It was another one of those moments when you stop, exhale deeply and wonder how in the name of sweet suffering Jaysus you manage to land yourself into such ludicrous predicaments. It was night time on the lawless outskirts of Phnom Penh and myself and my Cambodian driver Sonny had just pulled up outside a small timber shack in a corner of a fenced, derelict allotment. It looked like it had began life as an outhouse in Angela's Ashes but given the lack of any other type of building, be they Victorian Limerick slum tenements or otherwise, I concluded that it was probably a security guard shelter.
Phnom Penh is currently in the darkest depths of a property boom and overseas investors have been buying tracts of land, expelling residents, fencing off their plot and waiting for land prices to increase before selling on. The patch of scrub land I was standing on looked to be one such project and at least one of the two guys who shuffled from of the shack at the sound of our tuk tuk I guessed, was probably tasked with keeping expelled former residents from returning. Of course he would have a gun.
We disembarked as the men flip-flopped across the gravel towards us. They were both shabbily dressed in oversized t-shirts and grubby trousers and the bang of drink off them led me to conclude that Mekong Whiskey was the preferred method of making shifts in the shack pass at speed. Slick, be-suited, beamer-driving arms traders they weren’t. Sonny greeted the elder of the pair warmly, and he responded with a sporadically toothed grin. He then stood with his hands on his boney hips staring at me for a moment before proffering a grubby hand for me to shake. I of course was all smiles as I greeted the two men, hoping meanwhile that niceties would be kept to a minimum so I could get out of there as soon as.
The three Khmers chattered quietly as they shuffled towards the shack and I followed along, thumbing the $30 I’d brought with me to pay for the gun. It was all I had with me as I’d opted to leave literally everything else back at my hotel. Just as I got to the shack door the younger of the pair hopped inside and killed the light before returning with a gun in his hand. I had visions of him handing me a shooter in a grubby white rag as is common practice in movies. He, my Hollywood conditioning assured me, was holding the thing like he was going to use it. My heart slammed around in my chest for a couple of seconds before he tried furtively to pass it to Sonny. Sonny however took a step back and nodded towards me. And just like that, there it was – I’d got my hands on an illegal firearm. I’m no expert thank God, but it was some sort of automatic handgun, probably a Browning 9mm or even a Chinese copy.
I asked Sonny by way of mime whether it was loaded, which prompted the elder of the pair of gunslingers to produce a handful bullets from his pocket. I smiled and waved them away, happy that I wouldn’t be cutting across Phnom Penh’s rutted roads in a suspension-free tuk tuk with a loaded firearm jammed into my waistband.
A sneaky one in the chamber was still a possibility so I carried out a risk assessment before deciding where to conceal the thing – the consequences of the gun going off when lodged in my belt at the front didn’t bear thinking about. Getting an arse cheek blown off seemed a delightful prospect by comparison, so I stuffed it under my belt at the back.
With that, I used my one and only Khmer phrase ('Awkun' means thanks) handed over the cash and motioned towards the tuk tuk. Sadly, it was then that we hit a bump. The two boys looked unhappy and Sonny looked confused. After much to-ing and fro-ing it became apparent that there was a mix up somewhere along the line with regard to what exactly I was paying for. The boys and Sonny thought I was going to take photos there and then before handing the gun back. It actually seemed a better idea than bringing the thing back to the hotel but it wasn’t what I’d planned for and fear of being robbed meant I’d left my camera in my room safe.
I tried to point out that I had to get a photo of the gun and simply needed to take it with me. For their part, the boys couldn’t understand why I hadn’t brought my camera and my excuse of ‘in case you blew my head off and took it from me’ didn’t seem the right thing to say. I suggested we go back for the camera but it seemed by then that a return visit wasn’t an option – curtains might twitch at any further comings or goings.
I eventually admitted defeat and handed the gun back. I felt like I probably should wipe my prints off it or something, but thought I might look like a bit of an arsehole so I just passed it over. I felt gutted as we trundled hotel-ward, not to mention somewhat annoyed at Sonny for messing up the arrangements. I decided to consoled myself with the pluses of the endeavour. The fact that I wasn't lying in a ditch with part of my head blown off was probably chief among them.
