Visa Run - Pattaya to Sihanoukville (17 page)

The Golden Lions’ football team manager nodded his head sagely in agreement. I shook his hand and thanked him for the afternoon and told him how I had found the experience fascinating because football is still pretty new in Cambodia. The manager looked at me and smiled through his disappointment.

“Everything is still pretty new in Cambodia, my friend,” he said, and turned away from me to the boys to begin the job of lifting the spirits of his beaten team for their next big match.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

Having become very familiar with the handfull of small bars around Victory Hill and having had no luck in locating Psorng-Preng at all, one evening I decided to stretch my wings and take a look at some of the places on Ron’s list around the nearby downtown area again. I walked to the crossroads and rustled up the trusty Narith and he drove me along Ekereach Street and into town.

Downtown was a ten minute drive along Sihanoukville’s hilly, undulating main road. The street was lined with trees and wooden and block built buildings. I had Narith drop me at ‘The Strip,’ as I had heard the locals call it, intending to flash Ron’s photograph around the bars I expected to find there. In fact, ‘The Strip’ was really a misnomer because the few bars and restaurants downtown were not built together in a line at all, but scattered haphazardly around Ekereach Street and the smaller roads that led off it. The French presence was much less noticeable in this area and there were plenty of English, Australian, Italian, New Zealand and Irish-owned bars and restaurants dotted around.

I climbed a set of grimy stairs and made my way down an equally grubby corridor where I had my first beer in a pleasant, rooftop bar called the The Fisherman’s Den. A tattooed, seventeen-stone Kiwi with heavily muscled arms and a beer belly who was dressed incongruously in a pair of electric blue pyjamas decorated with balloons and teddy bears was telling anyone who would listen about the big Spanish Mackerel he had caught earlier that day on the weekly fishing trip the bar ran. The rough but friendly New Zealand bar owner barely glanced at the photograph I showed him and shook his head in dismissal, then continued to explain to his angling buddies how the big fish had taken his bait just before it was time to return to shore which—he said—just goes to show you should never give up. Despite the magnificently attired angler’s advice, I was beginning to wonder.

With the tough New Zealander’s words in mind, I spent the rest of the night exhibiting Ron’s photograph to various bar-owners, waitresses and barmen in the Star bar, the Angkor Arms, the Coyote Ugly bar, Pim’s bar, the Emerald bar, the Holy Cow and the G’day Mate bar and had two beers in each of them. By the end of the night I was no closer to finding Psorng-Preng than I had been when I had arrived downtown but I had managed to become so pissed I could hardly walk. In fact, I had enjoyed myself so much I decided it would be unsafe to attempt the ride home with a motodop driver I didn’t know, besides which I could barely stand up, so I checked into the first cheap guest house I could find, intending to crash there for the night.

Unquestionably, there are some real bargains to be found around the guesthouses and smaller hotels of Sihanoukville and Victory Hill, and four or five dollars will buy you a clean, comfortable room for the night. If you are willing to spend anything over the ten, you should be staying in comparative luxury. However, as a newcomer I didn’t yet know the value-for-money pads around town yet, so I bought a can of sprite and a toothbrush and some toothpaste from a little store nearby and simply staggered into the closest flop-house to where my night had finally ended. After someone with blurred features showed me to my room I undressed, had a wash and fell onto the lumpy bed and into a contented sleep; the depth of which only sixteen glasses of Angkor draft beer can induce.

I awoke early in the half-light of the early morning in a strange guesthouse in downtown Sihanoukville with an horrendous, pounding hangover. The pulse in my head was pounding like a jack-hammer and my mouth tasted like shit. I had intended to rise early and take a look at the beaches on Ron’s list. Narith had assured me they were only about five minutes from the downtown area, but the state I was in compelled me to turn over, pull the less-than-clean bedsheet back around me again and try to get back to sleep.

Just as I was about to return to the land of nod, I remembered how I had poured out a glass of sprite the night before and placed it on the floor by the side of the bed in anticipation of waking up with a dried out tongue. I mentally congratulated myself on my foresight and reached for the drink. My trembling hand closed around the glass and I picked it up. I sat up in bed and drank as deeply as I could, intending to get as much of the sweet liquid into me as possible in an attempt to wash away the foul taste that had become my mouth. After a couple of gigantic gulps, I realized something wasn’t quite right. I snapped on the light above the bed and took a closer look. My glass of sprite was swimming with drowned ants that had fallen into the glass and met their doom attempting to sample the sugary soda. I leapt out of bed in disgust and rushed to the manky bathroom to wash my mouth out with the none-too-hygenic water that trickled into the cracked basin from a corroded tap.

“Oh well,” I thought, always the optimist. At least I was up in time for the beaches.

Looking around me, I realised that the room I had chosen was grotty even by my standards. The cramped cubicle looked and smelled musty and damp, the walls and the floor were extremely grubby and the stains on the bed I lay on didn’t bear thinking about. During the night, it appeared that an extremely large cockroach had decided to become my sleeping partner—a decision that had proved to be the amorous insect’s demise. At sometime, I had obviously rolled on top of my beetle-bedmate and I threw the resulting mixture of flat roach and miniature intestines through the rusty, cell-like bars of the tiny window in disgust. The other wildlife in the dim, grimy room consisted of a tiny bat peacefully snoozing upside down in the darkest corner of the ceiling and a giant millipede that happily promenaded along the rotting skirting boards at the bottom of the wall. I resolved to get out of this pet shop as soon as possible, just as soon as the throbbing in my head had subsided to a bearable level.

My self-induced brain-ache was not helped at all by the clanking and whirring of a huge, corroded fan that wobbled alarmingly in the centre of the cracked plaster ceiling looking like the rotor blades of an old wartime Huey helicopter and sounding just as loud in my delicate state. The fan put me in mind of the opening scene of ‘Apocalypse Now’. After I had washed all the dead ants out of my mouth, I returned to the bed and propped up a flat, tired pillow that looked as if it hadn’t been washed since the fall of Phnom Penh. I stretched myself out on the discoloured, greying bedsheet intending to relax a little and compose myself before entering out into the bright sunlight and making my way to the beaches on the other side of town.

In one corner of the Wormwood Scrubs-like room, next to a tiny bathroom that contained an evil-smelling hole in the floor that served as a squat toilet, stood an old-fashioned iron clothes stand with protruding hooks. I was very surprised to see a pair of wrinkled black socks dangling forlornly from a couple of the rust-spotted hangers on the rack.

“Why would anyone leave those here?” I wondered idly to myself.

Then I sat up in a flash of panic and dismay as I remembered at once what I had done in my inebriated state the night before.

Not really trusting the look of the flimsy, plywood safety box back at the Crazy Monkey guesthouse on Victory Hill, I had taken to secreting all my dosh in a small, waterproof plastic envelope which I hid, rather cleverly (or so I thought) in one of my socks. Cash thus stashed, I could then venture out into the Sihanoukville night with only the money required for the evening’s carousing in my pocket, secure in the knowledge that the main bulk of my wedge was out of the way of any potential pickpockets or scammers. This ploy generally worked very well. However, on that particular night downtown, when I took off my trainers to turn in, I was appalled by the strong, cheesy smell that arose from my damp, sweaty socks.

Well, I consoled myself, it was understandable that my feet smelled so bad. I had done an awful lot of walking around the various bars scattered around town during my hunt for Psorng-Preng.

Not wishing to subject the unsuspecting holidaymakers on Occheuteal and Serendipity beaches to the putrid pong of my plates of meat, I decided—in a moment of drunken industriousness—to wash out the offending items of footwear and dry them on the iron hanger in order to have a clean pair of socks to put on in the morning.

Pissed as a newt, I had, of course, forgotten that one of the socks still held all my wordly possessions.

At least the fright induced seemed to work as a cure for my hangover. Thumping cranium forgotten at once, I leapt out of bed with mounting fear and felt first inside one sock and then the other. No plastic envelope.

I flung myself on all fours and scrabbled about frantically in the dust under the bed and felt all around the greasy linoleum floor. Still no plastic envelope.

I rushed into the dirty little washroom and fell to my knees as if the Virgin Mary had appeared in front of me, then desperately searched around the slimy green tiles. Definitely no plastic envelope.

Expecting the worst, I climbed to my feet and peered into the cracked washbasin I had washed my socks in the night before. Unquestionably, no plastic envelope.

Just a scummy drainage hole with the metal guard missing from its large opening; certainly big enough for a small plastic wallet containing six hundred bucks to fall into and be washed away without a trace forever.

I sat on edge of the bed with my head cradled in my hands, wondering how I was going to survive in Sihanoukville without any money at all. All of a sudden, I started to miss Pattaya very much. I had no friends in Cambodia to borrow from. I possessed no credit card and I had nothing to sell to raise money except a battered Seiko watch worth about five bucks. There would no help from the British Consul simply because there wasn’t one here. In short, I was screwed.

I hopefully checked the pockets of my jeans and withdrew a couple of one thousand Riel notes. At the going exchange rate, this meant I had about fifty American Cents to my name and I hadn’t even paid for the room yet. It was beginning to look as though I was destined to join the ranks of beggars that plied their trade around the town and slept in the doorways and streets—at least until I could persuade someone to lend me enough money to get back over the border.

I knew that finding someone to help me out would be a major task in itself. In a continent full of tricksters and con-men—both
farang
and Asian—I doubted anybody was going to believe I was not just a scammer and really had been dumb enough to wash six hundred bucks down a plug hole whilst pissed. I began to mentally prepare myself for a very unpleasant stay in Sihanoukville, indeed. So much for old Ron’s mission and visa run.

Staring at the offending washbasin that had stolen my funds, I saw something that gave me just a glimmer of hope. The drainage pipe that led from the bottom of the basin was of the type that bent downwards and then up again in a U-shape before disappearing into the mildewed wall. Clutching at straws, I wondered if it was within the realms of possibility that my plastic envelope could have become lodged in the bend of the pipe. There was nothing else for it. I took hold of the scaly drainage pipe with two hands and ripped it from the crumbling plaster of the wall. The wall was so damp the pipe pulled out of the plaster like a hot knife from butter. Luckily, the plumbing system was prehistoric—the eight inch pipe simply discharged its contents into a larger open channel that was hidden behind the wall.

With shaking hands, I fashioned a wire coathanger into a makeshift probe. I gently worked the wire down the plug-hole and into the filthy pipe. I carefully pushed and coaxed the probe through the twists and turns in the lead tube, all the time silently praying for a minor miracle. My wilted spirits lifted a little when I felt my hastily constructed tool come up against an obstruction in the bend.

With my heart in my mouth, I wiggled and prodded at the blockage carefully, my eyes fixed on the end of the pipe with a hopeful, manic stare.

Eventually, something black and disgusting emerged from the slimy aperture and fell onto the floor in front of me. I knew this was my last chance and I hardly dared to look.

Yes! I sighed with a relief that was almost orgasmic and sat down on the dirty, cracked tiles, nearly overwhelmed by sheer happiness. I was so overcome by emotion, I had to wipe away the tears of joy that filled my eyes.

A dead cockroach, two ancient condoms and a little waterproof plastic wallet lay in a small, glutinous pile of sludge on the soiled floor in front of me.

I gingerly picked up the deceased insect and the mouldering contraceptives with the end of the coathanger and threw them into the toilet. Then, I lovingly rinsed the filth from my plastic envelope under the tap. What a stroke of luck! Everything was intact.

At some time in our lives most of us have awoken from a vivid, bad dream with an overwhelming sense of relief that everything is still as it should be. Still half-asleep, we then snuggle down into the comfort of our warm beds and congratulate ourselves bashfully that we still possess our genitals and the wife has not run off with Robbie Williams, after all. Nor have we mistakenly gone to work naked—and Ronnie and Reggie Kray are not after us with shotguns for an imagined insult at all. No, everything was just a preposterous nightmare and the delusions that caused us so much terror in the darkness of the night seem completely ridiculous in the bright, welcoming light of the morning.

In that dirty little Sihanoukville guesthouse my own relief was even more palpable because I knew I wasn’t dreaming. The awful, mounting sense of panic I felt at being stranded penniless in one of the world’s poorest countries hadn’t been a nightmare at all, but had been for real. I had known all along that I wasn’t going to escape from that one by waking up.