Sihanoukville, Cambodia –
I hop on the back of the little motor scooter without an ounce of trepidation. After two days in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s rapidly bustling little capital, I now view my regular trips on this country’s taxis with two parts adventure and one part economic relief.
A moto is a cheap way to see Cambodia and cool in more ways than one. There’s nothing like beating the heat of a hot Southeast Asian night by flying through traffic on the back of a scooter – even going the wrong way down a one-way street.
But this is different. I’m not in the city anymore. I’m far from it, far from any sense of what people view as Cambodia. Pounding along a bumpy dirt road, we pass a tiny village of six wooden structures where a man sleeps in a hammock and a child pulls a crude, wooden wagon. A little boy and his brother wave and smile at me. We swerve to avoid a goat.
This road into the real Cambodia ends at a spectacular beach. I hop off the back and forget to pay the driver as I stare open-
mouthed at an expansive stretch of fine, white sand, nary a single hotel, souvenir stand or bar in sight. The only signs of civilization are two small, wooden shelters, serving only as protection from a rainstorm.
See it before the rush
In 1979, I visited a similar beach in Thailand. It was on Koh Samui, an island so sublime I didn’t speak English for a week and ate nothing but fresh seafood and fruit, the only food available. Today, Koh Samui has an airport, spas and pizza parlors.
I have come to Cambodia before it becomes another Thailand. I am not the only one. In 2004 Cambodia topped a million tourists for the first time, up 50 percent in a year. Home to one of mankind’s most ruthless regimes only 26 years ago, Cambodia has become a hot travel destination and one of the world’s best bargains.
But while the 30-year anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War has Americans hoofing the beaten path of war sites from Danang to the Killing Fields, I chose a different goal. I have discovered that there is another Cambodia besides massacre grounds and the 1,000-year-old ruins of Angkor Wat.
The real Cambodia is my moto driver.
After I stop gawking at Otres Beach, my own personal beach, I tell him that our negotiated price of 6,000 riel (about $1.50) for the 4-mile ride is a rip-off. Instead, I offer 8,000. My driver, short, slight with a ball cap to ward off rain, puts his hands together in the sign of silent prayer, smiles broadly and nods.
“Aw kohn!” (Thank you!) he says in a greeting that would soon signify these very gentle people.
“There’s sunshine, and it’s new,” says Burt Wigchert, an Australian who moved to Cambodia six years ago. “People want something new. They’ve been going to Thailand for years. They’ve been going to Vietnam for some years. But Vietnam doesn’t get a lot of repeat business. Here I see the same people coming back.”
On a steaming-hot June afternoon we’re sitting in the Angkor Arms, the British pub he took over three years ago in Sihanoukville, the charming gateway to Cambodia’s marvelous beaches. Filled with U.S. license plates, Nepalese knives and a Cambodian gun from 1953, the year Cambodia broke from French rule, the Angkor Arms represents the new Cambodia: a dash of Western comforts in the backdrop of a fascinating country that hasn’t lost its culture despite losing a generation to war.
“It’s quiet,” he says. “It’s unspoiled. All the people aren’t used to tourists. They’re happy to see you.”
Meal, $3.50; hotel, $15
There are signs of growth. Lonely Planet, the backpacker’s bible of Asian travel guides, declared in 2002 that Cambodia is finally safe for travel. Talk to the thousands of expats who flocked here in the late ’90s and they’ll say it has been safe longer than that.
Still, a year and a half ago, Occheuteal Beach, the main beach serving Sihanoukville, was as empty and gorgeous as Otres. Today there’s a string of simple restaurants and beach bars; not that anyone’s complaining. Unlike Thai beaches, there are no bratwurst shops or signs written in German.
Instead I eat delicious, authentic Cambodian food at prices I haven’t seen since rural Egypt in the ’70s. At one charming, romantic bar/restaurant called Le Roseau, a new taste thrill called coconut amok chicken is simply one of the 10 best dishes of my life.
With sticky white rice and an ice-cold beer, the total cost: $3.50.
If commercialization in Cambodia has risen, prices have not. In two weeks in Cambodia, my most expensive dish has been $5. For that I received a plate piled high with a pound of crabs in garlic sauce at Treasure Island Restaurant, where I had my own gazebo overlooking the Gulf of Thailand a few feet away.
It goes beyond food. My hotel here, the Orchidee, sitting 100 yards from Occheuteal, features a minibar, air conditioning, Internet, international cable TV and a large swimming pool for $15 a night for a double. The more upscale Jasmine Hotel a block away is $20.
The 5 1/2-hour ride from
Phnom Penh north to Siem Reap and Angkor in a comfortable air-conditioned bus is $6. Beer is never more than $1.25 per bottle. My most expensive moto ride is $2.50. I took into Cambodia $400 in cash and travelers checks, and it easily has lasted me two weeks. I once spent that much in two days in Paris.
But Cambodia is a world apart in more ways than financial. One day I pay $15 for a tour of Ream National Park, an 85-square-mile reserve established in 1993 to protect the wide variety of animal and bird species in the mangrove forest. An air-conditioned van takes my girlfriend, four others and me 8 miles east from Sihanoukville to the most rudimentary national park headquarters on the planet.
A crude wooden hut with a man swinging in a hammock is our jump-off point to ride on a longboat down the wide Prek Tuk Sap River. We miss the monkeys and dolphins, but an eagle circles overhead as a 3-foot-long monitor lizard does the breast stroke in front of our bow.
After 30 minutes we get out on a sun-splashed beach where a lone family cuts wood under their home propped up by stilts for high tides. We walk through the jungle. Suddenly, I can’t forget the estimated 1 million land mines that have left many of Cambodia’s 13 million people amputees.
Be wary of mines
Many mines remain. However, you’re told practically when you cross the border to stay on well-trodden paths and don’t even go behind a bush for bathroom breaks. But who needs to leave a path when you can see water buffalo bathing in ponds and children getting a lesson in a jungle schoolhouse?
After a hot 30-minute jaunt, we’re rewarded with another lovely beach stretching 7 miles without a soul in sight. As I pour my sweaty body into the ocean, I have to look down to make sure I’m in the water. It’s that warm.
“What kept bringing me back was it was unspoiled,” says Jim Heston, who dumped his job as a train-traffic controller for San Diego Trolley and moved to
Phnom Penh in 2000. Today he runs the comfortable Café California 2 & Guesthouse, a nerve center for Cambodia’s huge expat community.
Located on the wide, French-
style Sisowath Quay boulevard on the Tonle Sap River, California 2 has the best fish tacos this side of Ensenada and is my base while in Phnom Penh. The capital is no longer the gun-riddled danger zone covered with nothing but dirt roads.
Sure, there is corruption. On the road leading into Phnom Penh from the Mekong River, I saw government workers’ huge mansions towering over slums. Prostitution is rampant. Prosecution of pedophilia, despite a major ad campaign, is handled mostly through bribes. My girlfriend foiled a thief by pulling back her bag as he raced by on a scooter.
But police have checkpoints for guns entering the city, and nearly all streets are paved. The number of good, cheap restaurants, and bars ranging from relaxed expat sidewalk cafes to rollicking all-night discos, are now too many to count. I ask Heston, 46 and still laid-back California blond, why so many Americans have moved here.
“You can go into a different bar or a restaurant and see someone you know,” he says. “It’s about people. That’s what the attraction is. People here feel that. Where do people go in America? They’re in their cars. They go to the mall. Everything’s all spread out.”
Yes, I went to the Killing Fields and Angkor. My guide at the Killing Fields outside
Phnom Penh had two older sisters, 12 and 15, die of starvation under the Pol Pot regime. My guide at Angkor said his father had been murdered. I saw the 86 graves where they found 9,000 skulls. I hung out at the forest-shrouded temple where Angelina Jolie filmed “Tomb Raider.”
Jolie fell in love with Cambodia and came home with an adopted baby boy. I will come home only with a love for Cambodia.
It’s a country with a terrifying past, but its present has oh, so much more.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
