Toby and Lee leave us but some idiot gives away free beer!

With almost a week of Sihanoukville monkey business now behind us it feels like we never really left. The days following our glorious return were spent out on the very fine and well kept Independence beach, although it’s technically a private beach owned by a very flashy hotel we have never had to pay to use it and we never get any hassles there either.

The nights however were a different story – beer fueled rampages, tower after tower of Anchor beer and for Toby a couple more nights sat around the blackjack table. Georgie and I left the casino to Toby and a few other people we have met and instead soaked up that Monkey Republic atmosphere we have been so very addicted to.

Toby had to leave and head back to Bangkok early Tuesday morning so of course we had to have a real bender on Mond ay night to see him off proper, it’s a shame he had to go so early and we will miss having him tagging along but he has places he needs to go and if we were to back to Thailand again we would be broke… So we’re going to stay here in Sihanoukville for a while.

Sadly though Lee is off on a mammoth ten week holiday and last night was his last night with us, we started the day as usual… Coffee and recovery breakfast but by the time the afternoon came around we’d recovered just enough and caught wind of a local rival bar offering free beer (100% free no catch) between 5:30 – 7:00pm… I have only ever seen two free bars in my entire life but I have never had the chance to  take full and proper advantage of them… I felt if nothing, that I owed it to Toby to drink his share too, also it worked out perfectly with Lee’s leaving party which was arranged in town for 7:30.

Georgie took a little longer than usual getting ready and I sat at the bar talking to Grumpy Dave (the sausage king of Sihanoukville) working up a very unhealthy thirst.

Dave headed off to go and get started and I rushed Georgie along, by 6pm we were there and the beer began to flow. Bless them, I don’t think they anticipated the thirst of a bunch of tight arsed backpackers and expats to be anything like it was and with  everyone shouting at passers by “Oi you… Free beer” the place was soon rammed and I don’t think the tap stopped once until the first barrel was empty… Thats when things started to heat up because in the time it took to change the barrel everyone had finished off their beer and was demanding another – they had created a thirsty, beered up mob and the only thing to calm us was more beer. 7pm came around a lot sooner than any of us would have liked and with that a good slice of customers who had just been walking down the street to do laundry and stuff staggered off to finish whatever they were up to before we dragged them in. By 7:30 we had all finished up our freebies and it was time for us to get to Lee’s party.

Georgie, Grumpy Dave and I staggered down to a Tuk Tuk and rolled into the Khmer restaurant Cabbage Garden spot on time but thoroughly pissed. All the Monkey staff were there as was half of the Sihanoukville expat community, we kept the beer coming and ordered far too much grub but it was a cracking meal and it came in at only $6 a head… Somehow it didn’t seem fair – having drank and eaten our own weight in beer and excellent food but only forked out $12…

Back to Monkey for a few more drinks and last goodbyes to Lee which had Georgie welling up and then off to bed, as Grumpy Dave left he slid over to me and said “same time tomorrow boy”

to which I replied “of course sir”…