Drunken Tuk Tuk driver
The other night we were having a late night drink in Siem Reap. We were down our favourite alleyway. Our tuk tuk driver, Mr Hong, snuck down the alleyway to say hello (tuk tuk drivers, beggars, and people selling things seem to be forbidden to hassle tourists in the evenings). We invited him to have a drink with us and when he sat down, Stan offered him a beer. He pulled a face and we offered him a coke or anything else to drink, but he said he'd have a beer. We asked him a couple times if he was sure, but he said he'd have a beer. The beer came out and after a hearty "cheers" and glass clinking, Mr Hong took his first sip and then pulled a face that could have come straight out of a Warner Bros cartoon, eyes bulging out and lips pulled back. We asked him if he'd rather a coke, but he gave us a very unconvincing "I like this very much", and had his second sip. As he struggled to swallow this, he sounded like he was getting choked. He continued to drink his beer making a variety of strangling noises, gulps and pulling faces that even Tom and Jerry would have trouble duplicating. Anyway, he made if to the end of his beer and we offered another one. A look of panic crossed his face and he jumped up and said he had to go back to his tuk tuk, but he wanted to give us a free ride home after we had finished our drinks. We finished up shortly after and went to find Mr Hong. As we were jumping into his tuk tuk, all the other drivers started yelling, "you no go with him, he drunk", and "he can't drink beer, he will crash". Well, he got us back to our hotel OK and we did pay him for the ride.
Mr Cheech (or Chong)
We were having lunch in a Siem Reap restaurant and we happened to strike up a conversation with two Scottish university students. They were about to head off to Sihanoukville and were asking us what it was like there. We told them that its a lovely place, but a "party place". We told them that many restaurants we'd been to in 2010 had "plus $1 happy" on the menu and not to get a shock (like we had) on seeing marijuana sold openly. ("Plus $1 happy" refers to how much it costs to get marijuana cooked into your food or to smoke.) Another old gentleman in the restaurant overheard us talking and figured that we were looking for places to buy the herb. He had a very proper British accent and was in his sixties. He strolled up to us and, uninvited, rolled out a map of Siem Reap on our table. On this map he had made meticulous notes on every place in Siem Reap which sold the happy herb. He had detailed information as to quality, cost, whether he was allowed to light up in the building and so on. None of the four of us were in the slightest bit interested and we were rolling our eyes at each other when he wasn't looking. We tried to tell him that we weren't interested, but he went on and on and asked if we wanted to take some notes off his map. Finally he left us in peace and we all had a laugh at some of the strange people one comes across when travelling. A few days later we were talking to young Australian guy who had come to Cambodia "to party". He told us he'd gone up an ally to buy some drugs. The dealer had encouraged him to "try before buy" and when he'd had a few puffs and was dizzy, he got punched in the head and had his wallet with hundreds of dollars stolen. Its hard to feel sorry for people who put themselves in silly situations.
Evil tuk tuk drivers
We had a funny experience when we arrived in Phnom Penh the other day. We got in after dark and immediately we got off the bus we had about 8 tuk tuk drivers in our face all yelling that we get a ride to our hotel with them. While Stan got the luggage, Nicole negotiated with one driver to take us to our hotel. She asked him how far it was, "is it ten minutes?" "No, fifteen minutes", he said. He'd take us for $3, which was about double the normal price, but we just wanted to get to our hotel, have a swim and sit in some air conditioning for a bit after 6 hours on the road. We put all our luggage on his tuk tuk, and he drove around the corner and about 200 meters up the street and dropped us off at the hotel. Then asked for his $3. We gave him $2 and still felt we were paying $2 too much. He got really mad that we'd "cheated" him of a dollar and told us that we could make it up to him by employing him as our driver all the next day. We told him that if he'd told us the truth, we'd happily have used him in the future, but because he was a liar we'd never go with him again. Some of these guys don't seem to understand that if they were polite and not trying to cheat us all the time, they would get a lot more repeat business. Take our favourite driver Mr Hong, for example. When we paid (and tipped) him for a day's travel, he would say "too much, I told you only $12".
Kick boxer
For some reason, many people here think Stan is either part Cambodian or part Thai. No one believes that he is a real Caucasian. All over the country Cambodians have been asking if one of his parents or grand parents is Cambodian. Some say he has Cambodian nose, other say his eyes are Asian. Yesterday, one particular man on the island tour we did asked several times whether he was a half-Thai kick boxer. "I know I have seen you on TV", he said. When Stan said "no I am not a kick boxer", he didn't believe him. He thought Stan was trying to avoid the attention. Several times he came up and said, "I know you are a kick boxer". Once we got to the island and went swimming, he stopped asking, Sadly, with his shirt off, it was very evident that Stan did not have the physique of a kick boxer.
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