Shianoukville Part 1

ShianoukVille is a beach resort town on the coast of Cambodia half way between Thailand and Vietnam on the Bay of Thailand. It is a  four hour drive from Phnom Penh. The ride was pretty tight because five of the people on the bus had to bring all of their luggage because we were heading off to Thailand while everyone else would head back to Phnom Penh. Our luggage took up about 3 seats at the front of the bus and on this trip we had more people going. It was a bittersweet journey because by the end of Sunday night 8 of our 18 person group would be gone (5 to Thailand, 3 to Vietnam). We all vowed we would have a great weekend since it was the last time we would all be together.

When we got closer to the city and were traveling through the mountains we could start to see the sea and there was a buzz on the bus. We couldn't wait to get to the hotel and change. We finally got to our hotel there was a lot of confusion with the rooms. They did get enough rooms so some people didn't have rooms or one person didn't have a room mate, it was all a mess. I didn't care too much because my room mate and I got one of the big rooms and as soon as we got in our room we were in our bathing suits and out the door in a matter of 5 minutes. The beach was a 5 minute walk, we were literally in the water 12 minutes after getting into our room, it was heavenly. The water felt amazing. There was hardly any people on the beach. We stayed near Victory Beach which is the calmer side of the city,hardly any tourists and a lot less restaurants. If we went to the other side of the city to Serendipity Beach there would be crowds of people, children hassling you as soon as you got to the beach, and trash. Serendipity Beach is good if you want to be around tourists and want to party but none of us wanted to. We spent as much time at Victory Beach before we had to head in for dinner.

We were going to have dinner on the beach at some restaurant on Serendipity Beach. The one problem we had was we didn't get to the restaurant till 8:30 and then we were trying to figure out who was going on the boat the next day so we didn't sit down to eat until 9. Needless to say a lot of us were pretty cranky and just wanted to eat. We got a great table on the beach were people were shooting off fireworks on both sides of us. I even got to shoot one off thanks to one of our teachers, Steve, who really likes fireworks and bought fireworks for the table. Once we finished dinner we all went our own ways mainly we all went looking for dancing which surprisingly was hard to find. We were hassled the whole night by these children who would not leave you alone if you talked to them. They were incredibly rude and were not afraid to start a fight. I just ignored them, I said nothing I barely even looked at them and I was left alone which was nice. Some of the people in our group were not so lucky. One of the guys told a kid he didn't want a bracelet the kid put it on him anyway and walked away. The kid came back an hour later and said where is my money, the guy said "I didn't want to buy it you gave it to me." The kid proceeded to cut the bracelet off his wrist while he wasn't looking and chopped up the whole thing and threw it at his feet. When we started walking to find somewhere to dance the kid appeared again he started hassling our guy and then slapped a beer can out of his hand. We literally had to pull the guy away so not to cause a problem because we all know who would have gotten in trouble. It is really sad that these kids act like this. Its sad that they have to spend their days hustling people and will probably have no real childhood. We spent the rest of the evening trying to find a place to go dancing it took us a couple of hours but we finally found a place we stayed there for a bit. We were just too tired to stay out all night plus most of us had to be up at 7:30 the next morning for a boat trip to the islands.