A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [85]
Phnom Penh’s total population when the Khmer Rouge finished marching its citizens out into the countryside to dig irrigation ditches – and executing most of them – was a mind-boggling twelve people. That’s down from about 850,000 only a couple of years earlier. Most of the survivors returned to the city, to find their former homes in shambles; looted, waterless, powerless hovels, often occupied by equally desperate squatters. Armless, legless, limping, and crawling locals struggle still to scratch out a living making handicrafts for tourists. Or begging. The average wage in Cambodia is under a dollar a day. Four-year old children wander the markets, begging, carrying their two-year-old brothers.
Where does one go in Phnom Penh? Just where you’d think the expats would go: The FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club), where you can have an American-style hamburger, and a cold beer, then retire to the rear balcony to watch the bats leaving the eaves of the National Museum at dusk – a nightly event where a stream of thousands and thousands of bats curls out and up into the purple-and-gold sky like fast-moving smoke. Then you can stumble into the street, where a crowd of skinny, underweight boys on scooters and motos wait, no doubt calling your name – as they know you and your predilections by now – brush by a few amputees, hop on the back of one of the boys’ motos, and head off to ‘the Heart’, local shorthand for the Heart of Darkness Bar. After that, there are the nightclubs and brothels (a narrow distinction between the two), maybe some pizza seasoned with ganja, a bag of smack for a nightcap. With any luck, your Cambodian-made condom won’t snap, you won’t get rousted or shot at by the cops, and you won’t run into any relatives of Hun Sen, the prime minister – any of which might lead to tragedy. If you do get into trouble, don’t look to the law to help you out.
A story from the Phnom Penh Post:
Tha Sokha, 19, tried for the rape of a six-year-old girl, will serve only six months in jail for indecent assault because the rape of his victim ‘was not deep enough’ said Kandal Court Judge Kong Kouy . . . After initially ignoring the girl’s family’s complaints against Sokha, district police brokered a compensation deal between the families of the victim and the perpetrator. The girl’s parents thumbprinted a contract in which they would receive 1.5 million riel in compensation for the rape of their daughter, but they never received the money. Upon taking the case to the commune police station on Jan. 11, the victim and her sister reported receiving death threats from a commune police officer named Lon if they continued to ‘talk about rape.’
Another typical story from the Phnom Penh Post – same day as the above:
Acid Mutilation a Misdemeanor: The first case of a viciously mutilated acid attack victim pressing charges against her assailant has shocked legal observers by resulting in a two-year suspended sentence against the suspect. Kampong Cham Municipal Court Judge Tith Sothy dismissed a petition to upgrade the charges . . . Sothy justified the ruling on the grounds that [the perpetrator] had no intention of killing the victim but only sought to ‘damage her beauty because of jealousy.’
Getting the picture? So who is in charge? Hard to say. The easy answer is Hun Sen, the former Khmer Rouge officer who defected to the Vietnamese and then was ‘elected’ prime minister, ousting his nominal competition by coup d’état. There’s King Sihanouk, back again, installed in the palace after playing footsie with the United States, the Khmer Rouge, the Chinese – and everybody else. He provides a thin veneer of legitimacy and tradition to what is essentially a military dictatorship. There are the remnants of the Khmer Rouge and its allies – a loosely knit coalition of convenience