April and Pub Quiz Night

So here we are in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia and a strange city of contrasts.

Last night, Monday, I went to an ex-pat bar called ‘The Peace Café’ it is the nearest ex-pat bar - but not the nearest bar – to my humble little flat.

Now the Peace Café has been open for a number of years both here and at a previous location. It is run by an incredibly diminutive Englishman called David, who can just about see over his own bar.
Like many ex-pat bar owners here in this city he is a former English teacher who having made a pile of cash teaching middleclass Khmer children English decided to marry a Khmer woman and open a bar – I know of at least 5 bar owners that fit this description and I have only been here a few months !

The bar has a dark, slightly seedy and down at heel feel to it. Dimly lit with tattered books and pamphlets scattered around and David’s own dark and abstract artwork hanging on the walls. Reminding me simultaneously of Munch crossed with a six year-old with a crayon set.

Most times that I have been in there I have usually been the only customer, but Monday evening, in that great British tradition, is Pub Quiz night. On Mondays you can expect to find 40 or 50 people crammed into this tiny hole-in-the-wall bar and for US$1 each they enter the ‘pointy head pub quiz’ the winner of which takes all the cash.
Now US$40 or US$50 is a lot of money here in Cambodia. It would take a Khmer police officer 2 months to earn that much money (not including his bribes and extortion) so everyone is taking it very seriously.

Even so, it does seem slightly surreal to be sat in this strange bar on a Monday evening here in the heart of Phnom Penh competing in a pub quiz answering questions about British soap-operas and when was the Queens official birthday.
Even more so considering it was about 35ºC yesterday evening!

But there we were, my team the ‘VSO Very Irregulars’ romping into the lead. When we get around to the last round, the last series of 10 questions, now these rounds change every week so as to make it more ‘interesting’ …

Well, the topic for this round turned out to be a music questions, name the song and the artist.
Not to bad we thought, should do okay with this, have a good cross-sections of ages in the team, will cover quite a range of music.

Then the MC announces that they will all be classic rock songs we are not feeling to worried, covers a lot of ground but we are confident.

Then he announces that the songs will be all be classic rock CAMBODIAN hits and that Barry the great hairy arsed builder from Wolverhampton - complete with football shirt, tattoos and bum-cleavage - would be whistling the songs for us.

Well, as one might imagine, we did not do to well in that round. In fact out of a possible 10 points we scored about as well as the Finnish entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest – VSO nil points.

So I can tell you, coming in second to a team of American women – who luckily for them had a Khmer girl on the team – really really hurts.

Still, we will just have to get our own back on them next week.

I can see this becoming a regular thing.

Regards All

More booze filled tales from South East Asia soon.

Darren

N.B.
The Peace Café can be found on 63rd Street, half a block South of the intersection with 360th Street