S

ihanoukville

 

August 30 - September 9, 2001






Cambodian flag




 
 

We had heard from several people about Sihanoukville, not least Jan's brother Dave and his wife Jhap who had spent some time here just days before our arrival. We took their advice and checking into the Orchid Beach Hotel, which in spite of its name was not on the beach. It was, however, a quiet, clean, and comfortable hotel with cable TV, a fine breakfast, and more importantly, a balcony to eat the breakfast on.

We settled down for a week stay, doing very little before lunch and spending the cooler hours of the afternoon at the beach, swimming and snoozing, and serving as fodder for the sand-flies.

On our second day in town, we wandered over to a nearby restaurant for lunch and as is her wont, Jan immediately went to the toilet. The entire place was covered with white ceramic tile and the throne was set on a rather high platform, also covered with tile. As Jan stepped down from the platform to the floor, she lost her footing on the wet tile, fell back and hit her back on the sharp edge of the platform, and in so doing wrenched her arm and one of the fingers on her right hand. As she fell, she let out a loud yell that brought Gerry and the restaurant owner to her rescue, which was complicated by the locked door of the toilet. Ultimately, however, she was rescued and having eaten her lunch, made it safely back to the hotel just in advance of a major thunderstorm. Not a good day to go to the beach.

The next day, her back pain had disappeared and the arm was healing too, but she was worried about her finger which was swollen and painful. What if it was broken? What should she do? Gerry had bandaged it up for her, but agreed that perhaps we should go to a pharmacist and get a splint as all movement caused such pain. The pharmacist, who spoke a little English said he thought it was just a sprain but offered to get it x-rayed if we wanted. We said yes, and he made some phone calls then took us to the city hospital where we learned that the radiologist, his good friend, was coming specially to see us. Not only did the radiologist get called out specially, but the machine itself was started up just for us.

The x-ray showed no broken bone and the doctor and the pharmacist both said that it was not a good idea to immobilize it, that pain-killers would help, but otherwise one just had to wait. Jan was reassured, we had met some very nice Cambodians, and we had put some welcome money into the local economy so all of us were very happy. The finger sprain took an awful long time to heal, but heal it did.

We made a couple of excursions during our stay. For both of them we rented a small motor bike which Gerry drove and I rode as pillion passenger. One was just to explore the other parts of Sihanoukville, which is made up of two or three major beaches. We were pleased to find that the others were in no way preferable to ours and no hotel offered a much better deal.

Our second excursion was to visit a national park that was just along the coast. We went mostly just for the ride which was just as well because we could find no sign of the park. But riding a bike is a great way to keep cool and we did get to see some of the outskirts of Sihanoukville for our pain.

But finally it came time to leave. We wanted to go back to Thailand and had heard there was a boat along the coast of the Gulf of Thailand to the border town of Khao Kong. Having confirmed the information and bought our tickets, there was nothing left but the ride in the torpedo boat from HELL.




last updated February 17, 2005