Happier times on our little deserted island beach. We taught the kids how to play peaknuckle
It’s been odd visiting Cambodia. In just a few weeks we’ve gone from visiting one of the former greatest civilizations on Earth to the most shameful place on the planet and now I find myself looking at the horrific results of a poor country’s attempt to cash in on tourism all in an area of land less than half the size of Germany. Sihanoukville is on the south west coast of the country and looks out onto the Gulf of Thailand. It’s been known as a beach resort since the 50’s, so I wasn’t expecting a deserted Paradise, but arriving in town I was shocked to find that a taxi to Serendipity beach – just 3km away - was going to cost us $20 US. When we told the drivers we’d walk, we were approached further down the road by one who took us for $8.
On arrival we found café after café after café – all the way down the beach. The beach itself was lovely. Quite wide, golden yellow sand and waves that could be played in but not so big as to scare me away from going swimming. (I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to big waves). The problem was you had to strain to see it. Almost every inch of sand was covered by deck chairs and sun loungers. I was so disappointed – and also saddened – because there were barely any tourists there. I can only assume there had been a bit of a boom when Cambodia was really trendy 8 years ago and now the sun-loungers en masse had scared all the back packers away. There certainly was no sign of any of the package tourists that flocked Angkor Wat.
Wherever we went we were approached by really cute kids who begged you to buy their fruit. At $2.50 a bag it wasn’t something we could oblige them with too often. They’d beg you to promise them that you’d buy some the next day. One child started crying and shouting at me because I bought some fruit from another girl. He said I’d purposely not bought it from him because he was a boy! I didn’t know what to say to him. In Thailand that same bag of fruit costs 10 Bhat – about 20 US Cents. It was a horrible moment, you know that you are being completely taken for a ride with the prices – $2.50 is about 100 times more than the correct price, so you don’t want to let them get away with it, but here was this kid crying on me. Since I already had a bag of fruit in my hand which I had bought really reluctantly anyway, I told him to come to find me the next day.
I feel it’s totally wrong to be worrying about paying $2.50 for something I don’t need or want and I hate the guilty feelings I keep getting time and time again. These kids see us as millionaires – which compared to them we are. But at the moment our money is running out so fast that I’m really worried we are going to have to cut the trip short and won’t get to see India at all. I keep trying to remind myself of that and tell myself to toughen up a bit with the kids, but then I can’t help the little voice that keeps saying ‘oh poor darling, you’ve been half way around the planet having an absolute ball spending cash that most people here could only dream of and now you don’t want to give this kid $3 because you might have to cut your holiday short.’ I told that kid what time we were leaving the next day and told him to make sure he was there so I could buy some damn fruit from him. I wanted to try to teach him that he wasn’t going to make a good businessman by having tantrums on his customers. I even waited around. He never came.
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