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Other entries in Phnom Penh

Guns! Hoooooyaaaaah!

My bus ride from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh was fairly dull.  I was the only westener on the bus and so couldn't really chat to anyone.  In addition to this the landscape was rather boring - very flat with lots of rice fields and palm trees.  Luckily I had fully charged my iPod before I left.

I arrived in the evening and checked into a relaxing guesthouse (they had hammocks), called Number 9, which was on the lake.  Here I was cornered by "Peter", a Cambodian tour guide who talked me into letting him drive me round the city the next day.

I got up at 08:00 and Peter took me to the Royal Palace to see some stunning architecture before having a traditional Cambodian breakfast, which was uncannily like a Thai, Vietnamese, or Lao breakfast (basically meat, vegetables and rice).

After breakfast Peter took me to the shooting range.  Yes, shooting.  As in guns.  Real ones.  With real bullets.  Now, I'm not really one for guns - someone with my propensity for self-injury should never tempt fate in such a way - but as this was a shooting range, where safety standards would surely be at their most stringent, I made an exception.  I arrived at the outdoor army training base and was rather surprised to see kids not only handling bullets, but loading guns, and running around playing.......in a shooting range!  Caution, it seemed, would be down to me to apply.....DOH!

A menu, rather like a cocktail menu, was put in front of me with a list of guns that could be shot and the price of the bullets for each one.  It was quite expensive but I thought "what the hell, this is a once in a lifetime thing".  I chose the AK-47, of "Jackie Brown" fame.  A picture of the stereotypical robber pointing a pistol at me was standing 100-150m away as a target.  "Right, breathe slowly and gently squeeze the trigger" I thought, remembering the tuition from Jean Reno in "Leon".  I was given protective earmuffs......................."BOOOOOM!"...............I immediately realised why I was given earmuffs!  Much swearing and laughing followed for a couple of minutes and then after a few more shots I flipped the switch to "automatic" and finished off the clip.  It was.......an experience.  The target paper came back.  The robber was a gonner!

I enjoyed it so much that I had a go at the Colt 45 (sorry mother but boys will be boys).  The handgun was much more difficult to control as it wasn't resting on anything apart from my left hand.  It's even more difficult to control when you're shaking like a leaf because you're holding a loaded handgun!  Luckily there were only 7 rounds in the clip.  The paper came back - the guy was staggering but thanks to my only hit being in the shoulder he was still alive.  Clearly my intention was just to wound him.

Before I tried out the next gun I was asked by one of the soldiers if I wanted to shoot a duck or chicken.  "No!  What for?" I asked.  I don't see the point of killing a harmless creature for no other reason than because you can.  I was having more than sufficient fun trying to get the bullseye on the paper robber.  With this in mind I absolutely could not resist a go on the gun of all guns - the M60 machine gun used by none other than the great John Rambo himself!  This gun is huge as you can see in the photos.  Sly Stallone carried one of these with one arm!  ONE ARM!  And if anyone wants to say it was just a prop for a film and couldn't possibly weigh anything like as much as a real M60, just make sure I'm not around to hear the lies!  The gun was louder than the AK and made the sliding doors of the enclosure bow under the increased air pressure from each shot - that's how powerful it was.  I wasn't paying much attention to that though....for a couple of minutes I was Rambo and all I could see was that nasty looking bloke on the piece of paper waving his puny pistol around and calling me names!  After hell had been unleashed the paper came back.  I was pleasantly surprised that nearly all the hits I made were headshots (I was aiming for the lower body!) and decided that the sights were obviously not quite properly aligned.

I met three Geordie guys at this moment, two of whom were complete maniacs.  They spent at least $300 each on shooting guns and even paid an extra $15 to shoot a duck each!  Poor bloomin' duck didn't know what was about to happen.  One minute there's a duck, quacking away, tied to a wooden post - a couple of seconds later, a puff of feathers.  I let them know just how brave and courageous they were, shooting a harmless, defenseless, tied-up duck with a machine gun, to which one of them replied "well, it wasn't my idea you know!".  And they wonder why we call them northern monkies?

One of the Geordie blokes spent another $200 to shoot a B40 - a rocket propelled grenade.  They asked me if I wanted to come and watch and I couldn't turn that offer down.  We travelled out to the mountains, about 45 minutes away, where the rocket launcher was shot into the side of a large hill.  The noise it made was incredible.  The prat of a Geordie that fired it refused to put his earmuffs on.  He was virtually deaf for the next couple of hours.  I had a video of it to show you all but alas, it perished (more on that in a later entry).

When we got back to the shooting range I had one more go on the AK-47 to try to better my previous go.  I did.  All the bullets hit the paper and about 99% of them hit the robber.  Not bad for a rookie.

Next stop on the tour was the killing fields.  In an attempt not to depress people too much I won't go into too much detail.  This was where the Khmer Rouge massacred millions of Cambodians in the mid to late 70's.  After my trip to Auschwitz earlier this year, I wasn't too phased by what I saw here (although being greeted by hundreds of sculls piled up on shelves is a bit unnerving).  On my way into the complex I saw people taking pictures....something that I thought was wrong to do.  Then I saw something that I consider attroicious.  People, and not ignorant westeners either as you may expect, not only taking pictures of the skulls, but actually positioning themselves so that their heads were level with the skulls, smiling and having their picture taken next to the skulls.  SICK!  THIS IS NOT A THEME PARK PEOPLE!  This prompted me to take a photo of a sign I saw on the sacred building that housed the skulls, it was the only photo I took here.  The incident reminded me of when I went to Ground Zero in New York and saw a group of Japanese people, complete with beaming smiles, having their picture taken in front of where the twin towers used to stand.  Again: sick!

I think the most distressing thing was hearing Peter recount his own personal experience of what happened: he lost his father, brother and two sister-in-laws and was made to work, as a child of only about 10 years old, for the Khmer Rouge.

We headed back to the guesthouse just in time to catch the last glimpse of sunset.  While I was walking round town that night I bumped into none other than Vicky, Claire and Katy (again!) from Siem Reap who I hung out with for the evening.  I didn't have a late night as I had a flight to catch in the morning.  It would at last be time to start my journey to the country that was the reason for my travels in the first place:  Australia!

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