Fifty dollars, thirty rounds

Chann Mit turned his motorbike off the paved road and onto a long, dirt path. A blue sign at the corner read “Shooting Range” in white block letters. The mid-day sun brought sweltering heat, but even in his long sleeve button-down and pants, he didn’t mind. He was used to it.

I sat just behind him in a four-passenger carriage, or Tuk Tuk, attached to the back of his moto. The whipping air cooled droplets of sweat from my forehead, and a long, red and white krama, or traditional Cambodian scarf, shielded the dust from my mouth and nose.

Chann drove me from the town of Siem Reap, Cambodia, to the nearby Cambodian military base and back for $15. As a full-time Tuk Tuk driver for tourists, $15 was big money in one day. In stark contrast, I would soon blow over three times that amount through the barrel of an AK-47, in about 30 seconds.

I planned to visit the shooting range housed at the military base and run by Cambodian soldiers. In preparation for my trip, Internet searches had brought me to YouTube videos of foreigners at similar Cambodian shooting ranges, wearing army camouflage and laughing in astonishment as they fired automatic weapons into open fields.

One video showed a twenty-something-year-old woman chuck a grenade into a small pond and shriek as the pond erupted in a splash of water. Another clip showed a burly man with a bandana around his head fire a rocket launcher across the field at a grazing cow. The initial explosion enveloped the man in a thick cloud of smoke, out of which he emerged, stunned and grinning. The rocket exploded in a second cloud of smoke and dirt on impact, well beyond the cow. The man boasted loudly into the camera.

I went in search of a similar feeling, but having never fired much more than a paintball, the idea of pulling the trigger on an automatic killing machine sent butterflies through my stomach. The bumpy road didn’t offer much comfort.

Our route wound through the ancient grounds of the Angkor Empire – home to the complex of Angkor Wat, one of the man-made wonders of the world, and Ta Prohm, a temple featured in Tomb Raider. Passing through, most tourists pay $40 for a three-day temple pass. We had to convince the guard that we had different plans.

“We’re not going to the temples,” said Kate, an American who works in Siem Reap, who came along to watch. But unsure of the shooting range’s legality, she hesitated in revealing our true destination.

“Promise me!” the guard said.

“We promise,” she said. “We’ve already seen all of the temples.” And Chann drove on down the road, toward the military base and into an area with a tragic past.

The base sits just off the road to Banteay Srei, a 10th century temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, but also the final holdout of the Khmer Rouge. The “Angkar,” as they called themselves, were the Communist party of Kampuchea, responsible for the brutal deaths of about one third of the country’s population during the 1970s. Khmer Rouge guerrillas still roamed the area through the 1990s, and were known to ransack and burn trains and villages. They’ve since been cleared out, but their recent presence casts a gloom over the region.

The blue sign was the only English writing for miles. We sped across the bumpy dirt. Wooden houses disappeared, giving way to sprawling rice paddies and a cloudless blue sky. The only sound for miles was the tuk tuk tuk of the motorbike’s engine.

We slowed, turned into an open gate, and drove under a second blue sign. This one spanned the width of the road and read “Cambodia-Vietnam Friendship Military Training Grounds.” A thin, weathered soldier looked up from the roadside grass and pointed toward the road’s end. He knew why we came.

The road ended in a small dirt turnaround in front of an open-sided pavilion. Sandbags and broken artillery dotted the building’s perimeter, while a group of mahogany tables and chairs looked out of place near the entrance. Three front steps led to a raised concrete platform, upon which a small, hardened Cambodian soldier in a camouflage shirt, cargo shorts, and flip-flops stood to welcome us.

A few other soldiers lounged on picnic tables in the shade. Their level stares seized us up as we entered and seemed to warn us that our time at the range would be strictly for business. We were there to shoot, pay, and leave. No poking around. No questions.

Without uttering a word, the first soldier walked us to a whitewashed wall, upon which over thirty different types of black, metal weapons hung on display. A thick, red and blue rope cordoned off about three feet of space between the guns and me. The soldier handed me a yellow, laminated menu of guns available to shoot. Across the top it read “Welcome to Shooting Range” in thick red type. It listed the cost to fire thirty rounds of each weapon.

“RIFLE: AK 47 (KALASNICO), AMOUNT: 50$
RIFLE: M16, AMOUNT: 50$
RIFLE: UZI, AMOUNT: 40$”

Near the bottom, the menu indicated two longer, more powerful guns, the P.K.M.S. and the M30, Soviet and American machine guns, which cost $130 each for 100 bullets. Their barrels rested on short metal tripods on the concrete, pointing away from us within the rope. They brought to mind images of war video games – the scenes in Call of Duty where one soldier mans a powerful machine gun behind a wall of sandbags and sprays entire enemy units into the dust. These were those guns.

The bottom of the menu read: “Please don’t take picture without permission.” Two smiley faces flanked the words “THANK YOU!!” But the soldier’s face was stone straight as he awaited my decision. The AK-47, with its black metal and worn wood paneling hung menacingly against the wall. It looked to be years old and well used – its thin, deadly barrel could have been responsible for a slew of deaths.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the AK-47 has been ubiquitous amid Third World conflicts. Though the Khmer Rouge’s usual weapon of choice was the Russian Thompson, also hanging nearby, guerrillas in Siem Reap Province could easily have carried the very same AK-47 while raiding villages -- firing into wooden huts until their tin roofs lay flat in the dirt.

Even today, the Cambodian military trades fire with Thai soldiers at Preah Vihear, a disputed chunk of land along their shared border which houses an ancient temple. The ongoing warfare gave life to that wall of guns, though each one’s story was a mystery.


Two other tourists arrived with a tour guide. They were honeymooners from Mexico City. The man walked straight to the guns, and after a brief conversation with the soldier, he stepped back to wait for his ammo.

“I’m going to shoot the P.K.M.S.,” he said. He spoke with a slight Mexican accent, looking up from beneath the brim of a green army-style cap. “I said just half the price, so fifty bullets instead of a hundred. And then the AK-47. This is like Disney to me.”

He was prepared to empty his pockets for an 80-bullet thrill ride, but for him, the feeling was nothing new.

“Our friends were here about a year ago and they told us that the army was not very well paid and that you can shoot anything,” the woman said. “And he loves shooting. Everywhere we go we just look for a shooting range.”

“Yeah I’ve shot the M16 in Israel,” the man added. “It was very, very good. Very nice.”

“Wow, so you go places with actual conflict!” Kate said.

“Yes,” he laughed. “And Afghanistan – no I’m just kidding.”

But his love for weapons was serious. The couple had been to Thailand before traveling through Cambodia on their way to Hong Kong and Shanghai, visiting shooting ranges wherever they could. This would be their last globetrotting joyride before moving to Boston for graduate school in the fall. The man’s love for guns was so strong, he said, that he wanted to name his dog “Glock.”

The Cambodian military has turned that raw, primal urge to fire automatic rifles into a business. The shooting range profits go directly to the military, and even without official advertising, the range sees between three and five tour groups per day.

After asking him a few questions, the soldier who greeted us opened up about his own situation. He had been a factory worker until about ten years ago when he decided to become a soldier. The military, he said, was less physically demanding. The shooting range opened four years ago and provided him with a better job, which keeps him away from his family but offers a healthy salary.

I asked him which of the guns on the wall had been used in actual combat. He pointed to the Uzis, all of the Thompsons, and a few other massive, unwieldy chunks of metal. He claimed the AK-47 and M16 had never drawn blood, but rather spent their whole lives as military training guns, used at the army’s own shooting range nearby.

Kate pointed at the floor, gesturing toward the soldier’s entire operation. “Is this legal?” she asked.

“Yes, yes,” he responded, and went on to explain that the Cambodian government does know about the shooting range. They view the business as a viable source of military funding. But regardless of the legality, finding oneself staring at an array of automatic weapons in a remote third-world location is still a bit uncomfortable.

The Mexican tourist wasn’t phased, though. He stepped into one of four long, dark tunnels at the rear of the pavilion, his wife trailing with her outstretched video camera. I asked if I could film him as well, whipping out my digital Powershot. He said I could.

Another soldier closed a sliding glass door behind him before he squeezed off 30 rounds of the AK-47, followed closely by 50 rounds of the P.K.M.S. Each shot reverberated through my temples as the tunnel filled with a thick cloud of grey smoke. The sliding door opened and the man emerged from the cloud with a smirk and a request.

“Will you upload it to YouTube?” he asked.

“Yeah I will.” I said.

“But how will I find it? What will I search for?” he said. “How about ‘Mexicans shooting in Cambodia.”

“Okay I’ll call it that,” I laughed.

“No,” his wife said. “Call it ‘Crazy Mexicans shooting in Cambodia.” And they were gone.

They had just donated $115 to the Cambodian military. The soldier didn’t know exactly what that money would be used for, nor would he volunteer a suggestion. The military liked things just the way they were: low-key.

Is it morally acceptable, then, for tourists to funnel money into a struggling military without knowing where their money goes? Shooting range visitors could easily be funding illegal arms trade, or putting bullets into the rifle of a twelve-year-old soldier. The Cambodian military doesn’t offer much information, and apparently tourists are content not to ask.

The soldier would not allow me to speak with his Major, sitting at a nearby picnic table, nor could I question any other soldiers at the base. While exploring the grounds around the pavilion, he yelled for us to come back. We had to stay within view.

The air clogged with smoke and an uneasy tension, I made my selection.

“Can I try the Uzi?” I asked. It was the smallest and cheapest option. Its T-shaped form hung crooked on the wall, but it seemed manageable.

“No, no,” the soldier said. “It work but it jam a lot. No bullets. Bullets expensive.”

“Okay, what can I shoot?” I asked.

“The AK-47, M16, or P.K.M.S.,” he said.

“I think I’ll do the AK.”

A second soldier ducked through the rope and lifted the weapon from its hold. The first turned and walked toward a closet at the side of the pavilion, motioning toward a row of sound-cancelling earmuffs resting on a glass display case near the closet door. The earmuffs covered each ear completely, sending me into my own soundless world.


Any last-minute reservations gave way to pure adrenaline as I turned to examine not the open field I had seen in videos, but the same long, dark tunnel the Mexican tourist had used. Its brick walls seemed ancient, but were coated in grey ash. Thousands of gunshots had sent clouds of smoke down the murky tunnel, picking apart its soft roof. A permanent haze clouded the view of the rear wall, pierced only by rays of sunlight shining through holes in the ceiling.

The soldier emerged from the closet with a clip of ammunition. He rested the rifle on a brick, chest-high platform near the tunnel’s entrance, loaded the clip and looked back toward me.

“Okay come on,” he said.

I stepped through the glass door, which immediately slid shut behind me. The tunnel became eerily quiet except for a thumping in my chest. In video playback, soft Khmer music could be heard overhead, but not at that moment. I felt rushed, and kept my krama wrapped around my neck and my small backpack tight on my shoulders. I joined the soldier behind the rifle.

He pushed on my back, wedging the butt of the weapon firmly inside my right shoulder. My arms went limp to allow him to position my left hand as a stabilizer, over halfway down the black shaft, and my right hand on the trigger. Safety off, the metal felt neither cold nor hot, the wood grain hard but smooth against my skin.

Feet stabilized, I closed one eye and look down the length of the gun, through the metal crosshairs, focusing on a small hole in the tunnel’s back wall. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves.

“Okay,” he said. “Watch the kick.”

I gave the trigger one tentative but even squeeze.

“BANG!” An explosion rattled the length of the gun, sending a shockwave up my arm and into my shoulders.

“BANG! BANG!” The vibrations rocked my chest cavity and forced me to take a half step backward.

“BANG! BANG! BANG!” Grey smoke shot through the rear of the gun, while black soot sprayed out the end, turning my left wrist black with grime. The sound reverberated through the earmuffs and into my eardrums.

The sheer power of the gun amazed me. I couldn’t see my damage at the tunnel’s rear, but I knew that any life form caught in the gun’s crossfire would have surely taken a fatal hit.

The soldier reached forward and switched the rifle to its automatic setting. He stepped back again, but leaned against my back with his hand, stabilizing my body.

“BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!” Another quick squeeze sent multiple rounds into the tunnel – the exact number too rapid to count. Again, black soot coated my wrist and the smoke smelled rich and burnt. That weapon felt insanely destructive.

Over the next twenty seconds I fired around twenty more rounds, until my finger clicked against the empty metal. It was over so fast. Thirty bullets and $50 had become crude holes in the tunnel’s gloomy rear wall.

I wiped my wrist clean and stepped back through the glass door into the open air. My eardrums still rang and vibrations still echoed through my chest. I was shaky and unsure about what I had just done.

According to the soldier, my AK-47 hadn’t been used in Khmer Rouge combat, but many of the guns alongside it had. They represented some of the only remaining artifacts from a devastating and forgotten era in Cambodian history. By association, I had just bought entry to decades of deep conflict, years of bloodshed, and generations of struggle.

Staring at the wall of guns once again, small dents on the rifle butts reminded me of the Khmer Rouge genocide. They beat prisoners with rifle butts to conserve ammunition before burying hundreds of bodies alongside each other in mass graves. Thirty years later, I had just paid for a few more rounds.

But is it appropriate for a government to exploit the violent urges of wealthy tourists to fund the military? Cambodia says “yes,” but as a poor country in the midst of endless conflict, they accept all the help they can manage. The decision, then, should lie with the tourists themselves.

Visitors to the Third World should consider the direct effects of their money before spending it in any context. Where will the money go next, and into whose hands? What will it purchase, and whom will it truly benefit? Will it improve the country’s quality of life, or result in further conflict and bloodshed?

Those important questions are not easy to answer. But people like Chann, the Tuk Tuk driver, represent a class of hard-working families who could have used my $50 to feed their children.

Third World travelers are gifted with opportunity, but burdened with the power of money. It’s important to use it wisely.

Buildings, fields, survivors tell a vivid story

The earth at Cheoung Ek is defined by beauty and serenity. A large, intricate white stupa stands at the center of the compound, surrounded by ancient, curling trees. But the earth is not flat like normal ground, nor are the trees normal trees. And rising up through the center of the stupa are shelves upon shelves of human skulls.

They are the skulls of thousands of people who died under the Khmer Rouge -- the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who murdered about 1.5 million people during their reign in the 1970s. The Angkar, as they called themselves, wanted to revert back to “year zero.” They murdered all educated intellectuals and politicians, all minorities and people with previous government affiliation, as well as anyone who simply put up a fight. Their goal was a population of just 1 million simple, subsistence farmers. Today at Cheoung Ek, the clothing, bones, and souls of the murdered still remain.

Prisoners were trucked from prison and work camps into the “killing field” and locked in a detention room until their time came. They were then blindfolded and escorted to the edge of a mass grave. They knelt down and were bludgeoned to death with rifle butts and large metal bars – bullets were far too valuable to waste. They were then stripped naked and pushed into the hole alongside hundreds of other bodies. Today those holes remain, one after another, as large depressions in the earth. As tourists walk between them, they step on tattered shirts and scarves.

The roots of the “magic tree” stretch down into one such grave. Its dark, thick trunk rises up and breaks into long, sagging branches. At its base, a sign describes its purpose in English, translated from Khmai.

Magic tree … the tree was used as a tool to hang a loudspeaker which make sound louder to avoid the moan of victims while they were being executed.

Just behind the magic tree stands another large tree, seemingly leaning away from the mass grave at its base. This one has its own sign.

Killing tree against which executioners beat children.

The killings were senseless and brutal, but as a visitor, one can only appreciate so much. Our group had the privilege of eating lunch with Chum Mey, one of just twelve reported prison camp survivors, and one of only three alive today. He is now eighty years old. His dark eyes latched onto mine as I asked him questions, translated through our tour guide.


He said his life was spared for one reason – he knew how to fix typewriters. This was a valuable skill in the prison camp, for typewriters were used daily during prisoner interrogation and torture. After lunch, Chum slowly walked us through the Khmer Rouge’s main prison, Tuol Sleng – now a museum which lies in the heart of Phnom Penh. The prison was a grade school before the regime adapted it. Now thin, stone walls divide classrooms into tiny prison cells. Hard metal bed frames remain in torture chambers, while pictures of mangled bodies on the same beds decorate the walls.

Chum bent over one such bed, taking hold of a heavy metal shackle. He raised his thin leg onto the frame, slipping his foot through the shackle as he did thirty years ago. He demonstrated how his ankles were locked in place each time he entered the room. He showed us an old wooden frame in the schoolyard -- once a piece of playground equipment -- used to hang prisoners by their wrists as a torture mechanism. He said his toenails had been ripped out, his eye clubbed until he lost his vision.

But today he stands as tall as his frame will allow, and still moves quite well for an older man. As he walked us through picture after picture of prisoners, young and old, dead and alive, he stopped to point out his own picture. He stood with his arm outstretched to the photo and turned back toward me as I tried to take one of him. But my camera was dead. Perhaps that image best lives as a memory.

Chum has dedicated his life to sharing his story. His existence itself is a statement of the atrocities of the past, but he expressed the importance of making sure such crimes never happen again. Meeting, talking, and walking with him was a privilege and an honor, the magnitude of which I will be lucky to ever experience again.

Before we left the prison, we huddled around Chum as he spoke to us, and our guide translated.

“He says he wishes you will take this story and tell the people in your country. He hopes as journalists, you will bring the knowledge of this story to the world.”

“We will,” our professor said. “Tell him we will.”

A Deadly Road

The road between Siem Reap, Cambodia and Phnom Penh, the sprawling capital is bumpy and narrow. It is divided by a faint yellow line in some places, and closely flanked by wooden houses and storefronts. Schoolchildren play badminton in the roadside dust, inches from the tires of gas trucks, buses, and motorbikes, which catapult past at break-neck speed. The road has one rule only: get to your destination as fast as possible.

Drivers ignore the lanes as if they were never there. Large cargo trucks accelerate into oncoming traffic to pass slow-moving motorbikes and exhaust-spewing dump trucks full of watermelons. We rode in a grey bus, but it looked more like a shoebox. The flat front windshield revealed the road ahead, but it was never a pleasant view.

Our driver spent more time in the opposing lane than our own. Every few seconds he would veer into oncoming traffic to pass slower vehicles -- he would send the bus careening to the left edge of the road, forcing motorbikes coming the other way to drive into the dirt. Often times I would look up to see large trucks or buses looming in the distance, speeding toward us head on. Seconds before our collision and certain death, our driver would swing back into his lane, cutting off whoever was driving behind us.

What is the rush? I thought. He drove with unexplained impatience and recklessness. We weren’t on a schedule. We had nowhere to be. But I realized that this driving style was all he knew. In Cambodia, traffic laws are not enforced, nor given any thought at all. The biggest vehicles rule the road simply because they cause the most damage on impact. Motorbike drivers spend a lot of time avoiding collisions, weaving their way between cars and trucks, squeezing through tiny gaps and using all available ground – sidewalks and dirt included – to maneuver. And most bikers don’t wear helmets.

Our bus driver nearly lost his side mirror on multiple occasions, but didn’t bat an eye. He was the Mario Andretti of bus drivers, whipping the bus’s bulk into tiny spaces and around corners, moving at about one HCAPM (head-on collision avoided per minute). His confidence was reassuring, but I wondered how often car accidents really happened on the road. I soon got my answer.

We returned to the bus after a brief snack of fried tarantula, and I sat near the rear, next to a left-side window. We were talking, laughing. I heard a loud smash combined with a flash of color in my left peripheral. At first, it sounded like something had collided with the side of the bus. A few people yelled out, startled and confused. We looked around and tried to make sense of it as our driver drove on, unphased.

“I think we hit another car’s side mirror,” somebody said.

“Oh my god, no,” someone responded. “That was a person.”

The few Cambodians on our bus conversed rapidly while we sat in horrified silence. The conferred with our driver and got the story straight. Our guide, Santhou, leaned over to me.

“It was a motorbike with four people on it. They behind us and try to pass. So they go into other lane but they not see a car coming the other way. It was a big car. Lexus SUV.”

The helmet-less riders, crammed onto one motorbike and probably traveling at upwards of forty miles per hour, had veered into oncoming traffic. The back of our bus blocked their view of the road until it was too late. The flash of color I had seen was the driver’s body, which had been thrown off the bike on impact, smashing into the Lexus’s windshield and flying into the air.

“Don’t look,” Santhou said, but I couldn’t stop myself. I stood and peered through the rear window. Behind us I saw a battered mess of motorbike parts in the middle of the road. Next to it lay a lifeless, crumpled body. A couple onlookers slowly walked toward the wreckage. Our driver drove on.

“I don’t think they survive,” Santhou said, and I didn’t see how any of them could. It was a high speed, head-on collision in which none of the riders wore helmets. Their bodies were thrown and smashed before falling, mangled to the pavement. Out in the countryside, the nearest ambulance was miles away and the healthcare unlikely to have been good enough to help. Nor could the riders have paid for it if they wanted to.

So why, in this country, do they drive like they do? Relaxed laws and safety regulations have made driving a complete free-for-all, but don’t people realize how the slightest miscalculation or the smallest error in judgment can be fatal? In two weeks, I have seen at least three traffic accidents. The locals must see the same, yet they continue to follow that one rule: get to your destination as fast as possible. It’s ingrained in their heads. It’s all they have ever known.

As a traveler, it’s easy to grow comfortable with a place after a week or so. But as I sat in the back of that bus, only about two feet and a glass window separated me from that crunch of death. I was reminded to never let my guard down. In foreign countries, the tap water and fruits can harm one physically, but vivid experiences can also have immediate mental effects.

After the accident, we sat in silence for the rest of the trip -- each passenger in awe, disbelief, and reflection. We had experienced the split-second obliteration of human life. In our air-conditioned bus, we drove on.