Maybe Later, Sihanoukville

Sihanoukville is a small city on the coast of Cambodia.  It is known for beaches and the party atmosphere.  We hit up Sihanoukville for a few reasons:  beach time is always good, we had some free time in Cambodia, and we had heard about Maybe Later, a bar/restaurant on the main street through the beach district.  This was a friend of a friend sort of deal but we figured hey, we're restaurant people and they're restaurant people, what's not to like?  Worse case scenario we can bitch about restaurants!

 

We met up with Will and Anna a couple of nights into our stay.  We had wandered the town a bit, got our bearings, and were looking forward to meeting these fine, upstanding peoples.  Will and Anna are great.  They were incredibly welcoming and regaled us with the stories of opening and operating a bar in the wild west of Cambodia.  They also introduced us to some of their regulars, which included the director of a local charity M'lop Tapang, a Peace Corp worker and a computer programmer.

 

They also introduced me to a bucket drink.  It is a little sand bucket filled with booze and other assorted goodies.  The one I had was a mixture of white rum, lime juice, sprite and Red Bull.  The first one went down way too easy and the second one caught up to me.  

 

 

We met up with Will and Anna the next day and headed over to Otres Beach.  This is a much more pristine beach area, but it is a ways out of the city proper.  They filled us in on some of the history of the town and the modern era ruins that dot the roadside to Otres.  We met DC, a boat captain, farmer and general raconteur at Otres.  He invited us to his farm, which was back towards town.  He toured us around, detailing his plans for the property.  He's got a number of bungalows in the back and has already started raising pigs.

 

 

He plans to do sustainable aquaculture on the property, which butts up against the river.  We actually had to take a sinking paddleboat across the river to get to the property.  One of the highlights of the tour went like this:

Will - "Have you seen any snakes around here?"
DC - "Yeah, actually the wife of (his deck hand) found a baby viper on the floor of the kitchen the other night.  Probably a nest around here somewhere."
Will - "What happened?"
DC - "Oh, she killed it.  No big deal."

Meanwhile, we're traipsing through the underbrush in board shorts and flip flops.  The girls were behind me and I didn't repeat the story until a few weeks later.

 

 Hanging out with Anna, Will and the Maybe Later staff was definitely the highlight of our stay in Sihanoukville.  Here's how small a world it is:  The 3rd partner of Maybe Later?  From Boise.  What does his brother do?  Cooks.  Where did he work?  Used to work at Bittercreek Alehouse.  I didn't actually know the guy, otherwise our 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon would be complete.

 

 

 

A couple of other highlights of the area:  Sihanoukville has a thriving sex industry.  I happily played the game Spot the Hooker with the John while wandering the area.  One night, Molly and I watched a fight between 2 hookers and a John.  He started off strong, getting in a few good whacks, but the girls came back and started throwing bricks at him.  Definitely one of those situations where you watch in a state of disbelief.  Turns out that the area is known for "Sexpats" and "Sexpackers."