Occhueuteal Beach is a popular destination for backpackers. At night, with hordes of young Aussies and Europeans together, partying becomes a sport, and Sihanoukville is the Olympics. All along the beach, there are bars and restaurants thumping American tunes like Johnny Cash, Steve Miller Band, and Billy Joel. Rattan chairs surround tables, and strings of colorful neon lights illuminate the night. A couple places sold balloons filled with laughing gas. I can imagine what else they sold. Vendors strolled through the crowd, hawking everything from bracelets to fireworks. Why not sell a device that shoots out fire to the drunk tourists?
There is an invisible line somewhere in the middle of the beach that separates the foreigners from the Cambodians. The foreigner side has menus in English, and they serve pasta and tacos. The Cambodian side is quieter, everything is in Khmer, and nobody speaks English. This is how Sihanoukville was before the invasion of tourists. Here, the vendors sell lanterns. You can write something on it, make a wish, send it floating into the sky, and watch the flickering light get smaller and smaller until it disappears into the blackness. Everyone sits around and eats gigantic plates of crab, squid, fish, anything that comes from the sea.
I sat down on a lounge chair next to a large Cambodian family. They regarded me for a moment and then started whispering rapidly to each other in Khmer. It was likely something along the lines of, "What's up with the barang? Doesn't she know she's on the wrong side of the beach? Why is she alone? She must be deranged." I smiled at them and said, "Happy New Year!" Pretty soon we were bonding. They offered me a piece of fish cheek. I offered them a potato. We all politely declined each other's disgusting food. We conversed as much as possible with my limited vocabulary. There was a lot of laughter, mostly at my expense.
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