Back To Cambodia

February 13th saw me head once again to the Kingdom of Cambodia, my main purpose was of course to head to my favourite island, Koh Rong. My journey started with a plane straight into Phnom Penh, there was a cheap enough flight for about 2000 baht and I worked out that it wouldn't he that much more for saving a huge amount of time and effort and more so that I could cut out the Poipet land crossing and quickly get my visa on arrival at the airport. There was no real scam here other than how I watched him short change many people, a lot came back complaining and were instantly reimbursed as he knew what he was doing. In any case after he tried it with me I abruptly asked for my $5 and I was off in a tuk tuk to the guesthouse I had once stayed in the city.

I had just one night in Phnom Penh before heading to Sihanoukville, at the guest house I met up with Dave and Chelsey who had arrived there from Siem Reap where they had visited Angkor Wat, something I had already done. We decided to head to the riverside for something to eat and drink and it turned out to be a good night. After eating we went for a walk along the main riverfront to have some beers sold by the vendors there, it was here we came across a local man clearly off of his head on meth, he was running around screaming and chasing people and to be honest it was a little worrying, some people around completely ignored him and they were fine but we kept our distance until he finally disappeared not before he tore a huge branch off a tree though, I mean guy was seriously high. Following that ordeal we stayed put at the river front and spent all night talking to the vendor selling us beer, he was a very friendly guy who told us he was from a local provenance and any money he made was all sent back to his family, at one point he ran out of beers having only soft drinks left so he trusted us to watch over his cooler while he popped back to his apartment to grab some more. What a guy.

The following morning we took a minivan to Sihanoukville Cambodia's seaside destination where we spent three nights. My opinion on Sihanoukville this time round was that it is, in a nut shell, pretty dire. The first time I visited perhaps I was a little naive about the kid vendors selling bracelets but they are nothing but rude and obnoxious so and so's, just minutes after sitting down we were inundated by them and when we declined their offer for a bracelet they then told us to 'f off' and one kid of about 10 then asked Dave if he wanted a fight. We had a fairly good time in some of the places at night but it was pretty dead everywhere, I guess this was due to it being the low season. We had an incident on one night at our guesthouse with a couple of Russians staying two doors down, one of them had knocked on the door of the room in between where a couple were staying, the girl had opened the door while her boyfriend was in the bathroom, he then tried pushing his way in to touch up his girlfriend, the boyfriend came out and pushed him out the door and locked it, afterwards he alerted security to what had happened, we know this because when we arrived back the guy gave us a heads up on what had happened, he was not happy! We also had a problem with the same Russian in that he owed a tuk tuk driver some money and pretended to be Daves friend (as Dave is 6ft 8in) we explicitly told the driver we had no idea who he was and he was lying to which the driver believed us, I hate to say it but I hope he got a beating. I have encountered a number of Russians whilst travelling and they are the worst of the worst, I know I cant judge all based on the few I have seen but you ask any other traveller their opinion and it is always the same. They are not 'Putin' in any effort to give their country a better name. (sorry I had to use that Pun, I actually partially stole it from Dave)