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Published: August 7th 2007
Another bamboo island
There is one wherever you go in south east asia! No sign of the bamboo though!Sooooo, we are sat in our bungalow in Langkawi desperately trying to recall the events of the past two months as we realised that we are well behind with our blog updates. Our recollection is being helped along by us having taken advantage of Langkawi's duty free status and so being able to acquire 1 litre of Smirnoff, 1 litre of Stolichnaya vodka and 1 litre of French wine for under 8 quid, but more on this in our Malaysia blogs (if we ever get around to writing them!).
Evading the many moto drivers in Phnom Penh we were able to get some seats on a bus to Sihanoukville near to the front where it was a little cooler than sitting on top of the engine like our last bus journey. The man sat in front of us however must have still been feeling the heat (or having a hard time finding deodorant) as he stunk of stale body odour. Our bus driver had also contracted the 'Beep Beep' disease that was so prevalent in Cambodia but this may have been a blessing as it drowned out the crying form the Cambodian women on the bus who were watching the
Rambutan lady on Sihanoukville beach
colourful fruity things aren't they? dodgy love story film on the t.v. As far as we could tell the story went like this:
Rich girl has a car accident and loses her memory.
Idiot farm boy helps rich girl get better but doesn't realise she is rich girl.
Rich girl pretends to be a monkey (as she couldn't remember who she was!)
Idiot farmboy likes these monkey antics and falls in love with her.
Rich girl gets her memory back and her family forces her to marry rich boy.
Idiot farm boy stops the marriage and rich girl realises she loves idiot farm boy.
Rich boy shoots both of them (as you would!).
They die over a period of around 30 minutes. Thus, the crying on the bus reached it's climax!
The bus terminated in downtown Sihanoukville and not near the beach as we had hoped, and so we knew we would have to 'deal' with the persistent moto drivers or walk 3km. We knew that the fare should have been no more than $1US but none of the moto drivers would drop to below $4US each. We soon realised that this was because Sihanoukville is home to a very sophisticated and organised
Sihanoukville beach
a few jellyfish and very warm water but otherwise 'very nice' (said in style of Borat). cartel of moto drivers who have not only price-fixed their rates at extortionately high prices but have also been able (via intimidation tactics) to prevent tourists from hiring their own motorbikes. So, once Donna had completed her pleasantries (i.e: telling the drivers to go f*ck themselves), we set off walking on our long journey in the scorching hot sun to the beach. Luckily we met Ben (our aussie friend) on the way and he managed to acquire two drivers for a sensibly priced $1US each.
The beach area we stayed at was called Serendipity or Ochheuteal beach. We soon found a nice room for $10US with cable t.v, air-con and cold water shower. Serendipity is not very big, with approximately 20 restaurants/bars, but it had a great feel to it (moto drivers aside!). A note to the Thais...the sunbeds were free, as were the pool tables and the beer was a bargain at 50 cents a draft! We spent most of our days lazing on the beach, nightlife was limited to 1 or 2 places after 11pm.
There were many child beach sellers that were quite persistent (maybe they have taken lessons from the moto drivers) and they
Beach sellers
they hassle and say things like..'You can lie to Me but you can't lie to yourself'..Neil lied to Me a lot! got very moody if you did not buy anything from them. There were also a few dodgy men acting suspiciously and hanging around the children in the sea that could possible have been paedophiles but we couldn't say for certain, so we kept an eye on the kids whenever these blokes were around...just in case!
This resort is fantastic for omelettes, baguettes and curries. We did go to one restaurant which served good food but it took 2 hours for the food to arrive and 6 attempts to get the bill right. We had suspected something was wrong when the waiter took 30 seconds and 4 attempts to find the coaster to put our drinks on (it was right in front of him!). He was either pissed or stoned and when we asked he confirmed "I'm sorry but I'm a little bit pissed!" after having been drinking since 8am. His wife who also worked in the restaurant did not look happy (pursed lips, folded arms and foot tapping gave it away) and we never saw him serve in the restaurant again.
That's not to say that Sihanoukville didn't have it's disappointments. Have we mentioned the moto drivers? Well...because
of their extortion, very few tourists were prepared to pay their prices and so felt trapped in the resort. The sea warmed you up when you got in it rather than cool you off and it had several jellyfish. Ben and Andrea (we suspect because they were aussies) didn't get stung by the jellyfish....maybe they can speak fluent jellyfish or with the help of evolution they have developed skin impervious to the jellyfishes testicles/nticles! Neil foudn himself a jellyfish friend in the water who stung his calf. Surprisingly there were many offers from people on the beach to 'wee' on him to neutralise the sting, but to his relief lime juice seemed to do the trick just as well. Although the weather was supposed to be good at this time of the year..it was very hit and miss and we got some big thunderstorms and soaked quite a few times.
Oh yeh...we forgot about this...we went on a boat trip to do some snorkelling around some of the islands off Cambodias coast. One of them was originally called 'Bamboo island' ...who knows how many Bamboo and Coral islands there are in SE Asia but to date we have counted
6. This Bamboo island was great with some deserted beaches (see the pictures). The lunch for the trip was barbecued Barracuda on a baguette and let us just say this once..we are not fans of seafood or fish. Our driver said .."no loblem" and ran off the boat onto the deserted beach and returned 5 minutes later with approximately 1 Kilo of Europes finest cheese. We still have no idea where he got this from but it tasted heavenly. We expected him to give us a few slices of it but instead he cut the kilo in half and slapped each half onto our baguettes.
Time slipped by quickly in Sihanoukville and before we knew it Easter had arrived. Neil was happy because he found 20p Mars bars. Khmer New year was also fast approaching and the Cambodians were oh so excited about it's arrival. We celebrated these events in our own way with some friends by purchasing 2 bottles of Stolichnaya vodka at $7US each and played many drinking games to get us in the mood and got very drunk in our rooms while an electrical storm raged outside.
To finish this blog and our take of
Wavy beach on bamboo island
The aussies and Neil had great fun in these big rippers! Cambodia, here are some observations we have made:
1. Cambodians seem to occasionally be child like in their behaviour. We think this may be due to the lack of an ageing population sector to teach them right from wrong and so they have many bad habits but also a youthful and innocent outlook on life.
2. In restaurants the bill was rarely correct and often we were either under or overcharged. Maybe Cambodian's maths are not so good or they have a shortage of calculators in the country.
3. Cambodians speak exceptionally good English...in fact we have found that most SE Asians do (except for the Thais).
4. The streets in Cambodia have lots of rubbish. They do have bin/rubbish men but it doesn't seem to make any difference. Maybe a 'Keep Cambodia Tidy' campaign would help.
5. Cambodian people have the best smiles out of all the nationalities we have met so far. They are warm and natural smiles and their faces light up when they smile (which is more often than not).
6. Have we mentioned the robbing, thieving moto drivers who operate like a cartel and extort toruists? Well they are
Donna and kid beach seller
Cute but very persistent!...and I'm not talking about the kid! everywhere and unless you stand your ground you WILL get ripped off!
7. Cambodia still seems to be trying to form it's own identity following the Khmer Rouge era and still seem confused about where their country is headed.
We left Sihanoukville around the time of Khmer New Year to head to Thailand to meet Donna's parents.
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