Cambodia - Sihanoukville

I haven’t held American money in my travel-weary hands in over seven months, but I’ve become an expert at calculating exchange rates using all types of international currency including British pounds, euros, new Israeli shekels, Thai baht, Jordanian dollars, Egyptian pounds, Turkish lira, and Vietnamese dong.  As we looked ahead to crossing the border from Vietnam into Cambodia, we knew that we would need American dollars to purchase entry visas and initial supplies because the Cambodian economy runs primarily on American currency with their own riels as secondary exchange.  Not just any American dollars either—the Cambodians want crisp, freshly printed bills with no tears, creases, or any other signs of wear.  I’ve poked around the internet a bit to find out why this southeastern Asian country runs on American currency, and I can’t find a straight answer, and now I’m bored with researching it; so the matter will remain a mystery for eternity.

We spent our last two nights in Vietnam in the town of Chau Doc about seventy kilometers from the Cambodian border, and we used our time during the day to figure out the whole border-crossing procedure.  The guy running the desk at the hotel hooked us up with a local transportation hustler who arranged a bus ride to the border town of Ha Tien and taxi transportation to the border itself.  We knew that we would need American dollars to pay for our visas as well as the three-hour taxi ride to Sihanoukville, and in our American way of thinking, we figured we would just mosey on down to one of the multiple exchange offices or a neighborhood bank branch and secure some crispy American greenbacks.  Turns out, the local banks don’t exchange Vietnamese currency for American, and exchange offices in Chau Doc are nonexistent; so our transportation purveyor suggested we find a gold seller in the town market to see if he might have some dollars to sell for a decent rate.  I tossed and turned in bed that night imagining my family stuck in Vietnam begging for American money on the street corners.

The next morning while Deveny slept late, I took Deena and Joseph with me on a stroll around the neighborhood to start looking for a gold seller, and for some reason, we chose to walk a few blocks off the main drag and wound up in front of a mini-mart sporting a large “coffee” sign out front.  Deena remarked that I could come here for coffee later since I hadn’t enjoyed a decent cup in several days, and suddenly an elderly lady appeared out of nowhere and said, “Yes, I have good coffee. You take beautiful family and make sit down here!”  Before we knew what was happening, we were sitting in pink plastic chairs on the sidewalk around a blue plastic table laden with a pot of chilled green tea and tall glasses of rich iced coffee sweetened with condensed milk.  

Our barista’s English was decent, and she asked us about our travels in Vietnam and was pleased to hear that we thought her country was very beautiful.  I mentioned that we were heading to Cambodia and that we needed American dollars and asked if she might know a nearby gold seller.  She gave us a wide smile and said, “I have many American dollars, I sell to you and give you good price.”  We finished our delicious coffee, and while Deena and Joseph went down the street in search of lunch, I kicked off my shoes and entered this lady’s shop and sat on a metal stool in front of her desk while she broke out a calculator and figured up our transaction, stopping occasionally to show me her work.  I bought a fair amount of brand new American bills with most of the remaining Vietnamese currency in my pocket, and it cost only five dollars for the exchange.  I thanked her profusely and promised that we would return later in the day for more coffee.  I caught up with Deena and Joseph, and we proclaimed that due to her excellent coffee, stash of American money, and overall pleasant demeanor, our new Vietnamese friend should be deemed, A Gift From The Lord, since He obviously guided our steps to her shop that morning.

We spent the evening talking about our many adventures in Vietnam, but we turned out the lights at 10:00 since we had a 5:30 wake up the next morning.  The early bedtime would have been a good strategy had I been able to go to sleep, but thoughts of the impending travel and border crossing had me staring at the ceiling well after midnight.  At 6:45, we were packed and standing in the lobby of our hotel when much to our surprise, the transportation hustler himself showed up to help load our bags into the taxi he summoned for us, and he escorted us to the bus station on his motor scooter.  When we pulled into the station, we saw the big orange buses parked out front and thought we had booked a ride on one of the nice buses we had taken a couple times previously, but the taxi kept going right past those luxury machines to the small lot behind the station, where all the forty-year-old rattle traps were parked.  After our gear was stowed on an ancient brown bus, we took our seats, and the hustler bid us goodbye and was pleased to show us how the air conditioning worked by sliding the windows back and forth.

We got underway on time at 7:10, and thanks to the large plastic Buddha sitting in a shrine on the dashboard, our driver was able to quickly exit the city limits of Chau Doc using moves that would have made Darrell Waltrip proud.  Our large orange buses had young attendants who assisted passengers with luggage and made sure everyone got off at the right stop; our attendant on the old brown bus was a thin elderly man with a head full of white hair cropped close and a mouthful of gold teeth.  He smelled like Old Spice aftershave and tobacco, and I know this because he chose me to lean on while he took money from the passengers and checked their ID cards.  There were a couple of guys sitting behind us who chain smoked the whole way—fine with me since the thick fumes kept the mosquitoes circling the passengers at the front of the bus.  

We bounced and shook along the road as we entered the countryside stopping every so often to pick up other passengers at bus stops and to make deliveries of some sort that our elder attendant would chuck out the doors while the bus slowed down slightly.  At one point, we stopped for a woman, her two small children, and an old heavy television that our attendant struggled to bring on board.  Before we shoved off again, he got into a heated argument with the lady about the TV, which I think had to do with the fact he was going to make her purchase an extra seat for this big honkin’ TV, which she was not about to do.  The whole thing resolved with her fanny back on the side of the road along with the kids and the TV.  After that, the main form of entertainment for the passengers came from Joseph as he slept with his head lolling around and his mouth wide open.  Everyone pointed and laughed, and I thought about waking him up to save him some embarrassment, but since our fellow passengers were enjoying themselves so much, I let him sleep.

We followed the river for much of the trip, and even though the journey was only about fifty miles, it took almost three hours to reach Ha Tien due to the many stops, traffic, and poor road conditions.  When we finally reached the border town, we grabbed our stuff, got off the bus, and were greeted almost immediately by a man who was there to arrange our ride to the border.  He also said he “knew some guys” who could provide a car to take us from the border to Sihanoukville for a price that was about double what we had been told to expect.  I left Deena to bargain with him while I took the kids to buy some snacks, and when we returned, she had haggled the price down to a much more acceptable rate.  Our new transportation hustler helped us board a shuttle bus for which we curiously had to wait outside the gates of the station, but we made it to the border in about twenty minutes.

The border area was desolate and looked like a war zone with crumbling buildings, drooping, dust-covered palm trees, and piles of rubbish lining the broken pavement which had the shuttle lurching and bouncing.  We placed our luggage in the trunk of a waiting car and walked through the Vietnamese checkpoint where our passports were run through the computer, then stamped allowing us to exit the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and enter the Kingdom of Cambodia, where we taught the children how to bribe government officials and look happy while doing it.  It is well known among travelers that the Cambodian border officers charge $35.00 for a $30.00 tourist visa, and unless one has the time to be detained for several hours, one needs to pay the extra five bucks along with the $1.00 fake health fee to ensure a speedy and efficient border crossing.  Flush with an extra $24.00 in their pockets, our chubby and friendly border guards issued us crisp, blue visas with all kinds of official looking stamps, smiled broadly, and wished us pleasant travels...we think.

Our car was waiting outside the doors of the Cambodian facility, and the driver took us over the border to a waiting minivan which was to be our transportation to Sihanoukville.  Somehow all of this stuff gets worked out, and everyone gets paid while the passengers remain hopeful that they will reach their intended destination.  Our new driver was friendly, and he drove smoothly into the countryside, which looked vastly different from Vietnam even though we were only a few kilometers from the border.  The banana trees were gone, and there were only a few palm trees dotting the fields in front of low scrub-covered hills.  We passed through small villages on dirt roads where chickens and dogs ran out into the street, and our driver stopped occasionally to deliver packages to families and a school.  Two hours later, we pulled up in front of the Otres Marina Hotel, paid our driver, and took our packs to cottage number two where our hostess took our orders for free welcome drinks. We enjoyed these libations at the dockside pavilion after eight hours of stressful travel.

Sihanoukville is a small town at the bottom of Cambodia, and it’s a major destination for backpackers due to its beautiful stretches of beach, aquamarine ocean, cheap accommodations, and 25 cent draft beer.  The town used to have a thriving harbor until the Cambodians captured a US cargo ship in 1975, and the Americans responded by bombing the harbor back into the nineteenth century.  The area has rebounded well, and the town is a major destination for tourists even though the main thoroughfare along the beach is a dirt road full of hostels, bars, restaurants, and hovels built with bamboo frames and wrapped with plastic tarps where the locals who serve the tourists call home.  

The Otres Marina is old and run down, but our cottage has comfortable beds with a good air conditioner and a brand new floor fan.  The steps at the back of the property lead down to the small dock covered by a palm thatched roof where we’ve been enjoying our breakfasts for the last few days served up by the friendly staff.  The dock is located on an inlet just off the ocean, and it’s surrounded by thick stands of mangroves with thousands of colorful fish darting around the roots of the trees in the shallow water.  During our most recent meal there, we watched a small crew led by a skinny western-looking guy attempt to perform some restoration work on one of the small barges owned by the marina.  They carried a few boards back and forth, talked a good bit, and smoked a lot of cigarettes before calling it quits around 10:00.  Not bad for a day’s work.  

For the past couple of days, we secured some comfy lounge chairs in front of one of the many restaurants on the beach and spent most of the day in and out of the warm ocean water and enjoyed delicious barbecued chicken and pork for our meals.  Most of the restaurants serve some form of barbecue, and they cook it over charcoal on large grills sending the thick, tantalizing smoke wafting down the beach.  The food is cheap and delicious, and everyone’s in a good mood down on the beach, and we’ve had plenty of time to enjoy our first couple of days in Cambodia.  There’s a nice hotel with a pool next to our place, and Joseph worked up the nerve to see if we could swim there. The guy behind the desk said if we ordered some drinks at the swim-up bar, we could use the pool anytime—not a bad deal in my estimation.  Deena describes Sihanoukville as an old, hippie kind of place, and the laid back atmosphere has helped us recover from busy cities and border crossings.  Tomorrow we board a ferry bound for Koh Rong Island, where we’ll spend a couple of days in a bungalow overlooking the ocean. Then it’s off to the capital city of Phnom Penh as the southeast Asian odyssey continues in Cambodia.