Owwww! Sunburn!
Trip Start
Feb 28, 2008
1
5
18
Trip End
Jul 06, 2008
Sihanoukville,
Cambodia
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Sorry this one has taken me a while. I am currently in Vietnam and having an awesome time, so I have struggled to find time to get on the internet.
Sunday 16th March
I woke up just in the nick of time to get up, pack my bag (which I had planned to do the night before!), get some money and get to the bus station. All a bit of a rush really! The coach ride was probably the least eventful of the ones so far, apart from the fact that the smelly guy next to me decided that he wanted to sit on half of my seat as well as his own, so I spent most of the 4.5 hour ride squashed on the edge of my seat! The bus also had ridiculously springy suspension, so whenever we went over a bump, of which there were a hell of a lot, the coach bounded up and down for the next 50 metres! Also, it sounded like that the horn of the coach was actually placed inside the vehicle, so every time I fell asleep the driver would beep it and I would wake up with a jump! When I got to Sihanoukville my first choice guesthouse was full up so I ended up at a place called GST - the first place that I had stayed with a fan instead of air-con. I went to go and spend my first couple of hours on the beach which was less than 100m away. The beach was nice , but you are harassed every 5 minutes by someone offering you a massage, manicure, fruit, sunglasses, sarongs, books, bracelets, weed, etc! After some dinner and a bit of internet I decided to try and have an early night as I haven't been sleeping very well.
My poor sunburnt legs!
I read today that one of the side effects of my malaria tablets is insomnia, something which I have been experiencing almost every night. Most nights I have only had 4 hours sleep maximum.Monday 17th March
After another night of hardly sleeping I left my room early to go and chill out on the beach. I spent a whole 3 hours turning away people trying to sell me stuff before heading for some food. I headed back to the beach after lunch where I managed to get majorly sunburnt despite putting suncream on every half and hour! In the evening I got chatting to an English guy and 3 Norwegian girls at one of the many beachside bars. It was an awesome bar. All of the chairs and tables were set out in a big circle on the beach and owners were standing in the middle doing fire poi and fire batons, and a couple of bars down had some fireworks.
Tuesday 18th March
Today I went on a boat ride to Bamboo island. It is a really small island just off of the coast of Sihanoukville, and only 20 people live on it. We had to get to the beach for 8am for breakfast at one of the bars before they loaded us onto a ricketty old wooden boat that chugged along at a snails pace! The first stop was just off the coast of another island where we all went snorkelling over the coral reef. The water wasn't particularly clear, so you couldn't really see a lot apart from a couple of fish. On the island I couldn't really sunbathe or go in the sea because I had gotten so sunburnt the previous day! After an amazing lunch of fresh fish that the boat drivers had caught, I went for a walk through the jungle to the other side of the island with two guys and a girl, all French, that I had met on the boat.
Ochheuteal Beach
After a couple more hours of sitting in the shade, we headed to the coast of another nearby island for some more snorkelling, but by this point we had been out for 8 hours and nobody could be arsed to go! I had dinner at the GST restaurant and order spaghetti and meatballs, but when it came it was a greasy beefburger on top of a tiny pile of spaghetti, with a couple of bits of tomato on top. Suprisingly, it was really nice! After chatting to Jim on messenger, I decided to go to bed for the most uncomfortable nights sleep ever because of my all-over sunburn!Wednesday 19th March
I had another day of sitting in the shade today! The sunburn on my chest and one shoulder is still really bad! In the afternoon I left the guesthouse to go for a walk all the way along Victory and Ochheuteal beaches. The plan was to take some pictures on the way, but my bloody camera battery ran out at the end of the beach, so I couldn't take many! I ended up going to a bar on the beach called Chiva's Shack where I got chatting to a Dutch dude. It was pretty much just a run-down wooden shack on the beach, but it had massive chairs, decent music and cheap booze, so it was good by me. And all overlooking the sea. At about 5pm I decided to head back to beach for my last swim in Cambodia. I was in bed by 11 as I had to get up early to get the coach back to Phnom Penh, but I was still awake at 2.30am. The insomnia is really starting to piss me off now! I got my first mosquito bite in the night as well. One bite isn't bad for 3 weeks!
Thursday 20th March
I got the 8am coach back to Phnom Penh. I met a guy called Tim, from Cambridge, on the coach so I spent most of the time chatting to him. Now this coach ride was definitely the least eventful so far. In Phnom Penh I decided that I would stay in a different hotel. I tried to get into one place, but it was full. Then I tried another, but it had closed down sometime in the last week! So I ended up back at the Angkor International Hotel again where I was greeted by my friends (the gang of tuk-tuk drivers)! I went to the White Horse to go an chat to Narin for a bit before heading off to get a coach ticket to Vietnam for the following day. I decided to drop the ticket off at the hotel and I ended up chatting to the tuk-tuk guys for about an hour! They were saying that as it was my last night they would take me to a bar and then find me a nice lady (a hooker basically!). I declined as I was already 30 minutes late to meet Narin at the Frog and Parrot!
Well, there you have entry number 5. I am 4 days behind with my diary at the moment, so I need to go and catch up with that now otherwise I will forget what I have done.
Miss you all.
xxx
Comments
Interesting read
Hi Matt,
Just to let you know that I am following your trip with great interest. As I said to your mum, makes my trip out here to Spain in the 8o's, seem pretty tame!
Hope all continues to go well.
Cheers,
Graham (Hannah's uncle)
It's us!
Hi Matt!
We've also been loving your blogs although we haven't had many opportunities to use to internet so we have to read them in group sittings! Sounds like you're having a brilliant time and I can't wait to see all the photos when you get back. Your tuk-tuk stories also made us laugh as they remind us of Thailand!
Keep safe xxx
Oww
Your poor legs!!
The photos are excellent.
xxx