Kampot

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Yet another eventful bus journey took me to Kampot, which is on the Southern coast of Cambodia. Instead of passing time by playing peekabo with Cambodian children on the bus, I spent it talking to an Australian man in his fifties. He had done a lot of travelling throughout his life and had the most amazing stories from the time he travelled through the Middle East and India back in the 1970s. It then turned out he'd been coming to Cambodia every year for the last decade, but had only ever been to Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville. He is a sex tourist, and even has Cambodian baby as a trophy for his 'visits'. The sex industry in Cambodia is huge here and hideously blatant. Men parade around with girls not even a day over 14, despite the government apparently trying to crack down on peadophiles here. Having studied prostitution and sex tourism at university, and being of a somewhat more feminist viewpoint on most issues, I was really intrigued to actually have the chance to speak at length to a sex tourist. We spent most of the journey talking about it: he gave the typical justification that the girls make more money than Doctors and so can afford to support their family. However, later on he admitted none of the girls enjoy having sex with the older (usually fat and grotesque too) men, but love hanging around with younger good-looking Western men. Of course the former pay them more money and often will send money to them monthly and visit them again, whereas the latter usually get them pregnant or give them a STD and then piss off back home. I let him ramble on about how he felt the Asian set-up of relationships was better than in the West because of the lack of commitment! I absorbed all of what he was saying with great interest, but I had to bite my tongue many times.

With my tongue slightly sore, we arrived in Kampot at about 6. A small dark town greeted us and finally a few of us from the bus managed to find a guesthouse ($5 for two double beds, bathroom, fan & huge satellite tv. Not the nicest room ever, but bit of a bargain really). Richard (the ozzie) and I went to walk down to the river front to find somewhere to eat. Despite his obvious selfish, mysognistic tendencies he was a fairly sound bloke (and an excellent source for travel tips) and so I thought a few more hours in his company wouldn't be so bad. We ate a a small bar/restaurant ran by a Mancunian guy who had been living in Cambodia for about six years. Very friendly, as was his Cambodian wife (and they genuinely seemed to be in love actually) and he arranged my trip to Bokor National Park the next day. As it was an early start I went to bed early, watching the beloved BBC world and Star Movies.

In the back of 3 4x4s (i.e open top, sat on benches) about 20 of us began our ascent to Bokor National Park and Bokor Hill Station. We had already been warned the road was bad and so for the first ten minutes being thrown about like ragdolls whilst clinging on for dear life and ducking from overhanging branches was actually quite funny. After an hour my arse felt like it had been pummelled by bricks and we had all stopped laughing. An Austrian couple and their incredibly dry sense of humour kept everyone's spirits up though. Finally we reached Bokor Hill Station, which was a bustling French Colonial town back in the 1950s and 1960s. Now it is abandoned and decrepid. A very eery place. We continued looking around the Hill Station and had lunch. Our guide then informed us we wouldn't be visiting the waterfall because it was dry at the moment. Clearly it wasn't, they were late in picking us up and so didn't have time to take us. Instead we'd do a longer trek the jungle to return to the bottom of the hill again. After 20-30 minutes of easy trekking we met the 4x4s again. Longer trek?! Again we laughed about the trip being slightly different to the initial itinerary, you come to expect such things in Cambodia. A scenic trip along the river whilst the sun was setting took us back. My arse was very grateful. It also got the trip for free, as the bar owner told me I could buy my ticket off them in the morning, but they never asked to see anyone's tickets nor did they ask me. So I didn't have to part with $10 to have my arse bruised, happy days. And actually it was a happy day.

I went out for dinner with Jesper, a swedish guy who was also on the tour. For $3 we had curry and beer. Gotta love Cambodia. Quite a few beers later we headed back through the rather dark streets to the guesthouse, but decided to first walk towards the loud music and lights a few streets away. Turns out a huge Cambodian Kareoke concert had just been on and thousands of teenagers were scaling over the wall into crowded lorries for the journey home. They were all staring and waving at us - one very white girl and one very blonde Swedish guy is the stuff of celebrity here. Having such a major event in the tiny, sleepy town of Kampot was very surreal to say the least.

I decided I'd head to Sihanoukville the next morning in a shared taxi...

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Comments

[Inge]

Haha- am slightly amused thinking of you talking for hours with a sex tourist, lol- but I guess its interesting hearing 'the other side' of the story. You've already done so much! Love reading your stories... I'm going to see karl Kennedy on Monday! haha- 2nd time... I'm a true fan! Hope you have a nice weekend -x-