After our time in Siem Reap, touring Angkor Wat with a delightful bout of explosive diarrhea in tow (not recommended) and being boarded by drink pirates in a Vietnamese floating village (a kid leapt onto our boat brandishing a cooler full of refreshments, then leapt back to his dad’s boat when he saw we had water already), we made our way down to Shihanoukville. Advertised as a beautiful coastal town with pristine beaches, it turned out to be a gaping maw that wanted only to feast on our happiness.
The first sign that something was wrong came while I was on the roof of our guest house on the first day, drinking a beer and finishing up a book. One of the managers came over to my table and struck up a conversation. He pointed over the town at an island rising up out of the distance and said, “See that island?”
“Yes,” I replied, innocently enjoying the view.
“It’s owned by a Russian pedophile gangster.”
A beautiful sunset over the Russian pedo-island.I choked a little on my afternoon lager as the manager continued.
“That beach you swam at today is owned by the same guy.”
“Excuse me,” I said, pushing my chair away from the table and standing. “I have to go shower again and also throw up.”
But the Shihanoukville fun really started the next day when Kevin and I endeavored to rent scooters and and explore the town and surrounding countryside. Having done this in Pai during my Thailand excursion, I was reasonably confident that I wouldn’t kill myself.
We set out from a guest house on the other side of town, heading for some waterfalls about five miles out of Shihanoukville. We must have been almost there when my bike stopped working. I didn’t realize it at first because the engine didn’t cut; the bike just stopped accelerating and I drifted to the side of the road. Kevin, in an effort to pull up behind me, rear-ended my bike and tipped his. After it was decided that he was okay, we checked out my bike.
Neither of us are what you would call “gearheads”, so we decided it would be for the best to contact the guest house and have them come out and diagnose the problem. Kevin set out in search of a phone and returned a few minutes later having had no success.
“What about the other way?” I asked.
“I’ll try,” he said, and zoomed off down the highway, leaving me in a cloud of dust.
He was gone for over an hour, during which time I became well-acquainted with my surroundings. There was some sort of government building nearby with a single shirtless guard in a guardhouse, eyeing me with a mixture of suspicion and deep amusement. An iguana hung out in some weeds by the side of the path I’d parked on, probably chuckling inwardly at my misfortune. Some trash drifted lazily into the ditch behind me, catching my eye. What looked like a hundred dollar bill covered in mud turned out to be a bad counterfeit printed on computer paper and covered in what seemed to be shit. I instantly regretted touching it.
When Kevin returned some time later, a young Cambodian man was following him on a black bike. They pulled up onto my path and the man approached my derelict scooter. He looked at the ignition, then looked around at the ground, then looked and me and said, “Um.”
At this point it was clear that this guy didn’t speak much in the way of English (I should clarify that almost all Cambodians working in the tourism industry have an excellent grasp of English; this guy was something of an anomaly). I gave him the key. He started the bike and tried to accelerate, with the same results I’d had. Then he switched it off, sat upon it thoughtfully, and wordlessly lit up a cigarette.
We watched him smoke for a few minutes, then the man stood up, pointed to the seat of my scooter, and said, “Sit.”
“But it doesn’t work,” I said.
“Sit,” the man repeated. Then he pointed across the highway. “Go over street.”
I looked at Kevin, who shrugged. “The bike doesn’t work,” I repeated. “Why should I do this?”
The man went to his bike, turned it around, and pushed it across the highway as a demonstration.
“What does he think is going to happen over there?” I asked Kevin. “Is there a magic scooter-regenerating force field on that side of the road?”
“Just follow him and see what happens,” Kevin replied.
I shoved my bike over the highway, where the man again indicated for me to get on. Going with it now, I did so. The man started his bike and placed one boot on the footrest of mine.
“You steer,” he said.
“Oh. Oh. No. No, this is not the best idea,” is what I probably should have said. Instead I said, “Okay.”
The man then proceeded to kick me down the highway at about 50 kilometers per hour. I know because my speedometer worked, even if nothing else did. He would put his boot on my bike, accelerate, then let me go until I started to slow down too much to keep up with the semis and pickup trucks populating the road, then he would give me another boost.
About two-thirds of the way there we hit a huge downward slope and he let me coast the whole way. I did so gladly, relishing the freedom and speed that I had expected to get all day when I first rented the bike. But it ended almost as soon as it finished, and the man kicked me the rest of the way back to the guest house.
I pulled into the parking lot, dismounted, and turned around looking for Kevin. He was nowhere to be seen. I waited about ten minutes before he finally showed up, pushing his bike down the busiest road in Shihanoukville with no one to kick him.
“What happened?” I asked.
“My bike broke down. I hit a bump on that fucking hill, and the engine just stopped.” The manager of the guest house came out to offer us a set of keys to a different bike. “No,” Kevin said. “You keep your deathtrap bikes. We are done with this.”
We finished the day strolling around town and went to sleep that night looking forward to what was sure to be the highlight of our time in Shihanoukville: snorkeling off the many tiny islands dotting the coast.
We boarded a rickety boat the next morning and set off for our first island. As we approached, Kevin and I liberally applied sunscreen we’d bought at a Korean market. We are both very pasty men, clearly not meant for even a partly cloudy day of equatorial sunshine. When we arrived at our first snorkeling spot, our guide gave us a brief warning.
“If you see a rock you want to stand on, that’s okay. But make sure there are no urchins where you want to stand. You will see a few sea urchins, so just be careful not to touch them.”
Seemed fair.
The expectation.
Once we were actually in the water, however, and the floor of the reef came gradually into view as we reached the shallows, the horrible truth was revealed: IT WAS ALL URCHINS.
The reality. Seriously, fuck the ocean.Everywhere I looked there was nothing but urchins. Clinging to the rocks, the coral, each other, all of them at least the size of a cantaloupe. As I swam, I became aware of a noise in my ears, a sort of snick-snicker-snikt sound that almost sounded like a whisper. And I realized: They were talking to each other. Clicking their horrible needles together in some twisted Morse code, plotting which one would leap from the floor of the reef and impale me in the chest.
Fuck this, I thought to myself. Back to the boat.
The other tourists, Kevin, and I navigated the treacherous urchin sea for several hours that day, and each time we came out of the water we applied still more sunscreen. We should have been absolutely caked with the stuff. So imagine our surprise when Kevin and I arrived back at the hostel and this happened:
Both of us were absolutely burned to a crisp. The rest of our trip would sound something like this:
“Hey, Jake! Ahhh, ow! What do you want to shit! Do today?”
“I dunno, argh! I was thinking maybe we could fuck! I mean, go to the ow! Museum.”
“As long as I rarg! Don’t have to let anyone touch my back.”
And that, dear readers, is why I am planning to murder Korean sunscreen.
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