CAMBODIA: FOOD, NIGHTLIFE, LOST!

Phnom Penh nightlife is pretty good!!
Brothers in arms; my favourite picture. The kids go to the market too;child care for parents is non existent.
The smiling boy is one of the kids who found it so amusing mopping my brow with tissues!
Slitting the chicken's throat; the blood is kept but for what I am not sure!
Spicy stuff.
Colourful stuff.
The fishmonger!
The butcher!
6.a.m. at the market;stallholder prepares her stuff.
The market stall where I eat often;its bloody hot here but the food is wonderful!
Hello again. I've got a stinking cold and can only assume it must be down to the air conditioning! Never mind its party time in Phnom Penh from tomorrow which is Independence Day and then a three day 'water festival'; not too sure what happens during this, but I am going to stay a few days longer here to witness it.

Food in Phnom Penh has been mainly very good. Not quite up to Malaysian standards but still good. I have eaten in the roadside stalls most of the time and have not been too sure exactly what I have been eating but its cheap and delicious. Just around the corner from where I am staying is a sort of market and here, from early in the morning the stallholders set up their cooking equipment. They use what I suppose are giant wok like things and it is quite common for them to have ten or more, all on the go at once. Pork is common, fish, vegetables, beef, chicken, soups and a huge pot of rice. Basically you can choose two dishes and rice for $1!! The normal practice in most of them is to take your food away but I asked if I could eat mine there and the owner then cleared a space, more or less in the middle of ten boiling cauldrons!!! Well, as you can imagine the heat was just incredible and before I even started eating I was soaked in sweat, much to the amusement of the gallery of kids who had stopped to watch this crazy foreigner eat his dinner in the middle of a furnace! I really should have just got the take away but the owner had been so thoughtful in clearing the space and wiping the table that I did'nt have the heart to just get up and leave. Anyway I had some sort of fish dish and a beef and ginger stir fry with the rice and it was extremely good. The kids kept getting me paper tissues and mopping my brow but the tissues stuck to my forehead; what a laugh I had with them and I will be back there tonight for more.

The healthy alternative to a Union Street kebab here is chicken skewers; satay in effect but without the peanut sauce. Late into the night there are many stalls selling these and many other snack like things. The one food that I was very surprised to see, was oysters at a ludicrously low price; they are everywhere and I askd Mr.Phannak the cost and he told me they are $1 a kilo!! It seems so strange that a supposed luxury in the Western world could be so cheap here.(I've had oysters once at home and they are undoubtedly over-rated). However put a bit of fish sauce, salt, pepper, chilli oil, ginger and peppers with them, and charge less than 50p and wow! Yummy.

Having said that I have yet to finish one of these snacks because the street kids congregate around you and put their hands out asking for food. Call me a sucker but its difficult not to share food with these youngsters when they look at you with cow eyes and I am sure most of them are genuinely hungry. Even if they are trying to con you, it does'nt matter; their need is far greater than mine. The only problem of course is that most Westerners in Phnom Penh are viewed as a walking ATM machines and even at such cheap prices there is a limit to how much and how often you can be generous. I still buy a few of them something to eat most nights though.

Now then, we come to the nightlife!! My first night here I headed to Street 51 which is one of the bar/club areas of Phnom Penh. I had read of the infamous Heart of Darkness club, Walkabout and others which are known to be hostess bars. Let me explain what seems to be the score here. Not all bars are the same but most in this area will have a bevy of young ladies waiting for you to walk in; some have terraces or gardens I suppose and often the girls will be near the door all shouting 'hello, hello' as you walk by. If you go in, sometimes there is a bit of a scrum amoungst the girls to be the one to serve you. They will sit with you and sometimes offer you a massage, which is just a shoulder and back one (calm down Bloss!) After that it is up to you whether you buy them a drink and/or want any further services. It is quite easy to make it perfectly clear that you just want to sit and have a drink and it is also ok just to buy them a drink if you wish with no strings attached; I have done both.

The girls in one bar that i go to are not at all pushy and are infact really nice to talk to and have a game of pool with. I've been told by Ross, an Australian guy who lives here, that the girls get paid a dollar for every drink that is bought for them; I'm not sure what else they are paid but I believe it is in the region of $50 a month!! So not alot. One of the girls called Gia is the one that told me about her grandparents being murdered by the Khmer Rouge; she speaks quite good English and is always eager to chat to learn more. None of the girls here are hostesses and it is a sort of refuge amoungst the full on assault of other bars. The actual bar service areas in most of the places is very high and in general most Cambodians are very small(Hey I' a giant here! lol), so when you walk in all you can see is about eight or nine heads peering over the top of the bar, all smiling and saying " Hello Mr. Peter ", they actually pronounce my name 'pitta' as in the bread. There is always a scramble to see who can serve me first and then between one and five or six of them will surround me and keep asking if I want a game of pool or a dice game that seems very popular. Not quite Witherspoons but I know what I prefer!

Then we come to the other bars. Some of you will have received emails from me about my general feeling of the chaotic, hedonistic splendour that is PP nightlife so forgive me if I repeat myself here.

Imagine a Wild West frontier town but with crazy traffic; throw in the soundtrack from Apocalyse Now; add a dozen girls after your $'s and all smiling sweetly; hot and humid weather with the occasional spectacular thunder and lightning storm, the like of which you have never seen before; street kids begging for a dollar to eat; nightstalls cooking up meat skewers and things I still can't make out; temptation beyond belief; hot, hot sticky nights; sweaty brow and a slight feeling of unease coupled with a massive adrenalin rush; massage in the bar; smiles; stolen glances; eye contact; crazy crazy nights; hot; sticky; fear; euphoria; how do I get home?; anchor draught; peanuts on the bar; nine to ten girls fussing over me; the Doors blasting out some classics; power cuts; floods in the street; trapped in a bar; "You handsome man darling", Paradise Lost or Paradise Found?; Sodom and Gommorrah; Heaven or Hell; hot, hot sticky chaos abounds; love it or hate it; go with it; stay; go; stay;more beer; All Along the Watchtower; surreal; soaked in sweat; "you want moto sir, girl, massage" "you want boom boom sir", "you hairy monkey sir"; girls everywhere; vision blurred; screaming guitar solos; hot ,hot, and hotter; go; stay; go ;stay; love it long time. Madness, thrills, chaos, fear, uncertainty, amazing attack on the senses. "Ther ain't no devil just God when he's drunk"- Tom Waits.
Welcome to Phnom Penh nightlife; do I like it? What do you think!

Wow, I'm exhausted just writing that! Well thats the closest I can come to summing up a night I had here just a few days ago; I hope you get the picture. Now getting home after all that was a real nightmare and I ended up on the back of a moto, clinging on for dear life criss crossing the streets of Phnom Penh trying to find my hotel. Every night so far no moto driver has been able to find the Fancy Guest House and it should only take about five minutes. The night I have just recounted to you was a bit scary because we ended up in many dark side streets and I knew we were no way near home. We stopped at one point to ask a group of guys the way but that was a bad move because they wanted money from me and were offering heroin and cocaine. Luckily my driver just pulled away sharpish and after 30 minutes he found the hotel.
The next morning I thought about what had happened and to be honest I never really felt frightened just a little bit apprehensive maybe. There is still more to come from Phom Penh and you never know you might get some pics soon!!