The JaYmes Escape

I’m carrying my bags across the mud; to my left is an area strewn with rubbish buzzing with insects. Further on a group of Buddhist monks in bright orange robes are eating at a Khmer ‘restaurant’; a hut with plastic tables and chairs arranged on a wooden floor and hot vats of rice, noodles and various meat dishes. Straight ahead is the water; fresh green plants are being unloaded from a ship that looks like a floating pile of twisted steel. Alongside a boy of about 6 or 7 squats naked, playing in the dirt.

This is the port of Sihanoukville, on the Cambodian coast, where most goods enter or leave the country. It is a pleasant, if slightly edgy, seaside resort town which has glorious white beaches with thatched beach bars where rich Khmers and western tourists play side by side. Peter had hooked me up with his friend Panner, who gave me a full tour of town, out to a pleasant waterfall, and to cheap and delightful Khmer restaurants without even an English menu.

I show my passport to a man in uniform and walk down a dilapidated wooden pier. I have to watch my step to avoid losing a foot between the wooden boards. I reach the boat; a shabby flat-bottomed river vessel that could have plied tourists around the canals of Amsterdam or Venice 40 years ago, and heave my large bag towards the man on the roof where it will be strapped down under a tarpaulin. I am about to travel up the coast on what local ex-pats call the ‘vomit comet’; an express river boat tossed around on the open sea. As I take my seat the men inspecting tickets hand out sick bags; I take a deep breath as this is clearly going to be the final descent of my Cambodian roller-coaster ride.

After four stomach-churning hours of being bounced around on the waves we arrive at Koh Kong, close to the Thai border. I have not used the sick bag, but am informed that the sea was quite calm today; my belly shudders at the thought of what it must be like in the rough. Some negotiation and I’m bundled with my bags and some fellow tourists onto the back of a pick-up truck making the final 10 minute journey to the border.

Predictably, coils of razor wire mark the end of one country and the beginning of another. On the Cambodian side beggars, some with missing limbs, roam waving their hats like zombies, and smiling Khmer children try to sell me large boxes of cigarettes, presumably cheaper on this side, and offer me this many or that many Thai Baht for my Riel or Dollars. A few steps past the wire and a couple of keen eyed Thai soldiers, a certain orderly calm replaces the anarchy. The road widens again becoming clean black tarmac with neatly painted lines and an arrow indicating to the few arriving vehicles that they should move to the left rather than the right. There is even a cashpoint next to the neat row of air-conditioned minbuses waiting to take me to the town of Trat where I will stay the night.

As Cambodia disappears behind me I realise that this particular ride is over; I have arrived in a place which more closely resembles my expectations of ‘civilisation’.