noodle quest 2006

mmmmmmmmm shellfish. on this beach women walk by with portable grils with fresh squid sizzling and platters of fried lobsters piled high. 2 grilled squid kabobs cost 40 cents and 5 small lobsters cost 1$. It reminds me a lot of some of the beaches i went to in northern brazil with the constant food parade passing by.
the bus to sihanoukville was minorly horendous. jess and i both felt sick. jess had the diah and i had bird flu so traveling was not that fun.
it’s not that i really think i have bird flu but i do have a bit of an upper respitory infection (cough, etc.) and i have panick attacks every time i eat eggs. I am 99.999999999% sure that you can’t get bird flu from eating bird stuffs, only from touch bird juices (i.e. saliva, bird piss)… can anyone confirm or deny this allegation? I really need to know. I think I am going to e-mail my helpul nurse friend Scott Newman at travel medical services in New York.
So anyway the bus was long, hot and bumpy with a handful of crying naked babies and some devil worshipper listening to every single ring on their cell phone in full and on repeat. I yelled pleeeeeeeeeeease in khmer (“som”) but i don’t know how to say; “stop playing with that damn cell phone” in khmer so maybe everyone just thought i was having a compelling religious experience in transit. The bus rolled on for about 6 hours and we pulled into Sihanoukville after dark. we were swarmed by moto drivers repping their respective hotels. we threw our fate to the salty winds and went with two drivers to the GST guesthouse which is very nice, little bungalows across from the beach with fans, showers, and very clean for 6$ a night. there are better bargains around (i.e. free rooms on th ebeach at the beach restuarants where all you have to do in exchange for lodging is eat some food at the restaurant) but we are happy where we are. Also, we are desperately afraid of the dog-sized rats and do not have confidence that the wimpy mosquito nets at these places could keep them out.
thinking about my room at home feels like such a fantasy. how could i be so lucky to have such a nice bed and so much nice stuff all around. picturing it feels like such a decadent dream (ir)reality. yesterday we ate at the hotel (mmmmmmm very good mushroom and bean curd soup and good salad) and then watched three consequtive movies on hbo in our room until the early morning hours. the next day we hung out at the beach talking to all the kids who were pretty aggresively trying to send us stuff and talking with these dudes from northern cali who were lodging (for free) at the restaurant we were sitting in front of. we had lunch there. i had grilled shrimp with a salad with pepper and lemon sauce all over it. it was pretty good. then we took a walk down the beach and looked at some free lodging places. then we walked the other direction to a restuarant called “the endless summer beach club”which is run by a dude from san diego and a british dude. we ate some nasty burritos there, watched some family guy episodes and ran into some kids we knew from phnom penh. then we decided to rev up our party engines and we drank some mojitos and a bucket (yes literally) of some mixed drink. after that we went to the beach with some british friends we met a long the way. jess and some friends went for a midnight swim (jess quotes it as one of her all-time midnight swims- perfect water tempertaure, waves, etc.) and i went to a party further down on the beach where i met a bunch of nice israeli guys, a girl from barcelona, and this crazy cambodian guy who was performing hilarous dances for everyone. then sleep and now beach. jess made it out to the beach a bunch of hours before i will- which can easily be attributed to the last VERY unnecesray round of beers i participated in. ugh. i go beach now. bye bye!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2005 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.