Cambodia

After a long bus ride, and a short trip though the most lax security at a border crossing I have come across so far, we reached Sihanoukville - Cambodia. Our arrival was much anticipated it seemed as we were greeted by the locals running gleefully to meet our bus and offer us a ride to our preferred hostel. I had assumed we would be able to get a taxi to a guesthouse that had been recommended to us by another traveller, however, the only options at our disposal were a little Tuk Tuk (imagine a small rickety chariot drawn by a scooter rather than a horse) or a Scooter Taxi. From what the locals were telling us on the map, our hostel was not far away, but still a little too far to walk with our bags. Some of the other people who had arrived on the same bus as us were considering their options, and after deciding to go with the Scooter taxi, sped off a few minutes later. The Tuk Tuk driver wanted to charge us $6 dollars for the trip however the eager chap on the scooter was only charging $1 per person. I was rather dubious as to how we would fit the bags on the bikes as well, but he promptly removed my rucksack from by bag and lodged it in front in him between his knees.

With a shrug and a thought of ‘well why not?’ I hopped on behind, and on a scooter each, we sped off towards our Guesthouse. For some reason $8 bought us a room with two double beds but no hot water, however, it actually turned out to be a refreshing surprise in the heat of the beach town. Sihanoukville – or at least the area of it that we stayed in - easily turned out to be one the most touristy places we have been to so far, the beach front lined with bars, restaurants and street sellers some as young as 6 trying to push their bracelets, sunglasses, massages and pedicures.

In fact one of the street sellers called Beyonce, a 12 year old boy with skinny jeans, long hair and a swagger took such a fancy to me that I managed to get a free bracelet (if you consider a plaited piece of string a bracelet) in my favourite colour. Beyonce was not impressed, however, when I said that I didn't want to buy anything else, or have the hair on my legs attacked with two pieces of string.

Although far from an undiscovered location the hot sun, beautiful sea, cheap fruit shakes and continuous happy hours kept us here for a few days. The hours weren’t the only things that were happy either with plenty of places offering ‘happy’ pizzas or ‘happy’ shakes for only an additional dollar to the usual price. There were also places offering Dr Fish pedicures which of course we had to try. It was the most ticklish experience I have ever had to endure in my life, but I must admit I did get used to it after a while and soon enjoyed the sensation of lots of tiny fish nibbling at my feet. I don't think they came out much smoother afterwards though, but nevermind.

Whilst strolling along the beach trying to avoid the swarms of children brandishing beads on coat hangers we saw a sign advertising a ‘Reef Clean’ Scuba Diving trip out to one of the islands for half the usual price. We went to enquire, of course, and found that it was basically 4 Dives out on one of the islands which were actually fairly clean, but if we happened to see any rubbish on the reef whilst we were down there we would pick it up. It sounded like a great opportunity to us so we booked it, even though it would mean we would have to stay in Sihanoukville a little longer than planned.

The island was beautiful and I would say mostly worth the treacherously rocky 3 hour ride in the glorified fishing boat to get there. The bungalows were simple and it turned out there was no electricity for lights or anything else, but the diving was pretty good. I don’t think it will be very high up on the list once we start adding more place but it was still good fun, and useful for reminding us of what we learned during the course.

We returned back to the mainland on Justin’s Birthday so we decided to treat ourselves to a night in one of Sihaoukvilles nicer hotels. Grossly under-priced at $30 per night the rooms boasted double glass doors leading out onto the outdoor swimming pool, large double bed, a sofa, an armchair with foot stool, a flat screen TV, fridge, wardrobe, en-suite bathroom with separate shower and bath complete with an electric blind to shield the bathroom from prying eyes through the glass wall. Perhaps not a completely remarkable hotel but compared to the sorts of places we have been staying in it was a really luxury. My only criticism was that we couldn’t stay there longer!

After our little bout of luxury we thought we should probably move on to see another part of the country so we bought our bus tickets to Phenom Penh.

It was a nice enough city but the main reason for us wanting to go was to see the S-21 prison and the killing fields. Not the most enjoyable experience but a very interesting and sobering one. We also had enough time to check out the other main attractions which I can't remember the exact names of now but it included a museum, a Royal Palace, some pagodas and one of the markets called the Russian Market, (for reasons unknown to me) selling everything from buckets of little fish, spices to silver and candles for the tourists.

Two nights later we bought bus tickets to Battambang keen to go on the famous bamboo train. Now expecting the swarms of Tuk Tuks ready and waiting to whisk us off to a Hotel of their choice we read our trusty Lonely Planet and this time were armed with the name of the place that we wanted to be taken to. Funilly enough there was a driver with that very hotels name printed on a peice of paper, that also displayed the words 'Free Pick up'. Seemed like a good enough deal, so we piled in our bags. Unfortunately it turned out that everyone else must have developed the same technique as when we got there it was full. Whilst on the search for another hotel (which we literally only crossed the road to do) we met a lovely French couple who we ended up travelling with for the next few days, and at breakfast the next morning we decided to take a Tuk Tuk out to the Bamboo Train.




It was a lot less visited by tourists than I had imagined which was a nice surprise, however, at the end of the 30 minutes spent speeding through the trees (at an almost alarming speed considering the vehicle) we were greeted by several children keen (and no doubt well practised) to show us to a rice factory lodged in a little wooden hut down a dirt path. After our tour complete with an explanation of which bits of rice were for us and which bits were for the chicken, they took us back to the – for want of a better word – train station asking for 1 dollar for school. I was a bit perplexed at how they could be asking for 1 dollar for school when it was quite apparent that they were not going to school otherwise they would not be in their swarms ready to meet tourists coming buy train in the late afternoon. However, when I voiced my thoughts out loud one of the older children told me that my guide (an eight year old girl) went to school in the mornings. Her English appeared to be very good, so I asked if they learned English in school which I was told they did not, they just learnt it from the tourists. I asked the girl if she went to school today, to which she replied no, and the same answer when I asked her if she would be going to school tomorrow. Surely a bit of a flaw in her sympathy induced plea for school funds. Anyway, right or wrong we gave them half a dollar each which sent them skipping away with grins on their faces.

We only spent one day in Battambang as we were very keen to get to Seam Reap to see the Temples at Angkor Wat so the next day we hopped on another bus. Our Tuk Tuk driver in Battambang apparently had connections, and he had phoned ahead for one of his friends to pick us up from the bus station. After a bit of driving around – he ensure us that the hotel we ha d been recommended by a guy we had met in Sihanoukville was $5 a night more than the $10 he had told us and subsequentially ended up taking us to a couple of places in the area we asked him to, along with a couple of places well out of the bustling market areas whch we suspect must have been owned by ‘friends’ of his – we ended up going to the place we wanted to go in the first place and managed to negotiate a whole dollar off of the price for a double room with hot water.

Seam Reap turned out to be a pretty cool town I thought. Ok it was, again, fairly touristy and you were unable to walk more than two paces without being asked if you wanted a Tuk Tuk from one of the hundreds of drivers weaving their way through the pedestrian filled streets, but it had a very friendly, lively feel to it. There were several eateries to choose from, ranging from local BBQ’s on the street where you could dine for less than $3 on plastic chairs, to very swanky and modern looking western and Asian restaurants. For a bit of a change, our first choice for food was a Swiss restaurant that the Lonely Planet mentioned as having fondue and Raclette. Well in my opinion, one can never turn down the chance for cheese so we ordered the fondue without even giving the rest of the Menu a second thought. Surprisingly, in the middle of Cambodia the Fondue was amazingly good, though I’m not sure if that’s just because I have been cheese depraved for such a long time or whether it was a Fondue to be reckoned with. Either way it made me very happy for the rest of the evening.

After a day of relaxing and discovering my new favourite Seam Reap haunt, a place called the Blue Pumkin - which served monster sized fruit shakes, cakes, macaroons and delicious ham and cheese croissants. The best part being that the upstairs was an air conditioned haven with a sofa as deep as a chaise-lounge and your food was brought to your lap on a handy fold-away table - we booked our Tuk Tuk to come and collect us at 4.30 the following morning. Not an hour that I would usually frequent, even if there were promises of cheese, however, the sun rising from beyond one of the temples is an extremely popular photographic opportunity and ‘when in Rome’ as they say.... Although getting up at this hour meant that we had a lot of the day ahead of us to go exploring in the various temples, I would say that the sunrise was a little disappointing. Perhaps we were just unlucky with the palette of blue that washed the skies that morning, but everything was rather dull. I did slightly tweak this photo to represent what I thought I would be seeing when getting up at this hour, but nevertheless it was an experience (never to be repeated).

The rest the temples were pretty spectacular but by the afternoon we were all templed out and decided not to stay for the sunset.

After sleeping off the previous days early start we spent the next few days abusing my favourite haunt and exploring the old and night markets. When we had checked out most of what Seam Reap had to offer we thought it was time to arrange our bus ticket to Laos. Unfortunately for us, it would be another early start as the only bus left at 5.30 and we would get picked up from our hotel at 5am. Bah!

So at 5 o'clock the next day we were picked up by a little minibus which sped frighteningly fast along the dusty roads, to our VIP (or so called VIP) bus 4 hours into the 12 hour journey. Admittedly the VIP bus did offer a little more comfort. It was like the top floor of a double decker bus with reclining cinema seats, however, it looked like it had been involved in a shooting as there were shattered circles of glass kept in place by tape over a couple of the windows.

Thinking that it would be a good time to update the blog, I began to type this in my VIP seat contemplating the war torn state of the bus when all of a sudden it sounded as if a bomb had just gone off on the lower floor. Something it seemed like the bus had all too much experience in. Smoke suddenly started drifting into the cabin along with the smell of burning rubber. Flat tyre. So now everyone has gotten off the bus for a bit of fresh air whilst I can hear pounding and metal hammering below with the occasional shake of the bus. I hope we won’t be here for too long, the most important reason being that I don’t have any emergency rations...