The motorcycle-taxi driver at the airport was the first to offer drugs.  Driving along Phnom Penh's wide, dusty boulevards, he produced a small bag of marijuana from his pocket.

"You want some drugs, yes?" 

This was my introduction to Cambodia.  Before long, I'd been offered ganja three more times (once by my guest house manager), sex with underage girls, and the opportunity to discharge automatic weapons.

To say I was offered drugs by my guest house manager is misleading; in truth, I'd had a sizable bag of sticky green buds placed in my hand with the expectation that I'd pay later - with the linen bill, no doubt. 

It was midday.  I'd been in Cambodia for three hours.

Phnom Penh is an anomaly among Southeast Asian capitals.  While Bangkok, Vientiane and Hanoi all offer varying degrees of dubious after-hours entertainments, none of them come close to the prevalence – and openness – of the seamy Cambodian capital. In many ways Phnom Penh is a city strangely out of step with its more developed neighbours, Hanoi and Bangkok; an anachronistic throwback to the lost, lawless, drug-tinged orient that cities like Shanghai no longer are.  A Wild West outpost in the East, if you will. 

This frontier town feeling is unsurprising in a country that is as poor and as underdeveloped as Cambodia, and has such a staggeringly violent past. 

As recently as the mid 1990s the Khmer Rouge still controlled parts of the country and their legacy is constantly reinforced by omnipresent land mine victims and widespread ownership of firearms.  The country's staggering political corruption filters through all levels of society, opening up a world of possibilities for those who can afford them.  Like any forgotten outpost, the city takes moral boundaries that are clearly defined elsewhere and blurs them in a haze of heat, ganja smoke and booze. 

Walking along the dusty streets of Phnom Penh, the cries from the ubiquitous touts are almost comical, or would be, if they weren't so very serious: "You want smoke?",  "Skunk, real good skunk.",  "You want girls? Pretty girls? Very young! I take you." 

It appears any Khmer male with an even rudimentary command of English is well connected with every vice the city has to offer.  Their brazen opportunism is at first unsettling, but quickly fades into the background cacophony.  In Phnom Penh, it is unnecessary to go looking for seedy kicks – they're guaranteed to find you first.

Escaping the relentless heat and dust of the streets, I settled down at my guesthouse's lakeside restaurant to enjoy the mercifully cool breeze and according beer.  Pizza is available with 'smiley face' for an extra fifty cents, or 'extremely smiley face' for a dollar (in Cambodia, the American dollar is King).  The guesthouse manager – he who had earlier tried to ‘sell’ me drugs while I checked in – was amiable and later revealed himself to be a police officer.  His sales pitch had not, however, been an attempt at entrapment.  He was merely trying to subsidize his meager $20 a month police salary.  Unlike their ruthless Thai equivalents, Cambodian police don't appear to have recognised the potential for extorting large sums from tourists who want a little something to help them relax on holiday, but don't necessarily want to sample the facilities at a Southeast Asian prison.  It surely won’t be long until the connection is made.

Rather, the law enforcement agent-cum-manager-cum-drug dealer and his friends were more interested in getting me to shoot automatic weapons. 

"You like guns? We'll take you tomorrow, you can shoot military guns."  This particularly Cambodian phenomenon began in the 1990s when the country finally began to open up to large numbers of foreign visitors, and a number of military bases around the capital were transformed by opportunistic soldiers into shooting ranges where tourists could indulge their Platoon fantasies with AK-47s, M-60s and grenade launchers. 

When the practice started to impact on Cambodia's image, the bases were closed and the ranges went underground.  Offered by virtually every tout in the city, rumours abound about just how far these junkets go.  Allegedly, the worst excesses of this practice had been stopped, but when my drinking partners offered the opportunity to shoot a "duck or a chicken" I decided to test the waters.

"Can I shoot something bigger?"

"What you wanna shoot?"

"A cow?"

"Sure, you can shoot cow."

Surprised at the immediacy of their agreement, yet having no intention whatsoever to participate, I declined the invitation.  Research is one thing, but slaughtering animals with automatic weapons?

It was obvious that attempts to curtail these excursions had failed and that a fat wallet could still provide a so-inclined tourist with any entertainment they wished for.

Aside from – or in addition to - hawking narcotics and organizing the most immoral animal safari on earth, the guesthouse was a predictable Mecca for romantics, backpackers, outcasts and dropouts.  Among them 'John', an Australian national who is now a long-term resident of Cambodia.  John works for an NGO and is one of those ex pats who seems to come from another era, casually spouting such gems as "For the first six years, I learned Khmer sporadically, off the pillow."  As the night progressed and the Beer Laos poured, it became plainly apparent that he'd seen – and paid for – more than his fair share of pillows.

He spoke whimsically of Cambodia 10 years past as a hedonist's nirvana: "This place is unparalleled, but 10 years ago, it was Sodom and Gomorrah with amphetamines."  To him, Phnom Penh was "the Amsterdam of the east." 

In addition to coming from another era he also seemed to operate in a moral, not to mention legal  no-go zone. An invitation to join him on his night's revelry was extended with the line "If young girls are your thing, I can show you to the right places." 

I wasn't sure which was a greater concern – the openness with which the suggestion was made, or the assumption that a solo male in Cambodia was obviously looking for sex with minors.

Nevertheless, he did manage to sum up the essence of the Cambodian experience for a number of ex pats: "Too many people come here and go completely off the rails, too many drugs, too much sex, never sleeping.  They just lose it."

John's observations are backed up by the abundance of cheap knock-offs of Cambodia-themed books available from children and land mine victims throughout the city.  In them, one can read of an endless parade of amoral Western hedonists dropping out and indulging themselves in the grimy back streets of Cambodia's capital city, further reinforcing the idea that this city is somehow separated in space and time from the conventional world. 

The city has long been a haven for a rogues' gallery of pedophiles, alcoholics, drifters, junkies and English teachers although the demarcations are, as always, somewhat obscured.  To spend more than a couple of days in the city with your eyes open is to amass a mountain of evidence against the smack-addled thrill-seekers and first-world detritus that prowl the Cambodian capital, constantly looking for more booze and more drugs while paying virtually daily visits to brothels.

In Phnom Penh, as in many Southeast Asian cities, sex is easily facilitated.  In addition to a couple of nightclubs and the brothels scattered all over town, there are a number of locations that form ragged Cambodian equivalents to standard "red light" districts.  The "high end" nightclubs are standard fare, where those Khmer girls with English speaking ability are to found.  The vast majority of sex workers are however employed in sex districts that are a world away from the neon lit attractions of Bangkok's Pat Pong district.  In Cambodia, brothels operate with all the mystique of a napalm strike. 

One of the sex areas to the north of the city is little more than a three kilometer stretch of road lined on both sides by shack after wooden shack of 13 – 25-year-old girls.  Most of the girls are Vietnamese, and ply their trade inside filthy partitioned cubicles.  Although some foreigners use these slum brothels, the clients are predominantly Khmer.  It becomes obvious that one of the dangers inherent in the use of terms such as "sex tourism" is that attention is drawn away from the issue of who the majority of clients actually are, and exactly whose money is driving the sex trade.

Nevertheless, child sex, drugs and animal slaughter are not all that the city has to offer.  There are also the mainstream tourist attractions: genocide and mass murder.  There other options – relaxing on the riverside or visiting the pleasant national museum or a couple of wats – but it's obvious from first arriving that the main draw cards are the infamous killing fields and Tuol Sleng Prison, a former high school that served as a Khmer Rouge torture center.  In Phnom Penh, even cosmopolitan tourists find themselves constantly confronted with evidence of humanity's dark side.

It is easy to find fault in a city where the most popular bumper sticker advertises not a politician or city slogan but warns of the dangers of pedophiles, or when you find yourself with a handful of unrequested drugs within an hour of arrival in the country. 

Slowly emerging from  its tumultuous history and still hamstrung by corruption, Phnom Penh is an attractive, busy city, but is nevertheless permeated by a lingering air of criminality. 

Despite it's sordid air, Phnom Penh is a friendly, relaxed town that is mostly safe.  Mostly.  The begging and touting, though constant, are good-natured and easily shrugged off with a joke.  Despite its underbelly, the city is probably the most relaxed capital in Southeast Asia.  The people are refreshingly free of cynicism and despite constant heckling you aren't made to feel like you're simply a bipedal dollar sign. 

Cambodia is a worthy place to visit, and there is much more to see than just it's dodgy yet compelling capital.  Phnom Penh is ultimately worth only a couple of nights visit, but they're guaranteed to be an eye-opening couple of nights.  Just be wary of what people place in your hands or on your pizza.

 

Author's disclaimer: in researching this article, the author did not engage in any of the illegal practices described herein.