Becca Vs The World: So Long Koh Rong

Wedding of the year

Alas, the day I feared may never arrive has came and went! I finally put on a pair of shoes*, backed up my room, and hopped onboard a boat off the Island. After a fantastic, boozy, sunny, healthy, memorable (unmemorable), 8 months on paradise the time has arrived for me to step back onto dry land and "the real world" (whatever that is) well, Sihoukville and the relm of terribly built casinos, overcrowded streets and death by tuktuk. Safe to say as soon as I stepped off the boat I wanted to say

"JUST KIDDING TAKE ME BACK"

So what even happened for my last 10 weeks on the island? Very good question. We finally got my replacement member of staff, Kiwi called Blake. Great news, because it meant I could drop down to part time and get around to spending my last month doing some camping, hanging out and topping up my non existent tan. We have a running joke on the island that the people who live there are always the palest cause we're always inside the bars drinking (or in my case, hanging out in the shade of the trees).

I adopted a little pet dog, he was really sick and found under a decking the bar I was drinking in, so naturally I had to help him out. Knowing I couldn't keep him, he was only there for a week until he found a better owner on the mainland but he went from having "one or two days" left, to having a new lease for life. Job. Done. As well as my little baby cat Klang getting on absolutely perfectly.

Some other people didn't get such good news with their health. Part of my job is to walk up and down the beach and try to sell some tickets (and make myself a little bit of money). So one day I approach these boys and ask them if they wanted any information about things to do on the island yaddayadda and this is what I got in response:

"Naaa, we've just come here to get FUCKED UP...

do you know where we can get some drugs...?"

Not my cuppa tea gents, have a lovely time on this beautiful island. Fast forwards to later that evening and we're all enjoying a rum and mango (or 4) and a guy comes in asking for a doctor, luckily my friend Frankie is an emergency nurse. Turns out this guy has fallen from the balcony at a neighbouring bar/guesthouse. He's fallen from the 3rd floor onto concrete. We get there and we're expecting the worst. I get on the crowd control "Are you his brother? No? Are you a doctor? No? Okay turn ya phones off and move along, nothing to see here..." whilst Frankie does her thing and with it being 2am, and no hospital on the island he gets taken onto an emergency boat to mainland. What had happened was he had found what he was looking for and was swinging around the balconys and fell. well, hey mate. You did what you came here to do. Luckily for him, he ended up with just a broken wrist. How? I do not know.

We had to keep ourselves entertain in the low season, so whilst the Pub Crawl was off we decided to do the next best thing, a Mini Mart March (seeing that our little village now has 23 of them, over the 7 bars we have). The Pub Crawl on the island is the Richie Rich Pub Crawl, so we adopted the title with our good friend Mitch, the Mitchy Mitch M.M.M. It just involved us going to every shop open past 10pm when everyone finished their shifts, having a beer in each and pulling in the strays (and wrestling to the death

in the sand).

On the island we have two charities. One for the islanders and the children, Friends Of Koh Rong. They organise beach cleans, help feed families, teach english and do great things to the community. We had a big fundraiser and my friend Te asked me to help with reading the raffle prizes. You can imagine what I'm like on a microphone, now gimme a few drinks and I'm sure he regretted the decision, although me and my comedy duo partner Dennis were apparently VERY entertaining. Enough so that when Pups in Paradise (they bring the vets over and keep all of our island animals in good nick, neutering and providing medicine etc) held their fundraiser I was offered the microphone slot again. Substantially more sober, I actually got a fair few compliments on my Audio Ability and that I should take it up a profession, oo-err.

My final week on the island saw a big blow out to end. Connor and Berni also had the day off so we said about doing a boat trip- WELL that escalated quickly. Bring on the Curious Connor Boat Trip. We ended up hiring out own boat, getting 3 crates of beer and gathering everyone last minute, making them bunk off work (or later, kicked off their shift for enjoying one too many bevvies) and join. We did a little bar hop from Suns Of Beaches hostel, to Nestival Day Sesh, M'Pai Bay, then back. It's definitely one of those "you had to be there" moments but for sure one of my best days on the island and a perfect note to end on.

The cue for me to leave was my favourite bar closing down as it was the end of their lease, so we saw it out with a bang and a 4 day sesh leading up to Halloween. This also saw 6 of my close friends leaving so time for me to go onto my new chapter. After making 100's more global friends, a lifelong island family, some disgusting bite scars on my legs but another great chapter in my book of life.

My last week on the Island saw my old housemate from Tenerife, Danny, come to join me over in Cambodia for 3 weeks. I introduced him to island life well, showed him the ropes (literally, took him around High Point) and then we set off to see the rest of the country. But unfortunately, our trip was cursed from day one. We took my old travel companion, Barry, off the island for a bit of TLC from a mechanic...well. RIP Barry. Ended up scrapping him for $10. The mechanic told me that if I carried on driving him for even 30 mins he'd set on fire (even after repairs). Bikeless and looking for plan B we decided to get out of the hellhole that is Sihnoukville and head to Kampot for some better luck. Our plan B was to hire bikes and drive round on them or try buy new ones. Well that all fell through and so did the budget and we just opted for a holiday instead, massages, cinema trips, fancy hotels, dinners out but still, had an amazing time.

temples so ancient you can't help but have a taste

In Kampot we went on a riverboat trip called Rhymes On The River which is a cruise along with live music, a few bevvies and some fire spinning. One evening we decided it'd be fun to get a happy pizza (imagine Space Cakes, but on a pizza...sorry Nan) so we order a Vegetarian pizza cover with spinich, onions, tomatoes etc and a ..."special ingredient". the table next to us also are the herbivor types and ordered the same pizza. So our pizza arrives and we look at it and decide it looks like a normal pizza?? and the girls next to us decide to tuck in to theirs. Then the waiter comes over and looks really confused, double takes between us, the girls, our pizza, their pizza then comes up to us like ohhh. I forgot to add the "special ingredient". Then we realise the girls have got our happy pizza and we have their original...WELL lets just say I wish I could've followed them around for the rest of the night cause they had NO idea!

reminder of the so recent genocide

Then we came to Phnom Penh, revisited the Killing Fields and Genocide Museum. Then headed over to a new town for me, Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor. We decided, as classic know-it-all tourists that we could drive 150km, round trip to some ancient temple ruins called Bantaey Chhmar, have an explore and be back by about 7pm after leaving at 2pm...Well we made it to the temples, just as darkness fell at 7pm But exploring ancient ruins in the pitch black makes a better Indiana Jones feeling than in the daytime with tourists anyway! Riddled with snakes, after about an hour of exploring and a bat flying straight into my face, we decided to make the trip back home. After being pelted at 50km in the eyes with fireflies Danny fashioned himself a great pair of eyewear from some selotape, voila!

Danny's now heading back to England after a fab few weeks catching up and I'm heading over to Vietnam after Cambodia's water festival, picking up a cheap new bike and zooming around here for another few weeks.