My friend Angie and I had just finished a visit to the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh — acres of rural property where Cambodian people were slaughtered and tossed into mass graves by the Khmer Rouge communist regime.
Some people were beheaded. Some were bludgeoned to death with bamboo sticks. Some were buried alive, tossed into pits and covered with DDT until they perished.
It’s a miserable place, swamped by sadness and cluttered with ghosts.
Angie and I paid our respects to the many lives that were extinguished. We left quiet. We left reverent.
It was unusual timing for such a visit. Osama bin Laden had been killed the previous evening, and I was waging a nonstop, complicated moral war in my head. “Does anyone deserve a violent death? What if the person is really, really evil? Who decides what is evil? Is assassination ever justified? Does this make the world safer? What motivates someone to do horrific things?”
Basically, I was in a confused, plaintive headspace.
As my friend and I climbed into the tuk-tuk we hired, just outside the gates of the Killing Fields, our driver pushed a laminated sheet of photos toward us. It was pictures of people happily shooting automatic weapons.
“You want to shoot? You want guns?” he said.
“Uh, no.” We both shook our heads.
“No guns?”
“No. Definitely no.”
Maybe the other people who visit this memorial want to vent their frustration with the world. Maybe the other tourists are gun-happy. Maybe it’s just a matter of proximity — after all, the shooting range is nearby.
But firing off machine guns was the very last thing I wanted to do.
It’s definitely a highlight for some travelers in Phnom Penh. I talked to backpackers who were absolutely itching to get their hands on some combat shotguns. I even met a few people who made a detour to Cambodia specifically for the purpose of firing off Uzis and M-16s.
I didn’t think it was a big deal. I’ve rented automatic weapons before in Las Vegas (during a Valentine’s Day getaway with my husband! awww!), and I don’t like guns much anyway. But the firearms probably prove irresistible for tourists who have no access to AK-47s in their own countries.
That said, the shooting ranges in Southeast Asia go far beyond anything I’ve seen before. In Phnom Penh, they don’t only offer guns — the menu also includes hand grenades, single-shot M79 grenade launchers and shoulder-fired B40 rocket-propelled grenades.
Whoa.
To be clear, my friend and I didn’t go to this place. But I talked to dozens of backpackers who returned either raving or ranting about their experiences. The things they’ve told me are so crazy, I don’t know what to believe.
The range has fixed per-bullet prices for the machine guns. Grenades cost between $100-200, depending on your weapon of choice.
If you’re bored with shooting at cardboard, tin cans and rusty cars, live animals make for more lively targets. I’m told chickens, geese, goats, water buffalo and cows have all been slaughtered by beer-guzzling, gun-wielding travelers. Technically, this has been discouraged by the government, but it still happens. For the right price, of course.
I also talked to one guy who said he scraped the bottom of his savings account to buy a $100 grenade and a live cow. Well, he missed the shot — and ended up with a souvenir cow to take home. (He did buy it, after all.) He ended up selling the cow back to the shooting range for half the price he originally paid.
The most disturbing rumors involve people — living, breathing targets who cost a cool $10,000. Allegedly the prisoners offer themselves up to be killed because their families receive a cut of the money. For desperate prisoners facing life sentences with no other means to support their loved ones, this is one last sacrifice they can make.
It’s so outlandish, I can’t believe people could pay to shoot other people. That couldn’t possibly happen, right? It has to be a stupid backpacker tall tale.
Then again, there are a lot of horrific things I can’t wrap my head around. And those were true.
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