Chomping on barbecued squid for 3 dollars...
Trip Start
Aug 10, 2007
1
53
76
Trip End
Ongoing
Sihanoukville,
Cambodia
Monday, March 24, 2008
Sihanoukville was officially settled in 1964, and was named after (then) King Sihanouk, and is an ever growing and increasingly popular tourist beach scene. Accommodation is plentiful and cheap, at least round and about Serendipity Beach, wehere we spent most of our time. We shared an (expensive) seafront bungalow on the first night for 20 dollars for the three of us, but just a hundred metres down the road you're back down to 6 dollars for a room. A plate full of barbecued squid or a filet of barracuda on the beach won't set you back more than 3 dollars and a happy hour beer costs just 50 cents (50 cents! 50 cents!! long live all these economies which have practically pegged their currency to the dollar)! What a spot of heaven.
And what a brilliant concept: the Boom Boom Room. Not exactly what the lascivious name implies, but in fact a shop which specialises in clothing and digital albums for your mp3-player or iPod. For someone who's been vegetating on the mere 4100 songs on his iPod for the past eight months, this is a blessing. Besides, I've just realised that although I've been able to keep up on world events due to internet, BBC World, Al-Jazeira, the Economist and (I hardly dare say it, as it's such a sad excuse for a news channel) CNN, but in the world of popular music I've missed out on eight month's worth of harvest (2007/2008 thus won't be my forte when it comes to music during our pub-quizzing). Still the Enrique Iglesias, Axwell and Groove Armada hits don't really work for me (David Guetta on the other hand: Now that the love has gone...).
Right, back to business. We had to defer the 2-day diving trip for a day, as Kim had probably digested a local concoction going under the name "Ice Tea", but probably better described at "cooled-down-local-water-with-some-muck-thrown-in", although the former is more marketable. But when we did ultimately arrive off the coast of Koh Rung island (about 105 minutes' sail out of the Sihanoukville port), diving was very cool. Visibility still subpar, although sublime obviously by Dutch standards, but coral still in relatively good condition, plenty of fish and nudibranchs (though don't tell anybody that I've become a fervent nudibranch spotter). And during the night dive we even struck upon a baby shark and a seasnake. The Dive Shop, the dive organiser as an outfit is stil fairly young, which is good as the gear isn't all decrepid and falling apart (well..), but the second day, the boat was full with all kinds of weird and wonderful dive characters, and it was fairly clear that we'd established the limits of the capacity of this outfit.
Right, I'm starving and in need of a cool beer.
Cheers!
