ENGLISH TEACHER KH

ENGLISH TEACHER KH managed to survive four years in Cambodia without ODing on smack or stepping on a landmine, and he drops the skinny on that most exotic of destinations. 

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How long have you taught, and where?

Four years in Cambodia.

What made you decide to get into English teaching?

Rather more like changing ruts. I was living in very depressing squalor in Oxford and had reached the end of the rut, I hadn't finished my degree, and the debts were mounting. Oh, and I was living in a college town, growing older while everyone stayed young, beautiful, clever and rich.

Why did you decide to go to Cambodia?

A chap we christened "Personal Space" Mcnally. Two years in China had knackered his understanding of physical boundaries between individuals. He gave me a kick up the backside, for which I am grateful, and said it would be a good destination, that I could get a job without quals. They were desperate for teachers when he was there, but not quite so desperate a year later when I arrived.

Have you read "Off the Rails in Phnom Penh?"

Yeah, it's crap journalism, but a good story. I didn't need to read it. I knew everyone in it.

After it was published, some of the chaps were annoyed at others for talking to the chap who wrote it, one chap threw a glass of wine in the face of another chap, lots of huffing and puffing betwen chaps, and so on. One rumour was that the author left behind a box of S & M equipment in somebody's house.

Any rate, there was the usual fallout among guilty-feeling whoremongers. In retrospect it looks as if Mr Down and Out was the first among the waves of rubber-necking nerds and squares who started to arrive after UNTAC, which was a seriously wild time and not for the nebbish. I arrived late in the first wave of squares, in the late 90s.

Of course, the hardcore and the squares tended to overlap, but while the latter were making their way in, such as Mr Down and Out, the former were departing, or most of them, except the ones who had nowhere to go----but that's another story.

Going back to the book, I suspect most of the rancour came not from the author's having betrayed their trust and shown them up for being a bunch of sex-mad wastrels, but that he had blown their little secret and opened the market, as it were. Which is what happened. Actually, some of them were my good mates, I just wish I had been there with the hard-core, when in it was Dodge/Dawson. But I missed the party by a good 8 months, things had changed after the coup.

Where did you work in Cambodia?

Only Phnom Penh, that was quite enuff. Loony tune establishments lacking air con or electricity, with the occasional fan falling off a wall. Pedophile DOSes, deranged Baptist owners. I got fired from one job for not kowtowing to the office manager, someone obviously more powerful than I knew. Yeah, I stayed in the city. I would have gone mad in the provinces. Teacher "M" did just that and locked his students in their classroom, they called the cops, he lost his job. That's why I like your cartoons, they remind me of me old mates.

What were the people you worked with in Cambodia like?

Mostly, at least largely, certifiable. Well, not really. They were men who did not fit in back home and saw certain advantages to living there, and not just sex. I do miss 'em. Where to begin? The diehards knew how to walk the line between excess and restraint, but it takes some learning.

A lot of them were...well, almost competent, but as an indication, the first DOS I had went to prison on a trumped-up charge of diddling, my colleague from the same school went to prison for same and is doing hard time, and another colleague had swastikas tattoed on his fingers. His father was a guard at the Nuremberg trials, or so he said. I mean, the list goes on...I met an Austrian arms dealer who boasted that his father was HUNG at Nuremberg. He's probably in Iraq.

Did you do loads of smack, or just smoke a lot of  cheap pot?

Never touched the stuff. Got enough trouble with the booze. At least booze doesnt kill you overnight, as the heroin did to two of my close acquaintances. Lots of pot around, indeed, and a number of chaps were addicted to it, which I didn't think possible. Fits of paranoia were a regular occurence. Have you noticed that potheads talk of nothing but pot?

What about the $3 hookers?

What about them? Asian totty is not for me, I just don't fancy it much. But it's not a bad way to pass a lunch hour, if you're bored. It's the pimps you need to watch out for. Keep an eye on your wallet.

How often did you fire machine guns and rocket launchers at the firing ranges?

I did that once, but I met one chap who would come in regularly from Thailand for the firing range. I was obviously such a square that they were reluctant to tell me much about it. But right now, there is nothing I would like better than to go down the range. A beer in one hand, an AK in another, fucking beautiful. But it costs.

Ever get robbed or shot at?

Indeed--a taxi driver nearly beat the BS out of me when I persistently refused his services. I raised a hand to ward him off and he took umbrage that a foreigner should have insulted the great Khmer race. Oh, and some punks almost robbed me at knifepoint on my way back from the brothels, but they thought better of it. I was lucky on both counts.

Not so others. One teacher, a young posh brunette Englishwoman, fought off a mugger and and managed to keep her handbag, but he broke her arm or something, it was in a sling for weeks. She shrugged it off, very Evelyn Waugh. As for the aftermaths of grenade attacks, sexing the bodies and so on, I left that to the duly qualified. And no, I am not making anything up, I'm omitting shit.

Any particularly horrifying stories you'd like to share?

After consideration, no. Yes, but no.... I went there as a sensation-seeker, in late emerging adulthood as it says in my Psychology text, and luckily for me did not see much sensation. A bit like my grandfather during the war. I talked to the Bulgarian ambassador who said that the worst part of his job when the UN were in the country, in the early 90s, was writing letters to the parents of dead soldiers who had crashed their motorcycles. Guns abound, there as most everywhere, and people shoot 'em sometimes, but they're comparatively harmless, statistically. Isn't that boring? And I haven't even mentioned AIDS.

Oliver Stone was into the weed as well. A couple mates of mine were charged with the job of finding some for him. They met him in the parking lot of a well-known govt-run brothel and tried to pass it thru the window of his car, but, seeing a pair of white guys his age, he feared a set-up by the local journos and tried to hide his f ace. OLIVER STONED IN CAMBODIAN WHOREHOUSE....No, it wouldn't look good; I can sympathize with Ollie.  Teacher "W" from Tennessee then demanded his weed back, in a joking but rather persistent and hassling way, as he laughingly explained.

There was also the chap called Dan who tried to set up a website of real-time strippers, for stateside consumption. He let slip to Teacher "S" and Teacher "I" who got physical with him and chased him from bar to bar with a stick. I can still hear him in the Heart of Darkness, cowering behind the teak countertop and shouting "I'm a US citizen! Call my Embassy!" ... Anyway, the tales are beginning to snowball, so I will cut it here.

All best to all ye who venture there! It's a beautiful country, I'd just like put that on record. Completely fucked up and socially atomized, like a lot of places, but it's a real country with a history and a future, and they don't measure happiness in housing starts. And it's not a bullshit tourist colony either, like Thailand, at least not yet.

Did you ever try the marijuana pizza, and if so, did you make it home before you collapsed unconscious?

I did, a few times, but that sort of indulgence starts a to pall a bit after a couple years, if you see what I mean. I usually hung out next door at the Pink Elephant, which was owned by a gay Yorkshireman named Dave. When he died, the hospital refused to keep his body on ice (undoubtedly money hassles) and dumped it outside where it putrified for three days in the tropical sun, until one of my colleagues, Teacher "S", gathered it up and took care of old Dave.

What are your plans for the future?

Get my fucking BA, get my teacher certs for the international schools, and get the hell back out where it's happening.

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