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"Maybe Later?"-- Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Sihanoukville is a beach town complete with restaurants and bars all along the beach.  Days are spent lounging on the beach, drinking and eating the food ordered and served to you right on the sand, and laughing at the fun mis-translations on the menus and signs (my favorite being the Chicken CONDOM blue).  Only time you have to move is to use the toilette.  The only complaint some people had was the constant stream of vendors approaching you all day and night.  Children selling bracelets, men with sunglasses and tour packages, and women with fruit.  The kids are smart and befriend you with a free bracelet.  When you say you don’t want to buy one, they ask you if you will “maybe later.”  When “later” comes around and you still say no, they sometimes get angry and call you a liar.  Didn’t happen to me but I witnessed it. 

$5 beach massage

my lil bracelet charmer

Other vendors included women selling $1 lobsters (they peel it fresh for you when ordered), and nails and massages.  I tried all of these and they were fabulous! For a few dollars, I had a good hour massage (so good, I had one two days in a row), mani and pedi…on the beach! I got to know the woman, Lynn, and met her cousin-in-law, DANI! They were both half Vietnamese, half Cambodian and really sweet women to meet.  I’ve come to justify these self-indulgent spa splurges on account of the fact that they afford me authentic local and cultural interactions.  Who says beauty can’t help spread world understanding?!

Some of my days started with morning runs, but every day started with breakfast with Jay at a beach café where we quickly became regulars and made friends with the staff.  Again, my self-indulgent eating ways affording me local interactions. The guys here were really friendly, especially with Jay—sorry for abandoning you that day J

Nights in Sihanoukville were spent watching sunsets and eating cheap, delicious food.  Our favorites were a fancy restaurant that offered two course meals for $5 and the beach bbqs.  For $3 you had your pick of seafood accompanied by garlic bread, fries or potatoes and salad.  I chose grilled barracuda each time and LOVED it! After dinner, we would all meet up at whichever bar had handed us flyers that day for free drinks.  Usually ended up at JJs and Dolphin bar where we could watch fire dancers and Jay’s infamous tractor dance, my favorite. 

$1 lobster and (terrible) sunset mojitos

The beach area is small enough that we ran into several friends without even trying and it was nice to catch up with everyone.  Most of our days were in Serendipity beach (the backpackers area) but one day we took a tuk tuk to Otres beach (stopping at the Canadian ATM first, of course).   It was much more relaxing there--fewer restaurants and vendors.  Enjoyed an afternoon there with Hilde, Jorien, and Jay playing paddle ball, eating, and doing what we enjoy most…nothing!

Cambodia--Journey to Cambodia and a "Sleeper" Bus

JOURNEY  TO  CAMBODIA

The journey to get to Cambodia was LONG!  I made the trek with my friends Jeroen, Jorien, and Hilde (Dutch, of course!) We left Don Det, Laos at 8 am and were taken to the main land in a boat.  Once there, we waited about an hour to get on a bus.  While waiting, we handed over our passports and money to a man who collected them in a plastic grocery bag.  No one told us who he was or what was going on, but this is common here in Asia.  Just hand over your passport to a complete stranger and wait.  So far so good. 

When it came time to get on the bus, there was confusion as to which bus we were to be on.  Long story short, everyone was called to get on a bus except us so we were last on.  Luckily, it was only the bus to the border and the shortest leg of the journey so the crappy seats didn’t matter much.  Once at the “border” (it’s really just a toll-booth style bar in the road), we sat for another hour and a half.  Just waiting.  We found shade and cold drinks and passed the time chatting, playing Yahtzee, and walking back and forth between the two countries to go to the bathroom. The last 30 minutes or so of our wait (we never knew how long it would be by the way) I cherry-picked the hell out of the bus to make sure we got decent seats.  My stalking paid off and I was able to grab the first row for Jeroen to stretch out his long Dutch legs.  It was a good thing because this turned out to be a LONG ride!  And, they packed that bus full---complete with tiny stools in the aisles for extra people.

I forget how long the ride was actually supposed to take.  All I remember was the part that was NOT planned.  After several unnecessarily long rest stops that put us into the wee hours of the morning, our bus decided to break down on the side of the road.  After several minutes of confusion, we followed some locals to a house on the side of the road.  Climbed the stairs into the house (homes are built on stilts here), found a mat on the floor, and plopped down for a few hours sleep until another bus came to get us (a bus full of cranky Koreans, lights that didn’t turn off, and a driver that was permanently glued to his horn).  Didn’t ask questions about who the house belonged to or if we were even supposed to be there, but I thank the Cambodian who let a bus full of strangers sleep in his living room for a few hours---I’ve never been so grateful to see a floor and a mat!

After a seemingly never-ending ride, we arrived in Siem Reap around 6 am the next day.  Needless to say, we promptly slept a few hours and then relaxed most of that first day by the hotel pool.  Met some fellas, Johnny (Portugal), Hywell (aka “Jimmy” from England) and Peter (Hungary) who were on the second bus from Don Det that had arrived, on time, about 7 hours before us with no bus problems---boring! : )

Siem Reap is a nice northern town that is most famous for Angkor Wat, a HUGE complex of ancient temples and one of the only things not destroyed by the Khmer Rouge during Pol Pot’s reign.  Really spectacular, check out my photos. The girls and I (Jeroen, aka “:Jay”,  had already been) went to see the sunset and ran into the 3 guys there.  Had fun exploring parts we were (and weren’t) allowed to see. That night, we all went out to eat Mexican and dancing at a local bar.  Turns out Siem Reap has a decent night life.

Angkor Wat temple

I had fun but my friends had TOO much fun seeing as I was the only one who showed up for our 4:30 am meeting time to see the sunrise at the temples. (Thanks, guys! J ) We had rented bikes for $1 but I didn’t want to go alone.  Instead, I waited for a tuk tuk until 7:30 am, watching the sunrise from the hotel reception instead of the temples.  I think my driver thought I was the laziest tourist ever because I was so beat from two nights of no sleep in a row that I barely made it through a few hours of him driving me to temples.  I would walk around, take photos, and then hurry to the next one.  All the while, all I wanted was to make it back with time to sleep before check out.    

In the end, it all worked out and I had a lovely time seeing all I wanted to see (yes, I saw the Tomb Raider temple) and learning from my local driver.  I was back before the super intense heat and able to rest before lounging at the pool the rest of the day with Jay.  When the girls got back, we got dressed in the dark (power was out, again) and left on a night “sleeper bus” to Sihanoukville.

Ain’t No Sleepin on  a Sleeper Bus!

The term “sleeper bus” is an oxymoron.  You see, there is no chance you could possibly sleep on that thing.  When we first boarded the bus and saw 4 lounge seats in the back of the bus, complete with blankets and a bathroom below, we thought we had won the lottery.  What they don’t tell you in the advertisement though is that the temperature is either so hot you can’t breathe, or so cold that the air conditioning fluid drips on you the entire time.  No really, I was drenched wet.  That had to be good for my skin.  Additionally, the back of the bus was so bumpy, we could barely hold on.  Above all, the most frustrating part of the bus ride is the CONSTANT honking of the horn that Cambodian bus drivers LOVE.  And I don’t mean every once in a while when it’s actually necessary.  The horn is Asia is equivalent to a blinker, braking, steering, etc.  You don’t actually have to drive. You can just set the bus on auto-[ilot, honk, and expect everyone to move out of your way (they do).  The constant honking  almost makes you crave the karaoke videos on full volume.  I said almost.  Luckily, I was sharing the ride with good friends who were able to make it fun(ish) and now that we’ve had some sleep, we can look back at it and chalk it up to another adventurous Asian bus ride.  We can add this one to the FB page, Austin.

Cozy on the "sleeper" bus

Our mantra the entire ride was “the beach will make it all worth it”….and it did! 

Smiles All Around

Cambodia

February 28, 2012

It’s 8 am and I’m sitting at the restaurant/bar on Koh Ru (“Bamboo Island”) awaiting my breakfast.  I was awakened today, as every day, by the sound of crashing waves.  I do not mind this alarm clock at all.

Well, it’s now March 9^th, and I never finished that one. You can see how much the island life took over and I haven’t done much except relax and enjoy life.  Not complaining! I’m actually sitting in a hotel room in Vietnam now so I realize I’ve missed an entire country in my blogging. I’ll try to catch up now.

KAMPUCHEA, land of the Khmer.

 That’s Cambodia for all ya’ll who don’t speak Khmer, the language and name of the people of Cambodia.  If you read anything about Cambodia or ask anyone who has ever been, they will all tell you the same thing- - - Cambodians love to SMILE! What amazes me the most is that they are not only some of the friendliest, smile-ready people I’ve ever met (I mean they’d give me and Jen a run for our money for our “oh a camera’s in my face” flashy grin), but they have such a haunting past.--a very recent past, that it inspires me to think how much they’ve overcome and yet how happy they are.  Let me explain.

From 1976-1979, Pol Pot lead Cambodia and carried out his own version of the Holocaust. While seeking to create a new country from “Year Zero,” he, and his child soldiers, the Khmer Rouge, systematically killed over 3 million people from a country of roughly 7 million.  I’ll spare you the details here, but please check out my photo album to learn more about the “killing fields” as it is called.  Other sources of good information are the movie, “The Killing Fields” and the book “First they killed my father.” To be honest, I didn’t like the perspective of the movie much but I did enjoy the book and found it very informative. 

Again, we’re talking 1979 when this all went down.  That means that anyone I met from age 31 and over lived through this terror.  And yet, they love to smile, love to have fun, and love Americans.  Inspiring to me.  So, as you can tell, I found Cambodia to be very friendly.  I was also impressed with how widely, and well-spoken English was throughout the country.  I can honestly say that of all the countries I’ve visited on this trip, I found Cambodia to have the most English speakers (well, Australia and New Zealand might be close runners ups). 

Other impressions on Cambodia—

*The electricity goes out—a lot (but usually comes back within a few minutes or hours)

*They like to wear pajamas as clothes.  Yup, that’s it. Not sure how to explain that one either.

*It’s cheap (not Thailand cheap but nothing has been so far) but still cheap (like 25 cent beer cheap). 

*They mostly use US dollars (although some border towns use Thailand baht but change is sometimes given back in Cambodian Riel.  Like Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, there are no coins, which makes carrying the money much more convenient. 

It was both nice and not so nice to know what I was spending on things.  I have to admit that using foreign currency, it sometimes feels like play money and doesn’t really have the same impact as when I know for certain what I’m spending.  Oh well, good thing it’s only money.   Speaking of money, I have to thank Canada for investing there because your ATMs all over the country saved me a $6 fee every time I needed money.  This is something that all foreigners and tuk tuk drivers know and it was common practice for a tuk tuk to drive you to a Canadian ATM on the way to anywhere else (all the drivers knew where they were).