The Oasis Resort,
run by a British guy who’s been in Cambodia for seven years, is probably my
favorite hotel we’ve stayed at thus far.
It was $30/night for a triple room, which had really cool poster beds
with curtains, air-conditioning, a patio, a TV that got BBC, a refrigerator,
and a hot shower – and the shower was even in a sectioned-off area of the
bathroom, meaning taking a shower didn’t inevitably soak everything in the
entire bathroom, as is the norm in this part of the world, where shower
curtains are pretty rare. On top
of that, the hotel had swings, hammocks, and a beautiful pool that looked out
onto continuous fields and hills in the distance, with not another building in
sight.
The food in Koh Kong, both at our hotel and in town, was
wonderful, and included a lot of curry – chicken eggplant curry, vegetarian
green curry, red chicken curry – and vegetable cashew stir-fry, as well as
toast, yogurt, and chocolate mousse!
The hotel’s owner invites children from a nearby orphanage
to use the pool, and there were about twenty kids swimming there the day we
arrived. We swam while the
children were there, and, unbelievably (unlike Rwandan children), they didn’t
stare at us, laugh at us, point at us, or poke us. And, when we passed one of the hotel’s inner tubes to a kid
when he got back in the pool after a snack break, he even said, “Thank
you.” Amazing.
One of the main attractions in that part of the country is Koh Kong Island, Cambodia’s largest, which is
considered to have one of Southeast Asia’s most beautiful beaches. But, as it’s about a two-hour boat ride
from the coast, getting there is only possible when the weather is clear, and
the water was unfortunately too rough to make the trip during the time we were
there.
We had a successful outing to Tatai waterfall, though, about thirty minutes from town, which was
lovely. It was gorgeous, and the
water was clear and great for swimming.
The waterfall was also surprising secluded, and we saw only one other
small group of people the whole time we were there. It was really wonderful to be out in the middle of nowhere
and able to enjoy nature.
Throughout the entire trip, Anna and I had been planning
what we dubbed “our scooter adventure,” and had been waiting to visit a place
with little enough traffic that riding a scooter would actually be feasible for
us. Fortunately, since it was our
last stop together, Koh Kong fit the bill – with little traffic in town and
several empty country roads near our hotel, it was the best we could hope
for. I should preface this by saying
that, with some regularity, Westerners who don’t have the first clue how to
ride a motorcycle rent and try to drive them in southeast Asia, and end up in
accidents, sometimes serious ones.
Since I have a lot of experience riding as a passenger on motorcycles
and a tiny bit of experience learning to drive one, and since we rented a small
scooter that was an automatic, I figured it would be pretty easy. Well, it was definitely more difficult
– and less like riding a bike – than I was expecting, and I did sort of crash
once, but overall it was great. It
gave us a chance to get out in the countryside on our own, which was
beautiful. Plus, riding was just a
lot of fun, and I’m really looking forward to the chance to do it again – maybe
in Thailand next week!
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