Happy Christmas!!! Thank you for all your Christmas messages! Happy 2008 to everybody as well.

I am backtracking all the way back to the beginning of December so I will probably miss out loads but there will be more to fill you in on when we get back this way!

We were finding it hard getting around Cambodia to start off with. In Vietnam they issue you with one bus ticket that you can use all the way through Vietnam & stop off where you like. In Cambodia you are supposed to use Phnom Penh or Siem Reap as a base & travel to places with a return ticket. So we booked a return bus ticket from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville in the South. When we got there we found loads of travel agents selling bus tickets onto the next leg of out journey so we wasted a bit of money and time there but we thought we'd still travel back to Phnom Penh as there was a carol service on the day of our return & we needed to get into the Christmas spirit!

Sihanoukville is a beach resort with bars/shacks lined up along the beach. (Dad, this isn't as cool as it sounds! The rooms are boiling & tiny, not even room to stand up & the shared showers are in with the squat style toilets & you have to stand over the toilet to have a shower!). Anyway, the rooms were $2 a night so we can't really complain! Amy's friend, Michelle advised us to stay here as apparently if you eat at the place 3 times a day you can stay for free but we like to try out different places & 2 dollars wasn't much! We arrived in the evening so had some food at our shack & found out they were having a beach party (later found out this goes on every other night) so we decided to stay there & have a few cocktails, they have the Mekong Bucket (named as it is the colour of the Mekong, yuk!) It's whiskey, red bull & coke, it was nice but we have been warned to stay off the red bull here as it's a bit dodgy! So we didn't have too many of that type! They had flame jugglers which were pretty cool too. The next few days we chilled out on the beach, which was nice. We found the coolest cinema in the world there! It's a big room with beds lined up the top, then soft sofas & loads of cushions staggered down from there. If you want crisps, popcorn, drinks you go & help yourself from the front & pay at the end. We stayed & watched two films, it was so relaxing in there, plus it was the only air conditioned place we went to in the whole of Sihanoukville!