The Jeopardy

Bro made the fatal mistake of saying…”We haven’t really had any jeopardy on our trip yet so far have we?!”. We clearly didn’t touch enough wood because lo and behold the following day his camera got stolen.

Any trip to the Cambodian Islands requires a trip to the infamous Sihanoukville....famous for being a magnet for inebriated Westerners and rather un-coincidentally famous for being a super-hotspot for muggings and thefts. We knew all this so tried to avoid going, but the bus timetables had other ideas so we had an enforced night at this beach resort. The annoyance of this was eased by the fact that we had good company in the shape of Emily, Chloe and Tom from Koh Rong who found themselves in a similar situation, and we managed to get a room with a pool and a free beer each thrown in for a glorious $6 between us!! Plus the sun finally came out so we had a rather relaxed afternoon by the pool with some delightful tattooed Europeans pumping out some marvellous Europop tunes (god I sound like a Grandma), followed by some beers on the beach, the World’s Biggest Pizza, and a few drinks with our jolly little crew.

You know you're staying in a classy joint when this is on the wall of your room...

It was 6.30am the following morning when the camera got stolen. I won’t go into details because it’s super boring, and we’ve just spent two days writing reports about it but essentially the bus driver of the minivan that picked us up from our hotel took Bro’s camera from his bag, including £100 cash, whilst he was driving (and we couldn’t see as our backpacks we in the way), and we didn’t realise until we’d reach Phnom Penh, by which time he was long gone. The doubly sucky thing is that our Cambodian visa ran out that night, so despite us delaying in PP while we tried to contact the bus company (who didn’t give a shit), the police and our embassy (all to no avail), we then had to get the last bus out of PP before our Visa expired. This means no Police report (despite trying our best from Ho Chi Minh City), and therefore potentially no insurance…we’re still waiting to hear on that.

After a lovely 4 weeks in Cambodia it’s a huge shame that our last memory of this country is a unhappy one. We know you get thieves in every country, but it does leave a sour taste in your mouth.

The silver linings?...Bro had backed up all of his photos/videos apart from the last 3 days, and as muggings go, it was probably the least traumatic kind you could experience, so really it’s just money and hassle at the end of the day. Hey ho!