February 25, Sunday, 2007 7:44 a.m. Sihanouk, Cambodia

My plan for the day is to ride my bike up along the coast and see what there is to see. There might be nothing. There might be a fishing village or two. I’ve also read that there are some old navy ships up there rusting away. If I can get close to them, they might make some interesting pictures.

I described some of my arrival in Sihanouk already and how I reacted to the garbage-strewn main part of the beach. I also didn’t react that well to the foreigner end of this beach area, known as Serendipity Beach. The main beach will never grow on me. It is meant for families to come for the day and lie on the sand and have a big meal. I like beaches, but it’s not from the point of view of lying in the sand and occasionally going in the water. I prefer just being at the water. I love rocky shores. I don’t need any sand at all. I’d go into the water, but mainly for snorkeling. Here, there isn’t any snorkeling. It’s just a typical beach like you might find at any of the big resorts in the world.

Serendipity Beach is different, though. If sand is required for a place to be called a beach, then this isn’t even a beach. It’s just a stretch of rocky shoreline. And it’s very crowded by any standard. The stretch of shoreline is very short and there are a couple dozen guest houses, restaurants, and Internet cafes all jammed together. There is also very little flat land. At the very beginning of Serendipity Beach there is a little bit and a bunch of places have spread out a little bit. That is where the Internet cafe is, at a place called Coasters. I was astonished to find it there. It was very convenient and easy to use. They had about ten computers. And there are lots of other Internet cafes around. At least I’ve seen lots of signs. I’ve learned that just having a sign doesn’t mean there are any actual working computers.

But very quickly, the flat shoreline disappears to almost nothing. Most of this part of the shore consists of a steep hill and the bungalows and restaurants are built upwards on that hill. Right beside the shore, they have built up a section of land to make a sort of walkway, but that’s about it. It’s kind of hard to describe. It’s really more of a small headland or peninsula separating Occheuteal Beach and Sokha Beach. Both Occheuteal Beach and Sokha Beach are dominated by local tourism. It feels like this little foreigner ghetto, Serendipity Beach, is hemmed in on both sides. We’re like a mountain tribe that got pushed up into the hills when a bigger group invaded. You can really see the difference in tastes when you look at the two beach areas. I know that the foreigners don’t think much of the beach life of the Cambodians. I wonder if the Cambodians are as puzzled by what we do?

For one thing, in the foreigner area, the bungalow is king. Everyone wants to stay in a bungalow and the new places that are being built are all bungalows. Around Occheuteal Beach, there are mainly hotels and more standard guest houses where the Cambodians like to stay. I can understand that. From their point of view, perhaps a bungalow is too rustic. After all, people in villages already live in what are basically bungalows. Why go on vacation and stay in a village hut? They’d rather stay in a hotel room. That for them would be a step up.

It’s also likely that most of the people I saw on the beach yesterday didn’t stay here at all. Like the huge crowds at Kep, they probably drove down from Phnom Penh for the day. Then they’ll pack up and drive back.

I spent quite a while yesterday speaking with the new owner and manager of the Serendipity Beach Bungalows, soon to be renamed The Cove Beach Bungalows. He was a friendly fellow from Holland. He is friends with a man who has dual citizenship in Cambodia and France and this friend knew someone who wanted to sell or lease this piece of land (hillside really) on Serendipity Beach. At first he wasn’t interested. He pointed out a neighboring piece of hillside that is as yet undeveloped and he said that it basically looked like that – a scruffy bit of hillside covered in bushes and weeds. It doesn’t exactly jump out at you as a prime piece of property. But then he thought about it and he thought back to his time traveling around South East Asia and how everywhere he went he heard the same refrain over and over again: “Bungalows? Do you have bungalows? We want to stay in a private bungalow.” These bits of hillside aren’t very large, but with a little planning he realized that he could fill the hillside with bungalows. They wouldn’t be exactly private or secluded, but if they were spaced properly and angled the right way, each one would have a view of at least some of the ocean, and you wouldn’t be staring at any of your neighbors.

He spoke about this as if it was a revolutionary idea of his own and he went on to say that now everyone was copying him and soon there would be bungalows everywhere. He said that that’s all the local people know – how to copy. They only know how to copy and not come up with their own ideas. I found this tirade a bit odd. For one thing, he copied the idea of bungalows from what he had seen in Thailand. He even copied pictures from the Internet to come up with his designs for his bungalows. Plus, there were already bungalows here. Cloud 9 was already in operation, so it could be said that he had just copied Cloud 9. And I believe lots of other bungalow operations existed already. I saw some yesterday at a place called Malibu Bungalows and they looked like they’d been around a long time.

In any event, he came up with some rough plans for the layout of his place and the design of his bungalows. He has 13 of them in total. Three of them are larger and go for $20 a night. 10 are smaller and go for $15 a night. It took 7 months to build the place, and he just opened two months ago. I don’t imagine he has had a single bungalow vacant for one night in that time. Of course this is the high season. He said that in the low season he would be glad to just break even. This is the time when he has to make money for the year.

He was a very emotional fellow and he was at his most emotional when he told the story of the American that is suing everyone who is using the name Serendipity. I learned bout this when a man came along and asked if this was the Serenity guest house. He said no, and pointed to Serenity next door. I commented that it must be confusing to have the Serendipity right beside the Serenity. He then said it wasn’t called Serendipity anymore. He pulled out a sign that said The Cove on it. He then told me the story that I’d already about in the LP, about an American who claims he coined the name Serendipity Beach and now says he owns the copyright. I thought the whole thing was a joke, but apparently it’s not. This fellow has actually taken people to court over using the name. So the owner of this place decided it wasn’t worth fighting over and changed the name to The Cove. I guess we’ll have to ignore the fact that it isn’t a cove at all. This piece of land is pretty much the opposite of a cove. But a name is just a name I suppose. He is now changing over all his menus and signs and business cards. He also wants to get a logo and have t-shirts printed up with The Cove Beach Bungalows on it for his staff and for guests to buy as souvenirs.

We also talked about the different beaches here and he said that he often refers to the people on the main beach as “rich Khmers,” but they aren’t rich at all. He said that they hardly spend a dollar when they come to the beach. They load up coolers in Phnom Penh with food and drinks and everything else they need and then come down here and spread everything out on the beach. I commented on the amount of garbage down there and he agreed with me. He said that he often asks his staff to go down and clean the beach around his place and they do it, but they look at him like he’s kind of crazy. There isn’t that strong sense of garbage in Cambodia that we have in the west. Well, perhaps that’s not true. It’s just that in the west we have a very good garbage disposal system. There is a place for garbage. Here there isn’t. So you can keep all the garbage neat and tidy and in your car, but then what do you do with it? The garbage just gets cleaned up once in a while by big teams raking it into piles and setting it on fire, so why not just toss it to the ground? It’s as good a place as any. The garbage cleaners will get to it eventually. I went walking around the rocky point yesterday to Sokha Beach and I found big piles of garbage between all the rocks. These were the remains of picnic meals that people had had there. When they were done, they just got up and walked away and left the garbage behind. I came across one group of four or five children. They were doing the Cambodian equivalent of roasting marshmallows. What they had done was build up a garbage and leaf fire. Then they got sticks and grabbed as many plastic bags as they could and wrapped them around the end of the sticks. They stuck these sticks into the fire and set the plastic on fire and then laughed and played as it burned and sputtered, and melted plastic dripped all over the place.

I asked this Dutch fellow if he took reservations at his place, and I wasn’t surprised when he said no. He had the same reasons that the people at Cloud 9 had – mainly that people who stayed in bungalows tended to want to stay longer than they planned, so if he took reservations, he would end up having to kick people out or move people from bungalow to bungalow and he didn’t want to do that. It’s understandable, if disappointing. I think I found it particularly disappointing because when I showed up at the Verandah in Kep, they kind of harrumphed at me as if to say that I hadn’t made a reservation, so how can I possibly expect to just show up and get a bungalow? Here, I was suddenly willing to actually hang around for a couple of days just for the chance to stay in a bungalow. That gave me a chance to make an actual reservation. And when I proudly said that to the woman at Cloud 9, she said they didn’t take reservations. It’s like I can’t win.

The story might have a happy ending, however. I woke up fairly early this morning, and I walked down to this same part of the beach in search of a cup of coffee. I saw that a man was sitting at the little bar at The Cove Beach bungalows having a coffee. I asked for a cup of coffee as well, and I’ve been sitting here typing away. While I was typing, a couple came down with backpacks on and dropped off their key. I waited a few minutes out of politeness and then I sauntered over to the desk to see if they had indeed checked out and if I could check in. The answers were yes and yes and I am now the proud occupant of Bungalow 7. I have yet to see what kind of paradise I’ve acquired for my $15 a night, but it should be fine. It is one of the small bungalows which I prefer. I wanted a bungalow, but $20 a night was starting to feel a bit pricey. Two or three nights plus food would start to add up, especially when one can get a simple room for $5 a night.

Just now, I decided to get a picture or two of my new home. I took a picture from the walkway here, but then I decided to go down to the water and get a wider shot. I stepped onto an exposed rock not realizing it was covered in green slime and down I went. I protected the camera of course, so the rest of me got a bit bruised up. Nothing serious. More injury to my pride than anything else. I was wearing my Teva sandals so I could walk out amongst the rocks without too much trouble. I waded out to about my upper thighs and then took a few pictures from there. The bungalows looked even more jammed together when you saw them from out there.

I finally had a meal of a sort last night. It was an odd meal as all my meals tend to be. I sat in a chair beside a little table right down beside the water. The sun was just going down and of course no one came to serve me. I don’t know if it’s me or if I have the knack of choosing the least prominent table, but I always get ignored in restaurants. It has happened all my life. I must have a very private and secluded air – so private that waiters and waitresses never even see me. This table was also not the best choice, because it was right down on the narrow strip of sand below the built-up walkway. As such, it was the only really convenient place for people out walking to pass. I was in the middle of a parade of people. The worst was a woman who came by with a fully loaded backpack complete with the strapped on leather hiking boots. She swung past me and smacked me in the head with her heavy boots. She didn’t even notice and sailed on past. This table, being on the outer edges, was also right on the front lines for people asking for money. I hadn’t seen any during the day. Perhaps they only came out at night. First came a man with no hands. I have no idea how he lost his hands of course, but you have to think land mines. Next came a woman holding a baby. The final visitor was a man with almost his entire arms gone. He had just a bit of stump left above the elbow and that was all. When I went to hand him the money, there was a problem because he couldn’t bring the stumps close enough together to hold anything. He indicated a pocket where I could put it. All I had in my wallet were 5,000-riel notes and that’s what I was giving these people. I think that’s more than they expect, but it’s certainly not a problem. That’s $1.25 US or about NT$40. I watched these people afterwards and they went to all four tables that were down on the sand with me. No one at any of those tables gave them anything. I’m not saying that’s bad. I just noticed that when it came to my evening, giving them money so easily made it more comfortable. The woman with the baby was the most persistent. She went to each table in turn and stood there for a long time talking to the people and holding out the baby. They were all couples at these tables, and they worked very hard at ignoring her. They bent over their food and talked to each other or continued to look at the menu and pretended that this woman with a baby was not there. She stayed for a very long time, and almost as soon as she left, her spot was taken by one of the men with no hands. In my case, it would be very hard to enjoy a meal and relax while ignoring these people for so long. Speaking purely selfishly, by giving them money right away, I at least had a pleasant evening. It probably would have been better if I had smaller bills available. The money I ended up giving them was more than the cost of my meal.

Speaking of my meal, I did finally eat something. It wasn’t totally successful, but it was okay. All I wanted were some noodles and some rice. But not fried anything. So I ordered some vegetable noodle soup and an order of steamed rice. The rice was good. The noodle soup wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I wanted a good serving of noodles, but they put in so many vegetables, that I really had to scrounge to find a noodle. I didn’t even want the vegetables, but you couldn’t order just the noodles. You had to have something with it. Better vegetables than squid or shrimp, so that’s what I asked for. I just didn’t want quite so many vegetables. Service was incredibly slow and by the time I left, it was very dark and the beach restaurants had all filled up with people. It was quite a nice scene, actually. Lots of places had put out mats on the sand with lots of pillows and cushions. It was all very cozy. Loud music started playing around 11:00. I was already in bed by that time, and I thought about going for a quick stroll around the beach just to see what was going on, but I couldn’t get up the energy. I put in some earplugs and slept soundly. I also put up my mosquito net. I’d noticed four or five of the critters in the bathroom, and I figured that meant there were more in the room. I found a way to jam my extra bike spokes into a gap in the ceiling and then hung the mosquito net from that. It worked out well, except that the mosquito net is just a bit too small for my tastes. I prefer a much bigger net that doesn’t constantly pull loose from the edges.

Well, it’s time to go take a look at bungalow 7 and see what my new home looks like. Getting my bike here won’t be easy though. I’ll have to carry the thing over the beaches every time I want to go anywhere. Paradise always has a price. It will be like carrying my bike up to Rooftop Paradise.

February 25, Sunday 2007 2:45 p.m. Sihanouk, Cambodia

Well, I had a bit of an eye-opening experience today. It was so much like what happened to me my first few days in Ethiopia. I was walking back from the end of the beach when I spotted a group of small boys ahead of me. Most of them descended on this foreigner that was lying in the sand sunbathing. They were standing around him and looking at him while some of the kids were pushing on his leg and touching his skin. One boy, however, broke off from the group and went toward me. He looked me over and then he called out to the group of boys and made that “come here” gesture. The boys all ran from the sunbather and ran towards me. The first boy stuck out his hand and insisted on shaking mine. I didn’t mind that and I shifted my camera from my right hand to my left to shake his hand. I thought he was just one of those outrageously friendly boys. Another boy came up on my left. He had a coat hanger strung with a whole bunch of seashell necklaces and things like that. He kept pushing the hanger up against my arm and rubbing it all over the place to get my attention. This went on for a while and then I started to get annoyed. I turned to the boy and told him to scram. He stopped for half a second, but as soon as I took half a step forward, he was pressed up against me again and pushing his hanger of seashells against my arm. I got really pissed off and started to growl at him to go away. Then I got more upset. Finally some small alarm must have gone off because I got worried about my knapsack on my back and swung it around to the front. Sure enough, one of the boys had unzipped the back small pocket and he was digging around in there trying to steal something. This was exactly what happened in Ethiopia when the crowd of kids distracted me while one of them picked my pocket. In this case I just got lucky. Either the kid didn’t have enough time or he just didn’t manage to find my wallet, because idiot that I am, my wallet was there in that very first most vulnerable pocket. It’s like I need to be robbed once before my sense of protecting myself kicks in.

I wish I was a quicker thinker sometimes. In this case, I should have played it cool and simply zipped up the pocket as if nothing was amiss. Then I could have enticed the boys over again, perhaps to buy one of the seashell necklaces and then I could have grabbed one and scared holy hell into him, or better yet taken his seashell necklaces hostage. I could have taken them to the police station and handed them in and said the boys would be around to collect them. But I’m not that quick a thinker, and I simply glared at the boys feeling very much a fool for being caught with my guard down like that. The boys knew that I had caught them and they all started pointing at each other and accusing each other of being thieves. But really, what are you going to do faced with a pack of six or seven fleet-footed young boys? You’d be darn lucky to catch one of them. And if you did, then what are you going to do with him? I couldn’t exactly drag him kicking and screaming the two kilometers of the beach past hundreds of people so I could deposit him at the tourist police post I’d noticed. And even if I did, what would they do with him? Throw him into jail for twenty years for attempted robbery of a dumb tourist? They’d probably give him a medal.

I was upset, but I wasn’t really upset with the boys. I imagine in their shoes I’d do exactly the same thing. I’d definitely do the same thing if I knew what I know being a dumb tourist myself – that I could easily afford to lose the fifteen dollars or so that I had in my wallet.

Anyway, live and learn. As my lesson for Cambodia, it was pretty painless. I didn’t lose anything as far as I know. I’ve been thinking if I had anything else in that pocket that isn’t there anymore, but I can’t think of anything. Now I’ve moved my wallet into the inner zippered pocket of the other inner zippered pocket.

These robbery attempts are interesting experiences though. They’re like little lessons in human nature and how a con artist operates. This gang had a leader, the little boy who shook my hand. And he didn’t come sneaking up on me. No, he came marching straight up with his hand out and a strong voice. Then what was I going to do? Ignore him? Tell him to get the hell away from me? Why should I? I had no reason to suspect him and I didn’t want to be rude by deflecting his friendly gesture. I had no evidence that he was up to no good, so like a trusting victim, I shift my camera to a new hand and shake his hand. It would make an interesting portrait – the dumb tourist with a big smile on his face shaking the hand of a little boy while his friends rob him blind.

Those boys must have blessed their stars when they saw me coming down the beach. I’m obviously pretty dumb. I’d have to be dumb to be walking up and down the beach during the hottest part of the day. I’ve got my shirt on but it’s open and they can see that I’m burned raw in some places and ghostly white in others. A new arrival! Fresh meat!

I’ve got a big knapsack bulging with who knows what kind of treasures. And I’ve got that knapsack on my back. And dangling from my knapsack are my sandals. The sandals are hanging there and banging against my body. Those kids must have known that they could stick their arms into my knapsack up to their elbows and dig around and I wouldn’t have felt a thing.

And as if that weren’t enough, I was wearing huge sunglasses with side panels which meant I had absolutely no peripheral vision. They could do whatever they want to the sides and behind me and I wouldn’t see a thing.

They probably normally have three or four boys distracting the victim, pulling at his arms, touching him, trying to sell him things, talking to him. And we’re so desperate not to offend that we don’t push them away or do anything to get rid of them. We just say no, no, no thank you and keep walking. In my case, being such a perfect target, they only had to use one boy to distract me – the kid with the hanger of seashell bracelets and necklaces. He must have been laughing and laughing inside at what an easy mark I was. I did everything so predictably. I first said no politely a few times. Then as he kept pushing against me and rubbing the hanger up and down my arm I got irritated and then angrier and angrier. He was probably thinking, “Yeah, that’s right. Get angry. Start yelling. Push me. That’s good. keep yelling.” The angrier I allow myself to get, the more focused I am on him and the less I’m aware of what the kids are doing behind me.

When I finally had the impulse to swing my knapsack around to my front, it wasn’t really that I thought these kids were robbing me. It just seemed like a good thing to do. I was feeling all hemmed in by all these kids and I just didn’t like my knapsack being exposed like that. It was actually just a precaution when I unhooked one strap and swung it around. I didn’t really think I was being robbed. I was more than a little surprised to see the pocket open and that little hand suddenly darting back. There was so much confusion I couldn’t even say a second later which little boy it was who had his hand in my knapsack. It didn’t really matter. If I was going to grab one, I would have grabbed the boy with the seashells. He was the most vulnerable and he was the one distracting me.

The walk was also quite interesting. I simply walked to the end of Occheuteal Beach and back, but that’s no small walk. The beach from end to end has got to be five kilometers long. Maybe it’s only three, but walking in the sand like that it felt very far.

The first little bit was Serendipity Beach. I guess that there are some sandy bits of beach that they call Serendipity. After that, the main part of the beach begins. From what I saw yesterday, I assumed that it was all occupied by Cambodians. But that isn’t true at all. Yesterday, I saw it mainly from the back. This time I was walking down the beach itself and it had an entirely different aspect. For one thing, most of the people that I saw along the first major part were foreigners. And they weren’t just your young backpacker set. They could easily have been on a beach at any of the big resorts around the world. I have to say that all in all they were a scary looking bunch. I shouldn’t give old people a hard time, I know. People get old and they tend to put on a little bit of weight and their skin gets a bit, well, old. But do they have to put on THAT much weight? And do they then have to wear Speedos and bikinis? It was a pretty awful sight at times. I came across two women that must have weighed two hundred pounds each. Despite that, they were wearing the tiniest of bikinis and lay there on their backs in the sun, roasting. Their flesh rose up off the sand like small islands. When they moved, there were waves of flesh all over them. I saw some other women similarly proportioned and they were turning over on their beach chairs. I swear it took ten seconds for the waves of fat to stop jiggling. The sight burned itself into my retinas. Groups of Cambodians were walking past and they would stop in awe or shock and just stand there in a group staring at this vision of masses of pink and white flesh. I have no idea what they could be thinking. The men were not much better, I have to say. I guess that’s my North American prejudice against the Speedo that is so popular in Europe. The men were also bulging out with fat, but they were also wide and solid and with the burns that come with being exposed so suddenly to this sun, they looked horrific – they looked like giant creatures, like they weren’t even of the same species as the slender and light Cambodians around them.

The beach here was lined at the back with a solid row of restaurants and bars. I was surprised at how many of them there were. They had the beach chairs and umbrellas out front which I guess you rent from them (or pay for by buying drinks from them) and behind them they sometimes had huge picnic areas underneath shelters that they had built. I don’t think I’ve ever sat on a beach in that way. It’s just not something that would suit me, especially when sitting there you are exposed to the constant flow of people trying to sell you jewelry and food and souvenirs and massages. I guess there’s nothing wrong with someone going on a beach holiday to Cambodia and then getting a massage on the beach. I’m sure it feels good. But it turned my stomach at times to see these masses of white flesh lying there immobile while these tiny elderly Cambodian women were massaging them.

After this section, I got to the main part of the beach that caters to Cambodians. It didn’t look that different from the other parts except the people were Cambodian and there were a lot more children. Plus there were a lot more people in the water. You could rent inner tubes and jet skis. There were people playing volleyball. It felt like a normal family beach.

February 27, Tuesday, 2007, Sihanouk, Cambodia

It’s seven in the morning and I’m sitting on the balcony of my bungalow. The sun is in my eyes at the moment, but it should rise up above the thatch roof in a few minutes. I just wish I had a cup of coffee. Some of the beachfront places might be open already and serving coffee, but I’m not in the mood to join the world yet. I remember in the Philippines, they brought a big thermos of hot water to every bungalow early in the morning and left it on the steps. That was nice. You could make your own coffee or tea.

I’ve made arrangements for moving on from Sihanouk. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I sat down the other day and started adding up the remaining days and I realized that I didn’t have nearly enough time to do what I wanted. If I didn’t go to Angkor Wat, then I could do anything I wanted of course. But if I wanted to see Angkor Wat, then I had to make some changes. I did some calculating and figured out that if I got to Siem Reap in one day by bus, then I’d have time there and enough time to cycle back to Phnom Penh. That road from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh wasn’t my first choice for a road to cycle on, but it’ll be okay. I’d like to see some more normal Cambodian towns. Sihanouk has been enjoyable and I won’t complain about my wonderful bungalow on the beach, but the moment I arrived here, this trip stopped feeling like my adventure. It just became a holiday.

I found out from a German fellow I spoke to that one bus line, Mekong Express, had nice buses with washrooms in them. If I took that bus, I could then go to Siem Reap in one day. I’d be able to relax and drink as much as I wanted and have access to a bathroom. It wasn’t what I really wanted to do. The bus left at 7:45 in the morning and took four hours to get to Phnom Penh. Then I’d have to transfer in Phnom Penh to a different bus and then it was another six hours to Siem Reap. That would be a long hard day even if it was a comfortable bus. But I thought I could do that. Then I’d have two or three days in Siem Reap and four or five days to ride back to Phnom Penh. So I rode my bike into town. I could have purchased a ticket from any of the guest houses here on the beach, but I wanted to see where the bus picked people up and I wanted to buy a ticket directly from the bus line. But when I got there, I saw that they also sold flights to Siem Reap. The bus, including a charge for the bike would cost $26. The flight including the bike was $85. I decided to go for the flight. The deciding argument was that if I took the bus up, I’d be going over the same stretch of road twice, once by bus and once on my bike. By flying, the road back to Phnom Penh would be fresh. Anyway, we’ll see. I was actually pretty amazed that they had a flight on the day that I wanted to go and that they had seats on that flight. Things don’t normally work out that well for me. I do wish the flight left a bit earlier. It departs at 5:30 p.m. which gets me into Siem Reap after dark. Then I’ll have to put the bike together and cycle into Siem Reap in the dark. That won’t be a big problem. I just like to have lots of time to get to know a new place and ride around before I pick a guest house.

My time here in Sihanouk as been very laidback. I’ve had pretty much no other adventures after the pickpocket incident. I ended up burning my chest and stomach pretty badly on that walk. That surprised me. I didn’t think I was out in the sun for that long. And I still had my shirt on. I just had it unbuttoned. It would flap open in the wind from time to time and my chest would be exposed to the sun. I guess it doesn’t take much though. I’m also not sure about this whole sunscreen business. I used sunscreen on my legs while I was cycling and that was fine. I didn’t burn my legs. But the sunscreen works too well. It’s like my legs haven’t been exposed to the sun at all. So here when I didn’t put any on, I burned my legs. And I burned them even though I’ve been wandering around in the hot sun with bare legs for weeks. It seems better to expose your skin to the sun just a little bit at a time and slowly build up a resistance to the sun.

The best thing about Sihanouk has been the chance to chat with some of the other foreigners here. I met a couple, Michael and Michelle, from Canada. They live in Squamish, B.C. I met Michael first and we talked for a long time while sitting at the little bar attached to our bungalows. He’s done a lot in his life. He’s run all kinds of different businesses from a grocery store to a construction company to a few high-tech companies. He’s also a ski instructor. He’s something of an entrepreneur and has an interest in the stock market and making money. He’s always thinking of angles and new businesses that he can start.

Later in the day, I met his wife, Michelle. We went to a big restaurant called GST. It’s on one of the main roads back a little bit from the beach. They had eaten almost every meal there. They didn’t like the food preparation that they witnessed at the places on the beach. They didn’t think those places were very hygienic and they are probably right. At GST they saw that the food handlers never touched the food with their hands and that everything was very clean. They were particularly impressed that the cutlery came to their table in mugs of boiling water. I thought that was interesting, because having seen this only once, they assumed that it was a sign that this place was much cleaner, that they had instituted this innovation. Of course, I’d seen this at every normal Cambodian restaurant I’d eaten at. It’s only at these places in Sihanouk that cater to foreigners where they don’t do this.

I think this is their first time to Asia, though it wouldn’t be a total shock to Michelle anyway. She was born in Jamaica, though she grew up in Canada, and had been back to Kingston a few times and she talked about the rough life there as well as in other parts of the Caribbean like Haiti. They had flown into Bangkok from Vancouver and spent a few nights there. I’m not sure what they did there, but they described being out in a tuk-tuk and nearly dying from the exhaust fumes. They hit a traffic jam and the tuk-tuk driver just shut off the engine and waited. And there they sat breathing in the exhaust of hundreds and thousands of other vehicles.

I guess their idea all along was to go to Cambodia. Bangkok was just the cheaper flight. Now that I think of it, though, they did go to Koh Chang. Then from there they took a bus to the border between Thailand and Cambodia. From there, you can take a boat to Sihanouk. That appears to have been the standard way to get from Thailand to Cambodia along the coast for a while. There is now a road and it is possible to go by bus, but people still like to take the boat. It’s a route with some history and people know how it works. I didn’t get the full story of their border crossing, but when they got to the point where they were supposed to spend the night in a hotel and then take a boat, things got confusing. I guess they bought a ticket that was supposed to include all of this. But the hotel was full and the boat was no longer an option, or something like that. So they ended up taking a mini-bus of some kind. That was a long hard trip and they got Sihanouk right in the middle of Chinese New Year. They got here in the dark, and they were driven around being told over and over again that every place was full. They feel they were being hoodwinked and they didn’t trust the people. They were shown one horrible room where the light didn’t even work and they were told it was $30. I think they felt they had had enough of being hoodwinked by this point and decided to take matters into their own hands. They cut the mini-van loose and then just spent the night camped out in a dance club of some kind. They waited for the next day and then walked around till they found their own place. It also cost $30 and according to Michael was little better than the place they had been shown that night. Their Sihanouk experience did have a happy ending because they ended up in a bungalow at the same place where I’m staying. It’s an amazing place considering the alternatives. They were now paying half as much ($15) for a nice little bungalow with a view of the ocean and a nice breeze. They are both looking forward to Siem Reap and I can’t blame them. So far, their experience of Asia has been Bangkok, Koh Chang, and Sihanouk.

After dinner, we walked down to the beach and walked along it back to our bungalows. It was an amazing sight. The whole beach is lined with bars and restaurants and all of them had big strings of lights. It was quite beautiful. We couldn’t help but notice, though, that most of the places were empty. There was seating for hundreds, but most places only had one or two people in them.

There’s another fellow I met who seemed something of a kindred spirit. I only spoke to him briefly yesterday though. He’s a German fellow perhaps in his thirties. He’s a mechanical engineer by profession and with his 30 paid days off every year has gone to quite a few places around the world. He talked about trips to Africa where he volunteered his time at various charitable organizations. He quit his job six or seven months ago and has been traveling around Asia since them. He spent a lot of time in Myanmar and Laos. He’s an avid photographer and has gone out of his way to go to interesting areas. He loves to learn new things and spent three weeks in some kind of meditation center somewhere.

I also met a family briefly. I don’t know much about them, but I enjoyed talking with the father a bit. They obviously had a late start in having a family. The man was in his fifties I’d guess and their two little boys were like five and six years old. They were very active boys. One of them had found a toy plastic gun on the beach and was busy shooting everyone. The older boy was holding a paperback copy of Goblet of Fire. He seemed just as interested in the size of the book as the story. It was handy for whacking his little brother over the head. They had taken the boat from Thailand and talked about how it was different when you were traveling with a family. If they were single, it would be a good story about an overloaded unsafe boat and a great adventure. But with their two little boys, they saw the boat as more of a danger and perhaps not the best way to travel.

 

 

Tags: bike, Cambodia Bike Trip, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap