Hashing Cambodian Style!

As many of you know I am an avid participant in any hash run I can manage to come across and find them to be an excellent way to meet people when you’re new to an area. So of course I had to try out the Hash run here in Phnom Penh yesterday. So I hopped on the internet, found the website and showed up at the old train station at 2:45 as requested about 5 minutes after getting there the hash wagon pulled up. These guys have this hash run stuff down to an art. They have an old produce truck with sponsorship banners (beer companies of course lol) on the sides that loads up all the runners every Sunday and drives them out to the run site. Now the drive takes about an hour to get out of town, as does any vehicle larger than set of roller blades, and the whole way out you get the most hilarious looks from the locals as you have a dump truck with about 50 white people drinking beer, driving through town. We got out to the run site, which like most other hashes is in the middle of nowhere, and all pile out for our run and take off along the path.


Our trusty hash steed!

The short run/walkers path heads one way and the long takes off the other. Now Cambodia as a country is almost entirely swamp, take any movie you’ve ever seen about Vietnam and that’s pretty much exactly what it looks like in the country side here. So we’re running for about 2k before our path trails off into a rice patty and we miss the marks showing to go the other way. So about 10 other runners(and of course myself) all take off through the rice patty maze attempting to stay on the berms separating the patties. Once were about 10 minutes and a kilometer off path the slower runners, which included the guy who set up the trail, go running by on the right path and we all start cursing and began making our way back. Then the path joined up with the walker’s path and soon ended at the water park. Now this is not your normal idea of a water park, remember this is the bottom of the Mekong River Delta and there are 5 other third world countries upstream from the water here, god only knows what lives in it. But in true hash fashion we all say screw it, pay the 75 cents to get in, guys drop to their boxers and girls to their undies and start hitting the slides(making certain to hold your mouth and pinch your nose closed when you go into the water of course lol). After everyone was pretty beat up (there were two Ausies who were convinced they could surf down the slides lol) we got together for the Hash circle afterwards. I got labeled as an illegal immigrant (because I had moved into their hash from another) and myself together with the hash virgins all got into the middle for our drinks and punishments. These guys are much more creative then the Hashers in Gabs or Ottawa ever hoped to be. One of their rituals is that the guys who set the run have to sit on a huge block of ice for the entire proceeding, resulting in testicle imprints in the ice when they got up(I don’t look forward to setting a hash here ever!).



Look mom I can slide!

Yes that is a toilet seat around his neck.

Poor little virgins all lined up and ready to drink!

Once all the goofy festivities were done then all 50 or so of us piled back into the truck and headed to town to find a restaurant. And since we're all done running and everyone is drinking pretty steadily now, well everyone’s getting a buzz going and getting much more rambunctious. Then it takes another hour or so to get to this sweet little Burmese restaurant which is completely unprepared for that many people to show up so it took a bit to get our food but the food was worth the wait(I’ve yet to have anything here that wasn’t delicious). By the end of the night I’d even managed to make a few friends with a couple of very interesting women who are lawyers down here from Germany and DC working as interns for the tribunals for the Khmer Rouge leaders, so I have found the type of good natured and dedicated people I like to hangout with. As well as a couple of pretty cool Ausie surf bums(yeah the two from the slide lol). All in all I think this town is going to fit me well and I am looking forward to many more runs with the P2H3 Danger Hashers and the rest of my year here in Cambodia.