Off the Rails in Phnom Penh: Into the Dark Heart of Guns, Girls, and Ganja

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Reviews

TIME Magazine	"Causing...a stir in Southeast Asia...Like a gonzo rant from Hunter S. Thompson" which "spins a fascinating...tale" and "plunges readers into the center of the Khmer storm."	(s-l-o-w)
The Nation	"The book is phenomenal...I found it very hard to put down and will never forget it."	Text only (fast)	(s-l-o-w)
South China Morning Post	"...racy, disturbing, fantastic, and sometimes funny."	Text only (fast)	(s-l-o-w)
Bangkok Metro	"...invigorating, exciting, packed full of fun and infectious youthful exuberance."	Text only (fast)	(s-l-o-w)

Mentions in the Press

Salon Magazine Travel Q&A	"...absolute recommended reading for anyone, male or female, visiting Cambodia.	Text link	Salon.com
Salon Magazine Vagabond Section	"...Adam told me about...his mild local notoriety from having appeared as a character in...Amit Gilboa's hopelessly sensationalistic (but largely fact-based) 1998 book."	Text link	Salon.com
Bangkok Post	"The Sweet Smell of Success"	Full text
Destination: Thailand Thai TV Ch. 11	"Now based in Bangkok, The Buzz cornered Amit Gilboa at the Atlanta Hotel."	Transcript	Apologies: Video not available on-line.
Morning Talk Thai TV Ch. 11	"I'm sure that it will prove to be a very interesting book to very many people."	Transcript	Apologies: Video not available on-line.

Synopsis

Phnom Penh is a city of beauty and degradation, tranquillity and violence, and tradition and transformation; a city of temples and brothels, music and gunfire, and festivals and coups.

But for many, it is simply an anarchic celebration of insanity and indulgence. Whether it is the $2 wooden shack brothels, the marijuana-pizza restaurants, the AK-47 fireworks displays, or the intricate brutality of Cambodian politics, Phnom Penh never ceases to amaze and amuse. For an individual coming from a modern Western society, it is a place where the immoral becomes acceptable and the insane becomes normal.

Amid this chaos lives an extraordinary group of foreign residents. Some are adventurers whose passion for life is given free rein in this unrestrained madhouse. Others are misfits who, unable to make it anywhere else, wallow in the decadent and inviting environment. This unparalleled first-hand account provides a fascinating, shocking, disturbing and often hilarious picture of contemporary Phnom Penh and the bizarre collection of expats who make it their home. As they search for love in the brothels or adventure on the firing range, Off the Rails follows them into the dark heart of guns, girls and ganja.
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The chapter headings were designed to hide nothing. Here they are:

Impressions

History

Lawlessness

Sex

Drugs

Work

Flotsam

Coup

Journey

Home

Bibliography

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Feedback

Words of praise, statements of outrage, and any and all other feedback, questions, comments and correspondence are encouraged.

Send your message to amitgilboa@offtherails.com.

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Purchasing Off the Rails in Phnom Penh

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Text of Review from Time

Leer and Loathing

February 1, 1999
A first-time writer tracks Phnom Penh's chaos.
Lost luggage, surly taxi drivers, a bout of food poisoning--these are usually the most outrageous things that happen to writers who chronicle their globetrotting adventures. Consequently, as a literary genre the travel narrative is often genteel to the point of yawn-inducing boredom. Maybe that's why first-time author Amit Gilboa's recent book, Off the Rails in Phnom Penh, is causing such a stir in Southeast Asia. Just one glance at the subtitle--"Into the Dark Heart of Guns, Girls, and Ganja"--tells you his hellish holiday in Cambodia will unfold more like a gonzo rant from Hunter S. Thompson than an erudite essay by Paul Theroux.

The first time Gilboa hit Phnom Penh was on a side trip from neighboring Vietnam for a quick visa extension. He returned in 1996, scribbling notes, keeping journals, dodging bullets. He befriended a group of dope-smoking, sex-obsessed slackers who worked as English teachers, hanging out with them as they visited degrading brothel villages and chomped away at pot pizzas while trying to avoid AK-47 attacks. He noted how the serenity of the Buddhist wats contrasted with the stench of the city's slums and the bursts of automatic gunfire. "Cambodia is like you're always tripping," one female teacher warned him at the onset of his journey, and she wasn't referring to stumbling on the sidewalk.

Under not-so-subtle chapter headings like "Lawlessness" and "Drugs," Gilboa spins a fascinating if somewhat fractured tale about a beautiful country whose people have been ravaged by decades of turmoil. His main characters may be the unsavory crew of stoned "sex-pats" who indulge their libidos with two-dollar hookers. But the real villains here are Cambodia's so-called leaders, who turned the once-spiritual haven into a bedlam of decadence and violence. Fortunately, there's enough historical and social perspective to give meaningful context to the tawdry sleaze that drips off the pages. What could have been a merely exploitative book can also be read as a lesson about the country's exploited victims.

As a writer, Gilboa is a better observer than he is a stylist. Much of his story reads like the raw notes of a wannabe journalist as he frantically describes the mayhem swirling around him. At times he resorts to listing various quotes from his teacher buddies, or seemingly transcribes one of their rambling, brutal monologues about "shagging" a young prostitute--word for word, in lurid detail. Forget about nuanced, three-dimensional characters here; aside from our humble narrator, there isn't a memorable fellow in the bunch, just a parade of freaks who blur together in a haze of marijuana smoke, gunpowder and flopsweat.
Perhaps unintentionally, the funniest portions of the book depict the author as an intrepid anthropologist determined to examine the debauchery first-hand--purely for the sake of "field research." Margaret Mead would not be amused. By the time he begins devouring slices of Merry Jane's "extra-happy" pizza toppings, he shucks all pretense and waxes about the "unique, if not delicious, culinary experience" that leaves him crawling on all fours. Bloodshot yet wide-eyed, Gilboa claims innocence throughout his stay, even as he racks up bar bills that read "Beer-$4, Juice-$2, Girl-$4." Still, with its mix of random jottings, bizarre character sketches and diary entries, Gilboa's account plunges readers into the center of the Khmer storm.
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Text of Review from the South China Morning Post

Saturday April 3 1999

High life in Cambodia
Kavitha Rao meets author Amit Gilboa, who chronicles the lurid exploits of expatriates in Phnom Penh in his debut work.
There is a beast in all of us, but in Cambodia that beast is let out into the open,' says 30-year-old of the country he calls a 'fiction writer's dream'. The Bangkok-based Gilboa's debut book, Off The Rails In Phnom Penh, is not a work of fiction, however, even though it reads like one. It is a racy, disturbing, fantastic, and sometimes funny account of the exploits of a motley group of expatriates in 1990s Phnom Penh, who spend their days visiting $2 brothels, eating ganja-topped pizzas, snorting heroin and shooting rockets at firing ranges.
'Everyone comes to Cambodia for either guns, girls or ganja,' said one of these expats to Gilboa when he first arrived in Phnom Penh in 1996. That sets the down-and-dirty tone for the book, divided into chapters with titles such as 'Sex', 'Drugs', 'Guns' and 'Lawlessness'.
'Cambodia is a place where the usual restraints on behaviour - legal, financial, social - are noticeably absent,' Gilboa writes of the atmosphere of easy girls and easy drugs.
At first glance, Gilboa seems an unlikely person to write such an explicit book. Slight, soft-spoken and self-deprecating, he was born in Israel to Jewish parents and emigrated at a young age to the United States, where he had 'a very suburban upbringing' in Albany, New York. Bored with his routine job as a banking consultant in Washington DC, he left for Vietnam three years ago to start a windsurfing resort.
When that did not work out, he switched to business journalism. The idea for Off The Rails was a 'fortunate accident' which arose when Gilboa visited Phnom Penh on a visa run in September 1996. Fascinated, he ended up making several more trips, even braving the bloody coup in July 1997.
Arriving in Phnom Penh's notorious Majestic guesthouse, Gilboa was stunned by the manner in which expat teachers, businessmen and ex-soldiers 'talked explicitly of their exploits in brothels like they were talking about a day at work, and of taking heroin like they were drinking coffee'. And it is all depicted in Off The Rails. There are tales of men bragging about forcing 16-year-old prostitutes into anal sex, comparing 'shags' to 'going into combat', and spending whole days in the 'assembly line' of brothels.
Most horrifying is the revelation that many of these educated expats do not use condoms. Writes Gilboa, 'The same Cambodian environment that enables them to shed their inhibitions against buying sex from young girls makes them lose their instinct for self-preservation as well.' Gilboa is careful not to impose his own values on the book. 'There is a moral shift in Cambodia; people's values change almost overnight. I could have written the book with every sentence beginning 'I can't believe this is happening!' That might have appealed to Americans, but that would not have represented the reactions of a normal guy living in Phnom Penh.' This book is not intended as an appeal to conscience, he adds. 'I wrote it for an American audience because all that most Americans know about Cambodia is Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge. If, when reading the book, they are reminded that Cambodia deserves more attention or more aid from the US because of what we did to them, that would be great, but I didn't want to be sanctimonious.' Gilboa was not immune to the moral 'shift' either. In one of the more disturbing chapters, he pays for oral sex with a young prostitute as part of his 'field research'.

Afterwards, he struggles with his conscience, wondering whether he has used the girl or indeed helped her to support her poverty-stricken family. 'It doesn't take a monster to be tempted by a pretty girl in Cambodia,' says Gilboa now.

As for reactions to the book, Gilboa says most of the expats who left after the coup were either amused or indifferent.
But some also describe it as sensationalist and titillating. 'It concentrates on sex at a time [during the coup] when thousands of people were being blown apart,' says one long-time resident of Cambodia.
The brothel-hopping chapter is the longest, but Gilboa points out the book's foreword specifies it is not 'representative of the general expat population in Cambodia'.

'It isn't fair to say that everyone in Phnom Penh is like the expats I wrote about,' Gilboa says. 'But it is because Phnom Penh is the way it is that people like those expats can exist and even thrive, like they couldn't anywhere else. Only in Phnom Penh are there street after street of brothels, people bragging . . . about the comparative merits of girls, and students inviting their teachers to visit the brothels with them.
'Brothel-hopping does happen in Vietnam and Thailand, but no one talks about it. Sure, there are several expats who lead normal lives, go to work, and have steady girlfriends; is it unfair of me not to write about them? No, because I didn't want to write a book about residents who lead a life similar to every other person on the planet.' The book is not all wine and women, however. There are some fascinating tales of chaotic everyday life in Phnom Penh: the summoning of fire trucks by firing guns in the air, the ludicrous award of a peace prize to Cambodian leader Hun Sen by an unknown body called the World Peace Corps, and Gilboa's risky overland crossing into Cambodia after the coup.

In all too brief chapters, Gilboa also touches on Cambodian history and life among the Khmers. These, though, seem almost to be footnotes to the racier portions.

While Gilboa repeatedly expresses his admiration for Khmer culture, much of the input is from Western expats talking about how the Khmers are 'a mystery' and 'impossible to understand', chiefly due to their non-Western beliefs in reincarnation, curses and evil spirits. 'The Khmer perspective is missing from the book, not because I didn't think it was important, but because I could not get anyone to explain the Khmer psyche, not even long-time residents or Khmers with whom I was on friendly terms,' concedes Gilboa, who speaks Khmer.

'There was a much bigger gap in understanding than language. I just didn't feel qualified to go too deeply into the Khmer culture and way of life. It's not meant to be an anthropological book.' In the book, Gilboa predicts a bleak future for Cambodia, but says he has become less pessimistic since. 'Though I don't approve of Hun Sen's government, it seems to be stable enough,' he says.

'Cambodia has been dismembered because of the constant factionalism, with every political party selling out to either Vietnam or Thailand to gain power. If Hun Sen is able to quash these factions and provide a stable government, then there may be at least some progress. If Cambodian kids can go to school without having to brave gunfire, they could at least learn to read and write, even if it is only to sing odes to Hun Sen.' Who is to blame for the mess Cambodia is in? Gilboa thinks Cambodian politicians are the chief villains, although he concedes that some of the blame should go to the US and Vietnam for their military actions in the region.

'Government officials everywhere are willing to make a few bucks, but in Cambodia corruption goes way beyond that, almost to the level of treason. If its leaders were of a higher quality, then all the machinations in the world wouldn't be able to wreck Cambodia. Still, after the coup, there is an attempt to make the government efficiently corrupt instead of randomly corrupt like it was before,' Gilboa says. 'And that, maybe, is the best that Cambodia can hope for right now.'

Off The Rails In Phnom Penh, Into The Dark Heart Of Guns, Girls And Ganja, Asia Books, $10

Text of review from The Nation

A not-so innocent abroad
Reviewed by Simon Johnstone

A young man setting himself up in business journalism in Saigon goes on a visa run to Phnom Penh a couple of years ago and finds that not all there is as it is in Pittsburg [sic], Pennsylvania.

So unlike is it, in fact, that he goes back, again and again, to try and makes sense of the wicked, topsy-turvy world he find there.

He is horrified. He is fascinated. He is hooked. He tries the drugs, but his cultural roots stop him (just) short of trying the hookers in any but the most Clintonian sense.

"I have," he says on page 107, "enough perspective to fear that I do not have enough perspective." Which is fair.

He is, though shrewd, and does not tell the reprobates he milks for information that he is going to publish it and make a lot of money out of it. To give them their due, they probably wouldn't have cared if he had. And to give the author his due, he deserves to make the money. The book is phenomenal. On a scale of the amount of muck raked it must come very high in the annals of reportage.

Lest you, the discriminating shelf-browser, be in anything like two minds about the subject matter, the book is subtitled "Into the Dark Heart of Guns, Girls, and Ganja." Via his chosen sources, who range from the wry to the wrecked - "I often wondered whether Cambodia destabilized otherwise rational people, or whether dysfunctional characters were naturally drawn here as if to a magnet." (page 131) - the author elaborates a grim catechism of what happens when even a country with a long and distinguished history casts of almost every restraint. (The reference to Conrad is intentional).

But why should Cambodia have undergone his macabre transmogrification and Vietnam not? Pol Pot and the lack of him, you and I would answer glibly. Whilst subscribing to this to some extent, Gilboa is more general: "The Khmers," he reflect on page 25, "consider the Vietnamese devious swindlers, and the Vietnamese, consider the Khmers disorganized primitives. The problem is that...both view are correct."

Some of what he details cuts near the bone in Thailand too, as when he quotes one of his sources on Cambodian religious ethics:

"'That's part of the problem with Khmer politics,' Joe states. 'Whatever happens they can justify it with karma and reincarnation. I mean, some government official sells off a huge chunk of forest. Either he was very good in his past life and the bribe from the lumber company's his reward in this life, or he's evil and he'll be reborn a slug in his next life. They just don't have the incentive to see justice right here, right now. I mean, if karma and Buddha will take of it, why should I risk my life now? If Hun Sen is being a bastard, Buddha will punish him for it. We don't need to.'"

What of the author's moral stance on this hotbed of morbid psychology? He is, to begin with, attracted, later repelled, then frightened for his own values - too little questioned previously, on suspects - and at last bored:

"Suffice it to say that Cambodia is a wonderful place to meet many "interesting' people. I found, though, that after a while this constant stream of human wreckage actually became tedious." (page 133). Many a committed rake's progress has taken this path; it is less commonly so with the rakes' chroniclers.

The book which was the end product of this immersion in a subworld is by turns attractive, repulsive and frightening but never boring. I found it hard to put down, and will never forget it.

Degeneracy may be repellent or glorious or both, and all find their place in Gilboa's pages. How appropriate of him to be named after a catastrophic biblical battle.

Text of Review in Bangkok Metro

Holiday in Cambodia

Wanna play Cowboys and Cambodians in a wild west frontier town? Author Amit Gilboa talks to Ian Crawshaw about his first book Off the Rails in Phnom Penh

Subtitled Into the Dark Heart of Guns Girls and Ganja, the debut work of young writer Amit Gilboa is a helter-skelter low-life travelogue through that neighboring madhouse named Phnom Penh. A book easy for old hands to dismiss as immature or na�ve, it's invigorating, exciting, packed full of fun and infectious youthful exuberance. Hell, who wouldn't want to be a young white male in '90s Phnom Penh?

"Jobs are so easy to find and keep in Cambodia that going into work stoned, drunk, or having been up all night whoring is not going to affect your career prospects," explain Amit, about the international gen-x'ers and white trash �migr�s. "Sure you can get laid or stoned in Vietnam or Thailand, but the police are going to be on your ass at the slightest excuse. This is simply not a factor in Phnom Penh (or at best a tiny one if you're going to be doing nine-year-olds)."

Stories and tales in Off the Rails are pretty strong, even by Bangkok standards - for a "29 year old product of standard American white suburban middle class upbringing", Amit's life experiences are unusual. On a whim, he studied briefly in China, where he became "absolutely fascinated by this huge country...Ever since that semester in China, I've been interested in the region..."

Born in Israel to a Russian father, he was raised in US suburbia, but his first taste of Asia convinced him to quit his job in Washington DC and head out to 'Nam. His dream of starting a windsurfing resort quickly stagnated into nine-to-five teaching. "I finally got fed up with all the hassles of life in Vietnam. I found myself called by the wilds of Cambodia, and moved there..."

Who are these stragglers and drifters who willingly move to such a crazy self-destructive town as Phnom Penh? "Eccentric people are drawn to Cambodia, but once there, they turn into freaks..." Amit feels, "Cambodia definitely attracts people looking to exercise the fullest expression of their desires for guns, girls and ganja. Whatever constraints held them back in the past are totally absent and they run amok..."

Amit's characters are not skilled multi-national company professionals on expat packages, they're English teachers, freelance 'writers' and business wannabes - all sharing a lifestyle bordering on suicidal. "Basically, whatever eccentricities, quirks, or foibles people bring to Cambodia are magnified there. Cambodia definitely attracts people who would have a hard time making it anywhere else. People who cannot keep up with the standards of Thai English schools and find themselves constantly spurned by girls in go-go bars (in Thailand) - they'll have no trouble getting themselves work and sex in Cambodia."

Don't read Off the Rails expecting the usual Vietnam-obsessed apologies of guilt-ridden ex-GIs. Amit's from a different generation. "Our involvement in Vietnam, and the upheaval which resulted is clearly, to use the cliched phrase, a stain on the history of this country. But if America created the opportunity for, as William Shawcross puts it, "the destruction of Cambodia", then Cambodian (and Vietnamese, and Thai, and Chinese) actors vigorously seized the opportunity to destroy Cambodia...We (The US) didn't create the unimaginable corruption of Lon Nol, nor did we create the Khmer Rouge monstrosities, nor the subsequent Vietnamese colonization of Cambodia, nor the feelings of resistance against Vietnamese occupation, nor the obscene corruption and factionalism that have characterized Cambodian politics in recent years. There is more than enough blame to go around."

Amit Gilboa has just returned to Bangkok to live with his Thai girlfriend, ("After Phnom Penh, drinking coffee in a San Francisco caf� just lacks a bit of punch") but won't be settling in Phnom Penh anytime soon. "It is very hard to be optimistic about Cambodia"considers Amit. "Hun Sen will position himself at the top...each person in the power structure will allow rampant corruption...smuggling marijuana, denuding the forests, collecting money from brothels and illegal casinos, collaborating with foreign business interests, and a whole host of other activities that do nothing to help Cambodia. Decrepit schools will place the country in permanent second-class status in the world, AIDS cuts down a whole generation of Cambodians in their prime, and Cambodia just falls further behind. I find the whole thing really depressing given how terrific ordinary Cambodians are and how deep and rich their culture is."

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Text of Article in The Bangkok Post

Sweet Smell of Success
Profile: Amit Gilboa is the author of the best seller 'Off the Rails in Phnom Penh', a story of his wild expereicnes among the hedonsitic expats in Cambodia's capital

by Joshua Kurlanzick

After working in what he calls "Relatively standard jobs�consulting, business, that sort of thing" in the United States for several years, Amit Gilboa realised that "it would be really easy to get settled into this business lifestyle, find it comfortable, and wake up 20 years from now."

So in 1995 he quiet American corporate life and headed for Vietnam , at the time on the most popular expatriate destinations in the world. After deciding against opening a windsurfing resort in Vietnam and making a halting start at opening an English-language school in Ho Chi Minh City, Mr Gilboa gave up on Vietnam and made his way to Cambodia = where "a whole new world awaited me."

Mr Gilboa arrived in Cambodia hoping to open a vegetarian restaurant in Phnom Penh. Sensing that the restaurant would likely fail, he abandoned the idea, started learning Khmer, and began writing articles about Phnom Penh in March 1997. Within a couple of months, after leaving Cambodia following the coup in 1997, he realised that while he enjoyed writing articles about Cambodia's wild capital, he really wanted to turn his journals and writings on his experiences in a book. Thus, Off the Rails in Phnom Penh was born.

Although he admits that "many expatriates in Cambodia think I was there undercover the whole time," Mr Gilboa says that "it was not as premeditated as that. I just was so entranced with the Phnom Penh expat culture that I wrote about for myself�I was just there, seeing all this craziness, such vivid lives�anyone could have written about the wildness there, the story virtually wrote itself. I then conceived the book later, after the coup, living in Bangkok."

What was so entrancing about expatriate life in Phnom Penh? While repeatedly cautioning that he by no means hopes to describe all the foreigners in Cambodia, throughout the book, Mr Gilboa describes living, playing and working with a segment of the expatriate population in Cambodia which regularly indulges in sex with young girls, teaches at English-language schools while strung out on heroin, eats pizza topped with marijuana, and goes to the local shooting range to fire off late-model rocket launchers.

Apart from the lifestyle, Mr Gilboa also notes that the city and the country themselves have a certain fascination: "Phnom Penh and Cambodia are so engaging. Whether it's the history, the politics, or the ganja and the heroin, you will find something that engages you there. It is not possible not to be engaged - - everyone's mind is occupied with something to do with Cambodia�it is so vibrant, in a way I have not seen anywhere."

Continuing, he remarks that, "Because the country is so engaging in so many ways, some foreigners tend to lose perspective while there - and do things they might otherwise not consider doing. Also, in Phnom Penh an atmosphere of zero peer pressure prevails. A lot of what keeps people in line is peer pressure, and in certain circles in Phnom Penh that is not a factor�you can do anything and not really be judged. The day I arrived in Phnom Penh a number of Westerners were telling me about guns, girls, and ganja without the slight qualms or hints of shame. These things are all in front of you so fast there."

Thus characters in Off the Rails do drugs before work, grab a "quickie" in tone of Phnom Penh's many brothels between classes, and return at night to the guesthouses in which they live to discuss their various exploits.

Mr Gilboa believes that to write an effective book "it was essential that I not judge morality in Cambodia. I could partake in smoking pot, going to brothels, or doing other things or not, but I could not pressure anyone to change their lifestyle there. It is just not done, and I would have been ostracised and ultimately had no book if I did."

How have friends that Mr Gilboa met in Phnom Penh reacted to the publication of Off the Rails? The author admits that "my book is sensationalism, to some extent� but Phnom Penh is a sensational place, and some people there live a sensational lifestyle, which makes for such a style of writing."

Furthermore, he allows that the "overall impression I give of Westerners in Phnom Penh is probably negative for most readers�even though I state clearly that I do not mean to describe the whole Western or Khmer populations."

However, Mr Gilboa used aliases in the book to protect people's privacy, and generally "has gotten a good reaction from many people who have lived in Cambodia and left, including the main characters in the book who no longer live in the country."

The author notes that a few "lifers" - long-time Western residents of Phnom Penh - have been upset with some sections of the book, and AFP wire services recently reported that a few of the "lifers" have threatened Mr Gilboa's life.

The author, who recently appeared on the TV shows Morning Talk and Destination: Thailand, is currently promoting Off the Rails - his first book - and writing articles about Cambodia.