It's the main beach town in Cambodia, on the southern coast. I had heard it would be disappointing after the beaches in Thailand but I liked it a lot. The beach was crowded but still had a mellow, laidback feel to it.
I spent most of my time there just sitting on the beach reading, relaxing and talking to the local working kids. They sell fruit, bracelets, and so on. Even if I didn't buy anything they'd sit and talk with me. Most of the kids were adolescents or young teens, but some were only four or five years old, often following around an older sister or cousin.
This is Som Peh (sp?), 13, a really sweet kid from whom I bought a dragon fruit every day.
I made a point to go to a beachfront restaurant every night to have a beer and watch the sun go down.
I did get my lazy butt off the beach one day to take a tour of some of the surrounding islands. This is Bamboo Island.
I did some snorkeling that day. There wasn't much to see and the visibility was nil. I had planned on scuba diving while I was there but after snorkeling I decided not to.
My decision to stay on land was cemented when I went to the beach the following day and saw one of the snorkeling boats had sunk overnight. You can see part of it sticking up in front of the boat in the center of the photo.
While I was in Phnom Penh the darker aspects of Cambodian life were always obvious: the poverty, the sex trade, the lawlessness. In Sihanoukville it was there, but in a more subtle, insidious way.
I was talking to a little girl who couldn't have weighed 70 lbs. She proudly showed me a few cheesy glamour shots like the kind you'd get at a mall in the US. I asked her why the color was so washed out. She said they did that on purpose to make their skin look whiter. I jokingly told her that people from the US and Europe came to Cambodia to get their skin brown like hers.
(It's funny to look at all the sunburnt, overweight tourists in their wildly inappropriate swimwear and then compare them to the locals. The beach vendors wear sunhats, scarves, long pants and long sleeves to protect themselves from the sun.)
She then showed me a photo of herself with three other girls in traditional Khmer costumes. They were standing behind a guy who was sitting in a faux military uniform. I guessed the guy to be in his mid-60s. He was bald, fat and white.
Suddenly the scene snapped into focus, as if I'd been staring at one of those 3-D posters. I literally shuddered as I realized, Holy @#$%, this little girl has already had sex for money. She's 14. She looks like she's 10.
I realized that selling bracelets or fruit or whatever was, for at least some of the girls, merely a means to bigger transactions. They practice their English, learn how to flirt with tourists, and, whether they're trying or not, eventually an opportunity will present itself.
Until that epiphany I saw them just as friendly kids trying to make a buck selling fruit. The only thing I was guilty of was naivete, but from that point on I was very careful about what I said and did.
One of the girls I bought fruit from actually was 18. Sam has been selling fruit on the beach for 10 years. She speaks excellent English even though she's never been to school. She walks up and down the beach all day, every day, selling fruit so her three brothers and sisters can go to school.
When she first started she would sell her entire tray of fruit and make pretty good money. Now there are too many kids selling fruit. Even though every year there are more tourists she makes less money. She could make more in one hour with a tourist than she could make in a week of selling fruit on the beach, but she won't.
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