Cambodia: The Sequel

Cambodia: The Sequel
Koh Rong Island

There are two ways to get to Koh Rong island off of the coast of Sihanoukville: the fast boat or the slow boat. The price difference is $5 USD each way. Anyone who has been on a boat with me knows how sick I get on water, so I took the 40 min fast boat option.
By the way, I can't remember if I already mentioned the local currency in Cambodia. Their local money is called "Real", and one USD is worth 4000 Real. All of this is pointlesss because for some reason that is completely unknown to me (too lazy to Google it) they use US dollars. Everywhere. For everything. Weird.

The only reason I even went to Cambodia is because of Kevin, our Craigslist 4th of July party boat captain. He drunkenly told me about his years living in Cambodia, and about Koh Rong island. He described a magical semi-deserted island where he told me I could get a beach-side room for $5 a night. At the time, I had never been to south-east Asia and could not even imagine a place so cheap. However now, $5 a night seemed completely reasonable to me. He did tell me that the best place to stay on the island was at "Monkey Island Resort" a place his friend Paddy owned.

All of the cool shit I did in Cambodia is actually thanks to Kevin inception-ing me to go to Koh Rong. From there I went to a total of 6 other Cambodian cities. Otherwise, I would have just stayed in Thailand.

The person taking the tickets coming on to the boat was the butchest lesbian I have ever seen in my life. This woman actually terrified me. She was wearing a cut-off that said "Friends of Koh Rong" and on each of her bulging muscle-ridden arms were huge tattoos of naked sexy mermaids. The benches on the boat were near the back and only offered a mediocre side-view, with the front being completely obstructed by the captain's cabin. I decided I was more worthy than everyone else on the boat, and climbed around the side onto the helm. I'm not sure how it worked because, on the way back, I tried the same thing and the mermaid lesbian tried to eat me. Regardless, it worked the first time and I had my own private 40 min boat ride.

When the boat docked on the island, I'll be honest, I wasn't impressed with what I saw. The beach, though much less crowded than Sihanoukville, was nothing extraordinary.
It was same-same (all the locals in south-east Asia say "Same-Same, but different" or "Same-Same" for short. Since there is no word for "similar" in their languages, they use this saying instead.)

There were probably 10-15 bar/restaurant//guesthouses right on the beach all one on top of the other. If you walk down the beach maybe 1km from the dock, there are more secluded bungalows. Nearly all the restaurants offer a $5 grilled bbq dinner. You can choose steak, chicken, pork, shrimp or red snapper, but the tastiest is the barracuda. I arrived quite late and most of the places were full, but after a few minutes of searching, I found a single room in a beach-side guesthouse with a shared shower for $15 a night. I told her I only had $12, and she accepted. I then paid with a $20.

Sleeping under a mosquito net has a very calming feeling to it. I think it reminds me of building blanket forts with my sister.

The next day I woke up early to make the 50 min hike through the jungle to get to the other side of the island. Before I left, I had a FB message from Kevin, telling me to go see his buddy Paddy at Monkey Island resort. I was instructed to find him and say "I carry a message from the Last King of the Fish Counters."

I walk up to the bartender.
"Hi, is Paddy working today?" I ask.
"Yeah, I'm Paddy. What's good mate?" he says, cleaning a glass.
I take a deep breath and say "I carry a message from the Last King of the Fish Counters."
He smiles at me with a curious look , "So you know Dynamite Kev, dooya?"

I eat breakfast at his bar while he tells me crazy Kevin stories. Though he didn't know me, he was incredibly nice and welcomed me as if we had known each other for years. I ask him if he was any bungalows available. Unfortunately, they were booked solid. Then he disappeared for a few minutes. When he came back, he tells me that I can sleep in his employee dormitory that night (free of charge) and that he would find me a bungalow for the next few days.

I thanked him and headed to "Long Beach", a breathtakingly beautiful 7km white sandy beach with clear blue water. When wading out into the ocean, the depth stays waist-deep for about 75 yards. I learned that this is the island where most of the rest of the world films their "Survivor" tv show. The television show has their base on the complete opposite end on Long Beach, and the Bulgarian Survivor started filming on my 3rd day on the island.

Halfway through the jungle trek, I met a British guy named Tony. We teamed up and made it to the other side, snapping photos of Cambodian warning signs along the way.

When I caught the first glance of Long Beach, I immediately understood why it ranked at the top of CNN's best beaches in the world list.

I purchased water and a baguette from the only shop for miles, and started to make my way down the 7km beach with Tony.

This island is nearly deserted and still completely wild, so every once in a while, a random water buffalo will make its way down to the beach to chill. This particular buffalo was a bro. I named him Ezekiel the Broffalo.

You're also able to see the high-tech fishing boats the locals make. If you can't tell from the picture, its a whole bunch of Styrofoam blocks held together by string.

When we finally made it to the end of Long Beach, there was a tiny local village. They had a school for the children, and all the families lived in beach-side huts where they could readily access their fishing boats. Making our way through this village, we saw a group of men sitting at a table slamming down shots of Cambodian "whiskey" (not whiskey at all). Since I don't think many tourists make it all the way down, they were so excited to see foreigners that they motioned over to us. I went towards them and one of the men filled a cup with whiskey and handed it to me, motioning me to drink it in one gulp. Their whiskey is 20% alcohol, so it was more like chugging strong wine. Downing the drink swiftly, I handed him back the cup as the locals stared on in wonder. They were so impressed by my abilities that they all stopped what they were doing and immediately started erecting a bronze statue of me while the women threw a parade in my honor. To this day, there is still a 40 foot tall statue of me riding a giant steed in the harbor of Koh Rong.

*Not actual statue.

We kept walking through the village when I spotted a great Kodak Moment. I saw an axe-wielding 2 year old wearing an Angry Birds t-shirt.

Later, we asked this nice family (using the language of exaggerated gestures) if we could walk through their property and onto their dock. They (jokingly?) asked for 4 bananas. It just so happened that my British friend was carrying a sack full of them in his bag. The bargain was struck and a picture was taken.

The sun was starting to set, but because of our position at the very end of the long circular beach, we would not have been able to see it. There was also no time to walk the 7km before it would be completely dark. We paid a fisherman a few dollars and he took us back to the other end of Long Beach, where we had started.

Apparently, it is a great place to watch the sun-set because a day-long "adventure cruise" stopped here to let the people watch the sun set.

My life has been pretty perfect lately.

Sitting on that beach, I met these three girls who were part of the cruise. Earlier in the day, they had gone fishing and snorkeling with the boat. They told me that after sunset, they had one final stop before heading back to the guesthouses on the other side of the island. Night swimming with fluorescent plankton. I could not pass up this opportunity. I found the cruise organizer tossing a Frisbee on the beach, and offered him $5 end the night with them.

Since we had to swim back to the boat, I asked Tony if he could take my bag back to his guesthouse for me. He seemed like a real straight shooter, so even though I had only known him 4 hours, I trusted him with my passport, phone, wallet and tablet.
SPOILER ALERT: he was a straight shooter and I got my stuff back that night. Thanks Tony.

So I got on board with the three girls, Pru (England), Sandra (Sweden) and CaxMee (Haiti/NYC). All three of them were also traveling alone and had met earlier on the boat. The locals on the boat were grilling the fish everyone had caught in the afternoon, so I got to eat some even though I didn't put in any work. We waited until the sun had completely fallen off the face of the earth, and then they shut the boat lights off. There was no moon that night, so we were immediately plunged into total darkness.

We had to team up with a swimming buddy, so Pru and I jumped into the dark abyss with our mask and snorkel together. The second our bodies hit the water, we were illuminated by a green glow. The plankton has some sort of bioluminescent property where they light up when agitated. Pru and I took turns diving down, flailing our bodies like crazy people, while the other stared at the light show from the top. At one point she did the Gangnam Style dance in the water. So I suppose I can check that off my bucket list: Gangnam Style Glowing Plankton dancing...check.

Making it back to the guesthouse side of the island, I bump into the two Belgium girls from my last night in Sihanoukville (Tatiana and Alexis)! We all get dinner together and plan to meet up the following morning.

Getting back to the employee dormitory around midnight, I snuck my way to my bed trying not to wake up the sleeping staff. It quickly became evident that Paddy may have forgotten to tell them that a foreigner was going to be sleeping with them. Once under my mosquito net, one of the girls started asking me questions in Khmer. Before I could answer, she woke up one of the guys who started shining his flashlight on me, asking me more questions. I didn't understand them, and they didn't understand me, so I just said "Paddy" a couple of times. Then I put my ear plugs in, pulled my hoodie strings tight and went to sleep.
I woke up alive, so I can only assume they failed to murder me in my sleep.

The next morning, my French friend Hugo finally showed up a couple of days late. His timing worked out perfectly because Paddy had just checked me in to a $25 a night beach side bungalow that we could split.

View from our bungalow

Hugo and I met up with the 5 girls and walked to a small beach.
As we were wading out into the water, CaxMee mentioned that she didn't want to go any further because she didn't know how to swim. Apparently, though Haiti is an island nation, most of the population never learns how to swim. We assure her that swimming is easier in salt water since the salt helps you float. She lost her right leg a few years ago from cancer, and so we told her we'd start with teaching her to float. If a girl with one leg can travel the globe for half a year alone, I'm pretty sure no one else can have valid excuses.