Sihanoukville

so ive just found out that in china, where we currently are, blogspot is blocked, but blogger is not. therefore, i will be able to post entries, but have to go through a proxy server to view it. since this blog isnt really for me to view in the first place, the entries will go on. as always, i am about 3 weeks late in writing this entry. not to worry, though. this is the point at which we decided to slow down our travels a bit, so each entry should be long, detailed, and ultimately should give you guys a good idea of the city or region it covers.

without further ado, sihanoukville, the crown jewel of the cambodian shoreline.

in the morning after our escapades at the heart of darkness bar, we awoke quite excited to finally go to a place where there is a beach. we had heard great things about the place from j-hizzle and could not wait to see these things for ourselves. the bus from phnom penh to sihanoukville was as advertised: weak AC, tons of locals, our bags stacked in the middle aisle, and a lot of mosquitoes. at this time, we had already decided to slather 95% deet all over ourselves and risk the skin cancer.

(SIDE NOTE: deet is the cute asian way for saying 'DDT', which is a chemical that is banned in the states. i dont necessarily think that deet is bad for you in the classical sense; i mean, it dries your skin up like a motherfucker and kinda makes your face burn if you put too much on, so it cant be good for you, but we chose to believe that that would be it. most western travelers are deadly afraid of using too much of it; we decided that the rewards (namely that you wouldnt become mosquito fodder) outweighed any perceived risks. for those of you that dont know, DDT was banned in the US in the 70's in response to a book written by a woman named rachel carson called 'silent spring' -- some of you may or may not have read about it in high school. basically, the book details the struggles of the american bald eagle, the symbol of our nation, and the effect of DDT on its ability to survive. because the bald eagle is at the very top of the food chain (save for us humans, of course), any chemical that affects lower portions of the food chain, like fish or worms or whatever, is magnified thousands of times upon the animals at the top. before the ban on DDT, farmers used to spray it indiscriminately over their crops to kill pesky insects that could damage their crops. DDT works to breakdown insect exoskeletons, essentially melting bugs to death like the wicked witch of the west. when this chemical washed away, it would enter the water supply and enter the bodies of lower animals like fish, other insects, worms, etc. by the process of biomagnification, the chemical would reside at higher levels in animals like the bald eagle. the effect of DDT on bald eagles was seemingly minor, but turned out to be devastating. it caused their eggs to have thin shells, meaning that once the mothers sat on the eggs to incubate them, their weight would cause these eggs to break. as we all know, you cant make a bird with a broken egg. DDT decimated the bald eagle population in a very short period of time; conventional wisdom dictates that if the chemical had not been banned, many birds like the bald eagle would now be extinct.

by the way, this is also the reason why we are warned against eating too much salmon, as mercury runoff in our streams, rivers and oceans have fixed in many fish like salmon. because we are much higher on the food chain than fish, if we eat too much of it, we can get mercury poisoning, which isnt a pretty sight -- it basically gives you MS. so, if you are pregnant or thinking about getting pregnant, do not even think about eating fish. ain't biomagnification a bitch?)

so we get on the bus and take another shocking ride through the impoverished parts of cambodia, where, as i have said, there is literally nothing but almost naked people sitting in makeshift huts, doing what they can to survive the harsh weather and dust storms that plague the region. anyone who complains about their way of life in america should really go out there and see it for themselves. the ride took about 5 hours.

we arrived at the bus station for sihanoukville and immediately were inundated by tuk-tuk drivers and moto drivers asking if we had accommodations or rides to our accommodations yet. after a bit of negotiation, we agreed upon the price of $3 for 4 moto rides to serendipity beach, the backpacker beach. our guidebook sold sihanoukville as an up-and-coming backpacker retreat, where you could drink and smoke to your heart's content without shelling out big bucks. skye mentioned when we got to the beach that he thought that it would be less built up; jason and i looked at him like he was insane. there was nothing there but a bit of construction, some shitty hotels, and beachfront bars that were not much more than grass huts with some chairs.

we checked into a nicer spot (mostly due to the fact that papa skee is 58 this year) that cost $16 a night for two people. jason and i shared a room and papa skee and little skee shared the other one. unfortunately for us, our room lacked one essential quality: AC. and sihanoukville is one hot and humid place! luckily for us, our place was right at the mouth of the only street leading down to serendipity beach, so going out and coming home were a breeze for us.

we arrived just at sunset and were able to kick off our shoes and enjoy the crimson sun setting over distant islands and fishing boats the first night we got there. we met these two british guys who had spent the last 6 months building houses in phnom penh. we thought that this was pretty hardcore by any accounts. then we found out that they didnt blaze and worked for some christian missionary program and we were a bit less impressed. they had a really shitty shuttlecock that we used to kick around with some local kids. (a shuttlecock is one of those chinese, weighted things with a big feather at the top. basically, you kick it around like a hacky sack and try to keep it up. in phnom penh, we saw tons of kids playing this game and believe me, its very difficult to do. but these kids were like whizzes with the shuttlecock; i guess thats what happens when it is the only thing you have to play with.) jason played for hours with this little girl; by the end of it, they were using their hands instead of their feet. skye and i broke out the frisbee and started hucking it around the beach. most of the locals had never seen such a thing and were enamored with our skills. even the brits sucked at frisbee.

for dinner, we all walked down the beach to one of the furthest spots, a bar that advertised 'happy food', which is a code word for weed food. unbelieving, we all ordered some happy pancakes and shakes as well as some not so grubby food. papa skee and skeelow were obviously floored by the happy food and got all smiley. papa skee even kissed skeelow a couple of times. he was having the time of his life. i didnt so much feel anything, but was happy nonetheless.

later that evening, we went out to the bar that was closest to us, the 'nap house'. we found out later that the place was owned by a french-cambodian guy named ya-ya whose father, edouard owned the place next door. the official beer of cambodia is called angkor (of course) and the brewery is in sihanoukville. as a result, all of the bars have angkor draft for $1 a glass, or less. jason and i drank some brews and played pool with some maybe-hookers on a nonlevel table at the nap house for several hours. in that time, we met many travelers who had gotten 'stuck' in sihanoukville. they told us that you could stay there almost for free, party all night, do whatever you wanted, and even find a place to work, if you can speak english or french. we also met this guy named ash who told us that he was a professional international party thrower, if that makes any sense at all. he told us that the nap house was his bar and introduced us to his hot fiancee (who may or may not have even known him at all). he then told us that he had a bunch of hot chicks waiting for him at this other bar off the beach called 'utopia' and that he needed a couple of wingmen to come with him. we thought he was hilarious, so we decided to go with him to utopia.

it was at utopia that jason and i discovered that we were perhaps 2 of 4 total americans in the whole city (with skeelow and papa skee being the other two). we were treated like local celebrities and met every hot chick in the place. we also met this cool kiwi guy named corbin and some other interesting fellows, including a half-black british guy we kept calling lewis hamilton. (lew hamilton kept uttering the phrase, "im really interested in what you blokes have to tell me, but i have to warn you: im massively messed right now!" this would be a rallying cry for us for the duration of our stay in sihanoukville.

utopia was off the hook. there were tons of western backpackers all around and the beer flowed like wine. ash turned out to be patently full of shit because he started getting butthurt when we started hitting on his chicks. douchebag. we found out that they would gather a bunch of 'hot chicks' at the bar and take them out on boat cruises every friday. jason and i, as studly americans, were invited, of course. after chilling for a few hours and meeting some cool peeps, we took off for our hotel.

the next day would be a big one for us. we woke up, went to the beach, got some more happy pancakes, got full massages for $5 apiece, and basically waded around in the water with local cambodians, playing frisbee and soccer until it got dark. papa skee wandered off and did his own thing for awhile and eventually, either the happy food or the runs got the better of skeelow and he retired as well. jason and i would be ready to go all night.

we went back to the nap house, hung around, and then started making our way down the beach, hitting up each bar, meeting the owner, and getting drinks. most of these guys were just young burnouts who had discovered the area, learned that they could put up a bar on the beach for $4000, and had saved up for half a year and come out to do it. a lot of them were gritty to the max. most of the people who owned shit on that beach were either british or french. most of the travelers who were there were also of the same ilk. (british birds are not all that great, as it turns out...but im sure you all already knew that.) we met this guy named 'jonny' who was a cambodian guy from phnom penh whose friend owned one of the bars. jonny had come out to run the bar for him and basically divided his time between promoting parties at his bar, lighting bigass bonfires, spinning poi (which is that firespinning shit the hippies do at raves in our country...you know what im talking about.... jonny spun the manly staff with fire at the ends. he and his friends were amazing, by the way), and fucking drunk english bitches. quite the life. we found out later from some other skeevy brits that jonny was actually the cambodian national champion in ahn bak, which is a very brutal form of fighting similar to muai thai -- lots of shins, elbows, and striking. we heard a story about how jonny's father, who was a previous champ, had trained him to the point where you could punch him anywhere on his body, and he wouldnt even feel it. they also told us about this time when some local khmer dudes tried to rob someone at his bar and he had chased all 8 of them down the beach, caught them, and had beaten all of them down at the same time -- to the point where he had broken his wrist and had just kept on punching and punching and punching, because he was in the ahn bak zone. needless to say, we didnt know any f this stuff when we met him. jason and i just basically decided that if jonny came back to the states with us, he'd pull a ton of chicks. go figure.

jason and i ended up spending the entire night out on the beach meeting people and getting shitfaced on drinks that we bought and were bought for us by our adoring fans. (like i said, we were kinda like celebs -- the only two guys from america, and california at that.) at sunrise, we saw lewis hamilton again and tried to explain to him why american football was better than rugby. (the brits have this big hangup about the action stopping all the time in american football, and how theyre all pussies because they wear protective gear. we told them that they were fucking insane and that if they didnt wear pads, you would probably see a fatality every couple of games. we also described to them the enormity of the people who play football and how they run faster than most soccer players. we told them that they would run full speed at each other -- sometimes 30 or more yards -- and then spear each other with their helmets. this has got to be more brutal than rugby, which to us is kind of homoerotic: a bunch of dudes in short shorts rolling around in the muck with each other. also, it's fucking boring, right?) in any case, this is when lewis hamilton uttered his famous phrase -- over and over and over again.

before going to bed, we each got the 'english breakfast' at one of the bars that was owned by this belgian guy. we got eggs, toast, bacon, and tea. it was a good way to end our evening. at this point, unbelievably, papa skee made his return. it was probably 5 or 6 in the morning and we saw him posted up at the nap house, drinking a beer. we told him that he was a legend and that we were heading down to beach to find some food. he told us that he was going to post up for awhile longer -- we didnt argue with him. he was basically blacked out. much to our surprise, about 30 minutes later, here comes papa skee stumbling into the belgian guy's bar, in high spirits. he ordered himself a long island iced tea, chased it with a beer and a bratwurst croissant, and proceeded to order himself another long island before jason and i even knew what was going on. about an hour later, we decided to call it a night and asked him if he wanted to come home with us. like the legend he is, he refused and ordered himself another drink. this is when jason and i decided that we had better make sure that papa skee did not pass away on this trip.

the funny thing is, after we left and had gone to bed, papa skee moved over to one of the comfy beach chairs and passed out. when he woke up (or rather, when one of the french guys woke him up), he learned that he had been robbed by a stranger in the night. they had taken the money out of his wallet, left him like $10, left all of his cards and IDs, and had returned his wallet back into his pocket. to borrow a phrase from lew hamilton: this guy was massively messed. this would not cause much of an issue for anyone other than skeelow, who was pretty pissed about it himself. papa skee rolled with the punches and basically decided that that was the cost of having fun. i think i love papa skee now.

theres not much more to say about sihanoukville. the rest of the time is pretty much a blur. i can only recount small snippets of stories that may suit your fancy.

here's one: skeelow was basically laid up with what we were calling 'sihanouk's revenge' for almost 3 days before he decided to call it quits and went back to phnom penh early to stay in a place where they had doctors and AC. for most of his time there, he would make frequent trips from his bed to the toilet to the shower back to the toilet. there was a point at which he couldnt even walk more than 50 meters from the hotel down the beach in either direction for fear of having an accident in his boardshorts. it was hilarious. he was a trooper about it and really tried to hang out, but as we all know, when you got the runs, youre basically peeing out of your ass every 15 minutes, so it was very difficult on him, and on us.

on one of these particular days, jason and i decided to hit up this weird looking, super out of place casino that was just a little way from our hotel. i forget what it was called, something lame. we had a bet going that we would find one dollar blackjack tables inside. we were also wondering who in their right mind would be gambling in cambodia. we ended up pleasantly surprised, but a bit weirded out as well. the entire place was empty save for a couple of japanese tourist dudes and a bunch of staff and dealers that kind of just milled around like cattle. jason and i each changed $10 apiece and got to gambling. we were wrong: the lowest table was $2-$50. we were pretty close though. we played for about an hour, going up mostly, doubling down when necessary and basically cleaned up. then, they brought in the killer dealer and she proceeded to wipe us out. but it was funny: we never actually went down to zero, so by the end of an hour, i bet the last $5 i had on one had and jason did the same. we ended up breaking even and walked out of there with $10 each. sorry, sihanoukville casino. we found out later that you can get free massages and drinks while you play; funny how they didnt offer them to us while we were cleaning up...

i have one more good story that i need to get down here before i forget it. this should be inspiring to you guys.

so skeelow and papa skee had to head back to phnom penh earlier than jason and i: skeelow because of the revenge, and papa skee to catch his flight back home. that evening, jason and i had gone extremely big and had stayed up until about 9 in the morning. again, before going to bed, we had eaten english breakfasts after drinking like fishes for about 10 hours. about two hours after retiring, jason woke up and proceeded to vomit uncontrollably for about 4 straight hours. the whole time, i was asking him if he would be ok to take the bus back to phnom penh. at some point, we decided that if we did go, we would have to take the 'luxury bus' that had a bathroom on it. i went out and tried to book the last bus, but it was too late and all the spots had been filled. dejected, i returned to the room to find the door locked and jason missing. for the next 6 hours or so, i hung around with my new friends and ate and drank and made merry.

(side note: our favorite place to go eat was this place run by a french chef named lionel called 'le petit gourmand', advertised as a french brasserie. the food was pretty gourmet and the dude was hilarious. on this particular evening, he had hired a bunch of local khmer musicians and had set up a bed across the street from his place for them to sit on and play. from what i could tell, he was paying them in angkor pitchers. anyhow, his food was great and he rolled spliffs all the time while he was behind the bar. this dude was probably around 50 and very very french. hilarious.)

so i was hanging out with the french guy and who shows up but jason, looking super refreshed. we exchanged pleasantries and he told me about his ordeal: not long after i had left to book the bus and use the internet, jason had crawled out of the room, commissioned a moto driver to take him to a doctor, and had been driven about 25 minutes out of town to this chinese guy who ran a hostel and did some medicine on the side. god knows how he kept his stomach in check for the moto ride. for the next 4-5 hours, he had laid on a bed with fans on him, drinking down IVs. every couple of minutes, one of three girls would rewet a towel he had on his face and stomach to keep it cold. this process went on for the entire duration of his stay. in all, for basically saving his life, jason gave the chinese doctor $50 and the moto driver $4. he appeared to be a new man and was even eating solid food.

the next morning, we woke up and it was raining. we decided to take a little hike around the other side of the beach to check out the other bars and bungalows there. we walked for a little bit and had to seek shelter from the rain at some other bars, which sucked by the way. when we got to the end of the beach, there was this little rock outcropping that blocked our path to the next beach. out of nowhere, this teenage cambodian kid shows up and offers (though body language) to take us over the rocks. as big americans, we were having a bit of difficulty negotiating the rocks, so we agreed to follow him. he grabbed our water bottles and bags and basically walked without his hands over treacherous terrain, always looking back to make sure we were still with him. at one point, it began to rain and he guided us under this tree that the locals use to hide from the rain. at this point, we asked him what his deal was. he told us that he was 15, went to school during the week, and liked to hike around on the weekends. whatever. we asked him to take us to the next beach, souka beach. he guided us over these rocks until we reached a steep staircase that led down to the next beach. we paid him a dollar and he asked for two. all business. we paid him and thanked him and headed down.

souka beach was one weird place. for one thing, the beach was for all intents and purposes deserted. all along the beachfront was this 5 star hotel by the same name. i guess souka is a large japanese company that had bought the beach outright from the cambodians and had put up this super opulent hotel in the middle of nowhere. as we walked up, we noticed that they had a outdoor pool with a bar. jason and i tried to play it off like we were hotel patrons, but even as obvious americans, we were called out. they wanted $6 apiece from us just to use the pool. they had a huge spread of a buffet there that cost $24. this was all too much for us, so we told them to beat it. we decided to walk the grounds of this hotel to see if they had a golf course or a ping pong table. the whole way, we were confronted by hotel staff in golf carts who asked us where we were going. we told them that we were looking for the ping pong table and they kept directing us in strange, often contradictory directions. to walk the grounds from one end to the other took almost 45 minutes. they had a well-maintained garden and a huge dragon statue. these were also very out of place, to say the least.

i am unhappy to report that we did not find a golf course or a ping pong table, but it was not for lack of effort. we got to the end of the beach and made the decision to push on a bit further towards a small fishing village in the distance. we decided that because anything goes in cambodia, we could perhaps ask one of the local fishermen to take us out on his boat to do some fishing. when we got to the village, we were shocked and appalled at our surroundings. all around there was garbage: in the water, on the sand, in the huts, everywhere. there were also chickens and ducks that roamed around freely like they were pets or something. clearly, whenever they needed to eat one of them, some person would simply go outside of their huts to the water, grab whichever bird they wanted, and killed it right there. we were a bit wary of bird flu. i dont know if you guys have seen that ad that they show late at night with that bearded white guy in a cambodian village... i think its the one dollar a day for one child thing. "an mei is a 5 year old girl who lives in this tiny fishing village in cambodia. all she wants is to go to school and learn, but she cant because there isnt any money. for just a dollar a day, you can make an mei's dreams come true. we can make a difference, one child at a time." this place looked EXACTLY like that.

all of the fishing boats were pretty much rickety old canoes that had been beaten down by the ocean. they were no more than 20 feet long and had a single outboard motor to guide them. we did not think that anyone here would be able to speak english and we almost gave up. just as we were turning around, the owner of the local restaurant (if you can call it that) came out and started talking to us in pretty good broken english. we asked him to consult with one of the fishermen who was going out to see if he would take us; they spoke and the fishermen quickly agreed to take us for $25. jason and i saw this as an opportunity to give money directly to the people, and god how these particular people needed it. we asked if the restaurant dude would come with us to translate and to cook the fish for us on the boat. he quickly agreed and scurried back into his hut to get a stove, a pot, some dishes, spoons, and sauces. he also sold us some ramen noodle packets, which, by the way, is basically the only thing these people eat on a regular basis. after this, we waded out to the fisherman's boat and we were off.

it was around dusk when we headed out and jason and i were worried about catching malaria after being eaten by mosquitoes on the water. to our surprise, there were no mosquitoes and the water was extremely still. the moon was out in full force and we had a peaceful, almost cathartic ride out to this special spot where the fisherman knew there would be fish. we dropped anchor and went to fishing. the operation was so simplistic that im sure they were doing to same thing a thousand years ago. instead of rods and reels, they had a wooden spool think with fishline wrapped around it. the hooks were all handmade from junk and the sinkers were old padlocks and pieces of metal. it took them awhile to set everything up, but we caught a lot of fish initially. the first one i got, i couldnt even reel in because, how the hell are you supposed to reel in a 3 foot fish with your hands? after we figured the operation out, we both caught some smaller fish and the restaurant dude and the fisherman killed and cleaned them right in front of us. the kicker to the whole thing was when, after the sun had gone down, the fisherman lit up this huge oil lantern and fastened it to the edge of our boat. the restauranteur told us that this would be to attract squid. apparently, they are drawn magnetically to bright lights, much like moths. as some points, the fisherman would take out this big net and literally pluck squid out of the water. he even got a pretty big one. everything we caught went into this big pot of soup and they grilled the fish over an open flame and handed the food back to us on plates, with a little fish dipping sauce. we ate to our hearts' content and gave the rest to the fisherman and the restaurant guy; they refused at first, but after we insisted, they ate voraciously.

we could have done this for a couple more hours, but the sky turned black and we were told a storm would be blowing in. they didnt want to take a chance with our lives, and we thanked them for it. we had agreed that they would drop us off at serendipity beach after we were done an on the ride back, we saw lightning in the distance over the ocean. it was pretty surreal. finally, we saw the bright lights of serendipity beach.

on our journey back, the restaurant guy told us of his sad story. he said that everyone in that shitty village had once lived on souka beach and once the japanese company had bought it, they were forced to clear out. now, they dont even let regular khmers walk on the beach at all, let alone hawk things or offer services. he said the hotel cost over $1000 a night to stay at and often, it would be full. (jason and i thought that this little part was bullshit because we barely saw a soul on our walk of the grounds.....but who knows, maybe people do pay over $1000 a night to stay at a 5 star hotel in the middle of a poverty wasteland. i'd rather go to hawaii or something, but who knows?) he told us that another japanese company had bought one of the small islands off of the more built up beach, victory beach, and was building a bridge from the beach to the island, with each room costing well over $2000 a night. all of these things, he said, were good because it meant that the locals could make more money. i wasnt so sure about this. we knew the beach on the other side of serendipity was owned by the russian mafia and that in order to get anything done in cambodia, you have to bribe the local police and the military. if you are a foreigner, they have to right to bulldoze your place at any time, without recourse. and now, cambodia was going corporate. if you guys want to live for cheap and have your own bar, this is the place for you, by the way.

we pulled up in our rickety fishing boat right in front of the nap house. we gave them $30 total and thanked them profusely. that amount of money could probably feed the entire village for a month. they told us that if we had any friends who wanted to do the same thing, theyd be happy to oblige us again. we told them that we would ask around. as we got out of the boat, all of the other travelers and backpackers were a bit amazed at our story. unfortunately, we didnt find them any more business.

one more point: the kids in cambodia are so intelligent and savvy and wise, you would not believe their ages. i spent a good 3 hours rapping with this local kid who sold bracelets and stuff on the beach. i told him that i didnt want to same shit everyone else had; he told me that i was in luck because he knew how to make bracelets himself. for the next 3 hours, he and his little buddy made me a cambo flag bracelet, two sweet bead geckos, a friendship bracelet, and another sweet, unique bracelet. during this time, the kid told me all about cambodia and answered a lot of questions i had about it. he pretty much spoke the best english of anyone i had met in cambodia to that point, save maybe for our friend joe yan the tuk-tuk driver. all these kids want to do is go to school and make better lives for themselves; that's it. and their government is corrupt and prone to infighting and civil unrest. the people are kept down and are given essentially no rights. i also learned all that stuff about the 'taxi girls' and voting from him. i wish i could have adopted him myself and taken him home with me. we parted with me telling him to go home, tear apart all of his shitty bracelets that he was selling for 50 cents apiece and to make those sweet cambo bracelets and geckos instead. he could sell them for 3 bucks apiece, if he wanted to. i told him that this would be the best way for him to stand out and make more money. he agreed with me wholeheartedly and i gave him $10 for his troubles. man, i hope he turns out ok.

and....we're done! thats pretty much all ive got to say about sihanoukville. it claimed skeelow early on and jason did a yeoman-like job of avoiding another pitfall. he rallied like a champ and ive got to commend him on that. i thought that he was going to die -- seriously. sihanoukville ended up being one of our favorite places on our journey. it taught us a lot about cambodia, the people, their spirit, and ourselves. for that, sihanoukville will always hold a special place in my heart.

more phnom penh in the next entry. (free tibet)