Finally we can stop pretending to be interested in temples and history – we’ve hit the beaches. It’s all tanning oil, Speedos and girly cocktails from here on in. Our last port of call inland was Chao Doc in Vietnam, a town on the other side of the Mekong River from Cambodia and there wasn’t a European in sight. We spent a couple of days getting taken around on motorbikes looking at rice fields (wet) and temples on hills (hilly) but the real fun was in the evenings.
We’d heard about a local bbq hut that’s a bit of a hit with the locals so went there for dinner and got a raucous reception from one table who kept insisting we went over to try their food and drink their banana spirit. We couldn’t communicate with anyone by any means but pointing and laughing so we sat down and gesticulated at the waiter as if to say ‘bring us anything you’ve got my good man’.
We’re doing this at every meal now because what we got was amazing and included a meatsicle, a sort of burger stuck on a piece of bamboo that we cooked on the tabletop barbeque. By the end of the night we’d been fed a banquet and drunk an awful lot of spirits. I’d innocently partaken in a ritual of drinking half a shot each with the girls on the rowdy table, but I later got the impression that meant I fancied them. Polly wouldn’t let me take any of them home though.
We’ve been away two months now and till this point hadn’t seen a single beach. Makes you sick doesn’t it? So it was with great excitement, water wings and a Frisbee that we headed to Phu Quoc. Apparently this island’s a real bone of contention between Cambodia and Vietnam because it’s much closer to Cambodia but Vietnam’s gone and stolen it. Not that we care, it’s got a beach!
We arrived by boat and got dropped at any old hotel on the beach, but our slapdash attitude cost us dearly in the heat of the day. Turns out it’s pretty popular and despite there being dozens of resorts it took us an hour of schlepping up the beach to find a room. Phu Quoc was grand at the time, we just sunbathed in the day and went to watch the local Abba tribute band of an evening, but the best was yet to come.
Back into Cambodia we stopped off at a fishing town called Kep for a night, ate lots of seafood and drunk too much again. I had a chance to polish my pool skills while Polly chatted to an American guy out there working for an NGO – I’m pretty certain Polly fancied him, he kept going on about how he organises his expenses using spreadsheets, which is right up her street.
From there we went to Koh Tonsay, also known as ‘Rabbit Island’ but I haven’t got the faintest idea why, it’s not got any rabbits and looks nothing like one either. When you consider there are about 20 beach huts with no running water on the whole island, you may see the futility in Polly’s mission to hack through jungle, clamber over rocks and fight off a sea dog in order to find what she claimed was ‘the biggest supermarket in the region’. We eventually found someone who would sell us food, which we were more than grateful for by that point.
Then finally, the jackpot. On our way to a lodge in the Cardamom mountains we thought we should try a place called Koh Rong off the seediest of Cambodian towns, Sihanoukville. No idea why but this place has story after story of people being robbed, drugged, imprisoned and plenty more besides. We didn’t hang about and went straight to the island and what an island it is. I guess this is what Thailand was like 15 years ago; three very nice bungalow resorts and nothing but beautiful sea and white beaches.
We thought we were going to have a bit of a nightmare though as when we arrived the first thing the owner did was come up to us apologetically and say that, despite our three night booking, we could only spend one night there and that he’d find us somewhere else to stay. He explained that the guy that owned the island, not to mention Cambodia’s biggest bank and insurance company, had phoned up that morning to say he needed the whole resort for his royal friend’s birthday party.
Being the lovely understanding people we are we said it wasn’t a problem, but the next day he was getting more and more agitated and we weren’t moving. Then about midday the beach, normally dotted with a dozen sunbathers at most, started to fill up. Not with more tourists, but rather with a regiment of Cambodia’s Army. Armed to the eyeballs with machine guns and pistols, they must have thought us a very serious threat.
As it happened the owner couldn’t find anywhere for us to stay so there we remained with the richest, most affluent group of Cambodians going. They turned out to be very hospitable and invited us to their beach party, where there was a lot of drinking and a lot of dancing – we had a go at a bit of Khmer-style dancing (like raving, but slower) then showed them a thing or two about dancing to the Macarena. They even put on a huge fireworks display, but without the usual health and safety legislation it was all a bit tense when they went off all around us. In summary, the most important lesson I learned was that a hangover in the searing heat is a very undesirable thing indeed.
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