Monsoon beach

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On August 8th Jeff and I flew via AirAsia (a no frills, no assigned seats, no food or drinks, but wonderfully cheap budget airline) to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. We decided to head south right away to spend a few days on the coast. We spent one night in a $4 room on the lake in Phnom Penh, then caught a bus the next morning to head down to Sihanoukville. We were told it would be a mini-bus, and when it first pulled up we were the only passengers. We foolishly believed we might indeed have the van to ourselves, but of course it was soon crowded with other backpackers. We settled down for the 4-hour trip, only to pull up at the Phnom Penh bus station, to transfer to normal-sized bus. Ah well, the mini bus was too good to be true. The full-sized bus was actually in decent repair, but the incessantly honking horn, squealing infant and the lady behind us, who spent the entire trip puking and spitting into a plastic bag, made it a long four hours. We made it to Sihanoukville in the late afternoon, and were immediately bombarded by about thirty guys thrusting signs and pamphlets for their hotels into our faces. After shooing them away, we loaded our selves and our bags onto two mopeds (the only reasonably priced way to get around town) and took off towards the main beach to find a hotel. We stopped to see a room at Susaday (which, pronounced a little differently, means hello in Khmer), a French-owned motel-style row of rooms across the road from the beach. The French owner was very friendly, and for $5 we got a fine little room with attached bathroom. Not a bad deal.

At that point we were thoroughly hungry, so we dropped our bags in the room and took off walking down the road, trying to track down a restaurant called Les Fueilles, which supposedly served steak with blue cheese sauce--a favorite of Jeff's. About every thirty seconds, a moped taxi pulled up to offer a ride. We started a game of counting how many offers we would get from one landmark to another. We ended up, due to map-reading confusion, walking in a nice big loop before asking some people (which was particularly entertaining because we had absolutely no idea how to pronounce "fueilles"). We finally found the place, a big empty-looking hotel and restaurant with a fully flooded front patio and lawn. Apparently, they had been getting a LOT of rain in the last few days. We ordered Jeff's steak, a calamari salad and some fried fish, and the same woman who took our order headed into the kitchen to cook it. Along with low numbers of tourists during low season comes low numbers of staff, meaning getting food can be sloooow. But it was great when we finally got it, and afterwards we splashed our way back to the hotel, stopping for a minute to check out the beach. The recent storms meant that the beach and was littered with trash and driftwood, and the waves were crashing hard on the sand. A few local kids braved the churning water, but for the most part the beach was empty. Thatched huts lined the beach, but most of them seemed desserted--just a few housed tables and offered drinks and seafood. We left the somewhat forlorn beach to return to the hotel for a nap, and slept until after dark.

When we woke we were hungry again, and we decided to try the hotel restaurant. This, it turned out, was a great decision. The menu offered all sorts of creative, awesome-looking options that we hadn't seen in months. There was chicken breast with dijon sauce, a cheese plate with baguettes, and even a dessert of cooked pear with ice cream and chocolate sauce. We feasted, delighted to have found a restaurant offering something other than the usual fried rice, chicken curry and banana pancakes. As we ate the evening rain began, turning quickly into a monsoon-like downpour. We watched the storm from our covered porch for a while. A local man who lived next door showed up in the downpour on his moped, hopped inside his house for a minute, then came back out in his underwear, holding a bar of soap. He proceeded to shower in the rain, scrubbing himself in the driveway. Well, why not? We went to bed once the best of the storm had died down, and slept to the sound of raindrops on the tin roof.

The next day was remarkably sunny and cheerful, and we headed into town on the back of moped taxis in the morning to track down a bakery said to have tasty cookies. The oatmeal raisin cookes were pretty special, or at least seemed it after 8 nearly-cookie-free months. We checked internet for a while, then wandered up the road to the grocery store, which was yet another jackpot of food. Somehow, this small Cambodian grocery store had some western import foods that we hadn't seen anywhere else in Asia. We snatched up a can of A&W Root Beer and a pack of Starbursts, despite the ridiculous prices. We then returned to the beach for a swim, stopping on the way to buy bus tickets to the town of Kampot for the next day. Today the beach was much cleaner and full of people swimming and body-surfing. There were a few other foreign tourists but mostly locals, which was refreshing. The waves were still pretty high, and we "swam" (and by this I mean got tossed around) for a while before deciding to rent innertubes like a bunch of local kids. The tubes in fact made it harder not to get thrown around, but it was fun when I ocassionally succeeded in riding a wave to shore. Once we were worn out, we wandered down the beach in the direction of a big red, green and white sign advertising gelato. There was a small restaurant there, and a few locals lounging in chairs looking bored. We asked about gelato, and received blank stares. We tried "ice cream" with no better results. We attempted to mime licking an ice cream cone, and they became even more confused. A woman finally went and got us a menu, and we perused it briefly and found no mention of gelato whatsoever. Finally an English-speaker came over, and informed us that they don't have anything of the sort. Apparently it's an old sign... most likely the old owners abandoned the restaurant, and squatters took it over--squatters who have never heard of gelato.

Instead of ice cream we settled on a cheese plate and bottle of red wine back at the hotel, which wasn't a bad trade-off. We played cards and relaxed for a while, then wandered towards bed for yet another food-induced nap. Sihanoukville was turning into a very dangerous place for us--way too much food and way too much sleep. It's a good thing we had to move on the next day, or we were likely to turn into cheese-eating nap-taking zombies. We did somehow manage to eat yet another meal that day--this time squid ink black rice made specially for us by the French owner--but our gluttony finally got to us, and by the time we got to bed we were feeling thoroughly sheepish about the last couple of day's laziness and food consumption.

The next morning we packed up, crammed ourselves and bags onto moped taxis again, and were off to the bus station, to head to the nearby town of Kampot.

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