The former capital of Cambodia, Sihanoukville, is best known for it's white sands and the thousand or so restaurants and bars lining the beachfront. As a short getaway from the village, it was a bit strange to be back amongst the party-time backpackers, but nice to eat some western food and enjoy the salt water again.

We arrived and took a moto taxi straight to Otres Beach, one of the quieter beaches a few kilometres out of the city. We spent the afternoon relaxing on the beach, and practiced our Khmer by politely declining offers of massage, pedicure and back waxing.

Looking for a bit of a party in the evening, we explored some of the nightspots along Otres Beach. To our disappointment every one of the ten or more restaurant bars was virtually empty. After we finally settled for a romantic entire-restaurant-for-two, it started to rain and we had to shovel down the rest of our meals before the roof caved in!

For the second day of our weekend away we tuk-tuked into Serendipity Beach, the main backpacker hub in Sihanoukville. Here we tried to avoid the heat of the day by wandering the markets in search of supplies for the village. It was really nice to put our new Khmer speaking skills into practice with some of the locals and we felt a bit more culturally connected. We found our party that night too, creating our own beachside bar crawl until the early hours of the morning.

On a nice big comfortable air-conditioned bus full of tourists on their way to Thailand, we're about to jump off and walk for a kilometre or so into our little village. It's a nice feeling to know we'll receive a warm and friendly welcome from the much more innocent and untainted families that live there.