The proprietor of the hostel in Kampot barely looked up as I dropped off the key on the desk and departed. I booked my bus ticket to Sihanoukville with a smaller company running minibuses, and was happily shocked when I discovered that the staff member had an excellent feathered friend.
The minibus was an older model, but I tend to be more concerned with the driver than the vehicle in SE Asia. An hour out of Kampot the road becomes an unsealed mess, forcing the driver to slow to a walking pace as he negotiated a path through the worst of the potholes.
Sometimes due to heavy vehicle traffic, the bus was forced onto the very soft shoulder, leaving the whole bus to be on an angle, which made me rather nervous, but our driver knew how far he could push this. I noted in alarm that there were several stockpiles of blue metal on the side of the road as if the money to fix the road only lasted long enough to transport the materials on-site. Two hours and a bruised coccyx later we reached the outskirts of Sihanoukville.
Phnom Penh is ugly because by the time anyone realised they could make it beautiful it was too late. Sihanoukville is ugly out of a twisted sense of civic pride. Rampant Chinese investment has left the place a horrid monstrosity of over-development. Russian interests have led to high crime, and according to the expat I shared a beer with last time I was here, means it is easier to get a sad handjob from a Russian than any local. But I was not here for handjobs, sad or otherwise. I was only interested in getting to Koh Rong Samloen. I only had enough time to order, but not drink a latte before a lady escorted us from the bus office to the pier. Still clutching my coffee, I managed to go to the Seven-Eleven to buy some jubes and some questionable Dim Sum on a stick, then jumped on the ferry. Luckily and dispite the best efforts of the skipper, I ate and kept down the coffee, jubes and dim sum by the time we docked at Koh Rong Samleon.
Island life is slow. You wake up, eat when you want, swim when you want and shower and head to bed when ever you feel like it. I spent four nights on the island, quickly settling into the routine.
Second night in and I was safely tucked into my dorm bed with the curtain drawn when, with a very Italian arrogance, the lady in the bunk above me peeked into my space and asked if I knew how to turn off the air con. No idea I replied, in shock at this breach of etiquette. A few hours later I was being kept awake by the same Italian moaning, and whacking the rail. Next thing I know she’s again in my space, and asked me if I could sleep on my side so I don’t snore. Wordlessly I turn onto my side, while thinking how the fuck was I snoring when I was awake because of her? Nothing is said the next day, but I overhear another lady telling a friend on the phone that a friend of hers in the hostel had a kidney infection, which is, of course, a problem when it is easier to get hash brownies than antibiotics on the island. I wonder if those two things were related.
On my day on the island I decided to take a walk to the other side of the island to Lazy Beach. It starts off looking like the early stage of a highway build, and then I turn into a more standard jungle path.
A wasp decides to attack me on the big toe, but I manage to brush it away before it does too much damage, and I keep walking. I end up at the rear of a semi-abandoned resort, and then the beach.
I spend a quarter of an hour swimming in the choppy surf before having a read in the shade before heading back.
After a late lunch, I go for a lazy walk to the far end of the bay, to check out a waterfall, which turned out to be a little disappointing.
However, the walk did show me the tumultuous nature of the tourist industry on the island. I saw an empty resort with a skeleton staff feeding scraps to dogs, and abandoned villas, with overgrown gardens. Again I can’t help wonder how it would be now if COVID never happened.
When I returned to my hostel I discovered that a tour group had been dropped off, and were busy taking advantage of the happy hour half-priced cocktails. While this no doubt made the owner happy, I felt that the number of Eurotrash babes in the shallow water taking selfies had reached critical mass, and I took my first beer for the day a few metres up the beach.
Adrian's Got The Moose 