Nine Phnom Penh Bars You Can No Longer Drink In
So given that persuading the average expatriate urbanite to drink vast quantities of beer involves no marketing genius whatsoever, the number of bars that have gone to the wall over the years has been somewhat surprising.
None of these bars listed below are in robust good health. In fact, they’re all long gone and whilst some committed voluntary euthanasia, others definitely had their suicides assisted.
Apocalypse Now
Classy chicks, cheap drinks and a level pool table were just three things this bar didn’t have during its notably peripatetic existence travelling to and fro along St 63 and thereabouts.
On entering the darkened room, one would be greeted by urine-coloured floor tiles, a wonky pool table and a number of unhappy looking Vietnamese girls scattered about the moth eaten sofas or busily engaged in pampering, petting, smoothing, and smooching the battle-hardened whoremongers, silver swingers and other non-functioning and indigent expat inhabitants of the city who were dumped on stools next to a plywood bar.
Presiding over this was a wheezy and degenerate pastis guzzling owner looking every inch the sleazy French pimp. He was a titan amongst bar owners (but only if we drop the last two letters) and a typical story involved an acquaintance of mine buying the man a beer so as to practise his French – and then being charged for a $3.50 ladydrink.
Rumour had it that punters who couldn’t afford to shell out $5 for a trip to the short time room received the answer, ‘you do me in the toilet.’
All this combined to leave a desolate impression reeking of low end commercial sex and stale flatulence.
Reason Closed? The owner was sent to jail for trafficking.
Tom’s Irish Bar
Close to the Sihanouk/ St 63 junction, Tom’s was a highly agreeable corner bar with a terrace that managed to catch a late afternoon through wind and resembled one those Irish theme pubs to be found everywhere in the UK – except that it was thousands of miles away in the tropics.
The walls were adorned with camán’s, dusty sepia photographs from Gaelic football matches gone by and other assorted Irish nick-nacks. A couple of genial hounds had the run of the place and the cheery owner was usually in attendance.
Tom’s would be alien territory for the new breed of snobby, young trustafarian NGO types, yet an older breed of NGO workers were this bar’s core clientèle – people who arrived in Cambodia when it wasn’t such a sexy and fashionable travel venue of choice for twenty-something vultures with sociology degrees.
Reason closed? Tom passed away.
George’s Nightclub and Kebab House
Owned by a Lebanese chap (‘choose wisely my friend but the fat one is mine’) this proposed behemoth of a bar sat astride the Wat Phnom traffic circle (these days the haunt of ladyboys and not much else).
Intriguingly George’s tried to go head to head with the Heart for the elusive late night freelance dancing ladies custom and this high risk strategy actually worked during that time the Heart was closed for renovations.
Whilst everything was going to plan there would often be a multitude of steel panther SUVs crouching outside, and inside one would find wealthy Khmer men yakking nonsense while slurping jumbo jugs of Angkor beer, local manikin dusky disco dollies cavorting around poles and lots of old white blokes watching the disco dollies, jaws agape.
Yet even then, one had the feeling the George was getting a little over-extended by ill-advisedly spending the GNP of Laos on the world’s most expensive juicer and not much less on importing a state of the art kebab machine that for some reason wouldn’t work in Cambodia
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