Stuck in Sihanoukville

On a peninsula on Cambodia’s south-western coast is the town of Sihanoukville, a conglomeration of three towns really, Victory Hill, Serendipity Beach and the Downtown Sihanoukville area. I arrived at the Downtown bus station on Friday night, the night of the Lunar New Year, around 7:30. The five hour journey from Cambodia’s capital,Phnom Penh, saw vast tan fields, tiny stilt-house villages and more than a handful of those full-bodied white cows roaming randomly.

It was dark. After picking up my pack, I busted through the throngs of tuk-tuk drivers to a nearby phone stand to make some calls to various guest houses around town. All were booked. So I walked around the downtown area, where firecrackers popped and trucks full of people sped by, apparently this was a celebration, but I was not in the mood to celebrate. I was tired and I wanted to find a place to sleep.

I searched everywhere, but could not find a thing. Every moto driver and tuk-tuk operator assured me that there were no vacancies in town, and I should have believed them. Finally, after nearly two hours of looking, I found a moto driver and asked him to find me a place, anywhere. He took me to Victory Hill, and after going to a few places we found a guest house with only one room left, for $20!

Damn, that blew my $20 per day budget very fast…but I had no choice.

Later, I bought the driver a beer for helping me out.

The next day I found another place that had a room for $5 per night, and that’s where I’ve been since. But also, on that same day, I started to get sick. First it was a stomach thing, I’ll spare the details, but after two days it became a full-blown fever and headache. Now, I’m still sick and I don’t want to chance a long day of travel in this condition. Hopefully by tomorrow I’ll be well enough to move on. Four days of sitting around in misery certainly put a wrench in my plans, part of which was to volunteer at an orphanage in Takeo, a small town to the south-east of Sihanoukville. But Cambodia feels good, I’ll surely return.

-chris

ps: I found an interesting website with good travel writing. Read this one.