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After spending a couple of days in Phnom Penh browsing around the bustling city we decided to head down to Sinnokville on Cambodia’s coastline for a little holiday away from the holiday (... such a hard life.) We arrived in the evening, and after dumping our stuff in a very basic little bamboo hut, we grabbed some dinner before heading down to a bar on the beach. The beach was beautiful, even at night, we sat right by the water’s edge with a 25 cent beer and my first glass of red wine since Australia and watched as the biggest, orange moon arose over the water, feeling completely relaxed.
The next morning, we booked a trip to Bamboo Island for the following day, before heading to the beach to sunbathe and swim. The beach seemed much livelier during the day, with many people sunbathing and playing on an inflatable obstacle course in the sea, which we decided to try our hand at after returning from the island, (unfortunately when we did finally return time was against us.) That evening, we enjoyed a delicious meal of BBQ Barracuda at a restaurant on the beach, before heading again to another bar where
we made the most of the 25 cent beer, good music and fire shows.
The next morning we awoke bright and early to be bundled onto a motorbike to go to the launch point for the boat that would take us to Bamboo Island. Tom was driven off first before the driver returned for me, at which point I tried to get on in a respectful fashion - wearing a short denim skirt, backpack and all - no easy feat. Dismounting was next to impossible, falling off seemed to be the only option.
One bike and boat ride later, we were stepping off the boat and onto the white sands of the beautiful Bamboo Island, the sands were pure white and the sea ranged from green, turquoise to blue. We were shown to our extremely basic, little bamboo hut on stilts, right on the beach with a hammock on the porch and decided that this was a place where we could stay for a very long time.
We whiled away our days reading on the beach, where we could stay for about 10 minutes until the red hot Cambodian sun pushed us into the sea to cool down,
snorkelling, swimming (with difficulty due to the numerous sea urchins), eating BBQ barracuda on one of the two restaurants on the tiny island. During dinner we had a friendly waiter who enjoyed telling us about Cambodia’s history and about a game that apparently older Cambodian women enjoy playing. The game consists of deciding whether you are a lender or a borrower, you lend people money and if they do not pay it back by a specific time the lender can take jewellery or their house. At first we thought he was talking about Monopoly, but then decided that either the game was lost in translation or that older Cambodian women seem to consider loan sharking as a game.
The Island only had electricity for 3 hours each evening, this was when I learnt to play chess and was beaten by Tom every time (who still swears he wasn’t a chess champion at school.) After this we sat on the beach by ourselves with our respective poisons, soaking up the tranquillity, watching the firefly’s illuminating the palm trees and the specks of phosphorescence lighting up the sea like gold dust. It truly felt like paradise and was one of the
most serene places that I have ever visited.
Understandably our one night visit soon turned into four, and when we could no longer ignore the fact that we were running way behind schedule, we regrettably jumped onto a boat to take us back to the mainland, and the next day we headed back to Phnom Penh to pick up our passport with the freshly stamped Vietnam visas inside and headed straight to the Vietnamese border.
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Margaret
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Lucky you....
Looks and sounds absolutely idyllic (and you both seem to be auditioning as models, too!) x