And you can rent them out in the meantime ;) -Bob
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For a Vacation That's a Real Blast, How About Launching a Grenade?
By PICHAYAPORN UTUMPORN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
PHNOM PENH -- The only privately owned firing range in Cambodia is shooting for a tourist boom.
For just $20 a pop, vacationers can try out a grenade launcher. It costs even less to rent an M-16, Ruger, Smith & Wesson, Makarov K59, Tokarev K54, Glock, Beretta, .357 Magnum, Uzi or AK-47.
"We want to bring out a little boy in everybody," says Victor Chao, the managing director and part owner of the club, which opened on Christmas Eve.
The Marksmen Club is only a few minutes from the genocide memorial of Choeung Ek, the "killing fields" where Khmer Rouge commanders executed their Cambodian prisoners in the 1970s. From the outside, it looks like a military encampment. Towering fences are capped with barbed wire. A tank aims its barrel squarely through the entranceway.
The grounds feature a T-54 tank, which Mr. Chao said was left by Russian troops during the Vietnam War, and an M-42 anti-aircraft tank used by Americans. He's awaiting the delivery of a Russian MiG-21 jet fighter and a U.S. helicopter promised him by Cambodia's air force. The vehicles will make "a very symbolic display of foreign influence in Cambodia," he says.
Setting up the club wasn't easy, Mr. Chao says, given Cambodia's violent history. To clear away objections, he has promised to share profits with the government, hire 250 Cambodians for the construction and operation, build a school and a hospital and provide the community with electricity and water.
So far, Mr. Chao says the investment has cost him and his senior partner, an Indonesian-Chinese businessman, $880,000. Whether it will turn a profit remains to be seen.
Sporadic fighting since a July coup has been scaring away tourists, and the slump in Southeast Asian economies has prompted those remaining to spend less. "Everybody is cutting down on the luxury of their lives," Mr. Chao notes.
Spending $20 for a personal experience with a grenade launcher may not seem unreasonable, but prices can escalate with rapid-firing weapons. Employees warn customers not to be trigger-happy with the machine guns. "The bill can easily go up to 30 bucks for keeping your finger on the trigger for three seconds," Mr. Chao says, because of the per-bullet cost.
"Sometimes people cry when they see the bill," he says. |
