One Colombian, one Argentinian, one Cambodian, and one bike

by Yanet Dorfman (Argentina)

I didn't expect to find Cambodia

The day started kind of late, as usual. I’m not a different person abroad than back home, either my friend. We are the Latin cliché, arriving late everywhere and loving siestas. The only difference here is that we do not actually -have to- be anywhere, so we just wake up wherever we feel like, and do whatever we feel like of our day. We were in Koh Rong at that time, a small and not yet very touristic island in Cambodia. We had a fast lunch, filled our backpacks with water, snacks, towels and flip flops and started the walk towards Long Beach, supposed to be a paradise at the back of the island. The way to get there is, as all the Asian ways, somewhat memorable. First, you get directly from this side of the beach into a narrow ally and walk straight until you reach some stairs. Then you start all the way up, passing through some open doors, small windows, and maybe someone chilling at a hammock watching you pass by while breathing hard. You will finally arrive to a pretty cool bar with a nice view. We rested for a few seconds and wondered how drunk fellows manage to get back home at night. After reaching the back of the bar, as if you were going to the bathroom, maybe doing a technical stop, you are now about to get into a more virgin land. First, it’s dry grass, a precarious wood house, some trees. But vegetation grows with your steps and you soon find yourself into a proper jungle, with lianas and insects buzzing in your ears. The way it's still not hard, just pretty much smoothly going forward. Until you arrive to a cliff. The first thing to do is to actually realize your path keeps over there. We walked in circles two times before noticing a small sign with an arrow pointing down. Okay. I’ll do whatever for a blue crystalline ocean and a white sand empty beach. So we started. We did it calmly, watching where we placed our feet. After maybe 15 minutes we were back on horizontal ground. A breeze was coming from between the trees. We recognize it. The breeze all office workers dream about. We follow a path to the beach that crossed something like a wasteland, with construction machines in it and some workers. Just when we were about to reach the sand, we saw a local calling us. He offered us boat tickets to come back. We realized it would be really difficult to get back as we came, and probably impossible at night, without any light. So we bought the tickets and proceeded to enjoy our day. Long Beach was all we expected, beautiful and calm. We used the afternoon walking along the coast while putting in our bags all the plastic we found scattered around (trash is a sad issue in most Southeast Asia), swimming in the warm sea and trying to get a lovely Asian tan. And during that attempt, of course, we fell asleep. And, of course, we woke up after fifteen minutes had passed from the time we agreed to meet our local friend. And, of course, he wasn’t there when we finally arrive. We started walking to see if we spot him. It was dark already. We distinguished a group of people at the distance, so we approached. And as closer we got, the scene became odder. Before I realized, I was standing next to a guy inside a barrel having a bath. (It’s okay. It's all good as long as you remember from which side of the Greenwich Meridian you're standing on.) It took us 20 minutes explaining to them what happened, and another 15 until they called some other guy that could speak some English and that offered us taking us back in his motorbike for some money. So that’s it, one Colombian, one Argentinian, one Cambodian, and one bike. A route somewhere between a beach and a jungle that I’m pretty sure it does not appear on any map. A big shining moon above us. A “whatever it has to be” mantra. Just another day in Cambodia.