Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Sihanoukville is a beautiful, tiny beach town on the southern shore of Cambodia. It's the type of place backpackers stumble upon and then get stuck in for months and maybe years. We met tons of 20-something travellers who are living above a bar where they "work" - basically recruiting young tourists to come join them for the night's big rager.

 It was a pretty relaxing few days although it got off to a rocky start when after checking into our bungalow we discovered rat droppings under the pillows. Even though we had already unpacked and showered we quickly checked out and headed down the beach to another hostel where we found a cleaner, newer room for the same price - this one only had a few cockroaches to deal with, ehhh no problem!

Tourism seems to be the only real gig in this town so the beach is teeming with locals trying to sell you massages, pedicures, sunglasses, bracelets, sarongs, waxing, threading.. you name it. We even had some super aggresive women take out their thread and start working on our legs despite our refusals!

We took one day to lay out on the beach and then a one day boat trip over to a few of the islands, snorkeling and eating one of our favorite meals so far - barbecued barracuda! But it seemed the rain was coming to stay so we headed back to Bangkok on a 14 hour bus/mini-van ride which might now take the prize for the longest and most uncomfortable day we've had on our trip. Happily back in our favorite Bangkok hostel, we are taking it easy today and heading to Bali tomorrow... where I imagine, unless I can convince the girls to hike the volcano, we will be taking it veryyyy easy ;-)