of fear and awe. Within a minute he had finished his handiwork—a perfectly rolled cone spliff. He lit it up and puffed away, exhaling several clouds of blue smoke, which hung in the sticky air, illuminated by the lights of the bar. He then handed it to Neil, who graciously accepted.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, attacking the spliff with the nonchalance of a master.
“Here,” the young Khmer said, tossing the bag of dope onto the bar in front of me. “You keep. I go.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“Welcome to Cambodia,” he said walking away. The old boy followed him back to the car, which was still running, along with the heavy thump of the stereo’s hip-hop beat. They got in and closed the doors, and the driver gunned it, peeling out in the street and blasting off into the dark of the Phnom Penh night.
“What an absolute nipple,” Neil gasped, burning spliff in hand.
I just shook my head and sighed.
“Tomorrow morning, la’. What do you say?” He took a deep drag off the joint. “I reckon it’s time to leave this pit of vipers.”
“Sure thing, dude.”
Big River, Bigger Lake
The boat chugged north along the Tonlé Sap River, which runs low during the dry season, forcing the pilot to navigate into the deeper channels in an effort to avoid scraping the bottom or worse. Though we had seats in the general cabin below, Neil and I elected to ride on top of the Russian-made craft, taking in the much-needed fresh air and Cambodian countryside as we glided through the churning, brown water. The punishing light of the early morning flooded the villages and fields and overwhelmed our retinas: shades were a must. I dangled my feet over the side and looked at the sun’s angry reflection on the water’s surface. The muddy river looked like my brain felt. After the Mexican bar, Neil and I had hit the town hard, jumping in tuk-tuks and drinking at several bars, until ending up on the balcony of a sketchy expat watering hole overlooking the old French streets, only to be herded inside when gunshots rang out just a block away. The combination of the last night’s lager, tequila—along with only three hours’ sleep—had me feeling positively retarded. Neil was still drunk, though now asleep, splayed out atop the craft with plenty of his pink and freckled British skin exposed. The man was a sunburn catastrophe in the making.