PHNOM PENH: Back to the Future by Ralph Dinlocker Cambodia. All I could think about was the war and the Killing Fields and our first, scheduled stop at Phnom Penh didn't exactly lighten my psychic load for the trip. Cambodia, Phnom Penh and Mekong. Twenty years of radio and television had made these names more familiar to me than many cities in my own home country. There was the possibility of trouble on this trip, but then, there was also a city in a time warp that could disappear at any time. My faxes had been answered, our flights had been booked and our film had been bought. All we had to do was board the flight in Bangkok and begin our journey. The boarding area at Bangkok airport brought on all sorts of media-memories implanted during my youth from the 1960's. The people waiting to board the plane to Phnom Penh didn't seem to be your normal tourists out for a relaxing, recreational junket. There were an inordinate amount of quiet, forty to sixty year old, multi-national men in Ray Ban aviator sunglasses and none of them were smiling. The rest of the people had that weathered look of weary world travelers taking on yet another exotic locale. They silently thumbed through their Lonely Planet guides looking for cheap places to stay and "in" places to eat. The only tourists who looked like they were there to have a good time wore identifying hats or badges and were actually talking with each other. On arrival at Phnom Penh, the airport presented a much less martial scene than I expected as we deplaned into the warm sunlight onto the barren tree-lined tarmac. Visas to enter Cambodia were easily obtainable at a wooden counter just inside the main terminal building. Easily obtainable, that is, if you were aware of the eastern concept of public space. Public space, like that surrounding any queue or line, was meant to be occupied by anyone with the ability to make their presence physically felt. The uniformed customs officer brought order to our disorderly assemblage and filled out, photo-bearing forms plus twenty dollars and passports were taken and stamped with only the red-stamped passports returned to show we'd been there at all.
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