Spent most of the day travelling to get to Otres. I wanted a bit of beach time after Vietnam
and PP. Now I did know when I decided to come to Cambodia that it was going to
be rainy season, but being the optimistic person that I am, I thought it wouldn't
affect me much. Er yeah, the season’s in
Cambodia don’t lie. I got to the beach
and it rained… and it rained. Luckily
there were a few other people at the hostel and they had a TV with LOADS of DVD’s. I did quite a lot of chilling, trip planning,
job searching, watching TV and walking down the beach when the rain wasn't too
heavy. Then after a couple of days
Sabrina (from Switzerland) came to meet me.
We had met in Malaysia in June and both realised we would be in Cambodia
at the same time. When she arrived the sun came out so we went for a walk down
the beach and had a drink and food in one of the bars.
Next day we decided to cross our fingers with the weather
and head to an island called Koh Rong.
It was a nice sunny morning (maybe a little rain) and after a TukTtuk
and ferry, we had arrived at paradise.
We found some cheap digs – a lovely little bungalow on a hillside which
overlooked the sea - and went for a walk
along the beach. Wow it was just
stunning. Paradise. Picture postcard. White sand, coconut trees,
turquoise seas. We sunbathed and swam and enjoyed the break from the rain. That
evening back at our accommodation Sabrina was in the shower and I happened to
walk outside to hang out my towel when I saw someone walking away from our
balcony. I walked over and asked ‘what are you doing?’. The guy turned round
and handed me Sabrina’s money wallet and said ‘sorry’ and walked off. I took the wallet and went back into the bungalow
to explain what had just happened. I was
a bit shaken and couldn't believe it had just happened. There
was some building work taking place at the accommodation next to us with lots of locals working there. Sabrina had said some of the guys had been looking over at her earlier when she was sat outside. So Sabrina
went to talk to the owner. I said the
guy had a very distinctive ladies pink floppy hat on. The owner then asked me to identify who
it was. Everyone looked very similar so
I explained about the hat. The guy who
owned the hat said he was in the shower at the time. A likely story. So without me identifying anyone, nothing
could be done.
That night, we went for happy hour at one of the bars on the
beach. We were having a nice time
minding our own business, when then these 2 guys sat down at our table. They didn’t ask if they could join us. They were pretty wasted and one of them didn’t
speak very good English. He was from
Russia and his friend was from another Eastern European country. The Russian man was very odd, but also quite
arrogant. In broken English he was
telling us about how he was on the run from Interpol and how he owned an island
near here. We thought he was speaking rubbish but we just listened (we didn't
have much choice!). Anyway they had
ordered food and decided to eat it at our table – again without asking. They didn't try and engage us in any
conversation… It was all about them.
They ate their fish like animals.
It was pretty gross. We really
wanted rid of them and finally they got the hint and left. After they left, the waitress came over and
asked if we were ok and then explained that the guy did in fact own an island
near there. He is actually an ex Billionaire! I am not kidding you. We were then joined by a lovely Spanish
couple from Barcelona who had been sat at the next table and had witnessed the
whole thing. They were very nice and we
had drinks and talked the night away. Very
random night and day!
Next day we decided to go to Long beach on the other side of
the island. To get there you can either take
a boat, or walk for an hour through the jungle.
Being the budget backpackers we were, we went for the walk. It was really cool, walking through streams
and making our way over big rocks.
Sweating, we finally heard the waves and saw the beach. Wow it was stunning and there was hardly
anyone around. We walked along the beach
a bit farther, sunbathed for a bit and enjoyed the beauty of the beach. After a few hours we tried to negotiate for a
boat back but the guy was taking the piss, so we decided to walk back with a
nice Aussie girl we had got chatting to on the beach. It was quite tough walking up the hill back
to where we were staying. My thighs were
killing me from the walk earlier and the walk up to our bungalow! At night we met up with the Aussie girl and
some of the girls she was travelling with.
There were 6 of us girls and it was a lovely night. Luckily the Russian guy and his mate weren't around. We had drinks in a couple of bars, met Mr
Boombastic (a local guy who was trying to get us to go on a booze cruise the
next day) and a guy who looked like My name is Earl. I then had a cheese toastie (yum!) and headed
to bed around 2am. Quite a late night
for me. Good fun!
The following day I was feeling a bit hungover and it was
raining again – a lot! Proper
thunderstorms. We had a chilled
day. The electricity on the island goes
off from 11am-2pm and 2am-8am so no internet for a while… the signal was pretty
pants there anyway. Good time to read
and chill out. We met the girls from the
previous day and said bye as they were leaving that day. We walked down to another beach with a new
friend – a local dog that had decided to come with us. As it was still a bit rainy, we went for a
massage on the beach. I had a Khmer
massage which was really nice but painful on my already sore thighs! We had a cheap $2 tea, a fruit shake and then
packed and decided to have an early night as we were leaving the next
morning. The accommodation next door
decided to play REALLY LOUD MUSIC (which was a load of rubbish). Thankfully they didn't play it until too late
and we went to sleep.
We checked out the next day and after Sabrina nearly losing
her money wallet, she had put money into the owners’ safe as there was no safe
in the room. They had signed the amounts
of money on a piece of paper but when she checked out, there was $40
missing. The owner wasn't around and
the guy who was standing in wasn't having any of it. She had to argue and threaten the police and
finally after a lot of agro, she was given the money. During the night I had been woken up with really
loud thunder and lightning. We were glad
to be leaving! Yes it is a beautiful island
but don’t go there with a lot of money (which you have to as they don’t have
any cash machines) or anything valuable.
We got on the boat and who was on there?
Yes the Russian guy and his mate.
Now this was about 10am … and they were drinking vodka… from the
bottle! Seriously! The boat back was
quite bumpy as the sea was quite choppy.
We went via the Russian guy’s island where the boat tried to dock. It couldn't as the sea was too choppy. So what did the Russian guy and his mate do?
That’s right, they just jumped off the boat into the water and swam to the island. God only know’s how they made it in that
state. We got to Sihanoukville and looked at the options to get us to our next
destination but decided to stay the night there. We spent the day wondering around the town
(in the pissing rain), stopping off for drinks and food along the way. We found a supermarket selling wine for $4 a
bottle, so we went to drink it at the hotel balcony. Unfortunately the bottle was some knock off
wine and neither of us could get the plastic cork out of the bottle as it was
glued in! Finally after trying with the
Swiss Army Knife for about 30mins, we chopped it out of the bottle. Thank god for screw tops back home! The wine tasted fine so we drank that and
went to the bar next door. There weren't
many people around so we went to bed at midnight. Next stop, Kampot!
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