Early 2000s, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

By Anonymous

Around midnight The Canadian threw his hand into the air and yelled, “Hey, where can a nice Christian boy who believes in gender equality and the fair distribution of wealth have a good time around here?”

I was rubbing my face while a dark-eyed man stared back at me from a mirror on the wall. It was my first week in Cambodia, and my second night of drinking with a man I knew only as “The Canadian.” He had diplomatic status but refused to give his name. Each time I asked he would only shake his head and say, “That’s not important.”

“Martini’s,” said a squirrelly little man at the other end of the bar.

I raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?” I asked with mock confusion.

A German businessman we’ll call Hans flashed a playful smile.

I’d never been to Martini’s before. I knew it only as the bar which the Lonely Planet had referred to as “infamous.” Sounded like fun.

A couple stools down a wrinkled old man we’ll call John held hands with one of the Vietnamese waitresses. They looked longingly into each other’s eyes.

The Canadian cried out “Martini’s!” as a sort of spiritual call to arms. A night of heavy drinking had convinced him that tonight was going to be something special. The old men were going out on the town, and I was coming along just as soon as the bar was closed down.

“I think I’ve had enough,” I said, and meant it.

The Canadian called out across the bar, “Never mind, he’s going to his hotel room to write letters to his mom.” Then he took an imaginary pen and paper and wrote, “Dear Mom, Cambodia is great!”

They all had a good laugh.

In a sense, I was living out my dream. I was in a dangerous third world country hobnobbing with government officials, businessmen, and writers. It’s just that my dreams never included me being insulted so much. I sneered as I gripped my beer. I wasn’t going to let some cranky old men out-drink me, or call me a lightweight for that matter. I pounded my fist on the bar. “All right,” I said boldly. “When do we leave?”

“That’s the spirit! But we’re going to have to wait for the bar to close up.” He looked over to a plump Vietnamese woman we’ll call Tuyet, who winked at me from behind the bar.

Oh boy.

A few hours later Tuyet turned out the lights and locked up the bar. She was a round woman with kind eyes and a bright smile. She called up a moto (a motorbike for hire) and, as we hopped on, the vehicle chassis dropped to the ground.

I looked back to see John with a waitress on each arm. The Canadian was on another moto, asking if he was coming along. John pulled the waitresses closer and smiled. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

I glanced downward to see the vehicle’s chassis just inches off the ground. “Do you think this is safe?” I asked, almost whimpering. But before I got the words out we were racing down the road.

The motos sputtered on into deserted streets. Phnom Penh is a dangerous place at night and people had warned me to take care after dark. The streets were lit only by intermittent street lamps and a lustrous moon. I thought about bandits in the shadows as the motos sped along empty boulevards. But we were soon at the open doors of Martini’s. Moto drivers milled about as children begged us for money. I looked at them with stern eyes, but pitied them their drab clothes and despondent faces.

We stepped inside, and on into an open courtyard, where a Celine Dion concert played on an outstretched movie screen. Along one wall sprawled an array of food stalls, and across another was a long bar. On the third wall sat a building that housed Martini’s iniquitous dance club.

I looked around, waving sheepishly to a group of Khmer girls in the corner. To my surprise they smiled and waved back. I turned to another group of girls who teased me and motioned for me to join them. One girl even gave me a wink. Thus emboldened, I began to flirt with all the tactless effrontery we Americans are known for.

I was congratulating myself for being so damned desirable when The Canadian wobbled up and handed me a beer. “Be careful. Every girl here is a prostitute.”

“All of them?” I asked disappointedly. I now suddenly realized why the Lonely Planet referred to this place as “infamous.”

“My advice is wear a condom,” he said, and took a drink.

I scowled disapprovingly as one of the beauties in the corner ran her tongue across her teeth. “You buy?”

“No thank you,” I said, using the same manners I reserve for the sample lady at the supermarket.

She frowned and walked away.

Later we were seated in Martini’s plastic patio furniture. Tuyet bought raw squid. She smiled as she forced it into my mouth. I winced and said it was delicious.

A week later I awoke in a dank but cozy room in the basement of the Golden Gate Hotel. I rolled over in my bed and turned on the lamp. The light stung my eyes, burning my brain with the horrible cheer of morning. Forcing myself up, I got into the bathroom, washed up, and put on some fresh clothes. I made my way slowly out the door, up the stairs, and into the lobby.

I was greeted with warm smiles from the Khmer staff. I sat myself down on the lobby couch and grabbed the local newspaper. I thumbed through it in a mechanical way, my eyes floating over the headlines and photos, until I stopped in surprise.

I straightened in my seat, looked around the room, pursed my lips and cried, “John!” The Khmer staff looked quizzically at me as I giggled on the sofa. There he was, the John who had run off with the waitresses the week before. Only now he was some kind of bigshot, in full color glory, before a crowd of people and a pile of weapons.

I asked the staff if I could keep the paper. They said yes, so I folded it up and tucked it under my arm. I was going to confront him that night, I decided, at the bar. I was going to sit myself on a barstool and hold the paper and his picture up before him. I hadn’t worked out what would happen next, but I was sure it was going to be great. I looked down at my watch. It was almost noon.

Nine hours later I was at the bar receiving Vietnamese lessons from the waitresses. I checked my watch periodically and wondered if John would ever show. While I waited, a middle aged man in a goatee grabbed a stool on my right. He was a reporter who wrote for several publications, including The Economist.

Since I seemed to have some time, I asked him if he knew anything about Laos. He shoveled a few peanuts into his mouth, chewed them up a bit, and began telling me of a Laotian hill tribe known as the Hmong. They had fought the Viet Kong and Pathet Lao under CIA supervision and lost. Their leader, Vang Pao, fled Laos long ago, but continues to encourage his former troops from his new home in Virginia. The reporter was struggling to remember the militiaman’s name when John walked into the bar and took a seat to my left.

I couldn’t contain myself. I immediately reached for the paper and said, “Nice picture.”

He looked at himself standing before the crowd and smiled. “We had a much stronger turnout than expected.”

The reporter’s demeanor suddenly changed, and I could sense the wheels turning in his head. “Is that you?” he asked.

John’s expression became sour. “It is.” His face was taut and his voice implacable. I could almost feel the atmosphere in the bar grow cold.

The reporter seemed to sense it, too, but continued on anyway. He introduced himself and explained that he was a writer for The Economist.

The inspector’s eyes were fixed on the bar before him. A gnarled hand gripped a bottle of Lao Beer. “I know who you are.”

At that the reporter began to squirm in his seat. “I’ve written several articles about you and your operations.”

“Quite unsatisfactory articles,” snapped the inspector.

The reporter paused a moment. He turned his gaze from the inspector to his reflection in a mirror across the bar. After some thought, he looked again to the weapons inspector and said feebly, “I believe you have me confused with someone else.”

“No,” said the inspector, “I know who you are.”

“Have you read my work?”

“Yes,” he said, turning the bottle in his hand. “I’ve read it.”

“Well,” said the reporter, sounding a bit bolder, “despite the level of overt hostility you seem to be displaying to me, your predecessor was quite pleased with my work.”

The inspector now seemed to have had enough. He straightened in his chair, leaned across me to stare directly into the reporter’s eyes, and with anger in his voice accused the reporter of looking at information he had no right to see and printing it in his newspaper.

The bar went silent. A waitress near me stared nervously at the floor. I was sitting directly between a major weapons inspector in Cambodia and a writer for The Economist whom the weapons inspector despised. The two were about to come to blows in a hole-in-the-wall bar in the middle of Cambodia, and I was fighting every urge in my body to throw my hands into the air and scream, “THIS IS SO COOL!”

Instead, I did my part to maintain world peace and changed the subject. I looked to one of the waitresses, who had laid a line of playing cards across the bar. “What are you playing?”

“It’s a Vietnamese game,” said the inspector, accepting the bait. “There are absolutely no rules, but that doesn’t stop the Vietnamese from betting on it.”

The reporter finished off the last of his beer, then offered a roll of bills to the waitress.

“Are you taking off?” I asked. I liked him and was sad to see him go in such a humiliating way.

“Yes,” the reporter said. “It was nice meeting you.”

We shook hands and he made his way out, looking defeated.

As soon as he left the inspector started up again. He leaned over and said, “He’s a madman, completely disreputable. He comes in and out of here periodically.” The inspector mumbled something about weapons numbers printed in the paper.

“You know I’ve been offered a few weapons here in town,” I said.

“Really?” asked the inspector. “What sort of weapons?”

“AK-47s, M-16s and rocket launchers.”

“Yes,” said the inspector. “Those types of weapons are being abandoned for smaller, more easily concealable ones.”

I nodded thoughtfully as the inspector turned a beer bottle around in his hands. Good to know, I thought.

The writer now lives in South Korea.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 | Email This Post

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