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Published: December 2nd 2006
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Hi, Liz here.
I know this is going to sound a little hard to believe but it has been AGES since Tom and I were on the beach so we decided that it was time to head south and adopt the position. The town of Sihanoukville was built in the 1960s and named after the king of Cambodia. King Sihanouk is a bit of a character, as well as having a turbulent political and public life he has written and produced several films often recruiting government ministers to appear in them or giving himself leading roles. Best of all he organized two Cambodian film festivals in 1968 and 1969 and awarded himself the grand prize on both occasions.
We are thinking of organizing a 'Backpacker of the Year; competition, with the first prize going to myself (of course) for being handy with the travel sewing kit and second place to Tom for remembering to pack the Swiss army knife, another cliché but vital piece of equipment. We haven't found much use for the 'removing-stone-from-horse-shoe' (if of course that’s what it is) but the cork screw has seen some action. Other pieces of travel equipment that we treasure are: 1)
the travel washing line, a godsend 2) the travel alarm clock, even layabouts like ourselves have to get up early sometimes and 3) everyone’s favourite, the travel hammock. A special mention must also go to the not-so-travel-sized inflatable globe. We should also admit that as well as delighting in miniature travel-sized accessories we had also on occasion found ourselves burdened with other less useful items including a two foot bamboo tube full of various pictures and copious pairs of souvenir chop sticks, oh and on one memorable occasion a full sized wooden cow-bell. Tom has a woolly hat in his bag which is slightly unnecessary (even though its December, wooo hooo!) and also having travel guides from four different countries was a bit of a mistake, but luckily for us we have just been to the post office and sent some stuff (books, clothes, souvenirs) back home in a large cardboard box. Nb. Mum it is going to your house but possibly won’t arrive for another three months. Originally we were going to send it by airmail but that was to expensive..we didn't decide this until it was sealed and had been checked by customs so ummm.. your Christmas presents
are going to be a little late this year..
So back to Cambodia, the bus from PP to Sihanoukville takes about four hours and there is loads of different accommodation and places to stay, we got a room down by Serendipity Beach which was nice - we were also told by our friend Liz to avoid Weather Station Hill as it is full of really sleazy men and sleazy bar/brothels. If you find yourselves in this part of the world then remember that your experience of the beach at Sihanoukville will depend on where you decided to settle for the day. We started off on the Occheutal Beach which is nice but rather built up with loads of bars and restaurants and so many people walking up and down the beach trying to sell you things that it will eventually make you want to scream.
We were in fact lucky that day because it started to rain so lounging on a deck chair was not an option allowing us to give the sales people our full attention.. Food is obviously a big seller and the ladies balancing prawns on their head are reasonably entertaining and the prawns tasted
really good. The best bit about people watching in Cambodia is that so many of the women are wearing pajamas, we are not sure how this trend came about but its a good game to spot people going about their business dressed like they have just got out of bed, and no they are not as we originally thought matching tops and trousers that resemble pjs, they are definately the real thing identifiable because of the common teddy bear motifs. Not sure how long the prawns have been carried back and forward in the sun for but we managed to avoid getting food poisoning, in fact (touch wood) we seem to be basically immune to all food related bugs and the only time either of us have got ill was (ironically enough)when living on the organic farm eating only vegetables. If you have a little less of an iron stomach then the 'squids on sticks' look good and the ladies will cook those for you whilst you wait using the little stoves they have balanced over their shoulders. That afternoon I also had a manicure and a pedicure as well as a strange hair removal process on her legs using
a piece of cotton, interesting but not a little painful.
On the second day we were a little more adventuress and went left down the beach and found a much prettier, much quieter spot on a really nice clean bit of beach - Rose you can check it out when you go to Cambodia it is about 20mins walk down the beach over the bridge and the headland with the queens hill bungalow, but shhh its a secret. The best bit is that the people selling stuff here are a lot less persistent but they do still occasionally pop by with snacks. Brilliant.
Our trip to the beach only lasted three days as we were keen to get onto Vietnam. Unfortunately this meant going back to the capital for the night - although we later found out that it is possible to do the journey from Sihanoukville to Ho Chi Mihn City via Phnom Phen in one day but it would have been a bit of a mission, of course if you are feeling adventuress you can make your own way to the Cambodia/Vietnam border in a taxi rather than getting the bus but we decided it would
work out more expensive so we went the lazy way. We spent another good night in PP this time in a different - and less backpackery, i.e. more expensive but nicer - part of town and had some of the best Khymer food of our stay. Bye Cambodia it’s been fantastic.
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