Panic on the streets

It’s official – there’s a 48–hour alcohol ban in Cambodia this weekend to coincide with the elections. People have had a nasty habit of getting drunk and shooting each other in past elections, so all pubs, clubs and shops have to hide their booze. Watch out for panic buying from the liquor stores on Friday afternoon and confused-looking Westerners wandering the streets on Saturday with only watermelon shakes to comfort them.

It’s going off at Preah Vihear. When Dave and I went there it was as peaceful and quiet a place as you could wish to be in, but now the Thai and Cambodian military have hundreds of troops building up on either side of the border, AK-47s hanging off shoulders, and people even talking about mounting machine guns on the road to Siem Reap in case of some last stand against a Thai invasion of Cambodia. This kind of thing is nothing new – Siem Reap means ‘Siam Defeated’ after all – but when the Thais have F-16s and thousands of soldiers on their side, and practically all of Cambodia’s tanks are sat in museums, the Thais appear to have the upper hand. That won’t stop Hun Sen saying he saw the Thais off with their tails between their legs by writing to the UN, which obviously means he needs to be reelected in case anyone else thinks about invading Cambodia.

I’m due to leave Cambodia on 2 August – that is, if there aren’t tanks on the runway of Siem Reap airport and Thai soldiers burning the hotels of Siem Reap to the ground.