Sihanoukville

The Sihanoukville trip marked our last weekend together as a whole group.  Our group of ten was becoming a group of five.  We left the hotel Friday morning, and the ride was much more pleasant, minus the bathroom situation.  We were told we would be stopping about halfway, and the bathroom were nice and clean.  Well we were highly misguided.  "Clean bathrooms" meant dark enclosed rooms with "squatters".  The floor was wet and muddy, and behind our hole was a huge tank of water you scoop from to "flush" the toilet... not my favorite experience!

We finally made it to the guest house, and were greeted with bugs, "coach" curtains, and a barbed wire fence.. All I kept thinking was at least we were walking distance to the beach.  Unfortunately the beach was so dirty with trash none of us even put our feet in the water.  We quickly learned that our location was not ideal, and decided to venture into town.

Immediately stepping out of our tuk tuk we were approached by Nicki (a ginger who got his name from Nicki Minaj), a local selling bracelets and hair wraps.  We probably were his biggest spenders of the evening.  Finally able to escape the begging, we walked along the beach and were stopped along the way to shotgun a beer with some Australians.  They worked at the bar, but instead of getting paid they were given accommodations and free food and drinks.. not a bad deal to live on the beach for free.  I learned a new game "lazy pong", which is basically just beer pong sitting in chairs on a shorter table.. I was surprisingly good.

The next day we woke up bright and early, crossed our fingers the rain would stop, and loaded onto a party boat.  After a rocky ride out to sea, we stopped near an island.  It was quite a struggle to get a snorkel, I've never been pushed out of the way by so many people.  Luckily I was able to hold my own, push back, and make it to the top of the deck ready to jump.  It felt like I was walking the plank, but I took the plunge and it was great!  The next stop was an island called Koh Rong.  We were finally in the paradise we had been waiting for!  A beach to ourselves, clear water and sunshine.  it was a relaxing time, until the downpour happened.  Luckily we still had about 2 hours on the beach!

We ended the day on a much more remote beach.  It was so nice to walk the beach with no beggars approaching us, and we had an awesome grilled BBQ dinner.  I even tried barracuda.

The day after getting back from the trip I received an email from the Embassy warning US citizens to be cautious of Sihanoukville... At least I didn't have any intentions of going back.