Cambroadians Ride!

Looks like my little English writing experiment worked better than expected. So, I'll try my and once more in this latest installment in the Great Escape. I promised in my previous entry that I would talk a bit about my adventures in Cambodia. Unfortunately I keep running out of time during my travels – I'm way too busy sightseeing, meeting new people, drinking and having fun. Sadly, one of the consequences is that I'm running behind with my blogposts. I'll try to catch up a little bit – but bear with me.

In this one we go way back in time, two weeks to be exact – a lifetime while traveling – to a little beach side city called Shinoukvile in the south of Cambodia. In the two weeks separating then and now, a lot has happened and I experienced traveling in a totally different way. This post is about a extraordinary group of young people, yours truly included, who decided to hang out together and have a memorable time. Which we certainly did.

It started as just another day in just another new place in a exotic locale. Shinoukville is the biggest town on the coast and functions as a important transport hub with it's deep sea harbor. The coastline of Cambodia is otherwise largely deserted with few towns and villages worth mentioning and with long stretches of secluded beaches, swamps, mangrove forests and other nature. Fortunately Shinoukville – named after the once monarch of Cambodia, king Shinouk – has the reputation of a party town and there are lots of tourists, guest houses, bars and restaurants dotting the narrow beach front.

Traveling alone means that sometimes you have to do things – you guessed it – alone. Including sitting by yourself in a busy bar or club if you really have that craving for an Ankor beer. Funny enough, enjoying myself at one of the party clubs on the beach one day, I saw this bald, tall white guy dancing crazily. No fucking way, I thought. I recognized him as Tette, a guy from my home town that I haven't seen in six years and that was part of the same big friend group back then. What is the coincidence of meeting someone like that? It happens more than you think, I guess.

Anyway, we hooked up and the next day met some of the other people of the group he was with. Including his lovely girlfriend Rosalie, there were the cheerful Adam, always in for a laugh and a beer, and Chris, the good natured traveler. Both were from the United Kingdom. Also, we met Brittan – the Canadian animator / cartoonist who with his crazy imagination, wits and storytelling managed to make us all laugh on more than one occasion. Later two British girls joined us – Em and Sarah, to complete our group.

The best ideas happen when your drunk you might say. It happened to us anyway. One evening we were discussing the plans for the next day. One of the things we wanted to do was to hire mopeds and explore the countryside. Coupled with the size of the group, the amount of beer drunk and one of us had the brilliant idea to start a motorcycle gang (ala Hells Angels). Names were flying around, from Khmer Blur, to The Cambohemian's, but we finally settled on The Cambroadians.

Cambroadians: it coupled the best elements of the next day – bros (brothers or friends for the Dutch readers) and road. We made up hand signs, motto's (“Our destination is to get lost”) and were planning elaborate initiation rites (two persons drive around a roundabout, in opposite directions, drunk and full speed and the goal is to high five each other a certain number of times) and complex clothing styles (which actually included wearing a leather jacket, which is impossible in the oppressive heat of Cambodia). We were going to be the craziest moped gang (motorcycle gang would not be the correct term) in the whole of Cambodia would ever see. We would rule Shinoukville!

The next day, all the drunken banter of the evening before seemed immature, to never be taken serious. A funny conversation, but nothing more than that. We were wrong.

Off we went, on our hired mopeds. We met a random guy who splashed in a swamp, to climb a tree, pull a live snake out of it, swim back with the snake in his hands and show it to us, before walking of. We just met the guy with the biggest balls, we all said. Somehow, along the way, after swimming in waterfalls and falling off our mopeds, driving around dusty roads, or going full out on the few paved roads, we became Cambroadians. (The two British girls didn't hire a moped and rode as passengers – they were momentarily called the Camroadians, roadies) The next couple of days, to our own great amusement, we started calling ourselves the Cambroadians. Nobody we met understood, and at one point we stopped explaining, but we had a great laugh.

And so it came to be. We traveled as a group from Shinoukville to the capital Phom Phen. Unfortunately some of us had to go their own different ways. We said our goodbyes. A smaller group traveled onwards to Siem Reap, where I'm writing this story as we speak. The day has come close that almost everybody is gone. Soon I'll travel alone again. But no worries, there's always fate, and who knows what's going to happen. There have been crazier surprise meetings and coincidences right?
I'll talk a bit more about the serious side of Cambodia in the next blog. The Kingdom of Wonder – a country that everybody loves, but also hates for the poverty and the corruption and for all the hurt from the past that still haunts it today. Next time I'll take you from the Killing Fields to Phom Phen to the beautiful temples of the amazing Ankor What.

But for now, enjoy the happy story of the Cambroadians. Hope you liked it.

Cambroadians, ride on!