Cambodia - Phnom Penh

By David Ellis

Take a movie-star tour past the homes and haunts of celluloid’s most famous in most any city in the world and you can bet your guide will be a chatterbox more bent on impressing you with how much they know, without actually sharing much of it with you.

And chances are you’ll see nary a star nor even a B-grade extra during your tour, this being explained away as “most unusual because on all our other tours we’ve always seen at least one star – sometimes two or three.” Yeah…

But on a recent trip to Cambodia a travel-writer mate, Roderick Eime got more than he bargained for when he sought to do a location tour of where the gritty “City of Ghosts” was made.

And he hoped that whoever he did the tour with could also tell him the inside story of local actor Sereyvath Kem, and his extraordinary rags-to-riches rise to movie stardom.

But instead Rod found himself being given the tour, not by a movie-tour guide nor even a studio PR lady – but by the movie’s Sereyvath Kem himself.

“Its something you dream to do, but know simply cannot happen,” says Rod. “And Srah – as he’s known locally – was anything but the big-headed movie star as we scurried around Phnom Penh, me clinging tenaciously on the back of his moped.”

Srah’s movie-life story began when was working as a taxi tout on a Phnom Penh street and a studio team arrived looking for extras for “City of Ghosts.” He joined the scrum of clamouring locals, and found himself chosen to play the role of Sok, a local cyclo driver in the film that was to be directed by and star Hollywood heartthrob, Matt Dillon along with James Caan and Gérard Depardieu

If you're heading to Phnom Penh, rent the movie first so you’ve a feel for the city with its proud but crumbling French architecture, and dusty hurly burly streets that have little changed from when the movie was shot eight years.

A journalistic sleuth, Rod Eime had first tracked down another local cast into the movie plot, Michael Hayes an ex-pat American who lobbed in Phnom Penh in 1991 to start the Phnom Penh Post newspaper. Hayes in turn put Rod in touch with the delightfully-named Hurley Scroggins who runs a local Mexican restaurant, Cantina.

“So you're looking for Srah?” asks Hurley when Rod arrives, and picks up the phone. “Srah, there's this journo here from – where was it? – Australia. Wants to chat.”

And next morning Rod finds himself on the back of Srah’s moped, being run around the film’s shooting locations, with Srah trotting out his lines at appropriate sites.

All great fun, Rod says, but he’s more interested in Srah’s story.

Polite and communicative, the 43-year old says he has a wife and two young children… but like so many Cambodians trying to create lives for themselves, is haunted by the history of the Khmer Rouge from the mid-1970s.

His father, a doctor, was a target for the despotic regime that sought to erase Cambodia's history and its academics and educated. After avoiding detection for several years Srah's father was eventually arrested; the family disintegrated and Srah and his brother went to an orphanage for 10 years, before he returned to Phnom Penh in 1990 looking for work.

As Srah and Rod zip around Phnom Penh, Rod can't resist the urge to recreate one of the movie’s iconic shots: the injured Dillon in the front of Srah’s cyclo-cab after his attack, but ironically finds Srah has never worked with a cyclo – and had to learn to ride one for his movie role.

Thanks to the film and a trickle of on-going movie work, Srah now owns a flat  and a Toyota sedan for high-end tours for those wanting to see the city and countryside through the eyes of a local.

If you’re heading to Cambodia and want a fascinating and reasonably-priced tour of where “City of Ghosts” was made  – with your guide the movie’s co-star himself – Rod says to email Srah on mrsoksrash@hotmail.com

Vietnam Airlines flies to Phnom Penh daily from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and has daily flights from both Sydney and Melbourne four times per week. See: www.vietnamair.com.vn or call 1300 888 028.