Sihanoukville (2)

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Next day, after breakfast at the hotel, I went for a wander. Found a bank machine and a bookstore with some english books. Lonely Planet Cambodia! I bought that, no longer was I flying blind. It was wrapped in plastic, as were all the books in the place. I expected it was to prevent rot or pollution or something, but no! It was a pirate book! I've encountered pirate software, pirate movies, pirate music, but this was the first pirate book. The colour pages were immaculate, it was professionally bound, but all the rest was photocopy. wtf?! Anyway, still a valuable resource. I picked out one of the beaches from the book and hired at moto-taxi. (that's getting a helmetless lift on the back of a motorbike). "Victory beach, please" "hello - ok!"

So we're driving around for about twenty minutes until we arrive at "L'Academie Francais". The driver asks one of the teachers who happens to be walking by some gibberish, and the prof asks me "francais?" Fortunately, I speak a bit of french & explained I was trying to get to the beach! He tuned in the moto driver in Khmer and back we went roaring off in the opposite direction.

There was a strip of backpacker-oriented shops on the way down to the beach. The one that stood out for me was a bar called "Retox" 😊 The beach was nice, but I was pretty beached out after Ko Chang. Had lunch and hired another moto back to town. I had to give him some direction, but fortunately my walkabouts had helped me get my bearings.

After my experience of the previous evening, had decided to GTFO of Sihanoukville, so I stopped in at a travel agency and bought a bus ticket first thing the next morning to get to Phnom Penh, the capital. On the way back to the hotel I stopped at a pub for a snack. The owner was an English Ex-pat named Gordon. He was drinking Ballentine's scotch at an incredible rate and at 3pm could only with considerable prodding complete a sentence. There was an american fellow at the bar, former firefighter from Reno, Nevada. We talked fires for a while (okanagan, california), he knew some technical details about that red stuff they dump from the helicopters, it was all good. Also a scotsman who had been in Cambodia a couple of years and gave me some valuable advice on where to visit in Angkor Wat, my next stop. Later, some other guys stopped in, including a canadian who worked most of the time in Fort Mac (or so he said...) I was a quite astonished by the amount of pedofile jokes being made. I mean, me and my friends sometimes crack jokes to try and gross each other out, but never on that topic. I'm no psychologist but they were going on and on and on about it. Methinks something else going on there. Amidst their nervous, maniacal laughter, I backed away clutching my bus ticket to my heart.

Sihanoukville: the cambodians I met were OK for the most part, the white people scared the hell out of me. Criminals on the lam from other countries, sex-tourists, pedofiles. Shocked, I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

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