Two Cambodian fishermen go night fishing in the seaside resort of Sihanoukville. Photo: AFPSydney Morning Herald
From a hammock in the bar, Stephen Phelan watches the tide rise and fall on a deserted jungle island off Sihanoukville.
This is not Cambodia, in any way you'd imagine. The island of Koh Rong Saloem has no roads or infrastructure, no native inhabitants, no history to speak of and no electricity, save for a few hours of inconstant power in the evenings, provided by two shuddering diesel generators. If Lazy Beach had a local name before a small settlement of wooden bungalows and outhouses was built on it three years ago, nobody here seems to remember.
"I think it was just called Beach Number Two," says the co-owner and operator of the site, Chris Beadles. That sounds like the kind of impersonal number the Khmer Rouge might have assigned, as they did to all the streets in Phnom Penh when Pol Pot's forces seized the capital in 1975.
No comments:
Post a Comment