Alright, it’s been about 9 days and I’ve definitely been late for an update or two, but to be fair it’s been really hectic over here, you will understand! You won’t believe the amount of stuff that can happen to you in a week in Cambodia. This place is chaos.

So I began the journey with one night in Bangkok for transit to Cambodia, it’s relatively uneventful. Landed after a fair few hours on the plane, taxi to my hostel no problem. I arrive there to realise that I’ve unknowingly booked the hostel dead in the centre of Bangkok’s Red Light District. A quick swim through some grime, lady boys and a tonne of creepy old white men and I manage to get to a bed and sleep like a baby. Cool.

Fly to Cambodia in the morning, it’s getting interesting now, you can see roving hills and green jungles on the fly over so it was a nice warm up. Phnom Penh airport is brilliant, as soon as you get there there’s a whole bunch of SIM card stalls, they cost like $10 for unlimited internet for a month and activated instantly with service all over the country. Sweet, at least I know I’m gonna have google maps when I hit the dirt roads. The taxi to my hostel from the airport is during rush hour. Phnom Penh is a smoothly flowing river of people, milling in around each other filling every gap they can.

“I have to drive a big dirt bike through this shit.”

Arrive at the hostel to find that it’s party central, bunch of cool people hanging out, there’s a rooftop bar and drinks and smokes are cheaper than chips. Actually I think Cambodia may be too cheap; when you’re walking in to a 7/11 and seeing a bottle of Smirnoff for $7 just floating there on the shelf in front of you it’s like being at the top of a rollercoaster you don’t really trust. Anyway it was the coolest first night in Phnom Penh ever, managed to pretty smoothly make some initial friends, James Bond baby. This English dude takes us all to a pretty unknown restaurant that he’s found and they sell literally the best meal I’ve ever eaten (I’ve been back there 3 times since then, and I intend on going back a few more). It’s called Irrawadi Myanmar Gallery on Street 334. I think I might become the next prophet of their Fish Curry; like seeing the burning bush on a mountain, this curry will seriously fuck you up.

So yeah I spent a couple of nights in Phnom Penh getting wasted because beer is impossibly cheap and the social atmosphere at Mad Monkey hostel really makes it hard to leave. Me and this super cool Irish dude who worked for Google spent about 8 hours through the day in the exact same spot just drinking, smoking, pissing and bantering. Ace of a day.

The next day it gets exciting! In a flash I find myself sitting on a 250cc Honda Baja: big growling bad-boy with thick black wheels and a snarl on his face. The streets are teeming with people all around me. This is what I’ve come here for. Zoom, and I’m away, I’ve got the wind streaming through me my bags are strapped tight to the racks and I am dodging and weaving with the best of them. I push out of Phnom Penh and it’s a big open road in front of me, I’m hitting 100, weaving past trucks and buses because they drive like absolute lunatics. No one has driven to Sihanoukville faster than me homie.

Sihanoukville looks pretty cool. I’m arriving just as the sun is setting over the water, and the ferry to Koh Rong island is coming in, there’s a definite energy in the air and it’s tantalizing. Unfortunately the place I check in for the first night turns out to be fucked in the actual head. There’s obnoxious people all around ‘wooooo let’s party yeah we’re partying yeah we’re having so much fun’. Fuck that noise. I need some pessimism with my beer. The homebrew DJ is blaring bad music til 4am and me and the chick on the bunk next to me are about to do some Pol Pot kind of stuff to these people.

We wake up the next morning and mutually wish good luck on getting out of this place. I drive myself to Otres beach which is about 2 kilometres away. The sand is whiter, the water is bluer, and the people are chiller; this is what I’m talking about. I sit have a bit of a self-reflection here because I’ve been drunk for like 3 days straight.

“Ok. I’m in Sihanoukville, it was supposed to take me like a week to get be but I got too carried away on the motorbike and skipped the first pit-stop entirely. I’m meeting a French-Canadian chick here in a couple of days and we’re gonna go to paradise Koh Rong island together when she arrives. so I’ll just relax here in front of the blue water for a bit. Cool.”

I check in to a nice little place called Everythang (I find out it used to be called Everything is Everything, fucking stoners). The staff are super nice and super chill. People are just ultra-relaxing in this place. I started drinking some beers because the sun is going down now and I’m officially retired. After a few beers I get social and make some friends and we’re having fun, then everything goes downhill.

This guy comes in talking about a rave happening a little walk away “Damn, I’ve never been to a rave.” I think to myself.

“Let’s go to the rave!”

My friends don’t wanna come because they’re feeling lazy so I’m like fuck this I’ll go check it out on my own. I get there, just a few hundred metres down the road, it’s pretty shit but I’m grinding at it so I decide I’ll have a drink at this place and carve myself a niche.

So this Russian guy working at this rave says “what do you want?" Big, thick, I'm-a-super-villain accent on him. I’m like “what’s popular?” and he pours me some vodka and lemonade, I give the guy a few bucks and drink it. This stuff tastes like the devil brewed it. And I can’t remember a single thing that night afterwards.

Wake up: “what the fuck, this is the worst hangover ever, my brain is split in two with pain, all my teeth are sore and feel like they’re gonna fall out, I’m covered in fucking dirt and scratches and WHAT THE FUCK MY PHONE IS GONE, MY MONEY IS GONE, MY PASSPORT IS GONE.”

So this is the situation I’m in: I have nothing except for my luggage, a motorbike, and $16 in my pocket. I can’t withdraw money, my cards were with the passport and I can’t wire myself money without any ID, also with the passport. I don’t know if I’ve been robbed or simply lost this stuff, I have the vaguest memory of telling a Cambodian that my shit has been stolen and if he can find it I’ll pay him $800 for it.