Adventures on the beaches and hills of Southern Cambodia

I had heard that Sihanoukville has a reputation of being a bit of the wild west of Cambodia and didn't attract too much for that reason. I just wanted a couple of days of doing nothing after all the restless sightseeing and travelling I had been doing in Cambodia. I had heard that there was a lovely island called Bamboo island off the coast so I was planning to go there rather than staying in the Sihanoukville. However, even if I took the very early bus and was in Sihanoukville by mid-day I soon realised my schedule was too tight for such a trip as there was only one connecting boat a day. So I was stuck in Sihanoukville and its more average beaches.

The motorbike driver kindly took me to a totally different place I had asked for, but as I was tired and the place was cheap and looked clean (a relative term as I found later two dead cockroaches from my room) I didn't bother to start arguing and decided to stay. I had a quick lunch and headed directly to the beach. It was busy in front of the hotels and I soon realised that I wouldn't have a moments rest from people trying to sell drinks, food, massages, shorts of whatever, so I walked more far away on the beach. My first thought was why on earth the people throw all they garbage on the back of the beach but soon understood that all the rubbish had come from the sea with the tide and no-one just bothered to take care and clean it away.

Never mind the litter, at least the sand was fine and white. I had a swim and set myself on the beach. An occasional seafood vendor tried to harass me but otherwise I was left alone. Until from somewhere appeared some six young boys, aged about 10. They surrounded my towel and came far too close for me too feel good. I asked them to leave but they were all talking at the same time and trying to direct my attention from my bag on which I was basically lying. Somehow, I have no idea how - they obviously were professionals - the boys managed to nick my wallet from the bag. Luckily I had read the warning sign at the guest house and left everything else except some cash (less than $10) at the room so the loss wasn't big. It was jus annoying and also a bit scary to notice that even if I new what they were after I couldn't stop them.

A Swedish couple next to me - still perhaps 50 meters away - had noticed what was happening and the girl came round. The little criminals have tried exactly the same with them. They had been able protect themselves better from the guys' little tricks - particularly the girl had been quite harsh with them and literally kicked them away. She and I decided to go to the boys who we could still see not so far away from us.

As we came closer most of them run away, but we managed to catch one and said that ok, we know all the faces but this one will go with us to meet the police. Eventually we needed to let him go - we didn't know where the police would be and it's no use to go and see the police in Cambodia anyway as you need to bribe them to even write the report for the stolen goods let alone that they would do something to catch the robbers.

There was one older boy, however, and we had a feeling that he was a leader of the gang even if he wasn't in the group going round the beach. So we threatened him a bit and he denied even knowing the boys. Eventually we decided it was all useless and returned with empty hands to our towels. The Swedish girl's boyfriend went still to talk to the older boy with a result that the Cambodian took a broken bottle from his pocket and threatened to kill the Swedish guy. So quite nice indeed there in the Sihanoukville beaches. I stayed for a while still but changed my towel much closer to the other people.

I obviously didn't feel too safe there and as I didn't want to go anywhere far from the hotel I got also bored quite quickly. I still decided to stay for another day as this was my one chance to see the sea for a while. In Vietnam there would be so much more to see that I wouldn't want to waste too much time on the beaches there. The second day was ok - I survived and even relaxed a bit. Luckily there was an Australian couple whom I knew already from the slow boat to Luang Prabang in Laos and they kept me company.

From Sihanoukville I wanted to continue to Kampot, a quiet riverside town towards the Vietnam border. The only way to make the two hour trip was by a shared taxi. Easy enough, I thought, and booked it. Well, it wasn't, even if the trip was supposed to take only for an hour or two. Firstly, we heard there would be four people in the back and two in the front. Slowly we collected the people to the old, five seat car. As two Cambodian people shared the other front seat and we were already on the way out of the town the three of us on the back seat sighed of relief - it wouldn't be too crowded in the end. Yeah right, just before exiting the town we still turned to the side road - to see that there were two more people and an enormous chair waiting to be fitted in to the car! First 15 minutes were spent by shaking heads. There was no way that the chair would go in the back of the car; it was already full of our big backpacks. The lady and her teenaged son who wanted to travel all the way to Vietnam with the chair were persistent, though, and they started, in cooperation with the driver, to undo all the screws in the chair to get it in pieces. After an hour work they somehow miraculously managed to get it fitted in the back of the car and us, four at the backseat and four in the front, were ready, two hours late, to leave for Kampot.

From Kampot I found the peacefulness I had been looking for, even if there was no beach. The place reminded me of sleepy Savannakhet in Laos, there were lots of similar French style villas around the central plaza and the pretty riverside view. The best thing, however, was that you could do a couple of nice day trips from there.

On the first day I took a motorbike taxi (after failing to find a single decent bicycle from the whole town) to the beach town of Kep. The three day celebration of the Khmer New Year had started on that day and the place was packed with Cambodian tourists having a seaside picnic. I would have wanted to do that too but firstly it would have been quite sad on my own as the average size of the other groups was about ten. Secondly, they all were eating crab and didn't have a clue how to eat one (looked much more challenging that homely crayfish) so I decided not to invest in the food I couldn't potentially manage.

My moto driver was supposed to pick me up after five hours and I had gone round the whole place twice in an hour. I was tempted to swim but there was no way I could have done that as the Cambodian women were bathing in their full clothes and I didn't have any change clothing with me. Lying on the beach wasn't that tempting either, it was too hot. So I hired a bike. After 15 mins the chain broke and I walked back. The guy who had rented the bike found this very funny and gave me another bike which was so heavy that I couldn't cycle it in the midday heat. So after half an hour I was back again. He offered yet another bicycle but I gave up and decided to spend the rest of the time reading a book in a cafe.

On the following day I attended an organised tour to Bokor Hill Station. After nearly three hours of very bumpy ride on the back of the four wheeler we arrived at the abandoned hill station built by the French in 1922. The place has been since then abandoned twice, first during the World War II and then during the Khmer Rouge period when the buildings were used as prisons for the Khmer Rouge victims. Not hard to guess, all permanent inhabitants were killed. The place has quite a ghostly atmosphere, as it is in the altitude of over 1000 metres and the mist rolls over the whole place revealing the buildings just when you get close. There were quite a few buildings, all in ruins: presidents summer residents, a hotel, two casinos (one for rich and smaller one for less rich), Catholic church, police station, post office etc. Once again, I was more than fascinated by the imagination inspiring buildings that gave an insight to the lost days of glory. You could nearly SEE how the people have danced in the ball room of the casino.

The other participant in the trip were all Korean teachers living in Cambodia. Some of them taught Korean (I still don't why Cambodians would like to learn Korean but there must be a good reason), some other subjects. What a lovely bunch! So hospitable and friendly. They shared all their food (and that was plenty I must say) with me and made sure I got my share of the time inside the car instead sitting all the way on the more uncomfortable seat at the back of car.

My Vietnamese visa which I had bought already from Bangkok had started to run already three days earlier, so the Khmer New Year or not, I wanted to move on. The problem was again the lack of the public transport. There was a taxi to the border, but they asked $27 for the trip and I didn't have anyone to share it with. (Well there was an Argentinean guy who would have wanted to but as soon as we agreed about the details he realised his visa wasn't valid until the following day and I didn't want to wait.) It was so much simpler and time-saving than going back to Phonm Penh though that I decided to go for it.

The driver appeared on time and seemed to be friendly enough so no alarm bells were ringing in my head when he asked for the payment in advance (for the gas etc.). From that on everything seemed to be a bit tricky during that trip. First we stopped by the market place for druver to do some errands. I sat in the car and had breakfast while trying to get rid of all the people trying to sell me things and ask questions. This took half an hour. Then the driver asked if it was ok if three more people would share the car with me to the border. No problem I said, but I won't pay more than 8 dollars. We tried to negotiate about this for a while but didn't come to any conclusion - and I realised how I totally overpaid and became really annoyed with my stupidity. I guess the driver was annoyed with me too not giving up, as when an hour and a half of a two and a half an hour trip was gone he said that I needed to change to a motorbike. I said no way, I have paid lots of money and he'd better to take me to the border. As I had been a double idiot - not only paying too much but also in advance - there was nothing I could do when he simply lifted my luggage from the car on the road. At least I managed to make sure that he paid to the young moto driver so I wasn't in trouble with him too. The drive was unbelievably dusty - I was covered with red sand when finally reached the border. Funnily enough I had just read from Lonely Planet that the Vietnamese border officials can be tricky and its better to appear shaved and showered. I guess my forced smile did the trick as I didn't have any problems and no exit or entry money was asked even if I must have been a wild sight being the very dirtiest I had been during the whole trip.

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