too old for dreads

We’re back on the mainland and on the Cambodian coast at a place rather unglamorously called Otres 2 – which sounds a bit like a Moscow suburb pre-Perestroika. It’s a very odd place.  

Tourism here is much as I’ve always imagined it was in The Gambia when that became popular in the ’80s; hotels full of westerners surrounded by poverty and scrub land. Maybe in five or 10 years time this whole strip of beach will have been developed and there will be huge hotels all along the coast. The betting round these parts is that when it happens it will be with Chinese money. Then it’ll be full of Chinese tourists singing their appalling karaoke every night. We had the misfortune of being next door to a Chinese hotel in Battambang and can tell you that no-one was able to hold a note. But my money is on the Russians – there’s clearly quite a network here. 

We’ve just watched an altercation between the guys running this hotel (mainly Russian I think) and their next door neighbour who was complaining about mess and waste on his land from this hotel. We stayed very quiet and realised that the ‘strip’ of hotels along the beach hangs together by a thread – and that the Russians aren’t to be crossed. 

Right now Otres is a curious mix of backpackers (they’re firmly kept on Otres 1) and Brits / French / Germans / Russians on package holidays on Otres 2 along with a smattering of Chinese the wrong side of 20 cans of Angkor Beer. Oh, and us. 

The dividing line is somewhat indistinct. We think it’s where the jelly-fish rather helpfully gather in the sea. It’s also the point where the guest houses and hotels suffer from an identity crisis; are they for backpackers, flashpackers (a new term we’ve learned) or package tourists? It’s at one of these places that two German girls we met yesterday felt they had to report what they thought might be child sex trafficking. The manager of the hotel just shrugged his shoulders and they were left with the impression that they’d either misunderstood what they saw … or that it was a common occurrence. 

Like other tourist coastal strips in developing countries, the sea and beach are lovely – said by the hoteliers here to be the 9th best beach in Asia (as voted by hoteliers in this part of Cambodia?). The sea is bath temperature and the beach is clean. 

But stray off the coastal strip (which is no more than 200m deep) and you’re reminded where you are. This is a really poor area of Sihanoukville and there’s really just scrub, wasteland and poverty around here. 

There are aspirational signs showing what it will be like at some point in the future but otherwise, nothing. 

Apart from our washing. 

They say not to air your dirty laundry in public so imagine how surprised we were to spot our clothes hanging out to dry on the roadside. That’s what the hotel does with your stuff when they say ‘Inhouse laundry service’ then. 

We started the day with yoga on the beach – which was excellent (and surprisingly exhausting in the early morning heat). Think we’ll end the day with some Tai Chi. And while we do that and the gentle jazz music plays in the hotel, real Cambodian life continues just 200m away. 

Well at least we’re all bringing a load of tourist dollars to the area. Interestingly everywhere in Cambodia deals first in US $ and then uses the local Riel notes as small change meaning there are no fiddly coins and lots of hard currency in circulation. 

I hope the people who look like they’re here on a package tour (western ladies wearing long dresses in the evening) get to see some of this amazing country. It would be awful to think they go no further than here. What a waste that would be. 

Next stop for us is Phnom Penh. We’re getting the bus from here and we’ll be thrown right back in to the mayhem of a big city (population of c.2.5m). Some love it, many hate it but all go to find out more about the history of the Khmer Rouge (or torture tourism as it’s sometimes referred to). 

According to people we’ve met along the way we need to schedule something ‘nice and upbeat’ after going to S21 – which is the prison and torture chamber used by Pol Pot and which was a school before being taken over by the regime. 

It’s all a world away from this little  200m bubble. Got to go, it’s time for our next exercise class on the beach …