Our direct bus across the border to Sihanoukville via Phnom Penh turned out to be a change of bus in Phnom Penh with a 2 1/2 hour wait. Oh well, bit of time to scope out Phnom Penh before we returned (every cloud...). The bus eventually got to Sihanoukville around 10:30pm. We got taken by a tuk tuk to a hotel/bungalow near the beach. To be honest, it could have been anywhere, we just wanted somewhere to sleep that wasn't on a bus. Was a pretty epic day, so we were pretty exhausted after it. Got picked up at 8:00am in Saigon and eventually arrived in Sihanoukville at 10:30pm. 14 hours. I did manage to smash a book on the journey - Dan Brown "Digital Fortress." Not his best, but OK.
Sihanoukville is one pretty awesome place. Very chilled beach place. We stayed down in the Serendipity Beach area. The beach is lined with bar/restaurants and beach loungers. Tuffy and I found a perch on the beach-side and pretty much didn't move from there for a good 8 hours. Why would you? They bring your food to your lounger; bring your drinks to the lounger; ladies wander to you and massage you if you want; if it's hot, you can just get up and fall in the water. This place is high on the recommendation list. These little kids rock round with coathangers ladened with bracelets. If none take your fancy, they have bags with different coloured threads and will make you one on the spot. They seem innocent enough, but they are damn persistent. From not wanting any, I ended up with three and Asty ended up with 2 and a bookmark (which he's already lost). I got a pretty sweet bracelet with "GEAR" written on it (which I've now lost). Asty got one with "ASTY" in the colours of the ABs. One, this little kid who made our bracelts, kept hassling us about playing games, where if he one, we'd have to pay his price for bracelets, or if we won, we got our price. I beat him in a best of three game of Paper, Rock, Sissors, so ended up with a Cambodian flag for $2. Asty bought a pair of "Oakley" polarised sunnies as well (which broke today).
As the sun goes down, all the restaurants start cranking the BBQ. You can get a BBQ feed of whatever from $3. Pretty legit feed, once you add the salad and fries to the place. We perched up at one restaurant, had our $3 seafood BBQ and our countless beers, and watched the fire dancers do their thing (made even more awesome after we sampled a "Happy Shake". We were pretty leered up by the time we decided to leave, but called into one last bar before the night ended.
Next morning, fairly hung over, we woke up and pretty much boarded our bus back to Phnom Pehn. Joslynn (Canadian girl) gave us a heads up about where to perch in Phnom Penh, so as soon as we got off, we could tell the Tuk Tuk driver where to take us. The tuk tuk driver (Bora, rhymes with Dora) ended up being a sweet chap, who ran tours round Phnom Penh, so we sussed for him to pick us up the next morning to check out the killing fields, tuol sleng (S-21), and some other sites.
Pretty intense shit went down in Cambodia not that long ago. We got to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek (around 15km South-west of Phnom Penh) and followed an audio-guided tour around the killing fields. Pretty chilling thing. Mass graves everywhere, the biggest held 450 bodies. The big memorial stupa hold the remains of the bodies of the people exhumed. Around 20,000 plus people were executed there and buried across 129 mass graves. some pretty intense stories are told in the audio tour.
After lunch, the intenseness continued when we visited the Tuol Sleng prison (formerly a high school). This was the torture, interrogation, detention centre during the Pol Pot era. People where arrested/caught, interrogated and tortured into confessions (true or untrue) and then sent to Choeung Ek to be executed. It was pretty creepy walking round, looking into rooms that once held thousands of people. There was barbed wire fences covering the higher levels to stop the desperate prisoners from committing suicide. not a nice place at all. When the Vietnam Army finally got to the prison, they found 14 people dead there. These were the last of the people tortured in Tuol Sleng. Their bodies are buried on-site and a memorial has been set up. It was bloody hot inside the buildings, I can't imagine what it would have been like to be kept prisoner in one of those rooms with hundreds of others. One of the famous quotes from that Pol Pot era was "No loss if killed, no gain if kept alive."We are now in Siam Reap. Picked up at 7:45am, arrived at 4pm. Damn these long-haul busses... i think a traditional Khmer massage is justified!
p.s. photos will be added to photoless posts when i find some decent internet.
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