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Published: February 25th 2009
A holiday in Cambodia....well, more like a holiday
from Cambodia!
We arrived in the beach town of Sihanoukville in the very south of Cambodia ready for a few days in the sun to relax and reflect on everything we had learned and witnessed in the past week about the brutal history of Cambodia. However, when we realized that our relaxing beach time would be interrupted every few minutes by more beggars, more children selling useless stuff, men missing limbs shuffling themselves from person to person asking for money, and women trying to sell "fresh" lobster/shrimp (if you consider the fish in a basket on top of her head baking in the intense heat fresh), we decided to see where else we could spend a few days. To give an example, in the span of an hour we were approached by 17 beggars! We had heard about a small island off the coast about an hour away with only 2 "resorts" and bungalows on the beach, so we booked ourselves on the first boat going out. We arrived to a beautiful white sand beach stretching for a few kilometers, scattered with about 10 bungalows, and one main restaurant. We stayed at
Ko Ru Beach Resort which is on the sunset side of the island and it was absolute bliss!
(As a general aside before we go on, we would like to mention for the record that hoping not to contradict ourselves from our last entry, as cruel as it seems, we do not want to support those who rely on begging as the means of living. No doubtedly many of these people have undergone unthinkable things in their life knowing the recent history of Cambodia, however if tourists continue to support these actions, these people will never do anything else for generations to come. If we were to give even the smallest donation to every single person that has approached us, we'd be on the next plane ride home. Perhaps that shows just how much in need people are over here, however there is even some corruption with begging that makes us further want to denounce this mode of helping out people. For example, most of the beggers here are children....very hard to say no to, right? This isn't a coincidence. Parents, or sometimes (for lack of a better word) "pimps of begging", put children up to begging tourists for
money and then in the end those same children see very little of those donations. Luckily, there are programs in place over here that cater to poor families, orphans and amputees affected by landmines that we would much rather support and we encourage others to go this route instead.)
Okay back to the good stuff.
We ended up staying at Koh Ru for 4 days, relaxing, reading, swimming in the ocean and topping up our fading tans! The water was a clear turquoise and although a little warmer than refreshing it was fantastic. At night the water was lit up by the lights from the shrimp fishing boats off on the horizon as well as tiny particles of phosphorescense which glowed in the water and the sand. It made for a great midnight swim! The best part: there wasn't anyone asking us for money every few minutes - a real holiday from Cambodia!
We are now back in the town of Sihanoukville and waiting to head out in the morning. Our destination: Ko Ru Beach Resort where we will be working for the next two weeks as bar staff! That's right, we are going back to the beach,
this time officially employed at a the resort and making $25/week with room, food and alcohol all paid for! On the boat ride back to mainland I was sitting with the owner and the manager (both Brits) and after chatting about the resort I was asked if I would be interested in coming back to the island and working for a bit. It turns out that that they were looking for 2 people for a couple of weeks until they can find someone on a more permanent basis. Having our Vietnam visas all ready to go, we decided that this was too good an opportunity to pass up and are heading back out to beach bliss in the morning!
Love to all,
MandL
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View from our bungalow
Julie
non-member comment
beautiful..
Hey Matt and Linds... LOVE all the pics!! LINDS - YOu are SUPER tanned...I love it! Miss you guys, and all the best! xoxox