Home on the Range: Phnom Penh

Think of the loudest bang you have ever heard.

Now, multiply that sound by ten.

Now, place that sound next to your ear.

Now make a tree explode.

That was the high point of my day.

The Phnom Penh Shooting Range is all over the web, though they don’t have their own web page. If you are anywhere in the city, the shooting range is pretty easy to get to. The shooting range has a wide selection of guns, many of which you can buy at 7-11 in America.

Just kidding.

I own guns. I know what they are capable of and treat them with respect.

I don’t own any grenades or rocket launchers. These I was very interested in checking out!

If you climb into any tuk-tuk in the city and tell them to take you to the shooting range, you are about 20 minutes or less from this:

If this is your sort of thing, you may also want to ask about the grenade and rocket range outside the city on a military base. That’s exactly what I did.

First off, if you are traveling South East asia, there are cheaper shooting ranges. Most of the prices people quoted online were about 1/2 of the actual price it cost when I got there. After a cursory glance at the gun wall I told my host, a middle aged paratrooper with a balding pate, to take me to the big guns; the Rocket Range.

We pulled up in the desert, on what appeared to be the back 9 of a military base and met with a midget at a padlocked building. The midget loaded a guitar case and some big looking guns into the back of the truck and we drove a bit further into the brush. We all got out and the midget started carrying guns out of the back of the truck along with the guitar case; El Mariachi.

After the guy from the range slid a large tube out of the guitar case, the midget loaded a strange conical device into one end and stood there; posing.

After a minute the midget handed me the tube; the M40. I got some brief directions from the paratrooper, and then this happened.

It’s not the sort of thing you see in movies. Those you can always see coming, with you Santa’s beard plume of smoke out the back and a rudolph nose. This one still felt like Christmas, though.

I’ve already told you how loud it was, but other than the noise, it was surprisingly tame; No huge recoil, no giant jetwash. I thought it was going to be difficult to hold on to, or that the tube would be super hot after it fired; it was nothing like that.

It was a once in a lifetime shot, though, as it was expensive enough that I won’t be looking to do it again any time soon. The shot itself was $350; much more than the $200 I heard it was. For the record, they offered to set up a cow for me to shoot at for $500, which I flatly refused. Everyone knows Cambodians can’t make a good hamburger.

Wrap Up:

Jump in any tuk-tuk or taxi in Phnom Penh and say shooting range. It’s about a 20 minute ride.

It’s not cheap. They have raised prices, so any prices you find online in blogs may be only 50% of the actual price. The big one is $350 at time of writing.

Chu Chi shooting range in Vietnam is much cheaper for machine guns if you are in the area, though no other range has the rockets and grenades.

The rocket range is another 40 minutes one-way from the gun range. Plan accordingly with your day.

You can’t officially buy a cow, chicken, goat, or water buffalo to shoot. However, money talks in Cambodia.