Was just looking at some pix of the faded splendour of 1990's Phnom Penh and its Post Office district. And it brought this old yarn back to mind:
I remember trying to use the phones in the Post Office in 1990 to try and hustle some reporting work from Ireland's national broadcaster and the Irish Times. Things had gone south when a certain Mr Saddam Hussein decided to go on a Kuwaiti jaunt within the same hour I crossed from Vietnam into Cambodia. Anyhow undeterred I took my ass to the PO and tried ringing. But the phones were routed through Russia. And other voices would appear on the crackling line. Just felt doomed. So I took my dejected ass down to the newly opened Cambodiana Hotel. And Eureka - I thought - there was a satellite phone. The only problem was it was 25US a min or part thereof. Fuck it man, no-one ever said this was gonna be easy. So I ring the two media organisations and ask them to ring me back. I reckon I have taken a hit of 150 bucks. The radio calls and promptly says if you get anything more interesting call back. Then comes the foreign editor of the Irish Times, a very talkative man. He is looking for the lay of the land etc how the war is progressing and tells me to stay in touch. So much for that. I ask the lovely lady how I owe. She replies 990US. It was 15 dollars a min incoming too. I had 1000 US in cash total on me. Another 2 thousand in traveller cheques. I offer the hotel lady traveller cheques. She says they don't accept them in Cambodia. I owe my cyclodriver a couple of bucks, the hotel/brothel where I am reluctantly staying 20. So I'm in trouble. As a man does when in trouble, I go for a drink with the cyclo driver, And I explain we need a Chinese Khmer and I need to calm down. Cos there was a bang of desperation off me. Not what you need when bargaining. Song the cyclo, who was the AFP office manager on my next rodeo, takes off. We find a guy in a hotel by the market. He offers me 95 on a 100. In the situation I felt blessed. Then the Foreign Ministry press crew wanted 2,000 for a two day one night trip with escort and interpreter up to Kampong Thom. And when I started to back out I got a lecture about the "enemies within" and a not so subtle threat that I would be locked up if I left town without permission. I was also asked to come and write an account of what I did and whom I talked to every day. Classic communist shit. Needless to say I ignored the demands. Then that evening I went into a restaurant where there was a bright young guy I would talk to. But he was avoiding me. Then as he passed, he stopped briefly to apologise and say that his parents had told to stop talking to me, that it was too dangerous. So my dream of being a war reporter was being shot apart before my eyes. I told Song I had to bail and as the mission was a disaster, I needed to get out as cheap as possible. So we got a Vietnamese Moc Bai entry visa. Then he took me to the Saigon bus at 4.30 am. The driver wouldn't take me. He was too scared to have a foreigner on the bus. So we hit the communal taxis. And the taxi boys just wanted money. So off we went. On the ferry I met a dude who had been a driver for some US embassy type back in the day and had managed to survive. He insisted I go to his village to drink and speak English. It was still relatively early. So we took motos off into the boondocks. Word spread quickly of my arrival and people arrived in their dozens to look at what they guessed was a Soviet. That fucking rice whiskey. You go from sober to psychotic bypassing drunk. At this stage the brave kids were launching darting grabs on my leg hairs. The crowd had grown to several hundred onlookers. Even through the fame, booze and heat I clicked that time was moving on. No I can't stay the night. Wish I could. So a bike is rustled up. The driver, me, my backpack and my new embassy mate who has taken to planting wet whiskey kisses on the back of my neck. The erratic driving leads me to believe the Moto dude must have joined the village booze up. Turns out this chaos works in my favour. Cos the bored border guards are stunned to see a drunken foreigner arrive on a motorbike. Soon I am their friend too. Seems I am everyone's friend. But the embassy dude's whiskey is turning ugly and he doesn't like losing me, the centre of attention. I give the Moto dupe a few bucks worth of my remaining riel adding some more for whiskey when they return. But the embassy guy has turned. He has a nasty booze face on him. And he is demanding dollars. Loads of therm. Then my new friends the border guards tell him to fuck off. And I walk out of Cambodia and stroll into Vietnam. All very chuffed with myself. But it's dead. No traffic, nothing. I doze off in the heat and wake up to the sound of a car. It's a French doc with Medicin du Monde. He's a bit surprised to see me. And he offers me a lift. Everybody is my friend. But he is going to Phnom Penh. The border closes in just over an hour but I might as well gamble on staying. So off goes the doc. The Coca Cola girls give small lumps of ice to soothe my whiskey head. Not sure if mindfulness had been invented yet but I was just trying to enjoy the melting ice on my forehead and not panic about the setting sun. When in the distance a bus appears. About half a kilometre and an hour later the bus has entered Vietnam. And who's there but the same geezer who was scared to take me 12hours earlier. But now he is going with the "everyone is Kevin's friend" flow. I am invited onto the bus and offers of money are refused. I am fucking jubilant. We drive a kilometre and stop. And wait. The lovely mother and daughter beside me suggest I get an alternative means of transport. Pointing to the empty road I try to point out that there does not appear to be an alternative. But they knew what was in store. I didn't. We were waiting for the cigarette smugglers who had got off the bus before the border and crossed overland. This was our rendezvous point. Soon they descended with millions of cigarettes. Most them of injured soldiers former Saigon grunts. So they filled the bus up and tied many more millions to the roof. It's about 5.30pm. All I have had since 4.30am is whiskey and ice and sadly not together. We drive a kilometre and we come to a bridge. We can't pass cos there are too many smokes on top. So out the boys go and rearrange the show. Then we take off. Another kilometre and we hit a Vietnamese customs ambush. What's worse they have local news cameras with them making bribery unlikely. So everyone has to admit how many cigarettes they have and pay a tax on them. You can guess the next bit, the tax figures fall short. Now those lucky enough to have two arms and two legs and only one big box of smokes make a break for it. For the next 30 mins silhouetted against the setting sun are these weird shaped humans with massive big square heads and thin tiny bodies bounding across the rice paddy. They probably looked as weird as the US Troops with full equipment did a couple of decades before. Finally darkness consumes the fleeing cigarette dudes. But back on the bus, shit is going south. I had just been marvelling at the fabled Asian patience when it snapped. Crutches and prosthetic limbs were flying thought the air as the tax compliant fought the tax dodgers. The nice lady indicated this was why she was suggesting alternative transport. The sums and occasional fights went on for a few hours. It was after 9pm when we got moving again. And it was after midnight when we arrived in Saigon. Almost 21 hours. I remember thinking at least I had a story to tell when I reminded myself that my mission had been stories to sell not just tell. It took two years to financially regroup and come back and try again. Panned out a little better the second time.
