My last week in Cambodia came as a bit of an anticlimax, heading down to Sihanoukville for some beach time I was thinking about extending my visa for another couple of weeks. I thouhgt that maybe spending an extra 2 weeks in Cambodia would enable me to be on the beach for Christmas. At the cost of $55 dollars I realised that it was more than i could afford, and on reaching Sihanoukville I was glad that I hadn't spent the money.
After arriving from the 4 hour bus journey from Phnom Penh and trying several hotels before finding one with a room avaliable (with a TV, I reasoned that as I was on my own I could justify the extra couple of dollars for the sake of having something to do in the evening!) I headed down to the beach in time for the sunset. Initial impressions weren't too bad, the beach was narrow and full of restuarants, cafes and bars, but the sand was white and the sea looked clear.
Walking along I saw Peter, the Dutch guy I had spent a few days with in Ban Lung. He introduced me to an English couple he'd met in Laos, and while watching the sun set we arranged to meet up that evening in one of the bars, as being the first night of the full moon there were meant to be parties happening all along the beach.
As the last full moon party I had been to in Thailand was lost in an alchoholic daze I decided to stick to just one drink, later realised that this was a mistake because if I had got drunk at least I stood a chance of forgetting the people I met that night. Peter never turned up so it ended up being myself, the English couple, some Canadians and a couple of Aussies. All of whom were apparently determined to keep the marijuana industry in South-East Asia alive and well. The conversation was based around how stoned they'd got, where they'd got stoned, how little is cost them to get stoned, and vague memories of people they think they may have met while getting stoned. All this talk, of course, was carried out while passing around joints large enough to need planning permision and a degree in structural enginnering to construct.
Now I don't really have a problem with people smoking grass, although it's keeping alive a problem which the various goverments of SE Asia are trying hard to stamp out, but being the only sober person there it was just the amount of complete crap it was making people talk! Apart from the tales of traveling drug use the other topic of conversation was the common topic of how everywhere is being ruined by tourists. Not backpackers of course, we're apparently not tourists and we don't count, but the people on 2 week holidays and package tours.
And yes, sometimes it is annoying when you're lying on a nice quiet bit of beach and up pulls a coach and disgorges 50 fat middle age Americans in tight swimming trunks, but minutes after moaning about about this the same people were talking about how great the last Full Moon Party on Ko Phang-Nga in Thailand was 'cos 9000 people turned up! Now how is 9000 drunk and stoned backpackers dancing like idiots on an island an improvement over package tourists??
At this point I made up some imaginary German friends and said that I had to meet them further down the beach, and returned to my hotel, thanking God for the Discovery Channel!
The next couple of days the weather turned overcast and rainy, which was when I discovered that there was nothing else to do in Shihanoukville apart from lie on the beach. Managed to find a barbers and get my hair cut, leaving me with a nice white line on my neck where the barber shaved the back of my head too high up, exposing a nice expanse of untanned skin! Luckily the next couple of days the sun returned and I got to work on browning that part of myself.
The major annoyance I found on the beach was the constant hassling by hordes of children selling fruit, soft drinks and seafood. Unlike the children at Angkor, I found them more annoying than endearing, and the only way to escape them was to walk about 3km down the beach away from the restuarants and bars. After a couple of days of this I had had enough and jumped on a bus back to Phnom Penh.
The last couple of days in Cambodia where spent arranging my Vietnamese visa and transport, rather than cross straight into Saigon I decided that it may be more interesting to cross into Chau Doc, in the Mekong Delta. The last day I went out to Choeung Ek, a very peaceful area, surrounded by rice fields and reached by a long dirt road shaded by ecuclyptus trees, and just happening to be where 17000 people formally imprisoned in S-21 were executed by the Khmer Rouge. Mainly clubbed to death to save bullets, the remains of 8000 people from several mass graves have been excavated and their skulls are displayed behind the panels of the Mermorial Stupa. It's a depressing a place as you would imagine.
Evenings were spent in my favourite place for people watching, Sisowath Quay along the banks of the Tonle Sap river. From late afternoon onwards people start gathering, teenagers in Britney Spears t-shirts, hawkers selling caged birds, coconuts, incense and lotus flowers. Monks come down on the way to and from the wats, girls tryand sell deep fried spiders.... On a previous occasion I ended up giving a group of young children a geography lesson from a 1970's French language text book, my last evening I was mobbed by a group of kids as I was trying to subtly take pictures of a monk and ended up being the center of attention for awhile as they crawled over me looking through the viewfinder of my camera and zooming in on each other's faces.
Very enjoyable, and there was still much that I wanted to see in Cambodia, but my visa only had 2 days left on it and I really had to get moving for Vietnam. At least I was leaving with some good memories - the sun rising over Ta Promh at Angkor, the children selling drinks and playing with my cameras at Preah Khan, blowing bubbles and taking pictures of each other. Schoolgirls wearing their blue skirts and white blouses walking along the side of the road from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, the glistening green of the rice paddies behind them. The clouds of red dust rising over the roads of Ban Lung, catching the sun as it set and backlighting kids playing badminton in the streets, shouting hello when they saw me.
I wasn't happy to leave.
|  | 
|
