Visa Run - Pattaya to Sihanoukville (6 page)

We drove down another narrow, pot-holed pathway and pulled up on a flattened area of earth where four dirt-tracks met. Later on I learned this spot was the main drag and meeting point in Victory Hill, but on my arrival, it looked about as lively as a bunch of farm tracks back in rural Devon. I gave the driver his two bucks and he parked up and went to sleep in a hammock slung between two nearby trees; his work for the day obviously done. I shouldered my bag and set off to look for a suitable HQ in the form of a guesthouse or a cheap hotel.

Joe Bucket had arrived in Sihanoukville.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

My first impression of Victory Hill was that the town was so tiny you could have smoked a spliff without finishing it whilst walking all the way around, and judging by the smiling, vacant expressions of some of the people there and the haze of marijuana smoke that drifted out from several open doorways and windows, plenty of the residents of the diminutive resort were doing just that. After Pattaya, ‘The Hill’ seemed little more than a quiet hamlet and I could see at once why Ron thought I might be able to locate Psorng-Preng in such a tiny area; there were so few people living here that I felt everyone must surely know each other. Despite its Lilliputian proportions, as I walked around hunting for accomodation, I began to feel the place did possess a certain rustic charm. Due to my experiences at the border during visa runs I was anticipating being trampled by a stampede of beggars and touts on my arrival, but to my surprise, nothing of the sort happened. In fact, nobody seemed very interested in Joe Bucket at all. I walked past a handful of intriguing little bars with names like the Crazy Rabbit, the Boom Boom Room, Bonobo’s and the Shark and I began to look forward to the coming night’s entertainment with the first real twinges of excitement since I had left Pattaya.

It soon became clear that Victory Hill was even smaller than I had first thought. In fact the town—if you could call it a town—consisted of little more than three dirt roads in the middle of nowhere that were lined with an assortment of ramshackle bars, guesthouses and restaurants. There was one bigger hotel—The Marina—hiding around the corner but I didn’t find it until I had already checked into the Crazy Monkey guesthouse. I chose the Crazy Monkey simply because there were two pretty Cambodian girls washing clothes in large plastic bowls in the yard outside. The two attractive sisters smiled at me as I walked past and I couldn’t help noticing how their T-shirts were splashed with water and pulled tight across their young breasts. So that was Joe Bucket’s accomodation sorted. Later on I noticed how the Mother of the two girls stationed her daughters outside the guesthouse with the washing every day just before the tourist boat from Koh Kong came in. In this way the girls provided an advertisement for the Crazy Monkey that was far more alluring than any attractive lobby or flashing neon sign.

The Crazy Monkey seemed a bargain to me at four bucks a night. Admittedly, my new room was pretty basic—although very clean—and it was situated next to two other identical rooms. The doors of the three rooms were in a larger living room where there was a sofa and a TV that the friendly woman owner said I was welcome to use. She told me without a trace of embarrassment that her name was Srey-Leak, which means ‘perfect girl.’ This was the first indication I had that all Cambodian names actually mean something, and it was uncanny how often these quaint connotations suited their owners. After that, during my stay in Cambodia I always made a point of asking what anyone’s given name meant.

Entry to the communal living room was gained through a heavy metal door with a see-through iron grill that looked out onto the yard where the two girls were busy at their washing. Srey-Leak gave me a key to fit both doors and told me I was welcome to come and go as I pleased. She asked me to make sure I always locked the metal door behind me though, because the guest in the other room was very security conscious. The two daughters—Chantavy and Chavy (‘beautiful moon girl’ and ‘little angel’)—shared the third room and always the optimist, I felt that might have definite possibilities. I splashed around for a while under a tepid shower that was heated by nothing more than sunlight, then unpacked and set out to explore Victory Hill and find something decent to eat.

When I came out of my room my next-door-neighbour was sitting on the sofa watching the National Geographic channel on TV. He was around forty years old and had a studious look about him and his eyes blinked at me, owl-like, from behind a pair of spectacles with lenses as thick as the bottom of a bottle of Tiger beer. He was watching a documentary about the reptile and amphibian life of South America and taking notes in a little book as he did so. In my mind, I immediately nicknamed him ‘The Professor.’

It seemed The Professor was not too delighted he had acquired a rough-looking, tattooed room-mate and when he discovered I was a Pattaya resident he was even less thrilled. This initial meeting was the first inkling I had of the difficulty I was going to find in keeping a straight face at the many weird and wonderful turns of phrase that littered the conversation of the bookish Anglo-Indian naturalist whenever I spoke to him—and it didn’t help my case when I heard his voice and accent sounded very much like a comical parody of some ridiculous Indian character.

“Oh, my goodness! Surely you don’t live in Pattaya!” The Professor said, waving his hands around like Al Jolson and dropping his notes on the mating habits of the Surinam Toad on the floor in horror. “What a den of antiquity! Wild women wouldn’t drag me there!” When The Professor discovered I had never visited Cambodia before he immediately began to tell me how dangerous it was in Sihanoukville and how I would do well to return to Thailand at once. At first I couldn’t work out if he genuinely believed that danger lurked around every corner of the little resort or if he was just completely paranoid; or maybe he was simply attempting to scare me off and get the comfortable sofa, the TV and the two pretty neighbours to himself again. In fact, it didn’t take me long to realize it was a combination of all three of these reasons. If it was such a death-trap here, I wondered aloud, what the hell was he doing here at all? The Professor then assured me seriously how he was engaged in extremely important zoological research and told me a little pompously how it was sometimes necessary for guys like him to face great danger in the quest for enhanced knowledge.

I told The Professor I was just about to explore the nightlife on The Hill and asked him if he fancied coming for a couple of sherbets later, but he shook his head firmly in consternation.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said. “The bars are all run by gangsters and The Hill is full of twenty-dollar prostitutes and people getting drunk on cheap beer and smoking whiffs and squiffs.”

Struggling hard to maintain a suitably serious expression I thanked The Professor for his portentious advice and left the Crazy Monkey guesthouse with a spring in my step. I was beginning to realize for the first time that Sihanoukville could possibly be my kind of place after all, and that there was a very good chance I might enjoy myself here despite my previous doubts.

“Be careful,” The Professor warned me darkly as a parting shot with a classic head-wobble as I made my way out through the metal doorway, “let sleeping logs die.”

I was ravenous, but I still couldn’t get the horror stories out of my mind that I had heard from my buddies back in Pattaya about the food in Cambodia. Many of them had assured me there was more dangerous bacteria than protein in Cambodian restaurant dishes, so I was still very wary of eating anything that might do serious damage to my insides. Of course, I knew had to take the plunge eventually, so I chose a small cafe pleasantly situated next to a couple of old-fashioned wooden houses. There were a couple of tables outside the little eatery so I sat at one of them to watch the world go by and hoped for the best.

I took a look at the menu the Cambodian waitress handed me and was surprised to find that instead of the expected rat with rice and dead dog dishes disguised as beef and chicken meals, there was plenty of Western fare to choose from. However, when I saw the giveaway prices, I expected the worst. What the hell sort of fish and chips was a dollar fifty going to buy me? I thought, wondering what the catch was. Rather tentatively I ordered it anyway, anticipating something similar to the unappetizing, spiky little fish the young angler had captured by the pier at Koh Kong to turn up. Whilst I was waiting I sampled the first of many Angkor draft beers and was delighted to find it cool, fresh and tasty. At fifty cents a glass the beer was so cheap as to be almost free by Thai standards, so that was a relief, anyway. At least the amber nectar wasn’t going to be a problem here.

The only traffic in the dirt road outside was a young girl on a bicycle. She was around twelve years old and had emerged from the wooden dwelling next door to take a look at the new bloke in town with the pictures on his arms. She pedalled up and down furiously in front of the restaurant, her legs going like thin brown pistons, and she shot glances at me from under a fringe of jet black hair that blew around her face in the breeze. I think she simply wanted to show the funny-looking
farang
just how well a Cambodian girl could ride a bike. It was a superb evening, and I found it a pleasure to be away from the oppressive traffic that now plagues Pattaya. The only other vehicles I saw pass were a couple of motorcycles and a small garbage truck. The yellow truck stopped here and there and a wiry teenaged boy in a filthy shirt picked up the bags of trash that people had put out and threw them effortlessly into the back of the truck where a set of iron jaws ate them. It was then I realised how surprisingly clean the quiet streets of Victory Hill were.

My meal arrived and I was astonished. Instead of the expected battered sardine I was served a large fillet of fresh white fish in crispy batter together with a mountain of chips, a fried egg and a side salad. As an Englishman, I consider myself an expert on the quality of fish and chips, and there was no doubt this was by far the best I had ever tasted in my life. The batter was firm and golden, the fish was completely boneless and could have been caught that morning and the chips were just perfect. That first meal was the initial clue I had that the
farang
food in Sihanoukville was one of the biggest bargains in the country; outstanding food was so cheap here that even the normally budget-conscious backpackers who travelled in overland from Thailand and Vietnam took advantage of the situation. For once, their money-saving twenty baht rice and noodle dishes were forgotten and the simple restaurants around town were full of hungry travellers tucking into bargain basement meatballs with mashed potatoes, ham and eggs, spaghetti, fish and chips and pasta dishes for the first time in months. Nobody who has ever been to Sihanoukville will deny that the quality of the food in most of the
farang
restaurants is anything other than magnificent, but once again I had allowed my preconceptions to be formed by listening to people who had probably never been any further into the country than the immigration checkpoint at Cham Yeam. Back in the Pattaya bars I’d been assured by many that Cambodia’s food situation was at best dodgy and at worst dangerous; but the truth was—with excellent food and good draft beer as affordable as this—I knew I’d be lucky if I could still get the buttons on my fake Levi’s done up by the time I returned to Thailand.

After I had eaten myself to a standstill I ordered another draft beer and watched the sun sinking over a stand of tall, delicate evergreen trees that rose behind one of the wooden guesthouses. My motodop driver from earlier on happened to walk by and he gave me a friendly wave. I guessed I was going to need a tame motorcycle guy during my stay, and at fifty cents a glass I reckoned I could afford to treat him to a beer and pick his brains about the town a bit. I thought I might show him the photograph Ron had given me as well, so I called him over and he was surprised and pleased when I ordered up a cold one for him.

The muscular motodop driver looked at the snap I handed him and shook his head slowly. He said he had certainly seen Ron before but he didn’t recognize the girl at all. The photograph didn’t seem like much to go on. The old sailor gave us his gappy grin from the glossy paper, one stringy arm around a dark-skinned girl of around twenty-five who was also smiling happily at the camera. She could have been any one of a million girls in Asia, and the fuzzy background of shelves containing bottles and glasses wasn’t any help at all either. I turned the snapshot over and saw that under the words “’Psorng-Preng, Victory Hill, Cambodia,“’ which were printed in a spidery hand, Ron had also written a message on the back of the photograph in the same untidy scrawl.

“Don’t worry too much about finding Psorng-Preng. If you bump into her, that’s great, and if you don’t that’s fine, too. Whatever happens, I’m sure you will enjoy looking, and I have a feeling you will find her. I only wish I could be there in Cambodia with you. Good luck! Ron.”

The old man had also scribbled a list of places in Sihanoukville on the back of the snap which I guessed were likely venues where I might come across Psorng-Preng.

1. Nightspots on Victory Hill

2. Victory Beach

3. Phum Thmei

4. Festival Mansion Casino

5. Ochheteal and Serendipity beaches

6. Blue Mountain

7. Freedom Hotel (The Flea Dome)

8. The Snake Pit

I put the photograph back in my pocket and sighed. The old man’s kind words and instructions were all very well, but I still had the four hundred bucks he had given me in my wallet and I felt obliged to make some sort of an effort. I wished he had given me a bit more to go on. The beer I had bought the motodop driver had disappeared down his neck, so I ordered up another couple of glasses of the icy brew. The strapping Cambodian motodop driver said told me his name was Narith, which means ‘masculine man.’ Looking at his stern, craggy face and bulging muscles, I thought his parents must have been psychic. As we drank together, I persuaded Narith to tell me something about his life.