I was watching a whole flock of young kids play naked in the dust in Siem Reap. Tumbling around with just the occasional bit of clothing, shrieking in the sunshine, it was like a perfect moment of childhood. And it made me realize that that isn't something I see too much anymore. I can't even recall seeing my family's kids nekkid (bar the extremely rare diaper change by this itinerant great-auntie) never mind a stranger's.
Children, and their exploitation are a big, big issue in Cambodia. Hey, whenever I thought of the place prior to coming here, my associations went like this: Angkor Wat. Pol Pot. Paedophiles (Gary Glitter). And there is no doubt it's a huge, huge problem here.
But I am happy to say that the government is starting to make some moves...Hotels are listed as 'Child Safe' - no one under 16 can stay in a hotel unless they are accompanied by an adult with passports proving they are family. And any hotel caught with an under-age kid onsite loses their licence to host foreigners (by far the most lucrative side of any hotel trade)..
Koh Kong remains the biggest paedophile hangout in the world - but publicity and the new fancy Thai-Cambodian highway running right through it with bus after bus of far more savoury and bigger spending 'normal' tourists is shining one hell of a big spotlight on the place.
Posters and handouts and rewards for reporting perverts and hotel programs and street kid hostels and education and awareness and so on, it's really good to see. But I do recall spending an awful lot of time bare assed as a kid, and I am sad that that's not cool anymore. I wish kids everywhere could run around nekkid, and be safe, cause that is really, really cool to see..
After the bright lights of the big city of Phnom Pehn, we decided to explore the south coast a bit. I had always heard so-so reports on the beaches and coast of Cambodia (that they were dirty, urban or non-existent) so I was really not expecting much - especially after the disappointment of the hyped Vietnam beach scene.
Wild things began to happen immediately.
Firstly, the four hour, highly entertaining bus ride gave us our first good luck at rural Cambodia. Dusty. Far quieter with less people than anywhere I have been lately, bar Saskatchewan. Or maybe Mongolia. But certainly beautiful and quiet.
Good-natured people, who don't barge on the bus - the seats are numbered! - and no one grumbles when we all have to troop off as the bus needed to cross a rickety board bridge that wouldn't have taken all our combined weight. All very amenable and pleasant, and the drivers didn't mind dropping us off at an unscheduled stop closer to the scattering of hotels in Kep.
Travelling and buses being the way they are in Cambodia, we got to the town of Kep in late afternoon on a Saturday and after real difficulty got an overpriced cold water hovel and went to stroll the town. The Ghost Town. It was just bloody eerie. Considering that every hotel was booked solid (and there were a lot of hotels) you didn't see a soul out and about - everyone comes down from Phnom Pehn, checks in to the hotel and just parks themselves.
Stumbling around in the dark, we eventually made our way to the charming Riel Bar, with a great south african born German owner named Marcel, who we hit it off with instantly. He had draft beer for sale. And he was a sound engineer for bad old bands I knew from the bad old days, eg. Siouxsie and the Banshees. Then it got even weirder when he played the Butthole Surfers and I said, hey! I used the know the tuba player for this band! I used to go-go dance for them! and he came back astonished, with the names that Trevor Malcolm - the tuba player in question - had been sitting in my chair not three weeks before. Okay, so that bent my mind. A lot.
Kep is an old resort, once the playground of the rich and infamous of Cambodia prior to all the troubles in the 1970s, so the place is peppered with crumbling old mansions and derelict buildings with huge overgrown gardens and broken walls. Usually with someone camped in the ruins, using them as at least some minor shelter. My first impresson of it as a ghost town was bang on, methinks.
We wandered around, gawped at old ruins, ate at the local crab shacks, which was stupid cheap and stupidly mindblowingly delicious and well, that was about it, really. The beach was really shite, really really shite, so I can see where the reports come from.
So we were really ready to kick on to Rabbit Island - Koh Tonsay in Khmer - a place that Chris had picked out on the map months before when he was looking over maps in China. And what a special little find it was indeed.
It was rustic to the point of almost being cartoon-like. We had a teeny bamboo bungalow on stilts, with a mattress, a light that worked from 6 - 9pm and a pink mosquito net. The shower was a big barrel of water with a dipper and the toilet was just a potty with another dipper. Oh, and a fantastic beach pretty much to ourselves after the day trippers left at 3pm.
lt was quiet and calm (except for the fukken roosters at 5 am) and we spent days simply lying around reading on the large beach. There were six or seven little bungalow groupings, each with a restaurant, with the usual Cambodian restaurant fare - rice, noodles, etc, but with the most amazing, organic shrimp, crab, squid and fish, dragged in from the sea right in front of us. Oh, and we discovered the joys of absolutely delicious deep fried eggs...
And the thing that really got my mind blown even more was lying in the sun one day and hearing...Sheila? C'est vous, la?? and looking up to see....Pascale and Matt! our lost little friends last seen in the Gobi Desert! wow!! So we had our little buddies with us for the rest of their stay, as well as making many new friends, too. It was a really special time all round, and we ended up staying there for almost three weeks!
Meanwhile, Marcel tells us the island has been sold to a foreign - owned developer with plans to open a casino on the island. Each of the families is getting $8000 - the only delay is they want to build a bridge from the mainland (why not just build on the mainland?) and the environmental lobby are creating a stink about it. Which really means, a bigger kickback needs to be made.
After the incredibleness of Angkor Wat, of which more later, we did our re-run of South Cambodia - having decided to swing south into Thailand - but in somewhat of a hurry as our visas were running out, again! Cambodia seems to entice me to stay and linger....
Bus through dusty villages with smiley wavey people back to Phnom Pehn. Which is starting to feel like home, already. Since we got the patter down by now - where to stay, eat, get tickets and so forth - it's all so effortless. And the next day it's back on the entertaining bus to Kep. With no glitches at all, and even taking the time to help other tourists, we are suddenly back on Rabbit Island.
In retrospect, this was probably a bad move.
Not only did we go back to a really special place that had really special synchronicity and magic - especially the incredible coincidence of seeing Matt and Pascale, and of course the fact that the water is full of phosporesence - but we bloody arrived on a Saturday morning on the biggest holiday of the year, Chinese New Year.
We barely got a hovel, the beach was awash with garbage (the Cambodians are really not too into recycling or picking up litter) and it was just all round nasty. In a mere ten weeks since we had last been, there were many new huts, new workers and none of the usual island families around. The horror!
I was intrigued to see the local fishermen had to put numbers on their boats, and now had to supply life jackets to the tourists that they formerly just tucked into their empty skiff next to the boxes of food and beer they were taking over anyways. And I bet they are none too happy by the pier built by an off-islander who put it up to bring big yachts in. and on the mainland, construction of a big parking lot for tourist buses to load up at the pier is well under way. This is all to go to a tiny island with a beach about 500metres long. Wow, are they going to be overrun.
So, I had a big crisis. Our little hideaway desert island is 'found'. When I meet the b*****d from the Guardian who wrote a glowing article about Rabbit Island, which was then promptly reprinted in the Globe and Mail (Canada) and the New York Times, I think I will have to smack him. Every second person I met quoted that article (grrr).
But then, you know, I grew up without running water in my very early youth. And it was great when we got it. So if all this means that the islanders get electricity, and water, and sewage and enough money to maybe send their kids to school, well then good for them. Just because I have some romantic ideal of a castaway island (but not 'too' castaway, you understand, one needs beer to be cold, after all), does this mean places like Rabbit Island should stay undeveloped? Nah, probably not. Good for them.
But still...for me, I will try to remember the first trip...
