Beach Fun
Sunday, January 21st, 2007
Sihanoukville is Cambodia’s Cote d’azure. It is however, yet to be overrun with mini dogs and women in white linen. It’s not quite yet a beach resort which is a good thing after the commercial beaches of Thailand and it was nice to be somewhere before it has been ‘discovered’ too much. I think in a few years it will be much busier, but as for now it’s a cool chilled out place with accommodation that is a cheap as chips in big shared rooms with mattresses on the floor. We stayed at a great place right on the beach called Chiva’s shack, everything is all very relaxed and the staff (when they can be bothered) or the many beach sellers can get you whatever you need, from happy pizzas to massages to fruit to bizarre hair removal methods.
Weather was beautiful and stayed for 3 nights hanging at the beach in the day and eating fresh seafood at beach front restaurants in the evening. Big comfy chairs are all over the beach and it’s a great way to spend a day sitting around with people bringing everything to you. Tash got a few beauty treatments done, including leg hairs being ripped out by cotton. In the evening people would light fires and there was lots of fire sticks to watch
One of days was somewhat wasted in the ‘great visa chase’. Always a fun time with visas, the Vietnam one being even more fun as we had to get before entering the country. This involved trekking around the hot dusty town trying to find the embassy. Finally finding it the guard at the door quickly locked the gate and told us to go away. A bit confused we eventually spotted the opening time sign, the guard not being too helpful by actually telling us the embassy was closed for lunch. Of course we had arrived at the beginning of a 2 hour lunch break. So hung out drinking lukewarm water until 2. The oh-so-helpful guard gave us another angry look when we asked if we could go in now that it was 2, he pointed to his watch. 1.58pm.
We did end up getting the visas, once we were actually inside it was surprisingly easy. So we were all set for our next country. We left the beach early in the morning on our incredibly professional (hilariously so) bus across the border. Baggage receipts and bus hostesses as well as snacks and strange information about the areas we were driving through over a dodgy PA system. We changed buses in Phnom Phen and had some food at a funky café before our next bus where they played strange video clips of western songs redone by Cambodians with Christmas themes, what does the Venga Boys have to do woth Jingle Bells?
The bus organsied our passports on the border which while helpful ment a long wait but hey, since when are border crossings outside of Europe straightfoward?
So we were into Vietnam, home of funny hats, pho noodles and of course the war
photos from Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia are here:
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| Phillippin |
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