After limboing out of Laos and up to the Cambodian border, we quickly passed through, but then had to wait for the people in the group who didn't arrange for visas beforehand at the travel agency. It only ended up taking them about 10 minutes or so to get through, which was well worth the $10 US in savings they incurred, so lesson learned there to not pay the extra for some guys to fill out a tiny bit of paperwork for you.
We waited for our bus, and when one finally showed up, it was absolute mayhem, as people that were on it all of sudden were getting their bags taken off of it, and then getting their bags put back on it and getting back on it. There wasn't any organized system whatsoever, plus there were several people at the border who hadn't bought ongoing bus tickets, and just wanted to buy them on location, which they were eventually allowed to do, at a fraction of the cost that we paid...damn! I got on and managed to snag one of the few remaining seats, while another 10 people after me were forced to sit on tiny little plastic stools in the aisle. I ended up sitting beside an American pastor from the Boston area, who ended up being a really nice and interesting guy. Within 5 minutes of talking to me, he dropped an F bomb, much to my surprise. I asked him about the whole religion thing and cursing, and he told me he found that if he swears a bit, it allows people to open up to him a bit more and not act so strange around him ha ha, point duly noted!
We chatted for a fair bit of the ride about some of the interesting people he's encountered, including some deaf Russian guy he met a few years earlier who was motorcycling around the world, and who was quite the character, and would get invited into most people's homes due to his kindness and crazy personality. We were on the bus for probably 20 minutes when we stopped in a nearby town, and several people were told to get off and onto a mini bus that would take them to a destination where another bus would take them on towards Siem Riep, including Henrique, Nick, and Anna. After all that stop, we drove another 20 minutes and then stopped again, to pick up more people, even though the bus was already full. Much to our laughter, we just ended up picking up several of the people who had gotten onto the mini bus earlier....like I said, absolute chaos. We then continued to make our way onwards, and watched some terrible Asian martial arts movie, and had an epic karaoke session on the bus (yes Asians love their karaoke!). It was mostly Britney Spears tracks, but also a bunch of random boy band and girl band tracks that were absolutely terrible, but several of us were getting into the spirit of singing away (well mostly me anyways). Eventually someone from the back of the bus passed up a note asking the driver to either turn down the karaoke or turn it off! They turned it off, and quite a few people actually booed this action, but they never put it back on...sad times.
After several hours of driving along the bumpy roads and observing the simple Cambodian country life, we arrived at a bus stop where we found Henrique, Nick, and Anna, who had already been there over an hour waiting for our bus to show up. We all disembarked and had a bite to eat and waited for the next bus to grab us. At this point, I decided to pull out a micky of Thai whiskey that had been sitting in my bag forever, and for whatever reason, Nick became excited about this and wanted to start drinking it and getting drunk. Nick had yet to drink while in my company, and only 3 times in 4 months previously, so it was extremely odd that he would suddenly want to, especially when we had another few hours on the bus and nothing to do that night! He's such a random guy, but I let him have most of the bottle and he got pretty tipsy. We got on our next bus, and continued on our way. I decided to have a dip of chew to make the ride go better, and being the good old farm girl that Andrei was, she decided to have one as well. That lasted all of about 5 minutes as she got the huge nicotine rush, and for the next hour had to spend her time trying not to vomit, hilarious!
We arrived fairly late to the bus station, and found that our bus was the last one to arrive for the night, so there wasn't many tuktuks available. We wanted to go to a guesthouse that the Irish had booked into, and of course after telling the driver we wanted to go there, they tried to coax us into going to some other guesthouse, which we didn't want to. They then called the guesthouse, and told us they were full, which was probably bs, but whatever, we were tired and just wanted to find a place, so they took us to another place. We found that place to be actually quite decent, and the price was also pretty good, as we were paying $12 a night for a room with 2 doubles, air con, hot shower, and cable tv, so split with the 2 girls, it was only $4 a night. We just checked in there, and had an early night. We later did find out that the drivers weren't lying, and that the guesthouse the Irish had booked into, had actually overbooked them, so they weren't even able to stay in the place.
The next day we got up at a decent hour, and Nick, Anna, and Henrique decided they were going to buy a 3 day pass for the Angkor Wat temple area and take a full 3 days to explore the area. I wasn't too interested in doing this, and neither was Laura and Andrei, so we just went out and wandered around the city a bit, finding the local market to do some shopping. Before heading out, I decided to shave and leave a perv stache, which was pretty raunchy, but absolutely hilarious as per usual. While out and about, possibly because of looking at my moustache for too long, Laura ended up not feeling too well, and heading back pretty early, while Andrei and I just wandered around. I was pretty excited to find that the local market had a whole bunch of the party watches in so many colours, so I ended up buying 2 more watches, plus some new sunglasses, since I've been going through them in droves! After shopping around there for awhile, we decided to stop by a bar called the Red Piano that had some Belgian beers, and a nice little view of the bar street. We enjoyed a nice Leffe blonde (my favourite beer in the world), and had a chat with an Australian guy who was giving some tips on things to do and see in Cambodia. After hanging out there for awhile, we spotted the Irish group wandering down in the streets below, so we called them up and they came and joined us for awhile. We found out that Mike had become quite ill over the past few days, and that they had to actually take him to the hospital to get some shots and medications. That whole group always seemed to have at least one sick person at times, poor lads.
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| Dirty back streets of Siem Riep! |
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| Hey there Stampy! |
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| Best withdrawal fees out of any Cambodian bank, and a cool name to boot! |
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| One friend described this photo as an "out of work pornstar" ha ha |
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| mmm Belgian beer at sunset |
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| Best beer in the world |
We had talked about meeting them for dinner that night at the night market area, but they ended up having a quiet night to recover a bit. We wandered back to the hotel, grabbed Laura and the Brazilians and Anna, and went down to the night market area, where we found a spot at one of the little tables and ordered some food. Andrei and I shared a Cambodian bbq thing, where they gave us a camping stove, big pot of water, a bunch of noodles, vegetables, and meat, and we cooked our own bbq soup thing. It was pretty tasty, and we enjoyed a few beers as well. After finishing up there, the girls wanted to go find the night market to do a bit of shopping, and Nick again surprised us by wanting to get drunk and wandering off to find a bottle of vodka from some shop. We had a few more beers, and found out that Alli and Kayla, the Toronto girls from Laos were in town and wanted us to come check out a nightclub called Angkor Wat, so after wandering around for awhile, having some beers and a bit of Nick's vodka, we wandered over to the nightclub. Andrei and I had decided earlier in the day that we would go to Angkor Wat the next morning and check out the sunrise, which meant we would have to get up around 4:50 am and head to the temples shortly after 5 am.
One would think this would be a reason to have an early night, but it also happened to be a Friday night, and we couldn't let that go to waste, so we said we would go check out the Angkor What place for just a litle bit. Well that ended up not being the case, as we found a very rowdy and fully packed place that was just loads of fun. Nick had tried to come in with his vodka bottle, but they wouldn't let him so he said he would head home, drop it off, and come join us, but he never did show up again, which wasn't all that surprising I guess. We got inside, and found Australia Laura (now to be referred to as Laura 2), and Jenn from England, who we had earlier met on the Mekong in Don Det, seeing the river dolphins. They were partying pretty hard with a big group of young Aussies, and we joined them for a little bit, but mostly stuck to our own group. There was also a pretty big group of people who were on a Contiki Tour, which I hadn't realized actually had tours available for SE Asia, so I guess that's something for a rookie traveller to look into sometime, if they want to experience SE Asia with a bit of a guided experience, although I really dislike Contiki Tours personally.
We didn't end up finding Alli or Kayla there, but still had a pretty fun night dancing and meeting new people. Before we knew it, it was already well after 2 am and the place was starting to die down, so we started wandering back towards our hotel. On our way back, we stopped for some snacks, and then I found what could be considered Cambodia's worst toilet on the street. I had to take a leak in it, but it was so awful. If anyone has seen Trainspotting, thing of that toilet, and it was quite comparable. We arrived back at our place, and I figured I would try and take a go at Laura since we were sharing a bed, but she shut me down since Andrei was next to us, and I had been flirting with other girls that night and kind of ignoring her a bit. I think this was the point where I kind of figured I was done with her, but we still remained friends. By the time we finally got in, got settled, and went to bed, it was probably about 3:45 am or so, and that hour and a bit of sleep really didn't help much at all!
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| Crazy Nick with his random alcohol adventures! Henrique in shock |
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| Why not get the locals to start having some shots with us! |
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| One of the many Siem Riep night markets |
We woke up, all still drunk, and stumbled outside to find a tuktuk to take us to the temples. It was so early, but we all kind of had that rush of energy still, and were on our way. We arrived at the gates, paid our entry fee, and got our ID cards, which I decided to have a little fun with, and take probably the most awesome photo ever, as seen here. For the rest of the day, when I would show it, I would ask people if they have seen this man?
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| Best ID card photo ever! |
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| Early morning blues, no photo please! |
We arrived at Angkor Wat, and found the Irish waiting around for the sunrise as well. I don't know if it was the drunkeness, or just my blurred vision from lack of sleep, but when I looked over to the West of the temples, I swear it looked like they were hills with a bit of fog covering them, which I would later on realize was just the cloud patterns...strange times. We waited anxiously for this supposedly amazing sunrise, and of course, it was an overcast day and it never materialized! We hung out in the area, lamenting the lack of a beautiful sunrise that we had all expected, and then just went wandering through the temples. Angkor Wat is really quite an impressive and amazing architectural feat, considering how long ago it was built. A lot of my photos probably don't do it justice, but here they are.
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| Entertaining the Irish with my tales |
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| Beautiful sunrise....not |
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| What's she thinking about |
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| What Japanese tourist is complete without a tripod! |
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| Angkor Wat! |
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| So Asian! |
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| Monkeying around |
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| Disappointed the shoe doesn't fit |
After wandering around Angkor for an hour and a bit, exploring various nooks and crannies, and being a bit of a brat (putting up no entry signs in corridors where they didn't belong and such, plus photobombing a giant Japanese group's photo), we continued on to find our tuktuk driver to find the next place. While on our way out, we did find a pretty cool group of monkeys and hung around that area for awhile. It was funny to watch the one monkey try and take Laura's iPhone at one point, as she got a bit too close to the guy. With the thousands of tourists heading there every day, and the hundreds of tuktuks, you would think it would be pretty hard to find our driver, but surprisingly enough, he was pretty easy to find after Angkor, although I wouldn't really recognize him if he hadn't waved at me. We hopped in and drove over to the next temple and explored that area. The temples remind you of scenes from Tomb Raider, which make sense, since a fair bit of the movie was actually filmed in the Angkor area temples. We wandered around the second temple for awhile, doing some planking and other fun photos, and then walked towards the next batch. By this point, it was getting to be very very hot, and the fatigue was starting to kick in. After the third temple, we tried to find our driver, but this time, it was very very difficult. I felt like a lost soul wandering through the desert, as it was so hot, and I needed water badly. It took us quite a long time to find him, but eventually we did, and we were off to the 4th temple.
We arrived there, and found a rather daunting climb up some steep stairs to the top. I decided to use what little energy I had left to spring up the treacherous steps, and arrived on the top for some photos, just in time for my camera to die, shit! We hung out there for a bit, and had a laugh when we heard some girl coming up the stairs on our way down, and say “fucking eh these stairs are difficult”. At this point we started to laugh, and say you've got to be a Canadian, which she was. We ended up chatting with her and her friends for awhile, and they told us about the youtube video called “Shit Canadians Say”....check it out, it's pretty hilarious.
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| Have you seen this man? |
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| Andrei and I playing around |
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| Very old toilet? |
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| Why not plank? |
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| Okay now this is getting weird |
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| yup, got really weird now |
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| Kind of feel like Tomb Raider running around these temples |
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| And this is when my camera died, doh! |
After this temple, our fatigue was really prevalent, and rather than go visit the next 3 temples, we just decided to pull the plug and head home, as it was already 12:30 pm. We arrived back at the hotel, went and had a quick lunch (some amazing ginger chicken for me), and then got back and had a huge power nap. All 3 of us slept from probably 1:30 until at least 5:30 or 6 pm. We woke up, met up with the Brazilians and Anna, and went out to this awesome Mexican place that Andrei and I had found the other day. We ended up sitting down at a table with an English couple who were really nice and gave us some tips on Sihanoukville, which was our next destination. We ended up having a great feast there, and some margaritas of course, while watching some EPL football. After some good eats, we wandered off towards the pub street and ended up finding the Irish hanging out at a street side pub, watching some football, so we joined them and had some beers and hung out there for an hour and a bit, before making our way to Angkor What again. The place is a really fun and rowdy pub/nightclub, and if you ever visit Siem Riep, I highly recommend checking it out.
We were there for a few hours, and ran into Laura 2 and Jenn, plus our Swiss and German friends from 4000 Islands, so we all had a pretty fun group. I ended up doing heaps of shots with Laura and Jenn, who were pretty crazy party girls, and out every night pretty much. After several shots and hanging out, Jenn told me that Laura was going to try and make a move on me (so much for the suspense), so rather than wait, I just went up to her and initiated it. Even with my super creepy moustache, I somehow managed to pick up. By this point, Laura 1 was probably getting a bit irritated since I was again kind of ignoring her and chasing after other women, which is understandable I suppose. After flirting a bit with Laura 2 (while being confronted by her and Jenn about whether Laura 1 and I were together or not), her and Jenn wandered off, so while the rest of our group continued to hang out and party. For some reason, Nick was in another one of his crazy moods, and he got sooooo sooooo drunk...he was a mess, but absolutely hilarious at the same time.
Meanwhile I was off flirting around with other women, when Henrique came up to me and asked me if I “had a free pass” for the night from Laura 1 ha ha....Henrique had been in a 10 year relationship back home, and was trying to chase after new women all the time, but having Anna with them and in his bed made for a very difficult time. You could tell he wanted to be single again, but didn't know how to deal with the whole Anna thing, and told me that he wouldn't get a free pass from her. I of course told him I can do whatever I want, and that I wasn't committed in any way, and he was a bit jealous about that! He had been ignoring Anna a bit too much that night, and she actually left the place on her own, a bit angry, but Henrique didn't end up doing anything else with any other women. Eventually it was again closing time, and Jenn and Laura 2 happened to come back, and join us to head over to the next bar, the X bar that is open until 5 or 6 am.
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| Nick getting crazy! |
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| Brona, Fiona, and I |
I was trying to get in with a beer from another place, which the security guard wasn't having any of, so I just offered to give him some of it to help me finish it. He was actually a pretty cool guy, and rather than going inside with the others, I just hung out with him outside instead. After 15 minutes I decided to wander inside, and found Laura 2 on her way out, and sensing my opportunity, I asked if she wanted to get out of there and head home, and she was keen, although we had to walk back to the other bar to look for some purse thing of hers that had no money or anything other than coupons she had been collecting??!! Yeah a bit of a strange girl, but oh well. So we start walking back, and I ask if we can head to her place since I'm sharing a room with Laura 1 and Andrei (which of course she says is super awkward), but she tells me she's in a dorm room, so I figured I could just find another room at my hotel for the night. We arrived there, and I get another room, and we go up to the room, and it ends up being right across the hall from my existing room ha ha, and then while trying to get the key in the door and sneak in, we were a bit loud and Andrei popped her head out our room and asked what we were doing ha ha....Laura 2 was trying to pretend like nothing was happening, but obviously Andrei knew better. Hilariously enough, in my haste to get the door open, I actually broke the key in the lock off (2nd time in my travels that has happened to me, the first time being in Prague a few years back ha ha), so I had to go back down to reception and get a new room, since the lock was screwed.
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| You mean I can't take this beer in?? |
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| Okay, we'll just be friends then |
We grabbed a different room, and I spent a night down under ha ha. Fun times all around again. Around 9:20 am we were up, and Laura 2 had to wander off to some cooking class. I checked out of the room, and stumbled back into my other room, and found that Laura 1 had met some other guy and gone to his dorm room for the night, so all was good, and no awkward and angry situation on her behalf occurred. We ended up sleeping in a fair bit, and just having another very casual day. I found out that Nick had gotten so drunk, and that he had vomited all over the hallway and spent the night sleeping in the bathroom of their hotel room. This was the first time he had ever become ill from drinking, so we were all giving him a pat on the back for his efforts. I guess he was absolutely hilarious when they got back to the hotel, telling Andrei how special she was and how he was sorry for messing up and getting sick, and such....hilarious times. Anna and Henrique went off for day 3 of their Angkor pass. Since I had forgotten to take my little mascot with me, I sent him with Henrique for a good temple photo.
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| Fancy to see you here chick! |
Andrei and I were thinking about going to the land mine museum that had been recommended to us by the Aussie guy a few days earlier, but found out that it had moved and that it was now 30 km away instead of 5 kms away, and that it would cost $10 to get to, so we squashed that idea. We just ended up hanging out at an internet cafe for awhile, and then heading down to the market again to buy some more things. I decided to buy another 2 party watches, and give one to Andrei as a gift, plus I grabbed a hilarious shirt that says “No Tuk Tuk Today & Tomorrow” since people in SE Asia are always hassling you to take one. After shopping a bit, we just wandered around and then back to the hotel to check on Nick. We happened to run into Jenn and Laura 2, who informed us that she had actually vomited at her cooking class that day, and that she couldn't even eat any of the food she made ha ha poor girl. We found out from the Irish people that there was a big rugby match on that night, so we agreed to meet up with them at the Irish bar to watch it, and invited Jenn and Laura 2 in case they were keen.
After chilling at the hotel, we just wandered down to the Irish bar and had some decent food there, and watched some rugby. I still don't really understand rugby, and I don't find it particularly enjoyable to watch either, but I figured I would go down there just to hang out and support the Irish. From what I could tell, it was at least a somewhat decent game, although the Irish lost and they were sad. As far as sadness goes, this was one of my tougher nights, since the Brazilians and Anna were leaving the next morning for Thailand, and this would be the last time I would get to see them, after a month and a bit of being together every day. We hadn't really gotten to know each other when we first met in Montenegro, but over the past month I came to really love the two guys, especially their unique dynamics within the group, as they were two very different but great great guys. Typically I have only travelled within a group of people for 3 weeks at most, so this was my longest travel buddy stint yet. We said our goodbyes, and we all wandered back to the hotel for the night. I could have had breakfast with them the next day, but the Super Bowl was on at 6:30 am local time, so I was pretty keen to watch that. I ended up getting about 4 hours sleep, and getting up nice and early to wander the streets of Siem Riep to try and find a place open to watch the big game. I ended up finding a little restaurant that was showing it, and a big group of French speakers there. My first thought was that they had to be French Canadian, since French people wouldn't really have any interest in football, and sure enough they were all Quebecers except for one guy from France. The restaurant ended up filling up quite nicely for the game, and it was good to watch an NFL game for the first time on tv in a long long time. The game itself was quite awesome, and a really thrilling match. I was actually cheering for that Pats for the first time ever, but the Giants and Eli Manning really proved that they're a great team.
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| Hanging at the Irish pub |
After watching the game I just wandered over to the bank to try and exchange this shitty $10 US bill that I had received as change from a mini mart a few days earlier. In Cambodia, they use both the Riel and US Dollars as currency, but if the Dollar is slightly torn or faded in any way, places will refuse to accept them, even though you can receive them from places as change. That was the case with this stupid note that I had, so I went to the bank with it, and even they wouldn't take it!! I decided to head to an internet cafe, and caught up with my parents on skype since I hadn't spoken to either of them in well over a month (I'm a bad son at times). I also uploaded all my photos, since I hadn't been doing that very well as of late, and I've had bad luck with losing photos in the past. After several hours there, I tried to pay with this $10 US bill since I only had that as money, and the girl of course wouldn't accept it. I didn't have any other money, and she told me to just come back later and pay....arghhh this stupid note was driving me nuts! I went and found Andrei at the hotel, and we went for a bite to eat at this nice cafe that surprisingly took my $10 note when I went to pay. After that we had considered heading to the floating market for a few hours, but again it was a bit pricy ($25 US), so we decided against that, but just went and booked our bus tickets to Sihanoukville for the next morning. We tried to get on the same night bus as the Irish people, but it was sold out. I had also contemplated going to Battambang via boat, as I was told it was an awesome trip, but at the last minute I decided to just stick with my girls.
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| Mean streets of Siem Riep |
Since we had an early morning coming up, we didn't really get up to a whole lot that night other than wander around the night market a bit, and have an early night. The next day we were up early enough, and picked up and off to the bus station. We arrived there, and Andrei and I got on the bus and found an older British woman sitting in my seat, so I just tried to sit down next to her but she told me her son was sitting there. Thinking the bus had just written down the wrong seats, I didn't make a big deal of it, and just found another two free seats and sat there, figuring there wouldn't be an issues, well, about 10 minutes later the trouble started. The bus staff went to the couple in our seats, checked their tickets, and told them that they weren't even for this bus company. That's when the British guy just lost it and started yelling at them to not cheap him, and that he paid $10 for the two seats. We had all paid $14 per seat, so he should have known something was fishy. I guess his travel agency had sold him fake tickets or something. The one bus employee tried to put his hand on his shoulder and ask him to kindly get off the bus, and the Brit just flipped out and told the guy “don't fucking touch me, or I'll knock you out!” and then he got up and got into the poor little Cambodian guy's face, and at this point the whole bus started shouting whoa whoa since it clearly wasn't the Cambodian's fault. Eventually they somehow got this dickhead off and Andrei and I got into our seats and had a little laugh at how some people get so worked up over things.
We started driving, and about 15 minutes into the drive we just randomly stopped on the side of the road, not knowing why. The staff told us we had to wait for a bit, and I jokingly said that the British people probably forgot something. Sure enough, one of the staff members came to where we were sitting and grabbed a hat, and we waited a bit longer. Then Andrei grabs my shoulder and starts laughing and points out the window to a tuktuk where the British people were, and the staff was handing them their hats. We started laughing a bit about this, and the guy saw this and flipped off Andrei, so she got all worked up and flipped him off, absolutely hilarious! After this fiasco, we were finally on our way. We arrived in Phnom Penh several hours later, and I just had a good feeling about the city, it seemed so clean, developed, and hip. We found what we thought was the next bus, that was leaving in 5 minutes, so we didn't have much time. Andrei and Laura got on the bus, and I grabbed a few snacks, and then hopped aboard, only to have the driver tell me that my bus ticket was for the next bus in an hour, and that this bus was full. So I told the girls to go on without me and that I would meet them, but then the staff checked their tickets and told them they had to get off as well.
So we just wandered down to some coffeeshop to use some internet, grab some food, and drink and hang out. We found out that the Irish were actually in Phnom Penh, and had decided to stay there for a few days before heading to Sihanoukville. Based on the time that our bus was leaving, we weren't going to get into Sihanoukville until 11 pm at least, and hadn't booked any places to stay, so I wasn't so keen on going at this point, but the girls were kind of keen on going, well at least Laura was. We lingered about, and decided we would still try and catch the bus, but if we missed it then it wasn't going to be a big deal. We arrived about 10 minutes past designated departure time, but of course, being SE Asia the bus was delayed, so we were able to get on and head off to Sihanoukville. We arrived there quite late at night, and quite exhausted, as it was about a 14 hour day of travel. We found a tuktuk and were dropped off at the Monkey Republic, which was mentioned as a good place to stay by the Lonely Planet (which I don't really like following, as it just leads everyone around like they're blind and you don't really go out and explore as much, but oh well). We found that place was full, so our driver took us to another place that wanted $20 a night for a fan room, which was a bit ridiculous compared to our price in Siem Riep. We decided to wander around a bit further, and couldn't really find much. The girls ended up finding another place that was $20 a night without air con, and for some reason committed to it. I had wandered off on my own to try and find a place, and when I didn't see them for the next 20 minutes, I had to get a ride back to the main drag to see if they found a place, which they had. We were all so exhausted that we just grabbed a small snack, and didn't even feel like going to this supposed Full Moon party that was meant to be going on that night, although after talking with some people, apparently it was meant to be the next night. So we just went back to the room and crashed.
The room was so unbearingly hot, compared to other fan rooms that I've stayed in, so we didn't sleep particularly well. We ended up heading out for breakfast or a late lunch I guess, and then tried to figure out what to do for the day. I had seen a sign the previous night advertising a gym, and was kind of in an exercise mood, so I decided I would go find that, and Andrei was keen on going as well. Before we did that I did wander down to a dive shop to check out some prices for diving in the area, and we ended up getting stuck in the dive shop for about an hour due to a massive downpour of rain, but it was alright as the Scottish guy working there was pretty cool. He also told us about a few places to look for a gym, including one at a fancy hotel that apparently didn't really check if you were actually a guest. We thanked him and went and found a driver and asked him to take us to one that had air conditioning, and he said sure. He took us to the one that was on the sign we had seen, but it had no air conditioning and was outdoors. It was probably about plus 32 this day, and we weren't so keen on working out in that heat, so we told him to take us to another gym that actually had air con, and he said sure sure. Well of course he didn't understand us, and took us to some really dodgy Cambodian gym, but at this point we didn't care. It was only a $1 to enter the gym, and the equipment was pretty crappy, but oh well. It was also outdoors, and so incredibly hot, I'm pretty sure I finished my litre and a half of water in the first 10 minutes alone since I was sweating so much. After about an hour and a half there, we were back to the hotel to have a snack and shower up.
We then went out and grabbed some dinner and a few beers, then walked towards the beach to find a place to eat and party a bit. We were stopped by some girls in the streets, offering free shots and telling us to go to JJ's bar later on, and continued towards the beach when we randomly ran into Stephane, a French Canadian guy I first met in Phuket, and then in Bangkok. He was so drunk and wandering around so we invited him to come join us and grab some dinner. We stopped at some place on the beach, but the food was pretty shitty, but at least the beers were cheap. We were also harassed countlessly by children trying to sell things on the beach (which you're not supposed to buy, as it only encourages them to drop out of school, work on the beach or in the streets, and likely get abused by their handlers). After dinner and some beers, we wandered over to JJ's and found it to be a pretty cool place. I ended up chatting with an American girl who we had met in the street the previous night, and she told me to save her from someone. I figured that someone was some dude, but then this soaking wet crazy Australian woman came up to us, and asked who the hell I was. Apparently this girl was either a lesbian or a bi, and was full on into this American girl, and she wasn't interested. The Aussie girl had just been at another bar called Utopia, and was swimming in the pool there naked with a few other drunk people, and then ended up coming down to the beach to chase this poor American girl. Truth by told, I was kind of scared of this Aussie chick, and she was pretty aggressive and in my face about talking to the American, and obviously if she had hit me, there wasn't really anything I could do, but fortunately she didn't. I wandered away from them for a bit, and sat at the bar with the girls, Stephane, and Alex and Christine (our neighbours from 4000 Islands in Laos who had just showed up), and hung out there. Stephane could only handle a few more drinks, and eventually disappeared for quite sometime, and we didn't find him for another hour and half, until we spotted him slumped over by a nearby tree, passed out ha ha.
I had also met this super cute English girl named Rosie while there, and kind of alternated flirting with her and the American girl (who was still trying to escape the crazy Aussie girl, and the girl again came up to me and started getting into my face telling me I was ugly and not good enough for the American girl yeeesh), but the Yank eventually left the place, saying she was kind of bored and that my game wasn't strong enough ha ha. At one point I looked over at the crazy Aussie girl, and found her sitting at a table, super drunk and with her tits hanging out, not caring what anyone thought, she was a real strange one.
We hung out at JJ's until about 3 am or so when the girls decided they wanted to go for a swim. I was thinking about joining them, but then the English girl said she was going to another bar, and I wasn't really going to go with her until she started kissing me and telling me to come, so I ended up following, plus I'm still a bit jaded over the skinny dipping incident in Koh Phi Phi when my watch was stolen. So I followed this girl to the next bar, and we danced for awhile and were making out a bit, but she was being super weird and acting like she was no longer interested in me, so I didn't really want to waste my time and just left her, and found the girls. They were being harassed by some drunk Indian guy and some really old creepy British guy, so they were ready to get out of the water. Laura ended up having her top stolen, but everything else of theirs was still where they left it, so I guess they were kind of lucky. We just went back to the room, and called it a night, although we suffered through the intense heat of the room again.
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| Andrei and Laura's faces in the back are great |
The next day we decided to spring for air conditioning since it was just so bloody hot in the room. We went out for breakfast, and randomly enough, ended up running into the Irish who had just arrived from their bus to the same restaurant, so we sat down with them and had some eats. After breakfast, I decided to shop around a bit more for some Scuba Diving, and found a place that was offering 2 dives, lunch, breakfast, etc. for $65 which was a pretty good deal, considering the other place had quoted me at $85. I signed up for that, and had to commit to an early morning the next day, which made for a pretty quiet day and night. We didn't get up to a whole lot during the day, other than just wandering about a bit. I decided to head down to the beach for a bit, and ended up running into Laura 2 and Jenn, who were on the beach with some guys. I think Laura had regretted us hooking up a bit, as she had been kind of weird since it happened, but oh well. I just hung out with them on the beach for 2 hours, and then walked back to the hotel with them, as they were staying right across the street from us. Laura 2 is also a complete drunk mess and injures herself badly, so she could barely walk due to numerous cuts and infections on her foot, so I offered to piggyback her back to her place, but she wouldn't accept the offer.
After getting back, I grabbed the other girls, we went for a bite to eat, and then decided to check out the nearby cinema. The place was called TopCat, and it was really sweet, as you would pay $3.50 each and basically rent out a big room that had a big flatscreen tv and pretty much any movie. The biggest room you could rent out could accomodate about 25 people or so, but since we only had 3 we just grabbed a smaller one. The rooms were so comfortable, with cushions everywhere, you could drink beers, order popcorn from the restaurant next door, and even lock the door for a more private session. We began to wonder how many people actually had sex in this movie room, as it seemed like a very likely occurrence, but we tried not to think about it too much, and just enjoy the film. After the movie was over, I just retired back to the room for the night, since I had an early morning, while the girls went off to find the Irish people and hang out with them for the night.
I didn't sleep particularly well, but got a few hours at least, and was up and over to the dive shop early the next day. I met a pretty interesting 53 year old American guy from Nebraska who had been an acccountant, then got his law degree, then decided to become a tennis pro ha ha. He was a pretty interesting character, we got along pretty good. There was a very small group of only 6 of us heading out by boat to an island about 2 hours way for the diving. When we boarded the ship, the dive leader made a fairly funny speech about the boat, telling us the emergency exits were off the side of the boat, much like an airline attendant would perform their safety speech. We were then our way, and I mostly chatted with the American guy about investing, traveling, and life back home. I found out that he had been with a woman the last several years, who was an executive for Scantron (the company that makes those exam sheets where you fill in the circle), and that he was traveling around by himself for a few weeks in SE Asia. He was asking how much I was spending per day, and I told him about $30 or so, and he told me he was spending about $50-$60, and I figured it was because he was at a nice hotel, but I found out the only reason he was spending that much, was that he was hiring local girls to keep him company....ahhh these old guys and their young Asian women....So yeah, pretty interesting guy anyways. We arrived at the island, did a briefing, grabbed our gear and were out for the first dive.
Truth be told, the dive wasn't actually that great, as we got into a very very strong current that made for a tough time to see many things, as I was more focused on trying not to get pulled too far away from the group, plus I was having buoyance control issues again. We dived for about 55 minutes, but didn't really see a whole lot of interesting things. When we resurfaced, we had to wait about 35 minutes for the boat to pick us up, and I really really had to urinate, so I had to do the gross thing and just go in the wetsuit...eww. We were eventually picked up, and taken back to the island for lunch. By this point fatigue had kicked in a fair bit, and I was having a bit of a headache, so I didn't feel so great, but we still had one more dive to go. We were back in the boat, and found a more shallow area, with better coral and no strong current, so the second dive was much better. However, the visibility wasn't really all that great, and again we didn't really see anything that interesting, that I hadn't already seen in Thailand. After another 55 minutes, we were picked up fairly quickly and taken back to the island to drop off our gear and get ready to head back to town. We did all that and were on our way. When we were nearly back in town, we passed this crazy island resort place that was apparently Russian mafia owned, and super bad ass. I can only imagine what would happen if I was to take a boat over there and try and get into the place. We arrived back in town, dropped off the American guy near the restaurant where his “girl” was working, and said I would try and meet up with him later in the evening for a beer.
After getting back to an empty room, I just had a quick shower, and heard a knock on the door, and found Merrell, one of the Dutch people we had been hanging out with in Laos. Her and her b/f Daan had just checked into our hotel, and were just seeing what we were up to. I told her after my shower, we would be heading out to dinner and come grab them. Once the girls returned, they cleaned up a bit from their beach day, and we went out for some delicious Greek food with Merrell and Daan, and tried to convince the Irish to come join us. We had also decided that the next day we would go on JJ's booze cruise, since it was a Saturday, and we had heard good things about it. We had booked our tickets earlier in the day, and also tried to convince Merrell and Daan and the Irish to all come, and finally succeeded. Unfortunately, when we went down there to buy more tickets, we found out that it was sold out, but that they might be able to show up in the morning and still get tickets.
We ended up just hanging out for most of the night at JJ's again, but didn't really have a particularly crazy night since we were kind of saving up for the booze cruise the next day, so it was back to the hotel at a decent hour to catch some sleep and prepare for the next day. We woke up, grabbed breakfast, and got a hold of the Dutch and Irish, but found out that they weren't able to get tickets, and wouldn't be joining us for the day so it was just Laura, Andrei, and myself going on the cruise. We kind of just sat around waiting for the boat, and were actually all kind of tired and not really into the idea of it yet. I tried to chat to a few people, but wasn't really getting much responses, and it almost seemed like it might end up being a bit of a dull day, but when we got on the boat, things definitely changed. The boat was so so tiny, and I'm surprised they fit all of us on it. They did limit the amount of people who could actually sit on the top of the boat, since there was limited space, and then the downstairs area had a tiny dance floor area with huge speakers and a tiny bar. We each received a free beer upon arrival, and grabbed our seats up top and started mingling.
I ended up meeting some pretty nice Danish girls, that I later realized I had actually met in Vang Vieng on Australia Day, but it took awhile to realize that. The one seemed quite a bit interested in me, so I figured I might have a chance to chase after my Danish flag, but I kept it cool and just chatted for quite awhile with her. I also ended up meeting some crazy American girls from Miami that were a real blast. The boat just basically cruised around for about 6 hours, and the staff would come up with water pistols filled with whiskey to give everyone shots every few minutes, so it was a pretty rowdy time. The boat would also stop at certain points in time so that people could jump into the water if they wanted to, which most of us obliged. I had to laugh at Australia Laura and Jenn from England, as they were on the boat, but we were wearing makeup and didn't want to jump in the water and ruin their makeup...they were probably the only people on the boat to not do so. The boat also offered a free bucket to any guy who jumped in naked, and any girl who went in topless...I didn't take up the naked offer, but one guy did, and one of the Miami chicks took up the topless offer, and made all the guys on the boat quite happy ha ha. Since there was booze flying everywhere, and water balloons and such, I didn't really pull my camera out too much in case it got wet, but here's a few photos from the day anyways.
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| Booze Cruise! |
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| Just a regular day on the boat! |
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| I still swear she had hungry eyes for me...oh those Danes |
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| and of course those Sexy Miami girls! |
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| Randoms! plus the Icelander! |
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| Sunset from the boat! |
Near the end of the boat trip, I did finally venture down towards the dance floor, thinking it might be a good time to make a move on the Danish girl, and I got down there, and found some other guy had quickly moved in on her and was kissing her, so I was a bit disappointed but no big deal. I found Andrei and started hanging out and pole dancing with her, when some blonde girl came up and started dancing on me, and was pretty quick to start making out with me. I just went with it and noticed the Danish girl looking on in disappointment, and found that she had shooed away the other guy...but by that point it was too late I guess! I continued hanging out with the mysterious blonde woman, and was going to actually leave her for a bit to go talk to the Dane, when I saw a bracelet on her arm that said Iceland, and immediately I was intrigued if she was Icelandic, which she was, so suddenly I became much more interested, since they're so exotic and rare. There's only 350,000 Icelandic people in the world, so they make up like less than .04% of the world population, and I figured this could be a fun challenge to see where I got with her, so I continued dancing with her and hanging out. At one point, the Danish girl and her friend actually grabbed me and tried to pry me away, but I was too keen on this rare woman ha ha. We hung out for the rest of the boat trip, and caught the nice sunset together, then it was back to port.
Once we arrived back at port, it was absolute chaos as everyone was so drunk, and it was dark and hard to keep track of people. I actually ended up losing the Icelandic girl while walking with Andrei and Laura, but I figured I would find her later on. We ended up walking by the hotel where the Irish were staying, and I saw them in the lobby area, so I figured it would be a good idea to go running and try and slide along the floor towards them, but quickly found out that the floor was not slippery at all, and I quickly came to a screeching halt in front of a dozen or so hotel guests, much to their laughter. After brushing myself off, I found that they were about to head down to a pub to catch a Man U and Liverpool match, so we agreed to join them, even though we were all pretty gooned and needed to clean up. We wandered over to the Big Easy pub, and ordered some food and drinks, and watched Man U beat up on Liverpool pretty badly, much to Michael's disappointment. The food was actually really really good there, as the Chicken Cordon Bleu I had was very tasty, so I would recommend the place for sure if you're ever visiting Sihanoukville.
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| After the cruise, still lacking clothing! |
After watching the game, I wandered back to the hotel to clean up a bit and head back out and meet everyone. Unfortunately, the booze cruise took a bit too much out of Laura and Andrei, and they both were down for the count for the night (youngins just can't keep up). Laura went to bed first, but ended up having really sandy feet and jumped into the bed that she was sharing with Andrei, causing a big mess, so Andrei decided to respond to Laura's dirty feet by doing this ha ha ha!
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| Ha ha ha ha! Dirty feet!! |
Meanwhile, I wandered down to the beach with the Irish and we stopped by a cool trendy pub that allows audience members to get up on the mic and play whatever they want. We were just hanging out there, when Michael announced on the mic that it was Sean's birthday, so I quickly ran up to buy him a shot, and found out about 10 minutes later that it wasn't in fact his birthday ha ha...damn Mike got us good. Michael was so drunk and picked up the guitar and tried to sing Purple Rain, and it was so hilariously bad since he had lost his voice and couldn't hit any notes...eventually the staff had to pull the plug on him since he was so bad but it was still good for a laugh. After hanging out there for 2 hours, I decided to venture over to JJ's bar to see if I could track down either the Danish girl or the Icelandic girl, so I left the group and said I would be back in 30 minutes or so if I didn't.
After arriving at the pub, I didn't see either of the girls, but did end up running into a few others that I had met on the boat, and hung out with them for awhile, when the Icelandic girl showed up and latched on to me right away. I ended up hanging out with her for the next 2 hours, and then she wanted to head home, so I walked her back. I wasn't too sure if it was going to go anywhere, and when we got to her place she had second thoughts about inviting me and ended up deciding to just leave me outside...sad times...the rarity of the Icelandic woman was so tempting! I ended up hanging out an extra 10 minutes in case she changed her mind, then knocked on the door to see if she had second thoughts, but alas no luck, just a makeout session and that was all...too bad so sad! So I just wandered back to the hotel for the night.
The next day was originally intended to be our last day in Sihanoukville, but since we were enjoying it so much, we decided to stick around for one last day, and head out to the beach! We decided to check out Otres beach, which is much much nicer than the main beach called Serendipity, as there's less touts and a nice relaxed vibe. We hired two tuktuks to take our group there since we had 9 of us in total. We arrived and everyone paid up except for me as the driver wouldn't accept my Cambodian note since it had a small rip..seriously, these people are so anal about rips in the currency it's so frustrating! So after battling with him for awhile, and giving him a different note that he didn't have proper change for and tried to short change me, I just went down to buy a beer from the beach so that I could get chance back. By this point I had actually lost the entire group, as they hadn't realized I wasn't following them, but the beach was small enough I was able to track them down. We just found some sun chairs and ended up hanging out for several hours until sunset, it was super nice to just chill out, have some casual beers with the American girls from the booze cruise, and play some American football with the Irish lads, as one of our Danish friends happened to have a ball there with him. It was good fun trying to teach the lads how to properly throw a football, since they are only used to playing rugby and can only throw it sideways...Michael's technique was by far the funniest to watch, as he looked like he was shot putting the ball. After lingering around for several hours it was back into town, and we all agreed to head out for dinner since it was all our last night.
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| Sean slathering on the sunscreen to protect that pasty Irish skin! |
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| Otres beach |
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| Nice sunset |
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| Creeping on Andrei and Michael with my zoom |
We arrived back in town, and kind of had a big mess when it came to trying to coordinate everyone to eat. I found the Irish at an Indian place, but they had already ordered and were eating so I ordered a plate for myself and ran back to the hotel to drop off some things and then come back. When I returned, I found that they had all left, and only the Dutch were left there, surrounded by a table of empty plates and my own plate filled with food...to the casual onlooker, it looked like they were just two really big eaters ha ha...fortunately they were cool enough to stick around until I at least showed up, and kept me company while I ate. Andrei and Laura and Mike showed up shortly afterwards to eat, but then decided to bail and head somewhere else. So it was just me and the Dutchies left. When we went to go pay, the staff over charged us, saying that one of the Irish girls hadn't paid for her meal, but when we went and tracked her down, we found that she had in fact paid....so it was just a losing battle to even bother to get back the $4 US from the restaurant, since their English was poor...ah well. The three of the Irish weren't feeling too great, and were staying in that night, and since we didn't know where Mike, Sean, Andrei, and Laura were, the Dutchies and I just wandered down to the cool open mic bar on the beach to relax for a bit.
After having a few beers there, and learning more about Dutch culture, we wandered down to JJ's to see if we could find the others, which we did. It was actually really going off this night, and there was a huge huge rain storm that showed up out of nowhere, soaking a whole bunch of people. Laura and Andrei and Mike all decided to dance in the rain, but I didn't want to bother since I had too many electronics with me. We had a pretty wild party night, even though it should have been a quiet one since we had a bus ride early the next day. I eventually noticed the Icelandic girl had showed up, but at this point in time, I was in a pretty good conversation with the cute Danish girl from the day before (so I ignored the Icelandic girl who kept staring over and glaring a bit), and was thinking I might be able to get somewhere with her, but then she wandered off to another bar and returned later on, where I tried to kiss her but she gave me the rejection, sad times! But as per usual, I rebounded quite nice since I happened to be wearing my Dutch football jersey this night, and for the first time in 5 years of wearing it, I actually managed to pick up a Dutch girl with it! This woman saw it and started chatting to me in Dutch about it, and once she realized I wasn't Dutch, the conversation just started and continued from there. We were getting along just great and after about 30 minutes of chatting, I just made a move and it went from there. At one point, some guy on the dance floor had a huge box on his head, so I ended up grabbing that and putting it on the girl, saying I preferred my women like that ha ha...she was a pretty good sport about it. Eventually people started to head home, including Laura who went quite early compared to the rest of us. Eventually it was just myself and the Dutch girl, and her friend who Mike had earlier been chatting up but left without making a move, so it was a bit of a tough situation, as I didn't think I would be able to get the Dutch girl away from her friend. But lo and behold, she suddenly suggested we go for a swim!
So we wandered off from the bar, and were making out and fooling around a bit on the beach, when some Cambodians came nearby and were creeping on me...seriously, how many times do Asians have to be creeping about at night near the beaches! So we wandered down a bit further to a more secluded area, and contemplated going swimming, but then I remembered the Irish had gone the night before and had a bunch of their stuff stolen, so I didn't really trust the idea of skinny dipping. The Dutch girl was okay with this, and before I know it, we're up against a tree and she's stripped me down completely, and the rest is history. After having our fun, we decided to walk back to the bar and find her friend, and we suddenly met Andrei walking along the walkway looking for me. She had left about an hour earlier to go home to sleep, and arrived at the hotel and found the door locked, so she pounded on it for awhile, but there was no answer. So at this point, she wondered if maybe I had the key and that Laura had just disappeared somewhere, but this wasn't the case, as Laura for sure had the key. Apparently Laura decided to have a shower when she got home, and since there wasn't a door on the bathroom, just a shower curtain, she was worried that someone might come into the hotel room (yeah she's a bit of a silly one at times....), so she locked the door, then after her shower she fell asleep and didn't wake up when Andrei was pounding on the door! So Andrei, all tired and with her voice gone, marched back to the hotel in anger, and pounded some more and eventually Laura let her in.
I hung out for maybe another 20 minutes at the bar with Lisa, the Dutch woman, and then decided to call it a night and head home. I was stumbling along, when I hear someone calling my voice from behind, and find Michael chasing after me. Apparently he was in his room about to go to sleep, but just happened to look out the window and see me wandering along, so he decided to come running out and chase me down for a bit of a chat. We actually talked about sticking around for one more night in Sihanoukville, since we were both having so much fun (plus the Dutch girl really wanted me to stay an extra day or two), so we agreed to chat in the morning and figure out if we would stay or not. I made it back, and found that Andrei, in her anger, decided to just sleep on my bed on the floor ha ha, so I hopped into bed and had a very short sleep. I felt pretty awful the next morning, since I only had about 4 hours sleep, and was seriously thinking I would just stay another day. I hummed and hawed, while the girls went and had breakfast. I managed to pack up and get down in time to check out, but still waited to hear back from Michael. He eventually showed up, and said he was going to head to Phnom Penh as planned, so I decided to just stick with the group and head out.
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| Daan and Merrell the Dutch couple |
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| You motorboating son of a bitch! |
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| Buckets and fun! |
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| The box man emerges |
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| My type of girl |
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| Love those Dutchies |
Our bus was actually like a 2 minute walk from where our hotel was, but we weren't sure about that, and the agency had told us we would be picked up by a tuktuk, so we were picked up and had to laugh when the tuktuk drove about 30 seconds down the road and dropped us off at the bus ha ha. We grabbed our seats, and were on our way to Phnom Penh. The drive wasn't really that memorable, other than the fact that I was playing on my computer, and during a 10 minute break, I left the computer on the seat with my portable hard drive connected to it. Up until this point, I had always put the computer away and taken my bag with me into places, but for some reason I just felt alright about leaving it on the bus and watching the bus from the restaurant. Well that turned out to be a terrible idea, as someone stole my portable hard drive, arghh. Initially I thought one of the guys had taken it as a prank, but once I told them about it, they were adamant that they hadn't stolen it....so I talked to the bus staff, but of course they just laughed and said they didn't understand...I'm sure it was one of the staff members that stole it, so yeah that was very irritating. I hadn't backed up a fair bit of my SE Asia photos on anything else, so I was mostly pissed off about that, but then I found out that my one program on my computer actually backs them up automatically, so I didn't end up losing any of the photos after all.....so yeah lesson learned, don't trust the buses with your stuff!
After the long drive to Phnom Penh, we arrived and went to check into a hotel that the Irish had stayed at before called the OK Guesthouse. It was a pretty decent place for 10 a night, so we got all sorted there, and I grabbed some more video entertainment from Michael's computer to make up for all my lost programming on my hard drive. We didn't get up to a whole lot this night, other than have our last dinner with the Irish, and just kind of hang out and relax a bit. It was tough to say goodbye to them all, as they were a great group, and we had lots of fun over the past month and a bit. I definitely hope to make it to Ireland some day to meet up with them again :) After our goodbyes, we just called it a night.
The next day we were up at a decent hour, and decided to head out for some breakfast. Andrei and I just stopped at a little street food market, where you could get a great bowl of Beef soup and a coffee for $1.50...win! Laura, being a bit picky, decided she would just head to a cafe instead to eat breakfast, so we said we would come grab her later on and head out to tour the city a bit. When I first arrived in Phnom Penh a few days earlier from Siem Riep, I just instantly had a cool feeling about the city, just because I found the boulevards and the temples everywhere to be so beautiful and charming. It is a giant and smelly city in some parts, but I just love the city so much. After finishing up our breakfast, and walking for 20 minutes, we decided to go see the sadder side of Cambodia.
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| Nice to see my stock holdings are present in Cambodia :) |
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| mmm cheap breakfast |
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| Andrei photobombing |
We hired a tuktuk, to take us to the S21 concentration camp. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Khmer Rouge and Pot Pul's reign of terror over the country, I would kindly ask you to google it and do a little reading...it is so horrifying what happened during this short time period to the people of this country. Anyways, S21 was the big prison in Phnom Penh were thousands of people were brought to, tortured, and either killed or sent away to the killing fields for execution for things such as speaking a foreign language, wearing glasses, having a university education, being religious, etc etc. It's one of the most terrible genocides committed in the history of mankind, especially considering the population statistics of the country. They say that roughly one in four Cambodians were killed during this time period, can you imagine 1 in 4 people in your home country being murdered in a 5 year span?? So we arrived at S21, and were immediately harassed by some victims of land mines, one of whom was really badly injured, so I took some pity on him and gave him some money. We entered into the facility and toured around there for about an hour.
They have put up photos in the rooms where they found the last 10 dead torture victims when the camp was finally shut down in 1979, and the images are very disturbing. The torture mechanisms at the camp ranged from pulling people's finger nails out to get false confessions, to hanging people upside down from the gallows until they passed out and then dunking them in sewage water to awaken them. Various farming tools such as shovels, hoes, picks, etc were also used to torture these poor people. What was really quite saddening for me is that in this terrible place of death, there were several Asian tourist groups that were taking photos in the courtyard, smiling and laughing...to me that's absolutely terrible and disgusting considering the location we were visiting and its gruesome history. But not much I can really do about that other than just glare at the people.
I will admit this though, the S21 didn't quite have the same eery and sinister feel that visiting Auschwitz in Poland did, but it was still disturbing enough. While touring around the facility, we actually happened to run into Stephane, the French Canadian guy again...he's seriously everywhere I go and we still haven't exchanged contact info! We decided to watch this movie for a bit, but the sound was so terrible and the room so hot, that we just ended up leaving 20 minutes into the film, and were on our way to the next horrific stop, the killing fields.
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| One of the rooms were badly decomposed body was found |
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| Photos of the last bodies found at the camp |
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| The Gallows |
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| For some reason, someone who is into electric circuits decided to write physics equations on the wall in the prison |
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| Skulls of victims |
So we were off into the crazy traffic of Phnom Penh, and through some of the more dirtier and smellier parts of Phnom Penh. We arrived to the killing fields, paid our entry and decided to take a quick photo to mock our Irish friend Sean. A few weeks earlier, Michael had snapped a hilarious photo of Sean with his huge camera and a guidebook and map, looking like a terribly lost tourist, so we decided to take the piss out of him and perform our own lost tourist photo, as seen here.
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| Where are we on this map! |
We then began our walk through the fields with our audio guides to describe all the areas where the massacre began. The first stop was where the trucks would unload the terrified prisoners in the dark (since Pot Pul and his group didn't want people to know that they were taking people to these fields, they would transport them during the darkness). They were then unloaded and taken to various spots where they were shot and then buried. It's just so sad to be in the area and to realize what exactly happened. Due to the soil shifting, it's not uncommon for more bones and teeth to surface from time to time, which are then collected by staff members and put into one of the memorial areas. To me, I think the worst part of the tour was standing near a tree where babies were smashed against the trunk and killed by the ruthless soldiers. The idea behind killing even the innocent children was that the government didn't want them to remain alive, grow up, and cause a revolt against them, so they figured the way to deal with that was to murder helpless babies....so disgusting. The people who found the fields after the atrocities, didn't quite know what the tree was for, until they found pieces of brain and skin on the bark, and unearthed a nearby grave with the dead babies...so so awful. After the terribly moving tour of the place, our moods were obviously one of shock and anguish, and we were ready to head back into town. Here's some pics from one of the most terrible places I've ever visited.
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| One of many mass graves |
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| A bone that has emerged from one of the graves |
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| Teeth and bones that have emerged |
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| Children's clothing, a reminder of those who perished |
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| I love the solitary look of this bicycle in such an evil place |
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| Disgusting evil spot where babies were killed |
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| Mass graves |
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| There's about 7 levels of skulls in the tower |
We drove back towards our hotel, turning down the driver's request to take us to a place where we could shoot AK47s and Bazookas, and got back in time to head out for dinner. This happened to be Valentine's Day, and even though we weren't in the best of moods obviously, we decided we would still head out for a nice dinner. So myself, and the girls tried to find a place to eat some Sushi, as Andrei and I were craving it (while Laura opposed since she's a bit of a picky eater ha ha), but we weren't able to find a place that was open past 8 pm....strange I know. Wandering through the madness of the Phnon Penh traffic is a very intense experience, especially during the evenings, and on foot. Somehow, we managed to avoid being run over and made it to an area with numerous restaurants. We found a nice hotel, with some expensive meals, sat down there and had a nice quiet dinner and a few drinks, then wandered back to the hotel. After arriving back, the girls wanted to go for a nightcap, but I was too tired, so I just retired to the room for the night and had a quiet and contemplative night.
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| They are both texting while motorbiking....multi tasking women! |
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| Interesting spot for a snooze |
The next day we awoke, and decided we still really wanted to get some sushi, so Andrei and I tried to convince Laura to come along, but she wouldn't, so we just wandered down to an all you can sushi buffet place we had spotted the previous day. We had our fill there, although the food wasn't really all that great, and then decided to go for a little walk around. We ended up finding some crazy Amusement park that only cost $1 to enter, and $1 per ride, and it was completely empty. We could have had our pick of any of the rides, but we decided we would maybe visit it later in the evening, and instead decided to wander across the street to some swanky looking hotel, that ended up being a casino! I was craving to play some poker, but couldn't find any live tables to play, and the casino staff didn't really speak much English so they couldn't tell me if there was a table or not, other than the crappy dealer based poker games...so I decided to try my hand at blackjack, which ended up being a bit of a disaster, as I quickly lost $65 damn! After lingering there, I joined Andrei at the electronic roulette table, and made back $20 of my losings, but was still down. After hanging out there for quite awhile, we figured we should probably head back and try and find Laura since we had been gone for quite awhile, and hadn't been in contact with her.
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| Sushi time! |
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| Tofu Nemos! |
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| Just an amazing city |
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| Inside the fancy casino |
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| Was going to climb on it, but there was a security guard nearby watching |
We got back to the hotel area, and there was a shop nearby called Rogue that sold portable hard drives with numerous offers on music, movies, and tv shows, so I decided I should pick up another hard drive to make up for the stolen one, and popped in there first to check out some of their packages. After selecting a package, and taking quite sometime to make all my selections that I wanted for the hard drive, we finally found Laura again and went out for dinner with our Swiss and German friends from 4000 Islands in Laos, who showed up at our hostel that day. We had a nice dinner and some beers with them, and were trying to figure out what to do for the evening, when we decided we may as well head back to the casino! So we all wandered down there, and found out that they actually offered free beer and cocktails to gamblers, so that was a big win. We ended up playing electronic roulette for quite awhile again, and I won another $25 so I was only down about $15 for the day..not so bad.
After hanging out there for awhile, I decided to take a quick peek at the upstairs area, and was shocked to find that there was actually a poker room there! After watching two of the tables, and realizing how bad the players were, I decided I would have to join in. Unfortunately, buy in was $200, which wasn't so cheap, but I figured I would give it a go. So I said goodbye to the group, since they were sticking around the main floor, and I joined one of the tables, where there were two particularly horrendous Frenchmen and a terrible Swede, and one really bad Asian player. I sat down and within an hour I had won $300 by playing 5 hands against these terrible suckers....it was such easy money, but I didn't want to push my luck too much more, so I collected my winnings and was on my way back to the hotel for the night, with a huge grin on my face!
The next day we didn't really have much planned, so I went down to collect my hard drive and use my poker winnings to pay for it (win), and then Andrei and I decided to head downtown to the mall, as she needed to get a new camera, and I just wanted to shop around a bit. We ended up in a huge mall, and spent a good 3 hours there, and I gave in to my need for fast food after eating Asian food every day for the last few months, and went to some friend chicken joint there, mmmm... After hanging out at the mall, we were on our way back to the hotel, but I had the driver drop me off so I could just wander around the city a bit, especially near the river, as the area is so amazingly beautiful. Here's some photos from my wander around :)
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| Lovely promenades too |
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| Beautiful river walk |
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| What's not to love about this city :) |
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| Monks everywhere |
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| Nice sunset |
After my nice walk around, I got back to the hotel, and grabbed Laura to head over to the German brewpub nearby for their happy hour, which was buy one get one free....well of course I had to go with the 1L beers....and the beer ended up being...quite bad actually...so I didn't really enjoy the 2nd L so much...we hung out there, waiting for Andrei to show up, and then finished off ours beers. After that, we just wandered down for dinner with our Swiss and German friends again, and had a pretty quiet and chilled out night again, as we were off to Vietnam the next day!
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| Deutsche Bier |
We were picked up fairly early in the day, and were on our way. When we arrived near the Cambodian border, we passed through this crazy random town, that had all these huge Vegas like casinos, that even had knockoff names! It was one of the strangest places I've ever passed through, and if I had known about it, I actually might have stopped there for a night or two! I didn't really get any good photos of the place, other than some from a distance when we stopped at the actual border, and here they are.
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| The Las Vegas of Cambodia! |
We had to get off the bus, and walk through Cambodian customs, cleared that, and were back on the bus and over to the Vietnam border side. There, we were all funneled into the customs lines, and our bus driver would just randomly call out our names, as he had our passports, and we just basically grabbed them from him, and walked right through without having to stop and talk to any of the customs agents. We got back on the bus on the other side and waited and waited and waited for Laura.....we were starting to wonder what the hell was going on, as it was a good 45 minutes, and everyone else had arrived on the bus and we were ready to go. Laura emerged onto the bus, and as a bit of a smartass, I started clapping for her, but then soon stopped when I saw she was actually in tears and informed us that someone had ripped out two pages of her passport, and that customs wouldn't let her through because of it. She had offered to pay to be let in, and they still wouldn't budge, so she was to be sent back to Phnom Penh, where she would have to go to her embassy and sort things out. It was a sad goodbye for her, as it would take her a few days to get things sorted out, and Andrei and I kind of had our own schedule to keep, so we didn't offer to head back with her, and just told her to keep in touch in case she made it 'Nam while we were there. We said goodbye, and one more travel partner was gone just like that!
And thus, I was now in Vietnam, where I will continue with my story in the next posting!
Adios amigos,
Rye
