To those who know me well, it may be surprising but the "sightseeings" of our past days has left me kind of "speechless", in this case more "writeless". It is hard to put into words what we learned, saw, read, heard and experienced. It was both - pure beauty and pure horror.
Siem Reap: Quite relaxed and excited to meet the 8th wonder of the world - see Siem reap album It is all about architecture:balance - interior - and more to come ...
By the way: The countdown is running. We will be back home in 10 days. Unbelievable!
So here we are in Cambodia. We did travel to Phnom Penh from Vietnam, so there wasn't much of a cultural clash. The first impression was that the country is even poorer than VN: The irrigation-pumps were mounted onto wooden carriages. The motocycles were older and until now nobody opened a taxi-company within a bigger city.
Second impression: It is definitely a poor country. The overcrowded minibus-shuttle (18 people in a Toyota Hiace) droped us in the eastern part of Phnom Penh so we took a Tuk-Tuk to our hotel and there it started. The guy did speak reasonable good english so why is he "only" driving a Tuk-Tuk? Obviously it pays off to charge the tourists with higher fares instead of working in an office where his still astonishing language skills aren't appreciated that much. We liked that funny driver (Safety First!) and arranged to pick us up for a typical tourist-tour in Absurdistan the next day:
Killing Fields
Happy Club Shooting Range
Genocide Museum
Sounds a little bit weird? Ahhh ... don't worry. If you have ever seen a German KZ you will see that it is the same thing on a smaller scale. There are no words to describe this. Neither the cruelty which has been commited here nor the feeling you have leaving such a place. However the Cambodians have something to "cheer you up": The Happy Club!
Although this establishment is run by the 911 Para-Commando Battalion they really make sure it looks less like an army installation and more like gun & rod club - I've never been to one in the US but this is how I imagine them to be. We drove by two barracks before we entered a side-street and ended up in front of a huge gate. The guard on duty looked like he had a good time but fortunately he was unarmed. I'm always a little bit freaked out by people with guns where I'm not sure what they are doing with this thing. So he opened the gate and our Tuk-Tuk driver from hell (Safety First!) entered the gate only to find ourselves in front of two APCs. From there on is was pretty straight forward and not different from ordering a pizza at the Italian around the corner.
"I'll have a clip of AK47 and ... errrr ... the 60 looks nice but I don't feel like machinegun today ... hmmm ... maybe a Famas? ... ahh what the heck. Just a beer." Yes there is a menu. And yes you can just order anything from a basic Colt .45 up to full scale RPG. Latter you have to shoot at another site but the "small" firearms can be shot in one of two indoor shooting channels on site.
The Lonely Planet strongly discourages travellers to go to the Happy Club (which has been renamed from Thunder Shooting Range. Happy sounds better). They say the country has suffered a lot from war. Yep. That's right and only sixteen years ago the Bundeswehr lost its first soldier on a mission abroad right in Phnom Penh. But now it's good and you can ease our mind by saying to yourself that if you shoot these weapons nobody gets hurt except the arab guy on the target (just in case you misread his facial features, he is wearing a Fez - so far for political correctness in cambodia), the stock of ammunition in this country gets less and moreover the guns don't get any better from using them a lot. Well ... nice try. In the end I believe by going to the Happy Club you fund a military unit. That's the ugly truth. But still >> it's fun!
Anyway. We left the outskirts of Phnom Penh and returned to the city in order to get a nice and decent meal. This time it really should be for the greater good. The only problem was that Martina decided to inspect the food before it was prepared. In this case preparing meant frying and since alive means fresh this one was pretty much alive.
Her scream would have waken the dead arab for sure.
