So we finally left Thailand with about a day to spare on our 30 day tourist visas. I think the only way that I got Mitra to agree to leave "The Beach" was by agreeing to go to another beach in a different country. I knew the travel was going to be long but I didn't realize how long it would be as I spent the entire night before we left sick in the bathroom. Not a good way to start a day of travel that would start at 7am and end at 6pm. Our modes of transport for this leg of the trip went as follows...fast boat from the island back to the mainland, taxi to minibus station, minibus to the Cambodian border, walk across the border to a taxi, taxi to bus station, bus to Sihanoukville and then a tuk-tuk to Otres beach. I think this has to be the most modes of transport I have ever taken to get to a single place.
We had already booked accomodation in Otres Beach as on our way to "The Beach" Mitra and I met Pete who's brother own's Sea Garden Resort in Otres Beach. Now it's not a fancy resort or anything just bungalows on the beach and it is the cleanest part of the beach, the water is clear and the sun will burn the white people really really fast. We decided to stay for four nights and relax a little before getting into the touristy stuff in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Otres is a very quiet beach so it was good for reading, swimming and that's about it. There is only power for five hours per day about 6pm to 11pm. So if you didn't get to bed before 11 you got no fan to cool you off. Not always the best thing for me as I tend to always be a bit on the hot side.
The most exciting part of being in Otres was the people watching and the stories that we were able to take away from our few days. First was the guy who was there by himself and just spent all day drinking the $1 draft beers and I can't even count how many he had but it was to the point that he was passing out in the hanging Papasan chairs at about 4pm each day. Then he would have conversations with himself for about an hour before disappearing and then starting all over the next morning. Second was the couple that we refer to as Room 17 as that is the room they stayed in for about two days. The girl was about six months in to and eighteen month around the world trip and her boyfriend came to Cambodia tovisit her for two weeks. The day they showed up I was up about 7am and they had just arrived on a night bus from Siem Reap. They immediately started to pound beers before catching a little sleep and hanging out that day. However, the real fireworks didn't start until the next day when they decided it would be a good idea to eat some mushrooms and drink all day. We were sitting by the beach and about every ten to fifteen minutes they were coming to the bar to get more beers. It got to the point that they didn't even get up but the guys at the bar just took them new beers every fifteen minutes. So as the sun is setting the guy comes to the bar and says that he is leaving and he doesn't like his girlfriend anymore. He wants to get his stuff and leave and go to Phnom Penh that night. At this point the guy can barely stand on his own and somehow gets his pack, pays half the bill, gets his passport out of the lockbox and takes off never to be seen again. After he leaves all the guys who work there decide they need to check on the girl to make sure that she is "okay". Luckily the comedy doesn't end there as the next morning the girl gets her laundry from the front desk and takes out all of the guys clothes which he left there and tells all the guys that work there that they can have anything that they want. I hope the story does this justice it was just amazing to witness this public break up I just wish I knew where the guy went and what happened in the end.
A day or two later we took off in a private taxi to Phnom Penh for a few days where we are going to visit the S-21 museum and the killing fields. Some really heavy stuff but we are here and it's something that I need to see as I'm sure it will be as emotionally draining as going to Concentration Camps in Europe.
Chum Riep Leah.
Brian
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A Protestant, a Catholic, a Muslim and a Jew Walk Into Cambodia…
Song for this post:
Be Here Now by Ray LaMontagne
Enter Aisha and Susan…
So I mentioned in the last post that we met up with 2 Irish girls on the island who were traveling relatively the same circuit as we were on basically the same time line. The first night we saw them at the resort bar on the island B and I were in agreement that they seemed to be THOSE girls – young, loud, drunk, hopping from city to city in Southeast Asia, looking for the next place to party and we were sure we wanted nothing to do with them. But as fate would have it, the four of us would be all up in each other’s grills for quite some time to come; well, three of us would at least…
I think I told you before that though we’d seen the girls around the place but never really hung out, never had more than a few passing words until a day or two before we were all leaving (or HAD to leave, as our visas were all expiring on the same day) and making arrangements to get the fuck off the island and to Cambodia. Brian – being the wonderful little planner that he is – took the reigns and got the four of us organized and at the ass crack of dawn on February 17th – B and I exhausted and the girls exhausted and somewhat hung-over - we met up in the restaurant and headed off for the pier. Right as we were about to board the speedboat to head back to the mainland, the 4 of us spotted this little bedraggled figure, with his big, blue-lensed John Lennon sunglasses, Fraggle Rock hair, and bright purple Thai pants slowly shuffling down the dock. It was Mickey - the owner of our resort who had made us all in our own way feel like family more than guests – coming to see us off. It was eight in the morning and Mickey’s day off and though I myself rarely made it out of bed before 9:30 (what am I saying – I NEVER made it out of bed before 9:30!!!) and usually wouldn’t catch sight of Mickey until at least around 11, I’m guessing by the amount of pot he smoked, talked about smoking, had other people smoke, and songs he sang and played on the stereo in the bar about smoking, that he wasn’t generally much of a morning person so it was really touching that he got up on his day off to say good-bye. He gave us all hugs, told us to come back, wished us a safe trip and stood waving as the boat pulled away and we were out of sight of him and he us.
Not much to tell here – no need to recount the gorgeous boat ride or the long ass bus (or was it busses?) ride(s) to the Cambodian border. If we were in a moving, motorized vehicle I’m pretty confident in saying that I was probably passed out and drooling on SOMEONE. Any lucid, conscious moments I had, I’m pretty certain were spent getting to know Aisha and Susan better. I was becoming increasingly pleased to be proven wrong in my initial judgment of Aisha and Susan – they were fucking cool and seemed to be just as sick, twisted, and hilarious as B and I think we are. Things didn’t really start to get going though until we reached Cambodia.
So, passing through the border from Thailand into Cambodia goes a little something like this – your bus drops you off about 300ft. from the Thai border and you get your exit stamp. Then, you walk into this strip of road that is basically a no-man’s land with your 30lb. backpack strapped to your back and your smaller – maybe 10 to 12lb – backpack on front. So there we were, the 4 of us walking side by side (The Protestant, the Catholic, the Muslim, and the Jew) like we were on our way to Oz and about 20ft. into the walk B belts out, “Fuck – I think it’s hotter in Cambodia than it was in Thailand!!!” It was hilarious but also, unfortunately all too true – the closer we got to Cambodia, the hotter it got. By the time we made it the 500ft. to Cambodia, we were spent, but laughing. Once we arrived at the border, getting our visas was an ordeal. One of the biggest nuisances of our crossing was that we had been under the assumption that we could pay for our visas with US dollars, but the guys at the border weren’t having it. B and I had just enough Thai Baht to cover our costs but Aisha had to walk all the way back to Thailand to get money out of an ATM to pay for her and Susan.
Once we got on the road though, we were all in good spirits and joking about the non-sensical (and somewhat corrupt) way things work in SE Asia and how Aisha was the most traveled of all of us, having walked to Cambodia twice in one day. On our 20 minute ride to our next bus station, Aisha and Susan filled us in on all the gossip from the eclectic, beloved resort we’d all become infatuated with. (They’d become somewhat closer to the staff there than B and I and were more privy to the behind the scenes goings on there. I have a feeling that such is the difference between traveling solo versus with a significant other – there are some experiences gained and lost by traveling with a mate – getting approached by or having the need to talk to more people being one detraction of couples traveling.) I won’t relate to you all they told us but I’ll just say that as much as I adored the staff on the island, I now know way more about their collective genitalia than anyone needs to know about the people who serve them breakfast every day.
We finally made it to Otres Beach (the quieter, less rave-sceney,/partying/ backpacking/gap year kiddish of the 2 main beaches in Sihanoukville) and found The Sea Garden – our home for the next 4 days. We’d heard about The Sea Garden from an American guy that we met on the bus from Bangkok to the coast where we caught our boat to the island. Long story short – he traveled to SE Asia about every 6 weeks for business. Back in the fall of ’09, Pete traveled over to Thailand with his brother Mike (Mike’s first time to SE Asia despite his 60 years) and Mike reluctantly traveled to Cambodia to meet up with his brother who’d left him in Thailand and within a week of arriving in Cambodia had bought a hotel. In short, Mike is nuts – great, but nuts!!! He’s 61 years old, loves riding dirt bikes, young Cambodian women – actually, young women in general - and just kicking it on the little, beautiful stretch of beach he’s carved out for himself in this world, talking to his guests about anything and everything, and joking around with the young Cambodian guys he’s got working for him. He lives his life – no excuses, no apologies, no holds barred – and he lives the life he wants, to the fullest.
There’s not much to tell you about Otres Beach. I think it was kind of like a travel limbo for all of us – B, me, and the girls. We’d all just spent a fair amount of time just relaxing and not really being pressed to DO anything but at the same time, I think we were all itching to start Doing, seeing, going. So I guess we were all just preparing ourselves for the traveling part of our travels to really begin. There was some swimming, a lot of reading, a lot of laying around, and a whole lot of iced coffee drinking and not much else. The most exciting thing that happened was watching the drama of room 17 unfold – the couple staying in the bungalow next to me and B who arrived early one morning and started drinking the second they arrived which rolled into the next day where they did mushrooms and continued drinking like it was their jobs all day until they had a big blow up and the guy took off late in the afternoon, the day after he arrived, announcing to everyone in the reception/restaurant area that they didn’t like each other anymore and he was heading to Phnom Penh that night. We doubted that he made it further than 2 or 3 more resorts down the road.
Other than that, the best part of that little stint was getting to know the girls. Susan seemed a little shy and stand-offish, maybe just a little too young (at 23) to be really sure of herself or what she was trying to gain by being on this trip, but fun to be around just the same. But Aisha – come to find out – was and is a firecracker and her and I just clicked!!! It was great to have that kind of connection with a woman, one that I hadn’t really had face to face in so long. The night before we left for Phnom Penh, she confided in me about her truly chaotic and surreal upbringing which – I can assure you – is enough material for at least a month’s worth of made for TV movies. At first, I could almost taste the apprehension she felt in disclosing such personal information to basically a complete stranger. (What people fail to understand about people in recovery is that we’ve basically heard it or lived all – I heard a guy in a meeting once share that he fucked a chicken he was so high – and there is very little that shocks or surprises us.) I just encouraged her and tried to reassure her by saying over and over to her, “I know. Whatever it is, I know.” Meaning to say that I know about demons and things that dog you. I know like you wouldn’t believe, I know all too well.
When we got up the next morning, her and I were sitting at the bar having some iced coffees and cigarettes (breakfast) and checking e-mail. Ironically, she’d received a message from a friend back home that some of her unhappy past had crept into the present and into the newspapers back home. I felt so awful for her and didn’t know what to say or do for her, she seemed pained, frustrated and maybe a little embarrassed by the whole thing, but what she’d shared with me. We’d talked about my writing and I’d she’d expressed some interest in reading some of my stuff so I pulled up one of my poems for her, THE poem, the one that is all me, all vulnerable truth and rawness. As she read it, it was my turn to be embarrassed and pretend to be really involved with lighting a cigarette as she was reading. When she was done, she looked at me, holding back tears and I just smiled at her and said, “I know.” She smiled and said, “You do.” And we hugged and went on our merry way off to Phnom Penh. But in that whole exchange, something had happened dear reader. I can’t explain it better than this but finally, after almost 2 months of travel and self-torture and confusion and feeling like everything around me was becoming more and more distant, rather than closer and closer to me, I FINALLY arrived on my trip.
xoxoM
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