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

~ (Author) "Phnom Penh is an anarchic festival of cheap prostitutes, cheap drugs, and frequent violence..." (more)
Key Phrases: visa run, grenade attack, Phnom Penh, Viet Nam, Hun Sen (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"There is a beast in all of us, but in Cambodia that beast is let out into the open," says Amit Gilboa 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 1990's Phnom Penh, who spend their days visiting $2 brothels, eating ganja-topped pizzas, snorting heroin and shooting rockets at firing ranges. -- South China Morning Post, April 4, 1999. By Kavitha Rao

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.

Gilboa spins a fascinating if somewhat fractured tale about a beautiful country whose people have been ravaged by decades of turmoil.

With its mix of random jottings, bizarre character sketches and diary entries, Gilboa's account plunges readers into the center of the Khmer storm. -- Time Magazine, February 1, 1999. By Jeffrey Ressner

The book is phenomenal. On a scale of the amount of muck raked it must come very high in the annals of reportage... The book...is by turns attractive, repulsive and frightening but never boring. I found it hard to put down, and will never forget it. -- The Nation, Bangkok, August 30, 1998. By Simon Johnstone

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 nave, it's invigorating, exciting, packed full of fun and infectious youthful exuberance. -- Bangkok Metro Magazine, September 1998. By Ian Crawshaw

Product Description

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, Phnom Penh Journey follows them into the dark heart of guns, girls and ganja.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 206 pages
• Publisher: Asia Books; 7th edition (July 25, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9748303349
• ISBN-13: 978-9748303345
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #645,197 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars mm, book on Cambodia besides Angkor Wat or the Khmer Rouge?, February 25, 2002

By	J. San (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

Wanna hear what a Khmer girl thinks about this book? (First, just to clarifyIm not a prostitute and having white skin is not my greatest goal in life). For other readers, I hope they dont make the fatal assumption that this book gives them insight about Khmer people. Classifying people beyond your understanding is a good excuse to avoid getting to know them. Whos primitive and superstitious is all relative, right? The author doesnt really make an attempt to get to know any Khmer people, besides listening to My Khmer girlfriendshe so crazy stories. As for his research at the brothels, it doesnt count! After watching the wretchedly horrible Tomb Raider movie, the stuff that foreigners get away with in Cambodia doesnt surprise me. (If I sat in front of a monk with my legs cross a la Angelina Jolie, my mother would go into convulsions). The ex-pats characters in the book are really lousy people by anyones definition. So the question is, what is it about brown people that make perfectly sane white peoples hearts turn dark all of the sudden? The answer is simply theyre lousy people in the first place. Like gossip columns, stories about girls, guns and ganja make for a good read. Take it for whats it worth. For me, its not a whole lot. It was more depressing that informational. Wished I picked up a book on the Khmer Rouge instead.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I Laughed out Loud, January 28, 2002

By A Customer

If you've traveled through SE Asia and find amusement in those expats who have been on the road a bit too long, marveling at their ability to lead lives without a moral compass or care in the world, this book is for you.

Gilboa weaves funny and well-written accounts of expats in Phnom Penh whom many would regard as having "lost it" --accustomed to recreational heroin use, $2 prostitutes and daily bribery. Many of them cannot readjust back to their old lives in the west, a feeling many a traveler can relate to after having been to such developing places as Cambodia.

The book reinforces the saying that truth is stranger (and I would add amusing) than fiction. Gilboa also describes accurately the comic absurdity and pathetic state that Cambodia is today -- politically and day-to-day life.

Overall a hilarious, lighthearted look at the "wild west" mentality of modern Phnom Penh, with an informing overview of Cambodia's modern political history.

One last note: If you've (a) never been to a developing country such as Cambodia and (b) are scared by drug use and prostitution, you may find this book more disturbing than amusing.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captures Phnom Penh, April 9, 2000

By	William Sonla (Bangkok) - See all my reviews

As a Thai raised in Bangkok and educated in NYC, I thought I had seen it all. But working in Phnom Penh threw even me for a loop. What's great about Off the Rails is that it captures the anarchy that Phnom Penh is full of. And Gilboa captures the essence of the sexed out, drugged out foreigners that we see all the time in Thailand and who now have "discovered" Cambodia. Off the Rails doesn't dwell on the mundane aspects of Phnom Penh, but goes straight to the heart of the story. I read the book in one sitting. It's funny some of the "professional journalists" (who haven't published any books on Cambodia) on this site complain about the writing. But the straightforward style works really well for this story. I suppose it wasn't written like (yawn) the New York Times would have. But maybe that's the whole point. I do wish that Gilboa could have included more about the Cambodians. Anyway, I hope he writes another book, but this one about the terrible things that go on in places like Thailand's own Pattaya.