I arrived back to Bangkok after my five-day cat-and-mouse game with the foot soldiers of Myanmar’s military junta nursing a residual terror at what might have come up had I been that little bit less fortuitous. The experience however, also reminded me of how jut-wrenchingly exciting journalism could be and I decided that I was unwilling to spend any more time re-writing press releases or detailing the wonders of some condo development or other for the property magazine I’d been working for. There were clocks ticking down back home, and I wanted to look into some of the more interesting stories floating around Southeast Asia before I headed back to the cold wet rock.
My trip spent gathering stories of the survivors of cyclone Nargis while dodging the Machiavellian attentions of one of the world’s most despicable regimes was a good start, but it also set the bar quite high. Writing about coastal erosion in Vietnam or the lack of landfill sites in Singapore wasn’t going to cut it. Happily, as is so often the case with the best stories journalists write, something which could only be described as astounding dropped into my lap.
“Go to Cambodia,” said my fellow Irish ex-pat Chris between gargantuan mouthfuls of Café 22’s famed fried breakfast one sunny lunchtime.
“Cambodia?”
“Yeah. You can fire a rocket launcher in a firing range over there,” he added, jabbing an oversized sausage onto his fork.
“Wow.”
“And if you pay a few dollars extra they’ll give you a water buffalo to use for target practice,” he continued blandly, biting into his skewered victim.
“Eh, wha’? I don’t think I’m up for that now to be honest.”
“Mmm. Well, you could go and shoot a few guns or whatever. Help reduce the country’s weapons stockpiles,” he continued, wagging the half-eaten sausage to emphasise this crucial, community-minded point. “Then you could check out whatever else people get up to while you’re there.”
“That could be a runner,” I said, my interest thoroughly perked.
“And, you haven’t heard the best bit.”
“What’s that?” I asked, wondering what bizarre piece of information could possibly top what I’d just been told.
“It’s only a dollar for a beer.”
So, as Chris coolly shuffled back to the secondary school he works in as an English teacher, I set about researching an article about the over-availability of weapons in Cambodia.
My first major concern was that Chris might have been taking the piss and that no such thing might be in the offing. However, after rooting around in various travel guides, I discovered that the Lonely Planet – the bible of gap-year trusafarian travellers the world over – made mention of Cambodia’s firing ranges, the use of heavy weaponry and even the tragic role of water buffalo in the macabre tourist attraction.
I decided that looking into the whole grizzly affair was a must, but it all seemed a bit too easy. I wanted to broaden the scope of the article and make it less voyeuristic by looking at the wider issue of how prevalent guns were in Cambodian society beyond the ranges. So, in the spirit of participatory journalism, I set myself a challenge – I would establish whether or not it was possible for a foreigner to go that step further than what went on in the controlled environment of shooting ranges by buying a gun. It would, I decided, be a good way of gauging exactly how prevalent and easily available guns were in a country that still carried a Wild West reputation despite being at relative peace for over a decade. Being neither criminal nor insecure American, I didn’t actually require a gun for anything. I decided, therefore, that I would probably do some sort of celebratory jig and then either hand it back or take it apart and dispose of it.
To me it all made perfect sense, but when I began spreading the news of my next adventure among my ex-pat buddies some were a tad alarmed.
“In the past two weeks you’ve fought a professional Thaiboxer, sneaked into Burma only to be chased back out by soldiers and now you’re going to Cambodia to fire a rocket launcher and see if you can buy a gun?” asked Ben, a 40-something English guy who was the elder of our group.
“Sounds a bit weird when you put it like that Ben but yeah, that’s basically the plan,” I said, starting to wonder if my time away from my beloved Ireland had precipitated some sort of mental illness.
