The Day I Didn't Bring My Camera

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Counting Days

I woke up more than a little stressed out. I'd been awake half the night counting the days left until my return to Thailand. I wasn't quite sure what today's date was. I also didn't know exactly how many days I'd spent in Koh Kong, just that they were too many. I really wasn't sure about my travel plans or timing for the rest of the trip. I was convinced I had to leave for Phnom Penh today.

I walked out to the Cool Banana bar to grab some breakfast and I told Craig about my worries. He didn't have much help, but he encouraged me to spend more time being laid back and carefree here and less time depressed in Pol Pot and Hun Sen's capitol.

I was torn.

Planning backwards from my last day:
- I'd have to get to the border at Poipet a day early so that I could get home to Chelly in time for dinner on the 7th.
- Everyone told me I'd need at least three days in Siem Reap to see all the temples of Angkor.
- I wanted to spend two days travelling up the Tonle Sap river and lake, just because nobody seemed to be doing it that way and I wanted to see more of the countryside.
- Phnom Penh looked like a two day kind of town, especially with all the famous genocide museums and the city's legendary wild side.

This meant that I had to leave ASAP. Spending one more day in Sihanoukville would either lose me a day in Phnom Penh or a day in Siem Reap.

But Craig really wanted to see the nearby Ream National Park. He'd let me drive the motorscooter. And, for exra incentive, he offered to help me find one of the great hotdogs I'd heard were to be had somewhere around Sihanoukville.

I was staying.


Road Warriors

We set off on the routes we'd learned yesterday, braving ugly Cambodian traffic and the hot sun.

It felt a lot like a Mad Max movie, for reals. The roads were chaotic, with scooters and bikes in various states of disrepair flying into the wrong lane to pass lumbering trucks that looked leftover from WWII. There were plenty of unique, homemade vehicles, and I think I saw at least one pickup truck without any body panels. Not to mention the condition of most of the roads themselves--abominable.

Our hariest moment came on the small road down near the port. There was one empty flatbed tractor-trailer rig backing out of a driveway on our left, and another identical rig backing out of a driveway on our right. Neither driver was watching the road.

A handful of cars and motos blared their horns and raised their voices, shooting between the beds of the two trucks as they inched closer together, and we didn't even notice the predicament until it was too late.

We slid through the ever-closing gap at full speed and I started to get really shakey. Looking back, we saw the beds of the two trucks collide and breathed a sigh of relief that two of us had missed being the meat in that metallic sandwich.

But that was the last of that sort of thing. We were quickly out on the open highway, feeling the sun and taking in gorgeous scenery.


Tragedy Strikes

That sun felt great for the first bit, and I was glad to have left my shirt behind. I was getting a tan.

But the sun got really oppressive after our flat tire.

I couldn't believe it. Craig was in shock. Coasting down a hill without a car in sight, after just escaping a web of foul traffic, we were on top of the world. And then our back tire blew, the scooter started to shuck and jive and wobble from side to side. Craig was shouting and I was squeezing the front brakes intermittently so we wouldn't go ass over teakettle. We eventually got to the side of the road and surveyed the damage.

Yup. It was flat allright. Problem was, we didn't have a clue what to do now.

Luckily, a car came along to help. It was a rickety station wagon crammed with about 12 Khmer (the truck was actually propped open to allow two passengers to ride on the rear bumper). After pulling over and switching on the hazards, the driver got out and told us he could give one of us a ride to town for 5 U.S. Dollars.

$5.00 is about 20,000 Cambodian Reil, enough for a nice hotel room for the night, maybe enough for all three of your daily meals. We said, "no thanks" and started walking.

The real luck struck came when an older Khmer fella pulled over on his motor scooter. He offered to take Craig on the back of his bike and to drive really slow to the nearest autoshop so that I could follow in 1st gear. He wasn't charging.

It was a long and painful ride with a few detours, but he got us there. The tire repair only cost $3.00. I fell asleep at a table while we waited for the job to get done and woke up looking like a lobster.


Ream National Park

It turns out that our repair shop was less than 50 yards away from the entrance to the Ream National Park. We got on our bike and rode in.

The national parks in this part of the world are peculiar. They have residents. They also have a lot of industry. If you look like you're staying inside the park, or like you've got legitimate business inside, you can just ride or walk in and enjoy your day. If you're gullible, you can stop at the ranger station and pay a hefty fee for the privilege of entrance and a glimpse of a shoddy map. We were gullible.

After spending our lunch money (and then some) on park entrance, we headed out along the road.

The place was gorgeous. Small, medieval-looking tribal settlements dotted the side of the road. We even took a side trip to explore an old Chinese graveyard. And the beaches...

Unless they working on the construction of a new resort or lying in a hammock, we didn't see anybody on the sand. At more than a handful of places, we had long beautiful beaches all to ourselves. These were much nicer than the beaches in town, with clean water and blank white sand, and they were all ours.

We also managed to find a great set of Buddhist temples up on a hill. They had really cool statues of rodents and dogs and other giant animals. And there was a Cambodian Navy base down by the water. We got chased away by dirty looks from the guys with the AKs and ended up following a dirt road past some really ancient military equipment.

Eventually, we made it to the rangers' recommended beach, 11km in. I rode the scooter in the sand while Craig went for lunch. At least an hour went by with me floating in the water and getting dizzy on tire-swings. It was pretty neat.


Totally Worth It

Craig wasn't too excited about swimming or tire-swings, however, he wanted to explore.

We'd seen some rugged dirt-and-rock roads earlier that definitely weren't on the maps. Craig wanted me to drive down one of them. I caved.

We found a number of cool things on this exploration, including a place where road construction seemed to have been halted by the intervening presence of a massively steep hill and a gigantic, solitary tree. There were also a number of sand pits in the road and rickety bridges.

At the very end was a quiet grove of pam trees. These shaded a lonely white-sand beach. I found a huge jellyfish on it. There was a place where a long sand spit received small, rolling waves. I sat in the warm shallows and let the tiny whitecaps wash over my head. Coming here was totally worth it.


Positively Stuck

But, as if we'd found one of those hidden corners of the Twilight Zone, we couldn't leave the place when we tried.

Probably against my better judgement, I'd been riding the scooter up and down the beach, getting hopelessly jammed-up in patches of soft sand and taking it off-road amongst the palm stands.

When it was time to go, we couldn't start the engine.

Even though Craig had done some autoshop work in the past, and I'd spent that whole year laboring away on my Big Blue Dodge, neither of us could wrap our heads around this problem. The thing was like a freakin' hair dryer on wheels. It's engine was incomprehensible to us.

Time to push the bike uphill through sand.

It was rough going, but we hiked a ways over shoddy bridges and dragged the lil' Honda that couldn't through sand pits and families of geese and chickens. Eventually we came across a work crew gathering lumber on the side of the trail (illegal logging is still a big trade within Cambodia's protected lands).

They laughed hysterically as they watched a stocky Korean and a beet-red white guy drag a Honda 100 up the hill. We told them our problem and--with our helpful gestures--they figured it out. One of the guys came over and stuck his head down by the front wheel. He plugged the plug wire to the spark plug and shook his head in pity as we had our "aha!" moment.

It was that easy.


Rush Hour

The return to Sihanoukville turned out to be even less pleasant than the trip out had been. Our tires stayed full, but we were darig rush hour traffic.

Even though the area outside of Sihanoukville-proper is pretty empty, this highway is one of the only fully paved roads in all of Cambodia, and there was a lot of trucking. There were also a lot of people heading to the afternoon markets to eat dinner and do their shopping. Plus day workers leaving town and night workers coming in.

It was all traffic and dust and dirt and three lanes for uphill passing but none for oncoming traffic (on a two-lane road). This was everyday driving in southern Cambodia. I'm surprised we made it through alive.


Sunburnt

I got back into town with the worst sunburns I have ever had in my life. No time to whine, however. After liberally applying aloe lotion, it was time to go out and get those hotdogs.

We located a place called the Fishermen's Den. This required turning down a dirt alley, parking alongside a scummy building, and ascending several greasy flights of stairs. At the top, we found the nicest-appointed restaraunt with the best food I got a chance to taste in all of Cambodia.

I got my great hot dog. I also got roast pork and mashed potatoes and yams and peas and carrots and french fries and cauliflower with a white sauce and a really strong creay rum-drink.

After a couple games of pool on Victory Hill, I was ealry to bed.

What a day, I wish I'd taken some better pictures.

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Comments

[Dionysus]

Good Stuff
Enjoyed perusing your blog. You're a good writer - keep having fun with it.

[javan]

i love it awesome
super cool