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Published: December 16th 2010
Serendipity Beach
The slightly messy beach with lots of beggars and hawkers.Sihanoukville, the South Cambodian coast - the beach again at last!
Arrived here, back travelling on my own again - felt good. Grabbed a moto driver from the bus station and arrived in style outside Monkey Republic where 3 people I'd met in Phnom Penh were sitting at the bar.
This place is much like Goa in India, tourist areas have slightly dirty beaches where endless streams of landmine victims, monks, masseuse workers and children try to pull some of your money off you and also quieter beaches where you can lie with no hassles on a beach very very close to being paradise!
Had a room for $4 which took some finding and negotiation, but worked well for the guesthouse as I got other people to stay there from comparing prices. Did have its share of wildlife, including the already infamous giant hopping b*****d spider who scared me half to death by jumping out of the way of my fairly epic sized book and hopped again underneath my bed. Next up was the large toad that thought he'd hop in whilst it was raining out, threw him back out pretty quickly. Finally it was a huge snail,
Otres Beach
The nice, quiet beach. dunno what these creatures are eating, but whatever it is, they eat to much of it.
First night there I met some English guys and a Canadian and joined them at one of the many beach bars, Sessions. A thunderstorm raged over the sea in the distance and it was pretty beautiful watching the lightening strike the water whilst being on the warm dry beach.
Spent nine days at the beach and bars including drinking green Angkor beer on St Patricks Day with a mixture of Swedish, Finish, Cambodian, English and Irish. Throughout the night an epic storm turned the roads to rivers so everyone was essentially stuck there until 4am whereupon the Irish barman informs us that he needs to get rid of all the leftover special green shots for the night, leaving us with about 6 free ones each. Felt rough the next day, and disappointed that the cursed luck of the Irish led to me losing the final pool game of the night to an Irishman, ruining my undefeated record that night...
Beach parties, lazing in hammocks and eating pizza pretty much filled most of the time. That and the inevitable having to recover
Tuk-tuk Problems
After going the wrong way, our tuk-tuk driver decides to take us to the middle of nowhere, surrounded by cows in a feeble attempt to extort some additional money from us. He failed. from the previous night. Spent most of the time with an English guy Sam, who was great fun and has the spirit to dance like he doesn't care whilst sober. We bowed down to the might of the freakish green reindeer hanging from the ceiling and tried to work out why he was green. Clearly, he was a god. Along with Sam there was Tom the Canadian, Anna (who seemed to hate everything there except for editing photos of her and her boyfriend on her laptop) and Karen (from London) who I spent the most part of 4 days chilling out with. It's definitely good to have someone to wander down the beach with to watch your bag as there are groups of small children who try to steal them if they are given half a chance. First day on the beach I left my bag next to a couple of Swedish girls (who I didn't know) whilst I went for a swim and they had to grab it back from these boys.
Slowly learning a bit more about Cambodia and the people here. For all of the money that is coming into the country via tourism there are
a hell of a lot of people here who just want the easy grab and money and an unsurprising level of bitterness towards the people who come to their space to party and spend money whereas they don't have the same option to enjoy it.
Along with the attempt at stealing my bag, walking to the beach at 1am with Karen two people on a moped with the lights off grabbed her bag and drove off. Fortunately we found her passport and wallet which had fallen out, but she lost her camera and mp3 player. Further to this a couple of days before I got to the beach an Irish girl was grabbed from outside Monkey Republic whilst her boyfriend popped to the toilet and they hauled her onto their moped, drove off to a secluded place before beating and raping her. This country being so fantastically corrupt has given pathetic responses, for example...
The Director of Tourism has said crime is rare in Sihanoukville and fears this might damage tourism (forget the seemingly regular theft) and over a week after the rape, the Deputy Provincial Police Chief denied having had the medical report from the girl. The
hospital claim it was completed within 24 hours and the police simply hadn't asked for it. He added that he'd send a sub-ordinate to check (lazy ****). He finally added that "It would affect the tourism business."
The last thing, another that I have personally witnessed was last night (back in Phnom Penh). There was a party in the street for many young Cambodians, all to do with their New Years being sometime next month. I was in a bar with the frankly brilliant name 'Magic Sponge' talking to an Irish guy when a fight started outside. We figured we might as well have a look before realising it was a Westerner getting the shit kicked into him by at least 10 locals. We ran out and tried to intervene, stopping them from kicking him as he lay on the floor, before dragging him into the bar whilst some still taunted him.
It was already about midnight and over the next couple of hours as the guy (from Melbourne) sobering he revealed more about what had happened and we all realised that his right arm was clearly broken in at least two places, to go along with the
swollen shut eye, cracked front teeth and usual cuts and scrapes. Apparently he was offered drugs and he said no (cost being too much) and being hammered the local took advantage and grabbed some money from his pocket. He obviously wasn't best pleased and tried to get it back, but the guy merely taunted and tehn grabbed some more from his pocket before punching him and jumping on the back on someones mopeds and zooming off. In his drunken state the Australian, to his big mistake, struck out at someone else and suddenly a seemingly repressed fury of the locals was unveiled as they beat the life out of him.
I don't know how much of this story is true, having been told by the Australian, but the brutality they threw at him was far too much, though I guess if he had gone down like a normal person after the punches that were splattered across his face, it might've been over sooner and there would've been a slightly better chance that he wouldn't have had to go to the hospital.
Anyways, so enjoyed the beach and the many nights where we went out for a drink and
ended up at a beach party at 5 in the morning, often whilst it thundered and rained during the evening leading to some refreshed drunken swimming in the sea.
Last day there me and Karen went zorbing (enjoying en-route a tuk-tuk ride to the wrong place and a mid journey stop for the guy to demand a lot more money to cover his petrol for having gone the wrong well. We told him where to stick his petrol canister). It was a new place just opened by an Aussie which meant we got to have unlimited goes for only 10 dollars and free goes on the zip-wire and swimming in the lake too. The final go down in the ball I went with the Australian and the Cambodian lads working with him gave us a fairly insane push off down the hill - definitely a bit nauseous after.
We grudgingly got the bus back to Phnom Penh the next morning and enjoyed the delight of the bus tyre completely exploding in two pieces and flying back off down the road. Five months into travelling and that's the first time that's happened to me - I must be
Kaboom!
Tyre bursts en-route back to Phnom Penh. I thought we'd hit someone. lucky! Fortunately it didn't take too long to repair and Karen and myself lazed around lakeside and tried some Khmer food (yuk) before she went off to get her flight home.
Spent the next few days relaxing and trying to recover a bit, been very lethargic for a few weeks, more than likely due to the struggles on being an Englishman who likes being cold trying to survive in temperatures that don't seem to drop below 40 degrees during the day.
Met Caroline a kindergarten teacher from Belgium (who teaches in Berlin, Germany) after we both got endlessly hassled by one of the many boys-with-books-in-a-basket (that'll catch on...). Was good to meet someone who genuinely loves her job, although whilst on her one-month trip, she got bitten by the travel bug and is planning on furiously saving to go away again as soon as possible! Another European who makes me feel bad as a pitiful Englishman who can only speak his own generic sounding language compared to her who regularly moved from Flemish to French to English to German and even Spanish depending on who else was about at the time. She flew back this morning, its getting
The Wedding Tuk-Tuk
Cheaper than a limo and much more original. a little worrying now that most people are leaving (the brilliant) South East Asia as it will soon be entering monsoon season.
That takes me up to now I guess, I'm passing time before I get my bus all the way up to North Cambodia and Stung Treng tomorrow. Depending on how what I feel at the time I may be going to a volcanic lake, or simply taking the border hop in Laos a bit sooner. For the next few weeks I have the pleasure of slow and expensive internet in areas of Laos and Cambodia where there is limited electricity. Added to this that I've lost my data cable for my camera and my plug adaptor as well, looks like I'm not going to be contacting anyone for white a while!
Hope all is well,
Frank
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