Yesterday down in Sihanukville we decided to take up an offer to join a booze cruise. This in itself sounds kind of cheesy, a bit 18 year party kid wannabe and I suppose a potential recipe for disaster. Still, we were lured in by the promise of food and drinks and a chance to go to see some islands all for $10. Ferry tickets in themselves were more expensive and without the food and drinks. Decision made, we clambered on to this rickety, 2-tiered wooden boat, no worries - after all they specialise in dodgy, rickety boats in Asia.
We were actually having a really good time, there were good people, and not just 18 year olds, we had a drink, we had a swim and then the bloody boat only went and capsized! Literally as quick as that, one minute I was chatting to people and Brett had gone to the bar, the next minute a massive gush of water came through the boat and I remember watching my bag shoot past me and thought "shit, now my bag's soaked" and then I was submerged. It did get kind of scary for a minute then, I had been on the bottom tier of the boat and finding myself submerged, I instinctively went to swim upwards only to find the floor of the boat on the water above my head. I opened my eyes under water but couldn't see anything but water, no people, no nothing. Now I'm not always the sharpest knife in the draw, I paused for a second and thought well someone had better do something here - we're surrounded by bloody water. It then occurred to me that I may not have time to wait for someone to do something, I may have to do something myself. I definitely considered panicking for a minute but figured that may not help the situation, so I took myself off to try to squeeze through the bars that had been the side of the boat. I got my head through and then got stuck so had to wriggle out and try swimming down further, I found a gap, swam for my little life and came bobbing out in the sea. There were just a sea of heads, plus boat debris. Luckily I saw Brett almost straight away, he had it far worse than me having to wait while I put 2 and 2 together and get the hell out of the boat, he'd been frantically searching and not finding me. Well, I never have been one to rush!
Anyway, there we were shipwrecked in the sea, somewhere off the coast of Cambodia, somewhat wide eyed and shell shocked, floating amongst crates of beer and soggy burger buns and a whole load of flip flops. Apparently there were also rats shipwrecked along with us but I was spared the pleasure of seeing any myself. I was so relieved to see Brett, but then I started panicking about the girl who'd been standing next to me. We found her and then pretty much floated and watched our old, wooden boat sink into the sea. No sign of my bag, which at this point wasn't important at all but yet there's still a part of me that was thinking of my camera and my shorts and my only pair of shoes that had been in that bag. People were scrabbling to grab beers, I, thinking we may be in it for the long haul, saved a crate of water. Actually we can't have floated for more than 10 minutes before local boats started appearing to our rescue. All in all, it was no Titanic but it felt pretty dramatic at the time. Some people were a bit concussed and a fair few were crying. Me and Brett and a lovely girl called Celina climbed onto a rescue boat with the last of the stragglers, when I say climbed, there was no dignified way to get onto the dam boat, so to add insult to injury, I was dragged head first, feet up in the air onto the boat. Then we made our way back to shore. The guys who rescued us couldn't have been nicer, they produced a bag full of cigarettes and handed them out and generally looked after us.
Back on land it was quite a nice atmosphere, everyone pretty much happy to be alive and rallying round to help each other. We all stank of diseal, which had been leaking out from the boat into the sea. And man alive, that smell's hard to get out! We'd given my bag up as a goner when this dude came walking through clutching it - I could have kissed him! Everything was saturated, my camera's as dead as a dodo but it was still good to have my bag back! Local kids were swarming round wanting to know what happened and one gave me a bracelet - I said no, I had no money to pay him and he said it was free - a gift for good luck. We're still really hoping that everyone made it ok, we're 99% sure, but being Asia, there was no official disaster plan or very efficient way of keeping track of people. We had a bit of a survivors party afterwards. We still never got to see an island, but hey - its not every day you get shipwrecked!
RIP camera!
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