Here's a picture from the Cambodian Side of the border after getting stamped in -- looking at the Cambodian entry point:
The touts didn't attack us as much as expected. But, we did get attention from them. All of us that rode together in the van (4 of us) made a deal with a tout that had a Camry to drive us to our hotels/guesthouses. I think it was like 2000 riel each, if I remeber right. I was surprised how far the border was from the actual town of Koh Kohg.
Another thing I remember is the Cambodia Camry driver talking about all the recent investment in this area of Cambodia as an ocean-front tourist destination. He said now the beach was crap, but they intended to build hotels anyway, then use the tourism money to continue to improve it. I'll feel sad when Cambodia loses its wild-west mystique!
We got to Koh Kong and here's some pictures of the main drag:
I checked into the famous Rasmey Makara guesthouse for $4 a night. Here it is:
That night, we checked out the chicken ranch. I was blown away by a few things. First, the houses were different than I expected. Second, we got there in the afternoon. The girls didn't mob us like I had read. They played their games together, and smiled at us and stuff. My friend and I did a few girls from Vietnamese house, but it wasn't anything to write home about. Also, the girl I wanted was on the rag. Damn! I hate it when that happens.
We headed back to the guesthouse, showered and then returned in the evening. It was a little different now. The girls came out and tried to pull us over to their house, etc. We ended up sitting and talking at one of the Kmer houses. I even told the Moto driver to go get some Ganja and gave him $2. He did, we rolled a bunch of joints from Cigarettes after he returned with about 1/8th. I shared about 1 and a half joints with him, then told him he could keep the rest. I just wanted a taste and that was enough for me. I ended up doing a cute Kmer girl that I nicknamed Princess Lea. Very cute, very fun, but sex was a 6.5 on a scale of 1 to 10.
The next day we had tickets for the Ferry to Sihanoukville. So, we didn't stay out all that late. Also, there was a weird French guy trying to hang out with us and we didn't really want his company.
This was definately an interesting experience and had all the wild-west appeal that had been described. One thing I remember is that once people know you here, they remember you. It's hard to be anonymous in this place to the locals -- to a certain extent. They remember where they saw you, or when you were there last, or what house you were at. "Hey, you were just over at the Viet house this afternoon, weren't you?". Also, the locals try to ask you a lot of questions about your plans: "How long are you staying? Where are you going next?" ETC ETC