I felt at peace with myself and the world as I relaxed and regarded the unfamiliar scenery.
“Welcome to Cambodia,” the young waiter said as he took the proferred joint from my fingers and had a puff himself. Tiny bats wheeled and flitted outside the open-fronted guesthouse looking for mosquitoes, and the insects in the nearby trees buzzed an accompaniment to the croaking frogs by the riverside. The lights along the length of the bridge we had driven in on painted wavering orange lines in the water and the flat-calm river was dotted with the red, yellow and blue lights of small vessels passing by. The shouts and laughter of children riding bicycles and playing drifted up from the dusty road outside, and the guttural sounds of a boat’s spluttering engine growled into the night. The dark blue sky was flecked and streaked with patches of lighter blue which were clouds that were still visible in the growing darkness and the uneven hill on the other side of the river turned the skyline into a dinosaur’s back. I thanked the young waiter for his gift, and as I climbed to my feet and floated back to my comfortable little wooden room, I was already beginning to wonder if there wasn’t just a little more to this Godforsaken country than the Pattaya boys had led me to believe after all.
There were no toilets in the rooms of the little guesthouse and the cold Angkor beer had brought on the need for a piss so I walked down the back stairs and down a small, dark corridor. I found a small room full of rubbish with another tiny cubicle next to it containing a squat toilet and a big plastic barrel full of water. It was so dark in there I could barely see, but the room had no door, which let in a small amount of light. I was in the process of relieving myself when there was a loud, feminine scream behind me and I turned quickly to face a naked Cambodian girl holding a towel around her body which she dropped on the floor at once in shock. Her husband—the owner of the guesthouse—appeared beside her at once and found Joe Bucket—knob in hand—in front of his nude wife in the darkened room. Luckily for me, the girl regained her composure quickly and was kind enough to explain to her husband why I was standing in front of his wife with my cock out whilst she was completely starkers. The husband seemed as relieved as his wife that I wasn’t a potential rapist or adulterer but merely Joe Bucket the stupid farang who had wandered into the wrong toilet by mistake. I was very relieved to find the Cambodian people apparently had a sense of humour. The couple seemed to find the incident a lot funnier than I did and I was pleased when the girl gave me a shy smile to show there were no hard feelings as I left for the boat in the morning.
The trip to Sihanoukville was in a long, speedboat. The doom and gloomers back in Pattaya had warned me it was really a river boat and wasn’t fit for the four hour sea journey I was about to embark on. As I stood in the queue amongst chattering Cambodians and scruffy backpackers weighed down with rucksacks that looked big enough to house small Khmer families, the sun was just beginning to rise over the horizon. I watched a small boy fishing in the rubbish strewn waters just by the gangplank that led onto the boat. His method of fishing was unique, if a little brutal. He had mounted a big lump of smelly fish intestines on a large treble hook and when a shoal of small fish came to investigate, the boy jerked his handline deftly and impaled one through the guts. Perhaps not the most sporting or graceful of angling practices, but judging by the dozen or more spiky-finned little fish he had threaded on the stringer hanging from his belt, very effective. I noticed a couple of used condoms and a dead rodent float by in the current near to where the boy was fishing and decided that the stomachs of the young angler’s family must be pretty strong. The boy looked up as I boarded the boat and I was surprised when
“Welcome to Cambodia,” the young waiter said as he took the proferred joint from my fingers and had a puff himself. Tiny bats wheeled and flitted outside the open-fronted guesthouse looking for mosquitoes, and the insects in the nearby trees buzzed an accompaniment to the croaking frogs by the riverside. The lights along the length of the bridge we had driven in on painted wavering orange lines in the water and the flat-calm river was dotted with the red, yellow and blue lights of small vessels passing by. The shouts and laughter of children riding bicycles and playing drifted up from the dusty road outside, and the guttural sounds of a boat’s spluttering engine growled into the night. The dark blue sky was flecked and streaked with patches of lighter blue which were clouds that were still visible in the growing darkness and the uneven hill on the other side of the river turned the skyline into a dinosaur’s back. I thanked the young waiter for his gift, and as I climbed to my feet and floated back to my comfortable little wooden room, I was already beginning to wonder if there wasn’t just a little more to this Godforsaken country than the Pattaya boys had led me to believe after all.
There were no toilets in the rooms of the little guesthouse and the cold Angkor beer had brought on the need for a piss so I walked down the back stairs and down a small, dark corridor. I found a small room full of rubbish with another tiny cubicle next to it containing a squat toilet and a big plastic barrel full of water. It was so dark in there I could barely see, but the room had no door, which let in a small amount of light. I was in the process of relieving myself when there was a loud, feminine scream behind me and I turned quickly to face a naked Cambodian girl holding a towel around her body which she dropped on the floor at once in shock. Her husband—the owner of the guesthouse—appeared beside her at once and found Joe Bucket—knob in hand—in front of his nude wife in the darkened room. Luckily for me, the girl regained her composure quickly and was kind enough to explain to her husband why I was standing in front of his wife with my cock out whilst she was completely starkers. The husband seemed as relieved as his wife that I wasn’t a potential rapist or adulterer but merely Joe Bucket the stupid farang who had wandered into the wrong toilet by mistake. I was very relieved to find the Cambodian people apparently had a sense of humour. The couple seemed to find the incident a lot funnier than I did and I was pleased when the girl gave me a shy smile to show there were no hard feelings as I left for the boat in the morning.
The trip to Sihanoukville was in a long, speedboat. The doom and gloomers back in Pattaya had warned me it was really a river boat and wasn’t fit for the four hour sea journey I was about to embark on. As I stood in the queue amongst chattering Cambodians and scruffy backpackers weighed down with rucksacks that looked big enough to house small Khmer families, the sun was just beginning to rise over the horizon. I watched a small boy fishing in the rubbish strewn waters just by the gangplank that led onto the boat. His method of fishing was unique, if a little brutal. He had mounted a big lump of smelly fish intestines on a large treble hook and when a shoal of small fish came to investigate, the boy jerked his handline deftly and impaled one through the guts. Perhaps not the most sporting or graceful of angling practices, but judging by the dozen or more spiky-finned little fish he had threaded on the stringer hanging from his belt, very effective. I noticed a couple of used condoms and a dead rodent float by in the current near to where the boy was fishing and decided that the stomachs of the young angler’s family must be pretty strong. The boy looked up as I boarded the boat and I was surprised when
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