Cambodia: Quick and Dirty
Created | Updated Nov 7, 2005
When I first accepted a job working as a copy editor at a small English-language daily newspaper in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, I got a variety of responses from my family and friends.
"Cool," my dad said.
"It doesn't fit my hygienic standards," Rod Lott said.
"You're going to die," my friend Karen said.
"Don't get AIDS," my mom said.
"You know, there's some strange people in Africa," one of my hometown Wisconsin acquaintances said. (He is an auto mechanic, so you gotta give him some slack.)
Anyway, I lived there for nearly 4 years, so here's the skinny.
Part 1: The culture.
Cambodians are comprised mostly of ethnic Khmers (pronounced Kah-my in the Khmer language). Khmers are not to be confused with the Khmer Rouge, which was a bad group of people led by Parisian intellectuals who thought that they could turn their homeland into an agrarian paradise via killing millions of people through starvation, beating and torture.
Anyway, your average Khmer guy/gal is a pretty laid-back sort, mostly interested in making enough money to feed his family and not being beaten to death, as is common in several other countries. They like to eat a lot of rice. A LOT of rice, and the garb of your common Phnom Penh urbanite is something between the stoner kids in your high school and the kids at your high school who could only afford to get clothes at Goodwill, before it was fashionable.
They're nice people, for the most part, and as long as you don't interfere with them making enough money to feed their families or try to beat them to death, they are gentle, kind, and really like to smile, which goes a long way with me.
Cambodians are Buddhists, for the most part. There used to be more religious variety in Cambodia, but the Parisian intellectuals decided that variety was the spice of bludgeoning during their 1975-79 rule, so there's only a handful of Muslims and pockets of hill tribe animist religions in the mountainous regions remaining.
Cambodians aren't like the Buddhists in "Kundun," "Little Buddha," or "The Golden Child," though. They're more like Catholics in America, going to the temple every holiday or so, offering alms to monks and putting fruit on altars to Buddha, but they don't really follow through on all the religion's precepts when it comes to making enough money to feed their families or trying to avoid being beaten to death.
The language, Khmer, is cool. It's simple, straight to the point, and doesn't hassle with all the little crap English speakers have to put up with.
The phrase that means milk is "tuk dah koo," which literally means "water breast cow." It does a body good. The word "suh-aht" means either beautiful or handsome, and isn't gender specific. While this is simple in Khmer, it can lead to embarrassing situations. My moto-driver (See Part 2: Moto Drivers), who is learning English, tells me I look beautiful every day. I try to explain my discomfort (perhaps mixed with curiosity?) with his saying this, But is just doesn't seem to get through.
Written Khmer, however, is a different ball of wax. Its origins are in Sanskrit, and it is mostly made up of little squiggles, and there are no spaces between words. I have managed to pick up a little of it, mostly owing to the fact that it resembles my own handwriting. Doubters of this can call my mom and ask her what grade I got for penmanship in 4th grade. Her name is Carol.
Part 2: Moto Drivers
The most common form of transportation in PP is the moto, which imperialist US dogs like to call a moped. There are literally thousands of Jack Palance-faced guys wearing baseball caps that drive around town all day long (for the reasons mentioned above) taking anyone where they want to go for about 25 cents a trip. They always know exactly where you want to go, until it's evident you're cruising around at random. Then the guy will say he had no idea in the first place and why didn't you tell them to turn left at the steaming pile of sewage right next to the brothels?
This results in another fun part of PP transportation: asking for directions. The streets are numbered: even-numbered streets go north-south, while odd-numbered streets go east-west. But some streets are skipped, apparently in the hope of eventually building more roads or something, and the guy from "Sling Blade" apparently set up the address numbering scheme, since No. 22 St. 240 can be right next to No. 45a St. 240, and so forth.
After telling the moto driver to stop (usually by hitting him repeatedly on the shoulder), the first person you ask will undoubtedly know where you should go, and berates the driver for being so ignorant while shuttling around a tall beautiful foreigner who obviously has something to do with helping them all make enough money to feed their families and preventing them from being beaten to death by sticks and cobblestones. By this time a crowd has gathered, as they often do around confused-looking tall white beautiful people from Wisconsin, and each of the crowd members in turn begins to berate the previous advice giver on his or her obviously shoddy advice. People on the periphery of the crowd always say "Oh, proh kapuah sah-at Americahng," which means, "Oh, a tall beautiful American man." Eventually some agreement is reached; I give the definitive advice giver the equivalent of a nickel and we head off, often only to end up riding around randomly once more.
Part 3: Nightlife.
If one night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble, then an evening in Phnom Penh would make a him feel like Zeus must have felt after he offed his dad and realized he was master of all he surveyed (probably better than that, even, since all Zeus could survey was Greece, and the chicks are pretty hairy there). If you've ever wondered what it was like to be Mick Jagger at the height of his career, then come to Phnom Penh with about $500.
Nights start late here and occasionally end several days later, so get some rest. Newbies like to visit the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Cambodia, a lovely yellow-walled colonial-era structure with really rude and slow waiters, geckos on the walls, and a strange paucity of foreign correspondents. The food pretty much sucks there, but there's a happy hour from 5-7 when everything's half price, and they make good bloody Marys.
If you're lucky, you can meet Al Rockoff, who was played by John Malkovich in "The Killing Fields." He really hates that movie, so ask him about it. He'll go on and on, and he might start yelling. His take is that the movie's basically a big lie that disguises that fact that Sydney Schanberg cared so little about his translator and so much about being a famous journalist that he sacrificed his translator's life for a lot of glory. Anyway...
Since there are no US fast-food restaurants here, I usually go for the next-best thing: Lucky Burger. The burgers are pretty much worse than anything in the US, but I have a Zen sort of method to eating them.
Remember the story of the student whose teacher made him stay outside on a cold night and told him he should keep warm by looking at a candle illuminating a window across the street? That's how I eat Lucky burgers. If they're hot and I eat them fast, all the time concentrating on the Hamburglar, my taste buds can sometimes be bamboozled. But the burgers almost always give me diarrhea.
8 is the usual dinner hour here, and since there are about a million aid organizations in PP with about a gazillion overpaid "consultants" and "enablers" running amok, there are plenty of good restaurants.
This is an extremely fortunate thing, since they can then "consult" each other on the sad state of affairs and the myriad problems confronting these poor people while eating meals that can cost upwards of several months' salary at one of the local garment factories (minimum wage is about $40 a month at the factories; government workers and teachers are lucky to get $20 or $30 a month.). Most of the westerners do not speak the language, and most prefer not to really associate with Cambodians a whole lot, but boy, they are really on the ball when it comes to issuing annual reports on how terrible it is here. (If you're wondering what the myriad problems confronting Cambodians are, it is that they are really, really poor people who have no education or skills and who happen to be led by people with just a little more education and a lot more grenades than they do. And since they've seen firsthand what happens when people with a lot more grenades than they do decide to revamp the country, they pretty much follow the "live and let me live" philosophy.)
The food at most places frequented by foreigners is either western or Thai, though there is a great Japanese place that never makes me sick and has a $5 sushi/sashimi special every day. This being part of the former French Indochina, there are a shitload of French restaurants, and, despite the fact that I don't see eye-to-eye with many French people, I love crème brulee, which at least sounds French.
By now it's about 9 or 10 p.m., and here is where the paths of night diverge for PP expatriates like paths...in the night. Choose you own adventure:
A) Sleazy journalist
B) Aid worker
C) Asian businessman
It's strange, but there can be successful combinations of A+C and A+B, but haven't seen a lot of B+C combinations going on. Most likely this is because for group B, the selection of where, when and how to party is based on morals, while groups A and C focus mostly on morale.
SOCIAL CIRCLES
A) Sleazy journalists.
After dinner, which could be at a swanky embassy function, a streetside canteen or any number of pizza places that put marijuana on your pizza for no extra charge, the journalist's idea of a night out starts with alcohol. There are a nice stretch of bars along the Tonle Sap River that provide a good early-evening (10-11 p.m.) pick up, and usually that's when everyone decides what and when everything's going to go down for the evening.
At about 11, it's time to hit the Bar of all Bars, the Best Bar in the World, The Bar at the End of the Universe: The Heart of Darkness (or, just The Heart). This place serves cold, cheap drinks and is looks threatening enough that tourists can think they've seen the real Phnom Penh without actually doing so. In actuality it's a tame place operated by a Cambodian man who is so gay you'd think that maybe he's a straight guy imitating a gay guy. He's also a great friend of mine and lets me drink on a tab, as well-known lushes are allowed to do.
The Heart is great for chilling out and chatting, but when it gets too crowded, and there's nowhere to sit, it's time to head into the real night of the city, which is a challenge to explain to people who haven't been here.
If the night of the sleazy journalist doesn't intersect with the other social strata of PP expat life, the next trip is referred to in our parlance as the trip "across town."
"Across town" is sleazy journalist code for the Martini's Pub, a combination disco, outdoor movie theater and late-night eatery that, like most of the country, is just a front for prostitution. At midnight on nearly every night of the year there will be probably 100-150 prostitutes (henceforth referred to as taxi girls, for various non-funny reasons) convincing fat, bald men wearing Bermuda shorts, black socks and sandals that yes, they think that bald spot is a solar panel for a sex machine and yes, fat is good, especially in the wallet department.
Martini's reminds me mostly of junior high dances, except for the whole sex trade. Girls dance, stand around and giggle in little groups of 4 or 5, pointing at each other and winking at slovenly sex tourists or sleazy journalists as if they just passed her a note in class saying "I like you. Do you like me?"
One will eventually approach the potential customer and hit him in a display of affection, then ask for a cigarette, a drink, or some food. If that transaction is taken up, then that usually leads to the final deal.
I used to go there all the time with some friends of mine after our night shifts ended (for the food...really!), and I've had a girlfriend for most of the time I've been here, so I am a master of the phrase "Mee-in song-sau howee," which means "I have girlfriend already whom I don't pay and probably has fewer infections than I do." The taxi girls respect that for the most part, but I usually still buy food for some who have become friends of mine. It's one thing to hate your job; it's another to realize that you have to rent out your vagina in order to feed yourself and your family.
Martini's doesn't close until about 3 a.m. After that there are usually four options for the sleazy journalist: go home (alone), go home (with paid accompaniment), join up with crowd C, which will be discussed later, or grab a bite to eat and go to sleep.
Since the first 2 options are fairly self explanatory and two of the four can be fairly dangerous and expensive, we'll skip to the options for chowing down at 3 a.m. in The City That Sleeps A Lot But Never Seems Well Rested.
1) Food stalls. Late-night food stalls are set up all around PP, most of them featuring pretty girls wearing lots of makeup selling either tikaloks (fruit shakes that are a lot like Tropical flavored Orange Juliuses {Julii?}) or Num Pang, which is a sub-sandwich-type concoction filled with some really nasty mystery meat, veggies and a sauerkraut-type condiment. The shakes are good and cost about 15 cents; the sandwiches will run you a hefty 50 cents and always make me sick in the morning.
2) The Walkabout. This is a combination 24-hour bar-hotel-restaurant-pickup joint that serves great, heaping portions of French fries and cheap beer. The crowd is mostly euro or Australian (in other words, assholes), but the food can't be beat if you want some fries to wind down the evening.
3) Dim Sum. Actually a breakfast place, the Dim Sum Place opens at 3 a.m. and is right next to a hotel that has a sign that reads "Blessing You to Get Lucky." Great dumplings, sandwiches and assorted little bites are served up with strong coffee and weak tea, and the crowd is almost always comprised of old guys getting up for work. One guy in particular likes to sit with me, and he'll talk for hours about his family in California and if I can help him get a visa and what hot weather we're having, etc.... mostly while I'm trying to concentrate on using my chopsticks to maneuver the carrot slice from the top of my dumpling into my mouth. We've eaten a lot there, and the bill is never more than, like, $2 a head. After a solid 9 or 12 months of attendance, however, Dim Sum has fallen out of favor, mostly because it started to make me sick the next day. But it's really tasty, so still recommended.
Unless the Sleazy Journalist makes it to hook up with out aforementioned crowd C), he, or rarely she, will go home and pass out so he, or rarely she, can wake up in the morning. I am so happy I am NOT one of these people. So very, very happy.
B) Aid workers
After dinner, which is usually at the FCC or another swanky place, aid workers like to go to fancy hotel bars and have cocktails (or so I hear). On weekends, they end up at The Heart, thereby forcing many other people out of The Heart. If, on occasion, an aid worker is attractive, she will inevitably get cornered by a Sleazy Journalist. These people like to dance to music by Abba a lot. They talk a lot if you ask them anything. Example:
Me: "Are you using this chair?"
A.W.: "No. Have you heard about my new resource-management program? I really think we could do a lot of good here if we get the funding. I'm doing a grant proposal right now, and I think Cambodians will really be helped if we develop a framework for empowering the indigent population to weave wicker baskets and sell them on the Internet."
Me: "I just take that chair, then. Thanks."
I don't like to get into the questions with them like "Why aren't you empowering the government to get its head out of its ass?" Or "Why can't you enable the police not to torture people?" Or "Why are you so stupid?" They don't understand queries outside their framework of reality. After the Heart, they usually go home and complain about how boring the city is, or so I hear.
C) Asian businessmen
Before I came to Phnom Penh, I really thought I had known some party animals in my life. I mean, I knew a guy who never took showers because he always kept a keg in the bath tub. But once again I didn't understand the impossible adaptability of man. Man is strong. Man can overcome all obstacles. Man can party.
Take, for example, my Singaporean friend Chaz (not his real name), The first time I met him, I was meeting some friends at the Heart and there he was, putting a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label on my buddies' table and pouring himself a stiff drink. He was wearing a US college hockey jersey from where he went to school, and after I was introduced, toasted me and made me down a heaping helping of scotch.
That was more than a year ago, and he is now one of my best friends, Some say I'm friends with him merely because he pays for high-priced karaoke rooms and higher-priced liquor. Some say I'm friends with him because I get to ride around in his Range Rover. But that's not true. I'm friends with him because he can party like the people Prince was talking about in that song.
The primary habitat of the Asian businessman on a night out entertaining guests in PP is the karaoke room. US residents may not be familiar with this setting, as I was not when I arrived here in the Land of Smiles and Pointy Sticks.
Karaoke rooms are usually situated in karaoke clubs (duh), but in PP, upscale nightclubs have a dozen or so karaoke rooms for the big spenders as well.
The typical arrangement of a karaoke room is roughly rectangular, with a big-screen TV on one side and a really nice plush cloth or leather/vinyl wall-to-wall couch on the other side of the room. The nice places have wireless microphones and a remote-controlled song selection system, but if you're on a budget, there are many good places with wired mics and girls in the rooms to run back and forth between your room and the music control booth to relay your song requests.
The watchword in any karaoke joint is hiddencosts (I realize that's two words, but once a word is typed, it's etched in stone, right?). The female attendants in the room will gladly refill your beer or bottle(s) of Johnny Walker, but it will cost you. And while the girl who is sitting next to you after you picked her out of a lineup with a laser pointer may really like you for you, it's most likely you will have to give her $5 when you go home, or $50 if you wake up with her. Peanuts, watermelon slices and flaps of dried squid are also expensive as hell, so, for your sake, ask beforehand or come prepared.
Many Asian Businessmen like to sing Sinatra or Dean Martin songs. My favorites are "Don't Fear the Reaper," by Blue Oyster Cult and "How Deep is Your Love," by the Brothers Gibb. I never liked these songs before, but they make me feel like I can sing.
Business deals are also apparently made at these sessions, but I'm usually so busy singing and drinking that I don't notice. I do, on occasion, wake up with a deficit of business cards and an overabundance of bathroom attendants calling me to ask when they can start at the jobs I promised them, but this isn't about me.
There is a supreme paradigm for the karaoke room experience in PP, and it is called Manhattans.
This nightclub stands up to Western standards for music, decor and sheer coolness, and being both a night-owl and a Journalist Who Must Plumb the Depths of Depravity So Good People Don't Have To, I happen to go there a lot. It's a place that witnesses the most profound insights and the deepest sorrows, often both in the time it takes to look in your wallet.
Your standard tables-surrounding-the-dancefloor layout is here, but people who know people know that the real action is in the private VIP rooms that ring the establishment.
These rooms are a homebase for you and your friends/colleagues/hangers-on to meet, drink, talk, drink, sing, ingest various substances and then, when the mood hits, you can all leave the secure solitude and dance among the savages who can't afford bottle after bottle of $50 Johnny Walker Black Label Scotch Whisky.
Nights at Manhattans are full of conversation, drinking, dancing, romance, drinking and, occasionally, vomiting. The men's room attendants give you back rubs while you relieve yourself (JUST DURING #1) or if you're under the weather.
As with all life-changing experiences, there are downsides to Being Where It's At in PP. There is occasional gunplay and the management may or may not be affiliated with Chinese Triad gangs, but usually they are more than nice. But as long as you come with a Successful Asian Businessman or the Bulgarian head of security, you'll have a bodyguard or two watching out for you at all times, to protect you and keep rude backpackers from jostling you while you're doing Da Butt to Chinese techno music.
Manhattans is also, really, just a front for prostitution, albeit a more well-dressed type that use drugs less likely to make you look like Karen Carpenter. And whereas the dominant languages at Martinis are Khmer and Vietnamese, the Babel at the 'Hat is more a mix of Chinese and Vietnamese. The worst part about going to Manhattans on a good night is leaving. This is usually because it's about 8 a.m., the live version of "Hotel California" (the closing-time song) is playing, and you walk out of a pitch-black nightclub into the searing, humid daylight of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This is the absolute worst time to go home, since everyone and their 40 chickens seems to be going somewhere in a hurry, and a 5-minute drive home ends up being a headachey 25-minute death march. But then comes good, good, sleep.
"Cool," my dad said.
"It doesn't fit my hygienic standards," Rod Lott said.
"You're going to die," my friend Karen said.
"Don't get AIDS," my mom said.
"You know, there's some strange people in Africa," one of my hometown Wisconsin acquaintances said. (He is an auto mechanic, so you gotta give him some slack.)
Anyway, I lived there for nearly 4 years, so here's the skinny.
Part 1: The culture.
Cambodians are comprised mostly of ethnic Khmers (pronounced Kah-my in the Khmer language). Khmers are not to be confused with the Khmer Rouge, which was a bad group of people led by Parisian intellectuals who thought that they could turn their homeland into an agrarian paradise via killing millions of people through starvation, beating and torture.
Anyway, your average Khmer guy/gal is a pretty laid-back sort, mostly interested in making enough money to feed his family and not being beaten to death, as is common in several other countries. They like to eat a lot of rice. A LOT of rice, and the garb of your common Phnom Penh urbanite is something between the stoner kids in your high school and the kids at your high school who could only afford to get clothes at Goodwill, before it was fashionable.
They're nice people, for the most part, and as long as you don't interfere with them making enough money to feed their families or try to beat them to death, they are gentle, kind, and really like to smile, which goes a long way with me.
Cambodians are Buddhists, for the most part. There used to be more religious variety in Cambodia, but the Parisian intellectuals decided that variety was the spice of bludgeoning during their 1975-79 rule, so there's only a handful of Muslims and pockets of hill tribe animist religions in the mountainous regions remaining.
Cambodians aren't like the Buddhists in "Kundun," "Little Buddha," or "The Golden Child," though. They're more like Catholics in America, going to the temple every holiday or so, offering alms to monks and putting fruit on altars to Buddha, but they don't really follow through on all the religion's precepts when it comes to making enough money to feed their families or trying to avoid being beaten to death.
The language, Khmer, is cool. It's simple, straight to the point, and doesn't hassle with all the little crap English speakers have to put up with.
The phrase that means milk is "tuk dah koo," which literally means "water breast cow." It does a body good. The word "suh-aht" means either beautiful or handsome, and isn't gender specific. While this is simple in Khmer, it can lead to embarrassing situations. My moto-driver (See Part 2: Moto Drivers), who is learning English, tells me I look beautiful every day. I try to explain my discomfort (perhaps mixed with curiosity?) with his saying this, But is just doesn't seem to get through.
Written Khmer, however, is a different ball of wax. Its origins are in Sanskrit, and it is mostly made up of little squiggles, and there are no spaces between words. I have managed to pick up a little of it, mostly owing to the fact that it resembles my own handwriting. Doubters of this can call my mom and ask her what grade I got for penmanship in 4th grade. Her name is Carol.
Part 2: Moto Drivers
The most common form of transportation in PP is the moto, which imperialist US dogs like to call a moped. There are literally thousands of Jack Palance-faced guys wearing baseball caps that drive around town all day long (for the reasons mentioned above) taking anyone where they want to go for about 25 cents a trip. They always know exactly where you want to go, until it's evident you're cruising around at random. Then the guy will say he had no idea in the first place and why didn't you tell them to turn left at the steaming pile of sewage right next to the brothels?
This results in another fun part of PP transportation: asking for directions. The streets are numbered: even-numbered streets go north-south, while odd-numbered streets go east-west. But some streets are skipped, apparently in the hope of eventually building more roads or something, and the guy from "Sling Blade" apparently set up the address numbering scheme, since No. 22 St. 240 can be right next to No. 45a St. 240, and so forth.
After telling the moto driver to stop (usually by hitting him repeatedly on the shoulder), the first person you ask will undoubtedly know where you should go, and berates the driver for being so ignorant while shuttling around a tall beautiful foreigner who obviously has something to do with helping them all make enough money to feed their families and preventing them from being beaten to death by sticks and cobblestones. By this time a crowd has gathered, as they often do around confused-looking tall white beautiful people from Wisconsin, and each of the crowd members in turn begins to berate the previous advice giver on his or her obviously shoddy advice. People on the periphery of the crowd always say "Oh, proh kapuah sah-at Americahng," which means, "Oh, a tall beautiful American man." Eventually some agreement is reached; I give the definitive advice giver the equivalent of a nickel and we head off, often only to end up riding around randomly once more.
Part 3: Nightlife.
If one night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble, then an evening in Phnom Penh would make a him feel like Zeus must have felt after he offed his dad and realized he was master of all he surveyed (probably better than that, even, since all Zeus could survey was Greece, and the chicks are pretty hairy there). If you've ever wondered what it was like to be Mick Jagger at the height of his career, then come to Phnom Penh with about $500.
Nights start late here and occasionally end several days later, so get some rest. Newbies like to visit the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Cambodia, a lovely yellow-walled colonial-era structure with really rude and slow waiters, geckos on the walls, and a strange paucity of foreign correspondents. The food pretty much sucks there, but there's a happy hour from 5-7 when everything's half price, and they make good bloody Marys.
If you're lucky, you can meet Al Rockoff, who was played by John Malkovich in "The Killing Fields." He really hates that movie, so ask him about it. He'll go on and on, and he might start yelling. His take is that the movie's basically a big lie that disguises that fact that Sydney Schanberg cared so little about his translator and so much about being a famous journalist that he sacrificed his translator's life for a lot of glory. Anyway...
Since there are no US fast-food restaurants here, I usually go for the next-best thing: Lucky Burger. The burgers are pretty much worse than anything in the US, but I have a Zen sort of method to eating them.
Remember the story of the student whose teacher made him stay outside on a cold night and told him he should keep warm by looking at a candle illuminating a window across the street? That's how I eat Lucky burgers. If they're hot and I eat them fast, all the time concentrating on the Hamburglar, my taste buds can sometimes be bamboozled. But the burgers almost always give me diarrhea.
8 is the usual dinner hour here, and since there are about a million aid organizations in PP with about a gazillion overpaid "consultants" and "enablers" running amok, there are plenty of good restaurants.
This is an extremely fortunate thing, since they can then "consult" each other on the sad state of affairs and the myriad problems confronting these poor people while eating meals that can cost upwards of several months' salary at one of the local garment factories (minimum wage is about $40 a month at the factories; government workers and teachers are lucky to get $20 or $30 a month.). Most of the westerners do not speak the language, and most prefer not to really associate with Cambodians a whole lot, but boy, they are really on the ball when it comes to issuing annual reports on how terrible it is here. (If you're wondering what the myriad problems confronting Cambodians are, it is that they are really, really poor people who have no education or skills and who happen to be led by people with just a little more education and a lot more grenades than they do. And since they've seen firsthand what happens when people with a lot more grenades than they do decide to revamp the country, they pretty much follow the "live and let me live" philosophy.)
The food at most places frequented by foreigners is either western or Thai, though there is a great Japanese place that never makes me sick and has a $5 sushi/sashimi special every day. This being part of the former French Indochina, there are a shitload of French restaurants, and, despite the fact that I don't see eye-to-eye with many French people, I love crème brulee, which at least sounds French.
By now it's about 9 or 10 p.m., and here is where the paths of night diverge for PP expatriates like paths...in the night. Choose you own adventure:
A) Sleazy journalist
B) Aid worker
C) Asian businessman
It's strange, but there can be successful combinations of A+C and A+B, but haven't seen a lot of B+C combinations going on. Most likely this is because for group B, the selection of where, when and how to party is based on morals, while groups A and C focus mostly on morale.
SOCIAL CIRCLES
A) Sleazy journalists.
After dinner, which could be at a swanky embassy function, a streetside canteen or any number of pizza places that put marijuana on your pizza for no extra charge, the journalist's idea of a night out starts with alcohol. There are a nice stretch of bars along the Tonle Sap River that provide a good early-evening (10-11 p.m.) pick up, and usually that's when everyone decides what and when everything's going to go down for the evening.
At about 11, it's time to hit the Bar of all Bars, the Best Bar in the World, The Bar at the End of the Universe: The Heart of Darkness (or, just The Heart). This place serves cold, cheap drinks and is looks threatening enough that tourists can think they've seen the real Phnom Penh without actually doing so. In actuality it's a tame place operated by a Cambodian man who is so gay you'd think that maybe he's a straight guy imitating a gay guy. He's also a great friend of mine and lets me drink on a tab, as well-known lushes are allowed to do.
The Heart is great for chilling out and chatting, but when it gets too crowded, and there's nowhere to sit, it's time to head into the real night of the city, which is a challenge to explain to people who haven't been here.
If the night of the sleazy journalist doesn't intersect with the other social strata of PP expat life, the next trip is referred to in our parlance as the trip "across town."
"Across town" is sleazy journalist code for the Martini's Pub, a combination disco, outdoor movie theater and late-night eatery that, like most of the country, is just a front for prostitution. At midnight on nearly every night of the year there will be probably 100-150 prostitutes (henceforth referred to as taxi girls, for various non-funny reasons) convincing fat, bald men wearing Bermuda shorts, black socks and sandals that yes, they think that bald spot is a solar panel for a sex machine and yes, fat is good, especially in the wallet department.
Martini's reminds me mostly of junior high dances, except for the whole sex trade. Girls dance, stand around and giggle in little groups of 4 or 5, pointing at each other and winking at slovenly sex tourists or sleazy journalists as if they just passed her a note in class saying "I like you. Do you like me?"
One will eventually approach the potential customer and hit him in a display of affection, then ask for a cigarette, a drink, or some food. If that transaction is taken up, then that usually leads to the final deal.
I used to go there all the time with some friends of mine after our night shifts ended (for the food...really!), and I've had a girlfriend for most of the time I've been here, so I am a master of the phrase "Mee-in song-sau howee," which means "I have girlfriend already whom I don't pay and probably has fewer infections than I do." The taxi girls respect that for the most part, but I usually still buy food for some who have become friends of mine. It's one thing to hate your job; it's another to realize that you have to rent out your vagina in order to feed yourself and your family.
Martini's doesn't close until about 3 a.m. After that there are usually four options for the sleazy journalist: go home (alone), go home (with paid accompaniment), join up with crowd C, which will be discussed later, or grab a bite to eat and go to sleep.
Since the first 2 options are fairly self explanatory and two of the four can be fairly dangerous and expensive, we'll skip to the options for chowing down at 3 a.m. in The City That Sleeps A Lot But Never Seems Well Rested.
1) Food stalls. Late-night food stalls are set up all around PP, most of them featuring pretty girls wearing lots of makeup selling either tikaloks (fruit shakes that are a lot like Tropical flavored Orange Juliuses {Julii?}) or Num Pang, which is a sub-sandwich-type concoction filled with some really nasty mystery meat, veggies and a sauerkraut-type condiment. The shakes are good and cost about 15 cents; the sandwiches will run you a hefty 50 cents and always make me sick in the morning.
2) The Walkabout. This is a combination 24-hour bar-hotel-restaurant-pickup joint that serves great, heaping portions of French fries and cheap beer. The crowd is mostly euro or Australian (in other words, assholes), but the food can't be beat if you want some fries to wind down the evening.
3) Dim Sum. Actually a breakfast place, the Dim Sum Place opens at 3 a.m. and is right next to a hotel that has a sign that reads "Blessing You to Get Lucky." Great dumplings, sandwiches and assorted little bites are served up with strong coffee and weak tea, and the crowd is almost always comprised of old guys getting up for work. One guy in particular likes to sit with me, and he'll talk for hours about his family in California and if I can help him get a visa and what hot weather we're having, etc.... mostly while I'm trying to concentrate on using my chopsticks to maneuver the carrot slice from the top of my dumpling into my mouth. We've eaten a lot there, and the bill is never more than, like, $2 a head. After a solid 9 or 12 months of attendance, however, Dim Sum has fallen out of favor, mostly because it started to make me sick the next day. But it's really tasty, so still recommended.
Unless the Sleazy Journalist makes it to hook up with out aforementioned crowd C), he, or rarely she, will go home and pass out so he, or rarely she, can wake up in the morning. I am so happy I am NOT one of these people. So very, very happy.
B) Aid workers
After dinner, which is usually at the FCC or another swanky place, aid workers like to go to fancy hotel bars and have cocktails (or so I hear). On weekends, they end up at The Heart, thereby forcing many other people out of The Heart. If, on occasion, an aid worker is attractive, she will inevitably get cornered by a Sleazy Journalist. These people like to dance to music by Abba a lot. They talk a lot if you ask them anything. Example:
Me: "Are you using this chair?"
A.W.: "No. Have you heard about my new resource-management program? I really think we could do a lot of good here if we get the funding. I'm doing a grant proposal right now, and I think Cambodians will really be helped if we develop a framework for empowering the indigent population to weave wicker baskets and sell them on the Internet."
Me: "I just take that chair, then. Thanks."
I don't like to get into the questions with them like "Why aren't you empowering the government to get its head out of its ass?" Or "Why can't you enable the police not to torture people?" Or "Why are you so stupid?" They don't understand queries outside their framework of reality. After the Heart, they usually go home and complain about how boring the city is, or so I hear.
C) Asian businessmen
Before I came to Phnom Penh, I really thought I had known some party animals in my life. I mean, I knew a guy who never took showers because he always kept a keg in the bath tub. But once again I didn't understand the impossible adaptability of man. Man is strong. Man can overcome all obstacles. Man can party.
Take, for example, my Singaporean friend Chaz (not his real name), The first time I met him, I was meeting some friends at the Heart and there he was, putting a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label on my buddies' table and pouring himself a stiff drink. He was wearing a US college hockey jersey from where he went to school, and after I was introduced, toasted me and made me down a heaping helping of scotch.
That was more than a year ago, and he is now one of my best friends, Some say I'm friends with him merely because he pays for high-priced karaoke rooms and higher-priced liquor. Some say I'm friends with him because I get to ride around in his Range Rover. But that's not true. I'm friends with him because he can party like the people Prince was talking about in that song.
The primary habitat of the Asian businessman on a night out entertaining guests in PP is the karaoke room. US residents may not be familiar with this setting, as I was not when I arrived here in the Land of Smiles and Pointy Sticks.
Karaoke rooms are usually situated in karaoke clubs (duh), but in PP, upscale nightclubs have a dozen or so karaoke rooms for the big spenders as well.
The typical arrangement of a karaoke room is roughly rectangular, with a big-screen TV on one side and a really nice plush cloth or leather/vinyl wall-to-wall couch on the other side of the room. The nice places have wireless microphones and a remote-controlled song selection system, but if you're on a budget, there are many good places with wired mics and girls in the rooms to run back and forth between your room and the music control booth to relay your song requests.
The watchword in any karaoke joint is hiddencosts (I realize that's two words, but once a word is typed, it's etched in stone, right?). The female attendants in the room will gladly refill your beer or bottle(s) of Johnny Walker, but it will cost you. And while the girl who is sitting next to you after you picked her out of a lineup with a laser pointer may really like you for you, it's most likely you will have to give her $5 when you go home, or $50 if you wake up with her. Peanuts, watermelon slices and flaps of dried squid are also expensive as hell, so, for your sake, ask beforehand or come prepared.
Many Asian Businessmen like to sing Sinatra or Dean Martin songs. My favorites are "Don't Fear the Reaper," by Blue Oyster Cult and "How Deep is Your Love," by the Brothers Gibb. I never liked these songs before, but they make me feel like I can sing.
Business deals are also apparently made at these sessions, but I'm usually so busy singing and drinking that I don't notice. I do, on occasion, wake up with a deficit of business cards and an overabundance of bathroom attendants calling me to ask when they can start at the jobs I promised them, but this isn't about me.
There is a supreme paradigm for the karaoke room experience in PP, and it is called Manhattans.
This nightclub stands up to Western standards for music, decor and sheer coolness, and being both a night-owl and a Journalist Who Must Plumb the Depths of Depravity So Good People Don't Have To, I happen to go there a lot. It's a place that witnesses the most profound insights and the deepest sorrows, often both in the time it takes to look in your wallet.
Your standard tables-surrounding-the-dancefloor layout is here, but people who know people know that the real action is in the private VIP rooms that ring the establishment.
These rooms are a homebase for you and your friends/colleagues/hangers-on to meet, drink, talk, drink, sing, ingest various substances and then, when the mood hits, you can all leave the secure solitude and dance among the savages who can't afford bottle after bottle of $50 Johnny Walker Black Label Scotch Whisky.
Nights at Manhattans are full of conversation, drinking, dancing, romance, drinking and, occasionally, vomiting. The men's room attendants give you back rubs while you relieve yourself (JUST DURING #1) or if you're under the weather.
As with all life-changing experiences, there are downsides to Being Where It's At in PP. There is occasional gunplay and the management may or may not be affiliated with Chinese Triad gangs, but usually they are more than nice. But as long as you come with a Successful Asian Businessman or the Bulgarian head of security, you'll have a bodyguard or two watching out for you at all times, to protect you and keep rude backpackers from jostling you while you're doing Da Butt to Chinese techno music.
Manhattans is also, really, just a front for prostitution, albeit a more well-dressed type that use drugs less likely to make you look like Karen Carpenter. And whereas the dominant languages at Martinis are Khmer and Vietnamese, the Babel at the 'Hat is more a mix of Chinese and Vietnamese. The worst part about going to Manhattans on a good night is leaving. This is usually because it's about 8 a.m., the live version of "Hotel California" (the closing-time song) is playing, and you walk out of a pitch-black nightclub into the searing, humid daylight of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This is the absolute worst time to go home, since everyone and their 40 chickens seems to be going somewhere in a hurry, and a 5-minute drive home ends up being a headachey 25-minute death march. But then comes good, good, sleep.
