Dreaming of a Beach Life....

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Wednesday 03, 04/06/2006

Our Bus, complete with WC and free water service, left Siem Reap at 7:55 am.

We read our books and slept and listened to music and blogged on the laptop and then we arrived at Phnom Penh. An earlier stop around lunch time, was full of surprises. We got off the Bus to get a quick bite for lunch and were immediately surrounded by a handful of children selling bananas, mangoes, pineapple and eggs. Yes, eggs. We started a lively conversation with them and the little girl selling the eggs was just too cute. There was no way on earth that I would be leaving that place without any eggs - even if I didn’t want any! Andrew and I both gasped when we saw the street vendors produce that lined the pavement. They where selling fried spiders and crickets! We couldn’t believe it! One of the little girls (who all spoke superb English by the way) took one of the ‘fresh’ spiders that had not been fried yet, out of the basket and let it crawl on her hand. Truth is we where not to thrilled with this little performance although it seemed that the spiders were totally harmless.

We were back on the bus, with four eggs, a bag of pineapple and a bag of bananas and the little ones waving frantically at our window.

At Phnom Penh we had to get off this bus and on to another one, something we hadn’t been told beforehand, but it all worked out really smoothly. Contrary to our prior bus that had served us with 5 hours of super loud Cambodian hit music and equally super video clips of half naked un-choreographed dancing girls, that by no means where ‘Apsaras’, this bus put on an English movie. It was called “Killing Fields” and was a chilling account of a Cambodian Journalist for Reuter’s fate after being captured by the Khmer Rouge. I would like to watch it again in peace as on the bus the volume was so low, we could hardly make out a word.

We arrived in Sihanouknille, eggs in tow, later that afternoon. We decided, as it was raining, to check into Monkey Republic, a place near Serendipity Beach. It was far from nice, with posters in our room saying ‘prostitution and drugs are prohibited on these premises’, which made Andy and I think constantly of how many prostitutes must have slept on our bed. It smelled like fungus and decay and the only good thing about the place was the free beer they give you upon arrival. Other than that, the food is overpriced and far from fresh, the staff is unfriendly and unhelpful and it’s located directly on a main street.
The following day after enjoying an extensive breakfast at the ‘Starfish Project Café’, another dine-for-a-cause, the rain set in quite aggressively. Waiting for the weather to clear by writing postcards and shopping fair trade T-shirts, we finally moved to Victory Beach after first checking out Otres Beach which looked nice but abandoned.

Victory beach seemed much the same but we decided to stay there and try to make our way to Bamboo Island the following day. Unfortunately the weather had been grim the whole day and chances were it was going to be the same the following day. We checked into L’Ambassade, a place that looked pretty nice and decent but proved to be an absolute whorehouse, with French men and Cambodian girls having their party in the room next door. The following morning was still rainy, we walked aimlessly around Victory, deserted and gray and made a decision to waste no more time here but to head to the capital Phnom Penh the very next morning.

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