Reef Resort Sihanoukville

... Cambodia's biggest tourist destination. The trip was a 5 hour boat ride through stilted floating villages and then across TonleSap, one of the largest lakes in Asia.
Siem Reap is in stark contrast to the rest of the country due to the tourist dollar found here more than elsewhere. The main draw here are the temples. Lots of them. They're like something out of an Indiana Jones film, apparently Tomb Raider was filmed here. I spent 5 hours exploring 4 temples which ...

... 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

... They proceeded to cover us in the paint. All of a sudden though myself and Leeanne were worse for wear. One minute we were talking and the next we were head down on the table. I went outside and got sick and then then said I had to go. Leeanne was exactly the same except she was up all night. Nat and Paul said it happened so fast that they reckoned we were spiked with something. But I just put it ...

... Jump in and see another boat full of kids so we wave and as we get closer we realise they are the kids from the beach! This Australian guy was with them and it turns out theyd been saying theyve never been to the islands and would love to go one day so he paid for a boat and took them all for a day out. Spoke to him and he said seeing how happy he made them it was the best $100 he ever spent. How amazing is that ...

... to treat ourselves as we are on holiday! It was worth the extra $2 purely because of the exclusive hammock use on the veranda. This place is known for great sea food so I decided now is the time to start trying the stuff so I got stuck into a seafood barbecue first night, barracuda steak, was delicious. Also tried some mini-lobster things that some lady was cooking up on the beach, I think they were actually langoustines which I remember from my fishmonger ...

... warm with some waves but they were not too big. After swimming for a while we got out to lay down and have some drinks. Like Phnom Penh there are a lot of beggars here. For the most part though the kids do not really ask for money, they ask for your used cans and bottles which they can get money for by recycling. There are also these women who walk around with big rolls of string which they can use to remove hair, which is really bizarre ...

... that there wasnt a lot i could do and that the bug had to take its course i went on the trip alone. We went to three islands and snorkelled on each. The Reefs didnt really have much on the ones i had seen in Egypt the summer before so i was rather less than impressed. Anyway we had lunch of barbecued fish on Bamboo Island and were left to explore the deserted beaches for a couple of hours resulting in a little more redness of the skin ...

... waxing !,who knows what else we could have had. It seemed a very reasonable price and we both had a great massage from head to toe, front and back certainly our best value of the trip. Very relaxed we made our way back to the ship to leave the port in company of hundreds of the small fishing boats off for another nights fishing. Fun sail away party as we left. Another sea day saw more singing and dancing practice and a relaxed afternoon. Then overnight before we arrived in Singapore.

... arrived.

Formalities at the border took far longer than we expected. We had to make the 8:00am boat to Sihanoukville otherwise we would be stuck in the seedy border town of Ko Kong which thrives on smuggling, gambling and prostitution, some of which is conducted in bars where emaciated caged bears are kept for the titillation of customers, so we were told. But the number of forms we had to fill out and the number of lines we had to join soon made catching the boat seem like a ...