Speedboat to the promised (is)land

After my early crashing, 3 am doesn't seem to be too early to get up.

Tree, curtain, and hammock

The booming and annoying young music from Serendipity is still going. It's almost inaudible inside my room but on my deck outside it disrupts my trains of thought.  The music will still be going on by 5:15 am, when I walk down for an exploratory beach visit. One bar staff is already sweeping the premises, but they don't look ready for business yet.

The music dies at 6 am.  The sudden silence is eerie.  So this crowd stays up until sunrise and then sleeps all day?   Odd, but then I don't really care. I'm leaving for Koh Rong today.  Hints in Julian's e-mails have me in trepidation that peace and tranquility have diminished there as well, but at least I will have a very swimmable ocean right in front of my beach hut.  That makes up for a lot of things ;-)

I get a fabulous HOT and STRONG Americano at the bar.  The woman serving it is visibly happy when I give her 2 thumbs up after she inquires how it is.

6:45 
The silence is SO NICE.  THIS is why I came here.   All the idiots are asleep and one can finally hear again the gentle lapping of the wavelets against the rocks in the water.

The serene peace and quiet are overwhelming.  The light breaking through the clouds only adds to the feeling.

  Let there be light !

This baby came galloping for pets when I called it ;-)

At 8 am the sun hits me and the sink laundry on my terrace.  While this is fabulous for the laundry drying efforts, I realize that I am far from acclimatized because I start SWEATING, LOL. On the other hand, my back is barely giving me issues again and neither are the other joints that were still aching a week ago.

8:30
Time to do the shopping.  I can't find moisturizer but at least I should be fully supplied with a hat, cigarettes, wine for 2 days, mosquito repellent, and instant coffee. I'm going to an island after all. Better safe than sorry !

9:15
What happened to my WiFi????
Oh, power failure again ;-)
When I ask the French proprietress whether she will turn on the generator again, she replies that it is too early because she might wake her guests. LOL.  Am I the ONLY one rising and setting with the sun?????

10:10
I'm outfitted with a Buva Sea neck hanger and a pink Sok San sticker.   I've been informed that the ferry will only take me to Coconut Beach and that the rest of the journey will take place by CAR!   

?!?  Looks like I'm getting an island tour for free, LOL.   An ADVENTURE !

Serendipity Pier is busy.  Speedboats coming and going....

At 11:10 I am on one of those....

New Chinese Casino & Hotel.   HIDEOUS 

The crossing takes half an hour and we are travelling with the wind, and consequently with the waves.   The first stop is Koh Touch.   The party town on Koh Rong.  I've read bad things about it but this is the first time I've laid eyes on it.   

Where are you supposed to swim????

Most of the passengers leave the boat and we get a few new ones boarding, indubitably headeding back to Sihanoukville.

Next stop Coconut Beach.

After 2 minutes of this part of the journey (in parallel to the wave crests and troughs), the guy behind me puts on his life vest.   There is no need for that, me thinks, but I hold on to the seat back in front of me to prevent one of the crashes into a wave trough causing my teeth to connect with said seat back. 

It's ROUGH sailing ;-)

Coconut Beach.  Time for me, a Mother-and-two-daughter Swedish family, and a few locals to get off the boat.

The Swedish teenager is pulling a large roller suitcase behind her and I can't resist to put on a smug smile and  ask her about 20 meters before we hit the sand: "Is that a ROLLER suitcase?"
But even I don't yet know HOW UNSUITABLE that suitcase REALLY is.   We are now following the driver, who before the sandy spot shouldered the bloody suitcase.

Where is the car?   Right behind the resort?


NOPE, we have to traverse an extended mud flat

Is the car at the end of this?

NOPE, we have to climb up THAT HILL !

I don't know how the small-framed Cambodian managed to carry that bloody suitcase all this way, because I'm already wheezing.  But then I just carried 4 bottles of wine up that hill in addition to the rest of the luggage.

The 'road' is not exactly in the shape that I expected. Rocks, water-eroded gashes, and flooded sections alternate with nice driveable sections like the one below.  Average speed? About 25 km/h.

The driver finally stops at the end of the wide main road close to the French resort, a 4 minute walk from my beach hut. 

Strangely enough, I feel motivated for tipping the driver, even though the drive is included in the ferry ride.  The owners of the suitcases don't seem to feel any similar compulsion ;-(

I hear Julian's voice when I enter the 'reception area' and my call of "Mr Cooper !" is rewarded by a big grin on his unshaven face accompanied by a big hug.   Instantly I am subjected to a beer and a brief 'what's new session'.   

While Julian puts the finishing touches on the hut to be occupied by the Swedish family, I move into my hut and take a few pictures.

Home, sweet home for the week ;-)

After I swim and a change my clothes, we get into more details of what happened during the last 9 months.   I switch to the wine I brought with me.

After 5 hours of drinking and finishing my bottle of wine, I'm exhausted.

I hit the mattress at 7 pm, for a minute I mentally curse the British Teenagers making a ruckus right next door, and am out cold after that.

HKG - KUL - KOS or... Go South, old man, where the sun's a little warmer

12:45 Hong Kong time
Time to check out 

I have 2 hours of time to kill, so I decide to take hang around the hotel's street for a bit....

I LIKE it here ;-)

 

No wonder, this neighbourhood literally has my name written all over it ;-)

... and then to take the Ding-Ding to Central.

content Ding-Ding rider 

14:10
I'm on the airport express.  Having bought a return ticket at the airport makes things easy.

15:00 Only when I'm sitting in some Cafe in Terminal 1 of HK Airport do I realize that my plane actually leaves from Terminal 2.  Oops, did it again.  

What can one say about Hong Kong food?  Definitely NOT kosher, LOL

Walk over to Terminal 2.  Go through immigration & security (I already have my boarding pass), take the train back to the gates at Terminal 1 (WTF?).  This is when I see that the flight that was scheduled for 18:15 now might leave at 19:50. That's 3.5 hours from NOW !

GREAT, just what I needed.   Where do I sleep for that long??????

I end up passing out on one of the VERY FEW 3-element benches for a while.
When I get to the gate at 19:00, departure has been delayed until 20:10 and there is still no plane there at 19:30.  GRRRRREAT !

The plane finally takes off at 21:00

and lands in Kuala Lumpur at 0:35. Yup AFTER midnight. 

The layout  of KLIA2 is bloody confusing.   But my first cigarette lets me appreciate the warmth that comes with being only 3 degrees from the equator ;-)
I decide NOT to take a taxi to my hotel in the outskirts, and after one failed attempt get a room at KLIA2 Tune hotel for 400 Ringit.  Sleep I need !

Despite being utterly exhausted when I got to the hotel, I can't sleep more than a few hours.

Tune Hotel KLIA2 (it's so moist that the camera lens fogged up !)

Checking my e-mail, I realize that I got a response from Joanna (Seattle Joanna, not Paris Joanna, i.e. my beach bungalow neighbour in July ) and have to laugh when I realize that we will spend the next week on two different dream islands, one in Vietnam and one in Cambodia, with only 96 km separating our chosen beaches.

 At 4 am I head back to the terminal building to exchange my left over Philippine Pesos for Malaysian Ringgit. 

I also buy a can of Carlsberg and some strange baked raisin thingie in the market in the terminal which shortly afterwards help to take the edge off.

Then it's time to hit the hotel's Breakfast Buffet for MR 32.

A Google Images Sambal sauce

The coffee is far from HOT, but Rosemary Chicken, Boiled Egg, Fried Noodles, and a HUGE dollop of SPICY Sambal sauce (also throw in a handful of dried tiny fish) help me to commence this day with a smoking-tires start ;-)  The same price that I paid for the Hong Kong breakfast buffet but literally a world of difference.  The second course has Sambal Sauce, chicken sausage & freshly roasted peanuts as its main ingredients.  I'm finally back in a part of the world where peanuts still carry their thin inner shell and have flavour ;-)

This breakfast alone makes me reconsider my previous decision NOT to return to Malaysia on this trip !  I could get used to eating like this every morning, LOL.

I finally sleep another hour and have another small breakfast at 8 am.

After checkout at 10:30 I walk over the 5 minutes to KLIA2 and order a Spicy Ramyun and a glass of wine. 

I really only wanted the spicy broth because that wakes me up again fabulously ;-)

Since I saw that my flight is delayed by more than half an hour, I might as well have another smoke in the fabulous outside smoking area.

As I had feared, there is NO smoking area behind the security system of the L gates at KLIA2.   Asian airports used to be a smoker's paradise.  But this is being slowly eroded.  I make a submission to Airportsmokers.com (Yes, there is a web-site that tells you which airport has smoking areas and where they are ;-)

FINALLY on the plane.  

A line-up of taxiing planes

finally airborne !

Somewhere over Malaysia 

You have to give it to Air Asia. 

 Service is glacial, but once you have your Chicken Vindaloo Biryani you won't regret the 15 MR you paid for it.

Picture from the menu.  The actual thing is not quite this pretty but tastes GREAT !

My camera temporarily goes on the Fritz while I'm taking pictures of Islands off the West coast of the Malaysian peninsula (it might be Thailand already judging by the above map).

To anyone who reads this, her is a tip: NEVER fly into Sihanoukville from abroad.  It takes the immigration staff more than 1 whole hour to process the passengers of a small Airbus.  It's appalling how long it takes them to process that plane.

A taxi ride from the airport to Sihanoukville is US$ 20.   Steep but not too steep for the half-hour ride. And I can feel the relief and joy of having secured the LAST available fare in both the face and the excited blabbering (in excellent English) of the taxi driver after the taxi vendor walks out to hand over to him the money and the LAST customer of this flight.   These guys are LUCKY to have one fare a day, so driving to the airport and NOT getting one is hardship.

A glass of white wine at 'The Turk' is US$ 4.  Outrageous really. But can you still get one for that price in North America? With this view? LOL

A glass of Rose at Laluna 50 meters down this path already is down to US$ 3.  The initially stressed proprietress quickly warms to me after a few Arkoons. She also tells me where to buy wine to take to Koh Rong tomorrow.

After a brief rest in my room, I back to the main stretch.   The BUVA FERRY return ticket to Sok San costs me US$ 27.

The Mini Market almost next door has a HUGE selection of wines. I walk away with 3 bottles for US$ 30.

17:30
Sitting in Laluna restaurant, having just ordered Thai scallops with rice. 

And I again realize how precious My Beach really is.  This former paradise here in Sihanoukville is going downhill fast, just as happened to Nha Trang a while ago and is happening to Da Nang right now. 

So I book a ticket.  Grandma will have me for my birthday and for Christmas.

17:40
It's been raining for a while, which was just now joined by lightning. Seconds later the power goes out.
Ah well.  Even though the WiFi is down, the laptop will run for a short while longer.  This also gives me a good opportunity to take a few shots of the ocean.

The power is back 11 minutes later ;-)  Could be a generator though, since all the WiFi networks are still down......  

It is a generator!

Hitting the bed at 6 pm no longer sounds all that bad after I realize that it's already 7 pm in Kuala Lumpur ;-)

The return of mains power announces itself when BRIGHT ligths and a right-in-my-face fan wake me briefly at 7 pm.