Stuck In Transit...

A Perfect Getaway (March 6-9) Part III

I knew that the families were bringing a lot of food on the trip to save on food expneses but I didn’t expect them to bring a whole kitchen! We negotiated to use a “rest area” to turn into a makeshift kitchen. The women hurriedly set up the gas stoves and plugged in big rice cookers. Out came the big knives and bowls and started chopping up the chicken that they’ve freshly killed that morning!

Th e ladies chopping away

In the mean time, I was drinking coffee with the boys (apparently we were not allowed to help cook but to keep the boys company) and playing with some of the kids that were playing nearby. They seemed to intrigued by my camera and pretty excited when I let them play around with it. Some of the photos were taken by the kids themselves.

An soon enough, dinner was ready! It was fresh, hot, and homey. There's something with a bunch of friends outdoors. I suppose it faintly reminds me of going camping.

2 gigantic rice cookers for 13 people

We ended the night going to the Sihanoukville night market and a concert sponsored by Camboia Beer. There was an array of events going on such as k-pop like singers, sweepstakes, sweet vendors, and needless to say the venue was packed with eager beer drinkers! It was a cherry on top to a great start of our vacation.

One more round of beer boys..?

kpop style singer

Now this is what I call a packed venue

Boy band dancin'

A Perfect Getaway (March 6-9) Part II

After a nice quick tour of Phnom Penh, we finally ended up with the family.. which turned out to be multiple families! They are family friends of Carena’s friend, Thaney. The families are all from the same village that live about 30 min outside of Phnom Penh. They rented a car to head out to Sihanoukville so off we went!

Full car!

Starting the party a little early..

Stopping on the road for a quick offering


Stopping by for lunch

Oh you know, the normal things you see outside your window :)

It’s about a 3 hour ride to Sihanouville so after rounds of beer, we arrived in the sunny beach town. While it’s not spectacular as the southern Thai beach resorts I like it because it’s quaint and less tourist crazy. We grabbed a table and enjoyed ourselves with more beer and fresh seafood on skewers.

Since the villagers spoke limited English, I tried to converse in my minimal Cambodian but I soon found out this as a harder mission than I thought. As I predicted the Phnom Penh accent and Siem Reap accents are very different. As I’m used to the latter, it makes the smallest phrases hard for me to understand. On top of it, they have different expressions and slangs mixed in, which makes it even more difficult. I felt quite stupid asking to repeat the same sentence over and over but I’m at least now familiar with the accent!

BEACH!

Deep fried shrimp $0.25 each :)

Yay for the beach!

Playing with floating objects

Siblings :)

Mr. Naat's smile is the best

Chow down

Chillin'

A Perfect Getaway (March 6-9)

After being a month and a half back in Cambodia getting over a bad cold, I was ready for a vacation.

My coworker Carena’s Cambodian friend invite her for a family trip to Sihanoukville and of course being the kind Khmers they are, they invited me, a total stranger, as well. Sihanoukville is a quaint beach resort town down in the south of Cambodia. In recent years, it’s been attracting Western tourists for their beaches and semi-hippie atmosphere.

There are direct buses to Sihanoukville from Siem Reap but as we were supposed to meet the family in Phnom Penh, we headed there first. Just a note, Cambodia has no train system although there have been many plans to reestablish it (but has failed every time due to lack of finance). One of the reasons implementing the train system has been such a struggle is because the bus transportation system has become so elaborate, accessible and cheap. You can get a one way ticket from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh for $6, albeit needless to say the quality won’t be good.

Since the trip takes about 6 hours (but 8 hours, if you’re on a low quality bus since they go slower and the drivers take more frequent breaks), we decided to not waste our time and take the night bus. Giantibis bus company is by far the best. It is $15 so it’s more than double the price of the cheapest bus ticket but you get a clean bed with blanket, pillow, and water (they advertise free wifi as well but it’s not reliable!). Plus it’ll eliminate a night’s cost at a guesthouse in Phnom Penh. It’s fairly comfortable and the attendants speak good English so they are able to assist you if there’s any issues.

Frankly, it's quite comfy. Well worth the $15 paid

We arrived in Phnom Penh around 5:30am and honestly it was a decent 7 hour bus ride. It was still a bit early to meet up with the family so we wandered around for a few hours in hustle bustle morning rush of PP.