Sunny, Smoky Sihanoukville
Trip Start
Feb 06, 2005
1
3
42
Trip End
Jul 2005
Sihanoukville,
Cambodia
Saturday, February 12, 2005
The answer was a little bit yes: beautiful weather, warm seas (29 degrees!), long beaches, friendly locals;
and a little bit no: we managed to arrive on the first day of Chinese New Year, and found ourselves paying double for a room. Turns out that those who can afford to leave Phnom Penh (the capital) for Sihanoukville this time of year. No room at the inn for us poor travellers, unless we pay (shock, horror) U$10 a night.
We have come away from Sihanoukville with a zen-like wisdom. We have come to understand the art of two-man bargaining. From paying $5 to cross town on our first day, to paying 50 cents on our third, we have matured
Another beach?? Whatever...
. We have discovered the joys of leaving organisation to the last second. Wanna stay on Bamboo island? ok. Bummer, can't get there. Yeah, whatever. Let's go to Phnom Penh instead.Bamboo island- a few bamboo huts on a deserted island (funnily enough), with a picture perfect beach. This is what we had dreamed of, but it was not to be... arrival and departure were at the whims of the tides and the waves, and nobody was going out there for half a week.
It was disappointing because, for all their smiling generosity, the cambodian people have not come across the idea of not littering. Beaches and streets are covered in refuse. Tourists can be the cleanest ones here- hippy chicks walk up the beach idealistically picking up garbage and surprising beachside shops by asking for a bin and using it to 'keep cambodia beautiful'. What the hippies don't seem to realise is that those bins just get emptied out the back of the shops- each home and store comes with a mini rubbish tip out the back. Thus, Bamboo island was our only opportunity to achieve a deserted and unspoiled beach. But, with our new zen awareness, we knew that if it was not to be, we would live.
Sihanoukville was where we also became more comfortable with the concept of what a modern-day backpacker is. Everyone has digital cameras. You can buy coca-cola everywhere
Asleep at the wheel
. You can bribe a cop with cigarettes. Step-through motorbikes can have street-cred, but only when driven by the psychos who are also known as cambodian drivers. Weed is everwhere.I thought i must be fooling myself when I could smell weed in the Cambodian customs office at the Thai-Cambodian border but no, apparently cops sell the stuff pretty freely. Thus, stepping into a backpacker cafe or guesthouse in Cambodia is like walking onto a 1970s university campus. In Phnom Penh there's even a pizza joint (pun intended) called Happy Herbs. The signs say you shouldn't plan on doing anything for a few hours after a pizza at Happy's. Not that we touch the stuff of course.
Anyway, our boat trip (no pun intended) around the islands was grand, i'm loving the heat and humidity (joe's not, ha ha), and Sihanoukville's great... but we're over it, so to Phnom Penh!
