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As I'm sure you had noticed, during quite a sobering stay in Phnom Penh and as a result of too much past drinking, I was becoming quite good at staying off the booze. Unfortunately due to the bad weather here at Sihanoukville, I have no choice but to get absolutely twatted every day again!
We caught a bus from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville at around 12.15. It was only a 5 or 6 hour journey. The first thing that struck me was the amount that the scenery changed as we went further south. In the north it was very flat and I must admit that a lot of the scenery would not look have looked out of place in the Suffolk countryside (strange but true!). As we continued south the scenery became a lot more mountainous and very beautiful. Acre upon acre of rice paddys occasionally interrupted by a handful of water buffalo and a lone shepherd or a few farmers tending to their crops using hand operated machinery. The backdrop was made up of mountains covered in dense jungle and draped with low-lying mist that seemed to disappear into the clouds.
Unfortunately as the scenery changed, so did
the weather - for the worse!
Arrived at Sihanoukville, which is a really nice sleepy seaside town. It’s like an underdeveloped Phangan before too many people arrive to ruin it by spewing on the beach, pissing in the sea and generally fucking the area up. As it was low season there were even less people there than usual so it was nice and chilled out. Checked into a guesthouse called Eden in a double room and persuaded them to put a mattress on the floor, which turned out to be an old foam thing from down in the bar - niiiice! You couldn’t help but wonder how many times drinks had been spilt, people had shagged, been sick or just generally sweated on it before us lucky bastards got to use it! We didn’t mind, we took it in turns to sleep on it - hey if it’s gonna save us a few bucks a night then anything goes!
The beach here is lovely, about a mile long and lined with bars and restaurants that very nearly touch the waters edge. We had a communal balcony with a perfect view of the waves breaking in front of you;
very pleasant to wake up to, but got a bit bloody noisy after a while!!
Talking of noise, Eden is the party place of the beach so don’t stay there if you want to get any sleep as the music is up very loud, very late! We decided to take on the attitude of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ so got totally wasted every night we were there (as if we needed an excuse in the first place!).
We met some cool people. The bar staff were wicked, Mel, Toby and Sheran. All were just as interested in partying as we were so lots of games of King’s Cup were commonplace and a great time was had by all. One day three girls checked into Eden who are in Cambodia for their university course studying the social……. lar dee dar…… Christ I can’t remember, it was 10.30am and I was drinking wine on the balcony when they told me! Anyway we went out that night and me and Paul had a spontaneous bit of fun with them by telling them that I was 32 and had 2 kids - harmless wind up eh? Well by the
end of the night, as more buckets were consumed and everyone got involved it just got ridiculous. I had gone from a 32 year old with kids, to an Israeli fighter pilot who had just finished national service so came out on holiday to relax! The funny thing was that they were actually believing it! I mean, come on if you were talking to a bloke in a bar, with a blatant English accent, completely pissed with a BUCKET of whiskey in his hand and a Nemo hat on his head would you really think he was a fighter pilot? If you’re reading this, sorry to disappoint you ladies, but I am an unemployed Colchester boy.
Anyone who is planning to go from Cambodia to Vietnam should certainly consider this: Sihanoukville is the fastest place in the world to get a Vietnamese visa. Celia and Deano got theirs in about 10 minutes! Can you imagine how pissed off me James and Paul were hearing that after spending 5 days on Khao San Road waiting for ours!
Had one morning of sunshine, which was absolutely beautiful and really gave me an idea of what it would be like here
in the high season. This was however short lived as the clouds came over and the heavens opened. Now this wasn’t just pissy English drizzle, this was no messing around full on torrential monsoon. It actually rained to the extent that the road turned into a river ending in a waterfall onto the beach washing brown mud out to sea like an oil slick.
It was at this point that we decided to move on, so said our goodbyes and organized a taxi over to Kampot which is east along the coast, close to the Vietnamese border.
Don’t let this blog put you off Sihanoukville in any way, we had a wicked time there and it was low season so I’d love to be there when the sun is shining and there are more people. However, if you are going to go, make it in the next year or two. The reason being is that the land here is fast becoming recognized by large companies as a potential goldmine so a lot of the nice more chilled out places will have to make way for high rises. While we were there we went to the last night of
a cool club called Utopia that the very next day was bulldozed as the land had been sold to a hotel chain.
Anyway, until next time…….
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