My First 24 Hours: Phnom Penh

Article by: Jane Rawson, March 2006

Why so many of them? I thought. What do they want from you? Why didn't you apply for a visa before you left home, like your mum told you to do? Are they going to take you into a little room out the back somewhere and blindfold you?

The eighth soldier beckoned me over. I handed him $20 and he handed me my passport. Done. No blindfold. Immigration waved me through; customs didn't even look at me. And when I asked my brother - who had come to meet me at the airport - what was up with the hypervigilant visa security he told me, 'Since the war ended there are a lot of soldiers sitting around in Cambodia, not doing much. You just met eight of them.'

Cambodia is the kind of country you can work yourself up into a real lather of nerves about. When your workmates are telling you to watch out for landmines and you're thinking about that guy who got dragged off a train and shot, when there's bird flu and malaria and dengue fever and 30,000 different kinds of dysentery to worry about, it's easy to forget that your real problem is the traffic. There are no lanes in Phnom Penh; there isn't even a right side of the road. Massive, brand new, 4WDs tower over a sea of motos (mopeds) with hay bales or chickens tied on the back and toddlers propped between and in front of parents. All of them merge, swerve and honk, in and out of each others way. And not one gun drawn, expletive uttered or finger given. Weird.

'So what do you want to do?' my brother asked. I had a mental list waiting to get ticked off. But my boyfriend realized he'd forgotten his second pair of shorts just as we boarded our plane, and on a two-week holiday in Cambodia when it's 35°C and humid every day, one pair of shorts just won't cut it. So instead of a cocktail at the Elephant Bar, a visit to the Killing Fields, or a stroll around the Royal Palace, we went to buy shorts.

My brother shoved us in a tuk-tuk and we headed for Psar Olympic; 'they don't know about tourists there,' he claimed (this was slightly disproved later when someone tried to charge him $5 for a mango, but never mind). If you want a pair of 'Lucky in Love' pyjamas, a Nattional (sic) brand rice cooker or 6m of florid plastic lining for your tuk-tuk carriage, Psar Olympic is the place to go. After searching among egg-sized gems and trays of dried fish, and a brief spate of friendly bargaining, we had two pairs of GAP shorts for $8. I was ready to head home (or to the Elephant Bar or the Royal Palace), but my brother had a hidden agenda.

'I've been thinking about this for the past few weeks. You need a bunch of bananas. For the car. You need a bunch of bananas for the car.'

He dragged us around in a series of ever-decreasing and disorienting circles through a sprawling concrete building packed with bolts of cloth and plastic colanders until we were standing in front of a not-particularly-exciting stand featuring glowing Buddhas and Chinese party favours.

'There. It's the Asian equivalent of fluffy dice. You have to have one.'

I've been thinking about this for the past few weeks. You need a bunch of bananas. For the car. You need a bunch of bananas for the car.

Oddly, he was right. And $2 later, we did. A bunch of tiny felt bananas as big as my hand - some of them green, a couple brown - strung together with garish lime green yarn; we could hardly wait to hang them from the rear vision mirror of our car.

I was itching to tick something off my mental checklist, but was once again stymied by my sibling.

'No, we can't go to the Killing Fields, Jane. We have to go to the supermarket and buy some Huggies. And some Stoli.' (Wait, they have supermarkets here?) Sure enough, there was a supermarket (quite a few, in fact) and not only did we get Stoli and Huggies, but Gordon's gin, Jameson's whiskey and a case of beer as well.

So the afternoon was spent playing with my brother's baby, watching old episodes of the Sopranos, looking for a SIM card for my phone and drinking bubble tea (which I'm told is all the rage these days in Phnom Penh, having displaced, I assume, kidnapping foreigners).

When the nanny offered to work late so my sister-in-law could take us out for dinner, I asked, 'are we going to the Elephant Bar?'

'No.'

'The Khmer Kitchen?'

'No. We're going to a new place. It's not in the guide book, so stop looking.'

I'd assumed Phnom Penh dining would be mostly roadside noodles and the odd karaoke bar. But this was probably the fanciest restaurant I've ever visited - plush, deep couches around a series of square marble ponds, a French wine list and at least 37 wait staff per table. A thunderstorm had hit just as we arrived, so we couldn't sit by the ponds. Instead we made our way up three flights of stairs to the top floor and settled in for a bang-up feed. As the entrees were arriving, 36 of the 37 wait staff began staring nervously at the floor. Water was trickling in under the door to the balcony. Someone had opened the door to the balcony. The trickle, predictably, became a flood, and the flood, as it hit the stairs, became a waterfall. We ate our main course and watched the impromptu floor show, as waiters, cooks, kitchen hands and management tried - first desperately and later amid hilarity - to dam the flow with buckets, mops and barricades of towels.

By the time we were downing our last glass of wine the rain had stopped, the last of the water had been mopped away and we were ready for bed. I woke the next morning to the sound of monks with sledgehammers demolishing the temple across the road. Out the window, I could see half the neighbours standing on the street, watching. It looked like I'd be missing out on the Elephant Bar again.