Markara Guest House Sihanoukville

hello every one i am now in a place called sihanoukville its kind of hard to pranounce lol<br><br>anyways im staying in a king of club here its free to stay in the dorm rooms but when your sleeping on a piece of wood with a fin matress with 20 people and its 30 + degress at night it gets quite hard to sleep the good thing is that you can buy beer pritty much every where for like 30 pence so it very cheep, you spend most of the day on ...

A few of us have made a daring escape from the truck and we headed off from Vangvieng, Laos on our own planning to take a 24 hour bus journey to Phnom Penh and then get the bus to the beach in Cambodia. We decided this would mean less time spent driving and a quicker border crossing then time on the beach before catching up with the truck in Phnom Penh. It could've all been so simple. The 3 buses to Phnom Penh turned into a truly epic adventure involving (including connecting ...

... chanting the 'massaaaaage. pedicure, me change your colour?' and children with great English forcing bracelets on me. Got rather p****ed off and have learnt to say 'no' to it all even if I get called a 'tight ****' by a 12yr old Cambodian child (my mouth was open in shock!). Spent a lovely day by the beach and I am off to do some English teaching tonight at a local language school and then a snorkel trip to the local islands on Friday. I'll put pictures up then

... Tony, three guys we were introduced to through David. They were good company and Bud especially was a real character, just one of many we had been fortunate enough to meet on our travels. <br>The local casino provided us with a welcome distraction one evening. There was no door charge and the beer flowed freely as long as we continued playing, how foolish, wooooohahahahahaha. Mish and I played roulette with the same 15 Dollars all night. We were up and down but ...

... were pretty cool, you could go right inside into a little cave etc, considering it was an absolutly scorching day, the water was a god send. We spent the rest of the day ******* around town on our peds. As we were following some locals through a red light (which is the norm), we got pulled over by the fuzz and got fined a few dollars each (whatever!). <br><br>We watched movies into the night and got the early bus for Siagon-<br>

... to the most popular; Don Det. Don Det is beautiful, very laid back and somewhat 'rural'. You only get electricity for three hours a day but in this place you just don't need it. Get a good book, lie in your hammock and laze the day away. We did do things to pass the time in our three days there though. We got bicycles to tour the island and neighbouring Don Kong (the film name opportunities for that were mouth watering) and went fishing with local fishermen. We managed to ...

... be an overstatement. Still $2 a night and it was all we needed. There were 2 toilets and showers (although only one worked, and a dribble at that) - and it was really bad if someone was sick in one, or both, of the toilets during the night before!<br>We hit the beach (Serendipity) and again did the BBQ thing. On the way to get food I was walking along the beach looking out to sea or talking to Pete and I fell down a hole that had a concrete foundation in for a large umbrella ...

... bungalow was ideal. However, I quickly changed my mind as there was a massive hord of mosquitos that attacked us through out the night. I could not sleep nor could I defend myself. The next day we asked to be changed to a different room with AC and concrete floors. I will continue this blog later. I have to run off and go pack for our Laos trip. We leave tomorrow at 6:10!

... to keep his nose stuck in a book:<br>'I see, your a good swimmer,' was his compliment.<br>We dodged the hawkers hawking allsorts, and had the much deserved 50 cents pint. <br>Nice watching the sun sink behind yonder sea, and made our way back to the guest house.<br>Just needed to explore the area to find a quieter beach. We did, eventually.<br>Can't think why people from these countries would try anything to get into the EU like the UK.<br>It beats me.<br> <br>

... to this a sometimes harsh aspect of 'kh' sounding words that are almost impossible to transliterate into English, and the task of trying to communicate with the majority of Khmers from a phrase book becomes a difficult one. Like just about everywhere else, the people of Cambodia have thrown themselves headlong into the task of learning English, but this being early days, only a few speak the language with any degree of self-confidence. Under the French, the people of Cambodia ...