Sihanoukville, Cambodia
After leaving Siem Reap, I once again for the second time headed back down to Phnom Penh en route to Sihanoukville for beaches. Unfortunately, the roads are extremely bad here. The national highway system is a clusterfuck of sorts. Dirt roads, muddy streets and badly paved roads. Generally speaking, in order to get anywhere in the country you need to head back to Phnom Penh where the majority of the bus companies are located. This can be seemingly difficult to understand being that you may actually be closer to your destination elsewhere but in order to get there it's cheaper and quicker to backtrack to Phnom Penh. Nevertheless, the bus ride back to Phnom Penh wasn't nearly as bad as getting to Siem Reap.
Once I arrived in Phnom Penh I was greeted by the all too familiar sight of sleazy motodrivers and tuk-tuks. I explained to one of them where I wanted to go and agreed on the price, this was good I thought; no bullshit. 10 minutes later I find myself passing the guesthouse I wanted to stay at; I explained this to the motodriver who just smiled and said "yes yes." Another 10 minutes later the moto-dop arrives at another guesthouse claiming that Lakeside Guesthouse was "full" and that this one was better. Un-fucking-believable. I called him on his bullshit, explaining that i'd been to Phnom Penh before and that this ritual wasn't going to work on me. Mad that I didn't want to stay at his "friend's guesthouse" (so he wouldn't get a commission), he finally took me to Lakeside Guesthouse where I stayed before. That's the end of the story pretty much, I got off the bike and didn't pay him a cent. Morale of the story I told him, don't be a fucking scam artist and maybe you'll get paid next time.
Naturally, this story may sound bad here to someone just reading it and not accustomed to typical guesthouse scams in SE Asia but I can assure you it's not a big deal. The guesthouse the driver had taken me probably wasn't bad. In fact, they're all the same. Nevertheless, this type of shit happens daily to unsuspecting travelers who don't know any better. It's important not to lose face or get aggressive in these situations, it won't help. Just politely explain or rather sternly explain that this is not where you wanted to go with a smile and eventually after the dismay of the motodriver who has just lost his commission you will be taken there with no harm done. After a while these scams become more of a delay or setback than something to worry about. The bottom line is that you'll eventually get to where you want to go as long as your persistent.
Anyway, I ended up staying one night in Phnom Penh again and got the bus to Sihanoukvile at 7:00AM in the morning. I don't remember how long it took because I was mostly asleep and trying to cloud out the noise from the bus and cars with my headphones. When I got here I was greatly by exactly what I expected hundreds of moto-dops and touts trying to take you to "their friend's guesthouse" (whom will pay them the highest commission) Of course, all of these guys are your "friend" or "mate." Why wouldn't you trust them!? I can compare the experience to a cross between being attacked by a rabid pack of animals trying to devour their prey and a thousand Wallstreet businessmen trying to fight off their last bid of a stock before the market closes. This is the low season here so tourist numbers diminish exponentially this time of year.
I really had no clue where to stay even after reading various travel guides and websites so I figured I would wing it. I remember someone in Siem Reap mention they stayed at a guesthouse called GST and that it wasn't too bad. Once I saw the sign advertising that guesthouse I had already made up my mind. The place itself isn't really bad but it seems like during the tourist season it's not so much as a guesthouse but a factory that pumps tourists in and out by the truckloads. The guesthouse must no doubt pay a good commission to all the motodrivers who are easily seen hanging out in front or bringing in new prey. The service is a bit impersonal but the food is good enough. The restaurant staff is comprised of about 10 young kids aged between 9-17 whom work for approximately 2 dollars a day. To them all westerners look-alike. No less than five times when I ordered food it generally ended up at the wrong table of westerners until they realized their mistake. Not a big deal, just a bit frustrating. The guesthouse is really big by most standards. Lots of empty roams. Due to it being low season, I got a decent but bare room for 3 USD a night with a comfortable bed, a bathroom, fan and more importantly a T.V. which I haven't had in any of my rooms for about 1.5 months.
The T.V. has since proved to be quite entertaining. I've been here 5 days and it's been raining nonstop with heavy downpouring. I've watched more television in 1 day than I have in probably 2 months of traveling. I've also read about 3 books. It's funny, back home I might buy a book and read it over a week or so when I wasn't busy. Now, I average one book a day at about 500 pages.
Today I finally saw the first glimpse of sunshine so I took to the beach all day. Probably did a good 5km walk on the beaches. The beaches here are disgusting, at least on this side though perhaps i'm a bit jaded since Thailand has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. While the populated ones are alright minus the hoards of beggar children, the other beaches on the farside away from development look like trash dumps. Straws, soda cans, plastic bags, paper, anything and everything. The most disturbing thing I found on the beach were a couple of syringes laying in the sand. After this, I sort of lost interest in walking any further on that beach. If you know where i'm from then the best description I can give would be that some of the beaches here make Revere Beach look like a Caribbean oasis, not an understatement.
Later on I moved to another beach that was a lot cleaner and more populated by locals. The waves were pretty strong and the water seemed a bit cold though refreshing. I spent the rest of the day reading a book and watching the locals or if they weren't locals they were rich Cambodians on holiday. It's pretty funny. Cambodians(Khmers) are deathly afraid of the sun or getting any sort of tan. You see to them someone who has dark skin or is tanned denotes somebody who is of lower class. It's the exact opposite of western culture where people who are tanned are considered healthy and rich because they don't work and have all the time in the world to lay on a beach and get burned. To Khmers, it pretty much means it's someone who has been working in the field all day. So in a sense people who are white must be rich because they're not outside working. Much to my amazement, I watched fully clothed Khmers, young and old equipped with long sleeve shirts, trousers and hats jump unhindered into the ocean. If I hadn't seen them at the beach, the last thought on my mind would be that they were going swimming. It was a pretty interesting sight.
After all that rain from the previous days the sun was still relentless. Even though I had already built up a good base tan from months of being on the beach in Thailand and Malaysia I still managed to burn badly over my already darkened tan. I plan on staying here one more night and then I am off to Phnom Penh for the third time enroute to Vietnam. It pisses me off that i'm actually closer to Vietnam now but it's cheaper to backtrack all the way up to Phnom Penh again to catch a bus to Vietnam. If I wanted to get a taxi to the Vietnamese border from Sihanoukville, it would cost me 45USD. In Phnom Penh, the bus is something like 10 USD.
