Beaches Of Sihanoukville

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I continued on with some of the others to southern Cambodia, a place called Sihanoukville. At one time this was to be a budding city until Cambodian civil war put an end to that and then of course the emergence of the Khmer Rouge. Not nearly as developed as the beaches over in Thailand, I had heard interesting things about the place. I arrived with Claire and Holly and later met Isa and Marissa who had gone there a day earlier. It was so hot when we arrived that we threw on our bathing suits and swam in the pool at Utopia for a while. We also ran into Kano Lad, an awesome scottsman who loved to get wasted on any occasion. I first met him in southern Laos, then ran into him again in Siem Reap. He recounted hilarious stories of him (obviously drunk) singing and then being kicked out of a small music festival there, then stumbling into some Buddhist wake that was going on in the evening, grabbing the mic and singing Rod Stewart's "If you think I'm Sexy!... finishing the whole song and then dropping the mic and walking out to the bewilderment of the locals there. I would have paid a lot to see that in person.

Basically the next few days were spent lounging about and not doing all that much. There is absolutely nothing in the town of Sihanoukville, the Serendipity Beach seems to be the busiest, although the beach really isn't attractive. Loads of rubbish cover the area and the locals seemed to hassle me even more than usual. It gets really funny when someone asks me about ten times if I want sunglasses. If I didn't want them ten minutes ago why the hell would I want them now? I did loads of swimming, going out really far until I could see a huge swath of coastline. There was also this water fun zone that I went into for free cuz I met the guy who knows the owner. The water was quite choppy when I was there.

The seafood was probably the best part of being there, although slightly pricey the barracuda and red snapper were exquisite. I ate seafood every night I was there.

My feet got munched on while here however. The sole of my foot got bit by a crab while I was walking on the beach, and it could have been either because there's so many stray dogs or cuz of the infested sand but my lower extremities got demolished by fleas. Not too itchy but doesn't look pretty. I think some might even have attached themselves to my clothes or bag cuz I'm still getting weird bites. I hate these parasites. Many others were having the same problem there as well. Apparently you need to keep your guard up even while on a beach.

One evening Kane was really drunk and we were clowning around as we headed back up from the beach. We ended up falling into a tarp. What we didn't realize was that tarp was actually a "wall" to one of the locals homes and his wife was right behind it taking a bath. I felt a few kicks through the tarp but didn't think much of it and got up and kept going. Kane however was curious and was poking at the tarp until a local man, the woman's husband, came bursting out and was ready to kill. He grabbed onto Kane's shirt and started karate chopping him like a man possessed. I got into the middle of it but it took quite a bit of energy to separate them, considering it was an older an smaller man. Luckily Kane wasn't trying to fight him back and in fact seemed quite confused.

Another situation involved Claire getting stung by a jellyfish in the evening and being in agony got Holly to squat and pee on her foot back at their room to relieve the burning. Apparently it kinda worked.

An ulterior motive to being here during this time was the fact that the Olympic hockey medal games were going on and I wanted to see as much as I could. I managed to catch Finland coming back and beating Slovakia for the bronze. My final night there I went to sleep at around ten in the evening, woke up at two in the morning and then went over to a 24 hour spot that was showing winter Olympics. I met a few other Canadians there also waiting for the game. In fact it was a decent crowd for a hockey game considering we were in southern Cambodia of all places.

The game was awesome and extremely even, with neither team wanting to give an inch. The Americans tied it up with 25 seconds left but the good guys ended up winning it in OT, making it even sweeter. It was amazing and I'm glad I found a place to see it while being here. After winning, me and the other guys bought a small bottle of whiskey and celebrated. One of the guys was an English teacher in Korea and invited me to crash at his place when I get there. I'll definitely take him up on the invitation.

Immediately after this I met up with Isa and we left for Vietnam. I knew I was going to sleep well on the bus...

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Comments

[Tee]

You guys went to the wrong place lolz! If you were to go deeper to the untouched islands off the coast you will find islands that are wayyyy better than Thailand's Islands! Koh Rong Island will rival any Island in South East Asia and the sand is pure white!