Research for the article I wanted to right about the proliferation of arms in Cambodia was going well. Weapons, it appeared, were everywhere. Signs on hotel doors requested that guns and explosives be checked at reception, army-run shooting ranges were among the country’s top tourist attractions and people who had been on the scary end of a gun crime were thick on the ground. But although everything suggested that guns were concealed in every other pocket and under every second bed I had yet to see an illegally held firearm for myself. I decided that the only real way of finding out just how abundant such weapons were was to attempt to buy one.
The best place to start I decided, was with Thida – my ever-cheerful guide and translator. Sadly, when I asked if she knew anyone who might sell me a handgun she gave me a look which told me she most certainly wasn’t the type to be knocking around with arms dealers and gunslingers.
We decided to pull Sonny, my self-appointed tuk tuk driver, off the subs bench to see if he could make the difference. So, the three of us headed out to a small Cambodian roadside eatery, ordered a ludicrous amount of food and began filling him in on what we were looking for. Thida chattered away at reduced volume while Sonny listened intently, throwing the odd alarmed glance at the foreigner looking to get tooled up.
Thida was explaining that I was a journalist unlikely to be planning a shooting spree when Sonny raised a question. “You can give back, right?”
“Sure,” I said. “I only need it for a few minutes.”
“$30 I can get!” he replied after a pause, clearly still convinced I was some sort of nut job.
So, we made an attempt at finishing the food we’d ordered before Sonny headed off, promising to drop me a line when he got sorted. Thida, who was a college educated girl from a comparatively well-to-do family, began to look a bit perturbed as we chatted about what would happen next. She was clearly worried about the prospect of heading off down some alley way for a rendezvous with a bloke we didn’t know in the hope that he’d sell us a gun. The endeavour went above and beyond what I could expect a translator to assist me with so I decided to head off with Sonny on my own when the arrangements were made.
Sonny phoned me the following day to tell me he would collect me that evening at seven bells, upon which time we would go to meet his friend. Apparently, a friend of this friend was willing to temporarily part company with a shooter for the paltry sum of $30. The plan was that we would head back to my hotel where I would take a few photos of the gun before handing it back to Sonny. He would return the shooter to the loving arms of its rightful owner and it would go back to being put to whatever use it had been put to before I came along.
Sonny didn’t seem all that nervous as we rattled around the semi-familiar streets of Phnom Penh in the direction of wherever it was we were heading, but the seriousness of the whole thing was starting to set me on edge. For some reason, as we bounced through crater-like potholes in dirt-paved, darkened side-streets in a part of the city I had never been to, I recalled a conversation I’d had with a 40-something English guy called Ben who I became quite pally with while living in Bangkok. It was shortly after I’d fought a Muay Thai match against a professional Thai fighter and I’d just filled him in on my plans for the following fortnight. He was alarmed by the fact that they consisted of sneaking into Myanmar to report on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis before heading to Cambodia to see if I could buy a gun on the black market.
“Robbie, why do you do these things?” he asked, with arms outstretched and a shake of the head. I had coughed out some rubbish about not liking boredom but until then had never really paused to think about any reasons I might have. I never liked the idea of journalist as spectator – someone who sits in an office poking holes in the things other people do while never attempting to gain any experience or real understanding of what they write about. I always felt there was more honesty in participatory journalism and on-site media reportage.
If I heard something that shocked me then I knew it would make interesting reading for others, so, all I had to was gain a level of credibility on the subject by somehow involving myself in it. It wasn’t that I headed for things I thought would be hazardous, which I think Ben feared was the case, I just went towards stories which I thought would be striking and enjoyable for readers and set the safety issues aside. But as I came to a stop outside a shack at the end of a dirt track on the outskirts of Phnom Penh with cash in my pocket to buy a gun, the idea of few years pontificating from the safety of a swivel chair seemed a really, really good idea.
