Seasick Bike Sailors: Part II

Current Location: Kampot, Cambodia

We spent a few nights in Kep and then made our way to Kampot, a little river town about 20km down the road to the West. On our way we stopped by a bakery to indulge in some cinnamon rolls and coffee and wound up running into two South African cycle tourists, one of which Elise had actually already met in Phnom Penh. We chatted for the better part of an hour, exchanging stories and contact info (you can find links to their blogs on our site now) but eventually set off in opposite directions. We hope to meet up with them in the future and possibly attempt the overland ride to India via China, Tibet and Nepal around September.

Kampot boasts a few more pubs, guesthouses, and sights than Kep including Bokor Mountain, spectacular caves, and some very unorganized inner-tubing down the river rapids the latter being more of a locals pastime from what we could tell. There was a bit more going on around town but it's still pretty obviously the low season as many of the advertised pub and grubs and even a few of the nicer guesthouses were shut down for the season. The streets were empty save for a few kids roaming about on bikes and to be honest it felt like a ghost town. The guesthouse we picked was a bit of a haven, with more traffic through the bar at happy hour than most of the town saw in a whole day. We planned to spend two nights in town and then ride out to Sihnokville the following day but a fever and some incredibly rainy weather put a damper on our plans. We did spend the two nights we'd planned but had to skip out on the inner-tubing we both wanted to do, partly because of abdominal rumblings and partly because of heavenward rumblings. A couple storm systems passed through while we were there giving us a good show of lightning and some of the heaviest rain we'd ever seen. From our second story vantage point we watched as the courtyard filled with water, floating laundry baskets along the banks of the guesthouse and generally soaking everything in sight, including all the hotel staff who were still valiantly trying to go about their daily business.

A break in the showers gave us enough opportunity to get ourselves packed up and convinced that riding a motorbike to Sihnoukville was our most sensible option with Z. not feeling 100% and the torrential rain that was on order for the next few days. It only took a mention of our plans before our hotelier had arranged and a moto and two stylish helmets to be delivered to us. Not 10 minutes later we received the keys and the moto with absolutely no paperwork, instruction, deposit, insurance, or any other sort of bothersome formality! It probably helps that we left our bikes and more than half our gear at the guesthouse which stands as collateral and is probably equal in value to the motorbike.

The 110km ride out to Sihnoukville was fraught with stinging rain squalls but the scenery remains incredible and an alternate route through the hills, avoiding hwy 4 (or the death highway as the Blissful Guesthouse owner referred to it) made the trip worth weathering the storms. The alternate route we took for the last 50km wound us around the backside of Sihnoukville and supposedly had us missing the police traps the place is infamous for. It was our luck that we'd ride straight into a trap going the "locals only" way. We'd heard the horror stories about Barangs who are without their Cambodian licenses having their motos confiscated and being heavily fined so we were not surprisingly a little nervous as we pulled over and offered up our Washington State drivers licenses. We were fined and upon not having two single dollar bills the police officer graciously accepted our five dollar bill and sent us on our way, ticketless and feeling exhilarated after paying our first official bribe!

We spent the next 5 days living it up on the beaches, driving the moto bike around, eating westernized food and meeting some fun and interesting people. We stuck mostly to Occheuteal beach which houses the best of the beach shacks when it comes to eating, drinking, music, and lounging in comfy chairs. We could tell it was the slow season but there were by far, more travelers here than anywhere else we've been in Cambodia. There's quite a bit of competition for the few customers that brave the rainy season and all the establishments that have decided to stick out the slow months are keen on using cheap booze and even cheaper nightly bbq's to entice. We settled into our papsan chairs, sand under foot and a steadily darkening sky suspended over clear green gently breaking waves and enjoyed a three dollar mixed seafood grill and a four dollar bbq steak dinner. Lights strung from bamboo poles planted in the sand illuminated our little table as night steadily encroached on the beach. We sipped at margaritas and chatted to our neighbors as we all wondered aloud about the fireworks shooting off at the far end of the beach. We spent a great evening chatting with a couple of university students from Chicago who were working on a research project in Phnom Penh around the Khmer Rouge era's effect on the younger generations. It was great to hear their impressions of Cambodia and their stories about their time spent in Phnom Penh working with college students.

During one of our more active afternoons we ventured off on the motobike to cess out guesthouse/bar that was rumored to rent out kayaks. When we consulted the guidebook it said the beach we meant to find was only 4km or so from where we were staying and that a motorbike path could be accessed to get there quickly. What we didn't take into account was that mornings heavy rain, and what we couldn't know was the condition of the "road". What we got ourselves into was a mess. A muddy, red, long, lost, mess. We drove for what must've been two hours, never found the shop we were in search of, ended up on a rutted out service road that was not on our map and was not taking any chances on us getting out with any suspension left on our scooter. We finally made it back to civilization and pulled up to our hotel only to realize that somewhere along the way the key had rattled out of the loose ignition. There we were covered in mud, hungy, cranky, and unable to turn the godforsaken motobike off! A nice guy at our hotel escorted us to a key maker in town and five dollars and ten minutes later we had a new key for the bike… unfortunately the key to the lock that we'd not anticipated needing and ended up having to rent in Sihnoukville, along with our U-Lock key for the bikes back in Kampot, were also attached to the now lost key fob. I went back over the area we’d ridden but as expected, didn't come up with anything except a sore bum and an emptier stomach. We ended up having to completely replace the rented motobike lock and have the originally rented lock cut off. As if one time wasn't enough I managed to lose a second ignition key on the way back to Kampot but luckily we knew where to go and what to ask for and got a new key made in less time for less money.

Tired of making our own itinerary we booked a "snorkel" trip as our final adventure of our coastal Cambodia trip. The taxi picked us up at 8am sharp and we swung by one other guesthouse to retrieve two other snorkelers before we were all deposited at a beach shack. We enjoyed a meager but free breakfast of slightly stale baugette and coffee with Kevin and Pete as we awaited further instruction. The rest of our 18 person snorkel group trickled in over the next hour and all at once we were approached by a Khmer guy who insisted we all get on the boat NOW… as if we had all been purposefully delaying? We all congregated on the beach looking for the boat and only finding long skinny fishing boats bobbing a hundred meters or so offshore. It didn't occur to anyone until the icechest was being floated out to the closest of the boats that we would be wading to our vessel. Hilarity ensued as girls with gargantuan backpacks, bound for the island resort for a few nights, made the crossing with bags held aloft on shaky arms while simultaneously being unsteadied by the waves breaking just below shoulder height. The boat ride was pretty slow by tour standards taking over an hour to make it to the first snorkel sight and rolling so well with the sizable waves as to make a few passengers *coughElisecough* a bit green. We couldn't complain about the weather or the scenery as neither disappointed and we were even able to snap a few pictures along the way.

To surmise what Kevin put in a much funnier way (which only an Englishman can and my memory wasn't sharp enough to retain): the masks and snorkels were like something you'd get out of a kids bucket and shovel beach set. Once we were all fit with some sort of mask and maybe a snorkel if you were one of the lucky few, we all set off to see the underwater sights. What no-one told us was the biggest sight to see through the unbelievably scratched glass of the masks were the hundreds and hundreds of giant spiky black death urchins. At least two people stepped on urchins during our brief foray into underwater viewing and most people were back on the boat within 20 minutes. We all discovered that it's a lot harder to snorkel when you don't have flippers, which apparently weren't part of the $15 tour package. Back on the boat we motored for another half hour before reaching the lee of the largest island where we were free to roam and where we were fed a delicious bbq lunch of barracuda. We trekked across the island and found the idyllic beach paradise of Kho Ru, complete with goat herd (Karen), a big rope swing, beautiful breaking waves, cheap bungalows, hammocks galore, and a flip flop tree.


Those of us who weren't inclined to stay on the island hiked back to our boat and went for a swim in the decidedly less urchin infested water or lay out on the beach and enjoyed the sun. Eight of us took to the seas to brave the return trip which was quite rough. The swells had gotten pretty large, or at least they seemed large from our low profile trawler that seemed more and more to be shaped more like a rolling pin than a boat. I quite enjoyed the ride from my seat but could see others suffering with each swell that would cause the boat to pitch roughly side to side sending sandals and water bottles into the bilge… ewww. We made it back in one piece, everyone sharing in the relief of being back on solid ground. Although the trip was probably exactly what we should have expected for a Cambodian snorkel trip, in discussions later we agreed that for $15 we'd had a pretty decent experience and were glad we'd gone.

We are now back in Kampot at the Blissful Guesthouse with our bikes and baggage. While in Sihnoukville we sorted out our 30 day visas for our return to Vietnam (managing to bugger up the date enough to buy ourselves an extra week in Cambodia, YAY!). Tomorrow we head Northish toward the border at Bavet. Cross your fingers that the rain gods go easy on us!