Cambodia - Night Post

A note upfront: I do not have any pictures of our night out as I was afraid to bring my camera out on the mean streets of Phnom Penh. All details of this story can be corroborated by clicking on the links below

After being sufficiently freaked out during the day by the general goings on in Cambodia for the past 40 odd years, my travel partner and I decided to hit the nightlife of Phnom Penh. First we went to grab dinner. We figured the best place to avoid mayhem would be to hit the Sisowath Quay riverfront area since we thought at the time that it was the "backpacker area".

This attempt at normalcy was thwarted within the first 5 minutes of sitting down out front of a restaurant. Little Cambodian street kids approached me first one by one, then two by two tapping my shoulder and giving their best English sales pitches to me on why I should buy their books/cds etc. These usually consisted of me saying "no" and them saying "why no?" I did what I usually do to people on the streets in Thailand which was fuck with them and try to make them laugh, however, these kids did not seem interested in any of this. Although I did play bloody knuckles with one little Camblette.*

This exchange melted my icy heart for a nano-second and I decided to do one thing nice by attempting to buy him an orange soda. When the waiter looked at me like I was bat-shit insane my heart iced over again and I told the kid to get lost.

After being bothered throughout dinner we decided to change venues and get hammered drunk. We went down the road and picked another place a block away from the river. This proved to be very dull with the only company outside of sex tourists to talk to being the many waitresses standing around doing nothing. We asked where "people like us" go - code word for vanilla face backpackers - but they kept saying "here". I guess we looked more like a couple of up-and-coming sex tourists.

We chilled there for a few more minutes while my travel partner sucked down a few Manhattans (see linked picture but gay it up by about 50%), then packed up and headed out to find another bar. Our luck turned at the next place where we met quite a few colorful characters. Of note was a guy who, no joke, when asked what he did, said "oh I'm just into some videos nowadays."

Given our choices, we continued on the theme of flirting with the only girls around - the excessive amount of bartenders and waitresses with nothing to do. At this place with pedophile Pete we met a nice Cambina** who was taken by our exotic white skin. Since there was no luck finding normal friends we decided to strike a deal with her to call her friend and take us out after her shift ended. We left the bar thinking this was a good backup plan if we found nothing else of interest.

At the next bar we got more of the same pattern. This one was particularly noteworthy though as sex tourists and vanilla face older guys came into the bar to play chess against the bar girls. After we ran our joke of being from the Philippines into the ground and the girls got busy with their sex tourist chess games, we decided the backup plan was the best way to go.

We went back to the bar with the Cambina who was able to get off early to take us out. Unfortunately her friend was not available so we rolled to the bar looking like a couple of backpacker sex tourists on a serious budget.

We arrived at the place the Cambina wanted to take us only to find it was closed. So we did the next logical thing and went to "street 51" where we found Phnom Penh's version of Spicy, called "Heart of Darkness." In true Cambodian style, this place was at least 10 times creepier than Spicy and Apocalypse Now. It was painted all red and black and was filled with "taxi ladies" (Cambodian hos) and large African immigrants. This is where I would like to insert a joke about AIDS, but as my friend told me after getting back from Phnom Penh, not even AIDS would go there. HIIOOOO.

So after arriving there as three we got some drinks and did some dancing. I did not get in any dance offs 1) because I would probably be put to shame by my superior darker skinned brothers, and 2) for fear of smudging a large man's Puma. While myself and the Cambina danced, my travel partner went off and experienced one of the oddest coincidences I have heard of in a while.

After about an hour of hard drinking and trying to discern if this Cambina was a taxi lady or not,*** I decided to figure it out once and for all. In conclusion I made a new friend who is not a taxi lady.

Cambodia was not so creepy after all.


* not actually short for a child from Cambodia
** not actually short for a girl from Cambodia
*** It is not recommended that vanilla face backpackers combine booze and judgment of who is, and who is not, a prostitute in SE Asia