The FARANG Speaks 2 Much

[Continued from Part Two]

And so, time to bring this circuitous tale to a close.

After a night of glorious, uninterrupted sleep (the Vietnamese chick was short-time only, folks), it was time to actually do a little exploring. But not just yet. First, there was an itch which simply had to be scratched.

The Hope and Anchor pub have a sign on the premises which declares that they serve the finest English Breakfast in Phnom Penh. Such claims must be verified. Preferably by me.

It was rather good.

Culture

So. We were up relatively early (lunchtime-ish). We had a day to explore. But what to do?

“Terry. Fancy a temple tour? Markets? A riverboat cruise? A trip up to Choeung Ek? S-21? Thunder Ranch?”

“Fuck that. I’m going back to the hotel to sleep off this food coma.”

Oh well. I did try.

I took a wander along the riverside instead, taking in the glorious view across the water. Or at least, I would have done if the bastards hadn’t erected a fifteen-foot solid metal fence all the way along the riverbank (pictured, above).

Apparently they’re putting in a new drainage system. Drainage is good, I suppose. Still kind of kills the view though.

Instead, I sampled a Cambodian foot massage. Much the same as a Thai one. Only cheaper, obviously. And with extra monkeys.

No, really. As I relaxed in the shop window having my soles poked and prodded, I watched a monkey descend from the balcony over the shop, then amble over to the trash pile and tear open the bags, looking for food. I didn’t know there were monkeys in Phnom Penh. Monkeys are cool.

Later, I wandered over to Wat Phnom, which is very nice if you like that sort of thing, then trecked through the suburbs where I found what seemed to be the local equivalent of Khao San Road (shudder), and even a small and rather sad-looking theme park.

The FCC of Phnom Penh is a must-visit, I’d read somewhere. So I got a motorbike there, and was disappointed to find myself in a trendy cafe-bar full of tourists and idiots, drinking overpriced beer. Still, its second-floor position on the riverside at least allowed me to peep over the fence at the river. It’s quite pretty.

Time was getting on though, and our last night in Phnom Penh was approaching. Back to the hotel for a wash and brush up, but then on to where? To exotic hostess clubs? To “Sophie’s”, the world’s scariest blowjob bar? To unmarked local brothels?

No. To Sharky’s and Martini’s again. Okay so, street 104 aside, we scored a big fat zero for investigative reporting, but when the regular haunts are this good, why change a winning formula? I’ll certainly explore a little more on my next trip, but I also wanted Terry to enjoy his first visit to Cambodia, and he was certainly enjoying Sharky’s and Martini’s.

Yes, the Heart of Darkness and Walkabout get the freelancer crowd too, but from what I was hearing from the girls and other punters, they paled in comparison. Plus the Heart has a reputation for being the favoured nightspot of various shady locals. I’d been stared out by local hardmen on my last visit, and tourists have been shot in there before. So that was out. And there just seemed little point in trying to figure out an entirely new scene in just one night, particularly with the risk of coming up short.

Blimey, You Wouldn’t Get Many Of Those In A Suitcase

So back to Sharky’s, where we met a Vietnamese girl with the biggest boobs I’d seen outside Casanova Bar. Which was nice. Shame about the face, though.

Instead, I got chatting to a cute local girl with a taste for our pitchers of beer.

“I can drink beer all night, I never get drunk”, she said, merrily slurping at a draft Anchor.

It’s always amusing when girls try to match men in the beer tolerance stakes. Especially when they’re full of attitude and really seem to believe they can do it. And particularly when they’re 39kg Asians.

To be fair, she matched us beer for beer. To begin with, at least.

As the night drew on, and the last pitcher of Anchor was emptied into the three glasses, it was becoming obvious that Terry was either going to have to take the deaf mute (but possibly squeaky - who knows?) girl, or soldier on to Martini’s. Again.

I was rather taken by my girl though. I shall call her Katy, after an ex-girlfriend who made a habit of trying to match my beer intake. That didn’t end too well, either. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

“I no dunk”, said Katy. “I want dance. Go Heart [hic!]”

“No, we’re going to Martini’s. You can come along if you want, and I’ll take you back to my hotel later, but we have to find a girl for Terry first.”

“I want go Heart. Dance.”

“Okay, see you later then.”

“You go Mah tee nee?”

“Yes, we go Martini’s.”

“I go wit choo [hic!]”

My Regards To Milky Joe

We probably shouldn’t have given her quite so much beer. Still, she said she could handle it. I considered it a valuable lesson for her, which perhaps she could accept on behalf of womankind.

Predictably, she was whining like a bitch within five minutes of our arrival.

“I want go Heart!”

“We are not going there. You knew this before you came here. You can leave if you like, no problem.”

“Grumble grumble grumble…”

And then, suddenly, as if by magic, the Coco Loco girl appeared…

“Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring ding ding!”

Her heady enthusiasm was a marked contrast to the sulking attitude of what had (before the beer intake) been a very pleasant young Khmer girl.

She was clutching the mandatory coconut, and it was time to figure out just what it was that made this girl so completely loopy.

I put my beer down, and took her coconut in one hand, taking the drinking straw in my other.

“May I?”

She nodded happily.

I took a sip.

It was plain coconut milk.

“Is this all you’ve been drinking, all along?”, I asked her.

“Yes. I don’t drink alcohol. Alcohol is bad. So are drugs. Ding ding!”

This, I had not expected.

And so our happy foursome moved on into the disco room. Terry and Coconut Girl, myself and Katy. The punters in this place make the guy at Bangkok’s Soi 7 Biergarten look like the Forbes 100. The girls weren’t much better.

“I no like your friend! He take lady bar!” said my lady bar.

“What’s the Cambodian word for irony?”, I asked.

“Me no undershtand”, she pouted - and stomped off to sulk in the corner.

I had pretty much run out of patience by this point, and decided to leave her there.

Terry and Coco Loco played pool at the outdoor bar. I sat scoping the scene with a Heineken, but time was getting on and numbers were dwindling.

It didn’t help that Katy had by now emerged from the disco, and was sat unsteadily at a nearby table, staring me out. Every time a man approached her, she hissed until he went away. I was beginning to worry.

I wasn’t sure whether I should try to make peace with her (although I definitely didn’t want to take her home any more), wait for her to fall asleep, ignore her, find another girl, or just leave.

But where was I going to find another girl? The place was emptying, fast.

And then, from the bathroom, came my savior. Coco Loco’s pal, who wasn’t the prettiest girl I’ve seen, but would do as a replacement for the evening. We played pool - doubles. By the time we were done, Katy had disappeared. As had everyone else. It was time to head back to the hotel, and I figured I may as well take the friend with me.

So the weekend didn’t end with quite the level of beauty beside me that I’d managed on the previous nights, but then neither did it end alone, nor with a drunken psychopath. And I think there’s a certain charm to a girl with a nose that resembles the back of a moped. Even if she did have teeth like a smashed piano.

It was a good trip.

The Wrap-Up

With hotels, food, booze and girls this cheap, I don’t think you can really afford not to go.

Okay, so some of the local expats might have the weirdometer pegged, with beards that they could tuck into their belts, but they seemed harmless enough to me. There’s plenty more to explore outside the girlie bars - last time round, I visited the Killing Fields and the army-run shooting range at Thunder Ranch, for example. Ever wanted to blow up a cow with a rocket-propelled grenade? Really? Weirdo.

I’ve yet to visit S-21, which is apparently chilling, and there’s even a KFC in Phnom Penh now, which is perhaps the most thrilling attraction of all! Eh? Just me? Oh.

The locals seemed friendly and rather less likely to scam us than the Thai touts of Patpong and beyond, and spoke a rather better standard of English to boot. I’m sure I got charged “tourist price” for more than a few things, but when it’s this cheap, who cares?

One memory that will stick with me is that of paying the bill for dinner at La Croisette on the last day, then the waitress making a fuss about giving us the wrong bill. We’d checked it already, and it was definitely right, and didn’t quite understand the problem. We’d already received our change and left a tip, and were ready to leave. So when she insisted that we wait while she sorted the problem out, we weren’t particularly impressed, and considered leaving anyway.

Eventually she returned, with just over a dollar for us. She’d given us the right bill, but had brought us the wrong amount of change. And on noticing the problem, she’d made sure we stuck around until she could give us our money. Of course we gave it to her as a tip for her honesty, but I couldn’t help wondering how likely that experience would be in a tourist area of Bangkok.

It’s not all sunshine and happiness of course, with the Khmer Rouge regime still a not-distant-enough memory for many of the locals - and whilst poverty levels have improved, it certainly hasn’t gone away. There are plenty of beggars doing the rounds, and some of the people really are dirt-poor. If this is the capital, I’m not sure I could cope with seeing the provinces.

And whilst the infamous “K11″ area of Svay Pak has apparently long closed, I don’t believe for a moment that the industry has vanished entirely. Child prostitution used to be merrily available in broad daylight. I saw no evidence of it on this trip (although I am nigh-on certain that I saw a very underage hooker being escorted down Street 148 on my 2006 trip), but I’m assured that the industry is still very much there, hidden up dark staircases inside unmarked apartments.

That said, the city has become visibly cleaner even in just the past two years, and the dirtier side of the “Wild West of South East Asia” may just about be ending.

Unpleasantness aside, the local food and beers are excellent, with the Western food in particular very good indeed. It seems that we have the French to thank for introducing the Cambodians to European cuisine. They did a fine job, and the end result is generally far cheaper than it would be in Bangkok.

Hotel rooms - we paid $35 a night (including the buffet breakfast that I never even saw), but rooms are available from $10-$15 all the way up to $100+. 3-star and below hotels are unlikely to bat an eyelid at your lady-friend joining you for the evening. The more upmarket hotels might not appreciate such companions. Just a thought.

Transport - local motorbike trips were all $1. Longer jaunts might stretch to $2. Tuk-tuks seemed to want to quote price per-passenger, but that may have been tourist gouging. Either way, it’s not going to break the bank.

Finally, girls. Opinions differ wildly on this one. I ended up with a girl who wouldn’t have looked out of place in Soi 7 Biergarten on the last night, but the previous two wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Rainbow 4 lineup, in my opinion.

Yes, there are some ugly girls around. But there are plenty of ugly girls in Bangkok, too.

The cream of the Phnom Penh freelancer crowd can certainly compete with anything in Bangkok’s freelancer scene - Thermae, Gulliver’s, Absolute 7, Nana Car Park, etc etc. And if this is, as I’m led to believe, the budget end of the market, then the medium-high end is something I’m very much looking forward to discovering next time.

PP Veterans: Having thoroughly enjoyed Sharky’s and Martini’s, but been disappointed by Walkabout and actually slightly scared by the Heart of Darkness, where is next? Street 104 offered girls of no greater quality who wanted 5x the price. Pierre mentioned the Manhattan club in the comments section of Part One, as did Gordon K in Part Two. Where is it? What’s the score? And where else should I be exploring next time? Thanks!