We arrived at Sisophon and I was expecting french patisseries and Italian style pizza shops. I set my hops a little too high as the small town was just a little too small and not as continental as my mind had spun off from the tidbit entry the Lonely Planet Guide had written.
Oh well... we had a recommendation. The Botoum Hotel. Some french cyclists we'd bumped into at the Cambodian-Thailand Border had given us this tip along with a tear and water-proof map and a brief description of their seven month route from China.
Meetings between crossing cyclists often consists of questioning:
- origin and destination
- trip duration
- dangers and difficulties
- interesting places
and the beginner's curiousity of...
- bike problems and how they were fixed or parts sourced in a developing country.
With this neat collection of information we were on our way, feeling ratified to be a part pf the moving global forum.
We arrived at the Botoum Hotel. A grand sign and array of international flags beckoned us into the long drive where a brick and wood french colonial building stood. With wooden shutters of every window and balconies on each floor it felt like we had stumbled our pastry and, dare I wish it, chocolaterie guide. I went inside to inspect the rooms and quickly realised the outside of the building was just as over promising as a movie set facade. The inner rooms were lined up like stacked matchboxes, all of the spacious reception areas, sitting rooms, dining lounges gone. All but the wide marble staircase and tall ceilings, now squeezed within the thin corridors running like a knife cut through the length of the building.
This is Cambodia, not Europe. I would rather stay in an authentic Cambodian guesthouse with is concrete and tiled walls and floors, squat toilets, low ceilings, ancestral and political shrines than cling to a pastiche of colonial Europe.
So, we politely refused the overpriced room and left in search of another rest spot.
Not far up the same road Tom spotted a Hotel sign with a lit up picture of a room with a Queen sized bed, turned down white linen and a champagne bottle on ice with 2 flutes resting on a tray at the foot of the bed. In this picture, this room had matching furniture and a large sky filled window. My initial thoughts were that this place may be out of our price range and aimed at the bus loads of Korean tour groups hurtling from Bangkok to Angkor Wat.
We decided to give this place a try and we cycled down the long drive. It seemed to be a kind of motel as we saw double storied terraces with single car garages on the ground . We could see that the cars parked downstairs had a thick beige curtain pulled closed behind it. Perhaps to deter opportunistic thieves?
We announced our arrival to the management and they pointed us further down the driveway to a set of single storey terrace apartments. These were motorcyclists or bus tourists I assumed.
The manageress, a 14 year old with fluffy pink bear slippers shuffled to see which of the apartments were available. As we followed, we caught sight of an older couple on camping chairs enjoying a beer together. Their faces were steady and determined as they announced to us,
“You don’t want to stay here!
“...They don’t have a key for our room.”
“When we go to dinner tonight we have to take all our bags!”
Tom and I were surprised at this unexpected welcome announcement. The male of the couple concluded for us...
“It’s a love hotel, they don’t have keys here!”
His partner, an older woman with a sharp and spiky short hair style briskly topped his comment off,
“Yes, while we’ve been sitting here drinking a beer a Cambodian couple came on motorbike and checked in and out within the hour.”
I was surprised to hear all this. I’d heard about hotels like this in Japan, but aside from Cambodia’s reputation or sex tourism I couldn’t have imagined the locals, in a fairly conservative nation, utilising a place like this. Beside this, Sisophon was only a small town with local business and industry.
It turned out thee two Dutch European were cyclists also. As Tom stopped to swap stories with them I went to make sure a key could be found for our room.
I mimed at our doorstep what I wanted and after some quizzical and amused looks the girl shuffled off in search of the key. A rare request, perhaps.
I started to look around the terrace apartment. I walked into the concrete waled building to thin lounge area. It was wedged between the tinted mirrored front windows and a closely laid wall.. barely enough room to extend your legs from the couch! Passing down the corridor a walked to the doorway of the bedroom.The walls of the bedroom were concrete, as thick as the concrete walls separating the outside from the inside of the terrace. The bed was pushed up against a huge wall mirror as long as the bed and as high as the ceiling. A small portable 1980’s television was on a table at the foot of the bed and the room was like a bank vault contained within a double concrete casing. Good noise insulation.
It was hokey, but it was clean. I knew it would be OK to recommend that we stay here to Tom, and strangely enough I preferred it to the bland and narrow room of the Botoum Hotel.
The girl came back with the key and Tom and I brought our bikes inside with the conveniently placed ramp at the doorway entrance, as were in front of all the apartment entrances. Privacy was a part of the facilities here. Tom wandered through the rooms I heard him give a yell from the bedroom,
“Do you think we're the first to stay a full night and not have sex?
In our defense, we were pretty tired after riding 300+ km from Bangkok over the past week! A further exclamation was laughed out,
“There’s empty condom packets in the beside table drawers!”
All part of the package, right. Even with these tawdry details it still beat the Botoum Hotel, hands down!
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