Sihanoukville – three pairs of pants

15 October 201526 January 2018

Day 31 (Thu 15 Oct): Sihanoukville to Kampot

Let’s start with a “wildlife” review, with these two still sleeping when I arrived for my pick-up:

Finally checked out of my “hotel”. I’d probably have stayed another night here if it’d been good, but I just couldn’t wait to leave. And nowhere to dry my clothes meant that I was down to my last pair of pants. So glad I brought three spares 🙂 On a positive note, Steve tried to make it up to me by providing an enormous breakfast. Here’s what a full English cooked by an Englishman in Cambodia looks like:

But then the “baguette and jam” arrived. It wasn’t so much the radioactive colour of the jam that perturbed me…

… it was the dead ants in it. But hey, this is Cambodia (and in Mondulkiri, I did actually consider eating ants… but didn’t summon up the courage before they’d all been eaten), so I scraped them out and down it went. Then down to the beach to soak up this view before the van arrived:

… when I was accosted by a lady offering any beauty treatment you could desire. There was no way she was getting her hands (and thread) on my eyebrows (what *is* that all about?!), but a quick haggle and she effectively waxed my legs using cotton thread. It stung a little, and took a lot longer than waxing, but it was pretty effective. I’ll report back whether it stayed away for the advertised “4 or 5 weeks”:

I like Kampot. It reminds me of Kratie (a coastal, functional town that’s alive, but not too touristy). Stopped at another local joint for lunch where there were only four things on the menu (and one was pudding!). And then a minor slip… off to find a massage place and inadvertently ended up at a brothel (or “massage with happy ending”). I can’t comment on her, er, “night job” but I hope she’s better at it than her day job – woke up with bruises down my legs. Will be more careful next time!

Loads of ex-pats here (or “Pot-pats” as they’re called). This may be exacerbated by the lack of locals due to Phjum Benh – the end of the 15-day festival when people return to their old country. Apparently, the temple visits are to “feed” the ghosts: when someone dies but doesn’t make it to the planned place they stay on earth as ghosts. Some of these may be your ancestors. So you go to the temple to feed the ghosts… whilst they’re working out a way to get where they want to be, I assume.

I really needed a ballet class (I’d even do adage;), but yoga was the next best thing and a lovely way to kick off Kampot 🙂

14 October 201526 January 2018

Day 30 (Wed 14 Oct): Sihanoukville (snorkelling)

A quick risk assessment. Safe. I collected myself, took two confident steps forward… and jumped.

After breakfast and this view:

… we’d quickly piled on to the boats, people suddenly appearing from nowhere, and we were off into the beautiful waters of Cambodia’s southern coast.

First stop was snorkelling (at Koh Praeus?).

Grabbed some googles, jumped in and promptly choked. As a sprint swimmer I’m conditioned to “explosive breathe” when I’m in the water: inhale quickly, hold my breath (this aids buoyancy), then exhale quickly before the next inhalation. Doesn’t work with a snorkel, it just makes you splutter. Ok, I thought, better teach yourself how to snorkel. And fast. It took ten minutes to retrain a lifetime of breathing 🙂

And I was off. But without a waterproof camera so here’s what I saw, courtesy of Google images:

A leisurely lunch stop followed at a beautiful beach with clear water:

A hammock:

Fantastic views (note the cow):

And a ton of litter:

Or rubbish, really. To me, litter implies a bottle or two, but this was like fly tipping. It’s everywhere – beaches, streets, people’s houses. Cambodia is one big rubbish heap.

Back on the boat, we pulled up here:

Everyone fell silent, not sure what was happening. Snorkelling again? “Jump”, said the guide in his basic English. Err, what? People started looking round at each other. “Oh no, I didn’t sign up to this,” said a voice behind me.

But we did it! Almost everyone had a go. Standing on the top, I could fully experience how the kids I teach feel standing on the poolside, toes curled over the edge, trying to summon up the courage to jump in for the first time. I also knew that the longer I contemplated my fate, the more difficult it would be. So I checked that the water was safe to jump, collected myself, took two steps forward… and jumped.

I was in the air for ages – we guessed it was about 7m high. And didn’t do what I teach (keeping your feet together – it’s really difficult when you’re falling). Let’s just say that it wasn’t the most elegant water entry I’ve ever made. But I did it (no photo – I was otherwise engaged). And I felt a real sense of achievement 🙂

One final snorkel stop (not good visibility as last night’s rain had churned things up here) where we spotted this beggar floating nonchalantly around us:

… and then back to the number we first thought of tired, happy, wet and very very sandy. A quick shower and back to the beach for sunset.

13 October 201526 January 2018

Day 29 (Tue 13 Oct): Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville

Lying in the van, watching the world go by:

Only six of us again, and a western-standard van. I’m going up in the world.

As ever, we stopped for “lunch” ridiculously early (10:30am), where they were selling these:

I was intrigued (she could only tell me the name in Cambodian, which obviously didn’t mean much), so I tried some:

Like a grapefruit but less juicy, so you can tear the segments from the pith.

It rained hard yesterday and you could see the flooded rice fields. You can’t mind the rain – it keeps the population (and me!) fed.

Dropped near the centre of Sihanoukville, I decided to wander round the town before heading out to my hotel – the main beaches are party capitals, so I’d settled on the furthest beach, 7km out of town.

In a mini-mart, I found garibaldi biscuits 🙂

And stopped at a local joint for lunch. Getting off the main tourist track is better, cheaper and more interesting. In Phnom Penh, I dined at a local cafe just one street in from the quay and feasted for half the price of one main dish on the main drag. You’ve just gotta have the confidence to try. Same here – at first I thought the $7 tom yam soup was expensive… until they served me enough to easily feed two (the lidded pot contained more rice than I could ever possibly eat). Lunch and dinner rolled into one.

I’ve noticed a number of western males with younger Asian females around. In the most part they appear to be in a mutually-consenting relationship. Jim was one such male. He explained it thus: “In England, I’m a fat, ugly slob; here, I’m like a demi-god.” And it’s true: females are conditioned to be attracted to mates that will not only produce good offspring (so handsome and intelligent), but who have the means to provide for them and their children (rich). And by western standards, you don’t need much to be considered rich here. And the men get attractive, young females. A win-win situation, it would seem. And they appear to be a small percentage of couples, so not adversely affecting the social equilibrium. But I don’t really know. Just interesting.

An hour later, the heavens opened. So I decided to head to my hotel.

“See!” I pointed at the big “Otres Marina” sign:

We were stood in the road, not more than 4 metres away. My tuk-tuk driver squinted. And then nodded enthusiastically, smiled a big grin and said “Ah yeah! My eye not so good.” He’d just driven me 7km in the pouring rain unable to see his hand in front of his face. It had occurred to me that I’d not seen any Cambodians wearing glasses, but had pushed it to the back of my mind. I resolved, at this point, to only use young tuk-tuk drivers. We’d been past my hotel twice already but when I’d said I thought it was here and pointed to the sign, he’d just nodded and carried on driving.

It was about to get worse: not only was the hotel not expecting me (“they don’t email us when they take a booking”; but I’ve not had a problem before so decided to reserve judgement) but my two room options were “awful” or “really awful”. Interestingly, it wasn’t the cold shower (not so bad when it’s 30 degrees outside) or the open-air bathroom option, but the sand. Sand everywhere so you never really feel clean. Even after a cold shower. On a (very) positive note, the wifi was super, the AC effective and quiet and no mozzies (I can deal with lizards – they don’t try to suck my blood). Still, I think I made the wrong decision. Went to book a snorkel trip at the bar down the road, turned round and saw this:

The place was beautiful, alive but chilled. Maybe I had made the right choice after all 🙂