Travel, Travel, Travel

To Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville, Cambodia -- December 22-23

Travel, travel, travel sums up our activities for the last two days. Our end goal, the island of Koh Rong and the promise of seeing the Pfyffer's.

I’m a little surprised it actually all worked out. The total trip involved a taxi from our hotel in Hoi An to the Danang airport, a domestic flight to Ho Chi Minh City, an international flight to Phnom Pen and an hour taxi ride to our hotel. Next morning was a ride to the station, a five hour minivan ride to the coast, a tuk-tuk to the dock, and then the slow supply boat to our final destination, Songkat Village on the island of Koh Rong.

Taxi ride to Danang

Flight to HCMC

Taxi ride in Phnom Peng

Minivan to Sihanoukville

Supply boat to the island

The stressful part, and of course there was one, was finding out in Danang that for some reason we didn't actually have a valid flight reservation. We had tried to check in the night before and the reservation wasn't found, but that's hardly the first time an online process hasn't gone as planned. We were informed that we hadn't paid, although a quick online check of our credit card confirmed that we had indeed already paid the $700. Oh well, no time to waste, we simply bought another set of tickets and would deal with the refund later.

Leaving the hotel in Hoi An

Buyng new tickets

At the Phnom Penh airport we diligently filled out the multiple forms for our “visa on arrival.”  Oddly, for the first time, the airport ATMs didn't offer local currency, the Riel, but US dollars only. We figured this was specifically for the $30 visa fee and $3 photo charge, but it turns out dollars and riel are completely interchangeable here. In fact, most everything seems to be priced in dollars. The exchange rate seems to be firmly fixed at 4000 to one, making 1000 riel, conveniently, twenty-five cents. And, since there are no coins (or at least we haven't seen them yet), fractions of a dollar are paid in riel. We were warned however that only clean crisp dollars are accepted. Indeed, I have a handful the the most pristine hundred dollar bills I've ever seen.

Airport lunch

As an engineer at heart, I like to keep lists. For seven months, I’ve been tracking our continually growing list of lost and broken items. By the way we’ve been leaving a breadcrumb trail of personal belongings, you'd think we were planning to retrace our footsteps across the globe. Just in the last month we've lost two shirts, a baseball cap, Nalgene water bottle, handkerchief, Swiss Army knife, and one of Dexter’s hiking shoes. To prevent the boots from stinking up the rest of his pack, Dex strategically stuffed them into side pockets on his pack. Somewhere along the line, though, one went rouge!  Believe it or not, we do actually search our rooms and transport before leaving. I suppose after over a hundred planes, trains, cars, buses and boats and almost twice that many different locations it's somewhat to be expected.

Unfortunately, if we're not losing things, we're breaking them. Currently, only Kylie's watch is working -- it was replaced in France after the old one filled up with water at the beach. Being the savvy consumer I am, I purchased a Chinese made sports watch yesterday in the Danang airport for $13. The fact I couldn't figure out later how to get a single beep or chime out of it, even after forty-five minutes, should have been a clue. At the hotel last night, I thoughtlessly jumped in the pool to find that the 30m specification was really only 3mm!  

New watch, 11:41 a.m.

Water-filled watch, 8:58 p.m.

This afternoon, we did finally make it to the small dock in Sihanoukville where the fishing and supply boat would leave for the village. It was so great to see Etienne, Anne, Louis, Arno, and Mathilde again. There was much to catch up on as they had spent much more time in Africa and a full month in Botswana. An hour after the scheduled departure, a series of huge ice blocks, delivered in motorcycle-pulled trailers, were loaded into the boat. This gave an early idea of the island infrastructure, or lack thereof.

Ice delivery

We were soon on our way, slowly chugging out onto the calm sea, and thankful for the ocean breeze. Not for two weeks would we be back to the mainland. The relaxing ride and beautiful sunset view of the island gave us confidence that our decision to come here was indeed a good one.