{"id":180,"date":"2010-01-23T00:42:27","date_gmt":"2010-01-23T00:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucebramson.com\/2010\/01\/23\/phnom-penh-at-m-y-o-b-2\/"},"modified":"2010-01-23T00:42:27","modified_gmt":"2010-01-23T00:42:27","slug":"phnom-penh-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/?p=180","title":{"rendered":"Phnom Penh"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everything up to this point had gone too smoothly! I felt it wise to arrive at the airport well before departure time. Just after lunchtime, I rode to Tan Son Nhut and stopped outside the compound. There, I drained what little fuel remained in the tank, then walked the bike into the passenger terminal. I was able to take one picture as the Air VN chaps assisted me:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Tan Son Nhut Compound<\/p>\n

beyond this point all photos were forbidden.<\/p>\n

Getting out of Vietnam in those days was complicated by the currency restrictions. After relinquishing the bike, and presenting my ticket<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Air Vietnam Ticket<\/p>\n

everything was in order. The bike disappeared, my luggage as well. The next step was to convert money. Whatever MPCs and Dongs I had I turned in for US Green: not a lot, less than a hundred dollars as I recall. Henceforth I expected to rely on travelers checks.<\/p>\n

The last step was emigration, where I presented my passport and ticket, which the Officer examined closely. He then said, \u201cYou can\u2019t go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYour ticket is to Phnom Penh, but the Exit Visa reads to USA.\u201d<\/p>\n

I knew there was no arguing, so simply retrieved my documents, stepped back, and joined the throng in the waiting room. When I got near the main entrance, I stepped out and hailed a taxi. I waved a $20 US under the driver\u2019s nose and said, \u201cget me to Immigration!\u201d<\/p>\n

Mind you, had I been stopped for any reason, having a wad of Green on me would have been difficult to explain and would likely have landed me in jail!<\/p>\n

There followed a wild ride across Saigon: the taxi driver wanted that 20 bucks, but when we got to Immigration I held the money and told him to wait. I knew he would!<\/p>\n

Inside, I found a fellow at a long counter who asked what assistance I needed. Fortunately, he spoke english, so I was able to show the documents and explain the problem. He rummaged around under the counter, pulled up a carton full of papers, and pawed through them: before long, he came up with the form I had prepared long-hand for PA&E; attached to it was the typed form some harried secretary at PA&E had copied. My long-hand version showed Cambodia, but the typed version showed USA. Since I was probably the only american who had ever left VN to go to Cambodia (virtually all US employees went back to the US) it was an easy mistake for her to make.<\/p>\n

Examining the papers, the fellow said, \u201cI can see how that happened, and I can fix it.\u201d He picked up a pen, annotated the passport with a \u201c(1)\u201d next to USA, and wrote above \u201c(1) via Cambodge\u201d. With a chop, the deed was done. I thanked him profusely. He did not ask for payment, and he got only my everlasting gratitude!<\/p>\n

Exit Visa Saigon<\/p>\n

(Arrows point to the critical additions.)<\/p>\n

Needless to say, the taxi was waiting, and I got a second wild ride across Saigon, where I was able to \u201cinfiltrate\u201d the crowd and eventually present my documents once again to the Officer. He studied them intently, but finally said, \u201cI\u2019ll never know how you did that, but I cannot stop you now.\u201d He added the exit chop and waved me through into the waiting area. I had at least an hour to kill before the plane was to leave!<\/p>\n

The bike was loaded after I got on the plane, so I did not know with certainty that it was with me until I saw it off-loaded at Pochentong. I snapped one photo from the plane, which I did not expect to come out at all. Oddly enough after all these years, I can scan that photo and just use an enhancement in the scanner to bring it out better than it actually is!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Vietnam from the Air<\/p>\n

The white spots are clouds, but the strips in the center near the bottom are recent strafing-runs.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t far from Saigon to Phnom Penh\u2014about 180 miles\u2014so the flight was short. There were very few passengers aboard. I snapped a photo of the tower at Pochentong as we taxied in,<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Tower at Pochentong<\/p>\n

then dashed off the plane in time to get a shot of the guys unloading the motorcycle.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Unloading the Motorcycle<\/p>\n

I was finally out of Vietnam! Let the adventures begin!<\/p>\n

But first, I had to get the cycle out of Customs. I left it behind and took a bus into town: it was growing late, I was tired, and I figured I could go back the next day and retrieve the machine.<\/p>\n

Yeah, right!<\/p>\n

Stay tuned!<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PHNOM PENH<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Angkor Travel Brochure<\/p>\n

NOTE TO READERS<\/strong><\/p>\n

The look of this blog will change slightly: I\u2019m out of Vietnam, I\u2019m in Cambodia, and I have a camera. There will be more pictures than there have been so far.<\/p>\n

My letters all along were distributed to family and friends: so there is very little in them about gay things. From here on, I will occasionally interrupt the narrative from letters to interject a \u201cBACKSTORY\u201d, which will include whatever it was I did not put in my letter to start with. I\u2019ll change the gay<\/strong> backstory text to blue, which seems appropriate! Other BACKSTORY entries will remain in black & white.<\/p>\n

I had with me a tablet of very thin paper, suitable for air-mailing, and I wrote continuous letters until I was able to mail them. Hence, some letters were long, covering several days. And now, without a typewriter, I am long-handing letters again, so for this blog all will have to be keyed in. This will slow things down a bit!<\/p>\n

BEFORE I BEGIN<\/strong><\/p>\n

You will see quickly that in late 1968 Cambodia was a very pleasant place. It went quickly to the top of my list of \u201cplaces I want to go back to\u201d. You\u2019ll also learn that I eventually returned to the states just in time to see places in Cambodia I had visited being blown to smithereens when Tricky Dick Nixon ordered the Vietnam war into Cambodia. There followed the horrors of the Khmer Rouge: Cambodia has not even yet returned to the condition it was when I was there, which grieves me to this day.<\/p>\n

ONE MORE THING<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am utterly appalled by the behavior of the right-wing nut-cases raising such a ruckus over President Obama\u2019s proposals about our health-care system. Former President Carter put his finger on it yesterday: racism is alive and well in the USA. We can only hope this bunch of nuts represents too small a portion of our population to cause more than noisy trouble, but I fear the violent nature of the rhetoric is likely to send some fool over the edge.<\/p>\n

ON WITH MY STORY!<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Just look at those prices!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Handy map of Phnom Penh as it was in 1968<\/p>\n

Phnom Penh,\u00a005 September 1968<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear everyone~<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite nearly everyone\u2019s saying it couldn\u2019t be done, here I am at Phnom Penh, exhausted, but delighted. The motorcycle is still at the airport\u2014there are some customs formalities to complete tomorrow in the morning, also have to get proper exit visa so I can go out (as planned) via Arranya Prathet to Thailand (3 weeks hence). So I took a bus into town, have a nice Hotel, had a couple of hours of daylight for a quick walking tour; had a leisurely & plentiful meal of pork sautee\u2019d avec champignons et. al., (very good), and am shortly going to turn in for a well deserved rest. It\u2019s been a long day! Met a chap from Holland who is going on to BK tomorrow\u2014he\u2019s just come from Angkor & says it\u2019s lovely and very devoid of tourists (this is not the season; the rains are not really quite over yet).<\/em><\/p>\n

BACKSTORY<\/strong>: I checked into room 206 in the Hotel Mondial and took a short rest. When I went downstairs to the street to see what I could see, there was a clutch of cyclos and drivers at the curb. They crowded around vieing for my custom, and offering sight-seeing, girls, more sightseeing, more girls. But one chap sidled up and said quietly, \u201cWould you like a girl\u2014or a boy?\u201d I agreed to take a ride in his cyclo, and once we were away from the crowd, it turned out the boy he had in mind was himself! We repaired to a small hotel of his choice, and had a wonderful romp! So, I had my first Cambodian within a few hours of arriving: he was not the last!<\/p>\n

I am amused by a statement in a booklet I have before me that says, \u201cTourists of all nationalities except Chinese (mainland), Vietnamese, Thais and journalists can obtain visa . . .\u201d Apparently they don\u2019t like reporters! A very striking new University is along the route from airport to down-town; just beyond it is a clumpish big technical University built by the Soviets. It is unusual (for me) to see a Polish Embassy (I didn\u2019t even see them in Europe!), but there is one, and Rumanian, and others as well. No American embassy, though\u2014and I doubt I shall miss it a bit. Lots of English spoken here in PnhP, but I may get away from that later.<\/em><\/p>\n

06 September 1968<\/strong><\/p>\n

The French have left behind throughout \u201cIndo-China\u201d a number of impressive monuments, not the least of which is a monumental bureaucracy that tends to put even us to shame! As a consequence, I still do not have my bike clear of \u201cformalities\u201d; I\u2019m assured by the Australian Embassy however that we should be able to complete arrangements tomorrow morning sometime. Since the pressure is off, I can take all this philosophically; after all, I didn\u2019t have to do it this way\u2014I could have toured in the more conventional manner\u2014hence there\u2019s no one to blame for the delays but myself. But no matter\u2014I got in a good deal of sight-seeing shuttling back & forth between the aerodrome, the Embassy and the Commissioner\u2019s Office. The hang-up actually seems to be the requirement of a \u201ccaution\u201d\u2014actually an in-country co-signer who will assume responsibility if I fail to re-export the machine in the allotted time. Naturally, I know no one here who will undertake this, and (rightfully) the Embassy won\u2019t do it either. But they\u2019ve been most helpful\u2014the Australians actually act in some capacities in lieu of an american embassy under a loose agreement we have with them\u2014and I feel sure the matter can be cleared up tomorrow.<\/em><\/p>\n

BACKSTORY<\/strong>: The real problem in dealing with the motorcycle was the language barrier: everyone thought I wanted to import the bike to Cambodia, which would have meant paying a hefty duty. I was unable to explain, my french and cambodian language skills being meager at best, that what I wanted to do was ride the bike in the country, and on out of it. Nevertheless, I was amused by the kind of forms the importers wanted to prepare: they had typewriters with carriages about 20 inches long, and huge sheets of paper to go into them! There were, of course, NO computers!<\/p>\n

Hence, when 1:30 pm came along\u2014everything stops then anyway\u2014I took the more accepted \u201ctour\u201d of Phnom Penh, via \u201ccyclo pousse\u201d. When I get the bike I shall revisit all the spots for a more direct inspection.<\/em><\/p>\n

I suspect PnhP is now rather like Saigon was in 1958 when Todd was there. It is, of course, much smaller than Sgn is now: about 600,000. Untouched by war in many years, it is hence much better kept, cleaner, & far less crowded. It is, among other things, much quieter: all the motorbikes have their silencers left in; thank goodness I brought with me the one for my machine, which otherwise would disrupt this place mightily. Since the Khmer are in general slightly stockier and larger than the Vietnamese, the Hondas popular here are the 65 & 90 cc models, though 125s are also around.<\/em><\/p>\n

Another French institution that is universally found in the Extreme d\u2019Orient is BGI (many americans call it British Gas Industries!). Actually, it is Brassieries et Glacieries de l\u2019Indochine. Despite the limitation of the name, they are into all sorts of things\u2014beer, soft-drinks, ice-cream, ice manufacture, etc.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the first city I have ever been in that is not plastered with \u201cBevet\u00e9 Coca Cola\u201d signs. The signs are there, but they read \u201cDrink Pepsi\u201d!! I\u2019m told that in the course of the falling-out with the USA, Coca Cola was somehow banned. How Pepsi slipped by I don\u2019t know\u2014the bottles all clearly say \u201cbottled under license of Pepsi Corp, USA\u201d. Ah, the mysterious East!<\/em><\/p>\n

There are lots of new buildings, the most spectacular being the Unicversity mentioned earlier and the Olympic Stadii\u2014there are at least two. A big bridge over the Tonle Sap looks like it might be new since Todd was here, but the \u201cPhnom\u201d seems to have been sinking, and a project is underway to shore it up by boring beneath it & putting in a new footing. The Royal Palace looks fascinating & I shall take the tour, tho\u2019 possibly after I get back from Sihanoukville. My tentatively \u201cplanned\u201d route is now:<\/em><\/p>\n

09\u00a0 Phnom Penh \u2013> Kampot \u2013> Kep . . . . . . . 195km<\/em><\/p>\n

10\u00a0\u00a0 Kep<\/em><\/p>\n

11\u00a0\u00a0 Kep \u2013> Bokor \u2013> Popokvil \u2013> Sihanoukville . . . . . . . 100km<\/em><\/p>\n

12, 13, 14: Sihanoukville<\/em><\/p>\n

15\u00a0 Sihanoukville \u2013> Kirirom . . . . . . . 120km<\/em><\/p>\n

16\u00a0 Kirirom \u2013> Phnom Penh . . . . . . . 125km<\/em><\/p>\n

17\u00a0 Phnom Penh \u2013> Oudong \u2013> Kampong Thom \u2013> Siem Reap . . . . . . . 314km<\/em><\/p>\n

18-24 Siem Reap & environs (Angkor, etc)<\/em><\/p>\n

25 or 26 Siem Reap \u2013> Poipet \u2013> Bangkok . . . . . . . 420km<\/em><\/p>\n

Subject to change! Will probably break the Siem Reap to Bangkok part into two parts, depending on availability of accommodations en-route. Divide the figures above by 1.6 to get miles, and the distances don\u2019t seem so great\u2014they aren\u2019t!<\/em><\/p>\n

Have to arise early tomorrow: life begins before dawn here, for some reason, and the Embassy opens at 7:30 am. Hence it is now time to get some sleep. Will add more tomorrow.<\/em><\/p>\n

07.09.68<\/strong><\/p>\n

Got the bike today OK & toured the Palace\u2014will get this in the mail & start a new letter soon.<\/em><\/p>\n

Love to all~
\nBruce<\/em><\/p>\n

BACKSTORY<\/strong>: Once the folks at the Australian Embassy got clear in their mind what I wanted to do, they prepared a letter (in French) which I was to take to the Customs authorities at the aerodrome. Apparently the letter made clear to them what I wanted to do, because, after some delay filling out forms, they released the bike and told me I was free to visit any part of Cambodia I wanted: just to hand in the form at whatever point of departure I would use. Expecting the letter to do the trick, I had brought with me the bottle of gasoline procured in Vietnam and the silencer for the muffler. I installed the silencer, put gas in the tank, fired up the cycle and drove back into Phnom Penh. At night, the Mondial staff moved the bike inside the main entrance, not to protect it from thieves, but to keep the weather off of it!<\/p>\n

This is the \u201cPhnom\u201d for Which the City is Named.<\/p>\n

More letters soon!<\/strong><\/p>\n


<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everything up to this point had gone too smoothly! I felt it wise to arrive at the airport well before departure time. Just after lunchtime, I rode to Tan Son Nhut and stopped outside the compound. There, I drained what little fuel remained in the tank, then walked the bike into the passenger terminal. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}