Sihanoukvile

Cambodia

August 2005
6 days

Gavin wrote:
were in Cambodia now! woohoo a new country!

once we crossed the cambodian border we immeditately got mobbed by about 8 blokes trying to get us to use their taxi, talk about football or whatever else they
were doing. There was a scary moment when dealing with a cambodian official who told us we need to pay 100 baht for a piece of yellow paper he had stapled in
our passports (something to do wtih Sars) - i was going to pay but lorraine stood up to him and said she reckoned he was lying and we werent going to pay (i was picturing my new future in a cambodian jail at this point), one guy (a taxi man i think) shouted at
us to get out of the country! - but we just got ferried to the next office and got through ok.

we had to spend a day in a border town called Krong Koh Kong beacuse the buses to Sihanoukville left the following morning. there was basically nothing of note there, we wandered around and found a bar and sampled the local beers and played pool.

The journey to Sihanoukville (where we are now, the southern beaches of cambodia) was horrible, the worst yet we recokn. The roads are a joke and the mini bus
was so old and over filled. It was supposed to take 6 hours but ended up taking about 8-9 hrs. At one point we changed to another mini bus which was about thesize of a VW camper van and it had 16 adults in it and 4 motorbikes!

we drove through some absolutly beautiful scenery and the river crossings were interesting. We also drove through one town which was the most filthy, saddest
place i have ever seen, i wont go into detyails but we were glad we didnt stop for long there.

cambodia is quite a weird place where there are hardly any proper roads and a lot of poverty, but so far everywhere we have stayed have had cable TV with premiership footie.

ok well, were in sihanoukville staying on victory hill a small townish thing with a few bars and restaurants and guesthouses. The beach (victory beach) is beautiful with amazingly clear water and lovely white sand (probably better than anything in
thailand, not as good as perherntian islands in malaysia tho).

stuff is dead cheap here as well, with our room costing $4 with cable (US Dollars that is - the currencies are weird here as both US dollars and cambodian Riel are in use at the same time, dead confusing getting back change for a $20 bill as $10 and about 36,000 reil) and food being cheap ie last night we went to a sri lankan buffet which was $3.50 for all you can eat and a draft beer is $0.50 - RESULT!

well, we plan to stay in sihanoukville for a few more days and we will move to another beach soon and see what that is like.

Jelly fish
Thats our guide on a day excursion through some national parks - he has found a jelly fish on the beach

Water buffalo

Fishing boats

Another pic of our beach

Our beach
Great beach at victory hill we hung out here for several days chillin and eating the best fried rice and fried noodles ever - the people were all lovely here - GREAT place!