Take a look at this pizza.
Does
it make you happy? Save for maybe the shrimp if they’re not your taste. They do
weird things here. Regardless, if it didn’t make you happy, it sure did with me.
No,
I’m not about to go down some philosophical arc. You see, one of the best
things I’ve learned to do before I visit a new country is watch the Anthony
Bourdain episodes on it. On his last visit to Cambodia, he ordered a special
kind of pizza served here with a special ingredient called “happy.” What’s
happy? Drugs. Happy is drugs. Usually marijuana, sometimes mushrooms.
Regardless, you can get it in tourist areas here in Cambodia, and was something
I had never heard about until a few days ago, mere hours before I left Vietnam.
So
as part of a recent goal of mine to “Anthony Bourdainmaxx”, the first thing I
did after I checked into my hotel in Cambodia was beeline to a happy pizza
place. The current border conflict with Thailand be damned, both my stomach was
hungry for food and my soul was hungry for advenure.
I
hadn’t eaten much after my 7hr bus ride over, so I was keen to order a wacky
pizza right away. Sure enough, I found one at a local happy pizza place in
Phnom Penh with mushrooms, mozzarella, and shrimp. Who gets shrimp on their pizza?
Goofy enough for my standards, I reckoned, so I ordered the second smallest
pizza with the smallest amount of “happy,” and wolfed it down. It was a fair
pizza – not incredible, not horrible. A level above bowling alley pizza, but
with the same pizzaz of hitting exactly when you want it.
Now,
I’m not the most experienced with marijuana. While it’s legal in Illinois, I comparatively
have dabbled a lot less than many of my friends. I’ve been in the Army for the
past four years, after all. So I made sure to get back to my hotel room just in
case, figuring I’d just ride it out for a night and pass out peacefully. I’m a
pretty big guy for Cambodian standards, so surely it wouldn’t knock me too flat,
right?
Just
to be safe, I settled back in my room. But the noises from the bustling street
kept getting louder and louder. No longer were the tables of prostitutes
outside only occasionally beckoning every guy that walked past, their constant “oooOOOH”
kept getting more protruding and more frequent. I felt like I was out on the
streets with them, a piece of architecture amongst but not participating in
their hounding. The walls became squiggly, and everything became loopy and
funny. I did a lot of writing. I listened to music. I think I took a shower. I
actually accomplished a lot of personal goals. And between the prostitutes and
the weird showerhead that was quite literally on top of the toilet, I realized that
I didn’t want to stay in this hotel room, thankful that I only booked it for
one night. Regardless, whatever was in that pizza was far, far stronger than I
imagined it being.
After
not remembering exactly when I went to sleep, I woke up the next morning to
banging on my door. I sprung out from my bed in a haze and yanked a shirt over
my head before answering, where one of the employees asked if I wanted to stay
another night. “oooOOOH,” the prostitutes beckoning reverberated in my head.
No, I was content with checking out. She said okay and let me pack, which I got
through approximately 30 seconds of before my body retaliated against me. Something
in my stomach burned like one of those sacred rocks in the satchel while they
were on the fallen bridge in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I thought my
eyes simply hadn’t adjusted from waking up and springing out of my bed in a
flurry, but the walls still moved and everything was just so loud. Nope, I was
still on my roller coaster from last night, but with the neat addition of a
stomach bug. It must have been that damned shrimp. No wonder nobody gets it on
their pizza.
So
I held off trying to sleep again until the lady came back and reaffirmed my
intention to leave, where I folded like a house of cards. Fuck it, moving is a
pain, I’ll stay here for the next few days. Once she said that was okay, I
crashed into my bed and instantly fell into a deep slumber.
Come
dinnertime, I had woken up again, and the sounds of the prostitutes had again
breached the thin walls of my hotel room. Somewhere between wanting to avoid
that, a growing hunger from eating nothing that day, and the innate urge to do
something here during my short stay in Cambodia compelled me to get out and go
get food. I got some nice noodle dish that, frankly, made me feel a lot better.
But when I came back, I fell asleep again right away, perhaps to further fight
down the remaining pain in my stomach.
I
woke up past midnight and decided I was just having a really early morning. So
I did some video gaming with my friends back at home and my sister and her
husband for a few hours until my bus arrived at the crack of dawn to take me to
the range.
Around
two decades ago (!!!), I had a Cambodian friend named Sam. For a year in middle
school, he went back to Cambodia, and I actually ended up sending him a letter
to where he lived in Phnom Penh. One of the most iconic stories he told me
about Cambodia was that you could go up to people with AK-47s and pay them a
couple bucks and they’d let you shoot it. That story floored me for many years
afterwards, and when I realised I was in that neck of the woods, I figured I’d
hop right over to Cambodia and give that childhood dream a whirl. I’m
understanding now how American it sounds to say you went to a country to shoot
guns. We all have growth to do. Regardless, it was only a short trip over from
Vietnam, anyway.
But
there’s one key reason I wanted to come here to shoot them instead of shooting some
back at home or in Vietnam – the rocket propelled grenade launcher. I could fire
one of the most iconic RPGs of all time here, the RPG 7. But when I got in the van
to be taken to the range, my driver explained to me that the commander of the
Army base where we shot the guns didn’t allow it, but he was only going to be
there for a few hours, so we’d have the morning to visit other places I’d
wanted to see, like the killing fields or the genocide museum. That worked, so
we picked up two Bosnian guys who were on the same page and we went there
first.
One
key part about those Anthony Bourdain episodes in Cambodia that stuck with me
was his reflection on his first visit during his second visit. He shunned it,
stating it was too much dark adventure tourism, essentially milking what
entertainment he could get out of Cambodia that had such fresh wounds from a
terrible regime in the 70s where a quarter of all Cambodians were killed, specifically
targeting skilled workers like doctors and scholars. It absolutely set the
country back, and they’re still reeling from the damage even today. So despite
my desire to shoot rockets and experiment with their pizza, I thought it would
be necessary to visit the sites of these atrocities, to pay homage to those who
lost their lives.
I
understand it doesn’t really fit the mood of the rest of this journal, but it’s
important to write about this stuff. We first visited the site of S-21, a
detention centre in the middle of Phnom Penh. Out of the thousands that had
made it to the detention centre over the four years of its operation during the
Khmer Rouge, only 12 had survived. Twelve. Virtually everyone who had ben
committed to the prison had either died there, or been transported to the
killing fields, where they killed hundreds each day. The killing fields were no
better, having only 20,000 graves been found of the ~2,000,000 people that were
killed at that time. Those numbers were appalling to me. The mass graves were
dug into the ground leaving pits that looked like the Somme battlefield after
the war, checkered with artillery marks. There’s too much to write that wouldn’t
possibly do it justice.
What
caught me the most were these tiny cells inside the buildings of S-21 that had
once been a school. Shoddily constructed cells, maybe just big enough for two
people laying flat to live in, breaking apart these once-peaceful classrooms. Sometimes,
they’d have records of who was in them. I found two with fellow 31 year olds,
and I couldn’t even imagine. Going to this camp, you simply were dead. You were
not going to make it out. What would have been going through their minds? How
would they have faced it? It reminded me of Sō Sukekuni, the leader of the
small contingent of Samurai and their retainers on Tsushima when the
overwhelming army of Mongols came to attack their island. They also faced inconceivable
odds, surely knowing they wouldn’t make it out. But with them, at least they
had a hand in their fate. These 31 year olds that were pushed into these tiny
cells had no such valiant end. It was tragic, tbh. An ode to remember what to
avoid.
I
couldn’t think of anything that would get me less hyped up to shoot a rocket and
machine guns than seeing that, so when our driver said we’d have to go the next
day because the commander was still at the range, I wasn’t too disappointed.
Anthony Bourdain said that the best things of life often contain a bit of
guilt, so using similar weapons to what the dictatorship would have used after
seeing the atrocities that took place there surely was one of those moments.
The day-long buffer only provided a moment of peace, but seemed appropriate.
Nonetheless,
I came to Cambodia with the intention of shooting some of the weapons I was
trained to fight against in the Army, so I had to go through with my mission. It
was a cathartic experience after being in the Army, after all. So much time
doing dumb things and not being able to fully flesh out the cool experiences
you join the military to do had me pent up and ready to try out some shooting. Barring
blanks, the only automatic weapons I’ve fired was the 25mm cannon and the
7.62mm coax on the Bradley, so I was excited to shoot some small arms. And, of
course, the rocket.
The
next day, we got in the van and began our two-hour commute to the Army base.
The road wasn’t in great shape. At one point, we had to get out of the van
while it went across a particularly deep pothole. But we made it to the range
on the Army base, which hardly reminded me of any range I had ever been at back
in the states. A garbage bag full of empty beer tins, automatic weapons and
rockets secured behind a simple lock in a tin shack, instructors not wearing
ear protection, and our favourite, a sign that reminded us “safty first”.
At
one point while shooting the rocket, one of the Bosnian guys turned to me and
said, “This is not safe.” I figured that if everyone else had made it out of
this range and it still had 4.9 stars on Google maps, I’d look at this like a
scientist would and figure we’d make it out okay. But he was absolutely right
in that the “safty” standards at the range were nothing like what they were back
at, well, either of our homes.
That
being said, I’m a gun guy. There are absolutely negative connotations against admitting
it, and I fully recognise that, but I can’t help what I like and don’t like. So
in preparation for this, I emailed a couple ranges before I came here asking
what guns they had and chose what I based on a combination of who responded and
what guns they had. Only one place responded, but my due diligence might be
important to note. Besides the RPG, I was particularly keen to fire an M-60 and
K-50 (which is the North Vietnamese version of the famous Soviet PPSh during
WWII). Because I’d want to know if I was reading this, here are my notes:
RPG
($500) – the two guys before me had two test-fires before their actual rocket,
with the third being a live round. Ready for this, I pulled the trigger the
first time and to my utter bewildermint, it fired. Turns out the first two “test
fires” were actually dud rounds. On the way back, one of the Bosnians showed me
a video of a guy having a dud round that shot off his head. Thank goodness I
didn’t see that before I fired. It was thunderously loud, much louder than I
thought it would be. The sights were as rudimentary as it gets and didn’t fully
lock up in place. The barrel was old and it felt more like an antique than a
weapon you’d go to war with. And it was damned heavy. I thought it was just a
tube, but it was a metal tube. Slightly thicker than I thought it would
be. Ergonomics were not good, and placement of the left hand felt awkward. The
round we shot did not have an explosive charge and I could not see where it
went. The smoke was everywhere after firing, both to the front and back. A
smoke “ring” came from the barrel of the RPG after one of the guys fired it.
The shooting experience left the two guys ahead of me covered in a black powder,
specifically on their right hand and the shirt where the RPG laid. I managed to
escape it. Perhaps there was a variance in the rounds. Regardless, shooting it
was a “blast”, if you will, and it’s an experience I was glad I tried.
DShK
“Dushka” 12.7mm Heavy Machine Gun – Now, I actually didn’t fire this one. It
was 160 for only 10 rounds, and I figured it was enough like a 50cal where it
didn’t really appeal to me. But it was loud, like expected, and was zeroed to
quite a bit further than the range, so they had to aim extra low to fire it.
Very neat watching it fire, the rate of fire was slower than the M2 Browning.
Upon research, the DShK actually has about the same or slightly higher rate of
fire, so perhaps it was just me, or however the guns were maintained.
Regardless, both firers mentioned that when they pulled the trigger just once,
several rounds came out. One shot his whole 5-round burst in one go. I’m unsure
if that’s how Dushkas normally are, but it suggests that it could also be
because the gun is old or not maintained the best. Regardless, super cool.
PKM
medium machine gun ($220 / 50 rounds) – perhaps the gun I was most excited to
shoot, as I had been regularly trained in how to fight them. The Soviet version
of our M240B medium machine gun (which I had been regularly trained disassemble
and maintain), it was roughly the same size and operations were largely the
same. The two differences I noticed versus the M240B were that the ammo belt
fed from the right side with the expended cartridges shooting to the left where
it’s the opposite on the 240, and when it jammed, I only pulled the bolt back
instead of back and forward on the 240. Speaking of which, I was actually
surprised it jammed. Those weapons had a reputation for being reliable. It
could again be how it was maintained, but it could also be because of the ammo.
Regardless, it jammed a couple of times between us firers. The feed tray looked
exactly the same as the 240. Sights were standard, but I managed to hit some watermelons
about 150m away without problem. Overall, I enjoyed firing it.
FN
MAG medium machine gun ($200 / 50? rounds) – I was really excited to fire an
M60, but I when they pulled out the MAG instead, I shot that instead. What, am
I going to be upset firing a machine gun? The MAG looked just like a PKM, but
operated more like a 240. The ammo belt fed from the left side and expended
cartridges shot out to the right. It was easy to use and did not jam, although
they pulled this weapon out for me so I suspected it had less mileage than the
others. Still fun to shoot. I had a particularly long burst of auto on it which
was fun.
AK-47
($60 / 30 rounds) – now, I’ve shot AKs a bunch of times. I own a Galil Ace Gen
2, which is technically an AK. But what I’ve never done was fire one on
automatic. So when they gave me a magazine, I racked it back and let that bitch
rip. I was curious how easy it was for the Vietcong to fire it in Automatic and
stay on target. I didn’t suspect much, with it being a 70+ year old design, but
I was actually really surprised. The man-sized target at 150m or so got
blasted. I couldn’t tell exactly, but it seemed like I got most of the rounds
on target. The recoil was surprisingly manageable and it was a lot of fun to
shoot.
Type
97 assault rifle ($60 / 30 rounds) – I know extremely little about Chinese firearms
that aren’t copies of western weapons, so when the opportunity to fire one
presented itself, I jumped on it. I’ve never fired a bullpup weapon before. It
was balanced extremely well and very easy to hold and keep the sights on
target. It had MP5-style front sights and a rear notch rear sight. I hit a watermelon
in two shots at about 150m and the guys beckoned me to shoot one of the spray cans
of compressed gas out there, and to the cheers of everyone, I hit it with my
next shot. I recognise that I am not a good shot, but that was one of those
moments where I just got lucky. But the weapon deserved credit – it was
shockingly easy to handle and aim. The selector was in a weird spot though, by
the stock. It had three-shot burst, so I tried that as well. Nothing too
exciting there, although it was my first time trying it. It did jam on me twice
though, which didn’t bode well. Auto fire, although it was only a few shots,
felt controllable, or at least around the same as the AK. I couldn’t get a
proper c-clamp around the front handguard because of a weird bar of metal
around the top, although it would have been possible, just uncomfortable.
All-in-all, I was pleasantly surprised with it.
K-50
– I didn’t get to fire it because they were “out of ammo.” I use the quotes because I had
just seen them shoot a pistol of the same caliber a moment before. My guess is
that they were tired because it was the end of the day. Oh well. Regardless, I
got to hold it. It was heavier and longer than I imagined, and the magazine
well was rather far forward. Pulling the bolt back on the pistol-caliber weapon
felt much more like a crude toy than the other weapons I used that day. Still,
a neat weapon to see in real life. Maybe next time I’ll be able to give it a
go.
M-16 with M203 grenade launcher
& barrel shroud – I didn’t get to shoot this, either (because I’ve already
fired my fair share of 40mm grenades with the Army), but man, did it make for
cool photos. Very heavy though, would not want to actually fight a war with one
of these. Glad we detached the grenade launcher and use it as a standalone
device.
So
as my time in Cambodia comes to an end, I can firmly say that my time here gave
me a wide range of emotions. The people were friendly, the food was good, and
the country was fun. But like Anthony Bourdain’s first visit here, I also feel
like I didn’t give it a fair enough experience. Next time, I’d like to give it
a proper try, perhaps dedicating more than a few days to it. The country deserves
as much.
SOTD
– Holiday in Cambodia by Dead Kennedys, obviously. It was stuck in my head the
entire time.
Comments
Post a Comment