Snooping about Snookyville

06.06.2003 34 °C

Johm riab sua! (Khmer for hello)

After a few nights of rather restless sleep in Bangkok, mostly due to the incredible humidity and my reluctance to pay an extra couple dollars for air-conditioning, I decided I might be best to take the day bus to Trat (province near to Cambodian border) from where I could take a minibus in the early morning on to Had Lek and then a boat on to Sihanoukville on Cambodia's south coast.

Trat is a gem mining/trading town about 50km from the Cambodian border. There isn't a whole lot to do in Trat but meander through the markets looking for delicacies to sample. After a 6 hour bus trip from Bangkok I checked into a bungalow style hotel -very swish and for 70 baht (less than AUD$3!) - and that's including the token geckos running on the walls and the roof of the hallway bathroom. If you've never been to a market in Asia before, here's just a taste of some of the goodies on offer if you have a rather bold palate.....deep-fried chicken feet, dragonfruit, durian, mouse-shit peppers, black jelly, boiled frogs, rambutans, boiled eggs with red yolks...I could go on for ever! Visually intoxicating, though not always appetising! I had some Ladnaa (rice noodle & vege dish with chillis, lime, pepper and i have no idea what else) at some stall in the market for 20 baht (80cents) and an amaaaaaazing banana crepe for dessert. They fry it in egg yolk, cook slices of lady-finger bananas into it, and then coat it with sugar and condensed milk...mmmmmmmm. It's divine!!

On Tuesday morning I awoke at the crack of dawn (i.e. before 5am!) to make sure i was up at the bus station by 5.30 for a bus to the Cambodian border town at Had Lek/Cha Yeam in order to make sure I could get through immigration etc. and then moto down to Koh Kong to catch a speedboat to Sihanoukville, a beach resort town on Cambodia's southern coast. Of course, running on Asian time (or maybe Rodionoff time if you know the family - greetings guys!) the bus arrived at the border late and by the time I got through immigration (a shack at the side of the road), I was too late for the boat so wound up taking a very uncomfortable bus for over 6 hours to Sihanoukville. The highway to Sihanoukville is predominantly a red dirt road (mind you it's quite good, compact dirt for the most part) with some rather nasty looking pot-holes here and there - the driver did a commendable job at missing most of them. Compared to some of the hair-raising 'roads' I've had the pleasure of experiencing in Sapa, Vietnam, it wasn't too bad. We only saw one major crash on the way.... According to a German guy I met in Trat, the waters along the coast to Sihanoukville are notoriously choppy at this time of year and the chances of seasickness, pretty high so a bumpy bus trip really didn't seem that bad.

So what's the verdict on Cambodia - 2 thumbs up - so far anyway....It's quite a delight to be here after the headiness of Bangkok. And it's really very mellow, tranquil, cruisy....you get my drift. Nothing like what you'd remember from the media a decade ago...or for that matter what you'd read on the DFAT website (mostly a load of rubbish)......sure, the country is still under the rule of a rather corrupt government and the poverty is quite confronting, but so far it's all pretty chilled. It's hard to even begin to imagine (at least from Snookyville) how messed up things were a decade ago.

Aside from dealing with the usual border crossing hassle (i.e. 20 moto drivers vying for my monetary affection all at once - "where you going miss", "madame you want moto?", etc. etc), and the ensuing hostilities when I told them at least a dozen times each that my chaffeur was indeed awaiting my arrival, my intro to Cambodia was pretty easy.

It was quite relaxing kicking back on the bus watching the scenery float on by.....luscious green rainforests, stilt houses made from bamboo and coconut wood sitting in the middle of rice paddies, locals zipping past on their motos, cows stopping for a chat in the middle of the road, oxen aimlessly wandering around the rice paddies, chickens pecking at the rich, red earth for worms that don't appear to be there, little kids running around and staring wide-eyed at as pasty farangs cruise past, checkpoint officials wiling away the time whilst rocking gently in their hammocks in the hot morning sun.....

There was a nice crowd on the bus too - a Dutch couple, some Canadians (Andrea and Jamie) and a girl from Belgium (Els) who I shared a room with at the MASH (Mash as in potatoes I suspect) hotel when we first arrived. US$1.50 each but at 35 degrees or so, really not worth the bargain price! I had dinner with the Canadians and Belgium at a lovely little Indian restaurant next to our guesthouse - run by an American ex-pat with an ever-increasing monobrow (and I thought it was just an Aussie, Greek and Italian thing). Aside from the longevity of the bus trip, the Michael Jackson music that played over and over the whole 6 or so hours was a little too much. Now an odd spot of Wacko Jacko is good for the moonwalker in all of us, but this wasn't MJ singing - rather it was some nasty karaoke style impersonator. I've now polished my MJ impersonating skills so if you're up for a karaoke night when I return to Sydney, you too can experience the joys of MJ - a la Khmer popstar.

I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing down on Victory beach, sipping coconut milk from the shell while lying on a deck chair (under a beach umbrella of course mum!). I had the pleasure of having four Khmer kiddies all competing for piggy-back rides on my shoulders as I was swimming about and I met a Pommie guy who has been living in Cambodia for the last six months writing a novel - he kinda scared the crap out of me with warnings of the local rabid dog population - apparently 1/8 of them!!

They don't however, scare me nearly as much as the notion of David Beckham becoming President of the whole of Asia.....I'm quickly discovering that everyone in Asia is obsessed with him. It was exactly the same in Vietnam and Thailand! Becks' perma-tanned face is on my mousepad in Sihanoukville as I write (along with Ronaldo, Mark Viduka and that rather handsome Totti). I did meet one Khmer at the beach today who explained to me that in spite of Becks' obvious sex-appeal (being 'metro' and all), all he jolly does is shoot goals - isn't that largely the point of soccer!?!??!

I spent yesterday morning back down at Victory beach (really not the nicest but it's only a couple hundred metres walk down the hill) in a monolexical conversation with some Khmer kids. I'd never known it before, but apparently a conversation for 20 mins duration that consists of nothing more than "Hello Hello" can be extremely engaging.....the shop vendors were quite friendly too. Lida, Lina and Linda (curiously very "same same but different) spent the morning trying to get me to buy all their fruit..... Aside from that, not a whole lot of action down there aside from the odd borderline rabid dog chasing one of 50 or so other borderline rabid dogs and the cargo ships coming and going from the harbour. In the late afternoon I motodopped it down to Ochheuteal Beach to watch the sunset.....Didn't even run into any sleepy cows on the way!

At breakfast this morning I met an Austrian girl who's been bumming round SE Asia for the last 2.5 months and we spent the day hanging out at the beach - sipping coconut milk from the pod while sitting under bamboo and palm leaf thatched huts, lounging in rubber tyres, talking to the local vendors, swimming in the overly warm waters of the Gulf of Thailand (I haven't had a hot shower since i left Australia so it was quite a nice change), and watching the Phnom Penhians frolick about (often fully clothed) in the shallow waters......One of the vendors we met claimed to be from the moon and was sad because her boyfriend (who lives deep in the ocean), would not visit her this weekend.....she enjoyed showing off her Aussie accent ('G'ray made') and filling us in on all the local beach gossip.....like the cross-dressing habits of the bloke two stalls up from our hut - as you do!

Tomorrow I'm heading by share taxi (hopefully only 5 people, not the rumoured 8 or 9!!) to the riverside colonial town of Kampot from where I'll visit Bokor National Park, Bokor Hill Station (the hotel on the top is purported to be one of the eeriest places on earth) and Kep-sur-Mer (a former Cambodian high-roller hotspot and also near to the cave where the Khmer Rouge kept the backpackers hostage back in 1994.

And from here it's on to Phnom Penh. I'm hoping to avoid becoming the trophy of a mad-as-bollocks Phnom Penh moto-driver.

Anyway, back to the hotel now....wish me luck with those bloody dogs. Thank goodness for my flat fat cat umbrella.

Ciao
Belinda x