After surviving the island, I realized I had reached my three month mark in traveling and it was time for a bit of reflection. I had been through five countries relatively unscathed. Sure I've had bed bugs twice, food poisoning twice, one trip to the hospital due to an infected lymph gland, a monkey attack, a near drowning experience, stings, bites and a funny looking skin rash, which is why i said relatively unscathed. But I still felt oddly confident and elated as I hopped on the bus to Siem Reap, my last stop in Cambodia. I realized I was no longer terrified of the unknown, and I was no where near ready to leave Southeast Asia. A stop to see Angkor Wat and then off to Myanmar!
Two Americans and a Dutch are stranded on an island with no food and no shelter. Should be the intro to a cheesy joke, but instead it was the start of my weekend off the coast of Cambodia. We decided to explore the least inhabited island, Bamboo Island, that had just "opened" for the tourist season. There was one restaurant on the island, which was closed, and a fishing village. After paying a couple of fisherman to take us on an hour boat ride to Bamboo Island, we decided to explore it for the afternoon. At about 2pm a torrential downpour arrived, and we hurried back to the fishing boats, ready to return to the mainland. Not possible, we"re told, the sea is too rough and if the storm doesn't clear we have to wait until the morning. With nothing left to do but wait, we are invited onto the fishermen"s boats, where they fish for us, and cook it on the small grill in the center of their boat. An hour into it this feast, we had attracted a small crowd of villagers, each of them bringing along a bottle of homemade rice whiskey. All afternoon they supplied us with unlimited food, alternating between coconut juice, fish and rice whiskey. When we insisted we were full, they insisted we eat more. I couldn't believe the unlimited generosity and hospitality from people who had next to nothing, and lived so simply. They didn't ask or expect anything in return, and refused our money. Out of 25 men, only one spoke broken english, yet we still managed to communicate through hand gestures, smiles and a harmonica. Realizing we had no where to stay for the night, we decided to sleep on the beach. Of course at 3am we woke up to another monsoon, thankfully, because the mosquitoes had been feasting on me all night.
After surviving the island, I realized I had reached my three month mark in traveling and it was time for a bit of reflection. I had been through five countries relatively unscathed. Sure I've had bed bugs twice, food poisoning twice, one trip to the hospital due to an infected lymph gland, a monkey attack, a near drowning experience, stings, bites and a funny looking skin rash, which is why i said relatively unscathed. But I still felt oddly confident and elated as I hopped on the bus to Siem Reap, my last stop in Cambodia. I realized I was no longer terrified of the unknown, and I was no where near ready to leave Southeast Asia. A stop to see Angkor Wat and then off to Myanmar!
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