• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • Travel
  • Sustainability
  • Food
  • Expat Life
  • Reviews
  • Resources & Recommendations
  • All Blog Posts
  • About ⋁
    • Contact
    • Work With Me
    • Press & Portfolio
    • Privacy
  • Tilted Map
  • Nav Social Menu

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • RSS
    • Twitter
Tilted Map

Tilted Map

Travel, sustainability & life between two cultures

Ship’s Log: An Adventure in Cambodia I Didn’t Mean to Have

March 22, 2015 by Ketti 2 Comments

The hammocks on the beach in Cambodia, where I waited to get on my boat for some adventure travel. ©KettiWilhelm2015

This was what I would call a travel mishap that turned into an adventure: On a boat, in Cambodia, by myself. It could have been much worse!


1:20 p.m. My tuk-tuk driver leaves me where he probably thinks I want to go: in front of a quiet guest house occupying a few yards of land between the pot-holed road and the Bay of Thailand. As I had been told to do, I walk a few doors down to the unremarkable Restaurant #41 and ask the young waitress/bartender/cook about a boat to the small island where my friend from home (probably still) works. Hopefully.

“Okay,” she responds, and walks away.

There are no other customers at the restaurant and absolutely nothing going on, but I’m practicing being island-cool, so I don’t press it. I wait. I drink a coconut. I take a nap in a hammock. Sometime later in the afternoon I ask again, “Umm… boat?”

“Okay, okay,” she says softly. I take another nap.

5:15 p.m. A rusted, narrow, turquoise fishing boat sputters toward the shore. The man at the helm hops into the water as the boat slides to a stop in the sand. He’s a head shorter than me, and wearing pants that might be a skirt in a way that only southeast Asian sailors can pull off. He climbs the short ladder from the beach directly into the restaurant, laughing for apparently no reason. He looks at me, grins, points at the boat, and asks, “Crusoe Island?”

“Yes!” I said, hopping to my feet.

The Captain nods and sits down. The “okay” lady brings him a beer. It’s not time yet.

A quaint looking (sketchy) Cambodian boat that took me on an adventure on the high seas. ©KettiWilhelm2015
The very boat.

5:45 p.m. After Captain eats dinner, I help him push the 30-or-so-foot-long, six-foot-wide boat off the beach, and he fires up the motor. We’re off, quite literally sailing into the pink and blue sunset on the bay, bound for a mostly empty Cambodian island that I know nothing about, except that a friend told me a month ago that she was there, it was paradise, and she planned to stay. Later, I’m told people really do call the man “Captain.”

6:00 p.m. The engine makes terrible noises. The boat stops.

Captain, whose real name is Jiet, looks embarrassed. I smile and give a little laugh, trying to show how calm and cool I am, and how much confidence I have in his captaining abilities. He laughs and lifts a tool box out of the hull and starts wiggling some nut or bolt with every grimy wrench. None of them seem to fit.

The sun has sunk below the horizon and the sky is turning purple.

6:13 p.m. Captain starts making calls on his black and yellow walkie-talkie-style cell phone, looking stressed but laughing, while readjusting his skirt-pants.

We’re not what I would call far from land in boat distance – I can see an island, not a populated one, but land nonetheless. But we’re definitely what I would call far from land in swimming distance.

6:15 p.m. Captain hangs up the phone, shakes his head, and drops the anchor. Shit.

6:20 p.m. I fish my headlamp out of my giant backpack in an attempt to be a little bit useful with the repairs, and try to keep it pointed at the right spot, which, as my Dad could tell you, I have never been all that good at. Captain finally finds a wrench that seems to work.

Captain Jiet at working to fix the engine of our boat in Cambodia. ©KettiWilhelm2015
Captain Jiet at work.

6:25 p.m. The wrench slips out of Captain’s hand and plops into the ocean.

He gasps and looks up at me like he’s wondering if I’m about to freak out.

I do not. I’m starting to find this hilarious, and soon we’re both laughing. We must be having fun! I think we’re bonding.

I ask him if he speaks French; given Cambodia’s colonial history, it wouldn’t be a total shock. “No, no, no,” he says, chuckling. “Español?” Haha, no. Worth a shot.

6:30 p.m. It’s completely dark. Captain makes more calls. I’ve been in Cambodia no more than 18 hours and I’ve managed to get myself in the middle of a large body of water with a stranger who only speaks Khmer, and exactly one granola bar.

“Well,” I say, because it seems wrong to keep silent when you’re sharing a tiny space and a specific goal with one other person, “At least it floats … ?”

He laughs and shakes his head that he doesn’t understand, then says something in Khmer.

I laugh too, because this is ridiculous, and say something in English that I don’t remember. Probably along the lines of, “Haha, I hope I don’t die.”

7:10 p.m. Captain gets the engine started!

7:11 p.m. The engine dies again. He glances at me and says something. I nod.

7:16 p.m. The man lights a cigarette, lights the Christmas lights dangling in clumps from the rafters covering the middle of the boat, and begins pulling up the anchor with his bare hands, cigarette dangling from his lip like a fish hook.

7:20 p.m. He starts the motor and we’re moving again!

7:25 p.m. We get stuck on a coral reef. We’re maybe 50 feet from shore and the water is only a couple feet deep, but the coral is razor sharp in places and inhabited by terribly pokey sea urchins, plus it’s dark, so we might as well be 50 miles away, as far as I’m concerned.

7:30 p.m. I essentially stop paying attention because I see the vague shape of a large man with a flashlight swim-walking toward us.

As he gets closer, he calls out to ask if we’re okay. I laugh, because everything is still hilarious to me and Captain, and tell him we’re fine. I ask him if he brought beer, to prove how okay we are. He did not, but he spoke English with a North American accent more welcome than any I’d heard in my four months since leaving the continent. Two hours is long enough when it comes to being ship-wrecked.

Jiet and our rescuer, who was working on the island as a bartender, eventually managed to push the boat off the reef while I stayed on flashlight duty.

8:00 p.m. My feet are back on dry land.

Lessons Were Learned

Later that evening, Jiet’s Cambodian boss (and the owner of the campground where he worked, along with my friend and the search-and-rescue bartender) told me she was the person the Captain had been calling. She also mentioned that he had been unsettled by my laughing. As it turns out, Cambodians laugh when they’re nervous. So every time Jiet laughed – probably afraid I was about to have a panic attack on his boat – my laughing along with him just frayed his poor nerves even more because he thought I was nervous, too. (Which I was, obviously. But I thought my laughter was conveying a sense of confidence.)

I always like to travel by land when I can, as opposed to by air, because I feel more aware that I’m actually going to a new place when I get to watch all the in between places passing by my window. I can now say the same about traveling by sea. Never have I felt more conscious of the fact that I was going far, far from home, than when I was wondering whether I was ever going to get there. I was so aware of it, I hardly left the island for almost three weeks.


Related

Filed Under: Cambodia Tagged With: Adventure, Culture Shock, Language, Travel Snafus

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Maria says

    May 13, 2020 at 1:12 PM

    what an adventure indeed!!

    Reply
    • Ketti says

      June 4, 2020 at 10:22 AM

      Thanks Maria! I would go back in a heartbeat right about now. 🙂

      Ketti

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Welcome to Tilted Map! A travel blog about sustainability & culture.

I’m Ketti, and I started blogging when I moved from Montana to China on a whim. That turned into 5 years abroad, a master’s in sustainability and a passion for travel!
On this site, you’ll find a lot about US & Italian cultural differences (which, of course, includes a lot about food) plus travel ideas and plastic-free product reviews. Hit me up with questions! Read More on My About Page…

Subscribe here!

Popular Posts:

The view of steep cliffs and turquoise waters from the front of a long tail boat in Thailand. ©KettiWilhelm2019

My Favorite Non-fiction Books for Traveling Vicariously While Stuck at Home

A plate of spaghetti con vongole (spaghetti with fresh clams) in Naples, Italy. ©KettiWilhelm2020

How Italians Stay Thin Eating Pizza & Pasta All the Time

More of the Latest:

  • Pasta With Broccoli: A Recipe Stolen from My Italian In-Laws
  • How Hard Is It to Go to Hawaii Right Now? (And Should You?)
  • Plastic-Free Toiletries: My Travel-Friendly, Less-Waste Routine

Follow the Facebook Page:

Support Tilted Map:

If you enjoy what I write and want to share the ❤️, you can contribute $5 here! xoxo

Search the Blog:

Booking.com Hotel Search:

This form takes you to Booking.com (with the same selection & prices) and a fraction of your hotel bill will help me run this website – at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!

Booking.com

LastObject – Use TILTEDMAP10 for 10% off!

The words "Black Friday" crossed out, with "Green November" beneath. For each product sold in November, LastObject collects 2 lbs/ 1 kg of plastic in cooperation with Plastic Bank. (An alternative to a Black Friday campaign.)

Want to Read More? Subscribe below!

If you get my posts via social media, that's great! But those websites change their algorithms all the time, and that can leave people not seeing my posts. Signing up for emails is the surest way to see when I write something new!

Privacy Policy

(Don't worry, I never send more than one email a week. Often less.)

Van Part 7 - Flooring! Damn, it's hard to make thi Van Part 7 - Flooring! Damn, it's hard to make this sexy. 😂  As you can tell from the video, it was a pretty slow, tedious, precision type of job. (Which, frankly, my nerd heart loves. ❤)  But that doesn’t explain why I’m acting like an insane person who hasn’t slept. It’s not drugs. It was the Saturday after election day, and I was feeling all those hope-y, change-y feelings. Anyone else remember that?  I still believe in it. The best is yet to come. And someday I’ll be able to get a haircut, too. 💇 ✌
Continuing the van building distraction: Part 6, T Continuing the van building distraction: Part 6, The Wood Ceiling! 🌲  Made from leftover Blue Pine boards piled in my dad's shop, stained by yours truly, and painstakingly wedged into place on an uneven, curved ceiling.  Definitely a square peg / round hole kind of job, but it makes this old Chevy feel like a cabin in the woods! 💚
My mind has been far away from our van project lat My mind has been far away from our van project lately, so I'm a few steps behind in sharing this story. But here we go – Part 5: climbing around on top of a car like a '50s pin-up model, but with more '90s grunge vibes. 🔧 💃  🎬 Video of course by @theaviaoexperience
You may have noticed my stories got a little vulga You may have noticed my stories got a little vulgar and angry and political yesterday. Well, expressing how I feel about what happened in my country yesterday required a lot of fucks.  But first, congratulations to @raphaelwarnock and @jonossoff , who both broke barriers yesterday!  As for the rest of it, well…  This might seem like a break from my usual travel posts, but it’s not. Travel IS political, and I write about it as such. Travel writers and bloggers SHOULD ABSOLUTELY talk about what’s really happening in a place – politics and oppression included.  We’re quick to point out when other countries are unsafe to visit, but what about our own? 
Of all the wealthy democracies I’ve visited and lived in, I've never seen a place with such  terrifying hypocrisy as the United States. And I’m on the easy side of it – I’m white!!  My favorite political science professor in college said, “The only defining marker of a stable democracy is the peaceful transition of power.”  Yesterday, the only “stable” thing I saw was the predictable impunity for white thugs and domestic terrorists who stormed Congress like out-of-control children – because they lost an election. And because they knew they could get away with it. No person of color would ever imagine they could do that in this country.  That is the REALITY OF AMERICA TODAY. And the world is watching.  How could ANYONE abroad see a country where anyone can have a gun, and any hostile, armed (white) person with a grudge can walk into the highest offices of government without being stopped, and think: “That sounds like a nice place for a vacation”?  This is the kind of impunity and lawlessness that makes the US State Department warn us not to visit other countries.  So tell me, if you’re thinking of visiting the USA as a traveler, how safe does it seem right now???  📸 : Photo is from a Trump protest in Chicago back in 2019. The sentiment is what we still have to live up to.
.
.
#thisisamerica #travelusa #travelbloggersofig
#travelblogging
My mantra for the new year. ☝️ I’m looking f My mantra for the new year. ☝️ I’m looking forward to lots more change, new gigs, moving, exploring, learning and, just like last year, adapting to and learning to do things I never thought I could. (Just hopefully more fun things. 🏄‍♀️ 🧳)  Whatever you’ve got in mind, here's to 2021!
.
.
#findyouradventure #newyear2021 #newyearnewgoals #itravelbecause
Follow on Instagram

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Subscribe to Posts via Email

(Emails once a week or less.)

How to Support This Blog ❤️

If you enjoy what I write, you can contribute a few "thank you" dollars here!

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
Ethical Influencers member logo.

Blog
About
Contact
Work With Me
Privacy Policy
Resources

Searching for Something?

Get easy updates on Facebook:

Tilted Map

Copyright © 2021 · Ketti Wilhelm & Ketti Wilhelm Communications LLC | All Rights Reserved