I think the last time I left this ed Jase and I were vowing to have an early night and kick off our day in Phom Penh with reckless abandon, willing to cast all our misconceived preconception to the wind and drink in the heart of the land that was ....is Cambodia (huh......WTF Henry) !! Yup, thought exactly the same thing. Anyway, the deal was an early night, that was the unwritten rule but, as many a sorry soul will tell you, the fateful cry of 'lets go for one' often turns into the deadly aftermath of 'what the hell happened', and so, as I casually perused the books on offer by a street vendor a friendly voice said to me, 'hey jebem te, what are you doing here ?'. The rest as they say is history, in someone else's mind at least.
Anyone seen my elephant? Last known location, walking along the Mekong - Phnom Penh - Cambodia
Royal Palace - Phnom Penh - Cambodia
It was all so harmless, a nice ale, Cambodia's finest (Angkor) and also the bastardised sibling (Anchor), a cocktail or three, a German laughing solo at only something he could understand, some pleasant conversation with the wait staff and then, somewhat merrily, the slow...then speedly decline into drunken stupidity. Once Jase and I were hitting JW Green's and at the point that the bar owner, (Andy, I think his name was), very graciously allowed us to finish the bottle with our last drinks....well....disaster beckoned. I'm not sure who made the call, whether it was Andy or his sidekick but the decision was made that we'd be making a b-line to a 'girlie type' bar only a few blocks away. I must admit, I tried to be reasonable and call it a night. I even left our three champions at their posts and started walking the couple of blocks to our hotel, but, like the true, flawed boy that I am, once the crew drove past, voices screaming, the car 'a honking', I was in for the ride.
Phnom Penh streetscape
Mekong river - Phnom Penh - Cambodia
At this junction, let me address a couple of points for a few parties. 1) A 'girlie' bar is not a strip joint 2) It is a place where you can get 'boom boom' 3) Jase did at no point touch, associate or do anything that would not have been done in any other bar on any other day of the week in Sydney 4) I did not engage in any activity that would be classed as inappropriate in any other bar in Sydney. Point of fact - we needed a place to drink, Andy was the man about town and he knew the place that was open....and so we began.
I don't know the deal but every time Andy clocked the gong at the bar it was drinks on him. On reflection it seemed like the whole evening was a 'gong gone wild' and I can't remember what I was having, who was passing it to me and if I requested any of it. Never the less, I laughed all the way to the bar and back. It ended up being a great night, the only point of concern was the projected kick off time for the next day which in fact was to be my only full day in Phom Penh, but alas, I digress. I recall at some point during the evening comprehending that I was totalled and attempted in vein to pull my heroic partner from his corner bar position and the JW that he was drooling over. Alas, Jase was G-O-N-E - he had gone up river long ago and my calls for us to 'get up and split' were just met with a headshake that was almost childish in it's delivery. So f*** it, I had to split and off I went in search of the Hotel Indochine that was a few blocks away.
Somehow I made the few blocks home comfortably and awoke, I assume, the hotel manager/night manager (whatever he was called), to open the shutter at the front door and let me in. I made it to my be and instantaneously woke up at 1pm the next day (...what the hell ??). Man oh man, that night and morning really through me for a loop and my thoughts where swimming in the fog that acted as the drop off point for all other mental functions. Damn, I could not waste the rest of the day. First stop was to check if Jase had made it back alive - he had. How and when is a question that we'll never quite figure out. I on the other hand had an appointment with the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng 'prison', S-21....a date that had been on my agenda for many, many years..........
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