Arriving in Sihanoukville

I stayed in the Orchidee Guesthouse in Sihanoukville, in a little neighborhood a couple blocks from the beach. I was disappointed when I couldn't book myself a beachfront property, but when I got to the beach, I realized why it was so difficult: the beach is covered in bars, right up to the water. There are places to stay, even free places to stay, but anything with any amenities (like a real bed or a private bathroom, let alone a pool or a tv) was off a ways from the shore.


This is the neighborhood I was in. It looks really nice from these pictures:




This seems a little more accurate. There was a bunch of construction right next door going the whole time (never bothered me, though), and the rest of the street is significantly less polished than the couple hotels immediately surrounding the guesthouse.




Driveway:


Restaurant (free breakfast):

Upper deck:


Cycle port:


I didn't take any pictures of the lobby, come to think of it. It was small and nothing special, though. You walked through a hallway to get to the pool:


And then there was a lot of corridor action:




And a lot of barbed wire action:


I was on the second floor. The room was decent, especially for $22 a night, most especially considering it was New Year's Eve during my stay, when apparently a lot of places tripled their prices. Prebooking pays off.




This little tv got tons of English channels, a lot more than I get in Korea. I was kind of pissed, actually. I try not to watch too much tv, but it's nice to have the option. Anyway, I didn't watch much of this tv, but I did catch a bit of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and all of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I think that's what it's called. Terrible movie.


This painting haunts me still. It's freaky, and ugly.


This bed had sheets. Almost a first for me in Asia.


First hot shower in Cambodia, and given my problems at home with hot water, first hot shower in like a month:



That was kind of boring, so I'll leave you with a nice sunset over Occheuteal Beach photo:


Isn't that special?

Relaxy

For my second and final full day at the 4 Rivers Ecolodge, I just hung out at my tent. I woke up around 8:30 (10:30 is my natural wakeup time, so with the time difference, I stayed right on schedule) and did some reading before breakfast. Breakfast at this place was pretty much the same every day: varying breakfast pork products; eggs in omelette, fried, or scrambled form; toast; coffee and tea; juice; some sort of potato product. Quite good, though.

Then I spent the whole rest of the day on my dock patio, reading, swimming in the river, and listening to my iPod. It was awesome. I had lunch with the South African family and then supper later with them and the Canadian family.

It was strange to compare their children to American children. They're so much more polite and well informed. They asked to be excused at every meal, and at lunch the South African kids, who were 13 and probably 11 or 12, were having a long discussion with their parents about the Bernie Madoff scandal. I was kind of embarrassed at how smart they were. I assume they're probably better off than most kids, anyway, due to being a family of international travelers, but still.

At supper they gave me a preview of my bill. I had been concerned on this issue, since all the meals were uniform for all guests, and there was no menu or price list anywhere. I had no idea what these meals would cost me, and was worried my food bill was going to rival the room rate, what with having to pay for two meals a day (breakfast was included), and really nice meals. But I was pleasantly surprised. Although the food was obviously more expensive than any other place in Cambodia, the most I'd been charged for a meal was $16, and my packed lunch at the waterfall was only $7, and I may have mentioned before that they took one of my dinners off the bill due to having problems with switching tents and whatnot. So my bill for my three days was only something like $65. Suite.

The next day I had to leave pretty early to catch the bus to Sihanoukville. I was able to catch breakfast at 7:00, though, so I was glad of that. The bus only cost like $5, I think. It wasn't very comfortable, and there was no official rest stop, just a bush in a field, as I mentioned in a blog while I was there, but for five bucks, I felt okay about it. I think the ride was like four hours or something like that. I just listened to the ol' iPod. I had to wait forever for the stupid bus, though. The ticket said 8:30, I think, and it also said I had to be there at 8:00, I guess since the schedule isn't exact and they're not willing to wait around to keep it. But I think it was after 9:00 before the bus actually got there. I was pretty worried I'd missed it, since one or two buses drove right by the little store I was waiting at. But anyway, it all worked out fine.

I'll tell you about Sihanoukville next time. There will be pics.

Tatai Waterfall

My second day at 4 Rivers I went with a couple families to the nearby Tatai Waterfall. We took about an hour-long boat ride to get there.

Some kayakers from the lodge:

Here's the waterfall from the boat. It didn't look like much from afar, but closer up the falls got a bit more impressive.

The waterfalls environs:

Nothing like a dead snake to start your day:

Some of the smaller falls close up:

View from the top:

There were some cool rock formations hanging around:

At the very top there were some shallow pools that we spent some time in. The bottom was very slippery, and everyone was moving very slowly and carefully so as not to fall. There were still several falls.

View from the very top:

These are some of the kids in the families. They were actually there together, having known met each other and become friends in previous travels, and both being families living away from their home countries (Canada and South Africa).

They were kind enough to take some pictures and video of me while we were there. I think these are the only pictures I have of myself for the whole trip. They always had a hard time figuring out my camera.

We had a packed lunch with sandwich, fried rice, and fruit. It was hard not to notice that although the ecolodge packed us silverware instead of disposable plasticware, they put our food in styrofoam containers (two each). One of the kids had been playing this game that involved pointing out all the things that the resort was doing inconsistent with the idea of an ecolodge, which were unfortunately quite a few. I decided to assume that since they were so new, they hadn't been able to finalize every detail, like buying plastic containers for day trips or refillable glass bottles for the guest tents instead of providing two plastic bottles of water every day.

On the way back we saw some really great pollution from the locals.

Upon returning to the resort I wondered how much that little trip would cost me. Although it was a pretty low maintenance excursion, it was also an expensive hotel. Even in Thailand the excursions cost about $50 apiece when booked through the hotel, and this resort was more than double the cost of where we stayed there.

When I received my final bill, though, I found I had not been charged for for the trip at all, which was a great relief.

4 Rivers Floating Ecolodge

After my night in Phnom Penh I was scheduled in Tatai Village, near the coastal city of Koh Kong, for three nights at the newly opened 4 Rivers Floating Ecolodge. This was the part of the trip I was most looking forward to, and for the most part, it didn't disappoint.

Getting there was quite troublesome, though. When I got to the hostel in Phnom Penh, I looked at the bus info they had posted to see if the bus went to Koh Kong, and it did. I don't know why I didn't look at the times, though. I must have been too tired to think straight. The buses left at 6:45 and 7:00 in the morning, which I didn't realize until I came down for breakfast at like 9:00. That was worrisome. I asked the staff members if they could help me get there, but they'd never heard of the village, the resort (understandably) or the island it is adjacent to. I asked if there were any travel companies around who could put me on a minibus or something, and they couldn't direct me to any of those, either. Finally I asked to call the resort itself, to see if they could help me. One number was voicemail system, though, and I left a message. The cell phone number, the guy at the hostel said, was not a valid Cambodian number, so he didn't try it. I went to double czech it at an internet cafe, and leave a message for the resort owner on the Skype messenger system, then asked a different person to try the cell phone number after I didn't get a call back from the two messages I already left. Luckily, the cell number was valid (I don't know what that guy was thinking), and the resort staff was able to call a taxi company, give directions to the river area, and send the driver to my hostel. The initial part of this process took about four hours, then once I got ahold of a real person over there, I was packed up, paid up at the hostel, and in a taxi within about a half hour.

The taxi cost $55, almost ten times what the bus would have cost, but that's about the same price I pay for Supershuttle to drive me an hour to the airport, so I considered it a reasonable price. The dude sped, too. I think he got me there in under four hours; the bus ride would have been probably five to Koh Kong, then I guess I would have had to take like a half hour taxi ride to the proper area, so I saved quite a bit of time with the taxi. I wish I'd been able to leave in the morning, though, so I could have enjoyed the resort more.

The owner picked me up by the riverside when the taxi got me there, and we drove over the the boat launch and took a ten minute ride down the river to the resort. Here's what it looked like a little while after I I got there:


It was still warm enough to swim, and the river was warm, so I took advantage right away, so as not to waste a whole day without swimming.

Here's what the tents look like on the outside:


You can roll up the flaps on all sides of the tent, so the whole place is quite well lit.

I couldn't believe how well furnished these things were. I've never seen so much furniture at a hotel. This is the sitting area. Those basket pillars in the back right are lamps, but none of them worked.

Cambodia was another place where proper sheets are not a given. At the hostel, I was given only sheets, and no bedspread, but I was surprised to find that here, there was just the bedspread. It seemed inappropriate considering how much energy it takes to wash a bedspread every time a new guest comes and the fact that it's an ecolodge. I'm hoping they're not cutting corners there. Gross.

This is the only (relatively) solid, stable wall in the tent. This family with a few obnoxious boys came around the day before I left and ran everywhere they went, causing this mirror and the bathroom mirror behind it (and well, everything else in the resort) to shake violently. I was talking to one of the owners and she said one of the kids actually broke a piece of one of the docks or something, and she was going to have to put up some rules for guests to follow to avoid them inadvertantly destroying her resort. I felt kind of bad. She was very stressed.

Since the lodge had just opened up, there were a lot of little bugs and unfinished business. The cabinet here is supposed to hold a tv, but the tvs for several tents hadn't arrived yet. I wasn't concerned about that, though some of the other bugs affected me.

One of them was the electrical outlets. Not all of them worked, so the lady owner had to spend a lot of time going around looking at all my lamps and making sure I had proper light by the couch and/or bed, since she knew I'd be reading a lot while I was there. It ended up being okay, but I wouldn't have minded a bit more light.

Another glitch was my shower. I was mildly disappointed with it when I first got there. The website showed a large porcelain tub in the middle of the tent, and even though the floor plans didn't reflect that, I got it stuck into my head that I'd be able to sit in a tub and look out my window onto the river. I realized when I got there that that kind of placement would be totally impractical, not only because of plumbing, but also for privacy's sake, since most people there would probably not be solo travellers like me. It was saddened to not be able to take a hot bath, though, even if it was in a proper bathroom (where there were still plenty of windows to gaze out of). In fact, I wasn't even able to take a hot shower. I wasn't sure if the lack of hot water was part of the eco-factor or just another bug. I didn't bother to ask, though.

Anyway, due to the humidity in the area, the varnish on the shower was still tacky, even after three days, so they moved me to another tent after my first night, and even knocked off one of my dinners from the total bill, because there was a lot of confusion over the move. When I got back from an excursion to Tatai Waterfall, my tent had been cleaned, and one of the staff members came in after me, seemingly to indicate for me to move my stuff. When I got there, the project manager was taking a nap on the couch (the staff quarters weren't finished yet), and the employee woke him up and had him move to my other tent. Then I noticed something amiss (I forget what), and the owner came to look at it and realized no one had cleaned this tent, so they took like two hours to do that, while I read on the patio commons. When I went back to my room later, some dude walked in on me in my own bathroom. I was kind of pissed about that, heh. There are no doors of course, only curtains, and not all of the people there have learned the importance of announcing oneself, even if they think the tent is empty, before entering.

My new tent did not have the big bed. I was disappointed with that change.

One of the cool little touches in the rooms was the rugs:

Moving on, here's the totally suite patio area:

I spent a lot of time during the day on the patio, reading, listening to music, going for a swim, then coming back to read some more. There's a little gate in front that you can open and there's a little ladder in the water. It's nice to be able to walk out of my tent and jump right in.

This is the island across the river:

There were kayaks available for use, probably for free, and I had planned on going kayaking at least once, but then my neck and shoulder blades started acting up, so I figured I shouldn't push it, and had to refrain from any exercise besides swimming and walking. Boooo-urns.

These are all the common tents, connecting the two arms of private tents. The big one is the restaurant, the one on the right is for staff, and the one on the left is the library, with some books and DVDs. The rest is all seating, and this is also where the boats dock.

The owners had a puppy that even I, a cat person, had to admit was really cute. She was very comfortable with people and treated the whole place like it was hers. She spent some time with me on my dock, and was waiting for me to get up one morning, sitting quietly on my patio.

Then another time I found her in my tent. I hadn't zipped it up all the way, and she shimmied inside and played around in there for a while as I was eating. She left a present for me, which I prompty passed off onto the owners, haha: