So I bounced out of Siem Reap headed to Phnom Penh, where I was going to catch a bus to Kampot. I wanted to catch up with some peeps so splurged on a private taxi (running late, hungover, who would have thought?), which cost $25 for the 4 hour trip because I scored the front seat. The back seat was only $15, but I didn’t know that at the time.

The main attraction in Kampot is the Bokor Hill National Park, which features some buildings built by the French in the 1920’s, long since abandoned – a casino, a hotel, and the King’s holiday house. The main thing I wanted to see were the waterfalls, which unfortunately weren’t running as it’s dry season.  Reminder: the waterfalls in Kampot are not flowing in the dry season, which is October through April.  To get to the interesting stuff you take a ride in the back tray of an SUV, a 2-3 hour trip depending on how many times the SUV breaks down – which in our case was 3 times, between the bullbar falling off and the radiator boiling! To be honest, the abandoned buildings were much the same as abandoned buildings the world over, and really wasn’t worth bouncing around in the back of an SUV for 3 hours each way. The views from the top are spectacular though. Kampot itself is not worth mentioning, apart from the Bokor Mountain Lodge, a great little restaurant and bar on the riverfront run by an expat Englishman which does great Khmer food western style, try the Tom Yam soup!

Out of Kampot into Sihanoukville (Snooky to its friends) an awesome little town on the coast, which seems to be all that Phuket would have been, 20 years ago. It’s surprisingly quiet here at this time of year, given that the beach is at least as good as those in Thailand, and it’s much cheaper. According to Dan’s Bucket Scale of Affordability (being the relative price of a night’s accommodation and 3 buckets of vodka red bull), Snooky is about 20% cheaper than Thailand. The only drawback is that the nightlife leaves a bit to be desired, but that could be very different when the place gets busy. After a couple of days laying on the beach I decided to get be a bit more active and made my way out to an island about 12 miles off the coast, to spend 3 days living in a timber hut in a fishing village known simply as “23″. It was an awesome experience, the island is almost untouched, the locals were staring at the white people, all the kids were waving and saying “hello! bye-bye!’” cause it’s the only English they know. They have no phones, hot water, ice, showers, toilets, or cold beer (although we did scam some on the last night) and electricity was only on from 6-11pm.

The other advantage of being on the island is that a boat came past daily to pick up and drop off people for scuba diving trips.  So, I was again able to indulge my love of being underwater; although the past practice of Cambodian fishermen using dynamite for fishing means that a lot of the coral is dead, and strong overnight winds meant fairly low viz.  Nevertheless, diving is like pizza and sex – even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.

Other highlights of Snooky include a new entry in my Top 10 Meals of All Time list. The Mlop Meng Restaurant is a proper Khmer restaurant, loud karaoke playing, plastic chairs, and when you order a beer it comes warm, with a bucket of ice. But they serve the most sublime seafood – Squid with Green Peppers, Prawn Tom Yum Soup, a whole snapper with garlic and chili and whole crab cooked with something I can’t even describe, washed down with a couple of Angkor beers (named after Ankor Wat) …. magnificent. The food was so good that decorum went out the window, my friends and I were gulping the food down as fast as we could. Sated, we called for the bill… I actually sent it back for them to recheck their figures – the whole lot was just $4.80 per person…. I love this country.

Having said that, all the money that I saved on dinner was blown on Serendipity Beach. The hawkers here are legendary, selling fruit salad, bracelets, lobsters, sarongs, hair plucking, pedicures, manicures…. these girls could sell ice to Eskimos and teach collective bargaining to diplomats. They start out by trying to guilt you into buying something at hugely inflated prices then offer a discount if you can beat them at Tic Tac Toe… you would be amazed how often they win (yes, fine, ok I lost, but I figure it’s alright to be scammed as long as you know it’s happening and you have fun doing it!)

Other Stuff Of Note:

* I stayed at the GST Guesthouse, it’s clean, safe… and I was going to say it’s not too cheap but at $7 for a double room with fan and private bathroom… I’ve clearly adjusted to SE Asia pricing!

* Every tuktuk driver seems to have a second career, selling…. “tuktuk, tuktuk? smoke, smoke?”

* I took a $10 day trip out to Bamboo Island for snorkelling, which was not worth it but the longtail boat ride itself and the lunch cooked on the beach made up for it

* There’s a cool little cinema in Snooky with comfy couches and great movies – I saw Pulp Fiction and Snatch

* Some guidebooks say that Victory Hill (AKA Weather Station Hill) is the backpacker area; however this is FALSE, it’s actually a seedy row of dodgy pubs sparsely populated by dirty old men and hookers

Oh, and someone asked me what my Travel Mantra is, the thing you recite to yourself when everything going wrong.  Mine is:  “Everything Happens For A Reason.”

Currently in Phnom Penh, just breaking the journey from Snooky… tomorrow Saigon,where I am meeting up with a mate from high school who I haven’t seen in 14 years, I hope I can recognise him. Vietnam will be the 14th country I have visited in 18 months… and I am only just getting started!

Until next time.

Peace and Happy Travels!

Dan

OK, so got all my dive training done in Koh Tao, was sad to leave that place, amazing people and diving. Diving highlights included my dive group being surrounded by 3 circling sharks (some conjecture over whether they were Reef or Bull sharks), me trying to be clever and do an inverted hover over a crevice just as a highly poisonous sea snake swam out, and finding out that I am one of the few people susceptible to Nitrogen Narcosis, which is kind of like happy gas and being silly drunk at the same time, with no hangover!

I highly recommend Cozy Corner restaurant, which is essentially just someone’s lounge / dining room they have opened up to the public with home cooked meals, cushions on the floor, fantastic chilled out place for the traveler who misses home. Cozy Corner is located on the road to Chalok Baan Koa just opposite of The Castle. It is opened daily from 10:00 to 23:00 and serves Thai and International fare.

Due to various reasons, I had to head out of Thailand before the 24th so I missed the legendary full moon party on Koh Phangan, but I still managed to get a taste of the Thai beach party, replete with buckets of vodka RedBull, at the Simple Life beach bar.

The boat ride to Surit Thani was great, very relaxing, we broke down linguistic barriers when a bloke asked me for a lighter and I managed to translate from Thai through English and into Italian (all via sign language or course) to get one for him.

Phuket was the tourism raped sinkhole I imagined it to be, so fortunately I only spent one night there. I can only imagine how nice that place was 20 years ago. The Squareone Guesthouse was great though, my first hot shower in 2 weeks!

I flew into Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s Capital, without guidebook, map, directions, or accommodation, although I did have some local currency (US$). A bloke I met in Koh Tao had mentioned something about Number 10 Lakeside Guesthouse, and through borrowing a map from a girl I met on the plane and sharing a cab with a French bloke I managed to find the delightful ghetto that is the Lakeside area of Phnom Penh. To enter the ghetto you need to run the gauntlet of some very dodgy looking individuals who hang around the entrance but once inside it’s a backpacker’s dream. A room with private bathroom, a trickle of hot water and questionable cleanliness was only $US5 per night, and it even had a remote control TV! The bar back area, overlooking the lake was sublime, and there was a steady stream of interesting people, all of whom were happy to share a few hours of chat. I will definitely be back there at some stage, although rumours are that the whole area is slated to be demolished to make way for a string of 5 star hotels, so it may have to be sooner rather than later.

Interesting English Newspaper in Cambodia: Phnompenhpost

The other stroke of good fortune I had was that the day I arrived was the first day of the Turning of the Tides Festival, where historically the King would come down and take responsibility for the natural phenomenon of the reversal of flow of the river between the wet monsoon and the dry monsoon. These days it is celebrated by a huge colorful boat race, and sponsored by Siemens.

I visited the S-21 torture center and the Pol Pot Killing Fields and came away disconsolate. Genocide on this scale is inexplicable and indescribable. The sign that bought it home for me was this one:

“The Chemical Substances Storage Room: This is where the chemical substances such as DDT were stored [which were used] firstly to eliminate the stench…. and secondly to kill off victims who were buried alive.”

Walking the streets of Phnom Penh one day I came across a bizarre building which its owner claims is a work of art, as well as an operating bar. When I arrived, he was building a crazy-pave style wall and painting it yellow. Adorned with Tom Waits quotes and an interesting color scheme, the Broken Bricks bar on 130 Street sticks out like a sore thumb. But then, as the completely insane English ex-pat owner / artist Davie says, “The good thing about looking unusual is that when a pretty girl stares at you, you can stare right back!”

Davie was also kind enough to point me in the direction of what he called the coolest barber’s shop ever, Hair Like Kennedy. The owner has a bizarre fixation with the coiffure of the ex US president, and has the place plastered with pictures of the man. I was tempted to go for something blow dried but settled for a number one.

Out of Phnom Penh for something less frantic, I headed to Battambang, which has very little going for it apart from The Smokin’ Pot Restaurant, but it is a good base for trips out to the countryside. Thanks to my speedy moto driver, in one day I managed to visit:

• A fish processing plant where there were a lot child laborers
• A rice wine farm, which even when flavored with the sweetest pineapple I have ever tasted, still reminds me of sipping straight Jack Daniels, but it is cheap!
• I climbed a hill to visit a temple that was tastefully decorated in 1980’s chic – day glo fluoro wall paint
• I took a ride on a norry. A norry consists of two train axles, a 4 stroke motor and a bamboo frame which when assembled form a cheap form of transport, utilising mostly defunct sections of the poorly maintained but still serviceable French rail system. When two norries come together, or a norry meets a train, the driver of the least heavily laden norry dismantles, jumps off the track and then reassembles once the other has passed. It all takes about 30 seconds, and in Sydney would simply end in a punchup.
• Angkor Wat was, well, Angkor Wat. Amazing stuff, definitely worth seeing but after a day of looking at stone temples from sunrise to sunset I was all templed out.
• The Cambodian Landmine Museum was a terrible testament to human’s ability to harm each other viciously, and a tribute to the great work of Aki Ra, who has personally defused upwards to 50,000 land mines and unexploded bombs.

Next: Sihanoukville for beach-side antics, then…. well, everyone I meet raves about Lao, so thinking of heading up there for a few days, or I might just chill in Phnom Penh for a bit. Decisions, decisions….

Top 5 crazy things I have seen so far:

• A small child taking a dump in the street whilst his parents watched and laughed
• While I was walking down a motorbike infested street of Phnom Penh a flock of sheep suddenly stopped all traffic
• As a single guy, being hit on non stop by hookers and ladyboys, and as being reasonably fit being offered discounts and freebies
• Young kids diving into filthy diseased rivers to collect plastic bottles for recycling money 10m away from a row of brand new top of the line Lexus 4WD’s
• I saw a policeman openly take a roll of notes from a bloke in the street in Phnom Penh (at least in NSW the cops take bribes in paper bags!)

That’s all I have for now.

Much love

Dan