Motorbike Crash in Cambodia – Part 2, the island recovery

Read part one here:

To recap: I was in Cambodia. I couldn’t walk. And the damage was seeming pretty serious. I was also alone, except for a guy who was, for now, hanging around to help me out. In my dorm room was a woman who got me stoned and flashed me, two tattooed Icelandic boys who didn’t talk, and a blur of various others who looked at me in horror as a warning tale.

I was due to arrive on Koh Rong Samloem, an island off the coast of Cambodia that I didn’t know much about. I delayed my trip there by a couple of days, until I could at least hop if I was holding onto someone’s arm. My friend decided to come with me, to keep me company, carry my bag, and be said arm. Also who can resist an island with nothing on it except a hostel? No internet, no wifi, no civilisation…

Have you spotted the catch yet? I was very injured with deep wounds. This might not have been my smartest idea.

Before we left, we went to the hospital to get my bandages changed. With us we took the newest member of our dorm-room of misfits, the man we dubbed Desperate Dan, who had been having a bit of a rough time. On this particular occasion he’d come to get his stomach checked out, which had started causing huge problems. A week ago he’d had a heart attack, after his drink had been spiked with meth, ket and MDMA by the Cambodian woman he’d had a week long romance with. He was also onto his third phone, after being scammed, losing, and breaking his previous ones. The tales were endless.

Once at the hospital he disappeared off and I was left in the waiting room in my wheelchair. A man on the other side with a tiny tiny baby noticed me staring, and beckoned me over. My friend wheeled me across and the man handed me his baby, who must have been barely a week old. I awkwardly held it as it snuffled to itself. I couldn’t quite believe how trusting this man was, that he would hand his baby to a stranger.

As I got my bandages changed, I thought it was probably wise to check that I was okay to disappear off to a tropical island. “Is there a hospital there?” I asked.

Beautiful Koh Rong, taken by Rene.

“There’s definitely a hospital on Koh Rong,” the baby-faced doctor confidently replied. Koh Rong was the next island across, and so I was reassured. Meanwhile, my friend was off getting his rabies shot. A dog had, unprovoked, nipped him on the ankle when he was at Angkor Wat, and now he was suffering a huge amount of expense and tedium trying to find rabies vaccinations everywhere he went so that he could complete his five week post-bite course. When done, we waited for Desperate Dan, who was in a mood. They had found a stomach parasite.

We reached the island without too much mishap, although swinging on and off a boat with only one leg was interesting. With impeccable timing, my friend decided to pass the hour on the boat by showing me the pictures he’d taken with my camera of when he went back up the mountain to see the parts we didn’t reach. This included a picture of my blood on the road… still there two days later. I went silent for a while.

Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. This was after two days!!!

By this time I was on some intense pain medication, and everything was dreamlike and surreal. One long boat ride, followed by a shorter one to transfer to Samloem, and we’d made it onto the island. In typical twist of fate style, the cabin we were given was the one furthest away from the main area where the food and the people were.

I spent my days by beating everyone else at scrabble (and being very modest about it). My concentration was too poor for most other things, but apparently my word skills were still working. After a couple of days the blood had soaked through the bandages and gone crusty, causing me a lot of pain. It was definitely time to get them changed, and so we started trying to make arrangements.

“Is there a hospital or clinic here?” we asked. We were told no.

“Can we go to Koh Rong? Is there one there?” They looked at us, and me, and shook their heads.

“I have to get to the hospital though,” I said, indicating my extremely dirty bandages.

He made a phone call, and told me that a boat would be leaving early in the morning and we could get to Koh Rong on that – the same boat we had come on, just going in the other direction. How we could get back remained a mystery. Likewise, whether there was a hospital also remained a mystery. They seemed to think there possibly, probably, maybe was one.

The next morning we set off bright and early, ready to go. The hostel boat took us round to the pier on the other side of the island and left us there for a while, where we were scammed into buying tickets from some guy in the restaurant who didn’t seem to be sympathetic to me needing to get medical help. When the boat arrived, the German woman covered in tattoos who was also crewing the way over looked me up and down with a ‘you again’ expression. She offered me a hand and I swung myself on.

Once we arrived on Koh Rong my friend headed off to find how we should get back. It was already 10am, and we were told that the last boat for Samloem was leaving at 12. This was much sooner than we had expected, as we knew the boat going back from the pier to the hostel wasn’t until 3. Unperturbed we made our way onto the island to find out about a hospital. While I waited, my friend went to ask and came back with the news: “he said there’s no hospital here, people always say there’s a hospital here, but there isn’t and I don’t know why they keep saying that. If we go to the bar down there, then there’s a barman called Dennis who’s a doctor.”

Pharmacy fun

Dennis was a shirtless and tanned English guy who took one look at my bandages and roughly told me to go up the road to the pharmacy, where they would charge me much less and do just as good a job. To get into the pharmacy we had to step over multiple small children who were rolling around in the doorway, where a blonde girl introduced herself and told me the pharmacist was in a meeting and we would have to wait. “As long as we catch our boat,” I said. “And why are there so many children here?”

“Oh, it’s also the daycare and English centre,” she said, watching as children wandered around the floor, inches away from prescription medicine.

The pharmacist, when she arrived, was an Australian girl in her mid-twenties who ushered me into the back room and onto a grubby bench. The wooden walls smelled of damp, and old English textbooks lay spread open in the dust on the floor. The metal plate with the medical tools on it was anything but clean, I think there was even a dead spider sitting next to a scalpel.

“So were you a doctor back in Australia?” I asked, as she peeled off my bandages.

“Oh no, I came to Cambodia a few years ago and fell in love with it. Two years ago I came back and started volunteering here, and at one point I did a first aid weekend. But after two years of dealing with motorbike accidents, you get all the experience you need.” I wasn’t overly reassured, and I was very thankful that nothing more serious had happened to my wound since I had arrived on the island.

The super sanitary room

As I grit my teeth and tried not to scream as the iodine was dripped onto the open wound, a cat wandered by on the wall above me.

The boat was, in fact, not a direct boat but rather a scuba diving boat for Chinese tourists. As we lounged around in our shorts and t-shirts, they tightened their life-jackets and clung to every piece of boat they could reach. Young Chinese women took turns holding each others hair back as seasickness got the better of them. When the boat stopped in the middle of the sea, we retreated to the upper deck for some sunbathing while the tourists leapt off the side of the boat and bobbed around, still in their life jackets, hunting for fish.

Relaxing on the top deck

Hours later, and a a little sunburned, we were deposited on the pier where eventually the hostel boat picked us up. The newbies who were arriving looked panicked at the sight of me, exhausted and bandaged. The hostel staff welcomed me back and asked if I’d managed to get my bandages changed, and I just looked at them.

“Next time someone asks if there’s a clinic on Koh Rong, please, please, tell them no.”

A Chinese tourist in a life jacket, bobbing along.

To be continued… as I find myself alone in Siem Reap, and with a website that’s been revenge hacked.

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Top 10 vegan restaurants in Rome

This is possibly my favourite city guide that I’ve done (and one of the biggest, crikey!). Rome, one of my favourite cities in the world, plus some of the best vegan food I’ve ever eaten? Heaven. So without further ado, on to the food, because as Caesar would say: veni, vedi, cenavi – I came, I saw, I ate.

Fine Dining

Ranging from the extremely high end to the price of a nice meal out, this is my selection of vegan and vegetarian restaurants in Rome that are something special, and not to be missed.

HOTEL RAPHAËL – vegetarian

At the end of 2015 Hotel Raphaël turned the hotel eco and organic, and the restaurant became entirely vegetarian. The restaurant is on the terrace, and in nice weather you can sit out and look over one of the best views in the city. Not only that, but the menu was designed in the style and with the help of Pietro Leeman, one of Italy’s most renowned vegetarian chefs and the creator of Joia.  Each dish is so beautiful that I wanted to frame it and hang it on my wall, but luckily I overcame that urge and ate the food instead. It was as delicious as it looked, and I especially liked the addition of pansies on each of the dishes to tie them all together.

Best vegan restaurants in Rome

The beautiful view from the terrace.

Best vegan restaurants in Rome

If you want to stay the night as well as eating lunch or dinner there, then you can book a room here. Each floor has a different design, and the whole hotel is also eco and organic – right down to the toiletries in the rooms which are vegan and cruelty free. The breakfast bar is a thing of awe and wonder. Everything is organic, and although it caters for the carnivores there are more than enough vegan options. No staying here and having to survive on the fruit platter in the morning! There’s a huge juicer and a fresh orange juicer, too, so you can get your nutrient fix first thing.

Best vegan restaurants in Rome

Gazpacho with Russian salad, and an actual salad

Top 10 vegan restaurants in Rome

Tempura (left) and artichoke with grilled tofu.

Top 10 vegan restaurants in Rome

Pumpkin ravioli with pear (left) and almond creme with raspberry sorbet.

A meal for two: €100-150 without drinks.

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LA CAPRA CAMPA – vegan

La Capra Campa opened 4 years ago as a vegetarian restaurant and changed to vegan almost immediately, alongside the owner’s personal shift. It’s a small but cosy restaurant with outside seating, a little outside the city centre and the tourist attractions but well worth the trip out. The menu is inventive, offering vegan versions of traditional Italian dishes and even homemade nut cheeses that have been seasoned for a month. You can also buy these in blocks. The food was exceptional – some of the best I’ve had – especially the seitan dishes. Even though we were stuffed we managed room for dessert, and I was particularly impressed by the cardamom and bergamot cream.

Top 10 vegan restaurants in Rome

Nut cheese platter.

Top 10 vegan restaurants in Rome

Homemade seitan.

Top 10 vegan restaurants in Rome

Top 10 vegan restaurants in Rome

Amazing desserts.

A meal for two: €50-80 without drinks.

Happy Cow | Facebook | Website

BIBLIOTHE – vegetarian

One of Rome’s longest running vegetarian restaurants, Bibliothe serves Ayurvedic food and runs events and readings on Ayurvedic and Indian philosophy. If you’re not familiar with the concept of Ayurvedic food, then it’s a little different to what we think of as Indian food. It’s created to be balanced for the body, rather than overloading with spices and flavour. When I went around 1pm, it was packed with locals on their lunch break, all eating the Thali which is a plate of rice and several small dishes. It was served with a bowl of bread, which was homemade and delicious. The menu is a mixture of vegetarian and vegan, but the cakes are almost all vegan. I tried the zucchini cake with spices and toasted almonds, and the apple crumble. Thinking about that zucchini cake now makes me want another piece, here… mmm. I wish I could make them like that. If you’re in Rome and want a break from pizza and pasta, Bibliothe is the perfect choice.

Vegan vegetarian restaurant central Rome

The Thali plate (left) and apple crumble.

A meal for two: €30-50 without drinks.

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IL GECOBIONDO – vegan

Il GecoBiondo (a clever name that includes the words eco and bio, look closely) opened in 2007 and turned vegan in 2008, and so claims the title of being the oldest fully vegan restaurant in Rome. It’s a Trattoria, which means the dishes change day to day, so there’s no menu – you just choose how hungry you are (the second option comes with pasta) and then the dishes start rolling out. Because it’s more buffet style the presentation left a little to be desired, but the food was very good nonetheless. Like several of the other restaurants on this list, it’s not very central but if you’re hungry after a long day of sight-seeing, then it’s worth the visit as the food is tasty, healthy and filling. It’s also all locally sourced and organic – even the alcohol.

Vegan vegetarian restaurant central Rome

Salad (left) and seitan with tofu cream, capers and nutmeg, jerusalem artichoke and chicory.

Vegan vegetarian restaurant central Rome

Roman gnocchi (left) and zucchini with apple cider vinegar.

A meal for two: €40-50 without drinks.

Happy Cow | Facebook | Website

Buffets

Rome boasts 2 totally vegan buffets, one pay by weight, one all you can eat. Both are fresh, creative and delicious.

PASSIONE VEGANE – vegan

Passione Vegane is a fully vegan buffet that’s a little out of the city, close to Ciampino airport. Many of their customers are omnivores wanting to eat more healthily who go there on their lunch break. Unlike Ops! below, which is a pay by weight, Passione Vegane is all you can eat, so make sure you’re hungry. In the evening it costs a little more, and you get a few extra options like seitan and a different pasta dish. There are gluten free options, but there’s contamination in the kitchen so it’s not suitable for severe coeliacs.

Vegan vegetarian restaurant central Rome

Incredible vegan food in Rome

The desserts are extra, but are amazing. They served me the first creme brûlée I’ve eaten since I went vegan, and it was perfect. The biscuits, too, are exactly like the non-vegan Italian biscuits I used to eat as a child when I went for Sunday morning coffees across the road in the Italian coffee shop with my dad.  If you’re on your way to Ciampino, or if your hotel’s a little out of the city, then it’s a perfect place for lunch and dinner.

Incredible vegan food in Rome

A meal for two: €40-50 without drinks.

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OPS! CUCINA MEDITERRANEA – vegan

If you’ve heard vegans who’ve been to Rome talking about the restaurant options, then you’ve probably heard of Ops! already. It’s a pay by weight buffet close to the centre of Rome, not far from the Borghese. If you go, make sure you’re hungry as there were so many delicious looking options I couldn’t help but fill up my plate with food.

Incredible vegan food in Rome

A meal for two: €40-50 without drinks.

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Pizza

There are pizzerias all over Rome, but relatively few with vegan cheese. Of all of them, there’s one that stood out.

RIFUGIO ROMANO – veg-options

The only pizzeria where I found a decent number of vegan options with vegan cheese, Rifugio Romano is run by a family, most of whom are vegans. They still serve meat, there seem to be more vegan options appearing all the time – and impressively the menu has tempeh, tofu, vegan cheese and vegan desserts. It’s not in the prettiest area, but it’s very conveniently located as it’s right by Termini, so very central. The pizza was good, and the cake afterwards was to die for.

Vegan pizza in Rome

A meal for two: €40-50 without drinks.

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Cafés

Rome has a coffee culture, but not a coffee shop one. So if you want to find somewhere vegan to chill with a coffee between sight-seeing, you’re a little short of options. There is an amazing one, though (although it’s actually a bistro), and it has cats.

ROMEOW CAT BISTRO – vegan

Finally a cat café makes it onto one of my vegan food guides! I generally avoid animal cafés as they’re a form of animal tourism that’s often overlooked on the lists of things you shouldn’t support. The cats in most cat cafés are pedigrees, bothered and hassled during the day and locked in cages at night. Adopt don’t buy, and don’t support businesses that buy either. But… Romeow, like some others now popping up, is a cafe with rescue cats where the customers aren’t allowed to force the cats to come to you. The staff clearly genuinely love the cats, too, and seem very happy in their feline-filled workspace. There are 6 cats, and you can watch them wandering along the walkways and sleeping in the sunny spots as you drink your latte and eat a piece of cake. I did try the food, and it was good (although small portions) but the desserts… oh the desserts… were incredible. My personal favourite of the ones I tried was the chocolate mousse cake that had a caramel layer between the base and the mousse. Oh so good. So so good.

Vegan cafe in Rome

Vegan cafe in Rome

A meal for two: €40-50 without drinks.

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Gelato and desserts

This is something Rome does particularly well, and you won’t be short of options if you have a sweet tooth. Two in particular stood out.

OLIVE DOLCI  – vegan

Most gelaterias offer sorbets, and a few even offer soy options, but if that’s not your cup of tea (or cone of ice) then head down to Olive Dolce, where they’ve replaced milk with… olive oil. This is one of those things that made me raise my eyebrows to start with and go: “what?! Olive oil gelato?” but once I tried it I was sold. You’ve got to taste it to believe it. They’re experimental with their flavours, and the mild flavour of the olive oil allows them to really shine through and be much stronger than with regular milk. I tried black tea, baobab, goji and naranjilla. I could have easily returned every day.

The best vegan gelato in Rome Italy

4 scoops in a tub: €4.50

Happy Cow | Facebook

GREZZO – vegan

Grezzo, tucked away in the cute little alleyways of the Monti neighbourhood, is the first pastry, chocolate and gelato shop in the whole world to serve fully raw, vegan and gluten-free recipes using only organic ingredients. Looking at the counter and the beautiful creations on offer, I couldn’t quite believe that is was all raw and vegan. I could have easily eaten half their stock, but I was restrained and tried just one orange and chocolate cake. Next time, my lovelies, next time.

The best raw vegan chocolate desserts in Rome Italy

The best raw vegan chocolate desserts in Rome Italy

One cake: €6

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TOP 10 VEGAN RESTAURANTS IN ROME ITALY

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