Sihanoukville Part One

Countries: 2
Cities: 10
Massages: 7
Time away: 49 days
Books read: 8

So this bus journey consisted of sitting and listening to a mix of dubstep, electro, house, motown, indie in one ear and a overly loud Cambodian karaoke soundtrack of ballads in the other whilst having odors of dried fish from the Cambodian lady sat next to me in pyjamas, fun times for most of my senses!

I got off the bus and went to stay in my first dorm which lots of people had recommended, Monkey Republic. There was a reason it was recommended by so many people, its simply an awesome place to stay, backpacker central with acres of chilling out areas, a video room, great music (more on that in a bit) a bar, good food and swarms of people without getting too crowded. Basically it was the place to be!

After getting in and settling down I met my dorm mates, Mekial (sounded like Vehicle) a German fellow, Kat the Estonian who tried claiming she was Jamaican, Gary an English dude, Itch who had just finished his service in the Israeli army, Pepe the Italian stallion of the group who was just an out and out joker, Charlotte who I thought seemed more of a Christine and a crazy Kurdish girl who shall only be known as crying and wanting to eat Pringles. Strange I know but that’s what you get with dorms a real pick and mix. It was an international pick and mix too with a few Brits and the rest coming from all over.

With Sihanoukville you kind of got into a rhythm there, you woke up and had some breakfast with everyone and then either settled down to read in the dorm or your room or even down by the beach, then headed for a nana nap and possibly do one errand for the day i.e. having your haircut, buying a book or doing your laundry but only one mind you, any more and you’d knacker yourself out! Then went to have a BBQ dinner by the beach, then to a beach bar called Dolphin for a few cheap (25 cent cheap) drinks and lastly to JJ’s and if you’ve got anything left then maybe the grimy Utopia. This basically repeated itself for a few days.

Now this might sound strange to stay in one place doing nothing for such a long time yet with the chilled out nature of the place and the people becoming part of your family by going through this daily regime it was hard to pull yourself away. Another huge draw was the immense music played at Monkey. It has been by far the greatest collection of music I have heard anywhere on my travels, possibly ever in my life! In the first few days I was there I heard only 3 crap songs and the rest were simply brilliant, it was so good I feel the need to reiterate this point. THE MUSIC AT MONKEY WAS AWESOME!

One of the days me and Itch went down to the beach to enjoy the sunshine when a group of kids attempted to sell us various bits of tat including friendship bracelets. In order to do so they had some great lines like “open your heart, open your wallet” and “you have girlfriend” “no” “if you buy you get girlfriend” as if the allure of a bracelet is the biggest magnet for females. Most of them were quite cheeky but funny and you could have a laugh with them, much like some of the children at Ankor Wat. However there was one child in particular who tried selling me a bracelet and would not go. He then insisted on playing a game and if I lost I would have to buy to which I stated I wouldn’t buy but I’ll play for fun, of course I won the first and lost the 2nd and 3rd which immediately meant I had to buy from him. Again I told him I wasn’t going to buy and he started pestering me for ages gradually getting to annoyance. It was at this point I said you have two options, you can either go somewhere else and try and get some business or you can waste your time and annoy me, which of course he said he was going to stay and annoy me! For a whole 45 minutes he tried everything in his childhood repertoire to annoy me and I used all the might/patience I’ve experienced from teaching to ignore him and eventually it paid off and he pissed off, PHEW!

Anyway that night me and Itch convinced the others over some gorgeous Israeli food to go to Bamboo island the next day with two other Belgium’s we met called Linda and Febe. We had to do something otherwise it just felt like our time was fruitless. As for our leaving the coast for a while we ended up having a leaving party which meant we were crazy tired the next morning yet in our hungover haze we still managed to mention to Gary “remember to bring some booze to the island and we’ll pay you back later”. It really is amazing how the brain prioritizes things!