Day 15-17 31st July – 2nd August Sihanoukville – the beach paradise!
When we got up on Tuesday we were feeling a little worse for wear so a day on the beach doing nothing was in store. I had a swim then some breakfast which was great! After this Frida and I went up the beach and found a place with some deck chairs and fell asleep, it couldn’t get any easier.
Later that night we met up with Rob (a Scottish guy we met on the bus and stayed in the next room) for a few drinks and dinner. We ended up getting a few cocktails, dinner then double Vodka Rebulls in between practicing our fire twirling. It was a great night and now I can twirl balls of fire on chains J
Wednesday 1st AugustFrida and I decided to rent a motor bike and head towards another beach somewhere along the coast. We managed to get one for $5 and then took off. First we went through town and were going to head to a town called Kampot which was 105km from the middle of Sihanoukville. Frida rode there and I rode back, and we only had a pretty average map to get there, it was a lonely planet map that didn’t really have much or any detail.
The riding was great, it is a really good way to see the country side even though we were on the highway. It got a little hellish when buses and trucks would go by really quickly right next to you, but was well worth it. About 50km from town we took a right and went through real farming country, rice paddies as far as the eye could see. I wanted to check out this place called Borkor Hill station, which was a station that the French built and it is right on top of a huge hill over looking the coast. We made it to the entrance of the national park and decided to get something to eat. There was a family selling food so we went over and sat down.
You could tell they didn’t get many visitors and they all wanted to talk to us. There was another family there as well who were friends/relatives and they all wanted to talk as well. I got chatting to this cool little guy who knew a lot of English but could not really pronounce, and it looked as though he had muscular dystrophy or something. After talking to his family it turned out he was in a motor bike accident and hit his head really badly, he was a real character though.
When we asked for the food they said what would you like, then it was what do you have. Frida went to have a look and it was squid or chicken, we said chicken until they were about to kill a chicken, then it was quickly squid. Talk about out of site out of mind. We had Squid Fried Rice and talked to this girl who had taught herself English from a book, she was really good at all the pronunciation, and she was relishing this moment to practice. I decided to practice on here, so I learnt numbers, 1,2,3 1st 2nd 3rd etc. By the end I was able to say “I have four brothers, 1st brother is Ben, he is 29” all the way down to Greg. It would be easy to learn if you could bug them all day about how things sound, and then practice.
We noticed it was about 5pm and we were three hours from home, riding in the dark is not much fun with all the bugs. While we were riding next the the rice fields, the bugs were crazy, my head was like a windscreen and I had to put sunnies on so that I could keep my eyes open. We eventually arrived home, pretty tired!
The next day we were not feeling very well (maybe eating squid that has been sitting outside all day is not the best idea) so we had another lazy day.