Phnom Penn offers a few other somewhat less harrowing attractions. It is easy to lose a morning in the Russian market where, amongst the normal array of often bizarre food-stuffs and you can find an assortment of souvenirs, rip off designer clothing, rip-off CDs and DVDs, rip-off books, rip-off jewelry, rip-off watches and rip-off electronics along with a mountain of useless tat. In short, if you can't find it here it ain't worth having and in many cases if you can find it here it ain't worth having either. Otherwise, there are various other markets and monuments, the palace and the national museum many of which warrent a visit. After the gravity of the previous day, however, it was time, we felt, to throw culture to the wind and find some gratuitous entertainment instead. So it was that four of us bundled into a tuk-tuk and found ourselves speeding through the traffic chaos of Phnom Penn en-route to the firing range.
I still can't help feeling that promoting and glorifying the existence of guns in a country so recently wracked by war is at least a little irresponsible. On the other hand these kind of activities provide at least one more way for a desperatelypoor country like Cambodia to extract relatively large sums of cash from relatively rich tourists. As with most things there are pros and cons and well, where else in the world does an average Joe like you or me get to fire a tank?
Well ok, I didn't fire a tank, but for a mere $2000, if I had that kind of money to throw around, I could have done. Instead, on arrival, I was confronted by an impressive array of hand-held weaponry including hand-guns, semi-automatic rifles, fully autonatic machine-guns and the odd rocket launcher or two. To be honest I can't even claim to know what most of these were; I have only seen the like in the hands of such venerable people as Rambo, Bruce and good ol' Arnie. Before you have the chance to really take in what is in front of you a price list is thrust into your hand and you have the opportunity to select which elements of this private armoury you would like to sample. Consceous of the cost I chose the relatively cheap options of an AK47 and some kind of large-bore hand-gun, the name of which I forget. With practiced efficiency I was summarily frog marched to the range, a pair of industrial ear defenders clapped onto my head, a 10 second instructional demonstration of the 'point it that way and pull that' variety was delivered and suddently I was confronted with a sight, a distant target and the prospect of trying to relate the former to the latter in some meaningful way.
Ok, lets be honest here, it ain't big and it ain't clever, but squeezing the trigger of a semi-automatic rifle set to automatic and feeling the rapid thud as bullets spray down the range hitting just about anything but what you are aiming at is ONE HELL OF A RUSH. I have never done it before. I will probably never do it again. But I have ticked yet another box on the long list of things to do before I die.
A few laps of the track on the go-carts and I returned to the hotel with my adrenaline addiction thoroughly satisfied, at least for a while. Better than a stuffy old museum, any day.
I still can't help feeling that promoting and glorifying the existence of guns in a country so recently wracked by war is at least a little irresponsible. On the other hand these kind of activities provide at least one more way for a desperatelypoor country like Cambodia to extract relatively large sums of cash from relatively rich tourists. As with most things there are pros and cons and well, where else in the world does an average Joe like you or me get to fire a tank?
Well ok, I didn't fire a tank, but for a mere $2000, if I had that kind of money to throw around, I could have done. Instead, on arrival, I was confronted by an impressive array of hand-held weaponry including hand-guns, semi-automatic rifles, fully autonatic machine-guns and the odd rocket launcher or two. To be honest I can't even claim to know what most of these were; I have only seen the like in the hands of such venerable people as Rambo, Bruce and good ol' Arnie. Before you have the chance to really take in what is in front of you a price list is thrust into your hand and you have the opportunity to select which elements of this private armoury you would like to sample. Consceous of the cost I chose the relatively cheap options of an AK47 and some kind of large-bore hand-gun, the name of which I forget. With practiced efficiency I was summarily frog marched to the range, a pair of industrial ear defenders clapped onto my head, a 10 second instructional demonstration of the 'point it that way and pull that' variety was delivered and suddently I was confronted with a sight, a distant target and the prospect of trying to relate the former to the latter in some meaningful way.
Ok, lets be honest here, it ain't big and it ain't clever, but squeezing the trigger of a semi-automatic rifle set to automatic and feeling the rapid thud as bullets spray down the range hitting just about anything but what you are aiming at is ONE HELL OF A RUSH. I have never done it before. I will probably never do it again. But I have ticked yet another box on the long list of things to do before I die.
A few laps of the track on the go-carts and I returned to the hotel with my adrenaline addiction thoroughly satisfied, at least for a while. Better than a stuffy old museum, any day.
posted by Al at 9:45 am
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