Moonin' Round Asia: Depression or Explosions?!

After catching a bus at the butt crack of dawn headed towards Phnom Penh, we arrived at about 1:30 and were harassed into agreeing to take this urchin’s tuk tuk to our hotel. The guy seemed nice enough, though relentless and was kind enough to drive me to an ATM so I could pay him. The WEIRDEST thing about Cambodia is that they use United States currency more widely than their own. In fact, when you go to an ATM, you can’t get riel (Cambodian money), only dollars. While I was at the ATM our tuk tuk driver took this opportunity to really hound Molly – telling her how he has 4 kids with a 5^th on the way and that he hasn’t had work for a whole month and had to pull his kids out of school, yada yada yada. I got back and she explained all of this to me, telling me that he really wanted to take us on a tour of the killing fields, museums, etc. and that he’d only charge us $15 for the trip from roughly 2pm to 6pm. We had a short discussion and decided to help him out and take him up on it, since we didn’t plan to be in Phnom Penh for too long and it seemed like a good use of time. After we arrived at our hotel and really discussed it, neither of us wanted to start rushing around – particularly with over 2 weeks left and only 3 destinations to go. We came down and explained to the driver and told him that we’d pay him to just take us to a lunch spot. We did so, tipped him rather well since we had lead him on and he gave us a guilt trip again, asking us what time he could pick us up the next day. While I feel for these people and know they’re just trying to make a living, it gets really old having to say “No, thank you” every single time someone approaches you selling woven bracelets, guide books, wooden frogs that make horrid noises, etc. On top of it, tuk tuk drivers harassing you, especially when I’m hungry makes a guy really irritable in short order. We took his card and parted ways as quickly as possible.

We decided to switch hotels the next day because our hotel had no hot water at all and didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned with fixing it. I don’t even think they had a water heater. We left in the morning and checked into a different place - much nicer. We were now faced with an interesting decision. The city itself was beautiful and we hadn’t gotten to walk around and see that much of it. Do we do this, plus another fun activity or go to the really depressing killing fields where the Khmer (ruling party in the late 70’s) committed genocide against their own people? While seeing the skull remains of thousands of people sounds like a really uplifting trip, we decided against it and instead went COMPLETE 180 degrees and decided instead to hit up the infamous shooting range. It’s rumored that for $200 for the rocket and $150 for the cow, you can give the two of them a very intimate, albeit short, introduction. I’m not sick in the head, this “act of fun” doesn’t interest me, but shooting big guns do and I had to check this place out.

We grabbed another tuk tuk and first went to the bus station to buy our tickets for the next day. Upon arrival, who do we see sitting outside? None other than the urchin from the day before, drinking a coke and just hanging out with some other tuk tuk drivers. Well pal, if you’re so bad off and have hungry kids to feed, why don’t you get your lazy ass out there and try to get some people to ride in your tuk tuk instead of hoping a casting director working on the new Coca Cola ad just happens to stroll by? First thing he says to me was, “Buddy, buddy, remember me? Why you no call, you make Tek cry…..” He proceeded to follow me around telling me how disappointed he was until I completed the transaction and hopped back into the safety of our hired tuk tuk. Even as we drove away, we could hear Tek in the background with the usual barrage of questions, “Where you from??? How much you pay for that????” Side note – southeastern Asians always want to know what you paid for something. If you yourself have intentions of buying something, I understand the question, but they just make conversation about it. We carried our laptop out of our room maybe 3 times this whole trip and every time, a hotel worker would ask me how much I paid for it. I don’t know if there’s an ulterior motive there, so the question always makes us nervous and we lie and undershoot.

After a 30 minute ride, we arrived at the shooting range. The wrong one, but either way, they had some heavy weaponry. Molly wasn’t in love with this idea. She’s become quite the worrier and was nervous some lunatic would turn the guns on us at the range. This was quickly put to rest when we realized we were the ONLY people there. The original plan was I’d shoot and AK-47 and Molly would watch. The salesman was really good though, almost convincing me to take another 40 minute ride to the mountains to take the rocket launcher for a spin. He almost got me a second time with the offer to lob a hand grenade into a dilapidated car. That’s some good ol’ fashion fun you just can’t have at home… We were talked into something that deviated slightly from the plan. Molly went from nothing to firing 30 rounds of an M-16 (http://www.colt.com/mil/downloads/m16_01.jpg) while I decided on a Russian K-57, which is just a straight up machine gun. I couldn’t find a picture of it online for whatever reason, but I think this is it: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/PKM_Machine_Gun_Iraq.jpg.

Molly was very nervous as we asked the guy to take a picture of us next to the rocket launcher and then made our way into the in-door range. I was up first and had to lay down on my stomach while the Cambodian guy stocked 70 rounds of very large ammunition into this weapon. As with all machine guns, it was fully automatic meaning that as long as I keep the trigger pulled in, it will continue to fire at a rapid pace. He put a paper target at the end of the range, about 50 yards away. I took my first shots with a heavy dose of anxiety. This is by far the largest, most powerful and probably oldest weapon I’d ever fired. I pulled the trigger as I held my breath and the kick was pretty powerful – enough to sting a bit. After about 15 shots I tore through the entire target, at which point the Cambodian guy says, “You want me to put coconut out for $1?” That’s like asking the Unabomber if he’d like a years worth of free postage. I replied, “OF COURSE I want a coconut!” He made sure to turn my killing machine towards the wall (like if I really wanted to kill him that would have stopped me) and went to the end to drop my victim off. I’m not embarrassed to say I missed the first 10 shots or so. Then I got into a groove and made swiss cheese out of coconuts. It’s no making water into wine, but still, a noteworthy accomplishment.

Molly, at this point, was adamant about letting me just shoot her M16. She looked shaken and saw the sheer insanity in my eyes at this point. She said “No, thank you!” and hinted that she just wanted me to shoot for her. The Cambodian guy wasn’t having this. He made her sit down and just coerced her into trying it. It worked like a charm. After the first shot, she was a natural. When the guide finally pulled back her target, out of 30 shots, she had about 9 kill shots. Truly impressive. After ogling the rocket launcher (which was just leaned against a wall by the way) we hopped back into our tuk tuk for the ride home. On the way we were passed by about 6 dump truck/pickup truck hybrids packed with young to middle aged women. I’m not even going to guess what was going on there, but a rather strange thing to see.

We left Phnom Penh the next day en route to Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat. If you don’t know what that is, do yourself a favor and google it. It’s the oldest and largest religious structure ever built, and that was in 1113. That entry will be here soon. We hope you’re all well and the countdown until our return flight, while a sad countdown, is most certainly on.