28 Get Up & Go

CAMBODIA

Take a movie star tour past the homes and haunts of celluloid’s most famous in nearly 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, than actually sharing much of substance 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’. Sure…

But on a recent trip to Cambodia I got more than I bargained for when I decided to do a location tour of where the gritty 2002 movie City of Ghosts was made.

I was looking for someone to take me on a tour who could also tell me the

inside story of local actor Sereyvath Kem (pictured,) and his extraordinary rags-to-riches rise to stardom via this film.

I found myself being given the tour, not by a movie-tour guide nor even a studio PR person – but by the movie’s Sereyvath Kem himself.

It’s something I couldn’t imagine, but it came to be – 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 he 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 Hollywood star 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 ago.

On the back of Srah’s moped I was taken around the film’s locations, with Srah trotting out his lines at appropriate sites.

This was fun but I was 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.

Cyclo celeb

While Phnom Penh is still struggling to find its place in the 21st century, one local man has made his mark in the movies. Rod Eime talks to a star.

VNA_Vacation&Travel_146x210.indd1 1 22/7/10 1:09:26 PM

His father, a doctor, was a target for the despotic regime that sought to erase Cambodia’s history and its academics and educated populace. 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 zipped me around Phnom Penh I couldn’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. (Ironically Srah had never worked with a cyclo – and had to learn to ride one for his movie role.)

Thanks to the film and a trickle of ongoing

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

Travel facTsGetting there

2 Vietnam Airlines flies to Phnom Penh daily from Ho Chi Minh City and has daily flights from both Sydney and Melbourne four times per week.[@] Visit: www.vietnamair.com.vn m Tel: 1300 888 028.

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

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a fascinating and reasonably priced tour of where City of Ghosts was made – with your guide the movie’s co-star himself – email Srah on mrsoksrash@hotmail.com. •