I couldn't believe it when we seen the beach. Nearly the entire beach had tables and chairs set up for supper. We hadn't eaten in about 5 hours so we found a nice place to eat. All the chairs at the restaurant were those big cushion lounge chairs. I've never been anywhere before that had so many of them. The beach must have had a few hundred. I honestly can't remember exactly what we had that night, but I'm sure that it probably cost no more than $5 including a drink each. Sweet deal, but not the best around.
We decided to have a few more drinks, so we stopped at small shack/bar. Two of the bartenders were Canadians, and they were only 19 and 20 years old. They were backpacking across Southeast Asia and stopped in Sihanoukville and were offered a room, food, drinks and some money in exchange for working at the bar. Pretty sweet deal. An even better deal though was the 25 cent draft beer they had. Kristin and I talked to the workers for a couple hours and our bill ended up being about $3. Some of the restaurants had fire shows at night which was pretty cool, but also scary because many of the performers looked about 12 years old and were in need of practice.
We didn't do a whole lot in Sihanoukville besides laze around on the beach, eat and drink. During the day time, all the restaurants set up padded beach chairs all along the beach. Provided you bought something from their restaurant, you could use their chairs all day long. At night time, the beach chairs were changed for the dinner service. The best deal on the beach was the BBQ. For $3, you got fries, salad, garlic bread and a choice of chicken, beef, shrimp, squid, prawns or swordfish. Couldn't go wrong with that price.
Cambodia is extremely poor and as a result you see a lot of children selling things on the beach, as well as beggars. We were able to get along with most of the children selling things, because they were easy going and always made a few jokes (despite English not being their first language) but some of the beggars were annoying. It's one thing to sell something in exchange for money, but to just wander the beach and bother people by asking for money is something else. The kids sold things like books, bracelet's, fresh fruit and scarves. All for dirt cheap too. We bought some bracelet's, not because I wanted them (I never seem to wear them except on vacation) but more just to give the kids some money. We also bought fresh fruit, which a 12 year old girl chopped up in her hands for us. We got hooked on mango's, and searched for them every day after this.
After buying three bracelet's from the two in the video, I was approached the next day by another kid. I told him I didn't want anymore bracelet's, because I had already bought a bunch. Showing some wonderful business skills, the boy made me an offer I could hardly refuse. We play tic-tac-toe. If I win, I get the bracelet for free, if he wins, then I have to buy one bracelet. In our best of three series, he won the first game with ease, and then we tied the second. In the next one, I got first go, and on my second go the boy told me that if I didn't put my X in a specific spot, I would lose. Feeling that he's messing with me, I ignore his advice and quickly lose. Now I've got three bracelet's that I'll probably never wear again.
The weather was perfect the entire time. It was probably about 35 every day and sunny, and believe it or not, I never got sunburned. This was my first vacation that I never got sunburned. It may have something to do with wearing SPF 45 the whole time, but my skin didn't turn red. It also didn't turn brown or any other shade than white. I have accepted the fact that my skin isn't meant to tan, only burn or stay white. It's a sad reality but one I have come to accept.
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