An Eventful Trip to Sihanoukville

September 21 and 22 were part of the Cambodian holiday of Pchum Ben--the festival of the dead, where Cambodians head to their home provinces and honor their ancestors by bringing food (for their ancestors and the monks) to the temples. Nothing against our ancestors, but we decided to take advantage of the four-day weekend and the fact that our good friend Amber and her boyfriend, Gerard, were visiting to head to lovely Sihanoukville and the beach.


Liz came along, too, so getting there was a bit tricky as we had 5 adults, 2 kids, and 1 Honda CRV. But we took it as an opportunity to try out Cambodia's intercity bus service, which I'll rate as pretty good. The bus was pretty clean, reasonably comfortable (except for poor Gerard who is about 6'3" and was considerably less comfortable than all the Cambodian passengers, who only came up to his elbow) and, best of all, our fellow passengers weren't smelly. I know from previous bus trips in the developing world that hygiene standards vary quite a bit in different areas, but Cambodians are big fans of bathing (our Khmer teacher in DC was appalled when he learned that, if we were exhausted, we'd let Ellie skip her daily bath) so it was really a fine experience overall.

We had a lovely time. The kids were a little timid, so the time we spent at the pool often looked a lot like this...


However, they loved playing in the sand (and their first sand toys!)


and on the playground

and we did even coax them in to the ocean eventually.


Ed and I even left the kids with Liz for an evening and had a lovely anniversary dinner at a French-Khmer restaurant overlooking sunset on the ocean. Ahhh...

We were just about to bring a successful mini-vacation to a close, when we decided to visit a temple on a hillside. The weather was crappy, we were all a little sunburnt, and we had a couple of hours to kill until the bus left.

Everything started off fine. We walked around, chatted with the monks, watched the cute monkeys, and had a photo opp with the Buddha.

Then one of the monkeys decided that he liked my camera bag and started to take off with it. We sort of yelled at him, which didn't do any good, so I picked up a plastic cup and threw it at him, figuring he'd drop the bag and run away.

Big mistake.

Instead, all of his monkey friends were at the site in an instant. About 2-3 feet from us, they had us surrounded and they were pissed. Hissing and showing their teeth. Suddenly those cute little monkeys were downright scary. Ed told us to go back up the hill past the Buddha, but that root was blocked. We looked around for an escape. People on one side would think we could slide past two monkeys on the other, but the people close to them said no way. The monkeys kept hissing and screeching. I noticed that one of the monkeys was missing an arm, which was really freaky. This really seemed like a bad horror movie. I hugged Ben closer.

Then, in a tactical error, the monkeys guarding the stairs down allowed an extra foot or two of space between them, and we all hurried down, not wanting to run, but eager to get the heck out of there. Amber ended up as the last person in line, and was actually scratched lightly by a monkey. We headed into the car, shut the doors and took off. We had lost the camera bag but had all the people, so we figured we had come out ahead.

I had heard of kids who had been scratched by monkeys needing rabies vaccine and so we called a doctor when we got back. The first (Khmer) doctor we talked to said she should come in and start the rabies shots, but didn't seem so certain. So we bothered a British doctor friend at home, who said that as long as there was no transfer of blood and saliva, Amber would be fine...a big relief!

Sure, he looks cute now. But wait til he decides to help himself to some of your possessions.