It rained for 3 days.
I stayed in, yet again, the cheapest place I could find – $4/night with onsuite and satellite TV – everything in the room was broken though, except for the TV, which is handy because on the second day the rain was so heavy that I just bunkered in for most of it.
On the third day the rain was light enough to go for a decent walk. Sihanoukville has a beach with bars lining the whole bay, considering the quite evident low season, the hawkers were relentless. It was quite sad to see the vast poverty between flash new buildings, that with the rain, I felt a little depressed and began smoking gudang gurams again after noticing them being sold in shops.
I decided to walk about 4ks to a marker on Google maps, titled: “new bus station”. Determined to not be ripped off by third parties, I headed to what I hoped would be a walkable central bus terminal. Just 30min into the walk and I was already outside the tourist area and onto local village suburbia. Just one street off the main road where a large western nightclub has been built; there was a large suburb of wooden houses on stilts with bundles of firewood collected to the side, ox and geese roaming the roads and swamp fishermen showing off their bucket filled with snails which they have harvested to eat. There were a group of middle aged ladies playing cards and gambling their money, they invited me to play with them but the game was a bit tricky to understand – and they will most likely win all my money. One thing that cheered me up were the smiles in the village, compared to the hawkers, bar staff and beggars on the beach – however it’s the relentless workers that are providing money for their village families, for survival. Cambodia is one of the most poorest counties in south east Asia with a terrible past and a current highly corrupt government, which I will go into more detail with the next post.
gambling ladies with a lot of character. I was not willing to take the risk of playing.
I cant imagine many tourists would ever see the real sihanoukville, the beach attracts mainly party going travellers as most beach side bars serve happy shakes (magic mushroom) and happy pizza (marijuana) on request, it reminded me of Vang vieng in Laos. They will all be oblivious to the mass poverty just a few km away.
few lads showing off their snails and a couple of small crabs
I digress, so, back to the walk. I arrive at what should have been a bus terminal, it ended up being a huge local market with all kinds of interesting stuff. On the way back to the beach, I spotted a private bus terminal, as it turns out there is no local bus just a few private companies. I bought a ticket to phnom pehn for $5.
The rest of the day, night and following morning was once again invaded by heavy rain. I watched the Dockers get slaughtered by Melbourne to wrap up this rather miserable and unexpected stay and hopped on the good old bus back to phnom pehn. This time, however, I managed to get a couchhost to accept my request.
The 5000 Project 