Sand Trapped

 I'm still down in Sihanoukville, where I've been a beach bum for the last two weeks.  It's a very relaxed town, as far as SE Asia goes anyways. There is still the inevitable constant hassle from tuk tuk drivers on the road. The main beaches are even worse. Kids walk up and down selling bracelets or collecting can. At night, they sell fireworks. Girls who are slightly older walk around with trays of fruit on their head. Then the older women either try to shill foot massages or walk around with a grill, selling lobster or squid. These are tied by string to a stick that balances on their shoulder, with a bowl on the other end containing supplies – it looks like a big tasty scale of justice to give you an idea. The older guys try to sell sunglasses. And every one of them has stories of how business is bad. In the time it took to type this convoluted paragraph, I said “no thank you” three separate times. Yes, this is being written on the beach.

Ah well, that's a small price to pay to be in paradise. Sihanoukville has several different beaches, all within 10 minutes of eachother. The cheapest way to get around is by motorbike. So, in continuing with the give-my-mom-a-heart-attack theme that has been my trip to Asia, I've ridden my first motorcycle! Luckily the drivers, like everybody else here, are more relaxed than their Phnom Penh counterparts. Sihanouvkille has a similar feel to Jamaica. Those who know my feelings on Jamaica will understand how much of a compliment this is. The main beach – Serendipity beach – is kind of like a backpacker's Negril.

At the end of the long day in Phnom Penh I'd described in my previous post, the three of us went out for dinner with Kim, another girl staying in our guesthouse. There I found out she was heading down to Sihanoukville to volunteer for a program that focuses on painting with kids, as a way to keep them off the streets/beaches. We've met up a few times and I've gotten to know the people at the Centre, so it's nice to have a group of people to meet up with every couple nights and hang out.

Friday was a little tense with the Tsunami happening in Japan. We were never in any real danger, but everybody seemed to have at least one eye on the waves as we dined on the beach. The water did actually come in a couple feet further than it normally does, but that was about it. The bigger excitement came at around 2 in the morning when I was falling asleep. Outside my open window I heard a bit of a scuffle, and then a guy yelling “you stole my wallet! Give me my fucking wallet!”. It didn't take too long to figure out that this guy had hired a hooker with less than scrupulous morals. If you can't trust a Cambodian hooker, who can you trust? Since I could hear everything clearly anyway I decided to go outside for some air and watch the show. It turns out it was this 60ish year old American guy I had talked to a couple days ago, and a ladyboy being seperated by staff. She was claiming he hadn't paid her, he was claiming she stole his wallet. My favourite part was that he was getting angry at the guesthouse staff for not calling the police as he demanded. Uh dude...you illegally hired a prostitute (with testicles)... the police aren't gonna be too sympathetic. I don't think he realised how big a favour they were doing him. Ah well. I went back in around the time where he was saying she could keep his wallet but he wasn't giving her her shoes back. If I see him again I'll make sure to ask him how it turned out and let you know.

I've walked past a couple cinemas in the last couple weeks that are pretty much air conditioned rooms with big tv's in them and all sorts of pirated movies to watch. One sign also said they had video games, so when it started raining yesterday, I decided to cave. I went into one and played Call of Duty: Black ops for four hours straight. I gotta admit, this was awesome. I haven't played video games since I left, so it was a lot like being back at the apartment, just hanging out. I just wish I could have been playing with the guys, but I guess this is the next best thing for now. It's just not the same without Delage whining about screen-watching, or whatever his excuse is for getting destroyed.

I don't have much else to say about Sihanoukville since I've been reading on the beach all day and hanging out with friends most nights. So I'll end on an anecdote from Phnom Penh that I had completely forgotten to include in my previous post. Our tuk tuk driver on our busy day was a really nice guy, and on our way back from the killing fields, he leaned back and said he used to live in the neighbourhood we were in. He asked if we wanted to see his old house and we said yes. He took us into this little courtyard that had several tin huts. There were a bunch of kids playing in there and they just stopped when they saw us. This was clearly not a normal tourist stop, so they were pretty surprised to see a few white guys walk in. They came up to us, but I could tell some of them were scared of me, most likely due to my beard, especially this one boy wearing camouflage shorts and tshirt.. One little girl even came up to me and hit my leg and then ran away. We went into the hut and I was shocked. It couldn't have been more than 8 feet by 8 feet, and all that was in there was an elevated platform that took up 2/3 of the space for sleeping on. He said 8 people lived in there when he was there. Our audience of kids grew around us as we stood in the doorway and I could tell my beard was still the focus of attention. Wanting to disarm the situation, I tried to think of the most mature and adult way to handle it. So naturally, I made moose antlers with my hands, crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue at them. They loved this...after that, they were all laughing, trying to imitate me and trying to show me their various toys. My favourite part was when we got back in the tuk tuk and started to drive off, the little boy in camouflage was running after us, making antlers, sticking out his tongue and laughing.